On the first day of preschool in L.A., I inadvertently marked my territory (like a good dog does) by being too polite. The teacher was speaking and I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to disrupt the class by butting in with a request to leave the room. I thought I could hold it, but just before she finished her speech, I raced from the room, trailing a yellow stream behind me.
Welcome to higher learning.
That was my first taste of embarrassing myself in public. I must have enjoyed something about it because I've been getting myself into embarrassing situations ever since. Sometimes they're inadvertent, usually they're planned, or at least they seem like a good idea at the time.
Geisha Grace
I
n 1945, reality kicked in again. Another transfer for my father, this time to the main office in San Francisco.
We moved into a small stucco row house, 1017 Portola Drive, a busy extension of Market Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares. Directly across the street was Saint Brendan's Catholic school, and I felt sorry for those kids, all having to dress the same, constantly being watched by those strange, gray-faced women in the long black outfits. I was glad my parents didn't belong to any weird organization that required such rigid, ritualized behavior. It was much later that I learned how each person imposes some version of rigidity on themselves anyway, with or without the help of organized religion.
I went to kindergarten at Miraloma, an old World War I army barracks with cloakrooms and coal-burning stoves. We lived directly below Mount Davidson, which was covered by forest and crowned with a gigantic cement cross, and I instantly became Robin Hood on that hillside. I'd drop the twentieth century and all its prefab buildings and drab clothing, and go back to a time when everything was handmade—when artisans spent long hours creating the houses, the bridges, the clothes, and the books. No assembly-line products, no carbon monoxide, no atom bomb, no DDT. I followed my imagination to the Renaissance, to the grass banks of the River Thames, to the turn-of-the-century Wild West, to the court of Priam of Troy, to the steps of Notre Dame, to the palace of Ramses, to Jerusalem, Kenya, Oslo, Saint Petersburg—anywhere but where I was. Anywhere I could invent myself all over again.
One of those places for invention
was
here and now, however—the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Located across from the band shell and the aquarium, it was a grand and beautiful neoclassical building filled with antiquities, the four-structure enclosure spreading out from the Japanese tea gardens to the tree-lined streets. Every time I walked up the steps to the museum, I knew I was about to be surrounded by handmade beauty: paintings, sculpture, suits of armor, displays of antique clothing, and the elegant exterior of the building itself.
A quiet appreciation of the museum's contents instilled itself in everyone who entered—children and adults alike. Some people who'd been loud and hurried outside became quiet and reverent as soon as they entered the main hall. Because of its size, there was a noticeable echo and a nice residual sound from the clicking of high heels on the marble floor. Red velvet cords looped through brass poles, which were placed four feet in front of the paintings as a reminder to “look but don't touch.” They were right to rope off the exhibits. I would have loved to have touched those paintings, to have felt the ridges of the brush strokes. I moved in as closely as I could to see the manner in which the artist had layered the paint.
Just below the museum was the band shell, where I used to watch orchestras play. I loved to see the forties musicians with their chairs, sheet music, dark suits or long dresses, and, of course, the conductor. As an adult, I played that same stage many times, but we had amplifiers, no written music, jeans and T-shirts—and
no
conductor. Instead, we had a wild assortment of individuals wandering around onstage “shit-dancing” (a term my daughter uses to describe the way white people move awkwardly to rock music), smoking dope, handing out flyers, and interacting in their own way to whatever was going on. Little did I know then, as I watched the rigidity of the forties performances, that I'd be a part of loosening up the band shell ritual. Today, there are still “respectable” orchestras playing there, but the rock bands broke the tradition of formality generally associated with Sunday concerts in the park.
On one side of the De Young Museum was a Japanese tea garden. It offered an excellent duplicate of the seemingly free-form arrangements of plants, rocks, steps, and flowers that typify the Japanese style of specific placement, which ironically gives the illusion of impressive spontaneous growth. Even during the time we were at war in the Pacific, the tea gardens continued to employ delicate-looking, young Oriental girls dressed in the elaborate costumes of Japan's Meiji era. The girls served tea and cakes to a steady stream of tourists and locals who, for at least a half hour, were able to suspend knowledge of the carnage that was taking place half a world away.
The weekly art classes I joined in 1946 met right there at the tea gardens. About ten elderly women and seven-year-old Grace would bring paper and pencils and, for an hour and a half, struggle to capture the beauty of the place. Each of us was hampered by a lack of artistic ability, but we'd all compliment each other, primarily for persistence. If I finished or gave up before the allotted time, I'd drift into a reverie and “become” a fifteen-year-old geisha girl, serenely waiting to be the performer in some elaborate ancient ceremony.
At seven years of age, I not only imagined myself as various characters, but I rummaged around in our closets and my mother's sewing boxes for actual costume and prop possibilities. On one dress-up occasion, I managed to make my parents run for the camera and, if only for a moment, reconsider their Republican political choices.
I cut out a rectangle from a black piece of paper and stuck it on my upper lip—Adolf Hitler. I put on my father's coat and hat, which, with the mustache, softened Hitler into the then current presidential Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey. Finally, I stuck my hand into the coat between the second and third button for the Napoleon look, completing my impromptu triad of conservative power freaks. My parents still voted for Dewey, unswayed by their incipient liberal daughter, who was simply filling time until Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce would really have them in the aisles.
Since my favorite cartoon character was Red Ryder, on my eighth birthday, I got a blue fat-tired Schwinn bicycle, a cowboy hat and boots, two pearl-handled thirty-eights with a double holster, a plaid flannel shirt, and a pair of Levis. So I
was
Red Ryder for at least six months. Then, at Christmastime, I turned my parents' hearts to mush by “becoming” the Virgin Mary, complete with white cardboard halos for me and my doll named Jesus, a white sheet draped over my head and down my body, some Kleenex swaddling diapers for Jesus, and a nauseatingly benign smile plastered on my face for the duration of the performance. You would think with all this carrying-on that I would have become an actress, but the idea of having to say someone else's lines has always bothered me, right up through the writing of this book.
Don't put
your
words in
my
mouth.
Fear of forgetting lines added to my distaste for the acting profession. If someone gave me a situation and let me make up the dialogue as I went along, I would have loved it. But movies cost too much to rely on that much freedom of expression.
At my school's fourth-grade talent show, I decided to die. The decision was inspired by Edvard Grieg's
Peer Gynt Suite
(one of the three albums that composed my parents' record collection), which had a particular cut I liked, an instrumental piece called “Asa's Death.” I purloined one of my mother's old gray curtains, wrapped myself in it, and did an unintentionally funny four-minute dying scene, writhing around on the floor to the accompaniment of the dolorous music. “It looked,” my mother said, “like a send-up of Isadora Duncan.” But she was kind enough to keep that criticism to herself until I was old enough (thirty-five) to appreciate the humor.
In hindsight, the most appropriate getup of all was the
Alice in Wonderland
costume Lady Sue made for me to wear in my school's Halloween parade. I was about the right age, eight, and at that time, I had long blonde hair, so apart from being a bit too chubby, it was probably the closest I came to actually looking like the character I'd chosen to inhabit for the day. That was my second-favorite Halloween costume, the very best being an accident of nature and my own stupidity.
As I was walking to school one morning, I noticed some beautiful, bright red and gold fall leaves. I gathered up an armful to take to my sixth-grade teacher, running all the way to school to get there early and surprise her with my lovely gift. She was surprised, all right. And she forgot to thank me. The instant I walked into the room, she said, “Grace, put the leaves in the garbage very slowly, and then go home and tell your mother to take you to the doctor.”
It was poison oak and I had third-degree burns all over my arms and face. By the time Halloween rolled around, the red raw skin had progressed to a disgusting crust of scabs, and the oozing sores prevented me from going out with my friends for trick or treat. But my disappointment was fully redeemed by the horrified expressions on the little kids whom I greeted in all my ghoulish splendor, holding a plate of dyed-red scrambled eggs for their “treat.”
No one had a better Halloween outfit that year.
1798 or 1998?
M
y childhood desire to wear costumes and travel back in time had nothing to do with being unloved. It wasn't about having a dysfunctional family or abandonment issues or domestic violence or obsessive/compulsive disorder or “de Nile” or “adickshun” or … yawn. It had to do with aesthetics. The way things looked to me, the way they sounded, the way they felt.
To understand what I mean, I'd like you to place yourself in two different settings—the first, a bedroom in the year 1798.
It's 8:00
A.M
. You're lying on your back in bed. Everything you see in the room is handmade, including the big wooden crossbeams supporting the troweled ceiling. The bed and the dresser have been carved by an artisan and rubbed to a warm finish with stains and waxes. Your night-gown or nightshirt, the wrought-iron chandelier, the honey-colored candles that you extinguish with a brass candlesnuffer, the ceramic bowl and water pitcher on the dresser, the leaded glass windows framed by crown moldings and covered by homespun curtains—each is the result of an individual's imagination and ability to realize the final artifact.
Your dog, who's been sleeping on a cushion in the recessed window seat, slowly wakes up, stretches, looks out the window, and listens to the soft clicking of the horse and carriage passing by on the cobblestone street. He goes over to the solid oak door with the hammered brass handle and barks. He's letting you know that it's time to take a morning walk on the three-hundred-year-old brick path, lined with trees, flowers, and the occasional deer or rabbit scampering in the bushes where birds are chirping at the sunrise. The path leads to the center of town, where a few red-cheeked merchants are rolling out their wheelbarrows full of produce from the local farms, to display around the town square.
You and your dog pause under a carved wooden sign, hanging by wrought-iron hooks from a seven-foot-high horizontal post, that says
bake shoppe
. The smell of warm biscuits circles through the air, beckoning two or three people to join you for breakfast and to listen to the town crier. He literally sings the morning news, and accompanying him are two musicians in Robin Hood-like attire—one playing the lute, the other playing a pennywhistle—hoping to catch a few nickels for their impromptu performance. When the old church clock chimes nine times, everyone moves on to the business of making something by hand, from scratch, so they can trade it or sell it in the marketplace for something else they need.
The day ends with a late dinner by candlelight and congenial conversation with friends over a couple of mugs of mulled wine. While you and the dog enjoy the warmth of the big stone fireplace, you read a few pages of an essay on freedom by Thomas Jefferson. Then you both climb the Dutch-tiled stairs. The distant sound of the grandfather clock in the hallway—eleven chimes—confirms it's time to retire. The last thing you see before you drop off to sleep is the view through the bedroom window: bright stars shining through a clear atmosphere, unclouded by smog or artificial lights of any kind.
OR
The year is 1998.
It's 8:00
A.M
. Again, you're lying on your back in bed, waking up. Everything you see has been mass-produced; not one human being touched anything in the room before it hit the retail store or the construction company warehouse. The ceiling is wall-to-wall twenty-year-old, white, asbestos-insulated cardboard tiles. The dresser amounts to four plywood drawers you were forced to assemble from twenty-seven separate pieces that came in a box marked
ikea
, which spits Styrofoam balls. You can switch the seventy-five-watt track floodlights on and off by pushing a button on a plastic panel on your metal headboard, which features rows of electronic remote units. They've been specially designed to keep you either immobile or comatose after your rigorous workout in a fluorescent-lit room filled with fake bicycles, digital readouts of your progress, gym instructors lurking behind overdeveloped muscles that look like tumors, people in eye-blinding synthetic glow-in-the-dark spinning suits, and seventy-five-year-old pensioners who've been ordered by doctors to engage in repetitive contortions because of heart problems caused by eating gigantic amounts of animal fat. Young girls are working out there, too, with fake lips, boobs, hair, and noses, talking about liposuction, and there are mirrors everywhere to remind you of your imperfections. In the corner is an isolation booth full of dry heat and infrared light bulbs to ease your pain and send your aching and tortured body back through streets redolent of carbon monoxide.