11:00 Mrs. Happy Ernst

Mrs. Happy Ernst (really!) lived on the Quai Tournelle. The first day she greeted me at the door in this regal outfit, something with gilded paisleys on it, huge swirling floral cyclones edged in gold. Which gave her the air of someone pinned between casual elegance and jogging suit. She was probably edging into her late 50s, early 60s and she had once been a looker, like a soap star backstage, the photos on the wall attested to that. Many, many photos. In fact, there were more of her than of all the rest of the world combined. Her with André Malraux, with Bacall, Arthur Miller, Ed Sullivan, David Susskind, Peter Lawford, Alan Alda, Streisand, an empty spot marked with a nail, a rectangle of bright paint edged in faded daffodil where a photo once hung next to one of Charlton Heston, one of Reagan with her on an aircraft carrier, Sonny & Cher backstage, heads of state, Willy Brandt, entertainment people, artists, Peter Max, her father, Max Ernst.

There she’d be in some golden shimmering clingy thing with some tiara halo in her hair, looking like a cross between a mermaid and a bohemian, a kind of pinched glamourpuss who snacks on very, very sour pickles. And yet, for all the trappings and Frenchisms, the capes and gowns and spare no expense, everything she wore seemed to be off by a centimeter here, a dart there, a loose thread, a Texas twangy pronunciation of phrases like coup de tête as cOOp duh tat. Where one broach would have been sufficient there were three, weighing in at a total kilo or so. Being rich is a tricky business I see. You want others to know you are rich but you want to say it without acting like you are saying anything.

Happy managed to make all her comings and goings, all her meetings seem ... essential to the welfare of the state of ... culture, Western Europe or the integrity of modern art. She did flatter me (actually irritate me) by finding a few days to cancel important engagements, canceling a luncheon date to be with me. I think it was to be sure I didn’t drip paint on her Persian rugs or steal anything or nose around and discover private things about her. Maybe she just wanted someone to talk to – or order around.

“This is what I want you to do: Dans la longueur, passer une couche d’enduit maigre ... Repeat after me.” She wanted a thin coat of spackle across the walls. She introduced her walls to me as if she were unveiling some precious artwork. She had that haughty upturned face of someone perpetually shutting out the ugliness of the crass and ordinary world. As if by breeding, her nose always remained at an adequate upturned angle to never have to smell her own, or anyone else’s, shit.

“Dans la longueur, passer une couche d’enduit maigre ...”

“Je sais. Je sais.” A sucker for punishment and scared of freedom. International Situationist, November 1966.

“Bons. Et maintenant, bouge un petite peut plus. Appliquer une sous-couche de laque blanche ou, si tu veux, donner moi le nom de ton gym. Tu est glorieuse musclé.” (And now, let’s get to work. Apply an undercoat of white paint, or, if you prefer, give me the name of your gym. You are so gloriously put together.) Her French tinged with a kind of ex-smoker, twang, a world-weary whine from Chicago via Texas or thereabouts. Yeah, OK babe. go ahead with your little gilded sandbox games of petite dominatrix. But then again, I did what I was told.

“I wanna get rid all duh craaacks.” Turning her “a” with the sound of a woodscrew squeaking into hardwood. “Anything to do with falling dilapidation.” The kind of accent that flattens all sound to the resonance of a cooking pot struck with a ladle.  “I got no use for old that ain’t doubling it’s value.” Her presence reminded me of someone who always thought she could maintain her integrity by never letting it appear that anyone was getting the upper hand on her – a value hunter. This meant she would never tip more than required lest others think her careless with her money. And the cheaper she got with money, the more she felt she was outsmarting the rest of us. My heart could be seen skating across her impenetrable, hard, slick surfaces. The first week she had me stay after hours – twist the cap off a caviar jar or tighten a screw here and there or offer more pithy comments on how Madame Ernst saw the way the world was put together: a series of cruel and interlocking conspiracies. “And I know, I been the fly on the proverbial corporate bathroom walls.” She ran her hands over the walls, looking for imperfections. She wanted perfect walls.

Gazing at the wall of photo portraits of her with international luminaries, I noted: “The only famous person I know is ... I mean I met Allen Ginsberg or he came on to me in a big way, I know the bassist in a new wave that had a minor indie rock hit on the East Coast, and then there was this guy in my high school who became a catcher for the California Angels.”

“Oh, you might think I’m lucky but I had to make my own luck and besides, the good life is saddled with all sorts of hidden downsides. You are constantly required to be in the company of complete bores like most of the women down at WOOP.” Quickly distancing herself from the rest of the mashed potatoes. (Women’s Organization of Paris.)

“I tolerate them only as far as I can pity them. And as far as they can be of service to me. My gift is to make it seem to them that I’m the one offering them my services. Comprende?”

“Sure. It’s like the happy pig feeling lucky to be feasted upon by such discerning consumers.” I applied wallpaper to a ceiling 5 some meters high in a kitchenette storage area, from the top of a ladder on my tiptoes, smoothing the wallpaper with the reach of a broom head. I had advised against this kind of cheap decorative touch.

“The paste is too heavy. Gravity’s against us.”

“What?”

“Le collant est trop lourde! It’ll never look elegant. Wallpaper is for walls. It’s a gravity thing.”

“I just want those unsightly cracks gone, gone, CACHà‰!” I was about to tell her that she was the only one who would ever look up at the ceiling in a closet area, when the phone rang – it rang all day – and there she went into another room in her jodhpurs, her riding boots and her flat unattractive twang. This offered me a slender moment to catch a breather, shirtless on top of a ladder, sweating, no air-con, looking out her huge windows, windows through which you could fit my entire apartment, looking north out over the Seine, thinking, dreaming, wondering, wondering what she meant by what I thought. My eyes filled with the white sails of the little sailboats gliding across the Luxembourg Gardens pond. I remember her saying: “Agents are pussycats and I know the kind of milk they like best. Mother’s milk.” I kept wondering if that meant that she was going to help me with my “career” – and then call it hers?

“Ugh, everyone wants a piece of me – I know what’cher thinkin’, that nonbody’s ever gonna see these cracks. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I will and that’s enough… Everyone’s a headhunter, a bloodsucker, or an accountant in my life. They don’t unnerstan’ that their wanting don’t make me feel wanted. Comprende? OK, let’s get back to it now. I’m paying you way too much for you to sit on top of a ladder. So, you think the peche meringue is a nice, let’s say sufficiently, elegant color for the trim?”

“I think it brings out the accents, highlights your curtains and compliments your good taste.” I was thinking pink and grey fishmeat in a blender on liquify. I was thinking bonus. I was already spending that bonus on Sophie as a way to make amends. I wasn’t sure what amends but I’m sure it’s better to be sure than unsure.

“Fine boy, no bonuses for flattery however.” She read my mind and then regaled me with stories about her husband, the son of Max Ernst, is what she said, and how he’d been “neutered by his career.” What was that career, shoveling in the money earned by dad’s legacy? I didn’t ask. It seemed to involve being the blood and bank and whatever of an old dead dad, who has been gone long enough to utilize to compliment one’s own good fortune and taste. She drank expensive bottled water from Finland until four in the afternoon when suddenly bottles with exotic labels began to appear. She complained about her husband in a manner that made you think she was talking about a malfunctioning kitchen appliance.

“They say workaholics have lower sperm counts.”

“Honey we’re beyond counting sperm – be careful, this Aqua Vie too quickly becomes aqua vide. We’re talking looking for the last surviving little squiggly. We’ve tried everything – on him: saw palmetto, ginseng, zinc tabs with beta carotene. We’ve tried warm salt water submerged massages by Thai masseuses. Graphic porn of girls too young to be of age. Amsterdam’s Red Light District. Everything. Although I wonder but ultimately don’t care whether things have gone extra-curricular. Better them’n me!”

“He must be crazy.” And while idly gazing at one photo of her in particular of her being woodenly hugged by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958. “I woulda fallen for you back then.” Sometimes saying the right thing was just the right thing.

“I coulda had anybody and I picked him. I mean, we’ve been looking for any hint of defiance of gravity for so long it ain’t funny. But thanks for the compliment. I could be your grandmother ...” She reeled onward with her odd amalgam of class and crass, false bravado tempered by a false sense of discretion. And you know, I did not dislike her at all. She was just very, very lonely and her sense of pride required that she reveal herself with a pinch of haughty bitterness and clever forays into clunky flirtatiousness. And, you know, ultimately she was right. Confession is 75% entertainment value and the rest is truth.

Her conclusion after 4 days of working for (and listening to) her: she could have been someone. No, correct that, she already was that person, unrecognized as she may be. She was that person. That’s what she was saying. Plus, that she was her husband’s secret weapon when he was making deals. But what were those deals? Weapons? Art? Did the son of Max do art in the shadow of his father’s renown?

Caliber, upbringing, pedigree, first Jew at Marymount. Although a week later it was the first Jew at Smith. There was also mention of Bard. And if I agreed, she’d suddenly turn on me, devouring and vomiting all my agreeable flattery – come on, don’ lemme off so easy! – betrayed by how easily I agreed, because by agreeing I was agreeing that she was indeed a failure. This would encourage her to begin touting all her accomplishments, all her contacts, all her connections to society ... She could show me other pictures of her with Hemingway, Dali, Milton Glaser, Milton Berle, Ray Davies, Wanda Jackson, Vidal Sassoon, Jean Seberg, the Spanish Ambassador …

“If I may be so brash as to be so bold as to be so forward,” This is how she spun brashness with discretion, desperation with desire, “but aren’t you working below your capacities. Aren’t you meant for more glorious things?”

“How so?”

“Well, aren’t you meant to be a feast for many eyes? I mean sure, writing, agents, that’ll come ...”

What did she mean by that? I mean that nature or she might take care of it or ...

“And if you let me handle it (Did I sense a pause and emphasis on it? Was it just the delirium from too little sleep, audio hallucinations, the paint fumes, her incessant chatter? What was this it?) it could really begin to happen for you.” I have heard this empty kind of power talk although I didn’t mind hearing it as long as I wasn’t required to act like I was taken in by it. I listened. Shook my head knowingly. This was another tale of how she knew people, had influence, could introduce me ... I could take her ... and yes, there was always the chance that there were hints of hints of genuine benevolence stuffed into these gargantuan edifices of puffery, meant really only to establish the image of her worth to others. It would be plain bad manners however, to ever actually call one of these connected people and ask them to make good on their promises to help you. This would be overstepping the bounds of illusioning.

“Uh...”

“I mean look at your glorious definition, the limbs, the pecs, the shine of your solar plexus, you’re in such a state of ...” She sipped hard, the sharp slit of mouth sucked the amber scotch greedily. Where did the scotch suddenly come from? Had she used sleight of hand? “The shrine of your solar plexus ... I like that ...in the, this shrine will be in the state of ...”

“Self-doubt...”

“That will only increase with age I’m afraid. I mean do you do sports? I mean everything is exactly where it is supposed to be. Heavens. Like a dream of Caravaggio’s. Or were you just born that way and you can eat anything I bet, and not gain an ounce.”

“I dunno.”

“I mean look at you, you’re just about half undressed here. I mean if a woman had any imagination at all she could connect a few dots and be home free.”

“I dunno. I’m not so sure.”

“You probably don’t expect some ole biddy to still have arousal fantasies but ... well, with my rich mixture of memories of well, you don’t even care about my ... variegated indiscretions ... I mean I hope you don’t mind I don’t use the air con. It gives me headaches. I’m a fragile piece of work. I mean what sports do you like?”

“I used to run track, play some b-ball.”

“B-ball?”

“Basketball.”

“Can’t it mean baseball too?”

“I guess. But here it means basketball.”

“Ever take up karate or judo?”

“Well, yea, I took a course in Tae Kwon Do.”

“Fascinating. Still do it? That’s Korean right?”

“Yeah. Not much. I liked it cuz it was more about dance than violence. It was like a physical form of meditation.”

“I bet. Will you show me some moves?”

“I guess some time.”

“Well, how about now. What’s wrong with now? Perhaps just a kick or two. Something aimed high toward my chin.”

“I mean it’s been years.”

“Come on, just a few. I’m absolutely fascinated by Eastern disciplines. Besides, modesty may be attractive to some but I find it kinda corny. Show me!”

We shoved an ottoman and some ornate antelope-leg end tables across the floor, careful not to slide the lamps and scratch the tabletops; we rolled up a Persian rug and stacked some books on a chair. I was suddenly struck by an instant of incredible deja vu: Me and Frank Lengelhad been hitchhiking to Amsterdam to participate in this huge art and performance festival that had been organized around the Piss Christ pieces by Andreas Serranno and his subsequent persecution and incarceration in the U.S. It would be a weekend of piss performances. Anything to do with piss: piss trails, cow piss photos, a video of men in one urinal located on the Singel, piss on tempered steel drums, replicas of Duchamp’s pissoirs, Warhol’s piss paintings reenacted, urine samples of famous criminals, one hundred women in 18-inch platform high heels pissing in the Dam Square lit from underneath, the piss waterfalls of Penck & Pinck, Shambles Mcleash spending 48 hours in a cold glass cube without urinating.

But somewhere in Belgium – flat fertile dark soil, low billowing dark clouds – standing with the frozen cattle gazing at us as we talked about who we were or thought we were: He, Frank, was a kind of flaneur, not a dandy, not a Baudelairian individualist but a gonzo connoisseur of pleasure. He also did art like no one else (luckily?) – did 12-second feature films, techno-celluloid at 63 frames per second, projected his films onto the audience so that audience members had to look at one another to figure out what was going on. He’d also somehow decided that he was going to make lots of money collecting odd scraps of carpet and shaving Calder shapes out of them and then laminating them. He was going to offer a service for offices where he’d go in and shave patterns and shapes into the office carpets. He showed pictures.

“They’re great but I just wonder where the idea comes from that you can make a living outa this.”

“Desperation.” He has sold 2: one to his ex. She said she genuinely liked them but we both know better that she’s a benevolent softie. He sold another to a maternal gallery owner who felt sorry for Frank and felt the depths of his deep, deep sensitivity.

Until we finally caught a ride with a curious man, a ball of dough, meek face, timid stare, eyes clamped tight to the side of his nose, twitches of conflict or sunlight veering in through the windshield. This man, a salesman of hydraulic hypodermics for Medcam, slowly hovered his conversation into the fact that he wanted me to show off some of my same Tae Kwon Do kicks for him! I watched his grubby moustache undulate like some vermin as he struggled between French and English. Frank and I were bursting with incredulous silence – I mean the gall! Was he serious? We giggled, guffawed it off. But his snickers were more like the sound of a noose tightening around someone’s neck. And was he reaching into his glovebox to remove a syringe filled with roofies, a liquid date-rape drug, which can induce anterograde amnesia. Watch his hands.

He suddenly stopped the car and his face went blank, serious as an abandoned warehouse wall. Potentially perversely/deadly so. Strange gnawed fingers thrumping the vinyl seatback. Utterly determined, fascinated and serious. I really had no choice. Or so it seemed at the time. Narrow parameters between dignity and compliance. Our bags were in his trunk and if he wanted to he could have just left us there by the side of the road. I harbored images, frantic lunge, a roadside mysterious death, me and Frank fleeing across muddy fields. Grainy photos of what was left of us in some police magazine. And now here I was in an elegant apartment overlooking the Seine, with chandeliers rescued from the Titanic by a survivor, hanging over me and some dame, some wife of the son of a famous artist, three years in Paris, prior to that from Chicago or Peoria and Waco, encouraging me to show off the same damn kicks. It was this kind of synchronicity that imbues life with the kind of mystique that keeps us humble. I mean, I just didn’t believe it and I was either too grateful for the employment or just dazzled by her audacity. You may ask, what it was I did at this festival. Well, I’d rather not go into it. I’ll just say that I did a performance that required I drink beer and then get aroused by an assistant and then piss through my erection. That’s all I’ll say.

“I will just sit here and watch. I am fascinated by the mechanics of the human body. The flexibility of a fully-operational human body. God, I miss those... I mean, I’ve had enough extensive intimate conversations with Balanchine and Godunov and ...”

I gave her a half-hearted leap and kick. I landed awkwardly on my socked feet. She gave a quick soprano squeal of delight and surprise, holding her heavy necklace of fist-sized nuggets of gold. I steal it and I live for a year.

“Better remove your socks or you’ll hurt yourself. And I ain’t no Florence Nightingale. I’m sure you can do better.”

“I mean, I don’t mind or anything but it’s not really in my job description.”

“Well, then it should be. I was put on this earth to be impressed by things, events, art. The bronzed torsos of god’s art. And when I am impressed then that thing becomes valuable. That is my purpose. Some are put on this earth to impress others, I was put here to be impressed and convert that being impressed into turn over. Yuh gotta have both. Now, impress me.”

I tried again barefoot, in shorts and unbuttoned, ragged, long-tailed, dress shirt with the sleeves torn off. My next leap and kick was more precise, had more whip to it. Clean and, well, elegant enough. She was impressed.

“Don’t you have to wear a protective device, I think it’s called a jockstrap,” She knew very well what a jockstrap was, “to keep your eggs, so to speak, safe in one nest?” I was absolutely dazed by the similarity of her pursuit, the same tactics as this Belgian homo who had picked us up: idle talk, lead into sports, body, Tae Kwon Do, kicks, jockstrap; the same exact trajectory! Had there been some book published recently which advised older people on how to pursue their lingering carnal interests among the young?

“Well, I didn’t know I was gonna be demonstrating for anyone ...”

“You should always be prepared. You stay young the longer you remain open to the sustenance of surprise. Surprise becomes part of your toolkit.”

I kicked again, higher, better split, good loft, nice touchdown, smile. She clasped her hands as if preparing to pray. She sucked on the ends of her forefingers. She was satisfied. Lit a cigarette. Inhaled the surrounding air. Removed a flake of tobacco from her tongue. Flicked it. She had seen my testicles jiggling around in my loose underwear. It wasn’t arousal, more a temporary reprieve from her ennui. The meaning and the placement of it in the continuum of events evaded me but I think she too didn’t know what the follow-through would entail.

Day 4 or 5: My work was winding down. She thought the work I had done was OK. There were spots where I’d cut corners she thought. I thought to say you get what you pay for. But did not.

“Perfection is a fulfillment of expectation. Mediocrity is a betrayal to an already ugly world getting uglier. Don’t contribute further to that ugliness.” There was no sense arguing the idea that perfection and beauty are not always the same thing because her kind always demanded that the appearance of the upper-hand made the upper-hand and this was done by picking away at my workmanship, more sanding, more spackle, parallel brush strokes ...

The next day, my last, I invited Guyla Halasz to help out with a couple of things, hanging a door [can’t do that alone], shoving some bookshelves back in place. But also to just keep me company. Not that I was scared. No no. That’s not it. I mean, I don’t know how I would have handled an escalation of insinuation. But that did not mean I was scared.

And when Happy Ernst finally went out to run some errands at the U.S. and United Emirates Embassies and left us to our devices, Guyla did not hesitate to start going through her drawers for 5-finger finds. I watched, elbows on the sill, as Happy hailed a cab. She was the kind of woman [elegant gilt scarf fluttering in the breeze] who could hail a cab in the middle of Siberia in less that a minute. Guyla went into her bedroom and I heard him sniffing through things. When finally I heard a mighty “Yippy-AAAie-Aiy-YIY-YIY KI OOOO!” There is something special about a Jewish boy from Queens, NY, yodeling like a cowboy imitating a Swiss yodeler in Paris.

I rushed into where Guy stood, her night table drawer wide open, him holding a framed photo of me.

“What is this? You two carryin’ on or what?” His obsession with the Kennedy assassination had rendered all of his investigative voices in DA Jim Garrison’s Louisiana drawl.

“It’s the one Winnie sold at the Parson’s show.”

“Musta been ole Happy who bought it.”

“Let me see that. But, I don’t remember it being a montage. I don’t remember her doing montages.” The photo of me in underwear (it was NOT real leather) had clearly been altered to say the least. I (posed as Iggy Pop) had been carefully cut out and placed in a new environment, standing right next to Happy Ernst, fully clothed and perhaps 20 years younger. Could that be?!

“I don’t think this is Winnie’s work. The collage part…”

“Whaddayuh think it means?” Guy knew very well what it meant but he wanted to hear me say it so he could laugh at my response.

“It means people’s private lives are fuckin’ creepy and that it’s better not to know too much.”

“It means some kinky kinda creepy, you ask me. I mean it’s in the drawer of her nightstand!”

“I think we should cool it cuz she’s prob’ly got surveillance equipment stuck all over.”

“She could be watchin’ us right now, yuh know! Think of the possibilities! We could do something extreme so she could be outraged and entertained later when she watches the video over and over.”

“Better put it back!”

“Yuh think so?” And with that Guy took out his penis and dabbed it in the paint and slopped it against her wall. “SEE DAT, HAP?!”

I put the framed photo back in her drawer but saw something else that caught my eye, a photo of Happy in a kind of abstract expressionist house dress and her hair pulled back with some golden cord flanked by three men in uniform bearing steel smiles. All three were reaching for her hand, she a foot shorter than them. The back of the 8x10 glossy stated simply: “January, police secrète celebrate successes at American Center.”

I wiped guy’s paint splat off her wall. As he washed up I discovered her bedroom liquor cabinet. There was a bottle of cognac that as far as we could tell was over 100 years old. We tried it and then again and again ... By the time we left we had both fallen in love with the younger nubile versions of her we had seen everywhere. It was like the framed photos were supposed to remind her of who she was and if there was no photo or mirror to look into she would lose her sense of identity. We left gushy notes for her how much we enjoyed working for her and that if EVER there was anything she needed doing to not hesitate to call.

“Maybe we oughta leave a secret message on the back of your photo. So that one day when she wants to change the photo there it will be like peek-a-boo. We could say something that’ll drive’r nuts. Something like ‘I wanna be inside you.’”

“‘I can always be reached at blabla. We can paint your walls, use my dick as a brush.’” We thought, hesitated, feigned going back into her bedroom, then cleaned up, one more sip of the cognac, and we left, pulling the door shut behind us.

My last paycheck arrived in the mail in a card in the shape of a heart. “Here’s something extra.” Is all it said. But there was nothing extra. If anything, she’d shorted me some 50 francs.

Orwell would have been disappointed to learn that I did not do so well in this handyman hustling, working in the black never quite becoming what I or the ladies at WOOP had imagined. And that soon enough I was back to rougher employment opportunities in unison with the perpetually under-employed Guy: “the ones that never knock...”

In the Méthylique on the Rue de Bellechasse, near his wife’s place [don’t ever call it Guy’s place in her presence because she will flip], Guy ordered a Château Chasse-Spleen.

“I recommend it because someone here once ordered it and it is a Médoc wine of some caliber.” He had immersed himself somewhat in the language and mythology of wine. “If we’re gonna speculate we oughta do it right.” We drank the bottle and then a second and speculated about the WOOP women and their men. How their men may have made gestures, issued some proclamations, made signs of the slit throat, insinuating that where my being kept on would threaten their own status of keptness. Although I have no evidence to substantiate this me and Guy believed this wholeheartedly.

“I know a Chasse-neige is a snow plow and chasse-mouche is a fly swatter…”

“Then a Chasse-spleen is a spleen hunter.”

“Or catcher.” As we departed – Salut! – I saw the man who pushes the wine with his tongue through the cracks between his teeth to filter it. He stares into nothingness and when I look where he is looking there is nothing.