Harry´s Blog

a novel by Herbert Kuhner (excerpt)

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I met Herby in his and my Glenn period. Glenn had been precursor of the new era. But now the word was getting around. Beatle-itus was at its height and the mini-skirt had just come in. Glenn was one of Vienna’s first hippies. Short, well-packed, a broad freckled face framed by a flaming beard, beady eyes and a sheepish grin. yes, the reddish blonde hair was shoulder length.

At another time, he might have been a pirate or a composer. In fact those elements weren’t missing from his personality. He had been known to swipe things, and he was involved in musical activities.

He dressed sloppily and outlandishly, which was both characteristic and due to lack of funds, Not that he didn’t get plenty of money from home. His parents in California threatened to cut off the flow, but fulfilled his demands – increasing the size of his checks. But he never had enough. He spent it on a large apartment facing the Danube and expenses for his two-year-old daughter. Her mother, his first wife, had disappeared somewhere in Germany, and was now, he suspected, employed in a bar-bordello.

At the time he was separated from his second wife. They were living at different addresses, she at home with her mother.

His explanation for the hasty marriages: “They dig changing their names, and you have to make them happy.” His age: all of twenty-two years.

According to his information, he was a jack-of-all-trades and arts. He had tried his hand at everything. Food-checker, fishmonger, truck driver, panhandler, fixer, actor, director, film-maker, painter, acrobat. The list went on.

Naturally he also wrote. He showed me his texts. I didn’t venture any criticism. Why should I? In Austria it’s easy for anyone to be a writer, except for a writer. Look at the literary circle-jerk in Graz.

Glenn was officially a student. He was studying voice and piano at the music academy. And he was composing a hippie musical. It was tragic with the rape and murder of the girlfriend, mistaken identity, the stabbing of a cop and the hero’s suicide from a rooftop. The tunes in were turn-of-the-century operetta style. Incongruous?- But then so was everything about Glenn. It was always a new subject that interested him and hold talk about it for hours. He’d go on and never stop. His information was, to be sure, not always inaccurate. But he could run anything into the ground. He had a special talent for making even the most interesting subject seem sleep-inducing.

There were other reasons for avoiding him. One was that he was a mooch. He was always inviting you to invite him. Or he’d simply go to a restaurant with you and say that he forgot his wallet when the waiter came with the check. You couldn’t meet him without his trying to make a touch. And as for touching, he was always telling tales of seductions. The seducees were mostly virgins “Seducing virgins was his bit,” Herby had said. Telling about seducing virgins, was my correction.

His reason for separating from his wife: he wanted to try other girls on for size. He hadn’t been able to accumulate enough experience to suit him, due to his two marriages. Out now was the time to make up for it. That’s where Herby came in. Due to Herby there was always a turnover. They’d be going in and out and Glenn could take the leftovers or the rejects. But back to the touching aspect.

Glenn would often try to illustrate his seductions as he told of them. He’d lay his satyr’s head on your shoulder using you as a demonstration dummy.

It was at Glenn’s party that our paths first crossed. Glenn had told me about Herby and I wanted to meet him – and see him in action. The party, Glenn had informed me, was to be an orgy. Of course . wanted to attend, but strictly as an observer.

At the time I was on rough seas with a painter. It was a typical situation. Women think I’m a life raft, always trying to climb aboard. “Help, save me!” They’d yell. “I’m going under. Come to my aid, and I’ll give myself to you forever.”

There were public scenes, hysterical telephone calls, false pregnancies, threats of suicide. The whole spectrum.

She had marriage in mind and her sights set on good old Leporello. She was the kind of woman who knocks a man down so that she can help him to his feet. “You need a woman in back of you,” she had told me. “No, not in back of me – under me,” was my silent correction.

I had been laid out on the philosophical table and given a thorough conscience massage. It hadn’t taken her long to find out that I had a built-in guilt complex. Some time after the advent, she told me that I had deprived her of her virginity. I hadn’t noticed that. Out there was an explanation. She had been deflowered on the operating table. According to Herby there were usually three possibilities. It was either the father, a bicycle or the doctor. In her case it was the last. (Herby always referred to her as my surgical virgin.) Since I had seduced her, I was naturally obligated to tie the bands. The fact that she was in her thirties was irrelevant. A virgin was a virgin. Surgery or no surgery.

I tried to cover up about the party, When I told her that I couldn’t go out with her on that particular night, I was interrogated. I gave her a story about visiting a sick aunt, but under her third degree, I finally broke down and came out with the truth.

I told her that she couldn’t go since the party was to be an orgy. As a writer, I had to attend to gather material. She countered that a painter also needed that theme. No. I refused to let her get into a compromising situation. Glenn had told me that a wild man would be there. He might make a try for her and then I’d have to go to her aid. My meeting Herby would begin with a fight. There was no question of her attending. I would go alone.

She was firm. I had a choice: either we went together, or I didn’t go. If I went without her, it would be the end. There were tears and threats. But I had decided to go and go I would. This time she wouldn’t bring me around.

Glenn’s party turned out to be a dud. Not a trace of orgy. The dullest party I had ever been to, Herby showed home movies. He was his own star. San Francisco: Herby crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Herby riding a cable car up Nob Hill. Herby wielding chopsticks in a Chinatown restaurant. They weren’t the real McCoy as Glenn had told me. (Those I would get to see years later.) The only taboo: tea was smoked. Herby told me long after the party that they had used real tea – the kind you make in kettles. But the party was the celebration of the end of the affair. The painter went out of my life, and Herby came in.

As for the painter, a Leporello addendum. When I had met her, there was home-made French bed in her studio. There was only one thing missing – a mattress. The bed, I was told, had been made for the man in her life and that man was me. She had not known me at the, time of construction, but she had a premonition of my arrival. I had come chronologically between bed and mattress. The missing mattress would be provided after we had tied the knot. In the meantime a makeshift mattress would have to do. The ersatz consisted of three stone-hard blocks that would separate when in use. Blue marks were the result. The attendance of the forbidden party brought an end to the bed – and canceled out the mattress.

Some time later, I found out another writer had constructed the bed. (Ah, those writers!) but he had never used it. For him too there were conditions. He was married. The bed would be at his disposal after his divorce. And it was that bed or no bed. It had been his successor who had broken it in.