Scumbler

  Lubar’s migratory, sleeps around, no regular nest. One night he slept on our living-room floor, rolled his jacket under his head and zonked out, not even drunk. My Kate almost climbed a wall. She’s not enthusiastic about people treating our nest as a flophouse.

  Lubar’s practically a pure migrating bird type. I’ll have to try some birdseed on him. Has asthma, too; asthma’s definitely a bird disease. People who are birds can’t get the right kind of air on the ground. They all ought to live on tops of mountains.

  I’m not having Lubar work on the bike and he’s somewhat upset by that: other people using his tools! But he does bring his toolbox full for me to paint in the picture. I just couldn’t let Lubar work on that lovely bike. He even has a hard time getting his contact lenses in. Sometimes he walks around without tying his shoes. It would be sacrilege, might work some kind of black magic and ruin the machine.

  AN AWKWARD STUMBLING THROUGH LIFE,

  TRIPPING ON HIDDEN TRUTHS WE ALL TRY

  TO IGNORE ANOTHER WINDOW ANOTHER DOOR.

  I’m having so much fun I begin worrying that I am not serious enough about this painting. I’m painting and giggling; laughing too much and I’m not at all sure why I’m laughing. Still. I must say, some of the best paintings I’ve ever done have been the most fun.

  Altogether, I do eight portraits. I’m putting myself in behind Sandy, looking over her shoulder with my back to the picture plane. Velásquez and me.

  I spend three days painting Sweik’s bike on the Place Saint-Sulpice. The last day, there’s an enormous crowd around me. The flics come over from the station house to ask what I’m doing. I tell them I’m painting a portrait of a motorcycle, seems obvious. They want to know if the motorcycle is mine. I tell them no; I’m only an admirateur. The two of them stand beside me for a while, then head back across the Place to the station. Five minutes later they come with another flic; this one has extra braid on his shoulders and a flat hat. Here we go.

  The square-headed flic with the braid asks me again if the motorcycle is mine. I stand stiff and salute with my brush. When I’m really bugged, I can get ridiculous.

  These flics around the Place know me. We lived just up the street for nine years. Once they busted me because I was roller-skating around the Place with my kids. I’m giving our two eldest, Annie and Jim, roller-skating lessons. The cops tell me to get off the skates, stop. I tell them I won’t. They take me by the arms and roll me into the station while I’m waving to the kids, telling them not to worry.

  In the station they look all through their books: no law against roller-skating in public; no law against roller-skating on the Place. I think it just bothered them seeing a bearded man on roller skates laughing. If everybody were like me, we wouldn’t need cops, so they know I’m a big threat to their jobs, subversive. Joy just might be catching.

  Wintertime, when the water froze, the kids and I ice-skated around in the fountain itself. The cops watched us go round and round but didn’t say anything. The whole police station of cops is standing outside their door freezing, watching us; lost their nerve. Terrific skating, like a miniature ice-skating rink. We rested by sitting on stone lion’s paws. It got to be the thing to do; most of the kids in our neighborhood joined us. Paris is a good place for that kind of fun.

  LIONS LURK UNDER SILVER-LEAVED TREES

  AND THE FOUNTAIN POURS ROLLING STONES

  IN ITS BED. STOP AND WAIT. THE

  SUN IS SETTING WITH US.

  Now they’re wanting my papers. I give the top cop my passport, my carte de séjour. He stares.

  Square-head asks if I have permission to paint the motorcycle. I tell him about Sweik. He wants to know where Sweik lives, has out his little book. I give him the address of a dentist I know in the sixteenth arrondissement. They’ll never check. I snap off my brush salute, go back to painting and the head cop drifts away.

  One of the young flics asks why I’m painting a motorcycle. I look at him; seems like a nice guy, really interested. I tell him about the big painting; invite him over to the studio; give him my address.

  A NEW FACE IN AN OLD PLACE.

  A NICE TOUCH, LITTLE OR MUCH.

  This flic actually shows up the next day; looks almost human in civilian clothes. He’s wowed by the painting. I get up nerve and show him our picture from the AMA magazine. There we all are standing in front of the cop motorcycles with the cop station behind us. They actually printed that picture we sent them, full-page spread. This young cop laughs his head off. He’s never going to make it as a flic; cops don’t laugh. Traude comes down from upstairs. She hears a young, laughing male voice, so naturally she comes down. I introduce them; his name is Clement and they go off together for a cup of coffee.

  In the easel painting of the motorcycle I did out on the Place, it looks like a piece of pop art. In my big painting it’s double life size; seems almost ready to roll off my canvas.

  We have the gearbox open and the clutch spread on the ground cloth. That’s the job they’re doing in the painting, “clutch job.” I think I’ll call this painting “In the Clutch.”

  I work another week on the background. I get beautiful distance, fine air feelings between and behind the figures. The Hotel Récamier is on the right side of the painting and the Rue Férou closes off the right edge; a bit of the Luxembourg Garden shows at the end of Férou. The left side looks up the Rue Saint-Sulpice. The painting has a wide-angle-lens effect.

  I take a day off to study the big Veronese painting in the Louvre called “The Marriage Feast at Cana.” I try to establish the same relationship of thrust between foreground figures and background. Naturally, my background is pushed back with some subtle scumbling. I scumble white over the Saint-Sulpice towers against the sky, the sky wrapping itself around the towers: spinning Harley wheels. I keep trying to design movements and points of emphasis in both two and three dimensions. With a big painting you need to. If you’re not careful, everything can fly off in all directions. This sucker’s twenty-five feet across.

  VARYING BACK WITHOUT THOUGHT, I

  CRASH THROUGH SPACELESS TIME, CARRYING

  IN SPENDED TROTH MY OWN LOST TRACKS.

  Finally, it’s finished enough so I need to take it out in our alley for the last touches. I cut a slit in the side wall; remove a board so the canvas can slide out without being removed from the stretchers. Sweik and Tompkins help me. We get it set up at the end of the alley.

  Lord, is it ever impressive! It looks more real than anything real out there. It’s like looking at a great Cinerama movie screen, only in broad daylight. I rig a cover over it with some rusty corrugated roofing tin.

  I work another two weeks, running up and down the alley to get distance; those old-time painters of big paintings must have kept in terrific shape. I run off about five more pounds of gut; wasting away to a shadow, thick shadow. I’m using cans of paint I buy at a wholesale paint store; any size tube would be woefully inadequate. I spend more than two hundred bucks on paint alone. With a big surface like that, you need real texture if you want the apparent texture to look honest.

  I take two days doing the last glazes and scumbles. By this time, there’s a crowd every morning when I get there. By midday, the alley’s full. People are lined up down our alley eating lunch standing up. One guy even has one of those periscope things for watching parades. There are some old geezers who come back day after day. Two girls are making sketches; it’s a poor man’s outdoor version of the Louvre. Motorcycles, coming in for a peek, clutter the streets for two blocks around. They make a tremendous racket blowing out pipes, racing each other, accelerating, booming away.

  And, of course, the ever-loving flics arrive. They don’t do anything, don’t even talk to me, but they set up a guard. To be perfectly honest, I’m glad they’re there. I leave a little light shining on the painting at night. It looks beautiful down the length of the alley, glowing, with everything dark. The gate to the alley is locked at ten o’clock by the concierge, so nobody can get in. Al
so, the blacksmith who lives next to the studio keeps an eye on things for me. Still, it’s nice having flics sitting out there all night; there are all kinds of crazies. I’m half expecting the flics to present me with a bill, like when you hire the Garde Républicaine for a wedding party, or have the lights turned on the Eiffel Tower for an hour. Nope, it’s all free. They’re protecting the public interest.

  CAN YOU SAVE ME FROM YOU—OR ME?

  JUST WHAT ZOO IS THIS?

  So then it’s done; nothing more to do. I decide to have a party, celebrate. I get permission from the concierge to have my party in the studio; I know it will run over into the alley. It’ll be a people’s vernissage. I buy two fifty-liter barrels of wine, with spigots. I buy twenty bags of potato chips, a block of pâté, a wheel of Brie; cook popcorn for half a day.

  I tell the cops I’m having a fête. In France, you’re allowed one noisy party past ten o’clock a month. I tell any neighbors who might hear us; invite them to come. I get the affair for a Saturday night. Friday night the motorcycle people up on the Bastille hear about it.

  Nearby, there’s an American commune group living in a loft; call themselves the Skunk Patch. They’re coming too. They’ve just driven down from Amsterdam in a psychedelic painted bus; on their way to New Delhi for a spiritual conference. They say they’ll give a free show for the party. It’s going to be a regular carnival.

  Kate politely tells me she’d just as soon skip my people’s vernissage. Says all she’s worried about is the paintings getting hurt in the fun and frolic.

  She looks me straight in the eye with her kindergarten withering look.

  “Do you know why you’re doing this? Why are you putting on this circus? It’s costing a lot of money we could use and taking up too much of your time.”

  I know Kate’s right; she usually is. I’ve asked myself some of these questions, not just about this vernissage but about a lot of things I do. I guess some of it’s only simple showing off, playing the big shot. Another part’s trying to convince myself I’m not dying, and do have some control of my own life. Doing something, anything, for no reason at all, playing, is one of the best ways, besides painting, to keep me from feeling pointed, aimed.

  “I don’t really know, Kate. I want to celebrate finishing the painting. I want people to see it before I have to take it off the stretchers and roll it up.”

  “Nobody’s ever going to buy that painting, dear. It might be a good painting, probably is; but no one’s ever going to buy it, so why put on this big show?”

  We don’t usually have these kinds of conversations. It’s a decision we made at the beginning. Jane, my first wife, was always wanting to talk things out. We spent whole nights in bed sometimes, sharing our feelings, our hostilities, ironing things out. Then what good did it do? When something big happened, when I really needed her, she wasn’t there.

  I think talking’s like drawing. You can talk your feelings away until there’s nothing left to live, no mystery, no excitement, no romance, no spontaneity. As I said before, you can draw until there’s nothing left to paint. It’s the same.

  But Kate wants some talking now. I’m not sure what to say. I know I don’t want to say anything. I don’t like looking inside myself any more than I have to. Part of being an artist is being able to surprise yourself. The best part of my paintings come from some secret inside places I don’t know about. I think Kate surprises me even more than I surprise her; it’s a big part of why I love her. I don’t think I could live with a predictable, boring person. Kate’s waiting. We’re in the kitchen and I’m making popcorn.

  “I can just call the whole thing off, Kate. It’s probably a dumb idea anyhow. Why am I, the great gallery hater, giving a vernissage?”

  “You know you don’t want to do that, dear. All I say is just ask yourself what you’re doing, think about it. Some of the things—the way you’ve been behaving the past months makes me wonder just what’s the matter with you.”

  With that she goes out of the kitchen and the popcorn starts popping. I’m happy we don’t go any deeper into things; I’m not ready yet.

  SQUEEZING PIMPLES, A TOOTH

  PICKED TO BLEEDING: FINDING OUT

  IS NEVER QUITE THAT SIMPLE.

  The party’s already rolling before dark. It’s a beautiful night: clear sky, big moon. Even though it’s early summer, there’s the feeling of a Halloween party. Mobs of people are on both floors of the studio; I’m hoping the whole place won’t collapse. I set up the wine barrels downstairs; cover Claude’s statues with burlap sacks. They look like corpses or mummies. The place has a spooky, mysterious look, lit only with candles.

  There must be two hundred motorcycles lined up on the street outside our gate, mostly overpowered four-cylinder bastards. Guys with fluorescent helmets, full leather suits are coming down the alley like medieval knights. Their women are wearing fluttery Afghanistan jackets, sweat shirts. They’re all loose-titted, swinging in the dusk.

  The Skunk Patch crowd comes on at about eleven. They keep pouring in; there must be thirty of them. Leg-wrestling contests get started on the floor. The floor’s already covered with spilt wine, some broken glasses. The driver of the Skunk Patch bus is the leg-wrestling champ. He’s throwing people across the room with a twist of his leg. The place is beginning to smell heavily of grass. Holy cow, if those cops come in, they’ll bust us for sure. I’m dancing like mad with all the wildest women. We’re working up an ugly semiorgy.

  I FLAY VALIANTLY THROUGH UNCUT SKIES,

  TESTED TANGENCIES VECTOR ME TO DESCENT.

  I CLING HELPLESSLY TO A PROMISE OF MAGIC

  IN THE PRIVATE INCANTATIONS OF DESIRE.

  The painting’s an enormous success. People are standing around it outside. I have it well lit with three spots. The motorcycle freaks are turned on by my painting of the machine; an old Ariel like that is a regular Mona Lisa to them. Sweik is there with Sandy. I can’t believe it; she’s wearing a dark blue suit, stockings and heels. She’s even wearing a white blouse with a round tipped collar. She looks like a nun in mufti. She’s leaning on his arm; he’s standing straight, no back problem. It’s nice to see them together. They spend most of the time looking at the painting, then leave about midnight.

  That’s when the Skunk Patch decides to do its trick. They wrestle in a huge plastic bag filled with yogurt. I don’t know where they got all the stuff. Then one gal, one who’s been dancing around in circles all evening—one hand, then the other, waggling over her head, like a confused Indian—strips and climbs into the bag. She lowers herself slowly into it. The other Skunk Patchers tie the top of that plastic sack tight under her armpits. She wiggles and squirms inside the sack, one hand, then the other, over her head. This woman must be six feet tall. She’s like a giant slug with a woman’s head, or a potato with a potato worm sticking its head out.

  The bus driver-leg wrestler, called Billy, starts passing out straws to everybody; then he punches a hole in the side of the plastic with his straw and starts sucking out yogurt. Everybody joins in; the whole mob’s bent around with straws and the woman’s head is rocking back and forth over them. She’s yelling “Suck, suck!” “Oh yeahh!” —things like that. Everybody starts taking turns on the straws. There’s got to be fifteen kilos of yogurt in there.

  They get it half sucked out so the yogurt is down to just below her tits, yogurt-covered tits and tight, slick plastic wrapped like pure pork sausages. I’m ready to get a flashlight pen and sketch pad to start drawing when the bag breaks.

  Yogurt spreads slowly to the floor. Some women begin throwing off their clothes and rolling around in it; they start rubbing yogurt in each other’s hair. The R-complex part of their brains is taking over. It’s all getting very ritualistic. Guys begin licking yogurt off the tall woman, who’s still spinning in her Indian dance. Round and round she goes, lick and lick and lick they go. They’re licking her all over, looking for good spots. Other women start dancing in their own little circles. Everybody is licking e
verybody else off, with or without yogurt. Guys are getting covered with yogurt, so they take their clothes off, too. Now it’s a true old-time full-screen orgy. Yogurt’s all over the place; it’s sticking to my Styrofoam ceiling. The burlap on the statues is saturated, sexy-looking. There’s a mixture of laughing, screaming and slurping, licking noises.

  I detach the water hose going to my studio upstairs; I’m afraid to go up there and look. There’s hardly enough space on the floor to walk; more slurping, smacking sounds.

  Kate knew what she was missing somehow. Maybe my mind doesn’t think far enough ahead. Short-minded like shortsighted, that could be it all right; but then if you look too far ahead you get so paralyzed you never try anything, forget how to fool yourself.

  MENTAL BLIND SPOTS SHIFTING

  IN A VISUAL FIELD, NEVER SEEN

  AND IN NOT BEING SEEN, VISIBLE.

  I turn on the water spigot outside in the court and begin spraying around with the hose. I’m washing yogurt off the gladiators. Maybe it’ll cool the party off some. I spray around, putting out joints. Everybody’s screaming and flopping over each other. I keep squirting, great fun. It looks like one of those summer New York pictures they always put in the newspapers on hot days where somebody’s opened a fire hydrant and kids are jumping around in gushing water.

  Now we have about six inches of floating yogurt on the floor. The water’s draining slowly.

  I turn up the music. They’re beginning to tire out. There’s a confused search for the right clothes, people helping each other dress, then helping them undress again. Clothes all wet, people wringing out shirts, pants, coats. Some of them go outside and wash themselves off at the spigot in the alley. Cézanne would’ve loved to paint this scene. The yogurt-soaked girls are lying flat on their backs on the cobblestones in front of my painting, slipping yogurt-soaked tight jeans over their slippery legs.

  Just then, the flics come up the alley. I don’t know what took them so long. I go out and tell how a plastic bag of yogurt we were going to eat for dessert exploded. We’re all washing off. They don’t believe me, nobody would, but the story’s too good. They could never figure any other way to explain this scene anyway.