Sept 6, 1994 - Maine - Journal Entry

I've spent the last week with Willem, his wife Liz, his son Jack, and several of the Wooster Group up on Thompson Lake, Maine. Fishing, swimming, hiking in Evans Notch, eating and drinking at their renovated summer camp. Willem has been extremely gracious and hospitable as was Liz, who previously had regarded me as an intrusion into their life. Both of us travel through the yera. He to films and me to Europe, Central America, and now Asia. We have met occasionally in London or New York for drinks or dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to be their camp guest.

He and I go back to 1978. He had been living a floor above my flat at 256 East 10th Street.

One week at night the sounds of sex echoed loudly down the airshaft. Alice, my hillbilly girfriend, shouted up the the lovers. No, it was more a scream. I thought it wouldn't last long, but the sessions lasted more than an hour with the woman begging for more.

"Talk to him."

She meant the blonde actor on the fifth floor. Our passion was always silent, almost as if she were in a church. She nev er asked for more, but prayed, "Oh, God." more worshipping her orgasm than my ardor.

The next day I confronted the actor in the stairway.

"Me?" He thought it was me, then we realized it was the dwarf on the fourth floor. We had a good laugh and he invited me to a play on Wooster Street. He had a few lines. "I want a coffee Boston."

As a native Bostonian I had never heard that order in any diners north or south of the Neponset River. I didn't care. Willem was good people, althiugh we never saw us regularly. Friends? There was no other word for it and I'm glad to be in Maine. My almost home state. Liz wishes she came from here. she had spent time on this lake at this camp, which Willem bought. She had spent time here as a child and now an adult. More timme than me, but I still have the accent.

I came up with an Esquire Magazine. Chuck Pfieffer, Willem's friend, had a story in the magazine about his years in Vietnam.He had been a Green Beret captain and none of his stories were bullshit. Once we were leaving Nell's for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I almost talked his girlfriend Paige to join Paulie and Greg. A good thinyg she said no. Chuck was no joke.

The Esquire article written by an editorial assistant to rein in the big man's mania told of going back to a land where he had been king or could act like a king, meeting Generwl Giap, although he made it sound, as if he would have rather sat at the Hilton Hano pool sipping drinks with Paige than swapping war stories with the NVA hero.

Who wouldn't?

I mentioned Chuck to Wille. I recalled seeing them a year ago at Nells. They seemed to be tighter than he and i had ever been and I realized he might have based his film character in PLATOON on Chuck. Olivier Stone had certainly scuplted Elias from his and Chuck's lives. The three of them had been friends. Chuck was a real hero. I was nothing, but then I'd never tried to be anything else.

"Poor Chuck," Willem said and his voice caved, as if he were talking about someone lost or dead. Something had happened between them. He looked at the photo in the magazine he walked out of Cabin # 7 without a word. I felt weird about not knowing about their estrangement and wondered if he spoke the same way about me.

But most of my friends spoke about me and said, "I thought he was dead."
Not dead, only died andome back from the other side.
Forever Lazurus.