We all pouted and sighed. Finally, Albert gave in and went to get some special coins to put in the slot machines. He gave one coin to each of us. “That’s all you get,” he said.
I deposited the coin into one of the machines and pulled the lever. I held my breath as the numbers and bars and cherries went spinning round and round in the little window at the top. Then the cherries lined up three in a row and came to a dead stop. Bells went off and coins started cascading out of the machine, so many I couldn’t catch them all.
“I won!” I screamed. “I won!” Albert was astonished, and he and the girls helped me gather up the money, which was pouring out onto the floor. That did it for Albert. He went off to get more chips, and when he came back, he handed them to the girls and told them to “go win.”
I was tempted to play some more but decided to quit while I was ahead. Money had always been too scarce for me to take any chances on losing it. Besides, even though I was feeling lucky, I knew it was probably beginner’s luck. I’m not quite sure where the maturity for that insight came from, given my tender age, but luck is just something I’ve always known instinctively that a person should never push. And I like to think I never have.
The next night I was backstage, getting ready for the show, when I heard Dave, our bandleader, onstage tinkling at the piano. I sneaked out to listen; Dave was a brilliant musician, and I could get lost in his jazz improvisations. He was wrapped up in his playing, but as he paused for a second, the sound of clapping broke through the silence in the auditorium. Then a voice said, “It’s me, you old fool.”
Dave stood up from the piano, peered out into the darkness, then saw the speaker walking up to the stage—a middle-aged man of short build with a mustache and close-cropped black hair. “Redd!” Dave blurted out, a big grin spreading over his face. Hearing his name, I knew it must be the famous comedian Redd Foxx.
The two men hugged and started talking a mile a minute. That night Dave told all of us that we were invited to see Redd’s act at the Aladdin Hotel. So after we finished our show, we tramped over to see his. The man was funny—I mean, so funny that when he told a joke, I started hiccupping from laughing so hard. His act was rude, raunchy, and sexy, what comedians used to call “blue.” I felt a little embarrassed, hearing the jokes with my mom there, but also very grown-up.
After the show we went backstage to Redd’s dressing room, and Dave introduced us one by one. When he got to me, Dave said, “This is Pat, the youngest model in our show.” Redd kissed my hand and gave me a dirty-old-man smile. Then he turned to the group and said, “So what do a nun and a junkie have in common?”
“What?” we all said together.
“A habit,” he said.
We all laughed, but Dave clammed up. “That’s not funny,” he said. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t like the joke. I thought it was hilarious.
“Never mind,” Redd said. “I was just trying it out, my friend.”
We were about to leave when a tall, slim man appeared in the doorway. “Stop,” he said. “Nobody leaves until I meet each of you lovely ladies.” My view of the guy’s face was blocked, but the voice was unmistakable: Bill Cosby.
“Hey, Bill,” Redd said, “what’re you doing here? I thought you were out in LA.”
“I’m filming for a week out here, so I thought I’d take in some sun and fun and see your show, of course.” He moved aside in the doorway to let another man come through. “I brought my costar with me.”
Wow, now I was seriously starstruck. I adored Robert Culp, and I Spy was one of my favorite television shows.
“Hi, everybody,” Culp said.
Redd shook Culp’s hand and said, “Don’t be jealous of all these pretty ladies, Robert. They just like handsome men like me.”
Bill laughed and said, “I thought we’d hang out with you tonight.”
“Wait a minute,” Culp said. “You guys aren’t gonna gamble, are you? You said no gambling, Bill.”
“Oh, come on, Robert,” Bill said.
“Not for me, man. I’ve got a wife at home.”
“Ah, you newlyweds,” Bill said. “So, Redd, I guess it’s you and me and all these pretty ladies.”
“What are you talking about?” Redd said. “You got a wife, too! I’m the only single fox around here.”
“All right, I’ll call my wife right now. Where’s the phone?” While he was on the phone, several of us asked Robert Culp for his autograph. When it was my turn, Bill came up to me and Theresa from behind and put his arms around our shoulders. “Don’t ask Robert for his autograph. Ask me.”
I noticed he was sticking pretty close to Theresa. Redd noticed, too, because he said, “If you don’t stop flirting, I’m telling your wife.” He turned to the rest of us. “If you want to go out on the town with me, let’s go! I’m paying, and you’re all my guests.”
So the eight of us plus my mom and the wardrobe ladies followed Redd Foxx and Bill Cosby into the Aladdin’s private casino, where the stars went to play. What a spectacle. The glamour girls and high rollers. The blackjack and roulette tables spaced out under vaulted golden ceilings and chandeliers. Card dealers dressed in tuxedos shuffling cards, and gambling tables piled high with stacks of chips. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
I was arm in arm with Bill when Redd pulled me away and said, “You’re my lucky charm tonight.” He placed several stacks of bills on the table and asked the dealer to convert them to gambling chips. Redd was about to throw the dice when he stopped and handed them to me. “Here, honey. Throw your luck.”
I’d never done this, but I’d seen a lot of gangster movies, so I figured I could wing it. I put on quite a show, shaking the dice and blowing on them before throwing. I didn’t let go of the dice until I had everyone’s attention, and when I did, they rolled slowly down the length of the table. When they stopped, the man behind the table said, “Win!”
I was ecstatic—maybe I really was a lucky charm—and Redd and Bill both hugged me. “I’ve got to keep you around,” Redd said, and nodded to the table where Mom was sitting with the wardrobe ladies. “I hope your mom over there doesn’t mind. Now do that thing again with the blowing.” So I did.
Meanwhile, Bill and Theresa were getting awfully cozy. Everyone was buzzing about it, and to help offset the other models’ jealousy, Bill invited all of us for dinner at his house in Los Angeles, where we were headed in two days.
When we arrived, Bill got in touch immediately and asked everyone involved with the show to come over. We models sat in the living room and chatted with his beautiful young wife, Camille, who was rocking their baby daughter. When Bill kissed her on the cheek, everyone giggled. You’d have thought we were in high school. (Well, I was in high school. But the others should have been a lot smoother.)
Bill went into the kitchen and returned with a tray of steaks. As he was heading out back to the grill, he said to Theresa and me, “Have you guys seen the garden?”
“Not yet,” we said, following him outside to the patio. It was a cool night, so everyone else stayed inside. I oohed and aahed at the stars and what I could see of the garden, and Theresa busied herself helping Bill with the steaks.
“Listen,” Bill said, turning to me. “Since it’s so dark out, I think it’s best to show one of you the garden and then come back for the other, because we have a crazy swan out there, and the slope is really steep. And someone has to watch the meat. If it burns, my wife will kill me. So can you keep an eye on the grill while I show Theresa around?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. I stood there for a long time, listening to the steaks sizzle, watching them turn crisp at the edges, until I knew they were ready to be flipped. I thought I’d better let Bill know, so I carefully, slowly, quietly went into the garden, not wanting to scare the crazy swan.
Bill and Theresa were behind a big bush, kissing passionately. Maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was. I thought their behavior was despicable (though in light of the later accusations agains
t Bill, the dalliance he had with Theresa seems almost respectable).
Some crazy swan, all right, I thought. I decided not to say anything and hurried back up to the patio and called out, “It’s time to flip the steaks!”
As the two of them walked toward me, Theresa adjusted her skirt and Bill followed a few steps behind. Her lipstick was smudged. She looked at me, and I gave her a dirty look. Cosby tended the meat, oblivious. He handed Theresa the tray and put the steaks on it. “Let’s go feed the gang,” he said. “We’ll see the garden later.”
We all ate and talked past two in the morning, at which point Bill’s chauffeur took us to our hotel in his limousine. Theresa and I were in the backseat, and Mom was in front with the driver. I was really upset. “I don’t like what you did,” I said to Theresa.
“What do you mean?”
“With Bill.”
“It’s none of your business. He likes me.”
“He’s married.”
“Look, I hate to disappoint you . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“We met his wife,” I said. “She’s really nice.”
“Listen, you’ve got a lot to learn,” she said. “You’re still young. A girl has to look out for herself. After this tour is over, I have nothing.”
“You shouldn’t do that to another person.” I knew that many of the girls on the tour were hoping to meet men. Back then, the biggest ambition a lot of women had was to find a husband who’d take care of them. Presumably, they wanted a man who didn’t already have a wife.
“I’m not hurting anyone,” she said. “He likes me, and that’s that. He can help with my career. He knows everybody.”
“You don’t have to take someone’s husband to make it. How could you?”
“How could I? Next week when we’re back in New York, he’s coming to see me, and we’re going away for a whole weekend. He told his wife he has a business trip.”
I had a flashback to my mom sitting in the living room, saying, “I’m so tired. I wish I had a dad for you, someone to help us and love us.” I was jarred by this memory. Camille Cosby had a husband and a dad for her two little daughters. And he was cheating on all of them.
I turned away from Theresa and didn’t speak to her for the rest of the trip. She and Bill Cosby had destroyed any illusions I had about stars.
The tour wrapped up with shows in Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Jose. Our final event was in San Francisco on December 9. At the end, we stood in a single line across the stage, all nine of us arm in arm like a string of paper dolls, including Jorge, our token male and honorary bridegroom. As Carole, the commentator, walked toward the podium, she called out each of our names and noted, “Our bride, Pat Cleveland, and bridegroom, Jorge Ben Hur, have been married ninety times onstage.” Jorge and I stepped to the center of the stage, and he kissed me for the last time. By now I was an old pro and almost sorry to see our little romantic ritual end. We took our bows, and then someone from the side of the stage handed bouquets of flowers to all of us. I started to cry.
That night in the hotel, I fell apart. I got a fever (most likely brought on by sheer exhaustion) and as I slept, I dreamed that a gang of tough girls was threatening me, saying, “Who do you think you are?” and “You’re not black. You’re not white. You’re nothing.” Then they grabbed me and started to pummel my head. I ran and ran into the distant horizon. “Leave me alone!” I screamed. “I’m not hurting anybody!”
Then I woke up.
Mom was packing our big pink suitcases. “You were having a bad dream,” she said.
“It was those terrible girls at school,” I told her. “They were hurting me.”
“Don’t worry, darling, you were just dreaming,” she said. “Anyway, you don’t go to that school anymore.”
The next day Mom and I were flying over the Rocky Mountains. My previous night’s bad dream notwithstanding, I was eager to get back into the swing of my normal life in New York City. Doing the Fashion Fair had been an incredible experience, one that had expanded my head and my heart, but it had been hard work, and there’d been some painful moments that had cost me my innocence. You’ve grown like a rose, I thought. And now you have a few thorns.
chapter 14
THE BEAT GOES ON
Me, working toward my dreams, during a typical day at the High School of Art & Design, New York City.
Back in New York, I felt a bit adrift socially. The kids I’d been hanging out with had all graduated the previous spring and gotten on with their lives. Two of them had even married each other. That’s how it was back in 1966: People got married right out of high school. Ray had moved away, and Frankie now had a serious girlfriend who occupied all his free time.
I still loved to dress up and go out dancing. The summer before I left for the Fashion Fair, I’d noticed a new boutique at the entrance to the Cheetah. It was run by a mod British woman and stocked with clothes designed by someone named Tiger Morse. This was the height of the Carnaby Street era in fashion, and anything even remotely British was the rage. The walls were painted in Day-Glo colors and lit with a black light; when you walked in, your face looked purple, and your teeth shone so white they seemed radioactive. Hanging from the ceiling were tents made of Moroccan fabrics accented with little mirrors. It was one hundred percent psychedelic.
I was wild about the boutique from the first moment I walked in wearing my red patent-leather microskirt. I guess the feeling was mutual, because the manager saw what I had on and went nuts for it. She asked where I got my outfit (along with my skirt, I was wearing a feathered boa top), and I told her my mom and I had made it. She asked me if I could make the outfit in different colors for her to sell in the shop—or, for that matter, any other creations Mom and I came up with.
So I was soon producing a line of clothes for the Tiger Morse label! My mom, aunt, and I would stay up late, sewing like mad, watching television, laughing, singing, and talking until we couldn’t sew anymore. And on weekends, before I went inside the Cheetah to dance, I’d deliver the clothes to the Tiger Morse boutique, collecting hundreds of dollars for the three or four dresses, tops, and skirts I left there. They were a big hit, and the store wanted more. I was ready and willing to keep supplying them. Mom used to say that sewing was like driving a car—easy on the pedal, don’t let the needle run over your fingers, and keep going straight—and the rules worked pretty well for life, too. Making clothes was fun and creatively satisfying. Best of all, I’d found my vocation: I wanted to be a fashion designer.
At Madame Metcalf’s urging, I applied for admission to the High School of Art & Design at Fifty-Seventh Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. (Mom was won over by the fact that it was three blocks from Bloomingdale’s, the chic department store where the stars shopped and where she and I loved to look at the mocked-up rooms in the furniture department and fantasize about how we’d decorate our dream house someday.) I prepared a portfolio of drawings on different themes, took a written test, and went for an interview. A few weeks later, a letter arrived offering me a spot at the school.
Since I’d been away during the first semester, I didn’t start attending Art & Design until the beginning of the second semester. I took sculpting, photography, painting, art history, and (my favorite) fashion illustration. I really excelled at draping. I found I could easily sculpt fabric on the croquis forms we used in class. Draping was natural for me, because I was already doing it at home.
My goal was to get good grades in order to earn a scholarship to college. I was reaching that goal in all of my classes except one: my draping class, taught by a certain Mrs. P. She was a jealous, bitter woman who constantly sabotaged my work. She’d found out I was a model on the Ebony Fashion Fair after seeing my photo on the cover of Jet. She’d clearly decided I needed to be taken down a peg or two. Mrs. P.’s hostility got so extreme that she would hide my work. It was outrageous. I mean, how could a five-feet-tall croquis form go missing?
“My form isn’t here!” I’d say, incredulous.<
br />
“You didn’t do your work,” she’d reply.
“But I left it in the closet.”
“Well, you don’t see it there, do you? So you’ll have to do it again.”
This went on for months, with me getting penalized for incomplete work. Finally, I decided to speak to the school counselor, who reported the situation to the principal. One day a school employee found Mrs. P. in the coat closet, destroying my work. Evidently, there was a lot of back-and-forth between Mrs. P., the administration, and the teachers’ union, but ultimately, she was fired for harassing a student.
Do you know how hard it is to fire a tenured teacher at a New York City public school? The teacher has to do something a lot worse than being lousy in the classroom—and she usually has to do it many times. That gives you an idea of just how terrible Mrs. P. was. Thank heaven she was caught red-handed. Believe me, I wasn’t the only student who was thrilled to have her gone.
That year I made several good friends, my closest being Jimmy, who sat next to me in illustration class and could paint like Michelangelo. It took me only a day to realize that Jimmy was a genius, so I couldn’t understand why he was always so sad. We’d eat lunch together in the cafeteria and go home together after school, and he’d tell me that the world didn’t understand him. He was my first gay friend.
Jimmy dressed really well and encouraged me to do the same. School dress codes in those days were strict: Girls had to wear skirts below the knees; no pants allowed. Boys could not wear jeans. Our school was more lenient than most, but miniskirts were still taboo. Naturally, I decided to wear one. The minute I passed through the front door, I was given detention and told to go home and change. I protested, saying that I was a designer and expressed my art through the clothes I wore. The argument went on and on: I was threatened with expulsion, but I held my ground. In the end I prevailed, on the principle that this was, in fact, an art school whose very foundation was creativity. Before I knew it, all the other girls had started wearing minis, too. The times they were a-changin’. Jimmy broke the same barrier for blue jeans, and shortly after that, Art & Design became the first New York City public school to allow both sexes to wear denim.
Walking with the Muses Page 9
