Early Works: "Coffee Shop Goddess" and "The Emancipation of Anne Frank"
Presented for your approval - or disapproval, doesn't matter to me now - are two vintage short stories of mine originally published in a short-lived, long-defunct Bay Area literary tabloid called The Rooster and The Raven. Both pieces reveal a very young, ambitious, sensitive, and romantic dreamer at work. Obviously the early influence of J.D. Salinger is apparent, but I think even by then (circa age 27) I had developed my own unique voice, focusing on my recurring themes of loneliness and romantic obsession. Coffee Shop Goddess is my ode to the '80s, set in L.A. and San Francisco, where I spent that decade, peppered with a lot of recognizable pop cultural references, so it's an effective time capsule, both personally and generally speaking. The Emancipation of Anne Frank is inspired largely by my own childhood, though I only spent a brief time of it in New York City, the setting of this story. As you can see, I've changed a lot since I wrote these stories. I've lost my innocence. I'm not sure that's a good thing, as a person, or as an artist. In any case, I'm happy to share them again after all these years, since they preserve a precious part of me that I'll never recover.
COFFEE
SHOP GODDESS
by Will
Viharo
Originally
published in The Rooster and The Raven, 1990
 |
| Original illustration |
I called
her Lightbulbs, since she always having bright ideas. She used to
hang out with the Cool Ones at Daddy-O's Diner. Her skin was as
soft-looking and creamy as the stuff she poured into every cup of
coffee she drank during the late night/early morning get-togethers of
residents of the Who's-Who – musicians, poets, struggling writers
like myself who all lived in this dilapidated building off Wilshire
in Westwood.
Lightbulbs
was also as sweet as the full container of sugar she used in her
sixteen or so cups of coffee. She didn't always engage in the punk
rock counter culture debates of her chain-smoking cronies; mostly,
she sat quietly drawing in her private draft pad. She was an artist.
When I
first met her, back in the Spring of '82, she was already working on
her masterpiece, a series of erotic flower paintings tentatively
titled “Floral Fixation.” I fell in lust with her almost
immediately, like everyone else, and gradually, as I got to know her
better, fell in love with her, like everyone else.
L.A.
1982. Teenage Enema Nurses and Rock Lobsters ruled the airwaves.
Lightbulbs was Neon New Wave before it became Old Ripple. While
living in the Who's Who she ran the rainbow gamut of hair colors,
from green to pink to purple to platinum. She finally settled for
blonde after seeing some old photos of Marilyn Monroe in a
memorabilia shop on Hollywood Boulevard. By that time she had already
burned-out on Debbie Harry and Blondie, Roxy Music, David Bowie, all
the New Wave dinosaurs. By the time I met her, in the depth of her
Marilyn phase (she was a sophisticated nineteen, world-weary but
emotionally immature), she was your basic nightclubber, a fan of all
the local bands. My heart broke every time I walked down the hall and
saw some leather-clad, stringy-haired, bleary-eyed punker emerging
from her room the morning after a surreal gig she'd attended. She
loved to dance, she loved to draw, she loved sex. She seemed
unattainable as a lover but all too accessible as a pal, so at the
time I took what I could get.
Clad in a
pink robe, open all the way down, she was kissing Tarantula, a
musician who lived in the Who's Who, when I happened past. Tarantula
and I bumped into each other as he turned to leave. I excused myself
and tried to keep my eyes off of Lightbulbs' creamy cleavage. She
noticed me noticing her though, and, with mock modesty, closed her
robe. Tarantula was obviously stoned and barely acknowledged me. As
he stumbled down the hall back to his own room, Lightbulbs and I
stood awkwardly in her doorway, trying to think of something to say.
“How about some breakfast?” I blurted finally. She said sure, let
me throw something on, which turned out to be a leopard skin halter
top, black matador pants, and pumps, plus her trademark cat-eye
glasses. Lightbulbs was near-sighted, her only physical flaw, as far
as I could tell at the time.
In truth,
Daddy-O's Diner was really Ship's Coffee Shop, on Wilshire Boulevard,
across from the graveyard where Marilyn Monroe is buried. But
Lightbulbs had dubbed it Daddy-O's Diner since that sounded “more
'50s.” As we walked to Daddy-O's that morning – unusually bright
and crisp and cool for L.A., maybe 65 degrees and mostly overcast –
Lightbulbs had on her Walkman, so I couldn't really talk to her.
When we
got to the coffee shop, I bought a copy of the Times from a box out front
and Lightbulbs stopped the tape. It was a continuous recording of her
favorite song at the moment, “Fade to Grey,” by some Eurotech
group called Visage.
We
snagged one of the smaller booths and ordered right away. “I love
this place,” she said. “Reminds me of a rocket ship, like the one
in Forbidden Planet. You ever see that movie?”
“No,”
I said. I ordered a fried egg sandwich and coffee from Dorothy, our
favorite waitress. She was a legend at the Who's Who, old and feisty
and wisecracking. She's dead now, from an aneurysm. Ship's is gone
now, too. But in my mind, there're still there forever. That whole
time and place was really an era, though none of us knew it at the
time, except when the Who's Who was torn down to make way for an
office building and everyone scattered in different directions, we
all knew it was the end of something special.
But, in
my head, my conversation that complacent morning at Daddy-O's lives
on.
“Guess
who came into work the other day?” she teased me as she put on her
makeup with the aid of a tiny mirror. Lightbulbs was working at the
time in a beauty salon in Century City.
“I give
up. Who?”
“Burt
Ward. Can you believe it? I got his autograph.”
“Who?
Who's that?”
“Robin!
On Batman? Don't you know anything?”
“What
would Robin want in a hair salon?”
“He
wanted to use our bathroom, but it's for customers only, but I let
him use it anyway. And you know who else I saw? In Neiman-Marcus?
Ann-Margret. I was going to go up to her and tell her Viva Las Vegas
used to be my favorite movie when I was a kid, but I figured I'd skip
it. What does she care, right? So what's up with you, Gumshoe? How
come you never talk to me?”
Everyone
called me Gumshoe because I was always reading detective novels. I
used to argue with this other writer at the Who's Who, a poet called
Vomit Comet (he also wrote lyrics for a band in the building), about
whether Raymond Chandler or Charles Bukowski was the great LA bard.
We both compromised and settled on John Fante.
“What
do you mean, how come I never talk to you?” I said. “We're
talking now.”
“Yea,
but never before. Not really. You never go to any clubs, do you?”
“Nah,
I'm not into crowds.”
“Neither
am I.”
“So why
do you go, then? Why hang out with all those types if you're not one
of them?”
“What
types? You mean my friends? Those types you mean?”
“Don't
get mad. Ever hear of Judy Holliday? You remind me of her.”
“Why,
is she a ditz with tits?”
“Um, yeah,
but that's not what I meant. So you like movies a lot, huh?”
Our food
arrived. Lightbulbs had coffee and eggs with ketchup. It looked like
some biological accident, but she scarfed it up with relish.
“What
makes you think I like movies?” she said.
“That's
all you ever talk about.”
“Well,
what else is there? Besides music and sex. Hey, you see Cat People
yet? It's my new favorite. The music's really cool, too. You
should see it, really. Aren't you a writer or something?”
“Yea,
or something.”
"Where are you from?"
"Where are you from?"
“Philly,
Philadelphia.”
“Oh,
yea? No shit. I'm from Kansas.”
“No,
you're not.”
“How
did you know?”
“You
don't fit the farm girl image.”
“Why
not?”
“I
don't know, must be the way you snap your gum.”
“You
should know, Gummy.”
“Please
don't call me Gummy. Gumshoe I can barely take, but Gummy...”
“I'm
from up north. Seattle, then San Francisco. In case you care, that
is.”
“So
where are your folks? Down here?” I asked, leafing through the
Calendar section of the paper.
She
shrugged nonchalantly, lighting a new cigarette. “I lost touch with
them already. My mother's up by Frisco last I heard. My old man might
as well be dead. They're both artists. Anything good playing?”
I was
scanning the movie listings. “A Marilyn Monroe double feature at
the Nuart.”
“Oh,
yea? Let's go, I've never actually seen one of her movies.”
“You
gotta be kiddin'.”
“Why do
you say that?”
“Forget
it. Yea, we can see those tonight.”
“Isn't
the Nuart right across from Dolores' on Santa Monica?”
“Yea,
come to think of it. You like Dolores'?”
“Yea,
it's sorta cool. Kinda dark. You ever been to Zucky's in Santa
Monica?”
“Sure,
whenever I'm down there. I like it.”
“It's
all right. How about Norm's on Pico? Or Ben Frank's on Sunset?”
“What're
you, Miss Coffee Shop of 1982?”
“That's
me, baby. Better believe it.”
Later
that night, after Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How To Marry
a Millionaire, we went to Dolores' and had coffee and mud pie.
“So did
you like those flicks?” I asked her. She was sort of quiet all
evening, I supposed out of awe for her idol. From our breakfast
conversation I discovered we had a few things I common – a fondness
for cloudy days, late night B movies on Channel 5 – but I knew she
had a thing for musicians, of which the Who's Who had an
overabundance. Also, I feared that beneath her hip, liberal exterior
she was just another gold-digger. In a town like this, young, nubile
girls like Lightbulbs had all the angles covered. I was wrong,
though. I was only 22 at the time, and paranoid about being a waiter
in a Venice cafe who scribbled autobiographical sketches by
moonlight. I didn't think a girl like Lightbulbs would want a guy
like me any more than one of those leggy sorority bimbos at UCLA
would. Again, I was wrong, and glad of it.
“Yea,
they were cool,” she said softly. A teardrop fell into her empty
coffee cup.
“Um...are
you okay? Just devastated about Marilyn being dead or...what?”
“I was
thinking about my father.”
“Yea?
How come?”
“I
don't know...let's just drop it.”
“Drop
it? Drop what? What did we pick up?”
“My
father...You remind me of him, a little.”
“Really?
Good.”
“Not
good, really. I hated him.”
“Oh...”
“But
that's not why you remind me of him.” The waitress brought us more
coffee, and shot me a look that accused me of disturbing the young
lady's evening. I let it pass. I put my hand on Lightbulbs' hand, and
her fingers curled around mine. Her hand was warm and moist, and I
grew excited in a very un-platonic way. I wasn't feeling very
fraternal toward her. Or I didn't think I was, by my definition.
“He
raped me,” she sort of whispered into her coffee cup.
“What?”
Which was a stupid thing to say, because I heard her and didn't want
her to have to repeat it, but I was too stunned and inexperienced to
react accordingly. She was really wailing now, and I was torn between
sympathy and morbid fascination, wanting every detail of the
encounter while simultaneously fighting repulsion and an urge to
throw up.
“I
don't want to talk about it,” she said, and I said sure and let it
go. She added one more thing, though, before lapsing into silence:
“Now you know why I am the way I am.”
We didn't
have a date for a long time after that night. She sort of avoided me,
for some reason, like I'd gotten too close and she decided to back
off. I lost a lot of sleep during that period. I was sloppy and lazy
at work and nearly got fired. I wrote something called “Lightbulbs'
Lament,” a sort of prose poem I half-planned to give to her but
tore up at the last minute. I saw more Saturday and Sunday morning
one-night stands leaving her room, and I felt crushed. She always
smiled at me before closing the door.
Finally,
after about a month of being politely ignored, I got up the courage
to knock on her door and ask her out. It was mid-afternoon, but
apparently I'd woken her up. She invited me in anyway. The shades
were pulled down over the window, and the room was a disaster of
dirty laundry and misplaced knickknacks. I saw some guy's underwear
and a used condom and pretended I didn't. Odd art prints adorned the
walls, by people I'd never heard of, but I had a feeling that was
more due to my ignorance than their obscurity. Pop art postcards
lined the walls as well. She slept on a futon with rumpled sheets.
The room was stuffy despite a fan that was on full blast, and smelled
vaguely of sex, perfume, and mildew.
“Ever
been to Junior's?” I asked her, referring to an overpriced Jewish
Deli on Westwood near Pico.
“Um,
sure, once. Why?”
“Wanna
go? My treat?”
“Now?”
“Well...yea.
Why not?”
“It's
still early. I just went to sleep about two hours ago.”
“Sorry
if I woke you. Maybe I should come back later...”
“No!
Don't leave. I'll...throw something on and be right with you.”
She was
entering her Bauhaus/goth period and all her wardrobe was slowly fading to
black, like a lot of the Who's Who. I was getting sick of living
there, to be honest, but it was cheap and even though I had a tough
time sleeping at night with all the noise I knew I'd miss it if I
left. It was just too unique in ways I can't begin to describe. It
was like a cross between Graceland and the House of Dracula, but not
really either in the final analysis.
I could
hear Billy Idol singing “White Wedding” on her Walkman from where
I stood, which was about a foot away as we walked down to Junior's.
She didn't look at me the whole time, but I knew I could corner her
in Junior's.
I ordered
a grilled cheese sandwich with fries and coffee and she ordered
corned beef on rye with coffee.
“I like
it here. It's cozy,” she beamed at me. The caffeine was bringing
her back to me.
“So how
have you been, Gummy?”
I let
that pass. “Peachy. How about you? I missed you, sort of.”
“Why?
We saw each other every day almost ever since...” She sort of
drifted off.
“Since
that night you told me about your old man.”
“I
don't want to talk about it.”
“Well,
I do. At least how it affects us.”
“Us?”
“Us.
Not the United States. You and me. We. Us.”
“Gummy,
don't get the wrong idea. I like you but - “
“As a
friend.”
“Right.”
“So why
are you playing games?'
“What
games?”
“C'mon,
cut the crap, Lightbulbs. Don't get cute.”
She
laughed at my hard-boiled jargon, even though that wasn't really my
intention. I'd just read Mickey Spillane and was feeling tough and
corny. “Lightbulbs?”
“Yea,
that's what people call you behind your back. Didn't you know? I
thought of it, actually.”
“Is
that supposed to be a sexist comment on my tits?”
“Not
really. Well, maybe. Anyway, you're avoiding the issue – ”
“Wanna
go see Blade Runner tonight? It just opened at the Village
Theater, or the one across from it, what's it called – "
“The
Bruin?”
“I
think so. Let's go see it. It sounds cool.”
“I
guess.” I was a little soured on sci-fi at the time, ever since The
Road Warrior came out and all the dudes at the Who's Who began
dressing and acting like Mad Max. Also, the more time I spent with
Lightbulbs, the better the chances of her opening up to me.
She loved
Blade Runner, and wondered why the world – or at least L.A. – couldn't always look the way it did in the film, dark and rainy and
neon-lit. We went to Ship's, I mean Daddy-O's for coffee and cream
pie afterward. Then she got this bright idea.
“Let's
go visit Marilyn!”
We jumped
over the fence to the Westwood Mortuary and found the wall casket
bearing the proper plaque. There were roses in a little vase hanging
next to the grave. They were fresh.
“Probably
from Joe DiMaggio,” Lightbulbs whispered, hushed by reverence.
Impulsively
I took the roses out and gave them to Lightbulbs, kissing her on the
cheek. She started to cry, and I held her. Her wet cheek glistened in
the moonlight.
I walked
her back to the Who's Who and to her door. She led me inside by the
hand and began removing my clothes. I responded naturally, and before
I realized it we were naked and caressing on her futon.
Before I
actually entered her, she whispered in my ear, “I have to be able
to trust you. You're not like the others.” We climaxed at the same
time.
“You
never did tell me why I remind you of your father,” I said later in
the dark. But she had fallen asleep, or pretended to. I lay awake
most of the night.
Word got
out around the Who's Who that Lightbulbs was entertaining the same
guest night after night in her room, and the general mood was on of
shock and outrage. Promiscuity was one of the Who's Who's staples,
along with drunkenness, recklessness, heavy drug use, and overall
decadence and debauchery – all in an aesthetic context, of course.
Everyone was a rebel without a cause, however. Except Lightbulbs and
me. We simply insulated ourselves from the outside world.
In our
coffee shop conversations I avoided anything heavy for fear of
turning her off again. We talked a lot bout art, especially her
ongoing project, “Floral Fixation,” in which orchids looked
suspiciously like female genitalia, and other flowers had penises for
“stems.” I thought it would be a hit exhibit at any local
gallery. Lightbulbs agreed. She was already thinking New York. This
made me nervous. I didn't like the idea of her moving away, but I
didn't tell her. I'd already learned that sometimes distance is
appealing, at least to neurotic women. I was already half in love
with Lightbulbs, but to say she wasn't neurotic would be like saying
she wasn't sexy. Apparently the two go together by nature, at least
in L.A.
I went
shopping with her on Melrose Avenue. I even went with her to the
godforsaken Valley to visit her little friends, fellow would-be
artists with names like Pill-O (yes, she took pills and slept a lot)
and Soap Oprah, who of course was addicted to daytime dramas. I was
with her as summer became fall and then winter, and 1982 faded into
1983. LA gets all its seasons in one day usually, and we both pined
for greener, lusher conditions in which to be poor and in love. As
far as I know she didn't cheat on me, and of course I was faithful to
her, since I'm single-minded by nature. She fell in love with Annie
Lennox of Eurythmics and proclaimed “Sweet Dreams” her new
anthem. We both kept dreaming, oblivious to the future.
1984
found her dressing in purple around the clock, thanks to Prince. I
was a Bruce man myself. Our relationship seemed solid enough for most
of that year. I sold a few stories to some of the smaller magazines,
and she sold a few paintings on Venice Beach. Our relationship was so
stable it was almost boring. But I was happy, and I thought she was,
too.
Many of
her club-going buddies had moved out of the Who's Who into Silverlake
or Hollywood, and she lost touch with most of the party crowd. The
Who's Who was pretty tame by its own standards when the eviction
notices came.
We'd been
living together in my room for most of the previous year by that
time. Now I wondered how this would affect us. Around this time she
met some sleazy art dealer on the beach who owned a small gallery in
Beverly Hills and who was interested in her. Or her work. Both, as it
turned out.
His name
is Simon, but I called him Slimon. Slimon actually wore open shirts
and gold medallions. Subtlety was not his forte. He was around forty,
and owned a Ferrari with a car phone. He was so obvious I couldn't
believe Lightbulbs would even talk shop with him. But he really
wanted “Floral Fixation” to find a proper venue, and in Bev Hills
he could jack up the prices and make a fortune, enough to quit her
current job as a salesgirl in a Westwood boutique. I was working at
an Old World restaurant right near her, hating every miserable moment
of the humiliation that is part of the job description. Being a
waiter was not my forte. My employers figured this out right
before the eviction notices came and they fired me.
It didn't
take a first-class wiseguy to figure out things were rapidly falling
apart.
What else
could go wrong? But as I was knocking on wood, Lightbulbs was getting
knocked up. By either me or Slimon, she didn't know which.
“Why?”
I whispered in our dark room, the night before we had to move out
with no place to go.
“He
reminded me of my father,” she said tearfully. Her show was
scheduled for the next month, and Slimon invited us to stay with him
in his Pacific Palisades home. He had a beautiful guest house, he
said.
“Where
would I sleep?” I asked.
“I'm
sorry,” she sobbed. “I guess it wasn't a good idea. Letting him
fuck me, I mean.”
“How
could you be seduced by a scumbag like that? It's not like you're
hard up. You really are a gold-digger after all.”
She
slapped me and left with a bag of her belongings.
The next
day I took the money the owners of the Who's Who had given all the
evictees to move with and took a train to San Francisco, winding up
in a residential hotel in North Beach.
1985 San
Francisco. Madonna and Miami Vice. Cafe latte and croissants
instead of coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches. Cafes instead of
coffee shops. Unlike L.A., San Fran wasn't trying to imitate the
heartland of America, but European caffe society. It took a while to
get used to, and I missed Lightbulbs so much I couldn't even write.
The weather was nicer here, though, and I knew she'd love the fog.
But I had no way of getting in touch with her. I'd left too
impulsively and was so hurt I never bothered to get a phone number or
address from her or leave one with a mutual friend for her to contact
me. Of course I didn't even know my destination that day, I was so
disoriented. She'd betrayed me. She'd sold out. And I'd take her back
in a New York minute.
Was she
in New York? I lay awake in my little hotel room fantasizing about
Slimon and her and the baby (which I imagined resembled the mutant
infant in David Lynch's Eraserhead) moving to SoHo or
Greenwich Village and living it up. Once “Floral Fixation” caught
on, however, she'd dump Slimon and move on. Maybe then she'd miss me
and find a way to get in touch. Impossible. My hotel room didn't even
have a phone. I was vanishing in Frisco's fog.
After a
series of odd jobs I lucked out with a job at City Lights bookstore.
Someone had died or something and I walked in at just the right
moment. I got into jazz and blues and saw old movies at revival
theaters. Most of the time I was alone. Sometimes I'd make a friend
in Vesuvio next to City Lights and forget my loneliness for a few
hours, but nothing or nobody could replace Lightbulbs in my heart.
She wouldn't go out.
I tried
everything, including playing Phil Collins' “I Don't Care Anymore”
approximately eight hundred times in a row on my portable blaster.
With my earphones on. Didn't work, and I've been a little hard of
hearing ever since.
I
wandered down to the Bay all the time, Fisherman's Wharf and
Ghirardelli Square, usually at twilight when it was at its most
ethereal. I looked at Alcatraz and knew how the inmates must have
felt.
I tried
working on a novel about a prostitute, but sour grapes make for
bitter wine. Lightbulbs was no good as a muse unless I knew she loved
me. Now I wasn't sure anymore. Maybe I'd just been an experiment in
security, emotionally speaking, but when Slimon came along with the
big bucks and hot connections Lightbulbs blew a fuse. She'd been
screwed into a more lucrative socket, and shone brighter than ever.
“Why
should I be selfish?” I asked myself. Slimon had more to offer, and
could afford a family, too. Even Lightbulbs must have had maternal
instincts. Maybe that's why she was attracted to me. But as it turned
out, I was just another moth blinded by her light.
The rest
of the '80s went by in a designer blur. The Micheal Jackson craze
died down, Reagan's term finally ended. The Berlin Wall fell. Am
earthquake upset a World Series between the Giants and the A's. I
barely noticed either.
 |
| Original illustration |
Then,
around Christmas of last year, I was walking down Broadway when I
noticed this sign: “XXX LIGHTBULBS LIVE!!!” I couldn't resist. I
walked through the red velvet curtain into the cool, decadent
darkness of the strip joint and got a table near the stage. I'd never
been in one of these dives before – I saw most of the girls without
makeup in my hotel anyway – but I had to make sure that sign was
only a coincidence.
In the
hazy yellow spotlight I saw to my horror it wasn't. Lightbulbs was
not only a topless dancer in this very town, she was something of an
underground celebrity, judging by the catcalls and whistles from the
sailors, bikers, dirtbags, and businessmen around me. At least she
wasn't a yuppie, I told myself with strained reassurance.
It took a
while to get her to notice me, but when the dancers came down off the
stage and began circulating around the tables, I touched Lightbulbs' sweaty loin and made eye contact.
She
gasped, turned around aimlessly, and ran backstage. Some musclebound
jerk with tattoos followed her, and I followed him.
The
memory is messy. Both Lightbulbs and I were in a state of shock, and
everything seemed surreal. The big guy wound up throwing me out, with
her protesting tearfully. I tried to get back in but the bouncer
tossed me back into the alley, barely conscious.
As I sat
in the alley for the next four hours until dawn broke, all I could
think of was how pretty Lightbulbs looked in her natural brown hair.
Around
6am or so, Lightbulbs finally emerged from the side door into the
alley where I was still sitting in a daze.
“How
about some breakfast?” I asked her. She shrugged and said sure, I
know just the place.
We walked
through Chinatown into Union Square and caught a 38 bus on Geary and
took it all the way to the Cliff House. There was a coffee shop on
the cliff called Louis' that afforded a breathtaking view of Seal
Rock and the Pacific. We were both exhausted and still in shock so we
barely spoke on the way there. I sort of rambled on about how I was
doing and what I was doing and so forth. She fell asleep on my
shoulder.
In the
coffee shop we ordered omelets and coffee. She'd given up smoking a
year before, she me to my surprise, though she never was big on
artificial vices anyway, one of her good points. Her greenish-grey
eyes were still pretty, but tired-looking, and not just from lack of
rest. They'd seen a lot during our time apart, but all I could think
of was the moment, of how beautiful the fog was rolling in off the
ocean, engulfing the coffee shop in a misty shroud. It was like a
fantasy come to life. Almost.
“I
missed you,” I said simply.
“You
must think I'm quite a slut,” she said. She'd barely touched her
coffee. “But then I was always a cheap broad, anyway.”
“Don't
talk about yourself like that.”
“Well,
it's so, ain't it? My idea of a fancy time is sitting in a diner at
3am.”
“So?
Mine too, and I'm no punk.”
“I had
an abortion, you know.”
“I
figured you might. What happened to Slimon?”
“Who
cares? After he paid for the abortion, he sort of got bored with me.
I never did have my art show.” She was
trying not to cry, unsuccessfully, and once again our waitress gave
me penetrating looks. “So I just packed up and moved to Palo Alto
and stayed with my mother for a while. Then the men came around
again, but different types. No musicians. Students, jocks, preppies.
Some wanted to marry me, I couldn't believe it. But I thought of you
and what I did to you and figured I didn't deserve any more nice
guys. So I came up here and found a job in that club and started
hanging out with musicians again. I live in this loft in the Mission
with a bunch of dykes. I had a fling with one of them when I decided
to give up on men altogether.”
“Really?”
This news turned me on, and depressed me simultaneously.
“Yea.
It's over now. She moved out. Then...aw, who cares. Who cares,
right?” She finally took a sip of her coffee.
I was
sort of crying now, too. “No matter what, it's good to see you,
Bulbs. Better not cry so much though – you might electrocute
yourself.”
She
smiled wanly and took my hand in hers. “Good to see you too, Gummy.
Or are you Sam Spade now, living in Frisco and all?”
I leaned
over and kissed her. At first she didn't respond, but finally we
wound up necking in our booth and were asked to cut it out or leave.
If we hadn't stopped, we might have wound up making love right there.
Instead we went down by the water and found a private spot behind
some rocks and made love there, with the foamy waves and gulls and
seals drowning out the noise. It was still cold and foggy but we were
warm and cozy and didn't notice.
I fell
asleep for not more than fifteen minutes. When I woke up, she was
gone. For a few panicky minutes I thought maybe she'd drowned
herself, but then I pulled myself together and looked all along the
local coast until nightfall. No Lightbulbs. She'd vanished again.
As I got
back on a 38 bus heading downtown, I noticed a piece of paper had
been stuck inside my jacket pocket. It was a note from Lightbulbs. It
said simply: “I know this is really melodramatic, but I can't stay
with you. I was never raped by my father. I almost wish I had been.
He just ignored me and left me and my mother alone when I was small.
I kept looking for him in other men and never really found him again.
I really did and do care about you Gummy. You came the closest. Maybe
too close. But I feel too cheap now after sleeping around with so
many guys I didn't care about, looking for Daddy. I don't deserve
you. You deserve an angel, not me. Goodbye, and have a nice life.
Love always, Lightbulbs.”
I took
BART into the Mission and just wandered around hoping I'd bump into
her with Fate's help, but I never saw her again.
As I
write this it's 1990, the age of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and rap
music. Turtle crap. Except for the materialism, I miss the '80s, all
the energy and color. I suppose I equate that decade with Lightbulbs,
who for all I know jumped off the Golden Gate bridge. Maybe I'll see
her work one day in a gallery. I can't believe I finally saw her
again after all those years and then lost her forever. Writing this
memoir is also like writing a requiem for an era. Both the past
decade and the girl who made it matter to me exist always at least in
my dreams, just like Marilyn Monroe. Lightbulbs will never dim.
THE
EMANCIPATION OF ANNE FRANK
by Will
Viharo
Originally
published in The Rooster and The Raven, 1991
I loved
her without reason and when I say reason, I mean both senses of the
word. I loved her with no reason, and for no particular reason. I
don't know why, or how. But it doesn't matter. I guess I was just
born with my love for her. All I know for sure is that my love for her could destroy me, but her love for me could save me. I really wish
with all my heart and soul that she is listening to me now. Wherever
you are, Anne...I love you. I always have, and I always will.
It began
a long time ago, when I was about seven or eight. I was living in
Manhattan with my mother, who was absent most of the time, so I spent
much of my time alone. The only exception to my solitude came when my
hired Nanny would drag me outdoors to the Bronx Zoo, which I enjoyed
the first eight or nine times, but after that it became a senseless
obligation, a boring alternative to the sanctity of my indoor
daydreaming. My mother, an actress who starred in many off-Broadway
productions before her third and most debilitating breakdown, always
worried that I would grow up an isolated loner, a prisoner of my own
internal fantasy life. But I never thought of myself as a prisoner,
really. I thought of myself as a clandestine adventurer.
My
favorite sojourns in those days were to the museums off Central Park
– the Natural History and the Met. The dark, ancient ambience of
both of those places made me feel strangely secure, like I was
stepping out of the hectic mainstream of our Armageddon-bound culture
and back into the ageless wombs of History, where no modern harm
could touch me. In my complacent little cocoon of a world there
wasn't any impending fear of global annihilation or Third World
oppression; rather, merely the day-to-day traumas of my mother's
violently alternating moods and my Nanny's cold indifference seemed
horrible enough to warrant escape.
My only
other avenue of freedom stemmed from the television, of which I was
an avid devotee. Countless late-afternoon hours of my youth were
dedicated to the absorption of the animated antics of Speed Racer,
Kimba the White Lion, and Astro Boy, as well as to the “realistic”
escapades of Ernie and Bert and Kermit the Frog. My mother was hardly
ever home except for early in the morning and late at night, so I was
never intercepted in my video addiction. My Nanny considered my
obsession a godsend, and encouraged it relentlessly. As long as I was
left alone, I was in my own private heaven.
The only
time I was really even made aware of my mother's existence came
whenever I overheard her playing music, generally Chopin, Beethoven,
and Gerswhin. But one contemporary song made her personal hit parade
over and over again, until I felt as if the needle of the stereo was
playing in the grooves of my very own mind. The song was “Those
Were the Days.” To this day, that record haunts me, and I haven't
actually heard it – externally – in ages.
I was an
average but earnest student in the private schools I was sent to. I
kept mainly to myself, of course. My best friends in school were
books. I raided the library while my pre-adolescent peers wrestled
around in the playground and watched the older students competing in
the gym. It wasn't that I lacked physical stamina; I was a healthy
kid, attributable to my over-abundance of check-ups, but being alone
so much just never allowed me a chance to cultivate any sustained
interest in sports or the development of machismo. However, I
discovered the beauty, allure, mystery, and elusiveness of the
opposite sex at a very tender age. When I wasn't in the library, I
was falling in love with whatever petite, pretty classmate that
happened to share the same breathing space with me. Because of my
enduring fascination with the company of girls, I was labeled a sissy
by the guys early on, who weren't able to overcome their fears enough
to delve into the same beckoning abyss so soon. I was stealing kisses
while my would-be buddies were still gagging at the mere mention of
Mary Lou or Betty Sue. Their loss, I thought at the time. I was
popular with girls because of the pervasive reluctance at that age to
engage in co-ed activities. The only time I was ever segregated from
my loved ones was when my teacher would snap me back into line. But
that was okay. I usually had a crush on my teachers as well, and
enjoyed the attention.
My first
book completed cover to cover was Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle
Book. After this cherished experience I actually became Mowgli.
Not long after this I read Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Son of
Tarzan, and instantly graduated from the jungles of India to the
wilderness of Africa, and mentally changed my name from Mowgli to
Korak.
In The
Son of Tarzan, Korak finds a beautiful slave girl named Miriam
and rescues her from a libidinous Arab. The two naturally fall in
love and inhabit the savage, emerald domain of the elder Tarzan with
wild abandon and hot-blooded passion. Even before the facts of
sexuality had surfaced in my consciousness, I was suddenly and
vicariously aware of my own body's desires. I envied Korak, and
dreamed of finding my own olive-skinned, loin-clothed slave girl to
rescue and love.
At the
Bronx Zoo with my Nanny, I began projecting myself into the past
lives of my captive companions. Whenever an adult would inquire about
my home life, I politely informed them that I had been raised by wolves in
Central Park. Invariably the response to this declaration was
amusement, a tweak on the cheek or a patronizing pat on the head. But
at the time I not only preferred this fictional background, I
actually began to believe it myself.
After a
dip into Robert Louis Stevenson and a few trips with H.G. Wells, I
came across The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. My
relatively prodigious reading efforts outside of class assignments
had already endeared me to the septuagenarian librarian, and she was
always ready with a heartfelt recommendation whenever I showed my
eager face in the shadowy, musty room. She wasn't sure if I was quite
ready for Anne Frank, I remember, but she told me that it was a book
I should discover one day nonetheless. I had expressed interest in
Gothic horror – specifically Mary Shelley's Frankenstein –
and the librarian strongly urged me to reconsider, citing nightmares
as a common by-product of such escapism. She suggested instead The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but in my own precocious fashion I told her
that Twain wasn't my style. I left that day with Lewis Carroll's
Alice books, The Wind in the Willows by
Kenneth Grahame, and Anne Frank's Diary.
It rained
all weekend, fortunately, so my Nanny was not obliged to take me out.
My mother went away for the weekend to the Hamptons to visit some
theater friends, I was told. So my Nanny turned on the television and
disappeared from my sight, sighing with apparent bliss and relief.
Although she had to sleep over instead of going back to Harlem, she
had the place to herself, and I was so easy to watch over it was
criminal. All I heard of my Nanny as I began reading and watching
television was some mumbled chanting, either Far Eastern mysticism or
Haitian voodoo incantations. Whatever, I thought. I was lost inside
myself before long, oblivious to the storm and the sounds of traffic
outside my window.
The two
fairy tale books I found entertaining enough, but decidedly lacking
in substance. At the time the metaphorical dimensions of those books
were lost on me, and I grew bored before completing either of them.
With resolute faith I picked up the Diary and immersed myself
in the mind and heart of the little girl in the Secret Annex.
At first,
I must admit, I had trouble concentrating on the entries, and my
attention kept drifting back to the colorful, violent images on the
tube. But as I got to know Anne better, a deep-rooted empathy was
aroused in me, and I took her plight to heart without fully
understanding the whys and wherefores of her predicament. I was still
very young, and my lessons in history had been reserved for innocuous
patriotism thus far. World War II and the atrocities of the Nazis
were as foreign to me as Europe itself. But still, I could get a
sense of what poor Anne was going through, and in my mind's eye I saw
the Secret Annex where she hid her family as a parallel universe
reflecting my own suffocating circumstances.
I related
all too keenly with Anne's ennui, her bridled playfulness, her
stifled intellect, and her thwarted need for romance. Her interest in
film stars touched me as well, and when my mother finally returned
from her hiatus I begged her for posters and other memorabilia with
which to decorate my room. Hesitantly she complied with my wishes,
but she was consistently opposed to any direct involvement in show
business, not wishing me to follow in her broken footsteps, and never
allowed me to participate in this aspect of her life. I was always
told that when I became a young adult I'd be allowed to see her in a
performance, but by that time I reached maturity her career was
kaput, and not long after she was dead.
So my
Nanny was sent to the local cinema shop to buy me anything I
requested, but only to a point. Randomly I picked out a Marx Brothers
poster and a print of an old movie bill advertising Marilyn Monroe in
The Seven Year Itch. I relished my new “wallpaper” and began to
watch old movies on the weekends to feed my newfound interest.
Insatiably I devoured black and white images of The Bowery Boys,
Jimmy Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart, all the while imagining I was
locked away in the Secret Annex with Anne, watching together our
stolen little TV set, praying the Nazis wouldn't come pounding in any
minute and disrupt our blissful retreat into dreamland.
As I grew
older, I also became more withdrawn. Even in prep school I was known
as the enigmatic loner, though I had friends in each of the pecking
order categories: The Jocks, The Brains, The Nerds, The Hoods, The
Clowns, etc. But I never fit into any of these groups, and while I
sustained my passion for the opposite sex, suddenly, as puberty gave
way to adolescence, I found the agonies of unrequited love.
And yet,
I never felt alone. I excelled in my studies since I had no
extracurricular activities to divert my energies, and I had become an
avid movie buff, spending afternoons within the darkened havens on
Forty Second Street in Times Square. The patrons were often unruly
and interfered with my consummate enjoyment of the proceedings
onscreen, but I never failed to catch the local double feature week
in, week out – premieres as well as revivals. My constant
spiritual companion was Anne, of course. I was going as much for her
as I was for myself.
In my
teens I was exposed to the harsh realities of the vibrant, pulsating
metropolis engulfing me as well as the horrors that had doomed Anne
Frank. I remember seeing Nazis march in Greenwich Village. A riot
ensued that nearly swept me into a paddy wagon, but I escaped
unscathed. In school I poured over volumes detailing the Holocaust,
and my yearning to touch Anne, to hold her and console her, grew more
intense, more real, with each passing year.
I'm
neither German nor Jewish, so Anne's plight did not hit close to home
on any ethnic or political front. Nor was I morally outraged, at
least not more than the next guy, or any conscientious human being.
I was, plain and simply, in love.
My mother
decided to take me to a shrink.
I was
fourteen at the time, a happy victim of wet dreams three times a
night, but other than that a healthy, normal kid (in the locker rooms
at school I noticed all the guys faced their locker, so
obviously I wasn't the only pervert with stained undies). When I told
the doc about my obsession for Anne, he didn't react with quite the
same vehemence as my mother. He didn't consider my love for Anne an
emotional aberration, but a harmless childhood fantasy I would eventually outgrow. For the sake of diplomacy on the homefront I
concurred, even going as far as to quote Freud and Jung in regards to
my case, although of course they were both dead by then and never
even knew I existed. I consoled my mother by watching Masterpiece
Theater religiously and reconciled myself to her good judgement
and worldliness in these matters. I never mentioned Anne to her
again, and quit going to the movies so often. Instead, I began to
keep a journal.
I didn't
model it precisely on Anne's, but I thought of her every night as I
wrote in it, and after a while I even began to write my entires in
the form of letters to her. I was very casual about it, informally
discussing my problems at school and with my mother, who was looking
more and more tired and unhealthy, living on unemployment in between
thankless gigs doing commercials and radio spots. My father was a
television actor on the coast, and I stumbled upon this revelation
quite by accident. He was guest-starring on some cop show as a
gangster, and the resemblance to my reflection in the mirror was
unmistakable. I checked the credits in the end and mentioned the
surname to my mother, since it had been the same as hers long ago,
and in fact was written on my birth certificate. (I'd been given her
stage name when I was too young to protest.) She sat me down and we
had a long talk, after which I cried and wrote about my feelings in
an entry to Anne. I remember feeling genuinely grateful that I had
someone to turn to, even in an epistolary fashion, since my mother
offered little consolation, not wishing to dwell on a subject that
obviously caused her much grief and stress.
She died
about a year after this revelation. I never bothered to get in touch
with my father. I just never felt the need to, and didn't really see
the point.
I missed
my mother when she died though, mourning more for her lost potential
as a thespian than my aborted relationship with her. I poured my
anguish into my journal, commiserating with Anne, who also had a
shaky relationship with her mother.
The quiet
finality of my mother's demise made me realize that Anne was indeed
gone from this world, and was not hiding out in Brazil someplace,
frozen in time and awaiting my arrival in her life. As I approached
eighteen and young manhood, this knowledge dawned on me with
increasing clarity, and the subsequent emptiness gnawed away at me
like maggots on a corpse.
I had
wasted my youth in pursuit of a fantasy, a myth. Anne was dead, and
there was no changing that. Moreover, without my mother to turn to, I
was lost and alone, afraid to depend on the illusion that had
sustained me for so long.
After
graduating from high school, I decided to postpone college and,
without dipping into the trust fund my mother had been saving since I
was an infant, I spent a large portion of my inheritance on a trip to
Europe. A year abroad would set me straight, I reasoned.
At first
I landed in London, and idled away a week there before crossing over
to Paris. I haunted the old stomping grounds of sundry expatriates
writers, searching for a clue to their immortality, but their spirits
were preserved in books, not in the streets of the living. Almost as
soon as I crossed the Atlantic, I was plagued by a disturbing sense
of futility, and a vague melancholia clouded the spectacular vistas
that I had spent my childhood dreaming about.
But there
was one place I had to go before returning to New York and the
confines of familiarity: The Secret Annex in Amsterdam. Of course
that was my destination all along.
It was
March, 1985, the fortieth anniversary of her death in the
concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. If only she could've remained
hidden for three more months, I could've possibly met her in person,
since Holland had been liberated by the Allies two months before her
death, and one month before her sixteenth birthday, which she never
saw. She would've been Sweet Sixteen, and in love with life (her
exuberance for the imagined world outside of the Annex remained
undiminished right up until the last entry in her Diary, which was
discovered amid the rubble by her father, and privately published).
Her faith in a better world revealed a naïve joy rather than a stoic
tenacity, and it was this unquenchable thirst for truth that so inspired
me and millions of others throughout the world. As I entered the
quaint, cobblestoned Mecca, I felt more in love with her than ever. I
was not in Amsterdam as a tourist, but as a long lost lover seeking
redemption.
If only
she were alive...and yet, it was her untimely, tragic demise at the hands
of traitors and under the auspices of demons that gave her Diary its
everlasting poignancy. She'd always dreamed of being a writer, and
posthumously her ambition was realized far beyond the confines of her
little girl imagination. Her Diary had taken its place in the annals
of Great World Literature. How could she have even hoped that her
little journal, her therapeutic escape, her innocent musings would
amount to a universal classic studied in classrooms for generations?
There
were crowds of people from all over the planet there making the
requisite pilgrimage, but I felt a distinct and special kinship with
the little girl who had once inhabited this tiny attic. I could feel
her spirit move something within me, and I began to cry shamelessly,
oblivious to gawking spectators. I don't know how to describe the
emotions I experienced as I stood within the Secret Annex, so far
from my childhood room in Manhattan, comparatively a palace for a
prince. I guess I felt a mixture of joy and sadness, the tangible
proximity to Anne's lost life pacifying my longing for her, but the
resonant echo of her absence reverberating within my brain and heart.
She was gone, gone forever, years before I had even arrived.
I went
back to New York and lived out my inheritance. I wrote a play, got
rejected, wrote a few more, got rejected, lived in a small, cold room
in the Village, and kept writing. I felt dismally alone and isolated,
without even a fantasy for a foundation. But still, whenever I wrote,
I wrote with Anne in mind, for I wanted to write whatever she
might've written had she lived. I also wrote for my mother, who may
well have been with Anne by then, silently watching over me, waiting
for me to join them.
Dreaming
of abrupt emancipation, I'll forego my sanctuary and carve a niche
for myself in the real world, even if it's like chipping away at
granite with a toothpick. Anne would've wanted that, after all.
A WRONG TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE (1982) and THE IN-BETWEENERS (1987)
LITTLE BLACK BULLETS (1989) and NIGHT NOTES (1990)
PEOPLE BUG ME (2013)
ESCAPE FROM THRILLVILLE (2014)
SUCKER PUNCH OF THE GODS (Flash Fiction Offensive) (2014)
THE STICK-UP ARTIST (Flash Fiction Offensive) (2015)
THE STICK-UP ARTIST (Flash Fiction Offensive) (2015)
Radio play based on my unpublished novella SHADOW MUSIC (1996)
NOW AVAILABLE from THRILLVILLE PRESS:
THE THRILLVILLE PULP FICTION COLLECTION!
 | ||||||
| VOLUME ONE: A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge and Freaks That Carry Your Luggage Up to the Room BUY
|
 | ||||
The new Vic Valentine novel HARD-BOILED HEART now available from Gutter Books! BUY
|
My short story ESCAPE FROM THRILLVILLE as well as my Tribute To Ingrid Bergman
included in this issue of Literary Orphans
 |
My short story BEHIND THE BAR is included in this anthology:
 |
My Vic Valentine vignette BRAIN MISTRUST is included in this anthology: |
My story SHORT AND CHOPPY and editor Craig T. McNeely's article WILL VIHARO: UNSUNG HERO OF THE PULPS featured in the premiere issue of the new pulp magazine
DARK CORNERS
DARK CORNERS
My story THE LOST SOCK featured in the second issue of DARK CORNERS (Winter 2014)
 |
| Screening of the Director's Cut of Jeff M. Giordano's documentary The Thrill Is Gone, Monday, November 17, 2014, 5:30pm at the Alameda Free Library |
