Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir (15 page)

Tonight the pickings were slim. I walked the hallway like a jailhouse warden on patrol for final bed check. A crypt keeper in booth number one. Several well-oiled porn stars in booths two and three (on the screens, that is). Darkness Invisible in booth number four, which is to say that the door was cracked open, but the transient resident was hiding in the shadows.
Never a good sign.
A tall, skinny man with extreme blond highlights gave me a one-eyed leer on his own patrol down the hall. He appeared to be drunker than I was. I ignored his gaze as I walked silently past him. An unspoken rule of etiquette in venues such as this is that no words be uttered, lest anyone break the mythological sexual tension looming in the stale air. The man in the last booth was a bit of an oasis. He was about my age and height. Dark brown hair. Slim. Good haircut. His five-o’clock shadow added to his sex appeal in a George Michael kind of way.

I gave him the look of love and loitered outside his booth. He seemed to return my gaze, so I approached. He raised his hand in halt and said, “I’m taking a break.”
Ouch
. When words are spoken, they are those, and they are the gentle way of saying “go pound sand.”

Not only did it hurt, but it infuriated me too.
Taking a break from what? All of the pageant winners strutting their stuff on this dingy runway? I’m just as good-looking as he is. I’m certainly better-looking than the other choices at hand! And wasn’t he giving me the eye?
Then I realized that he was eyeing the video screen above my head in the hall.
Oh, the humiliation of unrequited love.

I retraced my steps and checked out the booths again in the bored way you repeatedly check the refrigerator between commercial breaks hoping that food you want to eat that wasn’t there before will magically appear. After a couple of strolls, I went back to Darkness Invisible. I stood outside the cracked door, but couldn’t even see a pair of blinking spook-house eyes. The door creaked open to reveal more of the booth but no occupant.

“Psst. Psst.”

I looked for the source.

“Psst. Psst.”

I looked down. Darkness …
Visible
. There he was. A little person. A
very
little person. About four foot eight. A dwarf.
Aren’t there two kinds of dwarfs, proportionate and disproportionate?

He beckoned me into the booth with a hand wave and a nod.

I thought I had tasted the full range of male flavors, but this was a first. As I stood there contemplating, he gave me another nod.
What to do?
It’s an adventure, new frontier.
Oh, why not?

I entered his booth. The porno screen cast a grayish-blue light, but kept the room in enough shadow to hide the filthy floor. He stood in a corner by the door. He seemed to be all head and torso resting on baby legs, a putto come to life. He was cute in his red plaid shirt and khaki pants, his brown hair short and combed to the side. He looked young, but do dwarfs ever look their age?

As soon as I latched the door, he pulled down his britches. Out popped a staggering prize of manhood. It would have been an eye-popper on a six-foot-two man, but on a four-foot-eight man, it was truly a third leg.

Definitely a disproportionate dwarf.

He invited me to sample his supply. I accepted by squatting on my haunches. That merely brought us to eye level, crowding the corner. He scooted away from me to the corner diagonally opposite. Remaining on my haunches, I let my upper body fall to meet him, bisecting the booth. I grabbed on to his hips as I dipped my head, my profile nearly grazing the nasty floor. I went to town on his blue-ribbon-award winner, my body performing a painful modern dance that would have made a Martha Graham dancer ache.
Never have I worked so hard for so little and so much at the same time.

Mama Jean always intruded in times like these.
WWMJT?
The first time I had sex with a black man she was right there. As the man took me from behind and my head was bobbing up and down in a one-two motion, a miniature apparition of Mama Jean in her pink, full-length nightgown floated in front of me waving her index finger left and right: “Don’t play
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
with me!”
She didn’t warn me about dwarfs.

After I had gorged myself for a while, he tugged on my crotch. I panicked. Mine was nowhere near the size of his. In fact—oh, I’ll say it—his dwarfed mine by comparison.
Will he be disappointed? Will he laugh?
He kept tugging. Finally, I stood up and fed him with ease. After a while he broke the silence and suggested that we see if anyone wanted to join us. Maybe he was disappointed.

“Sure. Why not?” I said.

We turned and faced the door. Since he’d made the suggestion, I waited for him to take the lead and open the door. Nothing. Then I felt a tug on my trouser leg. I looked down. He was pointing up. I followed the arrow of his index finger to the door’s latch in front of my eyes.
Oh.

As I unlatched the door, a million little questions buzzed in my head.
How does he reach the buzzer on the street? How does he pay the gatekeeper at the cashier booth? Or does he slip below the gatekeeper’s radar and get in free? Is he ever mistaken for an actual customer for the fairy-tale videos?

We didn’t get any takers, nor was there anyone we wanted to take, so we went back to each other. I reached down to pick him up at the hips. Before lifting, I asked, “Do you mind?”

“No. Whatever gets the job done.”
You can’t argue with success.

So I lifted him like a proud daddy and made a human pacifier out of him. My flying putto was in heaven. I was in the clouds. When we finished, we left each other the way most such encounters ended: “Thanks, man.” “Yeah. See you around.”

What a fun little adventure,
I thought.
And I owe it all to alcohol.

FOURTEEN

Is That All There Is?

“Play it again! Play it again!” slurred Mr. Parker like a drunk at a bar begging for just one more drink. I did as I was told and pointed the remote control at the CD player and hit repeat. For the fourth time Peggy Lee’s whispery voice haunted the living room of West Eighty-second Street with “Is That All There Is?”

Mr. Parker, who had remained my best friend since the “Where’s my beret?!” college night, had just moved to New York from Los Angeles. He was staying with Michahaze and me for a couple of weeks until his boyfriend, Bunny, joined him to find their own place. We were having four
A.M.
nightcaps after another night of carousing.

Since he’d hit town, I was showing him every bar, bo
î
te, and ballroom I frequented, high to low. We had taken Peggy’s advice to break out the booze and have a ball. Every night. Michahaze had opted out of this night. “I’ve had enough,” he said with the implication
Haven’t you?
I hadn’t.
Perhaps he doesn’t like to drink as much as I.
Was it a school night? Probably, but at twenty-eight I had no problem making it to work after a late night. Or three.

In a louche, seen-it-all, resigned demeanor, Peggy sang verse after verse about a life of tragedy and letdowns, from the fire at her childhood home, to being bored by the spectacle of the circus, to the end of a first love, while being backed up by a tuba vamp. Each disappointment was met with the question “Is that all there is to a ___”—fill in the blank. A fire, a circus, love? Her answer? Keep dancing and boozing. Have a ball.

“My God, that song is brilliant!” Mr. Parker said with his head thrown back and his arms stretched out with his palms facing up, as if in religious supplication.

“Shhh!” I whispered. “Michahaze is asleep.” I pointed my head toward our bedroom. It was nearly four
A.M. .

Mr. Parker held an index finger to his mouth in a grand
shhh
gesture. “Right.
Right,
” he said, sotto voce and bug-eyed. “But I have to say that this song may be the greatest song
ever
. And Peggy may be the greatest singer in all of Christendom. God, I’m a Peggy Person.” He looked at me with besotted eyes and asked me rhetorically, “Jamie, are
you
a Peggy Person?”

“You better believe it!” I slurred back, mirroring his goggle-eyed glaze. “Peggy People are the luckiest people in the world.”

“That’s right,
baby
!”

I took a gulp of one of the bourbon on the rocks I had poured for us. I thought of myself as a little boy and that first moment of being instantly mesmerized by her ghostly figure wrapped in a massive cloud of white chiffon and singing that song on some variety show. My appreciation of Peggy’s oeuvre had since expanded beyond “Is That All There Is?” to her big-band swing days to her cool “Fever” jazz days and beyond. Her breathy voice was so sensual, a feline purr, as if she were your lover singing next to you in bed; her phrasing so nuanced and subtle that the meaning of the songs as interpreted by her were perceived in flashes, the way lightning can illuminate a dark room just long enough for you to see what you need to find. With her minimalist phrasing she could nail the essence of a song by her pauses, what she didn’t say. Like the best painters and sculptors, she knew that the deepest meanings often reside in the void of negative space.

In “Is That All There Is?” her father takes her to a circus, which she describes with a wink in her tone as “the Greatest Show on Earth.” Her voice rises at the end in a question, so that you can almost hear her ask, “Right?” But she doesn’t say it, it’s implied. Her assessment of the spectacle of clowns, and dancing bears, and pretty ladies in pink tights? “I had the feeling that something was missing. I don’t know what.”

“Most people think of this as the ultimate downer song.” Mr. Parker launched into his critical analysis. “I don’t. Conversely, I think it’s a celebration of the spectacle of life in all its joy and tragedy.”

“Well, she
does
say that she’s not ready for that ‘final disappointment.’”

“Oh! That ‘final disappointment.’ What a brilliant line. It’s a total
alkie
song.” He looked heavenward and opened his mouth like a choirboy as he sang, “She’s fan-
taaas
-tic!”

“And what will she be doing when that final disappointment comes?”

We answered in unison, “She’ll break out the booze and have a ball.”

We took gulps of drinks and marinated in the meaning of the song as we let Peggy finish it uninterrupted. In the final verse she says that as fatalistic as her outlook may appear, she’s not going to end it all, and when that “final disappointment” comes, she’ll face it, the way she has faced the rest of life. She rephrases the song’s question as a statement that she’ll keep dancing and drinking “if that’s all.” Pause. “There.” Pause “Is.” Followed by a final vamp and bump bump of the tuba.

We sat in silence and drank, staring ahead.

Then Mr. Parker spoke. “You know, I have her phone number.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean to say that I have her phone number. Right here in my wallet.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A friend of mine who knows I’m a
major
Peggy Person worked at one of the hospitals Miss Lee frequented. You
know
she was always in and out of hospitals.”

“Oh, I know. I read her autobiography. She described more ailments and near-death experiences than … than Elizabeth Taylor.”

Mr. Parker pulled out a folded-up, laminated piece of paper. He waved it at me. “I keep all the addresses of those near and dear to me so I can send letters and postcards from wherever I am. My friend slipped me Miss Lee’s phone number and address. You know it is one of Bunny’s and my dreams—dream number thirty-
two,
I believe—to open a bar called Is That All There Is? Anyway, I have her number.”

“Give me that!” I grabbed the paper from his hand and squinted at the tiny type of Miss Peggy Lee’s Bel Air address and phone number. Without thinking of the time, I picked up the cordless phone and dialed.

Ring. Ring. Ri—

“Hello,” answered a young-sounding woman.

“Hi. May I speak to Peggy?”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Jamie.”

“Okay. Hold on.”

I covered the mouthpiece and looked at a slack-jawed Mr. Parker and stage-whispered, “I’m on hold. For Peggy.
Lee
.”

He shot back with “This is
wild
!”

Hold. Hold. Hold.

And then “Hello?” was purred across the line in an unmistakable whisper of a voice. “This is Peggy.”

Bravado trumped the surreal moment and I pushed forward. “Hi, Peggy. This is Jamie.”

“Jamie?” Breath and pause. “Anderson?”

“No. It’s Jamie Brickhouse. I’m a
huge
fan of yours. I met you backstage at one of your New York concerts,” I lied.

“Oh. What are you doing?” Her voice was so sexy, the question could have been
What are you wearing?

“I’m sitting here with my best friend and we’ve been listening to ‘Is That All There Is?’ I’m in New York. I missed you at Carnegie Hall last year, and I’m still sick about it. Do you have any upcoming New York dates?”

“No. Since the fall I can’t even get out of bed.” Her words seemed to sink into what I imagined was a cumulus, king-size cloud of a bed where she was nestled in a quilted, white satin bed jacket, a Princess phone cradled between shoulder and ear. She let her words lie there for a beat. Then with a twinkle in her voice she said, “But I’ve still got the voice.” I could almost feel her breath in my ear.

I inhaled before speaking. “Yes, Peggy, there’s no mistaking that voice.” I mouthed,
Wow,
to Mr. Parker. “Peggy, it’s so good talking to you. I have to tell you, I think ‘Is That All There Is?’ is just about the greatest song
ever
. My friend Mr. Parker and I are a little drunk. We’ve been listening to it tonight. Over and over. I can’t tell you how many drunken nights you’ve gotten me through with that song.”