knew myself who I was anymore, and after meeting her father repeatedly in the living room where he would be sitting in a chair beside a lamp, reading Bunyan and maybe a little of Milton too, a little of Paradise Lost for variety’s sake, to clear his palate—those nights when I tried to make conversation with him while he read and while I waited for his black-haired daughter to come down the stairs so we could leave the house and go outside where I thought I might remember how to breathe once more—after all of that Nora and I were married in the summer of 1964 and we moved to Holt where I began to work for my father on the local paper. But Nora didn’t like Holt very much, even from the beginning. It wasn’t a thing like Boulder and Denver were. And I recall now what Stewart Fliegelman said about our prospects.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “You still think she’s some kind of violin and you just haven’t learned the fingering yet?”
“What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘She isn’t a violin,’ for Chrissakes. Aren’t you listening to me?”
“I’m trying to,” I said. “But it’s so goddamn loud in here I can’t hear anything. And you never make any sense anyway.”
Then Fliegelman leaned across the picnic table and started to shout into my face.
We were sitting in the Sink, one of the student bars on the hill near campus. You sat on wood benches at picnic tables; the tables were all carved and scarred on top and around you all of the walls and the low ceiling were painted black. There were beatnik sayings and slogans on the walls, spray-painted over the black in dripping colors, and toward the back there was a room which had a dirt floor. It was always crowded in the Sink, but it was especially crowded on Friday nights when everyone was trying to make a date for the weekend: an intense place then, packed and smoky and loud and really filthy and still wonderful, with students drunk on the seventy-five-cent pitchers of beer and shouting to people three feet in front of them above the scream of the jukebox. It was the place to go on a Friday night if you were a student in Boulder. It and Tulagi’s. Tulagi’s had a big dance area and live music while the Sink had atmosphere and also Sink Burgers with special sauce that ran down your chin.
That evening I had just come in and I had sat down on the picnic bench, after a date with Nora Kramer, looking characteristically confused and hang-faced, no doubt, wanting consolation and understanding, or at least a Sink Burger, and now Fliegelman was shouting into my face about violins.
“Because there isn’t any music there,” he shouted. “You hear me?”
“I hear you. But what the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s an extended metaphor, for Chrissakes. Don’t you know what that is?”
“What?”
“It’s what you and Nora Kramer aren’t. That’s what it is.”
“Jesus Christ,” I shouted back at him. “You’re drunk, Fliegelman. You’re from Chicago and you’re drunk and you’re full of shit.”
“Like hell,” he said. He sat up straight from the picnic table as if I’d said something which offended him. “It’s beer. And I’ve done all I can for you, Arbuckle. I’m going to go liberate my bladder. It’s my right as a citizen.” Then he stood up from the table and made his way drunkenly back across the dirt floor toward the rest room, moving through the dense pack of student bodies as if he were some redheaded gnome at a bacchanal.
Well, our generation was full of talk of rights and liberation then and of music too (though more about electric guitars than of violins), and as it turned out, although I paid no serious attention to him at the time, Stewart Fliegelman was right about Nora Kramer and me. There wasn’t any music there. Nor much that resembled liberation. And as for Fliegelman himself, his first attempt at marriage wasn’t exactly Beethoven’s Ode to Joy either.
• 5 •
J ack had been home from
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “You still think she’s some kind of violin and you just haven’t learned the fingering yet?”
“What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘She isn’t a violin,’ for Chrissakes. Aren’t you listening to me?”
“I’m trying to,” I said. “But it’s so goddamn loud in here I can’t hear anything. And you never make any sense anyway.”
Then Fliegelman leaned across the picnic table and started to shout into my face.
We were sitting in the Sink, one of the student bars on the hill near campus. You sat on wood benches at picnic tables; the tables were all carved and scarred on top and around you all of the walls and the low ceiling were painted black. There were beatnik sayings and slogans on the walls, spray-painted over the black in dripping colors, and toward the back there was a room which had a dirt floor. It was always crowded in the Sink, but it was especially crowded on Friday nights when everyone was trying to make a date for the weekend: an intense place then, packed and smoky and loud and really filthy and still wonderful, with students drunk on the seventy-five-cent pitchers of beer and shouting to people three feet in front of them above the scream of the jukebox. It was the place to go on a Friday night if you were a student in Boulder. It and Tulagi’s. Tulagi’s had a big dance area and live music while the Sink had atmosphere and also Sink Burgers with special sauce that ran down your chin.
That evening I had just come in and I had sat down on the picnic bench, after a date with Nora Kramer, looking characteristically confused and hang-faced, no doubt, wanting consolation and understanding, or at least a Sink Burger, and now Fliegelman was shouting into my face about violins.
“Because there isn’t any music there,” he shouted. “You hear me?”
“I hear you. But what the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s an extended metaphor, for Chrissakes. Don’t you know what that is?”
“What?”
“It’s what you and Nora Kramer aren’t. That’s what it is.”
“Jesus Christ,” I shouted back at him. “You’re drunk, Fliegelman. You’re from Chicago and you’re drunk and you’re full of shit.”
“Like hell,” he said. He sat up straight from the picnic table as if I’d said something which offended him. “It’s beer. And I’ve done all I can for you, Arbuckle. I’m going to go liberate my bladder. It’s my right as a citizen.” Then he stood up from the table and made his way drunkenly back across the dirt floor toward the rest room, moving through the dense pack of student bodies as if he were some redheaded gnome at a bacchanal.
Well, our generation was full of talk of rights and liberation then and of music too (though more about electric guitars than of violins), and as it turned out, although I paid no serious attention to him at the time, Stewart Fliegelman was right about Nora Kramer and me. There wasn’t any music there. Nor much that resembled liberation. And as for Fliegelman himself, his first attempt at marriage wasn’t exactly Beethoven’s Ode to Joy either.
• 5 •
J ack had been home from
Similar Books
