some chance / of being hallowed
Underlined in my copy of Randall Mann’s A Better Life
The long slide,
a B-side
play-
list
of degradation
*
Get off
my
intellectual
property.
*
Living
Dead
giving
head.
*
Local fame.
*
psalms on men’s washroom stalls
*
Time to borrow
a Marlboro
*
Sequins
on a gown.
*
and who
doesn’t
catwalk
a conference
room?
*
Poster-boys of childhood gone.
*
The phones of the dead chirp.
Connect the Dots
Peg Entwistle was the young woman who, in 1932, at the age of twenty-four, threw herself off of the Hollywood Sign. Her suicide inspired the Dory Previn song “Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign,” which I listened to a lot in the early 1970s, when I was around the age Peg Entwistle was when she jumped to her death. She’d climbed a workman’s ladder to the top of the “H,” a height of forty-five feet. The fictional movie in the Netflix miniseries Hollywood (first Peg, then retitled Meg) is based on Peg Entwistle’s life and death. I gave up on Hollywood after the fourth episode because I couldn’t stand all the historical inaccuracies. It was like watching a parallel politically correct universe. Which could have been fun if it weren’t so disrespectful to Rock Hudson (portrayed as dumber than a doornail) and Peg Entwistle (who was a real person who suffered real pain). In her song, Dory Previn changes Peg’s name, and speculates she jumped because “she did not become a star.” And vents her own disillusionment with Tinseltown. As a lyricist, she’d written songs for movies. One of them, Inside Daisy Clover, which I watched on the late show as a teenager, was about a movie star’s disillusionment with Hollywood. Daisy is played by Natalie Wood. She attempts suicide, then ends up blowing up her beach house instead. I share Natalie Wood’s birthday: July 20. In the late 1920s, Peg Entwistle was briefly married to actor Robert Keith. Keith failed to tell her he had a son by a previous marriage. Entwistle cited this deceit, along with charges of cruelty, when she filed for divorce. The son, Brian Keith, grew up to be a successful actor. I watched him, when I was a child, in The Parent Trap, a Disney film in which Hayley Mills plays identical twins who trade places in order to bring their divorced parents back together. I loved the idea of being able to switch identities, of pretending to be someone else. In the seventies, two different men at two different gay bars told me that I reminded them of Natalie Wood. This solidified my astrological “twinship” with the glamorous star. After appearing in several Broadway productions, Peg Entwistle made her way to Hollywood in 1932. She was cast in her one and only film, Thirteen Women, a thriller produced by David O. Selznick and starring Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne. After the movie performed poorly for test audiences, Entwistle’s screen time was cut from sixteen to four minutes. According to urban myth, this disappointment is what led her to suicide. Thirteen Women opened one month after Entwistle’s death. Recently, when I watched the DVD, I wished it were possible to see those twelve missing minutes. My friend Doug and I are watching and discussing, as a lark, the first six Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. (I can think of worse ways of spending one’s Saturday nights.) The British actor John Buckler appears in the third (Tarzan Escapes) as Captain Fry, the attractive but ultimately treacherous leader of an expedition to Tarzan’s jungle home. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert), Fry falls into a quicksand bog and is swallowed up. I thought Buckler handsome enough to google, and learned (shockingly) that he died at the age of thirty. On October 30, 1936, Buckler and his actor father Hugh were drowned in Malibu Lake when their automobile skidded off the road during a rainstorm and overturned in the water. Tarzan Escapes was his sixth and final film; he died one week before its release. Natalie Wood drowned, in a terrible accident, in November 1981, in the dark water off Catalina Island. I had a panic attack when I saw the news on TV. On the Wikipedia page for Hugh Buckler, there is a picture of the cast of the 1931 Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw’s Getting Married. Among the ten actors are Buckler and (surprise) Peg Entwistle. A pretty blonde ingenue in a stylish white wedding dress. In 1932, the Hollywood Sign was the Hollywoodland Sign. Advertising left over from a housing development in the Hollywood Hills. A woman hiking near the sign found one of Entwistle’s shoes, and her purse, and her jacket. In the purse was a suicide note, and in the ravine below, Entwistle’s body. The coroner reported the cause of death as multiple fractures of the pelvis. “I am sorry for everything,” Peg wrote in her note, “If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain.” On the Wikipedia page for Tarzan Escapes, it says that a scene which took a week to shoot, featuring Tarzan fighting vampire bats, was cut from the final film after test audiences found it too intense. I would have liked to have seen that scene.
from Valley of the Sonnets (The Wig Scene)
XV
She leaped after Helen and grabbed her by
held fast. Suddenly Neely let out a
the thing in her hands. At the same time
“A wig!” Neely yelled, holding the long black
as phony as she is!” Helen reached out
back my hair, you little bitch,” Helen yelled.
on and danced around the room. “Hey! Dig me
as a brunette!” Helen chased after her.
“It cost me three hundred bucks!” Neely put it
for her wig, but Neely jumped back. “Give me
hair up for Anne to see. “By God, her hair’s
Helen’s hands flew to her head in horror.
gasp of amazement and stood staring at
the hair. Helen pulled away, but Neely
LIX
She leaped after Helen and grabbed her by
the hair. Helen pulled away, but Neely
held fast. Suddenly Neely let out a
gasp of amazement and stood staring at
the thing in her hands. At the same time
Helen’s hands flew to her head in horror.
“A wig!” Neely yelled, holding the long black
hair up for Anne to see. “By God, her hair’s
as phony as she is!” Helen reached out
for her wig, but Neely jumped back. “Give me
back my hair, you little bitch,” Helen yelled.
“It cost me three hundred bucks!” Neely put it
on and danced around the room. “Hey! Dig me
as a brunette!” Helen chased after her.
30 I Remembers
for James Cushing
I remember the earthquake preparedness kit I kept in the trunk of my car when I lived in Los Angeles. I’d attended a (mandatory) lecture at my (city) job about how bad it was going to be when the big one hit. It scared me enough that I went out and bought a gallon bottle of drinking water, a flashlight and batteries, first aid kit, etc.
I remember stubbing my toe on the driveway of my childhood home.
I remember submitting poems to Poetry magazine in the nineties, and the editor at the time (Joseph Parisi) writing back, “I just can’t bring myself to publish you.”
I remember the plastic decorations on birthday cakes, that you could keep afterwards as toys: baseball players and golfers, pirate ships and treasure chests, Cinderella’s gilt carriage, telephone teens, hula dancers and palm trees, ballerinas in arabesque.
I remember before seatbelts. And my mother (at the wheel) extending her right arm to protect me (in the passenger seat) when we came to an abrupt stop.
I remember the lemon meringue pies my mother used to make—from scratch. The vibrant yellow filling. The glazed, cloud-like white peaks (delicately browned in places). The slightly crumbly homemade crust. A slice looked perfect, like a painting by Wayne Thiebaud, like pop art.
I remember Janet Gray’s book A Hundred Flowers. Each poem inspired by a different flower painting in a Georgia O’Keeffe coffee-table book. My favorite was the one that likened the folds of O’Keeffe’s white petals to Marilyn Monroe’s creased bedsheets.
I remember how scary Jaws was the first time I saw it in the mid-seventies. Swimming in the ocean would never again be as fun.
I remember roasting marshmallows in the fireplace at John and Eula’s house. With several rambunctious children. And Suzanne saying to them, “Fire is not a toy.”
I remember the eerie glamour of a suburban midnight. And the wind blowing through trees in the dark. And that sense of solitude while the rest of the world slept.
I remember ghosts coming out of portraits in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. And ghost couples waltzing in the ballroom. And ghosts flying out of gravestones. And the three ghosts trying to thumb a ride at the end.
I remember wistfully listening to my single of “Moon River” (the theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and wishing I could be as free a spirit as Holly Golightly.
I remember not being able to look at the newspaper until my father was finished with it. And asking him repeatedly, “Are you done with the movie section?”
I remember when I first moved from New York to Chicago, sitting with Joris on the grass at the lakefront, looking up at a pure blue September sky. And at the Emerald City-esque cluster of buildings downtown. And thinking: “Chicago is great for me, for now. But it’s not forever.”
I remember sparklers and firecrackers and Roman candles and whistlers and black snakes and cherry bombs and the little log cabin with smoke pouring out of it.
I remember how much I loved Greek myths. Sisyphus perpetually pushing the stone up a mountain in Hades. Daphne turning into a tree. Atlas holding the universe on his shoulders. Pandora opening the box and unleashing all the ills on the world.
I remember the poets who taught at Cal State Northridge when I was a student there in the seventies: Robert Deutsch, Arthur Lane, Benjamin Saltman, Ann Stanford.
I remember what Carol Muske-Dukes said about Ann Stanford’s poems, that they were written to last, and thinking what a high compliment that was.
I remember the strange texture (rough) of old-fashioned ceramic dolls.
I remember the metal breadbox on our pink kitchen counter. And the coffee cups (half a dozen or so) hooked by their handles on a little “tree.”
I remember the names of Crayola crayons: Goldenrod, Midnight Blue, Periwinkle, Carnation Pink, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber. And the “metallic” shades—Gold, Silver, Copper—that had a sparkle to them. And the built-in sharpener on the back of the box. And peeling away the label as each crayon got shorter.
I remember wishing in earnest as I tossed the coin into the well.
I remember my first part-time job, at McDonald’s. I was still in high school. With a child-sized broom, I had to sweep the trash in the parking lot into a long-handled dustpan. Which I found humiliating. Especially when kids from my school would drive through and order food. I lasted two weeks.
I remember my great-aunt Louise, who loved murder mysteries, and who once she learned I aspired to write, would ever after ask, “When are you going to write me a mystery?”
I remember the little wooden spoons that came with ice cream cups (vanilla with chocolate or strawberry swirls).
I remember, in old movies, the days flying off of a calendar, to indicate the passage of time.
I remember the talking flowers in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. The roses and pansies and tiger lilies that were really tigers. The iris that was a snobbish, big-bosomed dowager with pince-nez. And how they turned on Alice when they thought she was a weed.
I remember that the song “Eye in the Sky” was playing on the radio in the taxi when I first saw the skyline of New York City.
I remember looking into dioramas. And toy theaters. And dollhouses. With utter wonder.
I remember when I thought thirty was old.