An Unexpected Gift

I’ve been in this room many times in the past five years. I’ve grown accustomed to the long, mirrored wall, the worn hardwood floor, the high ceiling, and the large window at the opposite end with its rounded top, now turning slowly black due to the setting sun. The room is filling up, mostly with young girls and their parents, but my gaze has settled onto Jacob. Lately, he only wears gleaming white tights that come down to his knees and his shoes—which still look peculiar to me—during class. Jacob’s reddish brown hair isn’t too long, but it is long enough so that it bounces and tumbles with every move he makes. His fair skin is specked with freckles that match the color of his hair. Recently, he has become quite tall—over six foot. He’s stretching in preparation of Ms. Whitmore’s drills. His right foot—clad in one of those odd looking shoes—is up on the bar, and all of his muscles are taut as a result. Even though he retains the look of an angular, emaciated youth when he is fully dressed, I can’t help but notice how extraordinarily toned he is now.
At this point, no one expects Jacob to become a professional. I don’t think Ms. Whitmore—a sharp-boned woman who still dresses like one of her students even though her dancing days are well behind her—has ever produced a professional. Two or three years ago, Jacob dreamed about the possibility of getting accepted by one of the larger metropolitan ballet companies, but he knew scouts hardly ever made it this far out into suburbia, and they weren’t likely to make the journey for a boy who only practiced a few hours a week. Jacob now admits that he comes here only because he wants to, and that he’s likely to give up dancing once he goes to college.

Even though Jacob doesn’t have the drive to become a star, his efforts have been steady and reliable over the years, and this has given him a payoff of sorts. Although he is tall and reedy, Jacob is not awkward or clumsy. He moves with confidence while holding his head high. Although his voice is small and delicate, he speaks clearly and with a certain amount of self-assurance that is never cocky or flip. And Jacob is nearly always unfailingly polite. So you could say that dance has given him poise. He commands respect in a way that I never thought he would.

Jacob drove the car to the studio this evening, but because he only has a learner’s permit, I had to come with him. His mother, Jenna, usually accompanies him to dance class, but she had to work late, so I stepped in. I don’t mind. Waiting for Jacob will give me a chance to catch up on my reading. Just as I am about to turn to my book, Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, a smiling, happy-faced woman with curly blond hair steps in front of my chair, blocking my view of Jacob.

“Hi, Arty. Remember me? I’m Karen, Ashton’s mother.”

Ash, as Jacob always calls him, is a fairly shy dark-haired boy who started coming to Ms. Whitmore about the same time Jacob did. I catch him ducking into the locker room out of the corner of my eye just as I speak. “Of course, I remember you, Karen.”

Her expression becomes a bit more serious when she says, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Sure,” I say, not knowing what I could possibly do for this woman.

“Bruce, my husband, and I want to get away this weekend, and we were hoping that we could leave Ashton with you and Jenna.”

I hesitate for maybe a second, but then I say, “That would be fine.”

Karen’s smile lights up, and she says, “Great. I know Ashton will be thrilled. You are aware that he has a huge crush on your son, right?”

I try to match her levity as much as I can when I rejoin, “I’m pretty sure Jacob is just as smitten with Ash, Karen.”

She shakes her head in agreement and says in a slightly lower voice, “I caught them kissing the other day in the family room.” She giggles in a way that is surprisingly girlish and then adds, “It was so cute. When they noticed I was there, they were so embarrassed, but they tried to act cool and casual.”

My face freezes for a moment, and I scramble to think of a reply. Finally, I say, “Teenagers can be so self-conscious.”

“Yes... Well, anyway, thanks for taking Ashton this weekend. I’ll drop him off at your house on Friday about five or six.”

“No problem,” I say, making sure I sound sincere.

The request causes me to remember an incident that occurred a few weeks ago. As Karen steps away, the details come into focus. Jacob and I were sitting in the living room. I was reading, and he was doing his homework, when suddenly I realized he was looking directly at me, studying me. I asked him if anything was wrong, and he said no, but he asked if it would be okay if Ash stayed over the next night. Without thinking, I curtly replied, “Aren’t you a little old for sleepovers?” I’m not sure why I responded this way, and I knew immediately I was being foolish, but before I could apologize, Jacob’s fair skin burned red. He got up and left the room without saying another word. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to broach the subject, and apparently neither could Jacob, for he never mentioned it again.

In the days that followed, I picked up on a few clues that suggested I had been making my son uncomfortable about his feelings for Ash. For instance, one day when I walked through the kitchen, I saw that Jacob was sitting at the counter with his sketch pad—he loves to draw. When he noticed me, he turned the page in a way that was meant to appear nonchalant, but I was able to see what he had been working on before the maneuver was complete. Jacob had been putting the finishing touches on a sketch of Ash lying shirtless in a meadow. From what I saw of it, the likeness was pretty good. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to tell him that there wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, but something was blocking me, blocking both of us. And now Karen made me realize something else; Jacob has been spending a lot of time at Ashton’s house, but Ash hardly ever shows up at ours. It seems Jacob feels the need to hide his friend from me, and there shouldn’t be any reason for that. Ash is a good and decent kid.

As the class gets underway, I open my book to where I left off three days ago and drift into the story. I pay little attention to the flurry of activity taking place in front of me, the classical music coming from the old-fashioned record player or the sound of Ms. Whitmore belting out her instructions. But when I hear her call out my son’s name, I look up just in time to see Jacob catch a young woman by her waist and twirl her around. The young woman remains rigid, and she keeps her arms high above her head as my son spins her. I am struck by this move because Jacob does it with seemingly little effort, and I’m reminded of how people will sometimes swing a baby around in the air, only Jacob is much more graceful and fluid than the average new parent. I wonder how long he has been able to do that.

I watch in awe for a moment, but then I return to my book before Jacob catches me staring. I sit there engrossed in my story for quite a while. I am only dimly aware of the end of class and the people filing out of the room. When I look up, I realize that the only people left are Ms. Whitmore, one of the young girls in her class and the girl’s mother. They are down by the window, and it seems the two women are having a serious discussion, presumably about the little girl who waits silently and patiently a few feet away.

I instinctively look at my watch and see that it’s late, and then I look toward the locker rooms. I’m slightly annoyed that Jacob has kept me waiting, so I sit my book down and head toward the boys’ locker room. I go in thinking he is the only boy left inside. The showers are just past the door, and I can hear the water and feel the steam wafting in the air. I look into the shower room expecting to see Jacob lazily allowing the hot spray to flow over his tall frame. I almost call out to him in my fatherly voice, meaning to tell him to hurry up. But before saying anything, I see that Jacob is not alone. Ash is with him even though I didn’t notice Karen outside. It dawns on me that what the boys are doing is meant to be just between the two of them, so I quickly turn and leave before either one notices me.

When I’m out in the hall, I feel safe, and suddenly I feel washed in gratitude for having managed to get away without being detected. But then the gravity of what I just witnessed sinks in. I only caught a glimpse, but it was obvious the boys were dancing together. The little bit that I saw mirrored what took place outside earlier, only Jacob was spinning his wet, naked friend rather than a young lady. I have to admit that it was elegant. At least for this moment, they were meant to be together.

Jacob is nothing like what I expected when I was told that I was going to be the father of a boy. But as I stand there in the hall, I come to know that I wouldn’t want any other boy. He is a unique gift, and I’m so happy that he was given to me of all people. I am proud of him. So much so I laugh with joy as I imagine him and Ash dancing in their private studio.

Fifteen minutes later, after having read another chapter in my book, I return to the locker room. I open the door and listen before entering. When I don’t hear the sound of water running or feet skidding across the tiled floor, I go inside. As I make my way, I hear the boys chattering. I find them sitting on the bench in front of their adjoining lockers with their big white towels wrapped around their waists. They haven’t even begun to dress.

“Guys,” I say pleadingly, “take pity on the old man and get a move on it.”

Jacob looks over at me and says plaintively, “Sorry, Dad.”

To ease their disappointment, I say as I draw closer, “You two will have lots of time to talk in a couple of days. Ash’s mother tells me that he’ll be spending the weekend with us.”

Jacob turns in surprise, and Ash leans closer to him and says in a low voice that I’m able to hear clearly, “I told her to wait and let you ask him.”

“It’s okay,” I say as I turn to face our soon to be guest. “Ash, you’re welcome at our house anytime.”

When I look back at Jacob, I see that his shock is almost comical. “Don’t give me that,” I say.

“What?” he asks innocently.

“Stop staring at me as if you expected to find a monster behind you instead of your father.”

While keeping the rest of his body impossibly still, he curls his lips into a grin.

I place my hand on his shoulder and say, “Jake, I was watching you earlier, and I just wanted to tell you that you dance beautifully.”

His expression softens. “Thanks, Dad.”

Turning back to Ash, I say, “Is your mother waiting for you out in the parking lot? She’s not out in the studio.”

“She only dropped me off. There’s something she had to do, so she couldn’t wait.” As he speaks, he lowers his gaze. It’s obvious that he can’t maintain eye contact without blushing.

“How will you get home?”

“I’ll take the bus…if I’ve not missed the last one.”

Immediately Jacob begs, “Can’t we take him home?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks,” Ash says. “And thanks for letting me stay this weekend.”

“No problem. We’ll be happy to have you.” When I head toward the door, I say to both of them, “I’m giving you guys exactly two minutes to finish up in here.”

Before leaving the room, I hear Ash say to Jacob in his confidential tone, “I thought you said he was going to be uptight about me staying over."

The Missus

I was in second grade when Lester and his parents moved into the mobile home behind our house. We played together nearly every day for about three years. On weekends and during the summer, we were practically inseparable during daylight hours. I usually went to his house because his mother didn’t like him to be out of her sight. She and her husband were quite old to have such a young boy. At some point, Mrs. Beechum admitted to my parents that she and her husband were Lester’s grandparents, not his parents. Oddly enough, my parents passed on this information to me but forbade me from telling Lester. I never did let it slip, even when Lester was seething mad at Mrs. Beechum for being too restrictive.

The Beechums came from Logan County, and their accent was different, more backwoods and country. Lester enjoyed comic books and dinosaurs, and Mrs. Beechum didn’t differentiate between the Superheroes and the extinct reptiles. They were all Lester’s monsters to her, but she added an extra vowel sound to the word, mon-a-sters. One Saturday afternoon when I was at the Beechums, my mother called me home. Before I left, Mrs. Beechum asked, “You’uns goin’ summers?” I had no idea what she meant. I asked her to repeat herself, but I still didn’t understand, so I left without answering. My face was red, and I felt deeply ashamed for being so dumb.

Mrs. Beechum dipped snuff, and she always had an old Maxwell House coffee can handy so she could spit into it. Sometimes, she would blow her nose and sink the snotty tissue into the brown juice. I was traumatized by the sheer, unabashed nastiness of Mrs. Beechum’s coffee can. I think she was oblivious to the fact that some might not like to see that.

Lester and I didn’t play sports. We didn’t play any games with rules. We never kept score. There were no winners or losers. Lester and I spent our time together engaging in make-believe. We sometimes used his plastic dinosaurs to aid us. We often played with toy cars including Matchbox cars. My Alfa Carabo was my favorite. We spent hours rolling those cars along the floor or on the ground outside while making car sounds. I’m sure it was maddening to anyone who had to listen to us, but no one ever complained. At least it kept us out of trouble. Other times we didn’t use toys at all. We acted out scenarios as if we were putting on a play, but we made it all up as we went along. We extemporized, riffing off of one another for what must have been hours. No one ever noticed or said anything, but I regularly played Lester’s wife or girlfriend. It seemed like a natural role for me, and I stepped right into it without giving it much thought.

I was never ashamed to pretend to be female, especially one attached to Lester’s male characters, but I must have understood there were limits that I dared not cross. I would continue to daydream about the little dramas we had acted out when I went home, and I nearly always pictured myself in Lester’s arms. I imagined Lester kissing me, too. They weren’t hot tongue kisses—maybe I was still too young for that—but they were romantic mouth-to-mouth kisses. I never told anyone about those fantasies, and I never tried to push the action in that direction when I was playing with Lester. But I wanted to. I wanted to. I wanted Lester to pretend to come home from work, and I wanted him to take hold of me, his missus. I wanted us to roll around on the floor, and when we stopped, I wanted him to be on top of me. I wanted him to look down at me, call me by a girl’s name, tell me he loved me, and kiss me and kiss me again. I was nine years old and writing a dime store paperback romance inside of my head. I loved Lester, at least as much as a kid that age can love. I went so far as to write his name in magic marker on the bottom of my sock drawer. I had that dresser until I was forty years old, so I was regularly reminded of my childhood crush.

A Place To Just Be

As many of you know, my living situation troubles me. I have never liked Merced. I have never felt at home here. I traveled across country to live in a more liberal and accepting area and landed in one of the more conservative parts of California. The place is also much too dry and hot for a tree hugger like me.

My apartment isn’t the best, and I’ve had some maintenance and neighbor issues, but no place is going to be perfect. I could deal with the apartment if it were in a better location. However, I worry that I could be suddenly forced out. Last summer the owners decided to put the burden of paying the electricity on the tenants. The electric company demanded a huge deposit. (Or at least it was huge to me.) And this all took place right at the beginning of summer. The electric bill here isn’t so high from October to May, but once the temperature heads toward and exceeds 100, the cost of electricity can become astronomical. I was blindsided by all of this, and if not for the help of friends, I could have been forced to choose between rent or air conditioning. Something like that could easily lead to me becoming homeless. My lease and rent subsidy are reviewed yearly, too. There is never any guarantee that either will be renewed.

I know I’m not alone. Lately, I’ve come across a few stories (some fiction and some nonfiction) about people who have been forced to live in their cars, vans and RVs. A lot of these people are older, and many are loners, like me. If you prefer to live alone (or need to live alone for the sake of your mental health) and don’t have much money, you don’t have a lot of options. Many have learned to adapt to the nomadic lifestyle, but sadly, it can be difficult to find places where it is safe and legal to camp in your car. There are public lands where you can do it, but they don’t have any facilities, so finding water and an electrical outlet can be difficult. And if you don’t have much money, you can’t afford a lot of gas. You can take a chance on parking lots and side streets, but there’s always a possibility that someone will notice and call the cops on you or harass you.

I know that housing can be expensive, and you can’t count on government to increase funding given our current political situation. So I was wondering how you could provide a place for someone to live on the cheap. I personally wouldn’t mind living in a campground. I know there are plenty of campgrounds around already, but they generally charge by the night. Existing campgrounds are mainly getaways for the middle class. I’m thinking of a campground where you can live for a low monthly fee. The tenants could supply their own cars, vans or camp trailers. Maybe you could encourage people to donate old vans and camp trailers. Maybe there would be some handy people around who would volunteer to fix them up. There could be a bathhouse for those who don’t have a bathroom and coin washing machines and dryers. There could be a clubhouse with free wifi so residents could stay connected. And it could have one of those post office box rental places so residents could have an official address. I’m wondering if you could provide a service like this for less than 200 per site a month. I know you wouldn’t make money, but could someone with the funds to invest at least break even? If I won the lottery, I would do it even if I lost money. A lot of us, the poor loners of the world, need someplace where we can live and just be.

Public Works

Hannah Arendt distinguished between three forms of active life.

1. Labor. These are the everyday chores that one needs to do to sustain life: procuring food, sweeping the floor, brushing your teeth.

2. Action. This is political activity, coming together in public to decide who we are as a community.

3. Work. Work isn’t the same thing as labor because the effort is directed toward making something that’s durable such as the Washington Monument or a dog house.

Arendt was critical of modern capitalist democracies and communist countries because in her view they both devalued work and reduced politics to the management of labor. We busy ourselves with producing, and even things that should be durable, such as schools, roads and houses, become merely functional and expendable. No flourishes are added because you’re just going to throw it away anyway. She believed such an overwhelming emphasis on the mundane and everyday robed modern society of meaning and a sense of belonging and purpose.

The ancient Egyptians had the pyramids. The ancient Athenians had the Acropolis. The ancient Druids had Stonehenge. The ancient Mayans, Aztecs and Incas had their grand public works projects. Cambodia had Angkor Wat. Arendt also includes works of literature, music and art. All of these things help shape a society, give it form, and inform citizens of who they are.

We have our works, too, despite the modern devaluation. When I was living in West Virginia, I often felt deep appreciation for the Civilian Conservation Corp when I visited one of the state parks and saw all of their enduring efforts, the cabins, the walkways, the administration buildings, picnic pavilions. The structures were far more than merely functional. They were meant to enhance our enjoyment of the parks and to encourage us to visit frequently. The massive effort that it took to create the Mist Trail in Yosemite is like that. We allocated the resources and countless workers spent months and years to built it so that year after year thousands and thousands without any special mountain climbing skills could get up there and see the view. Why? Because that’s who we are. We appreciate the experience so much that we’re willing to do that even though the end result wasn’t practical or necessary. It wasn’t about making anyone rich or putting food on the table. Walking up the Mist Trail is like going on a pilgrimage. The Golden Gate bridge isn’t merely functional. It’s a thing of beauty. It inspires awe. And now, hardly anyone could image San Francisco without it. I think the effort to reach the moon was a grand public works project. The Cold War might have spurred us on, but who was thinking of the Russians when they watched Neil Armstrong make his giant leap? It was a spiritual event that brought us together.

I suspect Trump’s wall is tapping into this cultural need and urge among his base. It might not be practical, but in their view, it will be a lasting monument to who they think we are as a society. Sadly, it would be a monument to racism and nationalism. It would say, “We are over here, and you are over there. Now stay over there.”

I don’t want to see the wall built, and if it is built, I think we’ll need to take it down at some point in the future. But maybe there’s another more positive grand public effort that will help define us and give us a common goal.

Rachel Carson, Not Silent

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was far more than a best seller. It was a cultural event that helped change the way we view technology, the application of science and potential long-term risks of new seemingly helpful products. Carson not only warned us that if we destroy the environment, we will destroy ourselves, she also taught us that there was a powerful short-term profit motive driving a lot of scientific research. She was not a radical who wanted us to give up modern conveniences. Carson thought we should look at what we were doing in a sober, rational way.

American Experience: Rachel Carson not only summarizes Carson’s most famous book and its impact, it also examines Carson’s life filled with triumphs and tragedies.

Carson, born in 1907, was a promising and ambitious student at a time when girls were expected to find a husband, have children and take care of the home. Her first love was writing, and when she went to college, she majored in English, but a trip to the ocean kindled a love for marine biology and she changed majors. She finished her masters in biology and began working on her PhD when her father died. It was up to her to support her mother and a couple of younger siblings. So she dropped out of school and started looking for a job.

Luckily, Carson found one that was well suited to her. She was hired on at the United States Fish Commission, which later was combined with other departments to form the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Carson was to read scientific studies, correlate the findings, and write papers and pamphlets for a general audience. The job combined her love for writing and her love of science.

Carson was able to support herself and her family, but she soon had the urge to reach a wider audience. She submitted science articles to popular magazines, and she eventually wrote a book, Under the Sea, published in 1941. World War II was getting underway, and the reading public wasn’t much interested in Carson’s book, so it sold less than 2,000 copies.

Ten years later, Carson published another book, The Sea Around Us. She feared the Cold War would undermine interest in her new book just as war had overshadowed her first effort. However, that turned out not to be the case. Some of the chapters were published in the New Yorker, and The Sea Around Us landed on the best seller list and stayed there for months. Under the Sea was then reprinted, and it, too, landed on the best seller list. Carson had two best sellers at the same time.

The royalties afforded Carson the ability to quite her job and focus her attention on writing books. She also bought a vacation home on Southport Island, Maine, a little cottage by the water so she could examine sea life more closely. Dorothy and Stanley Freeman were her neighbors on the island, and they became friends. Carson had never dated, never married and was not a social person. She was lonely, so the Freemans provided much needed companionship. Carson became especially close to Dorothy, and the two women began exchanging letters two and three times a week when Carson was not on the island. Many of them were basically love letters full of expressions of affection and tenderness.

There was another book in 1955, but then Carson was delivered some serious blows. The mother she had supported and lived with for decades died, and then a niece died at 30 from pneumonia leaving behind a five-year-old boy. Just when Carson was finally free from her role as caretaker, she had to take on the responsibility of another family member in need. Carson adopted the little boy. Carson worried she wouldn’t have the time or energy to write, but her concern about the use of DDT inspired her to keep working. However, just as she began writing Silent Spring, Carson was diagnosed with cancer. She was battling the disease all through the writing process, the publication and the subsequent media attention. She died in 1964, leaving her then 12-year-old grand nephew orphaned for a second time.

Gatsby Figures

Maureen Corrigan is a literary critic for the Washington Post and NPR. Her book So We Read On is an examination of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and its rise to fame. The book is informative and entertaining from start to finish.

As you might expect, Corrigan offers some literary analysis of The Great Gatsby. Many think of The Great Gatsby as a tragic love story involving rich people, and that’s true enough, but there is so much more. Gatsby was a poor boy who strived to better himself, like Benjamin Franklin. In his estimation, he was a nobody from nowhere, and he wanted to reinvent himself. As a young man, he fell for Daisy, a rich society girl who represented all the things Gatsby wanted to be. Gatsby’s adoration of Daisy was never simple or merely about romantic or sexual attraction. There was a great deal of ambition mixed up in Gatsby’s desire for Daisy. Corrigan reminds us that Fitzgerald does not describe Daisy as a great beauty. She isn’t remarkably intelligent, witty or insightful. She isn’t bubbling over with charm. So what does she have? A voice full of money. She doesn’t have to strive because she, along her husband Tom, were born in the club, the very club Gatsby wants or thinks he wants to belong to.

This is what drives him, and there’s something askew, not quite right about this representation of the American dream. There is something desperate about Gatsby. The conspicuous spending. The excess. His shady business dealings. But no matter how hard Gatsby tries, he’s always left on the wrong side of the bay where the new money people live. Daisy and Tom are always out of reach. Corrigan insists several times in her book that the green light isn’t as important as Gatsby’s reaching out for it. And what’s between him and that green light? Water, lots of water. Gatsby loses himself in his ambition and ends up dead in his swimming pool, something he thought and hoped was a symbol of his arrival.

And was being in that club really worth it? Gatsby was envious of Tom, but who was he without the money he never earned? He was an insensitive, racist moron who treated women like his playthings. And who was Daisy? She was someone who would run down her husband’s mistress and let someone else take the blame. And we shouldn’t forget that Jordan was a cheat. The Valley of Ashes reminds us that great wealth and high living comes at a great cost, and the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg represent an absent god who is powerless to do anything about the injustice. Myrtle is like the female counterpart to Gatsby. She is so desperate to escape poverty that she forgets who she is. She throws herself at Tom in the same way Gatsby does for Daisy. And this destroys her. Many think the novel celebrates wealth, money and luxury, but the story is actually a scathing critique of the rich. When we’re told Tom and Daisy are careless people, that’s far from a complement.

Nick survives to tell the tale because he floats effortlessly between these factions. He has no money, but he was born in the club just like his cousin Daisy. And he reminds us of that right at the beginning when he tells us about the wisdom imparted by his father, that stuff about how not everyone had the same advantages he has had. Nick might live in a small cottage, and he might still be working his way up the ladder on Wall Street even though he’s almost thirty, but he’s always welcome at the Buchanans. Corrigan tells us that contemporary readers pick up on clues that Nick might be gay, and she sees no reason not to give that idea some thought. Nick might be enamored by Gatsby more than Daisy ever was. There’s a scene in which Nick ends up in the bedroom of another man after a night of drinking, and there’s another scene in which an elevator boy tells him to keep his hands off the lever.

Corrigan points out The Great Gatsby has elements of hard boiled fiction and film noir. There’s Gatsby’s connections with gangsters and bootlegging. His name might have reminded readers in the ’20s of a slang term for a gun. And there are three brutal deaths in the novel. Like Sunset Boulevard, the story is told in flashback, and the main character will end up dead in a swimming pool. Gatsby is already dead on page one.

So why would Fitzgerald write such a story? Well, he was sort of a Gatsby figure himself. His family always had enough money to live well, but they were not quite in the club. Fitzgerald went to fancy schools where he never quite fit in. Then he went to Princeton, and he wasn’t a social success there either. He was reportedly an unpopular boy, and one of the reasons might have been he tried too hard, making him appear weak and needy. There was also a rich society girl who turned him down because he didn’t have enough money.

The Great Gatsby was never a popular novel in Fitzgerald’s lifetime. It only sold about twenty thousand copies. Scribner gave it two runs, but the second printing never sold out, so if you wanted a copy in the ’30s , you had to order direct from Scribner and a book would be retrieved from their basement storage room. Fitzgerald made his money primarily through the sale of short fiction to magazines in the twenties. He ended up broke, alcoholic and nearly forgotten, and his wife Zelda was confined to a mental hospital. His last royalty check came to about seventeen dollars, and someone did a little digging and found that most of this money came from sales to Fitzgerald himself. He sometimes ordered copies of his books for friends. At some point in the ‘30s, he read about an amateur production of a play based on The Great Gatsby that was to be performed at a nearby college. Fitzgerald showed up in his finery only to discover the theater was locked. The play was to be staged in an upstairs hallway, and aside from Fitzgerald, only the young actors’ mothers came out to watch. When he died at forty-four, his funeral was almost as sparsely attended as Gatsby’s.

So how was Fitzgerald revitalized? Well, it started almost immediately after his death in 1940. Fitzgerald had been part of a circle of literary friends, and many of them still had influence. They began rereading his stuff and giving him high marks in newspapers and magazines. Then World War II broke out, and someone had the idea that soldiers should be given books to read. They began producing inexpensive and portable paperbacks that were meant to be passed from one soldier to another. Corrigan found out that someone connected to Scribner was on one of the selection committees, and Max Perkins, Fitzgerald’s editor, was still alive and working at the publishing house. Perhaps through their influence, over one hundred thousand copies of The Great Gatsby were printed.

Interest in Fitzgerald and his novels steadily grew throughout the ’40s and ’50s, and by the ’60s, The Great Gatsby was one of those novels nearly everyone had heard of.

Like many, I first read the novel as a teenager. I’ve always been fascinated by Gatsby, and by Scott and Zelda. When I was young, I probably couldn’t have articulated a reason why I found Gatsby interesting. But in my own way, I was a kind of Gatsby figure. I was never obsessed with being super rich. Even in my youth, I knew you had to be born a Vanderbilt to be a Vanderbilt, but I wanted to belong to the upper middle class. I wanted an educated, worldly family. I wanted liberal parents who appreciated learning and art and sons who happened to be gay. Basically, I wanted Elio’s life from Call Me By Your Name, and I had watched enough Public Television during high school to know there were people like that out there. I could get by without chauffer driven limousines and mansions, but I wanted to drive a BMW. I wanted my parents to own a house in the country with a guest cottage or a room over the garage that I could use. I wanted a studio in Greenwich Village. I wanted to be invited to spend weekends at beach houses and woodsy vacation homes. I wanted smart, civilized conversations about literature and art with nice people who were interested in and accepting of me. I wanted something I couldn’t have, and it took me a while to appreciate and accept who I was. In fact, I’m still working on that.

Grey Gardens Prequel

Most fans of Grey Gardens know about the origins of the documentary. In the summer of 1972, Lee Ratziwell, Jacqueline’s sister and Big Edie’s niece, was making a movie with a few of her friends in East Hampton, and she introduced the filmmakers to Big and Little Edie. The Maysles brothers were part of that project, and they were impressed by the Beales. They cut the film in such a way as to make the Beales the primary subject and showed the results to Ratziwell. For whatever reason, Ratziwell shut the whole project down and confiscated the film. The Maysles returned a couple of years later after obtaining financial backing and made their own independent film, Grey Gardens (1975).

I assumed Ratziwell had her film destroyed, but apparently not. It resurfaced a couple of years ago, and Ratziwell, now in her eighties, agreed to release it. That Summer came out in May, and it’s already streaming online. I watched it last night. Grey Gardens is one of my favorite things, so I had to watch it as soon as I could. I had to.

The film is book-ended with contemporary footage of photographer Peter Beard, who was part of the original project. To be frank, I found this footage to be superfluous and dull. But three fourths of the film focuses on Big and Little Edie. If you love Grey Gardens, I recommend you watch this film.

It’s both wonderfully familiar and oddly different. Big Edie is already moving quite slowly due to arthritis, and she sings a little in her cracked and aged voice as if it’s still 1935. Little Edie is forever fussing with her costume for the day, and her trademark headscarves are on full display. They both chatter constantly and eat ice cream straight from the carton. But their house is full of people. Ratziwell is often there, and she is overseeing the continued restoration that started some months before. Workmen go back and forth, and at one point, city inspectors show up.

The condition of the house was shocking in the original documentary. It was in worse shape in 1972. There’s even more garbage and clutter, and most of the interior paint has faded and peeled, making the rooms dingy and sad. The second floor deck, the one that affords the ocean view, is quite dilapidated in 1972. It even looks unsafe, so rebuilding it must have been part of the renovations.

I’ve often wondered why some of the Beale’s wealthy relatives didn’t help out more. I knew about the clean up effort paid for by Jacqueline in the early ‘70s, but judging by the condition of the house in 1975, they only went far enough to prevent the place from being condemned by the city. Why not clear out all that trash and pay someone to come in and clean once a week? Why not pay someone to mow and cut back the weeds once a week in the warmer months? Take care of at least the basic stuff? But neither Big or Little Edie seemed to like having strangers in the place, and they were nitpicky about what could be carted off. Every ratty chair and broken plate was a treasure with a story attached to it, and they were in love with every tree, vine and weed. I was startled by one scene in which Ratziwell was conferring with a couple of workmen, and Little Edie rushed in and sharply questioned what they were talking about. It’s as if Little Edie suspected her cousin of a conspiracy. I know from personal experience that it’s sometimes hard to help loved ones who aren’t rational.

That Summer is another fascinating look at the Beales. I appreciate Lee Ratziwell for finally allowing us to see it.