The Eigerwand, Part I

In this excerpt from his autobiography my father is again a bachelor, now in mid-60s Seattle. He seems to give little thought to his family while pursuing the life of a Lothario.

I returned to Seattle to await possible job offers and take part in the demise of my marriage. It seemed as if my life was disintegrating, piece by piece. Even my mother, my staunchest ally, was unhappy with the way things were going. With my sister going off to Graduate School at Northwestern in Chicago, she thought she would move up to Seattle. At first this was to enjoy grandmotherhood and to help Mary Ann raise two boys; then it was for the perceived companionship and support I would need. She had finally finished her Master’s degree in Education at UCLA and she believed she could find something to keep her busy in the Northwest.

            I don’t recall all the circumstances surrounding my final break-up with Mary Ann, but it was decided to at least make a trial separation that spring. The boys were told that they were moving southwards—to Carmel, California as it turned out—with their mother for a while. I was to stay on at our leased house, looking for another place, until the owner returned at the beginning of June.

            I was now so broke that there wasn’t the remotest possibility—although I longed to—of going to Cambridge and Europe for the summer. One bright sign emerged: I had been offered a further three year contract by UW, only two short of tenure! That would defer job-hunting for another two years. But then no offer was forthcoming from either Hopkins or Yale; but my friendship with Derek Price at Yale continued apace.

            I enjoyed the life of a 27 year old bachelor professor, but had few friends in the city. One day, after class, I was walking in the University District and I passed by this large glass window fronted coffee house with the weird name Eigerwand on it. It looked dark and somewhat dingy—not unlike all of the coffeehouses of the early sixties.

            As it happened, the Eigerwand came out of the Seattle World’s Fair where, as its first incarnation, it began as The Sleeping Buddha. I believe that its two partners, Joel Eisenberg and Eric Bjornstad, bankrupted it shortly after the closing of the Fair. And somehow some of its contents, barrel-tables, benches, ice-cream freezer, tea pots and tableware, found their way up to the University district.

            Along the Eiger’s walls hung numerous large framed black-and-white photographs illustrating Eric’s more renowned climbs—showing him in crevasses, climbing upside down, etc. Eric was a genius when it came to decoration: burlap (from a bag factory) was the wallpaper, the acoustic tile-looking ceiling was, in fact, egg cartons sprayed with dark brown paint and fire-retardant and the barrels and various utensils came from the old Sleeping Buddha. It was a cozy, friendly place in the University district of a rainy Northwestern city—and a reasonable profit-maker.

            In those days, Eric was an insatiable rock climber, this tended to mean that the Eiger was simply a money-generator to finance his climbing. It also, by way of his waitress-interviewing, a generator of his sexual fodder. This, coupled with his alluring red-finished pot-bellied stove with fire and private table at the back of place, provided Eric with ample companionship.

            Eric and I became acquainted not long after I started coming in. I found him to be intelligent, interesting, and willing to befriend me at a time when I was feeling very much alone. He, in turn, introduced me to other denizens of the place.

            I’m not exactly sure of the circumstances under which I first met Alicia Wheatley, but I believe it was at the Eigerwand, possibly in the company of Deb Das who seemed to be her guru. Alicia was considerably attractive, somewhat intelligent, and soft spoken. She was the daughter of a UW marketing professor. She had been a student, but had decided to experiment with a career in nursing. These were the days of “flower children” and clearly, under the tutelage of Deb Das, Alicia was fast becoming one. I personally think she had seen the film Elvira Madigan one too many times: she liked to wear gossamer summery dresses and drift or glide instead of walk. Alicia never planned anything in advance, she was, to say the least, spontaneous. She was the opposite of “up tight”; you might say, literally, not wound too tightly. But she had a soft, feminine, ethereal quality. She was, in short, lovely.

            About the only thing I remember that I found disturbing in Alicia was her nervousness; she was definitely high strung. Some part of her body was always moving; she could never sit still for long. Also, this was reflected in a pervasive intensity—the strong, committed way she felt about everything. I found her instantly attractive and wanted to possess her. Her hungriness and intensity made me want to possess her. Fortunately for me, she was not up to playing games: if she liked you, she was not difficult to possess—to ‘keep’, perhaps, but not possess.

            I remember that her friendship with a fellow student, Melody Greer, got her interested in theater. Melody was rehearsing for The Fantastics in a University drama production and Alicia was living it all out, vicariously. She sang “Try to Remember” endlessly when we were together. And we did spend a lot of time together. In order to get her to live with me, I had to promise to take her to work at a local hospital every morning around 6:30 a.m. This was the true test of love, as far as I was concerned!

            The only trouble was that Alicia was a bit of a nymphomaniac, so my nights preceding school days were none too restful. Going to bed at midnight, making love until 2 a.m., then getting up at 5:30 to take Alicia to her hospital, then going off to teach. Love, or lust, held it together for a couple of weeks, then it began to drag me down a bit. But Alicia’s physical beauty and feminine intensity held me enthralled.

            I really only clearly remember two events during the relationship. First was the evening I went to a sorority ‘apple-polishing’ dinner and found myself seated next to an imposing fellow Professor, a George C. Scott look-alike who seemed quite the self-impressed rogue. You could tell from his conversation that he wished he was a bachelor some 20 years younger. When I asked him about himself, I was floored to learn that I was seated next to and conversing with Alicia’s father! I tried to keep my cool as he kept prodding me about the love life of a young bachelor professor, and how I was doing with the co-eds—replete with the occasional nudge, nudge, know what I mean? thrown in. I found it embarrassing, because I suspected that, before too long, we would be more formally introduced by his daughter. As it was, I admitted to nothing, although he probed unabashedly. I remember coming home to Alicia that night, and asked her off-handedly to guess who I had dinner with. When I told her father, she went ghostly pale. She knew what a short-tempered bastard he was. When she learned that he hadn’t a clue as to who I really was, vis-a-vis his daughter, she relaxed and enjoyed my little joke.

            The other occasion I now remember vividly, was the weekend that six of us—calling ourselves The Olympic Loving Team—went out for a lustful weekend to the Olympic Peninsula. I can remember Susie, a waitress from the Eiger, who was a pal of mine, and her boyfriend Mark, a New York attorney, Jim Wolcott, his girl Kathy (another Eiger waitress), Alicia and me. There may have been one other couple along. I remember we had planned ahead, filled a cold chest with wine, ice, beer and other beverages. We brought along some pot and a few delicatessen sandwiches.

            We drove over, having taken the Bremerton ferry, and eventually stopped at a Norman Bates-type court motel in La Push, which, next to Humptulips, seemed to be the most appropriately named locale for the Northwest Spring Trials for the Olympic Loving team. We were all marvelously suited to one another and got along fabulously. The pot-smoking got us to playing kiddie card games like Go Fish! and Old Maid, and possibly my invention of 3-D Monopoly—where you can go under the board. We went to bed that night both physically and mentally wiped out. Susie and Mark had one bedroom off a sitting room that was shared by the occupants of a second bedroom (Alicia and I). We left the cold locker on a chair in the sitting room, still with remaining sodas and ice. Sometime during the middle of the night, thirsty from our cannabis and booze, three of us decided to get up and tiptoe into the common room to get something to drink. When it became obvious to each of us (Kathy, Susie, and me) that we were not alone in that darkened room, Susie spoke up, saying not to turn on the light as she was totally naked. When Kathy concurred that she too slept in the altogether and hadn’t a stitch on, I immediately flipped the wall switch to confirm all this and fed my eyes with their pulchritude as they ran squealing back to their respective bedrooms! Alicia was not too happy with my nocturnal activities and admonished me for my insensitivity. Since she did not partake of the weed, nor of much of the booze, she was, in my eyes, not really a full-fledged participant in our group. Had she not been great in the sack, that might have put an end to our relationship even sooner than it did.

            I had had an evening class student named Sharon Sinclair who was about 25 years old, who had quit regular day classes because (a) she needed to earn a living and (b) because she had dreams of being a professional figure skater. She had come up to me after class one evening in an effort to get to know me; in the course of this personal contact she learned that I had once been a figure skater. Her mental/emotional wheels were beginning to hum—rapidly. Clearly, she felt that time was fastly becoming her enemy; she had reached the advanced age of 25 with three years of college and hadn’t found a suitable mate. Her above-average intelligence which, unfortunately, showed a little too much and her above-average looks which were normally a considerable asset had also proved a drawback, in so far as they set her standards a little too high for what was currently available in the male population of Seattle. As a result, Sharon was an aggressive, determined young lady who, once aroused by a suitable quarry, became nearly obsessed.

One consequence is that she was sexually self-aware and used her predilection for nymphomania as a social assault-weapon. Naturally, I found this to be—in addition to the looks, intelligence and agile body—a most appealing attribute. After only two evenings we got into bed together. She was determined to make me feel that it was I who in fact seduced her.

 Indeed, once she got to know me intimately, she presented me with a joke present of some pale blue business cards with: “Peter Vorzimmer, Mind Screwer” printed on them! The only problem with Sharon was that her determination turned to obsession. Where I enjoyed this in the sex department, I found this too constricting to my bachelorhood. She did not possess the comforting warmth of a prospective mate; she seemed as shallow as she was bright; and it seemed to me she offered no long-term prospects as a wife. She was not generally social—perhaps it was a form of insecurity, of not being able to hold on to me in the busy full environment in which I lived. Only very slowly was I able to phase her out of my life, though she embarrassingly hung around the fringes of it at the Eiger, at the University and the University District in general.

A Falling Out

My father had some kind of disagreement with my grandfather in January 1964 the details of which we never knew other than the fact that it was something very trivial relating to paintings of a friend of his he was trying to promote. Years passed without communication of any kind between them and it became apparent to me that the incident, whatever the particulars, was in my father’s mind a sort of “last straw” in a series of conflicts with his stepmother, who had been my his father’s mistress and, therefore, in his mind, to blame for the dissolution of his parents’ marriage.

Although we, his grandchildren, did try to maintain a relationship with my grandfather, thanks in part to my aunt, my father’s sister Mary Ellen, it was never close and always a bit strained. I remember at the end of every visit with them, my grandmother—my step-grandmother—without asking me anything about how my life was going, would pull out a checkbook, write a check for a couple hundred dollars and hand it to me while telling how much they appreciated the visit. I always wondered if I appeared impoverished to her in some way.

My aunt, the only person that could have effected a reconciliation between her father and her brother, told us often that our grandfather wanted no part in making that happen. My grandfather was never told that his son had died in early 1995, having predeceased him by seven months.

During the six weeks I spent at my mother’s in Los Angeles before I moved up to Seattle, I was miserable. In my mother’s eyes I was still the teenager I was when I first left L.A. for college in Santa Barbara nine years before—and she treated me accordingly. I was broke—and thus dependent on her for support. And she was none too happy that my marriage was falling apart, because of my own infidelities which she saw as rank immaturity and a criminal shirking of responsibilities! I was obliged to account for all my time and money spent, I had to ask to borrow the car, in short, I had to explain or justify all my actions. I felt I was a prisoner on Alverstone Avenue. I couldn’t wait to get to Seattle.

My conversations with Mary Ann resulted in her willingness to come to Seattle and try once again to put our family back together. We would have a big family house for the year and it seemed to provide an opportunity to mend things. It also enabled me to save considerable face in my new location. After all, I was a young, green academic anyway, and in good old “family-values” middle America Seattle, being divorced at 26 with two kids would definitely not be a social plus.

All was going well with us at this time; the University of Washington History department had decided to keep me on, and offered me a 3-year contract despite the fact that Tom Hankins was arriving to fill the History of Science slot. But, I was happy and content, my dissertation manuscript had been submitted to the UW Press, and I looked to be well on my way. Nevertheless, I decided to hedge my bets by presenting a research paper on the work I was doing at the annual History of Science Society meeting to be held in Philadelphia just after Christmas. This had the additional advantage of seeing my father in New York—and also my former roommate on the trip to America, Claus Seligmann.

I contacted Claus, with whom I had been in regular correspondence since he stopped in New York, and arranged to see him there when I came out to attend the conference in Philadelphia. He invited me to come back up to New York and stay with him over the New Year’s holiday—the Conference was to be the December 27-30—I happily accepted.

I stayed with my father and his family in Manhattan for one night before I left for Philadelphia. Nothing unusual; my stepmother was as difficult as ever. She had been going on as if she were some important patron of the arts. They had some decent paintings on the wall, called the artist Leroy Neiman by his first name, and talked incessantly about discovering some young artist.

Since I had seen a number of Claus’ own paintings, I mentioned that I had a friend who was an artist, a good artist, and who was looking to be discovered. She and my father said to bring him over to the house—together with some of his works—one evening. I was happy; partly because I knew that Claus was a good artist, better than the one they had discovered, perhaps I could thereby do him a favor.

Philadelphia was somewhat of a success. I remember that my father decided to come down on the day I was to give my paper. That was some day! It was to be like an audition and I had heard that Yale and Johns Hopkins were both looking for an Assistant Professor on their tenure track. I was quite nervous, under the circumstances. But so was the young chap, Fred Churchill, who preceded me to the podium. I was sitting with my father in one of the back rows when Fred began. I wasn’t really listening when my father, hearing Fred slurring some of his words and swaying slightly, announced that something was wrong. He told me that he thought the speaker was about to faint; my father began to move out of his chair, towards the front. Sure enough, Fred continued for a few more words, then collapsed right in front of the audience. My father was one of the first to reach him where he was lying, already surrounded by people. My father urged people to stand back and give him some air and began to loosen Fred’s collar and tie. Meantime, former physician and Hopkins professor Oswei Temkin was also taking it upon himself to minister to Fred. He asked for a chair for Fred to sit in and was starting to help the bewildered young man into it, when my father intervened. He said that he should continue to lie still for a few moments and not stand or sit up! At this point, an argument ensued between Temkin and my father with Temkin demanding to know “Who is this man?” and declaring that he, Temkin, was a physician, and knew best, under the circumstances, what to do. My father countered that any first-year med student would know not to have a fainter be put in an upright position. Temkin demanded to know my father’s credentials. When he was told Chief of Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, Temkin mumbled and stalked off! Considering that Temkin had a say in the Johns Hopkins appointment only made me more nervous—and I was up next!

It all went well for the rest of the meeting; my father returned to New York and I followed the next day to Claus’.

Claus had taken a relatively menial architectural job in New York at modest wage in order to secure his visa, but he was none too happy at the rather stinginess of the wage he’d been offered and in his own ignorance of the wages necessary to live confortably in New York City. He had met and taken up cohabitation with, a German nurse, Jutta Holzhueter, whom he had met shortly after his arrival. She was an attractive, intelligent, extremely outspoken, Germanic young woman with a good sense of humor—and we all got along well. They invited me to a New Year’s Eve party, offering to find me a date. Immediately there came to mind the most beautiful woman I had ever met, who had been my birthday present the previous May in Cambridge. She was Dutch and was a flight attendant for KLM out of New York. She had given me her phone number when we parted in May and said if ever I was in New York to look her up.

It was a night I’ll never forget. I told Claus and Jutta that I might be able to scare up my own date for the party. I didn’t think, on but 24 hour notice, that I could get a date with one of the city’s most beautiful women—who certainly would not be hurting for a date on New Year’s Eve!

I was surprised to even get Michaela on the phone! And further surprised and flattered that she remembered who I was. I was stunned when she said that—as a matter of fact—she didn’t have a date for New Year’s Eve and would love to go along with me and my friends to a party. She had only just gotten in from one of her flights. She did mention, a bit offhandedly, that she had, about a month before, said to a young Dutchman she knew, that she might see him if he came to New York over New Year’s; but she’d not heard from him. By this time, I was hearing nothing, literally clicking my heels with ecstasy and glee at the thought of my incredible last-minute luck!

When queried by Claus and Jutta I said that I called some old back-up slag I used to know who would “make do” for a New Year’s date. Jutta was a little disappointed as she’d talked me up with an English nurse friend as a possible date. Meanwhile, I was in seventh heaven in anticipation of this gorgeous creature.

The party was to be a modest one, consisting primarily of nurses and artists in Greenwich Village. We brought two bottles of vodka and left early to pick up Michaela on the way.

When she opened the door, Mike was even more beautiful than I had remembered. Her long blonde hair was up in a French twist, showing off her flawless tanned face and flashing white smile. She was wearing a dark blue pinafore top dress with a single gold brooch. She seemed delighted to see me and invited me in for a quick drink while she got her coat. Claus and Jutta were down in the car.

I must say that I felt like King-of-the-World as I sipped my Scotch-rocks and surveyed her apartment. Who knows? Wasn’t it odds-on that I would get lucky on New Year’s Eve? I was definitely pre-orgasmic! This feeling was to last less than 30 seconds; for next the doorbell rang. Mike asked me if I would answer it.

Standing in the doorway of the apartment was the handsomest male human being I ever met. He was about 6'3" dressed in a ship’s officer’s uniform replete with braid and brass. He had a lion’s mane of blonde hair and a disgustingly charming white smile! I felt like a zit-ridden, wart faced Quasimodo by contrast. My mouth must have drooped open as he introduced himself. As he held out his hand, Mike came out of her bedroom and crossed to us. The only thing I could think of was to place my scotch in his proffered open hand and apologize for being in their way. I thanked her, hiked up my hunch, and strode out the still-open door. What total humiliation! And here I thought I would return to my waiting friends in triumphant pride and all I could do was drag one foot like Quasimodo and haul my humiliated hunch back into the car.

I was that close!

Jutta was great, insisting that she call her friend Gillian, who was going to the party anyway, and have her make up a foursome with us, which she did. Lower than whale dung at the bottom of the ocean, as an old friend of mine would say, I would find Gillian, a slender attractive English blonde, a more than sufficient substitute for my Dutch 10. But there was an interesting end to 1963—and I never hear to that song “December 1963 (Oh, What a Night!)” with its line “Late December back in ’63 . . . what a lady, what a night!” that I don’t think of Gillian.

The party was packed with people, a convivial, casual group of urban existentialists. Much booze, and delicious boiled calamari which went splendidly with ice-cold vodka; all contributing to the normal boy-girl vibes which, at our age and general inclinations, didn’t really need any stimulating.  

Our first stop after the party was Gillian’s. I went up with her, telling Claus and Jutta that I would walk back to their apartment afterwards. We were feeling no pain at that point, but neither were we feeling any unmistakable signs of forthcoming intimacy either. Offered a choice of either coffee or another drink, I chose neither. A few minutes of small talk and Gillian excused herself—it was getting late. She asked for my help in moving the coffee table away from the couch that would become her bed. I obliged and the bed appeared, already made. I was getting tense. Although 26, I had little or no bachelor experience—and I knew that the moment of truth was quickly approaching.

All I could think of was asking to use her bathroom.

As I stood there nervously emptying my bladder, my mind asked the perennial question whenever I got into tight spots like this: “What would Herb do in a situation like this?” My full-blooded Blackfoot Indian roommate from college, mentor, guardian, role model came in handy during moments like these. As I turned towards the door I saw, still swinging from its hook, an empty clothes hanger in the batroom. I knew what Herb would do. I took off all my clothes and was about to open the door when I paused, feeling utterly naked—which, of course, I was. I got this mental picture of myself walking out, buck naked, into the apartment of a young woman whom I had only just met some five hours before and having her look me up and down saying “What in hell do you think you’re up to?” All parts of me shriveled at this thought. I reached into my jacket pocket and, thinking of the English cigarette ad with the line “You’re never alone with a Capstan”, I took out a cigarette and lit it. I thought proudly of my mentor Herb as I turned the knob and sauntered into the livingroom.

Gillian had turned all the lights out except a small one on the bedside table, had gotten into bed, and skootched herself over into the middle, not only leaving enough for me next to her, but turning down the bedclothes invitingly. Although I must have looked a proper fool, coming out of the john without a stitch on, cigarette dangling coolly from my mouth, I maintained my composure, stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedstand, turned out the light, and moved in to enjoy Gill’s delights for the opening of 1964!

When I returned to my father’s apartment, I tried to convince him to accept one of Claus’ offered paintings for his wall. He actually had a choice of three, from which he picked one. It was a largish colorful abstract which I found striking. I pointed out that it would be very helpful if my father could help promote Claus—as he was not only talented but much in need these days. I gave them a packet of Claus’ cards just in case anyone struck with the exhibited sample might be further interested. I also gave them what would be the price of the one they had on the wall, as an example of the kind of figure Claus was expecting. Before I could finish my promotion, my father jumped all over me, ranting about my expecting to turn his apartment into a gallery, expecting him to hawk Claus’ paintings right off his walls—to vend to his house guests! I hardly had a chance to remind him that offering a business card to an interested party would be sufficient; but he and Hellie went on haranguing me for my presumption and audacity—and soon the diatribe veered into the area of long-simmering grievances they felt towards me, my mother, etc.

I backed off apologetically, but that had the opposite effect, they pushed forward, my father working himself into a real tantrum, at one point looking as if he were going to strike me. Again I apologized, saying that I would take the painting back to Claus—and again they pushed. Wasn’t it Claus’ gift? What was my role here? Was I some sort of agent or middleman for Claus? Was I using them? And off they went on some tangent that nothing to do with the painting and everything to do with the history of our relationship, and how my mother was telling me how rich my father was, was always putting me up to something.

As they joined forces in the browbeating, two things came into my mind. First, I felt that Claus’ beautiful painting was about to become the permanent property—a presumed gift—of my father and stepmother and, second, that I was being treated like a teenager, being forced to listen to years-old grievances of guilt-sodden immoralists. Slowly, I grew angry. My loyalties to my recent friend, I began to realize, were stronger than to these unreasonable adults. The phrase about the best defense being a good offensive also came to mind. If I was seen as standing in for my mother, I would defend her. I found a way out of that room—and the apartment—in which I could avoid being struck by my father and left. As of this writing, the incident was now more than thirty years ago; and I’ve not seen my father since.