by Simon Doonan
Jonny gets irate. He takes offense that I might not be permitted to sleep with him. Amy and David get to sleep with their boyfriends and girlfriends, et cetera. This is discrimination!
Feeling like the world’s biggest pervert, I shrivel further into the shadows. By this point I am identifying more with John Wayne Gacy than with Blanche DuBois. I scamper upstairs and hide in the bathroom.
Breathe!
I compose myself by taking inventory of Cynthia’s cosmetics. This proves to be a moderately effective mishigas antidote. As I contemplate her various applicators, I wonder how many sables have to die to make one of her oversize blusher brushes. Look at all these eye shadows! How often does she recolor her lids? Is blue eye shadow over, or so totally over that it’s just totally back? Ah, mascara! I’ve always been jealous that women got to wear mascara and men didn’t. Who wouldn’t want to wear a product called Ultra-Lash? And look how the packaging has changed over the years! It seems like only yesterday that Betty and her contemporaries were spitting into those adorable little cakes of black pigment and then attempting to apply it to their lashes with those horrid, clogged, little mini-toothbrushes.
Gradually, the cringing mishigas subsides. I find that I am left with a vague feeling of amusement and familiarity. I like my new in-laws. I begin to suspect, with growing relief, that Jonny’s family might be just as insane as mine, if not more so.
I open the bathroom door and creep down the corridor toward Jonny’s room. Suddenly I hear a “psst!” It is Jonny’s sister, Amy. She beckons me toward her room.
“I want to show you my new dress,” she says breathily, sounding like, and resembling, Anne, the “Gillian Girl” from Valley of the Dolls.
Perching on the corner of her bed, I relax and survey the scene. Though Amy is in her thirties and holding down a grueling and very grown-up job at a fancy New York law firm, her childhood bedroom still has an eerie, doll-strewn, prepubescent quality. It is about to get a lot more eerie.
With a ceremonial air, Miss Adler opens the doors to her closet.
She pulls out a nifty Dolce & Gabbana cocktail dress, the kind of thing Sophia Loren might have worn in one of her streets-of-Naples 1960s movies. I give it the thumbs-up, and we bond over our mutual love of a good frock.
I am just about to rejoin the mishigas festival downstairs when I notice a series of rectangular boxes nestling on the top shelf of her closet. These boxes are larger than a shirt box but smaller than an old-fashioned gown box. Intrigued, I ask about the contents. Amy smiles enthusiastically and grabs the nearest box. After much untying of ribbons and uncrunching of ancient tissue paper, she proudly holds up a dress. It is a tiny, summery Shirley Temple number with embroidered yellow flowers and a very full skirt. It’s about twice the size of an oven mitt.
“I wore it to kindergarten with matching yellow stockings. Every day I would twirl around and show the boys my underwear. I had many admirers.”
I am speechless. Being of diminutive stature, I am quite tempted to try it on myself.
Encouraged by my enthusiasm, Amy unfurls another frock and then another. Together we take a wistfully fascinating tour of her elaborate and meticulously maintained childhood wardrobe. Box after box is opened and then lovingly closed again. There are special occasion dresses in dark satins and pastel organdies. Day dresses are plaid or tweed or cotton gingham for summer.
As she shows me each frock, Amy recounts the occasion upon which it was worn, the picnics, the bar mitzvahs, the weddings and birthdays. It is a sentimental trip down memory lane, and one which seems to give Amy herself a surreal amount of dreamy pleasure.
I am feeling quite jealous, and just a tad resentful.
No wonder I can’t remember anything pleasant: I didn’t have the right frocks!
Whereas I can remember only the jarring occurrences—the flashers, the dentures, the pustules, the tarts, and the embarrassments—Amy seems joyously and effortlessly focused on all the magical Hallmark moments. None of the events she describes are particularly memorable. However, with the aid of her frocks, she has found a way to reconnect with the joy of each occasion.
“What a fabulous childhood you must have had,” I remark as I admire the fagoting on a purple linen number.
“Yes, it was perfect,” replied Amy, “utterly, utterly perfect.”
Jonny interrupts our tête-à-tête. He has resolved the issue of sleeping quarters and instructs me to follow him.
I skip down the hall toward his bedroom feeling totally at home. My new sister-in-law is not only gorgeous but completely cuckoo. In fact, Jonny’s entire family are every bit as deranged as mine, only they live in New Jersey, are slightly in-bred, and have Marimekko shades on every window. We have far more in common than I would have ever imagined. Though I have successfully managed to stay backlit for the entire evening, I am beginning to suspect that I might be wasting my time.
Jonny’s bedroom, like Amy’s, is frozen in time. It looks as if nothing has been moved since junior high school. Every surface seems to be covered in toy cars and Snoopys. I decide to go to sleep quickly, before I start to feel creepy and pervy again.
* * *
The next morning gets off to a good start. Over breakfast, I bond with Jonny’s brother, David, who has devoted a substantial amount of his late twenties and early thirties to researching the eating habits of the late, great Elvis Presley. He has befriended the cooks who fried squirrels for Elvis and the loving housekeepers who unwittingly clogged the Presley bowels and arteries with fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. Magnanimously, he agrees to share some of the recipes with me. I leap up to grab a pen and run smack dab into . . . Granny.
Jonny had previously warned me about the charismatic and combative Granny. She (age ninety) and Jonny’s mum, Cynthia (age sixty), were recently asked to leave Saks Fifth Avenue after a mother-and-daughter shopping trip disintegrated into a nuclear explosion of mishigas.
Granny had not been part of the previous evening’s crab-munching reception. Having retired to her bed early, she was now fighting fit and ready for some action.
Granny fixes her unwavering gaze on me.
The house is so white and mod and stark, there is nowhere for me to hide.
Granny corners me in front of the toaster oven.
I am struck by her appearance. For a woman her age, she is exceptionally chic, impeccably accessorized, and amazingly well-coiffed. Or at least her wig is well-coiffed.
We stare into each other’s eyes.
The New Jersey sunlight pours in and illuminates our standoff, our respective outfits, and our ages.
I feel as if I’m in a movie.
I am Blanche.
Granny is playing the part of Mitch.
Maybe Granny originated the role of Mitch.
Her piercing gaze deconstructs my ensemble. Is that a look of disgust or envy? I can’t really tell. Maybe she has never seen a man wearing faux chinchilla. She seems displeased. Maybe Granny is a fur activist. Her eye is drawn to the ring which adorns my pinkie. It glints. Finally she focuses on the large fur hat which I have elected to wear indoors because it is, in fact, quite chilly.
Granny puts two and two together and comes up with Charlie Powderpuff.
Granny retreats to her room.
I lean nonchalantly on the toaster oven and attempt to conceal my cringing panic by exuding an aura of international savoir faire.
I half expect her to return to the kitchen swinging a two-by-four.
Granny remains in her room. Granny weeps audibly.
Sparks fly out of the mishigas meter. It is smoking.
“Meeting new people is really wonderful,” I muse as I toast myself a crumpet. “New friends can have a transformative effect on one’s life. Why, when I met Jonny, I found out that I was middle-aged. And now, whaddya know, Granny meets me and she finds out that Jonny is a fagele.”
* * *
Granny emerges from her room some time after lunch, at which point I decide to go on t
he offensive.
“What a fabulous suit you are wearing!” I exclaim, referring to the cobalt blue St. John knit with the gleaming gold buttons.
“Black people love my clothing,” says Granny, caressing a large Chanel earring and shifting from one Ferragamo heel to the other. “They love color. I love color. The women in my building don’t appreciate it. They are boring. I have nothing in common with them. You see (beat), I was married to a judge.”
Granny’s deadpan declamatory delivery is not only hilarious but also highly informative. All has been revealed. Combining what Jonny has told me with what I have just heard, I now understand who Granny is.
Granny came to America nearly a hundred years ago. She bought nice clothes. She aspired up, not down. She discovered the power of accessories. Out of all the people in the house, Granny and I have the most in common. She is a superannuated female version of me, a feisty first-generation immigrant who enjoys dressing up and has clawed her way to the middle without really knowing why.
Granny and I bond, effortlessly.
“Can I see your bracelet?” I ask, after my eye is drawn to the rope of gold on her right wrist.
“Tiffany’s. It’s my Roy Cohn bracelet. My husband bought it for me after he won a big case against Cohn.”
After discussing all her jewelry, we embark on an enthusiastic rant about how generally more fabulous we are than anyone else in the Western Hemisphere. We are now a “we.” Everything is about how incredibly great and special we are and how pedestrian/uninteresting/unstylish the rest of humanity is.
We get quite carried away with ourselves. We become quite obnoxious, Granny and I. And why not?
We are the Beautiful People, and we know it.
* * *
Jonny and I drive Granny back to Philadelphia.
After being in the car for about twenty minutes, Granny and I begin to calm down. We have finally run out of self-congratulatory steam. Granny becomes a little contemplative. She takes a long look at me and my Jonny. The realization that we are a happy couple is starting to sink in.
“I always thought that when I reached old age I would sit in a rocking chair and stare into the middle distance like Whistler’s mother . . . ” She pauses and touches the side of her wig with a cupped hand. “But you know what? Nothing changes. The mishigas just keeps on coming.”
We take Granny up to her chicly decorated apartment. In the hallways we meet some of her coresidents.
None of them are as fab as Granny.
POSTSCRIPT
THE FLOOR PILLOW
In 1977, the year of the Queen’s silver jubilee, an overweight punk-rock friend pogoed onto the floor pillow, causing it to explode and fill our home with crumbling Styrofoam nuggets. Biddie and I dragged the half-empty sack out to the nearest bus stop and left it waiting poignantly in the rain.
In what can only be described as a coincidence of gargantuan proportions, Jonathan Adler, my Jonny, the love of my life, now designs and manufactures, along with his ceramics, gorgeous squishy floor pillows. Maybe I’m biased, but his floor pillows seem so much nicer than the one Biddie and I dragged around London for so many years.
JAMES BIDDLECOMBE
I’m happy to report that the incredible and talented Biddie has outlived the floor pillow. He continues to perform, delighting audiences from Stepney to Ibiza. He even has his own website—www.biddie.co.uk. As I write he is illuminating the pantomime season at the Malvern Festival Theatre and wowing the audience with his interpretation of a character called Widow Twanky in Aladdin. “She’s a very lanky Twanky who doesn’t hold with hanky panky!!” Despite our advancing years, we continue to call each other “daughter!” He continues to insult me about my lack of height. He recently sent me a bogus circus-midget application form with a sequin glued to the outside of the envelope. I was quite taken in. I should have smelled a rat when I got to the bit where I was asked to specify my “height (above sawdust).”
TERRY DOONAN
My dad outlived Betty by seven years. He missed her horribly and assuaged his pain by prominently displaying a pair of her high-heeled lace-up ankle boots on his mantelpiece to remind him of the good times.
SHELAGH DOONAN
My gay sister remains happily married to a lady called Anna, who is a leading light in the South London belly-dancing community. They have a gorgeous daughter called Tanya, who is much smarter and taller than I was at her age.
Upon reading the “Gifts” chapter, Shelagh wrote to me with her reactions. Here is an excerpt from her letter:
How did we both turn out queer? Who knows! Like you, I was simply trying to make sense of who I was. Loved everything you wrote with the notable exception of your depiction of me in the 1980s: it was an incredible time of personal and political ferment: nuclear weapons, exhausting experiments in non-monogamy, excitement and subversiveness in discos with names like Daisies and Rackets! It was all very different from the Slag/Shelagh who emerges in your pages—earnest, grumpy and a bit dowdy, like the dykes who (rarely) appear in Will & Grace.
Your loving sister XXX
* * *
In her letter she also accuses me of deliberately characterizing lesbians as stylistically challenged, fanny-pack-toting drears in order to create a foil for my own spotlight-grabbing persona.
Naturally, there is not one iota of truth in these outrageous and totally unfounded accusations. I am chalking her feelings up to gay sibling rivalry.
MY VERY FIRST DECORATIVE ACCESSORY
In 2000 I was clearing out my parents’ attic when I stumbled upon my first great love, that red glass decanter. I dragged it back to New York, where it sits proudly on my desk, a testament to my congenital affinity for camp and exotica.
MY FELLOW COLLEGE VERMIN
Joy stopped drinking astringent and had three kids. Sadly, Rose died in 2001, leaving a gorgeous daughter called Eleanor, who so far shows no signs of wanting to make cottage cheese in her panty hose.
UNCLE KEN
Though fraught with problems, Ken’s marriage to Pat endured. They remained together for the rest of his tormented and difficult life, proving the old adage that there is indeed someone for everyone.
Ken has long since departed for that great floor pillow in the sky, where I hope, God has seen fit to restore his sanity. I would like to think that he now spends his days lounging about, rolling his own cigarettes, and discussing my inclination to write confessional books with Terry, Betty, blind Aunt Phyllis, Lassie, and a happily unschizophrenic Narg.
THE MALAYSIAN SIMULATOR
Long gone, as is the Commonwealth Institute itself. Probably shut down by the health authorities, which is just as well. It was a breeding ground for cold germs. Biddie caught an atrocious flu after nodding off and snoozing through half a dozen presentation cycles.
MY SANITY
Haven’t lost it yet. There’s still plenty of time. Head thrashing recurs once in a while. My dog, Liberace, usually wakes me up by licking my face.
SKIPPING
Still a firm believer. I don’t recommend doing it in public, unless you are either very old or very young.
THE COLOSTOMY BAGS
I drove them around for a few more years. Never did find a use for them. I hope I never will.
RITA
I have no idea what happened to Rita the tart.
I try to conjure happy endings for my long-lost neighbor. Maybe she found God or won the lottery and bought a pub on the Costa Brava, where, tanned and podgy, she now entertains retired members of the offtrack betting community.
Somehow I doubt it. Rita’s willingness to embrace her role as underclass slag did not bode well for her future. She was a perfectly styled victim who might just as well have had a sign on her back which read, “Please don’t invite me for a weekend at your Elizabethan country house. Instead, please bludgeon me to death with a large wrench and throw me in an alley.” No amount of floor pillows could get her out of the gutter and into one of Nigella Lawson’s dinner partie
s.
The misery of her life reaches across the decades and yanks at my heartstrings.
Why do I care? Having myself traveled the bumpy road from common to vaguely presentable, I wish only the best for others.
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
Quelle surprise! They were right under my nose all the time.
Wait! I feel another Wizard of Oz moment coming on:
if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again
I won’t look any further than my own backyard.
* * *
No wonder Dorothy has so many friends.
ALSO BY SIMON DOONAN
Eccentric Glamour:
Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You
Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate
and Fabulously Eccentric Women
Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales from a Life in Fashion
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1 Pacamac: an unstylish but extremely popular brand of lightweight raincoat made of semitranslucent gray plastic. Umbrellas were thought to be effeminate. Real men wore Pacamacs.
2 I refer to the pill-popping, hellcat heroine in Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls.
3 Wee is a very important word in Northern Ireland, among savory and unsavory folk alike. Wee indicates something small but also something which is regarded with pleasure and/or affection. “Will you take a piece of soda bread?” a neighbor would say. “Yes, just a wee piece now,” Betty would reply.
4 The Well of Loneliness (1928): a brave but suicide-inducing early lesbian novel by a lady named Radclyffe Hall, whose friends wore monocles and favored bulldogs over poodles.