I Forget; A Memoir Corn
“Pressure Cooker”
Text and Photography: Marc Balet
Gay city summers meant Fire Island Pines. Everyone went. I made the trek a couple of times in the late 70’s; train, cab, then ferry though I was never a fan. The Pines, Provincetown, West Hollywood, Lodz, I try to avoid ghettos. That said, when Marianne and Christiaan offered me their cozy ocean front house in The Pines for a summer week for free, I accepted. Marianne was the agent for the famed fashion photographer Arthur Elgort. Christiaan, her husband, was one of the top hairdressers of the time and Arthur’s favorite. Work was family. We were close. I worked with Arthur while art directing Vogue Patterns magazine, various fashion ad campaigns and for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. As a result, I spent a lot of time with the very blond, never bland, Dutch couple. I looked forward to utilizing their beachy place as my seven-day sex pad. For years I had been regaled with madcap stories about the infamous Meat Rack, a sandy patch of land buffering the wealthy Pines enclave from the more rustic community of Cherry Grove. Its undulating sand and promise of infinite hookups beckoned us sex starved boys like a hot-bodied amusement ride
“Marianne at the house on FI”
After a few hours at the house the phone rang. It was Arthur. His new ballerina girlfriend had broken up with him. He was torn apart wanting to come out from the city and stay with me for a few days to recuperate. Though it crippled any chance of household sex, I said yes. “Come out. You can get over her while you make us dinner.” He arrived a few hours later and, just as the weather began to turn, I raced out to get provisions. There would be steak, a salad and corn on the cob. I wandered, lazily, into the kitchen as Arty cooked. There was the promised salad on the kitchen table, steaks sizzled inside the beat-up oven.
“What’s that?” I asked, frowning down into a pot.
“What does it look like? It’s called corn. I’m making corn on the cob for us.”
“But you have the corn in a pot with boiling water.”
“That’s called cooking.”
“What? No. That can’t be right. You need a pressure cooker to cook corn, Arty. Everyone knows that”
“Who’s everyone? What are you talking about?”
“My mother always used a pressure cooker to cook corn, Arthur. That’s the only way you can safely make corn. When the metal disc at the top of the pot whistles and rattles, on the verge of exploding, you know it’s done. I’ve never seen corn prepared in boiling water. That can’t be right.”
“Yes, it’s right.” He answered. I side eyed the oven. The break-up had affected his senses. This dinner would not end well.
I envisioned our bodies discovered days from now both stiff as cobs, splayed across that stained, cotton covered sofa. Chewed corn kernels strewn everywhere. “Arthur. You’re going to kill us with that corn. My mother was the Typhoid Mary of cooking and even she never just boiled a corn.” My panic amped. “I know you like dancers. They leap and twirl. Life’s a big stage filled with lovely chorines. You’ll find another, Arty. This is no way to end it. And by it I mean you. I love corn on the cob, mmmm dripping with butter, and seasoned with sea salt but boiled corn is the idea of a mad man. Do we have sea salt?”
“This is how you make corn on the cob, Marc. No pressure cooker needed. Calm down. You’ll see. It will be delicious. Go watch the sea.”
Yeah, I ate the corn, nervously, then waited for the tortuous cramping pains to begin. I felt nothing.
“Arthur Elgort at the house on FI”
Arty left in the morning. He had talked to his no-longer-ex, patched things up and was gone before dawn.
But. I was alive! I must be immune! It was Sunday. The Times would be delivered by early boat. I left the weathered, grey shingled home and made my way along the wooden footpath towards the harbor. Two minutes into that journey I fell to the hard planks writhing in pain. I screamed to anyone who could hear, “The corn! The corn!” I could not get back up. For those unfamiliar with Pines culture, Sunday morning is not the optimal time to cry for help. All cries are ignored by the comatose or drowned out by those still mating. No one came. I crawled back to the house. The wind picked up. The ocean grew murkier. I crept to a bedroom and lay down quietly imagining my obit. It would be short, no doubt, accompanied by a flattering photo – not by Arthur.
Arthur was assuredly, by now, in a better place, not meaning Manhattan. I envisioned him racing in slow motion through endless fields of golden, ripening, poisonous corn, his trusty Leica arcing out from his shoulder heaving in slow motion as he ran, his mouth agape in an eternal scream. Comforted by that imagery, I awoke smiling and headed to the bathroom.
As I began to pee, I fell down, again, in searing pain. Staggering to the phone, I called the on-island emergency staff to come rescue me. A couple of Parks Department men arrived by dune buggy. It was raining. They came up onto the deck, water rolling off their corn-colored, wind breakers. In pain, I stumbled out to meet them mumbling about the bad corn and how I had been poisoned by it. I asked if they kept an antidote on hand. I managed to describe the origin of my illness, about my pal Arthur, his breakup, him losing his mind over the split, the corn induced suicide attempt, his latest pages in Vogue. (Not everyone read the tiny photo credits placed in the magazine’s gutter. That always irked me). What the rescuers retained in looks they lacked in compassion pegging me as another Pines guy on a bender. The inclement weather prevented evacuation. They handed me a pill the size of a donut and assured me that it would keep me calm till the morning. If I still felt badly (re: the drugs had dissipated) they would get me off the island. They were polite but stern turning down my coy request they remain by my side till morning. That pill was a doozy of a tranquilizer. Come dawn, though rested, I was no better. I rang the number once again. The guys came back, this time with a stretcher.
I had never been on a stretcher before. I took to it immediately. I wished I had been stretchered in healthier times. As the men were about to lift me out of the house towards a waiting boat, I caught site of myself in a mirror. “Stop! Oh no way, stop here!”
“What’s the problem?” One asked.
“I can’t be carried out of here wearing this. And I need my sunglasses. This looks like you’re taking a junkie to rehab.”
I slid off and selected a muted, stretch cotton, T shirt I thought more suitable for a hospital visit. Holding my abdomen, I managed to throw a couple of essentials into a monogrammed canvas satchel, donned my new shades that everyone coveted and slowly climbed back onto my waiting transport. I was now ready for my journey across The Great South Bay or as I imagined it, The Bay of Styx. While hustled into the awaiting, bobbing Chris Craft I noticed that I had the pleasure of a boat mate. It’s lovely to have a traveling companion even for a short sojourn. He was young (good), scruffily handsome (a definite plus) and in handcuffs (trifecta!). He had that deliciously sexy, downtrodden appearance which newly arrested house thieves often affect post capture. I envied him. He was not in withering pain.
“Me on FI”
After landing, I bid adieu to my boat mate as he was led away nameless and downtrodden. Missing him, and after a brief ambulance ride, I arrived to a hospital somewhere on the south shore of Long Island. The doctor there listened intently as I explained anew how a photographer, “He must have 6 spreads in the new American Vogue” had prepared corn boiled in water for dinner. My eyes went wide in the telling. “Doctor, did you hear what I just said?” He nodded in the affirmative. “Could you think of anything crazier? He nodded once again. “Do you treat corn poisoning here on Long Island? By the way, where the hell am I?” The doctor listened for as long as he was able, then reached for a needle and injected me with something that shut me up and put me out.
I woke up in a cozy haze and found myself bedded in a very sparsely furnished, bright, white hospital room with terrible glare. I glanced over to see if they had placed my sunglasses nearby and face creams or any of the other items I had brought along. They hadn’t. I made a mental note. Oh, there was another patient sharing my room. What was hospital protocol? I’d never been in one as a patient before. Is ‘What are you in for’ an appropriate icebreaker? Then, I realized that I was attached to something other than my possessions. I pulled back the thin hospital covers. To my horror I discovered two clear plastic tubes leading out from my dick toward some plastic sack located at the foot of the metal bed. There was a chart there, too. I was no longer in pain but there was something very puzzling about the situation. I rang for an attendant.
“What’s this?” I asked the young nurse while pointing to my dick.
She skipped the obvious opening I gave her and replied, “You had or have kidney stones. We hope that you passed them.”
“Kidney stones. Do you get kidney stones from corn? How can you tell if the stones are gone? Can you see them?”
“You will have to be here for a couple of days, Mr. Balet. We have to make sure that they are passed and that you are ok to leave.”
“I’m staying attached to these plastic tubes?”
“Yes, for now.”
“Can I have guests while attached?”
“Yes.”
I reached for the bedside phone and called Fran Lebowitz.
“I got kidney stones from Arthur Elgort’s cooking.”
“No you didn’t.” She said, “I’ll drive out to see you.”
The doctor came in, and checked the chart with care.
“Mr. Balet, you seem to have an above average amount of minerals in your urine. Have you been taking large doses of supplements?”
“Well.” I began.” Now, that you mention it, a really special vitamin guy, I can’t remember his name at the moment, but one that everyone is using has been coming to my apartment on a regular basis.
“Really?”
“Yes, he comes by one evening each week and places a kind of plastic device over the middle finger of my right hand.” I showed him the finger. “The finger attachment is connected by a long, thin wire to what seems to be a battery powered, secret machine he places right next to me. You see Doctor, our fingers give out impulses or something that only this person is trained to read. Stop me if you know all this. Those impulses are recorded on a kind of speedometer that instantaneously reads what vitamins my body desperately lacks. It’s all super special. Everyone thinks it is.”
The doctor, now riveted, sat down.
“So anyway, this guy puts different devices onto my finger to see what vitamins I need and, this part’s super fortunate, because he was able to sell me the missing vitamins right then and there. He had them all right with him in plastic packs! Vitamin A, B, C, D, Zinc, E, K and whatever else my body required. Not only that, Doctor, but he knew the exact super high doses I needed to buy from him and gave me my own schedule as to how often I had to take them. It turned out I needed so many minerals, doctor. I was completely undervitamined. So I’ve been doing that for months. I mean, everyone does. I’m not sure that answers your question.”
“Marianne and Christiaan at the house on FI”
Fran thought my parents should know I was rushed to the hospital so they could visit me as being a patient was new.
I rang my parents.
My mother answered. “Mother, I’ve been rushed to the hospital in an emergency boat from Fire Island. Fire Island. It’s a beach vacation spot. Uh, huh. It’s very nice. Yes, lots of people go. No, someone let me have a house there. Yes, right on the ocean. Three bedrooms. Yes, it’s clean. No. It was free. Yes, my friends are very generous. Well, yes, I did get to meet some new people. No, mostly men. Uh…how do you make corn on the cob, mother? Uh huh. I know it’s been a while. Try to remember. Ah hah! Just as I suspected, in a pressure cooker! Did I tell you I’m calling from a hospital? No, as a patient. I have kidney stones! And I’m here alone in some Long Island hospital attached with tubes coming out of you know where. Well, I think you know where”
I glanced toward my roommate. He was staring at me without expression. I nodded his way so that he’d think I was having a normal conversation. My mother did not find my malady a crisis of any sort. She was absolutely certain that I’d be on the mend at some point down the road. It was a road she had no intention taking. She reminded me that as loving parents they were always there for me, of course, but in Connecticut. No, they wouldn’t be coming my way but to let them know if there was something less active on their part they could do, I was to be sure to call when I succumbed to better health. I put the phone down, smiled at my roommate whose stare went unabated and returned to looking out the window at the very fascinating parking lot below. Cars pulled in. Cars pulled out.
Fran called. Yes I had spoken to my mother. Not surprisingly, they wouldn’t be coming all the way over from the other side of the Sound.
Fran demanded that I call them back. Their son was in the hospital and, as parents, even these parents, had a duty to come and pay their ailing kid a visit.
I called back.
“Hello, it’s Marc again. No, mother I’m not home yet. I’m still here in the hospital on Long Island with kidney stones. Are you really, really sure that you can’t come over and see me? I know you don’t like hospitals. Who does? Yes, I can ask when visiting hours are over.”
My mother didn’t cotton to visiting hours. The ill saddened her. She felt more comfortable visiting hospitals in the evening when everyone had gone. It was quieter then for her and the lighting was better.
“I guess I can try and find the best route for you to travel, mother. You know, you both could even take the ferry over!”
A ferry! I was trying to make it sound almost fun for them.
“Well. I could try and organize that for you but, as you know, I’m in the hospital so it might be easier if you…? I see. Yeah. It does seem involved what with a car and a boat. Ok. The way you attempt to explain it makes perfect sense. Next time for sure, then. Well, if you change your minds I’ll be here alone for a couple more days getting over kidney stones. Oh, and since you asked what you could do, I’ll charge the limo back to the city to you. Deal. Great chatting, again. Yes, I’ll be taking my sleeping pills when I’m released from the hospital where I’m calling from. Good to talk”.
The next day my roommate had a visitor. It was the guy’s wife. I watched out of the corner of my eye with envy as she handed him a loving ‘get well’ gift and a couple of balloons to boost his spirits. Then she turned towards me, smiled wistfully and extended her hand. There was a gift for me, as well.
“My husband overheard your conversation with your mother.”
