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Show Moon -134 How could I have been so many people and then gathered up my selves at one moment to make good the escape? I carried so many people on my back. Their clothes, for one thing. I bought them at the thrift stores, which in New York if you know how to look yield up the finest bargains imaginable. Every Saturday I trudged back up Second Avenue to my railroad flat, bearing shopping bags stuffed with the these bargains. I had no room to hang everything up. My back room became jammed with unpacked shopping bags and I wondered if this was how bagladies got started. My selves could not decide which to be: blue jeans and flannel shirts, peasant skirts and blouses, Hippie beads, tailored tweed, or organic outdoor, complete with hiking boots and Powderhorn parka. As I came closer to leaving New York, I opted for organic, especially for riding the subway. I adopted a swagger to match: don't mess with me, I'm rugged, I'm quick. My closet was where each day I faced this crisis, forced to see over and over again that I had no idea who I was. An artist, I'd say to some man at a party. Then, embarrassed, I'd explain I did ad pasteups for a living of sorts; then Td invite him to my railroad flat where some of my better drawings were taped to the walls so he'd say, "You are an artist!" So he'd say, "How can you stand living in a place like this?" And I'd say I liked it fine, and he'd think what a good sport and maybe about taking me away from it all, which never got farther than a little pot or a play and a French dinner on Madison Avenue. About the time I left Mark, America was working its way into the sexual revolution. In New York City it was already tilt-awhirl, a wild ride, everywhere men to carry off the newly liberated women who thought freedom meant being |
