Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

Phil Le’Pierre

Anton Antonioni

Rod Pierre d’Anton

Fonzie Filbert

Jugs Valentine

Ralph Ruggles

Tony Diggs

Gig Frogg

Gorgonzola Antonguolla

Valentino Gofisho

Filbert McNutt

Giggles McGrin

Wallace Beery

Fonzie Fondolfo Fonzarelli

Fluffy Bobo Googoo

Boo Boo Fuzzy Moo Cow III

Among the names the two concocted for Jonathan’s startup male deodorant company were:

Stench-not

M’ Good Man

Armpit Fresh

Banish

B.O. Blockade

Onslaught

Honey Pits

Whifft

Male-odoro

Corsair *

Scent O’ Brawn

Ollie’s Factory

Derma-scent for Men

Smell Me Now

14. The death of his mother hit him hard.Less credible are other stories that circulated at the time, including one that had Jonathan spending long nights staring at his mother’s photograph and singing softly the lullabies she taught him in his youth, including a gentler version of a traditional favorite. JBP.

Rockabye baby

In the tree top.

When the wind blows

The cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks

The cradle takes wing

And flies through the winter,

And flies through the spring,

And sets itself down

In the room which you see,

To be near to your Daddy

And near, dear, to me.

15. Addicus had no choice in the matter.The conversation as remembered by Jonathan’s Aunt Delilah proceeded as follows:

JONATHAN : Father, I’m going back to New York City.

ADDICUS : I’ll miss you, son.

JONATHAN : No you won’t. You’re coming with me.

ADDICUS : I’m not so sure that would be a good idea.

JONATHAN : Mother has gone to be with Jesus. The bank is about to foreclose on the farm. I’m going to start a business in New York. I think you’ll be happy there too.

ADDICUS : I’ve got Arkansas in my blood, son.

JONATHAN : Aunt Delilah, maybe you can talk some sense into him.

DELILAH : Addicus, you go on with Jonathan now. It’s for the best. There’s nothing keeping you here and it would be nice for you and Jonathan to be together.

Here Delilah’s recollections become slightly suspect.

DELILAH (continued): Now, have we settled the matter? Good. Now, look at my face. People tell me I have a lovely smile. Should I believe them?

ADDICUS : You’ve always had a beautiful smile, Delilah. And you wear your clothes like a Parisian.

DELILAH : I do, don’t I?

JONATHAN : You definitely got the looks in this family, Aunt Delilah.

ADDICUS: And the brains.

DELILAH : You stop it right this instant! You’re making me blush!

Delilah Blashette Frost, Scribblings and Babblings (privately produced mimeograph, 1944). Used by permission of Frost’s great-granddaughter Glynnis Kingston in exchange for my noting here that Glynnis, in addition to writing trenchant women’s pieces, creates customized wall hangings and has a lovely professional singing voice that has a slightly feline quality, which makes it appropriate for cat litter commercial jingles. She can be reached via her representatives Michele G. Rubin or Nadia Grooms at Writers House LLC, 21 West 26th Street, New York City 10010.

16. “Childs has taken me back on as waiter and even given me a raise!”Jonathan’s Diary, 31 May1921, JBP.

17. She was a dead ringer for Great Jane.Glover drops the ball with a giant thud here. The short paragraph in his book devoted to Jonathan’s association with Kissy Valentine is based solely upon conjecture. He apparently doesn’t bother to look at Jonathan’s journal entries for the period and seems unaware of the existence of Kissy’s lengthy diary, which was published in 1987 by Man Love Press as Kissy Tell. Glover was apparently so uncomfortable writing about the relationship that he painted it with as few brushstrokes as possible. For a biographer usually given to breathless literary hyperbole, he is here emotionally uninvested and descriptively spare.

“While working at Childs, Jonathan briefly dated a woman named Kissy Valentine who he said reminded him of his former girlfriend Great Jane. Kissy and Jonathan subsequently found themselves incompatible and parted as friends. Kissy went on to a career on the stage. Her favorite soup was potato leek.”

Glover makes no mention of the fact that the incompatibility had much to do with the fact that Kissy Valentine was, in actuality, Wade Kissman, a transvestite and Childs regular who fell in love with Jonathan and who, after revealing her true gender to him, was heartbroken by his inability to reciprocate the affection. Glover is correct when he states that the two remained friends and that Kissy went on to a theatrical career (although technically, as Tallulah Bankhead’s dresser, she never appeared on the boards), but he misses a prime opportunity to explore the complexity of Jonathan’s ambivalent feelings. Jonathan’s diary entry for June 17, 1921, the day of the breakup, is quite illuminating.

“Kissy is a man! I guess I suspected it all along. But maybe I didn’t want to accept it. I did have strong initial feelings, I will admit it. Feelings that, truth be told, haven’t disappeared entirely. I want no physical relationship with Kissy/Wade — that is for certain. And yet I am still drawn to the warmth and joy I feel when I am around her. (I still can’t stop thinking of him as a her!) It is the damnest thing! Kissy asked me if I loved her. I said, “Not in the way you want me to, but that doesn’t mean we can’t remain friends.” This made Kissy cry. She cried while I waited on tables 17, 21 and 23. Then while I was giving table 27 a coffee refill, the cops came gangbusting in for their weekly raid. As per their usual, they hauled off a bunch of the fairy-regulars, including poor Kissy and her “girlfriends” Miss Gloria Swan Song, Is-a-whora Duncan and Nastymova. As per my usual, I contributed to the waiter kitty to bail them all out .”

* Struck through, perhaps due to its similarity in pronunciation to “Coarse hair”

1. It was a sizeable investment.We can only guess at the identity of the mysterious benefactor. I am inclined to believe it was J.P. Morgen who twenty years earlier had been suspected of having paid Jonathan’s legal fees in the lawsuit filed to free him from his indentureship with the Grund Traveling Circus and Wild West Show. In the interim, Morgen had significantly increased his financial holdings through shrewd wartime investments and successful stock and bond trades. There was another reason why the Arkansas businessman might have been a prime candidate to loan start-up capital for Dandy-de-odor-o, Inc.: Morgen suffered from a severe form of bromhidrosis that left him virtually friendless, often emptied corporate board rooms, and on one occasion cleared out a well-attended stockholders’ meeting, the hall subsequently requiring fumigation. A strong affinity by Morgen for such a venture would not be an implausibility. One wonders at the same time if Jonathan’s battlefield inspiration for Dandy-de-odor-o might have been antedated by a hospital visit from the aromatic businessman on the eve of the boy’s scheduled operation, a half-forgotten memory later revived — as olfactory memories often are — as fresh and aromatic as the day of their birth.