7720. BELOW THE WATER LINE, (pt. 140)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 140)

While still in the seminary, I had another

friend, John Guerassio. He was from Brooklyn.

A perfectly great kid, we two hit it off almost

immediately. Trouble with John was, he was too

cute  -  I mean like in a guy sort of way. Dimples 

and a grimace, wise-cracks all the time, a certain 

'Brooklyn'  Hell-be-damned sarcasm about everything.

Always in funny situations; liked musicals and ballet,

hated home life, and he used to say that the only reason

he was at Blackwood was to get away from home. I

knew, of course, exactly what he meant  -  we were

kindred spirits, in  a way, and he was the only person,

I mean the only, whom I ever saw with no visitors, no

home contact, no family-warmth evidences ever. He

was comical, some. Once there were a few joke-type

photographs taken, for a yearbook, to show how happy

and light and wonderful life at Mother of the Savior 

was. John was photographed, at an ironing board, 

ironing a shirt (something I don't think anyone actually 

did, though maybe), with a can of Right Guard next to 
him on the board, and the caption, underneath his 

engaging and thoughtfully grimacing face, was 'Spray 

starch? Right Guard? What?'  -  meaning he didn't 

realize the difference; deodorant (Right Guard, of 

the time) and spray starch. Funny you think? Once

or twice I thought of asking John to take the ride

home with me, hang a few days, and see what would 

up for a Brooklyn boy in Avenel, but I never did. With
John, most things were spectacle and play  -  other guys 
would be out on the field, me included, doing something;
John (and sometimes with me too) would be in the music
room on the ground floor, right hand side of one of the dorms,
listening to 33's of Broadway cast albums,; 'My Fair Lady'
and all the rest of the nearly current 1960's plays.

-

John's thing was theater, though he did very little 

with our own drama troupe. I think he had a role in

one or two of the Shakespeare plays we'd done, and I

know, too, that he was Caiphas (the High Priest) in 

my year's Passion Play. He was top tier, but he never

really shined. After I left, I don't know how much

longer John stayed around (everything was falling

apart by that time, or soon after), but he was the one

who told me about 'goils' being there the next year.

John used to make fun of Rudolph Nureyev, the

Soviet ballet star who'd defected to NYC-America.

I think , anyway. He'd call him 'Fruity Rudy'. It was

funny, but he actually did know about the guy, and

appreciated him too. John was the only other guy who

took this acting experience from the seminary and

actually, seriously pursued it. A few years later,

after he was established, I'd visit him on 3rd street,

in Brooklyn, where he had a pretty nice place. He'd 

buy fresh mozzarella, some perfect Italian bakery 

bread, olive oil, olives, and more, and we'd sit around

talking. He'd gotten a small but good off-Broadway

acting career going, at the Lion Theater Group on

W42nd street's Theater Row. His biggest note to 

fame, with a nice write-up in the NYTimes and more,

was 'K', a play about and around the Kafka character

he nicely inhabited. He wrote another piece, and played

in it too, entitled 'Sananda Sez', which I did not view or

attend so, not exactly sure how to summarize it, I'd say

it was about some New Age'y seer stuff. Interesting. John
also had a nice role in a Merchant-Ivory film entitled
'Jane Austen in New York.' I saw it in Soho one time.
It was nicely atmospheric, but a bit confusing for me.
I guess he did that while he lived for a while in Los
Angeles  -  he'd send me postcards during this time,
and he'd regale me with tales of his job as the overnight
attendant in a morgue, or funeral room of some sort.
He was also a yearly favorite, each Summer, in New
Hampshire, of the Peterboro Players, a theater troupe
that perfomed 5 or 6 well-attended and well-regarded
productions a year, for the Summer crowd. He was big. One

time, back in NY, we stopped, along that same street, and 

grabbed a quick coffee and lunch at a table and John

got me in stitches, unwittingly on his part, by making

a big scene over the fact that they had Sweet 'n Low

on the tables and he only used NutraSweet, which

they didn't have. He got pretty upset over that and began

berating a table-service person over it. I was cracking

up over the intensity of a preference for one artificial

sweetener over another. It seemed perfect for a comedy

skit, which in fact it almost was. Especially with this, 

tough, street-side old broad of a guy losing it over that.

I can still laugh at that scene -  all this rumbling going on

inside, while outside our windows, in the hot noon-day

heat, thousands of people were milling and passing around,

all hot and crowded, and the local Lincoln Tunnel streets

of entry were clogged and toasted and noisy and jammed.

It was a perfect (perfectly bad, that is) New York City

street-scene as background for this NYCity actor person

losing his charm over lack of a sweetener.

-

Some 20 years ago, John moved completely to London, 

and has been there since, making good English money doing

America, and Brooklyn, accented voiceovers for countless

commercials, and maintaining an active theater career as

well. In fact, in England, unknown by face, of course he is

the 'voice' of the Einstein character, dressed up and made up

for 'Einstein Bread' a Wonder-Bread type brand over there.

Funny how things go. The small world turns, we see it as big,

or the big world turns and we see it as small  -  either way,

our own fated characters always do seem to come out.

-

Whenever I collect myself enough to think over my life,

I always place my locus as Avenel, nowhere else. It's said

you can't go home again, maybe not. It's said you can't

cross the same stream twice, maybe so. But I'd dispute 

all that  -  water churning or not. The fixture of early life

is the lens by which, or through which, or with which, we

view the remainder of our lives. Bayonne, Irvington,

Brielle or Lanky Swallow Island, it's always the same. I

may say one thing, but I envision it as something else, 

something you'd not see unless you too had originated 

it out of my own Bayonne and Avenel filterings. It's 

the same everywhere. And I'd even bet that John's 

London filterings all come out of Brooklyn, no 

matter what. I always wonder, anyway, how much 

of what we become is authentic and how much is

derivative? It's very difficult then, to decide 

influences. 

-

I could never talk to anyone about things like this, in

this manner. Philosophy and musings had no place

in this life. Not in Avenel, where I was once more,

nor in the seminary which I'd just left, where everything,

no matter how arcane or foreign, was given no validity

unless it could be brought back and chained into the realm

of Christian pure belief, not even the tainted Presbyterian

versions. It made me crazy to think how people lived

like this, devoid of any real fabric of reasoning or any

consideration for alternate versions of reality. All those

lines of saints and sinners, martyrs and perfect beings,

all that grace and salvation stuff, you didn't really find 

that in Philosophy. Both of the were about their own

Dogma. I found Art and Writing to be the only things

which operated and remained outside of that bad halo  -

I was able to function as freely as I wanted in that realm. 

Not just a survivor, I became a Creator, and that was

all and alone what I could understand.

-

After this point, the best part of Avenel for me, ever, 

was the Woodbridge Library, on Rahway Avenue  -  

just after the golf driving range, in fact, very close to 

where I'd been creamed by the train  -  there had been

a large hardware store there, called 'Home Center'. It

fell back, and went out of business and the township

took it over for the library. It was marvelous, simple

and without pretense. A new, bureaucratized and formal

library building was built by 1972, in a completely

different location over by the high school, but for the 

8 or so years on that this was in place, it was great. I

used it heavily through all of '66. It became my home

away from home, nearly every night, or five nights at 

least. It was a brisk, 20 minute walk, maybe. I didn't

really use it to take out books or as a lending library, 

more to me it was just a place  -  long tables, quiet, I 

could write, sit there with all sorts of books and things

out in front of me, and be left alone. There were one or 

two pesky lady librarians who'd always bother me about

something, but it was completely manageable. I used to 

think they were ancient old ladies frittering away their

time in a library job, but I realize now they were probably 

in their 40's tops. Mostly Jewish ladies, oddly. Marge Abel.

Lil Gutman. And others. There was one, like the rest, always

ready with advise or pointers about something. Catching

my interest in painting, she'd always come over and begin

talking about something painting-related. It was OK. She was

a hobby-painter of sorts -  flowers and faces and things. The

usual nice kind of library-exhibit art you see, all gentle and

proper. I'll never forget her nugget of advice  -  she said,

'always paint on newspaper, it makes a great background 

for your work and colors, and adds a depth and an interest to

it.' Craziest dumb tip ever, but what she meant was that I 

should NOT, as most painters did, paint on canvas plain;

rather I should first put down with glue or transfer, a piece

or pieces of newspaper  -  printed news sheets. And then,

once that was adhered, paint on that, not bare canvas. That

way there was never any blank or raw canvas showing, and

it gave you a tonal background, an active gray, even if you

didn't paint it.  Well, that was her tip.

-

I'd sit there for hours, sometimes in gloom, sometimes in

happiness  -  reading plays, writing notes and verses or 

paragraphs of my own, gleaning information, checking 

out newspapers and magazines, learning of all sorts of things :

Mishima and Japanese fiction, etc. (and the he killed himself),

Kafka, Stendahl, French Existential writings, Heidegger,

eastern religions  -  all and every sort of things that caught

my fashion. It was like living in a room filled with books

and information, for free. And all I had to do was walk, 

get there, and stay  -  and amazingly it was open until 

10pm. Right across the street was a tiny little coffee shop;

actually this was before today's ubiquitous coffee shops, 

and it was more just like a fountain service counter, with

coffee, and donuts and all that stuff. 1960's version of what

today would be a lame Starbucks. It's a Chinese Restaurant 
these days, has been for a long time. The coffee was horrid,

and pretty indistinguishable from any other dark liquid.

So anyway, I was really pretty much set. It smelled like 

paper, people actually pretty much read and studied. There

was none of the non-library essentials that libraries have

now taken up  -  videos, study guides, computers, 

terminals, link-ups and the rest. The world was paper, and
only paper was the world. Ideas. Thought. If you were really

in earnest, you could truly get stuff done. And learn too. 

It's about the only good use of taxpayer dollars 

I've ever really seen.