I’m sure a lot of readers might consider some of this a little comical. It has something to do with that question of irony I was thinking about before. About Sven and Andy and the painting. But I also think that Silvan Tomkins was very sincere. So the business about biting and sucking is really not dirty but sort of sweet and also a little eccentric. And the business about being dominated is really not just about sadomasochistic tendencies. It struck me as simultaneously more tender and more disturbing than that.
It was starting to get dark. I looked up at the moon, which was partially obscured by the branches overhead. I was sitting under a willow tree. There are two very beautiful willow trees in that garden. And suddenly I realized where I’d seen the carper before.
I was sure of it, and it terrified me.
It was Jimmy Stewart. From Zagreb.
THE MAN I LOVE
After considerable internal debate, I decided I was being paranoid. Really, my various “leads” didn’t seem to point in any obvious direction except away from my manuscript revisions. I knew I needed to buckle down.
I’m not, as I already said, a particularly paranoid person. I don’t generally assume the worst of people.
Sometimes little kids will ask me outright if I’m black. If responsible adults are present they usually look mortified, but I don’t mind, of course. It’s an honest question. Sometimes very, very old people will also ask me this. This is a little more troubling, as I sometimes get the feeling they might go on to say, “because you don’t really look that black,” and then expect me to say, “Thank you.”
I sort of expected Bugs Bunny’s sister to ask me this. But instead, on the morning of June 30, 2009, after making her painstaking trek down the hallway to the impatiently honking elevator as I held the door, after slowly maneuvering her walker into the car, she looked up at me, smacked her gums, and asked: “AH YOU JEWISH?”
I said, “EXCUSE ME?”
She said, “I SAID, AH YOU JEWISH?”
I answered, a little apologetically, “NO, I’M NOT.”
She looked at me for a minute, and then she asked, “AH YOU CATOLIC?”
I wasn’t sure if it was worse to be totally godless in her eyes, but I find it hard to lie, so I said, “No, actually I was raised without religion. I’m not really a religious person.”
She said, “WHAT? I CYAN HEAH YA!”
I said, “NO.”
She said, “LEMME TELL YA WHY I’M ASKIN’. I GOTTA FWEN’ WHO’S CATOLIC, AND SHE TOL’ ME, LISTEN, IF YA EVAH LOSE ANYTING, YA GOTTA PWAY TO SAIN’ ANTONY. YA JUS’ SAY, ‘SAIN’ ANTONY, HELP ME FIN’ MY STUFF.’ LIKE… YA LOSE YA KEYS. YA SAY, ‘SAIN’ ANTONY, HELP ME FIN’ MY KEYS.’ AND YA KNOW WHAT?” Bugs Bunny’s sister paused for dramatic effect, her eyes twinkling. “YA KNOW WHAT?… IT WOYKS!”
I said, “I’LL REMEMBER THAT.”
She said, “I’M TELLIN’ YA, IT WOYKS!”
I made a mental note to tell Sven about Saint Anthony.
Bugs Bunny’s sister also never asked me if I was gay. I don’t really look that gay either.
I’ll tell you why I know it was June 30. It’s because that was the day that Pina Bausch died.
I was in New York the day that Pina Bausch died.
It was a day I thought a lot about loss, and not being able to find things.
I was out of coffee. I’d forgotten about this little detail when I was at Morton Williams the day before. The weather that morning was threatening. On sunny days, Bugs Bunny’s sister liked to take a lawn chair downstairs and sit just outside the entrance to the building in her Miami whites, sunning herself. But since it was overcast, that day she was contenting herself with a chit-chat with the doorman, Jorge. A chit-chat is another euphemism.
She screamed, “HOAHAY, WHAT’S DA WEDDAH GONNA BE LIKE TODAY?”
He said, “Madam, desafortunately ees gonna be more rainy.”
She screamed, “WHAT? I CYAN UNNASTAN’ YA! SPEAK UP! MY EAHS AH SHOT!”
I dashed over to Morton Williams and picked up some Café Bustelo and a little demerara sugar. When I got back, they were still yelling at each other about the forecast. Jorge paused to nod politely at me and say, “How are you doing, sir?”
Bugs Bunny’s sister looked at me and said, “WHAT’S DA WEDDAH GONNA BE LIKE?”
I screamed, “RAIN!”
She screamed, “I TOUGHT SO!”
Back up in my apartment, I boiled a little pot of espresso and flipped through The New York Times. I worked on the crossword puzzle. The wind was starting to rattle the windows and the sky looked increasingly ominous. I heard my cell phone buzz against the table: a text from Sven.
“im so sorry pina died :( ”
I stared at the message. Pina? This didn’t seem possible.
I Googled the news and indeed, there it was: Pina Bausch dead, at 68, just five days after a diagnosis of unspecified cancer.
Tears spouted out of my eyes. I felt like a cartoon character. Like my tears were arcing little dotted lines spouting out of my eyes.
Sven knew how sad this would make me. I’d dragged him all the way from Stockholm to Copenhagen on a train a few years before to see Carnations. I’d seen it at BAM in 1988, just before I moved to Sweden. I also cried like a baby when Lutz Forster did that sign language interpretation of “The Man I Love.” When Sven and I saw it together, we held hands and we both cried. When we left the theater we didn’t even talk for a while.
If you’ve never seen Lutz Forster doing this dance, you should really watch it on YouTube. That’s what I did as soon as I’d verified Sven’s news. The version that’s up is from Chantal Akerman’s documentary film, Un jour Pina a demandé… First she shows Forster rehearsing the song in a casual shirt. He seems to be in a dressing room. You can faintly hear him moaning the words over the recording of Sophie Tucker singing as he signs with his hands. His hands are so beautiful. The sign for maybe is a kind of indecisive wobbling of both hands, palms up. The sign for home is an O shape that sweeps up from the mouth to the cheek. When Tucker sings “just built for two,” Forster holds up two long, thin fingers in the shape of a V.
He signs roam by tracing a zig-zagging line before him. “Who would, would you?” ends with a wavering gesture, half pointing out, half pulling back.
We didn’t have to talk about why this moment was so moving. There’s a kind of obvious reading, of course, which is that it makes you think about homosexual desire. Sophie Tucker’s voice can say what Forster can only signal mutely. But I don’t really think that’s the heartbreaking thing about it. If you look at the comments on the YouTube version of the dance, you see somebody called “sagatyba”
