THEK U H CLINTON ST QUARTERLY Clinton Street Quarterly Spring, 1979 Nuclear Reaction Spreads Strange Death of Bruce Lee Taking a Wack at Wacker Homage To ....... . ..... .......... Lash La Rue Wllllll A Dictionary For The Eighties The Berkeley Kilo Contest Sad Sacks Of Pro Ball It Can t Happen Here? SEX PREVENTS CANCER Page 5
Why This Paper? There are a number of views on what makes the world go round. We intend to articulate a few that aren’t getting heard enough in our fair city. The Clinton St. Quarterly will hopefully be a sounding board to add force to those views and add some interesting perspectives of our own. Fredy’s doesn’t open up a health food section unless there is a mass upsurge for better food products. Nuclear power foes on regulatory boards do not appear unless thousands of courageous people from Karen Silkwood to Seabrook Sallie and Tommie Trojan start articulating their views. This quarterly is also born out of the incredible frustration of trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of life on this complex planet through the eyes of advertisers trying to sell the latest Meier and Frank fashion or Fredy’s lotion. The pap we read in the local press makes.the world seem to be an incredible jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces m i ,sing. The spector of another oil crisis is being presented without any historical overview making the crisis appear to be the result of the Iranian Revolution. But whatever happened to the Alaska pipeline tha t was supposed to save us from this foreign dependency? . Billions of $ later and millions of acres despoiled we discover that our refineries have the capacity to use only 10% of the Alaskan crude. Most of the Alaskan oil is the wrong grade. And what of conservation? Are the decisions being made for Oregon’s future truly representative of the resource realities of the coming decades? We plan in future issues to provide readers with an energy discourse equal to the severity of the problem. The press here likes to maintain “balanced objective” reporting that provides a paragraph or two on a few points of view. Objectivity is a sterilizing myth that maintains the status quo and offers little in the way of pointed analysis or exciting alternatives. The Oregonian and Willamette Week these days are full of “balanced” reporting on the question of displacement in the inner city. I t is not a question for the many of us who have been moved out of Corbett-Lair Hill and Northwest to make way for the noveau rich. Those neighborhoods were our turf where a sense of community was not something you read about in stories of yesteryear. Today no one we know can afford to buy and then live in a house in those neighborhoods — for us there is no objective way to present the pain of community lost. To try and do so is in affect supporting the displacement policies. Totality with Gusto The recent total eclipse in these parts etched for all of us our tiny place in the cosmic scheme of things. Yet as the ads say, if you only go around once, do it 1with gusto. The Clinton St. Theater is a r fairly successful attempt to do just that — to work creatively and positively in a non-alienating environment. We are going to try and use this quarterly as a means of raising the issues of how we work, play, think and act together. Now that we are no longer radical chic there is a trend to groove with the times “Stayin Alive” if you will — well, we believe in the traditions of the fabled press of yesteryear — of hootin’ and a ’hollerin’ and championing ideas whose times are more than overdue. We wish the money was available to run the newspaper of our dreams —for now we’ll have to depend on a lot of wonderful local yokels, both professional and amateur writers, and some provocative national writers who are willing to give us a leg up in our climb to being the newspaper of our wildest fantasies. Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned. uncombined. Wisdom enough to leach us o f dur ill Is daily spun; but there exists no loom to weave it into fabric .. . ■Edna St. Vincent Millay PORRETTA PIZZA 2239 SE Hawthorne 232-2812 TAKE OUT ONLY BEER AND WINE TOGO BEST PIZZA IN PORTLAND Whole Wheat or White Crust Subs-Salads Hours: Tue, Wed, Th, Sun 4-10 Fri-Sat 5-12 I am very pleased to announce the Graphoanalysis is a scientific, embeginning of a column in this period- pirical method of personality and ical utilizing handwriting analysis to character assessment. It is possible better understand people and their to determine from a page of a perthat emotional response is the foun- Graphoanalysis is occult problems. son’s writing how they emotionally react—feel their mental processes, forces to achieve, fears, defenses, coping mechanisms, integrity, social tendencies, vocational possibilities and capability with other people. It is not possible to determine age or sex. These are not modest claims. I invite readers to assist me to justify them as valid by sending me samples of their writing with specific descriptions of a problem. I shall then use graphoanalysis to shed light on the nature of the problem and perhaps suggest a solution. Normally, such assistance would cost between $35 Graphoanalysis has and $300 depending on the complexity and detail required. This service will be rendered without charge to determined those which we use in this column, not or dation of the human personality, hidden in any way. It is a method Emotional response is determined which most any individual of normal by measuring the slant of the upstrokes in the handwriting. An upstroke is any stroke that goes from the baseline of the writing to at least the level of the small letters. Generally speaking, the further the writing slants to the right the more emotionally responsive the individual. Writing which has a perpendicular slant indicates an unemotional character. For example, Eugene V. Debs, champion of the downtrodden, was a man of great feelings as the extreme slant in his handwriting clearly indicates. On the other hand the slant of J. Edgar Hoover’s signature indicates a cold unemotional character. intelligence with a sincere desire to learn can master for his or her own use. The author will be teaching an elementary course, through the community schools program, at Couch School in Northwest Portland starting April 17 at 8:00 P.M. Call 224-0300 for details. Anyone interested in writing a sample for this column should use unlined paper, write at least 12 lines and use ballpoint or fountain pen. No pencil or felt tip will be accepted. Please address the envelope to R.E. Philofsky, 2464 NW Savier, Portland, Oregon 97210. In the interest of objectivity, please use a nom-deplume of some sort. 2
What price Wacker? by M.G. Horowitz In 1946, Reedie Howard Vollum and five pals opened up a small oscilloscope shop on Hawthorne Boulevard. Eventually, that small shop became Tektronix of Beaverton, a burgeoning electronics giant challenging the Portland industrial stereotype. Move over chain saws, make room for software... Thirty-two years later I ’m talking with a spokesman for the state’s largest bank on the eighteenth floor of Portland’s drabbest skyscraper. (“ I’m in the Tower,’’ he’d told me on the phone. Great, man, I live in a basement.) “Diversification is a strong point with us,” he opens. “ Forest products have been a dependable industry for this state and have served it well. But it’s good to have something else. Like electronics.” Then, in hushed tones: “Tektronix. ..Intel...Hewlett-Packard... Floating Point Systems . . . Vacker.” He pronounces it Vacker — correct but chilling. I remember Mr. Robinson whispering in the G raduate’s ear: “ Plastics.” Now the First National Bank is whispering “ Electronics.” Electronics: clean, technical, profitable. And supportive of that Cybernetic Paradise where automation reigns, the Fortune 500 gets more fortunate, and the rest of us get to drive Winnebagos day after day. Yippee! We talk about the enviable record of Wacker’s soccer team and its alleged harmony with German labor. “You know, those articles in the Journal weren’t bullshit.” Suddenly I realize how high the stakes have become these days: bankers get high, listen to Kiss, and jive street talk. Now not only are they more powerful than us, they’re just as interesting. Is Wacker interesting? Who knows? All we know is that not only do their workers play good soccer, but their negotiators play good poker. The Germans drove a hard bargain with the Rose City last summer: to lure the corporation, Stumptown was obliged to initiate over $4 million in road improvements, nearly $54 million in administrative costs, and over $7 million in land acquisition; the chemists, for their part, were invited to purchase 84 acres of prime waterfront at less than a third of market value. Oh to be a business in Portland! Or is it, Oh to be that business in Portland? The weather turns grey as I descend into the bowels of Portland’s Northwest Industrial District. Here there are no soccer teams, no silicon wafers, no workers sitting on the Board. There’s just, among others, Esco Steel, Reed Electric, and, since 1889, J.A. Freeman and Son, manufacturers of agricultural implements. Kevin Freeman, a great grandson of J.A ., describes to me what Vaughan Street looked like nearly 90 years ago. “The farmers would come to shop at Montgomery Ward, see, and then come across the street for their seeds and tools.” Over the years, J.A. Freeman evolved from spades and hoes to complex machinery, supported by a team of talented designers. Now they ’re a $7-10 million operation, employing over 200 people. But, as luck would have it, Freeman’s hoped-for expansion conflicts with a contiguous housing project proposed by the Portland Development Commission. And if Freeman can’t expand, the company plans to move to Wilsonville. Goodbye, Portland. Goodbye, 200 jobs. I ask the Portland Development Commission whether there might be a compromise. “ The issue is still open,” they tell me “Kevin Freeman is preparing to move out of the city.” “A lot of people think Kevin Freeman is wringing his own neck,” they reply. And then they say a few other things: “The area isn’t all that good for industrial development anyway.” (No mention of the fact that the Freeman family might be emotionally attached to the property they’ve owned for 90 years.) And “There’s other land in Northwest Portland that would be more attractive.” (Would they talk to Wacker that way?) “Wacker looks good on paper,” Freeman allows. “ But I don’t see how the city can subsidize it: I t ’s not a Portland company, it’s not an Oregon company, it’s not even an American company. We’re a nonpolluting local firm, we’ve never laid off, we buy our castings and tires locally, we’re loyal to the Portland area. Training employees, building roads, who’s doing that for us? Wacker may turn out to be good for Portland. But they’re coming at the expense of local firms: those PDC bonds could have gone to alleviate local firms. ’’ A similar feeling can be found along Macadam Avenue where a highway project is compelling two local stalwarts to vacate the area, Huntington Rubber and Rodda Paint; Huntington has manufactured auto parts in Portland since 1913. President Jack du Vai, a 32-year veteran with the company and, for many years, an enthusiastic member of the Corbett-Terwilliger Neighborhood Association, speaks with disappointment about fruitless negotiations with city planners. “ The city,” he sighs, “wanted us to dry up and go away.” The result? A wide Macadam Avenue...and half of a Portland rubber company in Missouri. Casualties: half of a 200- person payroll. “Funny,” I admit, “how the city was willing to spend so much on road work to get jobs and unwilling to not spend on road work to save jobs.” “ I don’t understand it,” du Vai confesses. “Wacker’s an exotic in-: dustry with a lot of growth potential. But we wouldn’t expect a free ride and neither should th ey .” “Over 14 million dollars worth, to be exact.” “Well, the city’s worried about! jobs. But they should have worried about them two or three years ago. They could have had them for a lot cheaper.” By the time I get out to Atlas Wrecking in St. John’s, I know the tone is goine to turn more strident. Owner Walter Lowe is an active Republican and an outspoken critic of “bureaucratic meddling.” “I ’m always shooting my mouth off and giving everybody hell,” Lowe warns me at the s tart of the interview. “ Reminds me of a writer I know,” I rejoinder, and we sit down to drink his coffee. Lowe, as it happens, is about to be displaced by the UDAG housing project. “ It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of in my life, building housing along two railroad lines. This is industrial land, anyone can see that. That’s what it is.” I look out at the site. I see industrial property intersected by two railroad lines. “We’re just going to have to move,” he says sorrowfully. “Out of the city?” I ask. “ It’s possible. We’ve been looking at land in Scappoose. You can blame the attitude of the damn city. They just d idn’t give a dam n .” “They seem to care about Wacker.’ Lowe winces. ‘‘Tha t’s really a strange one!” he complains. “ Here they pay someone to come in and jerk the rug out from under people who’ve been here for years. Jeez, it’s a crime!” Is it a crime? When the Wacker proposal came before City Council, only one Commissioner, Frank Ivancie opposed it. For his pains, the Commissioner received a critical phone call from the First National Bank and was publicly denounced as a “jackass” by the Mayor. To anger the Mayor and the state’s leading bank in one day is militant politics but a look at Ivancie’s press release reveals why he felt he had to do it. “ Before we act on the Wacker Project,” he wrote on the Fourth of July, “we should take the time to thoroughly explore this proposal, to think things out, ask the hard questions, get straight answers, and then make our decision. This is not our only chance to get new payrolls and a new business for Portland. “ I want Wacker for Portland as much as anybody else. But I want them on a basis that is fair to Wacker and to Portland, without apoligies to the taxpayers or to other businesses of Portland.” Because of the wonders of tax-increment financing (where future taxes are applied to lowering the price of the land), taxpayers will not directly-and may never-feel the crunch of the municipal subsidy for Wacker. But small and mediumsized businesses feel the slight, because, as Kevin Freeman argues, the money could conceivably have gone to local firms. But could the local firms have offered as many jobs as Wacker? Well, certainly for the moment. Wacker expects to hire 600 people by 1981. Had compromises been reached with Huntington Rubber and Rodda Paint, 170 jobs would have been saved; had Freeman been accomodated, over 200 jobs would have been saved. St. John’s may lose half : dozen firms, forfeiting perhaps 50 100 jobs. And these jobs are right now —not paper promises for 1981. It’s difficult to say whether these firms could have stayed at their sites or, like Steinfeld’s Products Company, been offered attractive terms at Rivergate Industrial Park. In any case, the cost would surely have been far less than subsidizing Wacker. As Ivancie’s office points out, $14 million is a lot to pay for 600 jobs: “ that’s $25 grand a job!” exclaims Executive Assistant Jim Kuffner. Except we’re not really paying it, according to the First National Bank, (i.e. the wonders of tax-increment Continued on next page Bruce Lee Slain By Iron Fist According to Aaron Bank, the head of the New York Karate Academy, several of the elder Manchu Dynasty martial arts teachers were worried about Bruce Lee. Having watched several of his films, they decreed Lee — who was no fake, but rather a kung fu genius who developed his own style of Jeet Kune Do — was giving away too many of the ancient Oriental secrets. The Masters acquired some box office figures from Variety and saw that Lee’s movies were cleaning up in America. This was terrible, the Masters decided, since Americans are inferior, potentially mindlessly violent people, and thus not to be trusted with these secrets to ultimate power. Then, according to Banks, the Masters dispatched an emissary to reason with Lee. Bruce, however, was already as big as Valentino in Hong Kong and arrogant to boot. He would not agree to stop making films. So the emissary, a Great Master, simply laid his hand on Bruce’s shoulder for a moment. This, Banks said, was The Iron Fist, a martial arts technique only the Great Masters, with their consummate knowledge of brain-and-body-waves, can apply. Weeks later, as if a slow-working poison was pushing through him, Lee’s body functions began to ebb. Eventually they stopped dead. That was why, Banks said, the doctors could never successfully determine the cause of Lee’s death. A check of martial arts students around New York City indicated that, almost to a man, they believed in the Great Masters’Theory. —Mark Jacobson The Village Voice, Dec. 4,1978 3
Wacker Continued financing) “ But we are paying it,” argues Kuffner. “ Well, it’s just a difference in philosophy,” concludes the Bank. Well, okay, it’s just a difference in philosophy. But the public has a right to know what that philosophy is. Especially since it’s apparently being supported by a cogent triangle of municipal power: the Mayor, the Portland Development Commission, and the First National Bank. PDC doesn’t expect Wacker to stop at 600 employees; according to their Fact Sheet, they anticipate expansion to 1,000 employees by the mideighties. (“ What if silicon wafers are surpassed by silicon bubbles?” needles Kuffner. “They might just shut down the plant and move somewhere else.” ) And the Bank doesn’t expect Portland’s diversification into the computer industry to end with Wacker. “Once an industry begins in an area, it starts to grow on itself,” they explain. Which means new companies may come in to help Wacker make wafers. And maybe-if Portland is real good-new companies The School of the Arts & has moved! may come in to put those wafers into computers. So take your pick, Puddletown. Leave the old companies alone and endure mixed neighborhoods and narrow roads. Or move the old companies to new sites and subsidize the expense. Or salute the city’s apparent policy: goodbye bailers, hello wafers. Not being a fan of business old or new, I myself have no rerl preference. But I don’t think Frai k Ivencie deserves to be called a jackass for expressing some of the sentiments of the medium-sized business community: they’re part of his constituency and he’s got a right to advocate for them if he wants. And speaking of constituencies, consider this: when Wacker and Fujitsu and Philips all settle into Portland in the eighties, what will their politics be? What sort of city will the Gang of Software envision? What kind of politicians will these Multinational Giants encourage? I hope you like Missouri, Mr. du Vai. Anyone for soccer? -XThe new campus is at 8245 SW Barnes Rd. For information and registration call 228-4741 Poet City (for Marty Christensen) by Katherine Dunn Old cities are clean and deny it, Paris spinning black water on stones, Rome bleached to forget the Orient, Accept Portland in holy name Oregon, there is, do not Complain, some dog shit exculpated by grass, By the encroaching earth whose strength is not yet Obliterated, but the hard spots, unabsorbent Are dedicated by poets too poor to feed dogs. Creep nodding past the monuments Rosey puddle, brown pool, stone island in congealed acid, Remnant of Quality Pie, relic of Hamburger Mary, proof Of the Renaissance immortal, human glory. But you thought it was bikers or bums; old men spilling On the way to empty rooms Do not misunderstand these devotions of the poets, Struck in their cups, kneeling outside the thousand taverns, Crouching beneath the cross-walk signs, hunched, Hands on knees at the entrance of every parking lot spewing Pain and acrid mucous, heaving out songs of Ceta, Squeezing out ballads of too little food and too much blitz Raping their bellies for pink and lumpy sonatinas, Strophe burnt love, Antistrophe hope, The pools are widening under gothic fountains, Soft gargoyles arching over a liquid buttress My mother is dead, my father is dead My children lie broken in their blood sacks on the Gull heavy barges, My manuscript is locked in the closed tavern, It has fallen beneath the table, other poets slide their Mud toes through its sweet pages and the bartender Will not let me in to retrieve it. The bartender is Angry at the soun of my songs in his bottles, at the smell Of my puke on his floor. He rages that I do not tip him And that the free froth of my neighbors beer sets me crooning Oh my lost white papers with their love stains Indented. Clinton Street Quarterly Vol. I No. 1 The Clinton Street Quarterly is designed and edited by: Lenny Diener, Eric Edwards, Joe Uris and Bev Walton. Published by The Clinton Street Theater, Inc. 2522 S.E. Clinton St., Portland, Oregon 97202. This publication’ is free. All rights reserved. th an k s Mike DeJonnette Natures Its SW 6+bAve. (between Oak vWne) • Fresh vegetable & fruit salads • Homemade soups, breads, desserts • Organic juices • Frozen honey yogurt • Sandwiches • Whole wheat natural pizza • Exciting entrees Served in a beautiful atmosphere. Welcome to the finest in natural foods. Now in downtown Portland! Validated Free Parking after 5:30 Hours: Mon-Thurs 11-8 Fri 11-9 Saturday 12-9 Sunday 3-8 Orders to go: 224-5890 4
Orgasms The Coming Cancer Cure New studies suggest that famous Freudian student Wilhelm Reich may have been right when he said cancer is a consequence of an unhappy sex life. Until now, Reich’s theories of cancer have been banned by the U.S. government. The F.D.A. seized Reich’s books and ordered them burned. These theories have fallen into disrepute largely because they have been associated with macho sexists like Norman Mailer. But they may be right in ways Mailer and his friends never understood. Reich believed energy in a massless form flowed through the human body. This form he called Orgone energy. If blocked it could cause diseases like cancer. It flowed in great quantities during orgasm. Now western scientists must confront support for Reich's ideas from, of all places, the Peoples Republic of China. The Chinese medical technique, now popular in the West, called Acupuncture or needle therapy relieves pain and disease in many conditions. It is a safer and more Letters To The Editor To the Editor: Your scratch ‘n ’ sniff piece on opossums (“ Dead ‘Rat’ in the Middle of the Road’ ’ ) really stank. Ho-ho. Is a little joke. Reminds me of another joke: How many Americans does it take to eat opossum? Answer, three. One to carve and two to watch for traffic. Ho-ho. John-Paul [The Infallible Pole] II The Vatican To the Editor: Really liked the opossum article in your last ish. Enclosed please find my latest effort, The Book of Dead Cats (Guitar String Press,- $8.95), for your perusal. This is a great gift item, right up your readers’ alley. Elwood T. [Tabby] Tabouli Hogsfart, Ohio To the Editor: Why all of this fuss over ERA? Personally, I prefer it over either Cheer or White King D, since it really does get my wash brighter. H.G. Enumclaw, WA To the Editor: Your chilling look inside the dark halls of Portland State University (“ Scared Stupid” ) finally made me see the dangers of being smart. I was smart for years, figured I ’d never get caught. I started out just foo ling around w ith books on weekends, but these things catch up with you without your knowing it, and pretty soon I was smart all the time, reading, doing calculus, even blatantly discussing logical positivism with my gang. Boy, am I glad I read your article before I decided to pursue this madness on to college. It set me stupid right away. Thanks. K.F. [Kentucky Fred] Chicken Modesto, CA DOWN IN OLD TOWN PORTLAND at FIFTH and COUCH MEXICAN SPECIALTIES LUNCH MONDAY-FRIDAY 11:00-2:30 107 NORTHWEST FIFTH FINE WIVES ANH BEER DINNER FRIDAY & SATURDAY 5:00-11 SUNDAY-THURSDAY 5:00-10 223 -5048 effective anaesthetic than most dangerous drugs, doctors report. But the Chinese system, which has developed over many thousands of years, corresponds to no known visible physical system of the human body. Many health researchers wonder if the lines of the acupuncture system don’t correspond in some unknown way with the flow of massless orgone energy. In a recent study by University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Epidemeologist Dr. Arne Gjorgov, such frustrating methods of birth control as the condom, withdrawal, long term abstenance and even celibacy, may make women five times more likely to get breast cancer. No studies have come to light on men. Many questions remain to be answered. Is it sperm in the vagina that keeps women relatively cancer free as Dr. Gjorgov believes? Or is it lack of orgasm and or flow of orgone To the Editor: I, for one, think the firing squad for sex crimes is a fine idea. (“ Bullets for Buggers in Iran” ) In fact, our own depraved America could learn a lesson or two from the Ayotollah. The other day I found my ex-girlfriend Sheila “ going down” on my ex-best buddy, W ill, and, if you ask me, a bullet in the head would be too good for both of them. Sam Schmuck Elko, Nev. To the Editor: The hatchet job you did on my favorite group, The Whimps, in your last issue really shows your true colors, you bunch of old farts. How can you listen to the high energy, non-stop, revo lu tionary ROCK ‘N’ ROLL of “ Anarchy in Cottage Grove” and call it “ flacc id” and “ puerile” ? What does flaccid mean, anyway? Why don’t you just go back to spinning your Rolling Stones records and those other reactionary assholes. We are the future of ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. Henley Nudle Walla Walla, WA To the Editor: Perhaps there is a need for articles of this type in a family magazine, but if there was a reason for running such profane, disgusting trash as “ Scared Stupid” I ’d like to know what it was. Really! The language used by these hardened professors and teaching assistants would fry the ears of a lizard. It made my blood boil to think of our children being bombarded with the energy that is at the root of the problem? A study is needed to show whether sperm are the key factor or if orgasm is the major element in this puzzle. The answer to the riddle goes to the heart of the anti-homosexual bias of our society. It would not be hard to test the issue. Orgasmic and non-orgasmic women should be compared over a period of many years. Sexually active and non-active women should be compared as well. These groups should be further divided by sexual preference. Such a study could prove that the women who have a multi-orgasmic sex life, whether gay or straight, are healthier and better able to resist cancer. Perhaps the Beatles were right. “ All you need” (to prevent a dread disease like breast cancer) “ is love.” + * “ concep ts” and “ in s ig h ts ” of these abandoned creatures. There’ ll be no more such pointless garbage in my household. Kindly cancel my subscription! Nellie Hudspeth Canker, Puerto Rico To the Editor: My nominations for your “ Symbols of the ‘Seventies’ Contest” are: bad pot, jock rot, robbing banks and getting caught. Catlin Gerbil Deaf Smith, Tex. To the Editor: . . .selling cars, drunk in bars, throwing up beneath the stars. S.l. [Yellow Peril] Hayakawa San Francisco, CA To the Editor: . . .half-time, stoned blind, a double shot of gin and lime. Be-Bop Lemon Over-The-Rainbow, Kan. To the Editor: . . .bad dope, Polish Pope, zipless fucks and lusty gropes. E. Jong Seattle, WA To the Editor Dear creeps, commies, faggots, satanists and sheep, your biased thinking will lead you straight to hell. You won’ t like it there. Wake up before i t ’s too late. Jesus loves you. (Why, I don’t know, but he’s sort of a jerk.) You guys suck. God Heaven HIPPQ qUMHIWURO 201 S.E. 12th 2311444 Portland. Oregon 97214 BULLSHIT AND BARGAINS PERFORMANCE WITH EVERY DECENT OR INDECENTSALE COSTUMES AND ACCESSORIES FOR ALL YOUR KINKY, FUNKY HEADS 5
SUPER SEX New York Style by Henry Schipper Plato’ s Retreat. Saturday morning. Two a.m. This is the peak hour. Five hundred people, most of them naked, are jammed together in a dark, moist, throbbing atmosphere the likes of which I’ve never before seen. And I do mean seen. Many people are merely standing, some still fully dressed, but all seem to exude a kind of shadowy steam. The middle air is at once dense and empty, a swirling black hole out of which anything might seemingly materialize. It is an atmosphere that seems to have gathered out of some sort of human dissolve down below, a surrender of personal and social forms, a collective dare to try out the turn-on of chaos. Faces are flushed and bright, Toulouse-Lautrec colors that paint the darkness. The music is blaring its loudest: “ Push push IN push,’ ’ a disco siren exhorts, again and again, with rising intensity. And in the nooks and crannies throughout the place, in the two swimming pools, on the dance floor, and especially in the body-carpeted “ mat room,” couplings, triplings, body pile-ons of all description respond, pumping, bouncing, sucking, and hand-jobbing in time with the disco beat, creating a virtual landscape of climaxes, bodies flaring in all directions like fireworks on a sexual Fourth of July. Again and again, the same shot at different angles, a dynamic redundance in four points of each eye — arms, breast, and head suddenly flung up and out, sustaining an unbearable pulsing arch, collapsing in a palpable cushion of steam. From midnight to three, Fridays and Saturdays, Plato’s Retreat is a sexual twilight zone, a kaleidoscope made up, mind you, not of dionysian cultists, but of folks of all races and classes, Toms, Dicks and Harriets (Ozzie comes too) that bear every resemblance to you and me. Could this place possibly be a harbinger of the kind of nightlife that lies ahead, the next mind-blowing extension beyond disco and the singles scene? Plato’s Retreat, located on 74th Street just west of Broadway, is a sprawling den that heats up the basement of Manhattan’s landmark Ansonia Hotel. Open from 9 pm to 6 am, five nights a week, the place is designed with the overnight, longplaying patron in mind. Besides the dance floor, mat room, and a labyrinth of private, cushioncarpeted cubicles for more reclusiveminded couples and small groups, Plato’s offers a variety of atmospheres and services to keep people engaged and happy over the long haul. Indeed, with two pools, a steam room and Jacuzzi, and a constantly replenished buffet (ribs, chicken, pizza, potato salad, and bagels), the middle-class, health spa-Sunday brunch hedonists who hold the majority of Plato’s must almost feel at home. 6
Larry Levenson certainly feels at male-female ratio for the prowlers home. I spoke with Levenson, who get in as escorts.) Indeed, in dressed only in orange briefs, as he most men there is a mournful space lounged on the mattress floor of his deep down that holds that whatever private party room. A truly happy else one does, keenest fulfillment man is hard to hate, and Larry will never be had unless that fantasy Levenson, proprietor of Plato’s is a if fulfilled To fuck abundantly and happy man. Not merely the owner of anonymously is, after all, the prova booming business, Levenson is ince of the Gods, Zeus’ special nothing less than the King of Swing. prerogative to take whom he would, (Swinging, primarily a couples tradedisguised as the wind; and who off scene, has been around for years, would not be Godlike? At Plato’s, the but ever so discreetly. That is until opportunity is more real than one Plato’s). His business is very much might ever have dreamt possible, his pleasure. Half-dressed, Levenavailable five nights a week for son strolls around Plato’s not so nothing more than the price of much an overseer as a mellow host admission and a minimalist techand fellow reveler. Wherever he nique. ‘ ‘How do I get into so many goes, Platoites beam smiles of women at Plato’s?” one buoyant gratitude upon their sexual Santa. “ I got it all,” Levenson told me, his permanent salmon flush rising to near orange. ‘ ‘What can I say, I got tears in my eyes.” The man’s eyes do not betray him. Naturally sleepy and tilted, they are so saturated with good feeling they seem ready to slide into his cheeks. Deep down, very deep ard faint, there is a con-man glint. But if Levenson’s a hustler, he’s been born again and told he can keep his hustle, that the Lord is a loving Lord who smiles upon those who earn their bread by making others happy. ‘ ‘That’s what Plato’s is all about,” Levenson would say again and again. ‘ ‘The people here just want to have a good time, and we help them any way we can. The hell with the rest. There may be a war out there but in here, we enjoy ourselves. Tell me, is there anything so wrong with that? My God,” Levenson rolled his eyes across the room, ‘ ‘these people are having a ball, and that’s the bottom line, right? Who’s big enough to say no to that?” I set out to try to verify Levenson’s claim that the people at Plato’s were ‘ ‘having a ball.” A preliminary survey seemed to bear out out. I spend hours circling from dance floor to poolside to buffet, watched people go into and come out of the mat room, the steam room and the dozens of private rooms in back, and orgy-room veteran asked. “ I work everywhere I encountered the same through the toes. Everyone responds ‘ ‘this is too good to be true” grin, to that, at least a little, and when the especially among the men. A whole green light flashes, Igo .” truckload of fuck-crazy fantasies There is, of course, something were coming true and lighting up rather disturbing about this kind of faces in all directions. I don’t quite mass fuck joyride. I mean, Zeus this mean to be snide. The dream of guy was not, and somehow, I can’t experiencing a harem, not as a shake the feeling that for us mortals, purchased, whore-strewn situation the joy of sex ought to partake of but as a naturally wrought experisome wee bit of human exchange, ence, to ride through waves of some degree of person-to-person women in a single night, with recognition. Otherwise, why not just absolute access and no guilt, is fuck each other through a hole in the something that gets planted early wall without ever having to know and deep in whatever social soul men which opening or what species we’re have. (Plato’s entrance rules recoginto, much less names, birth dates nize this — women, but not men, and serial numbers. (There is, by the may come alone, thereby controlling way, a club in New York, patronized what would otherwise be a ruinous I hear by the very highest society, lone-wolf population, while at the called The Toilet, which features just same time securing a favorable such ‘ ‘Glory Holes.” ) Dad’s Excuse Tavern friendliest place in town (We try harder, we’re number two) 11 a.m.-2:30 a.m. 2516 S.E. Clinton a six-pack of Schlitz Bull with this coupon Good through April Alas, Levenson’s happy patrons “ Sounds pretty impersonal,” I were happy precisely because of the ventured. anonymity that Plato’s affords — “ Heyy, that’s the beauty of this that was the prevalent turn-on. place,” he exclaimed, “ that’s what Indeed, after about a dozen happy makes it so great. Plato’s is pure, people interviews, I came upon one unadulterated, sensuous, impersonmat-room reveler who was so godalized sex.” damned beamy I wanted to sit on his What, pray, would Erich Fromm face. The guy was taking a breather have to say to that? on the sidelines. I asked him what was up. He grinned. You have to Don’t get the idea that the orgasm watch what you say at Plato’s or numbers game at Plato’s is just a you’ll never get a straight answer. male trip. One lady, reclining on a ‘ ‘You look like you’ve enjoyed lounge chair and fanning her hot yourself, ’ ’ I began again. spot by opening and closing her ‘ ‘Five times,” he replied. knees, remarked gleefully, “ I can ‘ ‘Remember each one?” I asked. get as many guys as I want here, ‘ ‘Oh sure,” he said. “ I never with my husband’s permission.” forget an orgasm.” Another woman, piling potato salad onto a sagging paper plate, bristled angrily, “ What do I remember? Cock size. None of ’em had big cocks.” And then, at the juice bar, I came upon a dead ringer for the Blind Faith album cover girl, the acid child, replete with budlike breasts, vaguely pouting mouth, and flowing, amber hair. Only now she was ten years older and very up-to-date, her one-time flush banished by a Bahamas tan, her weirdly compelling look hopelessly blurred by Quaaludes. Swinging was her movement now, swingers all members of one family, she said, her glass dangling precariously between two slippery fingers. I asked what that did for her, what she got out of her evening at Plato’s. “ Wha’d I get out of it?” she echoes, suddenly realizing and letting me know I was very unhip. “ About twenny comes, that ’s what I got.” To be sure, not all the happy folk at Plato’s were of the above description. Some, like the sixty-two-yearold black retired truck driver and his wife, Friday regulars for the past two months, enjoyed Plato’s just for the visuals. “ When you get old and y ’ gotta body like we got, y ’ come and look,” the fellow explained. “ Course, when we get home, after seeing this stuff, it don’t take much to get us goin’ , ” he added, nudging his thin, severe-faced wife. Others, like a thirty-year-old PR lady, enjoy themselves in a more complex “ What about the women, you manner. Her high point at Plato’s, remember anything about the woshe said, was masturbating with an men?” enormous dildo on the juice bar in “ Like what?” he asked, slightly front of a cheering audience. “ It was suspicious. a goof,” she explained. “ I loved it. I “ A name, maybe?” flipped everybody right out. ’ ’ “ Ahh, what’s in a name,” he But in my nights at Plato’s, easily breezed while shifting to avoid a the happiest person I met, really sudden multibody roll. compellingly happy, was a young “ Well, anything else?” I persistwoman, plain faced but dreamy ed. The guy saw down and scratched eyes, a sophomore at Rutgers. “ This his grayish belly. is the best time I ever had in my “ The first was kinda fat,” he whole life,” she said, with wonderful began, “ and I wasn’t that turned on. sincerity. “ This is the peak.” With The second was a bit older, but she three guys making exploratory dives really loved it. The third was a bit under and between her legs as she older too, and she really loved it too. clung to the side of the pool, she told The fourth was younger,” the guy me she had lost count of the men she clicked, warming to his task. “ She had fucked. She couldn’t help herliked it a lot, though I never saw self, she said. At Rutgers she had what she looked like. And the fifth was pretty much the same thing. 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I i Orgy Palace relatively few lovers, with long spaces in between, and she went to an analyst because she felt shitty । cbout herself. “ But this is better than any analyst. I wanna do more than just learn how to survive. I want to live. After Plato's, I feel I have s lived.’ ’ j So many happy people at Plato’s, I > despaired of turning up a single wretched soul. As the night wore on, however, I became increasingly aware of something hostile, indeed, J of a near-pervasive anger hidden in i the atmosphere of Plato’s Retreat. | That.it should have eluded me for hours is not surprising. When you 1 first descend into the Plato’ s den, the visual impact is at once overwhelming and acutely frustrating. । Your eyes bounce around like pint balls, racking up a score of sex > scenes. But you can’t really take anything in. Your senses have jammed. Your instantly numb eyes register the startling images in an । exasperatingly superficial, abstrac- [ ted way. Reality like this is very I intangible. Its like hearing a hit song performed live; the familiar sounds seem to dissolve into a strange nothingness somewhere between ( 1 your ear and brain, somehow experienced as less real than the record. These living fantasy scenes likewise elude sensory acquisition. The whole array goes by you with less grab and i depth than a porno flick. Indeed, it’s > only after you make the curious adjustment of accepting Plato’s as a kind of 3D walk-around movie that you can begin to focus and absorb. The adjustment comes easily, l almost naturally, as P lato ’ s approaches its sprawling, earlymorning climax. As both the lovemakers and I grew more brazen, it became apparent that most of the i blatantly public fucking, the mat- > room, swimming-pool, and dancei floor screwing had a “ fuck you’ ’ edge to it, a hostility directed toward the very audience that had been deliberately engaged. It’s not that these loving couples would have preferred a bit of privacy. They resented being watched, but that resentment was a kind of turn-on, their lovemaking a kinetic scream of defiance. In many of the display couplings one could detect a turning point, a blast-off, when the selfconscious awareness of audience would suddenly shift into a decisive, fiercely aphrodisiac transcendence, a discounting of other people, of the intimidating real world master of public opinion. The presence of watchers isn’t really dissolved by a surrender to ardor. That presence is willfully left behind. Indeed, the tum-on is to continuously be leaving it behind, to explode inhibition in the: face of the inhibitors. The most mind-blowing scene of this kind that I witnessed took place, not in the sauna or pool or orgy room, but, surprisingly, on the dance floor. Two women wen. on the floor, going through some electrifying motions. The glistening, arching bodies, one head buried, the other thrust back, throat taut with pleasure — the sudden body clutches, mouth sweeps, and breast massaging, all executed with expert, inspired technique, had an absorbing, a devouring effect. It was like being drawn, sucked forward by an erotic force field. “ I bet they didn’t even do this in Fifties Cuba," a man next to me marveled through his trance. The women’s energy was ind sputably real, though it had non: of the surrender of passion. These women weren’t caught up in a tornado of love or lust, oblivious to all else. If we hadn’t been there watching they wouldn’t have been on the floor. But it wasn’t mere exhibitionism or theatrics. The women were definitely showing us something, but in both senses of the word, as performance and personal revelation. In an almost frightful way, the theatre was making it more real. You could practically see the public turn-on excite the women to rising pitches of intensity. But the energy had a defiant, almost malignant edge. It was as if the women were getting off on space sculpting a brilliant holograph of that energy, not as something to be joined with and shared, but as a flaming, spiteful statement of fact, a banner in which they wrapped themselves and marked their fiercely private ground. They both required and scorned their audience. As if sensing this, the dancers on the floor discoed with near perfect aloofness around the stretching, rolling, suddenly exploding couple. “ And you want to convey this to the folks in Boston?’ ’ the guy next to me asked, chuckling and shaking his head. Anger was not the only unhappy emotion emanating from many of the Plato love scenes. Along with an intent klatch of onlookers, I watched a black man and white woman execute a tortured essay on racialsexual stereotypes, the woman and the audience pressing for a stud performance, the man straining to meet their expectations. But in the face of his very “ white,” stiff, choppy thrust, you could feel the mutual disappointment, frustration, anxiety, blame, and helplessness take over. Perhaps the least comfortable men were those getting blown. Sitting on lounge chairs, against walls, or simply standing, they would try to channel their self-consciousness into absurd, impassive TV-like stares. They’d never admit it, but these fellows were not having a good time. Nearly as strained and bleak were the scenes precipitated by dawn and the closing time announcement. Hesitant couples, seated for hours, would suddenly decide, almost angrily, to get their money’s worth and fuck. And I watched one woman push herself off a sofa and step out of her panties in a coldly hurried manner that all too clearly read, “ C ’mon, let ’s do it and get it over with.” Ironically, one of the most private and lonely spots in Plato’s is the mat, or “ orgy” room. From a distance, and taken as a whole, the hundredplus bodies look like a complex organism of writhing, shadowy limbs. But take a closer look. It’s not really a single body, but a crisscross of atmospherically discrete twosomes. I had almost hoped for more of an orgy, for the apocalyptic and communal decadence of Sodom and Gomorrah. But if Plato’s marks the American Decline and Fall, it’s only the earliest, most tentative, beginning of the end. It’s more than a matter of isolated twosomes. So many of the people in the mat room, especially those who have just climaxed, lie about with distant, lost, dreadfully thinking faces. They look as if their actions, for the moment at least, have evaporated an entire world. This fantasy-fulfillment business is not to be toyed with. It’s kind of rough on beginners. In a sense, you either have to go all the way, be willing to endlessly conjure and act out your own fantasy realities, or settle for the steady reality of name and place. To go halvsies is to constantly undermine yourself. The only way you can hope to manage it is to utterly dissociate what happens at Plato’s from the life to be lived outside. Nothing must carry over. “ When you leave here,” Larry Levenson stressed, “ you go back to society, you go back to the PTA, the churches, and you forget this place. You have to.” Maybe not forgetting is the next stage, the final, insane decadence, when Plato’s spills out into the street, self and reality fully released in favor of fantasy and the void. For many of today’s mat-room revelers, however, that void is a terrible, scary place. Almost all Platoites strike an * everything is cool” pose when asked how they feel about Plato’s. But on the mats, in that post-orgasm stillness, you can see them suffering the complexities of the scene and their participation in it, mutely worrying, like forlorn souls about to go up in smoke. Levenson’ s injunction notwithstanding, it is virtually impossible to annul one’s experience of plato’s, to leave it behind and reenter the same old world. Indeed, the full impact of the place doesn’t hit you until you’ve left it. You’ve only been gone nine or ten hours, but you’ve gone so far, light years beyond the furthest reaches of customary, surface behavior, that when you come back, step out into New York’s Broadway dawn, it is not the same old world. The first strange jolts are supplied by people. Such is the cross-section at Plato’s, that virtually every face you see can be visualized there. The women who stride past on the street seem curiously absurd, their sexuality at once flaunted and withheld like an advantage, a secret to be hinted at but never fully seen by the likes of you and you and you. You want to say, “ Drop it babe, you have been seen, and not against your will be a Peeping Tom, but by your own hungry consent.” But it’s not just women and it’s not just sex. Everyone seems to carry a transparent public posture: head cocked against the world, protectively aloof, warily disdainful, unwilling to disclose a nuance of anything besides a together self-sufficiency. Laughable pretenders, all of them. You’ve seen them too, without the veil, grasping frenetically after a fantasy release, going down under the slipping sands of identity. But it’s not just people either, or rather, it’s all the things that people have built, everything disclosing a different quality after Plato’s — the ancient, iortresslike jail on 73rd, the sleek, forbidding Chemical Bank a block away, even the Bagel Factory on 79th. It’s hard to pinpoint but they all seemed to balance on a different foundation, an energy at once churning and vaporous: cars, horns, lights especially, the clamorous electric brilliance of New York, everything blinking forth the same neural impulse — America — the song of that name; a new world, unweighted by culture and tradition and known life — what else if not a fantasy of lightness and space, and absolute indulgence? We’ve all been hooked by that bottomless promise. Cinderella and Frankenstein, both of them dreams of fresh life, are the true national myths, the inspiration behind Woodstock, beaten into a look-butdon’t-touch disco integrity in the Seventies, and now, perhaps, about to explode into a be-and-doanything-nothing perversion in the Eighties? Plato’s Retreat may be the deepest advance yet toward Orwell’s vision. But, if so, it’ll be an inverse 1984, a social and cultural control that keeps everyone in line by letting everyone jump about to their heart’s content. A “ liberation” that drugs a deeper repression and capitulation. “ Where else can I fuck the boss’ wife?” one gleemy-eyed Platoite challenged. “ Maybe even the boss himself?” Indeed. But with this kind of fantasy fulfillment everything is won and lost. Already the success of Plato’s has inspired a dozen imitators in New York alone. And, as of last month, Plato’s Retreat franchises were being cloned for national distribution in L.A., Detroit and Miami. Odds are, w e ’ ll all be confronted by one sooner or later. Only remember, at Plato’s, you don the mask at the risk of losing your face. reprinted by permission Henry Schipper. KVAn SUIT€ 3231 d= 1 3 0 0 S.W. STH PORTLAAD. ORGGOA 97201 22 3 -6 320 1400 Am VAACOUVGR 8
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