Chapter 1

i. Meet the poet...

Gertrude Schmidt is opening her door as Berkeley strides down the second floor hallway, a lock of his fine, gray hair falling across the left side of his face and brushing his mustache. She stands in her doorway looking at Berkeley. He beams at her.

“Hi, Gertrude,” he says.

She eyes him coldly as he continues to grin at her. He enters his apartment. The telephone rings. It is Eustacia Hathorne.

“I want to see your new apartment, Berkeley. You’ve been there for weeks already. I heard it’s all women on your floor.”

“There are just three other tenants on this floor.”

“Still, it’s nice for you.”

“The woman next door hates me. I don’t know why, though. She’s a prim and dowdy sort. Gertrude Schmidt.”

“I know her. Your description is too kind. She’s a fright, really. And not your type at all, I wouldn’t think. Stringy brown hair, sallow, pocky skin, eyebrows that meet, week chin. An egghead but with sort of a dumb look on her face all the time. You want to have lunch tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The telephone call finished, Berkeley strips off all his clothes, lights a joint, and strolls around the apartment smoking it--and drinking a glass of whiskey with it. The doorbell rings. Berkeley looks through the peephole. It is Andy, a tall, gawky, handsome youth. Berkeley pulls the door open and invites Andy in. Andy lopes into the living room. He smiles at Berkeley.

“Hey, Ber, you’re nude. Cool.” He nods his head up and down, grinning. “I brought this joint over.” He takes off his leather jacket and pulls a joint from his shirt pocket.

“I admire you older guys,” Andy says through a cloud of dope smoke. “I’m mean a guy like you ... you’re cool. I mean, you’re what? thirty?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Thirty-four. Cool.” He nods some more and takes another hit from the marijuana cigarette. “Thirty-four years old,” he squeaks, holding in his hit, “and you’re handsome and well built.” He let out the smoke. “I mean, look at you, man.”

“Thanks.”

“And you know I love your poetry. I have all your books.” He lit a cigarette nervously.

“I’ll autograph them.”

“You would?”

“Certainly.”

“I brought this over, man,” Andy pulls a bag of marijuana from the pocket of his baggy chinos.

“Cool.” Berkeley skips into the bedroom and comes back with money, his penis slapping his thighs as he approaches. He pays Andy and Andy is on his way.

“Come over tomorrow night, Ber. I’m having sort of a party at my place.”

Berkeley lights some incense and strides into the bedroom. It is evening now, the room is dark, and sitting down on the bed he notices the light from the window next door, a mere six or seven feet away. Dannis Briskin walks into view in the lighted room. Berkeley does a double take. Dannis is dressed in bra and panties, striding past the open window. She makes several passes, with a sort of determined saunter. She walks towards the window and away from it. She stands still a moment facing the window and lights a cigarette. She smokes it till it is finished and then puts out the light and pulls the curtains shut.

The next morning is Saturday. He wakes up at 11:00. He’s been up most of the night writing poetry. He puts on espresso and lights a cigar. He rolls a joint and smokes it. He masturbates, takes a shower, and meets Eustacia Hathorne at the restaurant.

“Berkeley,” she smiles up at him, her face momentarily alight before sinking back into its characteristic austere repose. Berkeley takes a seat opposite her and picks up a menu. Eustacia is seventy, her face a network of wrinkles. She wears lipstick and eye make-up. Her hair is dyed black and fastened in a chignon.

“You live next door to my friends, the Briskins, Berkeley,” Eustacia announces in the prim and Victorian tones in which she customarily declaims.

“Yes, that’s their name. Do you know them?”

“I’ve known Corky Briskin for years.”

“I’ve only seen her to speak to once and we just said hi.”

“She goes to the Episcopal church, the one I go to.”

“I didn’t know you went to church, Eustacia.”

“Not terribly often. Corky has five children, four daughters and a son.”

“It doesn’t seem like I’ve seen that many people around.”

“The oldest daughter is in college, Regalia. She’s a beatnik, if ever I saw one--long, straight dark hair, wears tights and a sweatshirt and a black beret and black-rimmed glasses. She’s enormously intelligent. For the time being, she’s doing sculpture. I like her. The second daughter, Dannis, is the beauty of the family, and terribly self-possessed for a young lady of her age. Natalie is eleven. She’s blond like her father.”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He’s not in the picture any longer. Corky divorced him years ago, when she was pregnant with Natalie. Her second husband ran away with a much younger woman, one of his undergraduates and they were killed in a car accident, leaving town. Actually, they were a thousand miles from here when it happened. He left his son behind from a previous marriage, Patrick. He’s fourteen.”

“So he’s a step-son/step-brother.”

“Yes, that’s correct. He’s wonderfully handsome but a bad boy. He smokes and drinks and does drugs and skips school--that sort of thing--and he’s apparently sexually active as well.”

The waitress takes their orders. Berkeley has beer with lunch and Eustacia has red wine. Having waited a long time for service, the food comes quickly. Eustacia comments on this to Berkeley. “At least it came quickly after we were finally allowed to order.”

“We eat here all the time, Eustacia. The service is always like this.” She purses her lips at him and he laughs cheerfully. Someone at his shoulder speaks to Eustacia in a high, childish voice.

“Hello, Eustacia.” Eustacia looks up and Berkeley turns his head.

“Melinda. Do you know Berkeley?”

“We’ve met. Hi, Berkeley.”

“Good morning. Won’t you join us?”

“No thank you, Berkeley. We’re just on our way out. Teddy’s paying the bill. I just saw you two sitting here and came by to say hello.” She sits down anyway next to Eustacia. Melinda Archer is short and slender, with long gray hair wound into a thick braid on either side of her pretty head. Unlike Eustacia, she apparently eschews make-up and though well above forty, she has a youthful glow about her. Her voice is high and quirky. She leans conspiratorially close to Eustacia. “Teddy was so turned on that night when you and Randolph stalked into the living room naked.”

“He heard you, you know.” Eustacia indicated Berkeley with a nod. Melinda put a hand to her mouth and giggled. “He’s blushing,” Eustacia continues, “Anyway, that’s nothing compared to the time you urinated into a whiskey bottle at a party.”

“I’ve got to go, dear.” Melinda gets up and walks away, joining a tall, young lummox at the door.

“That lad is only twenty six,” Eustacia informs Berkeley, “younger even that my Randolph.”

“She’s cute.”

“I expect you’re too old for her.”

“Is that a challenge?”

Eustacia laughed. “You like older women, don’t you, Berkeley?”

“Yeah and younger women too.”

“You remind me of ‘The Man Who Loved Women.’”

“My favorite movie.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I wish I’d seen the urination-in-the-bottle scene.”

“It was an all-female party.”

“Sounds great.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Who’s the lad?”

“The lummox, as I call him, though I suppose he’s handsome in a rough-hewn way, was one of her students a few years ago.”

“How scandalous.”

“SHE claims nothing happened until after he graduated. Or at least until after he was no longer taking one of her classes. She was married at the time. Oddly, she had only gotten married the fall before. And then she met Teddy.” The waitress arrives with the bill and Eustacia pays it. “You didn’t ask how Corky Briskin got those scars on her face. She’s quite disfigured. Her first husband set the house on fire smoking a cigarette--he was a drunkard--and she got burned on the face saving the children. That’s why her skin is corrugated as it were with scar tissue. But only her face is scarred. She has a gorgeous body. I’ll give you a ride home. I expect you walked.”

In front of his building, when she leans over to give him a peck on the cheek, Berkeley gives her a long kiss on the lips.

“I can tell that you’re a lover,” she tells him, “by the way you kiss.”

“Thanks for lunch.”

“There’s Harriet Wiedlespach, one of your admirers, sitting on your front stoop.”

“God, Eustacia, you’re snorting and sneering.”

“Good luck. Ta ta.”

Berkeley gets out of Eustacia’s Cadillac and walks up to Harriet. She has red hair in a pageboy cut. Her face, arms, and legs are sprinkled with freckles. She is wearing a short, sleeveless cotton shift and sneakers without socks. Berkeley notices the wonderfully soft looking fleshiness of her slender thighs. She sees him looking and moves her knees closer together.

“You haven’t left for school yet?”

“It doesn’t start until after Labor Day,” she says in her low husky voice. She looks at Berkeley, who is wearing baggy chinos, moccasins, and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “It’s getting hot. Can I come in? Are you busy?”

He holds the door for her and they go upstairs to his apartment and into the kitchen, where Berkeley starts making espresso.

“I like this little garret window, Mr. Hays.”

“You’re going away to college. How exciting.”

“I know what your thinking: I look too young.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“I know I look younger than I am.”

“That usually turns out to be an advantage.”

She sipped her coffee. “That’s why I never had dates in high school. Because I look like a little kid.”

Berkeley raised his eyebrows.

“And because I’m supposed to be a geek, because I’m such a brain.” She rolled her eyeballs dramatically.

“Being a brain usually turns out to be an advantage too, Ms. Weidlespach.”

“You’re making fun of me, Mr. Hays, calling me Ms. Weidlespach. Goll, you’re rolling a jay. Cool.”

“Well, it’s about that time of day for me.” He hands her the joint and she sucks on it.

“There’s somebody here, Mr. Hays.”

A fat woman wrapped in a white sheet waddles into the room. She has long, curly, thick, black hair streaked with gray and wears wire-rimmed glasses. She speaks in a slow, sleepy voice, “Berkeley, I smell pot.” Harriet hands her the joint and she takes a puff.

“Where did you come from,” Berkeley asks.

“Bedroom.”

“Are you naked under that sheet?” Harriet asks.

“Harriet!”

The fat lady unwraps the sheet, exposing her naked body for Harriet, and then wraps herself up again.

“Harriet, this Rhonda. Rhonda, Harriet.”

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” Rhonda quips. The front door opens, everybody turns, crowded in the kitchen doorway, to see a lady stride right into the apartment. She is dressed in short shorts and a halter top, is in her sixties and has short, yellow hair and enormous eyes.

“Did she knock?”

“ ... Harriet blurted, almost rhetorically,” Rhonda mutters.

“Oh, Berkeley,” the lady begins, “you really should keep this door locked.”

“Anybody could walk right in,” Berkeley says. Harriet laughs and puts a hand to her mouth. Berkeley looks at the long, slender, fingers on her freckled hands. “This is Ms. Putnam,” he announces, “my landlady.”

“Goll, I guess I’m on my way out,” Harriet blurts out and scuttles towards the open door and scampers down the hallway. They hear her bounding down the stairs.

“You scared her away,” Rhonda tells the landlady, who gives her a sharp look.

“Do you live in this building?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think I knew you.”

“I’m Rhonda Cougat.”

“Berkeley has lots of admirers.”

“And I’m one of them.” Rhonda lights a cigarette and blows smoke towards Ms. Putnam.

Ms. Putnam backs down. “I’ll come back later, Berkeley.” She scuttles away. Rhonda closes the door behind her and locks it and turning to Berkeley, drops the sheet and steps over it. She slaps her bulging belly. “Do you like looking at me naked? Aren’t I fleshy? I have a big bust, don’t I?” She grasps her heavy breasts and shakes them.

“You have pendulous breasts. They’re wonderful really.”

“Pendulous breasts. I love to hear you say that. Pendulous breasts.”

“You’re lovely.”

“You think?”

“Certainly. Of course I do, Rhonda.”

“Pendulous breasts, but my stomach’s bigger than my boobs. When I was thin, my boobs were teeny. Of course, I was younger then. I’m twenty now. I wonder if that makes a difference. I suppose some body parts mature at different rates. I was always a hairy ape. I remember noticing when I was ten that my legs were covered with down.” She swaggers towards the bedroom, calling over her shoulder, “Well, let’s head for the pit and the pendulum before the landlady comes back ... or Wiedlespach.” Berkeley strips off his clothes as he follows her into the bedroom. He kneels and putting his face between her formidable thighs, he suckles the clitoris that pokes its head up through soft mounds of fur-covered fat.

ii. At the party...

Tamara Lamb is as tall as Berkeley and broad shouldered and big-boned and large-featured. Handsome in a rough-hewn way. She is swarthy and brown-eyed, her head haloed in a wild nest of coarse, thick, brown hair. Berkeley hands her a drink and sips his.

“My name is Tamara Lamb,” she tells him. He says he already knows her name and that they have met. She smirks with embarrassment and nods several times. She has a slow, somewhat idiotic manner of speaking. Her voice is deep and breathy. They make conversation. Her coarse features and skin make her look older than her age. She is wearing a dark blue silk blouse and snug blue jeans. She has prominent hips and formidable thighs. She moves her large hands awkwardly when she speaks. It turns out she is with a date. He approaches them, having broken away from one of the half-dozen small groups sitting and standing around the apartment, and asks if she is ready to go. He is bald and has a dark beard covering his face.

“I don’t want to go yet, Oscar,” she tells him in her deep voice and her halting manner of uttering syllables. He says, “Okay, I’m going anyway.”

“Okay,” she tells him and turns back to Berkeley. Oscar shambles off and then out the door of the apartment. Andy walks up to them.

“Hey, Tamara, Oscar left.”

“I know. That’s okay.”

“Splif, mahn?” Andy hands her an enormous joint. “There’s some toot on the coffee table, man, so enjoy.” They take the joint with them and go kneel at the coffee table. After a few moments of sharing the drugs at the coffee table, Tamara lights a cigarette and leans back to exhale smoke. Berkeley puts his lips to her ear and whispers.

“Did anybody ever tell you you look sexy smoking a cigarette?”

She reaches up and pats his cheek with her large, clumsy hand. “I’m as high as a kite,” she bleats haltingly. She rises up on her knees and takes another snort of cocaine.

“You have such a delicious butt, Tamara,” Andy’s girlfriend, Colleen, says. She is extraordinarily thin and wearing a floor-length cotton shift.

“Thank you,” Tamara says.

“You do for a fact,” Berkeley says. Tamara reaches out seemingly automatically and slaps Berkeley on the face. Colleen laughs, and Tamara smirks at Berkeley.

“I’m taking you home, Berkeley Hays,” she says bluntly. She drives them to her apartment building in her ancient car, an enormous two-door, dappled with rust. Her building is on a quiet lane, one without curbings and lined with large maple trees--rural and rustic looking, but only a few blocks from Andy’s house. The apartment itself is a mess and looks like it is always a mess: boxes and crates full of what appears to be an enormous assortment of junk--old electric eggbeaters, wrenches, videotapes, and so on. Berkeley has a bottle of whiskey Andy pressed upon him when they left. They sit on the living room floor and drink directly from the whiskey bottle. Berkeley kisses her on the mouth and she returns his kiss. They kiss for several minutes--long, intimate, kisses. Their tongues explore each other’s mouth.

“Don’t kiss me anymore, Berkeley. After a little while, I can’t stand it anymore.”

“Okay.” Berkeley sighs and leans back against the sofa, which is full of junk--magazines, cigarette cartons, etc.

“Maybe we should fuck,” Tamara muses. Berkeley sits up straight suddenly and then leans back again.

“That sound’s like a good idea.” He speaks as nonchalantly as possible.

“Would you like that?”

“Yes, I’d like that a lot. Since the first moment I laid eyes on you at the party tonight, I’ve been imagining you naked. I couldn’t help it.”

“But not the first time you ever saw me?”

“I don’t remember.”

She reaches up quickly and slaps his face.

“Ow. That hurt, Tamara.”

“I know. It was supposed to.” Her low, breathy voice gives an almost sinister gravity or else an hilariousness to everything she says.

“I want you to sit on my face, Tamara.” His voice is low and matter-of-fact. He looks directly into her eyes. “I want to see you naked.”

Tamara stands up and takes off her silk shirt. Berkeley sips from the whiskey bottle. Tamara walks around the room in front of him. She lights a cigarette and blows smoke out her mouth. Berkeley unzips his jeans and takes his penis out. He takes off his shirt. He reaches up towards Tamara, who is standing in front of him, and unfastens her jeans and pulls them down--and then her underpants. She steps out of them.

“You’re wonderfully beautiful, Tamara,” Berkeley tells her and she beams with delight.

“You like to look at me naked?” she rumbles in her deep, halting voice.