\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Bruce answered<\/strong><\/span> my questions about his trip to Puerto Rico in a monotone, with that dry humor of his, never looking at me and seldom saying more than the minimum. Wanting to cheer him up, I suggested we go to The Scene \u2014 the bar famed for having the only psychedelically lighted dance floor in Ann Arbor. I said, \u201cMaybe we can pick up some secretaries from Ypsilanti and tell them we\u2019re pre-med students.\u201d<\/p>\n Bruce agreed to go. \u201cBut no junior high school shit,\u201d he said. \u201cNo standing around for an hour to get the feel of things. We walk up to the first two hip-looking girls we see and ask to sit down with them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou take the lead, man.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t try to bring me down, I\u2019ll need all the help I can get,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to bring you down,\u201d I said, feeling pissed. But I let it ride.<\/p>\n The Scene was packed. It was Saturday night. The drummer and keyboard player, who accompanied the records, were taking a break. Bruce and I stood at the bar surveying the crowd. \u201cSee the two chicks in back?\u201d Bruce asked. “I\u2019ll go over and see if it\u2019s cool. Just stay here.\u201d One, with her back to us, was wearing a red bandana. The other, a blonde, looked fantastic.<\/p>\n What was Bruce going to say? Hi, my friend and I would like to sit with you?<\/em> I hoped it would be something better than that, but what? Bruce waved me over.<\/p>\n Now it<\/strong> <\/span>was my turn to feel the butterflies. Bruce was sitting next to the blonde. The girl with the red bandana had a friendly, intelligent smile, which made me wonder what she was doing at The Scene. We covered everyone\u2019s name, occupation and place of residence. The bandana girl, Jane, was a natural resources student at the U of M; the blonde, Marie, was a drop-out from Wayne State, now working as a check-out clerk at a Kroger\u2019s in Detroit.<\/p>\n Bruce asked Marie who her favorite authors were, as a ploy for recounting his own poetic and journalistic exploits (he wrote music reviews for the college newspaper). When she told him she had read On the Road<\/em>, he looked as though he was going to hug her. \u201cYou know Kerouac! What else have you read?\u201d All interesting, but with the music blasting away it was hard to hear half of what they were saying.<\/p>\n So I quizzed Jane about her major. She was very concerned about the environment. \u201cWe\u2019re running out of time,\u201d she told me. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to make changes now. In twenty years it will be too late.\u201d She didn\u2019t know what to do about it and neither did I. We danced, talked some more, and then Jane and Marie had to leave. Bruce wrote Marie\u2019s number down on a napkin.<\/p>\n Walking back to campus, Bruce said, \u201cHer name is Marie Verdoux. She\u2019s a Frog \u2014 a Canuck!\u201d Bruce had wanted to meet a French girl ever since becoming a fan of Kerouac, that son of Canucks. \u201cShe\u2019s a genius, no doubt about it.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple days later I dropped by Bruce\u2019s place, a rooming house just off State Street. He was sitting on his bed listening to records. He\u2019d been at it for hours. Bruce told me he had called Marie. \u201cShe was surprised but I think she dug it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat did<\/strong><\/span> you talk about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBullshit. I was just doing it to keep my edge. I don\u2019t want her to forget who I am, you know.\u201d Then Bruce rambled on more about Marie \u2014 what a good time they would have together. Bruce liked to make every encounter with a girl into a big moment of truth, a matter of make or break. We could endlessly analyze the nuances of these meetings. Bruce said, \u201cI tape-recorded the call. She has an incredible voice, like an airline stewardess or something.\u201d<\/p>\n Bruce tape-recorded nearly everyone who walked into his room or talked to him on the phone. It bugged me at first to see him flipping that thing on at the start of a conversation, but I\u2019d gotten used to it. Bruce said he was making the tapes for posterity. He liked to quote Ed Sanders\u2019 adage \u201cthis is the age of investigation and every citizen must investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n This tape \u2014 this blog post, label it \u201cThe Scene, 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Schilling, 1977<\/p><\/div>\n —\u00a0 Mark Schilling<\/a> has lived in Japan for decades and writes regularly for <\/span><\/em>The<\/span> Japan Times<\/span> and <\/span><\/em>Variety<\/span>. His books include <\/span><\/em>Sumo, A Fan’s Guide; Tokyo After Dark; The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture; and most recently<\/em> Art, Cult and Commerce: Japanese Cinema Since 2000.<\/a><\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a guest post by Mark Schilling. It\u2019s an edited excerpt from an unpublished novel Mark wrote in 1973. (The character “Bruce” is based on yo.) Bruce answered my questions about his trip to Puerto Rico in a monotone, with that dry humor of his, never looking at me and seldom saying more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29527"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29629,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29527\/revisions\/29629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mark](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/mark-schilling-japan-1977-166x300.jpg\")
\n<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n