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| "But I must see youI cannot leave you hereI must... |
06-12-2010 |
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"But I must see youI cannot leave you hereI must see you!"
"You've seen meIf you love me, Daddy, you'll let me be
The most perfect girl of all, one's daughter, had been raped
All he could think of was the two times she had been rapedFour people blown up by her--so grotesque, so out of scale, it was unimaginableTo see the faces, to hear the names, to learn that one was a mother of three, the second just married, the third about to retireDid she know what or who they were He could not imagine any of itOnly the rape was imaginableImagine the rape and the rest is blocked out: their faces remain out of sight, their spectacles, their hairdos, their families, their jobs, their birth dates, their addresses, their blameless innocence
Not one Fred Conlon--four Fred ConlonsThe rape obscured everything elseConcentrate on the rape
What were the details? Who were these men? Was it somebody who was part of that life, somebody who was against the war and on the run like her, was it somebody she knew or was it a stranger, a bum, an addict, a madman who'd followed her home and into the hallway with a knife? What went on? Had they held her down and threatened her with a knife? Had they beaten chanel logo earrings her? What did they make her do? Were there no people to help her? Just what did they make her do? He would kill themShe had to tell him who they wereI want to find out who those people areI want to know where it happenedI want to know when it happenedWe're going to go back and find those people and I'm going to kill them!
Now that he could not stop imagining the rapes, there was no relief, not for one second, from the desire to go out and kill somebodyWith all the walls he'd built up, she gets rapedAll of that protection and he could not prevent her from getting rapedTell me everything about it! I'm going to kill them!
But it was too lateHe could do nothing to make it not happenFor it to not happen, he would have had to kill them before it happened--and how could he manage that? Swede Levov? Off the playing field, when had Swede Levov laid a hand on anyone? Nothing so repelled this muscular man as the use of force
The places she was inHow did she survive without people? That place she was in nowWere all her places like that or even worse? All right, she should not have done what she did, should never have done it, yet to think of how she'd had to live___
He was sitting at his see by chloe bag deskHe had to get some relief from seeing what he did not want to seeThe factory was emptyThere was only the night watchman who'd come on duty with his dogsHe was down in the parking lot, patrolling the perimeter of the double-thick chain-link fence, a fence topped off, after the riots, with supplemental scrolls of razor ribbon that were to admonish the boss each and every morning he pulled in and parked his car, "Leave! Leave! Leave!" He was sitting alone in the last factory left in the worst city in the worldAnd it was worse even than sitting there during the riots, Springfield Avenue in flames, South Orange Avenue in flames, Bergen Street under attack, sirens going off, weapons firing, snipers from rooftops blasting the street lights, looting crowds crazed in the street, kids carrying off radios and lamps and television sets, men toting armfuls of clothing, women pushing baby carriages heavily loaded with cartons of liquor and cases of beer, people pushing pieces of new furniture right down the center of the street, stealing sofas, cribs, kitchen tables, stealing washers and dryers and ovens--stealing not in the shadows but out in the openTheir strength is tremendous, their teamwork louis cartier is flawlessThe shattering of the glass windows is thrillingThe not paying for things is intoxicatingThe American appetite for ownership is dazzling to beholdEverything free that everyone craves, a wanton free-for-all free of charge, everyone uncontrollable with thinking, Here it is! Let it come! In Newark's burning Mardi Gras streets, a force is released that feels redemptive, something purifying is happening, something spiritual and revolutionary perceptible to allThe surreal vision of household appliances out under the stars and agleam in the glow of the flames incinerating the Central Ward promises the liberation of all mankindYes, here it is, let it come, yes, the magnificent opportunity, one of human history's rare transmogrifying moments: the old ways of suffering are burning blessedly away in the flames, never again to be resurrected, instead to be superseded, within only hours, by suffering that will be so gruesome, so monstrous, so unrelenting and abundant, that its abatement will take the next five hundred yearsThe fire this time--and next? After the fire? NothingNothing in Newark ever again
And all the while the Swede is there in the factory with Vicky, waiting with just black chanel quilted Vicky beside him for his place to go up, waiting for police with pistols, for soldiers with submachine guns, waiting for protection from the Newark police, the state police, the National Guard--from someone--before they burn to the ground the business built by his father, entrusted to him by his fatherand that wasn't as bad as thisA police car opens fire into the bar across the street, out his window he sees a woman go down, buckle and go down, shot dead right on the street, a woman killed in front of his eyesand not even that was as bad as thisPeople screaming, shouting, firemen pinned to the ground by gunfire so they cannot fight the flames; explosions, the sound suddenly of bongo drums, in the middle of the night a volley of pistol shots blowing out every one of the street-level windows displaying Vicky's signsand this is worse by farAnd then they left, everyone, fled the smoldering rubble--manufacturers, retailers, the banks, the shop owners, the corporations, the department stores; in the South Ward, on the residential blocks, there are two moving vans per day on every street throughout the next year, homeowners fleeing, deserting the modest houses they treasure for whatever they can fake chanel bag |
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| There are a hundred different ways to hold... |
06-11-2010 |
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| There are a hundred different ways to hold someone's handThere are the ways you hold a child's hand, the ways you hold a friend's hand, the ways you hold an elderly parent's hand, the ways you hold the hands of the departing and of the dying and of the deadHe held Dawn's hand the way a man holds the hand of a woman he adores, with all that excitement passing into his grip, as though pressure on the palm of the hand effects a transference of souls, as though the interlinking of fingers symbolizes every intimacyHe held Dawn's hand as though he possessed no information about the condition of his life
But then he thought: She wants to be back with me, tooBut she can't because it's all too awfulWhat else can she do? She must think she's poisonShe gave birth to a murdererShe has to put on a new crown
He should have listened to his father and fendi b never married herHe had defied him, just that one time, but that was all it had taken--that did itHis father had said, "There are hundreds and thousands of lovely Jewish girls, but you have to find herYou found one down in South Carolina, Dunleavy, and finally you saw the light and got rid of herSo now you come home and find Dwyer up hereWhy, Seymour?" The Swede could not say to him, "The girl in South Carolina was beautiful, but not half as beautiful as Dawn He could not say to him, "The authority of beauty is a very irrational thing He was twenty-three years old and could only say, "I'm in love with her
"'In love,' what does that mean? What is 'in love' going to do for you when you have a child? How are you going to raise a child? As $ a Catholic? As a Jew? No, you are going to raise a child who won't f, be one thing or the other--all vintage chanel jewelry because you are 'in love' {? His father was rightThat was what happenedThey raised a child who was neither Catholic nor Jew, who instead was first a stutterer, then a killer, then a JainHe had tried all his life never to do the wrong thing, and that was what he had doneAll the wrongness that he had locked away in himself, that he had buried as deep as a man could bury it, had come out anyway, because a girl was beautifulThe most serious thing in his life, seemingly from the time he was born, was to prevent the suffering of those he loved, to be kind to people, a kind person through and throughThat was why he had brought Dawn to meet secretly with his father at the factory office--to try to resolve the religious impasse and avoid making either of them unhappyThe meeting had been suggested by his father: face to face, between "the girl," as Lou omega constellation Levov charitably referred to her around the Swede, and "the ogre," as the girl called himDawn hadn't been afraid; to the Swede's astonishment she agreed"I walked out on that runway in a bathing suit, didn't I? It wasn't easy, in case you didn't knowTwenty-five thousand peopleIt's not a very dignified feeling, in a bright white bathing suit and bright white high heels, being looked at by twenty-five thousand peopleI appeared in a parade in a bathing suitMy father almost diedI taped the back of that damn bathing suit to my skin, Seymour, so it wouldn't ride up on me--masking tape on my own behindBut I took the job of Miss New Jersey and so I did the workEvery town in the stateFifty dollars an appearanceBut if you work hard, the money adds up, so I did itWorking hard at something totally different that scared me to death--but I did itThe tiffany silver jewelry Christmas I broke the news to my parents about Miss Union County--you think that was fun? But I did itAnd if I could do all that, I can do this, because this isn't being a silly girl on a float, this is my life, my entire futureThis is for keeps! But you'll be there, won't you? I cannot go there by myselfYou have to be there!"
She was so incredibly gutsy there was no choice but to say, "Where else would I be?" On the way down to the factory, he warned her not to mention rosary beads or the cross or heaven and to stay away from Jesus as much as possible"If he asks if there are any crosses hanging in the house, say no
"But that's a lie
"Dawnie, it won't help anything if you say threeOne is just the same as threeIt gets your point over
"And you don't have to mention the other stuff
"What other stuff?"
"The Virgin Mary
"That is not louis vuitton neo cabby stu |
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| "You do your hair differently," he said, his... |
06-10-2010 |
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"You do your hair differently," he said, his heart beating as if he had uttered something irrevocable
"Differently? No?it's only that I do it as best I can when I'm without Nastasia
"Nastasia; but isn't she with you?"
"No; I'm aloneFor two days it was not worth while to bring her
"You're alone?at the Parker House?"
She looked at him with a flash of her old malice"Does it strike you as dangerous?"
"No; not dangerous?"
"But unconventional? I see; I suppose it is She considered a moment"I hadn't thought of it, because I've just done something so much more unconventional The faint tinge of irony lingered in her eyes"I've just refused to take back a sum of money?that belonged to me
Archer sprang up and moved a gucci watch bands step or two awayShe had furled her parasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravelPresently he came back and stood before her
"Some one?has come here to meet you?"
"Yes
"With this offer?"
She nodded
"And you refused?because of the conditions?"
"I refused," she said after a moment
He sat down by her again"What were the conditions?"
"Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of his table now and then
There was another interval of silenceArcher's heart had slammed itself shut in the queer way it had, and he sat vainly groping for a word
"He wants you back?at any price?"
"Well?a considerable priceAt least the sum is considerable for me
He paused again, beating about the question he purse logo felt he must put
"It was to meet him here that you came?"
She stared, and then burst into a laugh"Meet him?my husband? HERE? At this season he's always at Cowes or Baden
"He sent some one?"
"Yes
"With a letter?"
She shook her headI don't think I've had more than one letter from him The allusion brought the colour to her cheek, and it reflected itself in Archer's vivid blush
"Why does he never write?"
"Why should he? What does one have secretaries for?"
The young man's blush deepenedShe had pronounced the word as if it had no more significance than any other in her vocabularyFor a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask: "Did he send his secretary, then?" But the remembrance of Count Olenski's only 18k omega watch letter to his wife was too present to himHe paused again, and then took another plunge
"And the person?"?
"The emissary? The emissary," Madame Olenska rejoined, still smiling, "might, for all I care, have left already; but he has insisted on waiting till this evening
"And you came out here to think the chance over?"
"I came out to get a breath of airThe hotel's too stiflingI'm taking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth
They sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the people passing along the pathFinally she turned her eyes again to his face and said: "You're not changed
He felt like answering: "I was, till I saw you again;" but instead he stood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy chanel big sweltering park
"This is horribleWhy shouldn't we go out a little on the bay? There's a breeze, and it will be coolerWe might take the steamboat down to Point Arley She glanced up at him hesitatingly and he went on: "On a Monday morning there won't be anybody on the boatMy train doesn't leave till evening: I'm going back to New YorkWhy shouldn't we?" he insisted, looking down at her; and suddenly he broke out: "Haven't we done all we could?"
"Oh"?she murmured againShe stood up and reopened her sunshade, glancing about her as if to take counsel of the scene, and assure herself of the impossibility of remaining in itThen her eyes returned to his face"You mustn't say things like that to me," she said
"I'll say anything you like; or chanel logo earrings nothing |
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| Our threesome seemed right
"Well, all this," I... |
06-09-2010 |
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| Our threesome seemed right
"Well, all this," I told her, as we stood there just swaying together to the one-man band closing the day down singing, "Dreamwhen you're feelin' blue,that's the thing to do"--"all this I did not know," I told her, "on the harvest moon hayride in October 1948
"I didn't want you to knowI didn't want anybody to knowI didn't want anybody to find out Harold slept in the kitchenThat's why I wouldn't let you undo my braI didn't want you to be my boyfriend and come to pick me up and see where my brother had to sleepIt had nothing to do with you, sweetheart
"Well, I feel better for being told thatI wish you'd told me sooner
"I wish I had," she said, and first we were laughing and then, unexpectedly, Joy began to cry and, perhaps because of that damn song, "Dream," which we used to dance to with the lights turned down in somebody or other's basement back when the Pied Pipers still had Jo Stafford and used to sing it the way it's supposed to be sung--in locked harmony, to that catatonic forties beat, with the ethereal tinkle of the xylophone hollowly sounding behind them-- or perhaps because Alan Meisner had become a Republican and second baseman Bert Bergman had become a corpse and Ira Pos-ner, instead of shining shoes at the newsstand outside the Essex County courthouse, had escaped his Dostoyevskian family and become a psychiatrist, because Julius Pincus had disabling tremors from the drug that prevented the rejection from his body of the fourteen-year-old girl's kidney keeping him alive and because Mendy Gurlik was still a omega watches for sale horny seventeen-year-old kid and because Joy's brother, Harold, had slept for ten years in a kitchen and because Schrimmer had married a woman nearly half his age who had a body that didn't make him want to slit his throat but to whom he now had to explain every single thing about the past, or perhaps because I seemed alone in having wound up with no children, grandchildren, or, in Minskoff's words, "anything like that," or perhaps because after all these years of separation this reuniting of perfect strangers had all gone on a little too long, a load of unruly emotion began sliding around in me, too, and there I was thinking again of the Swede, of the notorious significance that an outlaw daughter had thrust on him and his family during the Vietnam WarA man whose discontents were barely known to himself, awakening in middle age to the horror of self-reflectionAll that normalcy interrupted by murderAll the small problems any family expects to encounter exaggerated by something so impossible ever to reconcileThe disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each generation's getting smarter--smarter for knowing the inadequacies and limitations of the generations before--out of each new generation's breaking away from the parochialism a little further, out of the desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre-America insecurities and the old, constraining tiffany heart tag necklace obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals
And then the loss of the daughter, the fourth American generation, a daughter on the run who was to have been the perfected image of himself as he had been the perfected image of his father, and his father the perfected image of his father's fatherthe angry, rebarbative spitting-out daughter with no interest whatever in being the next successful Levov, flushing him out of hiding as if he were a fugitive--initiating the Swede into the displacement of another America entirely, the daughter and the decade blasting to smithereens his particular form of Utopian thinking, the plague America infiltrating the Swede's castle and there infecting everyoneThe daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral--into the indigenous American berserk
The old intergenerational give-and-take of the country-that-used-to-be, when everyone knew his role and took the rules dead seriously, the acculturating back-and-forth that all of us here grew up with, the ritual postimmigrant struggle for success turning pathological in, of all places, the gentleman farmer's castle of our superordinary SwedeA guy stacked like a deck of cards for things to unfold entirely differentlyIn no way prepared for what is going to hit himHow could he, with all his carefully calibrated goodness, have known that the stakes of living obediently were so high? Obedience is embraced to lower mulberry bags the stakesRuns his business like a charmHandles his handful of an old man well enoughHe was really living it out, his version of paradiseThis is how successful people liveThey're good citizensGod is smiling down on themThere are problems, they adjustAnd then everything changes and it becomes impossibleNothing is smiling down on anybodyAnd who can adjust then? Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossibleBut who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? NobodyThe tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy--that is every man's tragedy
He kept peering in from outside at his own lifeThe struggle of his life was to bury this thingBut how could he?
Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed
After all the effervescent strain of resuscitating our class's mid-century innocence--together a hundred aging people recklessly turning back the clock to a time when time's passing was a matter of indifference--with the afternoon's exhilarations finally coming to an end, I began to contemplate the very thing that must have baffled the Swede till the moment he died: how had he become history's plaything? History, American history, the stuff you read about in books and study in school, had made its way balenciaga twiggy out to tranquil, untrafficked Old Rimrock, New Jersey, to countryside where it had not put in an appearance that was notable since Washington's army twice wintered in the highlands adjacent to MorristownHistory, which had made no drastic impingement on the daily life of the local populace since the Revolutionary War, wended its way back out to these cloistered hills and, improbably, with all its predictable unforeseenness, broke helter-skelter into the orderly household of the Seymour Levovs and left the place in a shamblesPeople think of history in the long term, but history, in fact, is a very sudden thing
In earnest, right then and there, while swaying with Joy to that out-of-date music, I began to try to work out for myself what exactly had shaped a destiny unlike any imagined for the famous Weequahic three-letterman back when this music and its sentimental exhortation was right to the point, when the Swede, his neighborhood, his city, and his country were in their exuberant heyday, at the peak of confidence, inflated with every illusion born of hopeWith Joy Helpern once again close in my arms and quietly sobbing to hear the old pop tune enjoining all of us sixty-odd-year-olds, "Dreamand they might come true," I lifted the Swede up onto the stageThat evening at Vincent's, for a thousand different excellent reasons, he could not bring himself to ask me to do thisFor all I know he had no intention of asking me to do thisTo get me to write his story may not have been why he was there at allMaybe it was only why I was there
Basketball was never like balenciaga giant bag t |
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| He was still at Parris Island then, but his... |
06-08-2010 |
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| He was still at Parris Island then, but his mother had described it to him in a three-page letterThe celebration party at the playground back of the school that night, everyone they knew, family friends, school friends, the neighborhood butcher, the grocer, the pharmacist, the tailor, even the bookie from the candy store, all in ecstasy, long lines of staid middle-aged people madly mimicking Carmen Miranda and dancing the conga, one-two-three kick, one-two-three kick, until after two aVictory, victory, victory had come! No more death and war!
His last months of high school, he'd read the paper every night, following the marines across the PacificHe saw the photographs in Life--photographs that haunted his sleep--of the crumpled bodies of dead marines killed on Peleliu, an island in a chain called the PalausAt a place called Bloody Nose Ridge, Japs ferreted in old phosphate mines, who were themselves to be burned to a crisp by the flamethrowers, had cut down hundreds and hundreds of young marines, eighteen-year-olds, nineteen-year-olds, boys barely older than he wasHe had a map up in his room with pins sticking out of it, pins he had inserted to mark where the marines, closing in on Japan, had assaulted from the sea a tiny chloe dior atoll or an island chain where the Japs, dug into coral fortresses, poured forth ferocious mortar and rifle fireOkinawa was invaded on April 1, 1945, Easter Sunday of his senior year and just two days after he'd hit a double and a home run in a losing game against West SideThe Sixth Marine Division overran Yontan, one of the two island air bases, within three hours of wading ashoreTook the Motobu Peninsula in thirteen daysJust off the Okinawa beach, two kamikaze pilots attacked the flagship carrier Bunker Hill on May 14--the day after the Swede went four for four against Irvington High, a single, a triple, and two doubles--plunging their planes, packed with bombs, into the flight deck jammed with American planes all gassed up to take off and laden with ammunitionThe blaze climbed a thousand feet into the sky, and in the explosive firestorm that raged for eight hours, four hundred sailors and aviators diedMarines of the Sixth Division captured Sugar Loaf Hill, May 14, 1945--three more doubles for the Swede in a winning game against East Side--maybe the worst, most savage single day of fighting in marine historyMaybe the worst in human historyThe caves and tunnels that honeycombed Sugar Loaf Hill at the southern end of the chanel bags pink island, where the Japs had fortified and hidden their army, were blasted with flamethrowers and then sealed with grenades and demolition chargesHand-to-hand fighting went on day and night
Jap riflemen and machine gunners, chained to their positions and unable to retreat, fought until they diedThe day the Swede graduated from Weequahic High, June 22--having racked up the record number of doubles in a single season by a Newark City League player--the Sixth Marine Division raised the American flag over Okinawa's second air base, Kadena, and the final staging area for the invasion of Japan was securedFrom April 1, 1945, to June 21, 1945--coinciding, give or take a few days, with the Swede's last and best season as a high school first baseman--an island some fifty miles long and about ten miles wide had been occupied by American forces at the cost of 15, 000 American livesThe Japanese dead, military and civilian, numbered 141, 000To conquer the Japanese homeland to the north and end the war meant the number of dead on each side could run ten, twenty, thirty times as greatAnd still the Swede went out and, to be a part of the final assault on Japan, joined the UMarines, who on Okinawa, as on Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Guam, and Guadalcanal, had chanel handbag 2.55 absorbed casualties that were stupefyingKnocked us around every which way, called us all kinds of names, physically and mentally murdered us for three months, and it was the best experience I ever had in my lifeTook it on as a challenge and I did itMy name became "Ee-oh That's the way the southern drill instructors pronounced Levov, dropping the L and the two v's--all consonants overboard--and lengthening out the two vowels"Ee-oh!" Like a donkey braying"Ee-oh!"
"Yes, sir!" Major Dunleavy, the athletic director, big guy, Purdue football coach, stops the platoon one day and the hefty sergeant we called Sea Bag shouts for Private Ee-oh and out I run with my helmet on, and my heart was pounding because I thought my mother had diedI was just a week away from being assigned to Camp Lejeune, up in North Carolina, for advanced weaponry training, but Major Dunleavy pulled the plug on that and so I never got to fire a barAnd that was why I'd joined the marines--wanted more than anything to fire the bar from flat on my belly with the barrel elevated on a mountEighteen years old and that was the Marine Corps to me, the rapid-firing, air-cooled 0 caliber machine gunWhat a patriotic kid that innocent kid wasWanted to fire the tank chanel wallet killer, the hand-held bazooka rocket, wanted to prove to myself I wasn't scared and could do that stuffGrenades, flamethrowers, crawling under barbed wire, blowing up bunkers, attacking cavesWanted to hit the beach in a duckWanted to help win the warBut Major Dunleavy had got a letter from his friend in Newark, what an athlete this Levov was, glowing letter about how wonderful I was, and so they reassigned me and made me a drill instructor to keep me on the island to play ball--by then they'd dropped the atomic bomb and the war was over anyway"You're in my unit, Swede A great break, reallyOnce my hair grew in, I was a human being againInstead of being called "shithead" all the time or "shithead-move-your-ass," suddenly I was a DI the recruits called SirWhat the DI called the recruits was You People! Hit the deck, You People! On your feet, You People! Double time, You People, double time hup! Great, great experience for a kid from Keer AvenueGuys I would never have met in my lifeAccents from all over the placeSome farm boys from Texas and the Deep South I couldn't even understandHard boys, poor boys, lots of high school athletesUsed to live with the boxersLived with the recreation gangAnother Jewish guy, Manny Rabinowitz from gucci backpack Altoon |
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| No nonsense, no commonplace stood between her and... |
06-07-2010 |
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| No nonsense, no commonplace stood between her and the harshest truths
Yet Barry enjoyed herSince they couldn't have been more dissimilar, perhaps theirs was one of those so-called attractions of oppositesIn Barry, there was such thoughtfulness and kindly concern--ever since he was a kid, and the poorest kid the Swede had known, he'd been a diligent, upright gentleman, a solid catcher in baseball, eventually the class valedictorian, who, after his stint in the service, went to NYU on the GI BillThat's where he met and jnarried Marcia SchwartzIt was hard for the Swede to understand how a strongly built, not unhandsome guy like Barry could free himself at the age of twenty-two from the desire to be with anybody else in this world but Marcia Schwartz, already so opinionated as a college girl that the Swede had to battle in her presence to stay awakeSat there and listened to herDidn't at all seem to care that she was a slob, dressed even in college like somebody's grandmother, and with those buoyant eyes, unnervingly enlarged by the heavy spectaclesDawn's opposite in every wayFor Marcia to have spawned a self-styled revolutionary--yes, had Merry been raised within earshot of Marcia's mouthbut Dawn? Pretty, petite, unpolitical Dawn--why Dawn? Where do you look for the cause? Where is the explanation for this mismatch? omega watch replica Was it nothing more than a trick played by their genes? During the March on the Pentagon, the march to stop the war in Vietnam, Marcia Umanoff had been thrown into a paddy wagon with some twenty other women and, very much to her liking, locked up overnight in a Djail, where she didn't stop talking protest talk till they were all let out in the morningIf Merry had been her daughter, things would make senseIf only Merry had fought a war of words, fought the world with words alone, like this strident yentaThen Merry's would be not a story that begins and ends with a bomb but another story entirelyA bomb tells the whole fucking story
Hard to grasp Barry's marrying that womanMaybe it had to do with his family's being so poorWho knows? Her animus, her superior airs, the sense she gave of being unclean, everything intolerable to the Swede in a friend, let alone in a mate--well, those were the very characteristics that seemed to enliven Barry's appreciation of his wifeIt was a puzzle, it truly was, how one perfectly reasonable man could adore what a second perfectly reasonable man couldn't abide for half an hourBut just because it was a puzzle, the Swede tried his best to restrain his aversion and neutralize his judgment and see Marcia Umanoff as simply an oddball from another world, the academic world, the intellectual chanel earrings world, where always to be antagonizing people and challenging whatever they said was apparently looked on with admirationWhat it was they got out of being so negative was beyond him; it seemed to him far more productive when everybody grew up and got over thatStill, that didn't mean that Marcia was really out to needle people and work them over just because she was so often needling people and working them overHe couldn't call her vicious once he'd recognized that this was the way she was accustomed to socializing in Manhattan; moreover, he couldn't believe that Barry Umanoff--who at one time was closer to him than his own kid brother--could marry someone viciousAs usual, the Swede's default reaction to not being able to fathom cause and effect (as opposed to his father's reflexive suspiciousness) was to fall back on a lifelong strategy and become tolerant and charitableAnd so he was content to chalk up Marcia as "difficult," allowing at worst, "Well, let's just say she's no bargain
But Dawn loathed herLoathed her because she knew herself to be loathed by Marcia for having been Miss New JerseyDawn couldn't stand people who made that story the whole of her story, and Marcia was especially exasperating because the pleasure of explaining Dawn by a story that had never explained her--and 34i hardly explained her prada logo now--was so smugly exhibitedWhen they'd all first met, Dawn told the Umanoffs about her father's heart attack and how no money was coming into the house and how she realized that the door to college was about to be slammed shut on her brotherthe whole scholarship story, but none of it made Miss New Jersey seem like anything but a joke to Marcia UmanoffMarcia barely bothered to hide the fact that when she looked at Dawn Levov she saw no one there, that she thought Dawn pretentious for raising cows, thought she was doing it for the image--it wasn't a serious operation Dawn ran twelve, fourteen hours a day, seven days a week; as far as Marcia was concerned it was a pretty House and Garden fantasy contrived by a rich, silly woman who lived, not in stinky-smelling New Jersey, no, no, who lived in the countryDawn loathed Marcia because of her undisguised superiority to the Levovs' wealth, to their taste, to the rural way of life they loved, and loathed her beyond loathing because she was convinced that privately Marcia was altogether pleased about what Merry was alleged to have done
The privileged place in Marcia's feelings went to the Vietnamese--the North VietnameseShe never for a moment compromised her political convictions or her compassionate comprehension of international affairs, not even when she saw from six inches chanel wallet away the misery that had befallen her husband's oldest friendAnd this was what led Dawn to make the accusations that the Swede knew to be false, not because he could swear to Marcia's honorableness but because for him the probity of Barry Umanoff was beyond question"I will not have her in this house! A pzghas more humanity in her than that woman does! I don't care how many degrees she has--she is callous and she is blind! She is the most blind, self-involved, narrow-minded, obnoxious so-called intelligent person I have ever met in my life and I will not have her in my house!"
"Well, I can't very well ask Barry to come by himself
"Then Barry can't come
"Barry has to comeMy father gets a terrific boot out of seeing Barry hereHe expects to see Barry hereIt's Barry, Dawn, who got me to Schevitz
"But that woman took Merry inDon't you see? That's where Merry went! To New York--to them! That's who gave her a hiding place! Somebody did, somebody had toA real bomb thrower in her house--that excited herShe hid her from us, hid Merry from her parents when she needed her parents mostMarcia Umanoff is the one who sent her underground!"
"Merry didn't want to stay there even beforeShe stayed exactly twice at Barry'sThe third time she never showed upShe went somewhere else to stay and never showed up at the Umanoffs' miu miu nappa agai |
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| Moreover, he was as illiterate as old MrsMingott,... |
06-06-2010 |
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| Moreover, he was as illiterate as old MrsMingott, and considered "fellows who wrote" as the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures; and no one rich enough to influence his opinion had ever questioned it
Newland Archer had been aware of these things ever since he could remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his universeHe knew that there were societies where painters and poets and novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought after as Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of Merimee (whose "Lettres a une Inconnue" was one of his inseparables), of Thackeray, Browning or William MorrisBut such things were inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think ofArcher knew most of the "fellows who wrote," the musicians and the painters: he met them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were beginning to come into existenceHe enjoyed them there, and was bored with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away with the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where they would naturally merge
He was reminded of this by trying to picture the tiffany jewelry wholesale society in which the Countess Olenska had lived and suffered, and also?perhaps?tasted mysterious joysHe remembered with what amusement she had told him that her grandmother Mingott and the Wellands objected to her living in a "Bohemian" quarter given over to "people who wrote It was not the peril but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade escaped her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising
She herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her drawing-room (a part of the house in which books were usually supposed to be "out of place"), though chiefly works of fiction, had whetted Archer's interest with such new names as those of Paul Bourget, Huysmans, and the Goncourt brothersRuminating on these things as he approached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in which she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into conditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be of use in her present difficulty
Nastasia opened the door, smiling mysteriouslyOn the bench in the hall lay a sable-lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk with a gold Jon the lining, and a white silk muffler: there was no mistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of Julius Beaufort
Archer was angry: so angry that he came near scribbling a word on his card and going away; then he remembered that in writing to Madame Olenska he had been kept mulberry bayswater bag by excess of discretion from saying that he wished to see her privatelyHe had therefore no one but himself to blame if she had opened her doors to other visitors; and he entered the drawing-room with the dogged determination to make Beaufort feel himself in the way, and to outstay him
The banker stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church candies of yellowish waxHe had thrust his chest out, supporting his shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large patent-leather footAs Archer entered he was smiling and looking down on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the chimneyA table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and against the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognised as tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving the arm bare to the elbow
It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet bandBut Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black white ceramic chanel watch furArcher remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in furThere was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing
"Lord love us?three whole days at Skuytercliff!" Beaufort was saying in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered"You'd better take all your furs, and a hot-water-bottle
"Why? Is the house so cold?" she asked, holding out her left hand to Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss it
"No; but the missus is," said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young man
"But I thought her so kindShe came herself to invite meGranny says I must certainly go
"Granny would, of courseAnd I say it's a shame you're going to miss the little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next Sunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people
She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer
"Ah?that does tempt me! Except the other evening at MrsStruthers's I've not met a single artist since I've been here
"What kind of artists? I know one or two painters, very good fellows, that I could bring to see you if you'd allow me," said Archer boldly
"Painters? omega speedmaster replica Are there painters in New York?" asked Beaufort, in a tone implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures; and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile: "That would be charmingBut I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers, actors, musiciansMy husband's house was always full of them
She said the words "my husband" as if no sinister associations were connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the lost delights of her married lifeArcher looked at her perplexedly, wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to touch so easily on the past at the very moment when she was risking her reputation in order to break with it
"I do think," she went on, addressing both men, "that the imprevu adds to one's enjoymentIt's perhaps a mistake to see the same people every day
"It's confoundedly dull, anyhow; New York is dying of dullness," Beaufort grumbled"And when I try to liven it up for you, you go back on meCome?think better of it! Sunday is your last chance, for Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia; and I've a private room, and a Steinway, and they'll sing all night for me
"How delicious! May I think it over, and write to you tomorrow morning?"
She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voiceBeaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood staring at her with an obstinate line between his prada clutch e |
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| It was, as he instantly recalled, the face of the... |
06-05-2010 |
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| It was, as he instantly recalled, the face of the young man he had seen, the day before, passing out of the Parker House, and had noted as not conforming to type, as not having an American hotel face
The same thing struck him now; and again he became aware of a dim stir of former associationsThe young man stood looking about him with the dazed air of the foreigner flung upon the harsh mercies of American travel; then he advanced toward Archer, lifted his hat, and said in English: "Surely, Monsieur, we met in London?"
"Ah, to be sure: in London!" Archer grasped his hand with curiosity and sympathy"So you DID get here, after all?" he exclaimed, casting a wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of young Carfry's French tutor
"Oh, I got here?yes," MRiviere smiled with drawn lips"But not for long; I return the day after tomorrow He stood grasping his light valise in one neatly gloved hand, and tiffany jewellery gazing anxiously, perplexedly, almost appealingly, into Archer's face
"I wonder, Monsieur, since I've had the good luck to run across you, if I might?"
"I was just going to suggest it: come to luncheon, won't you? Down town, I mean: if you'll look me up in my office I'll take you to a very decent restaurant in that quarterRiviere was visibly touched and surprisedBut I was only going to ask if you would tell me how to reach some sort of conveyanceThere are no porters, and no one here seems to listen?"
"I know: our American stations must surprise youWhen you ask for a porter they give you chewing-gumBut if you'll come along I'll extricate you; and you must really lunch with me, you know
The young man, after a just perceptible hesitation, replied, with profuse thanks, and in a tone that did not carry complete conviction, that he was already engaged; but when they had reached the comparative reassurance of the prada logo street he asked if he might call that afternoon
Archer, at ease in the midsummer leisure of the office, fixed an hour and scribbled his address, which the Frenchman pocketed with reiterated thanks and a wide flourish of his hatA horse-car received him, and Archer walked away
Punctually at the hour MRiviere appeared, shaved, smoothed-out, but still unmistakably drawn and seriousArcher was alone in his office, and the young man, before accepting the seat he proffered, began abruptly: "I believe I saw you, sir, yesterday in Boston
The statement was insignificant enough, and Archer was about to frame an assent when his words were checked by something mysterious yet illuminating in his visitor's insistent gaze
"It is extraordinary, very extraordinary," MRiviere continued, "that we should have met in the circumstances in which I find myself
"What circumstances?" Archer asked, wondering a little crudely if he needed louis vuitton travel bags moneyRiviere continued to study him with tentative eyes"I have come, not to look for employment, as I spoke of doing when we last met, but on a special mission?"
"Ah?!" Archer exclaimedIn a flash the two meetings had connected themselves in his mindHe paused to take in the situation thus suddenly lighted up for him, and MRiviere also remained silent, as if aware that what he had said was enough
"A special mission," Archer at length repeated
The young Frenchman, opening his palms, raised them slightly, and the two men continued to look at each other across the office-desk till Archer roused himself to say: "Do sit down"; whereupon MRiviere bowed, took a distant chair, and again waited
"It was about this mission that you wanted to consult me?" Archer finally askedRiviere bent his head"Not in my own behalf: on that score I?I have fully dealt with myselfI should like?if I may?to speak to you about the Countess deville watch Olenska
Archer had known for the last few minutes that the words were coming; but when they came they sent the blood rushing to his temples as if he had been caught by a bent-back branch in a thicket
"And on whose behalf," he said, "do you wish to do this?"
MRiviere met the question sturdily"Well?I might say HERS, if it did not sound like a libertyShall I say instead: on behalf of abstract justice?"
Archer considered him ironically"In other words: you are Count Olenski's messenger?"
He saw his blush more darkly reflected in MRiviere's sallow countenance"Not to YOU, MonsieurIf I come to you, it is on quite other grounds
"What right have you, in the circumstances, to BE on any other ground?" Archer retorted"If you're an emissary you're an emissary
The young man considered"My mission is over: as far as the Countess Olenska goes, it has failed
"I can't help that," Archer rejoined on the same note of omega olympic watch i |
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| The Kid from Tomkinsville could as well have been... |
06-04-2010 |
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The Kid from Tomkinsville could as well have been called The Lamb from Tomkinsville, even The Lamb from Tomkinsville Led to the SlaughterIn the Kid's career as the spark-plug newcomer to a last-place Brooklyn Dodger club, each triumph is rewarded with a punishing disappointment or a crushing accidentThe staunch attachment that develops between the lonely, homesick Kid and the Dodgers' veteran catcher, Dave Leonard, who successfully teaches him the ways of the big leagues and who, "with his steady brown eyes behind the plate," shepherds him through a no-hitter, comes brutally undone six weeks into the season, when the old-timer is dropped overnight from the club's roster"Here was a speed they didn't often mention in baseball: the speed with which a player rises--and goes down" Then, after the Kid wins his fifteenth consecutive game--a rookie record that no pitcher in either league has ever exceeded--he's accidentally knocked off his feet in the shower by boisterous teammates who are horsing around after the great victory, and the elbow injury sustained in the fall leaves him unable ever to pitch againHe rides the bench for the rest of the year, pinch-hitting because of his strength at the plate, and then, over the snowy winter--back home in Connecticut spending days on the farm and evenings at the drugstore, well known now but really Grandma's boy all over again--he works diligently by himself on Dave Leonard's directive to keep his swing level ("A tendency to keep his right shoulder down, to swing up, was his worst fault"), suspending a ball from a string out in the barn and whacking at it on cold winter mornings with "his beloved bat" until he has worked himself into a sweat' The clean sweet sound of a bat squarely meeting a ball" By the next season he is ready to return to the Dodgers as a speedy right fielder, bats 25 in the second spot, and leads his team down to the wire as a contenderOn the last day of the season, in a game against the Giants, who are in first place by only half a game, the Kid kindles the Dodgers' omega ladies watch hitting attack, and in the bottom of the fourteenth--with two down, two men on, and the Dodgers ahead on a run scored by the Kid with his audacious, characteristically muscular baserunning--he makes the final game-saving play, a running catch smack up against the right center-field wallThat tremendous daredevil feat sends the Dodgers into the World Series and leaves him "writhing in agony on the green turf of deep right center Tunis concludes like this: "Dusk descended upon a mass of players, on a huge crowd pouring onto the field, on a couple of men carrying an inert form through the mob on a stretcherThere was a clap of thunderRain descended upon the Polo Grounds Descended, descended, a clap of thunder, and thus ends the boys' Book of Job
I was ten and I had never read anything like itI could not believe itThe reprehensible member of the Dodgers is Razzle Nugent, a great pitcher but a drunk and a hothead, a violent bully fiercely jealous of the KidAnd yet it is not Razzle carried off "inert" on a stretcher but the best of them all, the farm orphan called the Kid, modest, serious, chaste, loyal, naive, undiscourageable, hard-working, soft-spoken, courageous, a brilliant athlete, a beautiful, austere boyNeedless to say, I thought of the Swede and the Kid as one and wondered how the Swede could bear to read this book that had left me near tears and unable to sleepHad I had the courage to address him, I would have asked if he thought the ending meant the Kid was finished or whether it meant the possibility of yet another comebackThe word "inert" terrified meWas the Kid killed by the last catch of the year? Did the Swede know? Did he care? Did it occur to him that if disaster could strike down the Kid from Tomkinsville, it could come and strike the great Swede down too? Or was a book about a sweet star savagely and unjustly punished--a book about a greatly gifted innocent whose worst fault is a tendency to keep his right shoulder down and swing up but whom the thundering heavens destroy nonetheless--simply a book between white chanel watch those "Thinker" bookends up on his shelf?
Keer Avenue was where the rich Jews lived--or rich they seemed to most of the families who rented apartments in the two-, three-, and four-family dwellings with the brick stoops integral to our after-school sporting life: the crap games, the blackjack, and the stoop-ball, endless until the cheap rubber ball hurled mercilessly against the steps went pop and split at the seamHere, on this grid of locust-tree-lined streets into which the Lyons farm had been partitioned during the boom years of the early twenties, the first postimmigrant generation of Newark's Jews had regrouped into a community that took its inspiration more from the mainstream of American life than from the Polish shtetl their Yiddish-speaking parents had re-created around Prince Street in the impoverished Third WardThe Keer Avenue Jews, with their finished basements, their screened-in porches, their flagstone front steps, seemed to be at the forefront, laying claim like audacious pioneers to the normalizing American amenitiesAnd at the vanguard of the vanguard were the Levovs, who had bestowed upon us our very own Swede, a boy as close to a goy as we were going to get
The Levovs themselves, Lou and Sylvia, were parents neither more nor less recognizably American than my own Jersey-born Jewish mother and father, no more or less refined, well spoken, or cultivatedAnd that to me was a big surpriseOther than the one-family Keer Avenue house, there was no division between us like the one between the peasants and the aristocracy I was learning about at schoolLevov was, like my own mother, a tidy housekeeper, impeccably well mannered, a nice-looking woman tremendously considerate of everyone's feelings, with a way of making her sons feel important--one of the many women of that era who never dreamed of being free of the great domestic enterprise centered on the childrenFrom their mother both Levov boys had inherited the long bones and fair hair, though since her hair was redder, frizzier, and her skin still youthfully louis vuitton kabelky freckled, she looked less startlingly Aryan than they did, less vivid a genetic oddity among the faces in our streets
The father was no more than five seven or eight--a spidery man even more agitated than the father whose anxieties were shaping my ownLevov was one of those slum-reared Jewish fathers whose rough-hewn, undereducated perspective goaded a whole generation of striving, collegeeducated Jewish sons: a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn't as easy to escape from as he seemsLimited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everythingAnd we were their sonsIt was our job to love them
The way it fell out, my father was a chiropodist whose office was for years our living room and who made enough money for our family to get by on but no more, while MrLevov got rich manufacturing ladies' glovesHis own father--Swede Levov's grandfather--had come to Newark from the old country in the 1890s and found work fleshing sheepskins fresh from the lime vat, the lone Jew alongside the roughest of Newark's Slav, Irish, and Italian immigrants in the Nuttman Street tannery of the patent-leather tycoon THowell, then the name in the city's oldest and biggest industry, the tanning and manufacture of leather goodsThe most important thing in making leather is water--skins spinning in big drums of water, drums spewing out befouled water, pipes gushing with cool and hot water, hundreds of thousands of gallons of waterIf there's soft water, good water, you can make beer and you can make leather, and Newark made both--big breweries, big tanneries, and, for the immigrant, lots of wet, smelly, crushing work
The son Lou--Swede Levov's father--went to work in the tannery after leaving school at fourteen to help support the family of nine and became adept not only big black bag at dyeing buckskin by laying on the clay dye with a flat, stiff brush but also at sorting and grading skinsThe tannery that stank of both the slaughterhouse and the chemical plant from the soaking of flesh and the cooking of flesh and the dehairing and pickling and degreasing of hides, where round the clock in the summertime the blowers drying the thousands and thousands of hanging skins raised the temperature in the low-ceilinged dry room to a hundred and twenty degrees, where the vast vat rooms were dark as caves and flooded with swill, where brutish workingmen, heavily aproned, armed with hooks and staves, dragging and pushing overloaded wagons, wringing and hanging waterlogged skins, were driven like animals through the laborious storm that was a twelve-hour shift--a filthy, stinking place awash with water dyed red and black and blue and green, with hunks of skin all over the floor, everywhere pits of grease, hills of salt, barrels of solvent--this was Lou Levov's high school and collegeWhat was amazing was not how tough he turned outWhat was amazing was how civil he could sometimes still manage to behe graduated in his early twenties to found, with two of his brothers, a small handbag outfit specializing in alligator skins contracted from RSalomon, Newark's king of cordovan leather and leader in the tanning of alligator; for a time the business looked as if it might flourish, but after the crash the company went under, bankrupting the three hustling, audacious LevovsNewark Maid Leatherware started up a few years later, with Lou Levov, now on his own, buying seconds in leather goods--imperfect handbags, gloves, and belts--and selling them out of a pushcart on weekends and door-to-door at nightDown Neck--the semi-peninsular protuberance that is easternmost Newark, where each fresh wave of immigrants first settled, the lowlands bounded to the north and east by the Passaic River and to the south by the salt marshes--there were Italians who'd been glovers in the old country and they began doing piecework for him in their china mulberry hom |
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| "Who are they?"
"Bill and Melissa
"And who... |
06-03-2010 |
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"Who are they?"
"Bill and Melissa
"And who are Bill and Melissa?"
"They're p-p-p-people
"What do they do for a living? How old are they?"
"Melissa's twenty-two
"Are they students?"
"They were studentsNow they organize people for the betterment of the Vietnamese
"Where do they live?"
"What are you going to do, come and get me?"
"I'd like to know where they liveThere are all sorts of neighborhoods in New YorkSome are good, some aren't
"They live in a perfectly fine neighborhood and a perfectly fine b-b-b-b-building
"Where?"
"They live up in Morningside Heights
"Are they Columbia students?"
"They were
"How many people stay in this apartment?"
"I don't see why I have to answer all these questions
"Because you're my chanel pearl necklace daughter and you are sixteen years old
"So for the rest of my life, because I'm your daughter--"
"No, when you are eighteen and graduate high school, you can do whatever you want
"So the difference we're talking about here is two years
"And what's the b-big thing that's going to happen in two years?"
"You will be an independent person who can support herself
"I can support myself now if I w-w-w-w-wanted to
"I don't want you to stay with Bill and Melissa
"W-w-w-why?"
"It's my responsibility to look after youI want you to stay with the UmanoffsIf you can agree to do that, then you can go to New York and stay overOtherwise you won't be permitted to go there at all
"I'm in there to stay with the people I want to stay with
"Then you're not chanel classic handbag going to New York
"There is no 'we'll see' You're not going and that's the end of it
"I'd like to see you stop meIf you can't agree to stay with the Umanoffs, then you can't go to New York
"What about the war--"
"My responsibility is to you and not to the war
"Oh, I know your responsibility is not to the war--that's why I have to go to New YorkB-b-b-because people there do feel responsibleThey feel responsible when America b-blows up Vietnamese villagesThey feel responsible when America is b-blowing little b-babies to b-b-b-b-bitsB-but you don't, and neither does MotherYou don't care enough to let it upset a single day of yoursYou don't care enough to make you spend another night somewhereYou don't stay up at night worrying about itYou don't really rolex watches for women care, Daddy, one way or the other
Conversations #24, 25, and 26 about New York"I can't have these conversations, DaddyI won't! I refuse to! Who talks to their parents like this!"
"If you are underage and you go away for the day and don't come home at night, then you damn well talk to your parents like this
"B-b-but you drive me c-c-c-crazy, this kind of sensible parent, trying to be understanding! I don't want to be understood--I want to be f-f-f-free!"
"Would you like it better if I were a senseless parent trying not to understand you?"
"I would! I think I would! Why don't you fucking t-t-try it for a change and let me fucking see!"
Conversation #29 about New York"No, you can't disrupt our family life until you are of ageThen do whatever you chanel clearance wantSo long as you're under eighteen--"
"All you can think about, all you can talk about, all you c-c-care about is the well-being of this f-fucking 1-1-little f-f-family!"
"Isn't that all you think about? Isn't that what you are angry about?"
"N-n-no! N-n-never!"
"Yes, MerryYou are angry about the families in VietnamYou are angry about their being destroyedThose are families tooThose are families just like ours that would like to have the right to have lives like our family hasIsn't that what you yourself want for them? What Bill and Melissa want for them? That they might be able to have secure and peaceful lives like ours?"
"To have to live out here in the privileged middle of nowhere? No, I don't think that's what B-b-bill and Melissa want for purse logo th |
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