Boyhood With Gurdjieff; Gurdjieff Remembered; Balanced Man
Fritz Peters, with a preface by Henry Miller
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Excerpt from Gurdjieff Remembered

After seeing mr. gurdjieff in Chicago in 1932, there was an interval of about two years during which I did not see him again. I had moved to New York in the fall of 1933, and one Saturday afternoon when I came home from work my landlord told me that a very strange man, with a heavy, foreign accent had come to see me and wanted me to get in touch with him. The landlord, however, had not been able to understand him, did not know his name, and only knew that whoever he was, he was living at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York. I thought of Gurdjieff at once, although it was difficult for me to believe that he had gone to the trouble of finding my address and then coming to search for me in person. I went to the hotel immediately and, as I had expected, found him there.
When I got to his apartment in the hotel, he told me that he had tried to find me earlier in the day, but that now it was too late and that he had no further need of—or use for—me. There was no affection in his greet­ing and he merely looked bored and very tired. In spite of this, and because I was glad to see him and worried about his great weariness, I did not leave but reminded him that he had once told me that “it was never too late to make reparations in life”, and that while I was sorry not to have been home earlier, there was surely something I could do now that I had arrived.
He looked at me with a tired smile and said that perhaps there was something I could do. He led me into the kitchen, indicated an enormous pile of dirty dishes and said they needed to be washed; he then pointed to another equally enormous pile of vege­tables and said they needed to be prepared for a dinner he was going to give that evening. After showing these to me, he asked me if I had the time to help him. When I had assured him that I did, he told me to wash the dishes first and then prepare the vegetables. Before leaving the kitchen, to rest, he said that he hoped he would be able to count on me to finish both jobs—otherwise he would not be able to rest properly. I told him not to worry and went to work on the dishes. He watched me for a few minutes and then said that several people had promised to help him that day but that there were no members of the New York group who were able to keep their promises. I told him that he had better rest while he had the opportunity and not waste his time talking to me, and he laughed and left the kitchen.
I was finished with my work when he returned and he was very pleased. He then began to cook the even­ing meal and told me to set the table for fifteen people, adding that some very important people—important for his work—were coming to dinner and that when the food was in the oven he would need me to help him by giving him an English lesson as it was essential that he talk to these people in a certain way—in a language that they would understand correctly.
When we had finished our work, he sat down at the table, told me to sit next to him and then began asking me questions about the English language. It turned out that he wanted to learn, before the guests arrived, all the words for the various parts and functions of the body “that were not in the dictionary”. We spent perhaps two hours repeating every four-letter word that I knew, plus every obscene phrase I could think of. By about seven o’ clock he felt that he was reasonably proficient with our “slang” vocabulary which he, apparently, needed for his dinner. Inevitably, I began to wonder what sort of people would be coming to dinner. At the conclusion of this “lesson” he told me that it was for that lesson that he had been trying to find me, because I was the first person who, some years before in Chicago, had given him the real flavor and meaning of the words “phony” and “leery”; it seems that these words, in the interim, had become very useful in his conversations with his American students. “These very good words,” he said, “raw?... like your America.”
When the guests did arrive, they turned out to be a group of well-dressed, well-mannered New Yorkers, and, since Gurdjieff had gone to “prepare” himself for dinner, I greeted them and, according to his pre­cise instructions, served them drinks.
He did not appear until most of them had been there for about half an hour, and when he greeted them, he was very apologetic for the delay and ex­tremely effusive about how beautiful the ladies looked and how much they were all honouring him by con­senting to be the guests of a poor, humble man like himself. I was actually embarrassed by what seemed to me a very crude form of flattery and by his presen­tation of himself as an unworthy and very obsequious host. But, to my surprise, it seemed to work. By the time they were seated at the dinner table, all the guests were in a very mellow mood (they had had only one drink so it was not due to liquor) and they began, in a somewhat jocular and superior way, to ask him questions about his work and his reasons for coming to America. The general tone of the questions was bored—many of the people present were reporters or jour­nalists—and they behaved as if they were carrying out an assignment to interview some crank. I could already see them making mental notes and could imagine the sort of “funny” interview or feature story they might write. After some questioning by this group, I noticed that Gurdjieff’s voice changed in tone, and as I watched him he gave me a sudden, sly wink.
He then proceeded to tell them that since they were all very superior people that they of course knew—since a simple person like himself knew it, then obviously they did—that humanity in general was in a very sad state and could only be considered as having degenerated into real waste matter, or to use a term that was familiar to all of them, pure “shit”. That this transformation of humankind into something worthless was especially apparent in America—which was why he had come there to observe it. He went on to say that the main cause of this sad state of affairs was that people—especially Americans—were never motivated by intelligence or good feelings, but only by the needs—usually dirty—of their genital organs, using, of course (as he talked) only the four-letter words which he had practised with me earlier. He indicated one very well-dressed, handsome woman, complimented her on her coiffure, her dress, her perfume, etc., and then said that while she, of course, might not want everyone to know her motives or her desires, he and she could be honest with each other—that her reasons for turning herself out so elaborately were because she had a strong sexual urge (as he put it “wish to fuck”) for some particular person and was so tormented by it that she was using every means and every wile she could think of in order to get that person into a bed with her. He said that her urge was parti­cularly, especially strong because she had a very fertile imagination and could already picture herself performing various sexual acts with this man—”such as, how you say in English? ‘Sixty-nine’?”—so that, aided by her imagination, she was now at the point where she would do anything to achieve her aim. While the company was somewhat startled with this disser­tation (not to say “titillated”), before anyone had time to react, he began a description of his own sexual abilities and of his highly imaginative mind, and described himself as capable of sustained sexual acts of incredible variety—such as even the lady in question would not be able to imagine.
He then launched into a detailed description of the sexual habits of various races and nations, during the course of which he pointed out that while the French had a world-wide reputation for amorous prowess, it would be well for the people present to make a note of the fact that those highly civilized French used such words as “Mama” and “Mimi” to describe some of their unnatural and perverted sexual practices. He added, however, that in all justice to the French they were, in reality, very moral people and sexually mis­understood and misrepresented.
The guests had all been drinking heavily during dinner—good old Armagnac as always—and after about two hours of unadulterated four-letter word conversation, their behaviour became completely un­inhibited. Whether they had all come to believe and accept that they had been invited to an orgy, or for whatever reasons, an orgy—or the beginning of one—was the result. Gurdjieff egged them on by giving them elaborate descriptions of the male and female organs, and of some imaginative uses for them, and finally most of the guests were physically entangled in groups in various rooms of the apartment, and in various states of undress. The handsome lady had manoeuvred herself into a small bar with Gurdjieff and was busily making “passes” of a rather inventive nature, at him.
As for me, I was cornered in the kitchen by an overblown, attractive lady who told me that she was outraged that Gurdjieff should use such words in my presence—I did not look more than about seventeen. I explained, quite honestly, that I had taught them all to him—or at least most of them, and she found this suddenly hilarious and promptly made a pass at me. I backed away and told her that, unfortunately, I had to do the dishes. Rebuffed, she glared at me, called me various dirty names and said that the only reason I had turned her down was because I was “that dirty old man’s little faggot”, and only wanted him to “screw” me. I was somewhat startled at this, but remembered Gurdjieff’s reputation for sexual depravity and made no response.
While the other guests were still hard at it, Gurd­jieff suddenly disentangled himself from the lady and told them all, in loud, stentorian tones, that they had already confirmed his observations of the decadence of the Americans and that they need no longer demon­strate for him. He pointed at various individuals, mocked their behaviour and then told them that if they were, thanks to him, now partly conscious of what sort of people they really were, it was an important lesson for them. He said that he deserved to be paid for this lesson and that he would gladly accept cheques and cash from them as they left the apart­ment. I was not particularly surprised, knowing him and having watched the performance of the evening, to find that he had collected several thousand dollars. I was even less surprised when one man told me—as it were, “man to man”—that Gurdjieff, posing as a philosopher, had the best ideas about sex, and the safest “cover” for his orgies, of anyone he had ever known.
When everyone had left, I finished washing the dishes, and to my surprise Gurdjieff came into the kitchen to dry them and put them away. He asked me how I had enjoyed the evening and I said, youthfully and righteously, that I was disgusted. I also told him about my encounter with the lady in the kitchen and her description of my relationship with him. He shrugged his shoulders and said that in such cases the facts were what constituted the truth and that I should never consider or worry about opinions. Then he laughed and gave me a piercing look. “Is fine feeling you have—this disgust, ” he said. “But now is necessary ask yourself one question. With who you disgusted?”
When I was ready to leave the apartment, he stopped me and referred again to my experience with the lady. “Such lady have in self many homosexual tendencies, one reason she pick on you—young-look­ing boy, seem almost like girl to her. Not worry about this thing she say to you. Gossip about sex only give reputation for sexiness in your country, so not important, maybe even feather in hat, as you say. Some day you will learn much more about sex, but this you can learn by self, not from me.”

Published January 2005 by Bardic Press. Hardcover, 372 pages, ISBN 0-9745667-6-4, £29.95, €42.

Please note that this edition is not available for sale in the USA. It is printed, published and sold in the United Kingdom.

Read an excerpt from Boyhood With Gurdjieff
Read an excerpt from Gurdjieff Remembered
Read an excerpt from Balanced Man