table—always sandwiches, always delicious—and stayed away, except for the occasional meeting in the hall where he’d either wink or ignore me completely—both of which were infuriating.
How I struggled to get it right; how I yearned for his approval. Our real fathers are not always the ones who give us the final, necessary approval. If we’re lucky, we’re able to recognize and work toward the right one. If not, confusion and dissatisfaction sit like dust on the rooms of our lives.
I was lucky, but that didn’t make it easier. The calmer and more normal Venasque acted, the more paranoid I got. What did he know that he wasn’t telling me? What was so wrong with my drawings that he put them down to be pissed on?
Nothing. Nothing was wrong with them.
I could spend a lot of time describing how I came to that correct conclusion, but there’s so much more of this story to tell that it’s time to move on, even if it’s in the middle of a long and rich Venasque story. He would forgive me the abridgement. In another context, he once said, “The future is hungry, Harry. It’s waiting with its big tongue out and a knife and fork like the giant in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ Fe Fi Fo Fum! I smell the life of Harry Radcliffe! Then spoink! He spears and eats you.”
“What am I supposed to do about that? Talk him out of it?”
“No. Learn to be eaten. Then learn to see in the dark as you go down his big throat. Some parts in there are boring and you can skip ’em, but most are interesting.”
So I’ll cut to halfway down the giant’s throat and tell about how I stood up from the desk, took the first drawing I’d done (seven thousand dollars ago), and walked into the living room where the old man and his animals were watching “Miami Vice.” I went up next to the couch and shoved the picture at him.
“This is it, Venasque. You were wrong before. This is the one.”
Without looking, he put out a hand and casually took the paper from me. He glanced at it and handed it back.
“Good. Tell me what materials you need and I’ll order them.”
“Wait a minute! Did you look at this? It’s the first drawing I did. The one you said was shit.”
“Right. Now it’s good. I like it.”
“Why now and not then?”
He looked at me for the first time. “Because when you first showed it to me, you wanted my approval. This time you thought it
through and know for sure it’s the right one. You have your own approval and that’s enough. I accept it now. I like it. Let me see the end of this show and then we’ll talk.”
“And what about my seven thousand bucks?”
“I bought a new Mitsubishi entertainment center with it. Big wide-screen TV, beautiful wood cabinets … top of the line. You should see it.”
SO WE BUILT HIS kitchen and I returned to sanity.
In the months that followed, Venasque died of a stroke, Bronze Sydney and I divorced, then I got involved almost simultaneously with Claire Stansfield and Fanny Neville.
Claire was tall and fragile-looking. A living breeze. Air with brown hair. Like a figure in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, she often appeared on the verge of either levitating or drowning in the complexities of life.
Fanny was pure Antaeus—bound to the earth—short and intense, a chain-smoking, eat-with-her-fingers realist who’d fooled (or frightened) a lot of people into thinking she was very tough.
But I don’t really want to talk about either woman now because although they are a large part of my story, it’s not this part. So excuse me, girls, if I only make introductions here, then open a trapdoor and disappear you both until the next act.
Zip. Gone!
Suffice it to say I met them and was intrigued enough to end up commuting back and forth from one to the other like a crosstown bus.
The most profound effect this semi-demi-madness (and the subsequent events) had on me was a yawning indifference to my job. Our firm was in the midst of several important projects when I went on
How I struggled to get it right; how I yearned for his approval. Our real fathers are not always the ones who give us the final, necessary approval. If we’re lucky, we’re able to recognize and work toward the right one. If not, confusion and dissatisfaction sit like dust on the rooms of our lives.
I was lucky, but that didn’t make it easier. The calmer and more normal Venasque acted, the more paranoid I got. What did he know that he wasn’t telling me? What was so wrong with my drawings that he put them down to be pissed on?
Nothing. Nothing was wrong with them.
I could spend a lot of time describing how I came to that correct conclusion, but there’s so much more of this story to tell that it’s time to move on, even if it’s in the middle of a long and rich Venasque story. He would forgive me the abridgement. In another context, he once said, “The future is hungry, Harry. It’s waiting with its big tongue out and a knife and fork like the giant in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ Fe Fi Fo Fum! I smell the life of Harry Radcliffe! Then spoink! He spears and eats you.”
“What am I supposed to do about that? Talk him out of it?”
“No. Learn to be eaten. Then learn to see in the dark as you go down his big throat. Some parts in there are boring and you can skip ’em, but most are interesting.”
So I’ll cut to halfway down the giant’s throat and tell about how I stood up from the desk, took the first drawing I’d done (seven thousand dollars ago), and walked into the living room where the old man and his animals were watching “Miami Vice.” I went up next to the couch and shoved the picture at him.
“This is it, Venasque. You were wrong before. This is the one.”
Without looking, he put out a hand and casually took the paper from me. He glanced at it and handed it back.
“Good. Tell me what materials you need and I’ll order them.”
“Wait a minute! Did you look at this? It’s the first drawing I did. The one you said was shit.”
“Right. Now it’s good. I like it.”
“Why now and not then?”
He looked at me for the first time. “Because when you first showed it to me, you wanted my approval. This time you thought it
through and know for sure it’s the right one. You have your own approval and that’s enough. I accept it now. I like it. Let me see the end of this show and then we’ll talk.”
“And what about my seven thousand bucks?”
“I bought a new Mitsubishi entertainment center with it. Big wide-screen TV, beautiful wood cabinets … top of the line. You should see it.”
SO WE BUILT HIS kitchen and I returned to sanity.
In the months that followed, Venasque died of a stroke, Bronze Sydney and I divorced, then I got involved almost simultaneously with Claire Stansfield and Fanny Neville.
Claire was tall and fragile-looking. A living breeze. Air with brown hair. Like a figure in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, she often appeared on the verge of either levitating or drowning in the complexities of life.
Fanny was pure Antaeus—bound to the earth—short and intense, a chain-smoking, eat-with-her-fingers realist who’d fooled (or frightened) a lot of people into thinking she was very tough.
But I don’t really want to talk about either woman now because although they are a large part of my story, it’s not this part. So excuse me, girls, if I only make introductions here, then open a trapdoor and disappear you both until the next act.
Zip. Gone!
Suffice it to say I met them and was intrigued enough to end up commuting back and forth from one to the other like a crosstown bus.
The most profound effect this semi-demi-madness (and the subsequent events) had on me was a yawning indifference to my job. Our firm was in the midst of several important projects when I went on
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