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November 18, 2007 (start)
November 25, 2007
December 9, 2007 (third draft)
December 30, 2007 (fourth draft)
January 8, 2008 (fifth draft)
January 15, 2008 (sixth and final)
January 19, 2008 (seventh and final)
January 20, 2008 (eight and final final)
January 21, 2008 (ninth and final really final)
Betsy Each year in November the state library sponsors a literary festival. It’s an annual centerpiece for the library; assembling more or less prominent writers who either live here or started their careers here, in order to showcase their work, discuss writing, etc. Nothing new, practically every state has a festival like it. The big shots never show for some reason. Not here, anyhow. The event itself is uneven; some lectures and panel discussions are fascinating–others place a strain on audience etiquette.
This year’s festival coincided with our university’s football team playing Alabama in Mobile, a typical Southern rivalry. Although the festival was scheduled to last til evening, chances were good that most people would be leaving the grounds around three to start barbequing and living football. Kickoff at seven.
The first series of morning lectures began at ten. After finding a good parking spot a little past nine, I went prowling around the large white tents set up to handle overflow exhibitors. That’s when--and where--I encountered Betsy. It was the beginning of Fall; a implausibly deep blue cloudless sky pressed lightly over cool, humid-less Southern Earth. The sun cut like a razor.
Anybody could be an exhibitor, you didn’t need to be the least bit literary, just have booth price. Food, toys, jewelry, all ok. I stopped to listen to a lady in a yellow sari selling Indian spices when I noticed Betsy...when she made herself noticed. She and the Indian lady were talking when I sidled next to her to see what was what and listen in. I sensed her turn her head to include me in the conversation.
“...I’ve been bouncing around one place to another all day.” It was only 9:30ish. “I took the grand-angels to the sitter for their momma who’s got the stomach flu, thennn I flew to Wal-Mart for Pepto and, naturally, the store’s packed. Whole freakin’ city’s buying charcoal and chicken for the game. I’m battered,” she said with a look that took us both in.
She was about five-five and not a day under sixty. Slim--a younger woman would be called anorexic–a pretty face, cool and brilliant brown eyes, thin lips with an Elvis-like sneer pulling at one side. But even as she talked frivolously her face remained wryly matter-of-fact. (And looking back on that day, I cannot recall her smiling once, not then, not later.) She wore a pink sequined baseball cap, very shiny and chic, but somewhat beaten and dirty around the brim. Her favorite hat, maybe. Short strands of dark brown hair with darker streaks poked haphazardly out beneath the cap’s band--also dirty--like wispy feathers from a leaky pillow, so light they could float away. Lipstick was her only make up.
“You don’t look bruised hardly at all,” I said, ready to flirt.
“Oh, yes I am.”
“Show,” I challenged.
I was just making conversation, flirting because she was attractive and outgoing and flirted back. When she said “Oh, yes I am” she lightly touched my arm and I felt a buzz run through my body, like the first toke after a long hiatus. Despite her obvious age (I’m old enough to appreciate an old enough woman), she wore young-ish fashion. Her clothes fit well and looked expensive. Shiny blue toreador pants, light green canvas tennis shoes with white trim, a short sleeved white silk t-shirt covered by a sleeve-less cream camisole. Around her waist, hanging over her butt, she tied a soft, maroon sweater, cashmere. Her arms were thin, muscles soft as cushions, little used to exercise. Her hands were gnarly, pink-palmed, stiletto-nailed, always in motion as she spoke. My kind of gal.
With my challenge hanging out there, she began pulling at the hem of her two shirts, rolling them up. I expected her to show her side or stomach, maybe a scratch or even a tattoo, just some mark to make me believe her bouncing around caused a bodily mark. Instead, she yanked her shirt up all the way to her collar bone, fast, and left it up for a second, maybe two, her elbows pointing straight out, left and right, at a hundred and eighty degrees, forming a line dotted by fists and elbows. What I saw, what she wanted to show, was not bruises. It looked at first like a boy’s chest, hairless, smooth pink skin with daubs of pale white. No breasts; no nipples. Just skin with the suggestion of ribs underneath, pale skin unmarked by sun, smooth white woman skin glowing in the morning-soft illumination of the white tent. Only after I realized what she was showing did I look for and see what could have been pencil thin scars, ragged lines slanting slightly upward towards her shoulders, but those also were white and pink. I was too shocked to wonder if the show was for me alone, a stranger. For whom else? The Indian lady was there, in a beautiful yellow sari; she disappeared from my awareness with the sight of Betsy’s flash and only re-materialized when I began to reconstruct that day much later. Were there a few people walking around? I have no idea. Probably. Betsy was not at all shy. She didn’t care. Her shirt came down.
I felt the need to say something and I did say something. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’m sure it was something completely inane like: “How brave of you...to show me...that...” So...?
“I once tried a prosthesis,” she went on seamlessly, “when I went swimming it popped out my suit and floated around the pool. It was made to look like a real boob, with a nipple nub, pink color and all. My granddaughter was scared it was a real part of me and began crying. Sweet.” Talking to me, she looked straight into my eyes. “It’s God’s choice that I’m still alive and my choice that I’m in the state of grace. Sort of. I’m alive, anyway.”
Anything I said I would sound like an idiot--and I was speaking automatically anyhow, so that’s how I sounded.. So, what I said was, “I’m a photographer. I’d love to take your picture.” After I spoke I realized it was obvious that I wanted to photograph her topless, her de-feminized smooth chest. What did she think about that? How odd did she think I was? On the other hand, was I any odder than herself?
“Sure, you can do that. Better yet, I have two grand daughters, six and nine. Wouldn’t it be great if you photographed us all together and people can try to pick out who is who without looking at our faces. You’d have to hide our faces otherwise it’d be too obvious.” She reached into her huge purse, fumbled around until she pulled out a wallet and showed me a picture of two gorgeous little girls, shoulder to shoulder, grinning broadly.“That’s the cuties” she said with finality. “Gotta go.”
She turned to leave. “Wait!” I gave her my card. “Here, here’s my email address and phone number.” I watched her put it in her wallet.
“Call me,” I said.
“Ok.”
“Call me,” I repeated.
“I will, I will.” She was already almost through the doorway. A Mississippi twang scratching in the middle of that final “ah-wee-ll.” Southern charm that could grow moss on pine.
“What’s your name?” I called.
“Betsy. Gotta go now.”
It was ten o’clock. I paged through my festival booklet while heading for the capitol building, still distracted by Betsy. That cap. Should have told me something. Pale skinned women in pink baseball caps, not exactly uncommon. Boy, was she calm. I tried to empathize imagining castration, but naaaah, couldn’t. Flash in public! Like a young woman bragging. Why show me? Or anyone, for that matter--although, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. If she has to flash, who to better than to a stranger, someone she doesn’t have to account to later, who has no right to question her, or challenge her propriety or manners; someone who can not embarrass her? She’s immune to criticism, anyhow, because of her surgery. “See my new chest; the latest version.” For me personally, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Most of my sexual fantasies involve breasts and nipples, particularly nipples. Keeping my hands off a date’s breasts was like not answering my cell. What was odd to me personally was that Betsy was undeniably attractive on a feminine level, even when I’m so hot about breasts. On the other hand, maybe what I felt was just pity.
By this time, I lost my edge of interest in the lectures and panel discussions I had come for. The weather was terrific, the air smelled of juniper and mown grass; the ambiance at the entire event was a warm, literate elitism. I felt right at home. Today, though, Betsy aside, the most seductive part of the day was a cerulean sky, a warm sun and cool shade. I strolled across the length of the large, ornate garden where, on each side of a wide concrete path, a double swath of authors set up tables hoping to grab customers going from one side of the fest site to the other. At the end of a line of vendors not dissimilar from the tent vendors and close to where we first met, I saw Betsy standing in the brilliant light, paging through a brightly colored child’s book.
“Hi.”
“This is a great book,” she said, as if continuing an unbroken conversation, “perfect for my grand girls. Is anything going on where you were? I want to hear the two female noir authors talk. I think they’re on soon.”
I pulled the schedule.
“Ah...too late, that was earlier this morning.”
“Shit.”
Inspiration: “I’m going to a lecture about this poet I never heard of but who’s supposed to be important. It’s in the library. Pretty soon now. Want to come?” I actually was going there, sort of.
“We-ell.” That drawl.
“Just a thought.”
“Ok.” she said, “who’s the poet?”
We started walking. I told her.“Few people have heard of him. I didn’t. But his write up sounds interesting.”
“Him? I knew him.”
“You knew him?”
“He died years ago. He lived, when I knew him, in the Pontalba Apartments on Jackson Square.”
“Yeah! That’s him.”
“In the attic.”
“Yeah! So, you really knew him?”
“I knew him in between his third and fourth wives. Carrie and Alma. He was a very creative asshole, very, very, very creative. He treated women like prunes: he’d eat ‘em whole, then shit them out and not even wipe up the mess. Personally, I can’t fault him there; I feel the same way about men. Men excite me. Always have–let’s not go there. I think this guy had five wives. Jesus, why you bring this up? I feel like a fucking time machine. He was short as me and had a gut, but was great in the sack, another creative venue for him.”
“You slept with him?”
I watched our shadows float over the yellow-grey concrete.
“It was the sixties. Everybody slept with everybody.” Ludicrously, I felt jealous.
“What do you think of his poetry?” I asked.
“I’m not into that. He was a very self absorbed guy. You had to know him to understand what he was talking about. He was a seductive son of a bitch; he spoke poetically. Just ordinary talk about ordinary things, but flowery, you know?”
“You married?”
She looked at me and I didn’t think she’d answer. “My husband’s playing tennis. He mostly runs after balls. And then after, like half the state, he’ll get ready for the game.”
“How many times?”
“What, married? You’re kinda nosey, mister. Twice. My first was a fucking alcoholic asshole.”
“Children?” My foot caught a raised piece of sidewalk and stumbled into her, feeling the softness of her arm.
“One. A girl. The mother of the two little angels I showed you.”
We arrived.
The lecture was sparsely attended, ten or fifteen people in a hall that could easily hold a hundred, but that was common for the more obscure subjects or authors. Betsy led the way to the first row, directly in front of the lecturer, a large, bearded man who looked like a poet himself and probably was. He was visibly nervous–or had a nervous-seeming temperament–he hemmed and hawed and stuttered. His talk was hesitant but interesting. I wondered what Betsy made of him, the lecturer, so un-sixtyish, so restrained. Hard to imagine him sleeping around. But...you never know.
He was talking as we sat, “...Our poet was an early bird,” the lecturer said in a cracked voice, “The only artist I know of–possibly the only artist in the history of art--who went to bed religiously at nine and was up at five each morning, without fail. He loved breakfast. Bacon, eggs, grits. He was a chain smoker and smoked eating, dousing a cigarette in egg yolk was a favorite habit to jolt guests. People did that then; the cigarette was important, not the egg. He was a short man, a classically bad dresser. Not overly hygienic, a frequent complaint was that his dentures stank. But only women complained. Most people didn’t think of him in those terms. Generally, people thought him loud, garish, convivial and infectious. Everybody loved him. He sported a Charlie Chaplin mustache, which he called his Hitler mustache. He said he wore it so Hitler would spin in his grave with envy, seeing how devilishly Aryan it looked on him, a Jew. He had one of those drawling, whiny Mississippi accents, a little like Truman Capote but more like Tennessee Williams, but with a full fist of testosterone and without the foppish gestures. Apparently he had testosterone to spare because...“
”Yes, he did,” said Betsy out loud.
The lecturer paused to look up over his glasses at Betsy then continued “...he married five times to four different women and had seven children. Plus, it was taken for granted that when he read at various colleges and universities–he earned most of his income lecturing and was a very dramatic, very popular reader–it was taken for granted that he would sleep with faculty wives and/or female faculty or grad students or both, simultaneously. Picking him up at the airport and escorting him around campus was a sought after job by easily awed co-eds.
“He loved women upper most; they dominated his poetry and claimed most of his time. Yet, as secure as he must have felt sexually, he nevertheless sometimes lowered his guard and let us peek inside a mind beset with contradictions. He dedicated the following poem to his second...uh, third wife, the one he married twice. It has no title. Like many of his poems, there is one line with at least three alliterations and one rhyming couplet, his trademarks. In it, he reveals an attitude, a drive that may lie at the base of his sexual lust: a need to conquer his male inferiority: |
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“I think he is saying that experiencing the demanding eroticism of woman, man has lost the means--the path--to any beauty outside of woman. Spectacularly a wimp’s attitude, wouldn’t you say? From this man! Why would this womanizer, this devourer, write from such weakness? His manuscript shows no strike-outs or corrections, as if he wrote it out all at once...”
Betsy: “Probably because he didn’t write it, he dictated it. He dictated a lot of his stuff. Are you sure it’s in his hand writing? Hell, it could be in mine, but I don’t remember it.”
The lecturer was clearly irritated. “You knew this man?”
“Yes, I knew him. There were a lot of us. We hung in the sixties. A few months in the sixties.”
“It is well known he dictated many of his poems,” he said in a calm voice. “Nothing new there. I have seen this manuscript, ma’am, and it is undoubtedly in his hand. Perhaps you would you like to share with us a bit more of your experiences with him as a poet?”
“Sure.” She remained seated, slouched, hands in pockets, hat pushed back, legs crossed at the knee, one leg snapping up and down in rhythm with her words. “He would recruit anybody within reach to take his dictation. Perfect strangers. It fed his ego to have people write down his every word. He’d test us by mumbling then ask what he’d just said. The hell is, some of us would change words around. Or leave ‘em out altogether. As far as I know he never caught on to that because he seldom revised and often dictated drunk and never remembered. He had this ego thing...like he was idolized...and, yeah, he was, he was. It never occurred to him his ‘secretaries’ wouldn’t faithfully transcribe every random word. If you think some of his poems aren’t up to par, they may not be all his.”
She spoke clearly, with little inflection, never changing her voice, like she was back in the past sitting in his attic on Jackson Square, reliving a fond, stoned memory.
“Do you mind waiting up after the lecture? I’d very much like to talk with you?”
“Sure. Be happy to.”
The lecturer returned to his notes, a bit on guard, resigned to speaking until Betsy needed to interrupt once again. Who knows why she did it. I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. That kind of self-assertiveness. It may have been an irresistible urge but I don’t think it was meanness. Who knows, before her surgery she might have been a wimp; but now she’s an Immortal, compensating for a life time of timidness. Perhaps, she simply had no notion of protocol where it is dictated that the lecturer talks, the audience listens and, maybe, later, questions are called for. I don’t think she was consciously trying to make a point. But who can say? I wasn’t concerned about her behavior, about rudeness or anything. I enjoyed her company. What’s she like that at home, I wonder?
It was obvious the lecturer still had a point or two to make when Betsy rose to go. I followed. The lecturer, probably, relieved to see our backs.
“I want a beer,” she said once outside. “Is there a bar or restaurant around here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Real perky, looking up at me under shaded eyes she asked, “Want to go to a party?”
“Everybody likes a party.”
“That way,” she pushed me to the left, toward a nearby street. We headed into an old neighborhood bordering the capitol grounds talking about things I don’t recall. Then Betsy pointed at a corner house and said “Party people.” It was an unusual house, different from the houses around it in that it was big and white and unreal, unreal in the sense that I laughed out loud. It was Tara and Rosedown and the White House pared down to a quarter city block. Not a home, it was a structure, like a tree or telephone pole, or movie set, too idiosyncratic to live in. Purposeless. It wasn’t difficult to see it simply as a facade. A rigged up anti-bellum mansion, too small to be a real mansion but bigger than a mere house–far too impressive for real people but perfect for friends of Betsy. Next door, its neighbor, also two storeys but appearing much smaller, was painted purple, green and yellow, Mardi Gras colors. The gaudier house was more real. At the movie set, the front yard was empty except for a round glass topped table, a bigger than life inflated tiger and an enormous magnolia tree, spilling shade over the fence, across the street, into other yards . She walked us past the house then turned down an alley leading to the rear. “Let’s see who’s home.” Remnants of construction material littered the ground, parallels of bare PVC pipes led to a small swimming pool under construction in the sliver of a back yard. The ground had been mud just days ago and now bore the casts of boots and embedded construction litter. The back of the house consisted of several large windows and a short, concrete stair way. At first, Betsy stood hands on hips trying to see through the windows, which were dark. She climbed the steps and twisted the door knob without knocking. Locked.. I thought it obvious that no one was home, but Betsy pressed her forehead against the glass, blindered her eyes with open palms laid against her temples and searched. “Ok. They’re all in Mobile. No party.”
We walked carefully back the way we came, passing the under-constructed swimming pool, too small, really, to call it a pool, more like a giant jacuzzi, but with a regular size turquoise diving board hanging over one end, looking so ridiculous that I was absolutely convinced that nothing here was real. When we came back to the street, Betsy wasn’t satisfied. She walked slow, running her hand along the edge of the three foot high brick fence, painted white, the mortar oozing out thickly between the bricks in an attempt, I suppose, at period decor, but to my mind mimicking sloppy workmanship. The middle of the fence was bisected by an elegant, elaborate gate of cast iron. Black painted filigreed leaves and branches curled around a sculpted white angel. This middle figure molded onto the gate caught my attention. It also was cast iron, part white, part rust, an angel holding an inverted torch in its right hand while weeping into its left elbow–someone died. Scarlett? Too real for the house. We entered the yard as trespassers. Betsy never said who the owners were or her relation to them. However, she was at home in this prop of a yard. The lawn was just deep enough to contain the table and, next to it, looking only slightly out of place, a giant, pulpy inflatable tiger painted purple and yellow, holding its left hand high, emphasizing his fore finger, pointing out that he is number one. Game day in Mobile.
“We got to let them know we came calling.” Betsy was animated now.
She headed for the table where a flyer of some sort lay stuck to the glass. “Ah ha!,”she said prying it up, turning it over. This is the most active she’s been since flashing. “But we can’t be too obvious about it.“ Digging in her purse. “Subtly is the key. Got a pen?” Digging. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Nope,” I said, “but if I did I’d be subtle.”
She pulled out a brass tube of lip stick, holding it like the tiger, shaking it with an air of minor triumph. “So. What’ll we write.”
“Write about the game.”
But the flyer wouldn’t do; too small, too little white space. She faced the tiger like an opponent, squinting, waiting for inspiration or a signal from the sidelines. Boldly, she stepped close to the inflated tiger.
“What’ll I write, what’ll I write?”
“Write: BAMA #1.”
“Fuckin’ perfect.” A look of indecision clouded her eyes, “Where?”
I pulled down the tiger’s index finger. “Here. Start at the finger and write down, in a column.” Evidently, I was good for something.
She wrote in fat, red capital letters.... |
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...and almost smiled.
“That’ll do ‘em,” she said.
We left the yard; I latched the gate. We walked back partly the way we came not saying much, until, without a word she stopped, propped her bag atop a fire hydrant and began once more to rummage.
“I need a cigarette.”
“You SMOKE!”
“Not much,” she said, “a little bit. I need one now.”
She clawed rhythmically through the large bag like a miner digging for gold. I could hear the click of hard items being pushed aside and her nails scraping at the lining. It was a huge purse, a portable well. Out of curiosity I leaned over to look inside.
“What’s that,” I asked, pushing my finger at a shiny brown garment. She picked it up to show me.
“My underwear. Don’t be so nosey all of a sudden.”
Her underwear?
“It’s not all of a sudden. I’ve been nosey about you since you...you know.” She continued searching without a pause.
She held the bag with one hand, leaning back while bending her shoulders to see inside while she used the other hand to pull everything forward with quick digging motions, first in one direction, then, giving her purse a half turn, away from where she just put it back to where it was. No cigarettes.
“Fuck!” under her breath. She straightened, closed the bag. “I got to get home, anyhow.”
“I’ll walk you to your car. You said you’d call me, right?”
“I’ll call you. You can take our picture, the three of us.”
She swung her purse expertly over a shoulder like a soldier slings his own personal grenade launcher. We walked toward the parking garage, about two blocks away. I tried to make small talk, but she ignored me. “If I only had a cigarette I could seduce this babe,” I thought. A wind arose fitting her clothes tightly to her body, reminding me. Is that what I wanted? Seduce her?
The garage was empty of people and contained just a few cars; hers was a nondescript, metallic grey, late model Ford not far from the entrance. I was prepared for something exotic as she is, a Porsche, Mercedes, chopper. Inside the car was a holy mess: papers, clothes, boxes, shoes. She opened the drivers side, plunged in head first and searched. The car was just a bigger purse.
“Ought to be a cigarette somewhere here.”
I sorted through the passenger side. We bumped heads and rubbed shoulders; her heat was strong; I listened to her bitch and, for the first time in years considered kissing a woman with cigarette breath. The glove compartment was crammed full of manuals, yellow and pink papers (parking tickets?), even an airline barf bag. Searching for gold in a puddle of trash, we moved to the back seat. She bend low to investigate under the seat, her ass in the air before me. I cupped her buttocks with both my hands and slapped once, playfully. Like a signal, she stopped searching, emerged from the car, faced half towards me, half away, but without looking me in the eye.
“That was neither called for nor appropriate.”
I said nothing.
“I’m going home now,” she said.
I wanted to do something or say something but I felt paralyzed.
“Call me,” I said again.
She said nothing.
She made no move to say good-bye, no hand shake, no hug. I hung back as she closed the door and started the car, then I turned, walked away to the other side of the garage. Before going outside into the street I looked back. She was already gone. |
