Cabaret

A St. Louis Story Of the 1970s

Fluffy snowflakes floated down from the grey sky, and landed on my stocking cap and the shoulders of my winter coat as I walked up Euclid toward the Potpourri. Since it was a December Tuesday, and the first snowfall of the season (even though not forecast to amount to more than a dusting, but who knew for sure) there wasn’t likely to be much of a crowd. “Crowd” probably shouldn’t even be used at all to describe the dozen – maybe 20 – who would be there, most regulars like me, no new faces (or baskets or buns) likely to be among them. But there was always the chance, the hope, that someone new, someone wonderful, might-just-might venture out, even on a December Tuesday with the first snow falling. And if he did, and if I wasn’t there to meet him, what a tragedy. Why take the chance? Why trifle with fate?

It wasn’t far to walk – and I walked since I had no car – just along West Pine to Euclid, and then up 8 blocks or so to McPherson. The “Po,” as we all called it, had no cover charge during the week, which made weeknight visits a bargain, even if you didn’t trick – which was likely on a Tuesday – but not inevitable, which is why I’d decided to go – though probably I’d have gone even if there was a cover – I almost always did. “What good is sitting alone in your room?” “Life is a cabaret.” And I loved a cabaret. And there was always the chance he would be there.

Source: Washington University Libraries

I pushed open the door and went into the dark, sparsely peopled ground-floor bar. The basement dance level – a death trap, with narrow stairs at front and back – thank God there had never been a fire – so far – wasn’t open on weeknights in the winter, which was just as well: the dancing would have been dismal with so few men there, and almost none of the hot ones. I smiled as I looked at the room and realized that on this December Tuesday night even I might count as one of the “hot ones.”

But maybe this would be the night when love would come back from an over-long vacation. Probably not, but maybe. Though sometimes I wondered why I even wanted it to return. It seemed like love always made me sad in the end. That’s what history said anyway. The highest high, followed sooner or later by the lowest low, as though it had to be that way. Law of nature; edict of God; just the way love works? But did it really matter why? Knowing why wouldn’t change anything in the end. It would be another story to add to my growing volume of tear-jerk tales.

The stories were all much the same – a matter of searching-finding-loving-losing, which unfolded with maudlin monotony after the first half dozen – different in detail (the dates were different, of course, sometimes the places, and the men, though how different, really, were even the men?), but all tracking along the same course, heading, seemingly inevitably, toward the same end. And there was always an end sooner or later, at least there had been so far.

I looked around, registering the faces, “That one,” and “that one,” and “that one,” all around the room, faces I’d seen over the years, some closely a time or two – but all already seen. As I’d foretold, a usual Tuesday in December, with the first snow falling.

But then, at a far table, I saw a face I hadn’t seen before, a face with an elfin look, hair over forehead, ears a bit too large, chubby cheeks (though with a slight physique), a hint of a smile, hinting at mischief, and eyes with a swagger trying to mask uncertainty. That hint of mischief proved to be one of the things that appealed most.

He looked to be alone – or was he with those two now standing at the bar, chatting up Jimmie, the cute bartender? Whichever, it didn’t matter, because he was alone at the moment, and in a moment I'd be back there with him, as soon as I mustered the nerve.

It never got easier, making a move. Even though presumably we were all there for more or less the same thing – to search, find, love, maybe not lose this time at last. What’s the definition of insanity – something about doing the same thing over and over? Could it be only chance (or maybe portent) that at that very moment Patsy Cline lamented from the jukebox: “I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying/And I'm crazy for loving you?”

Flash forward to May. No, best stop at April, when the gorgeous pink petals of flowering plums showering down from the blue sky, landed on our hair and shoulders as we walked down Euclid toward his apartment. In April, love was still a many splendored thing, the April rose of early spring. By May, another Patsy Cline song topped my lovelorn chart: “I fall to pieces/Each time I see you again.” How quickly sometimes (most times? every time?) things can fall to pieces.

His name, I’d learned, once I’d mustered the nerve to walk over, was … But why complicate things with names? He had one, but after the first always-awkward moment, we hardly even needed names or words to agree that we’d spend that night, and then many more nights, together – as many as he could manage, since it turned out – he made no secret of it, which seemed in his mind to make it all right – he had, though often out of town on business and so no impediment, (in my mind the word put at the end of a long sentence with many tangled phrases, in the hope, I suppose, that it would never have to be written – always hovering, but ignorable when not spoken, at least in the times of ecstasy), he had a Lover.

That first night LOVER didn’t enter in, even though it came as a shock when he shared the news – after the sex. I’d done nothing wrong that first night because I hadn’t known. All the subsequent nights I couldn’t claim ignorance, and hence not innocence either, but I managed to ignore the guilt. It was a skill honed through years of evangelical anguish, and so perfected to a high degree. When we were together, it hardly ever bothered me – until after the sex; until he got up to go home on those nights when Lover wasn’t out of town; until he called last minute because Lover had a change of plans so we’d have to change our plans too.

Love as “the other man” wasn’t a love I’d dreamed of, or one I’d imagined, or one I’d have chosen if I’d had the choice before it happened. But once it had happened, it wasn’t a love I could easily turn away from either. Who besides myself would I be hurting as an accomplice in infidelity? I was willing to take the risk of pain, for myself. Perhaps they had an understanding – he was never completely clear on that. If they did, OK; if they didn’t, was that my fault? Oh, the devious contortions love tempts one to. I managed pretzel twists of conscience and heart, to keep love going from December to April.

“Love” was never spoken, just as “Lover” wasn’t, but both hovered around us like apparitions through winter and into spring – always near in the beds we shared together, and the bed I slept (and wept) in alone when he was elsewhere – doing what with whom I tried not to imagine – though I knew what and I knew who – at least knew one of them –  and I wept even more. I was ready to endure the pain myself; I hoped no one else got hurt. (But that was only partly true. Truth be told, if Lover had felt more pain so that I could feel less, I’d have counted it a bargain worth the guilt.)

We could have gone on thus indefinitely – even sometimes three of us sharing the beds, pretending that was what we all three wanted – but it wasn’t, and all three knew it, no matter how hard we tried to pretend otherwise. Those who can truly sustain plural love are mythical creatures from another dimension for most poor humans, who cling to one-on-one, and that barely.

April and the pink petals passed. By May they were completely gone, with no festive Maypole streamers to replace them. Some of our trio could no longer pretend, or were no longer willing to. Try as we did, Lover and I found no connection, not even the connection of sex after the novelty passed. Nothing grew between us, and quickly both knew nothing could.

He didn’t want to believe it, because for him something flourished with both. It may have been love, some sort of love, or it may have been something else, but for him it was enough and he wanted it to stay. And not just from selfishness, because he wasn’t completely selfish – though that certainly must have been part of it: how exhilarating choosing his bedmate for the night, like a sultan with a harem of two – two that we all knew about, anyway.

By May, it was almost as though Lover and I had formed an alliance – not that we’d done so consciously; far from it – to force him to decide between us. It was a risk, and one I had no choice in taking. There was no assurance that I’d end the winner. I seemed to have some power – was it sexual?  I could hardly grasp the possibility that I might have sexual power, so maybe it was something else – but whatever it was, it reached it’s limit far too soon to secure for me what I wanted with him – what I thought I wanted, that is, which might have turned out to be not what I really wanted at all.

And as it happened, I’d never know, because as it happened he had the power that mattered, and Lover ended the winner – the chosen one, that is – and I the one left with tears. Was I surprised? No. Was I hurt? Yes. Would I survive? Of course. One always survived a broken heart. A broken heart could be mended with the glue and staples of passing time and hope. There was always the chance, the hope, that next time would be different. “What good is sitting alone in your room?” “Life is a cabaret.” And anything might happen – maybe even love that lasts – next time – at Cabaret.