Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father Read online

  I didn’t feel a natural kinship with my roommates either. There was Jane, an actress from upstate New York, and three dancers, all named Rachel, who came to be known by their last names: Goodman, Strauss, and Shaw. They were all smart and fun but the worlds they occupied were very much their own. In the evenings, Goodman, Strauss, and Shaw would gossip and stretch at the kitchen table, while Jane, practicing her vocal exercises, tried hard to round her Os and aspirate her Hs: “Whhhhere is the party? Whhhhat is the plan?”

  To remedy my abiding loneliness, I phoned my grandparents in Kewanee every Sunday morning at ten and Dad whenever I wanted, using an AT&T phone card my grandfather had given me. To save money on phone bills, Dad preferred to write to me.

  RRRINGGG!!!

  It’s . . . Alysia! When I talk to you on the phone it seems you’re not that far away. When I talked to my Dad about you not writing, he kept using the word, “weaned.” “They get weaned away at college” (like you were a kitten or a puppy).

  Issan says we’re all home-leavers, leaving the person you were supposed to be, to become the person you are. Being away from home, from San Francisco, I think you’ll discover (& create) the person you really are more.

  Well, I’ll end here – and I didn’t even talk about my “boring” friends (even though they always ask about you).

  Now that I was living on my own, I wanted to “discover and create” myself, the way I’d dreamed back in San Francisco. This was supposed to be my Tama Janowitz life. But I had no idea how to do this. I’d applied to NYU because I wanted to be in Greenwich Village and find my way into its storied bohemia, but I spent most of my time hanging out with a family on the stuffy Upper East Side. In addition to joining their dinners, I accompanied the Weiksners for weekends at their country house in Connecticut, evenings at Carnegie Hall or the Metropolitan Opera House. They even bought me a winter coat, since I had nothing suitable for the New York weather. For Christmas they gave me an antique pocket watch, which hung from a long silver chain.

  Though the Weiksners generously invited me into their privileged life, I knew it wasn’t truly mine. I could mostly fit in, sometimes borrowing one of Sandra’s scarves or a necklace if she thought I didn’t look “fancy” enough for an event. Like a good trompe l’oeil, I could effectively mimic the manners and posture that were expected of me. In my years of traveling between the worlds of home, school, friends, and grandparents, I’d mastered the art of adaptation. But I knew, in my heart, I was different: a pale and scrawny impostor. I was never quite certain what was expected of me or how I could return the Weiksners’ generosity. And I was deathly afraid of making a critical misstep, using the wrong fork, somehow acting gauche.

  I would have spent more time among the students at NYU, but outside the Weiksner house I felt totally isolated. Although I casually dated a twenty-something actor-proofreader I met at the law firm, I made no close friends that year. I didn’t anticipate how cold and disorienting the city could be—that if I didn’t yet know myself, no one else could know me either. I felt lost in New York, swallowed whole.

  In San Francisco, I also didn’t know myself, but I knew my neighborhood, my friends, and my father. There was a version of myself that I saw reflected back in each of these relationships that was both familiar and acceptable to me. Painfully homesick, I couldn’t wait to return for Christmas.

  ON THE FIRST EVENING of my visit home, I sat with Dad in front of the TV eating dinner. We’d caught up that afternoon, and as I picked at the chicken on my plate, with the TV news boring into me, I felt a strong urge to leave the apartment. Watching television no longer interested me and I was itching to get out before dark so I could explore my old Haight Street haunts. But I knew I should be keeping my dad company, at least until dinner was finished.

  “Is it okay if I head out for a walk?” I asked finally.

  “Yeah, sure.” The TV light flickered on Dad’s face and he turned to me. “Don’t stay out late though, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I walked with long powerful strides down Haight toward Golden Gate Park, eagerly looking for anything familiar. Unlike in New York City, with whom I still suffered the self-doubt and nervousness of a new love, I felt bold and sure of myself walking the streets of San Francisco. I intimately knew the city. When I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself like a ghost floating down Haight toward the Fillmore over to Dubose Park to Café Flore and up the hill of 18th and Castro back toward home over Ashbury Heights. I breathed in the street’s peculiar perfume—the faint smell of marijuana, eucalyptus leaves, and wet wood. Walking through the light fog, I even enjoyed the familiar cold dampness penetrating my jacket and jeans, taking up residence in my bones, so different from the razor-sharp winds of New York.

  Surveying Haight Street, as I did on each of my subsequent visits home, I made note of the many stores remaining from my youth and those replaced by new ones. The old Shop ’n’ Save had closed, to be replaced by a used clothing warehouse called Villains. Etc. Etc. had become the brightly lit Beauty Store. Passing different windows, I searched faces at café tables and in the aisles of boutiques, hoping both to recognize and to be recognized.

  When I caught sight of the park, I turned and walked along the opposite side of the street toward home. At the corner of Haight and Schraeder, I spotted a familiar form: Jimmy Siegel, the owner of Distractions. Pulling shut a heavy gate, he had his back to me. He’d shaved his moustache but I easily recognized him: his leather jacket, his short blond hair, his cute, boyish face.

  “Hi,” I yelled over the loud roll of the closing gate. “Do you remember me?”

  He was bent down low, fastening a lock. He turned around, looked at me, and stood upright. “Yeah, I do. How are you?”

  “I’m good. I moved to New York. NYU! I’m just back for Christmas.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Hey, whatever happened to Tommy? Does he still work here?”

  I had first discovered Distractions in 1984, after being drawn in by its punk rock window display and the New Wave music playing on the shop speakers. The front of the store had a large glass case full of intricately carved wood and metal pipes, sparkling rhinestone-encrusted cigarette holders, Zippo lighters, and Tommy. He was hard to miss.

  Already six feet, he was three inches taller in the roller skates he wore around the store, whizzing back and forth behind the counter. Tommy’s hair was styled short on the sides and high on top, which made his big ears appear bigger. His hair color changed depending on his mood—one week it would be purple, another week pink or blue. Beneath his pompadour he had sparkling green eyes and a mischievous, thin-lipped grin. When he smiled, he’d give his eyes a playful roll, like Mae West delivering her best lines.

  “Oh aren’t you a pretty little plum, but still too green to pick!”

  Back when I was being ignored by the high school boys and gender was still a puzzle I couldn’t solve, Tommy coaxed me out of my shell. He entertained and flirted with me, and Distractions became a regular stop in my after-school circuit.

  I eventually learned that Tommy was not paid to work the register at Distractions. He made his living dealing coke in the neighborhood. He used to brag about his star clients from prominent 1970s rock bands—all references lost on me, a Duran Duranie through and through. Tommy was the ex-lover and best friend of Jimmy Siegel, the store owner, and worked the register simply because he liked to hang out, to soak in the Haight scene. Sometimes his two dogs, a poodle named Cuddles and a terrier named Teddy, would join him behind the register.

  When one day I shyly revealed to Tommy that my dad was also gay, he asked with a wink, “Is he a top or a bottom?” When I gave him a confused look, he said, “Well, I am a top, definitely a top.” I just enjoyed watching Tommy: the way his back arched when he laughed his wicked laugh; his pretty, smiling eyes.

  “Tommy?” Jimmy asked. “Tommy died. He died of AIDS six months ago.”

  Jimmy said it apologetically, as though I were too
young, female, and straight to be troubled with such news. As Jimmy spoke, he looked into the middle distance, as though Tommy was just one of many men he pictured in his mind’s eye.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really liked Tommy.”

  “Me too.”

  Tommy’s death marked a change for me. When I was still living with my dad, my preoccupation with the world of my straight friends had mostly protected me from the effects of the AIDS epidemic. But on these first few visits back from college, I noticed how it altered everything. Dad would later tell me our former neighbor Robert was sick. Another night, seeing a classical concert downtown, I recognized the usher as one of the cute guys I used to chat with at the outside table of Café Flore. “Hey!” I called. “How are you? How’s everybody?” He just shook his head, not feeling as chatty as he’d once been.

  The street I knew growing up was changing. Some transformations between 1987 and 1992 might have been the effects of the economic recession, but much was a result of the AIDS crisis, as members of the city’s gay population went into retreat, either dying or caring for those dying, or else living in a perpetual state of shock about the deaths taking place behind so many closed doors.

  It was dark when I turned onto Ashbury Street. Upstairs in our apartment, I found Dad beneath the covers on his futon bed. The TV was still on, the volume loud. Dad squeezed the “clicker,” turning down the volume, and then turned to me.

  “How was your walk?”

  “It was fine.”

  “Did you run into any of your friends?”

  “No,” I said, thinking of Tommy. “Not really . . . Shop ’n’ Save is closed.”

  “Yup, you have to walk all the way to Cala to get groceries now.”

  “Well, goodnight, Daddy. I’m going to bed. I’m still feeling jet-lagged.”

  “Goodnight, sweetie. Oh, by the way. I bought some new Bic razors. The ones in the Pacific Drug bag you can use. Don’t use mine.”

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Dad and I went out for sushi and a movie at the Kabuki Center in Japantown, a favorite outing of ours, and at my suggestion we saw Working Girl, about a Staten Island secretary who dreams of her own office on Wall Street. The movie opens with a wide shot of the Staten Island Ferry crossing into downtown Manhattan. As the camera panned over Battery Park and Bowling Green I elbowed my father and pointed out the Cleary Gottlieb office building: “That’s where I work!”

  At home we opened presents under the tree and I gave Dad a surprise that I’d been working on for weeks: a collection of my best writing from that semester, which I’d printed and collaged with magazine clippings into a book I called “For My Father.” The book was divided into four sections: criticism, autobiography, poetry, and essay, which included the essay on Sam D’Allesandro. He loved it so much he pulled me to his lap and squeezed me against his chest. When Sunday came, I was sorry to have to leave for New York. Shortly after my return I received this letter:

  I’m really proud of how you’re doing Alysia. Even though I haven’t seen your report card, I have seen your writing and I’m really pleased to see your self-confidence more solid than when you left. And when I get a job again, I’m sure mine will be more solid too. Then we can really enjoy each other’s company.

  Back in New York, though, I felt increasingly unmoored by my college experience. Ironically, I failed to turn in a final paper in my pragmatism class and was now in danger of taking an incomplete. Furthermore, I had a misunderstanding with the Weiksners. Hanging out at their place one evening, I watched as their teenage boys took turns spinning each other in the basement dryer. It was a stupid game and I told them as much, but I didn’t stop them. When Marcia discovered the dryer was broken the next morning, she told the Weiksners who in turn got mad at me. “Why did you let them do it?” Sandra asked me. “You’re the adult. Weren’t you watching?” Only two years older than their oldest son, I didn’t feel adult and I didn’t realize that was supposed to be my role.

  I wanted to be good, but I never seemed to understand how to be good or even what “good” meant. I noticed how my roommates attended to their figures, slowly turning before the full-length bathroom mirror and measuring the space between their thighs in a standing position, down to the millimeter. At dinner, they ate iceberg salads, mixed with carrots and canned beans. They cut out sugar and white flour to reach their ideal body weight. I can do this, I thought.

  That spring, I researched the minimum number of calories and servings of food groups I needed to remain fit and organized my meals around these restrictions. My goal was to eat 1,500 calories a day: 400 for each of my three meals and 150 for each of my two snacks, at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. I drank eight glasses of water a day and avoided drinks other than coffee and tea because I didn’t want to waste calories. I memorized the calorie content of each basic food. Banana: 125. Apple: 90. Piece of bread: 125. Snack box of raisins: 50. Cup of plain nonfat yogurt: 90. On top of my careful diet, I started to budget myself to $15 a day, which I withdrew from the ATM each morning.

  Organizing my life around these rules and figures calmed me. If at any point I began to feel anxious or uncertain, I could always find a scrap of paper and quickly tally up everything I’d eaten that day. If I was under goal, I was happy with myself and immediately relaxed. If I was over goal, I knew what steps to take—skip my afternoon snack or spend an extra twenty minutes at the NYU gym—and was also happy. The margins and back covers of my school notebooks became crowded with these scribbled lists.

  In high school, I’d fantasized about a New York life that would revolve around SoHo openings and literary parties. I now spent most of my time at the Union Square A&P, a lonely old lady at eighteen. The top of my grocery cart stacked with my clipped coupons, I carefully examined the labels of soup cans and cartons of yogurt, comparing grams of fat, protein, and carbohydrates.

  Then one Sunday afternoon while I was working at my proofreading job, one of my coworkers approached me in the bathroom.

  “Hey Seventeen-something, are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Why?”

  “You look pretty thin.”

  “Thank you!”

  “Are you . . . getting your period?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Just curious.”

  I didn’t learn until much later that anorexic girls stop menstruating. I saw my close attention to diet and budget as a way of taking care of myself, of setting goals and realizing those goals. I knew I was depressed, the pathetic specter of the A&P, but I didn’t know why, so I kept these feelings to myself, which only made me feel more estranged. I longed for change. When Sandra Weiksner said she could arrange a summer job for me in the filing department of Cleary Gottlieb in Paris, I jumped at it.

  16.

  WHENEVER I THINK back to my first summer living in Paris, I remember a certain day on the Boulevard Filles du Calvaire in the 3rd arrondissement. It was a late Sunday afternoon in June. I was sitting next to the open window in my room at the dormitory where I was living, trying to write a letter to Dad. Whenever I felt stuck, unable to think of what to write next, I’d look out the window and watch the people passing on their way to the neighboring laundromat, large canvas bags balanced on their backs.

  I once read a poem by Charles Baudelaire called “Windows,” which starts:

  Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.

  Behind this closed window on the Boulevard Filles du Calvaire was an eighteen-year-old girl living outside her home country for the first time, wearing a white t-shirt and cutoff jeans. Her bobbed hair curled in the humidity.

  Fille. I was a fille. A girl. I always
liked the name of that boulevard: Filles du Calvaire. And I always liked the name of my temporary home there: Foyer Pour les Jeunes Travailleuses, Dormitory for Young Worker Girls. It had a nice communist ring to it. So very like the French in their socio-communist ways, I always thought.

  Sandra Weiksner had not only arranged my job working at Cleary Gottlieb Paris, she set up my stay at the dormitory, mailing the headmistress copies of my passport and proof of my employment. To be eligible to live at the Foyer, you had to be between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, legally employed, and not from Paris. Though I’d have loved spending that summer with Dad in San Francisco, the opportunity to live and work in France on the cheap seemed too good to pass up.

  Soon after my arrival, I noticed that the rooms were overwhelmingly populated by girls from former French colonies: the Antilles, Tunisia, Morocco, Vietnam, and Senegal. Each seemed to prefer socializing with girls from her own region, so I gravitated to the only European girls there, two French brunettes: a lean girl from Normandy with conservatively cut short hair and a thin, sharp nose, and a shorter, rounder girl from the Loire with long, kinky hair. We took breakfast together in the kitchen each morning before heading to our respective jobs.

  There were no other Americans. I shared my room with a girl from French West Africa, but she spent most of her time down the hall with her friends, stirring fragrant peanut sauces on hot plates. I heard them explosively laughing as they spoke in thick African accents about their mecs, their guys. She never invited me to join and would only stop into our room to change before her dates.