Episode 16: Lenny

Alice block is a writer who has a great depth of knowledge about music, theater, and performance in general. She's published two memoirs (and a novel) exploring her relationships with the women in her life, her own sexual awakening and her rich life experiences in the 1970s New York City gay scene. Alice contemplates a man named Lenny who she almost married in comparison to the "relationship" she had with the famous Leonard Bernstein. With humor and aplomb, Alice takes us through her successes and regrets. 

Transcript

Tavi Black  0:13  
Hi, I'm Tavi Black. 

Christine Junge  0:15  
And I'm Christine Junge.

Tavi Black  0:17  
And this is The Personal Element

Christine Junge  0:20  
Where we listen to an essay we love, and then discuss what makes it so good. 

Tavi Black  0:24  
This month we're talking about Alice Bloch's essay "Lenny", which will be published in Minerva Rising right about the time this comes out.

Alice Bloch  0:37  
Lenny

A year after my mother died, my father briefly lifted himself out of the depths of his grief, and traveled solo to eastern New Jersey to visit his sister Rosalind, with whom he shared a love of music and musical theater.

At Roz was an expert at obtaining two-fers, half price tickets to Broadway shows. During dad's visit, they attended several musicals, including an original cast performance of West Side Story. Dad returned home bearing a Sam Goody music store bag that contained my gift, the LP recording, whose red and black jacket showed an ecstatic Carol Lawrence as Maria, running through a New York street, pulling by the hand and equally ecstatic Larry Curt as Tony.

I was smitten. That album supplanted South Pacific and My Fair Lady on the turntable in the den, where I sat after school to do my homework. I memorized Stephen Sondheim song lyrics and absorbed the jagged rhythms and dissonant chords of Leonard Bernstein's score. The music was exciting and sexy in a way that even a nerdy kid like me could appreciate. 

The following year when Dad and I visited at Ross together, we spent a weekend at the Tanglewood music festival for a rehearsal and then a concert performance led by Bernstein. I have no memory of the program, only of the vigor and grace of Bernstein's conducting style. The elation of witnessing a great performance taking shape. Bernstein had just been appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic. At 39, he was the youngest, only a year older than dad, and the first American born conductor to attain that position. In addition, he was Jewish and handsome. Dad and Aunt Roz talked about his achievements with such pride that it almost seemed Bernstein was one of our relatives, a lively cousin who cheered us up during those sad years.

Of course, I watched all of Bernstein's young people's concerts on television. Each telecast began by showing audience members, mothers in fur jackets and children in fashionable wool coats and hats, filing into the concert hall. Then Bernstein gave a spirited lecture about an aspect of music or a particular composer. Sitting at the piano he played examples, sometimes from popular songs. Finally, the full orchestra performed a piece that illustrated the lesson. My favorite episodes, Musical Atoms, A Study of Intervals, and What is a Mode? taught me most of what little I know about music theory. Recently, I watched What is a Mode? on YouTube to refresh my memory, hearing Bernstein simple tips for recognizing the seven modes, variations on the commonly known major and minor scales, and his vivid metaphors for their emotional resonance. I was struck once again by his brilliance as a teacher. Bernstein's explanation of the difference between the harmonic minor scale and the Dorian mode taught me not only about music theory, but also about sex. Describing the halftone interval from the leading tone, the seventh note to the tonic, the eighth note, in the minor scale, Bernstein said, "it's as though that leading tone we're in love with the tonic pulled toward it. It wants to embrace it, it wants to get there. Ugh.

That grunt gave teenage me the first intimation that there was such a thing as orgasm. In the Dorian mode, by contrast, the interval between the seventh and eighth notes of the scale is a whole tone. Bernstein said, "the leading tone is not in love with the tonic. Its friendly enough, but it just wants to shake hands. To demonstrate the MixoLydian mode. Bernstein played examples that elicited screams from the kids in the audience. You Really Got Me, My Baby Does the Hanky Panky and Norwegian Wood. Was he the coolest music teacher ever or what? During freshman orientation at the University of Michigan. My roommate saw a flyer requesting volunteers for a drama department production of West Side Story. She and I had been matched by a computer. So it was no surprise that we both loved that show. We volunteered for the stage crew and got to watch every rehearsal and performance from the wings. By closing night, I'd learned all the choreography which I tried to demonstrate for my sister Barbara when I went home for Thanksgiving weekend. Alas, I was wearing a straight skirt, what would now be called a pencil skirt, which made it impossible to execute the required kicks, crouches and jumps. I ended up in a heap on the floor before the Jet's song was over. "Womb to tomb," said Barbara, quoting one of the Jets gang slogans. We laughed so loudly that dad came from the other end of the house to see what was wrong.

When I was 24 and living in Jerusalem, I ran into a college friend who had founded the University of Michigan chapter of the student peace union during our senior year. He was now studying to be a cantor and his name coincidentally was Lenny. He was about to return to the United States to work on Bella Abzug's first congressional campaign. Soon he began to write me impassioned letters, in which he confessed that he was gay, but launched to marry and have children. And he couldn't imagine doing that with any woman, but me. Reader, I nearly married him. I was already sort of figuring out that I was a lesbian, but this was 1971. I knew nothing about lesbian life. In fact, when a college boyfriend had asked me whether one of my professors was a dyke, I had responded,"what's a dyke?" And there were no sperm banks yet, no technologies to enable single women or lesbian couples to become pregnant without having sex with a man. And I felt a strong attraction to Lenny. Maybe it could work I thought. For a short time, Lenny and I loved each other with the intensity of the young and idealistic. We confided in one another with absolute honesty, and accepted everything, even the traits that would soon separate us. We spent hours nuzzling and kissing on the couch like a pair of high school kids. Lenny's touch was gentle, and he smelled like a rich blend of Moroccan spices. With a speed that now astonishes me to contemplate, in the course of a few months, Lenny and I moved from friendship to romantic love and back to friendship. Together we ventured into Manhattan for gay community meetings and dance parties. Then we opened the gay and lesbian dropping center called Liberation House in a dilapidated West Village storefront. The first rent check came from an engagement gift I'd received for my grandparents. One morning over bagels and coffee, Lenny said casually, "Remember when Leonard Bernstein came to Israel last year to conduct some concerts? Well, he was cruising in Independence Park and my friend Yossi gave him a blow job."  "You mean Leonard Bernstein is gay?" I couldn't have been more shocked. Apparently, every gay man in three continents knew about Bernstein. But like most of his admiring audience, I had been taken in by the photographs of him with his beautiful wife and their beautiful children. Although I understood the forces that would have led him to hide his sexuality, I felt betrayed. Why hadn't he trusted me enough to tell me the truth? Bernstein came out publicly several years later, but I never quite forgave him for playing me as a chump. Furthermore, I felt that his conducting was suffering from excessive flamboyance and self dramatization. The combination of vitality and restraint that had characterized his earlier performances was gone. He now specialized in oversized works like Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand. In one televised rehearsal, he shouted to the orchestra, "Give it all you've got, and then crescendo!" I wondered whether his former need to hold back his personal feelings in public had made him a better artist. It shames me to admit that I preferred Bernstein when he was still in the closet, when he was making a compromise I wasn't willing to make and didn't approve of. His good taste and performance was more important to me than his integrity. I hadn't been a loyal friend to him. I was just another fan, oblivious to his desires and hungers, caring about nothing but musical quality, valuing him as a maestro more than as a human being. 

When Bernstein died of a massive heart attack in 1990, I felt as though I'd lost a family member when I hadn't treated right. It was too late to make amends, and what amends could I have made? If he'd really been my relative, I might have valued him more than I valued his art. But he wasn't my cousin after all. He didn't know I existed, and I knew more about him than I had any right to know. And I was too stubborn to change my opinion about what I knew. I'd have loved to talk with dad about all of this, but he had died nearly 20 years earlier. Fortunately, Aunt Roz was still very much alive. During one of my visits when she was already in her 90s, we watched a PBS documentary about Bernstein. I was struck by his progression from lovely youth with ridiculously long eyelashes, to paunchy gay elder wearing a flashy cape and muffler. Most of the photos and video clips of Bernstein in his later years show him with a coterie of much younger men holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other. It occurred to me that he never had a long term relationship after leaving his wife and I wondered whether he his life had been happy whether he'd ever been satisfied. I thought I knew so much about him. But really I'd known very little. Aunt Roz interrupted my rumination. "Alice, when gay men are together, where does the insertion take place?" I was almost as shocked by her question as I'd been by Lenny's revelation of Bernstein's homosexuality. Aunt Ross had worked as a jazz pianist, and was a curious and sophisticated person. But her understanding of the human body had remained vague. And in 1000s of years of conversation, I'd never heard her mentioned sex. I took a deep breath and tried to adopt a matter of fact, tone as I said, "the mouth or the anus." Aunt Roz grimaced and shuttered. I could tell she wished she hadn't asked. "It seems that they enjoy it," I said feebly. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, she asked another question that caught me off guard. "Whatever happened to your Lenny? Did you stay in touch with him?" Aunt Roz had known Lenny quite well, because I was living in her house when he and I became engaged. Now I was the one who wished she hadn't asked for the answer was painful. A few months after I left New York and moved to California to live with my first woman partner, Lenny called and asked me again to marry him. He had broken up with a lover and was possessed anew by the yearning to have a family.Over the next year, he called with a marriage proposal every time he split up with a boyfriend, or encountered a disappointment in his work at the Gay Men's Health Project, another organization he'd co-founded. Finally, I asked him to stop using me in this way. I never heard from him again.

Years later, I learned from a mutual friend that Lenny had died in the first wave of the AIDS epidemic. My immediate reaction to the news of Lenny's death was relief. Thank God I didn't marry him, I thought. I would be dead to then instantly, the weight of sorrow descended upon me.I remembered Lenny's melodious voice, his slow smile, his restless intelligence, his deep commitment to social justice, all gone now. For the first time, I wished I'd had a child with him. After the sorrow came the anger, someone I had loved was among the many talented passionate young men who had lost their lives in an atmosphere of indifference and hatred. There was no way to remedy this loss, no way to calculate its magnitude. Today, I still feel the sorrow and the anger. Nevertheless, here's what I know. The two gay Jewish men named Lenny who changed my life did much more than that. They transformed the world making it a more spacious home for the human family, womb to tomb. Aleihem ha-shalom. Peace be upon them. Zichronam l’bracha. May their memory
 be a blessing.

Tavi Black  13:02  
Alice is actually in my writing group. And I've known her for a long time. And she's such a fine writer. She is also an editor. And she's done a lot of volunteer editing for me on my books. So I was so pleased when this essay got picked up by Minerva Rising. The thing that I like about Alice is that she is such a crisp, clean writer. She also does reviews for musicals and plays. And so yeah, she knows so much about music, and I was kind of really glad to talk about something that maybe I don't know as much about. 

Christine Junge  13:44  
Yeah, no, I feel like it's a good point. Like, a lot of these essays, I end up learning a lot about different subjects, including this one. 

Tavi Black  13:52  
Yeah. The other thing that I really like about it is that she's talking about a time in history that maybe I don't know, a whole lot about. She's a bit older than us. And lived through a really sort of exciting times. In New York, I'm just excited to do essays that are different subject matters. 

Christine Junge  14:12  
One thing that I really liked about this essay, was how subtle it is. She's giving us a lot of heavy topics, but she's not hitting us over the head with what, what the meanings are. Like, for example, in the first paragraph, she's talking about how her mother dies, and her dad kind of pulls himself out of his grief to go see a lot of Broadway plays. And for me that that kind of hammered home the idea of like art being a way that you can heal from the kind of more difficult things that happen in life, but she never comes out and says that she just kind of leaves it for the reader to to get on their own. 

Tavi Black  14:51  
Yeah, that's a really good point that I didn't think of, but that's, that's right. One of the things this Aut Roz, who she talks about, Alice actually has a novel out called Mother Daughter banquet, where you get a lot of Aunt Roz, like she calls her, who is such a character. So if you want to learn more about this character read that book. But yeah, I really like how she's talking about her family. But she's really sort of crafting this essay around these two men that she knows called Lenny. And I honestly, I didn't really know anything about Leonard Bernstein. I mean, I knew his name. I think maybe I'd seen a photo of him. And I knew that he wrote music for musicals. And that's about all I knew. 

Christine Junge  15:40  
Yeah, same. What a good coincidence that, that her beau is also called Lenny. So, you know, it ties together that way. Right. 

Tavi Black  15:49  
And as you said, She's tying in all of these really kind of heavy subjects, you know, about figuring out that she's gay, and becoming disenchanted as you grow up. 

Christine Junge  16:01  
And the idea of making these really heavy decisions in your life, like, you know, whether you're going to marry somebody even knowing that you could never be like, fully sexually attracted to them, or fully in love with them, because you're gay, but the idea of like society imposing things on you, and then also, if you do want to have children in this time that she's writing about, there was no way to do that. As a gay woman or a gay man. 

Tavi Black  16:28  
Right. And I love that. I mean, and she says, at one point, after she finds out that he has died, that is the only time she felt like she wished she'd had a child with him. And that really sort of broke my heart. That sentence. I know, I'm jumping ahead to the, to the end. But a lot of considerations, like you said that just you wouldn't have today, if you wanted to have a child with another woman, you would do that now.

Christine Junge  16:57  
Yeah, and interestingly, bringing back another essay that we recently discussed, Gun Bubbles. In this essay, like that one, the writer is really describing this, these people as if they know them, and the Gun Bubbles essay was about the shooter. But in this essay, it says, it's as if she and Lenny Bernstein are friends, almost, or like she said, "he's like one of the relatives a lively cousin who cheered us up during those sad years." And again, it's like, just bringing to light how in your mind, sometimes these people take on such an important place, even though you know, Lenny Bernstein would know the writer from, you know, from anybody. 

Tavi Black  17:36  
I know, I really love that. Because I think that we all do that, especially with celebrity. I mean, I think about when I can't believe I'm going to say this, but when I was young, I thought I just knew Axl Rose, from Guns 'n' Roses, so well, like that he would know me, it's an interesting thing. And so because of that sort of feeling that I remember having, I've actually been really interested in fame and celebrity culture and write quite a bit about it. And my novel, and I think I've said this before, but I really recommend Jake Halpern's book Fame Junkies, because it talks so much about our culture, and how we can start to think that we know celebrities, because we see them there in our houses, but of course, they don't know us. 

Christine Junge  18:32  
And, and of course, you know, she has no right to be upset with Lenny Bernstein for coming out or being flamboyant, or, you know, any of those things. But she does. She does feel that way. 

Tavi Black  18:44  
Yeah. And I like how self reflective she is in this in, in realizing that like, I kind of hated about myself that I liked him better when he was in the closet. You know, that I think I think he's a better artist that way. And that's, that's a whole other subject in itself, like how you feel about the artist versus their art. 

Christine Junge  19:08  
And what we feel like we have a right to, to ask of an artist. 

Tavi Black  19:12  
And it's interesting to be having this discussion about these two men that are gone, too, right? She's reflecting upon her past. Because I didn't know really who Leonard Bernstein was. I mean, I didn't really know him. I went and watched on YouTube like she did one of those young person concerts and fascinating. I actually want my daughter at a watch. What he does is explain music theory really well.

Christine Junge  19:46  
Oh, that's cool that you went and did that. I have to do it after we hang up. And I liked how Alice in this essay, she does kind of teach you a lot about music, but in a very subtle way. Like when she talks about "the harmonic minor scale and the Dorian mode taught me not only about not only about music theory, but also about sex." And like, what a surprise that is.

Tavi Black  20:10  
And she did slip in all of the sexual bits. Like, it's what I was saying she's such a clean writer, and in some ways, almost technical writer, right? Like she really has control of what she's doing. And then you just think, Okay, this is about music theory. And this is about my past, and some people she knew and some grief. And then you're like, Whoa, wait a minute. All right. She's talking a little bit about sex here. And then by the time you get to the part about like, her friend, knowing that Leonard got a blow job.Fellas, all right. Okay. Alice! And then you get to Aunt Roz asking.

Christine Junge  20:48  
I know when that was so funny in the Aunt Roz part about sex and the wording is so careful. Like she says, "When gay men are together, where does the insertion take place?" And like, what a delicate way of asking the question.

Tavi Black  21:04  
 The insertion.

Christine Junge  21:08  
Yeah, and then even her response, which is so technical, like "the mouth or the anus."

Tavi Black  21:18  
I love it. It's almost sly. The way that she's talking about sex here. And she does that throughout her novel too. On her friend, Lenny, you know, her "beau" as you called him, which I kind of like that words. 

Christine Junge  21:34  
I know, it's a good way to describe them. Because they do have this deep connection that, you know, like, they started this these programs together, they were engaged for a little while. But because they were both gay, I feel like beau really kind of describes it. Well. 

Tavi Black  21:51  
Yeah, it does. And I love their relationship and how they were able to, I actually want, I've never asked her this question, but I want to know, like, what was that discussion like, about? "Well, maybe we're gonna get married, actually, let's start a gay center together." Like, what was that discussion when one of them said, you know, I think I actually don't like women. I think I actually don't like men. You know, what, what was? What was that, like, maybe that's another essay.

Christine Junge  22:23  
I'd love to know more about her feelings about that, about starting to, like, picture her life one way in this closeted marriage, where, like that she would have been able to have children and a family, but she would have, you know, been cutting off a huge part of herself. And then making the decision not to do that. And to come out in a world that wasn't really ready for that. 

Tavi Black  22:48  
That reminds me of that, you know, the fact that we all have so many stories, you know, because Alice is a memoir writer, her life is just packed with stories. And I love that people take the time to write these things, to write them down to write essays to write memoirs, because we all have a lifetime full of stories to tell. characters in places we've been even if we don't think we've done very much. 

Christine Junge  23:18  
I think the essays that we discussed are such a good example of like taking one small part of your life and delving into it and, and making connections to larger issues. 

Tavi Black  23:31  
Right. I think that's that she does that really well. And if we're talking about the craft of this essay, I love how she opens it up talking about like you said about her grief about her dad's grief about how she loved musicals and West Side Story. And then she brings in that she was doing the dances for her sister. And then she falls and her sister says "womb to tomb." And I didn't know what that meant. And so she's added in quoting one of the Jets gang slogans. I mean, I'd seen West Side Story but a long time ago, when she brings that back in at the very end again, as we often discuss how writers are bringing in different sentences, different sayings, different points they're making, opening up and ending the essay this way I thought was really clever. 

Christine Junge  24:24  
Yeah, one line that I highlighted that I'd like to discuss is when she's quoting from the Lenny Bernstein explanations, and she says, "the leading tone is not in love with the tonic. It's friendly enough, but it just wants to shake hands." And you know, at first I just thought that was one of his witticisms. But then I realized, Oh, she's kind of insinuating what's going to happen with her and her friend Lenny, that she's not in love with Lenny. She just, she's friendly with him and really likes them a lot. But she doesn't want to sleep with him. She wants to just shake hands. 

Tavi Black  24:57  
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. That's another one of those kind of just really master of her craft sort of things that she's doing. It never occurs to me to sort of try to put two different subjects into an essay. You know, and I love it when writers do that, and sort of look at their lives in from all different angles. 

Christine Junge  25:25  
Mm hmm. Yeah. And like in this case, it's something not very personal, like music theory, the life of conductor, and then bring it really in parallel to something very personal, like, your sex life or your sexual identity, and juxtaposing the two. And then I love that part where she addresses the reader directly saying, "Reader, I nearly married him,"

Tavi Black  25:47  
 which is a reference back to to Jane Eyre who, in that book, the author really talks to the reader in that in that same kind of jokey way. Yeah. And you know, when I had first read this essay, I didn't know that I had to ask her, I was like, Oh, I like it when you're addressing the reader. And she was like, I didn't know that's a quote. I didn't. I'm fessing up.

And then I just want to talk a little bit too, about, we kind of touched on just during that time, 1971. And how it she says she notes, I knew nothing about lesbian life. In fact, when a college boyfriend asked me whether one of my professors was a dyke, I had responded "what's a dyke?" I mean, it really was such a different time. I mean, I think about kids now that are, you know, all into like, gender identity. And, you know, parents ask, you know, do you like girls do like boys, you know,  mostly people are open to whatever it is that you're feeling. But back then, you know, somebody who even had these feelings, didn't know what it was called. Or at least didn't know the slang term for it. 

Christine Junge  26:57  
Yeah, and it's, I mean, granted, the 70s now was 50 years ago, which is mind boggling. But, but it's still within like, one generation. Alice's. What 

Tavi Black  27:08  
in her 70s? 

Christine Junge  27:09  
Yeah. Okay, so Alice is in her 70s. And, and she in one lifetime has gone from not knowing what a dyke is to being able to live openly as a gay woman. And yeah, like, what a big difference in one generation. 

Tavi Black  27:25  
What a big difference. I think, you know, I just felt like when I read about the, the Manhattan for gay community meetings and dance parties, and I just thought, what an era that would have been to be in New York to be, you know, really, in the thick of people finding themselves and coming out of the closet, you know, that's when it became really like, Okay, we're going to be gay and be gay pride, you know, really started there. I'm sure she's got a lot more stories. 

Christine Junge  27:58  
Yeah, and what I mean, what a cool thing that she did, really helping gay people find community. 

Tavi Black  28:05  
Yeah, took a lot of courage back then I imagine. 

Christine Junge  28:08  
And a lot of creativity to think about, like what people need.

Tavi Black  28:14  
Right? Like, we need a center and you know, the medical center. Wow. It's so important. I'm sure in so many people's lives. I would love to interview people, you know, who had gone to their center and how it impacted them. Well, and I'd say that, you know, I do, I really like the way that she wraps this essay up, and sort of reflects on her feelings about Bernstein, her feelings about her friend who passed and, and how sad she is that these men have been so affected by AIDS and by discrimination, and maybe didn't live the lives that they could have lived.

Christine Junge  29:00  
And I feel like and She's so honest, in that last part, when she finds out that her friend Lenny has died. And she says, "the news was a relief. Thank God, I didn't marry him, I would be dead too." Like, what an honest way of just thinking about it from her own standpoint and not thinking about, you know, his the fact that he had left behind all these people who probably cared about him. And then, but, you know, then in that same paragraph, she goes on to say that, you know, she remembers his melodious voice, his slow smile, his restless intelligence, his deep commitment to social justice. So, you know, it's kind of that, that idea of like, you can have both, both things going on at once, like the selfish kind of feelings of like, feeling glad that she didn't get AIDS and then also feeling the sadness of remembering how wonderful this person was. 

Tavi Black  29:51  
Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is a really, of all the essays we've done, I feel like this is one of the more reflective ones. Not, everyone reflects in this particular way. Like, I feel like she wrote this with a purpose to look at her feelings around both these people intentionally. 

Christine Junge  30:14  
And I like to think about the two Lenny's because at one point she says about Lenny Bernstein, "I have a bit of a loyal friend to him. I was just another fan, oblivious his desires and hungers." It made me think like, is she really thinking about her friend Lenny, there? She wasn't a loyal friend to him because she didn't want to, you know, get married and settle down with him. Yeah, and the idea of these, these two Lennys and kind of how their relationships collide in her mind. 

Tavi Black  30:42  
Yeah, well, I just want to, and I will personally thank, Alice for letting us talk about this essay. And I hope that you all go out and find her work because Mother-Daughter Banquet is a really beautiful book that is in this vein.

Christine Junge  30:57  
 Yeah, I'm excited to add that to my to read list. So thanks for that. And thank you, listeners. We'll see you next time. 

Tavi Black  31:03  
Next time.

To learn more about this podcast, visit us online. At personalelementpodcast.com. There you'll find links to the essays we discussed information on how to follow us on social media, and more.

Christine Junge  31:21  
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai