The Interest of Strangers

The word Wanton -- when used to describe a female person unfit to associate with respectable men and women -- is a quaint Victorianism for what today we might call a swinging chick.

And few words carry in them a more damning indictment of the entire Victorian soul. We are told by dictionaries that Wanton means unrestrained, not susceptible to control -- and in an age of conformity these conditions should be thrice-welcome by all save those for whom Restraint and Control have become both food and drink, both drug and fetish. We are told that Wanton also means excessively merry or gay, sportive, frolicsome, playful ("as wanton lambs or breezes," says Webster, sniffingly adding, "Chiefly Poetic"). How mangy and maggoty the mind that can find evil in persons one with the lambs and the breezes, in persons excessively merry, in persons Chiefly Poetic! Let us, then, understand one another before we embark on this little amorality tale about four wantons: Olympia, her cousin, me, and Blue Mundy.

The art of Blue Mundy is too familiar to justify exhaustive comment here: his gutsy, traditional horn, his self-bestowed (but no less true for that) title, "The Moldiest Fig on the Tree" -- these are the stuff of legend. What must therefore occupy these notes is the story of Blue Mundy's passing into another world, a passing that shocked and saddened a legion of "Bluebirds" (the affectionate term by which Blue Mundy devotees described themselves) and made a memorial album such as this an unfortunate necessity.

As the president of Label Records, I knew the music of Blue Mundy; as a friend, I knew the man behind the music. An intimate knowledge, this, garnered bit by bit during many a night-long bull session, many a drinking bout, and, yes, many a double date. The beginning of the end for Blue Mundy came as a direct result of one such social engagement. It is etched forever in my memory.

"Blue," I said to him on that fateful day, "I don't need it." You see, he was about to do it again. He was about to fix me up. Blue had fixed me up on several occasions in the past, once with a girl who was a dead ringer for Mort Sahl, but on this occasion I no longer needed fixing up; I was doing quite nicely, thank you, with an amiable young lady of recent acquisition who was fixing me up, down, and counterclockwise, thus satisfying my modest needs. I was, and am, a simple man, It seemed to me I was fixed up as well as any young buck could reasonably expect in this imperfect world. Blue, however, thought otherwise. (continued on page 84) Interest of Strangers (continued from page 79) The subject came up during a recording session.

At the first break, he had turned to me, grinned, shaken the spit out of his horn, and said, "Say, Button Nose, whaddaya doin' this P.M.?"

"Nothing special."

"Good. I got a deal cookin' on a coupla very tasty Village broads. I'll fix y'up."

"Thanks a lot, Blue, but I've ..."

He looked at me with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

"Whaddaya, crazy? I said I'll fix y'up. A sure thing, in the bag. Continental stuff, very classy, very sultry. You'll love it."

"No, really--"

"Listen, don't get fancy with me. This is old Blue you're talkin' at, and I know you, Buster, I know you of old. Since when do you pass up any little bit you can get?"

"Look, old man--"

"Shud dup. And besides, you'll be doin' a favor for sweet old Uncle Blue, your buddy. This broad, mine I mean, she latched onto this cousin or somethin' just stepped off the boat from the Old Country ..."

"What old country?"

"Whaddaya, wise? How should I know what old country? This babe is stuck with this here hick fresh off the boat, and here I am with big things planned for between the babe and me. You don't wanna see old Blue get shafted, do ya? Hell, no. And listen, I've seen this yokel from overseas and it's all very mouth waterin' stuff what she's got. Very naive type, y'know? Good family, sheltered, don't know from nothin'. I mean you just move right in and take over. A setup. So here's what you wanna do. You wanna trot home and dab some Arrid under your arms and pick me up here about six in your heap. And while you're at it, stuff a thick heada lettuce in your wallet because what with alimony and income tax I'm naturally kinda pinched and we'll wanna show these quail a good time with all the trimmin's and make a big fat impression. Were you gonna say somethin'?"

"No," I sighed. "No, Blue, not a word."

"Great. See ya round six. And come -- diggez-vous? -- prepared."

He nodded to my engineer to indicate he was ready for another take, and I left as he lifted his horn to his lips.

• • •

Blue had decked himself out in a pink sport shirt, lime jacket, sky-blue trousers and shoes of leather, mesh and mink. Strongly redolent of witch hazel and Vitalis, he was sitting beside me vigorously chewing gum. "See that little artsy-craftsy shop? The one with all them mobiles in the winda? That's the place. My broad she owns it. Park right in front. Double-park: we'll only be in there a minute."

We entered the shop and Blue broke the cloistered stillness with a "Come and geddid, girls!" that made the mobiles tremble.

A lithe blonde wearing hoop earrings and thong sandals came at us from behind a greeting card display and glued herself to Blue. "Enoch, you big Neanderthal," she groaned lewdly. "Are you in good condition?" It was the first time I had heard anyone use his given name.

"Wait'll ya see what I got for ya, Baby. I'm in great shape," Blue said as he clamped down on her mouth. Time stood still while I inspected the terracotta ceiling and read a few greeting cards. I was struck by one in the Gourmet section that read Tell me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream, Tell me it is sliced cucumbers In a sauce of sour cream: Bon Appetit! Finally, Blue came up for air. "This here," he said, breathing heavily and jerking a hairy thumb in my direction, "is for your cousin." Then at me: "Hey, you bum, this here's Olympia. Shake her hand. That's enough; leggo. Now wherein hell's the cousin?"

"Here she comes, Enoch," said Olympia.

Blue had me fixed up with a flourish. Olympia's cousin advanced upon me from the rear of the store, her hips doing an unconscious cha-cha-cha. We were introduced quickly -- her name was unpronounceable -- and she extended her hand for me to kiss. Suddenly I wasn't angry at Blue any more for fixing me up.

"OK, break it up," he growled. "Let's go nail some chow."

I was driving a car with wide, roomy seats, but the cousin insisted on nestling so close to me that my left ear flattened against the window like a suction cup. In addition to this, her perfume (which I suspect she used as you or I might use rubbing alcohol) rose from her body in near-visible serpentine coils until I was so suffocated with sensuality that only a divine hand saved us from collision with an elderly female pedestrian. "What's," I coughed and started again, "what's that you're wearing?"

"Is called Criminal Assault," she husked.

"Hey, Jocko," commanded Blue from the back seat, "let's stick around the neighborhood, yeah? Pull over to that parking lot and we'll case the scene on the corner and grab a bite."

The scene under discussion was a subterranean espresso shop called The La Forza Del Destino Coffee Catacomb. Into it, I soon learned, fresh air and the light of day seldom ventured. We, more bold, did, and were approached by a young female person made up in the current fashion (current then, that is; the party line may have shifted since); her whole face, lips included, was blanked into pallor by a light shade of pancake makeup, but her eyes were heavily outlined and elaborated with Ballerina Black, causing them (especially in the murk of the Catacomb) to leap disturbingly from her face. "A pair of deuces, Doll," said Blue, and she led us behind an enormous espresso machine that looked like Winged Victory in aluminum, to a small table-for-four -- I stumbling blithely against chairs the while. Once established at the table, I struck a match and tried to read the menu, but the cousin's heavy breathing made the flame flicker and I gave it up as a bad job, placing my order by jabbing a forefinger at a random spot on the menu and grunting authoritatively. My efforts gained me scant nourishment (a parsley sandwich) so I asked, also, for a double gibson with extra onions which they sent next door for since they had no liquor license.

The cousin ordered the same; Olympia toyed with a chalice of Caffe Pirandello (ginger-ale, Pernod and coffee); and Blue wrapped his mandibles around a hero sandwich that harbored generous portions of salami, pepperoni, bologna, Swiss cheese, bel paese cheese, cottage cheese, sliced tomatoes, sliced pickles, chopped chicken livers, chopped egg, chopped nuts, marinated herring, anchovies, olives, Italian peppers, Spanish onions, chutney, curry powder, fried eggplant, lettuce, sliced tomatoes (oh I said that) and bacon. During this repast, the cousin sat directly opposite me and devoured me with her eyes. I report this in the interest of objectivity; there is no boasting involved; women devour me with their eyes too frequently to mention and I have long since ceased to attach any special importance to the act. I attribute it not so much to my boyish charm and button nose as to that suggestion of blood-curdling depravity I'm told lurks behind my deceptively seraphic features.

The talk between the cousin and me was without benefit of wit, starting with polite references to each other's vocations and avocations, and finally retreating to that last resort of desperate conversationalists, likes and dislikes. She confided to me that she liked to sleep naked. Also that she liked African lobster tails, American toothpaste and cultured men.

I told her, as I have already told you, that I am a simple man. "I like practically everything," I said. "It would be easier to list the things I don't like. Manhattans, for example. Baked potatoes. (continued on page 120) Interest of Strangers (continued from page 84) Beethoven. Art Carney. People who race sports cars. People who say period at the ends of definite statements. Palm Springs. Peter Sellers. Progressive jazz. Songs about winter. Brandy." Most of this was said for the benefit of Blue, who was addicted to racing sports cars in Palm Springs and who was often given to period. My insult was lost upon him -- he was totally occupied with Olympia -- but the gigantic hoops in Olympia's ears must have been tuned in on my spiel, for she turned away from Blue, looked me coldly in the nose and said:

"Reactionary."

"Me?" I squeaked. "Reactionary?"

"Definitely," said Olympia, beautiful and steely in her wrath. "A reactionary and a Philistine."

"Nah," said Blue, uneasy at the drift of the conversation, "he's Black Irish."

I played it cool. I frowned and said, "It's strange you should think that, Olympia. I'd be interested in knowing on what you base your assumption on." I don't think she caught the double preposition.

"Progressive jazz," she said. "You don't like it. Scratch a progressive jazz hater and you'll find a reactionary, every time."

"And a Philistine," I added, still smiling, still tolerant, still doing the bit.

"Right. And an inflexible, narrow-minded statusquonik."

"Lay off him, Sugar," urged Blue. "He's hip, he's OK."

She wheeled the klieg lights onto Blue. "Oh he is, is he? And what about you? I suppose your tastes have never advanced beyond those primitive New Orleans grunts either!"

"Baby," he crooned, cadging a chorus from The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature which I had loaned him two weeks before when he was planning a campaign against a minister's daughter, "thy people shall be my people, whither thou goest I will go, what thou diggest I will dig. Drink your Pirandello. Relax. Sure, I blow hot horn, but I think progressive's the most. Take this Dick Brubeck ..."

"'Dick' Brubeck is cool," she lectured, "not progressive. And ----"

"Now there is a split hair on which I'll be glad to give you argument," I broke in. "This business about cool and progressive being two different things is the veriest horsefeathers. They're just two symptoms of the same psychosis."

"He means like Crazy, Man," Blue said to Olympia, flashing me a shut-up signal. "Like you know Square got to be Cube and like that? The real far-out guys -- like him -- don't say Crazy any more, they say Psychotic."

But Olympia ignored him and turned again to me. "You don't know," she said, looking at me with annihilating pity, "you just don't know."

My mask collapsed. "Don't tell me I don't know. I know -- period!" I said, blushing with self-hate. "Now take Kenton ----"

"Well, if you're going to give out with the dogma, publish a papal bull----"

"Bull is right," said Blue in a last-ditch attempt to save the evening. "He ain't nothin' but a hound dogma. Ged-did? A hound ----"

"Shut up, Enoch," snapped Olympia without taking her eyes from mine. "All right, Mister I Know Period. Let's just take Kenton. The floor is yours. You're on."

"Thank you," I said grimly as Blue winced and the cousin idly stirred her gibson with a leftover sprig of parsley. "First of all, the very word 'progressive' can't be applied to music -- or any other art, for that matter. Artistic evolution must take its own sweet time. It can't be rushed. The 'progressive' musicians, like Kenton, hold the curious opinion that music should progress like science."

"And why shouldn't it?"

"Because art, honey, is not science. That's why shouldn't it. Whenever some misguided theorist has tried to apply the methods of science to art, the result has always been anti-art."

"The ----"

"You gave me the floor, now let me finish. Kenton is a very verbal guy, and he has gone around saying stuff like the, uh. the measure of a work of art's worth is its 'contribution to progress' or some-such. He admits he can't really feel any interest in the old works per se. He looks on them only as 'pacesetters of their times' -- a purely academic appreciation, see?"

"A perfectly sound attitude," she said, primly.

"Sure -- for an engineer. But it sure as hell is not sound for an artist. It's, it's, it's bizarre it's so unartistic! Why, I feel sorry for the poor guy. Look, he himself says audiences find his stuff difficult to dig without a little direction. When he gives a concert, he explains each number to the audience before he plays it. Like a scientist again, not a musician. Like a chemistry teacher telling his pupils to keep their peepers peeled for certain reactions in the test tubes."

"He wouldn't have to explain if it weren't for idiots like you!"

"Explain? Art doesn't have to be explained. It mustn't be explained!"

Blue had been amusing the cousin with bright banter while Olympia and I were going at it hot and heavy. Now, taking advantage of a break in the argument forced upon us by the sudden eruption of Winged Victory, he quickly said, "Let's split." The cousin was all for splitting; Olympia and I, hopped up with righteousness and sullen with guilt at having deposited a social stink bomb, silently acquiesced. Blue waved for the check. Ballerina Eyes brought it. Blue gave it to me. I struck a match and glanced at it, frowning darkly. My worst fears were confirmed. They had charged me for the extra onions.

• • •

It was only the beginning of a long evening.

We decided to stroll, so I left the car in the lot. Blue made a strong pitch for a club where a new vocal group called The T Shirts was appearing: Olympia made a stronger pitch for a Bergman; Blue, blanching, cagily suggested that the cousin might logically prefer the novelty of an American film; the cousin said she'd seen American films all her life back in The Old Country but had never seen a Swedish, so that seemed to be that. Olympia asked me, suspiciously, "Any objections to Bergman?" I assured her I had none. We saw the Bergman.

Afterward, we had pineapple cheesecake and chicken-fat sandwiches at Lindy's. Olympia's cousin was fascinated when the waiter emptied the ashtray by dumping its contents on the tablecloth and then picking up the tablecloth. Blue yelled hello to Alan Jay Lerner. I nodded to Anne Bancroft, Meredith Willson stared at Olympia and her cousin stared at me. "Talk more," she urged.

"Well," I said, "I like African lobster tail, too."

"It is happy," she purred. "You like also sleep in the naked?"

"Well, you know, in the summertime, but ..." Etc.

Olympia expertly ignored me, but she had not ignored the subject of progressive jazz: she had found a polite auditor in Blue.

Once out of Lindy's, we showed the cousin the marvels of Broadway: a magazine stall, where she studied pictorial publications with titles like Tomorrow's Muscles and Today's Groin; a Whelan's, where she went wild at the toothpaste section and made me buy her one of each brand: Ripley's Odditorium, where she shuddered with delight at the medieval instruments of torture: and a passing truck which bore the legend "City Dressed Hogs." Finally, footsore and brainfagged, Blue brought form and purpose to the evening by suggesting we retreat to Olympia's shop, or, more precisely, to the living quarters upstairs of same. The girls approved vigorously so I hailed a cab.

At the shop, we all piled out, damp and eager, and cantered upstairs to Olympia's digs.

They were surprisingly inoffensive. I had expected, not without grounds, that this young woman's dwelling would be a veritable aviary of mobiles, like her shop, and belligerently progressive, like her opinions. Nothing of the sort: simple, cozy, soft, clean, and just a little cluttered -- most important, it was feminine, free of the angularity of modern design.

Olympia mixed the highballs, Blue searched for records to play on the locost hi-fi, the cousin disappeared into the bedroom for an unvoiced reason and I spied on the books that lined one whole wall. The customary Camus, Kafka, Herbert Gold, Rilke, lots of Ionesco, stacks of the Evergreen Review, some standard classics, a set of James (the bright binding of which bespoke the James revival of recent memory), a book of Charles Beaumont horror stories, The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature (with my bookplate on the flyleaf! I had told Blue not to loan any of my books!), a smattering of Reik, a few Peanuts books, the collected criticism of Eric Bentley, that book with five photos of Norman Mailer on the jacket, the latest Feiffer, and so on. A snappy collection, but, I thought with dim malaise, indistinguishable from the bookshelves in any other apartment on the block. Then, as I was about to turn away, my eye caught a few uncharacteristic names: Remy de Gourmont, James Branch Cabell and -- good grief! -- Edgar Saltus. What on earth? Except for one minor Cabell flutter, no revival had ever honored those dated old grotesques. For a moment, my heart was warmed by this evidence of an individual, renegade taste similar to my own, but I reflected on the rapid turnover in Village roommates and how, more than once, I had sized up a chick on the basis of a few volumes, only to find out later that half of them belonged to The Girl Who Used To Share The Apartment and the other half to The Girl Before Her. The bookcase as psyche-barometer has its flaws.

All four of us completed our self-appointed rounds simultaneously: I turned from the books as Blue started up a Kenton as Olympia passed around the drinks as her cousin emerged from the bedroom in lounging pajamas and with blood in her eye.

She made a pliant armful, ungirt under the thinness of the PJs. We tried to dance to the Kenton. It was a weird experience, but I, being male, enjoyed it and she, being female, enjoyed my enjoyment. To avoid granulating her bare feet, I pried off my shoes. The carpet was thick and sensuous.

Blue and Olympia weren't dancing. They were Listening. At least Olympia was. Blue was being very manual, though not much more so than I. When the side was over, Blue gave vent to some truly sickening praise of the music, but was thoughtful enough to add, "It's not much good for dancin', though. Whaddaya got for dancin', honey? Got any calypso?"

Olympia went burrowing into her stack, but all she could find was a Sammy Kaye ("A gift," she explained, sneering). Then her eyes widened with inspiration and, burrowing with new zeal, she said, "There is something I just can't sit still to when I hear it ... it's not really dance music, though ... but it is wild ... ah!"

She held up the Shostakovich Violin Concerto, Opus 99.

Blue laughed.

But I ...

I was transfixed (De Gourmont, Cabell, Saltus) and I said, "Not ... not the scherzo?"

Oh, brethren, that was a gleaming fifth of a second. That was a momentous moment. Our eyes locked and it was galvanic, it was rapport, it was the real genuine McCoy with oak-leaf cluster. Marlowe said it, and Shakespeare hung it on a tree in his forest of Arden, and right here and now your faithful reporter is giving it his OK: Whoever loved, who loved not at first sight?

She knew it, I knew it, but nobody else knew it even though Olympia and I danced like nymph and satyr. I hope you know the concerto. If you don't, a few quick program notes might help you dig what Olympia and I were feeling.

It consists of two searches. The first search (Nocturne, adagio) gropes, wanders, reaches out, climbs blindly, stumbles, blunders on, yearning, beseeching, asking for guidance, but all to no avail. It sinks in fatigue, finally, and stops. At this indication of weakness, a pagan spirit enters (Scherzo, allegro non troppo) -- call him Pan, or Lucifer, or what-have-you -- and he mocks: Why this search for something that does not exist? Forget this aimless striving! Drink -- or dance -- or dull yourself with any other drug. I bring the conscienceless, moralless, thoughtless dance of the nerve-ends! And he does. But after he is gone, the search begins again (Passacaglia, andante) -- more insistent this time, more dogged, more desperate. It sobs in frustration. Then (as the violin is forsaken by the rest of the orchestra and is left to cry and ache and search alone) the spirit enters again, taunting, tempting, dangling a bit of the previous bacchanal, the recent fall-from-grace, before our noses. The first phrase of temptation is interrupted by two fierce, hoarse cries of defiance -- Retro me, Satanas! -- as are subsequent blandishments. But the tempter triumphs, is reinforced by gloating tympani, and once again (Burlesca, allegro con brio) we are drawn into a wild and heedless dance that was old when Babylon was a suburb.

The rest of the evening was diminuendo. Olympia was Blue's girl, the cousin was mine, and the tribal ritual had to be observed. I had to swallow hard when Blue attempted to charm Olympia with an a cappella rendition of a spiritual which afforded him an excellent opportunity to run his fingers coyly along her anatomy from the toenails up:

Oh, de toe bone connected to deFoot boneAnd de foot bone connected to deAnkle boneAnd de ankle bone connected to deLeg boneAnd de leg bone connected to deKnee boneAnd de knee bone connected to deThigh boneAnd de thigh bone connected to deHip bone ...

From that point on, he deviated from the time-honored lyrics and began inventing a few unlikely bones of his own.

The time came when I had to do my all for the cousin. Upon our return to the living room, it was obvious to me that Blue had met with a sudden resistance that baffled and vexed him. He was still working on the bone aria, but by that time he was thoroughly saturated with Scotch and had lost all coordination:

Oh, de knee bone connected to deHead boneAnd de head bone connected to deAnkle boneAnd de ankle bone connected to deBack bone ...

Olympia silently appealed to me for succor, and, feeling like the lowest and most rundown of heels and a traitor to my sex, I managed to rescue her from Blue with subtlety enough for his clouded mind. We made our farewells, my eyes speaking volumes of promise to Olympia and hers speaking likewise to me, and finally Blue and I sucffled out of the apartment into the air and weaved toward the parking lot.

"Beats me," he mumbled thickly, several times. "Beats the hell outa me. There's a broad never gave me no trouble. Never once. Then just because of this progressive jazz bit she puts me in deep freeze all of a sudden. Broads! And it's all your fault, y'hang-up ..."

It was my fault, but not for the reason Blue thought.

He continued: "You couldn't play along with her; oh no; you hadda giver a hard time with all that art-is-not-science crap. So then she turns on me, f'Chrysake, and no matter what I tell her she don't believe me. Well ... I'm not turned off yet." We had reached the lot and we climbed into my car. "Dip," Blue said, like a hiccup, "diplomashy. Tact. Head work." He tapped his forehead and winked broadly. "Oh de head bone connected to de ... head bone connected to de ... all your fault ... y'button-nosed sunnuva ... head bone connected ..." Sleep overcame him and guilt overcame me as we rolled away.

Olympia and I entered ever more intimate spheres as we crossed the Ts of our Temp Ta Tion and dotted the Is of our Indiscretion, put all our aches in one basket and burned our britches behind us; until, at long last (or, rather, at short last), we cemented the good ship Relationship and so sank swiftly down among the bubbles and troubles, the raptures and ruptures, the cool green silences and buried treasures of Davey Jones' Wedlocker. Not to mention the seaweed jungle of fancy writing. Olympia's cousin, choosing the shortest possible route to American citizenship, became Blue's as wife. I mean Enoch's wife -- for Blue, as we all know to our sorrow, is no longer with us. Faced with a barrier in Olympia he could not explain save by the difference in their musical tastes, he brought all his diplomacy, tact and head work into play, steeping himself in flatted fifths, saturating himself with the sound and the fury of the progressives, even growing a beard and laying in a whole new wardrobe of ironmaiden Ivy raiment. A mere veneer would not do, he knew; to really convince the girl and win her back, he would have to talk on her own terms, become her superior in appreciation and knowledge of the genre -- her leader, her vanguard. Well, unluckily for Blue, her heart belonged to another, and nothing he could do would win her back to his arms. He realized this too late, however -- too late to save himself from falling for his own line.

And that is why today we have an Enoch Mundy with his Existentialism in Rhythm, but no Blue Mundy with his natural, simple, unintricate, earthy, basic horn. Blue is dead; Mundy has passed into a world completely alien to the masses of adulating "Bluebirds."

As the president of Label Records, I no longer can endorse the Mundy music, which I do not understand or approve of. He has signed up with Something Else, a most progressive outfit. As a friend -- well, we see each other now and then, and we smile, and we wish each other well, but because of the rift created by my usurpation of Olympia and the unbridgeable chasm that now separates our musical worlds, I can no longer expect the same warmth and regard from him as in days gone by.

This album -- cut on the day of the night of our double date -- is, therefore, being released quite appropriately as a memorial to the extinct Blue Mundy. This pamphlet of notes is only an auxiliary -- it is the music itself that must serve to commemorate his spirit. I wanted to call the album Sic Transit Gloria Mundy, but Olympia, with whom I still conduct musical debates, insisted that the glory of Mundy most certainly has not passed away no matter what I may think of his new sounds, so, between us, we came up with the title the album now bears: Requiem for a Moldy Fig. An Altec M-30 microphone system was used with an Ampex Model 600 tape recorder and a Pedersen Professional preamp. Compensate for the NAB curve in playback. Beware the blunted needle!

The Wanton, though she knows its dangers, Must needs smear kohl about her eyes, And wake the interest of strangers With long-drawn, hoarse, erotic sighs. -- Edward Gorey: The Fatal Lozenge