Aspasia was both a jazz and opera singer. She could go through four octaves like Yma Sumac. Dressed, as she was about to leave, we started kissing again in the doorway, got undressed again and went back to the bedroom. She wouldn’t tell me where she lived but said I was going to be a burning ember in her life and that if I got a message to the Art Students League, she’d leave a message for me about when and where we could meet again.
“Hey, composer man, I better get the hell out of here before your wife comes back.”
After Aspasia had gone, my gonads glowing, I opened up the window to let some nice new fresh fumes come from the passing traffic. For some days I had been further intensifying my study of the fugue. And taking deep solace listening to my heroes in the world of music. Especially the great swelling melodic choruses of Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass. Which I had once traveled to Paris to hear when it was being performed in the church of Saint Sulpice. A sacredly remembered day in my life. The waves of sound and voices still sweeping through my brain and throbbing in my ears even as I would walk along a noisy avenue. And heard myself saying, “Praise be to you, Gounod.”
And then opening up the window even wider, I played the record and turned up the volume. The orchestral sounds and the voices of Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass thundering out again to the uninitiated passing in the street. Not a goddamn person ever notices. How dare they be uncomprehending and not stop and listen. How dare they not let their souls be uplifted with the sound. Push up the window even wider. Further turn up the volume. Shout Gounod, Gounod out over the street. Listen, you bastards. The choral voices are roaring “Sanctus dominus,sanctusdominus.”And you, you philistine fucker in the lumber jacket on the curb with your big stomach sticking out. Who the fuck do you think you’re shouting at.
“Hey, somebody call Bellevue, will yuh. A guy’s gone crazy up there in the window.”
“Fuck you, you infidel barbarian scoffer. Get out of here before I come down there and bust you one.”
A little group had formed and a gang of kids collected. As well as the passing garbagemen, who stopped. Even one who had his face busily buried in the Wall Street Journal studying his investments, looked up. Lean out, shake my fist. Could make me look like someone who can’t take this city anymore. And lead to maybe any second an ambulance or paddy wagon coming to take me away to a padded cell in that building euphemistically referred to as “Bellevue,” with barred windows on the East River. Or if I bust one of these bastards in the face. Or worse if they shoot me, take me to Bellevue morgue, where the hundreds of bodies lie unclaimed. Sylvia could identify me on two sides. Either with the scars she’s left on my arse. Or by the size of my Irish big prick.
“No need to roll him over. That’s him.”
The hopeless obtuseness of it all. Except for the advent of Aspasia, how can one’s creative desires be unleashed to soar. The indifference to be found in this city has no equal. Makes you want to jump from the Brooklyn Bridge into the murky East River waters. Instead, all you can do is weep. Boo-hoo. But then one might as a pedestrian venture somewhere in the city and pass, totally out of the blue, some roving minstrel which would restore hope and optimism. Only yesterday I was elated as I stopped to listen to a man playing the concluding bars of Giovanni Pergolesi’s Concerti Armonici for strings. The quality of the playing astounded. And one was inspired by the total fortuity and happenstance. I removed my cap and swept it in a bow at the last fading chord. And although I could not afford it, I dropped half a dollar in this outstanding instrumentalist’s hat.
And this day as I was about to slam the window shut and go down and beat the shit out of the infidel barbarian scoffer, suddenly the music stopped. Just at the words “Benedictus nomine domini” sang out and ended, “hosanna in excelsis.” I turned around and there was Sylvia. Standing there in the middle of her exercise space in her flowing mink coat. Hands on her hips, lower lip tightly drawn across her mouth, and surveying me.”
“Who’s been here.”
“What do you mean, ‘who’s been here.’”
“I mean, whose goddamn cheap nasty perfume am I smelling. The bed is broken. Blankets on the floor. Those are teeth marks on your neck.”
“I was having a nap and a nightmare. And the marks are legitimate indentations caused by my own fingernails dug into the skin.”
“Like hell you were having a nightmare. Hanging out the window and music blasting out all over the street and I had to sneak in the downstairs door.”
“I was dealing with uncouth infidels.”
“You were dealing in the bedroom with some bitch who has been here. Look at this, big sloppy gobs of lipstick on a cigarette.”
“Well, I don’t want you to assume that I am the composer of the hour but if you must know, it was an opera singer auditioning. Someone who is to sing soprano in Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass at St. Bartholomew’s Church, where there is a very good chance I may be invited to conduct. Its parish has a musically discriminating and sophisticated congregation.”
“You fucking liar, you couldn’t conduct your way backing assward out of a wet, broken paper bag. You couldn’t even meet a raving queer conductor to kiss his ass and get somewhere, as he didn’t turn up.”
“Hey, you just wait a minute. I’ve been dealing with enough graceless reprobates in the street and other hindrances in my musical work to want to hear any more crap. Why don’t you just go back to Sutton Place and stay there.”
Horns honking down in the street in a traffic jam, as Sylvia, her fur coat flying open, pulled off the wooden arm of the broken chair and sent it sailing across the room. The piece of walnut shined with elbows, bouncing off my upraised arm with the sound of something that could be broken. Or something so goddamn bruised, it was beyond being used for squeezing again. As she huffs off through the kitchen, sweeping pots and dishes from the shelves, dismounts a pan cooking on the stove, and disappears into the bedroom. More sounds of flying objects and breaking glass. Life, as it does with a moment of bliss and promiscuous carnality, conspires then to bring every goddamn worry upon you. Not only attempted murder and a possible fractured arm but also the clap. Or worse, the syph. Or some other goddamn fatal affliction. That I may, if I’ve now got it, now give. Cerebral anguish that would drive you into buying a television set. Or attempting to climb a tree or get into heaven. Or best of all, to go get a ticket on a ship back to Europe. But she’s back before I can even get out the door.
“That’s right, look at me with your amazed look, Chopin.”
“Why the hell did you do an unladylike thing as that. Potatoes that I was boiling, all over the floor.”
“Since I’ve paid for everything in here, why not. After all, it’s merely the sort of primitive peasant vegetable your ancestors used to dig out of the ground.”
“Hey, you cut out that ethnic slander.”
“It happens to be an anthropological fact. I may have engaged in consensual gang-banging in my time, but you’re not going to bring someone into where I live to
screw.”
Holy Christ, she stands there readmitting her carnal past. Knowing of the wounding it gives and the sour wrench of distrust it sends convoluting through one’s guts. When such should be interred to remain in her graveyard of memory. In which it probably won’t be long before the indiscretions of yours truly reside. But I was a total innocent victim of an unpremeditated carnal incident, whereas women always plot and plan and always like having a few reserve pricks they can fall back on, even when the present one they’re enjoying stimulates them. And they never forget a shape or size. Plus, the more pricks hanging out around them nearby, all the better. I want similar freedom. And not be a poor innocent who encounters a moment of healthy carnal gaiety and ends up suffering a dusting-over and the apartment gets visited upon it even worse. Such goings-on could predict that one might never again have peace on earth. Never again see Aspasia’s big innocent doe eyes, hear her pleasantly raucous laughter, or feel her silken soft lips or incredible elliptically enticing tits.