Fairfield, Connecticut 5.6.92: Urban Decay and Mythic Village Greens

In Fairfield, Connecticut. Drove here yesterday from Boston. Today beastly—coldish, and rain all day, and I with beginnings of a sore throat, itching in my left ear (which stays more or less stopped up), sneezing, congestion.

The last day in Boston we spent with Chuck, going to lunch in Chinatown, then desultory and unsuccessful shopping for a night shirt at Filene’s and Marshall Field’s, then to Harvard Square. It was a nice day, and a nice evening. Chuck took us to a restaurant in Boston’s South End, where I had a really wonderful grilled halibut, baby eggplant, and sundried tomatoes.

Chuck, who’s a marvelous mimic, told a very amusing story of his days as a gigolo. When he was at BC, he went to see John M. to discuss his homosexuality. John M. introduced Chuck to Tim, a marathon swimmer.

Tim lived in a building in which the daughter of Mrs. S. lived. One evening, Daughter came into Tim’s apartment as Chuck and Tim were rolling on the floor. Rather, they had time to compose themselves, barely.

Tim was taking Mrs. S., an elderly, mostly blind, millionaire from Minnesota married to Mr. S., a wealthy Cuban, to dinner at the Ritz Carlton once a week. For this he was paid $50.00 and the meal.

Daughter liked Chuck—“a nice young man”—and asked if he could replace Tim in this duty, since Tim was moving. So, at least weekly, Chuck would pick Mrs. S. up at a home smelling of urine and dominated by gibbering elderly people in wheelchairs. She would be in sunglasses (at night) and a wheelchair herself. From week to week, she forgot who Chuck was, but had a wily way of ignoring questions that would betray her lapses of memory, till she had heard information to clue her in.

Chuck would then escort her to the Ritz. When he arrived, “Yes, Mrs. S., of course, Mrs. S.” doormen would meet the little Honda among the Rolls Royces, and she would be shown to her accustomed place, where she would be brought french fries, asparagus, and several bottles of wine. The food she would overlook; not the wine. Chuck would coax her to eat, to which she would respond, “Oh, have they brought my asparagus?”

What conversation there was would be punctuated by her signature laugh, “Ah ha!” with a rising inflection on the second syllable, or by an “Oh, really?” with the second syllable strongly, emphatically stressed.

On the way home, Chuck would note Fenway Park as they passed, and would engage Mrs. S. in singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Park,” deleting words to get her to join in in a wine-stuporous croak. On one return drive, she commented on the ugly large teeth of the first lady. This was fifty years after FDR’s presidency.

One evening, Mrs. S. became angry at all the loud chatter around her and began to shout, “Shut up!” as she insisted it had never been this way in the past. An accomplice, Mrs. B., who came up to the table each evening, vowed to bring a whistle and blow it if the talk continued to be clamorous. And did so a few evenings later. At which Mrs. S. lifted her glass of wine and cried out, “That a girl!”

I wish I could tell the story with half the inflections and wittiness of Chuck.

Fairfield: not much. The old part of town is pretty, and the beach, but food uniformly abominable, and a sense of cultural tightness and dog-eat-dog money interests everywhere. We drove to an arts and crafts festival on the town green in Milford, nearby, but the rain had more or less closed the event. Then we returned on the old post road via Stratford and Bridgeport, where the urban decay and poverty were quite frightening, a stark antithesis to the mythic village greens with their pretty, stately New England houses.

Then in Fairfield, we went to the town historical society’s museum, which was unprepossessing.

Boston 3.7.02: Heat Wave and Calls for Plastahs

Have I mentioned there’s a heat wave in Boston? 95º yesterday, and supposed to be even hotter today, with suffocating steaminess.

Steve and I had dinner last night with Roger H., in an Irish pub-cum-restaurant in Harvard Square. Nice to see him, but I feel abashed with people, taciturn, hardly able to articulate an idea. Shell-shocked. Gun-shy.

He talks of people we knew in Toronto, with whom he’s kept in touch, and I feel 1000 miles away. It’s like I knew them in some other life. They have secure, cushy jobs, tenure, good salaries; they’ve had sabbaticals. They travel; they write.

I, by contrast, seem to continue struggling just to exist—I fear, none too successfully. . . . .

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People I’ve seen in Boston: a black man on a bicycle talking wildly to himself, throwing his head (which was covered by a wool toque on a hot summer’s night) wildly about. When the light changed, he suddenly jolted into action, trying to cross against the light.

A large woman in a t-shirt too tight for her, bright yellow at that, and a cotton skirt with indeterminate hemline. She came into the pharmacy while we were there, shouting repeatedly for adhesives. The clerk couldn’t understand, so she shouted, “Plastah!” Her hair was covered with a scarf, a bright bandana, though it was a hot day. She had on huge brown hiking boots. And, oh yes: she had a long beard, grizzled and gray-brown. And her pendulous huge breasts hung to her waist.

By the subway, another woman with hair tied up and cotton skirt that also had an indeterminate hemline. This one was thin and worried-looking, but with an air of intense moral superiority. She, too, had a t-shirt, with a cross and a logo I couldn’t read. On her feet, tennis shoes and thick white socks.

As she waited for the train, she paced in an intense figure-8 pattern, weaving around the pillars, head down and oblivious to the world.

Boston 2.7.02: Fens and Tiny Jewels of Gardens

In Boston. Chuck lives near what are called the Victory Gardens, in the Fenway. They’re little fenced-in plots in a park, which one rents for $10/year. Absolutely gorgeous little jewels of gardens, flowing with roses, hollyhocks, poppies, perennial sweetpeas, and everything else imaginable.

Some are little hiding places, with ferns, hostas, shade-loving plants. Some have arbors and swings, others picnic tables. A number have mini rock gardens or tiny ponds.

The gardens are in rows, like houses on a street, with woodchip walkways running throughout like a grid of streets in a neighborhood. All totally enchanting.

The park has a tiny river, the Muddy River, running through it, bordered by reeds—the fens for which Fenway is named. Paths run into the reeds, but we didn’t venture there. My Southern sensibility makes me fearful of places snakes may live, though this may not be a problem in Boston. And Chuck tells us the reeds are used for trysts and sexual assignations. We did see some very unsavory characters weaving in and out of them.

The park and much of this area of the city are full of lindens in full bloom, with a fragrance I didn’t know lindens could have—overpowering, heavy, sweet: at times almost like night-blooming jasmine in New Orleans. I’ve smelled linden in northern Europe, but there it’s demure and almost medicinal in its clean smell. In the warm muggy air of a Boston July, it must become something else.

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Sunday was a rest day. After the walk through the Victory Gardens, we shopped for groceries to fix grillades and grits for Chuck. Otherwise, we lazed about in the evening and watched “The Others,” which we’d rented at a video shop near Chuck.

Monday, Steve and I went to Harvard Square by subway and shopped. Had lunch at a place Bartley’s, which serves a dreadful Cobb salad, all cubes of pressed “turkey” and processed cheese, and one miserable tomato slice. The dressing, a lemon vinaigrette, had absolutely no taste of lemon and was sickeningly sweet. Why do people in the enlightened north seem to think that salad dressings should be sweet, and salads should taste like desserts?

Today to Dedham, where Steve wants to find records of his Kuld ancestors. We’re waiting now outside Longview/Shapiro hospital, where Chuck is retrieving his MRI records.