Becs and the Wall-Eyed Fat Man, Part 5 the Last

I kept pushing Moishe for more column inches in his magazine. Perhaps he was wise in limiting me, since in one of my reviews I said "Mork & Mindy" was going to be a bomb. I reason to myself that that was before we knew about Robin Williams.

I think generally, I just kept pushing Moishe. In response, he'd just roll one of his eyes and ask me if I'd done the address labels for that month's magazine. I wanted in, I wanted into his world. I wanted to be pals with Robert Silverberg. I wanted to take Fritz Leiber out to lunch. In short, I wanted in to a place where I was most definitely on the periphery and would continue to stay there.

So I decided to have a big, big, big party on my birthday. Moishe directed me to the best deli / caterer around and I packed his fridge with fabulous stuff. In the meantime, the invitations went out.

As hard as I pushed, there was someone who pushed harder. Harmony had been in class with me and Emma and RCW. She was a little older, but she certainly didn't know any better. The main focus of her life was to bang Harlan Ellison and I hear she eventually got her wish. But when she found out I was going to have this party and that Silverberg had been invited and that Terry Carr was coming, she was ravening for an invitation.

I invited her.

The gathering clouds gathered and the storm finally broke one day at lunch.

I was sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch. I allowed myself an hour and during that hour, I would read and generally entertain myself. It was practically my only Moishe-free hour during the day. His demands had grown to take up more and more of my time and in response, I had become more and more muley about it.

I don't remember what I was reading. Possibly, Interview with the Vampire. I was eating an elaborate salad. I faced one of the huge windows.

Moishe wandered in - he had clothed his nakedness with underpants - and said something like, "When are you going to take those magazines down to the post office?" He tone was decidedly snotty.

I answered in kind. "When I finish eating my lunch." And probably added something snottier in return. Just a for instance, "When I'm good and ready."

For a wall-eyed fat guy, he moved pretty fast. He was across the kitchen in a short and before I knew it, he had grabbed my pony tail and pulled it back so hard my neck was on the edge of the chair and all I could see was ceiling and Moishe's ugly face. "You will get up now," he hissed. "You will get up now and load those magazines into your car. You will take them to the post office." At this point, he pulled me up and shook me by the roots of my hair. He wasn't strong enough or tall enough to lift me off the ground, but I was completely at a loss of what to do except get the hell away from him. He dragged me around the kitchen for a couple of laps.

Finally, he let go. I flew into my room, closed the door, locked it, dragged out my suitcase and started packing. I threw my stuff into boxes, put my shoes on and carrying as much of it as I could, walked out and loaded my things into the Camaro.

"What are you doing?" He was genuinely perplexed that he could drag me around by my hair and I would stick around for more. (Oh, if only this lesson had stayed with me!)

"Is this what you did to your wife," I snarled. "Did you beat her?" I went back into my room and there Kitty was crying on my bed. Now I started to cry, because I knew Moishe would only ignore her. I heard him at my door and turned around. "Get the fuck out of here," I said.

"Get out," he said.

"Pointless. I'm already out of here. Fuck you, fuck your magazine, fuck your stupid wall-eyed life."

I got into the Camaro and backed out. He stood at the car port, arms across his chest, looking like he didn't quite know what had happened.

I can't remember when I called RCW to let her know I was on my way. Maybe I just showed up on her doorstep and once again, her kind parents took me in.

This would be the natural place to write "and then I drove back to Virginia", but I didn't.

First, there was the matter of hundreds of dollars of food left in Moishe's fridge. Food I had paid for, for a party that now could not happen.

But oh, not so. Moishe let it be known the party would go on.

Harmony arrived the next day with an entourage. She harangued me without end about going back to Moishe's, mostly because she knew Harlan, Silverberg, and Terry Carr were going to be there. My friends from my brief Berkeley days called me up to tell me we should go liberate Moishe's fridge and my food.

I am ashamed to say that I let myself be talked into it. We crashed the party. I crashed my own party.

And by the time it was all done, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to get the hell out of California. And so I drove.

Becs and the Wall-Eyed Fat Man Part 4

What do these two people have in common? Not much, but.....


Ed. note: I don't think we have much further to go with this. Maybe two more episodes until I blow that pop stand.
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Don't get me wrong. There were a number of reasons why I loved staying at Moishe's.

I especially loved the evenings when one of his confreres would pick up Moishe and they would go into Berkeley together or any damn where, just so long as I had some peace and privacy.

My last semester at college was an odd one. It was a writing workshop, very insular and insulated. We were of different ages and backgrounds but not so much ethnic groups. There were trends and little happinesses that made its way around the group. One of them was Keith Jarrett's Koln Concerts. It came to mean a lot of things to me - love. Peace. Heartbreak. Beauty. I don't think anyone was allowed to leave that college unless we had a copy of the Koln Concerts packed in our bags.

And of course, I took it with me to Berkeley.

When Moishe went away, I would creep up to his stereo - like any good geek, he had a phenomenal sound system - and would put on the first part of the Koln concert, stand in the middle of that huge living room with the forest all around me and watch the mist and fog move in through the canyon. Threading its way around the pines, parting like a river at a stone at Moishe's house, leaving behind a mist that would not disperse until the following morning's sun burned it away.

For those rare hours, the house was mine and it was beautiful.

Too, I got to meet a lot of people whose works I had only read until that point. I met some people who became friends and they would come up to visit me as often as they would come to visit Moishe.

I paid my way in more ways than one, but most of the time, I didn't mind it.

Moishe was prone to depression and fierce bouts of grumpiness. I had spent my childhood and adolescence learning to cheer up or at least distract the depressed. I had an unbeatable repertoire of Shirley Temple songs and didn't mind hauling them out.

More than once, Moishe sat at the breakfast bar with his ugly wall-eyed face in his hands, moaning about something and I would burst into song with:

Be optimistic! Don't you be a grumpy! When the road gets bumpy Just smile!

Accompanied with some tap dance moves I'd learned when I was seven. I looked ridiculous. I knew I looked ridiculous but I didn't care. I knew I could distract Moishe from his blues and I wouldn't have to hear him whine on and on all day.

But I'll always remember those moments standing at the windows with the mist coming in and the first few notes of the piano that always raised the hair on the back of my neck.

And Part I of the Koln Concert? It's about sex. Nice sex. You can hear the foreplay, the teasing, the Big O and then the fading away. Don't ask me how I know. But I know.