a sixty ninth story...'the poet'

The summer of ’33 we rented a white clapboard house by the sea.  There were six of us in all:  Rick and Elise, Marty, the painter, and his wife Joanne, me and Robert.  For the most part we had a lot of fun – bathing, picnicking and going for long coastal walks during the day; drinking on the rickety back porch at night, singing songs around the barrel house piano, or simply listening to the tide washing in.  

Robert, by this time, was becoming very famous for his poetry.  Part of the Greenwich Village scene, he spent his evenings socialising with Eugene O’Neill and Freddie Burt.  I remember he turned up the afternoon we arrived with a trunk full of plays, short stories and poems he had either written himself or collaborated on with the likes of O’Neill. 

Rick was the only one of us who knew Robert – the two were old college friends, kept in touch since Rick was in magazines.  Rick gave Robert a leg up by publishing two or three of his early writings.  All of us had heard of Robert, of course, and in advance of the trip, the thought of having a celebrity in our midst for the two weeks was exciting, to me at least.  And Robert arriving in his Lincoln convertible with the top down, and all his plays and so on was the sort of entrance I imagined.

The first evening we went for a short walk before dinner among the laurel groves, and I got to know Marty, the painter, one of the most gentle and unassuming people I had met up to that point.  His eyes, bright and ultramarine, I thought were the eyes of an artist – all seeing, all knowing.  Joanne, a ceramicist, was also very lovely.  But Robert and Rick lagged behind discussing futures and pasts.

At dinner we ate devilled chicken Elise had prepared, and drank brandy Rick had bought up with him from town, it was holiday so it made sense I suppose.  And afterwards we retired to the living room, which, I recall had a nautical theme, and chatted some more, although Robert listened mostly and nodded politely along with the conversation.  For my part, I was still too shy to ask him anything directly; I guess people are in some way afraid of intellect, especially as it’s something everyone worries they don’t, in fact, possess.  Or perhaps it was just that being in the presence of fame had made me air headed and starry eyed.  I had to take myself to bed anyway, feeling giddy from all the alcohol.

~

I’ll say this now, I didn’t know from the outset Robert was in a relationship already, that he was actually married.  Nor did I, in my exuberant and youthful naïveity, even consider or care whether he had had many women before me.  I mean I think I really believed artists of all sorts, whether they were painters like Marty (although he seemed an exception to the rule), actors, playwrights, poets, were free spirited and promiscuous, somehow above yearning and, or petty squabbling sexual relations between a man and woman can descend into.  But I had not read a great deal, nor seen very much back then.

Had I known Robert was married I’m not sure my rigid and proper upbringing would have necessarily lead me to refuse his advances.  Was he attracted to my innocence, but also, in a way, my ignorance, that is of his state of affairs?  Thing is, I was a young girl, in her mid-twenties, and I was flattered to receive the attention of this famous and celebrated artiste: it was as if I had put Robert on a pedestal and yet he had put on one even higher.  I didn’t question why,  I just let it happen, I was easy and sweet after all.

Now I am older, I am easy and sad, and I realise that Robert was too.  In spite of his fame and recognition, his achievements in what was regarded as the highest (purest?) form of literature, when it came down to it he was just a boy who wanted very badly to be loved by someone.  Instead, he was afforded deferential respect at almost every turn – no wonder he came across as aloof, no wonder he used his poetry (which I did read that summer by the sea) to communicate, for it was his only way to make people listen.  In real life everyone heard him, but were too worried, as I was on our first evening, about coming across well to actually listen to what he had to say (ok, he didn’t say much, but still).

That summer by the sea in ’33, we made love in the kitchen (the others were out), the woodshed (the others were inside), in bed (the others were asleep!), and with every time I could feel myself changing, my whole being reoriented.  I arrived a girl entranced, left a woman enhanced, while Robert went back to New York, his world of literary critics, friends, paper, ink and pens, and, his unhappy wife.