"Ghosts of St. Patrick's Day, 1997" by Baby Dee
I have this friend named Daphne. Daphne is wonderful. She's 82 years old and she plays the harp in the subway. She has lots of money and a big house on East 61st Street. My favorite thing about Daphne is that she knew Harpo Marx. My other favorite thing about Daphne is that she has a beautiful exotic bird, a "superb starling" that flies around loose in her living room and shits all over her beautiful golden harps.
So anyway, Daphne and I had made a date to play outside together—jigs and reels and that sort of thing for St. Patrick's on my tricycle. I suppose I should explain about my tricycle. Like Daphne, I am a harpist.
But wait. If I'm going to explain this right I have to back up and tell you how I came to be a harpist and why I admire Harpo Marx in particular. And to do that I must tell you about Bobby Slot and Freddy Weis. But to tell you about them I must first tell you about Kent Lang.
Kent Lang was a dirty demented child who lived at the ass end of West 39th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. He used to entertain the other children of the neighborhood by climbing up trees and defecating out of them.
Everybody knows that Kent Lang had no mother, but Kent’s father, Old Man Lang, offered undeniable proof of his existence. We knew he was there because we could hear Kent screaming. I remember the confusion that arose in my small head from trying to reconcile Old Man Lang with Shirley Temple's teary-eyed renditions of “Auld Lang Syne.” I don't think Robert Burns got a lot of play in Kent's house. He had, at the age of six, the most foul mouth of anyone I've ever met. And nobody ever saw Kent's father except for the time he beat up Bobby Slot, but I wasn't there so I never saw him at all.
Which brings us to Bobby Slot and Freddy Weis. Bobby Slot was big and fat and Freddy Weis was little and skinny. One day Bobby Slot and Freddy Weis were expecting the insurance man to whom they owed a sum of money. They were obliged to go out on some errand so they left the money on the kitchen table and put a note on the front door that said, "Dear Mr. Insurance man, Your money is inside on the kitchen table."
Well, who should decide to pay a visit? You guessed it. Kent Lang! (All this was before he fell off the fire escape and landed on his head, after which it became impossible for him to tell a true thing.)
So Kent went in and took the money and went to the store and bought several cartons of cigarettes.
Well, who do you suppose he should happen to meet on his way home? Bobby Slot and Freddy Weis!
And what do you suppose he did? You guessed it. He gave them each a carton of cigarettes.
Later Bobby Slot put two and two together and went down to Kent Lang's house to get his money back and Kent Lang's father came out and beat him up.
And what does all this have to do with me becoming a harpist and St. Patrick's Day? Patience, we're halfway there.
So anyway, Bobbie Slot and Freddy Weis could not be described as ambitious men but they had one powerful aspiration. Their heart's desire was this: TO NOT HAVE A PIANO. And the only thing that stood between them and their fondest wish was an old upright, which they dragged out onto the tree lawn and set next to the garbage cans. The garbage men refused. "Only if you can get it to fit into the cans," they said. So Bobby Slot and Freddy Weis figured they would bust it up into little pieces and started hacking away at the piano with axes and crowbars and sledgehammers.
I may have missed seeing Kent Lang fall on his head and his father beating up Bobby Slot but I wasn't missing this. My own father got out his entire collection of crowbars (yes, my father collected crowbars, I won't explain) and joined the throng of happy neighborhood men to chop up the piano into little bits. This was the best thing ever to happen on West 39th Street and there I was, right there watching. Hooray!
Well everybody knows that inside every piano is a harp and it's made out of cast iron. At least everybody on West 39th Street knew it. What they didn't know was how hard it is to chop one up and anybody can tell you that sawing with a hacksaw is not essentially a fun thing to do. It's not near as fun as smashing things up with axes and crowbars and sledgehammers. So they all gave up and went home. And there it was, this beautiful harp. It made quite an impression on me.
That is the story of why I became a harpist. Now I can tell you why I loved Harpo. Of course everybody loves Harpo but I have two particular things that I love about him.
The first is that he never played too much. One little number, sheer magic, and then it's gone and you don't see it again. The other thing is that the harp always appeared from nowhere. Nobody had to lug it onstage or fret about what would happen if it sat outside all night in a park. I always secretly resented that a harp should ever have to be lugged around by anybody at all. It should appear magically.
Which is why I had a tricycle custom-made to carry a concert harp ready to play at my whim. I'll draw a picture of it.
The seat looks a little funny but it's pretty accurate. The handlebars really are that big and the seat really is that high. I like being up high.
Which brings us back to St. Patrick's Day. Normally it's not a day I would work the streets because the city is swarming with the profoundly stupid. But I love Daphne and never pass up an opportunity to play with her and, besides, we were going out early and it doesn't really begin to get ugly downtown until after the parade.
So, we played for about an hour on the corner of St. Marks and Second Ave. Daphne behind me playing the harp, me perched up in the driver's seat playing the accordion. (There's no wonderful story about how I came to play the accordion.) I only play the harp on special occasions.
Question: What's a special occasion?
Answer: You give me twenty bucks and it'll be a special occasion.
After we had a lovely lunch together at Stingy Lulu's, I kissed Daphne goodbye and she headed uptown and I rode across Seventh Street. I was about to turn down Second Avenue and head home when I saw these beautiful green and white balloons and a bunch of people in front of the bars on the uptown side of the street. They waved to me.
So I pull up on the trike and announce: "Ladies and gentlemen. Today we celebrate the feast of St. Patrick. Legend has it that he raised up his holy staff and drove all the condoms out of Ireland. I will now play for you the traditional St. Patrick's Day Paso Doble."
And then it happened. A woman screamed. I saw smoke and sparks and ashes in the wind. "You're on fire!" And sure enough, I was on fire.
When I ride my tricycle I dress as a cat/angel (or a dead cat if you prefer). I have a tail and wings and a tutu, all of which were cheerfully burning. I hadn't even gotten to the big modulation yet, let alone the big finale, let alone the big segue into something lugubrious (“Danny Boy”). But how in the world could I be on fire? Cars start on fire sometimes but not tricycles, not harps, an accordion doesn't suddenly catch fire. These were my thoughts.
I jumped off and with the help of the nice lady who screamed I put out the fire mostly by beating myself on the backside.
But wait. I said all that and missed an opportunity to use two of my favorite expressions. This really is too bad! So I'll say it again:
By dint of beating myself on the backside and with some help from the audience, viz, a couple of kindly boozers who poured their pints of beer over my butt, we managed to put out the fire that engulfed my tail, tutu, and wings. (A sentence like that makes it all worthwhile. Saying "by dint of" and "viz" always makes me feel like Robinson Crusoe. I like Robinson Crusoe. I find it comforting the way he takes such pride in making the best of a bad situation.)
It was only after this that I realized somebody had deliberately set me on fire. It's a funny feeling that you get when you find out somebody set you on fire. I'd like to say it made me feel like Joan of Arc. I like saints. They remind me of Kent Lang. But I didn't feel at all religious. I was mad. I wanted to retaliate.
"I saw the guy that did it. He ran into Kiev," said the nice lady who screamed. So we ran into Kiev but there was only some poor bewildered guy at a table with two little girls being served a cheeseburger deluxe. The nice lady insisted, shaking her finger in his face, "That's the one! That's the man that started you on fire."
Now, I've eaten at Kiev and I know it would have been absolutely impossible for him to start me on fire and get a cheeseburger deluxe in so short a time, and it seemed equally unlikely that he would take his two little girls to lunch, order a cheeseburger deluxe, and then excuse himself for a moment while he dashed across the street to start a hermaphrodite on fire. So I started to think that the nice lady might be a little bit flakey.
I left Kiev and got back on to my tricycle and played “Danny Boy” and cried like a baby. I felt cold and wet. I made five dollars and after a brief and unprofitable visit to the 6th Precinct station house, I went home. Later in the day I called my mother but I didn't tell her what happened because I knew it would make her sad. She is Irish, after all, and we are a people as prone to sorrow as we are to laughter and to cruelty.
*
So all of the above was written on the day of the event. And seventeen years and two big moves later, I find myself thinking something that never once occurred to me: What if it was sweet Daphne who started the fire?
She was a pretty heavy smoker and she certainly would have been lighting up outside Stingy Lulu's as we parted. With all that mess of tulle and satin and crushed velvet that comprised my behind, it would have been possible that she had inadvertently flicked ash from her Benson and Hedges cigarette that smoldered in the folds of my tutu and, stoked by the breezes of triking homeward, burst into flames some minutes later.
Daphne was such a good egg that even if she didn't start me on fire I'm sure she'd be willing to posthumously take the blame for it if she thought it would do me some good. Remove a bit of rancor. Make me a little less negative, a little more forgiving.
Allow me to realize that things are not quite so dark as they seem, so bad as I remember them.
I love that scenario. It suddenly feels so true, so likely! And best of all it leaves the Irish off the hook. Patrick is redeemed by Daphne. A nation is rendered blameless. And Daphne's mythic presence in my life is all at once enhanced by something marvelous.
The prospect of fortuitous arson.
Author’s note:
Daphne died on August 4, 2002, at the age of 86. Her New York Times obit can be found here.
* photo of Daphne Hellman and Baby Dee by Paul Coughlin
Baby Dee is a gender dysphoric medievalist carny from Cleveland Ohio. She went to New York and did okay. Though no longer available for hire (except on special occasions), her music can be obtained from Tin Angel Records and from Drag City. She now lives in The Netherlands.
