Teflon Carl, Blind Robert & Deaf Nil

 

There were people in Henry’s life whose memory he would carry to the grave and beyond. As for beyond the grave, better to leave the extraterrestrial stuff to holy rollers and snake charmers. 

One was his deaf nanny Nil— who made a lasting impression on him. Henry grew up with her in an apartment in the West Village, and Nil was all he had. 

His old man was a traveling salesman who sold brassieres, and French knickers from a wholesale catalog, driving his Fleetwood Cadillac up and down the Northeast coast.

His mom loved Black dudes, jazz musicians, dope dealers, and she thought she was Negra queen, camping out at the Harlem Flophouse— the ebony Chelsea Hotel of the time.

Nil, his nanny, was a Norwegian beauty, a natural blond, just twenty-five, raising fifteen-year-old Henry as his mother and lover— a dreamy mix for them that they savored.

 

Neither drove, so they’d walk the streets of Manhattan at night, beautifully naive, open to everything, and on the run.

One night Nil bought a bottle of Night Train Express and wrapped it in a paper sack— she and Henry passed it back and forth like two Bowery bums, pulling on it as they walked.

In the Meatpacking District, they go to a working man’s bar called Axels. A joint looking like a million other blue-collar joints, with wooden bar and stools, a hard brown tile floor, three levels of top-shelve booze, and bottles of rail booze in the speed rack for easy access. 

On the back bar, there was an old NCR cash register, and gallon jars of pickled pigs feet, hot dogs, and hardboiled eggs.  

Henry and Nil walk into Axels and sit at an empty table, surrounded by Columbia and NYU students dressed like truck drivers and stevedores wearing jeans and safety boots— college kids slumming it for the weekend who read Sinclair Lewis and Nelson Lichtenstein.

Merl haggard’s song Misery and Gin blares from a large speaker hung on a thick chain from the ceiling. 

Nil walks to the bar, a few of the pretend proletariats eyeball her, she’s slender, innocent-like, and moves gracefully. 

She pulls a pocket-size notebook and a pencil from her purse jotting down in caps, 

TWO VODKA AND ORANGE JUICES 

Vodka and orange juice is the type of drink newbie drinkers like because orange juice overpowers vodka which is tasteless.

The bartender, an older man wearing a checkered shirt who has bushy eyebrows pours the drinks, looking at Henry, knowing the kid is underage, not caring because New Yorkers don’t give a shit about much of anything.

Then, the geezer hacks open-mouthed, splashing Nil, who’s standing in front of him at the bar. Unnerved, she takes a hanky from her purse and wipes her face. She writes in her notepad and holds it up so he can read it,

COVER YOUR MOUTH NEXT TIME YOU HAWK ON SOMEONE, ASSHOLE

 

The rummy hoots, grabbing her notebook and writing in it with an industrial size magic market,  

SIT ON MY FACE LITTLE GIRL AND DRINK  FREE

She picks up the drinks, turns, and walks back to Henry, writing in her notebook, 

LET’S GO, I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF  THE PHONY PROLETARIATS AND THAT RETCHED BARTENDER

They walk out of Axels without paying for the drinks. On the sidewalk hailing a cab, getting in the first one that comes their way, and going home.

Another memorable friend was Miami Carl, who had a run of bad luck, open heart surgery— having to replace a collapsed heart valve with a Teflon substitute, which worked OK, but made an annoying noise as it opened and shut. 

When Carl was excited anyone near him knew, because of the audible sound of his heart valve, which sounded like the lid on a Tupperware container being opened and closed.

Finally, there was Robert the blind man who Henry met in a Key West bar known as the 66 Club one afternoon. Robert was sitting alone at the bar and Henry sits by him and shamelessly comments, 

I’ve never met or known personally someone who’s blind.

The blind man who's in his late fifties, heavy-set, balding with stoop shoulders wearing brown slacks, brown shoes, a tie, and a sports coat says, 

nice to meet you, I'm Robert, 

I’m Henry, Robert. 

He looks closely at the blind man’s eyes, there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets, creepy-like. Henry asks, 

How bout a drink? 

Yes, scotch and water, Dewars. 

Henry waves to the bartender and says, 

Give my friend here a Dewars and water.

Robert the blind man raises the tumbler to his mouth, taking a slow swig, savoring it, then lighting a cigarette, smoking it down to the nub, and then lighting another one. Henry then asks him,

what do you do for a living friend? 

I’ve done a little bit of everything.

Robert turns his blind face towards Henry saying, 

presently I'm selling Fuller Brushes door to door. 

The blind man picks up and places a brown suitcase on the bar, opening it and saying, 

I have toilet brushes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, bottle brushes, brushes made of natural and metal bristles.

Henry’s had heard Fuller Brushes were overpriced,

how bout another drink Robert? 

You sure know the way to a blind man’s heart, make it a double. Then Henry asks, 

Robert do you have a TV? 

Why yes I have two of them, a color set and an old black and white relic. I listen to the news and try to keep up with what the announcer says.

Robert the blind man drains his glass taking a long pull and says, 

Henry would you mind walking me to the Greyhound station, I have to catch the 5:45 bus to Key Largo. 

Robert takes hold of Henry’s arm and they walk to the bus station where they wish each other luck and say goodbye. 

Robert, Nil, and Carl, three people who, for different reasons, greater and lessor reasons, made an impression on Henry.

If You're Christian, Don't Read This.

 

Henry and Lucia are giving up pork for Lent. Some things are in play here—

A few days ago while driving their station wagon on Stock Key, they noticed a passing truckload of pigs heading to slaughter up north somewhere, Louisiana maybe, where Cajuns are broke mouth for barbecue. 

The hogs in the back of the rig look rundown, beaten, and sad. Lucia sobs uncontrollable, Henry pulls the car off the highway, parking it, they look at each other, vowing to never eat the doomed creatures again, for a few reasons—

Pigs are more clever than dogs. 

Bacon is never fully digested, it turns black and sits in your gut for an eternity.

And finally,

When a person goes pork-less for a year a pig is spared.

As for Lent and Jesus, the atheist couple reckoned Jesus was an unorthodox thinker and a victim.  

He spent his missing years— the years between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry— studying Buddhism in India, and at thirty He returned to the Middle East where He roamed the sacred red planet known as the Sinai. 

During this period Jesus was a desert hobo— barefoot, naked, sweating flowers, his soul inflamed, leaping over hills, landing in no-mans-land on Mount Qurantania, colliding with Satan, face to face with Satan wearing his newly tailored Horned Piper snake suit, looking like a Hope Diamond, as big as the Gods, letting Jesus pass, bored by the rube.

Forty days and forty nights in the Sinai desert, Jesus’s halcyon days, the genesis of The New Testament—the greatest show on earth, the passion play, a hard-edged period for the young God. 

Sadly, He didn’t have a chance, in the end, as the story goes, Jesus was duped by the Gods and strung up by Dago Legionnaires. 

For the last 2000 years, Jesus has been hawked like Motorhead T-Shirts in the back lot of a Detroit arena by the high economist of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Assembly of God conglomerates for control, ego, and bling.  

Later, Henry and Lucia are in the kitchen, she’s frying turkey bacon, and eggs in an iron skillet next to a freshly boiled pot of black beans and rice, a favorite in Cuban where she grew up. Henry asks, 

darling, are Cubans religious?

After El Revolución del 26, Julio, Castro declared Cuba an atheist state. Fidel’s brother Raul was a Jesuit schoolboy who later talked of going back to the church, but wouldn’t dare mention it as long as his brother’s alive. Cubanos are free to practice religion, as long as they keep a lid on it. 

They can only pray underground? That’s not freedom. Are there Satanists in Cuba?

No sé Henry, you think I’m the World Book? 

Yes, The Cubano World Book,

Sí querido, there are Santeria cults in Havana, it's voodoo, not devil worship. They sacrifice chickens and small animals, burn incense, dance around campfires. Fidel threw most of them in the hole because Raul the altar boy was offended by the infidels.

Lucia, let’s go to the grotto at Saint Mary Star of the Sea and smoke ganja. The spots venerated baby.

Buena bebe, we’ll dress in black, like in clerecía.

After showering the love couple oils their waist-length hair with patchouli oil, braiding it Cherokee style. 

They lock the front door of the bungalow, then hop on their Vespa scooter, riding directly to Saint Mary Star of the Sea, parking on the lawn.

The church is made of rough-cut black rock and has a copper Celtic cross on the steeple— it was built in the thirties but looks hundreds of years old.

The couple bypasses the church, entering the grotto in the back where there’s a shoddy rock and cement structure that houses a shinny ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary—  overgrown red poinsettia bushes engulf the shrine. 

They sit on the manicured lawn, lighting a joint and puffing on it— the wind rustles, and the bushes swirl, reaching out to them. 

A powerful feeling of religiosity engulfs them. Then as the sky turns purple and the sun sways— the face of La Madre Virgen liquifies and she says in Latin, 

Henricus et Lucia omnia tua dant Deo

Henry and Lucia give your all to God

The air turns cold as the grotto is swallowed in blue smoke.

They look at one another and Lucia asks,

what happened querido?

That was either a hallucination or a religious experience, depending on how you look at it.

Was it real Henry? 

If you believe in God it’s real, but for nonbelievers, it’s an illusion, like an LSD trip. 

On the way home, they park the Vespa in the lot of The Moon Dog Cafe, across from Dog Beach, needing a drink after savoring the words drop-shipped in their laps by the Virgin Mary at the grotto of Saint Mary Star of the Sea Church.

The Moon Dog Cafe is an eclectic place where odds and ends are strung from wall to wall— fishing rods, surfboards, teddy bears, bras, you name it. 

The born-again lovers sit at the bar, ordering clam fritters, broiled grouper, coleslaw, corn on the cob, and a pitcher of Bucanero Draft dosed with Clamato— honoring their Lent commitment and not ordering pig ribs.

Lucia pours the red beer into mugs which they lift towards the sky, toasting all things religious, taking big swigs. Henry comments, 

the first mouthful is always the best.

Salud querido, I love you.

The bartender, an Israeli named Yoshi, sets the bar top with plates, tableware, and clothe napkins, then serves lunch.

As they’re eating, Henry points towards a shadowy figure at the end of the bar, someone who looks like he wants to be left alone, who's wearing a broad hat, black jeans, and a muscle T exposing his thin white arms. Lucia says, 

he’s a rock star, querido, 

yeah, it’s Keith Richards darling.

A few minutes later Keef walks towards them, sitting by them as Lucia says, 

you look hungry, bebe

she orders more plates of food and Keith says in his famous raspy voice, 

cheers, thanks, I don’t eat unless my old lady orders it, there’s no time when we’re touring. 

I’m Henry and she’s Lucia, 

Yoshi places an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels on the bar for Keith, gratis, and he says, grabbing the fifth, 

let’s get outta here, 

Henry places a hundred-dollar bill on the bar to cover what they ate and what's left behind. They follow Keith to a waiting limousine, things outside feel surreal.

In the back of the limo, Keith says, 

can I crash at your place for a few hours?  

Minutes later the limo's parked in front of the couple's bungalow.

Inside, Lucia pours drinks, Jack with coke, Keef passes out on the living room sofa, sleeping through the night till noon the following day, when Lucia makes him fried eggs, french fries, turkey bacon, and coffee. 

After breakfast, the legend grins, handing the couple a handful of backstage passes for the evenings' concert saying,

don't miss it, I might be dead next time around, fuck the naysayers!

Then Keef pads his chest with both hands, raising them towards the Heavens as he walks outside, walking his renowned unbalanced walk, staggering and getting into his limo which goes north on The Overseas Highway to Miami, where The Rolling Stones will play tonight at the Miami Orange Bowl.

It Was a Noteworthy Day

It’s a lie, how could anyone believe such a thing? 

Henry loves his Cuban wife, Lucia, he wants to take her in his arms and hold her. He wonders why she’s upset.

You must believe me, Henry, it may sound stupid, but, I’m telling the truth.

He looks out the kitchen window at the palm branches swaying in the morning wind, wondering what the drama is about and thinking, 

she’s Latin, when she’s upset she's has a problem expressing herself.

The lovers are sitting at the kitchen table, she lights a joint and takes a deep drag, forgetting about the liar, whoever he is, and saying,

querida, you burned la tostada, make some more. I finished Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude last night, I adore him, his stuff feeds the Latino soul, it's butterflies rising from mud and flying to the moon.

Yeah, he’s cosmic, baby, I know you love him.

Estas celosa bebe?

No, I’m not jealous, Gaby Marquez is dead, he's dust.

Henry, you’re jealous because you’ll never write like him, and his mind is beautiful and yours is muck. 

Lucia, is it rag week? Look, I write like me, OK?

I want to kill you, Henry, you make me crazy, tonight when you sleep I’m going snuff you out with a pillow. 

Let me tell ya, croaking beats dealing with you when it’s your monthly. If somethin’s eatin you doll I'll call Skank the shrink.

They shower, dress, braid each other's long hair, then make the short trip to the Skank’s office on their Vespa, parking it in the Sunset Mall lot— a conglomerate of pink cement modules connected by blue tile walkways.   

After walking past Radio Shack, and Sears, Lucia ducks her head inside her girlfriend’s salon saying, 

Chica, back in a few, vamos a hablar Skank the shrink. 

Inside Skank’s office, they go to the reception desk, where Henry asks, 

how much is a session with Skank? 

A middle-aged nurse whose face is deeply lined scowls as she answers,

160 dollars for sixty minutes, 

how bout a half hour for 80 beans?

Sir, our office is a member in good standing of the American Psychiatric Association, we don’t bargain.

OK then, an hour for my wife, Lucia, it’s somewhat urgent, but I wouldn't call it an emergency. 

Sir, if your wife’s situation is urgent I’ll call 911.

Call me Henry, so how long is the queue?

two hours sir,

two hours? Jesus, we’ll go have a drink then.

That's none of my business.

Whataya mean you old goat? You're Skank's nurse, ain't ya? Lucia pulls his arm and says, 

querido común.

The couple makes a b-line for Chica’s Beauty Salon, going inside where Lucia collapses in the parlor chair.

Oh mi Chica, that bitch at Skanks office is crazy. Henry laughs saying, 

when Nurse Ratched finishes jacking the patients up, Skank the shrink makes em whole again.

Chica brings them a beer and goes to work on Lucia's long curly hair, spraying it with water and shaving the split ends off her curls with a razor. 

Then the Cubano stylist leads Lucia to the shampoo station, where she washes and conditions her friend's hair.

As she’s being shampooed Lucia unconsciously spreads her long legs, exposing her thick black bush. Chica laughs saying, 

darling your cono es maravillosa, like a jungle bush.

She draws a mesh curtain on a circular track around Lucia, leaving and returning with a stand-up tray that has warm wax and strips of cloth on it. 

Then swabbing Lucia’s pussy with alcohol, cleaning her clitoris and vagina, slowly drying the sensitive area with a soft hand towel, arousing Lucia.

She applies tepid and gooey wax to Lucia’s bush that she’s trimmed down with scissors. Finally, placing strips of cloth on the pubic hair, letting them settle, and jerking them off.

The pain of waxing is akin to ripping a bandaid off sensitive skin— Lucia doesn't feel anything because she and Henry are three sheets to the wind.

When the beauty treatment's finished, the couple drinks with Chica till sunset, walking to the parking lot and getting on their Vespa.

They pull out of Sunset Mall— driving northwest on the Key’s Overseas Highway instead of driving home, pulled by something unknown to them.

Twenty minutes later they’re at Saddleback Key disoriented and driving in circles. 

Eventually, they stop and get off their scooter in an open field lit by a Waning Gibbous moon. Henry says, 

It’s fun bein lost ain’t it babe? This island’s witchy.

I wanna go home and go to bed, pollino.

OK, give me a second to suck in more green microbes. 

Green microbes? Are you loco, Henry? 

They’re in the sea air, they’re sobering, revitalizing.

A dark form moves out of a shadow, approaching them and saying, 

I’m Dom the Jew, I live in a Gypsy commune on Raccoon Key. I was night fishing and got lost so I rowed ashore. 

Everything about Dom the Jew is black, his curly hair, beard, overalls, and T. Henry smiles and says, 

you’re on Saddleback Key, Dom, can we help you?  

I'm OK, I’ll row home when the sun comes up. Let me reward your kind understanding. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a polished crystal, raising it to the moon, holding it there as shards of rainbow-colored moonlight flood the field. 

Henry and Lucia begin to feel a happiness that is impossible under ordinary circumstances. They feel sheer harmony leading to bliss.

Then, they’re engulfed in a balloon-like white aura that expands, and implodes, uncovering a field of fine white dust, a purely energetic state yogis call Sahasrara— a wholly other dimension of reality. 

The couple experiences an aha moment as they realize a pearl of wisdom has been thrown their way by the Gypsy boy.   

The out-of-body experience ends as quickly as it began and Dom the Jew is nowhere to be seen— most likely he was never there.

In a whisp, Henry and Lucia are cruising the Key’s Overseas Highway, wailing Walt Whitman’s Songs of Joy to the night sky.

O the joy of spirit— when it's uncaged— it darts like lightning!

A Quasi-Subterranean Stream

 

Lu Lu, Henry’s Cuban wife made him happy, he depended on her to deal with the people he didn't like.

The couple wakes early at nine. While sitting at the breakfast table Henry does a quick sketch of Lu Lu, showing it to her, 

dios mios, bebe, I’m all tits and ass, 

It’s a caricature, you know, exaggerating what's obvious,  

So, when you look at me, you only see tetas y culo? 

I feel the energies of the Gods and Things falling from the sky, passing through you at the speed of light embracing me. 

Sure, Henry talk big, you're no Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I adore him, he's an artista  versed in the words of love. 

You love Marquez because he's Latin and writes in your language. If you love him so much fly to Columbia, light candles and burn incenses on his bones,

Estás celoso cariño? 

No, not jealous, I just don't like you talking shit about my work.

Henry gets up from the table and walks to his study where he to cowers over his typewriter, feeling the breeze from an open window, breathing it in his nose and exhaling from his mouth, shutting down monkey the monkey who lives in your head. 

I had an affair, not long enough, with a Woman I met on Isla La Roqueta Beach in Mexico, we had a wild time,  smoking reefer, eating and fucking. 

Henry thumbs through some paperbacks on his desk— Hemingway, Durrell, Miller, Marquez turning on his Grundig radio, listening to Copland's 5th Symphony, typing a few paragraphs. 

Only one great writer surfaces every five hundred years, and I’m not the one, writing nonetheless

I hang Shitzman Fly Paper on the terrace, sitting there and typing.

Lu Lu walks into Henry’s study dressing him down, 

busting his cojones talking to himself for talking to himself out loud, he tells, 

Let's go have lunch and a drink at the Tahiti Club?

About 2, they come home loaded and try to fuck but can't.

So, I go to work on a The John Cheever Story, my love, 

lo tienes, bebé.

John William Cheever was an American short story writer known for his rapier-like view of the middle class. His attention to detail, hypervigilant writing, and creative power was on fire.  

He was born on May 27, 1912, in Quincy, Massachusetts. His father Fredrick owned a shoe factory, losing it in the Great Depression, his mother Mary Lilly owned a gift shop.

Cheever was sent to Thayer Academy, a prep school in Milton, Massachusetts. As a seventeen-year-old Harvard-bound senior he arranged his own expulsion, spending his time at bars in downtown Milton, and writing at home.  

John struggled with alcoholism throughout his life and wrote about the disease in his stories about suburbanites who drink too much.

In the mid-1930s, John lived in a bleak boarding house in Greenwich Village, he taught English composition at City College

In 1943 he married Mary Wintergatz that same year publishing his first book of short stories, The Way People Live, mirroring his lifelong subject— the ways of suburban dwellers. 

Then in 1947, The New Yorker published his story, The Enormous Radio, it got raves from reviewers.

Each story eclipsed the last. Then in 1951, Cheever was made a Guggenheim Fellow.

By 1964, he was on the cover of Time Magazine, a world-renowned author. 

Later the same year his story The Swimmer was adapted for Hollywood, starring Burt Lancaster.

Ned Merrill, who sees himself as a legendary figure, is sitting in his at home with a glass of gin in his hand, deciding by coin flip to swim home via hitting every neighbor's pool for a swim. a route Cheever might label as, 

a quasi-subterranean swim through curved streams and neighborhood pools. 

As Ned’s journey begins his mood is buoyant and in Cheever's words he's, 

sucking in the powerful eroticism of travel, traveling with a hard-on, tapping into Universal Love. 

Ned moves smoothly like a decathlon runner, snake-like, on Slip and Slides, through lawns, running and jumping bushes to the next neighbor's pools

Like conquering king he's on the booze circuit, Ned's offered drinks along the, he sucks them down.

Then, as thunder roars and rain pours Ned takes cover under a neighbor's patio where he notices a red maple stripped of its leaves by the force of the storm and the sign of autumn makes him feel glum, causing his sense of self to waver.

Somewhere around the halfway point of his journey, he crosses a busy road and is jeered at and a can of beer is thrown at him.

In the end, Cheevers's greatest short story leaves you hanging, wondering if Ned made it home. 

Of course, the masterpiece transcends the swimmer's safari through the suburban backyards and is more of a journey into one man’s heart of darkness. In Cheever’s words,

it’s the telling of lies, a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

Lucia looks over Henry’s shoulder and says, 

what ya doin bebe? 

I'm finishing a bit on John Cheever’s The Swimmer. Whataya say we go for a swim at Sunset Pool?