One and Only (8 page)

Jack appealed to Neal physically, and he was jealous automatically—tremendously jealous—of these beautiful looks of Jack. And after we were introduced, Neal was immediately drawn to him from his conversation. Jack never came on to girls—he never used his looks. In fact, it was like he was totally unaware of his own sex appeal. Really, it used to kind of amaze me. Jack never seemed to be aware of this attraction that he had for the female. In fact, it always seemed like he felt inadequate, like he wasn't much of a ladies' man. He would always say that the rest of the fellas could all do much
better than he could—he really always had that feeling, and he actually gave that impression. I really believe it to be so. I don't really think he had any egotism whatsoever concerning himself.

 

I later heard that Hal felt the same way—that it seemed strange to Hal too that Jack could never seem to get started with a girl. He always had to have an introduction from somebody, his friend's girlfriend or something, because he couldn't seem to make it on his
own with girls. I don't think Jack had any confidence, which is really strange in a boy that looks like him. Especially in those days, a football player had no trouble finding a girlfriend. I don't care if you looked like Dracula, if you were on the football team, ninety percent of the girls in school were all over you! Just the prestige of the whole thing was a magnet for girls. But Jack, like I said, always seemed totally unaware of his own power as a male. He was never aggressive with women. I never saw Jack, unless with Neal's pushing him and maybe being loaded, get a little confidence to approach a girl. He'd finally get nerve enough, whatever you want to call it, but then he would overdo it—he would come on so strong and so bad that he'd scare the girl off!

I remember that party that John Clellon Holmes wrote about in his novel
Go.
This was a couple of years later, in 1948. It was this fantastic party that we went to on New Year's Eve in a huge basement apartment not too far from Columbia. I really didn't appreciate it at the time, not until I got older and realized how many different people were there—from Neal and I and all the fellas at Columbia to all sorts of out-of-town people, women from uptown, women with furs that I thought of as “older women,” though they might only have been twenty-three or twenty-four years old. But they seemed very old and sophisticated to me, and it wasn't till years later that I realized how special a party it really was—and I wish I had been old enough to have been able to circulate a little bit. Because, we mostly stayed in one room with our own little group. Jack was loaded, and there was some girl there that Jack kind of had eyes for, and Neal was gonna fix the whole thing up. Well, Neal wound up going out to the car with her instead, and Jack was left with me. Jack and I always had a good rapport, but that night he was furious. I think probably that was the only time I ever heard Jack—mainly because he was loaded—get really irritated with Neal and start cursing him
out. “He was supposed to get her for me, and he's takin' her out to the goddamn car!” Jack yelled. “That's the end of that!” He even started making threats against Neal. “Well come on, you and I'll just settle this!”—that kind of thing. He would get kind of cocky, and he was even willing to challenge Neal—he was gonna tell Neal what he thought of him when Neal came back in. Jack said some pretty hard things—without meaning them at all.

Of course, back in 1946 and '47, I didn't really get to know Jack that well. There used to be a little bar near Columbia—it may have been a restaurant too—where we always used to sit around with some of the guys. It was right by the university, the place where all the fellas went. Everybody used to go in there for hours, sipping on beers.
⁴
In
Desolate Angel,
Dennis McNally's got Neal and I meeting Allen there. It tells about us coming to New York and we were sitting in one of the booths when we supposedly bumped into Allen. We did used to go over there quite often, and we may have met Lucien there, since Lucien was always coming in.

Those first few days in New York, Neal and I hung out with Allen, Hal, and Jack, and they were always telling us about things we had to do and movies we had to see. The first one they told us to go see was
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
—the French version. Like I said, we had thirty-five dollars when we got in to the city; and within two days, seeing films and eating in restaurants, we had nothing. There we were—totally broke in New York City. So Allen very graciously took us over to his cousin's, who let us move in with him. I always know his name until I try to say it, and then I can't think of it anymore. Allen's cousin was a red-headed boy.

In any case, we stayed at Allen's cousin's place for quite a while. Hal and his girl Virginia—they called her “Ginny”—used to come
over, and she danced for us up there. She had dark hair, and she was a model—I think Hal finally married her. He always dressed sharp too. Neal was always excited to see Hal. “We've got to go over and see Hal!” Neal would say whenever he heard that Hal was nearby. Hal was an archeology student, and much later I heard that he'd become a farmer in Paso Robles. That's the last thing in the world I would have imagined him becoming! Hal just wasn't the farmer type—at least then he wasn't the farmer type.

When we left Allen's cousin, we finally got a place of our own over on a hundred and thirteenth and Riverside, very close to Columbia. It was right by the river, and it wasn't a bad little apartment—apparently it wasn't the ghetto, but it wasn't the best neighborhood either. I guess mainly college kids lived there. It was a small, two-room apartment, and Jack spent quite a bit of time there with us. Jack and Neal started to get comparatively close then. At that time, Jack always seemed like he never had anything to do—like he never had any place to go, and nothing very pressing. Most of the fellas were rushing here or rushing there; they had this to take care of, and that to take care of. But Jack always seemed like he was at odd ends. Of course, he was out of school by then. He was working on his novel,
⁵
but I didn't know a lot about what he was doing. And then, pretty soon, Neal and Allen were getting very involved, and they'd go off together.

It was up to me to support us, so I found a job at a bakery. I had just gotten the job that morning, it was my first day, and Neal told me to steal some money! We didn't have a penny, and Neal told me, like, “Bring some money home!” Well, the woman who ran the bakery caught me, but she didn't call the police. She just dismissed me. It really put me through a traumatic experience—I don't know what
you would call it, but I went into a state of shock, I guess. Because, after I got off the bus at Columbia, instead of going to the boys' hall, where Neal was waiting for me, I just sat down on one of those big concrete benches that they had near Columbia. I don't remember who it was who found me, but I was just sitting out there in the snow, just sort of sitting there in a daze. In any case, somebody found me, and Neal came out and asked me what happened and what was the matter. The funny thing is, I still didn't feel any disappointment in Neal. It wasn't even so much the horror of being caught. What I told him was that I felt so sorry I disappointed him. I was in tears.

For quite a while after that—or at least, it seemed like quite a while, but maybe it was only a few days, though it felt more like a couple of months—I don't remember exactly—but I would go through these things, these mental episodes, that completely bewildered me. I tried to explain them to Neal. It was as though I was leaving my body. For a sixteen-year-old girl—especially at that time, I had never read anything, never gotten into anything concerning psychology or how the mind works, so I had no way of knowing or even half-ass analyzing what was going on—it was such a frightening, terrifying feeling for me. I was never what you would call a “crier.” Before this time, I rarely cried; I wasn't into making scenes or screaming or things like that. But I would get so terrified when this feeling would come over me, like I was dying, and I couldn't stop it. Neal would hold me, literally for hours, walking me and telling me I was going to be okay. It really was a bad, bad time in my life.

Whether this had anything to do with Neal really kind of settling down, I don't know, but it's possible I frightened him. In any case, what happened was that Neal got a job parking cars and we moved over to Bayonne, New Jersey. We weren't seeing hardly anyone—or maybe I should say,
I
wasn't seeing hardly anyone. I guess he would see some of his friends while he was at work, or he would take off
work or whatever. I'm sure he was seeing his friends. But the fact is, it was still a really bad period for me. And it was especially ironic because I finally had everything that I thought I had wanted. Neal was working and coming home every night, and I was going through this thing of being a good wife.

 

We had one room with a kitchen, and I went to the dime store and bought paper drapes, and I hemmed them. They weren't totally paper—they were like a paper type of material—and I can still remember sitting there hemming these ridiculous things. After I hemmed them, Neal assured me that they were gorgeous and beautiful. I brought home all these other little goodies. I had that room fixed up,
it was home,
and Neal kept telling me how much he liked it. And then I cooked the first meal for Neal. You know, I'd boiled hot dogs and things, but I was gonna fix him a meal now that we had a kitchen.

I fixed spaghetti for him—God bless his soul! I knew nothing about spaghetti. You know, I never had to cook at home, and so nobody'd bothered to tell me that when you cook spaghetti you have to put it in boiling water. I put it in cold water and brought it to a boil, and I had this sauce that was nothing but tomato sauce. I don't remember if I even had any hamburger in it or not; but, in any case, this spaghetti came out in one big lump! I didn't know what had happened, but I knew it wasn't right, and I was all teary-eyed and upset when Neal got home from work. “Don't worry, honey, it's gonna taste delicious!” —that's what he said, God bless him. I had to slice it and put it on our plates and put this crappy sauce over it, and God love him, he sat there and ate every bite. He really and truly did, telling me it was beautiful, it was terrific, it tasted great. I am a pretty damn good cook now, but I will never forget the first meal in our little kitchen. We laughed about that for years—that spaghetti that I cooked him. We had to cut it off in hunks. It was insane—oh God! But anyway…

Things had finally gotten to where I had everything I'd ever wanted—Neal working, and I had a little home, such as it was. I actually thought it was beautiful. And I swear to this day, I have no idea of why I destroyed it. But when Neal came home from work this one night, without any planning, without it even having entered my
head—
nothing!
—when he came in the door that night, it just came out of my mouth. I told him that the police had been there. I swear to you on my grandchildren—if there's more than one—that I tried to analyze it, but I never found the real answer. As the years went by, Neal and I talked about it. Neal had his own theories. He felt that because of all these things that had happened after we got married, that it was my kind of a self-saving reaction—an unconscious thing to get myself out. But I didn't want out. I mean, I didn't
think
I wanted out. Everything was exactly the way I had always dreamed it would be. But then I did that—I went ahead and told him that the police were looking for him.

From the moment I opened my mouth, I wanted to tell him the truth. But of course Neal was excitable enough as it was—that was just his natural state—and when anything happened that would upset him like that, there was no way to stop him from overreacting. There was no way I could've sat down with him and said, “Neal, I didn't mean it, it wasn't true.” I couldn't have stopped him even if I had wanted to, because he probably wouldn't have believed me. He would've thought I was trying to calm him down. So I put myself through this total nightmare, going through every bit of this agony with him, and every minute of it hating myself.