My Brautigan: A Portrait From Memory

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MY BRAUTIGAN: A PORTRAIT FROM MEMORY

BY DON CARPENTER

FIRST MEETING

In the early 1960’s I was writing a novel about the life of an institutional man, traveling from orphanage to juvenile home to prison, and then into and out of marriage. The character was partly based on a friend named Bob Miller. Bob had spent eighteen months in San Quentin, later became a buddy of Jack Kerouac’s, and fascinated me, both as character material and as a person.

One night I went over to Russian Hill to visit Bob and there was another man there, a tall stoopshouldered blond with a diffident manner and a weak, slightly moist handshake.

“This is Richard Brautigan,” Bob said.

We sat and drank and talked for a while. It developed that Richard was a poet, one of the North Beach crowd nobody called the Beat Generation. I had never read any of his stuff, but we had some mutual friends--Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder--and so the conversation was relaxed. Brautigan seemed like a nice guy.

At one point somebody, probably Bob, suggested that we play some poker, just nickel dime quarter stuff.

“Ah, poker, yes, poker. Let’s play poker,” Richard said (or something like it), and we sat down at Bob’s tiny breakfast table, moved aside the salt, pepper, vinegar cruet and catsup bottle, and started to play. This would be fun; I considered myself an expert poker player, needed all the money I could get, and poker would be a good way to show this poet I was a real macho fellow, somebody worth knowing.

“First jack deals,” Bob said, and began flipping the cards around. We had all our money on the table, a total of maybe twenty dollars in bills and change. Bob and I had our bills stacked neatly with the coins on top, nickels in one stack, dimes in another, quarters in another. Richard’s money was just in a heap.

Richard got the first jack. Bob stopped dealing and handed the deck to Richard.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“It’s your deal,” Bob said. Bob is a hardlooking man. He was once described as a hunk of petrified wood with blue eyes. “That was the first jack,” he said.

“Oh,” said Richard. He looked at the cards on the table.

“I’ll deal,” I said in a friendly tone. This was going to be great. The guy didn’t know the first thing about poker.

I was right. As we played it became clear that Brautigan thought of poker as an exercise in surrealism, in which the money distributed itself according to laws unknown to mankind.

Hot puppies. Bob and I could whipsaw this jerk out of his entire roll. The game went on:

Five card stud. I have a pair of nines showing, with a king up and a king down. Bob folds as I bet fifty cents. Richard has nothing showing, not even a pair. After long deliberation he raises me fifty cents. I count his money, and then bet everything he’s got. After no deliberation at all, he calls me.

“You’re beat,” I say flatly.

Giving me a cold hard look, he says “I have a pair of tens.” He turns over his holecard, a ten. I turn over my down king.

“Two pair,” I say, pulling in all his money, a little regretfully. Because now of course the game was over, and I kind of liked this big goofy poet, who couldn’t even play poker.

“You must be the finest poker player in America,” Richard said to me, his eyes glowing with affection.

I modestly denied this.

“It’s not that, Richard,” Bob said. “It’s that you’re the worst.”

Richard finished his drink. “I want another drink,” he said. “Let’s go down to North Beach.”

Bob had to work in the morning, so Richard and I walked down the hill together. We went to Vesuvio’s, then a hangout for fifties leftovers like us, a busy bar, a noisy bar, a place where anything could happen. We jammed ourselves up to the curve in front and waited for the bartender. The joint was packed, the music loud, the slide show in progress, Victor’s primitive paintings on the wall--paintings you could buy for fifteen or twenty dollars that now go for thousands if you can find one for sale--poets, writers, photographers and painters, bums and hangers-out, the mood was fine, the evening full of promise.

Then I remembered that Richard had no money.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked him generously, his six dollars burning a hole in my pocket.

“I have to bleed my lizard,” he said, and moved down the crowded aisle toward the stairs down to the toilet.

He never came back. Later I saw him down by the pay phone, animatedly talking to a couple of pretty women, a drink in his hand. I waited another half an hour, but he did not come back up to my end of the bar. This made me angry, and I set off for home and my family.

I could not have dreamed, of course, that this man would become my closest friend, that he was the craziest, funniest, most gloomy and pessimistic man I would ever meet, that he was an artist whose worth is yet to be decided, who flirted with the bitch Fame and is now beginning his affair with the bitch History.

All I knew was that I had beat him out of six dollars, and I needed the money.

CHANGE MAGAZINE

Back then it seemed possible to take control of American literature by simply starting your own magazine, printing your friends, and letting the world come to you. City Lights bookstore was a tiny triangle of cramped space with Shigeyoshi Murau at its center, behind the cash register. The front rack, under the window and to Shig’s left, was littered with hopeful new poetry magazines, ranging in price from FREE to $10.00. Brautigan and his friend Ron Loewinsohn decided to add to this blizzard of literature.

CHANGE was the name of their magazine, a bold announcement of what was about to happen to the world of art and letters. CHANGE was mimeographed on cheap 8X10 paper. It was priced at one dollar per issue and four dollars for a year’s subscription.

Brautigan and Loewinsohn met me at a cafe on the corner of Columbus and Pacific. The place was shabby and full of poets, all glowering at each other and themselves. We sat near the window and glowered out at the citizens passing by. Ron Loewinsohn was and is a small handsome man with snapping eyes and a bright laugh, a poet with ambitions.

To keep us from being thrown out, I ordered coffee and probably paid for it, too. After all, they were poets and editors, and I was only a part-time teacher. Over coffee they talked and I listened. Their magazine was ambitious--they would be printing in their first issue Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, and I don’t remember who-all. It sounded pretty good to me, and I said so.

“That’s just it,” Richard said, looking at me fondly. “We would like to offer you the position of first subscriber.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. Had they combed North Beach and discovered that I was the only person they knew with four dollars? Maybe so, but I decided to be flattered.

“Thank you,” I said, and forked over the money.

Some time later I got my copy of CHANGE, Volume One, Number One. As advertised, it was full of poets who have now, with the passage of more than twenty years, become famous as the centerpieces of the Beat. I still have my copy, tucked away in lightsafe storage. Volume One, Number One was, of course, the only issue of the magazine to appear.

There is more to life than editing other people’s work, Brautigan and Loewinsohn must have decided. As for me, their only subscriber (it turned out), they owed me three dollars. At that time, three dollars was a hell of a lot of money, and I frankly never expected to see it again.

But no. These were honorable men. About three months after I had forgotten all about the whole thing, Richard came up to me on the street.

“Ah,” he said, “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

I explained that I had a wife and family over in Noe Valley, and that domesticity and work kept me out of the Beach, often for days at a time.

Not hearing the sarcasm, Richard pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. “This is yours,” he said. “Your refund from CHANGE.”

I was very pleased. In the world of poetry, in the North Beach of then, money was a scarce item. This bit of businesslike honesty was endearing to me. I liked Brautigan better than ever.

The fact that the envelope contained three-cent stamps instead of cash was irrelevant. People can always use stamps.

THE NIGHT OF THE TWO BOB MILLERS

After a boring couple of hours shooting fifty cent snooker at the Palace Billiards on Market, I had gotten into a poker game with a bunch of strangers in an apartment out Market near Castro. By suppertime I had won over eighty dollars on an investment of less than twenty. When I got home I was too feverish to eat. I lay on our bed, thoughts of gambling racing through my mind. I had promised to return to the game, and there were hundreds to be won. But on the other hand, maybe I could get sapped and robbed. Or even lose.

Brautigan telephoned and asked if I was busy. This solved my dilemma about the poker game, and so with a kiss goodbye for my wife and daughters, I drove over to 123 Beaver Street, where Richard was living.

123 Beaver, just a couple blocks up Castro from Market, was owned by Tommy Sales, who lived in the upstairs and rented out the downstairs to a variety of remarkable people. At the time I’m writing about, Brautigan had the front room, Lew Welch had the middle room, and Philip Whalen had the back room off the kitchen they all shared.

I used to visit Whalen a lot in those days, and as I would walk up the path under the gigantic avocado tree I would hear Richard in his room, typing steadily away. I didn’t know what he was writing at the time [In Watermelon Sugar], I only knew he wrote steadily, every day.

Anyway, on this particular evening, when I got to Richard’s I found two other men there, one sitting on the bed and one on the chair. Both of them were named Bob Miller. I knew one, the blue-eyed hunk of petrified wood. The other was introduced to me as having just gotten out of San Quentin. He was a short stocky man with merry eyes and a gift of gab.

There was whiskey being drunk, and one of the Bob Millers had some marijuana, and the conversation bubbled and flowed. The new Bob Miller was eager to hear about what had been happening in the city during his absence, and we filled him in as best as possible. But then it was time to go out, hit the bars, make a sweep, play the toilets.

“I have an idea!” I said brightly. I was still pretty jived from my day of gambling, half-drunk, and a bit stoned. “Let’s go to Sausalito! The chicks over there are fantastic!” We all piled into the new Bob Miller’s Cadillac sedan and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge.

The rest of the evening was a chaos of elephantine drunken escapades. The new Bob Miller, who owned a refrigeration business in San Francisco, also pimped a little on the side, more as a hobby than anything else, and while we sat in the crowded no name bar, Miller would point out the various women he said he could turn out.

“Lots of chicks are natural-born hookers,” he said, and pointed at a woman with a group of well-dressed professional types. “See that one?” With the snotty look? She’d drop her panties for a dime.”

We ordered another round of drinks. “I don’t believe you,” Richard said. He had been staring hard at the woman as she laughed and talked with her friends.

“You don’t understand women,” Bob said. “You’re a romantic.”

Bob Miller, Bob Miller, and I were talking about something else when Richard got up from the table and went over to the woman. I don’t know what he said to her, but in a few moments the four of us were out on the street.

“What happened?” I asked. I was full of nervous energy, booze, pot, and aggression. I wanted a fight.

“Never mind,” somebody said. We went up to Zack’s, where, at the time, they were having a lot of chess matches. I grew critical of someone’s play and made a number of helpful remarks, and lo, we were out on the street again.

“The hell with this town, let’s go to North Beach!” I cried. “I’m never coming back to Sausalito again!”

Vesuvio’s for a couple of drinks, then across to Tosca’s, then up the road to Gino & Carlo’s, which is one of the strangest bars in San Francisco, perhaps the world. G&Cs opened early in the morning, and its regular customers were longshoremen. In the afternoon the place would be quiet except for a few old Italian men, in blue suits, gray hats, smelly cigars and glasses of red wine. But then, around suppertime, poets would start drifting in, male and female, young and old; poets and the friends and hangers-on of poets. By midnight the place would be jammed with the poet crowd, hookers, pimps, book clerks and pool shooters. There were two quarter pool tables, which were always busy at this time of night. Jack Spicer, the unofficial king poet of the place, might be hunched over the pinball machine talking about baseball or Raymond Chandler; Aldo, Dino and Donato would be behind the bar and anything could happen.

The four of us barreled into the place around eleven, and I got into a pool game that cost me every cent in my pockets, all I had won at poker and all my own money besides. I was as drunk as I had ever been. Richard helped me to the car, drunk as he was, and held me in the back seat as I vomited. They left me on my doorstep and rang the bell.

The next morning I felt pretty bad. Guilty. I had thrown away money that belonged to my family. I was unfit for human society. I had even lost my glasses--there went another forty bucks--and when, oh when, was I ever going to learn?

The telephone rang. Wincing with guilt, I answered it.

“This is Richard. Are you all right?”

“I’ll live,” I admitted.

“I want to put your mind at rest about one thing,” he said. “I have your glasses.”

For the first time, I felt love for the man. It was a small thing, a thing maybe anybody would have done, but in my condition his keeping my glasses safe and calling me the next morning to reassure me, seemed like an act of pure humanity.

EAST COAST LITERARY MAFIA

It was a cold gray gritty windy day. Richard and I sat at one of the marble-topped tables outdoors at Enrico’s, glumly drinking away the afternoon. A lot of time had passed, and a lot had happened to us both, since the night of the two Bob Millers.

When I met him Richard had, with three slender books, already established himself among the poets. Then one day we ran across each other on the corner of Broadway and Columbus. He told me Barney Rossett of Grove Press had bought two of his novels, A CONFEDERATE GENERAL FROM BIG SUR, and TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA, for an advance of one thousand dollars. One thousand dollars! Richard was properly full of himself and proud; I was properly impressed and envious. I had been writing for more than ten years and had not received a penny for my work.

Well, CONFEDERATE came out and died at 800 copies. Barney Rossett of Grove Press decided not to publish TROUT FISHING. There was simply no market for Brautigan’s fiction. But Richard was stubborn about his work, and soon Donald M. Allen published TROUT FISHING through his Four Seasons Press, a small edition of 4500 copies. Richard begged both Herb Gold and me to review the book in THE CHRONICLE, and we both did. The 4500 copies sold out in one week, mostly from Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore.

Everyone but Richard was dumbfounded. He immediately negotiated a three-book contract with Delacorte Press, and his career bloomed like a cherry tree. My own first novel, HARD RAIN FALLING, had meanwhile been published, and I, too, had made a lot of money (it seemed like a lot at the time, anyway). There was nothing ahead for us but endless days of good writing and automatic public acceptance.

Richard bought real estate in Bolinas and Montana, and I moved my family to Mill Valley. When he was in San Francisco, living out on Geary in a Gothic old apartment building near Sears, we used to meet often for breakfast. After my wife threw me out and I moved back to the city, these breakfast meetings happened more often, first at Zim’s out on California, then later at Mama’s on Washington Square. After breakfast we might walk around the square ten or fifteen times, talking about life and art. And then to our separate desks.

Over the years these walks and talks got to be more and more about what Richard called the East Coast Literary Mafia. Richard’s work was known and respected all over the world, in many languages, but somehow he could seldom get a good review in America. He made the whole thing into an East vs. West issue, which maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.

Richard’s immense audience was dwindling, that was a fact. It continued to dwindle, but Richard took this the way most writers do--you don’t want any buyers who aren’t readers. And you don’t want any readers who aren’t lovers.

But with dwindling sales comes dwindling income, which brings us back to Enrico’s on that cold windy afternoon. My own literary career up to then had been sort of interesting: my first novel sold well, but nothing else I wrote even made back its advance, although I always got stunning reviews. Everybody envied me for my reviews. They were wonderful reviews. But they sold no books.

Now I had just published the most painful and difficult book of my career, THE TRUE LIFE STORY OF JODY McKEEGAN. E.P. Dutton published the book as if they were ashamed of it, and the first public notice that the book even existed came from a total trashing in the New York TIMES. There was not one single ad or press release from Dutton, and nobody back there would answer my telephone calls.

“Book reviewers,” Richard said. He made a spitting sound.

“Little people,” I said. “Drab little people with unhealthy complexions and attics full of unpublished manuscripts.”

“They are the kind of people you can’t trust around livestock,” Richard said. We ordered more drinks from our sullen waiter, Kenny. Traffic soared and ground past. Herds of inferior genetic material shuffled by, bent on worthless errands. I was in a wonderful humor. A movie I had busted my hump over for two bloody years had died at the box office, and now this novel I had hoped would get me even promised nothing but bad news.

“I don’t care about the negative opinions,” I said, beginning the writer’s litany.

“It’s that they take the money right out of your pocket,” Richard said, finishing it for me.

“The dirty bastards,” I said. “I got a buddy in New York, Burt Britten, works in the basement of the Strand Bookstore on Broadway. You know what he does all day? He buys review copies of books from the book reviewers. I stood there all afternoon once and watched them coming in with their armloads of books. Little gray people with shifty faces, college professors with greedy ex-wives, half-assed intellectuals who haven’t brushed their teeth or taken a bath since they got out of graduate school, really, the scum of the universe...”

“This was your first total trashing,” Richard said, draining the poisonous whiskey from his stupid glass. “You better get used to it.”

“Oh hell,” I said despondently. “I have something horrible to confess to you.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I want you to be honest even if it ruins our friendship.”

“It probably will,” I said miserably. “You know all those nasty things we been saying about reviewers? All true, right? Well, it’s all true of me. I’m a reviewer. I review books. I do it for the money, and the power.”

“That’s not so bad. We all do things we’re ashamed of, for money. I once worked in a photo lab, for instance.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “You just don’t understand.” I waved my empty glass. “Kenny!”

“What don’t I understand, darling?” Richard asked.

“TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA,” I said. “Remember? You begged me to review it?”

“And I thank you still,” he said. “I will always thank you. Not all book reviews are bad book reviews. Some are good book reviews, by good book reviewers.”

“No, no, no. You don’t understand. See, I was working on my own stuff at the time, and couldn’t read your book. I just couldn’t. So I wrote the review without reading the book. Don’t you see? I’m the worst one of all. I’m worse than all the cheapass book reviewers rolled up into one--I didn’t even read the book! I’m a liar! A cheat! Filth!”

But he was not listening. Two pretty young Japanese women had seated themselves at a nearby table. I wasn’t there anymore.

I had one more surprise that day. When I left Enrico’s I found that while I had been complaining about my bad review in the NYTBR, my car had been towed away.

“I CAN’T GET LAID IN THIS PLACE”

“I can’t get laid in Sausalito,” Richard declared to me more than once. This was back in the schizoid days of the early seventies, when America had one foot stuck into the horror of Vietnam and the other deep into social revolution. Richard and I were both single men too old to fight, and so we spent a lot of time looking for women. We called it “getting laid.” In front of women we were, of course, more circumspect.

Singles bars, or “meet racks” were a new idea. Imagine! Bars where women came along, more or less expecting to be picked up! All you had to do was be presentable, pleasant, open, and pay for your share of the drinks.

Richard was at the top of his celebrity. His hunched six-four frame, with its pale gray uncreased cowboy hat, blond locks, and Mark Twain mustache, was familiar to nearly everybody. Walking down Bridgeway on a sunny afternoon among the throngs of tourists, hippies, and locals, Richard would be smiled at or stopped every few feet by people who loved his writing. Beautiful young women would run up to him, their eyes glowing, and ask for his autograph. Then they would run off and rejoin their young boyfriends.

Richard and I might start at the no name bar, where I loitered almost every day after work. I had a lot of friends there and loved the place, but Richard was always impatient in the no name. “I can’t get laid in this place,” he told me. So we would have one drink and then move on down to Patterson’s. But Patterson’s was no fun if you were with a guy who never got laid in Sausalito, and so after one drink, we would move on, usually to the Trident, with its famous waitresses.

The theory at the time was if you couldn’t get laid out of the Trident, you probably couldn’t get laid. (I remember the first Trident waitress I tried to pick up. She was wearing a harem costume, and after a couple of undoubtedly charming remarks about her navel, I asked her if I could take her out. “Don’t hold your breath,” she advised.)

Well, one night Richard and I decided to have dinner at the Trident, talk about art and life, and see what was what in the lady department. We were seated near the windows, with San Francisco glowing across the bay, and two attractive single young women at the next table. And heigh ho! They recognized Richard, loved his books, and soon a foursome had formed. Drinks, dinner, excited conversation. And as the meal ended, one of the women suggested we go up to her place for some wine and marijuana.

Richard and I followed their car up into the hills. Richard did not smoke, but I did, and I looked forward to a night of rock’n’roll, dope, and tender young flesh. Wasn’t this what life was all about? We were silent in the car, both of us savoring what might happen.

But once inside the house things went to pieces rapidly. My “chick” got on the telephone at once, and, lying on top of me fully dressed (both of us on the floor), she telephoned her boyfriend and conducted a long murmuring conversation, passing me a joint and letting me squeeze various parts of her body.

I hoped Richard was doing better in the next room, but no. Soon he came into where we were. He was entirely naked, but had a bitter look on his face. “Let’s go,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. I worked my way out from under the girl, who was still muttering into the telephone.

Richard’s girl, fully dressed, stood in the doorway. “He got undressed without saying a word,” she said. “Is he nuts or something?”

Richard did not speak, only stood there naked. Later, when we got back outside and in my car and on the way back to the city, Richard said “I told you.”

“You told me what?”

“I can’t get laid in Sausalito,” he said. “I don’t know why that should be.”

“Maybe it’s your approach,” I said. “Too subtle.”

“That’s it,” he said.

We laughed all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge.

PORNO XMAS

One Christmas in the late 1970s Richard called me at about six in the morning. He often called me, and often at odd hours.

“Good morning,” he said. This in itself was unusual. Most of his telephone calls started right out with what he wanted to complain about, and would continue until he was finished complaining. Then he would abruptly end the call with, “Somebody at the door!” or, “Something happened!” or “I’ll call you back!”

“Good morning,” I said, not to be outdone.

“Here it is again, our favorite day of the year,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. I knew he was building up to asking me to breakfast, which meant he hadn’t gotten lucky the night before. Christmas Eve is a tough night to score, maybe. Our breakfast meetings had been happening less often since my apartment in the city had been wrecked by fire and I had moved back to Mill Valley.

“Are you going to spend the day under your bed as usual, or do you want to come out and play?” he asked. He knew me pretty well. Christmas blew me out. Having satisfied my family obligations the night before with a brief embarrassed and thoroughly uncomfortable visit, the dropping off of ill-wrapped presents, the stammering redfaced acceptance of gifts from children I loved but could hardly talk to--typical, probably, of lots of kicked-out fathers--I was ready for a hard-edge day, something without sentiment.

Breakfast with Brautigan would be perfect. He, too, was an abandoned father, fleeing self-pity.

I picked him up and we drove out to Zim’s on California, for old times’ sake. Kate, the plump waitress who had always served us in the past, was delighted to have us back, and especially on Christmas morning. All the employees were in a good tough mood, and the few Christmas morning eaters were included. People shouted rough jokes from table to kitchen, from counter to table. It was a good breakfast. I had three pancakes with three eggs over medium and a glass of orange juice. Richard had half a grapefruit and a slice of cooked ham.

At the end of breakfast it was only around eight-thirty, and Christmas day stretched out ahead of us, an American holiday wasteland. I didn’t want to take Richard home and then go home myself. I didn’t want to be alone.

“I know what let’s do,” Richard said, breaking into my thoughts. “Let’s go down to Market Street.”

Perfect. Market was almost deserted. I parked, and Richard and I walked among the others who had no place to go and nothing to do on Christmas morning.

The self-pity was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

After favorably comparing ourselves to the walking wounded of Market Street Christmas, Richard said, “Look, this is boring. Let’s go see a movie, or something. What do you want to see? A good Western? A Samurai movie? Clint Eastwood?”

“Maybe Enrico’s is open,” I said hopelessly. Enrico’s would not open until eleven, if then. We continued walking down the wide nearly deserted sidewalk. Then we came to this little box office, with an old woman in it reading a magazine.

“Here, this looks like a good place to get out of the weather,” Richard said. The movie playing was DEEP THROAT. I had never seen DEEP THROAT and besides, Richard had already paid for the tickets.

Inside the theater after my eyes got adjusted, I could see three or four males, all sitting as far apart as possible. Only Richard and I were sitting together.

Well, you can certainly say one thing about DEEP THROAT. It sure takes your mind off Christmas.

You might think this was an unusual happening, but no. Richard and I went to porno movies on two Christmas mornings, and one Thanksgiving morning. I don’t know why.

BRAUTIGAN VS. BRAUTIGAN

All the time I had known him, Richard had been interested in women. He liked the company of women. He liked to talk to women. But above all, he loved the Game. I don’t know what else to call it. Richard’s love life became something of a joke among his friends, and the joke went like this: Richard would meet a woman, become attracted, and begin showering her with attentions. There would be little gifts, odd things, Brautigan things. He would take her everywhere, nothing would be too good for her: they would fall in love. The honeymoon, the ecstasy, the high, could go on for months, and Richard simply would not be available. Then he and the woman would move in together, to begin their future life.

Within two weeks, Richard would be on the street again.

Over the years many of Richard’s women came to me, not so much for solace as for answers: What was the matter with the man? Why did love and attention turn into obsession and...well, he just becomes this incredible endless pest!

I never had much sympathy for Richard’s women. I thought they should have known going in that Richard was an extraordinary man and that his private life was bound to be pretty extraordinary, too. If they wanted the fun of running around with Brautigan, then they would have to put up with The Monster.

Richard’s fondness for Oriental women began at a time when the social structure of San Francisco was undergoing one of its many upheavals, and there was something of a cachet attached to having, say, a Chinese woman on your arm. A lot of people thought that was it with Richard.

“He just likes to be seen with them,” I heard often. But it was more than that. I don’t know what, but it was more than mere vanity or Frisco macho.

Then one morning at about four-thirty, I was awakened by Richard’s faint, strained and obviously very drunk voice, coming to me from Tokyo. I was in Los Angeles at the time.

“Oh, Don, I’m so much in love,” he told me. I sighed and settled back, prepared for an hour or so of boring, repetitive maundering monologue. When Richard got like this, I just listened.

But this time it was different, and I began to pay closer attention. He had met a woman there in Tokyo, married but lovely, so lovely they had bitten the apple together, she was to leave her husband and they would marry. Marry!

“Richard!” I said, alarmed, but he burbled on and on about how much he loved her, he had never loved anyone like this, she was the perfection of Japanese womanhood, daughter of a Samurai (!), and their forbidden love had turned to delicious fulfillment. And on and on.

My foreboding was based on two things: what I knew about Richard made me feel he was not good marriage material, to put it as nicely as possible; and, in my mind, stealing another man’s wife was bad. There would be consequences.

I said all this to Richard, even yelling, but he seemed to hear none of it.

I could hardly wait to meet Akiko, but while Richard’s last name came from the German brautigam, or bridegroom, I didn’t think he would make a very good one.

They came to San Francisco to begin their new life together. Akiko was beautiful, young, accomplished, intelligent, altogether a fine catch, even for an internationally famous poet and novelist. They started in North Beach, in a nice big apartment on Telegraph Hill. As soon as they got all settled in, Richard took his new bride up to Montana, to his 40-acre ranch near Livingston. After a couple of weeks introducing Akiko to his Montana friends, Richard suddenly went back to Japan, leaving her alone.

She telephoned me. I was practically the only friend she had in America. “Why did he leave me here in the middle of nowhere, with no company, no friends, and nothing to do all day?”

“He must be crazy,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding.

It is easy for me to say the marriage was doomed. But after two years of fighting, splitting up, getting back together, both of them being by turns unforgivable and unforgiving, the marriage died.

One day the telephone rang. It was Richard. “I have no place to go. I need sleep. Can I sleep at your place?”

I only had a single bed in a one-room apartment, but I said yes immediately. I could spend the night at a friend’s in Sausalito. Richard showed up at my door a couple of hours later. He was overweight, puffy, with red blotches on his face. His eyes were tiny behind dirty glasses. His hunting hat had its earflaps down and he was bundled up in a heavy jacket, even though it was warm out.

“I haven’t slept in days,” he said. He stood looking around my apartment, which he had never seen before. “She’s impossible to live with!” he declared. I kept my mouth shut.

He found my bed and climbed into it without removing his clothes, his hat, or his cowboy boots. He lay stiffly with my yellow coverlet pulled up to his chin. He looked bad, angered deeply, hurt, not so much confused as dazed.

“I’ll let you get some sleep,” I said, and left.

When I got back the next day I found a note:

“I couldn’t sleep. You have a nice cat. Love, Richard.”

The divorce broke him.

RICHARD THE TERRIBLE

During the infinity of the divorce action, Richard lost a lot of his friends. In the old days, Richard had been bad from time to time, but he always made up for it by coming back charming, funny, original and just the best fun you could imagine. But not anymore. Everything was going against him, and he telephoned all his friends and endlessly ranted. He would say the same things over and over, not even bothering to pause between repetitions, not allowing his friends to get a word in edgewise, and then hanging up abruptly if there was a suggestion that maybe he might be even slightly in the wrong. He needed money, and by coincidence none of his friends were able to lend him any. Money was coming in from all over the world, but it was being sucked into that incredible divorce vortex.

Richard became hateful. He was no fun. He was not hot. He was not attractive. He talked about himself incessantly. He got horribly drunk and threw tantrums. He would fasten on women who didn’t want him, and he didn’t seem to get it.

The last time he called me he apologized for having insulted me the last time we met. It had been a minor insult, but I had flared up and he apologized at once. But here he was, on the telephone, still apologizing. Then we talked about the future a bit. He was going to go up to Montana soon, to sell his ranch. He was through with Montana.

“Well, darling, I love you,” he said finally. “Goodbye.”

That was odd. He had never said goodbye to me before, that I could remember. Always some excuse to get off the phone, but never goodbye.

SAKURA

The Japanese, with whom Richard was obsessed, have their own obsession over the cherry blossom. I do not understand it, but I know it runs deep in the Japanese soul. Sakura has to do with the beauty and brevity of life. I saw, in Tokyo, two old people standing in the middle of a sloping cherry orchard, openly weeping at the fall of the blossoms.

That is how I feel about the death of my friend.

* * * * *

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