Friday, February 1, 2013

Who Put This Earring in My Coffee...

Maybe just a little less introspective today, perhaps...

A top news item in the New York City area is the passing of former NYC Mayor Ed Koch.  My Facebook stream (if that's what it is -- I'm only guessing) has quite a few postings, from several people at widely different places on a variety of spectra, political and otherwise.  As a long-time member of the B&T subclass, I certainly knew who Ed Koch was, but while he was running for mayor of the Big Apple, my fellow Hoboken residents and I were being confronted with a slate of mayoral candidates that included the man, reputedly a distant cousin of the  famous 'Trees' poet Joyce Kilmer, and who walked up and down Washington St. with a little bull-horn, thanking people either real or imaginary, for having granted favors equally verifiable.   Ed Koch seemed to be a figure in a different sky from ours -- a light more clearly visible from across the river.  One bus, two tunnels, there he was.  Or there he was, in Gracie Mansion, at least.

But because life is full of improbabilities and wonders, I once had dinner at Gracie Mansion.  And it went like this:

I'd just celebrated some late thirty-ish birthday, and my first serious relationship-like event was collapsing.  I remember sitting in our car, down on Delancy St. someplace, while my soon-to-be ex, after trying to assure me that this would make our relationship that much stronger, began carting boxes up to his new apartment, and I was crying all over the steering wheel.  Shortly thereafter, on a trip into the West Village on the PATH train (it really should be B&T&T.  Or B&T&T&F.  But B&T sound more dismissive, and less like a law firm, I think), I realized that I was being eyed rather vociferously by an older gentleman who, it seemed, was trying to wedge his was through the crowd of passengers, so we could be just a bit closer as we swayed and twisted our way under the Hudson.

We met -- the kind of meeting where you actually exchange words, that is -- in a little park on 11th St., I think -- he'd followed me from the train station, but not in a stalker/ Law'n'Order kind of way, and he struck up a conversation with me.  Being careful to mention 'Dusty', as in Dusty Springfield, the famous (to me) big-haired 60's pop singer.  Would I like to...?

I don't remember whether it was pizza or some other cheap NY street food that followed, but it led back to his ground floor apartment on W. 12th Street, directly opposite an entrance to St. Vincent's Hospital.  And so began my second serious relationship-like event.

We'll call him Dan.  He was at least 20 years older, had a day job as a consulting medical expert, and also worked for the city, in a consulting capacity, on a council that concerned itself with one of the many lesser annoyances of urban life -- dog poop, noise, light pollution, irregular trash pick up, misdirected newspapers... The list seems endless.  And I forget which one it was. 

Because the main interest this council, from Dan's point of view, was its potential for bringing him, sometimes just a bit closer to, and sometimes right up next to -- Famous People.  He dropped names like busboys drop exceptionally oily dishes.  Once, we went to a concert on the upper East Side, as guests of an Australian orchestral conductor, and when the music was over, I somehow ended up escorting Alice Tully up the center aisle, as the nearest, fairly decently-clad young man who could walk that far with her on his arm.  Photographers snapped a picture or two.  I'm sure everything but my elbow, in a dark suit, was edited out.

Things like this were, it seemed, like a kind of water of life for Dan.  In the little closet where he kept his clothes (I'd been assigned a couple of hooks, as I became more than just a weekend guest), I once found a folded sheet of yellow lined paper from a legal pad.  Of course I opened it up -- across the top margin, in pencil, it said 'Famous People I Have Met', or something like that, and then there was the alphabet below, each letter spaced to allow for a certain handsome accumulation of well-known names to build up.  I don't think I really looked at his trophies all that closely.  I was just annoyed that I wasn't on it.  So I folded it and put it back, and I think my secret remained safe...

But Ed Koch.  He was again the Mayor, and Dan had gotten an invitation for two, to a weekday dinner at Gracie Mansion.  Would I like to go with him?  Well, as I'd just sprung for a new, dark blue Calvin Klein suit at Sym's, I could certainly dress the part.  So of course we went.

Why would I remember what day it was, or what week, or month, or year?  I'm probably the least reliable witness available, in terms of my own life.  I do know it began after dark.  Do your own math.  Our names were checked off the clipboard by one of those young women whose smiles are obviously bought at who knows what per hour, plus benefits and maybe dental.   We walked into the reception hall, I think, and probably had drinks (see?  What do I know?  I was wearing shoes, I'm sure about that), and at the appointed time, the twelve of us were ushered into the dining room, to take our seats at table.

There was someone from the Ford Foundation.  A doctor of something, maybe a lawyer too.  Dan was seated on the other side of the table, near the Mayor and some other politicians.  I had no way of knowing whether the yellow list would have more names that night or not.  I was at one end, next to Jimmy Nederlander's wife, a charming, chatty woman with an easy laugh and a way of tossing her head that made me fervently hope one of her earrings would land in my coffee, and I could manage to get it out of the building unnoticed...  I don't remember what we ate -- it was on plates, I'm pretty sure, and had been cooked.  There was definitely coffee.  Lots of coffee.  Cup after lingering cup, each one just a bit nearer to a well-coiffed head.  

Finally, dinner was irredeemably over, and we all trailed into another room, this one set with (expensive) Windsor-back chairs and (expensive) brocade-covered seats, all in rows facing one wall.  There were little desserts, and little drinks.  And after a few minutes, the Mayor suggested that we all sit down, as there was going to be a special after-dinner treat.  Most of us took our drinks and treats with us, and picked out a chair, and the lights went dim.

A slender young woman - a slender young woman of color -- wearing a dramatically simple red sheath dress, came out from behind a side-wall curtain, and a pianist appeared at the other end of the room (how do you miss seeing a piano?), and she began to sing.  It was riveting.   She was so beautiful, and her voice went to places I didn't know a human voice could get to, let alone come back again.  She accepted our applause graciously, and sang another number, and then excused herself, and disappeared behind that curtain again.

We all stood up again, and I think there was something else to do -- maybe cigars, or something terribly recherche?  I just know that I wanted to find out who that singer was.  So, in my customary respect for convention and manners, I found the door behind the curtain, and followed it down a little linoleum-floored hall, and into Gracie Mansion's black-and-white kitchen, where our singer, still in her red dress, sat at the table, having coffee with two much larger, impressively dressed men who could easily have been royalty from Mali or Nigeria.  I thanked her profusely, and probably said something exceedingly stupid, like "I'm going to find out who you are!", as though that would make a difference in her life.  She smiled and was gracious.  I think it was only later that I realized I'd been in the kitchen with Whitney Houston.
  
But back to Ed Koch, who's being left out here a bit.  There was a point in the evening -- I think it might have been before dinner -- when a group of us were sitting in yet another room -- it being a mansion after all -- and whatever the conversation was, he seemed quite interested in what I was wearing.  Not the Syms suit, but specifically my socks.  I'd deliberately chosen the brightest red socks I owned, and hoped they would make some kind of impression.  From the slightly puzzled look on His Honor's face, I'm not sure the impression was what I'd hoped for. 

Regardless of my sartorial blunders, or my perhaps too-subtle attempts to relieve a fellow guest of her jewelry while at a table full of people, Dan seemed in great spirits as we left, to walk to the subway.  He'd had some time to talk with the Mayor, and there was, apparently, another swank event coming up in the not-too-distant future.  I listened with only half an ear, being somewhat distracted by the incredibly handsome security guard at the Mansion gate. 

Shortly thereafter, Dan and I parted ways, and my days of close calls with celebrity seemed to be ending.  I wasn't really sure I minded.  The gulf between who I really was, and who these people really were, couldn't have been much wider than if I'd just gotten off a boat from New Guinea, and still had pigeon feathers in my hair.  I drifted back into my actor-wanna-be life in Hoboken, trudging up the four flights of stairs to my apartment, where the leak in the roof had turned my hall light into a little brown overhead aquarium.  Where I could see the snow accumulate on the big bronze elks guarding their Club across the street, and watch the annual, lagging Labor Day parade from my kitchen window. 

And where, for Mayor, the majority of voters in town had picked the guy with the bullhorn.  

           
©       2012               Walter Zimmerman

  

No comments:

Post a Comment