The Taming of the Rake

Naval air station Opa Locka, Florida June 19, 1946

Dear Buz,

It's as good a time as any to write to you, I suppose; last night I was out walking naked in the soft Florida night air through the more sedate part of Coral Gables, and the physical exertions concomitant to that kind of nocturnal sport were enough to make a day of loafing around the barracks a welcome change.

This is lovely country down here; the liquid splendor of the summer nights when the orange blossoms perfume the air is something akin to a poet's dream of a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. The world here seems to awaken only in the early evening. During the day a somnolescent torpor envelops the whole air base, but in the evening not a single sailor seems to stay on base, for the soft air that blows in from the everglades brings a gentle hint of impending adventure, a promise that a certain erotic Something is there waiting for us and that we only have to walk out into the night to find it. In the face of every sailor who passes through the main gate, crisp and fresh in his white uniform, there is a look that speaks no doubt that tonight he will pursue wood-nymphs around deserted Greek temples and into moonlit forest glens.

And so it was, yesterday, that Tiny Schwartzkopf, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him, approached me in the repair hangar and promised an uproarious evening if I could be the second male in a double date he had arranged. Tiny is a brassy and garrulous but likable oaf from New Jersey who threatens often and attacks seldom; the kind who is a blessing in battle but a social liability in public, who can be trusted with your life but never with a dollar or a pint of your whiskey. I knew that Tiny's double date would be worth an evening.

The Blue Death Wagon has been so named because of its unpredictable brakes and the bilious-blue coat of paint that Tiny has lately blessed it with. As it carried us east on Seventy-Ninth Street, Tiny grinned at me with that mouthful of disorderly teeth and told me of the evening's expectations. He had lately had the good fortune to develop the friendship of a girl whose mother was away and whose father, a railroad engineer, was home only every third day. But there was a younger sister, Doris, whose attention it would be my duty to divert, and Tiny inferred that I could be rather free in my choice of diversion.

The house was a stucco affair, on the edge of Coral Gables, with only a scattering of neighbor houses. There was a paved but uninhabited street that ran a block behind the house and, for the sake of discretion, we parked the car there. As we parked we noticed that the adjoining vacant lot had been freshly plowed all the way to the back yard of the house where the girls were waiting for us.

It was a gratifying evening.

About eleven o'clock, Doris and I were sitting on the couch in the front room talking quietly and listening to soft music from the radio and Tiny and his girl were in the back bedroom, discussing ancient Persian rock formations, I suppose. Everything was calm and quiet and I was impressing Doris with one of my war hero stories when there was a sudden fall of footsteps on the front porch and a hand jiggled the door knob as though it expected the door to be unlocked. Then there was an impatient knock.

We looked at each other; I saw terror in her eyes.

"It's Daddy!" she said in half belief. "He's back early."

I didn't have time to ask questions. I began grabbing my clothes up off the floor.

"Just five minutes, honey," I begged as I slipped my bare feet into my shoes. "Just give us five minutes."

I didn't even slow down as I ran through the back bedroom. All I said was, "Come on, Tiny," and I didn't need to elucidate, either. Before I was even out of the kitchen door he was right behind me, his arms wrapped around a disheveled wad of clothes and muttering "Jesus God!" under his breath.

Outside it was as black as the basement of Hell and we couldn't exactly see where we were going, but we were running like the devil to get there. I had a short head start on Tiny when we first hit the back yard, but he had more miles-per-hour per pound last night than any fat man I ever saw. I had just seen his big buttocks pull past me like an express train and he was digging in for a good long run when he hit that damned clothes line. It caught him under the chin and his feet flew up in the air, and articles of nautical clothing were scattered over a twenty-foot stretch of grass. While he was groaning and picking himself up off the ground and retrieving his clothes, I was laughing so hard I could hardly get my pants on.

He had found only about half his clothes when we heard the back door of the house open and slam shut, and we took off again like a couple of scared antelopes. We had just gotten up our full speed again when we hit that damned plowed field. Have you ever tried to run in a freshly plowed field when you expect to hear the belch of a shotgun at your back any moment? It's like one of those nightmares when you flee for your life but your legs will hardly move.

When we finally reached the car, winded and exhausted, there was a wild melee of searching through Tiny's bundle of clothes for the ignition key, and then after we found it we didn't think the engine would ever start. In a few minutes, though, we were barrelling hell-bent-for-leather up Biscayne Boulevard and I was getting into the rest of my uniform. Tiny was talking so excitedly and was so intent on his driving that we were waiting for the light to change at Flagler Street before he suddenly looked down at himself and realized that he was sitting unclothed in the middle of downtown Miami.

I was talking to Tiny this morning at breakfast; we are both afraid to go back to see the girls to find out what happened.

So it goes, Buz, old boy. Keep the home fires burning back there in Natchez, and good luck with the draft board.

Your old buddy, Salty

• • •

University of the South Sewanee, Tennessee January 8, 1948

Dear Buz,

Your proffered pity is so much hog-wash; for an astute gentleman who drinks good whiskey, your judgment is remarkably inaccurate.

On the contrary, we have better access to the more frolicsome morsels here in Sewanee than you have on your co-ed campus. Such indulgences as women and beer are reserved largely for week-ends, when several surrounding girls' schools offer up abundant feminine fodder for our parties and dances. Thus, the week is reserved for such necessities as mathematics and sleep.

And more important is the fact that we can escape any serious conversation with our dates. Nothing is so futile as a political discussion with a fetching freshman, and sooner or later, if you go to classes with her, even the most adoring playmate will expect you to talk to her as if she were a friend.

Another advantage is that southern girls' schools seem to attract students who have just enough intelligence to digest their food, and the lack of male competition in the classroom keeps them from rising to higher profundities. On the rare occasion when your date does try to get esoteric on you, she can always be addled with a shot of whiskey.

At this point in my day, I will stop memorizing for a moment the names of all the bumps and holes on a cat's skull and tell you the history to date of my latest amorous conspiracy:

Blossom is the daughter of a family of pre-Civil War eminence who lives in a pre-Civil War home in Chattanooga, and she goes to school in a Richmond, Virginia institution for the manufacture of Southern Belles.

But the indoctrination doesn't seem to sink in.

Her folks are ironsided descendants of the Old South; they seem to feel that their family honor hinges largely on the state of repair of their daughter's virginity. Because of their medieval ideas and the stiff-backed matrons at the school, our moments alone have been short and infrequent. Until, last month, we decided to do something about it.

In early December my room-mate, Tommy, bent his fertile but perverse mind to my problems and came up with a plan that worked beautifully. Blossom gave her blessing, so I bought a round-trip plane ticket from Chattanooga to Richmond and she bought two round-trip Pullman tickets over the same route, and we were off on the Great Attempt.

I flew to Richmond on the day her school got out for Christmas vacation and we enjoyed the overnight train trip to Chattanooga more than I need to detail. The Spanish sherry I had brought along was excellent; the mountain scenery, viewed from the darkened window of a Pullman berth, was superb, and you know what an aesthetic nut I am about scenery.

The train slowed to a brief stop in a small station on the outskirts of Chattanooga, and there I hopped out, bag in hand, to find good old Tommy waiting in my Chevvy with the engine warm and running. We wore half the rubber off the tires getting to the Union Station in Chattanooga and I ran on to the platform just a couple of minutes before the train came in. I found Blossom's parents waiting there, and they were real tickled that I could get down from school to meet the train. After Blossom had kissed her folks, we went through our tender little greeting routine while Mama and Papa looked on approvingly and the Pullman porter, whom I had already bribed, damn near croaked while he tried to keep a straight face.

When Blossom left to return to school the day before yesterday, I was there to see her off on the train. Our farewell was a tender and poignant scene; we were both shy and embarrassed in front of her parents and we performed just enough awkward pauses and nervous fidgetings to make the scene convincing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her mother suppress a sniffle and whisper, "Isn't that sweet?" to Papa.

I mentioned a lab period I was going to be late for at school, apologized for having to rush off, and left a few minutes before the train pulled out. Tommy ran through a couple of red lights, but he got me out to the north side station just before the train came around the bend.

The sherry and the scenery and the geological discussions were even richer than before.

I just flew back from Richmond this morning, and here I am memorizing the nomenclature of a cat's skeleton. The intellectual life is bleak at times; there's something dreadfully superfluous about learning anatomy from a textbook.

Well, hit the books hard, old dog. I'll see you in Natchez, and we'll combine our jollity to belabor the old town out of its doldrums.

As ever, Salty

• • •

143 Jasmine Ave. Natchez, Mississippi April 4, 1950

Dear Buz,

Well, I finally got rid of Louise; and for good, too. I was kinda sorry to have to play such a dirty trick on the girl, but the situation had been intolerable for such a long time that I was willing to try anything. Anyway, she will never know what happened to her, so the Machiavellian methods I used don't really matter.

Sounds like quite a trick, getting a dame out of your hair without even letting her know how it happened, doesn't it? Well, I don't take credit for it; that diabolical thinking machine I have for a room-mate came up with this one. That fellow should have lived in the world of Louis XIV. He would have been a sensation among the intrigues of the French salon.

My parents were to blame for the whole messy situation, anyway, so I let them bear the shock. Ever since Louise and I were babies there has been a plot afoot between our families to gently railroad us into marriage. Seems our fathers went to college together and have been bosom buddies ever since. I'm not really angry with my folks for presuming to decide my glandular destiny for me at such an early age; how were they to know that Louise would grow up to look like a Belgian draft horse?

When we were kids we lived on the same street and we played football and went to school and took baths together. She was the best friend I had. Then the rising sap of puberty went coursing through my veins, and things have never been the same since.

I thought the worst was over when her family moved to Memphis a few years ago, but my folks would never say die. Up at Sewanee I would make the mistake of mentioning a brewing frater-(continued on page 60)Rake(continued from page 38) nity dance in one of my letters home, and the next thing I knew Mother had taken it upon herself to invite Louise up to Sewanee for the affray. And when I was coming home for a weekend from school, there would be Louise, up for a "visit with the family."

It's not that I minded so much being stuck with the girl for a weekend, but she always managed to embarrass the hell out of me in front of the fraternity brothers. We're broadminded about drinking up there and nobody thinks much about it when somebody's date gets loaded, but when she upends a Chesterfield settee through a French window and throws candelabra at the Vice Chancellor it's sort of hard to explain to the fellows.

And those bawdy songs she used to sing! She has a figure like a cuspidor, a voice like a wheel sliding in gravel, and after four or five drinks she gets crosseyed; so you can imagine the spectacle that the tuxedo-and-hoopskirt set were treated to when she stood on top of the piano and sang six verses of Roll Me Over. I felt a little awkward about lugging her back to the hotel and holding her under the shower.

Then Tommy got to incubating my problem in that crafty brain of his and came up with a plan, so I decided to try it. I let Mother know several weeks in advance when I would be home on spring vacation and, sure enough, when I got home last week Mother greeted me with the glad tidings that Louise would be up for a "visit with the family" this weekend.

I drove to the station yesterday morning to meet her train and on our way back to the house I explained about Mother's "condition."

I hadn't told her about it before, I said, because it hadn't been really necessary up until now, and it was the sort of thing that would be embarrassing to all of us; I had felt that Mother would rather have kept it within the family if possible, but we had been having so much trouble with her lately that the psychiatrist had advised us to take some extra precautions, especially with house guests, and so on and et cetera.

Louise sat dumbfounded with astonishment.

There's no point in going into detail, I said; the general idea was that it had been necessary for Mother to undergo treatment and we had been having a little trouble with her lately; especially about sleep-walking; she did some awfully strange things when she walked in her sleep.

When Louise began to express her regret and sympathy I explained that my reason for telling her all this was to impress her with the necessity of locking her bedroom door when she goes to bed in our house. This seemed a perfectly reasonable request, I suppose, and nothing more was said about it.

So last night she and I went out to the country club and drank a dozen highballs and danced and threw golf balls at the flood lights and made disrespectful remarks about the other members. When we came home about one A.M., I offhandedly reminded her to lock her bedroom door, said good-night, and then went up to my room. I got into my pajamas, hung my clothes over a chair beside my bed, got into bed and rolled over a few times to muss it up, and then went up to the attic and slept on an old couch.

My mother, being a motherly person, always assumes the role of the family alarm clock, and has made her unfailing rounds of the family bedrooms at seven forty-five every morning for thirty years. When she came into my room this morning she found my bed empty but my clothes still hanging on the chair. This was something of a jolt to her, I'm sure, for getting me up in the morning is generally a major engineering project. As she continued her waking rounds farther down the hall she found the mutely meaningful locked door to Louise's room.

Boy, has the air been heavy around this house today! When Louise and I came down for breakfast Mother was dripping with sweetness, and the old man looked confused and uncomfortable and finally mentioned some chores he had to see to and left the table early.

Louise felt the electricity and asked about it after breakfast, and I told her the tenseness was just another one of Mother's symptoms and that it made everyone uncomfortable. I could see it was giving her the willies, too.

Right now, I'm sitting in my room pecking at this typewriter and drinking bourbon and branchwater, waiting for Louise to get her bag packed so I can drive her to the station. Mother is down-stairs giving the maid hell and rearranging the furniture in the parlor, and Dad found an excuse to go down to the office.

Like I said, I hate to do this to a good friend like Louise, but who the hell wants a girl for a friend?

Keep loose, Salty

• • •

Phi Delta Theta House University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois April 12, 1952

Dear Buz,

I'm beginning to think I never should have come up here to graduate school. It's been a disappointment from the beginning. Not the Anthropology Department, which has more to offer than I can ever assimilate, but the social life is arid by southern standards. Sometimes on Saturday nights, out of a desperation that comes from the depths of boredom, some of the boys from the house here go up to Skid Row or to a jazz-and-strip dive, trying to escape from the earnest but depressing conversations that permeate the atmosphere of the campus. These adolescent intellectuals who monopolize the campus beer joints (you know the type, Buz) are good joes, but they get their kicks out of sober discussions of Sartre and Bartok and pronouncing "reactionary" with a hiss. That last is not so easy to do, believe me, but still it's not my idea of fun.

Now and then, though, the more robust of our number find some way to relieve the tedium. Last Sunday evening Jim and Tony and I went up to the Near North Side to have dinner and hit a few spots. I must have mixed my drinks the wrong way because I withered somewhere along Rush Street. The other boys were having their own difficulties by that time and I guess they got tired of lugging me around, because when I woke up it was four A.M. and I was tied to a street corner mailbox with a tag addressed to the fraternity house tied around my neck and a three-cent stamp stuck to my forehead.

I've had very little truck with these Yankee women. They're a sorry lot, by and large; intellectual, independent, opinionated. But I did have a rather odd experience with one of them recently. Name was Veronica. I met her about a month ago and I had been seeing her pretty regularly for a couple of weeks when it began to look like I was in love with the girl. I noticed that I was losing my appetite. Worse than that, I couldn't sleep at night, I couldn't concentrate on my books and I was becoming edgy and irritable. My weight and my grades were dropping and I had decided that I had better just marry the girl to get her off my mind.

Then came the great disenchantment: last week my doctor told me I have a vitamin deficiency. I'm disgusted.

The mating chase has begun to bore me. I don't suppose I'll ever get married.

Give your wife my love, and I hope it's a boy.

They call me Salty

• • •

University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois October 18, 1953

Dear Buz,

I guess I'm writing this letter more for my benefit than yours; I have to get a grip on myself some way, and maybe if I sit down and put it all on paper I can begin to make some sense out of it. The props have fallen from under my little world and I'm not sure what it all means.

One balmy evening last month I was sitting on a bench in Bughouse Square listening to the assorted street-corner orators. There, among the crowd of bums and curiosity-seekers who came to listen or to heckle, I saw Ann for the first time. She was standing a little apart and watching the proceedings with such a wide-eyed wonder that I was reminded of an illustration in Alice in Wonderland. I sat watching her for awhile. There was a childlike quality about her; long brown hair that came down over her shoulders, eyes that seemed too large and a continual look of wonder in her features.

I was hardly impressed; she looked like she might think that marriages are made in heaven, and I wouldn't even have bothered to say hello if my own company hadn't become tedious. There was such a look of frightened purity in her appearance that I had only the smallest hope of picking her up, so you can imagine my astonishment that she seemed almost glad to see me when I introduced myself and offered a free guided tour of the bedlam around us.

"I'm kinda scared by myself," she confided. "I didn't know there would be so many rough looking people up here. Are you in the University?"

How easy!

She seemed so obligingly intent on everything I said, listening with the open-mouthed wonder found only in the naive or the wonderfully coy. And, sure enough, when we were driving down the Outer Drive and I casually suggested she come up to my apartment to listen to my records, she gave the appearance of wrestling with the idea for a moment and then agreed.

But nothing could have surprised me more than to see her make a dash for my record collection when we got up to my place. She thumbed through the albums eagerly, talking excitedly in her soft cello voice about what she found there and making happy little gasps when she discovered a favorite. She selected a Strauss tone-poem and a Mozart concerto and asked me to play them, and sat in the middle of the floor with a look of near transfiguration on her face while the music enveloped her.

We talked of music and books and poems for a couple of hours, she with wide-eyed delight and me with astonishment that she knew and understood such values as Wagner and Wordsworth, Berlioz and Housman.

How do you like that, Buz? I run across a girl in a notorious breeding pen like Bughouse Square, pick her up in forty seconds flat, take her up to my apartment, and – what happens? Right away she flashes her Girl Scout badge on me!

As ever, Salty

• • •

Cliffside Apartments Chicago, Illinois September 24, 1955

Dear Buz,

At last I have a few minutes to answer your letter. Ann went to some kind of ladies' social tea over at the church this evening and left me here to straighten up the place a little and take care of the baby. So, with a glass of beer, I now settle down to write to you. (Forgive the sloppy typing; my finger is infected where I pricked it on a diaper pin the other day.)

I tell you, boy, this married life is great; best thing that ever happened to me. I'm in the pink, so to speak; feeling a hell of a lot better since I gave up the old bourbon and branchwater. I've got Ann to thank for that suggestion. Swell little woman, my Annie!

As far as that get-together is concerned, any time it's convenient for you to bring your family up for a visit, come ahead. There are some things in this old town that were never dreamed of in Natchez and we will do our best to make them available to you. Some great stuff in the Art Institute. Ann put me on to it.

We sure would like to accept your kind return invitation, but it looks mighty unlikely right now. What with the baby and all, we have a lot of new expenses. Of course, we've been saving a bit by not being able to squander a lot of dough on movies and night clubs and crap like that, but it's still a long time between pay checks.

Well, that's it for now. Ann left a few dishes in the sink and I think I'll surprise her by having them washed by the time she gets back. After that, I'm heading straight for the sack. Gotta be bright-eyed when I punch that time clock at eight-thirty tomorrow morning.

Your old buddy, Salty

A voice: Where's Hoffman?

Another Voice: He's done for.

(Epilogue, The Tales of Hoffman: Jules Barbier)

And intoxicated with love

I left my home

And roamed over all the valleys and woods.

Her hair was dark and curled,

And her eyes mirrored open skies,

And passion and affection gripped me.

(Prologue, The Tales of Hoffman: Jules Barbier)