After some discussion with Ann last week about our old, sickly cat, and the ridiculous vet costs, I thought this observation of Gertrude Stein was interesting, “No Frenchman or Frenchwoman is so poor or so careless or so avaricious but that they can and do constantly take their pet to the vet.” Well, in this I differ with the French, I guess.

And here is an interesting comment by Picasso that she records. He was talking about how the painters of his early days dressed. It struck me because sometimes these days you’ll hear older people talk about how silly it is that kids pay so much for that used, well-worn look—worn or faded jeans, etc. Picasso says this in response to a remark about how well the painters of the day (before WWI) were dressing, “You have idea how hard it was and expensive it was in those days to find English tweed or a French imitation that would look rough and dirty enough.”

Ann and I have been going to a dance club on Saturday nights. Every weekend, come Saturday evening, I feel like I’d just like to stay home, but we go nevertheless and I always manage to have a good time. I feel like a regular among the crowd, exchanging looks of recognition and near complicity with other regulars. It reminds me of earlier times when I was alone and dancing on Saturday nights at a different club, with a different crowd but with the same feeling of loose association and good will towards familiars among the crowd. Back then it was a darker club, more seedy and rife with the feel of gay cruising and casual sex. Or maybe that was my own private attitude. Hehe I do remember seeing familiar faces most weekends, people I didn’t know and didn’t speak to, but whom I’d watch and smile to, and in some cases wish I knew. I remember years ago one girl in particular who was very attractive, almost always alone, and who smiled at me often as we danced around each other on the same end of the dance floor. She seemed very cool, too cool for me almost, and I always felt tongue-tied the few times she spoke to me. I could never decide if she was a lesbian or not. She didn’t seem like she was, but why was she there? Later I saw clearer signals that she was. It was disappointing.

Occasionally I come across people who capture me in some way, people I watch and admire for some reason, a reason not exactly founded in sexual desire, but in a recognition that they have a quality I never quite possessed but always desired, a sense that they were in command of the times or fit exactly and perfectly into the world I always wanted to occupy. We all have notions of what is cool, or what is admirable, what is to be emulated, the enduring ideal of the hip crowd we want to be a part of but can never be, no doubt rooted in adolescent insecurities never quite put to rest. Ann has lamented at times, particularly after a night of dancing, that she wished she was young and beautiful like the kids we see dancing. I have the same feelings sometimes, though I feel it less poignantly as I get older. Still, sometimes I fixate on someone. Lately it’s been this young man--perhaps he’s 25 or so. He’s at the club every Saturday night, always dancing in his characteristic way, with big, bold moves of his arms and legs, never dancing to the crowd, but inwardly (at least I imagine), absorbed in the music and enjoying it all with a shining smile and a somewhat timid glance at the crowd around him. He’s not trying to be anything (again, so I imagine), dressing simply and without any sort of statement. He does have a very thin, carefully sculpted line of a beard on his cheeks, his only trace of affectation. He knows lots of people, who let him dance and give him space, occasionally intruding into his world to say hello and to move on. I even notice the beginning of baldness in the back of his head—a fact which makes him even more endearing to me. As I try to describe him I realize even now that I still can’t quite pin down what it is about him that I find so interesting. I don’t know. Ann believes I think he’s sexually attractive, but though he’s attractive enough, there are many other young men at the club whom I find more attractive. I just think he’s very cool. He may not be if I got to know him, but I imagine that he is, cool in a not-trying-to-be-cool way, which is the only kind of cool for me. I mostly want to know him, to be a casual friend. But it’s impossible. I could never be comfortable around him.

Of course, it occurs to me that this casts a pall over my current collection of friends. Are they people I’m comfortable with because I don’t find them particularly interesting?
Gertrude Stein, writing through the voice of her companion, Alice Toklas, claims she has known three geniuses--Picasso, Alfred Whitehead, and Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein! Imagine writing that about yourself. Even if Toklas might have said such a thing to Stein, would you dare write it?

It occurred to me just yesterday that Stein (and Toklas too) was Jewish, or of “Jewish ancestry.” Could she then be an anti-Semite? Maybe. One source characterized her as a “conservative fascist.” She’s buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery. I missed her grave when I was there, but after a quick review of a list of famous persons buried in that cemetery, I missed a lot of graves I’d like to have seen. Why am I so drawn to cemeteries and the graves of greats? I don’t know. I want to return there, to take the metro ride in the morning, to stop at a little bakery and grab something to eat, and stroll through the cemetery for hours under the sun and the canopy of towering trees. Why do I always want to put an ‘a’ in ‘cemetery’? Stein was born in the Pittsburgh area.