Tom Robbins - Tibetan Peach Pie - A True Account of an Imaginative Life

As befitting his haircut, the straight dwarf was, indeed, involved in filmmaking, although on the production side, and after a time he moved to Utah to work on a series of wholesome nature movies financed by the Mormons. The hipster’s name was Maury Heald, and he possessed a heart, a spirit, a life force, and a résumé that would have dwarfed most men twice his size. In the fifties, for example, he’d traveled to Cuba to join the revolution, living with the rebels in the Sierra Maestras alongside Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. A talented commercial artist, Maury worked as a draftsman for NASA at Cape Canaveral before it became Cape Kennedy, and it was while in Florida that he was saved from drowning by Esther Williams. He’d fallen into a pool, and due to the brevity of his legs, was ill equipped for swimming. Ms. Williams, the champion swimmer turned movie star, happened to be walking by and, fully clothed, dove to his rescue. He claimed he repaid her, though he didn’t say how.

It was at an advertising agency, in San Francisco if I’m not mistaken, that Maury designed the Frito pack, the same red-and-orange motif the package bears today. Obviously, it was a successful design, but one evening — admittedly, we’d had a puff or two of pot — Maury confided that it had wider and deeper implications. He revealed that the design, if scrutinized from a particular angle, held the visual key to the fifth dimension. I assumed he was putting me on, of course, but I must admit that ever since, I’ve found myself staring at Frito packages longer than good sense might dictate or the munchies require. The reader may be inclined to investigate more thoroughly than I.

Although I’m unsure of the derivation of the term “banner year,” I think I know what it means, and in accordance with that meaning, 1971 was definitely a banner year for me. Another Roadside Attraction was published that year, Terrie gave birth to our son Fleetwood, and I met the literary agent Phoebe Larmore, who, more than forty years later, continues to represent me. Back from Japan, I was immersed in the writing of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Phoebe’s efforts on behalf of that novel would elevate the trajectory of the rest of my life.

My contract for ARA gave Doubleday right of first refusal for my next book, stipulating an advance of five thousand dollars should they accept that book for publication. Phoebe, friendly with the young woman who’d been my editor at Doubleday, had had a peek at some early pages of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and was, she told me later, knocked out by them. Aware that I didn’t have an agent, perplexed by my poor contract and Doubleday’s seeming indifference, and confident that she could find a more supportive situation for me elsewhere, she wrote to me in La Conner (I couldn’t afford a phone) and offered her services. I thought it over for approximately as long as it would take a neutrino to travel through a slice of Swiss cheese at room temperature. And accepted.

By this time, however, I’d received the $5K, and it was keeping Fleetwood in diapers and me out of the fields at night. Operating behind the scenes, Phoebe enticed Ted Solotaroff, one of the last of the old-time hands-on Maxwell Perkins — style editors still working in New York, to read my manuscript-in-progress. Within days, Solotaroff privately offered to best Doubleday’s offer by a multiple of ten, provided I could somehow terminate my obligation to Doubleday. Up to the challenge, Phoebe now convinced Doubleday that I was blocked, suffering chronic back pain, and too stressed out to finish writing Cowgirls. Doubleday, all too cheerfully, agreed to cut me loose if I’d pay back the five grand, whereupon I borrowed that amount, half each from a couple of older friends, and linked up with Solotaroff at Bantam Books, which would remain my publisher for the next thirty-seven years.

Incidentally, Phoebe’s nose grew not by so much as a centimeter when she spoke of back pain: I was, indeed, hurting and it was relentless. Because it was so low — down around the coccyx — it would have qualified as what our cousins in Merry Olde call “a royal pain in the arse.” Many days, I was forced to write standing up. Due to its proximity to the nether regions, and the fact that spinal X-rays weren’t revealing anything definitive, my primary care provider eventually referred me to a proctologist.

Driving down to Seattle to have someone peer into, and perhaps probe with metal instruments, my personal allotment of the ancient mysteries was hardly my idea of a merry afternoon; so, as is my custom in unpleasant situations, I decided to squeeze at least a dollop of fun out of the ordeal, or, if nothing else, endeavor to lighten it up. To that end (pardon the pun), I dug out my duck mask.

This was no ordinary duck mask. This was not the ducky-wucky false face any mother would have chosen to enliven festivities at her little one’s birthday bash. Molded from hard plastic, thickish and crude, this mask — a sickly yellow with a smear or two of red — suggested the countenance of Donald’s thuggish cousin: the bad duck who’d done time in Folsom for armed robbery, the one who’d been escorted off the backlot at Disney for sexually molesting Minnie. It was difficult not to picture a hand-rolled cigarette or the stub of a cheap cigar dangling from its beak.

Concealed in an innocuous paper bag, the mask accompanied me to the proctologist appointment. There, a nurse ordered me to completely disrobe and don one of those embarrassing paper-thin cotton gowns that tie, always awkwardly, in the back. Bidding me sit on the edge of the examination table, she announced that Dr. Medwell would see me soon. The instant she left me alone, I retrieved my bag and put on the duck mask.

Upon entering the examination room, the doctor took one look at me and froze in his tracks. He did not move. He did not smile. He did not speak. Dr. Medwell just stood there for the longest time, staring, seemingly unsure whether to approach me or retreat. Finally, to relieve the tension, I said, “Well, aren’t you at least going to refer me to a veterinarian?” That broke the ice, but he still refused to examine me until I took off the mask.

Beginning in 1980, I had season tickets for Seattle Sonics basketball, attending virtually every home game for twenty-six years. A hoop fan as well, Dr. Medwell had purchased season seats in a section near my own, and frequently we’d run into one another entering or exiting the arena. Recently divorced, he was dating various women, and when he was with one I hadn’t met, he’d always introduce me, even years later, saying “This is the patient I told you about. The one with the duck mask.” Still in my possession, I suppose that mask and I are destined to go down in the annals (or should it be the “anals”?) of Seattle proctology.

The term “legendary,” like many another superlative or word denoting singularity or extreme excellence (not to mention wonder or marvel), has been in modern times so excessively and undeservedly employed by advertisers, media hacks, and the barely literate masses that it has lost much of its impact and nearly all of its meaning. When applied to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, however, it’s truer to its roots than a natural blonde. For many decades the Chelsea was home away from home for countless artists of every discipline, and its walls have witnessed legendary activities ranging from the sublime to the tawdry, from Bob Dylan composing “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” to Sid Vicious stabbing his girlfriend. For one week in 1975, I resided in the Chelsea, riding the subway every business day up to 666 Fifth Avenue, where, at Bantam headquarters, Ted Solotaroff and I went over the Even Cowgirls Get the Blues manuscript page by page, line by line.