The Sheila Variations

Rimbaud's son

Today is the birthday of poet visionary Rimbaud.

Last year, I read Paul Theroux's latest travel book (it's called Dark Star Safari) where he goes from Egypt to Cape Town without ever getting on a plane ... he's such a nut - such a CRANKY traveler, it's hilarious - but anyway, I believe Rimbaud lived for a bit in a walled city somewhere outside of Addis Ababa - He was ill, he became an arms trader, but first he was a coffee-trader, not to mention a poet whose fame grew in his native country while he was traipsing through Africa - he was the first white person to journey into the Ogaden region of the country - people still talk about the guy. So Theroux went to this city to follow in his footsteps, see where he had lived, etc. The description of the place (where there was still a leper colony on the outskirts, where rangy rabid dogs ran wild, and where they still remember the crazy poet who had lived amongst them once upon a time) - was one of my favorite parts of the book.

Here's more information on Rimbaud.

My only connection, really, with Rimbaud is that he reminds me of somebody - somebody who was obsessed with Rimbaud, called him his favorite poet.

I wrote a post about this man a while back called Rimbaud's Son.

In honor of Rimbaud, here is that old post. It's a sad one. But I think it's a pretty good tribute to Rimbaud.

Rimbaud's Son

I met Deli Guy the day after JFK Jr. disappeared, and I just happened to be reading Chris Matthews' book Kennedy and Nixon at the time, coincidentally. I stood in line at the deli counter, nose in my book. I had on a backwards baseball cap, overalls, a tanktop, and high-top sneakers. Basically, I looked like a Peanuts character. In line at the deli. Reading a political biography.

What I'm really trying to say is that I was not dressed for romance.

I heard a deep tough-guy voice say, "It's a shame about his son, ain't it?"

I looked up - and there was Deli Guy. I didn't know what he was talking about, or why he was talking to me. Whose son? What?

I said, "Whose son?" It did not escape my notice that the guy was gorgeous, in a kind of overblown way. By that I mean, he looked like a young John Travolta. He was a startlingly good-looking man standing behind the deli counter.

He gestured at my book. "His son."

I looked at my book, and then got it, thinking of the disappearance of JFK, Jr.

"Oh! Yeah. It is a shame."

The guy had a shock of thick black hair, he was about 6 feet, and the eyes - they were something else. They were bright green. Bizarre. And he had pale skin. He was a looker, although not my type at all.

However. It did strike me as, shall we say, notable that he would look up, see the Peppermint Patty/Linus creature waiting in line, look at the title of her book, and then speak right out to me about it. Not: "Is that a good book?" or "What are you reading?" But leaping right into it. "It's a shame about his son, ain't it?"

There was something about his face I liked. The eyes were something else. Truly. I've never met a man with such spectacular eyes. And so, 2 or 3 days later, when I saw him sitting on a bench outside the supermarket, having a cigarette on a break, I took one second to contemplate things, one second to get my courage up, and then walked right over.

He remembered me. We talked about John F. Kennedy for about 2 seconds.

The Deli Guy seemed odd. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It was like he was about 10 years old inside, with the same open-faced enthusiasm about things, the same fearlessness with strangers. I am much more reserved. He had no reserve.

Somehow, he started talking to me about Henry Miller. He loved Henry Miller's writing. I love Henry Miller, too, but more than that - I liked how Deli Guy talked about literature. Not sure how to put my finger on it ...

That ended up being the main attraction. I loved to hear him talk about authors, languages, books.

He loved Coleridge. He loved TS Eliot and William Carlos Williams. He had read all of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. He thought Henry Miller was awesome. He had actually read Finnegans Wake all the way through.

He loved Rimbaud most of all. His relationship to language was so personal, so ... individual ... It is hard to describe.

I grew up with language. I grew up being read to, I grew up with parents who loved to read, I grew up surrounded by books. It was expected, in my family, that I would be well educated, etc. In my family, you come home and 2 seconds after you are asked, "How are you?" you are asked "So what are you reading?"

To some degree, I take this for granted.

Deli Guy grew up in a nightmare. With an abusive father, and an ineffective mother. A brother in jail. No money. Deli Guy put himself through college. He majored in English. Perhaps not a practical major, for someone who literally had no way to make a living - and a family who thought that going to college was a stupid thing to do, a waste of time. Right before I met him, Deli Guy's father had been diagnosed with throat cancer. Instead of facing chemo, and treatment - he instead chose to shoot himself in the head in front of his wife and sons. Deli Guy couldn't get the image of his father's head exploding out of his mind. I know it's awful. I know it's awful to just say that so bluntly - but that was what he was trying to forget.

Deli Guy discovered literature late. Rimbaud was his "way in". The first time he read a Rimbaud poem, he was hooked. To him, it wasn't "the meaning of life" or anything like that. Rimbaud WAS life. Deli Guy could talk about Rimbaud for hours. And he did. To anyone who would listen. Bartenders, Hispanic co-workers who spoke no English, people on the train ...

He talked about these poets and these authors as though they had written their books specifically for him. He had no preconceived notions about Yeats, or Eugene O'Neill, or Shakespeare. He had no nice little neat Harold Bloom canon in his head. None of it was received knowledge. When he read Yeats, he met Yeats for the first time. It all was new to him.

I loved it. I used to keep a notebook with me when we were hanging out, and I would write down some of the stuff he would say about literature. He thought it was amusing that I would do that. I was quite blatant about it, I didn't care.

But like I said, the man was crazy. He was semi-homeless. He lived in a YMCA which was ... the epitome of bleakness. He hung onto his life and his sanity by a thread. He had been hospitalized many times. He needed to be medicated. He could not hold down a job.

I became the normal thing in his life. The sane thing in his crazy life. He clung to me because of that. I was not allowed to leave him or even have a day off - because he would start to lose his mind when he was not in my presence. This all happened very very quickly. By that I mean, his attachment to me happened almost instantaneously.

I would say to him, "I really am not the kind of person who needs to see someone every day. As a matter of fact, I am the opposite kind of person. I cannot see you tomorrow. I need some time to MYSELF."

Then, at 8 am, a knock would come on the door. There he was.

"I won't get in your way! You can have time to yourself - I'll just sit in the other room and read or something! I won't bother you!"

What really happened was this, and it is a very Sheila thing to say: I just loved how he talked about books. I was addicted to how he talked.

Our first date was a very bizarre odyssey. We met up for a drink at a local pub. I had a job at the time, casting extras for a film. I met him for a drink at 9, knowing that I had to leave at 11, to go shoot all night long. Anyway, he ended up coming along, and being an extra in the film. Which was positively hilarious. This homeless Deli Guy in my movie.

At one point, one of my fellow casting directors took one look at the black-haired crazy-green-eyed gorgeous extra, and said, "Wow. Who is that guy?" I said, "You are not gonna believe this, but I am on a date with him right now." "Right now?" "Yes. Right now. As we speak."

We had some long long breaks during shooting when neither of us were needed, so we took these weird long walks through the East Village. Mind you, it's about 4 am at this point, because it was an all-night shoot - but there he and I were, taking a nice walk as though it were late afternoon.

He talked and talked and talked. He was, I decided, certifiably insane. But in a benign way. He talked my ear off. Flowing from one topic to the other. Cabbages and kings. Quotations from things I couldn't recognize. Random non sequitirs, in his tough-guy New Jersey accent.

Like he said at one point, "I hate deja vu. I hate it cause I feel like one day I'm gonna go into a deja vu and never come out of it."

After I finally broke up with this sweet damaged tough-guy poet-man, I wondered and worried about what happened to him. But I could not allow myself to look for him (basically, he disappeared) - because I did not want to get sucked into his dramas, get sucked down into his vortex.

As much as I missed hearing him talk about Rimbaud, I had to move on. I couldn't be his babysitter anymore.

The guy never had any money. He got fired from the deli job. He was living at the YMCA. He was desperate. I had to cut the cord, and never look back. It was harsh, it was brutal.

"Don't ever call me again," I said to him, knowing that the ending to his story would not be good. But knowing, too, that I could not save this man. "Don't even call me to say Hi."

A couple of weeks after I banished him, one of Deli Guy's brothers called me. This brother was not the one who was in jail, but the only functioning member of the whole family. He was the one whose wedding I attended. The brother was another big tough-guy, a big Italian tough-guy, but ... for whatever reason ... he had found my number, and called me to talk about his brother.

He was being all manly, all tough, saying stuff like - "I'm sure he owes you money. Let me know if he does ... and we'll make sure you get it back ..."

Beneath his take-charge attitude - I sensed heartbreak. I decided to speak to THAT, as opposed to what he was actually SAYING.

So all I said to him was, "I'm sad for him. That's all. I'm just sad for your brother."

It was like I had flipped a switch. This guido hotel-owner, this big-talking Italian Jersey man on the other end, broke down into tears. I was at work. I could not believe it. I didn't know what to do. He was sobbing ... just sobbing ... I could hear him choking with sobs on the other end. It still takes my breath away.

The brother sobbed, "He was such a golden boy when he was a kid ... He was always the leader of the pack ... I don't know what to do for him ... My brother ... my brother ... Oh my God ..."

I just listened. I supported him. I told him that I had no ill-will towards his brother - and I wished him the best - and I wished that he would get healthy, and stay on his meds, and get his act together.

The Deli Guy thing was 4 or 5 years ago.

Deli Guy is one of those people who lives on the fringes of society. He will have no phone number, no medical records, no dental records, nothing. When I said good-bye to him, I had a feeling of overwhelming doom, as I watched him walk back into the Y, his shoulders kind of hunched over in a way that cracked my heart.

I had to be so HARD when I set him free. I had to steel my heart against the pity I felt for him. It was pity. Not compassion. I pitied him.

That strong intelligent soul, that wild spirit ....

On the night we took the long walk through the East Village, he was thirsty for water, but we didn't come across a deli for a couple of blocks.

He proclaimed to the dark streets, "WATER WATER EVERYWHERE AND NOT ENOUGH TO DRINK..."

Last I heard, he had moved to Key West. He basically wanted to slip off the edge of the world, he wanted to move to a place where nobody knew him, where Ernest Hemingway had written, where Tennessee Williams had written (the two poles of masculinity - Deli Guy thought that if he moved to Key West he could find the balance between the two poles in himself.)

I never heard from him again.

But then - a couple months ago - I saw him.

I saw a grubby figure, lying in a doorway in Hoboken. I glanced at it, in passing, got one glimpse of these bright-green eyes (his eyes were manic, startling) - and literally stopped in my tracks. My heart pounded.

That couldn't be him ... Why is he back here? He's in Key West ... He's been there for years ... That's not him ...

Why was I scared? I can't explain it. I just was.

I circled the block, and passed him again, glancing at him closer. It was confirmed. It was him. The homeless man lying in the doorway was the Deli Guy.

Only there was one thing that shocked me. And this thing ... hurts me to think about (well, so much of this hurts me!)

His thick thick jet-black hair had gone completely grey. Almost white. His whole head was grey. In the years since I have seen him, all the black in his hair has disappeared. This is a young man. He's my age. I am not saying people don't go grey at my age ... It was just the radical transformation, in what seems to be a short period of time.

Whatever grip he had on reality when he and I were hanging out - was obviously completely gone. He was filthy. He was talking to himself. He was begging on the goddamn street.

The light in his eyes was no longer a sane light, a beam of light shining over the great works of literature, illuminating them to me in unexpected ways. The light in his eyes was now completely insane. Unearthly, floating about, not ever landing in one spot.

He looked lost, unhinged.

The man I once knew is gone. Forever.

I've seen him a couple of times since. He is living on the streets. He is one of the homeless people you see, that you step over on your way to the Path train. I have a hard time believing it is the same guy. That haggard-looking grey-haired skinny-skinny-skinny man - he who once was so vibrant, and manly, and tough. (He was always a little bit crazy - I don't want to paint this incorrectly. But he stood tall, he was big and manly, there was sanity in his features, there was a conscious self behind those eyes.).

That man is gone.

Sometimes I have wondered, in a kind of uneasy way, if his brother (the one who cried to me on the phone years ago) has no idea where his big brother is now. In strange moments I have thought: "I should see if I still have his work number somewhere ... call him and tell him that I have spotted Deli Guy..."

But I don't think I will.

It's horrible to say, but I do not want to get involved. I do not want Deli Guy to know that I have seen him, that I have recognized him. He is obviously a desperate man now. Not the man I once knew.

The big guy with the wry intelligent face who said to me across the deli counter, "It's a shame about his son, ain't it?"

Deli Guy thought that Rimbaud expressed exactly what was going on in his own head. He couldn't believe the accuracy with which Rimbaud captured the mental chaos, the glory, the sudden illumined moments of truth, the loss -

People were always stealing Deli Guy's stuff at the beat-down YMCA he lived at, he couldn't hold on to anything that meant anything to him, so he walked around with his dog-eared paperback of one of Rimbaud's books in his back pocket. The book was literally falling to pieces. But he would take it out, eagerly, almost bouncing up and down in excitement, wanting to read something to me. Then he would stop, laughing at himself, "Look at me. I'm like 9 years old right now."

I would laugh at him. "It's cool. Come on, read it to me."

And he would read me the poems of Rimbaud.

It's sad. That's all. It's sad when someone is lost.

Recently, I saw him staggering down the street - staggering, yes, with this kind of light manic look on his face. Unattached, unhinged. He was smoking a cigarette, and his clothes were falling apart. He is skin and bones now. His hair is grey.

As he passed me by, not looking at me, I peered closely at his butt - instinctively. I had to check. No, I wasn't checking out his ass. I was looking for that dog-eared Rimbaud paperback that he always had in his pocket. God. So strange. 4, 5 years later ... I remembered, and I had to look for it. Ever the optimist, I HOPED it would be there. If he still had that book, it might mean ... something. What I have no idea ... but I had this strange dying hope inside that he had not lost his Rimbaud. If it was still there, maybe there was some hope ...

But of course, there was no book in his back pocket.

And even if there HAD been - what difference would it have made? He still would have just been a homeless man, staggering down the street with a book of Rimbaud's poems in his pocket. Rimbaud wouldn't put a roof over his head. Rimbaud wouldn't feed him.

But ... there is that thing inside all of us - that cannot be killed. Our soul? Our spirit? Our essence? That's what it would have meant to me if I had seen a glimpse of that book: That his essence, his soul, his ... is-ness ... had not been completely erased. His energy is not lost to the world forever. If he still had that book ... then maybe ... all was not lost for him ...

I almost didn't recognize that dirty grey-haired man. It wasn't just his appearance that had changed so much. It was that the actual person looking out of those green eyes appeared to have changed. He was not in there anymore.

And Rimbaud had probably been lost a long long time ago.

Somehow, that haunts me more than the grey head of hair and the floating unhinged look in his eyes.

Posted by sheila