by side in our narrow bed as streetlights came on, we’dfollow their patterns on the walls and ceiling as we listened to late-night radio talk shows. Our favorite was Long John Nebel. One night a caller said, in a slow, ignorant drawl, “Long John, you have missed the whole boat.” Naked in our drugged darkness, we turned to each other with a rush of sweet, gluey love and happiness. For months thereafter, we said affectionately, “You have missed the whole boat.”
Sylvia could be happy and funny, but it is easier to remember the bad times. They were more sensational; also less painful now than remembering what I loved. There were moments when we’d happen to look up at each other while sitting a few yards apart in a crowded subway train, or across a room at a party, or in the slow flow of drugged conversation with four others in our living room, the gray dawn beginning to light the windows, and we’d smile with our eyes, as if we were embarrassed by our luck, having each other.
One afternoon, alone in the apartment, I found myself staring at Sylvia’s sneaker lying on the floor beside the bed. It was still laced. She’d shoved it off her foot with the heel of the other sneaker, which was nowhere in sight. What came to me was the terrifying emptiness of the sneaker. I couldn’t remain alone in the apartment. I left and walked quickly toward the Columbia campus, trying to spot her in the crowd, black hair flying, brown leather coat.
Roger phoned, then came by. He told me that he shot up last night, and had gone to sleep at eight in the morning.He was awakened by a phone call, at 9:45 a.m., from his aunt. Wretched with no sleep, he tried to be polite. While talking to his aunt, he noticed tiny bugs moving about his crotch. I imagined Roger sprawled in bed, talking on the phone, playing with himself, and suddenly noticing the local fauna. The aunt said, “I’ve got a girl for you.”
Roger said, “Really?”
“She’s blonde, works in television, and is charming. Promise me you’ll call.”
Roger said, “I promise.”
After hanging up, Roger spent twenty minutes immobilized by horror and fascination, staring at tiny white bugs crawling on his skin.
Before he could tell me all this, Roger said I had to swear not to repeat a word of it. He always does something to make me wait before saying what he has in mind. He lights a cigarette, or stares into my eyes and says nothing. The effect is eerily suspenseful. Finally, whatever he says is anticlimactic. I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone. He said:
“I think I have syphilis.”
I asked why he thought so.
“A late stage of syphilis.”
I asked again why he thought so.
“There are little animals crawling on me. I also have a rash.”
I didn’t laugh. I advised him to call a doctor. From my place he phoned his doctor friend, Jerry, Roger’s roommate at Harvard. Jerry told Roger he probably didn’t havesyphilis, and he explained about pubic lice. Jerry phoned in a prescription to a nearby drugstore. Roger and I walked up Broadway together to pick it up. I wondered if it is remarkable that Roger Lvov, a genius from Brooklyn who has a Harvard Ph.D., thinks pubic lice indicate a late stage of syphilis.
JOURNAL, JULY 1963
At the end of the school year, I resigned from my job at Paterson State, applied for readmission to graduate school at the University of Michigan, and began to audit classes at Columbia to recover the feeling of lectures and the formal study of literature. I also started reading again in a scholarly mood, with attention to style and meaning, and no pleasure. There were more fights with Sylvia. After a bad fight, when both of us were spent, I said quietly that I would leave New York. She said nothing. I took her silence as agreement.
One night, around 11 p.m., we were going to an all-night movie house on 42nd Street. As we descended into the subway, a rush of air, urinous and greasy, lifted about us. I said, “I can’t go down there.
Sylvia could be happy and funny, but it is easier to remember the bad times. They were more sensational; also less painful now than remembering what I loved. There were moments when we’d happen to look up at each other while sitting a few yards apart in a crowded subway train, or across a room at a party, or in the slow flow of drugged conversation with four others in our living room, the gray dawn beginning to light the windows, and we’d smile with our eyes, as if we were embarrassed by our luck, having each other.
One afternoon, alone in the apartment, I found myself staring at Sylvia’s sneaker lying on the floor beside the bed. It was still laced. She’d shoved it off her foot with the heel of the other sneaker, which was nowhere in sight. What came to me was the terrifying emptiness of the sneaker. I couldn’t remain alone in the apartment. I left and walked quickly toward the Columbia campus, trying to spot her in the crowd, black hair flying, brown leather coat.
Roger phoned, then came by. He told me that he shot up last night, and had gone to sleep at eight in the morning.He was awakened by a phone call, at 9:45 a.m., from his aunt. Wretched with no sleep, he tried to be polite. While talking to his aunt, he noticed tiny bugs moving about his crotch. I imagined Roger sprawled in bed, talking on the phone, playing with himself, and suddenly noticing the local fauna. The aunt said, “I’ve got a girl for you.”
Roger said, “Really?”
“She’s blonde, works in television, and is charming. Promise me you’ll call.”
Roger said, “I promise.”
After hanging up, Roger spent twenty minutes immobilized by horror and fascination, staring at tiny white bugs crawling on his skin.
Before he could tell me all this, Roger said I had to swear not to repeat a word of it. He always does something to make me wait before saying what he has in mind. He lights a cigarette, or stares into my eyes and says nothing. The effect is eerily suspenseful. Finally, whatever he says is anticlimactic. I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone. He said:
“I think I have syphilis.”
I asked why he thought so.
“A late stage of syphilis.”
I asked again why he thought so.
“There are little animals crawling on me. I also have a rash.”
I didn’t laugh. I advised him to call a doctor. From my place he phoned his doctor friend, Jerry, Roger’s roommate at Harvard. Jerry told Roger he probably didn’t havesyphilis, and he explained about pubic lice. Jerry phoned in a prescription to a nearby drugstore. Roger and I walked up Broadway together to pick it up. I wondered if it is remarkable that Roger Lvov, a genius from Brooklyn who has a Harvard Ph.D., thinks pubic lice indicate a late stage of syphilis.
JOURNAL, JULY 1963
At the end of the school year, I resigned from my job at Paterson State, applied for readmission to graduate school at the University of Michigan, and began to audit classes at Columbia to recover the feeling of lectures and the formal study of literature. I also started reading again in a scholarly mood, with attention to style and meaning, and no pleasure. There were more fights with Sylvia. After a bad fight, when both of us were spent, I said quietly that I would leave New York. She said nothing. I took her silence as agreement.
One night, around 11 p.m., we were going to an all-night movie house on 42nd Street. As we descended into the subway, a rush of air, urinous and greasy, lifted about us. I said, “I can’t go down there.
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