Chapter 2: Illusions of America
FICTIONAL REALITY, IMAGES FLOOD MY MIND ENDLESSLY LIKE OVERLAPPING SHINGLES ON A ROOF.
The crossing was rough. The ship plowed through a March storm of sixty-foot breaking waves. Most of the passengers were seasick and there were buckets in all the cabin-ways. The crew was constantly mopping up vomit. But me, I was in my realm, the open sea. I ate every meal and purchased a two-pound box of Whitman chocolates and ate all of that too. Food went through me like air. As thin as a rail, I was six feet and 135 pounds.
After the storm the ship crept past the Statue of Liberty into a gray, ice-filled New York harbor. Most of the passengers had come as emigrants or refugees. Me? I came as John, the English Adventurer, expecting to see John Wayne striding the wooden sidewalks of New York with horses and wagons rumbling by. Instead I was met with deep concrete canyons occupied by blowing garbage and yellow cabs.
In the 101st Street East Side apartment where we lived everyone spoke Italian. On Sundays, with me dressed in my English tweeds, we ate great feasts of pasta. I was introduced to Maria, also sixteen, who had a body that would put Venus to shame. Her uncle, Jimmy the Bandit, jealously guarded her, so I could only look at her from a distance, while stuffing my mouth with her mother's spaghetti. Her skin was so olive it almost made me faint.
It quickly dawned on me that if I wanted to have something like Maria I would need to be successful at some type of work. Within the period of a few years I became in rapid succession a Western Union messenger, a shipping clerk, a gas stove repairman, a telephone receptionist, a watch repair apprentice, a magazine salesman, a footman for Jock Whitney, and a waiter at the 21 Club. All of this was great experience but I was not impressing Maria and I was getting restless, so I thought I would head out West.
I purchased a 30-30 lever-action Winchester Saddle Ring carbine, a pair of Acme cowboy boots, and an outfit of roebuck jeans and jacket. I purchased a bus ticket to Las Vegas, Nevada, and practiced saying "Howdy" in my best western movie imitation. I burned my English tweeds and set off on a Greyhound, eating chili with beans at every bus stop we pulled up to. Along the way I actively imagined my new persona.
I decided to change my name to Chris Scott, who was surely a distant relative of Randolph Scott. I was born in Bitter Creek, Wyoming, and was sent to England for schooling because we were relatives of Scott of the Antarctic exploration. It all sounded quite airtight to me and surely would impress any Maria I met. Not leaving anything to chance, I purchased an authentic Indian beaded thunderbird necklace. I figured if I ran into any redskins they would most certainly recognize me as a long-lost brother and invite me to marry the chief's beautiful daughter, Maria.
Las Vegas was not impressed with me when I finally got off the Greyhound bus five days later. I spent the night at the Salvation Army shelter and headed out for a real cow town; Mesquite. Arriving, I slung my kit bag and carbine over my back and swaggered, John Wayne style, into the adobe cafe. With my last silver dollar I ordered chili and beans and in a loud voice, with my best Texas accent, put out the offer, "Does anyone around here need any horses broke?"
In a masterful stroke I flipped the Bull Durham tobacco tag so it hung out of the top of my denim jacket pocket and turned around on the swivel counter seat to face the breakfast-eating crowd. Nobody reacted except the waitress, who backed away from me and retreated into the kitchen. From behind the swinging door I heard laughter, which temporarily punched a hole in my act. I rallied, however, and picked up my gear and headed out the door.
I had not gone far up the sand street before the waitress came running after me, grabbed my sleeve, and said, "Sonny, try Harley at the gas station; he needs help." My first impulse was to keep going on to St. George, Utah. Sonny, indeed! A gas station attendant! Not for Chris Scott of Bitter Creek. At that time I was near the gas station, so I thought, Well, what the hell. I found Harley, a man in mechanics' overalls. He said, "Well, I need someone to feed my cattle in the feed lot, back of the garage. Can you ride a horse?" He looked at me with curiosity.
"You bet," I answered, with a confidence born of imagination.
"Well," he said, hesitantly, "You can sleep in the garage and I'll pay you three dollars a day. Okay?"
"You bet," I answered.
"There's a saddle and bridle on the fence over there. Saddle up the black in the corral and I'll take you over to the feed lot."
I walked over to the fence, slung the saddle across my back in Randolph Scott style, took the bridle in my left hand, opened the gate, and for the next hour chased the black horse all over the corral. Then I heard a loud whistle and the horse headed for Harley and the two men who had come to watch the display.
"Hey kid," said one, "bring that saddle over here." I did just that.
"You might need a blanket," said another.
I was just about to answer that I was not cold when he flung it across the horse's back. They put on the saddle and bridle. "Kind of rusty, ain't you, kid," chuckled one. "Here," said Harley, and he handed me the reins. What happened next should have worked, as I had seen it in the movies enough times. I put my left foot in the stirrup, my hand on the saddle horn, and was about to pull myself up into the saddle when the horse put his hoof on the toe of my right boot. I could not remove my left foot from the stirrup and the horse would not move his hoof from my foot. The three guys were rolling around with laughter. To make matters worse, I let go and fell backward on the ground, my foot still in the stirrup and the other still pinned under the horse's hoof. This produced more convulsive laughter.
Harley let me stay and paid me three dollars a day to entertain everyone. After that I got a job on a ranch in Nebraska where I lived in a real bunkhouse with three other hands and earned four dollars a day with food. But after six months I got fired for shooting the ears off one of a team of horses, which happened this way.
It was in the fall and flocks of ducks were migrating south over the Nebraska cornfields. Chuck, one of the hands, pulled up to me in a manure spreader with a team of horses. "Quick, Chris," he yelled at me, shoving a 10-gauge shotgun into my hands. "Get in the back; there's a flock of birds in the top field." I jumped into the empty manure spreader and Chuck whipped up the horses and headed for the field.
Unfortunately, he had the spreader wagon in gear, which meant the chain floor used to move the manure to the back of the wagon into the whirling arms of the spreader was running under my feet. I had to keep hopping up and down in the back to avoid getting caught up in the tracks. Chuck was so excited he didn't hear me yell to stop. The sky was thick with low flying ducks. "Shoot! Shoot!" yelled Chuck, as I fell back into the wagon. I tried to aim the gun into the air and pulled the trigger.
We both saw the left-side horse's ears disappear in smoke. Chuck managed to stop the horses about a mile down the road. After a chewing out by the boss I decided I'd had enough of Western life. I got a suit at the Salvation Army store in Omaha, burned my cowboy outfit, sold my Winchester, and headed back east to settle down.
Because of my farming and ranching experience out west I secured a job as a farming instructor in a state school for retarded young adults. I was back in Form One-X, except now I was the teacher or, as it turned out, the "Farming Gang Boss." It was more like a prison than school, even though it was called a state training school. The farming department had about 100 Holstein cows and extensive fields of market-garden vegetables, from tomatoes to spinach.
I was given a gang of about fifteen teenagers who would have fit very well into Form One-X, and I took them out into the fields to weed, pick, hoe, dig, rake, burn brush, or whatever was needed or invented to keep us occupied. It was my first decent job and I felt like finally I was someone. I was twenty and could look forward to all kinds of health plans, insurance, and a retirement package.
Now that I had a good job, a wife was needed to complete the picture. I successfully courted a young secretary by the name of Helen who worked at the local school. We planned to be married in June. With our combined wages we rented a small house near the training school and furnished it on the hire-purchase plan. I made no attempt to sleep with Helen because this was the woman I was going to marry and that meant purity beyond mere sexual lust.
It was a grand wedding. The church was filled with flowers, tuxedos, and white gowns. A singer sang I Love You Truly from the church balcony and I was in wedded, blissful heaven. There were champagne, toasts, and the wedding cake with the effigies of Helen and me on top of three tiers held up by three columns. The bride threw the flower bouquet and we were off on our honeymoon to New York City. That night we tried to make love, but when I came to touching her vagina she cried and ran from the room. Honeymoon jitters, I said to myself. Be patient, be calm, be kind. Remember, this is the pure love of your life.
After a year, wedded bliss had turned to wedded hell. We still had not consummated our wedding -- no sex. We went to counselors, psychiatrists, and fortune-tellers, all of no help. Finally, I sold the furniture, quit my job, and left forever. I went to New York and got a job as a summer camp counselor at University Settlement Camp in Beacon, New York. I had sworn off marriage for the rest of my life when I met Ruth, a young, intelligent, beautiful Jewish girl. I say girl because she was only seventeen at the time and I had just turned twenty-one. I fell deeply in love.
A court somewhere in Georgia annulled my marriage to Helen and I asked Ruth to marry me. She refused on the grounds that while she felt I was wildly romantic she did not think I would make a reliable or stable husband or future father. I was heartbroken-devastated. I went to New York City and got a job as a group worker at University Settlement House. Still devastated and depressed by the rejection of Ruth, I became very drunk one night and cut my wrists in desperation. But, being in the state of intoxication, I rolled over onto my wrists and woke up in the morning to find the pressure had stopped the bleeding. My recovery was slow, but in any case I was determined that one day I would marry Ruth.
I registered and took art classes at the Art Students League and Columbia University. One of the professors at Columbia said if I really wanted to learn to draw as well as Leonardo DaVinci, I should get a job at a mortuary and draw dissected bodies. Taking him upon his word, I got a job dissecting aortas from cadavers at St. Vincent's Hospital. One day a doctor came into the mortuary and asked me if I knew anything about pumps. I said I did and he asked if I would help them fix their pump. It happened to be one of the first heart lung machines, whereupon I was offered a position as a surgical technician with his team of doctors and nurses. It was there that I met and later married Sylvia, a young nurse from Britain. Ruth, I heard, married a Jewish doctor by the name of Joe.
Sylvia and I returned to England and settled in Devon. She had a nursing job at the Exeter General Hospital and I secured a position at St. Loyes College for the disabled, where I was the preliminary training instructor. In addition to work, I began to attend art school part time, which eventually became two years of full-time enrollment.
One fine spring day I received a telephone call from Ruth informing me that she had divorced Joe and that she was coming that early summer to stay in Paris. I quickly obtained a scholarship to study art in Paris that summer. Sylvia was not included in the plans.
Ruth and I met in Paris and began a torrid love affair. We were unable to let go of each other, even for a second, and knew we had to be together forever. In the midst of our passion Sylvia showed up at the hotel, having tracked me down. There was a tremendous row, with anger, accusation, and tears. Because I could hardly afford to eat in those days, I was quite faint from the buffeting of the emotional storm. Somehow, though, the whole turmoil only served to bring Ruth and me closer together.
Before Ruth returned to America to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois, we decided to live together. I was to follow her in two months after I had acquired a divorce from Sylvia. Ruth was four months pregnant with our first child when we were married in Greenwich, Connecticut. Ruth's parents were not at all happy about her daughter marrying outside of the Jewish faith-least of all to a ne'er-do-well like me without any prospects of a job. However, I was always one for grand ideas.
After a year of graduate school, Ruth and I decided to start our own school on the east coast of America. I borrowed some money and bought a car to take her and our newborn daughter to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. The following summer we started a summer camp for exceptional children in Elizabethtown.
The camp was well attended and Ruth and I considered it a success. The second summer's program was winding down when we received an invitation to attend a cocktail party given by some educators in Lake Placid, New York. I was having a conversation with a gentleman from Rhode Island who worked in the correctional system there. It was the early 1960s, and a lot of teenagers were getting arrested for smoking marijuana. When I asked him what it cost the state to house these young people he replied that it was about eleven thousand dollars per year. I rashly said, "Okay, I could do it for six." Immediately he said, "If you can, I will send you five people next fall."
Ruth and I borrowed money from a rich friend and purchased a 600-acre farm in Paradox, New York. It was nestled in a picturesque valley with a barn and old farmhouse. We contracted with Connecticut and New York, in addition to Rhode Island, and that fall we started Highland Community Residential School. We had thirty students and ten teachers. Everybody worked on the farm in the morning and in the afternoon we had academic schoolwork. We trained the students specifically to pass the New York State Equivalency High School Exam. During this hectic turmoil of establishing a school, Ruth, who had been pregnant, gave birth to our second daughter.
While this outline seems somewhat conventional, my fantasies about reality continued to display eccentricities. Warfare in particular -- or wars -- were a continual fascination of mine. We played out this fascination under the guise of teaching history. This was something akin to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. We divided the school and staff into two groups and over several days we acted out the Roman Celtic wars. In these wars the Celts always won. We also reenacted the Roman and Greek wars - again the Romans were soundly defeated.
One Saturday we bused the entire student body to Ticonderoga to see Charlton Heston in the movie Khartoum. Inspired, we spent the next day reconstructing an old cabin on the property with which to play out the story of the beleaguered Khartoum. The majority of the students acted as the fanatical Mahdi hoard, dressed in white sheets and bearing spears. I, as Gordon himself, was holed up in the derelict cabin with a few hardy students, a meager food supply, and two six-pounder muzzle-loading cannons. These cannons were loaded with gun powder and steel wool so that when they were fired at night a shower of hot metal sparks would shoot out about 50 yards all around.
Sure enough, that very night, sounds were heard in the large field that stretched before us. I ordered the gunners to stand by. When the sounds grew even louder I gave the order, "Open fire." The cannons roared out, sending flaming steel wool across the fields. Through the night air we could hear the Mahdi's fanatical hoard screaming as they ran off with burning sheets.
The next day the student "horde" was seen reforming itself under the command of two of the resident teaching staff. They had acquired new sheets during the night and had constructed a battering ram from a telegraph pole on a set of wagon wheels. The sheeted horde made their approach across the field and began to beat down the door of the cabin while we threw gunpowder loaded tennis ball bombs in amongst them. They finally withdrew, but we knew that we could not sustain another assault.
That night my soldiers and I snuck down to the barn and located several buckets into which we poured cow manure and a few dead rats. This was our last hope. The plan was to retreat to the rafters when the Mahdi hoards invaded the cabin, pour the offal on them, and then surrender.
Sure enough, they attacked that morning and managed to throw an explosive devise into our ammunition box-which sent rockets and fireworks exploding within the cabin. We rushed into the rafters and hauled up our buckets. The maddened yelling and screaming mob of Mahdis swarmed into the cabin, whereupon they were drenched in cow shit and dead rats. Screaming, they ran out and my lads and I nobly surrendered.
The wars escalated and our equipment and props improved dramatically. Two U.S. Naval whaleboats were donated to the school, which we immediately rigged with four-pounder bow guns and one-pounder swivel guns. Our seamstresses and tailors fabricated 18th-century Royal Navy uniforms for the students and teachers. We purchased cutlasses, pikes, and muskets and set forth to retake the colonies for King George. We took part in reenactment battles at Crown Point, Fort Ticonderoga, and Fort William Henry.
While this was a coed school, the boys were the main participants in the Royal Navy reenactments. The girls, feeling a bit left out, requested an all-girl trip on Lake Champlain in the whaleboats -- to which I agreed. It was a warm September day when we set off down the lake with the girls sweating at the oars, singing "Row, My Bully Girls, Row." They then stripped off their shirts and I stood at the tiller looking down at these bare-breasted Amazons pulling away as a cloud of red Monarch butterflies engulfed us. The boat was white on the outside and red on the inside. The autumn colors on the shore glided by. The sky was cloudless and there was the hum of an occasional dragonfly. The sound of the oars squeaked rhythmically in the oarlocks. The fantasy was complete and the environment cooperative. If realized in the moment, the mythology of the situation could have been seen as an omen of past, present, and future -- on the spot.
I COULD REINVENT MYSELF from one second to another without hesitation and could be completely immersed in whatever fantasy reality it was that was created -- whether it was a house, children, marriage, school, being an artist, a teacher, a cowboy, or a naval officer. Each could b accounted for without any real sense of reality.
But the interactive emotional reality of people surrounding me swelled and exploded. The fantasy of my living happily ever after with Ruth ended because of my infidelity. We had terrible fights and we decided that I should leave. As I left our dream house forever, Ruth in a fit of rage shouted, ''And take this with you!" She threw a statue of the Buddha at me and it hit the doorpost next to my head. I picked it up and vanished. She found security in a seemingly more stable Joe and married him, and through the law courts, acquired custody of my daughters and ownership of the property. I was devastated. I wanted to kill myself. I was engulfed in depression for two years -- my fantasies having failed me, or me having failed my fantasies. Then I met Chogyam Trungpa [1] Rinpoche. [2]
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Notes:
1 During the 1974 Seminary, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche explained, "The word Trungpa is an honorific term, which literally means 'attendant.' Ideally when somebody serves their guru twenty-four hours a day. they begin to get some glimpse of the workings of his mind. They begin to get messages and reminders of awareness and things like that. So the best way to develop is to be the guru's servant. That's the tradition.''
2 Rinpoche means "greatly precious"; a title given to especially qualified masters.