Volume 16 ~ Spring 2004 ~ ISSN 1543-6063

JEFFERY CONWAY

Dead Poet

You wrote in a poem something
I often think about—countless encounters
with men and that with each you felt
“a kind of love.” Wish I never
read that—truth hurts, love hurts—
and here’s my idea of death,
which isn’t a cliché, or at least
I haven’t heard it (though as you
know, in this day, chances are someone’s
already said it), but here goes anyway:
The dead know everything, or have the option to.
You sit up there and watch a kind of big screen
TV with billions of channels—one for each of us
bores here on earth. I’m sure you haven’t
tuned into my station, but if you had
a few months ago, there I was
minding my own on a nude beach
under the harshest sun when he crossed my path
wrapped in a pink (I know) towel.
He sat down and I moved closer.
The rest, dear dead poet, is Jeffery history.
One afternoon spent naked on the highest dune,
drenched in Skin-So-Soft (horrible flies),
with a man so beautiful and kind
that even I had to wonder
if we’d really been there at all.
But the next day, there was his number
on a piece of scrap paper and the memory of him
placing it in my hand: “Just in case,” he’d said.

Two months later: he’s standing in front of me
(because I called)—his eyes so blue even
in the dark—asking “Why now?”
One can’t whisper, “Because I felt
‘a kind of love.’” But you know that
because you’re dead, and you see clearly
how we mortals fill our lives with work, and bills
(even though we work), and daily gum care,
and the gym, and our parents who despise
everything we do, and relationships
with really good people, with marginal types,
with losers, with alternate side of the street parking,
laundry, the food shopping,
and the freakin’ dishes day in and day out,
the mail, e-mail, with reading for classes
we don’t like but “have to” take, reading
to stay smart, or get smart—oh yeah,
keeping up with whatever is on TV so we
don’t feel out-of-it, or old, like with music,
which we love, but can’t help feel pressure
from the board of directors in our head
to know and form an opinion about the video.

There I was, standing a few inches
from his confused face with nothing
to say because I’m realizing
our “kind of love” was never meant to be
expressed in person, with words, down here
on earth where we buy the truth with our lives.

My summer roommate and I invite the nice guy who is staying next door to us here on the Cape for coffee. He tells a story about his noble grandfather who set up reading programs for illiterate Irish immigrants early in the century. I tell the story about how I had to get rid of Pecky, my pet chicken, when I was a kid because Sugarfoot, my dog (all black with one white paw), kept eating Pecky’s poop off the patio and wouldn’t stop vomiting, which isn’t a bad story to tell, except my roommate finds out a little later in the conversation that this nice guy is a Kennedy, and he is evasive—says he’s really very busy—when we ask him to come for dinner.

I’m in my tux waiting for the onslaught of an after-performance crowd to invade the buffet, when Dom DeLuise walks over and says, “Hi! Who are you?” “I’m with the caterer,” I say. “Oh,” he says, “we could be friends.” He’s real jolly, laughs, and stands in front of the crudités display devouring entire piles of carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, snow peas, et cetera. But what’s really shocking is that he’s a “double dipper” (a person who dunks a vegetable into the dip, takes a bite, and sticks it back in for another glob).

I’m standing with Tom, the other waiter, behind the bar waiting for the party to break up, but it goes on and on. Finally, the hostess, Annie Lebowitz, walks over to say she’s leaving. Thank God I think I can go home now. But Annie says she’d like to keep the party rolling even though she has to go. Tom says okay, as long as she pays us cash right away, which she does. Then she takes a step back, pulls out an odd little camera, and snaps our picture—my face is frozen in horror at the thought of being immortalized in my secondhand tuxedo.

I’m passing a tray of sushi in a very crowded hallway. I see a person in a small group motioning me to come over. I mumble “feeding time” to myself as I push the silver tray into the huddle. A woman with her back to me turns around and smashes her breasts into the tray. “Oh,” she says looking at the sushi rolls, “what’s this?” Staring at her boobs, which are resting on the ornate lip, I say, “They’re filled with raw fish.” I look up at her—it’s Marla Maples Trump—and she says, “Maybe just a taste!” She snatches one from the tray and bounces off after her husband, saying “I’m always holding you up!”

I’m assigned to the entertainment’s dressing room at a big banquet. There’s a photo of a very pretty black woman in a short black dress pinned to the door. I was told the performer is an ex-Supreme, so I figure this must be the right room. I go in and stack the fridge full of Evian and champagne. The door flies open and this woman from the photo walks in with her entourage. I say hello and ask if there’s anything else I can get her. She says no, and I say “You’re Martha Wilson, right? Could you sign a picture for my friend David, please? He wrote a poem about the Supremes once, and he’s a big fan.” The woman grabs a pen and scribbles something trite (“Touch”) on the back of a photo, hands it to me, and says, “Now go—I gotta dress.” I smile and walk out. When I tell David that I got Martha Wilson to write something on a photo for him even though she didn’t seem very nice, he tells me her name is “Mary,” not “Martha.”

Glancing at my watch, I notice that Lauren Bacall is reaching for a tissue in her purse. She’s standing at the bar in front of me, talking to some man. She turns her head and blows her nose discreetly. I become obsessed with her tissue, drive myself crazy trying to figure out how she’ll get rid of it in this streamlined, sparse, yet posh Time Warner reception room that has no trash receptacle. I wipe glasses as her eyes dart around the room. She’s obviously as concerned as I am about what to do with the snotty tissue. She and the man begin their good-byes. Lauren grabs a white cocktail napkin from the pile that I carefully fanned earlier and wipes her mouth, then she crams the balled-up Kleenex into the napkin and clenches it in her fist. She shakes hands with the man and walks toward the door, all the while looking for a place to leave the small package. I see her place it behind some empty glasses on a cocktail table in the corner. After she disappears behind the double doors, I beeline for the scrunched-up prize. I put it in the pocket of my tux and bus the glasses onto my black lacquer tray. When I finally get a chance to open the thing up, I see Lauren’s red lip prints on the cocktail napkin and the balled-up snotty tissue inside. I put them back into my pocket. A few weeks go by, and I’ve forgotten all about Lauren’s gift, until one night when I’m working with a bunch of bitter catering queens. I pull the white ball from my pocket and announce with pride that I am the owner of one cocktail napkin with Lauren Bacall’s lip prints on it, and one Kleenex with her dried snot on it. To my dismay, my friends the queens aren’t impressed: One rolls his eyes, one walks away, and another dryly remarks, “Fabulous. The unforgettable pair, Boogie and Bacall.”

I’m working at the Guggenheim Museum. A cosmetics company has rented it for the day to throw a party launching a new product. I’m dressed by twenty-two-year-old women fresh out of college who think it will be “fun” to have the waiters dressed as computer nerds. The color scheme for the party is white: Everything white. We are dressed in white high-water pants, white short-sleeve oxford shirts, white loafers, white belts, and chunky square-framed glasses. The young women grease our hair and make exaggerated parts to one side. I’m thinking, This is definitely a low point. We have to pass white hors d’oeuvres on white trays through the main lobby, which is filled with white cocktail tables, white flower arrangements, and white bean-bag chairs. After a couple of hours, the party winds down, and the other waiters and I take the trash out to the street via the loading dock. As we’re dragging the garbage bags to the curb, we see a thin, older man with long hair walking towards us. One of the other waiters whispers, “Oh my God, it’s Tiny Tim!” Another waiter, an actor from the Midwest, starts to sing “Tip-toe Through the Tulips” in a shrill falsetto. Tiny Tim gives us three computer nerds bedecked in white the once over twice, makes a face, and sticks his tongue out at us as he passes.

My friend Bouffy and I have been hired as waiters for a women’s tennis awards party. The theme is seventies and eighties retro, and we get to wear costumes instead of our tuxes. I’m dressed in khaki’s, white Oxford shirt, and blue blazer (a la Dynasty). Bouffy looks kooky in his four-inch-high “cha cha” platforms, striped bell-bottom pants, and purple velvet shirt. We twirl around the party passing hors d’oeuvres, checking out the guests’ clothes, et cetera. Bouffy’s long black hair is up high in a ponytail, and I tell him he looks like Veronica in The Archies. He sucks his cheeks in and starts to flip is head violently from side to side. I see a woman close behind him waving her hand in front of her face, trying to defend herself against Bouffy’s flailing ponytail. I pull Bouffy out of the lady’s way, and as she passes in a huff, we see that it’s Martina Navratilova. We can’t stop laughing and decide to go downstairs to take a break. At the top of the metal staircase, Bouffy stomps his platforms like he’s doing a jig, making a lot of noise. A woman at the bottom of the steps stops and backs away as Bouffy dances down the stairs singing the Stevie Nicks song “Stand Back” and I fan him with my serving tray to simulate a wind machine. When we pass, we realize it’s Billy Jean King. She stares with her mouth open as Bouffy and I run down the hall shrieking.

It’s the height of the Christmas season, and the catering company is swamped with parties. There’s no driver, so another waiter and I have to load the food onto the van downtown, then drive in stop-and-go traffic all the way to the upper East Side. We arrive at the apartment a little late. The hostess is frantic when we arrive, putting her small hands on my shoulders and shaking me: “Jeffery! Jeffery! Are we going to have a flawless party, Jeffery? Mr. Peter Jennings will be here tonight—Peter Jennings! That’s what type of party this is, Jeffery!” Her eyes are all bulged out, and by her breath I can tell she’s had a little drinky-poo. The other waiter sets up the bar; I unpack the food. There’s no chef with us, and I’m a little disturbed to find that the main course is basically a big pot full of chicken bones with a fancy French name. Not only does it look vile, but it doesn’t even look like enough for ten. Surreptitiously, I tell the other waiter to run out and buy a bag of rice to stretch the entree. The hostess appears and shrieks, “Where’s he going? The party starts in a half hour!” “He’s just going down to get something from the van.” I lie. “Jeffery! This is a very important event! Peter Jennings will be here—Peter Jennings!” “Yes,” I say, “so you’ve mentioned. Don’t worry, everything will be fabulous.” The veins pop out in her neck. “Let’s make it super fabulous, Jeffery!” The other waiter returns, and I pour a big bag of rice into the pot of chicken bones. “If anyone asks,” I whisper, “tell them it’s French.” The guests arrive and have cocktails. The hostess pops into the kitchen and opens the lid to the pot of mush. “What’s this?” she cries out. “That’s dinner, madam.” I say matter-of-factly. “What is it?” she asks. “It’s a French dish,” I say, “Ossements au Pot.” “Oh,” she says, “I’m sure . . . it tastes good.” “Oh it does, madam, it does.” She leaves the kitchen, and I’m relieved that she obviously doesn’t know any French, because “Ossements au Pot” is my comical, rough translation for “pot of bones.” The guests sit down for dinner, and we place bowls of the mush in front of them. Peter Jennings stares at his plate for many moments. The hostess chimes in with, “Oh, ah, Mr.—ah, Peter, you’ll love it . . . it’s a French dish.” Peter Jennings is polite, but he doesn’t touch it after the first bite. He keeps talking, though, and the hostess seems to be dealing with the situation, until Peter Jennings excuses himself to go to the bathroom. I clear the plates, and the hysterical hostess bursts through the kitchen door screaming, “Jeffery! Jeffery! What have you done to Peter Jennings!?!”

I’ve been told to greet guests with another waiter at this party for the novelist James Michener. Each table has a different theme—each one is based on a particular Michener novel. As the guests arrive, the other waiter checks the list for their names, then tells me which table to lead them to. A woman walks up and says, “Jong.” The waiter, who is a very young actor/dancer/model from L.A. says, “What?” “Jong.” she repeats. “You mean like, rhymes with ‘gong’? You know, like one of those things you hit?” The woman responds slowly, “I mean like ‘Jong.’ Erica Jong.” The waiter doesn’t like her tone and brushes her aside with, “You’re in Hawaii tonight. Next—your name, please?” Ms. Jong gives him the evil eye. “Right this way, please.” I say. She follows me to the Hawaii table. “Here you are. Aloha!” 

Tina Brown steps up to the bar and asks for a glass of wine. She tosses toasted almonds into her mouth while she waits. I give her the drink, and she strikes up a conversation with one of the other guests. I’m watching a candelabra on the bureau behind me—something the fastidious hostess told me to do, as she doesn’t want wax to drip. Tina Brown puts her glass down (without a cocktail napkin) on a very expensive antique Italian credenza. The hostess told me to make sure this doesn’t happen, so I rush over and place a napkin under her glass. I notice one of the candles starting to ooze wax onto the bureau, so I dart back behind the bar and blow it out. Tina Brown picks up her glass and begins to talk to another guest—New Yorker this and New Yorker that—and I’m trying to watch her class, the candelabra, and make drinks all at the same time. Yet again, she sets it down on the credenza without a napkin. I try to get there, but someone orders a Bloody Mary. Finally, I make a dash for her glass, but it has already made a ring. On my way back to the bar, I notice three of the candles in the candelabra have dripped onto the bureau. After the party, the hostess appears with a big jar of paste wax and a hairdryer: “Use the paste to buff out the rings, use the hairdryer to heat up the wax—then peel,” she commands. As I’m buffing, blowing, and peeling, I’m thinking Damn you, damn you, Tina Brown!

I’m taking coats at a literary party in a huge pre-war apartment on the upper West Side. The guest of honor, Seamus Heaney, arrives and I take his coat. He follows me into the large walk-in closet in the entry hall. “Can I get you something?” I ask a bit confused. “Yes. A drink, please,” he whispers. “What would you like?” I ask. “Scotch,” he whispers. “How would you like it?” I ask. “In a bottle,” he replies. I go to the bar and grab a bottle of scotch and a glass, put them on a silver tray, and return to the coat closet. “Here you are.” I say. “Oh, thank you.” he whispers. He pours a glass and gulps it down. I return to the foyer and take more coats. The hostess of the party approaches me. “Have you seen our guest of honor?” “Yes,” I answer, “he’s in the coat closet.” “What’s he doing in there?” she shrieks. “He’s having a drink. He asked for a bottle of scotch, so I gave it to him.” “Well get that bottle away from him,” she demands, “and get him out of the closet so I can introduce him to our guests!” I return to the closet. Seamus Heaney is standing in the middle of the rack  between two big gaudy furs, glass in one hand, bottle in the other. “Um, the hostess is asking for you.” I stammer. “Oh dear,” he says, “one more and I’ll be ready.” He fills the glass and hands me the bottle. “Thank you so much,” he whispers. “Mr. Heany . . . Mr. Heany . . . .” The hostess is standing outside the door with a group of people. “Come out! Come out! Come meet your fans!” she coaxes. He hands me the empty glass, whispers “Oh dear” and steps into the crowded, dimly lit hall.

I’m bartending in an over-decorated penthouse in an old hotel. We’re waiting for the hostess to arrive—she’s returning early from a poetry reading, before the guests. The front door flies open and a tall thin woman with Gloria Vanderbilt hair saunters in. She’s wearing a floor-length, black velvet cape. Her long skirt is red velvet, and her blouse is white, poofy and sheer. “Step lively!” she yells out. “The guests are on their way. Galway Kinnell is coming, and I don’t get crushes, but I have one on him!” She demands to see the buffet table and the flowers. “Nice,” she declares, “and now for the atmosphere.” She clicks on a TV, which is suspended from the ceiling. “Every modern environment has a television,” she pronounces. The other waiters follow her around like sheep, lighting candles, fluffing throw pillows. I look around the room. There are huge clown shoes, mannequin arms protruding from walls, and odd-shaped pieces of neon lit up here and there. On the bookcase next to where I stand, there are rows and rows of Poetry magazine, some cookbooks, and one book titled Alcohol Without Alcoholism. “As for you,” she says getting my attention, “do you make my martini?” “Well,” I say, “I suppose I can—how is it done?” “Oh!” she exclaims, “I’ve got to train another one!” The doorbell rings and she floats to the other side of the apartment. More guests arrive than expected and the booze is going quick. The hostess is informed that one of the special guests, Galway Kinnell, won’t be able to stay long. “Ridiculous!” she screams and throws open the French doors to the terrace. She raises her arms up to the night sky. “New York! New York!” she wails, “this is the center of the art world!” Just then, Galway Kinnell is ushered in to meet his hostess. She is quiet and reserved. Suddenly, she turns her back to him and sits down at a small table with a loud Greek couple. “Friends!” she gushes. They don’t know her and the man asks in a heavy accent, “Are you Greek?” “No,” she responds, “but Goddamn it, I’m willing!” Galway Kinnell slips out the door, and I close the bar to take a break on the terrace, high above a blackened and silent Gramercy Park.

I finish setting up for the party. I’m working for Bobby and Wyn Handman. Their maid has been requested to stay late to help out, and she’s not happy about it. I go into the living room and ask the Handmans if they’d like a drink before the guests arrive. I know that Mr. Handman produced Anne Sexton’s play Mercy Street in 1969, which is the only reason I accepted the job, so I take the opportunity to ask what she was like. Mrs. Handman says, “Oh, you like Annie’s work? We knew her well. She stayed here for awhile. In fact, that was her favorite chair,” she says offhandedly, pointing to the chair I’m standing behind. I look down at the brown chair, a sad, worn-out upholstered number from the 60’s, and I rest my hands on the back of it. Mr. Handman proceeds to tell me how much trouble she was, how’d she get drunk, take pills, and pass out in the chair. “We’d just leave her there all night,” he says. I squeeze the back of the chair, hoping to connect with Anne. Like on an episode of Bewitched, the chair somehow becomes Anne. “How about those drinks?” Mrs. Handman asks. “Of course,” I say, and return to the kitchen. The maid is sitting on a stool next to the refrigerator. “They better make this quick,” she complains, “I got things to do.” After the guests arrive, the maid and I serve dinner. She gives me a plastic container of cheese to put on the table. “Is it OK like this?” I ask. “Of course,” she snaps, “just put it on the table.” I set it in the middle of the bedraggled table (mixed-matched plates and cheap linens). Mr. Handman freaks out, grabs the container off the table and follows me into the kitchen. “What is this? This is no way to serve cheese!” he rants. His maid looks at me, looks at Mr. Handman, and shakes her head in disgust. “I told him . . .” she says slowly. Mr. Handman huffs out of the kitchen. I go out the opposite kitchen door, head for the empty living room. I sit down in Anne’s chair, close my eyes, and listen to the vague, dull chatter coming from the dining room.

It’s like my fifteenth party in a row; I’m exhausted and irritable. I’m standing in the lobby of the Alliance Francaise, waiting for the film to let out—a premier of a documentary about John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Suddenly the doors open and the hoards pour out, reaching for drinks, snarfing up hors d’oeuvres. In a few seconds, my tray is empty, and I go back to the kitchen to refill. When I enter the lobby again, I run into Allen Ginsberg, who’s standing in the middle of a group of people. He sees me and calls out, “Jeffery, Jeffery! What are you doing here?” “Serving it up, Allen,” I say dryly. “So this is what you do for a living? You look very elegant. Can you get more of those shrimp?” “Sure, Allen,” I say and head for the kitchen. One of the other waiters, a 60’s retro kind of queen, is real impressed that Allen knows me. I tell him, “He’s one of my professors; he sort of has to know me.” I go back out and pass by Allen with a fresh tray of shrimp. “Jeffery,” he calls, “come here, I’d like you to meet someone.” I stop in front of him. He’s talking, but his eyes are fixed on the shrimp, and his hand is thrashing at the neatly fanned stack of cocktail napkins in my right hand. “Jeffery is a student in my poetry workshop,” he globbers, “and this is what he does for a living.” The group of people standing around him sort of silently nod, stare at me for a second or two, then crank their necks from side to side to check out the other guests at the party. Allen finishes off the last shrimp. “Is this all there is to eat?” he asks, “I’m starving, I didn’t have dinner and my blood sugar is low.” “Wait here,” I say. I go to the kitchen and get another tray. When I return, Allen is in the same spot surrounded by a different group of people. “This is Jeffery,” he says as he spears a series of shrimp with a toothpick, “he’s a student in my poetry workshop and this is what he does for a living.” Suddenly I feel nauseated, and I disappear into the crowd with my empty tray. Later, toward the end of the party, I’m sitting on a milk crate in the kitchen drinking a Coke when the 60’s retro waiter bolts in: “Jeffery! Jeffery! Allen Ginsberg wants to say good-bye to you!” Oh fine I think and walk out into the lobby. Allen is standing there wiping his mouth with a cocktail napkin. “Oh,” he says looking up, “I want to say good-night—see you on Monday?” He reaches his hand out for mine, then pulls me in for a kiss, and all I can think about is the inevitable smell of shrimp (which I abhor), so I turn my head, hold my breath, and wait for the wet scruff of his beard on my cheek.

The man behind the counter is full of reproach. He’s saying something about buying before browsing. I can’t be bothered. The February issue of Interview has finally arrived. As I stand in front of the stack, I think back to a couple of years ago when an editor at Interview asked to see my work for a spread they were doing on younger poets. I sent some poems, including one that has a line in it referring to Interview as “a rag.” He called a week later to say that they couldn’t use me. Then just last November, the phone rang and another editor at Interview, who got my name from Ira Silverberg, was on the line asking to see my work for another feature they were doing on young writers. I sent him poems (but not the “rag” poem), and he said he liked them and decided to include me in the article. Bruce Weber photographed me the following week on the rooftop of a chic Tribeca loft building. I met a beautiful young woman there who was being photographed as well. Her name was Galaxy. She asked me what I write. I told her I write poems. I asked her what she writes. She told me she hadn’t really published anything, but that she was going to write stories. I smiled and wished her luck. Bruce seemed like a nice man; he said he liked the deer coat I was wearing. He got me to take the coat off, though, and he took pictures of me in my T-shirt. Then he got me to lift up my T-shirt, and he took pictures of me showing my chest. Then he got me to take off my T-shirt and sprawl out on some steps in a very cold stairwell. I felt a bit of glamour as he took roll after roll of film, saying “You look great!” every now and then as a Sade album played in the background. Towards the end of the shoot, he started saying, “Yes, that’s it, you look great, yes, just a bit more, yes, yes,” faster and faster until he shot the last photo. Afterwards, he didn’t say much, and I gathered up my things and put my shirt back on. “That was really great,” he said. “Yeah,” I said, “it was great.” I asked him if he had a cigarette, and he said no. I said good-bye and left. I couldn’t wait for the February issue to come out, but two weeks into the month it still hadn’t hit the stands—the January issue with Ricki Lake’s big face on it sat there and sat there. I grew to hate her—I mean, she already had that stupid “talk” show. Everywhere I turned I saw her vacuous smile. But today, a bleak Wednesday late in the month, a stack of February Interview’s is finally on the shelf in front of me. Ignoring the hairy man behind the counter drumming his fingers, I reach out and grab a copy, tearing through it from front to back, back to front. I see Galaxy on a page with some other women writers. But I’m not in any of the glossy photographs; they seem to have cut half the spread, the half that I’m supposed to be in. The “celebrity feeling” I had when I walked into this East Village newsstand drains out of my body. It’s just as well, I think as I throw the magazine back onto the stack and turn to leave the store, because to be honest, I still think Interview is a rag.

© Jeffery Conway 2004. All rights reserved.

Jeffery Conway's poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including most recently The Brink: Postmodern Poetry Since 1965, and Bend, Don't Shatter. He is the author, with David Trinidad and Lynn Crosbie, of Chain Chain Chain and Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse. He lives in New York City.

Duncan Hannah
www.jamesgrahamandsons.com

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