Election night was a horror. Biden lost Florida and it looked like Pennsylvania might be lost. I could feel the PTSD from the 2016 election forming like a calcium deposit on my frontal lobe. My executive functions would soon start to deteriorate. I’d been thinking for some time that I wanted to work on the massive problem with PTSD that the country would be facing post-Trump and post-COVID. But how do you address the trauma when it remains ongoing and ever present?
I turned the TV off early and considered what I’d do with the rest of my life if Trump won. It seemed to me to be a problem of place. California isn’t far enough away from this madness. What about moving to Hawaii where I could pretend that paradise was enough for me? I needed to talk to someone who could save me from myself. I thought about calling Pina but I was still pissed off at her from our conversation the night before. Screw her and her goddamn self-sufficiency. Screw her and her cheating ways. I wasn’t going to let her break my heart. I considered calling Sally, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the possibility that my daughter was a coke freak.
Thankfully, the phone rang just as I was at the point of waking Roscoe for the sake of some companionship. My friend Arrow Wilk was on the horn. He likes to call me after he gets stoned and jabber. Tonight about his new series of paintings, The Deaths of Trump.
“So you’re thinking in plurals? Isn’t killing him once sufficient?”
“What are you talking about? Who ever heard of a series of one?”
Arrow and I had been roommates in the city when we were students at the Art Institute. That was decades ago. Arrow moved to Sonoma County before me and has settled into a fine life in an old barn up Sonoma Mountain Road. He’s prolific. He paints all night. Sells his work cheap, but he sells it.
“You miss the whole point, Charlie. I want to kill Trump a hundred different ways. Remember that old TV show on Spike, 1000 Ways to Die? That’s my inspiration. They had an episode on this Norse dude, Sigurd the Mighty, a superstar Viking who died from gangrene. Now get this, Charlie—what kills him is the decapitated head of one of his victims. For real. He tied the motherfucker’s head to his saddle, and the dead joker’s buckteeth ripped through old Sigurd’s leg while he was riding. Ain’t that a motherfucker?”
“Arrow, that’s epically grotesque.”
“Isn’t it? I worked on Trump’s gangrene today. Took it straight through his toes on up. Not for the faint-hearted, Charlie. It’s amazing what you can do with a gangrene palette. It has more blue in it than you’d think.
“Yesterday I finished Trump’s death by quicksand. All we see is the top edge of his purple hair and one short, stubby finger sticking up in the air. You can tell it’s Trump’s finger from a mile away. I’m about to start on his golf course heart attack. I’m thinking a sand bunker right after he takes his swing. Sand is flying everywhere, the ball’s still in the trap, and Trump has collapsed to his knees; a second later he’s a dead man eating sand.”
“Sounds like you can kill him a thousand ways but, meanwhile, he’s winning the fucking election. I’m going a little nuts here.”
“He’s not going to win, Charlie. Lots of the states count the mail-ins last. That’s where Biden scores. This is common knowledge, Charlie. What have you been watching, Fox News? Do something for yourself. You sound like a wreck. Smoke a joint, Charlie, snort a couple of lines, swallow some shrooms. You know who you are? You’re a man in need of a creative outlet. How’s the bird? I saw him on Instagram. Very clever what you’ve done with him. I don’t know how you do it. But what are you going to do with a parrot now that the election’s over?”
“To be determined.”
“Charlie, for you, at your stage of the game, it’s too late to leave things to be determined.”
“Why are you busting my chops, Arrow?”
“For your own good. I’d hate to see you waste away. Atrophy is a dirty word in my book. Go to bed, Charlie. You’re no good to yourself now.”
I took Arrow’s advice and climbed into bed with a hearty snifter of Pina’s cognac.
On Saturday morning before turning on the TV I did some self-hypnosis. I’d learned a simple technique from a hypnotist and noted blues singer in Sebastopol, Efraim Merz. He led me to some deep ass levels with his basso. At the start of a session he’d say, “Are you ready to go down?”
I’ve never been able to descend as deeply by myself, but it can get cavernous after I sample my breaths for a while and melt into the sensations of my limbs. That’s when a simple suggestion can go a long way. I’ve learned to work the method in an elementary way and it is part of what I’m teaching Roscoe to do with himself. I like to ask him, “Are you ready to go down, Roscoe?”
“I’m not afraid,” he says with his parrot smirk. “How about you, Charlie?”
So now, in thirty minutes time, I have successfully disassociated from Pina. It may only last the day. But I’m junking the cuckold routine and will let bygones be bygones. Who wants to project personal grievance when there’s such a climate of it in the air? I’m thinking seventy million Trump voters for whom grievance resonates. Meanwhile, I have Pina where I want her, in an emotional lock box.
After I brewed coffee I flicked on the TV. They finally called the election for Biden. The news rocked me. I think some horror stricken part of me believed we’d never get rid of Trump. Breathe.
I briefly watched the celebrations in cities across the country and wanted to join in or at least spectate in person. I walked down to the square. Three people were making noise with whistles, cymbals, and triangles at the foot of Broadway. It wasn’t enough clatter to keep me in Sonoma.
I packed Pina’s laptop in its sack and a suitcase of her clothes, although I doubted I’d deliver them, but I was heading to San Francisco. Perhaps I’d leave her stuff with the concierge who wasn’t a concierge. Would that delight Pina or infuriate her? Frankly, I didn’t give a damn. The self-hypnosis had done the trick.
By the time I reached the bridge I decided against heading to the parts of town where the bigger celebrations were likely taking place: Civic Center, Market Street, and the Mission. I must have known, unconsciously, that I wanted a bit of old home week in the city. In the end I got far more than I bargained for.
I took the Marina Boulevard exit with the idea of parking somewhere in North Beach and walking around the neighborhood a bit. That’s where I’d lived during my time at the Art Institute. I shared a flat on Union Street with three pals from the college. All four of us were painting students, the three others, including Arrow, have kept at it. The undisputed star of the gang was Sheri Arnette, who went on to have a stellar career, with frequent shows at galleries and small museums across the country before she died at forty-nine, run over by a drunk in a panel truck as she crossed Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley.
Sheri, a curly-headed beauty, and I were an item for a few months at the Union Street flat. Alas, she was too intense and talented for me. I also had difficulty with the fact that she rarely showered. She called me bourgeois for taking a shower every morning. Her competitive spirit was sexy at first, but it lost its charm. I remember the night Sheri challenged us all to a pissing contest; she claimed that she could piss harder than a man. None of us had the balls to take the challenge,
I used to like to watch Sheri paint; she’d go at it all night long, lovely, lyrical paintings that belied her ferocity. I thought of her work as neo Frankenthaler, with a few bits of collaged assemblage tossed in, à la Rauschenberg. She’d have killed me for saying that but, jeez, she even relied on Frankenthaler’s soak-stain technique.
Of the four of us in the house I had the least talent. The third was an Irishman, Toby Devaney, a photo-realist who specialized in painting cropped graffiti-tagged walls. Toby landed a teaching job at SMU. The dude was an Olympian womanizer. He liked to ask: “Do you know how many beds my brogue has gotten me into?” We kept in touch for a while after he moved to Dallas. In one of our last phone calls he told me, “These coeds all carry three things in their purses: a cell phone, a teasing comb, and a handgun.” I imagined he got into quite a few coeds’ purses. Living a bit dangerous, it seemed.
Despite my paucity of talent, I was the first of the four of us to be represented by a gallery. I’d done a series of paintings embedded with coiled circuits. A hidden switch activated braids of light, clover leafs of night traffic. Collectors really ate up this shit. I imagined them in their fancy houses, delighting guests by flicking on the hidden switches. My first show at Branson-Holly was called “Electric Beasts.” It nearly sold out. I knew better than anybody that the work—an assortment of electrified mammals in the California funk style of Roy De Forrest’s dogs—was really a crock, novelty art that I had little desire to repeat. My roommates were surprisingly generous about my success. They must have known the work was a flash in the pan.
Despite discovering, during my time on Union Street, that I wasn’t a painter, those years were among my happiest. When the gallery finally cut a check for my share of the sales, I bought a McIntosh II, for which I began designing software. That was the beginning of my career in soundscaping and animation.
I lucked out, finding at a two-hour meter in front of Da Flora on Columbus Avenue, certain that in such a prominent spot no one would break into the trunk and pounce on Pina’s stuff. I was tempted to wait in line for a table in the parklet and a plate of gnocchi, but the day was crisp and lovely and I headed up Green Street, where a half dozen parklets had been established in front of restaurants. On Grant Avenue, several cars were blowing their horns while revelers on foot marched in my direction. A group of three—two women, and a man in an Uncle Sam hat, hailed me with a cheer: “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.”
“That’s right,” I said, “Rigor Mortis has set in.”
Someone across the street began singing that tune from The Wizard of Oz. More cars, driving five miles an hour, sat on their horns.
This was what I came to the city for. I walked north toward Filbert Street, past quirky shops and watering holes, a number of which seemed to have called it a day, and then turned back down to Washington Square Park and grabbed an empty bench on the park’s perimeter. Some celebrants, all masked, were keeping a good three feet from each other while snaking through the grass in a wondrous line dance. Apart from the sprawling dancers, a young Asian woman, barefoot in shorts and a T-shirt, did Tai Chi with a grace that was beguiling. I couldn’t remember seeing a young person doing Tai Chi. What a revelation, a body, at once strong and lithe, redefining time.
One of the line dancers, swaying close to my perch on the bench, tried to get me to join in, but I demurred. Meanwhile a small terrier puppy sniffed at my shoes. The tall, willowy woman at the end of the dog’s leash yanked the pup away from me and apologized. I knew the voice if not the woman, masked in African batik with round, impenetrable art deco shades. I stood up. “Gita?” I just had to pair the voice with the body.
“Not Charlie?”
”Himself.”
“Oh, my.” Gita’s long fingers spread evenly over her batiked face. “You’ve aged well, Charlie.”
“You can’t really tell, can you? The mask does wonders for me.”
Gita stood with her feet apart, her long arm bent with a hand on her waist. Her limbs captured sharp angles; her body seemed like an architectural wonder. “Isn’t this serendipitous?” she asked.
“I didn’t think there was any serendipity left in the world.”
“There must be.” She climbed onto the tiptoes of her saffron-hued Chuck high tops, and kind of bounced, a girlish gesture that cheered me.
Gita and I had been colleagues at Industrial Light and Magic and I’d run into her only once or twice, at ILM reunions, in the decade since I retired.
“Don’t tell me you live in the city, Charlie?”
“No, just down for the day from Sonoma. But you live here, right? With a puppy.” I bent down and gave the little guy a pet.
“Dart,” she said, by way of introduction. “Yeah, so when Daryl and I split a few years ago I decided to leave Marin County behind. Wise decision. You were always an inspiration to me, Charlie, retiring before you were fifty. I thought that was so cool—a man in his prime deciding to pursue creative interests of his own.”
“Just don’t ask me how I’ve done.”
“I’m sure you’ve done nicely.” I didn’t need to see Gita’s lips to know that she was smiling. She’d taken off her shades and her dark eyes sparkled. I felt an amorous twitch inside my jeans. At ILM I’d kept my attraction to myself. Gita was a married woman, after all, and I didn’t think it was a good idea for people who worked together to get involved, not that she’d have had any part of me. Not long before I left, I fessed up, told her that I’d always had a crush on her.
She gave me a peck on the cheek. “I think you’re wrong. It’s me, I’m the one who had a crush on you, Charlie.”
Now she met my eyes. “I wasn’t as clever as you, I didn’t get out until I was fifty-two, a couple of years ago now. We’re queer ducks, as my mother from Iowa would say.”
“Queer ducks?”
“Yes, retiring early. I know a lot of people who could afford to, but would never consider it. What would they do with themselves? I don’t have that problem. I mean, I need to acknowledge my privilege—I made fortunate investments. That’s how I can afford to live here. Do you still have your sailboat, Charlie?”
“We are privileged, aren’t we? No, I sold my share in it, not long ago. I wasn’t getting down to Sausalito often enough. It suited me for a period.
Gita stretched her arms in the air languorously, and then they arched in a balletic gesture. I noticed that shte stood framed between the two spires of Saints Peter and Paul, across the street. The tabernacle that her arms briefly formed was lovelier.
“You never remarried, Charlie?”
I shook my head, but thought of Pina, who I’ve known for little more than six months but who has felt as much like a wife to me as anybody since I was first married.
“I live with a parrot named Roscoe,” I said.
“Roscoe! Oh, I can’t believe it. I know about Roscoe. ‘Roscoe here.’ I knew somebody amazing was behind Roscoe. He’s brilliant. Oh, Charlie, can you come up for a glass of wine? I’m only a few blocks away. There’s a very nice deck and we can stay as far from each other as we need to.”
With that, the business in my pants acted up. I did my best to hide it by crossing my legs but felt as awkward as an outsized rubber plant in a small apartment, even though I was standing outside and made of flesh and blood. That’s when Gita noticed she’d let go of the leash and her puppy had wandered away. She sprung to action, leaping off in her saffroned high tops, her lithe strides knifing through the line dancers, calling, “Dart, Dart,” before high-stepping past the Tai Chi master.
With puppy in tow, Gita led me on a steep hike up Greenwich Street, practically to Telegraph Hill, and then to the upper unit of a posh building. This was major multi-million dollar territory, but before I worried about being out of my depth, I reminded myself that I’d only been invited for a glass of wine.
The loft was huge with gorgeous heavy timber beams under a vaulted ceiling. Gita led me past the cork-floored kitchen with its Viking stove, across from a mile of granite countertop, covered with a dozen huge jars of olives.
Gita followed my gaze. “I’m brining twenty-five pounds of olives. Don’t ask me why.”
The living room was even larger, with quite the view of the bay. I admired the redwood plank floors and Persian carpets. One side of the room was with oak bookshelves. A witty, madly colored ceramic sculpture of a woman, life-size, wearing vintage librarian spectacles, held forth beside the bookshelves. “You have a Viola Frey,” I said, approaching the ceramic lass.
“Yes, isn’t she lovely? Let me show you the deck.”
The view from outside was even more spectacular.
“When it gets chilly,” Gita said, “we can light a fire.”
I considered the fire pit and the possibility that I might be in for more than a glass of wine.
As Gita went inside to get refreshments, I heard her whisper to her Echo: “Sketches of Spain,” and suddenly Miles Davis’ plaintive trumpet filled the deck. I looked around to see where the music was coming from because, clearly, a superior speaker system was in play, but I couldn’t find them.
Gita was taking her time. As I listened to Miles weaving his way through Rodrigo’s “Concierto De Aranjuez,” I thought a moment about loyalty—my loyalty to Pina and hers to me. Apparently it wasn’t fixed in stone for either of us. That reality made me sad. Briefly. In a year like this when the world goes to hell, I reasoned, it behooves us to be adaptive, a conclusion, I must say, that came a little too easily.
Gita glided out onto the deck, balancing a round tray with two cocktails, a plate of crackers and some hors d’oeuvre. “I hope you don’t mind a Manhattan. I didn’t have a chilled white. But I did find a tin of caviar just waiting for us in the fridge. We may be the only people in the world to eat caviar on bagel chips. I really need to do a serious shop.” Gita set the tray down on the red rattan table before peeling off her mask. It was good to see her generous lips, her pert nose. She smiled at me oddly, her head tilted sideways. “You’ve been really careful about the COVID, haven’t you, Charlie?”
I nodded and lifted off my mask. We toasted each other and then Gita planted her lips on mine. In no time, my hands found their way to her breasts. It was old-fashioned making out on the deck until Gita pulled us back to our caviar and martinis.
“It’s really good on the bagel chips,” I said.
“It is, isn’t it?”
We made eyes at each other as Miles, his trumpet muted now, continued to sketch his way through Spain. I’d heard it was a recording he was unhappy with. When a reporter asked him why he said, “Too pretty.”
In the morning, after kissing Gita goodbye, I picked up a double espresso at Café Trieste. I’ve never been fond of drinking coffee out of takeout cups, but these are the times we are living in. On Columbus Avenue, I found two tickets on my car; I’d expected there to be one. Then, gobsmacked, I noticed that the trunk was ajar. Really? Somebody had made off with Pina’s laptop and suitcase of clothes.