Love Me (7 page)

I flew to Chicago, and Los Angeles, and Houston, and gave readings, and book editors took me to lunch and asked my opinion on publishing matters. My success conferred absolute authority on me—in regard to politics, personal relationships, the brotherhood of man, the search for world peace, I was a voice to be heeded. I stayed in small luxury hotels on quiet side streets, hotels with small brass nameplates and protective doormen. Big bouquets of flowers on the coffee table and bottles of Puligny-Montrachet on ice and Italian sheets on the beds and oil paintings of Paris boulevards and towels as big as sleigh robes on heated towel racks. A green marble bathroom with a basketful of amenities (shampoo and conditioner, but also Q-tips, bath salts, three flavors of mouthwash, aspirin, Vaseline, benzocaine, iodine, oxacillin, digitalis, laxative, and six kinds of soap, milled, castile, pumice, glycerin, liquid, and brown) and every step I took was cushioned, every door opened, every need attended to, the manager on the phone—“Everything okay there, Mr. Wyler?” The editor to say “The book is in its sixth printing.” And I hopped in the limo and was whisked away to more interviews, where people fawned over me with a vengeance and I walked through a stage door and onstage and eight hundred people burst out clapping and I smiled and nodded and put my book on the lectern and read to them—read to them from my own writing! Stuff I wrote on Sturgis Avenue in St. Paul! People in Chicago and St. Louis and Dallas liked it, too!—and afterward they pumped my hand and I signed books and a lovely brunette murmured, “You’re so much younger than I expected you’d be.” The book shot to number 1 on the best-seller list. “That’s great,” said Iris. I flew home for a day. She was at the new drop-in center for single mothers in recovery.

It was a madhouse. Screeching kids and stoned daddies and the daddies’ new girlfriends and the bipolar mommies riding out the backwash of the Thorazine and some of the mommies had bad new boyfriends or girlfriends and a pretty little girl whose name tag said “LaTeisha” was being pushed on a swing by two ladies, one behind, one in front, who chatted with her and ignored each other. The one behind was the daddy’s ex-girlfriend in neon pink stretch pants and a V-neck T-shirt in which breasts the size of cantaloupes bounced around, and the one in front, his new squeeze, was skinny as a fence post. And LaTeisha’s mommy was lying on the floor, dazed from the methadone. And through the chaos strode my good wife, the goddess Iris of the Streets, Protector of the Fallen, spreading light and succor, giving hugs, blowing noses, tying shoelaces, doing good, nothing but good, in this sinful world that is rewarding her wayward husband so handsomely.

“I’m going to LA,” I said.

“Good-bye!” she cried, merrily.

“For three weeks.”

“See you in three weeks!”

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” I said.

“I thought you’d never ask! ” she said.

I told her that our ship had come in. We would be rich. When I returned in three weeks, I wanted to look for a new home.

“Don’t get a big head,” she said and turned away to see how LaTeisha’s mommy was doing.

I came home after LA and the house looked so drab, so small.

Sturgis Avenue seemed junkier, meaner than ever, as if years of hard winters had knocked everything loose. Homes atilt, walks bowed, sidewalks cracked, trees bent, and a depressing clutter and mishmash—as if everyone were too busy managing their alcoholism to ever pick up a shovel or rake—Damn, this is ugly, I thought. Why not run a herd of buffalo through, hold a Black Sabbath concert? I left my suitcase on the porch and hiked up to the cathedral and walked along Summit, past the old Humphries mansion, where I will live someday though I don’t know it yet, and past Mrs. Porterfield’s rooming house porch where the young Scott Fitzgerald sat and smoked and thought about the fame that would soon descend on him, though he didn’t know it yet, and past the stone house that Frank Frisbie bought with the money from his crappy novel and the University Club and the old apartment house where Katherine lives—

And in the little park with Nathan Hale on a pedestal, hands bound behind his back, I stopped and thought about the child Iris and I never had, who gave up his life before he was born. My little bumblebee. My little gumdrop.

I am a happy man. I have a duty to be.

Americans are meant to live, love, laugh, and be happy. The quintessential American philosophy: work it out—make the best of it—lighten up. We’re optimists. Leave agonized introspection to the Swedes and cynicism to the French and
Weltschmerz
to the Berliners and
Ich bin nicht ein Berliner.
Problems can be solved. Don’t sweat it. Play it for laughs. Where there is love, there’s comedy. Don’t hang out with unhappy people; don’t go into a profession full of the humorless. Be happy.

All through my younger days, I had morbid fears of drowning inside a car or suffocating in a coffin, or having my skull fractured by a giant vise operated by evil apes, or riding a train that derails on a high trestle over a rocky gorge, or going to the electric chair at Sing Sing, or skidding off the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the horror of thousands of Japanese tourists.

And then I learned that music can postpone dread. And so can sex. The
St. Matthew
or the passionate nakedness of two happy adults.

A beef sirloin is good, too, slightly charred on the outside and reddish pink in the middle, nicely peppered, with mustard aioli.

And sleep. A good solid eight hours of Z’s in a room with a window open and a salt breeze blowing in.

Fresh melon from a roadside stand. An endive and pear and blue cheese salad. A rousing Broadway musical with some classy comic turns and a winsome leading lady and a terrific tap routine in Act 2 and a grand finale with the whole ensemble dancing with faces aglow and hands in the air. A good medicinal martini with a fellow martinist. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. The Beatles’
White Album.
A September day in St. Paul. A fine Episcopal mass in a sunny sanctuary and the organist plays quietly and the choir hangs together on the anthem and the homily is concise and your sins are lifted from your back and you come away from the Lord’s Table filled with grace and walk out into the sunny world with a fresh chance at life. And the snooze during the Scripture readings is good, too.

 

 

Many things have the power to make us happy. A good ball game, score tied, bases loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth, and the local hero punches a double into the right-field corner—but no! the first baseman leaps and spears the ball for the third out!—No! The ball caroms off his glove and into the box seats and knocks the commissioner of baseball’s rug off his head! The crowd rises, yelling, ecstatic. Walking around New York City on a summer night. Walking around the Minnesota State Fair. The Bach
Mass in B Minor
or
St. Matthew’s
or Handel’s
Messiah
and a big choir leaning into it like sled dogs on the tundra.

Moving can make you happy. America is a big country. If you’re unhappy in Minnesota, you should try Iowa, or Wyoming, Oregon. Any state with an O in it. California, or Washington, or Montana, or North Dakota. Illinois. Vermont. Colorado. The list goes on and on. Don’t accept grim fate. Dance on out of town, hop a freight train, ride the dog, borrow your mom’s car, and make a fresh start.

I walked around Ramsey Hill thinking about New York.

My agent had gotten me a cool $200,000 advance for the sequel to
Spacious Skies,
to be called
Amber Waves of Grain.
I had written to Mr. William Shawn, the editor of
The New Yorker,
and asked if I could come to the magazine as a staff writer. He wrote back:

And one night I walk out the door and up West 7th and I call a Manhattan real estate agent on the pay phone in the Day By Day and leave a message on her machine saying, “Yes, I’m interested in purchasing apartment 12A at the Bel Noir for one million dollars.”

That night Iris and I lay in bed and I told her my New York dream—to work at
The New Yorker
and run into John Updike in the hall and say, “Hi, John,” and he’d say, “Hey, Larry, how’s it going? Liked your last story.” And I’d go to lunch at the Algonquin with Mr. Shawn and in would come Mr. Perelman and Mr. White and Mr. Trillin and we’d sit and yak about writerly things and I’d head home to the fashionable Bel Noir on Central Park West and there would be Iris in a silk pantsuit on the terrace, ready to go off to the Met for
Der Rosenkavalier
and a late supper at the Café des Artistes—

“What’s wrong with St. Paul?” she said.

“I want to live a bigger life. I want to be in the midst of things, not out on the fringe.”

“Maybe I don’t. What’s New York got that St. Paul doesn’t?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

“We’ve got theater here. Music. Museums. It’s good enough for me. How come you’re all het up about New York?”

I put my arms around her and lay my head between her neck and shoulder and kiss her and say, “Do you remember the first time we made love, that summer night? We sat on the grass listening to the jazz band knowing something wonderful was about to happen? New York makes me feel that way.”

“I don’t really feel like moving,” she says.

“I’ll help you feel like it.”

She sighs.
Who is this man and what does he want, anyway?

I talk about New York and the harbor, Wall Street, Trinity Church, Bryant Park, Soho, meanwhile my finger traces around her wings and down her spine and she leans back against me, and I unbutton her blouse, and she smiles, and I am kissing her—

“I am so fat, look at this,” she says, pinching a little flab at her waist.

“You have the breasts of a goddess—I wish I had a painting of you nude. I’d hang it on the dining room wall and look at it as I eat dessert.”

She glances down at her breasts as if she can’t remember where she got them.

“You don’t have as good a view of them as I do,” I point out, grasping them gently, my little friends.

“Remember back in the seventies, those people in south Minneapolis ? We went to their house for dinner. They had photos on the wall of a woman’s belly and nipples and crotch as big as movie posters, and I tried not to look stare but then it dawned on me that these were the nipples and crotch of the hostess, who was tossing the salad. Remember them?”

“I don’t remember that at all.”

“Of course you do.”

“What is it with men and breasts? It’s so infantile.”

I adore her and she keeps arguing with me. I cry, “Woman, don’t you know you make me crazy when you take your clothes off?” She says, “Haven’t you ever seen a naked woman before?” I say, “I love when you lie on your back, your arms behind your head, your little bush standing up so proud and delicate.” She says, “It’s not that different from anybody else’s.” I say, “Let’s get a picture of you nude to hang in the dining room.” She says, “I don’t want the plumber looking at me.”

“I’ll do your plumbing!” I cry and I kiss her breasts.

I kiss her Aphrodite breasts and caress her thighs and turn her toward me so we lie face to face, chest to breasts, belly to belly, sword to sheath, peak to valley, peninsula to inlet, and we kiss long and sweet and I put my hand between her thighs and stroke her slowly, and she sighs, she murmurs, she gives off heat, and we move through the Seven Stations of Foreplay from the Anointing of the Nipples to St. Cunnilingus and head toward the finale—and as she mounts me, I imagine that maybe a few swimmers will penetrate the harbor defenses and paddle upstream through the marshes to the royal egg and dive into it head-first-and she swings her hips forward and back a few times and she groans with pleasure! Oh my God! Yes! Yes! Yes! But even in her bliss, she thinks about leaving St. Paul and feels bad and sits down on me, dreading New York, not realizing that sitting on Mr. Penis turns him into Mr. Penis, Jr. The guy is not a weight lifter.

“I don’t know why we can’t be happy right where we are,” she cries.

I tell her, “You are a fabulous lover,” and try to raise her up with my knees so we can resume the lovely thing we were doing.

She sighs. Words of praise don’t rest easily on my Minnesota wife: she brushes compliments away like deerflies. She says, “How many other women have you said that to?”

I wish she’d get off the poor guy and let him breathe. A moment ago he was James Joyce and now she is turning him into a
local writer.

She looks down and sees him, shriven, hanging his head. “What’s the matter?” she says. “You lose interest?”

How to tell her? Praise inflates Mr. Penis, and a critical review is deflating. One more reason to go to New York. There’s more hype. Hype works. Minnesotans don’t think so but it does. The surest way to give a guy a powerful hard-on is to gasp in amazement and say, “My gosh, I haven’t seen anything that big since the circus came to town! That is the Beethoven Ninth of all erections. What on earth has gotten into you? You been taking kryptonite or what? That is the
Giants in the Earth
and the
Woody Herman Big Band
and the
Peterbilt Tractor
of penises.” This is how you turn a cocktail weenie to a foot-long bratwurst.
Advertising.
In Minnesota, they sit down on you hard and you deflate and they say, “Oh, well. Some other time.”