Page 14 - Vol V. #8

The Nut File ((continued from preceding page)
tion to alleviate my headaches, but I couldn’t drive as my balance nerve had been removed and I couldn’t even walk with any stability. I called the religious woman across the street to ask her to take me to the drug store, which she generously did. And generous, too, were the other custom- ers who moved aside on seeing the ghastly scar, allowing me the front of the line. When my neigh- bor dropped me off at home, I thanked her and she said, “That pain almost makes you want to believe in God, doesn’t it?”
don’t recommend it.”
“Almost,” I said.
in Boston, to a place with a sign that read LIVE CHICKENS/FRESH KILLED. When her turn came, Ida told the clerk she wanted one chicken and paid for it. She moved down the line, where another man held up her bird and she nodded. Then he tossed it into what she didn’t know was a centrifugal tumbling machine that removed all the feathers. He threw it into a plastic bag and she was ushered out the door.
I had dinner with Allen Grossman and his wife Judith at Henrietta’s Table. Judith ordered tuna, rare, but when it arrived, it was overdone. She mentioned this to the waiter, who brought the manager to our table. He apologized profusely, saying, “There is nothing worse in the world than overdone tuna!”
In 2003, Stanley Kunitz was dying for the first time. He laid in bed in his 12th Street apartment, surrounded by friends, mostly women. My wife, in town to give a reading at the New School, vis- ited him to say goodbye. At the end of their talk, Stanley said that he had something important
for her to tell me. She told me this story on her return, and I couldn’t imagine what this could
be. He said to tell me that “the best thing I’d ever done...” and here I waited for his judgment on my career or my work... “Tell John,” he said, “that the best thing he ever did, was to marry you.”
Allen said, “It must be a very happy world then.”
My doctor ordered an MRI of my brain to see if a tumor was responsible for the ringing in my ear. At the end of the first round of images, the techni- cian who administered the procedure said there was nothing there, and I rejoiced as he injected dye to get a clearer picture. When that was over he said, “Oh, there is a tumor.”
Stanley recovered a few days later, rising from his bed and ordering three more years of bat- teries for his hearing aid, exactly the number of years he would live after this first death at .
I drove home, stopping for a drink at a place called Louie’s Beer Stadium. The bartender told me the stadium was a private club and I had to be a member in order to be served. He apologized, saying the county was dry, and the club was a way around the law.
My son’s goldfish died, and I told him that eventu- ally everything dies, that everything breaks, including toys, computers, cars and that he shouldn’t be sad about it because everything in life is temporary. He took this very well. A few weeks later, his friend visited and, during their game of racing cars, the boy’s convertible lost a wheel and he began to cry. My son ran up to me, cupped his hand to his mouth, and whispered, “He doesn’t know!”
“Although you could be a guest...” he said, nod- ding to a member leaning over a gin and tonic.
The patron did not look up, but simply said, “He’s my guest.”
I had to sign a register, and then I bought a drink for myself and for my host before going off to a table to contemplate the tumor in a world where everything seemed either host or guest.
Dining with Allen Grossman at his favorite res- taurant, Villa Pizza of Sienna, I asked him what he was having. “Veal Parmesan,” he said. “But I
Our class praised the student’s poem about a robin. At the end of the critique, when it was the poet’s turn to respond, he said that the robin was
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Ida suffered from trichotillomania, pulling her hair out. Her psychiatrist told her to go to Chi- natown and buy a fresh chicken, and when she felt the urge to hurt herself, she should pluck the feathers instead. She went to Kneeland Street