Men I Have Loved and Other Fiction

February 12, 2014

WRITE ON NEW YORK

Men become mythology in the mind of a single writer and that mythology turns into stories. And so I was reminded a few days ago when I had an 8 a.m. meeting in Manhattan and, rather than struggling with slush and erratic Q train service, decided to stay overnight at the Edison Hotel on 47th Street off Times Square.

There, in the lobby, I encountered the mural by Charnick, Manhattan through the eyes of a gull painted, as you can see, before the fall of the towers. When he painted this, I was a young girl in the city. Seriously crushing on intense, poetic young narcissists—artists.

Charnick, who used only one name long after Plato and well before Oprah, broke my heart. I tried to possess him by writing a play about him. This is something writers do. We write about things that plague, haunt and entangle us. In the writing, where we are queens of the manor born, we are free to figure things out, and exorcise.

I approached the mural like a lapsed Catholic might approach a statue of Christ: raptly, but with irony. Oh, what you meant to me, once. And where is Charnick now? He winters on an island off the coast of Nicaragua, stripped by age and corrugated loneliness of his power over women. At least, he no longer has power over me.

As I look at the mural that is rarely viewed because it’s way too fantastic for the backpackers and ruddy country folk from Shropshire who frequent the Edison, I recall not only this mistake but many others I’ve made in the name of love.

There was Eoin, the charming BBC producer who came to America to find American writers of radio plays for a contest. I’ll never forget watching him on stage at Playwrights Horizons telling a roomful of playwrights about Radio 4 and all I’m thinking is, “Look at him,” and that accent. Probably, I did try extra hard; I did win.

Happy so far but then, when my screenplay was about to get made, Eoin steps forward with an offer from Working Title and I drop my hard-working American producers and spin off to London ostensibly to sign but actually to see him again.

There was Jim, who promised to take care of me right after cancer, and who, when I held an engagement party for us at my loft (when I was rich enough to live in Manhattan) embarrassed me by sitting stiffly in a chair and not saying a word the whole night. I spend an entire year writing a self-help book on social skills.

Richard Siebert for whom I write a book of poetry. Billy who inspires Letting Billy. And the boys in the band, literally, all of whom I had a crush on, and for whom I recently complete my new play, The Dodgers.

Early the next morning, I avoid the mural and stick to the coffee shop, where the theater folk go. Order oatmeal and coffee, and, stirring the brew, vow to write about things I don’t know: scientists, or vampires, or maybe that’s been done.

To read more from Diana check back next Wednesday here on AANY
or visit her website DianaAmsterdam.com