—March 17, 1980
Runner
We saw a beautiful nine-year-old girl named Machelle Sweeting win the Colgate Women’s Games VI eight-hundred-metre run, at Madison Square Garden. She ran so fast and she ran so gracefully that at times she seemed to be not a little girl running in an arena but a young, long-limbed animal running on the veldt. The other day, we went up to Harlem and called on Machelle Sweeting. With her in her family’s living room were her mother, Mary; her father, Eddie; her sister, Elizabeth; her brother, Glenn; and her seventeen-year-old track coach, Kevin Moore. Machelle at first appeared shy, so her mother, a handsome and expansive woman, said, “Machelle has won around thirty races in the last year and a half. She has only been running for two years, and competing for less than that. I cannot believe it. She was born with a dislocated hip, and the doctors thought that she would never be able to walk at all. I discovered her dislocated hip when she was three months, and when I took her to the doctor they wanted her to have an operation. I said no, she was too young. They designed a special brace for her, and she wore it until she was thirteen months. She started to run because her sister Elizabeth was running. I didn’t want her to run—I was always afraid she would do something to her leg. But Kevin, who was also Elizabeth’s coach, kept encouraging her. In a year and a half, she has won fifteen first-place trophies, one for third place, and one for fourth. She is part of a relay team that is No. 1 in the country for girls nine years and under. That one over there is my favorite of all her trophies—the East Coast Invitational. She broke the national record on her first day, and on the second day she broke her own record. She is a very bright girl. She has won a Kiwanis Science Award for an electricity project. She painted a shoebox blue, put a light bulb in the top, connected two wires to a battery and the light bulb, and made the box light up. She writes poetry and has won a special award from the World Poets’ Resource Center—it does a lot locally to promote student poetry. She is in the third grade, and is her class president and an honor student. For one of her class projects, she wrote a book called How the Zebra Got His Stripes. Her reading score is 6—9.”
By then, Machelle wasn’t feeling so shy.
We asked her what she liked to do besides running.
She said, “I like to sing television commercials and I like to mimic my mother.” She proceeded to sing a television commercial for the Broadway show Peter Pan and one for the Broadway show Evita, and she sang the song in the Trident sugarless-gum commercial and the song in the commercial for Sasson jeans. Then she mimicked the voice of her mother, just home from her job at an Off-Track Betting office and tired, on the telephone with a friend. Then she said to us, “I like spinach, I like carrots, I like peas and rice, I like steak, I like celery, I like ice cream, I like chocolate, and I like to paint—especially with the color blue.”
—March 31, 1980
Party
“Well, here we are at a party celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the first of the Nancy Drew mystery books!” exclaimed Pam.
“Yes, here we are,” said her friend Bess, with a short toss of the head.
“Yes, here we are,” echoed Sue, Bess’s younger sister, and then, with a challenging look at her two companions, “So now what?”
“Some stairs,” said Pam, pointing and then leading the way. “Let’s take these stairs.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” groaned Bess as she slowly followed Pam up the steep marble stairs. “Instead of stairs, I want some refreshments immediately.”
“Do I have to come with you?” asked Sue, with a touch of the querulous little sister in her voice.
“I like looking down from the tops of stairs at people who are just milling about,” said Pam, ignoring her companions and dashing up the stairs two at a time. Then, reaching the landing, she turned and looked down on a room filled with people who were in fact milling about and who also held glasses in their hands.
“Refreshments,” said Bess, licking her lips thirstily. “I wonder where those people got their refreshments.”
“Shall I go all the way down and ask them for you?” asked Sue, with more than a little sarcasm. “And then shall I come all the way back up and give you the information?”
Suddenly, Pam’s body tensed; her fingers grew taut as she clutched at the balcony rail. “Look!” she exclaimed in a soft but hoarse whisper. “Look,” she said again, and this time she pointed a finger at something or someone down below.
“Oh, oh, oh,” said Bess, her eyes growing large and her face turning first a ghostly white, then a vivid red.
“What?” asked Sue, peering at the swirling mass, her head bobbing up and down confusedly.
“But it can’t be,” said Pam.
“I don’t believe it,” said Bess.
“What?” asked Sue again, this time with a small stamp of the foot.
“How vile!” said Pam.
“How vile, to say the least!” said Bess.
“ … But …” said Sue.
“How bilious!” said Pam.
“How bilious indeed!” said Bess.
“I … I … I … don’t know … what you are talking about,” said Sue, with an almost prehistoric whine in her voice.
“Shall we?” asked Pam, turning to Bess and grabbing her almost roughly by the shoulders.
“Shall we? Shall we?” said Bess, trying to free herself from Pam’s now firm grasp.
“Hypers,” said Sue. “Shall we what?”
Pam, now locked in indecision, turned back to whatever it was that had caught her attention so firmly before. Her face darkened in puzzlement, her eyes darting here and there furiously and fast. “It’s gone,” she said. “Oh, dear! It’s gone.”
“It’s gone,” said Bess. “It is gone. Oh, oh, oh.”
“But what?” said Sue. “And now it’s gone. And now I don’t suppose you will ever tell me. You never tell me anything.”
—May 12, 1980
Royalty
The other morning, Their Royal Highnesses Prince Albert and Princess Paola of Belgium, here to celebrate the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the independence of Belgium, were expected at a quarter past nine in the lower plaza of the McGraw-Hill Building to see The New York Experience, a film about how truly awful but truly wonderful it is to live in New York. At twenty-five minutes past nine, Their Royal Highnesses Prince Albert and Princess Paola had not arrived, and the publicity man for Trans-Lux, owners and operators of the film, was beginning to get nervous, because the film ran for a full hour, and at eleven o’clock three hundred schoolchildren were scheduled to see the show. Standing alone at the foot of the escalator, looking up quickly every time he heard footsteps approaching, he said, “If they are really late, I don’t know what we are going to do.” He also said, “Ah, the vicissitudes of publicity. The TV people were to be here, but they’re stuck in New Jersey. They had it on their books. I was on the phone with them this morning. But now they’re in New Jersey.” And he said, “I hear that the Prince and the Princess are staying at the Waldorf, and that the city didn’t even give them a police escort around town. Can you imagine? Royalty and no police escort!”
At half past nine, the publicity man looked up and saw twenty men, each wearing a dark suit, each with a little red-and-white card indicating that he represented the Belgian press, come down the escalator, and the publicity man sighed and shook his head. In the next fifteen minutes, a woman carrying a large shopping bag, a man wearing a golfing shirt, two women chatting in French, and a man wearing a pin-striped suit with a woman wearing a blue dress came down the escalator, and each time the publicity man sighed and shook his head. Then, at a quarter to ten, he looked up and saw a man followed by a large group of people come down the escalator. He said, “This must be the Prince.” And it was.
The publicity man held out his hand, tipped forward slightly, and said to the Prince, “Welcome, Your Highness.”
The Prince and the publicity man shook hands, and then the Prince
started to move on.
“Where is the Princess?” asked the publicity man.
“Alas,” said the Prince, “the Princess could not come.”
“Oh,” said the publicity man. “I am sorry.” His face fell a tiny, tiny bit. But then, catching himself, he said, “Well, if you’ll just come over here, I would like to have a picture of you standing in front of this poster.” The poster advertised The New York Experience.
—June 2, 1980
Two Book Parties
ONE: The Balletomania: A Quizzical Potpourri of Ballet Facts, Stars, Trivia, and Lore, by Andrew Mark Wentink, party:
1. Who wore combs in her hair at this party? a. Patricia McBride.
b. Mme. Marie Taglioni.
c. Birgit Cullberg.
d. The Duchess of L’an L’ing.
e. Marie Merchant.
2. Where was this party held? a. At a friend’s house.
b. On the roof of a building.
c. In a private supper club.
d. At the Vincent Astor Gallery in the library at Lincoln Center.
e. I give up.
3. At this party there was one woman who a. said in a loud voice, “This is Ruth Page.”
b. blew kisses across the room to women she obviously didn’t even know.
c. had a huge pile of dry wood on her head.
4. At this party, there was a man in a khaki-colored suit, and his name was a. Peter Marshall.
b. James Van Allen.
c. Anthony Dowell.
d. Harvey Fuqua.
e. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
5. At this party, there were a lot of a. things to drink.
b. races to run.
c. closets to clean.
d. babies to feed on time.
6. At this party, one girl said, a. “I want to live now.”
b. “Close Encounters was a movie, 1941 was a film.”
c. “I have never in my entire life seen anything like it.”
d. “I think being funny is a joke.”
e. “I want to go home now.”
7. At this party, people were a. talking animatedly to each other.
b. reading the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, by Jeremy Bentham.
c. looking at decorator colors on a paint chart.
8. At this party, a different girl from the one mentioned earlier said, a. “Boy, if I never go to another book party I wouldn’t care. This is the best book party I have ever been to.”
b. “I like hot dogs.”
c. “It’s just amazing how good I can be when I put my mind to it.”
d. “Yes, I know what you mean.”
e. “I want to go home now.”
Answers: 1, a; 2, d; 3, a; 4, c; 5, a; 6, a; 7, a; 8, e.
Two: The Baseball Diamonds, edited by Richard Grossinger and Kevin Kerrane, party:
The man from one of the city’s daily newspapers walked up to the bar and asked for a drink. He had to ask for it a couple of times before anyone seemed to even notice he was there. When he finally got his drink, he drank it. In one gulp. The drink obviously went down his throat straight to the bottom of his stomach, and stayed there—at least for a little while. The man from one of the city’s daily newspapers asked for another drink, and after he drank that one he asked for another, and after he drank that one he asked for another. This was one for his stroll around the room. As he strolled around the room, he greeted people, some of whom he knew—they were in the daily-newspaper business—and some of whom he was meeting for the first time. Clearly, he was glad to be in this room, glad to be with these people, glad to have a drink in his hand, glad to be alive. A woman came up to him and said, “Hi, I like your great writing,” and the combination of the drinks and the woman’s saying such a thing to him made his face turn red with pleasure. He beamed at her, and she, in turn, beamed at him. As he moved on, he shook his head and shaped his eyes into a playful squint. The words “Well, well” formed on his lips, and he put his free hand on his nape, perhaps reminding himself that he was, after all, a man from one of the city’s dailies. He said out loud to himself, “I better call my wife.” His clear blue eyes suddenly clouded over. He said, “I better get out of here.” He looked up. His eyes met those of another woman. She wore a black dress, a white apron, and a little white cap. She was one of the waitresses hired specially for this party. He looked at her, his eyes pleading. She looked back at him, and in looking so closely and deeply at him she knew everything about him there was to know at that moment. She brought him a fresh drink.
—June 23, 1980
Audition
Lester Lanin, the society bandleader, who is from Philadelphia, who as a child played the piano and the drums, who has played at more than ten thousand weddings and at more than three thousand desbutante parties, who has played in every state of the union except Montana, who has committed to memory the tunes of many thousands of songs, who is in his sixties, who has been conducting a Lester Lanin Orchestra since 1937, who was once married to a woman who was a former Miss Texas, held an open audition recently in a room he rented for four hours in a building on Broadway. Sixty-three musicians showed up for the audition. They had heard about it either from the musicians’-union paper or from a column in the Post or by word of mouth. Of the sixty-three musicians who showed up, five were women, one of whom played the flute, one the trumpet, one the harp, and the two others—sisters, who had just come from playing on the QE2 eighty-day 1980 World Cruise—the violin and the accordion.
It was raining heavily on the day Lester Lanin held the audition, and almost everybody in the studio—a large, white, square room with mirrors covering one wall—looked a little rumpled and damp, the way people look when they have just come in out of the rain. Lester Lanin did not look rumpled and damp. He wore a neatly tailored black suit with a vest, a black-and-white patterned shirt, and a black-and-white patterned tie. He is a small man, about five feet seven, and he stood more or less in the center of the room, surrounded by auditioning musicians—say, a pianist, a drummer, a bass player, a clarinettist, a trumpet player, a trombonist, a flutist, and a guitarist. Every fifteen minutes or so, a new group of musicians assembled. Each musician was asked to play something, and the others joined in.
“Do you know ‘’Swonderful’?” Lester Lanin asked a man who played the trumpet.
“Yes,” said the man. He started playing “’Swonderful,” and the other musicians did their best to join him.
“That’s good,” said Lester Lanin. “But a couple of notes were a little corny. Try ‘Somebody Loves Me.’”
Altogether, in a period of four hours, Lester Lanin asked thirty musicians to play “Somebody Loves Me,” thirty musicians to play “All the Things You Are,” thirty-five musicians to play “’Swonderful,” twenty-seven musicians to play “Willow Weep for Me,” forty-two musicians to play “Muskrat Ramble,” one musician to play “Proud Mary,” three musicians to play “Bad Girl,” the same three musicians to play “Hot Stuff,” four musicians to play “Macho Man,” one musician to play “Freak Out,” ten musicians to play “Hello, Dolly!,” one musician to play “Ease On Down the Road,” two musicians to play “Just the Way You Are,” and one musician to play “Moonlight Becomes You.” When any of the musicians didn’t know the tunes to the songs, Lester Lanin told them to go out and buy a certain songbook, which had over five hundred songs in it, and learn all the songs in the book. He told them that in his orchestras, of which he sometimes had as many as forty, no one played from sheet music—only from memory. To a man who was a very good trombone player but knew only one of the tunes he was asked to play, Lester Lanin said, “Many famous orchestra musicians have played with me, but they weren’t qualified to play a deb party or other social event, because they couldn’t play the tunes without charts.”
At the end of the audition, Lester Lanin said he thought he would use men who had played the clarinet, the flute, the guitar, and the trombone, and the two sisters who had ju
st come off the QE2 tour.
—August 4, 1980
Benefit
Gary Indiana, the punk poet and pillar of lower-Manhattan society, said:
Last night, I m.c.’d a benefit for myself at the Mudd Club, on White Street. A couple of weeks ago, someone broke into my apartment and took the money I had to pay the rent, and my videotape machine and my stereo, which weren’t even really mine. I felt like a refugee, and so I gave myself a benefit. Tina L’hotsky showed three films—Marilyn, Snakewoman, and Barbie. Then Ethyl Eichelberger, along with John Heys and Agosto Machado, did some music from their play, which is a new version of Medea. They did a number called “Revenge.” Ethyl, of course, is this drag performer wearing Kabuki eye makeup. Then Max Blagg came on and read some of his poems. I don’t know if you know Max. Max is this decadent Englishman. He writes poems about his own feckless romanticism. He is always falling in and out of love. His poems are in the form of letters sent from hotels in South America. People loved it. They wanted more. So Max, backed up this time by Ethyl, came back, and he read while Ethyl played. That was pretty good. Rene Ricard read a poem called “Prison.” Rene is in Underground USA. It’s the cult film of the year. Rene also had a small part in The Chelsea Girls, and he was in another film, called Hall of Mirrors, which Warren Sonbert made in 1966. Around that time, when he was twenty, Rene was probably the most good-looking man in all of New York. Gerard Malanga read some of his poems. One had something in it about some kids at Bennington, and people didn’t like it very much. I mean, this crowd didn’t care about Bennington. Then Cookie Mueller read a long story about living in San Francisco. It was about all the things she did, and it was fabulous. People loved that. I think they liked that best of all. Cookie is in all the John Waters movies, and a lot of people know her from that, but I don’t think many people knew that she wrote. I read my new poem, which is almost entirely based on “You’ve Really Gotta Hold on Me” and “You’re the Top.” A lot of people I didn’t even know showed up, but I recognized James Rosenquist, Michel Auder, Chi Chi Valenti, Patti Astor, Kathy Ruskin, and Richard Sohl. I came out of it with four hundred dollars, and I am going to buy a new lock for my door and go to the dentist.
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