'Denver D. Doll' was the man who gave me the courage to obtain my postponed dreams:
'What really knocks me out is a book that,
'What really knocks me out is a book that,
when you're done reading it, you wish that
the author who wrote it was a terrific
friend of yours and you could call him up
whenever you like. That doesn't happen
very much, though.'
J.D. Salinger, Catcher on the Rye
ON THE 27TH DAY OF JULY IN 1953...
THE KOREAN WAR ENDED IN A GRIM stalemate. In September of that year I became a senior at East Denver High School, and first laid eyes on Justin W. Brierly; a closeted homosexual. He would one day become a character called Denver D. Doll in Jack Kerouac's book On the Road, published in 1957 and again in Visions of Cody published in 1960. Brierly had had graduated from Columbia University in the City of New York with both Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the founders of The Beat Generation, and had mentored another member of the future Beats by the name of Neal Cassady, who he had taken under his wing in the late 1940's at the same high school I was now attending.
My Dad had told me all about him. Apparently, Mister Brierly had been a very important person long before he became an East High School English teacher. He had once taken a leave-of-absence from his teaching duties in order to attend the Yalta Conference in the Crimea in February of 1945, having been invited by Prime Minister Churchill to do so. This Conference was where President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premiere Joseph Stalin discussed the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. What was important to me, however, was the class he now taught was called Advanced Literature and the Art of Writing, and for some odd reason decided that might be where I belonged, so wrote a brief essay as to why I would like admittance to his class, saying that I wanted to learn about writers and writing in a concrete way.
I began to think that I would not get in.
Then on the opening day of the semester, as I walked toward the entrance of the high school, I spotted Mister Brierly standing at the entrance. He looked at me and said, You have been accepted into my class, Mister Daugs. There will be 7 of you. We meet in room number 302 promptly at one o'clock on Monday and Wednesday and Friday afternoons. If you are late, you will be dismissed and no longer be able to attend. He reached into his suit pocket and handed me a small card. I live at 2257 Gilpin Street, my address is on the card. Our class will meet at my home on Wednesday evenings at 7 o'clock to discuss what we have thus far learned. He then turned and walked through the entrance door.
At 48, lean, with a receding hairline and and Hitler-like mustache 43, Mister Brierly was prompt, peculiar, and pompous. He was involved in both educational endeavors to advance educational values at and local politics as a city councilman. He despised segregation in schools and detested politicians who sought power for power's sake. He had publicly stated to reporters from The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post that he believed Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was as ruthless and demonic as Hitler had been, saying that his hunt for communists in America was akin to the assassination of the the European Jewish population, and that the only difference between Hitler and McCarthy was that McCarthy did it with overwrought anger and innuendo and lies rather than with guns and gas and bombs.
His home on Gilpin Street was located in a small area of shops and two-story homes, and was considered to be in one of the most prestigious of Denver neighborhoods, where we would sit every Wednesday evening in his elegant living room eating delicate English pastries and cakes while sipping on lapsang souchong tea. On one evening early in December Mister Brierly introduced us to both Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg only as old college friends of his, and we had no idea of the fame which lay ahead for both.
The first book we were assigned to read was A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and in that romantic novel, I first came across the notion of a separate peace, a peace achieved outside of war. In the climax of the drama, Frederic Henry deserts to join his woman, Catherine Barkley, leaving behind the abstractions of patriotism, loyalty, and solemn oaths. To him, living was more important than dying; loving a woman was more important than loving a country. Mister Brierly then introduced is to a book by Malcolm Crowley called Exile's Return, and I realized that there was another way to make a separate peace: departure. Faced with an America dedicated to thrift, commercialism, and puritanism, many of the 20's writers and artists became expatriates. I loved that word. The expatriate F. Scott Fitzgerald went to the Riviera, T.S. Eliot to London, Katherine Anne Porter to Mexico, Ernest Hemingway to Paris.
They lived the expatriate life among civilized people (or so I thought), in countries where food and shelter and drink were cheap and the women were beautiful. In my imagination, searching for absinthe among the Hank Williams - Webb Pierce jukeboxes, Paris became the golden city of my imagination. It was so in the 1920's, I thought; it must be so now. I envisioned cafe tables on summer afternoons, smoky dives in the winter, painters on the slopes of Montparanasse, and there, coming in the door striding right out of The Sun Also Rises, was Lady Brett Ashley. I would read and then reread Hemingway's words when he described Lady Ashley: 'She wore a slip over jersey sweater, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of that with that wool jersey...'
One Wednesday in early December instead of eating our usual pastries and cakes, Mister Brierly took us to an 1930 art deco movie theater on Glenarm Place by the name of the Paramount Theater to see an encore presentation of Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris, and there was Gene Kelly, living on the GI Bill after World War Two - which was for me as I sat in that darkened movie theater, now - telling me that if you can't paint or write in Paris, you might as well marry the girl next door and settle for less than you ought to be. Gene Kelly had a studio in the Quarter with a bed on pulleys that raised in the morning to the ceiling, and windows open to the air of spring, the Paris rooftops, the cobble stoned street, the bookstalls, and the fresh bread, and, of course, the cafes. I envisioned myself as Oscar Levant, who was Gene Kelly's best friend. He was a piano player and the girl they both loved was Leslie Caron. The music was by George Gershwin, filled with charm and confidence and bittersweet regret. Paris was a city bright and gay and full of writers and and painters and beautiful women and I wanted it.
I had other dreams too. I wanted to finish college and enter the seminary in order to become a Lutheran minister, and after I had done all of that - I could go to Paris and see all the great paintings in the Louvre and read all the writers whose names had been scattered through Crowley's book: Joyce and Pound, Proust and Valery, Verlaine and Rimbaud and Budelaire. Why not? I had many years ahead of me. I planned on finding Cafe Bel Ami and sit at a table and order Fundador and read little magazines too. And then write all night long. I would discuss writing with my fellow writers, study cannon law of religion and art...
...I never did go to Paris...
...Over the following months up until the semester's end, I would sit with Mister Brierly on Wednesday nights after the rest of my class had departed, tell him in detail about my future hopes and dreams, as he sat silently with a small smile on his face and listened without comment. When the semester came to an end and summer arrived, he phoned one morning and asked if I could take a drive with him into the mountains where we could take a long walk and have a good talk. I had replied that I would very much like to do that, he picked me up shortly after dawn the next day in his classy black Lotus Mark 4, and we drove off toward the magnificent Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.
I took note of a picnic basket resting between the two of us and he said, I took the liberty of packing a small lunch for the two of us. There are roast beef sandwiches with Dijon mustard on sourdough bread, lettuce and tomato and cold celery sticks, along with potato chips, a canister of cold iced tea and a wonderful dessert of cherry pistachio tea cakes. All of which will be served with proper silverware, Waterford crystal glasses atop a red-and-white checkered linen tablecloth. He then gave a laugh and added, Although I am somewhat of a closet homosexual and almost everyone I know is aware of that fact, you need not worry about me putting 'the hit' on you. That is not the reason for our little trip. I smiled and said, That thought never even entered my mind. And he replied, Good...
We arrived at the Garden of the Gods long before noon. When the Lotus had pulled to a stop he grabbed the picnic basket and we began walking through the green hills toward a small grass-laden park with pine picnic tables. I summoned the courage to ask him why he had become a teacher and then became known as a mentor for writers. He replied with a smile, I have always loved writing and writers and schools are where the future talent is. As he carefully laid the tablecloth and set the silverware and glasses next to our plates, he went on to say: I became fascinated with the minds of writers when I spent time with Ernest Hemingway in Paris at the Cafe Bel Ami and became astonished by the workings of his mind and then went to Mexico City where I became acquainted with Katherine Anne Porter, and eventually met T.S. Elliot when I was in London during the Second World War, as well as having an evening with Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street, where we smoked Cuban cigars and discussed fine literature. That was during the time when Prime Minister Churchill had invited me to England as a consultant on the evacuation of children in urban areas from German bombs.
He smiled as we sat down to eat and said: I have seen much of the world, had wonderful meals and good times, heard the chimes at midnight from St. Paul's Cathedral in London, spent drowsy summer afternoons in Madrid with Salvador Dali, experienced delightful mornings walking along Krystal Beach in Acapulco with the Mexican writer Octavio Paz. Paz was the one who said to me: 'Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events.' I knew at that moment that above all else I had been called to teach.
After finishing our meal and taking the picnic basket back to the Lotus, we began walking the magnificent trails through stands of pine trees and lovely scenery that surrounded us. Mister Brierly told me more about himself. He was now a director of the Central City Opera House and a prominent member of The Performing Arts Society of Denver, as well as a member of The Colorado Outward Bound School. His tone was matter-of-fact and it was obvious that he was not attempting to impress me. He was telling me about the life that he had thus far led and how he had become the man that he had turned out to be.
He told me to never allow myself to lose the illusions of my youth. To always live a life filled with heady excitement, that I ought to make my dreams of the ministry a reality and move forward from there.
And as the Colorado evening rose around us: over in the distance we could see the ever deepening Range of the Rocky Mountains beyond, now tinged with the purple and orange from the dying sun, and he said, The reason that you are here with me, Mister Daugs, is that you have more than a modicum of talent as a writer. I wanted you to know that. You will, no doubt, live out your other dreams before you return to the art of writing. But there will come a day when that will happen. I am not a prophet, but I am astute enough to know the inner-workings of a gifted writers mind, and I would appreciate if if you could look me in-the-eye when I tell you this.
I did.
And he said:
I have practiced many trades, had a ringside seat at history, knew know both Roosevelt and Churchill - before I finally did what I was that 'I truly was meant to do. My manifest destiny was 'the call to teach.' One day in the future, you will off somewhere and be thinking of the words of George Bernard Shaw when he wrote: 'You see things; and you say 'why?' But I dream of things that never were; and say 'Why not?'. And that will be the day when you become what you were always 'meant' to be, a writer...
...And 28 years later, I was...
My Dad had told me all about him. Apparently, Mister Brierly had been a very important person long before he became an East High School English teacher. He had once taken a leave-of-absence from his teaching duties in order to attend the Yalta Conference in the Crimea in February of 1945, having been invited by Prime Minister Churchill to do so. This Conference was where President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premiere Joseph Stalin discussed the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. What was important to me, however, was the class he now taught was called Advanced Literature and the Art of Writing, and for some odd reason decided that might be where I belonged, so wrote a brief essay as to why I would like admittance to his class, saying that I wanted to learn about writers and writing in a concrete way.
I began to think that I would not get in.
Then on the opening day of the semester, as I walked toward the entrance of the high school, I spotted Mister Brierly standing at the entrance. He looked at me and said, You have been accepted into my class, Mister Daugs. There will be 7 of you. We meet in room number 302 promptly at one o'clock on Monday and Wednesday and Friday afternoons. If you are late, you will be dismissed and no longer be able to attend. He reached into his suit pocket and handed me a small card. I live at 2257 Gilpin Street, my address is on the card. Our class will meet at my home on Wednesday evenings at 7 o'clock to discuss what we have thus far learned. He then turned and walked through the entrance door.
At 48, lean, with a receding hairline and and Hitler-like mustache 43, Mister Brierly was prompt, peculiar, and pompous. He was involved in both educational endeavors to advance educational values at and local politics as a city councilman. He despised segregation in schools and detested politicians who sought power for power's sake. He had publicly stated to reporters from The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post that he believed Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was as ruthless and demonic as Hitler had been, saying that his hunt for communists in America was akin to the assassination of the the European Jewish population, and that the only difference between Hitler and McCarthy was that McCarthy did it with overwrought anger and innuendo and lies rather than with guns and gas and bombs.
His home on Gilpin Street was located in a small area of shops and two-story homes, and was considered to be in one of the most prestigious of Denver neighborhoods, where we would sit every Wednesday evening in his elegant living room eating delicate English pastries and cakes while sipping on lapsang souchong tea. On one evening early in December Mister Brierly introduced us to both Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg only as old college friends of his, and we had no idea of the fame which lay ahead for both.
The first book we were assigned to read was A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and in that romantic novel, I first came across the notion of a separate peace, a peace achieved outside of war. In the climax of the drama, Frederic Henry deserts to join his woman, Catherine Barkley, leaving behind the abstractions of patriotism, loyalty, and solemn oaths. To him, living was more important than dying; loving a woman was more important than loving a country. Mister Brierly then introduced is to a book by Malcolm Crowley called Exile's Return, and I realized that there was another way to make a separate peace: departure. Faced with an America dedicated to thrift, commercialism, and puritanism, many of the 20's writers and artists became expatriates. I loved that word. The expatriate F. Scott Fitzgerald went to the Riviera, T.S. Eliot to London, Katherine Anne Porter to Mexico, Ernest Hemingway to Paris.
They lived the expatriate life among civilized people (or so I thought), in countries where food and shelter and drink were cheap and the women were beautiful. In my imagination, searching for absinthe among the Hank Williams - Webb Pierce jukeboxes, Paris became the golden city of my imagination. It was so in the 1920's, I thought; it must be so now. I envisioned cafe tables on summer afternoons, smoky dives in the winter, painters on the slopes of Montparanasse, and there, coming in the door striding right out of The Sun Also Rises, was Lady Brett Ashley. I would read and then reread Hemingway's words when he described Lady Ashley: 'She wore a slip over jersey sweater, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of that with that wool jersey...'
One Wednesday in early December instead of eating our usual pastries and cakes, Mister Brierly took us to an 1930 art deco movie theater on Glenarm Place by the name of the Paramount Theater to see an encore presentation of Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris, and there was Gene Kelly, living on the GI Bill after World War Two - which was for me as I sat in that darkened movie theater, now - telling me that if you can't paint or write in Paris, you might as well marry the girl next door and settle for less than you ought to be. Gene Kelly had a studio in the Quarter with a bed on pulleys that raised in the morning to the ceiling, and windows open to the air of spring, the Paris rooftops, the cobble stoned street, the bookstalls, and the fresh bread, and, of course, the cafes. I envisioned myself as Oscar Levant, who was Gene Kelly's best friend. He was a piano player and the girl they both loved was Leslie Caron. The music was by George Gershwin, filled with charm and confidence and bittersweet regret. Paris was a city bright and gay and full of writers and and painters and beautiful women and I wanted it.
I had other dreams too. I wanted to finish college and enter the seminary in order to become a Lutheran minister, and after I had done all of that - I could go to Paris and see all the great paintings in the Louvre and read all the writers whose names had been scattered through Crowley's book: Joyce and Pound, Proust and Valery, Verlaine and Rimbaud and Budelaire. Why not? I had many years ahead of me. I planned on finding Cafe Bel Ami and sit at a table and order Fundador and read little magazines too. And then write all night long. I would discuss writing with my fellow writers, study cannon law of religion and art...
...I never did go to Paris...
...Over the following months up until the semester's end, I would sit with Mister Brierly on Wednesday nights after the rest of my class had departed, tell him in detail about my future hopes and dreams, as he sat silently with a small smile on his face and listened without comment. When the semester came to an end and summer arrived, he phoned one morning and asked if I could take a drive with him into the mountains where we could take a long walk and have a good talk. I had replied that I would very much like to do that, he picked me up shortly after dawn the next day in his classy black Lotus Mark 4, and we drove off toward the magnificent Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.
I took note of a picnic basket resting between the two of us and he said, I took the liberty of packing a small lunch for the two of us. There are roast beef sandwiches with Dijon mustard on sourdough bread, lettuce and tomato and cold celery sticks, along with potato chips, a canister of cold iced tea and a wonderful dessert of cherry pistachio tea cakes. All of which will be served with proper silverware, Waterford crystal glasses atop a red-and-white checkered linen tablecloth. He then gave a laugh and added, Although I am somewhat of a closet homosexual and almost everyone I know is aware of that fact, you need not worry about me putting 'the hit' on you. That is not the reason for our little trip. I smiled and said, That thought never even entered my mind. And he replied, Good...
We arrived at the Garden of the Gods long before noon. When the Lotus had pulled to a stop he grabbed the picnic basket and we began walking through the green hills toward a small grass-laden park with pine picnic tables. I summoned the courage to ask him why he had become a teacher and then became known as a mentor for writers. He replied with a smile, I have always loved writing and writers and schools are where the future talent is. As he carefully laid the tablecloth and set the silverware and glasses next to our plates, he went on to say: I became fascinated with the minds of writers when I spent time with Ernest Hemingway in Paris at the Cafe Bel Ami and became astonished by the workings of his mind and then went to Mexico City where I became acquainted with Katherine Anne Porter, and eventually met T.S. Elliot when I was in London during the Second World War, as well as having an evening with Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street, where we smoked Cuban cigars and discussed fine literature. That was during the time when Prime Minister Churchill had invited me to England as a consultant on the evacuation of children in urban areas from German bombs.
He smiled as we sat down to eat and said: I have seen much of the world, had wonderful meals and good times, heard the chimes at midnight from St. Paul's Cathedral in London, spent drowsy summer afternoons in Madrid with Salvador Dali, experienced delightful mornings walking along Krystal Beach in Acapulco with the Mexican writer Octavio Paz. Paz was the one who said to me: 'Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events.' I knew at that moment that above all else I had been called to teach.
After finishing our meal and taking the picnic basket back to the Lotus, we began walking the magnificent trails through stands of pine trees and lovely scenery that surrounded us. Mister Brierly told me more about himself. He was now a director of the Central City Opera House and a prominent member of The Performing Arts Society of Denver, as well as a member of The Colorado Outward Bound School. His tone was matter-of-fact and it was obvious that he was not attempting to impress me. He was telling me about the life that he had thus far led and how he had become the man that he had turned out to be.
He told me to never allow myself to lose the illusions of my youth. To always live a life filled with heady excitement, that I ought to make my dreams of the ministry a reality and move forward from there.
And as the Colorado evening rose around us: over in the distance we could see the ever deepening Range of the Rocky Mountains beyond, now tinged with the purple and orange from the dying sun, and he said, The reason that you are here with me, Mister Daugs, is that you have more than a modicum of talent as a writer. I wanted you to know that. You will, no doubt, live out your other dreams before you return to the art of writing. But there will come a day when that will happen. I am not a prophet, but I am astute enough to know the inner-workings of a gifted writers mind, and I would appreciate if if you could look me in-the-eye when I tell you this.
I did.
And he said:
I have practiced many trades, had a ringside seat at history, knew know both Roosevelt and Churchill - before I finally did what I was that 'I truly was meant to do. My manifest destiny was 'the call to teach.' One day in the future, you will off somewhere and be thinking of the words of George Bernard Shaw when he wrote: 'You see things; and you say 'why?' But I dream of things that never were; and say 'Why not?'. And that will be the day when you become what you were always 'meant' to be, a writer...
...And 28 years later, I was...
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