The Underground Literary
decided to hold a Legends of the Underground
reading at Amato Opera Theater, off-off-Broadway,
and held a press conference at CBGB’s, a couple of doors down
a couple of weeks before. The media were invited. The Village Voice
came, Shout magazine, George Plimpton from the Paris Review, and
a retinue of staffers. Ann Sterzinger wore a lace see-through dress
with her aureolae and erect nipples and luxuriant pubic bush showing.
I sat behind her on the podium, and had to look at the audience
looking at me not looking at her ass-crack. The shithouse door
on a tuna boat. I was asked for my observations.
I said I came to
a student at the Art Students League the year of the Jackson Pollock
Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (1965), and thought it was
a nice place to visit.
I vowed to come back when I was sent for. “Et
maintenant…
je suis ici.” (Sterzinger delivered her opening remarks to Plimpton in French.)
I sat back down in a clap of dirty thunder. Plimpton said, “Jack up there is the only one
of you who knows what he is talking about.” Later, he gave me a business card
and invited me to send him something at the magazine. I wrote a story about
the occasion and mailed it to the Paris Review with the card, but an unpaid intern
(I imagine) read it and returned it to me with a note on a rejection slip, saying,
“This is not the sort of thing Mr. Plimpton likes.” Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t get past
the gatekeeper. Sorry, George. Just another missed connection.
But didn’t Ann have audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace.
The ULA says the Paris Review was subsidized by the CIA. Why not?
All spies went to Harvard,
the family secrets to? Some arriviste in a see-through dress?
He looked like he got a lot of pussy. I got to hear him say, “Balderdash!”
He was the Fireworks Commissioner of New York City. Better than Norman Mailer’s
Lego sculpture. Better than losing the Oscar to a science fiction writer (Doris Lessing).
How many wives does a man need? How many mistresses? How many sycophants and
yes-men? Ann called the hair on the insides of her thighs she shaved before
the performance her sideburns. I got to hear her shaving backstage.
It made me hot. I was a happily married man. I had to leave
to catch a plane back to
Jesus, Ann, were you tantalizing me? Did you think I was too old
to cut the mustard? Were you unaware of the effect you had on people?