Volume 12 - Issue 2

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The Nelt' Journal. December 1978

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lheNewjournal Volume twelve, number two

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Aaron Betsky Editor Caroline Mitchell

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Puh/isher

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Mark Sheehan Designer

Eva Saks ManaginK. Editor

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Lenore Skenazy Jamie Romm Associate Editors

What People Are Dreaming About

Jim Clark Ed Bennett Business Managers Staff: Bill Wood, Fred Kelley, Dick Persha n, Claire Enders, S. Summers, Peter Pokalsky, Anonymous, Elizabeth Newjersey, Paul Chiasson, Frederic Hamilton, Jim Kearny, John Hall, Judith Spacks, Clare LeGros, Mike Radcliffe, Alexandra Kahn, Lindy McCrum Ed Hornsby, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. ~ '-<'~~· ight o

1978),y The New Journal at ' \'ale, Jnc.,l'l non-profit organization. Letters and unsolicited manuscripts welcome.

3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06S2C

"I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after. and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water. and altered the color of my mind."

- Wuthnint-r Heit-rlm

.. 1 dreamed I was in a purple sk~ scraper in New York City and Charlie's Angels were the secretaries. was a messenger, and Kate Jackson hated me. There was a lecherous doctor who wanted to give her a shot in the ass; he caught her, she screamed, and I woke up." ... "I dreamed I got high with my dean ." ..... 1 dreamed that my sister was six months pregnant and I was very worried. I was laughing in my sleep." ... "I dreamed I was sleeping with

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comment. dreams and ecstasy, nasty, brutish and short

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Saratoga Summers Social Notes II

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Fiorucci: Visual Pretense not another Italian rt>staurant

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Jackaroo·: She'ep-tend-encies in A:usmilia you always hurt tht> one t'IH' lo1•e

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To_the Sublime_: An Interview with Charles Ludlam . " . . the pril'ote /~,·e:. of the sexes

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Neo-Rationalism : A Primer for Would: Be Beginners a /?t'OIOJ(iSI S{it>ldtrip

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Social Noies

E1•a Saks

FrederiC' Hamilton

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Paul Chiasson Lenore Skena=y -

A nonymou.\ Dick Pershan

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Ask .t:.va 1

Staff

Ed &nnett -

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. I you o/11·a.l s hurt tht> onto l'ou low• SCenes fiction

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Claire Enders

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When is.a New.Woman Not a New Woman? the.femmine mi!.tok!• Yalies Don't Get V.D .

my girlfriend and another woman.

They were both giving me pleasure.

One had a big ass and the other had big tits." ... "I dreamed about a school with a war inside. For some reason, I had to turn in a check stub." ... "I dreamed about a woman giving birth to a gourd." ... " I dreamed that I was walking down Lynwood Place and I met the pervert who bothered me when I was eleven." ... "I dreamed I was turning into a sphinx." ... "l .dreamed that my high school admissions counselor invited me to a large Gothic house for the weekend. I overheard him tell another guest that he was keeping me prisoner, so I climbed up through the rafters and out and through a window and onto a very slippery, moss-covered roof. I slid dOWf\, and just as I was about to reach the rotting gutter, my host appeared floatine in the air in front of

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Staff

SITE·: Scu_lpture in the EnvU:onment and tht> walls come tumh/in ·down 10

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Karen Sideman Graphics Editor

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me, revealing himseif in his true glory.

And he said, ·vou may never leave my island.' Defying his words, I jumped off the roof and grabbed a large orange and violet plant. Then he appeared, pointed to the plant, and said, ·vou can't leave. I even control the vegetation.' At which point the grass grew upwards, surrounded me, and anestheti1..ed :ne hack into dreamless sleep." ... "I had a very long and complex dream about Vincent Scully.

It was in color." ... "I dr~amed that I was talking to my parents, whom I haven't seen in a few months, and they aske<.l me if I'd seen any feathers lately." ... "I dreamt that the man who gives me my psych experiments came into my bedroom while I was undressing." ... "I dreamt that the colleges we-re segregated by race and sex and social class. The dancing teacher from Harriet the Spy was in Davenport Dining Hall, auditioning people for A Chorus Line." . .... I had this completely hallucinatory dream - I kept thinking there was someone in bed with me. Then a rhinoceros came into my living room and I shot it with a tranquilizer gun.

It pissed all over the carpet." ... " I dreamed something that was so obscene it was beyond pansexual!" ... "I dreamed that I was in a drawing room full of people. Someone suddenly stood and recited a quatrain to us: You say that you are schemer.\, Your rea.wnint-r iJ dl'ar.

But I su.\pl'ct you're dreamers There ar<' no ioker.\ here. continued to pa~e.J

Stoff·

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Tht' Nc-tr Journal. Dt't·t'mht'r 1978

continut>d from page 2 That's all I remember." ... " I dreamed I was at a carnival and there were all these Russians riding on the ferris wheel, and I fell instantly in love with this Russian girl. But the Russians weren't allowed off the ferris wheel, and I wasn't allowed to get on.

I just stood there looking and looking. I had ea1en a lot of yogurt before going to bed that night; for a week after this dream, I had yogurt every night, hoping to get back to the girl on the ferris wheel."

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it's a nioe gesture, like the big shells occasionally imbedded in the ribbed concrete.

From room to room and floor to floor, self-contained societies have evolved, separate territories with particular rituals and individual chemical smells. The top floors, civilized, airy and carpeted, belong mainly to the architects and their onion skin papers, elaborate models and slanting tables. The basement, where teachers suggest wearing baseball caps to block out the lowness of the ceiling, is full of photographers, film makers and undergraduate painters. They're painting a black still life (umbrellas, mostly, and inner tubes, a bowling ball, trunk, iron, unrecognizable metal things) and a white still life (onions, eggs, hats, stuffed animals, and a car exhaust pipe). The blue collar workers always walk through Intermediate Painting, sometimes striking mock poses on the way.

The number of scarves, berets and black sneakers increases markedly on the fourth and fifth floors . There are colored dabs and sad-eyed faces finger painted by the phone where graduate painters wipe their hands on the walls.

Someone has done a faint figure · drawing called "Blue Nude" impossibly high up near the ceiling on the wall of the two-story fourth floor "pit." Hundreds of canvases lean against -each other in the corridors.

The studios where the doors are shut indicate sacred privacy; open doors invite a chat and criticism. Every grad student's studio is a personal world.

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A&A People who really like the Art and Architecture building are usually thinking of the mutilated outside. Or the classy lecture ball, or the Gallery, or the blueberry muffins and view of both East and West Rocks at the 7th floor coffee shop. Art and Architecture students talk about their building all the time, and rarely have anything good to say about it. It looks like a corrugated cardboard box, it's a maze, it has flourescent lights, it's too cold or too hot, the library leaks on the reference books, the flftb floor skylights leak on the models, tall people are afraid of bumping their heads on the low ceilings and everyone can hear everyone else's radio through the studio cubicles.

The A&A is a self-conscious building. Every room must have been drawn at least once by now, even the back hallways with the contaminated water coolers; every use and misuse of space has been noticed. In places it bas an almost endearing awkwardness: the stairways are decorated with Egyptian frescoes and orange benches are placed on the landings in front of them. It's too dank to sit there, but

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Sometimes when rm ready to leave, ru think it's still a beautiful day outside and it will be night and raining. rm so terribly absent-minded.

You can lose all track of time in here."

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The New Journal, December 1978

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One week O nly On The Mainstage DECEMBER 26 -

DECEMBER 3 1

EMLYN WILLIAMS as

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There's always someone trying to replace me with an article about the history c;>f Yale. Further, when I complain, they say "Stay in your comer, cur, we only print your hogslop because you're blackmailing the publisher's brother-in-law": I include this here so that I may categorically deny it. Consider it denied. On to the news, gang, in what room I hove left . ..

I'll admit that this next hot scoop is only a rumor I heard, so l'U let you imagine for yourself how true it is, but the rage of certain disreputable, sect-evoking parties these days is a wicked game they call Plane Crash.

The aim of this glitteringly vindictive parlor play is to book a flight with all your very worst archenemies, or people that you just could do without, plus the people that everyone agrees have got to GO!! - and then you make the plane crash. It could be anything from an oil slick at runway's end to a spectacular explosion over the Pacific, from simple engine failure to a slam into Mt. Shasta.... Just heard my dear friend BLOOMSBURY recently died in a plane crash.

Just kidding, tootles... Praise to God, B!.lddha, Krishna and even the B-Iist deities that the New York Times is back - such a fetching ornament next to the morning espresso and croissants, and a raving necessity for the catbox - my finicky feline absolutely refused to deposit his processed Perrier and Beluga anywhere else! Yes, simpleton, I tried the National Enquirer, but lago is picky - he only does Number One for headlines about Laetrile, and saves Number Two for psychic predictions about Laverne and Shirley! If he'd only tinkle for Farrah FawcettMajors, I would never again worry about newspaper strikes. Anyway, I'm not worried about them now, because the strike is OVER!' In the words of a recent hit song, "life I love you, all is groooo-vy. . . " Please excuse my late propensity for "hip" coUoquial argotte, but I've been vexed since a friend called me "out of it" because I happened not to have heard that. Patty Hearst had been caught. I hardly think this teensy pocket of ignorance qualifies me for the unequivocal monniker "out of it."

There were so many kidnappings back then, is it moronic to assume that one of them faded from the headlines unresolved? But 1'11 get even with my exc~ss~vely critical friend - I've got an ms1de scoop on an upcoming Elvis tour, and I'm not breathing a word to her! And she's the world's biggest Elvis fan! She'll have a COW! I attended a swell wingding recently where I almost avoided my semiacquaintance and rabid worshipper GILES GREENWICH, who has the tingle back in his topsiders since he as he so quaintly puts it - "got punched" for Fence Club. (You reaJiy shouldn't laugh - the poor boy still refuses to admit to himself that he isn't at Harvard. Here we never "punch" - vulgar! - though we

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·•tap" like Atm. Miller on five hits of speedy windowpane!) Giles is thrilled at his new status - "now I know how the Pope must feel, you know, to be elected and all" - and also admits to a new feeling of, weiJ, validity, exclaiming: "Before, I was just another social climber." Giles also says that he feels the mood on campus is changing, that students he knows are rethinking their priorities : ..It's more important to be important than it is to be rich, but being rich is important."

It bears mentioning, with a chuckle and eyes a-glimmer, that I've received a dab of rather uncivil mail since my meteoric rise in the Yale media cosmos. In the interest of magnanimity - and to provide whatever impaling rebuttal might appear necessary - I hereby air one of these tiny voices, since, as it says in the beautiful Desiderata, "they too have their story":

Dear Saratoga, I've been collecting accounts about YOU for a change, and my friends have given me systematic reports directly attributable to you twomouthed two-face. We have a tape composite of your voice alternately praising and maligning the same person over a spectrum of readings taken from 9:04:32 am to 5:22:01 pm on November 21, 1978. How do you account for this blatant (and certainly prodigious) hypocrisy? That is if you have the courage to print this letter.

Dolly Sandifur Saybrook, '81, ..where the girls all go to church and have big jock boyfriends who get not ' neath the nightie."

Dear Dol1y, When your halo cools, and you get off your high horse, let's get some wine and cheese and pate!'and just rap about this, OK? Perhaps you may come to understand that I'm a complex person, often governed by intuition and tempestuous turns of whim, those hallmarks of a passionate nature rare - and thus, sadly, alienated - in - and from - this world. Or, you may come to be stuck with the bill for the wine and cheese and pate': Hey, it's all in fun. Wheeee.

You bring the brie.

Well, debs and debonaires, I am compelled against all might and reason to stop writing now, all because I have filled my so-called ..allocation" of so-cal1ed "column inches." Hang onto your hotlines until next month, when 1'11 fill you in on all you most assuredly haven't heard !

And if you get to feelin' just a trifle persnickety in the long trudge to term's end, and you feel you haven't a friend in the world, why not call me up and RAT on all the friends you thought you had? Try it - it's almost as much fun as Plane Crash!

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Fragmentary lntrodul'lions A slickly crammed eye, peering out on 59th St. between Park and Lexington, with a loud madly coloured labyrinthine brain stretching behind. Fiorucci. a store.

An elongated face, mummified by strips of colour, blinking under pulsing light; bobby-soxed feet boxed into platform sandals. Fiorucci. a salesgirl.

A dark young punk. arabesque smile dreaming on his face, perches a half-!lobe of yellow plastic on his acrobatic hair. Fiorucci. a shopper.

A thin ellipse of the female genre high-steps adroitly. gleaming in the mirrors. blissful eyes smiling.

Fiorucci. a cruiser.

A Story

Elio Fiorucci speaks: "Freedom is the most important t hing. People must unlearn arbitra ry and capricious rules and follow their own unbounde( spirits...

Fiorucci began in 1967. in Milan.

The concept behind the store has not changed. he says: it is meant to be a gallery. a meeting-place. a refuge. an intelligent business overflowing with brilliantly-coloured witty or witless gadgets. accessories and clothes. A jim place: music insistently ber7.erk. colours leaping out of corners like cra7cd animals. roaring neon. Fiorucc says he wanted to break the rules of fashion. to propose a life-style and a persona that would trash and clash with neat middle-class tastes. The emphasis in the design of the store is on colour and space and movement: the clothes arc moved almost daily. the trinkets pop precariously from counters. hombastic graphics hlast across walls. Fiorucci persistently uttcmpts to avoid permanence. prcdictahility. horedom. Otherwise. their market would vanish. Buyers comb not only Europe hut also Thailand.

Hong Kong. Taiw:m. and Japan for :.mything that will he hmsh. new. and l>alcahlc. However. most of the major artifacts :1rc concci\cd in Cof)>ic<~ h~ a snwll !!roup of dl-signcrs. A concept tap' into a picl'C of merchandise quickly. l>incc f:lio Fiorucci maintainl>

Claire Ender.\

The Rest of the Sto ry that alter two weeks. the idea is stale and old a lready. The item is then consumed in a few days and thrown out, even. it seems. if it sells remarkably well. Pants are an exception: they are not exactly cheap and a re not meant to be. With respect to the glittering pinked-out and redded-in accessories. the themes are kitsch Miami Beach: palm trees.

UFO's. pin-ups. cherubs. propellor planes.

"We are not Saint Laurent. .. concedes Angelo Careddu. Fashion laughing at its own presumption. perhaps. for people who want to make witty flings at solid and sturdy quality clothes that people \\car in banks. That image has stra~ed and become stable in the fashion world.

Elio Fiorucci's clothes are not only worn to discos. All sorts of types wander and flit around in them. jading an eye (mine). "hich becomes unamused b\' all this tiresome cQlour. manufactured and stamped humour.

Further Introductions

Most of the clothes are made of cotton alone. o r mixes of artificial fabrics. Highly flammable stuff. Th~ image of tacky clothes and accesso.nes has become a paradox. Like all agmg re\ olutionaries. Fiorucci wants to insist on the essential quality of its items. It now wants to use more wools and other fabrics that lasr while keeping up the glittering pretense of momentary splendour. amid \Oiatile whips and swaths ot colour.

Fiorucci·s ofticial philosophy is to pro\ ide a nice \\Orld to play in for those "ho are deemed. in a boring trite commonplace. "~oung at heart" as well as bod' . Witness the large turno,er of saicspeople. the endless peregrination), of space colour and merchandil.c around the place. the bombastic and often outrageous display" indn\\S. thc infinite \aricty and change of itcms. the namc.

Fiorucci. aping Polo. Gucci.

Gi,cnch\'. e\en S:~int I aurcnt.

Hermes.' L:tco~te. Cardin. is bbted inside and outside of most piec'-·s . .

Fiorucei's concepts. to deal "ith '' ta\\dr~ ~ide. carn it ..t5 Million Otlllars pcr annum.

Red sat in garters rigor-mortisized with stiffness. courageously worn sunglasses. poodle and cow pins. turquoise/ red drop earrings. glowworm belts. grinning plastic purses. sequined bracelets. tin parrot or fruit fly or dragon fly pins. flammable inflammatory tiny hats. kitsch hea' ybreasted booted and conspicuously buxom brash brass beauties grinning on posters and postcards. yellow and purple feathered fans. green blue red black quilted jackets. a few large pla'itic apologetic penguins. black & red & white leggings for sidewalk or secretarial hussies. IO<Y'(- wool sweaters. cappucino or espresso giggling in sea-blue cups.

Fioruct'i. upstairs.

A sweet-faced tender-aged fellow in a proud tuxedo slips his e\cr-so pale finger along the groo\cs of a sad-eyed plastic penguin.

Fiorucci. innocence astray.

A high-twotcd blondicd candicd fu11cd mascarading agcy and cagey madcmoisdlc trips O\cr a step as shc slides up the stair~ umbilicating upstairs and do\\ mtairs. tmnslix'-·d b~ hcr image in th'-' mirrors.

Fiorun·t. a tmnbic.

A stout ing S\\ il>hy-haircd young man \\ith :1 l..ind l.lllilc and tircd eye~.

J'ioruai. A ngdo C'a redd u. head of public rclat itml>.

All thil> tl.tl-h, trash and paper '-' tmld concci\ a hi\ be g\Hl'-' in a k" minutes.

Stl tliml-\ ,;re the dothes. so light arc the pla,ii'-· arttfa'-·"· M) ltwl-c th'-' beallll.. thc tltltlrl-. the l'OSnlll' l-p<IC\.'.. thc mu'•'-· l'nuld fad'-' .1nd all \\istlully lade b\ the ptl\h'r tll :1 sma II tla Ill\.' tlf "ind. ~lr the 1mpla'-·ah•ht~ nf ag'-'· Claire l .'11dc·r• drt'""' ,.,.,._. well.

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Jackaroo:

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Journal.

!Nc~m"'r

1978

Sheep-tend-encies in Australia -Ed & nnell

them.

One week I was part of a conversation which left me shaken. Peter, a fellow jackaroo, turned to another I met an Australian couple in the Lake District in England a couple of one· of us and asked: "Has Ed killed weeks before leaving for Australia. I his first sheep yet?" Ed said to told them of my plans and the woman himself, with a mixed expression of gave me three things to look out for: disbelief and surprise, .. He's joking, sun, dust and flies. I found all three .. I right?" Then, out loud: ..What d'ya asked the cook my first day about the mean - why kill them?" "We eat heat, hoping to have my fears allayed. mutton out here. Ever have mutton?"

He told me to cover my body or rd I began phrasing arguments in my burn severely ...No one stands in this head. Can' t stand blood. That's it!

Hopelessly squeamish. Maybe a little sun for more than thirty minutes, Eddie, you bum." I had six months of fainting would do the trick. Or how nine-hour workdays coming up. I had about the philosophical approach: committed myself to being a jackaroo preservation of life, inhumanity, before being a freshman. cruelty to future lamb chops... ? I I rode into Perth. The sky was tucked these forensic gems aside and bright blue and Perth was spotless, glossed the discussion over with a green parks, flowers and beautifully laugh. Maybe they'd forget ... quiet. I spent a day there, my introThe following week, my initiation duction to Western Australia, then took place. Chris and I drove to the paddock of ration sheep or "killers," flew to Esperance. As we circled the airstrip I scanned the flat, green selected three, tied their legs and brought them to the killing block. In landscape. Tiny white spots scampered away as we buzzed by. clinical fashion, Greg and Chris each Sheep, my companions for six demonstrated their styles, discussing months. Nearby the ocean was clear fine points (removal of bladder, blue, smooth and alluring. Esperance snapping of forelegs) as they went. itself is stark, flat land that has either Then it was my turn. I didn't want to do·this, and the pathetic, shaking been cleared for grazing or cropping or has been left untouched; virgin sheep didn't like the vibrations either.

All I could see was one of its eyes land. In Esperance, I could see the horizon forming and the sky stretched staring at me. It began to bleat, and I over the fields, making me feel small. thought I could hear my name: Zooming around 300-acre paddocks "Eheehd ... Eeehed ." An hour and a on a motorcycle in the sweet smelling half later I was covered with blood heat, herding sheep, I didn't need and fat, panting and finished. By the college - I didn't want college. The end of six months, I would do it in farm was quiet, unstructured, slowfifteen minutes.

A month later, hay carting began, paced - everything life in America is not. Where was I? On a sheep farm in tlie most physically exacting job I did . .

Australia twenty hours on a plane The hay had been cut, raked and away from home, but it seemed baled. Now we were to collect the farther than that, so foreign was the . 5,000 odd bales and create two huge landscape. The forests and mountains · stacks. One drove the truck, a second of home were in another space grabbed the bale as it came flying up the elevator and the third would stack entirely, completely out of mind.

My most serene moments came in the bales on the truck's boarded floor. the early morning and evening. I was My first time out produced sore up at six nearly every workday. I rose shoulders, blistered hands and a new conception of the word hot. The straw easily, feeling sore from the previous day, but not reluctant. I would grab a dust blew its way through my long two-gallon pail and walk across a sleeve shirt and blue jeans, making me small field to the milking shed, where itch. But the steady rhythm of lift, place, lift, place would soon take the cows and their full udders waited.

At that hour, no one else was awake. hold, and the smooth, soothing sea The sun was just rising and I felt breeze would seep in, blowing back exhilarated, not knowing the world the hot winds.

In January we put the rams in. could be so still and bright. In the evenings I took long walks. When the Backing the covered truck against a sky had been clear during the day, the- hill, we would release thirty of them stars would dot the night in all directo attend to a flock of 600 ewes. This happened once a year for these tions, making me feel as if I were on the middle of a pincushion. horned beauties and when you let But during the day the heat was them off, they ran. A month later, we like the blueness of the sky - always returned to reverse things, using there. It seared our backs and soaked motorcycles and the ever-present dogs. There were three of us: Mike, us with sweat. At the beginning of a day, we would sense how hot it would Colin and I. The other two had dogs. feel. Before lunch, a hot wind would This left one of us to wade through often sweep down on us from the the sheep, grab the unhappy rams and northern deserts. Lips would dry and drag them back onto the truck. The the sheep would be reluctant to move. rams knew what was going on. They If we were working closely with the watched me from the comers of their sheep, it became especially trying. eyes and shifted nervously. The dogs My first days, we were busy jetting themselves were perhaps more valuable than I was. They could run sheep. This, I learned, meant forcing them through a narrow walkway. A faster, understood instructions well, didn't crash into fences and always horizontal series of bars was pressed did as they were told. They only aside as each sheep walked through, triggering a spraying mechanism. The respond to one person: Until you run chemical would prevent, for a few down a sheep in the middle of a ' short ~lc:s, flies from laying eggs on paddock you can't realize what an

uset these srriall pups could be. They •ode on the back of the Land Rovers and, o n command, would jump off and wrestle down a sheep pointed to.

They'd bring a mob down a hill and run them in a circle for us to inspect or push them up a race to be counted and cured. And they did it all for a can of ground pseudo-meat.

I had less luck with horses and cows. The former were too big and I didn't like their eyes. Like the rams, they understood too much. When it came down to it, I didn't want to hop on the back of one, but the inevitable occurred after two weeks of anxiety.

We steered the lucky five horses into a small pen. Chris hopped on his bare back. Bareback! Amazed, I moved hesitantly toward Duke, my mount.

He eyed me knowingly. Be a good poker player, I thought. I walked with my saddle, which I handled like an amateur. Duke didn't want me, and I wasn't too happy about crawling on top of him either. Luckily, the confrontation was delayed for a few days. We were to round up cattle and herd them across a stock route to another paddock. I was riding Duke again. Mike left for a few minutes, telling me to saddle up and wait. I was feeling cocky by this time, since a couple of uneventful weelc.s of riding left me thinking I could do it easily. I hopped on and scanned the horizon.

Ah! life in the outback. Then, I saw three stray bead o' cattle in the corner. I set off, in a canter. Then Duke, quiet, peaceful Duke, the horse they gave to green city boys, bolted, just took off at full gallop. My foot immediately slipped a stirrup and my attempts to pull up Duke fell ridiculously short .- leaving me scared sbitless. Duke began a sweeping turn back toward the fence. At this point, my thoughts bad no coherence. Somehow I thought that the horse would jump the fence quite a trick at that speed. Instead, he abruptly pulled himself out of his hellish run ten yards from the fence.

His momentum threw me headlong, and I landed at the foot of the fence.

Too white and trembling to be angry, I got up and shook my arms.

My easiest job was when I had to take care of Stan. Stan was the

exceptional ram. $1 1,000 worth of horns, fleece and, it was hoped, semen. Stan was housed alone and indoors, hand fed and watered, given ~very privilege a well-born young ram should have. These included an unlimited sexual life...Family" was the mob of 200 ewes that Stan fathered. Unlike the other rams, though, Stan had individual ewes brought into his pen, sometimes unwillingly. We wrote the ear tag number of each ewe in the stud book and waited for Stan to deliver an $11,000 screw. .

When I first saw my fellow jacks and a stockman kick and throw sheep around I was disgusted and appalled.

Their insensitivity was incredible, I thought. Then I wondered if I would

become that way by the time I left. Is this . what my experience wilt mean to m.e? Traditionally, jacks are the worst offenders when it comes to this sort of irresponsible behavior. I watched the others, though, and noticed that both overseers and the stockman, Peter (an egregious offender) would often do a number on an uncooperative sheep.

Greg Bannon, the manager, never did, though. He had a sardonic life view, an easygoing manner, and he seemed above our fits of pique. I retract the word ..never," however. Once he, Chris and I were selecting rams to be trucked to another stud farm. Greg was handling each animal's balls in an effort to judge its breeding potential. I enjoyed work that day - Greg was in good humor. Then one ram refused to remain quiet and still. Greg cursed and, grabbing it by the horns, flipped the ram on its back roughly. Chris and 1 exchanged glances. Ah - even Greg loses it sometimes.

In December, the Australian summer begins to peak. The bright green fields become brown, dusty and dry. The little yellow flowers shrivel and vanish. I wondered how the sheep stayed alive, having so little to eat. I would wander about the beaches.

Only twice did I find more than five people walking on the sand. I could swim alone, jumping from the chunks of granite into cold, shining water.

The days became hot and bright, and

continued t• rJag.

The New Journal. lkcemher /978

7

To the Sublime:

An Interview with Charles 0

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"Sawing a woman in half can be accomplished by any idiot with a sword .

The trick is in putting her back together."

-Charles ludlam, circa 1978 )

Charles Ludlam is the acknowledged power behind the throne on ·which he sits at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. For the past ten years, R.T.C. has been celebrated as New York's most innovative Off-OffBroadway company. They are currently performing UTOPIA INCORPORATED at the Sheridan Square Playhouse, their new home.

(UTOPIA is described by R.T.C.'s Executive Director Christopher Scott as being about "two -drug smugglers who get sucked into a whirlpool in the Bermuda Triangle and find themselves in a utopian civilization at the earth's inner crust."- "It's a cross between Abbott and Costello and high avant-garde drama circa 1956," he added.) The troupe ·mrs spent the past few months performing Ludlam's Camille, Stage Blood, ·and The Ventriloquist's Wife in repertory. We discussed the latter, the story of a malign-spirited ventriloquist's dummy named Walter Ego who diabolically devastates his parents, Charles and Susan. .

ES: How did you become interested. in ventriloquism?

CL: When I was little, my older brother gave me a dummy and I did

Eva Saks is 1he madcap heiress 10 Saks Fiflh A venue.

ventriloquism. (Nobody paid any attention to me, I don't remember anyone saying it was particularly good. But recently, when I told my mother I'd got a dummy, she said, "You used to do that so well." I said, "Oh, I didn't know that.")

ES: Have you always wanted to do a show with a dutnmy?

CL: Yes. I'd been doing Punch and Judy (puppet shows) and I realized fd like to have a different relationship to the figure, one where I'd be a character in relation to him ... I bold these conversations with myself, two parts of myself, divided and always set in opposition. So that was really the impulse ... In fact , a number of years ago I bought a rare book on ventriloquism called "Practical Ventriloquism" by a man who was in Henry Irving's troupe at the turn of the century. (He didn't believe in using dummies, be felt that was a corruption of PURE ventriloquism, which means vocal performance, exclusively: you imitate the sound of a distant train, a voice coming from the floor; you can throw your voice to create an illusion, open a door and have a conversation with somebody who was out in the hall who's unseen.

The author included a section on working with figures, but basically didn't approve of it, thought it declasse.)

ES: When did you start working on 1he Ventriloquist's Wife?

CL· Last summer, when there were a number of ventriloq~sts around. I

was in Philadelphia doing Punch and Judy on t his stage that had been used in a circus. (The set looked very Diane Arbus sitting there; it had this wonderful quality that the Japanese call - well, SUCHNESS.) And I imagined myself sitting with this pretty, weird little screen behind me, a ventriloquist's dummy on my lap.

That was on a Saturday night, and of course there was no way to get a dummy on Sunday. Th,e next day I talked about ventriloquism continuously and drove all my friends crazy, and Monday morning I got up and went to a magic shop. I saw a bunch of dummies that didn't appeal to me very much, but there was this little child sitting a"'ong the dummies and that was WALTER! ES: You never wanted to try ventriloquism with another person as the dummy?

CL· Ac.t ually, we tried it that way, but there was something wrong with the scale of a man on my knee. We were the same size ... Jerry StiJJer suggested I use Susan as the dummy (Actress Black-Eyed Susan, the flower .of the R.T.C., who plays the ventriloquist's wife), but it didn't have the right effect. Also, I thought it would be wonderful if the dummy could be something PORTABLE. (Though fve realized since that the dummy is like a guitar or something; you have to CARRY it yourself, whereas you wouldn't dream of carrying puppets or another person.

So maybe in the long run it's more of a burden to have Walter.) I can take Walter anywhere, and it becomes theater; wherever he is suddenly becomes a theatrical situation. If I were starving, I could take Walter to a street corner, pass the hat, and have enough money to buy a sandwich.

With ventriloquism and puppetry, I had created a portable theater, a portable art form where I could indulge my extra appetite for theater, above and beyond what I could do with my ensemble, beyond what I could afford to do. As far as the play, for years I had wanted to do the story of possession, which is the ventriloquist's story ... I like the idea of the ventriloquist who's doing the dummy while the dummy still has a will, an opposing will. Because you have an opposing will within yourself ...

Mentally, I catalogued the resources of ventriloquism, of what ventriloquism could do, and I used that as my vocabulary (for playwrighting).

Susan and I worked together ... I taught her ventriloquism. A few of the secrets and she could do it perfectly.

Susan and I decided to play out this fantasy between us. I wanted to use my own name because that made it more ambiguous, more like Games People Play ... Waiter was carved by a ventriloquist in New Jersey, but a lot of people said he looked just like me. I think I looked like that when I was a kid, but maybe I'm just projecting; maybe dummies come to look like their owners and owners begin to look like their dummies after a while. That would mean I'd be looking younger and younger in this case, so I don't mind.

Walter and I decided to work together in a puppet show. We tried the streets ... We went to this bar on Third A venue called Little Peter's black transsexuals lip-synching to tapes, standing right on tbe floor. I went home to my Bauhaus theater chart to analyze what form of theater

t his was and I came out with "FAIRGROUND." So I thought, that's where I am. I'm in a fairground, that's the nature of this. I found it very hard (to work there) because actually the lip-synch that was being done is ALSO ventriloquism - which is very funny - the performers were their own dummies! ... So I got very turned on. I thought that was where I really belonged, in this very raunchy crowd carrying on with fever and disorder - which I've always romantically thought was the true atmosphere for theater ... men and ladies of the evening and all kinds of people ... well, it was a wild and· wooly atmosphere but I don't think that THEY had the same sentimental attachment to ME that I had to THEM. I saw them as out of The Blue Angel, and they couldn't figure . out what the hell I was doing there.

ES: Was the show raunchier then?

CL· No, I was doing very clean lines then; naive, almost poetic jokes about Walter's childhood. They liked a lot of it, though ultimately the place got too crazy and I left. Then Stuart Sherman, who is a conceptual theater person - he manipulates objects on small trays, and they have theatrical impact - he wanted to do his show on the streets and so did I, so we went around together. Finally, though, I decided that I didn't want to work on the streets. I couldn't get the kind of attention and concentration that I needed. The things I was doing were too subtle, and I knew I would have to change the act and become a barker, and have a very short act full of fireworks so I could slam them with it, stop, pass the hat, and move on ... But as I wrote it, The Ventriloquist's Wife had to be done in a cabaret.

ES: How does working in a cabaret differ from performing in a theater?

CL· In a cabaret, there's a certain amount of other activity that reflects the attention of the audience: people start drinking, someone turns his chair around to see better. Remember the scene in Annie Hall where she decides to go into cabaret? She's singing, and everything's going wrong - and that's what it's like, captured perfectly! But then, it's so much more of an accomplishment when a hush comes over a cabaret More of an accomplishment, in a sense, than in a theater, where people wouldn't dream of EATJNG, or calling for a drink while you're performing. So I kind of like that, it's a demand on me. (Mr. Ludlam peruses my review of his play, published in the January 4, 1978 issue of Casting Call, which describes Walter as "strongly resembling a sexchanged Anita Bryant.")

CL· It is true that Walter's rather pretty for a demonic dummy. But there's something also about that fear of the beautiful child ... Walter scares me a little bit ... I don't like gazing at him, because Tdo get a rather bizarre feeling ... I have to get away from him sometimes. And he sometimes says unexpected things!

Walter's very lucky - this whole play is a vehicle for him.

ES: Are you pleased with the play as it is?

CL· It changes from night to night.

I improvise, but I don't ad-lib, and ~re is a diffe~ce. Improvisation is a t~chnique: you approach it witb guidelines, trying to 8(XX)mplish SOD.le-

- contimlid to JH16~ 14

The New Journal. December 1978

8

N eo-Rationalism: A Printer for Would-be Beginners -

Frederic Hamilton

A "new wave" of European architects is carving out a niche in the American architectural establishment: the Italian nco-rationalists. Historically speaking, they find their roots in the self-proclaimed "Rationalist" Gruppo Sette of the late 1920s. These architects demanded an architectural aesthetic derived "exclusively from the character of necessity," and for construction to give expression to the "New Spirit" so evident to the youth of post-war Europe. The members of this group found in the work of such architects as Peter Behrens, Mies van der Rohe, Mendelsohn, Gropius, Le Corbusier and others clues to how such a vision of built form could be

extracted from the necessities of the time - how indeed this New Spirit could be fulfilled. But what marks them out from the generality of that milling crowd of excited artistes who dominated the intellectual "scene" between the wars, are certain attitudes deriving from, as they themselves put it in 1926, Italy's "nature, tradition, and most of all ... the victorious period it is passing through . ., Reading between the lines of their manifestoes, one can detect, even beyond their explicit discussion of the notion of type, a concern for a whole world of issues of which the idea of typology is only a part, and which can be generally described as morphological.

They are interested in buildings as geologists are interested in rocks that is, as parts of much larger conglomerations of material, whose internal characteristics and transformations through time can reveal the actions of much larger tectonic structures, whole mountain-ranges in the landscape of culture. Their attitude, in fact, was very much like that of the geological detective, whose eyes are peeled for the faintest sign of streS$ or shear in the larger fabric.

For ttle Group of Seven, such a sign was tHe virtual extinction of Style as a generally expressed symbolic - one might eve11 say, esoteric - synthesis of structural ideas, and the subsequent centrality of the issue of Style in architectural discourse. For them, Style would naturally develop out of the collective elaboration of building

typologies, inherent in whose nature would inevitably lie specific formal and te~hn ical imperativ.es.

a static piece of architecture, the building is shown in a state of flux, either in_a period of growth or decay.

In 1975, S ITE designed the "Indeterminate Facade," another Best building for Houston, Texas. The building, located in a typical suburban shopping¡area, was given a brick face which extended above the roofline.

The top of the facade was arbitrarily chipped away, leaving a ragged brick edge. At one point, the facade was fragmented to allow a cascade of

the building. In an environment of strict linearity, the use of a precariously tilted facade establishes a visual dialogue between what we know, the traditional shopping center, and what we perceive, the plane of brick unexpectedly lifted from the building. Such a casual comment forces a questioning of both the perceived and the accepted.

SITE treats the building as a found object, changing the formal aspects of the structure only slightly. A peeling

bricks to fall over the entrance canopy. Here again, the idea of architecture in the process of becoming or reducing changes our perception of building. This ambiguity establishes a discontinuity between what we perceive and what we already consider as valid. ln the NOTCH project, a corner of the typical white brick box was cut away. The remaining notch was fixed to a rail system incised into the pavement so that it could be added or in, freeing the facade of the building subtracted from the building. This to inform or comment. fragmented notch moves forty feet out SITE's most widely known work is from the building to expose the a series of buildings for Best Products entrance. Within the standard shopCompany, a catalogue-showroom ping center context, SITE has merchandiser. The first project for the changed our subconscious perception Best Company was completed in 1972. of the environment by changing very To an existing box-like structure, little of the actual physical reality. In SITE added a brick veneer facade the case of NOTCH, fragmentation with peeling corners, giving the has led to the addition of meaning. building a feeling of tentativeness and In the latest project, TILT, the iostabi~ty - the facade ln<?ks as if it entire masonry block facade is is falling off the building. Rather than casually tilted to reveal the in_side of

facade, the addition of a cascade of bricks, the subtraction of a corner, or the casual tilting of a facade are seemingly simple devices accomplished with an economy of-means. The interior of their buildings function under the same grid pattern as most other large shopping centers, allowing the owners to use the space as they wish. However, by using the skin of the building as a vehicle for art, SITE allows us to reevaluate our perception of the environment. In this way, the questions which these buildings generate both enrich and strengthen their context.

Working within a strict set of professional dogmas, traditional architecture appears fixed on proliferating and strengthening those institutions and values which our society has begun to question. To these fixed ideologies, SITE offers an alternative.

The ambiguity, irony, and humor of the Best buildings seem a welcome change.

SITE: Sculpture in the Environment -

One wonders how well the field of architecture has weathered the twentieth century. The overwhelming move towards technology has created an environment littered with memorials to function, economy, and formalism. Recently, however, the images of technology have lost their ability to excite, and the axiom "Form follows Function" is less mighty than it once was. It seems society was not prepared for an aesthetic lacking ambiguity, complexity, or a sense of humor.

The more recent past has witnessed the resurgence of a more humanistic approach to architecture. Postmodernism, a catch-all phrase for the growing number of current styles, has opened the profession to a reevaluation of its aging dogmas. Most popular among these trends is an increasing interest in eclecticism. The icons of the past are an attractive alternative to the stark brutality of the present. But electicism seems strangely out of place in a society based on

suburbs, shopping centers, automobiles, and technology.

SITE, Inc., of New York, tias been dealing with some of these problems since its conception in 1970. Aware of the growing-pains of the architectural profession, a group of artists, headed

by James Wines, began looking closely at the role of architecture and public art in today's society. Two problems became clear: the inability of architecture to communicate to Paul Chiasson is a site for sore eyes.

The C while pr circles, 2

Paul Chiasson

more than a handful of members of our society and the fissure which has grown between the arts and architecture.

Originally concerned with large scale public sculpture, SITE (for Sculpture In The Environment) became interested in the iconographic possibilities of architecture. The SITE group realized the impact that changes in the traditionally perceived built world could have if buildings were treated less as designed objects and more as a vehicle for social commentary. They postulated that if the accepted axiom that architectural form should relate to internal function was minimized , architecture could communicate to a much wider range of society. For SITE, the continuity between outside and inside is of little importance; the external influences of the social and cultural context are the dominant factors in their work.

Contrary to the great percentage of present day architectural thought, SITE's ideas evolve from the outside

-¡

The Ne·w Journal. December 1978

roup of Seven, for a short ,minent in Italian· artistic nd even involved in a

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respectable amount of material production, wa~ eventually discarded by fa.Scist administrators, to be replaced by blandly monumentalist neoclassicists. Their writings were forgotten, their buildings ignored.

Ignored, that is, by the mainstream: for the young leftists of the period immediately following the Second World War, their work was an inspiration. The attitudes and themes delineated in the twenties were finally grasped and began to receive the kind of critical attention necessary for their development into consistent, coherent theoretical positions. One can see in the writings of these architects the opening up of new horizons for architectural discourse, whose roots lie explicitly in the rationalism of the twenties. The architects involved in the movement were already beginning to formulate both a distinct theory and a formal "look" that would later intersect strategically with the views of entrapped and exhausted professionals of America who had been beaten down from their former brilliance by the triumph of the previous wave of European architects, the Modernists.

The most well known of this new group of neo-rationalists is Aldo Rossi. So far, his most widely published project has been the winning

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9

entry in the Modena Cemetery competition (now under construction) which, through its stark articulation of pure, though perhaps linguistically ambiguous form, is able to.draw the broad light of day into discussion with the eternally dark. Rossi will undoubtedly have a large impact on architectural thinking in the next few years, but it is important to remember that he is only one of a relatively large group of architects and intellectuals in other fields who share the same core of beliefs in common.

Among these, the chief theoretician must certainly be Manfredo Tafuri, whose slight but weighty book, Architecture and Uropia, has recently been translated into this language, and who himself now makes forays of sporadic frequency into this country.

At the other end of the spectrum is Carlo Aymonino, one of the most prolific of neo-rationalist builders, who has been relatively neglected on this side of the Atlantic.

But quite aside from the team's line-up, what do the "neo-rats" have to say? At first glance, their views hardly appear revolutionary, especially considering the predilection of these designers for so-called pure

forms and monumental harmonies.

But underneath all of this is a radical approach to architecture, the city, and, above all, to construction itself.

While Tafuri declares the end of the profession, and Scolari tries, on various continents (among them Manhattan) to educate it, they unite in declaring the architect, as society's foremost expert on construction, to be absolutely central to the development of the plan, the formal, social, economic and ultimately spiritual process by which humankind's evolution is to proceed. This is not utopianism, but rather a statement of will on the part of architects to take a place which is rightfully theirs, to assume a role which reason itself allots to them.

Reason? For the nco-rationalists, architecture is construction, and more than that, it is a construction of ideas, having a logical structure independent of ideological considerations, related, through its typology, to the city and em bracing memory through its ordering of urban morphology. Thus architecture is the impingement of thought - of reason - on the world, the tool by which man shapes and directs both his past and his future.

Frederic Hamilton awaits the Battle of the Words on the Seventh Floor.

10

The New Journal. De<·emher 1978

When is a New Wontan Not a New Woman?

-

New Woman magazine bills itself as "a digest for the woman of the Seventies." It should specify which century it represents. Although the slogan presumably refers to the present decade, the articles, ads, and attitudes expressed are basically as sexist and degrading as any published long before female suffrage, much less women's liberation.

The table of contents for the December, 1978 issue reinforces the magazine's schizophrenia - it dedicates itself to the independent "new woman," but is convinced that she needs a man to make her happy. "Are You Overly Concerned with the Opinions of Others?" and "How Popular are You?" cannot both appeal to the same new woman. "Are You Capable of Sexual Beauty?" follows an article stressing, "The key to sexual beauty is to go beyond the sense of sight," and suggesting "we get out of the Playboy environment." But the magazine has a monthly feature called "Reducing," and gives a painful but supposedly very effective method for removing cellulite (apply boiling water and ice cubes to the skin) in another section called "Doctor's Office." Be happy with your body and disregard those gorgeous models, says one article, while others tell you how to become one of those skin-deep beauties.

Under the liberated woman-type heading Successful Ljving New Woman presents the article, "If You Want to Meet Men." Its feminist conviction, "Your worth as a human being does not depend upon your popularity nor upon any man's reaction to you," would provide a welcome note of liberation if the article did not elsewhere promise, "Just five principles hold the key to scientific man-meeting. Once incorporated into your thinking, these put man-meeting within your control."

"Yes, now yo·u ean develop the kind of magnetic attractiveness and sex appeal that excites and arouses others

Lenore Skenazy

the moment you walk tnto a room ... thanks to the great new mindreprogramming book called Inner Looks." Although these two mindcontrol quotes seem to be from the same article, the second one is actually part of the blurb for the $7.95 book Inner Good Looks advertised on the opposite page. Inner Good Looks promises a "sure fire way to get others to fantasize about you sexually," and is "unconditionally guaranteed to improve your good looks in two weeks."

Mind over body - to diet, to glow, and to arouse. Is this what a truly liberated woman would waste her brain power on - feeling good about herself just so others will too, hopefully men?

Of course! claims New Woman in another two articles called "Relating to Others," and ••Relating to a Lover.'• Both stress advertising your true self while being a good listener, empathetic, and quiet about your own problems because your friends and lovers "have enough of their own."

What happens if the woman who wants a relationship happens to be impatient or troubled? Mind over personality, of course. Although the author advises that "to misrepresent yourself is a waste of time, because any relationship evolving from such a meeting will be in big trouble when the real you is discovered," he directly contradicts himself later saying you must act a certain way to make and keep friends, whether you feel comfortable that way or not.

"Can you buy friendship? You not only can, you must," emphasizes the "Relating to Others/ a Lover" author.

"Every person has needs. When you fill one or more of those needs, you're paying for someone's friendship." But, the author warns a page later in bold type, "Friends won't respect you for trying to be unselfish." You're out for yourself, honey, so grab some friends and be sympathetic, but not for their sake; and be yourself, but only if

~

you're an angel on the make.

If you're a liberated woman on the make (and after all, aren't all new women horny, hedonistic, husbandhunters?), r:emember that "If you want to be liked - and loved," you cannot "keep yourself - your real self - in hiding." Dr. George Weinberg, author of the article "If You Want to be Liked - and Loved," says that you must also enjoy life. Never mind that the "you must enjoy yourself" attitude is the basic American guilt trip as defined by Martha Wolfenstein in her essay "Fun Morality." For others to like you and for you to like yourself you must, as the New Woman author stresses ..get involved in as much as you can in the world around you," and enjoy it, goddammit. While Wolfenstein says this indoctrination makes us less able to enjoy life and hence guilt-ridden, New Woman says it makes us more us. While Wolfenstein says this reduces our pleasure play to a duty, New Woman thinks this is not the case, and that we do it to please · ourselves. The fact that the magazine insists that to be liked - and loved we must do it, however, proves that we are living and enjoying life for someone else in the hopes that she or he will love us for it. ..To be liked, don't try to please others," says the author hypocritically after eight tips on how to win friends and influence people which seem almost lifted from Dale Carnegie.

When you are fmished or tired of . winning and influencing new lovers and likers, perhaps it is time to tum to your own spouse. Dale Carnegie includes a section on domestic tranquility, why should New Woman be any different? ..What can YOU do to make your relationship better?" is the unlikely lead sentence in an article titled "Fighting Fulfills a Function for Staying Together." You must "make yourself more attractive and thus make working at the relationship easier for him."

With this advice the New Woman goes beyond Dale Carnegie's sycophantism to Maribel Morgan's sick Total Woman-ism. Just as Maribel suggests each wife greet her husband with a kiss and a compliment every evening when he comes home, New Woman exemplifies "Judy, an elementary school teacher," who, when her husband "came in the door after work each day would give him a kiss, smile, and say, •Hi, handsome' No IJ'latter how she felt." Italics. New Woman's. This same article later

admonishes "the woman who regularly 'fakes' orgasm to please her mate," because she is "not solving their sexual problem but preventing it from being solved.'' Why should she .• fake joy and lust in the front hallway, but not in the bedroom? Because she is a new woman, buffetting between liberation and subservience.

Obviously New Woman's advertisers realize the reader's fantasies, because over one-third of the ads are for beauty, fashion, and general mancatching aids; including make-up kits, jewelry, clubs, and individually preparl!d Natal Horoscopes which "can bring you love, romance, and improve your Life." The other ads sell cigarettes (for the independent woman look), convenient contraceptives (for the independent woman who proves her liberation through "spontaneity") , and liquid paper (for the independent secretary). To be fair, they also advertise insurance, liquor, and New Woman subscriptions.

The new woman herself is a female without well-defined feminist or antifeminist convictions. Appearances are all that count for her. If she seems independent, self-confident, and welladjusted, that serves her purposes just ·as well as if she really were. If she says she is liberated, she is, and with that out of the way, she is free to continue chasing men, youth, and beauty with unabated ardor. The happy ending she dreams of could be Cinderella's - she wants to find a man who will love her and take her

/

away from her forced self-reliance.

She can go it alone if she must, but she'd really rather not. Hence she is willing to play with her face, clothes, personality, and values to snag a man.

Labeling herself as liberated is just another ploy - maybe if she flirts with independence as well as men, they will find her more attractive.

"The more you realize that there is more to life than men - the more men you will have in your life," the article "So You Want to Meet Men" explains. Since meeting men is the object of the article to begin with, clearly the "more to life" is insignificant once the new woman has .attained her goal and secured a male.

So. come on, new woman. Prove yourself - desirable. Show us what you've got - up front. Come out of the closet - into the bedroom. And bum your bra - he'll think that's cute.

Lenore Skenazy writes for the Yale News.

Do;~,.

Th~

Nt>w Journal.

~ct>mher

11

/ 978

Yalies Don't Get V.D. Christmas morning and ... pus. I stare down at myself in horror thinking No it can't be. Urination isn't painful, thank God for that. But after breakfast, after we've unwrapped our presents, after church (Church? What am I doing in church, loathful sinner, bringing my disease to this house of God? How many others here have it too? And the priest, has he ever had it?), it is painful.

But it can't be, I've only been seeing one person. It's an infection, just a urinary infection, and I pore over my mother's nursing books searching for some kind of clue - big words that I don't understand and they all look worse than the clap.

No doctor, and DUH is two hundred miles away. It would be so easy if I were home at Yale. (Home? I om home, and it's not Yale.) My pediatrician shook hands good-bye when he gave me my college physical.

Now I realize why pediatricians are pediatricians; they can't deal with adult problems. Tell my parents? No. A V.D. clinic? But it's not V.D. And if it is, it can wait. Oh, but it hurts when I go to the bathroom and I never know what direction it's going to come out. Mop it up with toilet paper. (They're going to wonder why it's going so fast.) Another piece fold it in half and put it in my pants so they don't get stained.

Baby brother's two years old and he charges at me on the yellow horse with the blue wheels. Don't touch him, don't let him get near you.

Babies get it in their eyes and go blind. (Then there was the guy who kissed his children good-bye when he went to work and they all got syphilis.

Toddlers with oozing chancres on their innc;>cent lips.) He calls me "P." "P," ploy. Sorry, "P" can't play; don't cry, play with Ba-ba.

What to do? Two days go by and I do absolutely nothing. But the pus is turning color, from a pure friendly white to an evil, ominous beige-yellow that dries to the color of the beige stripe (next to the green and the red) in the Gucci insignia. I am scared. I have to talk to someone.

My father always complains that I never talk to him, which is true. He is

a space-scientist, and I am an English major. He used to take me to planetariums when I wanted to go to the movies. I interrupt 'his reading after dinner. "Dad, can I talk to you?" He. looks up from his book and his heart is touched ...In private." He follows me upstairs to my bedroom.

This is going to be an event communication.

It is a disappointing event for both of us. "Have .You been sleeping with

A non 1·mous

unclean women?" he asks. He doesn't can tell he's a sterling citizen by the hypodermic needles, each containing know anything about V.D. He doesn't protuberance of his mandible." about a quart of penicillin ...Lower ask to see it. (I wonder whdse · is Laughter. "What happened to him?" your pants to your hips and turn ..We don' t know. Either he was hit bigger?) He wants me to visit my over." by a truck or someone shot his pediatrician. I have younger brothers "You've got to be kidding." stomach full of aluminum .bullets. Or and sisters who still see him, and I "No. rm not." he ate them." More laughter. don't want to disgrace the family. "I I stand up and lower my pants, The addict's hand comes alive. It think you should ask your mother," then struggle to get back on to the he suggests. "Maybe she can set up an swings wildly, thrashing through the table. It is difficult. air, then dies. The doctors didn't see.

"Lie flat on your stomach if you appointment with one of the doctors can. It'll hurt less." at the hospital. Or I could take you to One goes in and leans over the bed.

False friendliness. "Hi! How 'ya Of course I can. You think you've the emergency room at the Medical doin'? Oh, I see. Gee, that's too bad." given me an erection or something?

Center." Mother is called in and at The doctors are all laughing. They Don't flatter yourself. this point I don't care who knows. I leave and the hand is thrashing again.

The first needle stabs. The pain is just want help. We decide on the I suddenly realize what's wrong. unbearable and I stifle a yell into the emergency room. Before I leave my The hand .is too close to the bottom sheets. mother assures me, "I just want you "Relax. Relax the muscle. You're of the bed, and the sheets are to know that gonorrhea can be gathered strangely.

The addict has no making it worse." transmitted by toilet seats. It's not just legs. The doctors are still laughing.

I try. The nurse is pushing hard. It an old wives' tale. They taught us in Finally a doctor comes to see me. I feels like she's twisting the needle. training." tell him my problem. My voice is There is a plopping sound. Air in my At the hospital, I have to fill out muscle? The nurse giggles. She pulls choked. forms; the nurse has to fill out forms.

••Have you had sexual congress out the empty tube.

"Religion?" she asks. I pause a recently?" His accent is thick and "Oh. I forgot to ask. Are you moment, measuring principles and strange. allergic to penicillin?" priorities, but this. is no time for a ..Yes." " You're a real riot, you know religious crisis. "Catholic." I sneak a "When was the last time?" that?" glance at my father. He winks The last day at school, before she She stabs me again, the other broadly. left to go home. Let's see, that would cheek. Punishment. There are tears in We are separated and I am led my eyes. be... ''Eight days ago." through a maze of hallways. I try to "I see. Let's have a look ... UhWhen it's over, I pull up my pants. concentrate so that I don't look like a huh."

"O.K., you can go." lost jerk on my way out. The nurse Go? But no one's told me anything.

Before he touches it, he puts on brings me to a large room sectioned thin rubber-gloves from a roll hanging I thought they asked questions, tried off by curtains and points to a bed in to take names... But ... but ... I on the wall. They look Like fiveone of the sections. "Someone will be fingered condoms. I am hurt. Leper. want to see the doctor." with you."

She frowns ... He's outside." There'll He feels around.

I am alone for quite a while.

"This is a venereal disease," he be no privacy.

There is something wrong about ·the I walk through the curtain. The announces. man behind the curtain across from Injury to insult. I object. "fm sure room is filled with people. Patients, me. I can't see most of his body, just it's not. It must be something else." relatives, doctors, police, nurses. They the edge and the bottom of the bed.

Sure kid.

Something else.

Your all look at me. They all know. They But there is something strange about penis just has a bad cold, that's all. smirk and nod to each other. the way his hand rests on the side of "We see this all the time. lt's ·very I find my doctor. He is busy filling the bed. The woman next to me has a out forms. lie seems annoyed, that I'm common." hernia. The doctor explains, "When I am not common. I go to Yale. bothering him. you fell down the stairs, a piece of .. But you haven't told me anything.

The doctor bas a Q-tip. Oh my your intestine got pushed through God, what is he going to do with You have to tell me something." your diaphragm ... ., that? "I have to take a sample." I " What do you want to know?"

A big black nurse comes into my don't believe it. It won't fit! I prepare "Can it be something else? It bas to section with a little gadget. It is a for intense pain.

The head of the swab be something else." digital thermometer. I get to watch The doctor stalls. "There are some disappears, but I don't feel a thing. the lighted numbers mount higher and "Now we'll take a blood test to see if things. About four or five, but they're higher until they reach I 0 I. The nurse you have syphilis, too. It won't hurt." very rare." takes my blood pressure. She looks at "But you don't understand. You It does. The girl who gave me a blood the dial and laughs. "Scared, huh? test at Yale was a cold bitch, but see, I'm seeing one person."

Don't worry, we don't bite here." She "It only takes once... when I exclaimed, ..That was paindisappears.

There are doctors gathered around a station outside. What the hell are ·. they doing? Why don't they come see me? Another doctor joins them. They are laughing.

"Where is he?"

They point to the curtain across from me. The doctor looks in. .. My God." He looks away...What is the nature of his addiction?" " Morphine."

The doctor looks again. " Well, you

1

, t

less!" , she smiled proudly and said.

"Thank-you."

"We will give you treatment tonight, and it will be all over." The doctor exits, and I wait. Alone.

About ftfteen minutes later a young nurse comes in. Slim, good-looking, jet-black hair, trying very hard not to laugh uncontrollably. She bands me two yellow pills...You take these first, then the shots." She exits.

She returns later with two large

Goddamn foreigner. He doesn't understand what rm trying to say.

Can't even speak English. Why the bell don't they stay in their own fucking countries instead of coming here, taking up space !n our medical sctiools, our hospitals. Won't even go · back like be's supposed to. Too much continu~d

to pog~ 15 .

12

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Dick Perslwn

It is the middle of autumn in Hempstead Heath. An old man seated between a grey bomberg hat and a park bench contemplates a father and son. They - both wearing khaki knickers and knee socks - are progressing slowly through a light underbrush which they fight through and away with the aid of canes, warped legs of wood which the trees have shed in a recent wind. A black thrush rushes whistling through the branches of a tree that has turned purple with the late heat of .the season. The leaves flutter, as if the bird's wings had power to set them in motion. The man seated on the bench notes to himself that the color of the leaves, a wine color, is something which is artived at only after many months and then endures only briefly for the glint of several afternoons.

The black of the bird is a spectacular and darkening shadow against the color of the leaves. The man thinks he will paint the scene when he has returned to his "Studio and feels the strength. He thinks about what he shall do with the father and son, must analyze their character and relationship, pin them down with perfect clarity beneath the scudding clouds.

The rest is murky enough, he thinks, the hqman element must be crisp, distinct.

Using their canes the father and son poke about the roots of a knotted oak tree. The son thrashes at the leathery bark trying to cut to the green blood of the wood which he wishes to expose underneath. He slashes his weapon like a scythe-sledge-sword.

His father taps at the tree trunk huge around without any hurt, to pass the time. They do not talk. The father's sound is a steady breathing beating, the son's a furious wracking, young and uneven. Gesturing with one arm up and pointed forward, the man on the bench interprets the two figures as foresters chopping trees... A Corot," the man says, "and the trees will be taller and the air thicker and more substantial."

The son kicks at the caked ground with the heel of his shoe. He manages to dislodge a smooth stone, wet with the dewy clay underneath. He measures it in his palm, fixing it into the sling of his index finger, and heaves it - a slicing spinning saucer - into the bloom of the tree in which the thrush has been chattering.

The boy jumps up gleefully with the crack of the stone against the first bough, and then its sound as it ricochets thuds through the tree like the banged pipes of a wooden organ.

The father watches in an attitude of condonement, following the slice of the rock as if it were an extension of his son's arm. The man on the bench admires the admiration of the father.

"This is the representation of love," flashes the man to himself in images

of harmony: streaked shades of autumn in the boy's burnt-blond hair firing the orange brown in his father's.

There is a coordination. The painter sees it and notes it and finds himself raising his hands and poising them, paletteless, in the grey air. He conducts the song of the thrush.

The father and son walk through the shaggy grass of the open spaces.

The man on the bench considers whether they are returning or departing. He considers the angle at which he sees them - oblique, never scheduled for a meeting. He considers it otherwise, and experiments with the other possibilities - flipping the mental image of their bodies from one side to the other, playing with their embodiment as if turning over a negative or inverting a mirror. The man on the bench translates the father and son countless spaces forward, then rewinds them back to their original position; next he re-aligns their direction in the grass, shifting them over several degrees. Finally, he flips them over entirely: they are standing on their heads.

The man on the bench blinks and the father and son are both walking on their feet, but he notices that they are limping, that both of them are dragging the same foot, plumping it down unsmartly. "No wonder the canes," he says to himself and changes the shape of the wood, straightens it, varnishes it, and hooks the handle around to make it easier to clasp. The father and son are suddenly changing their direction, wa.Iking now unquestionably straight for the man on the bench; yet they do not see him.

The father and son are headed dead straight for the man on the bench. In the same instant as the painting of his mind registers the change in their direction, he sees the collision, the collision between himself, the man on the bench, and the father and son. He shudders and protects his hands in the cradle of 路his chest. He will not have them harmed. Now he notices that the father and son both wear identical sunglasses, ugly black plastic. They are the black-eye covering kind, he thinks to himself, no one wears them unless there is a wrong. The sky is the white color of dirty snow. If the sun shone it would be diluted to one dimension ...They are blind ," the man on the bench realizes, "and those are not bits of wood , but canes."

The man on the bench tries to uncross his legs. The upper leg won't unlock and he is stuck in that seated position while father and son toss away into a bush the pieces of wood they have been carrying in their hands and scamper lithely across the field.

They are not even wearing glasses.

The man on the bench waits for his nurse to come to pull his legs apart and wheel him home. She has his wheel chair.

Oick Pershun k<'C'fJ.'i his fUn.

-

13 -. The New Journal, Decemher 1978

Ask

iThe Name of the Game is fashion ...

[vu

Dear Eva, I went to the Calhoun Happy Hour last week, where you arink champagne and it tastes just like coca-cola.

Then this girl walked up to me a nd s he asked me to dance! Well, I'm not the world's most passionate guy, but when I looked in her eye, I almost fell. She picked me up and sat me on her knee, and said, "Little b<ty, would you come on, please?" Well, I'm not the world's most physical ·guy, but when she squeezed me tight, she nearly broke my spine. (I left home just a week before, and I never ever kissed a woman before.) Well, I'm not the world's most masculine man, but I know I'm a man and I'm glad I'm a man , unlike some people I might mention. Just o ne thing confuses me: I'm not dumb but I can't understand why she walked like a woman and talked like a man?

- Not Dumb Dear Not, What is this, an epidemic? Stop worrying a nd give yourself over to absolute pleasure, as Kierkegaard wrote in Fear and Trembling in !.As Vegas. AND I WOULD APPRECIATE IT VERY MUCH IF PERVERTS STOPPED WRITING TO ME!

•••••••••• Dear Eva, My husband batters me, my daughters look like Shelley Duvall, my sons are homosexuals or worse. It has been snowing since mid-June, the dog has eaten the cat, a nd the bill collector's beating at the door. (Our life savings were invested in FlavourAide and the Midi.) On top of all that, I didn't even make The New York Times' " Hundred Neediest Cases." Quoi faire?

- Name Withheld Dear Name, We must not blame others for our own inadequacies, Name. You should look inward, speak to your astrologer, and take up smoking unfiltered Camels.

••••••••••

Official Memo: I've read every column you've ever published and I think you're doing a swell job. For the life of me, I can't see why anyone would want to criticize Eva. A. Bartlett G.

••••••••••

Dear Eva, I was sittin' in my truck outside of Berkeley College, just seJling some firewood, and I thought up a great way to make some bucks. Why not start a Yale Hooker Service? It could go on the Bursar's Bill as Y.H.S. and serve "handfulls" and "mouthfulls," in the grand old tradition of the Calhoun Cabaret. Then folks like me wouldn't end up groanin' over our cornflakes on Sunday mornings. Y'all interested?

- Dino, Calhoun '81

We are proud to announce our appointment as agents for this prestigious line of fine men's fashions, including suitst sport jackets, slacks & sportswear.

P.S. Don't want t his to sound SEXIST or anything.

Dear Dino, It's always gratifying to hear from students who really want to contribute something to the community. I'm s ure you could get backing from your college's social committee. If not, you should try to organize it through Mrs. Rosen at Mental Hygiene o r through Christ Church. Keep me posted on your progress!

...

•••••••••• Dear Eva, I found a million dollar baby in a five-and-ten-cent store, but she won't give me the time of day! I took her to see Fritz Lang's Salamanders in Salamanca (1943) at the Lincoln, but sh e still insisted we keep "three feet on the floor" when we got back to her apartment. I feel like I'm squinting at a mirage - if mutton at Mory's doesn't d o the trick, I'll kill myself!

- Anonymous, Andover '76 Dear Anon, As Walter R . Cove and Jeannette F. Tudor's Sex R oles and Mental Illness so succinctly expressed it, "although not a form of mental illness, suicide reflects a high degree of mental distress." Therefore, don't do it. You have overlooked the Yalie's usual seduction site, the top floor of Connecticut Hall. You might also try giving her a pineapple. If all else fails, fall down and die before her; thus dying live, and living do adore her.

Hours: Monday-Saturday, 9:30-5:30 Free parking across

the street

:

•••••••••• Dear Eva, Moo !

-

La Vache Qui Rit ;

Dear La, Moo to you too. Cherchez La Vache!

Food is good for youDrinks wash it down-

•••••••••• Dear Eva, I live in a small and provincial New England town. I am an outcast, a pariah, a marked woman. Censurious townfolk ostracize me, hypocritical clergymen insult me, I wear a mark of shame always. All because I don't conform! Can you help me?

- Hester P. Dear Hester, Believe me, I know just how you feel. But don't be discouraged. Take heed of the immortal words of Howard Parish: " It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is s haped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or strikes out against injustice, .or acts to improve the lot of others, he sends a tiny ripple of hope; and, crossing each other from a mimon different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."' Amen.

We have both.

388 Elm St.

New Haven

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Tht' Nt'w Journal, Dt'ct'mbt'r /978

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41 COLLEGI: SlRf"T CONNE~ICUT

N EW H A V[N

continu~d fro m pag~

Walter: I saw some kids playing outside.

Charles: Were they boys or girls?

Walter: I don't know, they didn't have any clothes on.

5

thmg. An ad-lib is a covering remark that LUCKILY worked very well, but . in an improvisation you can plan and pre-determine what you're going to say. We do have a script. But every performance will always be different, because every audience is different, and it evolves that way.

I feel that the accomplishment is that I've done what I set out to do: synthesize a drama (with a plot and characters and a story) with the idea of a nightclub act.

I think a lot of it is owed to radio, even though the visual impact is very strong; the idea of how much was communicated verbally, just by standing still at a microphone. I love radio.

I love TV, too. I would adore to be on TV. It's the feeling of the 20th ·century. No, it's the 21st century, because it's a cross between communi-

cation and an art form; it's like the telephone. That could be an art form ... imagine! ... Ventriloquism is very appropriate to radio. Although we think of the dummy as being terribly important, actually it's not necessary at all. Edgar Bergen always used a dummy, though, even on the radio.

ES: I found "euphemism" a recurrent theme in the play.

CL· In all of my work. For instance, in one play, a eunuch says he doesn't like to say "eunuch," he prefers to think of himself as "extremely well circumcised." Another character is told that what he's doing is blackmail and he says, "I prefer to call it the simple economics of discretion."

0~~~

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ES: An actress I know considers The Ventriloquist's Wife to be politically oppressive and sexist, because it presents negative stereotypes of women and gays.

CL: I think there's a difference between oppression and the representation of oppression ... Susan and I are not TRYING to show an exemplary relationship; we're showing a pathological one. It's like a I 950s sitcom marriage ... I find it more oppressive to have people tell you that "this is the true image" (of women and gays), of something that's BEYOND a cultural representation.

Sexuality is something more primordial. When somebody says they're gay, I don't know what they mean that they are, I really don't. There's a

whole Jot of shades of grey between "man on top of woman for procreation only," and the most exquisite fetishes where a shoe or a scarf or a photograph can cause sexual feelings - it's very complicated. In the play, Susan and I are playing out fl relationship we've vigorously rejected in our lives ... It's THEATRICAL convention. Moreover, it's not easy to be truly sexist these days, with plays like I Love My Wife- that's not even up to sexism; it couldn't work up to a head of sexism! I've been planning a play called The Secret Lives of the Sexists. which is going to lay bare the whole problem of sexism.

And THAT play will solve all these questions. ·

]J~IJ

~otEISURE LOUNG~y 259 ORANGE ST·

This card is good for one FREE Cocktail of your choice with the purchase of any sandwich or platter on our menu. ''Our kitchen closes when we do.''

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The New Journal.

~C'emher

15

1978

\

continued from page I I

the physical routine no longer made me ache in the early morning.

Christmas came. It was I ()40 on Christmas day, and I thought of the Northeast, buried in white.

On Christmas night, the moon was full and the stars were shining brilliantly. As always, the quietness sent quivers up my back. Gazing at the southern hemisphere night lights and walking along the dirt road which boundaried the homestead, it seemed as if Esperance was the only place on earth. Indiana, Pa.? How could I conjure more than a thin, twodimensional image? College was someplace my friends were "going to." " Where are you going this fall, Ed?" "Oh, I don't know," was my answer all summer. Pause. "Oh," said the questioner. Now I was in Australia, learning about rams and ewes, horses and cows, dust and flies, stars and stretching beaches.

Just as summer began to fade I got ready to leave. By this time, I was the only jack left. I packed my bags and Greg drove me to Esperance. I wasn't entirely reluctant or excited.

I was eager to travel and see other parts of Australia and yet, I enjoyed being a part of the farm's rhythm. I walked along the beach one more time, wondering how much the days at Yerritop Creek Station had changed me. "It'll make a man out of you!" Man-boy, maybe. I picked up my duffel bag and hustled to the oneroom bus station. I hopped on, took a last look, and began the slow grind to Perth.

I. I

1

to. Look at that big fat cop with the . _they connect m~ with Family stupid grin. Walk up to him and say Planning. When I call back agaan they money here. Forget about the poor loudly Don't worry I didn't tell them I connect me with another outside slobs at home. caller who is trying to reach Family got it from you. Head for the door. ..I am seeing one girl. We've been Oh God, don't let pte trip.

Planning. A third call gets me Family having a steady relationship. If I have Planning, and they inform me that the When I get home, I can't keep my V.D. that would mean she's been hospital doesn't have a V.D. clinic. I mouth shut. "They tried to tell me I cheating!" am advised to call emergency. They have V.D.," I cry, hurt and innocent.

The doctor looks at me blankly. are busy in the emergency room and "It was so degrading, so humiliating." they want me to call back at four "Well, I can't say anything about When I undressed for bed, there o'clock. that." were two large blood stains in the seat That bitch. That goddamn bitch!

"I won't be here at four o'clock. of my underpants.

I've got to catch a train back to Couldn't do without it for a week school in half an hour." while I studied for finals. Couldn't I didn't sleep at all that night.

"Well, can you wait a few minutes, give a guy a fucking break. I'm not Nightmare visions of the man with no and rn call you back." even going to tell her. I'm going to let legs, thrashing his arm in angry When she calls back, her voice is her find out for herself. And if she frustration. I hate doctors. I hate the voice that they use to inform a doesn't (the symptoms often go medicine. I bate doctors. Frankenfather that his wife has given birth to undetected in women), then I'll stand steins, all of them. My old roommate a set of twins. by silently as it eats out her tubes and wants to be a doctor. Ob John, John, "P_ _ , I have your test results. ovaries, leaving her as sterile and when you are, avenge these atrocities.

Negative. Congratulations." barren as her conscience.

Become the Me~siah of medicine. I ••Negative!" I run through the "You haven't even told me ... am sorry, I am so sorry for that night house shouting. Down the stairs.

Doctor. You haven't even told me when I told you to pack it in, that ••Negative!" I cry. "NEGATIVE! how long it takes. I mean, how long you didn't have what it takes.

NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE!" before I can have sex again?"

Remember you told me how much It is joy. It is rebirth. It is baptism.

He looks at me disdainfully. So is you liked Camelot? I saw it on T.V. that what you're worried about? "Two last night and now I understand. It is Peter Pokalsky wishes to remain weeks." my only comfort in this tear-stained anonymous.

"And what if it is something else? night. There simply is not a more How will I know?" congenial spot for happy-ever-aftering "If it's something else the penicillin t.'1an here in Camelot. Run, boy! will kill it. You can call back if you Ruuuuuuunnnnnn! want and find out the test results. Call In the morning, at breakfast, the operator and ask for the V.D. Mother asks, "How is your problem'! clinic."

Did it go away?"

Not too loud. Everyone heard that "Yes it did, as a matter of fact. It last one. I get up and walk down the fell off." long corridor, past the multitudes of Grandmother drops her teacup, but smirking eavesdroppers, head held Mother is sneaking a laugh behind high, proud. Oh, I wish I'd bought her napkin. one of those jackets that say Yale on A week later I call for the test them like my ~other kept telling me results. I ask for the V.D. clinic and

•

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