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Writing Under the Influence
(Note: This is a revision of an earlier essay of this name. A fictional variant of events described below can be found in
'The Miracle.')
I went out to write and drink and smoke for 14 years.
After my back-to-back political immersions with Herbert Brun and the Labor Party, I had a lot of pent-up political ideas to get off my chest. And the best way to do this, I decided, was to write political essays. I recall that I was reading a translation of Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia at the time, and these social critiques affected my own writing (I even called my pieces 'Minima' for awhile.) I was also reading Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride – a wonderful and humorous book of critical examinations of (mostly) magazine advertisements. (His given first name was 'Herbert', by the way.)
So in 1977 I began going out at night to write. My search for a venue was tricky: it had to be a place that would not mind my sitting there for two hours or so while ordering very little. And it would have to be a place that allowed smoking. (By the way, I was a 'sissy-smoker', in that I could not bear to draw smoke into my lungs.)
Filthy habit that it was, smoking got me out at night to places where I would not be interrupted by friend or phone. Indeed, I only smoked after 9:30 P.M. At the hour when most people were beginning to yawn, I began to feel the pangs of nicotine-dependency. As a result, I got an immense amount of writing done.
My searches brought me to Howard Johnson's at the Fresh Pond traffic circle in Cambridge. This was open 24 hours a day (hence no disconcerting last calls;) it was spacious (hence no guilt about taking up a seat;) it was attractive (I happened to like the deep red Naugahyde seats;) and it was informally anonymous (hence no one to bother me.)
My first evening there I tried coffee with my cigarette. But, unlike so many people, I did not take to the mixture of two stimulants. The next night I tried wine, and that was it. I would go on to mix those two ingredients, wine and cigarettes, 365 days per year (including Christmas) for the next 14 years.
At that time HoJo's had a goblet of burgundy for 65 cents. This provided enough wine for a whole evening of writing. If the ordering of wine constituted my 'rent' of that space in a Naugahyde-covered booth for an evening, then the 'rent' was cheap indeed.
I got an abundance of writing done there, mainly short political essays. During the day I would carry a little pocket notebook around with me. Whenever I would think of a subject to write about, I would inscribe it in the notebook. (I think that at any given time, I'd have thirty or more topics listed in that little book.) When I arrived at HoJo's each night, I'd take a seat in a booth and there begin a series of carefully choreographed actions. First, I'd open my writing tablet and take out my (Bic) pen. Then I'd remove the little pocket notebook and lay it out in front of me. I'd choose a cigarette as I was perusing the list of possible topics. And then, simultaneously, three things would happen: I'd light the cigarette; a waitress (they were all well-trained after a few weeks) would bring my goblet of wine; and I'd put my finger on one of the topics and exclaim, 'That one!' I'd take a drag, the nicotine would kick in, and my hand would begin to write automatically.
Thus was I able to practice instant gratification and write a complete essay each night: these became a collection which I called 'Impreachments' (the title being a recognition that I had a tendency to take myself too seriously.) At that restaurant I also wrote hundreds of aphorisms which I collected under the title 'Apercus'; and the quasi-poetic linear notes for The Percussion Group recording of my drum piece para-DIDDLE. So this seemingly-prosaic place was very good for my work.
Unfortunately, after two years we moved further away from HoJo's, and so I needed to seek a new venue for my escapades. Eventually I wound up at Carroll's Diner in Medford Square. There I realized how lucky I had been at HoJo's, for at Carroll's the wine cost more than twice as much for a glass only half as large. So now I needed two glasses of wine for a normal evening's work.
At Carroll's my 'rent' had become prohibitively expensive.
I finally hit upon a solution to my problem: I would buy the first glass of wine from Carroll's, and bring in the second with me. I did this as follows:
1. I purchased a gallon of Carlo Rossi Burgundy for $4.99 at the liquor store;
2. Before going out, I filled a medium-sized plastic medicine bottle with the cheap burgundy;
3. I put the bottle in my vest pocket, after insuring that the cap was tight. (Nevertheless, I soon had a maroon stain on the tan corduroy vest pocket.)
4. In the restaurant I would pour the wine into the wine glass, thus giving myself an extra glass of wine - and halving my evening's 'rent'!
Of course it would not do for the waitress (or anyone else) to see me engaging in this activity. So the pouring would have to be done gradually and surreptitiously.
It seemed clear that I shouldn't drain the original glass of wine. For, once the waitress saw that, she would need to believe me to be someone comparable to the loaves-and-fishes practitioner if she were not to be suspicious when, somehow magically, the glass filled itself again.
I found that the optimum level of fullness (notice I do not say 'emptiness') - the lowest level in the wine glass that would not trigger the suspicions of a waitress, and thus the level most ripe for refilling - was somewhere between two-thirds and one-half (O.K., seven-twelfths, but who can estimate that?), but closer to two-thirds (to a waitress, the glass is never half-full, it's always half-empty.)
Once that critical level was reached, the process of 'pourage' was commenced, as follows:
First, a façade of normality had to be maintained for my activities. Of course I could not write during this process, but as long as possible I simulated writing. I affected a studious look to my countenance, even going so far as to raise my fingers to my lips in a pretense of deep thought.
And then, whilst pretending to that sort of industry, I would, with the utmost studied casualness, reach over to grasp the wine glass. Of course it had to appear that that wine glass was the furthest thing from my mind, that I only reached over out of mere habit. (Needless to say, the reaching over should not be so casual that I would inadvertently knock over said glass!)
At that exactly crucial point in the process, I would raise my eyes to the heavens, as if I sought inspiration for my writing from a higher power. Anyone watching me would, in a sort of unconscious mimicry, tend to look up as well.
It was at that precise moment, when I had deflected the eyes of any spectator in an irrelevant (if not irreverent) direction, that I would, ever so slowly and casually, slide the wine glass off the table with my left hand and lower it to my lap, placing it carefully to rest on the seat between my legs. (Caution: do not allow glass to topple to the floor!)
At that same moment I would lay my pen down on the table. In doing this I would affect a weariness with my toil, to which my closed eyes and knitted, furrowed brow would attest.
And now my right arm would creep stealthily down - down to the pocket of my vest, from which it would remove the bottle containing the ruby elixir. My left hand would unscrew the top. And then came the Achilles' heel of the whole process, since it is the one time I had to look down: I would pour some of that ambrosia into the wine glass. (Caution: do not pour wine into lap!) How much, you might ask? The answer is: enough to add a significant amount to the glass without filling it completely (for that would cause suspicion.) How much is meant by 'significant', you ask? My reply is: don't be so quantitative! 'Significant' is 'enough', and you'll know it when you see it.
The last step is to raise the wine glass again. (Caution: do not smash glass against underside of table!) I thought I might as well raise it all the way to my lips, thereby bringing the level of wine nearer once again to that magical point where 'pourage' could begin anew.
Needless to say, I had to go through this process, these simulations, several times in the course of an evening. I am aware of the fact that this seems to be a time-consuming and nerve-wracking series of events to carry off once, to say nothing of two or three times. But I ask in good faith: does anyone have a better idea how to save $1.73 (that includes tax) every single night?!
Eventually, of course, it had to happen: my machinations would be detected, permeated, seen through. Or at least I thought and assumed they were. The following is a complete and accurate transcript of the 'conversation' with the waitress on this topic (if indeed it was on that topic):
She: I wish you wouldn't do that.
Me: Do what?
She: What you were doing.
Me: Oh – okay.
(I challenge the reader to take this petite exchange as a model to be expanded upon, namely: How far afield can this 'dialogue' be taken and still have as its 'substance' merely an allusion to something never mentioned?)
Now I was wont to point out to that waitress (though I didn't) that her busybodyness was detrimental to her employer's best interest. For, if she discouraged my wine-pouring, I might not be able to afford to go there any more. Thus, the owners would lose the revenue on one glass of wine each night. She should have been fired, in my non-prejudiced view (but she wasn't.)
I never did find out what she thought I was doing!
I guess I continued going to Carroll's while swallowing the extra cost – until one evening around 1987, when I came and found it closed. (I later learned that it had been sold to a developer for well over a million dollars.) I was at a loss as to where to go, when I remembered that Mr. Carroll also owned a place down toward Boston called Memory Lane. So I drove there. The place was huge but I didn't see any customers inside. However, there was a group of waitresses, some of whom I recognized from Carroll's, standing over by the bar. When I entered, they broke into a cheer, crying, 'It's Mr. Burgundy!' Apparently my pouring fiasco hadn't gotten around; or, if it had, it had long been forgiven and forgotten. Now, I was an object of nostalgia.
I sought a new venue for my adventures. Eventually I found the Rosebud Café in Davis Square, Somerville. This was a low-class bar, but it had its charms. From the outside it looked like a sleek black diner. Inside there was a row of wooden booths along the windows, and a bar along the opposite wall. It was ill-lit and it was dirty and raucous, and it appealed to me immensely. For all its semi-sleezy aspects it was a safe place (I was never aware of any reputed drug deals there) and even welcoming (the barmaid would occasionally give me a free glass of wine 'because you don't cause any trouble.') It was not like the bar down the street where, the one night I was there, a woman slashed her lover's face with a broken bottle.
The problem was, as time went on, the Rosebud became less and less reliable. First of all, they began running out of wine: first burgundy, then rose, until one evening, bizarrely, they had no wine at all! Then too, I'd find them closed on various nights (those drug deals.) I sought a fallback option and found Christopher's in Cambridge. There I would order a half-carafe of burgundy and hang the expense! (Needless to say, the Rosebud did not serve their (non-existent) wine in carafes!) Christopher's was the first bar/restaurant I'd written in that had a smoking section (a small one around the other side away from the fire.)
During that period it was not unusual for me to frequent these two places on alternate evenings. One was imbued with the esprit of things Cantabrigian, while the other was soaked in the sweat of Somerville. And I cherished the contrast, the counterpoint between the two. The following things overheard should give a taste of their respective (if not necessarily respectable) patrons:
CHRISTOPHER'S: "Is there some way to impose the system of Wagnerian Leitmotifs on Joycean stream-of-consciousness techniques?"
ROSEBUD (over a blaring jukebox): "F – U – H – H – H – H - C K !!"
I think it is obvious as to which establishment I preferred to frequent. Unlike Christopher's, the Rosebud lacked all pretense, and I found that refreshing. There was an edge to the Rosebud that I found exciting. The bar was a long tube where anyone entering had to encounter everyone else there, even if only with a look or a glance.
I grafted the romantic image of the maverick with a cigarette onto this. For one (and only one) time in my life I played the game of engaging a complete stranger with a look and then staring him down. At least that is the way the 'encounter' happened in my own mind: what is more probable is that my 'adversary' was not even aware that an 'encounter' was taking place. A complete account of this 'encounter' is given below:
I sit in a booth facing the door.
I take a long drag on my cigarette.
The door opens and a man stops at the threshold.
Our eyes lock.
Slowly and coolly I exhale the smoke.
The stranger's eyes fall.
Defeated, he slinks by me into the bar.
(The reader is invited to spin variations on this 'theme' (I myself produced twenty at one point.) For example, the stranger could wink at me, causing me to choke on my smoke. I even imagined a meta-confrontation, wherein the stranger dictates the narrative to me and I dutifully write it down.)
Well, it was bound to end eventually, this going out to smoke and drink and write. For one thing, I had long since exhausted the list of topics to write on: toward the end I was mainly writing in my Journal. There was also the question of money: during my Christopher's phase, I estimated the cost of wine plus tip and cigarettes to be around $2000 per year – a not-insignificant amount.
But the main reason for halting may have been my health. One time I began coughing in the car on a family outing. My wife said to me bluntly, 'Do you want to live to see your kids grow up?' I got the message: sissy smoker or not, I quit for good. That was in 1991.
And of course now there is no bar or restaurant that allows smoking. I had gotten in on the tail end of it.
As for those places I frequented, only Christopher's still exists (sans smoking) as it was when I went there to write. HoJo's has lost its red Naugahyde charm and is now a Ground Round. Carroll's was razed and a medical building now stands on the spot. But the most depressing transformation has been the Rosebud: on the outside it is the same. But, like Bill's Beer Hall in Bilbao, it has become a clean well-lighted place serving fairly decent food to the bourgeoisie (I wouldn't have dared to eat food at the old Rosebud, had they served any.) In short, it has become respectable. Yes, terrible and depressing!
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