The Writing Life: reflections by a working writer. The Writing Life

Reflections of a working writer, a university screenwriting professor, and the editor of Oregon Literary Review.

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Charles Deemer

Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

Email: cdeemer(at)yahoo(dot)com

The eagle flies!

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Ron Silliman, contemporary poetry and poetics

Maud Newton
literary links, amusements, politics, rants

Darren Barefoot
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Rob's Writing Pains
Journey of a struggling writer.

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Cara Swann, fiction writer, journalist, "reflections on humanity, random news & my life."

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scribble, scribble, scribble
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Official site of occult fiction author Sean-Alonzo, exploring symbolism, alternative history, philosophy, secret societies and other areas of the esoteric tradition.

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The Writing Life
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It Beats Working 9-5
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Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God
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The Writing Life...
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
J.D. Salinger

"All my best friends are writers and are dead."
A friend over beer, Berkeley, winter, 1959

"And it came to pass that all the stars in the firmament had ceased to shine. But how was anyone to know?"
The Half-Life Conspiracy

After October 31, 2006,
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The Writing Life II

(Posts archived here are from 01/10/03 - 10/31/06)

 
Sunday, May 11, 2003  
Booze, whores and spies
NOTE: as you may have noticed, this blog has been malfunctioning since Thursday. Only the most recent post is accessible, even in the archives. I've alerted BLOGGER of the problem, and hopefully it will be fixed soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the meantime, I'll make all daily entries under one heading so at least a full day's blogging will be available.

[from a memoir in progress]
With Crooks living off-post, I did my daily drinking with the linguists in the billets. Surely not every linguist in the company was out drinking at every off moment, but it seemed like that to me because that’s what I was doing. Therefore, I was hanging around with those who did the same. There were enough of us to suggest that the entire company behaved this way.

I became especially good friends with several linguists who became my regular drinking buddies: Rich and Bob, who like myself did not have a college degree; Jim and Cal, who were from the east and had masters degrees in literature. Another dozen or so would weave in and out of our group as we did our drinking at the E. M. Club or downtown at the Family Club or Albert’s gasthaus. Since we worked tricks, our work schedule moving from days to swings to mids, we could be out drinking at any time of the day or night. It was a hard-drinking life but also a hard-working one, for all the linguists took their Cold War duties seriously – which is a good thing since we were working when the Berlin Wall went up, when it looked as if World War III were about to begin.

Every month to six weeks, the Animals would come out of the field and take over the bars downtown. We stayed put on our base then. The Animals thought a good time was starting a barroom brawl or leaping from rooftops into trash cans. In contrast, our drinking was always infused with energetic arguments about literature and music, about art and life. But although we avoided downtown Baumholder when the Animals were on the loose, mostly out of fear of being attacked for sport, we never failed to hang out at the train station to watch all the prostitutes come to town to service the “real” soldiers.

A barmaid at the Family Club, appropriately nicknamed Amazon, always alerted us when the Animals were due to hit town. This was our cue to hang out at the train station. Normally only several trains a week came into Baumholder but suddenly several trains a day arrived, each loaded with prostitutes ready to service the Animals. Drinking beer at the bahnhoff, we could hoot and jeer and have a fine old time, watching the surrealistic parade of whores of every size, shape and description as they arrived in town.

A few could break your heart. These were young girls just starting out in the trade, some as young as seventeen, all under twenty, usually escapees from a communist country in Eastern Europe. Desperate but free, they had answered ads to work as a waitress and ended up working as a prostitute for a large German crime syndication that took advantage of them. More than one linguist fell in love with a young prostitute in order to save her from the profession, but I know of only one instance in which a linguist changed his life in a major way as a result. This was the tragic case of Harry.

Harry was a shy literature student from an Ivy League school. He was bright and articulate and very serious. He didn’t hang out with the drinking crowd much, preferring to drink alone. Harry fell head over heels in love with one of the new young prostitutes who arrived in Baumholder during a cycle when the Animals invaded town.

What was unusual about this young woman is that she remained in Baumholder after the Animals returned to their war games and the trains took the girls back to the larger cities from which they came. And from the beginning, there was something fishy about her.

First, she spoke fluent English, not the barroom variety that most of the girls spoke. More suspiciously, she seemed always to be reading a novel by Faulkner or Hemingway, eager to discuss American literature with anyone. She was young and pretty, and dozens of linguists were infatuated with her, including myself.

What was most strange of all was that the young woman would go out on a date with any of us – but only once. On the date, which was always during the day (a stroll in the park, a picnic), she permitted no romantic advances. She also insisted on snapping a photograph of each of us.

It didn’t take long for us to decide that this young woman was a spy. She had to be. She was too interested in what we did in the Army, asking for details far beyond polite conversation. Of course we never told her anything, or at least not anything approaching the truth – with the probable exception of Harry.

Harry and the young woman became an item. He was the only guy she saw again and again. This confused us at first – then began to worry us. Harry, always quiet to the point of being secretive, became more reclusive than ever. He started missing days at work, claiming to be sick, but later someone would spot him in a park with the young woman, passionately making out.

One morning soon thereafter, Harry disappeared – and the young woman along with him. Nothing was ever heard from him again. All of us assumed that he’d defected with the young woman, who was a spy just as we’d thought. It remains the only thesis that makes any sense. Harry fell in love and defected – and I shudder to think what his life must have been like after that.

Few of the linguists gave the prostitutes much business. We were too busy drinking. The idea of buying sex didn’t appeal to me – at least until later when I figured out that this often was what the dating ritual was about. At any rate, I never bought the services of a whore in Baumholder.

On leave in Spain, however, I visited prostitutes several times. Once, in Barcelona, I heard a crunch as I was pumping away for the pleasure I’d paid for and raised myself up to see that my hired sex partner was munching on an apple. This is not the kind of experience that endears you to prostitutes.
5/11/2003 05:46:00 AM | 0 comments

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