I have an idea for another book.
Yes, I’m aware that I have two or three other books in various states of incompletion… but, like most other forms of infatuation, this is not something within my control.
The idea grew in response to a tiny piece I wrote that was unconnected to anything else I’ve been writing. It was no more than a little character sketch, and it seemed unlikely to ever fit into anything else I’ve tried to squeeze into book form. Obviously, something else was required.
Back in the sixties, many of my friends were reading Gurdjieff’s Meetings with Remarkable Men. It was a tad too spiritual for my agnostic tastes, but I liked the idea of describing folks I’ve met—in real life, in fiction, or merely in my imagination—folks who have influenced my (for lack of a better word) “development.”
That first sketch, below, might be about someone I’ve met, or—then again—maybe not. I don’t think I’ll be very forthcoming about the relative reality of the folks I’ll be including. Reality is relative—and somewhat over-rated anyway.
Whether or not anything comes of this start, here’s the impetus:
Orpheus’ Ascent from Hell’s Kitchen
I don’t recall the first time I spotted Orpheus Johnson on the street. I do remember experiencing an oddly comfortable feeling at the time—rather like an unexpected sighting of Moondog or Mr. and Mrs. Purple. It was reassuring to feel that I was a part of the New York City scene, just one of the unique characters who inhabit it. An ordinary person, in some fly-over state, might accidentally encounter a celebrity in the wild, but characters like Orpheus only exist in New York.
They’re anomalies, for sure, but they’re our anomalies and we’re proud of them.
That first time, when he caught me watching him he kinda’ shimmered over in my direction. In a hoarse, Miles-like, conspiratorial whisper, said, “Bird lives.” I knew that Charlie Parker had been dead since 1955—half a century earlier—but something in Orpheus’ manner suggested I should just accept anything he said.
The man had gravitas, you understand?
I don’t think I ever considered Orpheus in any other context than the street—it was almost as if he had no other existence beyond that which manifested itself, spontaneously, at the very moment I might need a jolt of urban eccentricity to cure me of the metropolitan blahs. There was something eternal about him.
That’s why I was so surprised to see his obituary in The New York Times.
It said, in part, that Dr. Antonio Jones—AKA Professor St. Libertinus, AKA Orpheus Johnson, and perhaps other pseudonyms—had been found dead in one of the many Upper West Side apartments he managed as guru of an extensive free-love cult. His nude body had been found in a tangled heap of bodies: including several of his female acolytes—who were also naked. Their identities, if known, were not released by the investigating officers. The police had not yet determined if the deaths were the result of foul play, accident, or autoerotic suicide—albeit one approaching Jonestown proportions.
Now that I consider the matter, there was always a subtle undertone of scam, or flim-flam, about him, but it was so slight—or so professionally masked—that my naturally suspicious nature wasn’t alerted. It was as if there was some sort of magnetic field around him. We could be talking, on the street, when strangers just accumulated around us, as softly and silently as drifting snow—then stayed behind to bask in his aura—even as I walked off to ninety-sixth street to catch a downtown express.
Now that he’s gone, I can’t help wondering what my life would have been like if I had followed Orpheus, the pied piper of unrepentant promiscuity.
Paid subscribers to these substack pages get access to complete editions of two of my novellas. Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. Unbelievable is a kind of rom-com that forms around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful. Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get them for free!
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