The Coral Gables Times

-Copyright 1961. Reprinted from The New Yorker. "It's kind of you and Martha to offer me a meal while Erma's away, but, frankly, I'm a little pooped."

The Beat, Man, Is for Always

By ELVA CHARLTON Correspondent Are you living in a square box, with sharp outlines in which everything exists? Then you're not a beatnik. Recently I wrote an article on beatniks, in which I stated they are lost souls to be pittied by normal people. Then I went to a beatnik party and found a whole new version of them, Miami style. It took me most of the day to get myself and clothes ready to go to an open house in Miami in late August. I decided it would be more or less a dressy party and chose a black cotton dress. I groped around my tumbled lingerie drawer for a pair of hose. Squeezing my feet into last Spring's patent pumps, I completed my costume with crystal jewelry and sprayed my locks with hair spray. Armed with the unfamiliar appearance of my husband in dark suit and white shirt and tie, we set off. I decided we were the best example of cultured people of our age group and congratulated myself on being able to achieve it in this heat. "We'll probably not stay long," I said. "It will be a come and go affair." My husband gave me a quizzical look, indicating for the first time that he knew more about this kind of party than I did. When I said, "Perhaps you better go alone," he was too smart to answer, so we went together. Beside the front door was a note for guests. There would be nobody to greet you or introduce you. Enter and make yourself at home. Introduce yourself, browse around. You're strictly on your own. Our bachelor host was absent when we arrived, but he had stationed a young lady to receive us and show us the unusually designed house built around a kidney shaped pool which you could fall into easily. In fact several of the guests were in it already, but this early they couldn't have fallen in, or could they? One man was in his underwear, floating around on one of those aluminum floating chairs. About a dozen drink coasters floated with him. Much later I was informed that this man didn't have on his underwear, it was a man's white bikini. I had forgotten that our host excelled in a certain dangerous sport hobby until I viewed his trophy room. In the living room was a beautiful painting which was impossible to understand. Now through the kitchen, which was only used for making drinks, and back to the patio where the bar was. The bartender was not relaxing. The guests wore less than one usually does to go to bed, except the Indian girl who always wore her native costume with drapes over one shoulder and the sarong type skirt down to the ground. Her American husband sat near her dangling his feet in the water. They were the center of a small group which sat on the ground at the edge of the pool. Their child was not there, of course. Two or three girls swam or stood talking in the briefest of bikinis, as the three musicians tuned their instruments at the far end of the pool. They wore no bathing caps but several strands of white beads covered their necks, of all places. The music started and had a beat I thought was only used in foreign countries to excite the savages. Through the increasing loudness of the music I heard the man's voice at my elbow. "Think of yourself as living in a small place with sharp edges, hemmed in by your inhibitions, where everything exists. As against these people who live with no boundaries at all. "In their world, nothing exists. There is no pain or sorrow, happiness or joy, because there is nothing existing." his voice went on. "I could accept the beatnik, I think, if they only looked happier," I said. By now, he couldn't hear my answer, so I sipped my drink and thought of my life pointed to the Indian girl with sympathy, I only things existing but imaginary ones as well, giving me more trouble than the existing ones. I began circulating, talking to the people, nearly falling into the pool as I tripped over a mound of shoes kicked off by the guests. A beautiful French girl, wife of a professional man interested me most. She said her husband was too successful, it made him work too hard. She spoke of the difficulty she felt in getting people to accept her because of the language barrier. I gazed at her beautiful mouth with the bitter twist, at her brocade top and velvet capri pants and the beautiful sandals on her feet. She looked as though she had everything. But when she spoke of acceptance and pointed to the Indian girl with sympathy, I felt sorry for her. If you use a financial rule to measure success, these bearded men and scantily clad women were successful. The happily-married young couple who stayed too close together were the most conspicuously miserable. Or perhaps a man who sank on the sofa and started talking to me who said he was divorced, like me because I had my shoes on and looked like Shelley Winters. The drinking went on but seemed to have no effect on the guests. Used to the brand of parties of the Roaring Twenties where sex was hidden in dark corners, the dancing suggestive, and the drinking from hip pocket flasks, the contrast here was terrific. No slightest suggestion of anything evil was evident. The bedrooms around the pool all had glass doors. Young people lounged or sat on the beds and talked in the air conditioned rooms. The dancing was of the Indian war dance variety, fast and wild. I got the impression that there was absolutely nothing to hide. A feeling of depression came over me, as though a whole world existed I knew nothing about, and could never now be a part of. Looking around for my husband, I felt he was more likely to have his sharp edges dissolve than I was; but since we were in one car, he followed me out the door. We have exchanged few words since the party, except "pass the salt, please." I am looking forward to a more enlightening viewpoint on the life and beliefs of this strange group of people. You are mistaken if you think the beat is on the way out. We are going to hear more and more about them.

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