37. Communitas
Brenda wants a threesome - Joe, she and Stan - and not only for the sexual connections. She visualizes a threesome based on trust. And trust must be achieved by dropping everyone's psychological defenses, sharing each person's (of the threesome) most private self (opinions, emotions) each one to the other. But it will be such a shockingly radical idea - she guesses - to Stan who is such a formal gentleman that she does not mention it.
Stan knows she is doing an educate Joe Pro and approves. He is interested to see the development of Joe's brain after the brain surgery. He guesses the stimulation may have neutralized some of the inhibitory activity, opening a gateway to more efficient thinking.
So when Brenda suggests they invite Joe over for Sunday supper, Stan says "Yes, I will like to enjoy our get-together with Joe."
Brenda plans the three will sit at the square bridge-table in corner by window. and Joe as guest will have the window seat while Stan will sit across from Joe, and Brenda's seat will be on the table's side, opposite the window, between her 2 guys, allowing her quickest access to kitchen. Before supper, while Joe and Stan sit together on sofa, she cooks, sets table and takes part in conversation. Stan brings up a recent book he'd read, Communitas, by Paul Goodman the famous culture critic with his brother Percival, a brilliant architect, about 3 different ways of living:
A community based on maximally efficient consumption.
A community based on eliminating the present differance between Production and Consumption.
A community based on maximizing scientific and artistic creativity with minimal regulation.
This last - the community maximizing creativities - is what interests Stan and he starts on it.
"The community will be organized first on maximizing leisure. That starts with everyone's living a walking distance from one's work, play, and shopping. In Communitas they call that living at a human scale."
Brenda says "Impossible. Can you imagine New York ....?"
Joe, excited by the idea, picks up on it. "Yeah! Why not Communitas organized in living sections - like housing project and residents with work-places and entertainment and shopping and other stuff all in the housing project?"
"That's it!" exclaims Stan. "Think of it, "You walk home from work at 5, enjoy a supper, go to a latest repertory play or a movie across the street made by your fellow neighbors as amateurs - gifted but refusing to take money for their gifts - or else, in another aspect of your leisure, enjoy nature free in nearby forest. And mornings you walk the few minutes to your nearby work. No getting tired out, like today on subways or like the commuters from Long Island or New Jersey or Westchester driving themselves to exhaustion.
"Yeah, those dumb commuters!" exclaims Brenda, thinking of the returning World War 2 veterans, so many, with new wives and babies, talked into living in commuter communities like Levittown on Long Island or across the river in New Jersey, under the romanticized, false dream of owning your own home in a Garden City, and ending up commuter slaves in isolated private homes, chronically tired from wasting too many hours on trains back and forth, and then on nights and weekends again traveling back into the city for entertainment or special shopping.
Stan adds, "Right now we have this kind of creative Communitas - we three. I mean I live here with Brenda and walk to and from work and go to the Tuxedo movie house to see Joan Crawford choose between Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews in a movie, weekends, or go to the Van Cortlandt forest for my leisure nature enjoyment, and we shop on Jerome Ave."
Brenda chimes in: "And I go to college at Hunter and live walking distance here and have Stan and you, Joe."
"Me too," says Joe. At least since Doctor man buzz my brain with the magnets and get me smart so I earn a living painting murals."
Brenda interrupts: "OK, guys. The eats is on the table. As they said in Hollywood Come and Get it!"
They sit and are silent, thinking about each one's good luck being young & healthy and having each other. Then each eats: starting by spooning a naturally sweet cantaloupe juicy with lime sour, then biting into a garlic bread, and alternating small mouthfuls of white, plump swordfish steak under olive oily, fried onion, and then digging to get a spoonful of baked potato under sour cream with string-beans mixed in; and also swallowing pieces of soft, sweet eggplant, and drinking cool, pure water.
The eating goes on in silence to maximize the brain's sensual enjoyment. At its end Brenda serves tea with lemon and cherry pie wedges and conversation starts.
Joe mentions sculpting in plaster to add to his painting skill, and a course in night school.
"So you will be another Michelangelo," says Brenda.
Stan says, "Leo Davidoff is writing a book on Neurosurgery and I told him of your superb illustrating talent, Joe, and he wants to talk with you about doing work for him. Also if you can do plaster I want to make a model of the brain for medical students. Perhaps we can cooperate?"
Joe smiles at his good luck, and Brenda is happy because she guesses the more Stan and Joe come to value each other, the easier it will be for the menage she has planned for the three. For next, click 13.38 Eddie - Light on His Life
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