Leggy Blonde: A Memoir

by Aviva Drescher

  On any given night, I didn’t know who would come through the doors of Alexandre’s clubs. Celebrity sightings were commonplace. And then a man came into the club du jour, and knocked the ennui right out of me. Sylvester Stallone, my junior high fantasy boyfriend, arrived with his model wife, Jennifer Flavin. Alexandre welcomed him and introduced us. Sly was much shorter than me. I had to lean down for a double-cheek kiss. He smelled like soap and the well-oiled leather of boxing gloves. I was in heaven! Later that night, I was on the dance floor with hundreds of people jumping up and down. Alexandre and Sly were watching me from a balcony.

  Allegedly, Sly said, “Yo, Alex. Your girlfriend can really dance.”

  When I played this back in my head, he sounded like Rocky Balboa (“Yo!”). The next night we all had dinner together. Sly was delightful in real life, a lovely person. I sat next to him, and we shared a dessert. After that teenage dream come true, I was officially addicted to the nightlife. The thought of a quiet evening at home made me antsy. Alexandre was only too happy to have me at his side at the club. I loved being his girlfriend, too. Alexandre was no-nonsense, not a Pepé Le Pew arm-kissing French romantic. His brain was more than enough to seduce me. He knew everyone in Paris and I felt connected and protected.

  We fought sometimes. Being a creature of the nightlife was a blast, but it was also fast and furious. A lot could happen when you stayed up until dawn. The intensity was stressful and overwhelming. Every day, I was studying and challenged at my classes. Every night, sex, drugs, and booze surrounded us. Even though we did not partake, the temptation was always there. I flirted with guys. Alexandre didn’t love that. Nonetheless, I was head over heels (flats, whatever) with our life together. I couldn’t imagine anything going wrong between us.

  It was my honeymoon in Paris, with Paris. Like all honeymoons, though, it ended too quickly.

  • • •

  After two semesters abroad, I was supposed to return to Vassar for senior year. If I didn’t, I might not graduate with my class. I flew to New York, drove to Poughkeepsie, wheeled and dealed, and came up with a plan to earn enough credits to graduate. I stayed at Vassar for one long semester and got my degree. Finally, I returned to Paris as a student in New York University’s Masters French Program. I was back in the place I loved, doing what I loved. My year abroad had changed me inside and out. The result of my reinvention: I felt like a foreigner at home.

  I moved in to Alexandre’s converted garage loft in the Bastille area. Our apartment was rough around the edges—as was our relationship. The fighting got worse. I hadn’t really realized it when I lived in my own apartment, but Alexandre had a bit of a temper.

  One day, a New York pal called and said, “My friend Jennifer is coming to Paris. Can you take care of her?” She showed up in jeans and a ponytail, looking exactly like what she was—an Upper East Side Jewish princess, recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She reminded me of New York. For the first time in a year and a half, I felt nostalgic for home. I did not look like a Vassar graduate. I’d gone native, a wild club chick, in miniskirts, sparkly tops, big hair, and dramatic makeup. Jennifer and I became friends instantly and continued to take Paris by storm.

  The minute Jennifer entered my life, so did her mother. She called every day to tell me what Jennifer should eat and whom she should date—only wealthy men. I didn’t have a controlling Jewish mother. I had a sweet shiksa mom who respected boundaries. Listening to Jennifer’s mom call the shots was more of a culture shock than living in Paris.

  I started spending a lot of time with Jennifer and other Americans, including Lizzy Guber, the daughter of film producer Peter Guber. We were a fast group, and really lived it up. We studied during the day, and indulged in restaurants and clubs at night. Nothing seedy or dangerous. We were actually pretty staid. We called ourselves the Golden Girls because we acted like old ladies. For lunch, it was the Ritz. For dinner, Stresa or Le Grand Venise, an incredible Italian restaurant, were our favorites. We didn’t think twice about eating pasta every night. Carbs weren’t the enemy back then.

  Fashion was such a huge part of living in Paris. I tried on all kinds of looks. One week, I was decked out head-to-toe in classic Chanel. The next, I was in Jean Paul Gaultier. Jennifer, Lizzie, and I combed through Hermés sample sales. I started collecting Birkin bags before they were popular in America.

  No one knew about my leg, except the New Yorkers and Alexandre. He never saw my stump, though. I could tell he was the queasy type. I was careful about that, and kept my prosthesis on at all times. Paris, like New York, was a walking city. The abrasions turned my stump into steak tartare. I needed to find a prosthetist in Paris to make adjustments. Through Alexandre, I met an artist named Yves Corbassiere. He was at least eighty, and wore a big black hat. He hung around the clubs and always had a group of beautiful, sexy young women with him. He wore a prosthetic leg, too, and connected me with an alleged genius prosthetist outside of Paris. Although that turned out to be a disappointment, I was thrilled to have made a friend of Corbassiere.

  One day, he asked me to lunch. The restaurant ceiling had a Michelangelo reproduction painted on it. At night, the retractable roof would open up, and you could see the sky while you ate. He knew every precious spot like this in the city, and loved sharing them with his friends. He solicitously poured my water and was adorably fussy about the food. Living was an art form to him. Everything had to be just so. He spoke passionately about any topic. And wherever he went, sexy women surrounded him. At our lunch, they were relegated to a nearby table, and kept looking over at us.

  When we left the restaurant, Corbassiere took my arm. The girls followed behind us in a row.

  Muses, groupies, hired girlfriends, whatever those women were, they kept his passion burning. An artist needed his inspiration. I would have loved it if Corbassiere painted me, but we never got around to that, regrettably.

  My parents came for a visit. Although they liked Alexandre, they gently insinuated that he was not right for me. I was getting tired of nightclubs and the party people that came with that scene. The novelty was wearing off. I stayed home some nights, and Alexandre didn’t show up until dawn. I started resenting him. We fought more often, loudly, like a French movie couple. It seemed romantic, for a week. But then I just felt sick of it. I hadn’t come to Paris to argue. I’d come for freedom. But the relationship started to feel uncomfortably restrictive. This lifestyle was vapid. Our fights were ridiculous. I told Alexandre how I felt, and it just launched another French-accented screaming match with wild hand gestures.

  Jennifer’s living situation changed, and she needed a place to stay. I invited her to move into Alexandre’s. That might not have been the best idea. His apartment was a wide-open loft. It was eclectic and cool, but there wasn’t a lot of privacy. Alexandre and I weren’t getting along well. I thought having Jennifer around would put him on his best behavior.

  She came home one afternoon when Alexandre and I were in the midst of another row about our lifestyle. I said, “I’m done with it. I can’t do it anymore.”

  Then he put his hands on my shoulders and shoved me so hard I went reeling. At the same moment Jennifer opened the door. I flew across the room, right past her. She stood there in shock at the sight. I landed on the floor, hitting it hard on my hip. Like my accident, there was no pain at first. Only shock. I glanced across the room at Alexandre. His chest was heaving and he looked furious. It was as if Jennifer didn’t exist. She actually giggled from fear.

  Then she came over to me, scooped me up, and got me out of the loft. In a daze, I went along to a nearby café. She ordered us coffee.

  “How long has this been going on?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The pushing? Has he hit you?”

  “No!” He had pushed me before, though. Would he hit me the next time? I had no idea. “He’s just afraid of losing me. It can come out as anger.”

  She was silent for a minute, and I realized how irrat
ional that sounded.

  “It’s time you went home,” said Jennifer. “You have to get away from this guy. Come back to New York with me.”

  She was scheduled to return to New York in a week. I’d been in Alexandre’s orbit for a long time by then. His night world became mine. I was swept up in it, and had lost perspective on myself. Jennifer was like a protective Jewish mother herself at age twenty-one. She shined a harsh new light on my French affair. I’d accepted Alexandre’s possessiveness, his temper, and his criticism as part of who he was. In the artificial atmosphere of the demimonde, I thought that passionate fighting and fierce possessiveness were proof of his love for me. But they were just proof of how far I’d strayed from my own true nature. I’d let a man turn me into something I swore I would never be: someone who felt bad for herself.

  Even if Alexandre hadn’t shoved me, our relationship wouldn’t have lasted. He was thirty-three, a confirmed bachelor. Being part of the club scene perpetuated his youth. He had no intention of growing up. If I stayed with him, our future would be more of the same: clubbing, partying, big fights—possibly escalating from shoving to hitting—and passionate make-up sessions. Children, marriage, and a quiet, safe home life were out of the question. I’d been raised on crazy in New York and had come three thousand miles to replicate the old patterns. If I was going to be unstable, I might as well do it at home. I missed my parents.

  I had no regrets about my three years in Paris. I learned to speak fluent French and learned a lot about myself. I had my master’s in French literature. I was twenty-three years old, an official adult. It was time to go home, and for my real life to begin.

  “You’re right,” I told Jennifer. “I’m ready to go back.”

  I flew back to New York within the week.

  I couldn’t as easily swan back into my old life. Paris had changed me. My old friendships felt forced. It seemed like everyone had moved on to a new life with jobs, college friends, and relationships. But none of that was as disturbing as events at home.

  While I was away, my parents had been in turmoil. They kept the truth from me that Dad’s business was in serious trouble. They decided to put the Kenilworth apartment on the market and were moving to Miami. Dad was in his sixties. Mom was just fifty. They were too young to make the traditional Jewish migration south.

  “We need to make a change,” said Dad. “I can’t keep up anymore. I’m done with it. I am sick of New York City combat living.” If they got a good price for the New York apartment, they could live off the profit for the rest of their lives in Florida. The move wasn’t a complicated geographical calculation. It was basic math.

  “You can live in the apartment until it’s sold,” Dad told me. “But then you have to get your own place.” They left the city to search for a house in Miami. I stayed alone in my childhood home, soon to belong to someone else. I spent many nights by myself, knocking around that apartment. I’d lived there since I was six. Not all the memories were happy ones. But they were mine.

  I’d left New York in part to get away from my parents and my old life. Those five years, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, were the only years I spent off the island of Manhattan. I had the college experience. I’d lived a Moulin Rouge fantasy in Paris. Being a flamingo out of water, as it were, had been exciting. But I was ready to start my adult life in my natural habitat, to make a nest and a name for myself.

  • CHAPTER SIX •

  Prune

  In the grand tradition of overeducated, underemployed women who don’t know what to do with their lives, I went to law school.

  I’d been working at a life insurance company for a couple of years, and talking about death all day long made we want to kill myself. I had a passion for criminal law and a big mouth, so pursuing a law degree seemed like the obvious career choice. I took the LSAT and went to Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in the West Village of Manhattan.

  Part of me thought of law school as a cop-out. I had my bachelor’s degree and a master’s in French. Now a law degree? I’d become a perpetual student. But it was better than sitting in the office discussing life expectancy rates all day. The job was really starting to depress me.

  In law school, I came back to life—my classes were fascinating. My favorite teacher was Barry Scheck, who taught while he was working as one of OJ’s defense attorneys. I’d take a class, and then watch him talk about DNA evidence on TV that night. Now that was cool.

  At the risk of sounding like a stupid girl, I defined eras of my life by my boyfriend at the time. When I was in law school, I met a man named Jonathan through a mutual friend of a friend. We were introduced at a party and Jonathan called to ask me out.

  And so began the early Jonathan Period. I hadn’t had a serious boyfriend since Paris. Jonathan was the all-American antidote to Alexandre. He was funny, outgoing, tall, and tan. He wore his hair slicked back, like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby. The combo of athletic and intellectual was irresistibly sexy. He was a business student at Columbia University; I was a first-year law student. We were both native Manhattanites. At exactly the right moment, Jonathan reminded me what was incomparable about New York. Any day, around any corner, you could fall in love.

  I fell just as hard for his kooky family. His mother, Edith, was a real downtown character. Super thin, she wore tight, short clothing and chunky ethnic jewelry. Her lips were extralarge, even in the bee-stung-lips nineties. Edith had to be in her fifties when I knew her, but she had the dewy soft skin of a newborn baby and her hair was jet black. Picture a skinny, older, stylish version of Veronica from the Archie comics, with huge lips. Edith was eccentric and superstitious. She threw salt over her shoulder, knocked wood, or kissed a mezuzah whenever something about the future was mentioned.

  “Don’t have sex with my son,” she announced one day. “You have to wait until you’re married.”

  At first, I wondered why she thought I hadn’t already had sex with Jonathan. We’d been together for a while by then. The fact was, despite our serious attraction to each other, Jonathan and I hadn’t done “it” yet. I’d been thinking lately that we really should cross that Rubicon. And here she was telling me not to. Was it up to her? I wasn’t about to discuss what I had or hadn’t done with her son. It was just too weird. Edith might be that cool, but I wasn’t.

  Dear God, I thought, was Jonathan telling his mom about our sex life? (He wasn’t.)

  “I won’t give away the milk,” I blurted.

  “Good,” she said. “I like you, Aviva. I want you and Jonathan to get married. But if you have sex before the wedding, it won’t happen. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”

  Edith spent a lot of time meditating with crystals and chanting. The incense she burned might’ve opened up a pathway to the great beyond, and she could see into our future. In her present, she was locked in an absolutely vicious tooth-and-nail divorce battle with Jonathan’s father. There was a lot of hatred, bitterness, resentment, and money involved. Edith distrusted men in general. To some extent, that included her own son.

  Thus far, in my romantic history, I’d had a great relationship that ended amicably, a good relationship that ended in infidelity, and a tumultuous affair that ended in violence. I was on a downward trend. I believed I could turn that around with Jonathan.

  Some of Edith’s superstitiousness must have rubbed off on me. I heeded her warning, and held Jonathan off. I wasn’t a prude or frigid. I loved sex and had a great time with Jonathan. But we didn’t go all the way. Something besides Edith’s prediction kept me from going for it. I’d been burned. I’d learned to be wary of throwing myself into an intense relationship that might make me lose sight of my personal goals. Long term, I wanted to be a hotshot attorney, as well as a wife and mother. If not having intercourse made that possible, I’d wait for it. There was also something worthwhile about maintaining a little mystery in the relationship.

  After a year of dating, Jonathan proposed. We were in the Hamptons at his dad’s
house. We went for dinner in Sag Harbor at a restaurant in the American Hotel. At the end of the meal, Jonathan got on one knee in front of the whole restaurant and asked me to marry him. He presented a four-karat emerald-cut diamond with very elegant side stones. Of course, I said yes, and the restaurant applauded and cheered.

  Edith was thrilled at the news. We told her in person. “Congratulations!” she said, hugging us. Jonathan left the room to make a phone call. She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Don’t forget. No cheating on the rule. Not before the wedding night.”

  We hadn’t. Not even after that fairy-tale engagement dinner. We might’ve, but very soon after, sex had to be back burnered. I got an especially nasty abrasion on my stump. It was about two square inches of red, pulpy raw flesh. I was used to that, but this time, it just wouldn’t heal. It was puffy and really sensitive.

  Jonathan urged me to see a plastic surgeon. I was long past due for a new, thicker skin graft. I made an appointment with yet another doctor. He took one look at my abrasion and visibly paled. “This is terribly infected,” he said. “You have to check into the hospital tonight.”

  Not again.

  The dreaded osteomyelitis, that potentially fatal bone infection, had finally come. It’d been looming like the sword of Damocles over my head (leg) for nineteen years. That was long enough, said Destiny. I checked into Beth Israel North Hospital right away, continuing on my tour of every Manhattan hospital on the grid, for a series of MRIs and other tests to confirm the diagnosis.

  They put me on IV antibiotics. The drugs snatched me back from the brink. I survived my third (fourth?) close call. You know, all those near-death experiences, and I had yet to see a white light or my beloved dogs Clever and Sandy panting at the entrance of heaven, beckoning me in. I was starting to feel a little resentful.