Part 5 (1/2)
He is referring to My Mother.
Gertz lowers his voice and they all scrunch their chairs forward amid a great cloud of cigar smoke. There is only one thing to do. I scrunch forward, too, and stick my head into the huddle, right next to the Old Man, into the circle of leering, snickering, fishy-smelling faces. Of course, I do not even remotely comprehend the gist of the story. But I know that it is rotten to the core.
Gertz belts out the punch line; the crowd bellows and beats on the table. They begin uncapping more Blatz.
Secretly, suddenly, and for the first time, I realize that I am In. The Eskimo pies and Nehi oranges are all behind me, and a whole new world is stretching out endlessly and wildly in all directions before me. I have gotten The Signal!
Suddenly my mother is in the doorway in her Chinese-red chenille bathrobe. Ten minutes later I am in the sack, and out in the kitchen Gertz is telling another one. The bottles are rattling, and the file clerks are hunched around the fire celebrating their primal victory over The Elements.
Somewhere off in the dark the Monon Louisville Limited wails as it snakes through the Gibson Hump on its way to the outside world. The giant Indiana moths, at least five pounds apiece, are banging against the window screens next to my bed. The cats are fighting in the backyard over c.r.a.ppie heads, and fish scales are itching in my hair as I joyfully, ecstatically slide off into the great world beyond.
IX
I INTRODUCE FLICK TO THE ART WORLD I INTRODUCE FLICK TO THE ART WORLD ”It hasn't changed a bit,” Flick said.
Two truckdrivers had taken places at the far end of the bar. Flick ambled down; served them up a pair of boilermakers. One of them got up immediately, crossed to the jukebox, dropped in a coin, pressed the b.u.t.tons, and returned to his stool. Immediately a wavering reddish-purple light filled the room as the enormous plastic jukebox glowed into vivid neon life. Waterfalls cascaded through its plastic sides. I watched it for a moment, and, forgetting where I was, said: ”Pure Pop Art.”
Flick paused in his gla.s.s-polis.h.i.+ng. ”Pure what?”
It was too late to back out.
”Pop Art, Flick. Pure Pop Art. That jukebox.”
”What's Pop Art?”
”That's hard to explain, Flick. You've got to be With It.”
”What do you mean? I'm With It.”
I sipped my beer to stall for time.
”Flick, have you ever heard of the Museum of Modern Art in New York?”
”Yeah. What about it?”
”Well, Flick....”
X
MY OLD MAN AND THE LASCIVIOUS SPECIAL AWARD THAT HERALDED THE BIRTH OF POP ART MY OLD MAN AND THE LASCIVIOUS SPECIAL AWARD THAT HERALDED THE BIRTH OF POP ART I ”hmmmmed” meaningfully yet noncommittally as I feigned interest in the magnificent structure before us. ”Hmmmm,” I repeated, this time in a slightly lower key, watching carefully out of the corner of my eye to see whether she was taking the lure.
A 1938 Hupmobile radiator core painted gaudily in gilt and fuchsia revolved on a Victrola turntable before us. From its cap extended the severed arm of a female plastic mannequin. It reached toward the vaulted ceiling high above us. Its elegantly contorted hand clutched a can of Bon Ami, the kitchen cleanser. The Victrola repeated endlessly a recording of a harmonica band playing ”My Country Tis Of Thee.” The bronze plaque at its base read: IT HASN'T SCRATCHED YET IT HASN'T SCRATCHED YET.
The girl nodded slowly and deliberately in deep appreciation of the famous contemporary masterwork, the central exhibit in the Museum's definitive Pop Art Retrospective Panorama, as the Sunday supplements called it. I closed in: ”He's got it down.”
I paused adeptly, waited a beat or two and then, using my clipped, put-down voice: ”...all of it.” of it.”
She rose to the fly like a hungry she-salmon: ”It's The Bronx, all right. Fordham Road, squared. Let 'em laugh this this off on the Grand Concourse!” off on the Grand Concourse!”
I moved in quickly.
”You can say that again!”
Hissing in the venomous sibilant accents of a lifelong Coffee Shop habitue that I always used in the Museum of Modern Art on my favorite late afternoon time-killer-Girl Tracking-which is the art most fully explored and pursued at the Museum of Modern Art. Nowhere in all of New York is it easier, nor more pleasant, to snare and net the complaisant, rebellious, burlap-skirted, sandal-wearing CCNY undergraduate. Amid the throngs of restless Connecticut matrons and elderly Mittel European art nuts there is always, at the Museum, a roving eddying gulf stream of Hunters and the Hunted.
It was the work of an instant to bundle her off to the outdoor tables in the garden where we sat tensely; date and cream cheese sandwiches between sips of watery Museum of Modern Art orange drink.
”Marcia, how many of these clods really really dig?” I shrugged toward all the other tables around us. ”It's really sickening!!” dig?” I shrugged toward all the other tables around us. ”It's really sickening!!”
”b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!”
She whistled through her teeth. I sensed the stirrings, faint but unmistakable, of an Afternoon Love. Up to her pad off the NYU campus, down to the Village by subway for a hamburger, and then....
”Only the other day,” she continued, ”at the Fig, I said to Claes: 'Top Shmop. Art is Art, the way I see it'....”
She trailed off moodily and then bit viciously into the raisin nut bread, her Mexican serape sweeping the ashes from her cigarette into my salad.
”Good old Claes.” I followed her lead, ”He lays it on the Phonies!”
I wondered frantically for a brief instant who the h.e.l.l Claes was!
”And they lap it up,” she added.
Our love duet was mes.h.i.+ng nicely now. Point and counter-point we wove our fabric of Protest, Tristan and Isolde of the Hip.
A light fog-like rain descended on us from what pa.s.ses for sky in New York. We ignored the dampness as we clutched and groped toward one another in the psychic gloom.
”What do these Baby Machines know of Pop Art?”
I nodded toward a covey of Connecticut ladies eating celery near us. Our eyes met intensely for a long, searing moment. Hers smoldered; mine watered, but I hung in there grimly. And then, her voice low, quivering with emotion, deliberately she spoke: ”Pop Art, as these fools call it, is the essential dissection of Now-ness, the split atom of the Here moment.”
We looked deep into each other's souls for another looping instant. I took three deliberate beats and countered: ”Now-ness is us, baby. The Now Now of Here!” of Here!”
Her hand clutched convulsively at the smudged and dog-eared paperback copy of s.e.xus s.e.xus. A Henry Miller. I knew my harpoon had struck pay dirt!
Suddenly, without warning, she stood up and called out in a loud voice: ”Steve! Oh Stevie, over here!”
I turned and saw striding toward us over the marble palazzo, past a Henry Moore fertility symbol, a tall broad-shouldered figure wearing black cowboy boots and tight leather pants. Marcia hurriedly darted forward.
”I've been waiting, Stevie. You're late.”
Stevie, her high cheekbones topped by two angry embers for eyes, snapped: ”Let's go, baby. I'm double-parked. And the fuzz tag a Harley-Davidson around here quicker than a kick in the a.s.s. Let's go.”
Her rich ba.s.s voice echoed from statue to statue. Marcia, weakly indicating me, said: ”Uh...this is...uh...uh....”
”Pleased ta meetcha, Bud,” Stevie barked manfully, her thin moustache bristling in cheery greeting. They were off arm in arm. Once again I was alone amid the world's art treasures.