Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

20. roll over, rossini

The very first time I attended a concert by a symphony orchestra, it was in order to review the performance for a leading metropolitan daily newspaper. The first time I ever went to the opera, it was for the very same reason. And in both instances, my critiques were published, presented to the public as if they were the reasoned and insightful opinions of an experienced musical authority. I suppose I owe it to readers, especially any who unlike me are classically cultured enough to tell spezzati from spaghetti, to explain how this charade came about.

When you blow up a major life situation, as I did on two fronts before leaving Richmond, the explosion can leave a hole in your psyche. Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and over time the crater is almost certain to fill in with new wisdom — or fresh folly. Sometimes it can be a challenge to tell the difference. For example, my metamorphosis into a critic, indeed my first thirty months in Seattle overall, was a mingle of transformative revelations and screwball circumstances.

Susan, little Kendall, and I had arrived in Seattle on a Friday afternoon following a cross-country drive that lacked only a team of sled dogs to successfully re-create a scene from Nanook of the North. From western Pennsylvania to eastern Montana, Old Man Winter had a stick up his butt, punishing animal, vegetable, and mineral alike (cars count as “mineral,” don’t they?) with lashing winds, deadly low temperatures, and a great suffocation of snow. Unaccustomed to driving on ice, I braked abruptly at the lone stoplight in Perham, Minnesota, and went skidding into the rear of a farm truck. The truck shrugged it off and the damage to our Valiant was largely cosmetic, but the collision caused an air vent under our dashboard to stick open, permitting swirling snow, mile after mile, to blow up my pant leg. By the time we’d traversed North Dakota, the family jewels were so frozen they wouldn’t have looked out of place on Michelangelo’s marble statue of David.

Eastern Washington, while considerably more benign, was nevertheless chilly, its brown fields lightly dusted with snow, but once we crossed the Cascades and began our descent into Seattle, there’d been a dramatic shift, meteorologically and chromatically. It was like being gulped down the open throat of an emerald. A famous Italian journalist once began her interview with Muammar Gaddafi by asking the Libyan dictator if he had a favorite color, to which Gaddafi replied, “Green, green, green, green, green, green, green…” on and on, over and over, for nearly five minutes, she said, before she could get him to stop. The interviewer thought he was crazed but I think he was channeling Seattle.

Seattle, the mild green queen: wet and willing, cedar-scented, and crowned with slough grass, her toadstool scepter tilted toward Asia, her face turned ever upward in the rain; the sovereign who washes her hands more persistently than the most fastidious proctologist. These days, Seattle is not radically dissimilar to other large cities in California or back east, but in 1962 it was a magical metropolis, wrested from moss, mildew, and mud; animated more by chain saw and chi than by commerce and chutzpah; and although I would miss Richmond and miss aspects of it still, I was thrilled to the bone to have landed into this clam-chawed outpost where one might mix metaphors with impunity, bathed in oyster light beneath skies that resembled bad banana baby food. That darkening afternoon, watching Seattle’s hills begin to sparkle as if mounds of damp silage were being set upon by a trillion amorous fireflies blinking Morse code haikus that no Virginia cockroach could appreciate or understand, my heart informed my head that I had found my new home.

We’d traveled that northern route across the U.S., so fraught with wintry perils, neither out of innocence nor a craving for adventure but because I simply couldn’t afford the extra fuel required to take a warmer, drier southern route. As it was, I’d arrived in Seattle with only a hundred dollars in my wallet, three bodies to feed and house, and no clear prospect for fattening the kitty.

Barely had we entered the city, however, when, driving along Boren Avenue, precise destination unknown, I glanced up a side street and spotted a “For Rent” sign on a 1930s-era brick building. I made a quick right turn, parked on the northwest corner of James and Minor, went inside and handed over eighty-five dollars for the first month’s rent of a clean, roomy apartment. The landlord was Japanese American, which I took as a favorable — even exciting — omen, since, if truth be told, its connections and relative proximity to Japan were the reasons I’d sought out Seattle in the first place.

With the remaining fifteen bucks, I walked to a little corner market and stocked up on cheap, filling foods such as rice, beans, cereal, and a few decidedly non-Zen items like Dinty Moore beef stew. For a celebration, I splurged (it cost a whole ninety-nine cents) on a six-pack of beer. For several minutes, I studied the labels on Olympia and Rainier, debating which local brand to test-drive. Eventually, influenced by its label alone, I selected Olympia. It was the wrong choice. Everything else, however — for days, weeks, and months — was to go so miraculously well that events seemed choreographed by the gods.

The next morning, armed with a gracious letter of recommendation, believe it or not, from John H. Colburn of the Times-Dispatch, I found my way to the offices of the Seattle Times. Even though it was a Saturday, I chanced that there might be someone in the newsroom with sufficient authority to answer my inquiry about the possibility of a part-time job. I was received by none other than managing editor Henry McLeod, who, after studying the letter (it evidently made no mention of Sammy Davis Jr.), informed me that an assistant features editor at the Times was about to depart for Europe on a six-month sabbatical and as yet no replacement had been hired. I started to work at the Times on Tuesday.

One of my assignments in the features department was to edit the daily advice column, Dear Abby. When its author, Abigail Van Buren, would visit a city whose paper carried Dear Abby, it was her habit to drop by that paper’s newsroom to pay respects. At the Seattle Times, she specifically requested to meet the person responsible for the headlines on her columns therein, as they were, she said, most unlike the Dear Abby headlines in any other paper (and there were scores of them) that published her. I believe she used the adjective “colorful.” Thus it was that I came to shake the hand of the woman who’d comforted more brokenhearted lovers than all of the booze in all of the gin joints this side of Casablanca. In our brief conversation, though, I neglected to ask Abby what I might do about my new wife, to whom I was experiencing greater difficulty adjusting than to my new city.

The features department was located next to the much smaller arts and entertainment department, and toward the end of my projected six-month stint at the Times, I had an unobstructed view of a parade of little blue-haired ladies in tennis shoes coming by to interview for the recently vacated art critic position. It was a freelance position, actually, the Times art critic was not on staff, and as I watched the dilettantes and Sunday watercolorists sashay in and out, I remember thinking that visual art in Seattle was about to be smothered with a perfumed hankie. The threat had nothing to do with gender, mind you (women such as Barbara Rose, Lucy R. Lippard, and Rosalind E. Krauss were already among the most illuminating modernist critics in the business), but, rather, that these would-be arbiters of taste gave off a vibe clearly indicating an approach that would be reactive rather than analytical; that when evaluating art they’d consistently favor the traditional over the unfamiliar, the pretty over the rigorous, the decorative over the expressive, the fully clothed over the naked, the prudent over the bold.

At some point in the lamentation, it also occurred to me that once I started grad school — I’d been accepted by the University of Washington — I’d still need to augment the modest salary Susan was commanding from the brokerage firm where she’d just been hired. So, bending once again to impulse, and maybe even imagining myself a knight on a white donkey, I gathered a sampling of the art reviews I’d written for the Proscript at RPI, strolled into the office next door and plopped them down on the desk of arts and entertainment editor Louis R. Guzzo. “Why not me?” I asked.

Why not, indeed? A month or so later, after giving myself a crash course in Northwest art history (it helped a bit that we’d discussed painters Mark Tobey and Morris Graves in my aesthetic classes at RPI), I was being paid to look at paintings and sculptures, to think seriously about them, and propagate my opinions thereof, never mind that those opinions were only intermittently supported by deep knowledge or keen insight.

Soon there was another development. Lou Guzzo’s right-hand man, the assistant arts and entertainment editor, left for greener pastures (though what besides Gaddafi’s mania could be greener than Seattle?), and I was offered the job. I would be expected, in addition to my art beat, to attend and review those cultural events that were deemed not blue chip or mainstream enough to warrant Guzzo’s attention; to cover, for example, the UW drama department, various hootenannies, traveling ice shows, pop music, and foreign films. How cool was that?! I set about convincing myself (foolishly, as it turned out) that I could handle the load and still become fluent in Japanese.

Naturally, I accepted the offer. To be a reviewer, even for B-list events, on just about any newspaper is a dream job, and I’d sometimes fantasized about it when reviewing student plays and musical theater at RPI. Now I’d fallen into it like a drunk hobo falling into a vat of champagne. In fact, so many things had fallen into place, one after the other, in the nine months since I’d left Richmond that I began to suspect that Satchmo, Sammy, and Pearl Bailey, never mind the gods, were watching over me, moving the pieces.

And then… and then there was another unexpected development. (Was Pearl Bailey practicing voodoo?) My unsturdy shoulder had been to the arts wheel a scant few weeks when Lou Guzzo was hospitalized with a hemorrhaging ulcer. He’d come close to dying (easy with those pins, Pearl!), and wouldn’t return to work for nearly two months, during which time I, a raw rookie, was the arts and entertainment department of the Seattle Times, B-list and A-list, the whole enchilada: talk about a baptism by fire! And that, patient reader, is how Tommy Rotten came to publish authoritative critiques of the first opera and the first symphony concert he’d ever in his life attended.

For its mid-winter concert, my symphonic cherry popper, the Seattle Symphony, had announced a Rossini program. It was a vaguely familiar name, Rossini, but I could no more have identified one of his compositions — What? Rossini wrote the William Tell Overture? I would have sworn that was Tonto — than I could have named the stars in the Crab Nebula. Nothing to do but head to the downtown branch of the public library and look him up. (Yes, the library: in 1962, “google” was the word for something obnoxious that clowns did with their eyes.)

There was a picture of Gioachino Rossini in a music encyclopedia, and I was immediately struck by how closely the composer resembled movie actor Robert Mitchum. They each, Rossini and Mitchum, projected an air of dreamy menace, primarily due to their heavy lids. “Bedroom eyes,” some might describe them, although in Mitchum’s case it was rumored that he looked perpetually sleepy because he was perpetually stoned, an opinion advanced by Hollywood gossipmongers after the actor was busted for smoking pot. There was no mention in Rossini’s biography of the composer having suffered a similar invasion of his privacy, but he was widely known as a “gourmand,” a polite French word for someone with the chronic munchies, and it’s easy to envision him raiding the pantry late at night in search of chocolate chip cookies. Moreover, Rossini had a reputation as a cynical wit and for hiding behind a mask of indifference, both characteristic of the film noir sensibility for which Mitchum was longtime poster boy. For composing the Stabat Mater, the ten-part work the Seattle Symphony performed that snowy evening, Rossini had received from his patron a gold, diamond-encrusted snuffbox (Really? “Snuff”?) and the music itself is as dark and expressionist as the best film noir, except for one quartet part that is strangely almost danceable.

Okay, I may have been reaching, but what else could I do? At the end of the concert I rushed back to the office and pecked out for the next day’s paper my assigned review, but because the musical knowledge I’d suddenly acquired in my library research was hardly adequate to fill the allotted space, I padded the critique with a few comparisons of Rossini and Robert Mitchum, their personas and their work, on a variety of fronts, real and imagined. Mostly imagined. Then I waited.

I waited for the reaction — but there was none. Not a single symphony buff threatened to cancel her subscription, and although Rossini’s Stabat Mater was based on a Roman Catholic poem about Mary’s grief for Jesus, not one irate Christian petitioned to have me crucified. Curious. Especially so because my art reviews, which were a tad more conventional and a lot more knowledgeable, were generating considerable feedback. At any rate I decided to take silence as an affirmation, and thus encouraged, in my virgin review of an opera (I’ve forgotten which one) a couple of weeks later, I hinted that the performance would have been more riveting, more relevant had the chorus worn black leather jackets, the soprano been a biker chick, and the basso profundo a Hells Angel on speed. Impressed by the music but bored by the opera’s stuffy, stilted ambience, I seem to recall expressing regret there hadn’t been Harley-Davidsons onstage.

Doubtlessly influenced both by my recent purchase of a motorcycle and my abiding admiration for The Threepenny Opera (when I’d seen the über-edgy show in New York in 1961, it had knocked my socks off and fanned searing anti-establishment flames in my heart — though, of course, by traditional standards the Threepenny is an opera in name only), this review, like the Rossini, provoked not even the mildest public rebuke. Mind you, I wasn’t actively soliciting punishment: I, a thin-skinned Cancerian, harbor not one masochistic cell in my body. My critiques were unorthodox simply because when confronted by my supreme ignorance of the subjects I was obliged to evaluate, I had little choice but to play the one wild ace that was always up my sleeve: my imagination.

My next symphony review, one in which I riffed on a piece by the Brazilian Villa-Lobos, liberally sprinkling my article with phrases such as “dense underbrush,” “hot oozing rhythms,” “predatory jungle cries,” and “sophisticated savagery,” also failed to elicit reader fury: nary a hot oozing letter or a predatory phone call. I did, however, receive soon afterward an invitation to a private afternoon cocktail party at the home of Milton Katims, the esteemed conductor of the Seattle Symphony orchestra. What the…?

The Katims occupied a large, low, modern ranch-style house in an upscale neighborhood. I drove around the block two times before parking and wouldn’t have stopped at all had not Susan insisted. My friends in Seattle were scruffy bohemians who frequented the Blue Moon Tavern, but Susan, pining for her Virginia royalist milieu, could scarcely wait to rub shoulders once again with gentry, and never mind that she knew even less about classical music than I.

From the moment I’d opened the invitation, I smelled a rat, albeit a rat with a dab of Chanel No. 5 behind its ears. Surely it was a setup. Once Maestro Katims and his high-toned pals had me cornered in unfamiliar territory, a couple of cocktails under my belt, I’d be grilled, exposed, shamed, ridiculed, and diced into pieces small enough to fit on a canapé. Susan disagreed or didn’t care. She pestered, cajoled, and finally — as some women do so effectively — loosened my resolve with the vaginal wrench.

A uniformed maid admitted us. The clink of glassware and chirp of lighthearted conversation reverberated off elegantly simple furnishings, mostly in beige and white. Near the center of the living room sat a grand piano the size of a gunboat. By the time I’d downed my second cocktail, I could picture it steaming into Havana’s harbor, firing a barrage of Beethoven and Brahms at the Plaza de la Revolución. While Susan mingled, drinking too much and bragging dishonestly about her family back in Richmond, I adopted a nonchalant yet defiant stance on the starboard side of the piano, yet not so close to it that a guest might inquire if I might play.

Before long, the distinguished maestro himself came over, pumped my hand, smiling all the while, and confessed that he and other members of the symphonic and operatic circles had wished to meet the person responsible for those “uh, most unusual reviews” in the Times. I believe he used the adjective “colorful.” Never in his career had Katims read anything quite like them, he confessed. It occurred to me then that the culturati were not so much angered or disgusted by me, not so much contemptuous as they were… well, dumbfounded; that they suspected, bless them, that perhaps I was less an ignoramus than some kind of loose cannon.

Great! I decided that it would be to my advantage to assume the role. The previous day, I’d heard on the radio that a woman in Issaquah, a suburb of Seattle, had been arrested for telling fortunes without a license, so when a member of the opera board asked my favorite opera, I avoided the trap by going on at some length about a libretto I was writing entitled The Gypsy of Issaquah, improvising a melodramatic plot on the spot. You must admit it had an operatic ring.

And when another doyenne inquired more innocently if I had a favorite cocktail, I answered, “Oh, definitely the gin greasy.” She looked blank. “It’s Beefeater and mayonnaise,” I explained. After that, I was pretty much left alone.

The “gin greasy” was no joke. It’s an actual drink. Or it was. Once. Briefly. It did attempt a comeback but, for better or worse, did not succeed.

One Wednesday night, after having dropped Lynda at her dorm just ahead of curfew, I was sitting in my Fan district apartment quietly listening to Billie Holiday or Chet Baker when a couple of friends came to the door, bearing a bottle of Beefeater. I welcomed them enthusiastically, then — since none of us was attracted to drinking gin straight — went in search of something to mix with it.

Upon peering in my refrigerator, Sherlock Holmes would have instantly surmised that (a) I was a bachelor, (b) was less than affluent, and (c) had very specific tastes. The contents of said appliance consisted almost exclusively of ingredients for the swift preparation of my favorite repast: the tomato sandwich. In addition to several tomatoes, a loaf of Wonder Bread, and three (yes, three) jars of Hellman’s mayonnaise, there was in the refrigerator only peanut butter, cottage cheese, and the blueberry pancake syrup that I occasionally drizzled over my breakfast toast. Hmmm? After serious consultation, the three of us were forced to agree that as mixer for the Beefeater, fruit syrup was the logical choice. You yourself may have concurred.

Well, it was awful! Truly terrible. Please, take the advice of one who has gone where no man has gone before him: never pour your gin — cheap or expensive — into blueberry pancake syrup, not unless you’re consumed with self-hatred, have had your taste buds surgically removed, or are a candidate for the title of Epicurean Jackass of the Month.

Okay, back to the drawing board. “How about,” I ventured, only half in jest, “the mayonnaise?” It made sense. After all there are few edible substances on this earth that mayonnaise cannot improve. I believed that then and I believe it now. My companions were understandably skeptical, yet no one moved to interfere when I loaded a heaping tablespoon of Hellman’s into the blender, then added three jiggers of gin.

Once blended, the mixture resembled a young bride’s failed attempt at béarnaise sauce: pale yellow, thin, and runny, like the contents of a zombie’s chamber pot. I filled, in the absence of cocktail glasses, a trio of paper cups with the stuff. Collectively, we closed our eyes and sipped. Then, sipped again. It wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. Even my friends, who lacked the wisdom to recognize that mayonnaise (invented by wanton nymphs who once frolicked in a grotto on the slopes of Mount Olympus) is the true and authentic food of the gods, even my pals had to concede that the gin greasy (as we’d dubbed it) was entirely drinkable — although it may have only been in comparison to the blueberry-pancake-syrup martini. In any case, we finished off the entire bottle of Beefeater that way and felt the better for it.

Despite its favorable impression, twenty-five years were to slide by before another gin greasy glazed my palate, this time with a less favorable reception. One afternoon in the late 1980s, I was sitting with Curt Boozer in the bar at Cafe Sport, a restaurant in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, when something prompted me to mention the curious cocktail. Curt, the son of pro basketball star Bob Boozer, hadn’t exactly led a sheltered life, but he looked incredulous as I recounted my gin greasy adventure. When I persisted in extolling the concoction’s virtues, however, he became not merely convinced but intrigued, eventually insisting that we consume one then and there.

The bartender was not receptive. He thought we were just being alcohol silly, and anyway, there was no mayonnaise at his station. Determined now, we appealed to our waitress. Coleen was a stand-up girl and she knew Curt and me fairly well, as we both dined at the Sport two or three times a week and were generous tippers. When she found a free moment, Coleen went to the kitchen, fetched a small bowl of mayonnaise, presented it to the bartender, who then, scowling all the while, mixed the drinks according to my instructions.

When Coleen brought the finished product to our booth, one glance told me these were not the storied gin greasies of my youth. This version was less yellow than green. Green, green, green, green: did the barman think us supporters of Muammar Gaddafi? It just wasn’t right.

Curt was puzzled by my hesitation. He was starting to suspect I’d been pulling his leg all along. So, with my credibility on the line, I toasted him, and we each took a swallow. Then we made a face that would have fit right in on the facade of Notre-Dame. Come back, blueberry pancake syrup, all is forgiven!

It turned out that the only mayonnaise in Cafe Sport’s kitchen was herbed mayonnaise. Herbed! Laced with tarragon and basil and God knows what other pungent weed. I can’t say whether the nymphs on Mount Olympus would have been appalled, but it took a while for Curt to trust me again, for me to trust Cafe Sport, and as for another entry in the Gin Greasy Diaries, well, that seems to have been indefinitely postponed.