September 11: Animality and Vulgarity, Lose Track, Mirror in Front of My Face

Merton loses the religious faith he recently found . . .

That summer, when I went on a slow and dirty train in a round-about way to Chicago to see the World’s Fair, I picked up two pamphlets on the Mormons in the Hall of Religion, but the story of the holy books discovered through revelation on a hill in upper New York State did not convince me and I was not converted. The thin red and yellow walls of the palaces of the Fair, scattered between the lake and the slums and freight-yards, amused me with their noise, and for the first time I walked in the wide-open air of the flat and endless Middle West. 

Out of sheer bravado I got myself a job for a few days as a barker in front of a side-show in a part of the Fair called the Streets of Paris, the nature of which is sufficiently evident from that name. The ease with which I got the job astounded and flattered me, and it gave me a sense of power and importance to be so suddenly transported from the order of those who were fleeced of their money to the level of those who did the fleecing. However, in a couple of days I also discovered that perhaps I had not risen above the ranks of the “suckers” after all, since the boss of the side-show was more ready to pay me in promises and fancy words than in dollars, for my services. Besides, it was very tiring to stand in the heat and dust from noon to midnight shouting at the sea of straw-hatted heads and shoulders dressed in duck and seersucker or in open-necked shirts and dresses soaked with healthy Middle-Western sweat. The absolutely open and undisguised and noncommittal frankness of the paganism of Chicago and of this Fair and of this particular part of the Fair and, apparently, of the whole country which it represented, amazed me after the complicated reticences of England and the ornate pornography of France. 

When I got back to New York I had lost most of my temporary interest in religion. My friends in that city had a religion of their own: a cult of New York itself, and of the peculiar manner in which Manhattan expressed the bigness and gaudiness and noisiness and frank animality and vulgarity of this American paganism. 

I used to go to the Burlesque and hang around Fourteenth Street with Reg Marsh, who was an old friend of my father’s, and who is famous for painting all these things in his pictures. Reginald Marsh was (and I suppose still is) a thick-set man of short stature who gave the impression that he was a retired light-weight prize-fighter. He had a way of talking out of the corner of his mouth, and yet at the same time his face had something babyish and cherubic about it, as he looked out at the world through the simple and disinterested and uncritical eyes of the artist, taking everything as he found it, and considering everything as possible subject matter for one of his Hogarthian compositions, provided only it was alive. 

We got along very well together, because of the harmony of our views, I worshiping life as such, and he worshiping it especially in the loud, wild bedlam of the crowded, crazy city that he loved. His favorite places of devotion were Union Square and the Irving Place Burlesque, stinking of sweat and cheap cigars and ready to burn down or collapse at any minute. But I guess his cathedral was Coney Island. Everybody who has ever seen his pictures, knows that much about Reg Marsh. 

All that summer I hung around his Fourteenth Street studio, and went with him to many of the parties to which he was invited, and got to know my way around New York. 

But when September came I sailed for England once more. This time I made the crossing on the Manhattan, a garish and turbulent cabin class steamer full of Nazi spies working as stewards and detesting the Jewish passengers. The voyage was a violent one. One night I looked down one of the deep stair-wells and saw six or seven half-drunk passengers having a general fight on the swaying linoleum floor of E deck. And one afternoon in the middle of one of those paralyzing synthetic amusements that are fixed up for the passengers on Atlantic liners—I think it must have been the “horse race”—an American dentist stood up with a loud roar and challenged a French tailor to come out and fight him on the promenade deck. The challenge was not taken up, but all the business men and tourists savored the delicious scandal, for there was no one on board who was not aware that behind it all stood the six-foot daughter of someone prominent in Washington, D.C.

At Plymouth they put those of us who were bound for London on to a fat launch in the middle of the harbor, and once again I looked upon the pale green downs of England. I landed with one of the worst colds I ever had in my life. And so on the tide of all these circumstances of confusion I swept into the dark, sinister atmosphere of Cambridge and began my university career.

Getting distracted is very easy, very human.  Merton leaves Italy full of a religious fervor he's never experienced before.  Upon returning to New York, he falls back into old, worldly habits, and returns to earlier jaundiced view of organized religion.  That it is simply artifice and vanity.  Plus, he is swept up in the "animality and vulgarity" of what he calls "American paganism."  His cathedral is New York City with its steel and glass and multitudes of sweaty humanity.

It's so easy to lose track of yourself in the midst of struggle.  If anything, that's what this year is defined by:  struggle.  For me, the struggle has been on all levels, from the universal to the personal.  So much upheaval and turmoil.  And my son, who I've tried to shield from all the slings and arrows of 2020, has picked up on it.  Yesterday afternoon, a phone call from the school guidance counselor confirmed this fact.  Intuitively, my son realizes something is amiss in his little portion of the planet, and he's been expressing his reaction in unhealthy, self-harmful ways.

Anyone who knows me, even superficially, knows I would do anything for my kids' happiness.  One of the reasons I've held on so long as a contingent professor at the university is so that I can help my daughter and son pay for their college educations.  The reason I work my second job in the medical office is for the health benefits.  Then there's playing the pipe organ on the weekends.  Cleaning churches during the week.  All for my family.  And I don't mind it.  It's what fathers and husbands are supposed to do.

In all this busyness, however, I sometimes don't see problems that exist right in front of my face.  My son is hurting.  Really hurting.  I didn't see it.  I see it now, after that call from the guidance counselor, a visit to his therapist, and a trip to the ER.  It was a sobering night for me.  Held up a huge mirror in front of my face, and I didn't like what I saw. 

What did I see?  I saw a father who was too wrapped up in what he thought a father ought to do, not doing what a father needs to do.  Which is to be attentive.  Be mindful.  Be there.  I'm sitting across from my son right now at our kitchen table.  He's chewing gum, listening to his weird music (Oliver Tree--do yourself a favor and avoid it), and actually smiling.  I haven't seen him smile in quite a few days.

I listened to him today at his therapist's office and then in the ER, and I think my son felt heard.  Perhaps that accounts for his smile.  I think, deep down, that's what everyone wants.  Validation that they are important and loved, no matter what.  That they are heard with a capital "H." 

My son taught me how to be a better father--and person--today.  That's a miracle.  He's home, safe.  Another miracle. 

Saint Marty gives thanks for his son's smile tonight.