Manhattan

1978

While eating dinner at La Goulue with Daniel (our second date), he invited me to Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic for one week.

He said that I could ride horses—or polo ponies—there, while he played golf. We’ll travel by private plane. One of his clients, who lives at One Beekman Place, among several other places, is an industrialist who owns his own jet, which lives at Teterboro airport. Several New York couples are going.

Daniel sent me home in a limousine, after slipping an envelope containing one thousand dollars to me under the table.

“Buy some new clothes for our vacation,” he said.

Both of us are taking a big risk. We’ve never spent a night together. He asked if I would “switch.”

I answered with an emphatic, No.

Hope I’m not en route to some cocaine-crazed orgy. Definitely not my style. Have to take risks though. Don’t want to be too stodgy, which perfectly described me in high school and during freshman and sophomore year at college. I was always the quintessential Goody Two-Shoes: Little Miss Priss.

Manhattan

1981

Another day for hibernating. The past weeks there have been too many dates with new men, too few hours of sleep, too much Pomerol and Metaxa, too much strenuous sex. I’m getting too old for living this way while working full-time/overtime at the medical magazine.

My body is flashing red lights; my last period was 44 days ago. No, not pregnant.

[Amenorrhea hasn’t plagued me since I was a tormented adolescent. The relentless stress inflicted by my mother caused my period to stop for several years.]

Self-preservation must overrule the pleasure principle.

Must learn to be more patient and tolerant. Must be able to forgive others more easily. Must not take myself so seriously. Must not be so hypersensitive.

I am seriously defective; my hypersensitivity will overwhelm me and alienate me from learning experiences.

As T. H. White wrote in The Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin … “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

As Anna Dostoevsky, wife of “Fedya,” wrote in her diary:

“From a timid, shy girl I had become a woman of resolute character, who could no longer be frightened by the struggle with troubles.”

1972

Manhattan

In retrospect, I very much regret returning one of my mother’s very rare letters to my father. Nancy had informed me that she was filing for divorce.

I asked him to return it. He didn’t.

It was a Xerox copy of a letter that she had written to her father about why she was getting a divorce. (She never got one.)

She said, among other unusual and hateful things, that she spent her wedding night with my father and his blond boyfriend, Joe, an Episcopal priest, who had been a longtime lover, and, according to Nancy, the love of his life.

Joe married them! She wrote about the times she got Robert out of jail or the psychiatric hospital.

His offense: picking up men for sex.

Memphians in the 1950s were not tolerant of homosexuality. The only thing worse than being black was being gay.

My egregious mistake was sending the letter to Robert. It was an awful thing for me to do. I had enclosed it with an epistle from me explaining, lovingly, I thought, that I loved him very much anyway and that homosexuality was neither a crime nor a sin. Men were just born that way. I loved him as much as ever.

I got the usual response from my unreachable father:

NO RESPONSE AT ALL.

1975

Look Back in Anger

Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer resonates within me. I am Binx Bolling crossed with François Truffaut’s quixotic dreams and amorous restlessness.

Throughout my adult life, I’ve tried to understand what experiences and influences Nancy endured to warp her into the woman she became.

One incident is heartbreaking: Shortly after my birth in Tennessee, she took me to visit my grandparents in Pennsylvania.

While we were gone, my father had wild homosexual orgies in our Memphis house.

When she returned, there were broken whiskey bottles and cracked eggshells everywhere; the eggs had been thrown at the walls.

The silverware from her great-grandparents had been stolen.

Years later, Robert painted a geometric Matisse-like watercolor that included several dramatic elements of that night—broken whiskey bottle, cracked egg, his childhood home in Arkansas, hers in Pennsylvania, criss-crossed like angry swords…broom (her not-in-this-lifetime career ), paintbrush (his fantasy career), leafless tree with gnarled, exposed unattached roots (his marital life).

The gestalt is eerie and disturbing.

My parents were a lifelong mystery to me. Whenever I was alone in the house, I would go through their chests of drawers in hopes of finding clues to their behavior, which seemed so alien compared with the love and warmth I witnessed among my friends’ parents.

In my father’s bureau, I found pills for treating venereal disease. In his bookcase, he kept several novels by Gore Vidal and a copy of Great Cases in Psychoanalysis, which I found fascinating because of the kinky sexual case histories.

I believe that my father was trying to understand himself, and he selected Nancy as his wife because he tragically believed that he must be punished for his perceived sexual deviations. Our WASP culture, at that time, harshly frowned on the psychiatric profession. Our culture said: Fix yourself. Self-reliance above all.

1977

Manhattan

During a lunch break from DR. Magazine, I went to Viand Coffee Shop on Madison and 61st.

While I was eating my roasted turkey sandwich at the counter, Thomas began talking to me. He was meeting some businessmen at the Regency Hotel later that afternoon.

Thomas, a Jew born in Hungary, now a resident of London, England , is an international financier based in Hamilton, Bermuda—for tax reasons—immediately invited me to travel with him for two weeks on his yacht in the Bahamas.

I gambled and took the risk, after he wined and dined me at the Regency that night…and we conversed for two hours.

 few days later…

Will fly first class to Ft. Lauderdale where Thomas will meet me at the airport, then drive us to the yacht club.

He told me that he’s worth more than seventy million [dollars]. The Rolls Royce stays at the estate in Buckinghamshire—with his wife most of the time.

The art collection lives in his Fifth Avenue apartment.

If Edward Heath had won the election instead of Margaret Thatcher, Thomas would have been made a “Lord.”

I am sooo tired, but determined to be the best company! Haven’t spent seven days with the same man since Richard took me to Gurney’s Inn in Montauk and Daniel took me to Santo Domingo.

Oh! And there was the very relaxing trip to St. Thomas, Tobago, and Montserrat with Noah. Occasionally, we swigged Chivas for breakfast.

It is fascinating [and pathetic] what men will do/spend for great sex, isn’t it?

And I learned it all from my ex-husband’s insults and the compliments of a few good men.

[Ladies, practice your Kegel exercises and butterfly tongue with blowjob routine.]

Returned to New York yesterday with Thomas. Feel like I’m still on his Bertram yacht named Baby Max, christened after his son was born.

My equilibrium is off balance. Didn’t get seasick. Enjoyed the trip and could easily become addicted to that standard of living.

Didn’t really realize how wealthy Thomas was until lunch at Turnberry Isle with some other businessmen. Thomas is written up in The London Times as “the aging whiz kid.”

He’s a multimillionaire who pays low taxes, hunts for big game in Botswana, maintains homes in London; Buckinghamshire (country estate); Hamilton (Bermuda)—for tax reasons—and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

And he’s completely infatuated with me.

He sent his wife on a tour of China with his cousin while we “bummed around” Chubb Cay, Joulter’s Cay, Paradise Island, Nassau, Cat Island, and Bimini (where we visited a Hemingway drinking hangout).

The winds were very strong the first day out, so Thomas sent the crew and boat ahead to Chubb Cay. He didn’t want to risk my getting seasick, so he chartered a Piper Cub from Red Aircraft in Ft. Lauderdale and we flew to Chubb. We didn’t sleep on the boat, even though it had three comfortable bedrooms, but spent nights in the simple rooms of private yacht clubs on our stopovers.

Last month, Thomas caught an enormous marlin near Chubb. This week, he caught an iridescent dolphin fish and an eight-foot sailfish.

The sports fishing techniques are interesting to watch, but the sight of bludgeoning the fish to death while blood sprays like waves against the bow was disgusting.

Learned about the designs of Haltars, Strykers, Hatterases, and Bertrams, and the dangers of the Gulf Stream, as well as pirates looking for cash and/or drugs.

Three loaded rifles were kept under the banquettes at all times.

At Chubb, a yacht named Sharon with a helicopter on top was docked nearby. [the little boy/big boy mantra: Mine’s bigger than yours.]

We all joked that the helicopter was really pretentious. The owner’s (Victor Posner) private jet was stabled nearby at the tiny airport. The rich sure are different.

Thomas studied mathematics at London University, then started a business manufacturing plastic toys. He has one son who lives in Texas with his American wife.

He was very kind and protective of me. I didn’t expect him to be so attentive. He’s extraordinarily interesting—so knowledgeable on diverse subjects.

“You have a unique intelligence,” he observed, “but what will become of you?”

{The British writer, Jean Rhys, would have understood and could have answered that question for him.}

Because of his various worldwide businesses, he spends most of his time on the telephone.

Told me I was the calmest, most serene woman that he’d ever met (“like a doll”). (three cheers for Nancy’s training/punishment/indoctrination/abuse)

That I was so relaxing to be with—quiet and without jitters. He said that most women are suffocating and always idly chattering. [Note to man-hunters out there: Back off and shut up. Intermittent charm is good; endless babble is bad.]

His wife, according to him, is very high strung. She has a right to be; she and her mother were prisoners in Auschwitz and were spared because they were tall and strong—able-bodied workers.

He appreciated my reading, without any complaining, while he telephoned London, New York, Bermuda, Zurich, Jerusalem, and Dusseldorf.

It helps that he speaks five languages.

“You’re so well behaved,” he commented. [Southern repression/manners come through for me again!]

During his recent one-month skiing vacation in St. Moritz, his telephone charges exceeded his room bill!

He’ll return from London in two weeks and wants to see me again. We’ll go to the Carlyle Hotel for the Bobby Short cabaret.

Two months from now, I’ll spend two weeks with him in his Bermuda home. His wife is in London entertaining relatives.

“Life never becomes a habit to me. It is always a

marvel.”—Katherine Mansfield

The only advice my father ever gave me: ”Don’t settle for an ordinary life.”

I was always the most obedient daughter.

(all material has been copyrighted/Library of Congress)

[Music: Twentieth Century Fox ––The Doors]

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania.

—Dorothy Parker

[music/Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess]

April 22, 1983

Earth Day and Day of My Last Drink

 High Falls, New Jersey

The psychiatric male nurse rifled through my small canvas bag. With a black magic marker, he wrote “Smith” on the crotch of every pair of my white lace panties. Trembling, I stood silently beside him. Would I spend the rest of my life in this godforsaken hellhole in the wilderness of New Jersey? Would a bored psychiatrist give me a shot, so that I would become just another inmate doing the Thorazine shuffle?

Another Frances Farmer?

I have never been so scared in my whole life.

I got married six months ago.

Would my husband divorce me? Would I become a homeless woman sitting beside overflowing garbage bags on the streets of New York?

I felt like an astronaut floating in space whose umbilical cord to the spaceship that would return him to Earth had just been severed.

I was instructed to wait in another room.

“Does your husband beat you?” the kind nurse asked. “No, never,” I answered with quivering lips.

“How did you get all those bruises?” she asked.

“I bumped into the furniture and fell off my bicycle.” It was true.

I was riding an old Schwinn from the Pellisades health club to my apartment building in heavy traffic after dark.

(Every alcoholic goes to a health club daily, right? I did; it was my futile attempt to exert some control over my behavior, which I hated, but could not stop.)

When I got married, I left my one shabby room in Manhattan for New Jersey. I hated New Jersey almost as much as I hated my alcoholism. Parts of New Jersey are really beautiful; I just didn’t live in any of them. Living in this congested town by the George Washington Bridge represented unequivocal failure to me. It had all the disadvantages of an overcrowded city, as well as a boring suburb with insufficient parking places. I left Frenchtown (a suburb of Memphis), Tennessee, so that I could end up in Port Lincoln, New Jersey?

Why was I traveling by bicycle? I hadn’t driven a car since I was 17 after having an almost fatal encounter with a tractor-trailer on a major east-west thoroughfare in

Memphis.

When I went to Thorncliff College and lived in a dorm for four years in Westchester County, I didn’t need a car because I could take the train that runs alongside the scenic Hudson River to Grand Central Station.

Don’t know if she believed me or not, but the nurse sent me to a large room, essentially a holding pen, filled with men and women of all ages and sizes. Each patient would be evaluated eventually and treatment—drugs and/or therapy—would begin. Being a well-bred Southerner, I attempted to make polite conversation with a muscular man, Douglas, a paranoid schizophrenic, who had just been shipped over from a psycho ward in Connecticut.

He started talking about Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy… what a cool bus ride they had together.

Five minutes later, I was lying on the cold linoleum floor spitting out large chips of teeth and lots of blood. Several of the male patients came to my rescue; they pulled Douglas off of me and held him until a doctor appeared.

He drugged Douglas and escorted him into a room with a solid,

gray metal door.

After his door was bolted, his bloodcurdling, scathing denunciations of me penetrated every room of that hospital.

Someone gave me an ice bag to hold on my throbbing cheek. Much of the attack is now just a blurry nightmare in my head. I was assigned to a bedroom only three doors away from his.

My skinny roommate, Melanie, sat on her bed with her knees

clasped to her chin.

She looked like a praying mantis cut in two.

“Why are you here?” the frail, depressed girl asked.

“I can’t stop drinking.”

“I slashed my wrists. See?” Melanie questioned.

I wasn’t really expecting a coherent conversation. Melanie exhibited her bony, scarred arms. I was really trying to be calm and sympathetic, but I just wanted to escape.

“I’ve been attacked. I want to leave this place now,” I told the nurse on duty who came in to check on us.

“You’re safe now. Don’t worry. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Please let me use your phone.” She pointed to a public telephone down the hall.

I made a collect call to my husband, Joseph.

“I hate you. I really hate you. An insane man just tried to kill me. Come and get me. Now. This place is filled with certified lunatics, and that’s no exaggeration.”

Joseph replied in a stern voice, “I’ll come tomorrow morning.”

During the night, he arranged to have me transferred to another hospital, Fair Hope, in Sumac, New Jersey.

(What a strange coincidence; I remembered that my parents were married in Fair Hope, Alabama—I would have named their marriage rendezvous location: No Hope. Ever. Ever. Ever.)

The following morning, the Walter-Mitty type staff psychiatrist tried to convince my husband and me, as we sat in his dark-brown dreary office with worn-out leather furniture, that I should stay put.

“Out of the question,” said my 53-year-old husband in his most authoritative executive voice.

He immediately drove me to Fair Hope Hospital where I lived for one month.

A member of the cleaning staff stole my navy leather handbag—

with the exquisite brass hardware and clasp—from my closet,

but other than that, the experience of living with a group of men

and women, who had endured far more than their share of life’s

cruelties, injustices, and tragedies, was almost an epiphany; I

began to believe that a different life was possible.

During the day we had group therapy with counselors who all were recovering alcoholics and/or drug addicts. I was an oddity because I had never used drugs. Not once. Most patients in their 30s had at least experimented with every powder, pill, or injection available.

As Boris Pasternak wrote, “I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless, and it isn’t of much value. Life has not revealed its beauty to them.”

He was right, of course. I wish that we had met; Dr. Zhivago is one of my all-time favorites.

I think it should be required reading in every school curriculum. (And a book on Greek mythology; it teaches just about everything you need to understand the perversity of human nature.)

And I’m very fond of late bloomers; he was sixty-eight when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

We ate our tasteless meals in a bland cafeteria. Only decaf

coffee was available from a large metal container, so I was

really sleepy for the entire 30 days.

Most of the patients were men, so my roommate, a pretty, blue-

eyed blonde, around my age, and I got lots of attention. We also

were among the youngest inmates.

We were the lucky ones, who had been forced into rehab before the devastating effects of alcoholism took their toll: debilitating neuropathy, memory loss, grizzled complexions.

One patient had to have his arm amputated; he was drunk and

waved his arm out the  car window…a truck roared by, too

close.

 [Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite 2, Op. 55]

Every night we went to an A.A. meeting. I met a woman, who had watched her brother hacked to death with an ax by a stranger in her backyard; a man who was just released from jail for grand larceny and who ran a prostitution ring from his Irish bar on First Avenue (He begged me to work for him as a call girl after we were discharged from Fair Hope); a good-looking, sanguine, irreverent man in his late thirties who had spent years traveling on luxury cruise ships pretending that he was a Catholic priest and befriending and bedding older women if they bought him enough champagne; another woman stood outside with her mother and sister as her father burned to death trapped in their suburban house; a shy, thirty-two-year-old female, who was the unwanted only child of an abusive alcoholic bipolar mother and charming, artistic homosexual father, who found neither the time nor the energy nor psychological fortitude to protect his daughter from his wife’s violent rages and relentless cruelties.

That one was me.

[Tchaikovsky/Concert for Violin in D, op. 35/Joshua Bell/violin]

1967

Christmas Day

My father and I went to the local Holiday Inn in Memphis for dinner. My mother drank too much the night before and was unable to dress and leave the house. She stayed in bed while we set forth for roasted turkey and pumpkin pie, my favorite meal.

In the buffet line, we ran into one of my father’s friends/clients: Anastasia. She looked much more like an East Village resident of Manhattan than the inhabitant of an architecturally conservative apartment building in a good neighborhood of Memphis. She was more Harvey Fierstein than Anita Bryant. Anastasia was flamboyant with her heavy makeup, colorful clothes, and Lucite handbag, which completely exposed the contents.

If I had looked closely, I might have seen the Trojan condoms.

Anastasia was a wealthy divorcée who got her kicks by pimping for the secret society of artistic, homosexual men in the city.

She threw raucous parties where handsome, youthful males and older patrician men were introduced. Women were invited also, but they tended to be in their 50s and 60s and were oblivious to Anastasia’s romantic machinations.

My fantasy of my future when I was 12 years old was to become a nun or a soldier after graduating from West Point (even though, of course, women at that time were not admitted to the academy).

Years later, when I read about Julian Sorel in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, I was amazed and comforted that his life choices had been the same: church or army.

What was the appeal?

An uncanny ability to follow orders, to repress all emotion, to obsessively monitor the behavior of others, and to sustain an unquenchable longing for a position in society—at least, in a particular kind of culture—worthy of respect and admiration.

HORIZON

The jagged edge of lightning pricks the sky. The

Clouds explode with vociferous clapping as

Rain heaves on the torrid pavement.

Thunder groans as the

Roofs sigh from the sudden weight of the

Uneasy sky. The sluggish drains regurgitate.

Dragged indoors are the weary workers, incapable this

Evening of a summer stroll. The parking lots

Belch from overfeeding. Black tires

Plow asphalt fields. No dust settles.

There is none.

The sky gargles with electricity.

Horizon ran away.