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May 19, 2006

SOCIAL LIFE (a story based on actual events)

Tribeca, 1980. Getting coffee at the bodega, I run into a neighborhood painter named Roy. I know him to nod to; walking my malamute Aleut, I sometimes see him with his shepherd, West, on West Street, or up on the West Side Highway: The truncated, disused elevation has become something of an unrestricted dog run. Roy apparently has forgotten my name, but he mentions, as an offhand invitation, a party tonight on Vestry Street. I give a “maybe I’ll drop by� shrug.

Around 9 I enter a big loft space. A throng of Isadora Duncans is leaping about in flapping Moroccan pantaloons, flying scarves and kurtas. The occasion, I learn, is a bon voyage for someone named Jacqueline, off to teach dance at the U. of Melbourne, Australia. I head for a paint-encrusted trolley converted into a temporary buffet: Twin Gallo gallons (red and white), punch bowl, Jarlesburg, Triscuits, pretzels, chips; pastel palette of dips as viscous as rabbit-skin glue. Hanging around the food are poet-types in black and purple with faces like albino rabbits, bodies like Scandinavian flatware. But most are artists, in splotched jeans half-devoured by turps and stand oil. As for me, I’ve been so busy lately with my factotum non-career, I haven’t painted in two weeks. But dress the part: Pearl Paint t-shirt, watch cap, old denims, and spattered penny-loafers with subway tokens in the slots.

Averse to dancing and noise, I pour a Yellow Mellow Vodka and wander off to explore the rooms on the outskirts of the loft--partitions defined by unpainted sheetrock or paisley bedspreads hung from string. Art is everywhere--the gloomy first bursts of dubious potential relieved sporadically by Fauve and Nabis posters. Pinned to one wall (a quilt) hangs a row of postcards—traces of someone’s cross-country itinerary. Another cluttered makeshift space defines a kitchen, of sorts. Many of the books, in stacked crates, are in duplicate or triplicate—telltale signs of somebody’s multiple relationships. The john is huge and gray; jerry-rigged shower with a plastic drop-cloth curtain, strange toilet on a plinth. No sink: toothbrushes are in the kitchen, in a Bustello can.

Back at the refreshments, I swallow another Yellow Mellow. To my surprise, a guy beckons me to dance. It’s too noisy to say no. Reluctantly I put down my cup and try to approximate all the proximate arabesques and pirouettes. My partner shouts, “Are you a professional dancer?� revealing that either (1) he’s drunk, (2) he has no sense of movement, or (3) I am faking it okay. His name is Gabriel (I think); he’s in architecture school somewhere.

Pretty soon the balance fluid in my inner ear is spinning like Blue Whisk in a Maytag. I keep losing him. When the music abruptly slows and the decibels drop, he pops in front of me and takes me in his arms. The song is “I Only Have Eyes For You,� by the Flamingos. Suddenly I’m back in Miami, in seventh grade.

When a mid-afternoon rain-shower surprises us out on the Phys. Ed. field, we’re usually sent to Study Hall for the rest of the period. Today, no such luck. We’re herded into the gym, which is unctuous with humidity, trapped air and residual sweat. To our dismay, we’re forced to dance. Above the groans and giggles, the desiccated Phys. Ed. teachers (white Bermuda shorts and polo shirts, whistles on cords around crepey necks, faces like leather handbags) warn: If we try to skip, we’ll get F’s in Effort and Conduct.

The gym is rife with pubescent reluctance. I’m poised to fight-flight-freeze. Barely 5’ tall at age 12, I’m paired with a huge, damp boy with oily black hair. We face off uneasily. A slow song scratches to a start over the staticky PA: “I Only Have Eyes For You.� Mine are fixed on his yellow-checked, clammy, whale-like midsection. The boy wraps a log-like arm around my waist, engulfs my right hand in the Mazola-moist cavern of his left. He smells like Arby’s roast beef. Awkwardly, in the malodorous atmosphere of Shenandoah Junior High, we begin to shift from side to side.

Then, he starts getting creative and his dips deepen. Who does he think he is, Ricky Ricardo? Now I’m leaning so far to the left that my right saddle shoe lifts high above the concrete. My foot dangles in midair, waving like a skyscraper-suicide with second thoughts. I am powerless. The boy is oblivious. The Flamingos croon on and on. I feel like a flamingo myself, wings clipped, teetering on one knobby leg. One thing for darn sure: I will never in my whole life ever go to another dance… but…

It’s not so bad, eighteen years later, shuffling anonymously to the same song, this time with both feet down. Gabriel and I circle about the crowded room and find ourselves in front of a huge built-in wardrobe with missing doors. The shelves are crammed with wooden shapes and dusty-rusty tools which remind me of the sculptures I’d just seen at the Louise Nevelson retrospective. An entire floor of the Whitney was divided into three rooms painted one color each: black, white, and gold. The monochromatic sculptures, in their color-coded rooms, almost disappeared. As did I, dressed in black, lingering in guess which room.

Mrs. Nevelson arrived wearing gold and white, a wide-brim hat and her famous centipede-like eyelashes. A subdued hubbub lasted until 11, when she quietly slipped away. Hanging over the first-floor landing, I saw her climb into a long black car idling on Madison. She drank something in the back seat, with three dark strangers—studio assistants? Sons? Their faces glowed like embers in the streetlamp. One of them, I swear, looked like a boy I had an unrequited crush on in tenth grade, who never even knew my name. Now, come to think of it, I can’t remember his.

Posted by Jane on May 19, 2006 10:37 AM

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