A Nice Place To Visit

The Poetry Reading The Salon was founded in 1976, the first regional multipurpose literary center focused on providing support for writers at all stages of their development. Workshops were based on the apprenticeship model. At first, it was located in an abandoned school. Then in an old amusement park next to a merry-go-round and pottery and craft shops. Then in an office on top of a lighting store. And finally in a building which had been used by the county Rec department. Aside from drunks coming in for a drink and the occasional upper middle-class housewives coming in for a ‘cut and blow-dry’, visitors to the salon were expected to write. Poets, novelists, biographers, short-story writers came in from their real lives as housewives, computer programmers, rehab techs, teachers, and waiters, etc.. Goldbug usually could not go to his wife’s poetry readings. They were mostly on Sunday afternoons and conflicted with Eagles games. This particular Sunday the Eagles were not playing, a fact that Goldbug had concealed. They arrived early so Beverly could plan the reading with her sister poets. Goldbug hovered around the entrance, watching the people come in. The women wore colorful outfits, a lot of purple and silver and orange... and stones, shiny stones, odd-shaped stones, big purple stones, little yellow stones... on necklaces and bracelets and sometimes just hanging by themselves... big turquoise stones, little ones... and scarves and capes and pashminas... and boots, high and shiny and dark. So the typical poetess showed up wearing a long, dark skirt, black boots, a lot of the requisite stones and a light blouse, incompletely wrapped in a purple cape. The uniform resembled that of a social worker. The reading was called to order by a short-bearded man wearing glasses, dressed like a truck driver... old dirty work shoes, dungarees and a Mets jersey—the look of a man searching for the kind of easy masculinity which had always eluded him. His name was Sheldon Paskevitz. He and his wife, Audry—who looked just like him—had founded the Salon 25 years ago. They were refugees from New York and wanted to incorporate many of the ideas behind the 92nd Street “Y”. Both of them were frustrated writers. Sheldon was around more beautiful women after organizing the Salon than ever before in his life, which, of course, ultimately led to their divorce. The final irony was that after a lifetime of upholding literary standards, the best seller that their son wrote was a biography of the Monkeys. There is a tradition in poetry readings at the Salon... usually three poets reading from their works. The ambience is distinctive. The first reader was a tall, zoftig woman, colorfully dressed with wide-spaced eyes, long, dark hair and a tendency not to look at people in the eye. When she was introduced, she was applauded and one could hear all the stones clicking. She was the divorced wife of a psychoanalyst. When she would say something in a particularly artful way, the audience would respond with a collective “oooooo” and then “ahhhhhhh”. While she was speaking, the audience was silent, paying rapt attention, which made the ooo’s and ahh’s more emphatic. Goldbug was seated at the end of a middle row. He could not stop fidgeting. The chair would creak. Thirty pairs of eyes stared at him with disapproving glances. So he slinked back to the rear. But the thing about standing in the back was that he would meet Beverly’s friends as they came in. He saw Kimmy Aragon looking none-the-worse after her recent divorce. Her most recent marriage had been a real happening, a Shinto ceremony to her Japanese lover who had bought the condo unit adjacent to her own, knocked down the wall and laid out a beautifully huge living space with windows, great views of Washington, shrines and much empty space—particularly valuable to a Japanese person used to being crowded and cramped. But after six weeks, Kimmy stalked out and Chuck joked to Beverly that Takeo was going to commit Hari Kari. Apparently, Kimmy had refused to sleep with Takeo for six weeks after the wedding, saying he was treating her differently after the wedding as if she had to sleep with him. Takeo said, “Isn’t that what marriage is supposed to be?”, which is when she left. All of Kimmy’s poet friends empathized with her about Takeo’s insensitivity. Chuck wanted to know if Takeo was going to sublet space, to which Beverly replied that if he didn’t shut-up, pretty soon he would need to sublet some space. Takeo was last seen on a Nippon air flight to Tokyo, mumbling incoherently about American women. When the tall woman had received her final ooo’s and ahh’s, it was Beverly’s turn. No far off glance for her. She scrambled up the stage steps and reveled in the limelight. She always said her ambition in life was to be on the Dick Cavitt show. Perhaps her chronic depression manifested by her blacker—and less colorful uniform—came from Dick Cavitt being cancelled without her ever making it on. “Take care where your foot falls, for that’s where your mouth fills.” “Ooooooooooo” “Ahhhhhhhhhhh” Afterwards, Beverly asked him how he enjoyed it. He said he enjoyed it in the sense that it was a happening but he could not appreciate the emphasis on words. “Too many obsessive women. They look like they should be hysterical with all the color, and then they spend all their time listening and thinking. What a waste.” Beverly responded, “You want them to dance for you?” Goldbug jested, “Yes, and if you want a literary reference... like Laban’s daughters dancing for Jacob in the red tent.” Sometimes Beverly did not mind such remarks and might even be amused by his flagrant primitivism but this time she got very annoyed, probably because he had been insufficiently complimentary about her reading. It left Goldbug with an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach—their disconnect a portent of bad things to come.