There's a Cow in Manhattan Part 09

Date: About 1961 to 1965
 

There's a Cow in Manhattan

Part Nine

Now I was in Washington D.C. I had been there once when I was in the Army, but seeing and experiencing things in the Army has nothing to do with real life. When I got off the bus I could see the Washington Monument and I remembered walking to the top and vowing I would never do a thing like that again because nothing happens. When I got to Paris I wouldn't go near the Eiffel Tower because it was just like the Washington Monument and those things are for other people.

I was supposed to go to Twentieth Street and M or N. I was now at something like Twelfth Street, so I could walk to Twentieth and save money. Strange cities are like unfamiliar books and you cannot know anything about them until you've read them. Then you either kick yourself for not having known, or are very pleased that you've stretched yourself over a new experience. I kicked myself for not having known that Washington D.C. of all places, would never allow Twelve to be followed by Thirteen and continue on to Twenty. There were many strange circles that had nothing to do with numbered streets and although I finally got there, I never did figure out how Washington D.C. really works, even though everyone insists on its being on a grid system in which letters name the streets one way, and numbers the other way. If you know it it works, but if you don't, it doesn't.

This was just the beginning of my discomfort. Rehearsals are horrible and depressing things. I can't see how any person in theatre can persevere long enough through rehearsals to have his chance to perform. Most of his life is rehearsing without an audience. Rehearsals tear you inside out, make you throw away anything you've concluded, then, when you have finally been broken to bits, you must return after it's all over, pick up the pieces and try to make some kind of sense out of it in order to remember it. There were six of us in the Children's Dance Theatre, two boys and four girls. Erika Thimey was the director. She was German, had an accent and a very German weight, and I couldn't see her having anything to do with dancing. However, she could in her way and that was even more confusing. Erika was a good enough director and knew everything she was telling us, but it took so long for me to know where everything was to fit. After weeks of daily rehearsal I figured out there were three parts to our program. The first was an Indian dance, then a folk dance, then "King Solomon and the Bee." I was an owl, then an Indian in the first, then a folk dancer in the second, then a slave in the opening of King Solomon, but quickly had to change into King Solomon with an artificial nose. Erika thought I was going to be a good Solomon, but found I was so frightened, that when the big opening performance in Washington came to be, a tall girl whom I had never seen was suddenly King Solomon and I remained being the slave. Then the dancers I had been rehearsing with consoled me by telling me I had been screwed, that I was a far better Solomon than that girl. Erika told me I could quit the company if I wanted to. She was not satisfied with my Solomon, if I wanted to stay, we would need to work very hard for another week before our Camden, New Jersey performance. We worked very hard and I just couldn't satisfy Erika. I could only do it my way because I couldn't conceive of my mocking her -- I even tried. Well Camden, New Jersey came and went. I did Solomon, Erika was there and after the performance everyone was very sad, they all knew it wasn't a very good performance. Erika told us the same thing and although we went through it again and again, we had no more performances to play with Erika going with us. I didn't know this until very early one snowy morning we drove out of Washington on our way to the University of Wisconsin. One of the girls was driving. Her name was Karen, Karen Cross. It was the Inauguration Day for President Kennedy and we had to get out very early before all the traffic began. We left at five-thirty. Washington was just beginning to make sense to me. We drove Pennsylvania Avenue, all kinds of reviewing stands were set up. Television companies were getting ready with their huge cameras up on poles. It was a funny turnabout. We were ready for the show but were driving out of town. I happened to ask if Erika was meeting us during the trip or at Wisconsin and it was explained to me our tour was not going to be with Erika, we were to do it alone. I said I was very glad because we would all be very good without Erika, but no one understood what I meant until after our performance in Wisconsin in which we were all perfect and the children lined up for our autographs afterwards and one told me, while I was still in my Solomon costume, that he was glad I won over the Queen of Sheba.

I've never voted. Once I decided to vote for Adlai Stevenson when I was in Chicago at school, but had to vote by proxy and take my ballot to a notary public, then mail it to Vincennes. The man at the notary window opened it and read it. I told him that was a secret ballot, and he had no right to read it. I grabbed it from him and tore it up and didn't vote. I thought the fun was in the secret. When Kennedy and Nixon were running against one another I told George Monk I was voting for Kennedy. He tried to persuade me to vote for Nixon, but I wouldn't. Our political argument was very weak but we decided that neither of us would vote. It would keep things even that way so why bother.

After Wisconsin we went somewhere else for one performance and began an intense tour of one-day stands for a week or two. Here we all began to know our roles very well. King Solomon took over the company he drove most of the time told the company where we were staying, managed the set-up for the show and even told the girls when and where they were to pee. It was a natural thing to do and King Solomon was becoming more and more able.

Besides Karen Cross, there was Gayla Land, Suzanne Sindle and Phyllis Edelman. Richard Arve was the other boy besides me. He was really named Richard Brown but changed his last name to Arve, it was his mother's original name, because when he got into Equity there was already a Richard Brown. At least this is what he said, I've never heard of such a thing, but it helps to explain the strange person that Richard Arve is. He's totally a dancer. He never noticed that rehearsals were difficult because he was dancing. I stayed with him and his aunt while rehearsals were going on and we became very good friends. Karen and Suzanne were both from Juilliard, but I couldn't believe Karen graduated from the Dance Department at Juilliard she was too heavy and her approach to dance was like a jazz dancer's. Suzanne was very bright, pretty and a well-trained dancer and I respected her and Richard Arve for their art. Gayla Land was married to a young Washington lawyer and was humorless and usually grouchy and we got along well because she never frightened me like she did the others, I enjoyed shouting at her and making her do things my way and that's how I came to be leading the touring. Phyllis Edelman was the Queen of Sheba and I loved her dancing the part. She was too heavy, lived in Queens, New York, and became interested in dance because of her weight. She was very stupid to drive with and never knew which side of the stage to enter on, but when she got on, the stage was hers and King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba became the most important part of the program. Richard Arve's great solo was the Indian Chief in the first number. It was far superior to the program and when we got to Chicago, he auditioned for Ruth Page with that solo and later danced in her company.

The Children's Dance Theatre went from Bangor, Maine to Cincinnati, Ohio. We had a few days off now and then where we would try and go to Manhattan. One morning we did get here to Manhattan about three-thirty in the morning. Gayla and Richard Arve had nowhere to stay, so I took them to the loft. Naturally we woke up George Monk and he was furious, to my great surprise. Usually he enjoyed unexpected people even in the middle of the night. Gayla and Richard Arve went their ways for a few days and the company planned to meet one morning to continue the tour, but for some unknown reason we had to meet at a bus station at some strange early hour, and the bus station was way uptown by the George Washington Bridge. George Monk was still furious after Richard Arve and Gayla left. He was not there when I went to bed at about eleven o'clock that night. The telephone rang at about twelve-thirty and it was George Monk drunk. He informed me that he was bringing a crowd over for a party. I begged him to have mercy, that I was resting and had to get up early, but he reversed the whole story and used it to explain the way he felt when I came in on him at three-thirty in the morning with my party. I decided I would be naked for his party and shock them all into leaving, then I decided to just get out and went to David Gamble's for the few remaining hours I had left. I didn't think David Gamble would start playing this sort of game George Monk and I were playing, and he wasn't and he was very consoling and I slept and woke very early to return to the loft, grab my belongings for the tour and get out of there for a few weeks. Horrors had occurred at the loft, there had been a fire which burned out of the fireplace on to the floor and up the wall and had burned away the greater part of the portrait of the red-haired girl that was Lee Guilliatt's friend who came from Iowa. I saw it, saw there was no other harm and was even more glad to leave on this tour, which was seeming very comfortable by now. George Monk stumbled in right before I was able to leave, full of sorrow and great fright. So I took advantage of it all and told him calmly I was returning in a few weeks, and expected him to have moved by the time I returned.

All this didn't matter very much. I knew George Monk and I were finished being college roommates, the portrait of the red-headed girl from Iowa was going to get away somehow. It really wasn't what I did because in those days I didn't know what I did was just like what I thought I did. That's why an artist must be old enough to know that whatever he does is something and he must know this so well that he forgets it until whatever he does is what he does. Now everything I do is something and I can't see a series anymore. It's all one big series if that's the way to think about it. Nowadays it comforts me to know that both Rauschenberg and Johns or Johns and Rauschenberg are the last examples of artists doing what they thought they did. It's a comfort now because any artist now can be an artist all the time without concerning himself about a series. Now an artist does art whenever he walks or talks or sleeps. The qualification of his artwork will be taken care of by the world anyway, like always.

Now I had the beginning of that feeling and it began working for me. I couldn't tell anybody in the car, as we were driving off again to the University of Illinois for one performance and two days later had to be in Evansville, Indiana. I knew everything was going to take care of itself, that George Monk would move out and Lee Guilliatt would move in and they would have exchanged apartments. I also knew that I was no longer ever going to help people move from one apartment to another in Manhattan. One has to serve his apprenticeship and move to new apartments, but they must also help friends move. I helped Lee move twice. She moved from Suffolk Street to Catherine Street after her ceiling fell in her old apartment. I helped Gretchen and John Benedict move, but now people could move all around me, even into and out of my own loft and I would no longer help them. A lot of things happen to a man who becomes a king every other day.

Three in front and three in back, that was the way we traveled in the station wagon and the scenery costumes and tapes for sound were loaded with careful arrangement in the far back. On one of the doors there was printed Dance Theatre, but some of the letters had been scratched off, so it said D NCE THEAT E. It looked just like Erika Thimey talked.

If you hang a piece of cotton on your screen door, the flies will not stay on the screen. Put a couple of marbles in your kettle and all the sediment that comes from boiling water will disappear because of those marbles. Put a few grains of rice in your salt shaker and the salt will always be dry even during wet weather and be sure to unplug your radio during a thunderstorm or lightning might strike. Burn the alcohol out of whiskey and drink a tablespoonful if you have diarrhea. In winter, during a snow, if you wipe the windshield of your car with a cloth that holds tobacco, the ice will not form on the glass. If it rains on the Fourth of July, all of your grapes will rot. Just put a barrel in the middle of your tomato field and turn it either on its side or stand it up every day, and the crows will not bother the tomatoes. A little sugar in stewed tomatoes doesn't make the tomatoes sweet, just taste a little better. Give your pigs a bit of coal to eat now and then, they love it; it puts iron in their diet. Find the oil duct on the tail of a goose, squeeze it and catch the oil. It will keep for ages and can be used for most stomach trouble. An aspirin in the water of a vase of flowers makes them keep an extra week. If you are buying nylon hose, buy two pairs -- two pairs are three pairs after a while.

Indiana is full of trees, but few are very big and one feels they are in new land all the time. The sky is very low and the horizon is even lower. Sunset is not an event because it happens for hours. It's just sad. No one knows what to do with their hills in Indiana, so they talk about them. Sometimes they built houses on them, but cut away half of it to make a road and also they say you can see it better. Everyone likes fences in Indiana, but they are usually in need of repair and never repaired properly. Houses there are built very low to the ground with no basement or just a cellar.

We spent the night in a cheap motel that had cabins in a row behind the office. It was damp in the cabins and the wooden walls inside were papered with wallpaper. The next morning we planned to get to Vincennes around ten o'clock. Then we could make it to Evansville for a performance at three-thirty.

I had telephoned Aunt Renie that all of us were going to drop in before we went to Evansville, but when we got there, both Aunt Stell and Aunt Renie had their best wash dresses on and the house was all cleaned, yet Aunt Renie said, as she unlatched the screen door, "Well, what a surprise." She always greets me this way, she always has the screen door to unlatch, even in the winter. Aunt Stell waits until I've completed my greeting with Aunt Renie, then says, "What a surprise." She also knew I was with the dance company, but she asked if I were alone. Everyone in the station wagon wanted to meet Aunt Stell and Aunt Renie, I've always talked about them even without knowing it. Once I was at a party in Chicago, the year I was finishing school. Everyone was quietly talking. Some couples were petting. Benny Andrews was there and he told me later that all during the silence of the party, everyone could hear me talking about Aunt Stell. Aunt Renie had her Chicago accent on. She saw the group I was with and saw they were adults, so she had to put on her Chicago accent, and she said hello with a sound of "w" in the last syllable. It always means serious business. I've seldom seen Aunt Renie and Aunt Stell in their house with strangers whom I knew, and experienced for the first time their charm and their beauty. They both sit on the edge of their chairs, speak clearly and slowly, keeping their backs straight and Aunt Renie is always near laughter. In anyone's living there is a time to receive visitors and while the visitors are visiting, one always thinks about what the visitors are seeing. Aunt Renie doesn't hesitate looking around and finding what visitors are seeing, but Aunt Stell sort of closes her eyes like a cat and thinks about what visitors are looking at behind her. Sometimes she tells them all about what they are looking at without any effort to see if she's right. She's always right, she was a teacher of course, teachers are people who can see from the backs of their heads although they always tell you they can't. Aunt Renie sits near to everyone and Aunt Stell sat far away.

The girls all used the bathroom. Girls don't know where they are until they use the bathroom. Boys can manage it or not, but seldom tell anyone that is what they are doing. I don't know if Richard Arve used the bathroom but I do know all the girls did because they each asked in turn. If I told them where it was, they asked either Aunt Renie or Aunt Stell anyway.

After doors were opened and shut to the bathroom many times, and the flushing system was whispering its last noises, Aunt Renie began serving coffee, ice cream and fresh strawberries. She said it was too early for this kind of thing, but she bet we all had appetites if we were dancing and working so hard. Everyone was very surprised. Aunt Stell explained that her brother worked in produce and kindly supplied her and Aunt Renie with choice fruits and vegetables the year round. We were delighted. After a week of only Howard Johnson it was very special. It was very special being in on Aunt Stell and Aunt Renie at home. I had very little to say, I felt like a stranger and the less I did the more delighted these aunts were. It was a short visit, but so special. Fr. Hilary was the only one who brought strangers around. He saw how we all acted in our own houses on special events. Once, when we lived on the farm, Fr. Hilary telephoned that he and two priests had a chance to drop by, could they stay for a meal. Aunt Renie telephoned Aunt Hootie quickly to ask her to help with the meal. Dad and I spent most of the morning trying to get the dining table from the kitchen to the piano room. By the time Fr. Hilary and the two priests arrived the house looked different from any arrangement I had ever seen. One of the priests said we had a very nice home and thought the meal was excellent. I was too young then to know how to act as though we did this all the time, so I could not resist telling the priests that we moved the dining table into this strange room, and we all were in a strange house. I know now and know what an important part of life it is to receive strangers in your house and see that the strangest part is you.

Evansville was a pleasure. Aunt Renie said she was going to try and go to the performance, but I didn't know if she was in the audience or not. During the Indian number Richard Arve's totem pole didn't go up, and I was the one who always set the prop up for him. I had found a new way to get it up, but forgot to tell him. It was his big solo and I ruined the whole thing. He told me later that he had heard of many techniques of upstaging, but never of someone going so far as to messing with the props. I feel bad about that to this day because somehow I think he was right. I was brilliant as King Solomon and thought I heard Selma laugh. After the performance I was told that there were friends coming backstage to see me. There was Fr. Hilary with Fr. Aurelius, Selma, Aunt Hootie, Buck and Aunt Renie. I was very pleased and Selma stayed and waited for me because she was going to drive me back to Vincennes. The company had three or four days off and I was going to spend them with Selma and meet with the dance company in Chicago.

Indiana tilts. It is longer than it is wide and goes toward the north where it is higher. It doesn't matter if there are ways of measuring to show if Indiana is level or not, it still tilts. It is also green. Not green as Connecticut is green, but dull green, a green that is mixed with too much white, like hospital green. Indiana is not known for its mountains or hills, although there is Brown County at the southeastern corner, but it has been absorbed by Indiana people and no one else is aware of it. Nothing happens in all those miles and miles of corn fields either. One would think that some secret should be hidden in all that flat land and those who live in Indiana do think that indeed there are secrets, but when they move away, they find there is nothing there but corn. Of course that is the secret but the secret is only known by people who move away. There is too much light in Indiana and that makes everything look different from what it really is. That is until you get up real close, then you can see what is there. That is the reason why so many people from Indiana wear eyeglasses, but still they can't see. This light continues to be too intense even to people who have perfect vision. The greatest thing in Indiana is Chicago because Chicago is in Illinois and people in Indiana appreciate Chicago because it's where Indiana ends. This makes people from Illinois very different from people from Indiana because Illinois people have Chicago and Indiana people don't have anything like that. What Indiana has that is more than any other place I know is smell. Every good smell is in Indiana and those smells are more potent for some reason. It's like putting printed cotton fabric in water and seeing the print become so much more intense. The smell of earth is so potent and so good it gives off the source of smell all the way to Kansas -- which has no smell except the hazy echo of the original smell that comes from Indiana. Anytime anyone reads anything about Indiana, they read great descriptions of smell. Each day has a different smell and everybody knows which day it is there because of smell. Thursday smells like freshly washed sheets that have dried in the sun and that's why I've always loved Thursday in Indiana. Leaving Indiana is one of the best parts of being from Indiana. I thought about disliking it for a few years but couldn't find how to do it. I don't really know how it is to leave any other state but I do know it can't be like leaving Indiana. People in Chicago are always leaving Chicago, Illinois to go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. New York people are always leaving New York to go to Connecticut. People from Detroit are always going to Michigan. There is no real reason to do this, but they do it, and everyone who does it says they have just always done it. Most states go to other states because they always have. Indiana doesn't do this, they stay in Indiana. Once when I learned phrases like state of consciousness and state of grace, I could only think state could be the shape of Indiana and either you are in that state or not in that state. When I left Indiana I understood those phrases much more clearly because of the new state I was in. This is the way people think in Indiana, and the ones who never leave are folded into that state and nothing they do can cause anything to happen.

Selma has never left Indiana. She went to Chicago for her honeymoon, but was only there five days.  Selma is pink, the same tone of pink that Indiana is green and it works out very beautifully. She wears eyeglasses and the only thing they do is hide her eyes. Her eyes are not very beautiful, but her ears, hands and eyebrows are perfect. Her middle name is Lucille, but she only uses the letter L when she signs her name. Most women have double names in Indiana and if they don't use them, they use their middle initial. They seem to be so afraid that they won't have proper identity unless they use their entire name. Women do this more than men. Selma L. Schulze is Selma's married name and she never refers to the Deem name. Aunt Renie was so interested in her Deem name she named her son George, George Deem Ottensmeyer who is now Fr. Hilary. Selma got so involved with Marie as a middle name that she named all of her children Marie, as a middle name. There is Laura Marie, Sara Marie and Jean Marie. She had two boys after the girls and I think the Marie idea was forgotten. Selma can run faster than I can and her laughter is her deepest emotion. She has no idea who anybody is anymore, not even herself and that makes an Indiana adult, and that's fine.

Each time I return to Indiana I am sure I will find hordes of wonderful images so I can finally recycle them for painting ideas, but this never comes true. I've borrowed Aunt Stell's car and taken long drives back into the countryside where  I grew up, but there is nothing inspiring there, only roads and fields and too much light. Indiana is not traditional and has no interest in preserving anything. When it does attempt it, they are not satisfied until they rebuild it so it looks like it should, not like it did, and there is no other way in Indiana.

Color can be seen when it is associated with another color. It's like sound. Sound can't be heard until it stops, which of course means another sound starts. Sound is not like color in any other way however. With color there must be a field. Sound has a field, but it is nothing like a color field. For one thing everyone works with color consciously and with sound unconsciously. When color is seen it is in its field and the field is composed of at least one different color. Different values of a color means a different color. So, whenever a color is seen it is because of another color and that is what makes a color mood. That is what makes everyone always working with color. The mood is the story of color. Two colors are enough at once. More than that makes the field so complicated that something else happens, even an arbitrary danger in which one can easily get lonely trying to work it out. After all he is way out there somewhere by himself.

Selma left me when she was sixteen. Up until that time we were regular friends. The summer she was sixteen she fell in love with a truck driver named Joe. It didn't work out so well, certainly not in Dad and Aunt Renie's eyes. The only way it did work was it was Selma's first taste of love. Early that summer she told Joe goodby and spent the rest of the summer in tears. One day in August she had defrosted the refrigerator and had thrown the ice into the backyard. I was going toward the closed-in back porch to get a fresh jug of water, we had been picking melons. Naturally I was barefoot and I stepped on the ice in the backyard. Selma saw this and began her wonderful laughing, the laughter shocked her into tears and she ran out to me and hugged me and cried for a good long time. Then she told me she would never be mean to me again. I've never seen her cry since then, and she became a young Indiana girl and went on her way and left me to tend to my identification by myself. It's the usual pattern of brother and sister, at least in Indiana.

In order to leave Indiana, you just have to close your eyes and push. Never look up and never look back or you won't get out. It's alright to stay but if you linger while trying to leave, chances are you won't get out, you'll end up in Indianapolis, thinking it's far away from Indiana, when it is in the center. That's what Bill Updike did. I never stopped in Indianapolis except to visit. It always seemed so white, like Washington D.C., and white really does very little.

The "Children's Dance Theatre" returned to Washington D.C. finally in April. Before we were to disband we had one more performance there and I would be doing King Solomon for the last time with Erika Thimey in the wings, watching. It was a very special performance for UNESCO and Erika was very excited and difficult, but when I was out on stage I realized Erika could not get me so I did Solomon my way and it was very well received. She told me that I was very good even though I hadn't done it the way she had taught it. I was very surprised late that following summer when Erika telephoned me here in the loft asking me if I might return to Washington to do a few performances of King Solomon again. What a pleasure it was to say that I couldn't because I was working with Mary Anthony for a television show, which was true.

George Monk had moved out and Lee Guilliatt had moved in and it was a pleasure returning to the loft. Richard Arve stayed with us and Lee loved him. Lee was working at the Living Theatre as stage manager. They were going to Europe that summer, so Richard Arve stayed most of the summer with me here. Marnie Mahaffey was a dancer and a close friend of Lee's, and she stayed for a month or so after Lee left with the Living Theatre. Finally Marnie got an apartment next door to her close friend Remy Charlip, and Richard Arve got a summer stock job at the Starlight Theatre in St. Louis. In those days there was no worry about having people about. Somehow I continued painting and felt no strain of people coming in and out of the loft. I don't quite know how it began, but i couldn't work with people around after a while.

Lee Guilliatt has only one ovary. One was removed for some reason and while they had the incision they removed her appendix too. Aunt Hootie has one breast. One was removed because of a tumor. Junior Ellerman has one testicle. He lived across the field from our house on the farm. I'm told it was because of mumps, but that sounds very Indiana to me. We had a milkman who came each day to pick up milk not deliver it, and he had one arm and it was interesting to see how he handled those huge milk cans. I met a girl with one eye, the other was glass. Her name was Cleo Oshie and she said she lost her eye in a spider web. She was pretty, but it was so difficult talking to her because I didn't know where to look. Nowadays women and men prefer wearing a patch over their missing eye. The glass eye is somehow out of style. Joe Fleck had one ear burned off in a fire. There he is with no right ear. I think of people who have one thing when they should have two when i think of Lee's missing ovary, but she said I shouldn't, that a missing ovary is really nothing, but I still think down the list all the way to Joe Fleck. In April the spring in Washington D.C. is well on its way and in Manhattan it's hardly noticed. Washington is very southern and Manhattan is northern, yet they seem to be connected in the eyes of someone from Indiana. It seems that south of Manhattan, right after Brooklyn, one runs into Washington D.C., with Philadelphia being on the west side of D.C.. After the Bronx there is Boston, just as if Boston is way uptown Manhattan. After Boston is Canada. East of Manhattan is Europe and west is the Dakotas.

I don't see Richard Arve anymore. After he stayed here for the summer Lee was in Europe and after he had finished with the Starlight Theatre in St. Louis, he went to Chicago. During that summer he did lots of auditions and even got involved with Leon Danielian, the lead dancer from the old Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Danielian taught ballet now and picked Richard Arve as a potential dancer for the plans to revive Ballet Russe. He asked Richard if he would be interested in traveling to Greece, where the company was going to work until they were ready for tour. Richard Arve's enthusiasm seemed to fade when I began calling his company the Ballet Russe de Greece, and he ran away from the whole situation. Richard Arve was always running away. He often left suddenly and didn't return for months. I don't know what he's doing now. He says he is teaching ballet and jazz and living in Hammond, Indiana.

The main thing that impressed me with Richard Arve was his ability to dance. He was too short to be a soloist in a ballet company, at least that's what Ruth Page told him, he was too timid to see things through to the end, but he was always in a dance situation and the remarkable thing I remember was his insisting on being perfectly quiet while we dressed and made up while we were on tour. At first I thought it was one of his affectations. He certainly was never the type to be quiet and contemplative. During the night while he slept he always had to have a jar under his bed to pee in, it was a nervous worry which he couldn't get over and would pee a bit six and seven times during the night. I never knew when he slept and he was always ready to do any feat of energy for dance. The strict silence which he insisted on impressed me. He called it "getting into character." We had to dress and make up while the girls were with us in the same dressing room once on tour. Richard asked them to all be quiet for a while, but when six people are not expecting such a request, it just doesn't happen. Both Richard and I noticed our performances did not have the usual satisfaction they had if we had got into character like we usually did. He told me that it never made any difference if you satisfied the audience or not, the point was to satisfy yourself and when that didn't happen, you were not performing well. He knew everything about performing and anyone who saw him believed it and believed his performance. I will always be fond of Richard Arve even though I think he stole my ring. When he leaves suddenly to go away he leaves all his clothes and when i happen to see him again a year or so later he never remembers. I'm expecting him to come in on me again anytime, stay for a month trying out New York dancing jobs, then leaving suddenly forgetting to take any of his possessions, as though he thought of going somewhere far away while on a subway coming home from dance class. In fact, that is the way he does it.

He was born and raised in North Carolina, and during High School he was a star athlete; loved playing football and was very interested in track. He saw a modern dance performance in his home town once and got very excited about movement. Somehow he decided to go to New York and there studied drama and dance. He taught himself how to talk without a trace of a Southern accent except for the word ruin, which he pronounced rurien. At one time he began studying ballet with a Russian man named Serge something besides Lifar and this Serge told him that he needed a great deal of training. He said that perhaps it was too late for Richard to actually become a dancer. This is the way to talk to Richard in order to make him work and from that day on for two years, Richard took a ballet class in the morning, two in the afternoon and usually two in the evening. He slept at Serge's studio, had very little money, so practiced on Sundays alone. He has always kept up this intense schedule and when he has no classes to go to he gives himself a barre that is exhausting to me, but feeds more and more energy into him. If he has no dance classes or dance work to go to he quits, sits around without sleeping and never says anything, just pouts until something comes up. 

While Lee was in Europe, she telephoned me twice from Paris. I was surprised, I had never got an intercontinental telephone call. All she could say was how much she missed me and how strange and lonely it was in Paris. I knew what she meant. Being in a city without any business is usually lonely, and Paris is probably one of the worst. When I was there visiting Fr. Hilary when I was in the Army, I had a dreadful time during the days I was alone. Lee stayed for a while in Paris with people she had met during the tour of the Living Theatre, and when the tour was finished she stayed on for a while.

I was looking forward to her return. Richard Arve was gone, so was Marnie, and although it was alright working here alone, I wanted Lee to return, she seemed so desperate when she telephoned. She wrote many letters and I could never find out just what she did while away, but it seems she didn't do much that she could talk about. She always had a way of making herself noticed and now she was carrying a guitar wherever she went and would sing for anyone, anytime. In those days she wasn't very good at playing the guitar and was collecting songs slowly, so i never thought she could get much consolation from playing and singing like some musical people whom I had seen and heard, who were able to close off the world and do wonderful things all for themselves allowing anyone to listen.

Living with Lee is much more delightful than just knowing her. When you know her she's very hard to understand or communicate with, but when I began to know her belongings and understand her daily noises I was comforted. Her belongings are unusual, she doesn't have anything that is listable. A few records of Chris Connor a few books, always something by James Joyce besides Ulysses, a few drawings from Chicago, plus all those old clothes that women always carry around with them and you never see them wear. Lee always wore pants and loafer shoes with white socks. there were a few shirts, but mostly sweaters and one day she bought a Levi's jacket and it was thrilling because LEE was pressed into all the brass buttons.

People did anything to stare at Lee, because she looked like a boy at first, then a girl second because she is a girl. She often said to people staring, "I'm a girl" and they never seemed to know what she was talking about.  She has a lovely girl's body, a beautiful stomach and classic feet that are so long and perfect they look like they could break. Lee goes crazy once in a while and either goes into one of those stupors that I saw her do, or she tries to kill herself. She and I both knew nothing like this would happen while she lived here in the loft. Somehow with me she was always even. If there is a dark spot that comes up, it always is my doing.

The Living Theatre was on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue in those days and Merce Cunningham's dance studio was above the Theatre. One day Lee came home and asked me who John Cage was. I was hardly able to say, although I did know. She became very friendly with Merce and John and that is how I came to meet Remy Charlip, who had been dancing with Merce. It's very difficult to meet John Cage or Merce Cunningham, although Merce speaks to me, no one has really introduced me to him. I don't know if I'm that way or they are that way. I met Judith Malina and Julian Beck, the directors of the Living Theatre. They are easy for me to meet and I like watching Julian Beck whether he is performing or not.

Just before the Living Theatre left for their European tour, they had an art auction in Larry Rivers' loft and I escorted Lee. She had somehow got some money from her grandmother's will and she and I went to Bloomingdale's to buy Lee an outfit for the auction and party. I insisted Lee get something wool and conservative, which she could wear on special occasions when she had to wear a dress, but Lee doesn't think this way, and this shopping trip convinced me she was right. She bought very high heel black pumps, some hose. When the clerk looked at her legs to decide the size both Lee and I realized she hadn't shaved her legs for at least a year and by then, knowing Lee and our situation, there was nothing to do but laugh. She chose the most dreadful bright red silk jersey dress that did nothing for her but cling. How was I to know that's what she wanted. Suddenly she got HAT on her mind and paid a great deal of money for a bullet shaped hat by Lilly Daché. Naturally, this was done on the day of the auction, and we rushed home and put these things all together on Lee. She grew six inches with the heels and at least four more with the bullet on her head. I tied a string of pearls around her neck by breaking a long strand, I insisted they be tight, then I put makeup on her. She got up and within that instant she was a graceful trim beautiful woman. I was astounded, but she knew all the time what was happening, but I don't think she knew she was too tall.

The auction was successful. I've never understood how people can stand around and bid great deals of money for paintings publicly, but it is a certain spirit. There were Jasper Johns and Barney Newman, Kleins and Gustons, everything that was popular on the art market. Larry Rivers' loft was huge, with an enormous balcony holding a select few who were bidding and making more classy noises from above. When the auction was over, and Julian Beck recognized who Lee was, we were invited to the balcony where we had a buffet dinner and champagne. I smoked my first pot there and with champagne I got very light-headed and began having such a delightful time, although it seems I was alone floating and smiling. I noticed Lee was constantly surrounded by very excited men and she was playing it all so well. There were many propositions, even one that included me and she laughed and said yes to everything. One man kept falling towards her and she kept asking him to get her more champagne. When he told her that her glass was full, she poured it out onto the floor and said now get me some more champagne. Somehow it was time to leave, the propositions were being taken seriously. I told Lee and she found her shoes, took my arm and said goodnight and we walked down the steps of the balcony. We found a taxi and got in. I saw there were six angry men following us out of the building and reached over and locked Lee's cab door just in time. There was beating and shouting as the cab drove off with one man hanging on the back for a block. There was Lee and I full of excitement all the way home. It was the first time we ever played this and it was so successful, but when Lee got home she broke and became very tired, pulled her pearls off and they scattered all over the loft and went to bed in her clinging dress.

Right before the ship sailed for Europe with the Living Theatre, Lee fell down some steps and sprained her ankle. She admitted to me that she did not want to go, but I kept telling her to go but felt sad when she hobbled onto the boat with crutches and a guitar.

Lee got back from Europe in September and she quit the Living Theatre and began painting here in the loft with me. It was a glorious year. Benny Andrews found a loft very near and we were all painting and being smooth and I felt something adult should happen.

End of Part Nine