Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

It is no accident that America is the nation that pioneered the best-seller lists, the record charts, the best-dressed lists, the ten-best-movies-of-the-year lists, and (God help us) even the ten- worst -movies-of-the-year lists, a distinction in itself; if you cannot be one of the ten best , there is some satisfaction (but only in America) in knowing you are listed among the lousiest. In America, if you are eleventh, you might as well be dead. And if you are Number One, then you are exactly what America itself desires to be, ever and always. I do not wish to raise problems, forgive me. But what is so terribly wrong about being number two? Or (God forbid) number eleven? In 1960, Dwight’s Blues was number One on the LP record charts for more months than I can recall, and something began happening to me.

I was spoiled rotten even before the raging success of the album; I had, after all, been successful since 1955. I was used to making my demands known and having them satisfied, I had grown accustomed to deferential treatment from headwaiters and recording executives, music publishers and nightclub owners, hotel managers, airline hostesses, everyone. Everywhere I went, they asked, “Is everything all right, Mr. Jamison?” Yes, everything was all right. When I was a boy, my grandmother Tess had treated me like an Italian Prince, which is one step higher than a Jewish Princess. My brother Tony could sometimes escape her solicitous clutches, being blessed with vision and a pair of stout little legs that could carry him scurrying away from her advancing embrace. I never escaped her. “I’m going to get you, Ignazio!” she would say, and those loving grandmotherly arms would snatch me up, and her tongue would cluck in deep affection, and sometimes she would sing to me in Italian, and press me against her pillowy bosom, and tell me what a darling little boy I was. If I had been left solely to the care and training of my grandmother Tess, I would have grown up to be a hopelessly dependent vegetable. It was my grandfather who taught me to stand on my own, blind or not. But my grandfather was Italian, you see. And I was American. And starting in 1955, I was a successful American. And in 1960, I became a ragingly successful American, and the world was full of Grandma Tesses eager to tell me what a darling little boy I was, eager to turn me into a hopelessly dependent vegetable. And something began happening to me.

Maybe I only (only!) wanted to go to bed with my mother. Maybe those tales of Charlie Shoe exploring her youthful quim had incited me to fantasize wildly about the joys to be experienced between those maternal thighs. Success had brought me power, after all, the power to command whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. So why not now dismiss my father, who had peed his own pants when he was but a mere lad, and take my rightful place in bed beside my mother? Maybe that was it. Or maybe I had to prove to Jimmy Palmer that his own fumbling attempt at adultery (had there really been an Irish whore on Pelham Parkway?) could be topped by his famous blind son, show him I was not only a better musician than he was, but also a better swordsman, a man who could screw every beautiful woman in the universe without having the Virgin Mary appear to Rebecca, without getting caught , and certainly without leaving any telltale evidence about golden earrings with sapphire chips in my dresser drawer. That’s another possibility. Or maybe, being blind, I just naturally demanded more of everyone — more and more love, more and more respect, more and more proof that I was not what I (and thirteen other little blind bastards) thought myself to be — nothing.

Whatever it was (and I certainly do not dismiss any of these quite respectable tenets), I began to think that since my album was Number One, then I myself was Number One. I had cut the album, hadn’t I? I mean, after all, the album was only a mechanical reproduction of the music I had made, the music I had pulled from somewhere inside my head and my heart; the album was me . Now never mind whether or not I was a good father (I was), or a loyal and devoted husband (I still was), or a man who did not cheat on his income tax (I took advantage of legal loopholes), a man eligible for the Talmadge Good Neighbor Award, an upstanding member of the town board, a pillar of the community, or an all-around darling nice guy. Never mind any of that. Never mind what the man Dwight Jamison was. The man was the album. And the album was successful beyond my wildest dreams. They used to touch me. When I walked toward the bar after a set, they reached out to touch me, I could hear them whispering, “Here he comes,” and then I would feel the cautious touch on the sleeve of my jacket.

Well, unless I wished to believe that America was a land of idol-worshipers bowing and scraping at the clawed feet of the hairy monster called Success; unless I wished to believe that the crowd reaching out to touch me as I walked from the bandstand to the bar was really reaching out to touch The Beast; unless I chose to come to grips with the painful knowledge that The Beast was something independently alive, standing behind my shoulder each night, leering out at the crowd and demanding adoration for him-self, then I had to believe the cheers were for me and not for my success, the cheers were for Dwight Jamison, the cheers were, in fact, for Ignazio Silvio Di Palermo. And why not? I deserved them.

Yes.

Deserved! Because I was giving so much of myself to the public, yes, and it was only fair that I should get something more than money in return. (Christ, was that me? Did I really believe that?) Yes. Up there on the bandstand each night, I was reaching into my head and my heart and discovering somewhere in my own experience something I was willing to give to total strangers. It leaped from my fingers and into the room, and it became theirs, no longer mine, not even mine and theirs, but theirs alone. My past and my present, my joy, my anger, and my sorrow became theirs to push around on their plates with their leftover dinners while they signaled the waiter for another round.

I rationalized my promiscuity (which is exactly what it was) on two levels. First, I told myself I had already given of my head and my heart, so what would it matter if I now gave of my cock? Giving of my cock was really giving nothing; I was still being true to Rebecca. Secondly, I played a mental trick that can only in retrospect be considered schizophrenic. (Don’t be so quick to agree, Rebecca!) I told myself all these women really did love me and my shabby, dignified good looks, and my blond hair and sightless blue eyes, and my talent, and everything about me. But at the same time, I told myself they only loved the incandescence of my success, they only loved The Beast. I zippered on The Beast’s hairy hide the way I would a gorilla suit, but at the same time I denied that he was me. All those women loved me for myself, yes, but no , they really loved The Beast. I was only the conduit through which adoration for The Beast flowed. The women were faceless; they would have been faceless even if I could have seen them. And I was faceless as well. The Beast was getting it all; I was only his boy. And yet I knew they adored me.

Mishegahss , I admit it.

I’d have to be really nuts (I know, Rebecca; save it) to pretend at the age of forty-eight that all that fucking around had been caused by a capitalized Beast relentlessly stalking the landscape of the American myth. But sometimes, when I’m alone and I remember with a start that after all is said and done I am | only blind and only Ignazio Silvio Di Palermo, I wonder what it would have been like if I’d never been a big success, ma’am. Would you offer to blow me if you saw me stumbling along Broadway behind a Seeing Eye dog, with a sign ADVISING HERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GOES THEE?