Love Me Read Online Free Page A

the White House, and now he was filthy and out of his mind, and she roped him in and brought him to the hospital and made sure that his needs were attended to and that the newspapers wouldn’t find out, and took the afternoon off and married me, at the courthouse in Hudson, Wisconsin, August 4, 1966, with a.bouquet of dandelions in her hand. No fancy wedding for her because the expense was ridiculous and what did we need it for? Dandelions are fine.
    We called our parents from a coffee shop and gave them the big news. My father said, “What did you go and do that for?” He was miffed, but then he always is. My mother said, “I hope you’ll be happy” in a tone of voice that said, Six months. A year at most. They were on their way to play in the 3M Parade of Plaid golf tournament. My parents live in their own little world. May to October at Dellwood, winters in Palm Beach. They golf eighteen holes three or four times a week and attend a cocktail party every single night and in their pink lady and martini haze are honestly not aware that some people do not have two homes. We don’t talk except when absolutely necessary and we haven’t come to that point yet.
     
     
     
    We attended Iris’s dad’s church in Hopkins that Sunday and he introduced us from the pulpit and people clapped and he had us come up front for a special blessing and then he preached on fruitfulness. It was a twenty-five-minute sermon and all through it I thought about how nice it would be to get back into Iris’s pants. The Rev. and Mrs. O‘Blennis took us to dinner at the Tremont and the Rev was still revved up about fruitfulness; he asked Iris if she had a bun in the oven. She said no. “What do you do, if I may ask?” he said to me. “I am a writer, sir,” I said. “I’m working on a novel.” For all the work I had done on that novel, I might as well have said, “I am working on a cure for the common cold,” but he seemed satisfied with my being a novelist and keeping busy novelizing. They were sweet old birds. He said to the Missus, “Well, it’s a big occasion, our little girl going off and getting married,” and he ordered a bottle of red wine and they got slightly potted and then he had a big glass of tawny port and I thought he might burst into song. “When can you two come up to the cabin?” he cried. The Missus fussed over the fact that Iris was keeping her last name, which was customary among young progressive women in those days. Her mother worried, “How does Larry feel about that? What’s wrong with Wyler?” Larry felt fine about that and everything else. Had no dough and no great prospects, but I had the girl, and that was good enough for me.

2
    Salad Days
    We lived in a string of one-bedroom apartments in southeast Minneapolis, and I washed dishes, worked in a mailroom, tended kids at a day camp, and at night I stayed up late, writing short stories with characters who talked like my sweet Iris—who said, “Ya, shur,” and “What kinda deal is that?” “Well, all right then.” Anyhoo. Sounds good. I worked at nothing jobs by day and spent the evenings at my Selectric. She and I made love more or less constantly but nobody in my stories ever did, they mostly sulked. Sometimes they got in a car and drove around. I tried out pen names: Lawrence Wyler, Carson Wyler, Wyler Lawrence. And then (unconsciously) signed my real name, Larry Wyler, to one that The Carleton Miscellany bought and there I was. It took me five years to get three stories published in little literary magazines with no readers. I sat rap-tap-tapping until 3 or 4 A.M. and smoking many many Pall Mall cigarettes and praying, O dear God, please give me a success. Don’t make me live my life as a nobody. I am terrified of monotony. Let me be a somebody. That’s all I’m asking. That’s it. Make me the Turgenev of the Tundra, the Prairie Proust, the Poor Man’s Maupassant. Don’t let me die a
    schnook. I woke every morning in a prayerful state