J. Donleavy: Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton

“What, are you kidding. West Sixty-eighth Street was bad enough where you were living, but now Chinatown, down nearly on the Bowery with a bunch of alcoholic hoboes and derelicts all over the place.”

“Well sir, yes, there may be these persons discarded by society but who were once, many of them, citizens trying to do their best. However that area has many historic buildings and people of noted distinction to boast of who previously lived there. As well as many examples of Chinese artifacts and culture. And where can be obtained ingredients beneficial to health, such as ginseng root, dried sea horse, deer’s horn, and preserved bear’s testicles.”

“Hey don’t try to be funny with me, Steve.”

“I’m not, sir. Merely demonstrating that the area of Pell Street is not an habituation of the down-and-outs. Plus, it carries the name of a most distinguished family, the Pells.”

“Hey, what the hell are you. Some kind of social climber.”

“I am a delver into all aspects of the historic matrix that has played a part in forming possibly the greatest metropolis the world has ever known.”

“Well, okay. I’ll buy that bit of spiel. You seem to know quite a bit about this little old city of ours.”

“Plus, sir, such knowledge as I have, if I may be so blunt as to mention, prompts me to think, sir, that you might want to avail of an opportunity for you to become a munificent patron of the arts.”

“That’s more pedantic speak.”

“But honestly spoken, sir.”

“Well, I think if you take the trouble to look into as much as you have about the Pells, you’ll find my family name already well represented all over this island of Manhattan as a contributor to the arts. While your family seems to own just a couple of beer joints, a hangover from speakeasy days, in what some people might regard as the wrong part of town. I hear, however, they do okay business. But having had you personally checked out, your own financial status and prospects rate zero. Sit down. Don’t get alarmed. I would, in giving you a handout, only be giving you more financial quicksand to sink in.”

“I’m not looking for a handout. And I’m not sinking.”

“Well, I’ll admit that maybe you’re not, because with your kind of sales pitch you might get a job down Wall Street in a brokerage house speculating in Confederate bonds.”

“Sir, I’m not giving anybody a sales pitch. And I regard your statement as an insult not only to me but to the southern gentlemen who gave their lives in the cause of the Confederacy.”

“See what I mean. Gift of the gab. Next you’ll be telling me you grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana.”

“As a matter of fact sir, I have ancestral kin there.”

“Well, glad to hear that. But my word, let me look at my watch, and excuse me, I’m afraid I’ve got to rush. Just got time to get over to a backgammon match in exactly ten minutes. But stay where you are. Finish your beer. Oh, sorry, it’s tomato juice, isn’t it. Well, I’ve enjoyed our little informative chat. And it’s true what Sylvia says. You do look a little like Rudolph Valentino who, I believe, was also a little impecunious and did a bit of dish washing before he became a star. Pity acting is as tough to make a living at as composing. But good to meet you again, Steve. And if there is any way else I can help, outside the financial, that is, don’t hesitate to keep in touch. Good-bye.”

As Jonathan Witherspoon Triumphington III departed out his club’s front door, Stephen O’Kelly’O was left standing, having as he came to his feet pushed over his chair in the solemn silent emptiness devolving upon this place, the sound seeming to echo out to Fifth Avenue. And then the overwhelming need to take a nervous pee. Relieving the bladder lessens the stress. Head to the gents. I should have hit him. A goddamn social upstart. The O’Kelly’O’s were kings in Ireland when that fucker’s ancestors, somewhere obscure in England, were wiping their asses with fig leaves. And this while the O’Kelly’O’s were from their own carved stone lavatory seats shitting from a height up in their tower houses, and pulling a bell rope to make musical warning to everyone below to get out of the way. Although being hit by an O’Kelly’O turd was considered good luck. Now move across this vast room, through all these empty tables. But holy cow, I was shot down in flames before I was even airborne. Had a good mind to tell him I got twice awarded a Purple Heart. The fucker, a lieutenant commander in the navy, having a good time in Washington, D.C., during the war, probably sailing up and down the Potomac drinking cocktails on a yacht that one of my sixteen-inch guns could have blown out of the water with one salvo. He has the nerve to shake my hand vigorously. Then smiling, leaves me to finish my tomato juice with a couple of pretzels while he goes to play backgammon at another snooty club. Clearly the sort of person starving the cultural life of the United States, and wouldn’t between his polo matches know George Frideric Handel from Albert Einstein.

Stephen O’Kelly’O pushing open the door to the gentlemen’s rest room. The sweet smell of embrocations and the polished ceramic surfaces. A bottle of toilet water. Just of the sort one would expect a smooth socially registered fucker like Jonathan Witherspoon Triumphington III, with maybe fifty trust funds drenching him daily in dollars, to use. The son of a bitch is handing out worse blows than the blistering swats already landed across my ass from his adopted Sylvia. I’m sure its against a club’s rules to leave someone, a nonmember, unattended like me, a stranger who could then go start stealing books or magazines from the library or the toilet paper and bay rum from the gents. Where, Christ, right now I’m shaking in such rage that, holding my prick, I’ve already pissed all over my goddamn shoes.

At the coat check, O’Kelly’O retrieving his soup-stained overcoat, a button missing. Struggling with it half on and half off. And the sound of ripping echoing all over the vast room as another big tear splits the lining down the inside of the sleeve. The hatcheck gentleman, instead of calling the enforcement arm of the Social Register to have me apprehended, handcuffed and gagged, bowing a pleasant good-bye. All such thoughts a sure sign that my paranoia was going out of control. Miracle I have enough self-esteem left to hobble to and out of the front door. Time to reinvent myself. Famed linebacker on his prep school football team. Wartime naval hero slightly concussed, of noble Irish lineage, now foxhunting across the countryside of New Jersey. And soon to conduct his Fifth Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

With the light turning green, Stephen O’Kelly’O, collar up, tweed cap pulled down tight on his head and hunched in his coat, crossing Fifth Avenue. Yellow stream of checkered taxicabs roaring by, splashing up slush. Don’t give a good goddamn what they do to pedestrians. A secondhand phonograph record and book seller freezing his balls off on the corner. At least there’s a sign of some cultural dedication and concern for those impecunious who can’t afford new books or classical records. But somehow one feels he’d do better with a begging bowl. My occasional momentary inferiorities are busting out all over the place. A big cold sore beginning to erupt on my lip before I even got down the three or four steps out of that club. Be a relief now to go mingle awhile amid the more sympathetic animals in the zoo. Whose pleasant roars and screams won’t be accusing me of social climbing or looking for a handout.

The sun a red cold ball in the sky, sinking down somewhere over Nebraska. The light fading over the zoo. The sudden strange beauty of this city alerts you to its majesticness. Until some kid is screaming he’s lost his balloon floating away up over the hippopotamus house to disappear into the pink chill of the New York heavens. Once saw an eagle soaring up there over the apartment rooftops of Fifth Avenue just north of maybe Eighty-first Street. Still free in nature. And down here on earth in the zoo, the squawking, squealing seals knocking their way around the ice floes in their pond. An aqueous furore as the keeper arrives with a bucket of fish to toss in. Walk over to where the big outcropping of rocks are and see how the polar bear is psychologically coping pacing back and forth, claws clattering on the cement. Or maybe is content that he can luxuriate in the chill weather. Make a day of it here uptown before I go home downtown and face any more ignominy. Go check on the monkeys, who in their own rent-free hot house can go ad-lib amusing themselves scratching their asses, and shoving pricks into holes that take their fancy and then grinning obscenely out their window at the miserable spectators.