Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir

by Jamie Brickhouse

  She let me in and rolled her eyes in Glenn’s direction. “Good luck with that one.”

  Glenn, shriveled and peering over his signature tortoiseshell reading glasses, pointed a shaky, gnarled finger and laid into Jack and me with an automatic round of expletives so foul that they were original even to us. For once Jack was at a loss for words. We left Glenn still quivering from the shots he’d fired. After giving up trying to console the inconsolable over God only remembers what, I got myself a martini and let the party begin.

  I’m sorry that I don’t have a photo of Joan meeting Mama Jean. In this brief but cordial moment I don’t think that Joan realized she was meeting “the Joan Collins of Beaumont.” The rest of the party was a blur of more martinis mixed with the floating heads of other women of a certain age: Nan Kempner, Arlene Dahl, Blaine Trump. And Elaine Stritch.

  Miss Stritch, tall and bony, whiskey-voiced, seventy-something, famous Broadway star, stood chatting in a corner with a younger woman. This was before Miss Stritch had the biggest hit of her life with her one-woman show, At Liberty, about her career and struggle with the bottle. But then she was most famous (and most beloved by me) for “The Ladies Who Lunch,” her showstopper from Stephen Sondheim’s Company, which was almost thirty years past. It was one of my favorite songs to drink to. It’s an alcoholic rant in which she lobs acerbic barbs at the empty lives of rich society matrons who lunch—at places just like Mortimer’s, come to think of it—and punctuates each zinger with an increasingly guttural “I’ll drink to that.”

  I thought she would be thrilled that someone barely thirty not only recognized her, but was such a rabid fan. Clearly, I didn’t know as much about celebrities as I thought.

  I pardoned my intrusion and introduced myself. “Hello, Miss Stritch, I’m Jamie Brickhouse, Joan’s book publicist. It’s such a thrill to meet you. I’m a huge fan of yours.” Nothing. Just a cigar-store-Indian stare. “I loved you in Albee’s A Delicate Balance.” Still nothing. Not even a smile. Finally I used a variation of my Peggy Lee line on her. “Oh, Miss Stritch, I can’t tell you how many drunken nights you’ve gotten me through with ‘The Ladies Who Lunch.’”

  She didn’t thank me. She didn’t tell me, “Well, I guess my life was worth living.” She didn’t even tell me to get lost. She broke her cigar-store-Indian stare. In a crusty voice—mouth moving like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s—she instantly deflated my fan balloon with “You know, it’s really rude to only introduce yourself to the famous person and not to the person that the famous person is with.”

  I wish I had said, Oh, is there a famous person here? or Jesus, have a drink, not knowing she was sober. Instead I mumbled an apology and grabbed another drink at the bar. I’ll drink to that! And one for Bernbaum!

  Joan had a great time, despite the volatile Glenn, who, she said, “was less than charming to me.” My parents had stories to tell their friends back in Beaumont. Dad fared better with Elaine, who told him that with a name like Brick-shit-house, she might even come to Beaumont for a visit. And I was happy and very …

  “Drunk! You’re drunk,” Mama Jean informed me at dinner after the party. Yes, I was, but I didn’t need her to tell me and I didn’t need her to spoil it. She looked down at the drink I had just ordered. “How many is that?”

  “I don’t know. Three?”

  “Alcoholics can’t count.”

  I glared at her over my martini.

  “Jamie, I’m worried about you.” She looked at me and heaved a sigh of disgust. “Every time I see you, you’re drinking. I—” She interrupted herself with a sudden thought. “And there’s nothing in your refrigerator to eat! It’s all liquor-related.” I pictured our nearly barren refrigerator: a jar of olives, lemons and limes, tonic, club soda, Absolut in the freezer. Even our cat, a Russian blue, was named Stoli. “I think you’re an alcoholic.” I laughed. “No, Jamie. I’m serious. I really do.”

  Jesus Christ! So what if I was drunk? The party had been a success. I was having a good time and wanted to keep having a good time for as long as possible. She shook her finger at me as she continued to tell me that I had been overserved. Involuntarily, I pulled a Brennan and began biting the air just shy of her finger. I discovered that when I did it, it had the same effect: it infuriated her, but it shut her up.

  I was proud of that moment. Of having the liquor courage to force her to back down. But like everything she said to me, either praise or criticism, it left me asking, Really?

  Not long after that night, the party started to wane for Jack. He took me to lunch to tell me that he was worried that his job was on the line. In all seriousness, and as his devoted colleague and friend, I told him that he had to stop drinking … at lunch. He agreed as we sipped our second—or was it third?—vodka tonic.

  I didn’t want to have that conversation, and a year later I didn’t want the phone call that came one weekday morning while I lay in bed hungover, having just decided to call in sick. My rule of always showing up to work, no matter what happened the night before, had relaxed to “a sick day here and there can’t hurt.” Besides, I’d only taken three—or was it four?—sick days that year.

  “Hello,” I groggily answered the phone, sounding like Elaine Stritch.

  “Jamela.” Jack sounded exhausted. “I’ve had it. I’ve just checked myself into rehab.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, grabbed my throbbing head, and before telling him that I’d help in any way he needed me to, I thought, Am I next?

  SIXTEEN

  Hides: Persian and Raw

  I’ve always loved fur. Growing up, I was the coat-check boy at my parents’ Christmas parties. Even though the temperature rarely dipped below forty-five degrees, all of the wives—and a couple of antiques dealers—arrived in fur. I’d place the sumptuous coats on the double bed in my room and lie on top of them, burying my face in their downy luxury. Pearly Mae, our cat, joined me in inspecting the furs: a red-fox jacket, several full-length, black minks, a silver-fox stole, a cheap calico-rabbit jacket, the occasional lynx, like the full-length one Mama Jean got after seeing Rip Taylor’s on our New York trip. But the fur that fascinated me was Dorothy Loehman’s three-quarter, black, Persian lamb that weighed a ton. So did Dorothy.

  Dorothy was made fun of for that coat by my parents and their friends. “Can you believe she still wears that thing? Nobody but old ladies wear Persian lamb anymore. And she looks like a bulldog in it. It’s not like she can’t get a new coat. She has plenty of money.”

  I guess Dorothy loved that coat. I did too. It was unlike any of the others, with its strange, squiggly pattern of raised black fur that looked like a cockscomb flower but more like the surface of a brain. When brushed against the grain, it had a satiny sheen. Her coat had a brown-mink collar and oversize buttons with mother-of-pearl centers. It also reeked of mothballs, which I found repellent, but its uniqueness among a coterie of the latest-in-fashion look-alikes held my fascination long after I left Beaumont. I remember wishing that boys could wear fur. Then I moved to New York, and with each visit to the flea markets I was getting closer to a fur of my own.

  I was trolling the Columbus Avenue Flea Market with Michahaze one Sunday, trying to take my mind off how much I loathed my new job at a boutique PR agency I’ll call Dorothy Watts & Associates. I had left my associate director of publicity job at the publisher about a year after Jack got sober, with the illusion that I would be representing world-class luxury clients and traveling the world. The first day of the job I entered full of piss and vinegar, my temperature running high with enthusiasm. I was like a cartoon thermometer flooded to the top with red. With each discovery of the reality of the job, the red dipped, dipped, dipped, until the thermometer was bloodless.

  I would not be representing exotic resorts and Michelin-rated European restaurants. I would be hawking window blinds and candles for the home-furnishings division. And the agency was run like a finishing school for girls, with Dorothy Watts as the head mistress. No one called her by n
ame, but warily referred to her as “She” and “Her.” “She doesn’t like for us to eat at our desks. Attracts rats.” “Any client meetings have to be cleared with Her first.” “She can’t stand it if you don’t follow Her color-coded filing system.” My new coworkers were a bevy of white girls in pearls, either perky and upbeat like Stepford Wives or beaten down with the vacant look of post-op lobotomy patients. Paula, an older schoolmarm type with a straight, greasy bob, referred to the place by its acronym, DWA, but pronounced it “Duh Wah” in the flat accent of a cyborg about to run out of battery power. I went out after that first day of work and got stinky drunk.

  But Duh Wah was far away as I roamed the stalls of the flea market. I spotted the Holy Grail of vintage fur hanging solo on a chain-link fence: a Persian-lamb coat. A man’s Persian lamb, with a brown-mink collar, it was cut like a peacoat and was two sizes too big for me. At only $150, I could swing that. God, I had to have it. I tried it on. It weighed a ton, just like Dorothy’s. Sold.

  I spent another $150 in alterations and mother-of-pearl replacement buttons. The first day it was ready, I wore it to work with a pair of vintage, black sunglasses. I was enveloped in so many feelings wearing it. Fur changes a person. I was impossibly chic and original. No one else was wearing Persian lamb. I was sexy like the aging divas who used to pose for the Blackglama fur ads with the headline “What Becomes a Legend Most?” And let’s face it: it was delightfully queenie. No one on the street will mistake me for a football fan.

  Then I arrived at work. Any cloak of positive thinking dissolved when I removed the fur and faced the dismal reality of the Duh Wah to-do list waiting for me:

  1. Come up with three holiday ideas for Ye Olde American Candle Co. (“Sparkle, Shimmer, and Shine This Holiday Season!”)

  2. Write bathroom-window-blinds press release. (“Shade Your Bathroom in Bright Lights and Discreet Privacy with Lunetta Shades from Hailey Blinds.”)

  3. Slit wrists.

  The only thing that got me through the day was the promise of my five-thirty drinks date with Mr. Parker at the Gramercy Park Hotel. In those days the Gramercy had a delightfully down-at-the-heels lobby bar peopled with Eurotrash, crypt keepers from the neighborhood, and dipsomaniacs such as Mr. Parker and me.

  When I arrived, Mr. Parker was already seated at our corner table with a martini—less one finger of gin—in front of him. He raised his glass and exclaimed, “Whoa! Darling, that coat is fan-taaas-tic!”

  I did a quick model turn with my hands in the coat pockets and a glance back over my left shoulder, sunglasses still on. “You like it? Good.”

  I nodded to Nick, the old Greek bartender, in his green livery jacket. He came over like an Oompa-Loompa in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, hands behind his back. “Hello, sir. The usual?”

  “Yes, please, Nick.” He bowed and walked backward away from the table.

  “So how’s Duh Wah?” Mr. Parker asked, imitating me imitating Nancy.

  “Just a little bit worse than it was the day before, but let’s talk about happier times.”

  After that first martini—Beefeater gin, up, dry, with a twist—melted into my body, I left Duh Wah all behind. Over two or three more martinis, mixed nuts, and some chicken drumsticks, we dove into our endless banter, which ricocheted from Joan Crawford’s always wearing open-toed, ankle-strap high heels, to debating the precise shade of green (chartreuse or olive?) of a wall in Michahaze’s and my apartment, to the artistic perfection of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and of course to the exquisiteness of Persian-lamb fur and how lucky I was to have scored the dream coat.

  We called for the tab, as Mr. Parker had to go home for dinner with his boyfriend, Bunny. I should have gone home to Michahaze but I was feeling too free, too sexy, too confident, with my thrilling new coat and three-martini—or was it four?—high not to get more out of the evening. And the Duh Wah icks were long left behind.

  I decided to hit the sodomite resorts in Chelsea. First stop: Barracuda, where the dream coat got me noticed (“Fabulous coat!” “What is that, brain fur?” “My grandmother had a Persian-lamb fur. I adored it”) but not laid.

  Next was the View, a dismal bar that was routinely half-empty. How does it stay open with crowds this meager? Is it a drug front? That’s why I popped in. I was looking for a wintry mix, not what the weatherman called a mix of rain and snow, but what I called a mix of booze and coke. I found it at the View and decided to take my evening down a few notches and shoot for some easy prey at the Rawhide.

  The Rawhide was ostensibly a leather bar, but all were welcome. It was never just Rawhide but always the Rawhide, which lent it an air of foreboding. The awning boasted that the bar was established in 1979, and little seemed to have changed since opening night. To say that I was overdressed is an understatement. The clientele was almost exclusively in jeans, black T-shirts, and perhaps a flannel shirt. Not another Persian lamb in sight.

  It was stripper night and the place was packed, but I lucked out and snagged the last available barstool. As I teeter-tottered a bit while removing my coat and placing it on the back of the stool, I felt disappointed that no one complimented my coat. Wrong crowd. Know your audience.

  “Gin and tonic,” I said to the bartender. Then I swung around to introduce myself to whoever was there. “Hi. How’s it going?” I said to Mr. Right Next to Me.

  “Not bad. You?”

  “Oh, I’m having a swell night and enjoying life!” I said just a little too loudly.

  “Seems like it. You’re kinda drunk.”

  “So? Isn’t everybody?” I said with a crooked smirk.

  He turned away to the person on his other side. Fine.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see a handsome coffee-colored guy holding his leather bomber jacket in the crook of two fingers. “Mind if I park this on your stool? It’s crowded in here.”

  “Sure. Be my guest.” As he placed his coat on top of mine, I remembered the dime bag of coke in my pocket. “Be right back.”

  I took my drink and popped into the bathroom for a snort or three. For another thirty minutes or maybe an hour, I boomeranged from the barstool to the bathroom and points in between. After the coke dried up, I decided I had had enough. Actually, I had had enough because I’d had all there was to have.

  The crowd had thinned a bit. I headed back to my stool. The leather bomber jacket had been replaced by a peacoat. I lifted it to get my Persian-lamb coat. But it wasn’t there.

  Hey. Wha’ happened?

  A beefy, mustached, bald man appeared. “Excuse me, but that’s my coat.” He pointed to the peacoat I was holding.

  “Oh, sorry. I was looking for mine. It was right here.”

  “I just put mine there. There was no coat there.”

  I panicked. Maybe it was the wrong stool. I looked left and right. The stools on either side were empty.

  “Hey,” I yelled at the bartender. “I had a Persian-lamb fur coat. Right here.” I pointed to my stool.

  “A what kind of coat?”

  “A black, furry coat with a mink collar.”

  “Haven’t seen anything like that in here.”

  I careened around the bar looking for the coat or anyone wearing it. I ran out to the street to see if I could spy the thief casually sauntering off in it. Nothing.

  I went back inside and did what I knew how to do best in a moment of crisis: I ordered another drink. In the time it took to finish two gin and tonics I went through the five stages of grief:

  Denial: It can’t be gone. Okay, it’s got to be here somewhere. I’ll find it.

  Anger: Who in the Rawhide would want a Persian-lamb fur? Where is he going to wear it? Motherfucker!

  Bargaining: If only I had carried it with me. If I ever find it, I’ll never let it out of my sight, and I certainly won’t wear it in a place like this.

  Depression: You idiot! You didn’t even get a chance to wear it to a party. You blew it all on a nothing night. You migh
t as well have handed it wrapped in a red ribbon with a complimentary cocktail to the first guy you spoke to. You’re such a fuckup!

  Acceptance: God damn it! It’s gone and was never meant to be. Maybe I never deserved it.

  As I left the dark cave of the bar, a gust of frigid wind hit my coatless body, a final slap in the face. Damn, it’s cold outside. “Taxi!”

  SEVENTEEN

  Forgive Me, for I Have Sinned

  I scanned John’s plywood-and-cinder-block shelves, heavy with titles like Sexuality and the U.S. Catholic Church, The Case for Clerical Celibacy, and The Vatican and Homosexuality. I’d met John, last night’s hookup, at the witching hour in a dark corner of a Lower East Side, poultry-themed bar, the Cock.

  As John handed me the two Advil I’d requested and a mug of black coffee, I said, “Judging from your library, I’d say that you’re either a lapsed Catholic or a priest.”

  John sat opposite me on his futon, curling his long legs under his six-foot-two, meatless frame, and took a sip of his coffee. “Actually, I am a praacticing Caatholic”—his a’s were pronounced long and flat—“but a laapsed priest.”

  His shrug of the shoulders and so-sue-me grin told me that he wasn’t joking. Besides, his goofy, puppy-dog, fortyish face instantly conveyed that he didn’t have an ironic bone in his lanky body.

  “If I’d only known, I would have called you Father John last night.”

  “Oh, Gad,” he said with a roll of the eyes. “I’m glaad you didn’t. I’m actually on leave from my church in Minnesota.” Minnesota. That explains the accent. “I’m at Fordham getting my maaster’s. My thesis is on sexuality and the Caatholic Church.”

  “You’re doing some excellent fieldwork.”

  “Ha. I’m making up for lost time. I’ve been a priest for fourteen years. I wanted to be a priest my whole life. When I was a little boy, I used to pretend to be a priest and say Maass in the basement with a makeshift altar and everything.”