Cover Art
- Alfred Dietrick Kleyhauer III
Photo -
What Nots Live - Marcia
Ward
ADK
As always for Marcia
In
Alfred Dietrick Kleyhauer III’s first book, BLACK – a collection of poems and ink
drawings he created as teenager and published by Alan Swallow of Swallow Press
who also published the likes of Henry Miller and Anais Nin, Alfred says of
himself: “i was born on a little green hill 1 mile up in the sky. i didn’t talk
until I was 3. i said: ‘there’s a damned fly in my window.’ My father has
always thought me a bit mad; my mother has always thought me a bit queer.
Amazing how revealing genealogy is.” Alfred was, in fact, outrageously queer as
well as immeasurably brilliant as the scales used to measure IQ tend towards
inaccuracy when approaching the 200 mark.
Alfred spent most of his adult
life living in downtown Denver above his father’s optometry shop on Tremont
just north of 14th. The last time I looked, the unoccupied building
still sports the name Kleyhauer across the door, and it remains one of the few
two story buildings in downtown Denver. In keeping with the title of his first
book, Alfred painted the walls, floor and ceiling of his apartment black where
he eventually spent much of his final years in mourning as his companion,
Michael Trego, had died of AIDS. Ironically, a decade before his death, Alfred
and Michael had created poster size comic book-like collaged drawings that tell
the tale of Trumble and Ding, alter egos of Alfred and Michael. My favorite of
the group has a prophetic, Tiresias-esque feel: Trumble and Ding are
conventioneers riding a trolley towards a convention center that radiates
welcoming and wonderful times. Trumble and Ding are blissful with anticipation.
Across the destination light box of the trolley, one word: ETERNITY. Sadly,
Alfred died in 1994 while crossing California at 15th, a block from
Denver’s, at the time, new Convention Center, the first accident fatality of
Denver’s recently launched electric trolley, Light Rail. The Denver papers
noted in their stories of the tragedy that Alfred was drunk at the time; well,
Alfred was drunk for forty years – Everclear, 200 proof, was his preferred
wake-up call. I believe what happened is that he simply was impatient to cross
California Street as he lived nearby on Glenarm. He’d crossed that street a
thousand times and most likely didn’t take into account presence of the new
high-speed line. I gather from certain witness accounts that he simply wiggled
through the crowd that was waiting for the train and sadly stepped in front of it.
Had the Light Rail trains been equipped with cowcatchers he most likely would
have been scooted sideways instead of under the train. Poetically, perhaps
fittingly, on the west side of the street from where Alfred died, there is a
Colorado Historical Plaque inscribed with words from Jack Kerouac’s 1955
classic On The Road: “I walked around the sad honkytonks of Curtis Street: young kids in
jeans and red shirts; peanut shells, movie marquees, shooting parlors. Beyond
the glittering was darkness, and beyond the darkness was the West. I had to
go.” Alfred was, to my way of thinking, Denver’s glittering darkness.
During his life Alfred embarked on
many artistic adventures. He held Sunday potluck art salons. An early evening
there was theater in progress. One of Alfred’s assets was his ability to have
an answer for any query. Alfred possessed a certain wisdom capable of grasping
the simultaneity of time, that is, the timelessness that it generally takes
mathematical physics to describe as well as having an alchemist’s passion that
absorbed the truth of everyone he knew. Whenever I was burdened by an
unsolvable problem it was Alfred who I turned to. Here’s an example of what I
mean.
I served as the editor of the
Denver literary art magazine POINT in the early 90s. Five or six of used to sit around the
offices of the Alternative Arts Alliance drinking beer and figuring out the
magazine’s content. One time it was suggested that we publish on the inside
cover a drawing by a local artist that I simply found unsavory, to say the
least. It depicted an airbrushed image of a mustachioed visage that looked a
lot like Adolph Hitler floating above an airbrushed piece of meat, a New York
steak. I nixed the piece for use because I was not about to include any
reference to Hitler. The other magazine makers called me a censor. I maintained
that I was an editor not a censor. We were at an impasse so I called that
artist and asked for an explanation of his submission. He told me it was a
private joke between him and his girlfriend: “I call her a piece of meat and
she calls me Adolph Hitler,” which I interrupted as proof that not only was the
piece not funny it reeked of misogamy and ill humor. I was so upset at being
labeled a censor by my peers that I called Alfred for advice and solace. His
humorous and compassionate “Hell, Ed, it’s nonsense no matter how you look at
that artwork because Hitler was a vegetarian” gave me perspective, and I stuck
to my guns pointing to the utter inanity of the artwork and used a beautiful
photograph of Marcia’s instead for what turned out to be the final issue of POINT magazine, the final issue because
I resigned and no one was willing or capable of doing what I had done to make
POINT real.
Mid-life, Alfred started a typing
service for term papers as he could type a hundred words a minute without
error, both blindfolded and intoxicated. When students - freshmen and doctorate
candidates alike - brought him papers to type he would tell them, “I hope you
don’t mind, but it would be easier and quicker for me to just rewrite your
paper from scratch than deal with the thematic and grammatical errors contained
therein. And, of course, I guarantee an A.” One of the youngest Denverites ever to be
admitted to MENSA, Alfred earned a dozen PhD’s anonymously via his underground
“typing.” He told me that he once got seven “A’s” all in the same graduate
class, ghost writing for seven of the eight students enrolled. He had to have a
different writer’s voice for each all while writing about the same theme. He
also wrote out a check to me for one million dollars because he simply loved my
family; even more precious, he gave me a first take Walt Disney drawing of
Goofy, that one of Alfred’s wealthy lovers had given him.
In a review of Black for the
Colorado Historical Society, I wrote:
BLACK is the quintessential Alfred, possessing as only an eager
and tireless speed-reader can, the librarian mind of a ancient lizard whose
jewel eyes have knowledge of centuries, civilizations, and art movements
unfolding. He writes the dialogue
of warriors and composers and sheathes the sword of love. Maybe one day, the
Bonnie Bray Library will change its name or name a nook to include a reference
to Alfred, as no one used the books in that branch library as did Alfred.