NINETEEN

IT OCCURRED TO ME the other day that I could use a better typewriter, one with some memory capacity but not too much, so I walked down to 40th Street to an office-machine shop, and found a typewriter with memory and with a sheet of white paper in it on which a person or persons had typed: “fadksjdfjkdsjfkjkfjdkjfkjskdjfkaj-kdfklsjdk catcatacatcatdogdogsdogdogdogdoguiuwthethethethethethetheth the birdsthe cats the birds and cats and dogs and flowers sall day long we played int he field and had fun in the sun with our friends and relatives. WE went to the beach and the park and played ball and swam. IWe ate hot dogs and hambarugers aldjksjfjsadhfjsdjfkjsdkfwewewewewewewewe quququququququququququququ-ququmamamamamamamamamamamamamamama ususususususus 34343434343434343434”

The line about “fun in the sun with our friends and relatives” struck me as exactly the experience I missed out on this summer. I didn’t play in the field or go to the beach, didn’t play ball or swim, didn’t eat many hot dogs or hambarugers either. For the most part I sat here in my office at The Fadksjdfjkdsjfkjkfjd and went ququ, and then I traveled for a couple weeks in Denmark and went a little ququ there, too. I don’t eat hambarugers in foreign countries, because I’m proud to be an unugly American who eats what the natives do, fried eel or calves’ brains, lambs’ eyeballs with rancid yak butter, whatever’s on the menu, and say thank you. I am a good citizen, just as my mamamamamamamamamama taught me to be. I speak softly and know how to apologize and express gratitude in many languages, especially Danish. Undskyld is to say “I’m sorry,” which Danes hardly ever say, but they say thank you incessantly, in a dozen variations, including: tak, mange tak, tusind tak, tak fordi du vil se os, tak for sidst, tak for mad, and tak for aften, which mean, respectively, “thanks,” “many thanks,” “a thousand thanks,” “thanks for seeing us,” “thanks for the last time,” “thanks for the meal,” and “thanks for the evening.” I use them often. I try to be a model American. I walk politely around Skagen, around Svendborg and Roskilde and through Copenhagen, dressed in muted colors, carrying no camera, wearing no Mets cap, admiring cathedrals and palaces, public gardens, ordinary Danish streets, Danish buses, billboards, plumbing, everything Danish, and when people walk up to me and say, “Aldjksjfjsadhfjsdjfkjsdkfwewewewewe,” I answer (in Danish), “I am sorry. I am an American. I do not understand you.” This becomes tiring after a while. After three weeks of good international citizenship as a bird in a world of cats and dogs, weakly chirping thethethethethethetheth, I am exhausted, done in, tuckered out, fed up, run down, and I long for that summer paradise described on the typewriter with memory. I’d like nothing better than to plop down on American sand with friends and relatives under the American sun that rhymes with “fun,” pop a cold one, play ball, get in the swim, and chow down on a big hambaruger with raw onion, bright-yellow American mustard, in a soft white bun, and holler, “How about those Mets?” to someone who’d answer, “Hey!” Time to come home.

My first hot dogs of the summer, in fact, were two I ate with my son on Saturday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, in Flushing Meadows Park at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, across the IRT tracks from Shea Stadium, where the Mets were entertaining the Dodgers. Big-league tennis is dominated these days by Czechs, Swedes, and Germans (in two of whose languages I can say “Thank you” and “Excuse me”), and we sat in the sun, in the cheap seats at the top of the stadium, and watched Steffi Graf, the nineteen-year-old West German phenom, dispose of a Frenchwoman in two fast sets, 6-0, 6-1. My son is nineteen, too, an aspiring rock-’n-roll guitarist. He writes songs and records them and mixes them and intends to become a fine artist. When I was nineteen or so, I used to put on a Buddy Holly record and pick up a tennis racket and pretend it was a guitar and I was him.

Graf was so much fun to watch, later we waited in line at Court 16 and crammed into the tiny grandstand there and sat through two men’s matches so we could watch her doubles match (with partner Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina) and, when a tall horse-faced man announced that it had been switched to the stadium (and a thousand of us Grafites groaned), we raced over there and snuck down past an usher into a box seat for a close look. Graf is a big broad-shouldered long-legged girl with a long blond ponytail who had won the Australian and French Opens and Wimbledon earlier that year and, a few days later, would win the Open to complete a Grand Slam, a feat accomplished only four times before, but you didn’t need to know that to see what a happy, ferocious athlete she is. She and her ponytail bounce around the baseline, then she hops a little three-step as she receives service and takes an open stance and whacks the ball so hard that her follow-through takes her right off her feet. She leaves the ground when she serves and on most of her forehand shots and her overhead smashes. When she cocked her arm for a smash, the look on her face was homicidal, and she went a foot in the air as she put the ball away.

Losers drag their feet and stand flat on their heels like ordinary people. They stand and perspire and wait for misery and pain to finish with them. In the stadium, the sun shining down on her, Graf makes you feel what the age of nineteen is like on its best days, the pleasure, the heat, the spring in your legs, the murder in your eyes. My son’s songs on a tape he had played for me the night before had that sort of snap and sting to them. A powerful age. To be a world-beater is exactly what a healthy nineteen-year-old would want, I guess. Be a winner. Beat the pants off older players, cream Chris Evert, pulverize Martina, and play killer guitar. In between the singles and doubles match, I had my hot dogs, two excellent wieners, with sauerkraut and mustard, chased with a cold beer. I ate them in the sun, wearing a bright-red shirt and white jeans and a pair of shades, thinking: Only athletes and musicians get so good so young and travel easily across borders, playing and winning as they go. We ordinary cats just have to clunk along with our old forgetful typewriters. Our language hems us in, our hangup with language defeats us, and after a few weeks on foreign turf our feet start to drag. Ddkjfksdjfkjqoueourweiuriuw. Farewell to summer. Time to come home, clean house, write some letters, and elect a decent president.