Stanley Elkin - Boswell

That’s not the reason for this entry, however. (See? Now I have “reasons,” though when I first started this journal it was only because I felt I needed some device to stop time, a sort of spiritual Brownie. I made entries like those phrases travelers put down in guestbooks: “Awe-inspiring.” “I am thunderstruck.” “It makes one feel insignificant.” But the truth is, nothing makes me feel insignificant. Hell, big as it is, couldn’t make me feel insignificant.

I came to Los Angeles to wrestle. I’ve been here almost three days. I must be particularly careful in Los Angeles. My resolution. And the temptation is great in a city like this. If one doesn’t absolutely shut his eyes the possibilities that he will run into the great are enormous. Washington, D.C., is the same way, so is Manhattan. So I must be very careful when I’m there, too. In Washington the great are too busy, and in New York they are frequently strangers in town themselves, but in Los Angeles they’re at home. Instead of this relaxing them, as one might think it would, it makes them even more self-conscious. This is their territory, but somehow they expect to be spotted. Perhaps they are even eager for it. Even in slacks and sandals they seem to throw out hints of their presence as sure and solid as a scent. Of course I am particularly vulnerable to this, and the temptation is always to forget what I learned from my encounter with Sandusky, to throw it all up and devote myself to some strategy which will engage their attentions. Also, there is the fact that I wrestle. I am, after all, something of a public figure myself — though, strangely, I am not really colorful or flashy enough to be a feature attraction, or even, for that matter, a contender in the more important preliminaries. I start the evening, or end it, or am the other guy on unimportant tag-teams. Nevertheless, I have often spotted stars in the audience. They flock to exhibitions of this sort. They sit there, their collars opened, their hats high on the backs of their heads, and scream obscenities at us. The women are even worse than the men. They come in furs or evening dress and study us darkly. We athletes are sort of American bullfighters. They admire us for what they think is our simplicity, our animality — which is only surface, after all, while their own is buried and therefore more urgent. Before the ballplayer, the wrestler, the boxer, the bullfighter, there was the gladiator, before that the Christian martyr, before that some shepherd on a slope of the Apennines.

So whenever I am here I must exercise my full will. It’s a real test of the resolution I made over a year ago. (In Cedar Rapids what danger am I in? Some obscure millionaire? A governor, perhaps, if I’m lucky? Lucky? What am I talking about? Which side am I on?) And then one doesn’t simply fly into Los Angeles two hours before a match and then out on a late plane two hours afterwards. Bogolub, the big promoter out here, insists on the wrestlers having at least two sessions in the gym before they go on — even sub-eventers like myself. I once complained to him that I thought the act got stale if it was rehearsed too often. “I don’t think so,” Bogolub said. He’s a tiny man, white-faced, like someone with a heart condition. He goes in a limousine which he drives himself to all the gyms in the city to watch his wrestlers. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think practice makes perfect.” “I can’t agree,” I told him. “That’s what makes horserac- ing,” he said, pointing vaguely toward the ring. I shrugged and went off to work out on the mat — my kind doesn’t even get to use the practice ring — with the ox I had been matched with. About ten minutes later the guy had pinned me according to plan and I was lying there underneath him, thinking absently of my Uncle Myles and how I had been either on top or underneath more men in my life than girls, when I saw Bogolub watching me carefully. It was almost a quarter of an hour after our talk, but he continued as if there had been no interruption. “In addition,” he said, “you’re just a tanker. The biggest men, the biggest, work out the routine in the gym before a match.” He’s an interesting man. He’s invented most of the famous wrestling personalities — a Herlitz of the Mat World, as it were. (There I go. Since I resolved not to chase the great I find that more and more of my time is taken up with the parochially important or the simply unusual. Why, for that matter, did I even challenge Bogolub? What am I? A dumb tanker. If I want to wrestle in Los Angeles I have to play by his rules.)

So in Los Angeles the question of how I can spend my time is very serious. I could stay in my room, I suppose, but what’s the point? Somehow I keep forgetting that I am still a very young man. In another context, with parents or perhaps just friends, I might even be considered a kid. Loneliness makes for precocity, but there is a danger that it makes for world weariness, too, if you let it. What right have I got to be world weary? A dumb tanker! There will be no drinking myself unconscious in hotel rooms for me, yet, no going down to some all-night cafeteria for a two-o’clock cup of coffee and a quick shot of human companionship. Just because one is resigned does not mean one is through. I promise you at least that much, Boswell. You are not through, in no sense washed up, you and your middle-aged heart. Just because you have it figured about life— everybody dies —there’s still no reason to turn yourself inside out, to go through the world skeleton first, to make every morning shave a memento mori. I try to keep myself presentable, like some old lady in a home for the aged with eau de cologne up her smelly crotch. That’s the ticket. Appearances, the heart’s red hair ribbon. That’s what makes horseracing! So I force myself.

Well, that’s not accurate. It’s true that sometimes I have to force myself — but not last night. Last night I was feeling pretty good about things. I wanted to see a motion picture. But in Los Angeles you can’t go to a first-run movie without running the risk of bumping into some damned movie star. They’re crawling all over the lobbies on some crazy busman’s holiday. Do I need that kind of aggravation? I figured it would be best to get out of town, so I bought a paper to see what was playing in the suburbs. In Chilanthica there was a revival of Plenty of Daddies with Edward Arnold and S.G. “Cuddles” Sackell and Eugene Pallette. Carmen Miranda and José Iturbi are in it, too, and Margaret O’Brien and Sabu, the Elephant Boy, in his first non-jungle picture. It introduces little Dickie Dobber, whom I’ve never seen in anything else. I see this film whenever I have the chance. One day I’m going to buy my own print, just to have it around.

I called the theater and asked when the last feature started; then I called the public service people and found out exactly how to get there. (Just like the old days. In certain ways I am still a planner, an arranger. My movements are a series of carefully plotted steps, like the directions on how to assemble a child’s toy. It never rains on my picnics.)

The name of the movie house in Chilanthica is the Orpheum. At first this was very satisfying. Nothing had ever happened to me in an Orpheum. It would be like, being bitten by a dog named Rover. But then I thought, Chilanthica is a very small town, there’s only one movie here. “Orpheum” is always the other movie in a small town, practically a brand name, the manager’s choice after “The Chilanthica” has been spoken for. It was disquieting. (I’m not that sensitive, but as I say, Los Angeles makes me nervous.) There was only the Orpheum, I kept telling myself, only the Orpheum. It was fishy. It was too much like being reduced to primal things. It didn’t make me any easier to note that the movie was on Elm Street. And sure enough there was an ice cream parlor (not a shoppe) across the street. Had the town been called Centerville or Maplewood I might have bolted, but “Chilanthica” was enough like the real world. So, like a jerk I bought my ticket and went in. It was, as I say, primal — like walking out onto a bare stage. I needn’t have called; there was only one showing. At 8:30, of course. I stood in the lobby watching some of the others coming in. It was pleasant at first, like the experience with the name, to see their anonymity, to exult in it as one can sometimes revel in muddy river water. A GP; the man who owned the filling station; the druggist; Mother Hubbard from the restaurant; the couple that ran what must surely have been “The Emporium” (he, vaguely big-time, well-dressed, sporty; she, almost but not quite chic). And people. Respectable, safely unimportant. Had I my wits I would have realized how pat it all was, they all were, these maskers, these phony Republicans.