32 THE SONGS OF SALOME
You Talking to Me?
In late August, Alchemy and I moved in with Nathaniel. Hilda didn’t put up much of a fuss after Bicks Sr. informed her that I was within my rights. Nathaniel, Gibbon, Ruggles, even my New York therapist blathered on about how I needed to rent a studio and get to work. I lacked inspiration. The opportunity to use it for activities other than making art might be too enticing.
I’d kept my polyamorous diversions to zero until Nathaniel left town to do a series of university lectures deploring Reagan’s election and the few flatulent and toothless protests. Alchemy spent the weekend with Hilda. Holencraft finally received his long-awaited reward (he rented us a suite at the Pierre), which was sexually gratifying, but after the fact added a nasty odor of moldy banana bits and rusty nails to my soulsmell. It put me off flings … for a time.
I was still unmotivated to make art or exhibit until one late night while vagabonding across the Brooklyn Bridge. Awash in the East River’s aquatic mist and the skyline’s iridescent flickers of light and death, a corpselike man wearing a long overcoat bumped into me. I stumbled, snapping the heel of my silver mule, and scraped my right palm on the pavement. I leaned back against the rail and yelled, “Watch out, asshole!” Already far ahead of me, he turned and waved a massive fist and kept walking. I felt droplets of blood oozing from my hand. I dabbed at them with the bottom of my blouse when the psychopomp communes of Lou Andreas-Salomé—DNA ancestor, rapturer of Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud — vapored through my body. “Do not let men or their desires intimidate you, not by physical strength or the demands of marriage or sex. Never let any man dictate the designs of your life.”
She absolved me for my slavish behavior when I was under Horrwich’s sway. “Oh, I understand. I lament that the photo of me whipping Nietzsche and Paul Rée has become my legacy. It overshadows my books on female sexuality that predated Master Freud. True child of mine, do not let us down. I expect you to right the wrongs of our history.”
Inspired by her visit, I created the Women of the Scourge series of representational canvases (which appalled Gibbon), challenging the historically accepted phallocratic histories of my women. My first painting was Juan de Juanes’s Beloved Disciple and Jesus with Jesus as Salome’s disciple. I modeled Salome’s face on Greta’s. Using the same role reversals, I did Charlotte Corday and Marat (Jacques-Louis David), Salome and John the Baptist (Caravaggio), and of course the photograph of Frau Lou and Nietzsche.
At the opening, Alchemy came running up to me. He had scraped his elbow, which was bleeding. Gibbon fetched a Band-Aid and I bandaged it quickly, but not before Frau Lou ascended to me. “Salome, you must protect him. Explain to him the history of these works. It is essential to his future and ours.”
Gibbon and I made a pact about selling the paintings, which were fetching five figures — I could veto a sale to anyone I deemed unworthy. Over Nathaniel’s protests, I sold one to Malcolm Forbes, who gave me a ride on his motorcycle.
A few nights after the exhibition came down, Nathaniel and I went to our favorite Chinatown dive. After the salt-and-pepper squid, he sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes? Speak,” I demanded.
“I received a letter from Jean-Marc at Vincennes University in Paris. They offered me a one-year position.” Nathaniel had adopted the tactic of unveiling any potentially inflaming situations while we were in public, and with Alchemy present. He thought that might keep me from erupting.
“Are you asking me to join you? Or telling me you don’t want us to come?”
“Of course I want you to come. But there are extenuating circumstances.”
His desire to escape the U.S. didn’t surprise me. He was appalled by Reagan’s election, felt thwarted by the apathy of American college kids, and was energized by the promise of the new French Socialist prime minister Mitterrand. He explained that Vincennes was no longer the radical flash point, but it still offered an opportunity he couldn’t find in America.
I didn’t erupt then — not because we were in public but because his evasiveness wounded me. “Are you sure this isn’t a ploy so you can leave me? Or so I’ll marry you? What happened to offering us stability?”
He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His bottom and top teeth clicked against each other as if they were tapping an urgent telegraph. I understood that his once vibrant hope for domestic calm was wrecked by me. In dark moments, I feared he saw himself debased by the cunningly crazy dominatrix with whom he had tragically fallen in love.
“Not at all. I won’t desert you. I want you two to come.”
“And I want you to take it.”
Over the following weeks, Nathaniel never mustered the courage to say: I am going to France with or without you. Our relationship became laden with recriminatory jibes and plaintive facial tics. I finally erupted.
“Stop looking at me as if I’m your ball and chain!” I stomped off and locked myself in the bathroom. Facing the door, I shrieked, “I love you, but if I marry you, you’ll share power over me with the Bickleys. I can’t give you that!”
His bare feet thumped on the wood floor toward the bathroom and he bellowed in his self-righteous/aggressive/injured Nathaniel-Brockton-on-the-podium tone that he rarely used with me, “Is that so terrible? You can’t possibly trust them more than me!”
I tempered my voice. “You love me and they don’t. You’ll act with your heart. You’ll feel guilty. I don’t want to hate you if you put me back in Collier Layne. And you will.” I opened the door a few inches and peeked out. “You’re scared, right? Afraid that I was in here hurting myself?” He grimaced as if I’d clawed his cheek. “Answer me, Nathaniel!”
“Yes,” he said dejectedly. “Yes, you scare me. Are you proud of it?”
Perhaps it was better for all if he left without me.
33 THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2005)
The Big Enchilada
Almost four years after they first met, Alchemy insisted they have dinner at the Don’s, a local Mexican restaurant in Culver City. Moses was already seated in a booth and reading a book when Alchemy slid into the seat across from him. “Sorry to interrupt. You look engrossed. What is it?” Moses held up the cover that read The Disinherited Mind and then placed it down on the table.
With the exception of a few goo-goo-eyed glances or thumbs-ups, the customers couldn’t have cared less about the famous guy lounging in the crusty booth in the darkest corner of the room.
Alchemy ordered a large guacamole, three tacos, a shrimp fajita dinner, a beer, and a margarita all for himself. Moses was always impressed with his gargantuan appetite and his ability to remain damn near skeletal. Alchemy finished crunching down a chip with hot salsa and guac. “I do my best to keep Salome and Nathaniel away from L.A. because I don’t want to tempt you without knowing what you want to do.”
“Still nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Butterworth says I have to do what feels right for me. I’m still healing, and then the real battle will begin. Ruggles has no idea how Salome will react. And I have no idea how I will react to her reaction.”