His was not bathroom-stall salaciousness; it was clearly aimed on the literary set. As a B-side bard in a college submit that by no means thrilled him, Albert had facet tasks that made allusions to the greats, wrapped inside traces like “Harris thinks of himself as twice his dimension, standing astride the shallow pool above Charles.” Digging via my father’s unpublished manuscripts from the Seventies, which I discovered in a field a few years after his loss of life, I wasn’t positive what amazed me extra: his plots filled with missed sexual encounters, oceanic masturbation scenes, and society seductions or the truth that the figures of his creativeness appeared to inhabit the identical beloved tidal swimming pools of my youth. Albert’s naughty novellas, Ramshead Passage and Battery Foote, have been set on the island the place my sister and I spent over a decade of summers as children.
The little island in Casco Bay, Maine, had no shops, no automobiles—solely an historical fireplace truck that may make its approach to the twenty-odd household dwellings if want be. Apart from that of the island ferry, there was additionally no day by day schedule—a reality my mother and father, who have been each in any other case hard-working lecturers, relished. Video games and sports activities have been elaborate all-island contests, dress-up events frequent, theatrical productions legendary. Albert was on the centre of all of it.
A great Catholic boy from a small New England mill city, my father shocked everybody by changing into a stage actor in New York after highschool. His a long time of adventurous existence had slowed, nonetheless, by the point I used to be born, on his fortieth birthday. However although he had the trimmings of “normalcy”—a few levels and tenure within the English division—he was not like all of the fathers I knew. He possessed what my mom affectionately referred to as “aptitude,” as evidenced by letters he composed to the Portland Press Herald, which have been stuffed with Shakespearean references; his extravagant gown sense, which on one event included a full toga and blond wig studded with grapes; and a penchant for composing odes, limericks, and sonnets to individuals like Kurt Vonnegut, Noam Chomsky, and Julia Baby’s husband, Paul (who, my mother and father claimed, despatched him a sonnet in return).
I hate to confess I used to be largely embarrassed by his eccentricities. However, on the island, these emotions melted away. This was a spot filled with flamboyance, and the summer season’s many festivities gave a merry bunch of adults an entire new stage. Right here, Albert’s puckish nature and penchant for fabulous costuming discovered an ideal outlet.
What I didn’t understand is that the island created different allowances for him as effectively. For one, he had time to jot down. He additionally had sources of inspiration for his secret tasks, equivalent to events in turn-of-the-century cottages full with pantries, porches, attics, and backyard follies the place he might think about his characters’ illicit dalliances.
However, most significantly, he had a form of freedom—the liberty to stay life sensually, imaginatively, absolutely—he didn’t all the time have on the mainland. I feel my mother and father had made a form of cope with one another: my mom had been burned by love prior to now and most popular my father’s amiable moderately than amorous affections. In alternate, she “lined” for Albert and let him be who he wanted to be.
Till Albert got here out once I was in my thirties, I didn’t know that my father wanted to be something apart from the self he offered. However after I discovered his manuscripts, the whole lot snapped into focus. Our favorite island haunts had been the setting not only for childhood adventures but in addition for existential, grownup transformations. As I learn his phrases, I started to see that Albert wrote different variations of himself into being each summer season via his varied characters:
The solar is heat, there’s a tidal pool close to to the place Charles emerged from the comb. He strips, enters the pool. He feels cleansed, renovated by the dip and in addition sexually aroused by the solar and bracing water. . . . He now associates his newly found sexual energies with these parts—they combine, one with him.
There was all the time one thing concerning the island’s “energies” and “parts” that my father, specifically, absorbed. And he discovered a potent approach to translate this. Now, as an grownup, with these manuscripts in my palms, I don’t really feel a shred of embarrassment, solely pleasure. Pleasure in imagining him face to the solar, wading into bracing water.
Rebecca Duclos, dean of Concordia College’s College of Advantageous Arts, beforehand held tutorial and administrative positions on the Faculty of the Artwork Institute of Chicago.
Tallulah Fontaine co-created the zine collective House Zine.
