Sunday June 3 2007 “Gene Turns Tucson”
Gene was at the Fort Lowell swimming pool 3 days ago, because Marty is visiting from New York and Marty is a swimmer. Marty was still swimming when we arrived, Gene was dressed and on the deck. I do not know if he went in the water, but in this great heat I am sure he must have. I think Gene just dawdles around in the water, Marty is the great swimmer. I think our wonderful outside open-year-round swim pools are the reason Marty was willing to buy the Tucson house. Gene has no money, Marty bought it. Gene and Marty have been a couple for 30 years, the whole time Gene lived in New York City. Marty is a New Yorker, but Gene grew up in South Carolina, went to college in Miami, met all the New Yorkers there and decided “New York is where I want to live,” and moved to NYC and never left. Till his friend Natalie, who he had known from New York, settled in Tucson (she has a career here) and invited Gene out to stay with her.
Gene and Marty had separate apartments. Gene had a loft in Chelsea for 30 years, but finally the landlord had figured out how to get it away from him. Gene had been paying very low rent, and when rents skyrocketed in Manhattan, the landlord wanted it back bad, and eventually succeeded. Gene put all his stuff in storage and accepted Natalie’s invitation. Since it seems to me Gene could have moved in with Marty while he was looking for a new place, perhaps Gene wanted a change, a chance to get out of the City for a while. Plus he had that hip problem, I think the idea was to have the operation out here, convalesce from the operation out here, and then return to NYC. Gene did a lot of work for Natalie while he stayed with her. He put in 100 rose bushes, he is a genius gardener, and he bought chickens, raised the chickens and they had fresh eggs and brought them to all their neighbors.
Natalie had a fancy sports car and let Gene drive it. Natalie took Gene to the Fort Lowell pool his first summer, which is how we met Gene. He had just arrived and was getting out of the car, when we arrived and were getting out of the truck, and we fell into conversation. And Gene said how he is a New Yorker visiting his friend Natalie, and we said how we moved here from New York City. It’s possible we saw Gene and Natalie at the Fort Lowell Pool one more time but I am not sure. Instead at the end of the summer the city swim pools raised their prices astronomically, and we joined the Racquet Club instead, it was so much cheaper and open 24/7.
We had been there a few months when Gene and Natalie showed up there, they joined too. Bill got into a long conversation with Gene in the pool, and found out he was an artist, that he had been a cartoonist back in New York. Bill really liked Gene, they became friends. I became curious about Gene and wanted to get closer to him too when Bill told me all about him, what a nice guy he is, and how his cartoons are on the internet, and soon I got close to Gene too. He and Natalie came every afternoon, Bill and I came every afternoon, and the club has a Jacuzzi where people just sit around and schmooze.
I guess eventually Gene got his own car, because Natalie works, she has a consulting business, she tells people how to get grants, and she is successful at it. Once Gene had his own car, he didn’t have to leave when Natalie left, and he spent long afternoons at the club. This is probably when I spent more time with him. Yes I must have seen Gene one more time at Fort Lowell before I saw him all the time at club, because I have distinct memory of Marty swimming first in the Fort Lowell Pool, and then seeing him swim at the club pool. I think Marty came out for that Christmas, and they stayed in a very fancy elegant resort hotel in central Tucson. How Gene found out about it I don’t know, I only found out about it from Gene. Marty was here for 10 days and because he is a swimmer, Gene took Marty to swim at the club every day, and then took him to all the towns around Tucson. It’s possible they were thinking about buying a house out here even then. But I am not sure why, since the plan was after Gene had his hip operation and convalesced from it, he would return to New York.
Marty came out a few times, but not that many, I guess he had big job in New York. We had already been seeing Gene every day at club for two years when I heard from Sally “Gene had applied for the State health insurance to pay for the operation because he has no money, and they turned him down because he has a car,” and Sally reported “Gene was so upset telling her this, he was in tears.” Then next I heard from Sally, “Gene is making the decision now, whether to go back to NYC, or stay in Tucson, all his stuff is in storage there, he would have to go back and get it.” Then next I bumped into Natalie somewhere, maybe in Trader Joe’s, and she told me Gene and Marty bought a house, the most beautiful house in the world, in the most beautiful area in the world, not that far from Fort Lowell Pool, on River Road and Craycroft.
Then we stopped seeing Gene at the club, and Bill said “we haven’t seen Gene in long time,” and I said “you know how much is involved in buying all the stuff for the house, and Gene has such good taste, he is probably doing all that shopping now.” But a whole year went by until we bumped into him at Fort Lowell Pool. It was summer again. Gene told us all about the house. It had been a miracle of good fortune. The son of a very wealthy Tucson businessman had built this dream house for his new bride. But somehow the marriage didn’t work out, she went to Oregon and he sold it. But he wanted to sell it to someone who loved it as much as he did, and of course that fits Gene to a T. So he sold it for a bargain rate, and Marty had the money and bought it. Marty went back to New York and Gene planted the 600 bushes, flowers, trees, etc, and did all the work. It is a whole acre, and way out in the country, because as Gene said to Bill last year, “it is just me and the snakes and bobcats and coyotes out here.”
Perhaps Gene had the house for a whole year at the point we had that long chat in Fort Lowell Pool about how lonely Gene is. I recognized that 4 year turning point, when your New York City friends stop calling you and each time you call them they are too busy to talk, you realize it is all over. And at the same time, for some bizarre reason, you lose all the friends you made when you first moved to Tucson. Gene said Natalie refuses to speak to him.
Perhaps Gene had been in Tucson 3 full years then, and it was the following summer, when he was just leaving Fort Lowell as we were arriving, that he said he followed my suggestion, just watch old movies on TV day and night, and he still has no friends, and “Marty hasn’t come out for a whole year and that gets old.” And he has started to write and has written 400 pages, and he has nice conversations with the ladies at Walgreen’s check out counter. And that is when I saw Gene’s face and eyes had completely cleared up. Instead of too-much NYC-socializing-confusion in front of his face and eyes, there was just crystal clarity and peace.
And I knew he liked it the way it was, even tho it was hard. Because when I said “everyone at the club loves you, you can go back there,” he didn’t want to. And when I invited him to the Barnes and Noble writers meetings, he didn’t bite. In New York City, Gene’s life, like mine, had been a whole life on the telephone.
And this is what it had taken to clear Gene’s mind-- as it has been the same thing it had taken, to clear my mind. My friends in NYC had also stopped calling, when I called them they were busy. My Tucson friends had either moved away or stopped talking to me. Bill was in art school all day, and then returned for Open Studio at night to draw from the live model. It was long empty days in the house for me too, and it was what healed me too. By the time it was over, I too had peace and a crystal clear mind. I just had to be willing to go thru all the boredom, or more explicitly, find things on TV to take away my boredom, since no one can tolerate boredom.
Which is why I had suggested TV to Gene, it had worked for me.
I guess Marty finally did come out to Tucson to visit, because few days ago, when we saw Gene next, he said “Marty is in the pool swimming.” And I said “Bill will be so happy to see you, after we saw you last time, he thought you’d be there all the time, and when we went swimming he said ‘Gene will be there, good! I will have someone to talk to.’” I didn’t spend much time on deck talking to Gene, I really wanted to get into that deep cold water, summer heat had hit. But when Bill emerged from men’s dressing room I called out and said “Gene is here,” and I saw them talk for 20 minutes before Bill got into pool, and Gene and Marty left to go home.
And Bill told me last night Gene said “I don’t miss New York at all, and I am never going back.” And a rattlesnake was sunning himself on his deck and Gene had to chase it off. And I said “Gene must have turned totally Tucson if he doesn’t miss New York at all and said he is never going back.” And Bill said “yes, Gene has turned Tucson, and his mind is all cleared up now.” And I said “that is what Tucson did for me too.”
And then we talked about the rattlesnake. Bill told me Gene killed it, he didn’t want it on his deck. I was upset about the snake. Bill said, “I told Gene he did the right thing, I didn’t want him to feel bad, and if you talk to him don’t mention it, I don’t want him to feel bad he killed the snake.” “I won’t mention it” I said.
Bill said “Gene told me, ‘I am bored a lot, I rent movies to watch, but I don’t miss New York at all and I am never going back.’” And that is the story of how Gene and I turned Tucson.
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