Café Calvin, Northhampton

Dear Henry, The heat up here, recently, in remittance-land, has been unforgivable. Though my name (mangled at Ellis Island by some tipsy, sinecured Mick in a circular pasteboard hat) would suggest origination in Africa’s clime (in fact, in predynastic Egypt–by way of France), the La Badarian gene pool gathers no tributary rivulets from anyplace south of Amiens (where there is an excellent cathedral), and I am as suited as an Inuit, or a walrus for that matter, for humidity and strong sunlight. Since being fired from my bookstore job I have lain torpid through the days, sipping gin and stengah, when I am not at the movies, drinking Coke by the gallon, desperate as a man eating human flesh in the hull of a plane crashed on an Alp. Not for us, the "wifebeater," Henry, nor the cheap barbaric rubber sandals sticking to the pavements–much less the savage, erotic exultation in life-threatening humidity. In New York City, as you well remember, Henry, I could not walk half a block without looking as if I had been dunked for hours in cheap cooking grease. At this time of year my sneakers (or "trainers," as Malcolm Gladwell would have them–up his ass, if he likes) begin to smell like some other man’s shoes–a corpse’s. If there were a way to go into a state of refrigerated hibernation for the duration of the summer, I would do precisely that, for any amount of money, until the weather turns cool enough for a genius to walk to the liquor store in Western Massachusetts without wearing a kaffiyeh and a bedsheet.

The days are long gone when La Badarian could fuck off to the Vineyard at this time of year, to lie bathed with cool air in a genius-hammock on the third floor porch, to sleep with a blanket at night. I do not know if I reported to you, Henry, that my grandfather, the Senator, is dead. He is. It happened 19 years ago. He was struck by lightning and incinerated while guiding his gasoline-powered Scamp between the eighth and ninth holes at some sinister, scrubby links on what people call The Island. (It was the same lightning strike that cured Bill Styron of his "depression"–in other ages called the DTs.) Gram was fuddled for a few days after the Senator was planted, which allowed her daughter-in-law Delores, matriarch of the low-rent South Shore La Badarians, to evict the old lady from her 18-room cottage near Gay Head (now Aquinnah, as the previous appellation was never going to be anything but uncomfortably literal to Town Fathers, not to mention humiliated aborigines who could barely sell a hot dog without feeling funny), and slam her, apologetically catheterized (she didn’t need a catheter, except that she did have to have one if they were going to keep her there), into The Home. Her protestations that she wanted to die in her own house were ignored for her own good. Her bank accounts were made "joint" for her convenience, and then emptied so that the money would not show up in her estate upon her death.

Once Gram was tied to a chair in the Home, intubated and separated from her cash and the World, the hideous Medford La Badarians started living in the house and not letting anyone else go there–while not informing Gram of this change–and my near-mongoloid cousin Phil, who had fought his way into what he conceives to be the middle classes via good Credit and a degree in criminology, ended up, owing to the capsize of a cheap kayak off a stretch of private beach, marrying the insane, solicitous daughter of a Belgian industrialist. Phil now lives in the French Alps and stays in contact with the two restaurants he "owns" in Boston by satellite phone. Location is everything.

The last time I went to the Vineyard to visit the "family’s" house I found that my key did not work. Upon entering through a window I found that my room–my room from childhood’s hour, Henry–had been converted into a "gentleman’s day spa" by one of the less employable Medfordites, a community-college graduate named Rosanne who had thought that she might meet JFK Jr. by littering his hedge with leaflets advertising cucumber "facials." After having been on the receiving end for so many years I imagine she thought she would be adequate at dispensing them. At any rate, after the police came (I wrecked the day spa with a five-iron and threw all the shit out the window), it turned out that the house, a perfectly ordinary large clapboard house now worth $7 million, had been "sold" to the vile Medford La Badarians for $215,000, exactly the price they had gotten for their aluminum-sided dump in Medford. When I explained to my grandmother that I had been disinherited, she wrote me a check for five dollars, the sum she put in my Christmas cards until I was 40. It bounced. If I am going to get a summerhouse of the sort to which I am accustomed, Henry, I am going to have to do it myself–a daunting prospect.

But enough of my difficulties. Let me move on to my triumphs. "A.S. Longwood" has used his Sears card to buy–and then pay for–a small toaster oven. I have proved myself capable, in an insect-like way (is there any other way?) of Citizenship, and I find it strangely satisfying, even restful. I suppose that surrendering to normal behavior is a bit like being committed to an institution, or being in the Army. You do a handful of things they want you to do, at the right time–and you do these things irrespective of their foolishness–and you are not only left alone but granted further privileges. This is an amazing breakthrough for me, even at the "ironic distance" of pseudonym and pretended retardation. I have been developing a fondness for the little people, an appreciation for all the mysterious little things they do, and from time to time I even find myself possessed of a gentle desire to be like them. Today I saw one of these saints doing beer deliveries, in a neat suit of brown "work" clothes and steel-toed shoes. His hair was cut neatly and you could tell that he accepted his status, or lack of it, with philosophy, and didn’t owe anyone a nickel. For a moment of hallucinatory intensity I wished that I was him. It was like one’s first exposure, via a cheap microscope, to the beautiful world of mold spores.

It is to be wished for, Henry, relief from one’s own complexity. After gaining the world in the way that is inevitable when a genius finds himself in circumstances which will emancipate his inner carnival fraud, T.E. Lawrence, world-famous as Lawrence of Arabia and in danger of being Lawrence of everywhere else, sought refuge as a private in the Tank Corps–for relief, Henry, from his own implications. What if Jesus had said the hell with this, and joined the Roman Army? My mind strays in that direction, Henry. I think about a job in a factory, a regular routine, a part in my hair, a pin-neat trailer home, just like that beer-delivery guy. Or perhaps I could go live off the land in Alaska, like that guy who died in a bus with a bellyful of potato seeds. Why? Because novels are bunk, written by damaged frauds, and published boringly by idiots. Shall I be a novelist, Henry, or shall I instead be a lifer deli clerk, or a latenight Chinaman on a one-speed bicycle? I prefer the latter options, Henry. I prefer them. For what does it profit a man… You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? God, I wish there were still some fucking monasteries. I had a terrible time making do with the University. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a man with my mind to remain an undergraduate for eight years? It nearly killed me.

I am now "beating the heat" by sipping an icy margarita expertly made by "Jeff" at the Café Calvin. A fetchingly bucktoothed brunette in a white "top" and a watermelon-colored linen skirt has sat down beside me. I have no idea why I still get women, Henry: none. I am not famous, I have no money and I am presently as fat as shit, but there’s something about me, apparently: I could get laid in a convent full of lesbians. This is as much of a mystery to me as it has always been to my friends. That fucking Monahan, who is, I think, happier than me, is across the room drinking a rum and Coke (he comes in at night, has one, and goes home: always working, that motherfucker: of course, he isn’t a genius: he doesn’t have my problems) and making notes in a copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy, probably for review in some low journal. He is wearing a claddagh ring, unironically. He doesn’t appear to have any problems, and I have had, more than once (I had it the other day, when I saw him in the stationers), the strange, strange sensation that I am having his problems for him. It is possible that via the practice of some voodoo he has found peace at my expense. He looks (now packing away his books and papers into his backpack, having the career I ought to be having, on point of genius) rather like that happy insect, the beer-delivery man. Off Monahan goes, serenely, into the humid college-town night, pretending to manage to be an artist as if it were as simple as being an electrician. Never mind him. Tomorrow I’ll embark on my course to a summer house, one way or another. If you think I left my pistol in Saugerties you are very much mistaken. Why do you think I’ve been growing this beard?

Sincerely,
Claude La Badarian
Restaurant Critic
The Aristocrat Magazine
Next Week: An Incident Among Infidels