Fifteen
I DREAMT I WAS ON A STAGE DANCING WITH BOBBY KENNEDY. My mother and Eunice and Len were in the corner playing strip poker. Bobby kept nudging me toward the camera. There was a camera on the dresser in the wings. Suddenly the dresser was huge and my mother was tap dancing on top with Gene Kelly, her thumbs in her slip straps. I woke up at noon and Frank was gone. I had a vague memory of him saying he had to go over to Brian’s to learn how to do something or other. I didn’t care, I wanted to kiss Bobby. In my dream, I wanted to kiss him because he had come back for one performance only.
I staggered into the kitchen and put coffee on, visions of my mother and Eunice Chelsey playing strip poker dancing through my head. I had a terrible longing for my mother to have danced with her heroes. Most of those nightclubbers did charity events. Sammy Davis Jr. did them right and left. If Celia Dare and Friends was for charity, they’d have come out. If Johnny sponsored it. They did what they were told where mobsters were concerned.
In the spring of ’64, Celia’s show opens with a mini-summit of Frank, Dean and Sammy, middles with Carol Channing and ends with Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly. She dances a softshoe with Kelly as the two of them sing “The Doodlin’ Song.” Seated in the front row closing night is Gene’s friend Bobby.
After a week straight of sellout shows and rave reviews, Celia is having drinks with her benefactor. “Peter Lawford brought Bobby Kennedy backstage afterward. He had such a soft voice. I was expecting this ruthless bastard the way people talk but he was so shy.”
“Kennedy?” Johnny’s pale eyes slice across the table. “Those guys are all pigs.”
“They say you get a lot of action yourself, Don Giovanni.”
“Don Giovanni. If it weren’t for that prick-mick persecuting Italians, my name would never have even been in that publication. Italians are who Bobby-Civil Rights-Kennedy targets. Look what that bastard’s doing to Hoffa—wiretapping his lawyers, bugging the jury—one long breach of civil liberties!” Polishing off his vodka, he rattles the ice and points a finger. “You stay away from Bobby Kennedy.”
“I could swear you’re jealous.”
Shooting air out his nose he raises a finger to the waiter, who scurries off. “I don’t want you getting loused up by that little shit. Look what he did to Marilyn. Him and the brother both. Treated her like a whore.”
“I thought that it was only Jack.”
Johnny waves her off.
“He came backstage—I’m not having his baby for godsake!”
“Don’t even joke. Makes me sick. That man will never touch you.”
She’s a bit flabbergasted. “It’s Lawford that hits on me, not Bobby.”
“Lawford’s just covering for queer.”
A few weeks later Celia and Annie are on a double date at Le Club. Celia’s escort is a high-rent criminal lawyer, Annie’s a shifty-eyed character reminiscent of Micky D from the old 92. Another guy who makes his living off vending machines.
“Look at the bastard,” the lawyer gripes. “Kills me. They make like clean-living Catholics going to church, playing touch football, meanwhile they’re chasing every skirt in the country and now you got this one banging his dead brother’s widow.”
On the dance floor, Bobby and Jacqueline Kennedy shake it up. The two had come with Truman Capote, who’d gone off and left the couple to themselves.
Celia watches them cling to one another, hypnotized. Her brief conversation with Kennedy backstage still echoes. “Mr. Attorney General,” she said. “Or should I call you Mr. Kennedy?”
“Just call me sonuvabitch, that’s what everyone else calls me,” he jokes, his voice thin and shy, his eyes lined and sad.
The self-deprecating boy in him has roamed in her mind ever since. She watches him with Jackie and she wants to hug her too. “They’re just looking after each other,” Celia declares.
The lawyer guffaws. The vending-machine owner joins in and pulls Annie closer, saying “This girlfriend of yours, she kills me.”
Annie smiles wanly.
Leaning across to Celia, the vending guy corrects her. “He’s getting his rocks off is what he’s doing. This guy is capable of the kind of bullshit a girl like you shouldn’t know from, so, maybe it’s good you don’t. But lemme tell you, there’s a lotta guys just waiting to piss all over this fuck.” His thumb stabs toward Bobby.
“Eh! Ladies present,” the lawyer reminds him.
“Excuse me,” he says. “I get riled.”
“I’m going to go powder my nose,” Celia announces. Annie joins her.
In the ladies’, Celia leans against the counter. “Can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
Annie touches up her lipstick. “You said you were sick of married men hitting on you. These guys are single.”
“Wonder why. Christ. Every guy who wants to date me is either married or a low-life. And only the creeps want to go out in public with me.”
Annie takes out her eyeliner. “Yup, even when they’re single—the so-called legit boys only want to see you in private. In public they trot out these Chanel-suited ice queens like Jacqueline Bouvier.”
“What’s the difference between me and Annette Funicello, is what I want to know. She cavorts around some beach movie in a bikini and sings dimwit pop music and nobody treats her like she’s anathema.”
“Anathema. There’s a twenty-five-center.”
The outside door to the restroom opens and closes.
Celia comes face to face with the reflection of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy just as Annie says, “Everybody’s anathema to somebody, I ’spose.”
The widow’s eyes have the same haunted quality as her escort’s. She looks in the mirror at Celia. “That’s a fair assessment.”
Annie steps into a stall.
“Mrs. Kennedy, I’m Celia Dare,” she stammers. About to extend her hand, she stops and washes them. The attendant hands her a towel. “I’d like to offer my condolences and—I guess there are no words. I had the pleasure of being introduced to Bobby—Robert Kennedy—not long ago and I’m so glad you have each other right now.”
The bathroom is silent. The attendant waits for more wet hands. A flush from Annie’s stall and her door opens.
Mrs. Kennedy’s cool face forms a smile. “Thank you, Miss Dare. Bobby mentioned your show. He said you were wonderfully energetic.”
Annie heads for another sink to rinse her hands.
“Oh … Thank you.” Celia tells her.
“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Dare.”
“And you,” Celia says as Jackie heads into a stall.
Outside the washroom Annie bats her eyes at Celia. “Oh and by the by, Jackie, how is your brother-in-law in the sack?”
Still in my robe, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and tossed the video that showcased memories of 1964 and ’65 into the VCR. Lyndon Johnson wins another term as president and tells the country he intends to save the South Vietnamese from communists; a flashback shows JFK’s funeral and Jackie addressing the nation in a breathy childish voice not so dissimilar from Marilyn Monroe’s; Mohammed Ali still calling himself Cassius Clay; the Beatles with their so-called long hair in front of mobs of screaming, crying girls; the rush to get to the moon for a gawk at a gravel pit; six days of rioting in Watts; Miss America grinning pure and wide and white; go-go boots, miniskirts, polka dots galore.
Frank showed up in the middle of it. “Been working?” he asked.
“Isn’t it weird to think of the Stones on the same top-ten list as Petula Clark,” I commented. He frowned at the fires onscreen now, police turning their hoses on blacks in the street.
“Booking lots of private dances?” He was fidgety and a little overexcited as seemed to be his general state since he got our jerkflirt.com connection.
I turned the tape off. “I haven’t even looked at it.”
He sat down at my desk and went directly into the site. I sighed and wandered over, peered over his shoulder. The home page asked if he was intereste
d in flirting with live guys, live girls or live she-males. “I didn’t know they had guys,” I said and reached over his shoulder to click on the name Cazzius. A young guy with a tribal armband tattooed around his slim bicep appeared. He looked about eighteen. He had thick blonde hair and a stoned smile as he lolled on his side, his hand in his underpants. Names like BigDick and Sugarman asked if he was bi or gay. He tapped at the keyboard on the bed beside him: Bi. “Next time I buy a lotto ticket, I’ll have you in mind,” BigDick said. Cazzius typed a smile. They asked how old he was. Twenty-one. Where was he from? Halifax. They asked if he read and what he was reading. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Then he lay back and rubbed his black bikini front again.
“You should touch yourself more,” Frank said to me. I reached over and clicked on another model. A bored angry-faced guy named Diamond. Each one looked more bored than the last. Frank clicked back over to the girls. I recalled the weather-girl wannabe saying how important it was for a woman to look friendly and approachable.
“Have you noticed there’s no black people on this site?” I asked.
“They’re under Exotics.” He clicked on Sabrina and suddenly onscreen, there was Sienna, the girl with the question-marked repartee from Nevermind. Her false eyelashes batted back at us. Up on her knees, she stretched her rubbery young body and showed off a bejewelled belly button above a pink lace G-string. She ran her hands up and down her thighs before she sat back down and grinned. “Watch her go, babe,” Frank said and went to the kitchen. “She’s been making about three grand U.S. a week doing this stuff and then another fifteen hundred from this other site where guys can download videos of her fucking Brian or whoever.” I heard a cork pop and Frank poured wine. He brought glasses back to the desk and both of us watched Sienna. Lojo typed: “U so hot, I lick u clean.” Sienna typed, “:)”
“Can u flash u pussy 4 me?” Lojo asked. “Only in pvt,” Sienna answered and licked her finger as she gazed doe-eyed and smiling.
Frank maneuvered me into the desk chair. “She was asking about you when I was over there. She thinks you are the hottest thing she’s ever seen. She does, Viv, she wants you like you wouldn’t believe. Even more when I told her you did your hair dark. She said, Oo, we’d be like a twin duo?” Frank imitated her light questioning voice. He put the glass of wine in my hand.
“What time is it anyway?”
“Cocktail hour.” Pushing his face into my neck, he ran his tongue up my throat. “God, it turns me on to think of you fucking her with that strap-on.” He picked me up and carried me into the bedroom, stopping only long enough to light the candle on the bookshelf again.
The news is unbearable. “Today in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles, a riot erupted when a Negro man was arrested by a white police officer for reckless driving.” The cameras pan over smashed windows and flames as looters rush from supermarkets and appliance stores. A woman cries on the sidewalk as children cling to her thighs.
For six days and a hundred and fifty blocks, Watts burns in Celia’s living room. She hugs her knees remembering stories about Vegas hotel managers who drained swimming pools when a Sammy Davis or a Dorothy Dandridge dared to break the water’s surface. She’s getting depressed again. What’s the point of having a microphone if you’re never going to yell something big enough to rearrange a redneck’s brain? There’s Freedom Fighters and then there’s me.
When Annie comes home that night, she hears Celia in the kitchen singing, “Another bride, another groom—”
“Hello, kidlet!” No response but repetition, a little deeper, a little more constricted. Annie hangs up her coat and heads past Dinah Washington spinning on the record player.
Cigarette in hand, Celia looks up from the table with a bluesy, frowsy, sleepy-eyed wink. “Hey baby, how’s your bird?”
“Plucked, chicky, how ’bout yours?” Annie opens the fridge.
The song ends and Dinah starts into Where is my daddy, with his big long slidin’ thing … Celia duets it with feeling. Turning in the light of the fridge, Annie looks at her. “You’re not.”
On her feet, Celia moves languid across the kitchen floor as though getting the walk might get her the voice. “I just have to get the smoky throat right. I can’t get that thing, that smoky raspy—like how a cat would sing.” Strolling back to the table, she grabs her wine and takes a slug before she drags off her smoke. “If I smoke a lot my voice gets a little more rasp.” She steps closer to Annie and sings, “Where is my daddy with that big long slidin’ thing …?”
“Sharesies if you find him?” Annie snatches her cigarette, takes a drag and shoves the refrigerator closed with her rump.
Pouring a glass of last night’s champagne, Annie grabs buns and peanut butter out of the cupboard and sits at the table. A sip from her glass, she gives a flat-champagne grimace before speaking. “I don’t know how to tell you, sugar, but you ain’t black and that might be the intangible quality you’re looking for. Washington’s voice is lower too.”
Celia lights another cigarette. “Julie London’s voice is this low. So’s Peggy’s.”
“Even if you get her voice—reach me a knife while you’re up?—no matter how long you lie in the sun, you ain’t gonna get her skin.”
“Walnut-shell juice! You can tint your skin with it,” Celia announces, her voice giddy as she hands Annie a butter knife. “Make me one too.”
“You’re kidding, yes?” Annie asks, incredulous. “Why do you want to do a Negro act?”
In the dining room Celia changes the record. “Maybe I should start with Ella. She sounds more like a white girl anyway and then I could ease into Dinah,” she says and waltzes back into the kitchen to “Our Love Is Here To Stay.”
“How hard you been hittin’ the sauce? You cannot do a minstrel show!”
Celia continues to dance slowly around the kitchen, smoking, eyes at half-mast trying to soak up the vibe. “It’s a tribute. My contribution to the civil rights movement.”
Annie slathers peanut butter on her bun. “You’re smashed.”
“I did Carmen Miranda. I even learned some Por-tu-guese,” she says Hispanically.
“Maybe by morning, I won’t need to explain how asinine this is.”
“That’s why the lady is a tramp,” Celia trills, hitting Ella’s line pitch-perfect.
Annie pushes the corners of her mouth down as she chews, with a not-bad nod.
In the end, Annie lets herself get juiced on Celia’s excitement. She hauls out whatever might be useful, gives her a lead on a makeup artist who knows her way around henna and walnut-shell juice. “I used to date this jazz musician and I remember him saying that coloured singers tend to come in after the beat. White singers are more on the beat or even ahead of it. He liked the way the coloured girls did it cuz it sounded cooler and more confident.”
Celia sucks up every tidbit she can get her ears on. “What if I do a singer from each decade. I could talk about each one’s struggle, you know? I’ve gotta bring up more through my nose with Billie. She’d be good to start with: parents abandoned her, worked in a brothel, recorded all this stuff with Benny Goodman and never saw one dime in royalties. And the heroin. I could end the set with her hauled off to jail and take off the white gardenias, slip out of that dress and then have somethin’ a little more Dinah underneath.”
“And you gotta have chorus boys,” Annie adds, slipping into Mae West mode. “Prop players. We’ll dress them in black.”
“Yeah!” Celia squeals, beside herself with anticipation. “They’ll be the bulls who arrest me, club owners and husbands, and drug dealers.”
“And at the end,” Annie says, “They’ll pick up your naked little body and hold you up to the heavens! You still need a sixties chick. How do you feel about Etta James?”
“I saw her at the Jumpin’ Joy in San Fran.”
“Well, then you know you’re half her weight. But, who cares, it’s the spirit you want. And on a practical level, if you do Etta last, you c
ould have your own hair. She’s got the same platinum as yours.”
Opening night found the Copacabana filled to capacity. Word of mouth had spread about the show’s rehearsals and some thought this would be the show that would make Celia Dare a household name. She had special invitations sent out to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Kennedy along with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Peter and Patricia Lawford, Frank and Mia, Dean and Jeannie Martin, Sammy and May, Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin. Cyd and Tony couldn’t make it; Dean had a show in Vegas; Sammy and Peter were in London.
Annie and Johnny are down front. Frank’s daughter, Nancy, shows; Walter Winchell comes. Somebody says that Annette Funicello is there with Frankie Avalon. Members of the press, black and white, are scattered throughout. Two of the Supremes are in attendance. They say Etta James might show. Bobby Kennedy and Gene Kelly sit ringside.
Backstage, Celia paces through the opening act, biting at her nails, tugging at her wig.
Once she hits the stage though, she is on. Every note, every step, every every, comes off smooth as the orchestra that accompanies. Celia doesn’t get a sense of the audience until, clothed in nothing but hot pants, go-go boots and pasties, her tinted body is hoisted into the air.
When the lights go down there’s an odd pause until the hands of Senator Kennedy slap together, a big-toothed grin on his face. He is joined quickly by Kelly and the rest of the audience. There’s an anxiousness in the room, the uncertainty between the lightning and the thunderclap.
Celia sends a couple chorus boys out to mingle and listen. The only sure thing is that members of the Negro press have all left. One of the Supremes was overheard saying it was interesting. Johnny and Annie tell anyone in earshot that Celia is a genius.
Eventually she dresses and joins the room. Annie barely gets a hug out of Celia before Johnny steals her away to the dance floor. Pulling her to him, he says, “Well, my darling, you were magnificent. You’ve become an incredible performer.”
“Thank you.” She looks past his shoulder to the other couples dancing. “It’s not over yet. People decide what to think when they read the papers.”
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