Bob

“Don’t you know who I am?”

The answer to that question is almost always, “No.” And, can usually be followed by one of the following phrases, and stop it, I don’t care, or get the hell out of here.   Most of the time, when someone says it, it means, I’m a nobody, and I want to be somebody. Pay attention to me.  I’m a midlevel cube farmer in the valley, but I want to be more.  I heard a man say it once, and he was a somebody.  His name was Bob.

I was 19 years old, and a student at Richland College.

It had all started with a panicky phone call from one of my gay friends, and by gay I don’t mean happy.    Back in the day, before cell phones and text messages, at any moment, I could get one of those calls.  Liza Minelli was in rehab again, there were size 15 pumps on clearance somewhere, Tina was coming in concert, I need a ride Hunky’s Burgers…  It was always something. 

“Get over here right now,” he pleaded. 

“I’m busy, I have to study.  I don’t have time for this right now.  Like, no…” These were my standard responses to Warren.

“Please,” a dramatic begging tone tinged Warren’s voice, “I don’t know if I can hold him off much longer.”  I heard the sound of breaking glass and a loud male voice in the background.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I grabbed my keys and headed over to Warren’s a scary efficiency off of Park Lane.  I noticed a Lincoln Town Car in the space reserved for my friend’s unit.  Because Warren didn’t have a car, the Town Car was actually in my spot.  When I knocked on the door, it flew open and Warren ushered me inside.  The place was a wreck.  Trash from cans in the kitchen and bathroom littered the coffee table and floor.  A giant drop cloth was in the dining nook with spray paint cans strewn about. The dining nook was never, ever used, it was a Judy Garland tribute room and shrine constructed by Warren as part of his transvestite cabaret act, so I knew something was up. I smelled whiskey.

“You have to help me,” Warren whispered.

I dropped my keys, and began to pick up the garbage. 

“No!  Don’t touch that!  He uses that! He is making something for Mrs. Hunt!  Put it back!” Warren’s eyes flashed fear.  He tended to be a little bug eyed anyway.

At that precise moment, an old man came crashing out of the bathroom.  I assumed he was Warren’s dad, or maybe his grandfather, but I was so very wrong.

He was ruddy, bloated, and squinty eyed drunk. He braced himself on the wall, and stuck out his hand in my general direction. “I’m Bob…,” and he started to topple over.

Both of us, the sober ones, rushed to his side and eased him onto the sofa.  Our elder busied himself pawing through trash.  He found a fuzzy piece of gum on the carpet, popped it in his mouth, and well, I guess, savored it thoughtfully.

I was summoned to the kitchenette.  Warren stuffed a crisp $100 bill into my hand and ordered me to the liquor store for more whiskey.  I scanned the counter.  Empty fifths lay prostrate on the Formica. A fourth, shattered, lay jagged, and its contents oozed across the stove and onto the floor. 

“First of, all, I am only 18, and I can’t buy,” I hissed, “And secondly, I don’t think more whiskey is your problem.” I started to make some coffee.

Bob beckoned me from the sofa, “Hey you pretty little fag hag, get your ass in here. I want you to show you something.”

I ignored Bob.  He said something really vulgar, and I screamed, “Pipe down grandpa, and for God’s sakes, zip your fly.”

I was worried about Warren, who was about to have a stroke.  While waiting for the coffee, my soon to be ex-friend, if his story wasn’t really, really good, explained himself.  Warren had taken an on campus job at SMU, he had to, because he was on scholarship.  Warren was assigned the task of picking up and chauffeuring various dignitaries around on behalf of the University.  The mystery of the Town Car was exposed.  Bob would be picking up an award in a few hours, and in the meantime Warren had to keep him out of trouble.  Warren was failing, miserably. Bob had insisted on seeing Warren’s apartment.  He didn’t want to stay at his hotel.  The Mansion on Turtle Creek.  The Mansion housed not only the world’s premier restaurant at the time, but a beautiful and charming hotel that rivals Paris.  Bob preferred to be in a grungy apartment where gunfire could erupt at any moment.   

“Okay, you go get the whiskey, and I will try to funnel coffee down his throat,” Warren hugged me, he was so, well, gay, and skipped out the door.

I poured a giant mug of coffee, and hunted for a spot to set it down.  Bob’s handiwork was taking up every surface in the tiny apartment. 

“I’m from Port Arthur,” Bob triumphantly announced.  He’d accidentally glued his index finger and thumb together. I feared he would draw blood in the separation process.

He was affixing a newspaper on a board, and spray painting that, and gluing trash over that.  “You really shouldn’t spray that inside.  It’s not safe,” I said while waving my hand in front of my face. 

I was taking Art Appreciation that semester, and was thus, an expert. 

“So, you’re like an artist?” I asked.

“Don’t you know who I am?” he shook his hand to release a dirty band aid from his found objects, and removed the gum from his mouth, spread it wide and stuck it to the piece in front of him.

I sat blinking at this lunatic.  It seemed like it was taking Warren a really long time on the booze run.

“Take that, Ruth Ray Hunt,” he slurred, pushing the masterpiece away from him.  He flopped backward, and intertwined his newly freed fingers behind his head.  “I am Robert fucking Rauschenberg. And I am hungry.”

I had no idea who he was.

Bob and I waited and eternity for Warren to return.  When Warren reappeared, Bob snatched the bottle and headed to the bathroom.  He went to the bathroom a lot. 

“He’s hungry,” I told Warren, “It would sober him up to get some food in him.”  I frantically searched Warren’s cupboards, twice, but they were bare, except a can of aerosol cheese that Bob inhaled. 

Warren was sweating.  “Okay, here is what we do.  We take him to the Mansion.  We eat.  I will get him cleaned up.  And hopefully I won’t get fired. Because, if I get fired, I will lose the scholarship.  If that happens, I will have to work at Great Outdoors again, and I hate salami, and I have a cheese phobia, and…” Warren was a mess, and I wasn’t in the mood to re-hash the details of his life again.

We lured Bob to the car by using the bottle as bait.  He clutched onto the artwork he’d thrown together on Warren’s sofa. I followed in my car.

Because he didn’t own a car, Warren was a cautious driver.  Through tinted windows I could see Warren’s head frequently snap around, and his right arm fly over the seat.  The Town Car swerved, often.

Bob liked to operate the power windows.  He also liked to scream obscenities at pedestrians. 

We eased into the drive of the Mansion on Turtle Creek just before 3 in the afternoon.  The restaurant wasn’t open, but we could perhaps enjoy canapés, a lot of them, at the bar. 

The three of us crashed through the ornate carved doors.  Warren and I had difficulty keeping Bob upright.  Being college students, we hadn’t considered our next obstacle.

Bob was wearing a t-shirt with liquor splashed down the front, and jeans.  Warren was in a polo, but had a pair of slacks.  The maitre de eyed us suspiciously. 

Warren stepped toward the pedestal, and meekly croaked, “Table for three,” he held up his fingers to emphasize his point.  The Mansion was deserted, we were the only patrons, but the prim, impeccably dressed host, looked down at an important book, and flipped pages.

“You are aware we have a dress code?” he arched his brow at Warren while Bob and I waited in the wings.

Warren launched into, “I need this job.  If I get fired, I will lose the scholarship.  If that happens I will have to make sandwiches. I can’t do that, I hate cheese…”

I propped Bob on a bench, and stepped forward, confidently.  “Hi.  He’s a guest at the hotel,” I motioned toward our charge.

“In that case,” he snapped his fingers, and two blazers, two ties, and a random pair of pants appeared. 

Warren inspected and cherry picked the garments.  He chose the rep tie, and threaded it neatly around the collar of his polo, which he flipped up.  He tied a Windsor knot, and adjusted it upward, carefully smoothing his collar.  I could read his mind.  He unfastened the Windsor completely, and then set about trying a half-Windsor. 

I clenched my jaw, and spat out, “Could you stop being so gay for a minute? You aren’t going to prom.” 

Bob lurched to his feet, snatched the remaining tie, which was conveniently already tied, and looped it over his head.  It looked like a noose. He grabbed a jacket.  “Where’s the head?”

We assisted him to the restroom, and Warren hesitated at the door.  “I don’t want to go in there by myself,” he said, “you go.”

“Warren, I am a girl.  I sit when I pee.  I have my own bathroom,” I explained.  I finished my lecture on the difference between boys and girls by stealing a line from Nike, “Just do it.”

We heard a crash. A moan.  A flush.

Before Warren could do anything, Bob, wearing, a jacket sized for a pre-pubescent boy, exited the bathroom.  The sleeves were three, maybe four inches above his wrists. The pants had a distinctive flared leg, and were well above his ankles. He wore no socks.  This left Warren to slide into the remaining coat, which was enormous.  Warren had a comedic air as he carefully brushed imaginary lint from his garment. He straightened his tie in a side to side movement that made him look like exactly like Rodney Dangerfield.  I expected him to say, no respect.

“How do I look?” Warren asked.

“From the neck up,” I replied, “Rodney Dangerfield.  From the shoulders down, like David Byrne.”

“Oh, you know I saw him once when he was filming True Stories.  He was sitting an old VW bus at a house in Lakewood.  And he was listening to music really loud. And my friend called me.  My friend went to Bishop Lynch. Anyway…”

It was just like Warren to launch into one of his repetitive, long, rambling accounts of his life in the middle of a crisis. He had an uncanny knack of taking seemingly unrelated events, and somehow, tying them together into something that was significant, only to him.  Meanwhile, Bob was restless.

Several minutes later, Warren wrapped it up, “…and, that is how I knew that I could pull off Judy Garland.”

Bob, like a homing pigeon sprinted toward the bar.  We ordered all of items on the bar menu, twice.  The food at the Mansion was small, but pretty.  Bob dribbled tortilla soup on his borrowed neck wear, but other than that, was docile.  Warren practically tackled member of the wait staff.  In a hushed conversation with Warren gesturing wildly, I knew what he was saying.  Coffee, we need lots of coffee.

Without a constant infusion of Jack Daniel’s, Bob was actually kind of pleasant.  We were fortunate in that the too-small clothing limited his range of motion.  I could see sobriety wash over him.  With his belly full, he leaned back in his bucket chair, and flipped his tie over his shoulder like an aviator’s scarf.

“I need a nap,” Bob announced.

It was after 5, and bar was filling with Dallas’ elite movers and shakers.  These well dressed men glanced at us as we passed.  We were a motley threesome.  Warren gathered the artwork, Bob, the pile of clothes, and headed down the long beautiful hallway toward the hotel. 

When I got home, I searched my Art Appreciation text book.  There it was: Robert Rauschenberg, born in Port Arthur, Texas, 1925.  Pop Artist.  Beat Artist.  Collage.  Bridged the gap between painting and sculpture.  Considered by many to be the greatest American artist of all time.

I kicked myself for not snatching one of those little pictures.  I often wonder what happened to them.  Did he give them to Mrs. Hunt?  Did she put them in her personal collection, or put them towards her philanthropic causes?  Or, did the hotel’s housekeeping staff confuse them for trash, and toss them?

Warren called a few days later.  All of the drama and trauma was gone.  Instead of “hello,” all he said was, “Wasn’t he the greatest?”

Yes, Warren, Bob is the greatest.

Robert Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008.