Posters
by Jimmy Carl Harris
SEE THE WORLD
"Don’t you have a bed?"
It began with glances over espresso. She laughed when I winked. I laughed at her laughter. We strolled along the quay. She pointed to the gray ladies and I told her about their bloodlines and their particular charms--there, a British destroyer with Sea Darts, there, a French frigate with Exocets, farther out in the harbor, my cruiser with Tomahawks and Harpoons. She said they were sinister sisters, but I let that pass. At noon, she showed me how to dip bread in olive oil. When I asked where we could go next, she ran her fingertips along my forearm and said we could go to her apartment.
The only visible furniture was a dark, hulking table, accompanied by three equally stern chairs. After I had been there a couple of times, Simone told me that a comrade had broken the fourth chair into clubs, useful in political discussions. The posters on the pale walls hurled forth the likes of Red Guards Advance Against Capitalists and Workers Of The World Unite. The marble parquet floor was hard and cold through the soles of my sneakers, despite the softly blazing Greek sunshine outside. There was a closed door, maybe a bedroom, but I was never to know.
"Beds are for sleeping. Pleasure is enhanced by pain. You are a soft American."
"Yeah, but--"
Simone tugged at my zipper, clearing my mind of protest. We made love on the floor, then adjourned to the table. I put my skivvies on, but Simone left her clothes where she had dropped them. She slouched in her chair, her legs apart as if to cool herself. One elbow rested on the table, a smoldering Karelia Plain Oval gripped lightly between her thumb and forefinger. Her eyes, their luster already heightened by sex, filled with amusement at my attempt to rub some relief into my bruised knees. "Did we not have marvelous sex?"
I couldn’t permit the triumph in her voice to pass unchallenged. "I could’ve had marvelous sex without the marble floor."
"Not with me, you couldn’t." Simone stood and turned away, leaving me to fear I had spoiled the moment, and more. Then, she took a bottle of Tsantali and a couple of unmatched glasses from a windowsill, sat, and began pouring. "Don’t worry. Equality is a core tenet. Next time, my knees get banged up." She sat the larger glass of ouzo before me. "Do we have time, before you return to your ship?"
SOUTHSIDE
I spent the first year after I got out of the Navy in Birmingham, remembering Simone and working as a poster boy. I wasn’t one of those photogenic studs whose likeness convinces the masses that they, too, will look sexy smoking a Marlboro or a Kool. I was the kind of poster boy who hangs posters. In my native South, boy does not allude solely to age. It can be a pejorative that signifies a man’s place at the bottom of the socioeconomic order. I’ve witnessed men in their fifties, broom or rake in hand, being addressed as boy. I was twenty-six and once a petty officer on a ship of the line, but I spent nearly twelve months answering to poster boy.
My job was to put up posters anywhere a public space could be violated for the sake of cause or commerce. Causes ran from Salvation Now to Don't Pollute. Commerce ranged from Two For The Price Of One to Vote For Joe Blow. I held American politics to be commerce, not cause, a notion Simone planted in my head. On the other hand, I held Saint Hildegard Sodality Barbecue Here Or To Go to be more cause than commerce. I never did make up my mind about I Want To Buy The World A Coke.
I had originally wanted to ship over, to reenlist for what would have been my third hitch in the US Navy. All I wanted to do was cross-deck, transfer from my homeport-bound ship to anything headed back to the Mediterranean. That way, I would have another chance of pulling liberty in Greece. Greece, where a hard-shelled Communist with a soft center had insisted on practicing the pleasure through pain principle beneath her favorite poster. It was all alone on one wall, like a shrine, the black-on-red image of the eternally proselytizing Argentine. All we needed to complete a Marxist fantasy was the Internationale playing stridently in the background. Even without the music, it was rollicking tenderness on what had been the floor of an ancient temple dedicated to some member of an ancient pantheon. It was the most exotic and erotic combination of things hard and things soft I ever experienced or ever expect to experience.
It was the Command Master Chief who ratted me out to the Executive Officer, telling him I had fallen in with Reds and could no longer be trusted in the message center of a guided missile cruiser. I guess he figured I would pass on to Simone, who would pass on to The Evil Empire, the secrets encrypted in our skipper’s birthday greeting to the Chief of Naval Operations. The XO advised the skipper not to pass a potential spy, maybe an already spy, to an unsuspecting Med-bound skipper. The Annapolis types look out for each other. So, the skipper said no way to my cross-deck request and told the Chief to tell me, which he seemed to greatly enjoy doing, that he was reconsidering my request to ship over. I decided, to hell with the Navy, I’ll get out, go down to Tuscaloosa, and reap the benefits of the GI Bill at the University of Alabama.
Which I did, after a year of going around Birmingham with a pastepot and whatever posters my employer contracted to print and distribute. I didn’t go straight to college because, in her only letter to me, Simone said she wanted me to return to Greece, only please wait until she said it was OK, and it definitely had to be after the elections. She was running for parliament and didn’t want her opponents to make an issue of her liaison with an American. I didn’t want to quit school in the middle of a semester, and I knew damn well I’d be off to Greece as soon as Simone said so--I even went to the Federal Building and got a passport--so I put off starting school until the Simone thing played out.
Simone answered none of my eight letters. I read in The Birmingham News that Simone’s Trotskyist faction was blown out in the elections. Reading that led me to remember how, one day while we were sipping ouzo and recharging my batteries--Simone’s batteries were always on full charge--she told me I was a lackey of the CIA because my ship’s message center was passing intelligence reports on the Communists and, therefore, I was part of a capitalist plot to subvert the people. I told her that was bullshit, whereupon she assumed a very European air of superiority and informed me that I had not been educated to understand these matters. That was not totally untrue but it pissed me off, anyway, and there was no more sex, that day. After reading about how Simone lost out on her shot at parliament, I had to tell myself that maybe she wasn’t writing because she thought I’d given her letter, which included some typical Simone stuff about her conservative opponent being a neofacist, to the CIA. That was totally insane, but commies are big on conspiracy theories.
So, during my year of coming to terms with Simone’s silence, while still remembering how she and I would take turns leaving sweaty butt-prints on that memorable marble floor, I plastered posters all over Birmingham, but mostly on Southside, which is more of a poster kind of place. Once, I did go out of state, to Azalea Springs, Mississippi, to do the publicity for a big holy roller temple fund raiser, which they were building in defiance of the Gulf Coast casinos. It was a first-class production, with four-color posters promising Jesus In The Face Of The Moneychangers. I had always thought that particular biblical allusion was to bankers, not gamblers, but maybe that’s putting too fine a point on things. Anyway, it must have worked--I heard they collected nearly a quarter-million toward raising their Ebenezer.
But, like I said, mostly I worked Southside. The problem--maybe it was only a problem for me, maybe not for anybody else--was that the good poster places already had posters posted, often by me. That meant, for example, an investment opportunity that sounded like a rip-off might get plastered over a grainy picture of an overweight teenage girl with a plea for information--Any Information No Questions Asked Small Reward. Or, Meat And Two Vegetables For $4.95 might hide Meat And Three Vegetables Plus Tea For $3.95, solely because it was posted a week later. When I complained about this, my boss, who had been in the business for about fifty years, said I was only a poster boy with a lot to learn. He said, if I worked the same space long enough, the order of things would reverse, and reverse again. He said it was all business for him and a job for me.
But, some of Simone’s fist-in-the-air lectures had stuck in the back of my mind and kept telling me it was unfair. Some needs are greater, some causes are more just, some offers are a better deal for the people. Yes, for the people. Still, I liked the job. I liked being outdoors, after nearly eight years in a cramped message center with piped-in air. I also liked the money. My boss paid by the piece and, if I wanted to shift into an acquisitive Republican gear and really bust my ass, I could earn about as much as the writer I hoped to someday be.
So, I came up with my own way of inserting a little justice into the process. What I did was, any time I put a poster over one I judged superior in some way, I would figure out how to support the bargain or entreaty I was about to render unseen. I made a point of eating at the meat-and-three for $3.95, and I took a couple of friends. I made an anonymous donation to the grandparents of the missing girl, so they could pay for more posters for me to put up. One time, I even went to a tent meeting, but I kept my butt firmly planted on the bench when the choir invited me to Stand Up for Jesus.
A TERMINAL CASE OF SWEETNESS
And that’s how I met Elaine. Elaine’s poster offered a String Quartet Performing A Classic Medley, playing at this highfalutin liberal arts college to raise money for AIDS. Elaine, pictured on the poster with the other three, was the cellist. Even in the lousy, black-and-white poster picture, she looked as wholesome and winsome as one of the Doublemint Twins. I had never heard--had never heard of, for that matter—a string quartet, nor had I given much thought to the AIDS epidemic. But, before I coated Elaine with paste and covered her with Get E-Mail Absolutely Free By Signing Up Just Five New Customers, I jotted down the particulars of her performance and stuck it in my pocket with the rest of that day’s accumulation of good deals and worthy causes.
Now, I’m about to start my third year in the creative writing program at the university. Hanging all those posters provided me with more than room and board. They provided me with half a dozen good story lines, one of which, about a revival preacher struggling with his homosexuality, made me a finalist for the Pushcart Prize--pretty damn good for a sophomore.
Elaine is finishing her MA in music at Ole Miss. She now spends her weekends with me, breaking her mother’s heart and enraging her father, who was right in thinking she was still a virgin when she met me. I could tell him she resisted my lustful advances for more than a year, but I doubt that would make him feel any better. Pretty, proper Elaine. Elaine, whose shoes are always in season. Elaine, who would be mystified by the idea of arriving at pleasure through pain and appalled at how that might be accomplished, but who has never suspected me of being a CIA stooge. Sweet, predictable Elaine.
For a long time, I hardly ever thought about Simone. Then, one Saturday afternoon while we were lounging around my apartment--Elaine had cookies in the oven, her favorite after-sex activity--she asked me about other women. I guess she figured I owed her that, in return for the great gift of her chastity. I tried to escape the question with a shrug, but my rush of memories must have made its way to my face. She removed the arm I had draped around her shoulders and repeated the question. I mumbled something about youthful flings and went into the kitchen for a beer.
When I returned to the couch, Elaine asked if it had been in Greece. I nodded and turned the TV on. Elaine captured the remote control, pressed the mute button, and asked if it had been an older woman. I was so startled by Elaine’s insight, I confessed. Yes, the woman in Greece had been older, but that was all behind me now. When I asked Elaine what made her think that, she said she could sense I had been with a more exciting and more experienced woman. I told Elaine she was exciting enough, and the way I felt about her had nothing to do with experience. Elaine extended one very rigid little finger and punched the mute button. It was the only time she ever asked about other women.
A couple of months before the end of last semester, Elaine declared it would be great fun to rub elbows with real, live Yankees and see some musicals. Her folks pitched a hissy fit about it, but we went, anyway. Elaine really does love me.
One of the first things I noticed was that New York’s posters reflect New York’s self-anointment as a world-class capital of culture and commerce and everything else. Theater ads cover more than Broadway or off-Broadway, they also tout productions in London and Buenos Aires. Airfare specials are just as likely to be offered by Lufthansa or Cathay Pacific as by Delta or United. Causes range from saving whales and/or tigers to freeing Tibet and/or Cuba.
LATTE'
Elaine came out of the shower, fully freshened, a towel tightly wrapped from her armpits to her knees. She asked if I liked the two hundred dollars per ounce scent she had bought that morning at Bergdorf’s. It occurred to me I don’t know how the real Elaine smells. She is always inside this almost-visible cloud of toiletries--cologne and deodorant and mouthwash and whatever else the merchants of illusion require. Then, my writer’s brain added conflict to the plot. I remembered the smells of Simone--a hint of sweat in her sun-warmed hair, a hint of garlic from her lips, a hint of her private musk as she lifted her dress over her head. Simone never practiced olfactory deceit. I told Elaine she smelled nice.
Elaine pecked me on the cheek, then went to the desk and began rustling the theater pages of the New York Times. I knew that, if I didn’t come up with something else, I was in for another over-priced extravaganza. So, I launched a preemptive strike. "OK, we’ve done Cats and Phantom Of The Opera. How about, let’s go to a Greenwich Village coffee shop?"
Elaine responded with a little-girl handclap. "Yes! Do you know of one?"
"No, but that’ll be part of the fun. Let’s just take a taxi to the middle of Greenwich Village and then discover."
"We could do that, I suppose." Elaine paused. She was not through supposing. "A friend told me about a place with poetry reading that brews an excellent latte’. The proprietors are Puerto Rican expatriates. Shall we try it?"
"Elaine, Puerto Ricans aren’t expatriates. They’re US citizens."
"Oh." Elaine tightened her lips.
"You’re right, that’s not important. Sure, let’s go there."
At the coffee shop, Elaine assumed that, since her politically-challenged friend had suggested the place, she was in charge. "Latte’, dos, por favor."
The guy with the ponytail slapped his left hand on the bar, lifted his right with two fingers extended, and replied in pure Cajun. "Cafe’ au lait, twice, coming right out, cher."
While our latte’ was being brewed, I walked around the room, inhaling the aromas of strong coffee and steamed milk, squinting through the carefully contrived coffee house gloom at the posters. There were dozens of them, the fresher ones partially covering others that were yellowed and curling.
"Looking for more story ideas, dear?"
"Yeah, I guess. Look at this one. What d’you think it says?"
Elaine joined me. "Raw Poetry Howl. I imagine it’s some sort of poetry reading. Tonight. Shall we stay for it?"
"No, I mean, underneath. The one that’s almost covered up."
Elaine turned her attention to the protruding corner of the nearly covered poster. "Well, let’s see. Free, something. Difficult to say." She leaned closer. "Free, then it looks like L and A. La. Free latte’, perhaps?" Elaine frowned and stepped back from the puzzle. "That’s wishful thinking, of course. I give up. Raw Poetry Howl is covering too much of it."
I reached out and picked at the corner of Raw Poetry Howl with a fingernail. "Let’s see."
"Darling! We don’t even know these people."
"Sure we do. El Ponytail is a Puerto Rican expatriate from Louisiana. Anyway, the best story is underneath. It always is." I peeled back Raw Poetry Howl. The gloom made reading difficult, but it spared Elaine the contortions of surprise, then understanding, then horror I felt gripping my face. She nodded when I mumbled something about taking a few notes.
"Please don’t be too long. Our latte’ is ready. I’ll be at our table."
LA GRECA
Free La Greca. La Pasionaria Of The New Millennium, the poster had explained, was an International Revolutionary who had been Imprisoned In South America while Fighting For The Freedom Of The Oppressed. There was no mention of how she came to be in South America or what act had led to her being thrown into the bowels of a municipal prison. In the picture, apparently a mugshot, La Greca looked as though something had been worn out of her. There were shadows under her eyes that could have been smeared printer’s ink but I knew were the results of pain unaccompanied by pleasure. Her untamed black curls were jammed into a beret, a beret like the one Che wore as he looked out, over the fierce coupling of the daughter of the proletariat and the imperialist warmonger, into a future he strove to influence but would never see.
Elaine does not know about the check made out to the La Greca Defense Fund, or that I asked to be kept informed of La Greca’s fate.
I still have my passport.
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