Stay of Execution

Told you I'd have another Hirschfeld drawing.

Since Pride Month is drawing to a close, I thought I'd mark it with the public debut of a short story I wrote a few years back, one in which I mused on the differences in attitude towards the LGBTQ community of a half-century ago, before such a community was even referred to as LGBTQ. The main character is, or was, a real person, but he's been fictionalized here, hence my amazing ability to read his thoughts. Though inspired by a real event, it didn't involve the real person I just alluded to, though I'd like to think that if everything had fallen exactly in place, it most certainly could have. It's one reason to write fiction, to see to what extent the facts can be redeemed.

TRIGGER WARNING: About a third of a way through this story, a nasty LGBTQ epithet comes to the fore and is then repeated several times thereafter. I'm sorry if anybody finds the mention of this word disturbing, but I honestly don't think I could have told this tale without it.

 

Truman took a sip from his drink and wondered what he might say on TV tomorrow. He had no new book to promote, the only logical rationale for appearing on television in the first place, except for that other logical rationale--Truman liked appearing on television. The producers knew that when they asked him to fill in as a guest at the last minute on a local interview program. That he hadn't been their original choice--"Erich von Daniken forgot he had a prior commitment"--was all the more demeaning, though much less demeaning than going a whole month without appearing on the airwaves at all. Local. In the last year he had appeared on both Dean Martin's and Sonny and Cher's shows to what he could have sworn was critical acclaim and high Nielsens. Not bad for someone represented by a literary, rather than an entertainment, agency. But maybe he should sign with the latter, too. Get his own talk show so he could ask the questions. No, that would be boring. He'd rather do the answering. Well, at least this was Manhattan local. Tri-state local. It might not get Martin's or the Bonos numbers, but wasn't that still something like a quarter of the total U.S. population? He'd have to look it up. Since the novel he was working on was nowhere near finished, and so had nothing to promote, he wondered what might be asked of him. There was no way to prepare. Now that he had earned a reputation as a criminologist of sorts, something might be asked of him along those lines. But he didn't really feel like talking about crime. He had spent five years of his life living with a quadruple murder that ended with two men hanged--

Truman quickly downed his screwdriver and signaled the bartender to make him another. The memory of the two of them dropping through the floor. Horrors.

Well, Truman's next book would be different. He had earned a respite from darkness, from tragedy. Champagne and the Ritz from here on in! Well, at the moment it was a screwdriver and a gay bar on Christopher Street, but his new novel would focus on the former, and those who took such an existence for granted. Just what to say about such an existence is what had Truman vexed. Nice way to live if you can afford it? Well, he could now afford it, thanks to his best seller--DON'T DWELL ON THE BEST SELLER! Or risk the memory of the two of them dropping--

Truman downed his screwdriver and signaled for another. Concentrate on the new book. Life among the rich. Do it wrong and it could end up Harold Robbins. Actually, from a sales standpoint, that would be doing it right. But his goal was loftier than that. It was not Robbins but Marcel Proust that Truman looked towards for inspiration. If only he could summon Proust back from the dead for assistance. He could be a ghost writer, hee, hee.

"Excuse me"

Interrupted in the middle of his own witticism, Truman looked up at a young man, an attractive young man, of about 20. He had a mustache and hair down to his shoulders. Those attributes along with the tie-die shirt and jeans made Truman think "hippie", although a young man with a similar style whom he had tried to pick up a week earlier had taken offense at the term. Apparently, the term, but not yet the look, was now considered passé. Well, Truman wouldn't make that mistake again and call this young--hee, hee--prospect that. He wouldn't call him anything that he didn't want to be called.

"Well, hello there," Truman replied in his most hospitable voice.

"Do you have any identification on you?"

Truman quickly pulled out his trademark Moscot sunglasses from his jacket and put them on, nearly blinding himself in the dimly lit bar in the process.

"Recognize me? That should be identification enough."

The young man let out a chortle. An unintended chortle, as his face turned grim.

"This is serious, Mr. Capote."

So he had recognized him!

The young man continued: "Do you realize you are in an establishment where men have been spotted illegally kissing other men?"

Oh, so he was a policeman? With that hair and mustache? The Serpico look was certainly catching on fast.

Truman pulled out his wallet, and handed a card to the young man, adding: "Here's my lawyer's number. You'll note that he's a partner in one of the biggest and most prestigious law firms in Manhattan. This is a clear case of entrapment. When I walked into this establishment today I had no idea such unsavory acts were taking place. Unsavory acts that I took no part in. I was sipping my drink and minding my own business when you walked up to me."

"Oh, I'm not here to arrest you, Mr. Capote. I'm here to recruit you."

"Recruit? Now I am confused. That hair, that mustache, the way you're dressed. Is this an example of the ‘new’ Army? Anyway, I'm too old."

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Saul Florentino, of the Gay Emancipation Organization. We recently split off from the Gay Activist Alliance, itself having earlier split off from the Gay Liberation Front. Also within our ranks are disaffected members of the Mattachine Society, the Janus Society, and the Daughters of Bilitis."

Not liking where this was going, Truman took a stab at changing the subject.

"I do admire that colorful shirt of yours. Did you make it yourself?"

"Huh? I bought it from Kmart."

"Kmart, eh? Sounds like the counterculture has been co-opted by the bourgeois. Not that you're a hippie. I hear they're passé these days."

"The shirt was cheap, a blue-light special. You can call me a hippie if you want, but I prefer to think of myself as a freedom fighter. As for the counterculture, most of whom you and everybody else call hippies have outgrown it and are now crawling back to the Establishment. But unless there's a radical change in society, I can never outgrow it, no matter my age. I am gay, was born gay, and will always be counter to the culture. You, too, but you just don't realize it. You can't just watch the struggle from the sidelines, Mr. Capote. You have to participate!"

Outraged, Truman replied, "Now, look here, young man, I have done more for the cause of homophilia than any man in America, perhaps the world!"

"Oh? And what have you done exactly?"

"I am one of the greatest living American writers, a master prose stylist of the postwar period. 'A Christmas Memory' is one of the greatest short stories of the 20th century! Holly Golightly is one of the best-known literary characters of the past 50 years! In Cold Blood an expert piece of reporting that has single-handedly transformed journalism into an art form!"

"I'm aware of your accomplishments, Mr. Capote, but what does that--"

"I'm not finished. I have a net worth of over a million dollars! I own a luxury apartment in the United Nations Plaza. I also have a home in Palm Springs. I eat at the finest restaurants. Am invited to the best parties. I threw one of the best parties, the legendary Black-and-White Ball. I've shopped for clothes on Rodeo Drive, and, of course, jewelry at Tiffany's. I know movie stars. Frank Sinatra is a personal friend. I--"

"I get it, Mr. Capote. You're rich and famous, but how does that help the gay cause?"

"I've set an example! I gone higher and farther than any gay man before me. I’ve proven that provincial prejudices toward homosexuality doesn't have to be a barrier to success. You just pull yourself up by the cliché, I mean bootstrap--"

"You got it right the first time."

"I'm talking, not writing. Obviously, I never would have put such a trite phrase down on paper."

"I've read the gossip columns. While gays are fighting and dying in the streets, you're busy partying with your rich pals."

"Oh, the way you say 'rich pals', as if they were cannibals. Your generation is so very wrong about them. If you'd just give them half a chance, you'd find that the wealthy are very open-minded, especially when it comes to sexuality. My next book will go a long way toward rehabilitating their image."

"If the rich are so open-minded, how come homosexual acts are still illegal here in New York and almost everywhere else?"

"Well, the rich don't write the laws. They're not elected officials."

"No, but they buy elected officials. They'll throw a sack full of money at some politician to make sure a factory they own keeps on spewing toxic chemicals into the air, but when it comes to gay liberation--"

This conversation obviously wasn't going to lead to sex. Truman decided to cut it short.

"Look, young man, why don't you try enlisting Gore Vidal? He fancies himself a political provocateur."

"I plan to, but right now he's in Italy."

"Well, if you hurry, you can make the 8:45 flight to Rome."

The young man laughed. "All right, Mr. Capote. I'll leave you alone for now. Rome, huh?"

He began walking toward a coat rack by the entrance but then stopped. Looking back, he yelled out, "Arrivederci, Mr. Capote!" and threw Truman a kiss.

The gesture wasn't meant to be sexual, but Truman got an erection anyway. He jumped off his bar stool and scurried over to the cute young man.

"Look," said Truman "I don't want you to think I don't care about what happens to other gay people. I do care. And I care about what happens to you. Ever hear of a local show called Bookchat? I'm going to be on it tomorrow. At 7 at night."

"Oh, so you've finished that book about rich people?" 

"Well, no, but I'm a lion of literature. I don't have to have finished a book. Now, I'd like you to appear on that show with me. You can promote your cause. It's not a national audience, but it's New York City, so it might as well be national. Now, you can either meet me there or stay the night at my place and we can both go in together."

"I'll meet you there."

"All right," said Truman, trying to hide his disappointment. "Let me give you the address." Truman reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "524 West 57th Street."

"CBS."

"It can't be. They told me it was a local broadcast. Channel 2, I think."

"So it is. But it's a CBS-owned affiliate. Their flagship station, in fact. This is going better than I had hoped. Mr. Capote, you got yourself a date!" With that, the pretty young man bent down and kissed Truman right on the lips!

His hard-on got even harder.

Cozily insulated from the November elements in a full-body sable coat recently purchased from Sak's Fifth Avenue, Truman stood under the marquee of the CBS Broadcast Center waiting for that darling young radical to show up. Paul--wasn't that his name? Once on the air, Paul would get his political jeremiad out of his system, Truman would be hailed as a hero of the gay lib movement (if he wasn't already) and the two would dine at La Côte Basque, or McDonald's if that was more to the young Kmart shopper's liking, as just part of an overall celebratory night on the town, ending with a celebratory night-into-morning in his United Nation's Plaza bedroom. Might as well treat him to breakfast, too. Maybe La Grenouille. Or Perkins, if that was more to his liking.

CBS. Odd that he hadn't recognized the address. Two very dear friends of Truman's, Babe and William Paley, owned CBS. He had been here and to the corporate headquarters that was somewhere around here many times. But he had taken a cab, or, in recent years, a limousine. He didn't need to know the address. All he had to do was tell the driver, take me to CBS. If the driver asked him to specify, he'd either say the one with the studios or the one with the bigwigs. And what bigwigs Babe and Bill were! Through them Truman had met every major CBS star from Lucille Ball to the guy that plays Archie Bunker. Not that Truman wouldn't have eventually met them anyway. Meeting famous people was a specialty of his. He had danced with Marilyn Monroe and sucked the cock of Errol Flynn without any help from the Paleys. Still, he was grateful for their friendship.

"Hello, Mr. Capote!"

It was the handsome--boyishly cute, actually--young man. He was wearing one of those frontier-like jackets with fringes, a button-down shirt, and jeans. Would they let him on TV like that? Perhaps. Everybody was beginning to dress a bit more casual these days.

"Hello, Paul. I am so very pleased you could make it."

"The name's Saul, Mr. Capote."

"Oh, well," Truman giggled, "I said that in the off-chance you're struck by lightning on the way to Damascus. By the way, you can call me Truman."

"OK, Truman."

"Do you know what I was just thinking about? How I didn't recognize the address even though I'm friends with the couple that owns CBS. Can you believe that?"

"Oh, I've done my homework, Truman. I know who you run around with, but if it's the Paleys you're talking about, I don't think that they actually 'own' CBS so much as have a controlling interest. It's a publicly-traded company."

"Whatever. Business bores me. But the Paleys do have a lovely apartment. Picassos everywhere."

The two of them walked into the CBS building and up to a burly security guard with sideburns almost down to his dimples seated behind the reception desk.

"Hello there, good sir. My name is Truman--"

"Capote!" the guard exclaimed. He stood up and held out his hand, and Truman took dismayed note of a wobbly beer gut that accentuated all that burliness.

"I am so pleased to meet you. In Cold Blood is my favorite book! I've read it twice and seen the movie. It's my favorite movie, too. I've seen it twice!"

A fan, thought Truman, pleased. This might be a good chance to show that young radical just how accepting the general public was of his homosexuality. He decided to camp it up.

Lowering his head and batting his eyes, Truman asserted, "Oh, you make me blush!"

"Do I really?" the guard replied, thrilled.

With an air of impatience, Saul asked, "Can you please tell someone Truman Capote is here?"

"Um, let me look," the guard glanced down at a paper. "Bookchat. Local broadcast..."

With mock distress, Truman exclaimed, "You make 'local' sound so demeaning!"

Alarmed, the guard replied, "Oh, gosh, Mr. Capote, I didn't mean anything by it!"

"Oh, I was just kidding, you big silly Pooh bear!"

The guard breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the paper. "Um, Bookchat is in Studio 32, right here on the ground floor." The guard signaled to a short, chubby teenager in a suit and tie with the CBS eye logo on it who was standing to the side of two big doors.  "See that page? He'll take you there."

Truman clutched his hands together and bent his left leg backwards off the ground, "Oh, that would be simply divine!"

"It would, Mr. Capote? Really?" said the guard, excitedly.

"Oh, my, yes. Will you be here when we come back?"

The guard nodded vigorously.

"Well, now, if you're a good little security guard, I might just give you my autograph!"

"Oh, Mr. Capote!"  

Truman gave him a little wave goodbye, and he and--Paul? No, Saul--followed the chubby young teenage page through the big doors and down a hallway.

Saul glanced at Truman, and remarked, "'Simply divine'? You've just set homosexuality back 50 years!"  

"I was only trying to prove a point. If that guard and I were two little kids at the playground, he'd try to beat me up. But now he wants my autograph. He doesn't care that I'm gay."

"Yeah, well, people will overlook a lot in a celebrity. When my parents found out I was gay, they kicked me out of the house and would have nothing to do with me for about two years until I snagged them a couple of tickets to a Liberace concert. He's their favorite entertainer. Now I get Christmas cards. My mother signs them, anyway."

"Liberace's not gay," said the page. "He once sued someone for calling him that and won."

Truman and Saul looked at each other and started laughing. The page gave a puzzled glance backwards, and apparently decided it best if he laugh, too.

The page led the both of them into what Truman recognized from his many talk show appearances as the "green room", nicely furnished, at least compared to a doctor's waiting room, with a refrigerator, a small bar, table full of snacks, and a TV set tuned to The Merv Griffin Show. There was a somewhat tall, somewhat thin man in the room sitting in one of the plush chairs. 

With a faint leer on his face and a bit of suggestiveness to his voice, the page said, "Here Mr. Capote, you and your 'friend' can wait here until it's time to go on. You're a bit early."

The way he said friend! Obviously the page had gotten the wrong idea about the exact relationship between him and the young gay liberationist, not that Truman didn't wish it had been the right idea.

Truman sat down on a comfy-looking sofa, and was dismayed that the young radical hadn't sat right down next to him. Instead, he just stood there, staring intently at the door that the page had just closed behind him upon exiting the room.

"You know, Tru--" Oh, he had called him Tru! Not Truman but Tru. He does want to get intimate! "We're just down the hallway from where Walter Cronkite delivers his newscast."

"How can that be? This is local, he's national."

"Broadcast technology has advanced quite a bit in the last few years. They do amazing things with antennas these days. "

"Well, how do you know Cronkite is right down the hall?"

"Oh, I know the whole layout of this building, as well as ABC and NBC. Not just here, but their Hollywood operations, too. And the layouts of the movie studios. I can tell you everything you need to know about the set of Marcus Welby, M.D."

"That's not a movie."

"It's filmed at Universal City. I've been there. Oh, have I been there."

Well, Truman thought, this young man obviously has a fascination with show business. He probably couldn't get work--most actors can't when they're just starting out--and so had turned to radicalism in desperation. That's why he had tried to recruit him to his cause, so he could get on television where some big producer might see him. Truman bore him no grudge for having been taken advantage of in such a manner. He's Lana Turner, and I'm Schwab's drugstore, hee, hee.

"You know," said Truman. "I could help you out. I have many, many connections in the entertainment industry. Why, in the last year, I've been on both Dean Martin and Sonny and Cher. As we speak my agent is negotiating an appearance on The Carol Burnett Show.

"Do lions of literature often do TV variety shows?"

"I'm blazing new trails, my dear boy!"

"Sure, Truman. Um, I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back."

"I understand. You're nervous about your television debut."

The young man--Paul? Saul?--exited the room.

"Excuse me, but I want to say that I'm very honored to meet you, Mr. Capote."

It was the somewhat thin, somewhat tall man.

"Actually," Truman replied. "We haven't quite met, but I'm sure it will be quite an honor when we do."

"Oh, excuse me. I'm Harry Fisher. I'm going to be on Bookchat, too."

Fisher held up a book. On the cover was Dick Hickock and Perry Smith!

Truman started to shake. He felt like throwing up.

"You all right, Mr. Capote?"

"Why...did you...write a book...about those two?" Truman gasped.

"You don't find them funny?"

"Funny?! How could you--" He took a closer look at the book. The Films of Abbott and Costello. How embarrassing.

"I critique all their movies. Offer biographical information. Interview the actors who are still alive, including Bud Abbott himself. He's not in good shape. In a wheelchair and everything."

"Oh, I am sorry, my good man. I thought it was Perry and Dick. I must see an ophthalmologist."

Fisher smiled. "The two guys you wrote about In Cold Blood. The killers."

"Only one of them did the actual killing."

"They both got the chair, didn't they?"

"No, they were hung," and just then Truman saw the image of them swinging from the rope as the floor sprung open. With shaky legs, Truman hobbled over to the bar and poured himself a straight whiskey.

"Did you see them hang?"

"Yes. Yes I did."

"You're lucky. I always wanted to see an execution."

Feeling anything but lucky at that moment, Truman asked, "Why would you want to see something like that?"

"Well, I think it'd be interesting. That's why I'm a writer. To write about things I find interesting. I find Abbot and Costello interesting, and I find executions interesting. Unfortunately, I doubt if they'd let me write about both. At least not one right after the other. My publisher wants me to do The Three Stooges next. Nothing against them, I think they're interesting, too, but I really don't want to be pigeonholed as an author."

Truman could commiserate. After the success of In Cold Blood, his publisher for a while kept sending him proposals for every murder to make the front page of The New York Post. But he wanted to get back to his masterpiece-in-progress, where he would make it clear once and for all to Doubting Thomases like that young radical--Paul was his name, right?--that the rich weren't all that bad. A further incentive was that you rarely saw anybody tied to a noose at a garden party in the Hamptons.

"Moe and Larry are both still alive," the somewhat tall, somewhat thin man continued. "I look forward to meeting them, but those guys that came after Curly and Shemp, I'm not interested in them at all. I'll just be going through the motions interviewing them. I bet you didn't have that problem."

"Well, if I did I wouldn't admit it, and I didn't interview anyone I wasn't already interested in. The only thing I didn't look forward to was--" Truman took a mighty gulp of his whiskey, as the unwanted memory came back.

"You mean the execution?" asked the man who wrote the Abbott and Costello book. "I'm sure it wasn't pleasant to watch but look what they did! They slaughtered an entire family. You can't say they didn't get what they deserved."

Get what they deserve? Well, thought Truman, two wrongs don't make a right. Actually six wrongs if you add up the Cutters and Perry and Dick. Not that they were innocent. Or innocents. Insane, maybe. That's what their lawyer was trying to prove, but the judge wouldn't let in the psychological exams. "Personality disorders" and the like didn't fall under the legal definition of insanity. Truman wondered if anything else would have, at least in Perry's case. In his many interviews with the man, Truman had gotten the distinct impression he was a homosexual, albeit repressed. Perry knew a bit about that world and seemed curious to learn more. As much as Truman despised linking homosexuality with insanity, if it could help the young man evade the hangman's noose, it would be worth it. The lawyer didn't think so. All the jury needs to hear is that Perry is a faggot, he said dismissively. Truman took that to mean they'd convict and condemn him to death. So instead the jury assumed he was as heterosexual as Dick, and the jury convicted and condemned the both of them anyway. The crime was too horrific. Probably nothing could have saved them. Truman certainly couldn't have saved them. The lawyer seemed to think otherwise. He thought Truman could somehow bring about a last-minute reprieve. You're rich and famous, he said. Rich? He was living on a New Yorker advance. Famous? Some of those Kansas farmers thought they were meeting the former President when they first heard his name. You wrote a famous book, the lawyer said. The governor's wife is an Audrey Hepburn fan. Truman eventually stopped taking his calls. He did go see the execution itself. Dick and Perry both had requested that he be there. He watched them drop--Truman gulped down the rest of his whiskey--and then went back home to Manhattan to write his book. In Cold Blood sold more copies than Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany's combined. That finally made him rich and famous. Now he might be able to get a couple of condemned killers a stay of execution. Just not Dick and Perry.

Truman looked up at the TV, expecting to see Merv Griffin. Instead it was Walter Cronkite, whom Truman had met through the Paleys.

"In Watergate news, the Nixon administration denied the latest allegations to emerge from..."

Truman, whom hadn't been following the ongoing national scandal too closely, wondered if the allegations were of a sexual nature. Maybe Nixon was gay! He was repressed over something. Look how he walked. A tin soldier moved more gracefully.

The short, chubby teenage page poked his head through the door.

"Hey, Mr. Capote, the producer wants to see your boyfriend before he lets him go on the air with you."

"That guy is your boyfriend?" asked the Abbott and Costello author. "You're not gay, are you?"

Truman put his hand under his chin, wriggled his fingers, and in a sing-song voice asked, "Well, what do you think?"

The author laughed. "Oh, I get it. Very funny."

The page looked around the room. "Where is he?"

"Oh, he needed to use the men's room. He'll be right back."

"There's one right here in the green room. Right behind you."

Truman turned his head. So there was a bathroom! Now that he thought about, he'd even used this particular one in the past. The door was open some. His young friend--boyfriend, hee, hee--wasn't in the darkened lavatory.

"Well," Truman replied to the page. "He obviously was unaware that--"

"Hey, isn't that who you're talking about?" asked the Abbott and Costello author, as he pointed to the TV screen.

Cronkite was at his desk talking--"Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said today in a news conference..."--but to his left with his frontier-jacketed back turned to the camera was the young radical. He moved to the center of the screen, turned toward the camera, and sat down right on the desk, obfuscating the anchorman in the process. The radical pulled out what looked to be a poster from the sleeve of his jacket, and unfurled it in front of him. It read:
                                                                                                           

                                                              CBS

                                                            UNFAIR

                                                                TO

                                                              GAYS

 

Now he began to speak:

"Sorry to interrupt the broadcast, but this is important. The much-vaunted CBS news organization has practiced continuous discrimination of gays through censorship. It recently reported on a gay rights bill struck down by the New York City Council but failed to add that similar bills have become law in 23 other cities in the last few years. Furthermore, this news program covered 5,000 women who marched down Fifth Avenue, but ignored another occasion when 50,000--I repeat, 50,000--gays marched down the same avenue in protest of..."

Oh, God, thought Truman. How am I going to explain this to the Paleys? I let this nut in here!

"My, My," said the somewhat tall, somewhat thin man who wrote the Abbott and Costello book. "Your friend is quite the rabble-rouser."

"He's not my friend! I just met him yesterday! He tricked me into bringing him here!"

There was the sound of pounding footsteps. Truman glanced at the open door. The security guard whom he had earlier dazzled with his celebrity ran past it and down the hall.

"Now where is he going?"

"Right there," replied the page, pointing to the screen.

The guard, now on television himself, grabbed the young rabble-rouser by the shoulders and yanked him off Cronkite's desk. The screen went black for just a moment, only to be replaced with:

                                                            PLEASE

                                                            STAND

                                                                BY

"And that's the way it is," muttered the page.

BAM! The sound of something hitting a wall could be heard through the open door. Truman ran out into the hallway to investigate.

Toward the end of  the hallway, near a sign that said STUDIO 33, the security guard had the young radical pressed against the wall, the latter rather defenseless as his arms, legs, and even torso were tied up with what appeared to be cable.   

"FAGGOT!" the guard screamed, punching the radical in the face.

And that wasn't the end of it.

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

"FAGGOT!"

 POW!

"FAGGOT!"

 POW!

Truman shook his head sadly. There was nothing he could do for the young man. He certainly wouldn't be spending the night with him.

Truman turned to go back into the green room, but never made it, for blocking his way were...

Dick Hickock and Perry Smith!

Truman ran away from the two, stopping only to avoid colliding into the guard and the radical.

"Whoa, Mr. Capote!" cautioned the guard, who then went back to what he was doing.

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

Truman spun around and away from them, but, there, at the end of the hallway, were Dick and Perry!

"Best to stand back, Mr. Capote. This could get violent," warned the guard. "FAGGOT!"

POW!

"Could get--well, all right" Truman replied, and then turned around once again, and Perry and Dick were still there.

Oh, dear, if he must be haunted by a ghost, why couldn't it be Marcel Proust?

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

The radical began to slump downward. The guard merely slid him back up against the wall.

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

After that last punch, the radical turned his head, the only part of his body he was capable of moving at that point, toward Truman. His once-pretty face was now a mélange of blood and bloated flesh.

"Tru...," he moaned.

Despite himself, and in violation of every prudent instinct he could muster, Truman made an appeal to the guard, "Will you please stop doing that to him?"

"Mr. Capote, this man broke the law!"

"What law?"

"He was trespassing!" he replied, and turned his attention back to the young radical, "FAGGOT!"

POW!

"Trespassing?!" Truman exclaimed. "A misdemeanor?! It's not like he slaughtered a family in Kansas!"

"A family in Kan--Oh, I get it. Good one, Mr. Capote! Well, hanging is too good for this faggot!"

POW!

"And as for his being a faggot, so am I!" Truman exclaimed.

"Aw, don't kid with me, Mr. Capote."

"I am a faggot! And so is Liberace! And the Paleys--"

"They're faggots?"

"No, you fool, they're worse, as far as you're concerned. The Paleys are very good friends of mine, the same Paleys who own this very network, this very hallway, and that very wall you're punching that young man's head against!"

"Mr. Capote, I have a job--"

"I can vouch for this man!" a familiar voice shouted out.

It was Walter Cronkite, standing underneath the STUDIO 33 sign.

The guard pointed to the badly bruised radical.

"Him?"

"No," said Cronkite. "Truman. He really does know the Paleys. I've been to their home many times, and Truman's always there."

Further emboldened, Truman began wagging his finger at the burly guard.

"You heard him. Uncle Walter! The most trusted man in America. LBJ said he lost the Vietnam War when he lost Walter. Or something like that. That's how influential he is. Now if you don't stop punching that young man right now, I'm going to tell the Paleys on you. Also, I won't give you that autograph I promised. You still want it, don't you?"

"Well, sure, Mr. Capote, but I can't just let him go. We called the police and they should be here any minute. It's my job to keep this faggot subdued until they arrive."

"Look at him! How much more subdued can he get?"

The guard sighed, and took his hand off the tied-and-bound man's chest, causing him to slide to the floor. Truman crouched to his level, looking for some signs of life on the bloody mess that was once his face. As it turned out, he needed only to hear that sound of life.

"Thanks, Tru..." he said in a weak voice.

"Thanks for what? Looks like I'm a few blows too late."

"No, no... You came right in time...One or two more would have finished me."

Truman smiled. "I guess us rich and famous types aren't so bad after all, eh?"

"Well...you're not so bad after all...As for the other rich and famous...I'll have to wait and read that book of yours."

"We need to get you to a hospital."

The young man nodded his head to something behind Truman.

"Maybe they'll take me."

Truman turned to look. Down the hallway, past where the kind of tall, kind of thin man and the chubby teen page were standing--had they been there the whole time? --were a couple of policemen, looking curiously through those big doors he and the radical had earlier walked through.

The guard pulled the radical back up and tried to march him in the direction of New York's Finest, but he fell back down, the consequence of both his feet being tied together, and the beating he had just taken. So the guard picked him up again and began dragging him backwards toward the cops.

"So long, Truman," said the radical as he was being pulled away. His voice didn't sound quite as weak.

"So long... Saul?"

The puffy-face radical smiled. "Hey, you remembered! But Paul would have been all right, too. It's a variant."

"Aren't we all?"

Cronkite shook his head.

"What do you suppose got into that young man?"

Truman shrugged. "Maybe he just wanted to break into show biz."

Cronkite laughed heartily and put his hand on Truman's shoulder.

"You were always good with the bon mots, Truman. Hey, the Paleys are having a dinner party next week. I expect to see you there." And with that the venerable newscaster disappeared back into Studio 33.

As for Truman, he decided he'd call it a day. Go back home and work on his novel. He had his own rabble to rouse.

Except that at the end of the hallway, the teenage page was talking to a middle-aged man Truman recognized as the producer of Bookchat.

The man went back inside, and the page called out. "Mr. Capote, Bookchat was supposed to start fifteen minutes ago. They've been pretending to have technical difficulties. We have to get you on the air."

Truman sighed, and walked reluctantly toward the Bookchat studio, wondering all the while if it wasn't too late to break out of show biz.

 

 

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Compositional Consumption Edition)

 

In all the good Greek of Plato
I lack my roastbeef and potato.

A better man was Aristotle,
Pulling steady on the bottle.

I dip my hat to Chaucer,
Swilling soup from his saucer.

And to Master Shakespeare
Who wrote big on small beer.

The abstemious Wordsworth
Subsisted on a curd’s worth,

But a slick one was Tennyson,
Putting gravy on his venison.

What these men had to eat and drink
Is what we say and what we think.

The influence of Milton
Came wry out of Stilton.

Sing a song for Percy Shelley,
Drowned in pale lemon jelly,

And for precious John Keats,
Dripping blood of pickled beets.

Then there was poor Willie Blake,
He foundered on sweet cake.

God have mercy on the sinner
Who must write with no dinner,

No gravy and no grub,
No pewter and no pub,

No belly and no bowels,
Only consonants and vowels.

--John Crowe Ransom, "Survey of Literature"

..............................................................................................................................................

This just in...

Neal Adams 1941-2022

Vital Viewing (Naked Light Bulbs, Rude Remarks, and Vulgar Actions Edition)

 

Playwright Tennessee Williams was born on this day in 1911 (he died in 1983.) Williams was about 63 when he sat down for an interview with talk show host Dick Cavett in a leafy courtyard of an antebellum era New Orleans hotel. As his plays were an unusual blend of tragedy, comedy, poetry, social commentary, sex, violence, and local color, you might expect the man himself to be somewhat unusual, and Williams certainly doesn't disappoint, but he's unusual in the most charming, wonderfully Southern twangy way possible. Though any careful, or even sloppy, reading of his work would indicate a rather dark nature, he seems to be in good humor here. Watch and listen:

It took me a bit of googling to find out who the hell this pirate was that Cavett was talking about. As Williams suggested, Jean Lafitte was an obvious choice, as he was the most famous pirate in New Orleans, having helped Andrew Jackson defend the city against the British during the War of 1812 in exchange for a pardon (what none of the local combatants on either side knew is that a peace treaty had been signed in Belgium a few weeks earlier. Life before the telegraph.) But he wasn't involved with any plot to bring Napoleon to America. 

Turns out it was a friend of Laffite's named Dominique You. A wealthy New Orleanian and former mayor by the name of Nicholas Girod sponsored a plan to have You rescue Napoleon Bonaparte from his second exile on St. Helena (Elba was the first), bring him to America, and set him up in a guest room in Girod's home, where the Little Corporal would presumably live rent-free. This was a popular scheme in New Orleans, which at the time had a heavily ethnic French presence, and, who knows, had Napoleon not died before You had even set sail, it might have gotten Girod another term as mayor. The house is still in existence, and is now a restaurant called The Napoleon House. So Cavett knew what he was talking about, even if it was a bit of a digression from anything having to do with Tennessee Williams. But look at me, I'm digressing myself! So lets get back to the playwright.

 

He was born Thomas Lanier Williams III, but thought Tom was a rather "dull name" for a writer, and so started calling himself "Tennessee" when he was about 27 years old and his playwriting career began in earnest. According to John Lahr's acclaimed 2014 biography, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, which right now is sitting to the left of the computer I'm writing this on, he lived in the actual state of Tennessee for just two separate years of his life, the first time when he was still a toddler, and the second time when he had been sent there to recover from a nervous breakdown after--I mean no disrespect but for personal reasons I can't help but smile--working in a shoe warehouse. However, Williams' father, though not particularly distinguished himself (an alcoholic who gambled away his middle-management earnings, he once got part of his ear bit off in a poker fight), came from a distinguished line of Tennesseans including that state's first senator, and so by giving himself that nickname, young Tom Williams figured he could claim a piece of that linage for himself. As for where he did live in his life, until he was eight he lived mostly in Mississippi in the house of his maternal grandfather, an Episcopal minister from Illinois, just enough time for him to acquire that Southern accent. After his father, who had been a traveling shoe salesman, was transferred to the shoe company's home office in St. Louis, Williams, his prim and proper mother Edwina, mentally troubled sister Rose (the model for Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie), and younger brother Dakin (often depicted in Williams biographies as the most normal one of the bunch, later in life he was seen as a bit of a character himself) were packed off to the hustle and the bustle and the Northern accents of a major Midwestern industrial city. The difference between the two environments would pop up again and again in his plays (as did just about every other facet of Williams life with the notable exception of his homosexuality, and even that was there, though thinly camouflaged.) Jumping ahead to the last thirty years of his life, Williams mostly divided his time between Manhattan, the home of Broadway where his plays were produced, and Key West, the bohemian island and city just off of Florida's southernmost tip. And there were extended trips abroad where he palled around with the likes of Gore Vidal and Truman Capote (at first the three of them together, and then, once Vidal and Capote had a falling-out, separately.) In-between and interspersed and intertwined with all of that were residencies in the aforementioned New Orleans, the setting of a number of his plays, including one of his most famous. If you were listening to that Cavett interview carefully, you would have heard a line read from one of those plays. If you weren't listening carefully (and shame on you for not doing so), I'll repeat it here:  

"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!"

Obviously that line is packed with allegorical meaning, but that's not the only thing. It's also packed with...

 

 

 

...literal meaning.

(There's a River Styx Road that runs through Cleveland's southern exurbs. I wonder if I could turn that into a play.)

A Streetcar Named Desire wasn't Tennessee William's first Broadway hit. That would have been the St. Louis "memory play" The Glass Menagerie, which came out in 1945, two years earlier. But the success of Streetcar did prove Williams was no one-hit-wonder (in fact, he eventually became a seven-hit wonder, nine-hit wonder if you throw in off-Broadway, ten-hit wonder if you add an original screenplay, eleven-hit wonder if you count a best-selling memoir, a sixteen-hit-wonder if you throw in the movie adaptations, and I think that's it--Oh, wait, there were several highly-rated TV adaptations, and some of his Broadway flops did quite well when performed by regional companies, but I can't count them as hits because my pocket calculator just upped and died on me.) 

In 1951, A Streetcar Named Desire was turned into a movie, starring Vivien Leigh as Blanche, Marlon Brando as Stanley, Kim Hunter as Stella, and--I'm going to let you guess the last one..................That's right, Karl Malden as Mitch, not looking all that much different than he did when he played opposite Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco some twenty years later. Brando, Hunter, and Malden all were in the original 1947 Broadway production (I've gone online and looked at pictures from that production, and Malden STILL looks like he did in The Streets of San Francisco!) 

Here's the trailer: 

If the above doesn't convince you that this movie might not be a bad way to kill 125 minutes, here's a couple of more reasons:

Stanley Kowalski, widely considered to be the villain of the piece (though some literary scholars would consider that an oversimplification.) Was Marlon Brando's hiring an oversimplification? As Williams described it after hearing him read for the part, Brando was "God-sent". Except God hadn't read the play's own instructions, which states Stanley is about 30 years old, the same age as Mitch. Brando was 23, 12 years younger than Malden, and a whopping 15 years younger than Jessica Tandy, who originated the role of Blanche, Stanley's sister-in-law. Even Kim Hunter, who played Blanche's sister and Stanley's wife Stella, was two years older. Director Elia Kazan (who also helmed the film version) privately thought Williams was turned on by Brando. Williams did admit that "he was just about the best-looking young man I've ever seen", but the wily wordsmith also offered this explanation and/or rationalization:  "It had not occurred to me before what an excellent value would come through casting a very young actor in this part. It humanizes the character of Stanley in that it becomes the brutality and callousness of youth rather than a vicious old man ... A new value came out of Brando's reading which was by far the best reading I have ever heard." Whether he said this before or after the cold shower, I can't say, but Brando got the part, got up on stage, and turned on theatergoers. Then he got the film role, went before the camera, and once the prints went out to the nation's movie palaces, turned on moviegoers. In fact, he became a movie star and kept on turning on moviegoers right through the 1950s, and into the 1960s, until his steady diet of Mallomars, cinnamon buns, and jars of peanut butter finally caught up to him (fortunately for him, he had genuine acting talent to fall back on, thus allowing him to make potentially no-longer-turned-on audiences an offer they could not refuse.) Here's Brando in, if not necessarily the best, then at least the most famous scene in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire:    

Lust means never having to say you're sorry.

Charlton Heston and (in make-up) Kim Hunter. No matter her appearance, Hunter seems to have no problem attracting shirtless males.

As I said earlier, Jessica Tandy (right) originated the role of Blanche DuBois on stage, and the theater critics of the day thought she did a superb job, something we have to partially take their word for as the performance was never captured on film (however, we do have the audio .) Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, at the time all relatively unknown outside New York City, got to repeat their roles in front of a Hollywood camera. Elia Kazan, who got to repeat his role behind a Hollywood camera, also wanted Tandy for the film version, but the studio execs didn't. Although Tandy finally became a household name in her senior years (thanks to such 1980s movies as Cocoon and, especially, Driving Miss Daisy), she wasn't one in 1951. What the execs wanted was an actress with a national following, i.e., a movie star. Vivien Leigh (above) had some prior experience playing a Southern belle, and had also portrayed Blanche on the London stage (husband Larry was the director), so she got the gig. Nothing against Jessica Tandy--I have fond memories of her and Morgan Freeman's humorous exchanges as they motored about the Jim Crow South--but I don't see how Blanche DuBois can get much better than this:   

Tomorrow is another day. At least it is for that paperboy.

Like the character she played, Leigh eventually succumbed to mental illness. In fact, she even blamed that character, claiming Blanche had "tipped me over into madness." 

I still haven't convinced you to watch this movie? You find the whole Southern Gothic thing too off-putting? All that black-and-white drama with now-dead actors is something you just can't relate to? And what's with all the jazz music? Aren't they supposed to listen to the Grand Ole Opry in the South?

Perhaps this charming young woman can help make it more accessible for you:

I love how, after she tells of Stella returning to Stanley, she can't help but blurt out a hushed "stupid". And dig that shocked Mickey Mouse on her jacket. That says it all.

Tennessee Williams father was a southerner who spent spent so much time in the North that it's said he eventually lost his southern accent. Tennessee Williams mother was a northerner who spent so much time in the South that it's said she eventually gained a southern accent. Somehow in transit they hooked up with each other, opposites attracted while going in opposite directions. Cornelius Coffin "C.C." Williams and the former Edwina Dakin never divorced, but it's telling that I'm forced to use separate pictures because I couldn't find one online with both of them in it. Obviously, there were conflicts there. So be it. As any lit professor worth his tenure will tell you, conflict fuels the best fiction, and it fueled Tennessee's plays. There's the conflict between rural calm and urban restlessness, the conflict between cultural enrichment and industrial efficiency, the conflict between the religious and the secular, the conflict between tradition and originality, the conflict between uniformity and individuality, the conflict between homogeneity and multiculturalism, the conflict between nonconformity and economic survival, the conflict between self-actualization and a social life, the conflict between free will and chromosomes,  the conflict between the head and the heart, the conflict between the head and the loins, the conflict between the heart and the loins, the conflict between boy-meets-girl and (as Williams' generation viewed it)  the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, and, as every bit as pronounced in his work as anything sexual, the conflict between upward mobility and downward mobility. Finally, there's the conflict between the Mason and the Dixon, a line Williams spent his entire life straddling. The Dixon part is what gets everybody's attention, but Williams also had things to say about the Mason. Y'all just have to get past the regional dialects and regional colloquialisms to know what they are. Ultimately, his writing was universal, as all art strives to be. And all artists, be they painters, writers, or actors. Take Vivien Leigh. When she wasn't playing Southern belles, she talked with an English accent!  

 

"Mom, Elvis. Elvis, Mom."

Actually, by the time rock 'n' roll arrived on the scene, Tennessee Williams was about 45 years old, not exactly its target audience, and so probably didn't listen to too much of it. However, he does seem to have been a fan of at least one of its musical antecedents:

 In that interview with Dick Cavett, Williams mentions that during one of his stays, perhaps his first stay, in New Orleans, he'd head to the bar after a full day of writing and listen on the jukebox to the proto-doo wop group The Ink Spots. Here's their biggest hit (which Williams and Cavett try but fail to sing), "If I Didn't Care".  Give it a listen. Who knows? Maybe it will inspire you to write your own Streetcar Named Desire.

Now get back to your typewriters, er, keyboards.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed this trip into the heart of Tennessee (the man, not the state.) I guess that's a bit of hyperbole as I got nowhere near his heart, and, to mix a metaphor, barely scratched the surface of his career (though that's not much of a mixture given the trenchant nature of his work.) As long as this post was, I never got around to Big Daddy, or Carroll Baker in her short nightie in a crib, or Anna Magnani and her tattooed friends, or those hungry little kids that drove Liz Taylor to a shrink. Maybe next time. For now, so long, and remember... 

...be kind to strangers. They depend on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Slight Spark of Life

 

The above is a excerpt from a diary kept by the late 18th century-early 19th century English  intellectual radical William Godwin, covering the last few days of August and the first few days of September in the year 1797. The fourth entry down on the left-hand side describes what was going on in Godwin's life on the 30th, exactly 223 years ago today. It reads:

Mary, p. 116. Barnes R Fell & Dyson calls: dine at Reveley's: Fenwicks & M. sup: Blenkinsop. Birth  of Mary, 20 minutes after 11 at night. From 7 to 10, Evesham Buildings.

So what's all that mean? Well, scholars who have looked into the matter believe Mary, p.116  refers to a 1788 novel Godwin was reading titled Mary: A Fiction, written by the 18th century radical feminist (by the standards of the day) writer Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Godwin had in fact married only five months earlier. Barnes is crossed out so we won't worry about that individual (if it is indeed an individual.) Fell, Dyson, Reveley, Fenwick and M. were all friends or acquaintances of Godwin's. Scholars can't identify Blenkinsop, but Godwin apparently ate supper with him (or her.) Skipping the second sentence for just a moment, Evesham Buildings refers to Godwin's residence, where he was at from 7 to 10. AM or PM? Assuming this diary entry is chronological in nature, I'm thinking it's AM (in which case it's now the 31st.) I say that because Mary is born 20 minutes after 11 at night, hence PM, and we all know 11 comes after 7 (and, for that matter, 10.) So who is Mary? Obviously not Wollstonecraft, who was by then 38. In fact, it's Wollstonecraft's and Godfrey's daughter, the reason the two tied the knot in the first place (though if you do the math, you'll see it's a somewhat belated knot.)

I'd like to report that Godwin's, Wollstonecraft's, and little Mary's story from that point on was one of familial bliss, but, unfortunately, I can't, for 11 days later there was this entry:

                 20 minutes before 8. _________________________ 

 Godwin was now a widower with one daughter and and one stepdaughter (Fanny, Wollstonecraft's daughter from a previous relationship.) He soon remarried a woman with two children of her own, though young Mary was said to have had an uneasy relationship with her stepmother. Hey, it's not always the Brady Bunch.

Godwin for his part doted on Mary, plied her with books, and raised her to be a radical intellectual like himself. He did such a thorough job that she fell in love with an up-and-coming radical intellectual...

 

….Percy Shelley, who set forth his radical views in rhyme. Mary and Percy actually met through Godwin, for whom the young poet had a great deal of admiration. Godwin seems to have been less than flattered, as he opposed Mary and Percy's eventual marriage. Part of it was that Shelley, a scion of a wealthy family, had promised to pay off Godwin's many debts, only to renege after his parents cut off his purse strings. The other part was that Shelly was already married, a marriage that only ended when his wife drown herself in the Serpentine, a recreational lake in London's Hyde Park.

And so Percy and Mary tied the knot. It was said to be an open marriage, though biographers agree that  he was more enthusiastic about free love than her. Whoever they were sleeping with, when together they enjoyed each other's company. One moment of togetherness had them holed up in a Swiss chalet with Percy's good friend Lord Byron and a Doctor Polidori during a spell of particularly nasty weather. To kill time they decided each would write a horror story. Though Percy and Byron were both published writers at that point, Mary was the only one to actually finish a story. Percy liked it so much that he encouraged her to expand it into a novel. And so she did. A horror novel with an intellectual bent, though for those who haven't read it but recognize the title, it may be more resonant of black-and-white Hollywood and Halloween costumes:

These days, Mary Shelley is more well-known than either William Godwin or Mary Wollstonecraft. Still, she needed their genes. Writers are born, not made.

 

 

 .