RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,004
(spare house ? hourly rentals)
There was always an air of
abstraction around me. Riding
the Lincoln Tunnel bus, from
Carteret, one of those early
days when traffic used to back
up oddly as the bus exited the
Meadowlands and drained on
down - slowly - to the helix
ramps in Weehawken. It was
a slow go, but the amazing
thing, back then, was how the
bus would always come to a
halt in a section of roadway
lined on both sides with beautiful
wildflowers. I always thought,
until corrected, that they were
sunflowers, but I was later shown
the difference. Yeah, sunflowers
are huge; these were what were
called Black-Eyed Susans. A
strange name, but I guessed I
could understand the image.
Sort of sunflower-like, but way
smaller, they had a black center.
Thus, I suppose, the reference
to the back-eyed thing.
-
Whatever, and however it went
it was cool to be stuck amidst
them, just waiting for traffic to
move along. Amazingly, no one
else give a rat's ass, (as my friend
Pete used to say) about it, nor
ever seemed to even notice.
Which baffled me; all these
jerks in their Newsweek or
Good Housekeeping Home
and Garden or Electrocution
Monthly, or reading their latest
Jacqueline Susan book (she
was a big deal in about 1969,
with sex and Hollywood steamy
potboilers of 'Romance' novels.
All of which was fine if you
weren't Roman Polanski butt-
sticking it to some 14 year old.
It was OK in those books, but
better not do it, really. 'Your
intruding on our fantasy! That's
how we make our livings.' So
Hollywood said.
-
Another weird thing, once I got
to NYC, was the sex trade. I saw
a lot of it, and always stayed at
the fringes (it was only in 8mm
then, and I was 'too large' for the
screen. OK, that's a joke, girls
and ladies). There was a lot
I never understood; I mean it
was obvious, and I knew the
rates for 'Glory Shots' and all
that stuff. Three hundred bucks
for a good squirt, a hundred or
two more for an extended or
multi. What I never understood
was the butt/anal angle. Those
who talked about it, and did it,
they got still more money, but
it seemed so freakily un-natural
and sickeningly perverse to me
that it hijacked the entire premise
of porn. Some of these jerks went
about it as if it were high art:
fancy setting, curtained rooms,
discreet lighting and linens. And
others were shot in hovels; rank,
sickening one-room SRO's covered
with filth. Probably vermin too.
It wasn't like in California, where
the porno industry was really based,
and clean and professional. There,
if they don't use sets, most of the
time, working hand in hand with
real estate people, they use empty
and large,beautiful homes and estates
that are being represented for sale.
Big bucks there, for the use of
such premises. As if they hope the
place never sells. The NY side
to all this was way different, that
I saw anyway. Sometimes it was
nothing more than a 50 cent
peepshow booth. Poor suckers;
but many were drawn into to.
Quick money, they'd say, and
"I'd probably be doing it anyway,
for free!" Funny stuff. What
also was funny for me, at first,
was how any big, hit Broadway
play was SRO, meaning 'standing
room only.' And these filth-ridden
slimeball hotels were billed, in
the same manner, as SRO. But it
meant 'Single Room Occupancy.'
-
Anyway, I got out of those
scenes pretty quickly. There was
a legendary, kind of a beatnik
leftover guy named Herbert
Huncke, sort of a Charles
Bukowski type, low-life
bar-fly kind of guy who had
a demi-monde career as a male
whore, or pick-up anyway. It
got him famous, he wrote a
little about it. Big bore. The
scene was a failure, always.
-
I hate writing this sex-stuff, but
even the jazz guys got into this.
The undercurrent, like dirty water,
was always there and running.
New York was strange like that.
People on the make, open about
sexuality and not really caring
about it either. I guess like
Amsterdam, but I never knew.
-
It wasn't to ever be my concern
anyway. I always had this theory
about the more guilt there was over
sex, the larger the wedding ceremony
and all the ritual and reception stuff
was. They seemed to go hand in hand,
as a sort psychic complement to the
actual physical situation that the
poor suckers involved got all into.
Then, I started reading Freud, a
little; though I never took to any of
that Germanic didactic insistence
on things. He had some fairly
weird tings to say on the matter:
He claimed to often have a problem
of his patients, female, whatever
they were called, clients, patients,
'falling in love' with him. He'd write
procedural stuff for other analysts,
and say things like 'Women are
going to fall in love with you but
don't take this to be attributed to
the charms of your own person, or
that it is real love. It isn't, and
whatever you do don't reciprocate.
Have her stick with her analysis
and get over the infatuation, and it
will all cure her of the lovesickness
caused by her problems in the
first place. You must not repulse
it or make it distasteful to the
patient, but you must just as
resolutely withhold any response
to it. Treat it all as something of
unconscious origins, and you must
then bring all that is most deeply
hidden in the patient's erotic life
into her consciousness and
therefore under her control.'
Yes, pretty weird.
-
There's more: 'Sexual love is
undoubtedly one of the chief
things in life, and the union of
mental and bodily satisfaction
in the enjoyment of love is one
of its culminating peaks. Apart
from a few queer fanatics, all the
world knows this and conducts
its life accordingly.' Wow! That
was a humdinger. I got a kick
out of 'culminating peaks.' Was
that some coded reference or
wisecrack? And, finally, 'It is
not the patient's crudely sensual
desires which constitute the
temptation...It is rather, perhaps,
a woman's subtler and aim-
inhibited wishes which bring
with them the danger of making
a man forget his technique and
his medical task for the sake of
a fine experience.' Ladies and
girls, I admonish you, think twice
before getting on that analyst's
couch. 'A fine experience?'
I was surely baffled, all along
the way - the industry, the
sex trade, the crummy places,
the lousy money, and, then,
this sex-obsessed Freud guy.
Too much for me. And then I
read once some commentary
on those words too, and it said,
'It is Freud's honesty that rises
above his ambitions as a scientist
and forces him to acknowledge that
this thing called 'transference-love'
is a pretty wobbly notion, if not
a cover-up, for the attraction
that develops between a man
and a woman who meet every day
in a small room and talk about
intimate things while on of them
is lying down.' Jeepers again;
where's that spare house you
said you had for hourly rentals?
No comments:
Post a Comment