A RECENT EMAIL EXCHANGE
From: Krissy@….com
To: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Subject: is that really you???
Wow, look at you! Got your own web page. Is that old man really you? Picked up some dents since ’75, but still got that crinkly squint, laughing at the world. Glad you’re alive.
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
To: Krissy@….com
re: is that really you???
Thanks. Me too. Today anyway. Laughing now, but in ’75 that “crinkly squint” was probably a hangover.
From: Krissy@….com
Not liking yourself so much back in the day, huh? Well, join the club. I get a hot flush every time I think of some of my escapades…
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Which were?
From: Krissy@….com
Vanity, Vanity, huh? Thinking you’d remember me from a name after all these years. Krissie, the skinny blonde with overbite (since corrected.) I used to come into Spring Street bar with my cousin, Charlene. We’d hang out and watch the show. Charlene was a big girl, loud laugh, really big drinker, never got drunk. “Here’s the lady with the hollow leg,” you would say. Charlene was really mortified the first time, but then she realized this was Soho, nobody judged. Anyway it kind of made her a celebrity, although she probably drank more because of it.
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Still drawing a blank.
From: Krissy@….com
There was a redheaded cop named Phil. You bet him fifty bucks one night that Charlene could drink more beer than he could. She matched him fourteen big liter cans of Foster’s lager. He wobbled out banging into the walls, and you declared her the winner. But then he came back and wanted to keep going. “I just went out to take a piss,” he said. And you said “house rules: you can’t leave the field and get back into the game.” He waved his gun and said he was going to kill us all. And he pointed it right at you behind the bar. And you said: “That won’t get you out of the bet, Phil. You’ll still have to pay my heirs.” He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, then slammed some money on the bar and stumbled out. And you said you knew he wasn’t going to shoot you because you were supposed to leave one chamber empty in a revolver. And anyway a smart lush like Phil probably unloaded his gun when he went out drinking. You tried to be nonchalant, pouring yourself a big shot of Martell. And I said: “you’re scared out of your mind.” And you whispered “don’t tell anybody,” which was funny because everybody saw you shaking like a leaf.
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Doesn’t ring a bell. In those days weird things happened every night.
From: Krissy@….com
I dug up a picture, maybe that’ll help. We were pretty friendly. I came to NY to be a star. Remember you laughed when I said I’d played Juliet and Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in high school in Tulsa. I get a hot flush thinking of what a pathetic little diva I must have been, although I guess we would have said prima donna in those days. I was uptown studying at Stella Adler and you said “she’ll bury you, she only likes the male students.” So I came down to Neighborhood Playhouse and you said Sanford Meisner would be mean to me and he was. So I got a job taking care of kids in a pre school and you said “you’re doing God’s work.” There was this actor who hung out at the bar who was in a play with Diane Keaton. And he said he was infatuated with her, but she was ignoring him, wouldn’t even say hello. They had this scene where he was supposed to slap her and he’d been doing a stage slap. And you said “give her a real hard Brooklyn smack, that’ll get her attention…” And he came in a few nights later, drunk out of his mind. You always said: “beware the guy who gets a head start in another store.” (You guys always called bars “stores” for some reason) And he was screaming: “you sonofabitch bastard dirty motherfucker. I took your advice. I slapped her so hard her lip started bleeding on stage. And now they want to fire me and she’s making an Equity complaint against me, you sonofabitch bastard, motherfucker….” And he jumped over the bar and tried to choke you and your partner Richard had to pull him off you. Everybody was laughing. But you ran out after him, saying: “I’m sorry man, can I buy you a drink…”
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Is that one of those machine photos? It’s a little out of focus.
From: Krissy@….com
Remember when your first novel came out? You said “I’m only writing books to tide me over until I get a good bar job.” You were supposed to be very nonchalant about your art in those days. Not to take yourself seriously. You had three copies that night. I said I wanted one. “You’ll have to earn it,” you said.
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
I think I’m about to get one of those hot flushes.
From: Krissy@….com
You poured me a split of champagne with a couple of shakes of bitters. I never drank anything but beer and this was gooooood! After closing we went to this diner across from Bellevue Hospital where the waiter gave you tons of free food for a twenty dollar tip. You had a room at the Martha Washington Hotel in the ’30′s. It was like a horror movie, dark and creaky, old people in the lobby at 4 am. It was the smallest room I ever saw. The radiator was banging. As soon as the hot air hit me it all came up–the champagne, the eggs and bacon and rice pudding –everything. I was in this tiny bathroom and I knew you could hear me retching and shitting. Oh God, I just got another hot flush. I didn’t want to cry because everybody laughed everything off in Soho in those days. You said: “I know I’m not a great lover, but I never made a woman puke before.” You opened the window and the cold air came in. You had this Slippery Elm Bark tea, or something. It put me out like a light. When I woke up you were watching the new cable station. “It’s a Cagney festival,” you said, really happy. We watched Cagney movies all day and then the basketball game came on. “James Cagney and the Knicks,” you said. “This is a day to remember…”
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Not by me. Well, at least I remember the room. It was a short crawl to the bathroom. You could reach the TV, radio, little refrigerator, toaster and hot plate without getting out of bed. One of those old people left the hot plate on one night and that was the end of the Martha Washington.
From: Krissy@….com
Once at 8:30 I was waiting for the bus to take my kids up to the Museum of Natural History and you walked right by without seeing me. You were as gray as a tombstone, smoking a cigarette. So close I could see the white crust on your lips. But I didn’t want the principal to see me talking to you, I was such a little Miss Prim…
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Gray as a tombstone. Think I’ll steal that.
From: Krissy@….com
There were these three Colombian guys, who had leather jackets and watches and jewelry. You called them “los tres majos” like the Three Wise Men in the xmas story. You guys guessed they were drug dealers probably doing business with the mafia in Little Italy. “Chocolattes, amigo,” they would say. You poured cognac, creme cacao and heavy cream over ice and sprinkled nutmeg. They loved it. “Cheap Brandy Alexander,” you said. “They think I just invented it. Like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court…” They were always sliding rolled up bills across the bar. You would go into the little wine closet behind the bar and come out all glassy-eyed and light up a cigarette. New Year’s 1976 the bar was like rush hour. People passing drinks and money like at a baseball game. At 4:30 in the morning the place was still jammed. You were at the door yelling: “party’s over, everybody back on their head,” which was the punch line of some old joke. Finally, you got everybody out. The Three Wise Men were piling mounds of coke right on the bar. You were laughing and shaking your head. “No podemos aqui. Felice anno, amigos y adios…” They were so loaded they dropped a full bill on the way out. This bartender Louie who was in Andy Warhol movies got a straw and started snorting the floor, getting dust and ashes up his nose. It was too much for me so I left. The Three Wise Men were jumping around in the snow. One of them grabbed me, but another guy said: “es la pequenita del barman…” They gave me a dollar bill: “Happy New Year flaquita.” You had already locked the door, but you let me in. I was pretty disgusted. I put the dollar bill on the bar. Everybody gathered around as you opened it. “It’s the size of a golf ball,” Louie said. I just walked out. I was sure you guys were all going to die.
From: hgould@heywoodgould.com
Some of us did. I decided to wait for natural causes. I’m a grandpa now. Even cigarette smoke makes me nauseous. Happy New Year.
From: Krissy@….com
I’m a grandma. Happy New Year to you!
