#2 In the 50`s David meets Helen Lee Seitelman at Seward Park

David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
1 #2
In the 50’s David meets Helen Lee Seitelman at Seward Park High School.î
350 Grand Street between Ludlow’n Essex on the site of the old Ludlow Street Jail.
Helen’s father was David’s Junior High School teacher.
She’s smarter than me, David says’n works harder’n gets better grades.
He asks his mother Rose fa money to date Helen. She gives’m $1.
Dear daddy, I need money to go to a movie with Helen. David writes tiny on toilet paper.
He wraps it round Sam’s toothbrush. Sam wakes up fa work at 4:30 AM.
Leaves $5 unda David’s bureau cover.
Helen’n David subway uptown’n Helen don’t wear her glasses on a date.
#1
David wears Sam’s old shirt and tie. Helen wears, she says after, a rich aunt’s dress and high heel pumps.
Puts her glasses back on in time to watch Quo Vadis with Peter Ustinov as Nero, at the Capitol Theater.
Capitol Theatre, in the 50’s, is a movie palace located at 1645 Broadway,
north of Times Square in Manhattan, across from the Winter Garden Theatre.
#2
Rosie waits up fa David, reading, inna kitchen. Rosie says, hadagoodtime? Yeah. Wheredyago?
Grand Street Settlement square dance. 50 cents. What’dyadoafta? Hadda egg cream.
David lies’n lies. Hasta remember square dancing and no he never saw Quo Vadis.
Sam comes home from work’n winks. Did David find the money? Was it enough?
David never asks if Sam has the money. Sam never asks what David does with it.
#1
David is a boy who begins to resemble a man, he says, because Helen is a smart girl who really likes him.
#2
Inna Loew’s Delancey movie balcony he slides his arm backa Helen’s seat. Arm slides slow around her shoulder. Don’t move. Lean over’n kiss her neck.
She turns her head’n he kisses her lips. Slides his hand slow into her blouse’n into her brassiere. Holds his breath.
Useta hold his breath’n slide a hand in a job lot carton inna living room of pushcart peddler grandpa Louie. Hold ya breath’n see what ya find. No looking.
Helen’s warm breast is in his hand’n he feels her nipple’n she don’t stop him. He is so grateful. After the movie, back in Knickerbocker Village,
Helen’s mother, father’n kid brother Leon are asleep. Helen don’t turn onna living room light.
Is David excited, in Mr. Seitelman’s living room, with a hand in his daughter’s bra. Light goes on.
They pull apart’n sit up. Mr. Seitleman puts on his glasses.
He wears boxer shorts. Time for bed, he says. Sam Gordon never wears shorts at home, even in the summer.
Mr. Seitelman don’t worry David sees his legs.
#1
Seward Park girls begin to date college freshmen. Helen’s gonna go with a college freshman to the prom.
#2
David ain’t gonna go or maybe only with a girl nobody knows. He meets Riva Wachtel. è
He rents a tux. This is my son, Sam says, to the Latin Quarter headwaiter.He’ll be with friends next week.
I hope he gets a good table. In the nightclub Sam palms folded dollars for the headwaiter.
Table near the floorshow, Sam winks. Headwaiter winks back. He pockets Sam’s dollars.
#1
David buys a red rose wrist corsage to match Riva Wachtel’s white tulle dress with red pussy willows.
#2
David introduces Riva to Helen’n Helen introduces her date to David.
After the prom, at the Latin Quarter the headwaiter says ah, Mr. Gordon, this way please.
Leads ‘em to a ringside table. Everyone’s impressed.
2 David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
#1
1952, David is 16 when he decides he needs eyeglasses.
#2
He don't need ‘em. Wantsa take ‘em off’n put ‘em on for the affect.
Strategic moments like actors on TV and inna movies.
Well, I'll tell you he says (glasses off, pause) I don’t think so (glasses on).
#2
ç Inna 70’s (see 70’s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY) David startsta really need to wear glasses to read’n then to see.
He’s angry, as he is about most things, about really needing eyeglasses.
#1
1954, 2 years later in college, David is a secret part time social smoker.
Recessed filter cigarettes. Parliament in the elegant box.
#2
Well, I'll tell you he says (inhale, pause). I don’t think so (exhale).
#1
Dr. Lew (see 30’s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY) is now a semi retired eye doctor.
#2
He must know David don't really need glasses.
Dr. Lew’s own eyes are magnified behind thick lenses.
Double magnified behind a 2nd set of lenses.
On silver rods. Holt yaw hant on yaw left eye ant reat ze (gulp) lettas.
David has 20/20 vision. Too bad.
Clever Dr. Lew says, Zo, you haf headache ven you reat (Gulp) Yess?
He gulps air mid sentence.
#1
Dr. Lew prescribes rose color lenses. David loves the idea of rose colored lenses.
But he’s persuaded to choose blue grey metallic frames.
Good color for teen age boys, fashion maven aunt Yettie says.
#2
He hates those frames. Wantsa sit on ‘em or lose ‘em.
What becomes of Dr. Lew? He musta died. When did he?
Was there a funeral? Did Rose’n Sam go?
Inna 50’s nobody ever talks about funerals in fronta the kids.
.
Wake up to the smella camphor. Everyone’s in dark clothes and hats they don’t ever wear.
Everyone goes out and come home with a headache.
Don't light another cigarette Sammie, Rosie says.
Siddown. I’ll make ya something to eat.
1953, David is 17 when Sam’s mother dies.
David’s 1st funeral. He sees Sam cry.
1st time he sees his father cry. And in public.
Sam asks David to help carry the coffin. David backs away’n says no.
Not the 1st time young David disappoints Sam.
David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
3 #1
1953, the morning the Gordons move out of the Ludlow Street tenement, David subways from Delancey and Essex to Brooklyn College.
#2
Gordons move from the lower east side of Manhattan where David’s born’n grows up to the 2 family brick house bought by grandma Fannie in Coney Island.
Next to someone she calls cousin Dottie. Across from her brother Sam on 30th Street between Mermaid’n Surf Avenues.
Later that moving day David subways home to the new Coney Island house. Uncle Alfred, Hymie’n Fannie live upstairs. All the Gordons live downstairs.
Alfred’s gonna sheet rock rooms’n paint 1 atta time. In his “spare time” he says. David’s the oldest so he getsta move from undone room to undone room.
#1
He never actually gets a finished room of his own before he gets married.
#2
In 1953 David Gordon doesn’t know what he wantsa do if he gets into college or after he gets out. None of grandma Fannie’s kids go past high school except Rose.
David’s mother graduates from Hunter College. Immigrant illiterate Fannie has ambitions for her 1st daughter but Rose disappoints when she meets’n marries Sam Gordon.
In the early 1930’s (see 30’s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY)
íRose Sylvia, 1st of Fannie Wunderlich’s 5 daughters and 1 son, all abandoned by their philandering father Morris,
meets and marries Sam, 3rd of Louis Gordon’s 2 sons and 1 daughter
all abandoned by their runaway teenage mother Anna.
#1
Sam Gordon, the handsome Marine leaves school to get a job at 11.
#2
st
David the 1 son hasta prove something to Fannie for Rose’s sake. And for Sam’s sake.
But none of David’s talents make Sam happy.
David gets A’s in Art’n English’n writes’n illustrates his own stories’n poems for the school magazine.
He loves English teacher, Augusta Irving, who ain’t allowed to suggest books not inna school syllabus.
Ms. Irving firmly “un-recommends” books. Do not dare read Catcher in The Rye by J.D.Salinger, she says.
David races to the library. Gets C's and D's in everything else including Physical Education.
#1
But he wins the high school Art Medal at graduation.
#2
1953 he’s accepted at Hunter but he switches to City College for no reason.
Manhattan peers including Helen go to Brooklyn College. So David does too.
David majors in English and minors in Education.
Art medal winner Gordon discovers he’s red/green colorblind. What number do you see? Where?è
#1
In the colored circle on the page in the book of colored circles, the teacher says.
He doesn’t see any number. Oh, wait a minute.
#2
And he tawks like a Noo Yawk Jew. Sez dis n’dat, gawna’n hafta. Hafta go to Speech Clinic.
He shuts up. Listens ta strangers inna street. Ta actors inna movies’n on TV. Practices secretly tawkin in his head.
In bed. Or inna toilet. Gotta start ova so he’s gonna choose howta sound. He has goals.
Abandon English major’n Education minor. Recognize color blue. Get ridda braces on his teeth.
Wear clothes some one else don’t already wear. Stop being Dudie?
Figure out who the hell David is away from the Wunderlich/Gordon “shtetl”.
David sees a discount shrink who says after 1 visit: you think you’re the only person in the world.
#1
Goes twice more and stops. Begins to go places and meet people who change his life.
They don’t intend to and he doesn’t notice. Begins to talk again. Where were you born?
4 David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
#2
In 1
1955 David Gordon becomes a Visual Arts major.
çMeets visual art’n science student Barbara Kastle.
Meets actor’n sociology student Norma Fire.è
Norma sits strumming on her guitar inna classical lounge,
shoes off, shapely legs crossed in black tights.
Brooklyn College has a “classical” and a “popular” lounge.
Kastle has breasts’n hips’n “Bette Davis” eyes.
Fishbowl earrings with guppies swimming or fresh flowers in water.
She arcs, pivots’n swivels, swoops’n slashes’n fills 10 18 X 24 pages
to David’s 1 page of erased’n re-drawn constipated doodles.
David, calls Kastle “Kastle”. She begins to introduce herself as Kastle.
#1
Mother Peggy’s a Science teacher. Accountant father’s another Sam.
Norma’s mother Miriam’s a housewife. Tailor father’s another Sam.
Kastle is also a dancer. Also Norma is also a dancer.
David trails Kastle like a puppy, or a stalker, to the Modern Dance Club
in the women’s physical education department. Norma’s there too.
#2
#
Gordon don’t know about black tights or classical music or music.
Let’s Pretend’n Bob’n Ray onna radio and Milton Berle Show, onna 8” TV.
`
And Your Show of Shows. Imogene Coca and Sid Caesar are his heroes. è
No museum. No theater. Thinks Ravel’s Bolero is the Rose Bolero.
Auntie Ruthie runs from Fannie’s kitchen across the hall to Rose’s kitchen. Rosie, put on the radio, she yells.
It’s the Rose Bolero, he thinks she yells. David imitates Ruthie and Norma laughs. She thinks David’s funny.
#2
Norma Fire’s funny’n she sings. She has a surprising deep voice, scoliosis and 1 wandering eye.
She takes David home. Miriam, her mother, vacuums behind David’s feet from foyer to living room.
Till David is invited to sit on the clear plastic covered couch.
#1
Norma, Kastle and David write text for People, a movement trio.
Norma narrates and Kastle and David dance in burlap costumes and hats.
Machine sewn in Kastle’s Brooklyn family basement. where her unmarried aunt Sarah lives.
People is performed twice at the Dance Club’s Modern Dance Concert, May 1957, in the campus Gershwin Theater.
David doesn’t tell Rose or Sam he joins the modern dance club.
#2
Or he designs’n sews costumes’n draws, paints’n sculpts in Art labs or he hasta learn to not tawk like them. Wunderlich/Gordon credo: Nobody gotta know ya business.
1950’s, he’s a troll inna production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt n’meets actor, singer, lyric writer Judy Weinberg who plays Anitra’n invites him to join the theater crowd lunch table.
They act’n joke’n perform for each other and for David. He keeps his mouth shut. Practices sounding like student actors Jordan Charney’n Michael Lombard when he’s alone.
Practices sounding like Sanford Beresovsky who becomes comedian Sandy Baron. He’s the Stage Deli narrator in Woody Allen’s ‘84 film Broadway Danny Rose.
Judy takes David to watch final audition between 2 student actors for the lead role of a Witch Boy. Directing professor calls out, you there’n hands him a script.
David reads the script with a sorta movie hillbilly accent. Like inna movies he gets the part. 1956, he acts’n dances the lead in Dark of the Moon.
Climbs up a chicken wire n’paper mache mountain onna Gershwin Theater stage. Opening night he hasta hang at the backa the mountain till he hears the curtain rising.
If he lives through this show he promises Fannie’s God he’ll never walk or talk onna stage again. Climbs over the toppa the mountain in black tights singing:
A witch boy from the mountain came, A-pinin' to be human, Fer he had seen the fairest gal...A gal named Barbara Allen.
#1
No family, aunts or uncles, and not Rose or Sam know or see David as the Witch Boy. Nobody gotta know ya business. So he doesn’t tell anyone.
5 David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
Aunt Ruth Wunderlich Licata Bamundo
Brother Barry Gordon
Grandma Fannie WunderlichFannie Wunderlich
#1
1950’s David also photographs. Develops and prints in the Arts lab. He tries to get out of taking a photography class. Harry Holtzman, professor, friend of Mondrian, insists.
David begins to understand how to frame images in the camera and reframe or edit in the lab. Thanks to Harry Holtzman it matters to everything ever after David ever does.
#2
1956, David gets his 1st professional dance job. Paula Levine, Dean of Dance at Hollins College,, ex Modern Dance Club, auditions dance students for Thy Kingdom Come.
The 1st religious outdoor drama of the south. David, with more presence than technique is hired, and Sam puts him on a train to Roanoke, Virginia’n says, be careful.
They think we have horns. By “they”, turns out he means southerners. By “we” he means Jews. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Richard Strauss is overture for Thy Kingdom Come.
David poses in faux Roman get ups to half empty houses onna outdoor arena stage facing a crematorium that issues smoke nightly. House fills up the night ladies get in free.
#1
There’s family and history you inherit and family and history you may be lucky to create for yourself. Then there’s a show biz family, a theater company. David is 20 in July.
Blonde Tampa Florida debutante Howell Hardie is a lead and she thinks she loves David for a minute. She has a charming southern accent and he loves her back for a minute.
st
With his new invented speech clinic delivery. He imagines he’ll know his 1 professional theater company always. Enda the summer some of the company go to Washington.
Outta town tryout of West Side Story. David and Howell are there together. He cries during the show and cries again when it’s time to say g’bye.
David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
6 #2
Inna 1950’s Gordon dances but he ain’t a dancer. Learns social dance, as a teen inna kitchen between the sink’n the stove. Rosie shows Dudie howta Rhumba.
And to Fox Trot. Rosie’n her sisters love ta Fox Trot. They dance together if their husbands don’t. Mosta the men don’t. Rosie’s and Yettie’s Sammies don’t.
They embrace selfconsciously’n sorta move in place. Irene fancy fox trots with hubby Morris’n with sister Ruthie. Girls don’t fox trot no more, David tells Rose.
Girls “slow dance” with boys they like and girls Cha Cha. That’s the truth. Truth ain’t everyone’s cuppa tea. David innocently tells his truth to family and peers.
Until he sees the reaction’n learns to never or nearly never tell the whole truth to anyone anymore’n works to keep track of his lies and who he tells ‘em to.
#1
In the ‘50’s he meets design student Christopher McKenna who wants to sublet an apartment for the summer from a theater student he knows named Michael Kahn.
#2
st
Christopher asks David if he wantsa be a roommate on Houston street inna Village. David 1 says no but he gets interested in what happens if he says yes so he says yes.
He alienates the Wunderlich/Gordon clan relocated to a Coney Island bungalow for the summer. Rose wakes David early 1 morning in Coney Island.
She says Sam says: if David wantsa sublet in Greenwich Village he better go now and never come back. Rose wipes her eyes.
David packs everything in shopping bags’n F trains to Manhattan.
#1
David interviews for a summer office boy job downtown.
He gets hired and enrolls in summer school classes.
Studies for exams on a bench in Washington Square Park.
Hello, you must be a dancer,
says Choreographer James Waring. è
Waring invites Gordon to audition for his company.
#2
st
David 1 says no but why not so he says yes next.
David meets Waring, after all, because he says yes to McKenna.
Jimmy shares studio rehearsal space with Paul Taylor.
Jimmy introduces David to Paul who he calls Pete.
Pete’s dancing in a Broadway musical based on the comic strip Lil Abner.
th
Studio is at 50 something Street and 9 Avenue.
It’s also storage space for a used furniture store onna street level.
Furniture is delivered once a month.
Used chestsa drawers, kitchen tables, armchairs and couches.
Dance space shrinks till a bureau or a couch gets sold.
If business is good’n and furniture gets sold dancing gets bigger.
th
st
Jimmy asks artist friends to design costumes for his concert at the Masters Institute on 108 Street. It’s David’s 1 performance with the company.
Paul Taylor designs David Gordon’s costume. David wears cardboard half spheres the size of half cantaloupes on his shoulders and across his chest.
Pete paints the crotch of David’s black cotton tights green with David in ‘em. David wears the tights for 1 night but he’s green for weeks.
st
nd
David sees his 1 Paul Taylor concert at the conventional 92 Street Y. Taylor’s a technically trained dancer who can move up and down and around.
He looks good in leotard and tights and unitards. Conventional curtain rises on a stationary couple.
Paul Taylor’s dressed in a conventional suit with shirt’n tie and changes positions to phone announcements.
The time is: 8 o’clock. 8 o’clock and 10 seconds. 8 o’clock and 20 seconds. An electric fan blows dancer Toby Armour’s flower print dress.
In the 1950’s verbal wars are waged in theater lobbies at dance concert intermissions.
Major modern dance cliques commandeer and protect geographic lobby territory as well as aesthetic turf.
nd
92 Street Y attendees cheer and bravo or boo and hiss in unison.
They storm out noisily during and after that particular Paul Taylor concert. David sees this concert with Jimmy Waring.
David refers to it, in 2014, as his personal 1st Post Modern dance experience.
7 David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
#2
Inna 50’s, David moves from free or cheap sublet to sublet. Norma’n Kastle, an unlikely paira roommates, move in together in Greenwich Village.
Ancient elevator and an ancient doorman on 8th St between 5th’n 6th avenues. David moves in part time‘n works part time inna shop downstairs.
I meet Michael Malce who’s younger’n changes my life by hiring me part time in his new store, Papier Malce, accent over the final “e”.
We go to wholesale showrooms to choose new merchandise for shelves’nwindows.
I use my “visual arts” college training to put stuff inna store window to get customers to buy candles, greeting cards’n tchotchkas.
I don’t know I’m gonna put stuff in store windows to earn a living for my 1st 20 married years.
st
I don’t know I’m gonna choose’n design merchandise for Azuma shelves for 1 20 married years. Don’t know yet it’s a job called “display”.
#1
Kastle draws and paints but doesn’t get work shown. Teaches for money. High school biology like mother Peggy.
David asks Kastle, in 1962, to design his costume for Mannequin. She gives him her old bloody biology lab coat. (see 60’s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY)
#2
Kastle has 4 finches, 2 cats and a German Shepherd named Natasha. She has a short white boyfriend’n a tall black boyfriend’n a fling with Robbie, a blonde lesbian.
#1
Norma auditions for roles she doesn’t get.
#2
David helps invent her “act” for the Showplace, a club.
She sings’n does a kinda “stand up”. She’s a social worker for money.
#1
Buys rubber soled oxfords and tailored clothes to play the social worker role seriously.
th
Norma’s 8 Street boyfriends include a young novelist, an alcoholic middle aged sailor,
the married directors of a medical employment agency and of a community settlement house.
st
#2
David photographs’n designs Norma Fire’s 1 “professional” composite.è
#1
th
The trio give 1 party together on 8 street before everybody goes where they go next.
#2
Guests bring drink but Kastle, Norma and David steal all the food from local supermarkets.
They buy a coupla items for cover’n David holds what he steals under his coat in his arm pits.
Tinned ham, kosher salami, smoked oysters and packaged fancy foods.
They don’t get caught. They never do it again.
st
Norma heads for San Francisco to find a good job and her 1 husband.
th
A last date with David at his parent’s 25 anniversary party. Grandma Fannie loves Norma.
She’s a college graduate and a Jew. Fannie tells Norma if she can get David to marry her:
I’ll buy ya a car, mammelah.
#1
Jimmy introduces David to newly arrived British dancer Valda Setterfield. Let’s make a duet.
You 2 look good together, he says, David says she’s too heavy.
#2
Valda says, he don’t know howta lift. She’s right. He don’t know how.
His 1st “professional” experience is Jimmy’s company. Dancers rehearse during a year.
To do 1 or 2 shows but nobody gets paid so sooner or later someone hasta go.
Hafta dance with who can pay ‘em or wait tables or tend bar.
Or teach other kids to be dancers. Who won’t get paid.
#1
We work on a dance, Valda says. Someone leaves, We teach that part to someone new.
If the one who leaves comes back he or she learns another new part.
Because someone now has their old part. Some dancers go and go for good.
David Gordon 50’S ARCHIVEOGRAPHY
8 #2
Toby Armour starts a company in Boston. Vincent Warren joins a ballet company in Canada. Timothy La Farge becomes a forest ranger.
#1
Freddie Herko, more unhappy than we know, dances out of the top floor window of a Greenwich Village tenement.
#2
Jimmy Introduces David to John Cage’n Morton Feldman. And Fanny Brice songs. Gustave Mahler live at Carnegie Hall. Art of Alphonse Mucha. Pronounced Moocha, Jimmy says.
Sound of throat clearing. Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Kurt Schwitters, Jasper Johns and Ray Johnson. Laurel and Hardy movies, Jean Cocteau. Busby Berkely,
#1
Luis Bunuel movies. Films, Jimmy corrects. Dances of George Balanchine, Merle Marsicano, Merce Cunningham and Katherine Litz. Dancing of Maria Tallchief. Jimmy bravos.
#2
Andre Eglevsky, Jimmy boos. And Harriet Hochter. Lyda Roberti, Groucho Marx, Fred Astaire. And something Yvonne Rainer calls Ordinary Dance . Extraordinary, Jimmy says!
David meets’n takes class with Cunningham because Jimmy says to. David says he dances because he meets Jimmy and because he meets Valda.
#1
Valda’s from Westgate-on-Sea in England so David invites her to Coney Island. Come for a day at the beach he says.
#2
Grandma Fannie’s rocking onna porch. Valda says good morning to Fannie. Fannie don’t answer. Grabs David as he passes and says in Yiddish, she’s a goy?
#1
Valda and David perform in Jimmy’s Dances Before The Wall at Henry Street. Set design by Julian Beck of the Living Theater. Village Voice review by Allan Ginsberg.
#2
1959, Jimmy teaches “composition” workshop on 14th street. Sits in a chair, wears too big sweaters. Sniffs. Books to read, what’s on in NY? Art exhibits, film. Sniff.
Off’n on Broadway. Sniff. Live concerts. What to see or avoid, sniff, sniff. Avoid recordings, he says. Unless there’s no other way to hear the music,” he says.
1960 David makes 1st Valda and David duet, Mama Goes Where Papa Goes because of the James Waring workshop. (see 60’s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY)
#1
Jimmy tries to convince David everything changes.
Your coat, Jimmy says, hanging in your closet changes.
Even if you never wear it, Jimmy says.
#2
Jimmy says: If you make something you gotta keep it.
#1
If you don’t like it, he says, maybe you’ll get to like it.
#2
If you don’t get to like it, he says, who says you hafta like it?
James Waring dies of cancer, at 53, December 2, 1975.
(see 70’s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY)
David regrets not naming somebody or something
for Jimmy Waring.