Long whiles ago, when I was working days for Agence France-Presse in Paris,
there was a two-hour slot between shifts and I wandered into a strange French
vampire film, surely the most boring one ever made. It starred an immensely
tall actor who wore shades all the time. He and bride were on honeymoon at
her long-lost uncle's castle. Unc turned out to be a gay vampire and all his
friends were gay vampires too; they kept popping out of every conceivable nook
and cranny of the ancient pile and nuancing about gayness and blood as hard as
they could go. The cinema had started out pretty full but I kept hearing the
clack of seats being abandoned in the darkness and we gradually dwindled down
to about eight spectators. I felt in some obscure way we'd become chummy for
lasting the course.
On screen, the couple were at last ready for their bridal night but in their
bedroom the camera swung away from their reclining embraces towards a large
grandfather clock in the corner of the room and began inexorably zooming in on
it. It was clear what was going to happen. So as the clock's pendulum door
slowly swung open and the hidden vampire emerged, I called out, "Quelle heure
il est?" This produced hollow laughs from round the auditorium. At that
stage of my knowledge of French it was very satisfying to make my first public
joke to strangers.
What relation does this have to poetry?
Well, three years later, when I was back in England, there was a big party at
Barry Hall's place after Anne Waldman had given a reading. While I think the
occasion wasn't quite as star-studded as the Halls had wanted, Anne was a
star, so were Ted B. and Alice, Sam Shepherd (who has Lower East Side NYC
connections from way back) was there and came and danced with me, there were
some others, and so on.
At some point, I went into the back room where some dancers from a show were
idling beside a double bed. In the bed's centre lay the huge French
honeymooner from the film, still wearing shades.
Doug
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