Memoir V (Salvy)

If you neutered too early, you would damage the lab's hips; if you neutered too late, you would risk a litter of additional Salvies all over Park Slope. "Do they miss their parents?" we asked at Endless Mountain, the manor where Salvy was born. "No!" said the breeder, confidently. "They really don't! Not at all!" And I wondered how any human could *know* this, with certainty; was it possible that Salvy's nighttime whining meant that he was pining for some half-buried memory of his mother? There's a good deal of pseudo-science in the world of puppies. "Don't use a retractable leash, because the puppy learns to tug," said some experts. "Retract! Retract!" said others. (I'm hostile toward the first group, as if they all walk around with perfectly-behaved puppies who never, never tug. Puppies who act like docile Mary, in "Little House on the Prairie," all the time. Those puppies can go fuck themselves. And their owners, too.) "Is your puppy biting? Leave the room!" "No! Jam a finger down its throat! That's actually secretly humane! Scout's honor!" One day, the vet, who charged hundreds of dollars per visit--unless the hundreds would vanish (on occasion), because of mysterious, stumbled-upon technicalities here and there; and what's a hundred dollars when it's your puppy's life at stake?--just left a piece of a needle dangling from Salvy's paw; it just wavered there, in the breeze, and one parent assumed it was necessary, because when do doctors fuck up? Doctors fuck up.

I spoke about Salvy in therapy. I was like one of those not-good-enough mothers, the ones whom Alice Miller wrote about, the ones who cannot see their babies as separate, living entities. Sometimes, I would feel so bored and irritated on a walk, and visions of my own childhood, hints of old biochemical rivers of unhappiness, would pop into my head. "You are jealous of Salvy," said my jovial Italian therapist, who did not like to mince words. "You and Salvy are competing for Marc's attention." And this was true. Salvy, Salvy, Salvy. Salvy-Bear. Salvy-Baby. Salvador-ay Pizza Pie. We drove Salvy to the Catskills, and I was withdrawn and unhelpful, and Marc gestured toward Salvy's massive, cumbersome crate, once he had set it up. "Did you think to lift a finger?" he asked. Or: he asked it with his eyes. Could I cut down on my tutoring to be with Salvy? Hadn't I indicated I would be home by 5 on Tuesday? Had I really needed to get out to see a screening of Dan Brown's "Inferno" on a weeknight? When I *was* home at 5, I read novels in a distracted, surly way, and I often shut myself in the bedroom. I had turned into Betty Draper! "Sometimes," said one authority, "a dog is more the property of Half A in the couple, less the property of Half B." I nodded and felt tired and guilty--and this faintly-silly feeling continued, more or less unabated, week after week.

***

Hell is other people!

You could drive a person crazy,
You could drive a person mad.
First you make a person hazy
So a person could be had,
Then you leave a person dangling sadly
Outside your door,
Which it only makes a person gladly
Want you even more.
I could understand a person
If it's not a person's bag.
I could understand a person
If a person was a fag.
But worse than that,
A person that
Titillates a person and leaves her flat
Is crazy,
He's a troubled person,
He's a truly crazy person himself.

When a person's personality is personable,
He shouldn't oughta sit like a lump.
It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull
To try to get you offa your rump.
So single and attentive and attractive a man
Is everything a person could wish,
But turning off a person is the act of a man
Who likes to pull the hooks out of fish.

Knock-knock! Is anybody there?
Knock-knock! It really isn't fair.
Knock-knock! I'm workin' all my charms.
Knock-knock! A zombie's in my arms.
All that sweet affection!
What is wrong?
Where's the loose connection?
How long, O Lord, how long?
Bobby-baby-Bobby-bubbi-Bobby,

You could drive a person buggy,
You could blow a person's cool.
Like you make a person feel all huggy
While you make her feel a fool.
When a person says that you've upset her,
That's when you're good.
You impersonate a person better
Than a zombie should.
I could understand a person
If he wasn't good in bed.
I could understand a person
If he actually was dead.
Exclusive you!
Elusive you!
Will any person ever get the juice of you?
You're crazy,
You're a lovely person,
You're a moving, 
Deeply maladjusted,
Never to be trusted,
Crazy person yourself.
Bobby is my hobby and I'm givin' it up!

This song is a great comfort to me, as I have dealings with someone two-faced and in possession of exquisite manners. It's a song about hypocrisy. It's also a song about the madness of expecting something from a person who clearly can give nothing. That's the big joke of the number; these ladies know better than to continue tangoing with Bobby, but they bring more and more exasperation on themselves. It's very funny to see them flashing big smiles and calling, "You son of a bitch! Turkey! Monster!" It's also funny that the women are represented as a kind of three-headed beast; though each has her own personality, the three together have one collective experience of Bobby's covert asshole behavior, and so they can sing as one voice. I grew up with the LaChanze revival recording of this song--as did most gay boys of the nineties. A few things to point out. "You impersonate a person better than a zombie should" is among the great lines in musical theater; it beautifully captures the human condition, the reality that we say we are one thing, while in fact we are another thing. (Had anyone before Sondheim inserted so much complexity into the musical theater?) The ambivalence is here in full force: "You're a lovely person; you're a moving, deeply maladjusted, never to be trusted, crazy person yourself." And the comedy of making someone into a "hobby"--that way, insanity lies; just ask Jane Austen's Emma--and the idea of blithely "giving it up." I really doubt that any one of these three women will stick to the content of that assertion.

"Personable/ coercin' a bull"--among the more legendary rhymes in Broadway history. "First you make a person hazy so a person could be had. Then you leave a person dangling sadly outside your door--which it only makes a person gladly want you even more." Why? Because people are nutty! I also enjoy the catalogue of doomed-love scenarios. "I could understand a person if it's not a person's bag. I could understand a person if a person were a fag. But worse than that--a person that titillates a person and then leaves her flat is crazy!" Sometime in the nineties, the lyrics were sanitized, so that "fag" was omitted. This drives me up the wall. Is the use of the word "fag," in an angered seventies-era character's choice of speech, somehow an endorsement of the word "fag" in 2017? Who said? I think the line as Sondheim wrote it is fabulous; it beautifully captures the rage these ladies are half-suppressing; it points to turbulent feelings under the cheery surface. I will always stand by that use of "fag"--and, like Sondheim, I'm a gay man with many thoughts on the word. Well, that's all for today. Therapy-via-Sondheim: rarely a bad idea!

*P.S. Do you notice how the "I could understand a person" structure is picked up/re-purposed in a late verse? "I could understand a person if he wasn't good in bed." (Perhaps the person is asexual and doesn't want companionship.) "I could understand a person if he actually was dead." (A big punch line and the culmination of a theme: Bobby is a zombie. "You impersonate a person." "Knock! Knock! A zombie's in my arms!") I also love Sondheim's use of chatty lingo in this song. "Get you offa your rump." "Turnin' off a person is the act of a man who likes to pull the hooks out of fish." Compare these lines with the formal diction of "Pretty Women," from "Sweeney Todd." Sondheim is a man who just really loves words--and who built a life off of that. He actually has written several sentences on one observation alone: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd." On the alliteration, the diction, and the tone of that one sentence. It's the truth! Hallelujah and amen.

P.P.S. After some research, I have to point out that it's Sondheim himself who changed the "fag" reference; see his fascinating note on page 177, "Finishing the Hat." I think he was wrong to make the change. Oh, well.