Great Kisser by David Evanier Page A

life,” in which he promised to tutor young men and thus redeem “the days of their lives.” After all this sappy crap about the days of our, his and their lives, he went on to say that he had loved his wife, that she was “a class act” and created a terrific bakery out of nothing. He spoke so well, he looked so pleased with himself, it was as if he thought the jury would be so moved and touched and persuaded of his superior qualities that they would change their minds, take off his handcuffs, and, after giving him a standing ovation, allow him to walk out of the courtroom a free man and resume his life with the stripper he was courting and to whom he had given his dead wife’s car.
    This is how we experience our lives now, but it is not boring. How entertaining to write about. We immediately recognize the Rabbi’s evil as ours, our neighbors’, the undertow of our world.
    My wife Karen has the courage of a lion and goodness with no subtext. She has repaired herself and has become a psychologist whose presence is cherished by her colleagues and patients. What crippled and inhibited her is gone. She looks directly at me; she listens; she is not afraid. Her physical beauty is more intense than when she was young. I watch her read in her reflective beauty and she is the person now I wanted then.
    And me? I rose out of the rubble too.
    XI: Where You’re Terrific Even If You’re Good
    In the bitter life I had carved out for myself in New York, sticking tenaciously to the writing I loved was the only thing that mattered. There was a purity to it, I thought simply, looking at myself in the mirror. I sacrificed everything else, everything, to get it done. I liked to quote Faulkner: “The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. If a writer has to sell his grandmother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.”
    I worked at the office jobs I hated—as a typist, a temp, or a publicist—and at night would go to my studio off Times Square, drink hot coffee and flog myself to work until midnight or one or two. Then I began the most difficult part of the night: getting safely to the subway. I had to get down the 42nd Street block past the muggers, the pimps and hookers and the killers. I was vulnerable, with my beret, my books and notebooks and briefcase, walking in the neon lights past the porn shops. But I had certain advantages too: I looked weird, I was drunk from the shot of bourbon I had before leaving the studio, and I deliberately talked to myself and acted paranoid. I fit in a little better that way—even though the things I was saying aloud were really perfectly rational: stuff about making progress in my writing and avoiding summarization and cerebral content.
    As I got closer to the subway entrance, I ran instead of walked. The biggest challenge was when I reached the entrance. That’s where they waited with their knives and guns. But I’d developed a strategy that worked pretty well. I ran up to the entrance and then, to everybody’s surprise, I threw myself down the steps, landing at the bottom, where the token booth and the cops were. This was painful, but it worked. Of course, I padded my knees with foam rubber. I was never mugged. Then, when I got on the subway, I looked so ragged and wild that nobody messed with me.
    Unable to sleep, I would go into the office in the morning and ghostwalk. The cheery businessmen would spot my exhaustion and vulnerability and pounce on me. I went into the bathroom and wrote down what they said. Some of my best writing was about them.
    It was hellish, it was fun. I did this well into middle age and thumbed my nose at all of those who did not do it: who tended to their families, went rollerskating with their children, chose good schools for them, joined the carnival of life. Yet I accepted Karen’s help