When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot - 3

By Robert Levin

In any case, with the recognition that my role in the process was just to show up and play along, other methods of procedure I would over time develop are fairly simple, intended only to make sure that I'm presenting myself in a way that's as amenable to distortion as I can get it and then to forestall the possibility of ruining things.

My manner of dress, for example. To try and stay apace of what some half-dozen affluent and more or less fashion-conscious men might be wearing at any given time would have been out of the question even if I'd been able to afford it. And since I never know who I'll be before I venture outside, whose wardrobe would I choose? So in the summer I wear jeans and a work shirt (cleaned and pressed to be sure) and either sneakers or boots. In the winter I add a sweater and a pea coat. I might very well be the complete non-entity and total loser that I am. On the other hand I could just as easily be a Master of the Universe in a casual mode.

My demeanor is informed by the same psychology. Once a woman has established contact I try to limit my responses to those rare questions for which I have no answer to an ambiguous smile. Or, when I think it's best, I become silent and expressionless. Real actors will notice that, in the latter respect, I avail myself of a rudimentary device of their craft. Taking on a poker face, I let the woman read into it what her wishes and expectations dictate and require.

And, of course, no matter how agreeable the experience and melancholy the break, I always make it a point to disappear after one night.

With just one notable exception, I've scrupulously adhered to these rules and they've helped to assure me a fairly decent range of experiences.

I'm thinking now of a woman who despite an off-putting quirk that she had of blowing her nose with her hair, kept my interest by taking me through not just every position in the Kama Sutra but more than enough new ones to justify a supplementary volume. (It being Lou Reed's turn to get lucky I was serenaded all the while by her tape of my "Greatest Hits.")

I'm thinking as well of the time identical triplets, appropriately sharing the same delusion and built like middle linebackers, invited Leonard Cohen to a cluster fuck and wound up breaking two of my ribs.

It's a little off to the side, but I'm also thinking of a period that lasted several months during which I was continually approached by men. "I really enjoyed your work in "Cocks 'n' Cocks," they would say. And they would go on to tell me how impressed they were by the way I took "full occupation" of my "space." That sort of thing.

It was puzzling. I'd never heard of this film, or of the actor — Johnson something — they were taking me for. At first uncomfortable with their advances, it dawned on me one evening that my chances for scoring had suddenly doubled and that I'd be a fool not to take advantage of this turn of events. (I mean where's the problem? It's just friction, isn't it?) But sad to say, not much would develop for me in this area. Before anything happened these guys would erupt in fits of incapacitating laughter, get really nasty or become crestfallen and disconsolate. It turned out that they'd decided I was Johnson Johnson, a porn actor who (within his discipline) was having his fifteen minutes. Curious, I found "Cocks 'n' Cocks" in a theater on 42nd Street and checked him out. To my surprise there were real and striking similarities between us; many more in fact than was usually so. Unfortunately there was also one significant difference. I had barely qualified for the "Woman's Home Companion" category in the old high school joke. When Johnson Johnson used the urinal in a men's room he probably had to stand in the hall.

And then there's the "relationship" I spoke of, which was also the time I broke most all of my rules. We're going back a dozen years here, but there are still nights during which I'm abruptly awakened by the sound of my voice calling her name. When I'm not alone these outbursts cause my bedmates to awaken rather abruptly themselves, but I think at least a part of what they find disconcerting is that the name I call is "Roger" - her father wanted a boy and he hadn't taken no for an answer.

A sparrow of a girl, no more than four-foot-ten and alarmingly skinny, Roger had thick black hair that, falling over most of her face, also fell nearly to the floor. The first time I saw her, from the other end of a long and crowded bar, I thought she was a half-opened umbrella standing on its handle.

We were introduced later that evening by a casual acquaintance of mine she turned out to be with who knew nothing about me except my real name (and who was obviously trying to dump her). But when he said, and quite clearly I thought, "Roger, I'd like you to meet Pete Papadopolous," her reply was: "Mr. HOFFMAN! What an honorary and spectaculated phenomination. This is PEERLESS even."

Now the thing was that when I saw what was happening normal procedure in this circumstance went out the window. I think I knew immediately that Roger was a keeper and at once recognizing how much she wanted me to be Hoffman and deathly afraid that she would turn away at the slightest hint that I wasn't (which would have been difficult to tell since her hair made it all but impossible to know in which direction she was facing), I went out of way to nourish and perpetuate the "misunderstanding."

What can I say? I was in love for the only time in my life, and when, in our initial embrace a couple of hours later I must have squeezed her too hard and she urinated all over my sneakers, I just - I guess it was the intimacy of it - went over the top. Indeed, before the sun came up I had invited her to live with me and she had accepted.

"I'm so excrutiated," she gushed. "I'm besides both sides of myself. And yours too!"

Yes, of course I knew there was no way it could work, that it had to end badly. But I couldn't help entertaining the fantasy that if I drew her in really tight before she discovered her error, we might achieve a depth of bonding that would make my true identity (or lack of one) irrelevant.

The following morning (and amazed by the soothing effect her presence was having on my flying roommates - who'd stopped fluttering around so much and were making sweet cooing sounds), I was more than anxious to know everything about her.

She hadn't, I learned, had an easy time of it.

Her father, she said, had been a profligator of languigistics at a presticated universalment but had quit his tender position and disisipated — just, and poignantly, a day after Roger, then a toddler, had spoken her first paragraph.

Even more heartbreaking, her mother, on whose insurance policy she'd been living for the last twenty years, had tragicastically electrified herself when she inexplaciously dropped a George Foreman grill into the bath she was taking — this on the evening of the day she'd come to Roger's first grade class to hear her recite "Mary Kept A Smallish Lamb."

“How is Isabella?”

But at this point (and apparently wrestling with her delusion — which was something I'd never known any of my women to do and which, I thought, said something about the quality of her character, though I'm not sure what exactly), she began to ask some questions of her own.

"How come you don't seem to have the majority of cash I respected?" she said. "How come you don't habituate in a nice place? How come you don't have a phone in case Steven Spielberg and Sidney Pollack are feeling communicable? How come your closet is only fulminating with jeans? Also, how come you don't keep your birds in cages?"

Considering that I wasn't used to such an interrogation — and that I was obliged to think on my feet — I came up with something that I thought wasn't bad.

"Honey," I said, "you've entered my life at the worst possible time and while I know that it's asking a lot, I can only hope you'll find it within yourself to bear with me. I'm afraid that I may be afflicted with what's called the 'J.D. Salinger Syndrome'. It's a condition of creative paralysis that sometimes develops in artists who have achieved a legendary stature. Owning the prospect of a fame that will survive their demise, they live in terror of losing that prospect by producing work that might be inferior to what they've already accomplished. Rather than risk tainting their image, they cease to function and, in the worst cases, to even appear in public where the possibility of a clumsy or mediocre utterance could alter and diminish the way they're perceived. What happens is that they effectively sacrifice the remainder of their lives to their immortality. I may or may not overcome this disease and I'll understand completely if its something you want no part of. All I can say is that I'm deliberately staying out of the public eye right now and that I've cut myself off from even my closest friends and associates who, meaning well but not understanding, would only make light of my problem and encourage me to work. This unfortunately includes my accountant who happens to be the only person with access to my bank accounts. As for the apartment, it's my hideout. It's perfect as a hideout because no one would ever think to look for me in such a crummy place. You're the only one who knows about it, the only person I've trusted enough to bring to it. But again, I'll understand if this isn't something you want to involve yourself with because it won't be a whole lot of fun and I don't know how it will end."

And it worked. Roger said nothing, but in addition to breaking out in a really hideous rash as I spoke, her chest swelled noticeably, almost expanding into something like a bosom. She must have felt five feet tall to be deemed worthy of sharing in my time of trial.

Archives

When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot - 3

By Robert Levin