The Muse of Houston Street Part 1

The Muse of Houston Street

by Harry Buschman - Part 1

Writing does not come easily for me. I am a painter by trade – an artiste if you prefer. I respond visually to stimuli, much the same as a moth to a flame. It's very awkward for me to explain things in literary terms, and perhaps as I plod along, you may find yourself bored with my story ... but that's your problem – not mine.

With tongue in cheek however, I must admit to a clandestine love of poetry. The sentiment in verse sets me off and I see pictures flash before me – a couplet like this, for example:

"For oft, when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,"

I see myself stretched out on my ratty mattress, plucking at the loose ticking and contemplating what remains of my condition ... or more likely, my present low estate. My former estate was quite sizable, I hasten to add. My ex-wife's lawyers are largely responsible for the condition in which you see me.

I am used to better things.

I live and work on the fourth floor of a run-down loft on Houston Street in New York City. A torn bedspread and a blanket hang on a wire stretched across the room, they form a separation between my living space and my studio. I share my studio with a man named Chipson, a night shift butcher at Waldmart. He spends his days here pretending to be a sculptor.

My name is Porter Backhouse. Does that name ring a bell with you? I thought not. But had you been around forty years ago, I'm sure it would have. You could walk into any penthouse apartment along Fourth Avenue from Fortieth to Eightieth Street and see a Backhouse on the living room wall. Nudes were my game; and let me tell you, I couldn't paint them fast enough. Look at me now! Alas, I would sell my soul to have those days back again. Nudes, by the way, have nothing to do with sex or love, or any of that rubbish – nudes are an art form, just as paintings of sunflowers or sailing ships ... or whatever.

I made a tidy fortune with my nudes ... well, with one nude in particular. Her name was Jasmine, Jasmine Goldfarb – and a more beautiful piece of work you couldn't hope to see. I painted Jasmine for nearly ten years in every conceivable pose, in every wayward mood and in every imaginable entourage, (that's a French term for 'setting') – maybe I'm getting too technical. To put it bluntly, she was the loveliest creature I've ever laid eyes on.

She was only sixteen when I met her. Her sister was being married in the Village, and I played side guitar in the band at the reception. At the time I was down on my luck, and I squeezed out a living with a three piece band that played at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and stag parties. I had yet to carve my niche in the art world. Well, here I am full circle! Thanks to my wife's voracious lawyers, I am in much the same fix today.

Jasmine was a provocative girl ... perhaps promiscuous is a better word. She was more than willing to pose nude, and blissfully confidant that I would never lay a finger on her. I wouldn't of course! She was my muse, and a proper artist would never stoop to dishonor his muse. Her pride in her body was enormous, and her natural talent to pose was miraculous. It was as if a Greek Daphne had come to sit for me. I try to explain this to Chipson, the sculptor, who shares this humble loft with me, and he shakes his head.

"Backhouse, you're mentally ill – you know that? You're unnatural, that's what you are!" He continues chipping away at his grotesque "Dying Indian."

"You're a yahoo, Chipson, you have no soul! You will never understand ... " I climb down the kitchen step stool and shake my fist at him, "A true artist would never stoop to screw his muse." It goes on like this all day. Chipson is a butcher by trade, working the night shift at Waldmart ... did I mention that? I have very little income now, and if it wasn't for the rent money he pays me, and my sign painting business, I would be out in the street. Chipson apparently requires no sleep and very little food for that matter. He gets here at eight in the morning after eight hours at the market, and chips away at his 'Dying Indian" until it's time for him to go back to butchering at Waldmart.

"Would you screw your dumb 'Dying Indian'! – it gets smaller every day, by the way. Mark my words, Chipson! In a week or two you will wear it on your watch chain."

He hunches over his "Dying Indian" and ignores me. He knows I'm right. The thing is getting smaller, just like the others on the shelf behind him. The problem is, he can't let well enough alone – never knows when he's finished. The floor around the tiny statuette is littered with marble chips and there's very little left to work on. All sculptors are dumb, mind you, but none so dumb as one who would double as a night shift butcher at Waldmart. Did I mention he worked there at night?

He puts his tools down reluctantly and walks over to my side of the studio to get the broom. That means he's finished and whatever is left of his "Dying Indian" will join the other statuettes on the shelf behind him. The rubble will be shoveled into a trash can and bounced down four flights of stairs to the street.

As he passes me he stops and looks at my new painting of Jasmine. "The thing's getting bigger every day, Backhouse. When are you gonna stop? It's fourteen feet long."

"Damn right," I say. "Nine by fourteen to be exact."

"But, you painted it on the wall, you idiot. Suppose somebody wants to buy it – although I can't see anyone in the world buying such a crackpot painting – they couldn't get it out of here."

"It's meant for the future, Chipson – it's my legacy. Some day this atelier will be declared a national treasure." I adjust the light bulbs that hang on a wire stretched across the room to illuminate the painting from one end to the other.

The painting is a composite of all I remember of Jasmine Goldfarb. From her teenage years until she left me at the age of twenty-six to be the wife of a kitchen detergent manufacturer in Pound Ridge, New Jersey. Her shoulders morph into her knees, which become her thighs, then her ankles, then her entire body becomes one marvelous bosom. The exquisite coloration of her back from buff and pink to gray and green. A woman to be worshipped and immortalized in a painting, not slobbered over by a kitchen detergent manufacturer from New Jersey.

Shaking his head, Chipson drags the broom back to his corner of the studio. "The better the light, the worse it looks, Backhouse ... by the way, you may be interested to learn my next piece will be a bust of Gertrude Stein. Her head was made for stone." He begins sweeping and the dust rises – it hangs in the air like smoke after an artillery barrage and makes further discussion impossible. I decide to leave and wait in Max's lunch room across the street. Besides, I have my signs to deliver – they're my only source of income these days. "Shaving Cream & Hot Oil Wrestling, Wednesdays & Fridays," that's for the "Pink Lady Lounge." "Medicaid and Food Stamps Cashed – Low Rates," that's for "Alfonso's Bodega" on fourth Avenue.

I start down the four flights of stairs. Just below my studio lies Kaplan's Work Pants. Below them, Laguna's lamp shade factory, then, on the ground floor, the newly installed Narghesian World Imports. "What a motley crew! What am I doing here? How could I fall so far so fast?”

I used to live uptown on Madison and 84th. A beautiful roomy brownstone with a gallery at street level – living quarters on the second floor and my studio with a north skylight on the third. I did my best work up there with Jasmine. The muse was with me then – working overtime. The muse wouldn't be caught dead down here on Houston Street ... neither would Jasmine, for that matter.

Kaplan's shop door is open, and the noise of the machines and women's voices inside is deafening. There are thirty or more Latino women working there. Every hour Kaplan blows his whistle and stops the machines and the women relax for ten minutes. Some head for the john, others light joints or do stretching exercises. Kaplan says if he doesn't do this they lose concentration and begin making mistakes. One of them, an emaciated little thing catches my eye. There is something familiar about her. What is it? Must be her color. Her skin! That's it – it's the same color as Jasmine's.

"Mr. Kaplan, may I have a word with you?"

"Ah, the upstairs artiste. You come down for pants maybe?"

"I have pants, Mr. Kaplan. That young woman sitting in the second row – the one flexing her shoulders. Who is she?"

"A good worker, a virgin! Steady. Steady and honest. What about her?" He looked at me suspiciously.

"Her name, Mr. Kaplan. What's her name?"

"Meshuggah! You think I know their names? They're all Rosie this, or Conchita that. I never ask. You have not come to take her away – don't tell me!"

"I'm just wondering if she'd like to model for me."

"It's okay by me, whatever you do with her after five o'clock. But during the day, that's not so okay. Good workers are hard to find. Go. Talk to her – you got five minutes."

I put my signs down outside and walk over to her. She's dressed in something very much like a red and white Italian checkered tablecloth. Her hair is pushed up and out to the back of her head and tied with a bow of the same material. Her hands are clasped behind her neck and she brings her elbows together to stretch her shoulder muscles. She wears a small crucifix, but no rings or bracelets. Most of the other women wear bracelets from wrist to elbow. As I approach, she brings her hands together defensively.

"You speak English, Miss?"

"What have I done, Senor?" Her eyes dart from side to side, and if she had some place to go, I'm sure she would run.

"Don't be frightened, Miss. My name is Porter, Porter Backhouse. I paint in the studio upstairs. What's your name?"

"Bianca, Senor – is there something wrong with my work? Senor Kaplan says I do a good job."

At this point the woman who works at the machine next to her comes back from her break and stares at the two of us. She secretes a symphony of smells. I catch the scent of Bay Rum, cigarettes, garlic and the pungent odor of mouse shit. It is a combination that betrays close quarters, an absence of sunshine and the forfeiture of self respect. I try to keep my eyes on Bianca.

"Have you done any modeling, Bianca?"

The other woman springs into action. "What you want with Bianca? She too young for you – too skinny." She smoothes her bright red hair and leans toward me, her flabby upper arms quiver like jello, then she smiles like a Cheshire cat, revealing several missing teeth. "Take me, mister. I'm Maria. Maria knows how to give a man a good time."

I feel myself redden and I back away awkwardly just as Kaplan blows his whistle signaling another fifty minutes of non-stop sewing.

"So howd'ja make out?" He asks me.

"A slight misunderstanding – it wasn't important anyway."

I pick up my signs outside and, flustered beyond words, I start down the stairs for the street again. Things do not come as easily as they used to, I seem to be out of step with the world. No one is interested in what I have to say. I don't even listen to myself, yet I talk to myself all the time.

End of part one.