Unsure of what to do with myself I sit and watch some television on the oldest set I have seen in a long while. It reminds me of the great wooden cabinets which served as TVs in my youth. Then we had never seen a colour television. We arrived to the entirely new notion of daytime programmes and colour. The colour was poor and mainly green. It was achieved by means of a panel of three large lights in front of the box — one red, one green and one blue. I suspect there was a poor scientific rationale behind the concept and for some time we thought everyone in American show business had some mild form of gangrene.
The set in this otherwise trendy apartment has not moved on much from the 1966 effort and certainly the coverage has not improved. I feel assaulted by the TV. I remember when the thing about American television was that programmes were regularly interrupted by television ads. Now it seems to be the other way round and the tiny programme sections are merely an irritant to the main function of selling. Ads pound at me every few minutes to buy shares, lose weight, get a new mattress or have the experience of a lifetime, all with the same urgency.
Some American woman athlete has lost in the first round of something and she is being interviewed. She smiles, with teeth so glitteringly filled that they rather make up for the lack of gold round her neck, and declares, ‘I don’t mind losing because, you see, it is God’s will for me.’ I think about that. In the UK it is not God’s will but a lack of lottery funding.
My sister, who is living in New York, has sent over a video of a very bad B-movie, Reptilicus, made in the 1950s by a director called Sidney Pink. It’s a rather gripping story about a monster that tries to eat Copenhagen. It’s all in English and includes a thirty-second sequence with our dad playing a journalist telling the people that ‘There is no reason to be afraid. The military has everything in hand.’
Fantastic. Like father, like daughter. Another Toksvig brush with the fringes of fame.
I move back to ‘live’ television. Martha Stewart is planting pansies and making ‘tomato cobbler’. I don’t know what tomato cobbler is — either a vegetarian main course or a rather unusual profession. I hit the sound and let Martha speak. She doesn’t explain about the cobbler but she does tell me that ‘Pansies are the thoughtful flower’.
Martha looks thoughtful. Not surprisingly. She has much money to be thoughtful of. She is a curious American phenomenon. She is the ultimate homemaker. Her television series and vast website encompass the whole American Dream of home life. She serves up an endless diet of the myth of home-grown vegetables, hand-made quilts and pets that don’t shed hair. It is, of course, the American dream existence shot through twenty-eight layers of gauze. I think the director intended to make Martha even more ethereal than she actually is, but it is like watching TV through a tube of KY jelly. Martha, in a thick gelatinous fog, wanders round a farm with a tray of lettuces while young men let soil run through their fingers and talk about organics. She never actually touches the soil but everything is clearly fresh and beautiful. Martha is my friend. If I went to her house she would make me soup and we could decorate the tomato cobbler or play with him or whatever. Then she smiles and spends some time telling me what I can buy on-line. The Pumpkin Carving Kit!, all wrapped up in a beautiful cloth roll, is certainly a must have. Perhaps I could just hole up in the Bowery and order things. Perhaps I need never meet anyone or have any kind of reunion with people who think they know me…
The final shots of tomato cobbler make me hungry so I look in the fridge for something to eat. In the freezer compartment there is an empty ice tray and a solitary frozen TV dinner. I check out the dinner. On the side of the roast beef plate it says:
‘Serving Suggestion — Defrost’
I like the fact that it is only a suggestion and that some people might decide to suck the thing frozen, but it is still too much cooking for me so I put it back. What would Martha have said?
Although the apartment is small I check it again for anything untoward. This is unnecessary as I have already looked in every cupboard, under the beds and indeed down the loo. The loo thing is important and I’m not sure everyone would think of it. When I was a kid it was a well-known urban myth that many, many people brought baby alligators back to New York from Florida holidays as souvenirs. Of course the creatures grew and no one knew what to do with them so the general solution was to flush them down the toilet. There the reptiles refused to die and thrived in the excrement of the NYC sewage system. Every now and then one of them would seek freedom back the way they had come. The toilet bowl was not a dumping ground but an escape hatch. How the thing was supposed to get round the U-bend I have no idea but, even aged forty-two, I did just look. Really, I shouldn’t be left alone.
The phone rings at 9.30 and reckless as to whether a serial killer is calling for an appointment I answer. I think I would have spoken to anyone. It is Rita. Gladys Two. Of all the Gladyses, Rita is the one I have kept in closest touch with. We talk for about an hour. It is easy and fun. I find my accent slipping into the New York of my childhood. She says that the one year at high school, the year of the Gladyses, was high school for her. Then we cover the fact that we are both worried that each of us will think the other is fat and hang up full of promises to meet the next day. I turn away from the telephone and see myself reflected in the television screen. I am fat. I am a fat forty-two-year-old woman. I can’t think how I got that old or that fat but at least I have started my journey. At least it had been important to Rita too.
Now there is a talk show hosted by a man called Maury. Maury is an older man. He has a thin handsome face and looks very fit. I am sure Maury works out. He also must be exhausted at the end of the day because all his guests scream at each other. The theme of this programme is women who are controlled by their men. The men on the show happily admit to beating their wives.
‘I am the man,’ one fellow called James keeps repeating. ‘I am the man. You women want to talk to me, you get down on your knees and then I might listen. I am the man. I am A-class and women are B-class and I think you know what the B stands for.’
James is a big man with a vast stomach yearning to be released from the confines of his clothing. I am surprised that James can spell anything. Indeed, getting as far as B in the alphabet must have been a challenge for his local education authority.
There is a shot of a woman listening to James. Her mouth is wide open in horror. She is wearing headphones and carrying a clipboard so we know she is a professional. This one shot tells us a lot. Clearly this woman works for The Maury Show, clearly she has heard a great deal in her time but today takes the biscuit. This show, that one shot tells us, is unique. James wants to marry his girlfriend but James is clearly not the bridegroom every girl dreams of.
Maury is fantastic. Maury is a real man. He stands between James and his woman when James wants to ask her to marry him.
‘In all my years as a talk-show host I have never stood between a man and his girlfriend if he wanted to marry her.’
It is noble. It gets cheers, but you have to ask yourself how many times Maury has had to deal with on-air marriage proposals.
There is a constant trail, teasing us that James has asked his girlfriend to marry him backstage. The cameras were there. Did she say yes? I have no idea. I go and have the swiftest of baths. Swifter than I intended, actually. The plug system for the bath is operated by a three-foot silver lever at the side. The plughole shows no sign as to how it might actually seal. The workings are concealed by a silver plate with holes in it. I cannot figure out if the lever should go up or down. I try both but the water escapes in a rush either way. This is shower country and I am a fool to want to sit down at all. Only English people want to lie full length in their own soiled water, but I am nothing if not determined. In the end, I opt for wedging my arse over the hole and there is sufficient suction from the escaping water to make this a rather successful plug. With one cheek between me and the New York sewer system I now realise that I have placed the soap too far away on the
ledge for me to reach without moving my plug. And anyway suction has been greater than I thought and there is some doubt as to whether I shall ever be able to move again. I envisage Richard eventually returning to find me naked, wrinkled, still filthy with a mark round my derrière like a love bite from a Koi carp. Then, I remember the baby alligators and imagine that one of them is even now eyeing up the new moon I am presenting via the plughole. I am out of there pretty quick.
By the time I return, the woman-beater seems to be confessing that his mother is a prostitute. I decide I must revise my initial opinion of the man and realise with some humanity that he has had a difficult life. In fact, during my short absence Maury has disappeared and Jerry Springer is talking to an entirely different young man whose mother has just become a prostitute. She is an enormous woman wearing a yellow brassière and Lycra cycling shorts. It is not at all attractive and as I haven’t eaten I turn it off. I have every confidence that should I find another moment of leisure later in the day someone else will be talking to Siamese twins who were seduced by their uncle just before he became archbishop.
I don’t know what all this means. I don’t know why people would want to come on a television programme and expose their lives in this way. Is it for fame? Is it actually seen as helpful? As some kind of therapy? I once read that the American people are by nature pioneering spirits, who moved restlessly across this great continent from the East coast to the West until they hit the Pacific. After that there was nowhere left to go so they began to explore inside themselves. I don’t know if it’s true. Therapy is big here. Clearly the people on the Maury and the Springer shows come from the poorer section of the population. Perhaps they can’t afford to go and see someone to pour their hearts out to; so they go on television. It is a horrible gladiatorial display, which is somehow compelling. It has the same balance of fascination and repulsion as watching surgery on TV. These people’s lives are dreadful and exposing the minutiae of them to the world is not going to help. Maury promises the line of beaten and bruised women that therapy and assistance will be found for them, ‘And if it takes money then you come to me.’
St Maury. Everyone cheers and then watches a product endorsement for a spray furniture polish. It gets rid of scratches in fine wood. It makes things whole again, just like Maury.
I wonder if anyone has ever done a study of the actual impact on people post-talk-show appearance. Perhaps they all just go home, have a beer and contemplate their brief flirtation with fame.
Anyway, now it’s 4 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I blame the mattress. There’s nothing wrong with it but I have watched four hundred mattress ads and have been bludgeoned into thinking that there might be. The CBS news people are up as well, which is nice. There is a very plastic woman and a man with quite grey hair being very cheery about stocks, weather and the price of internal airline tickets. The neighbourhood is not slumbering either. Someone appears to be washing out the West Side Story look-alike backyard with its Tate Modern collection of metal fire escapes. Richard is still out because he is a gay boy and knows how to party.
The sounds outside are building into endless, relentless noise. People are washing streets, backing up trucks, dumping giant pal-lets of stuff on the road just in case things quieten down. Directly across the street is Bowery Building Supplies, where sheet metal is apparently only ever delivered at four in the morning and no worker has ever been employed who didn’t have butterfingers. My ears are assaulted by the city. The Bowery still has many timber yards, service stations and small industrial units that all take deliveries. It could correctly be described as a ‘colourful neighbourhood’. All the trucks have beepers to act as a warning when reversing. I’m sure they have them in England but not so loud. I think the idea is that blind people won’t get hit by an unexpected high-volume delivery of broccoli, but the noise is unbelievable. On our street (I am beginning to feel proprietorial), no truck seems to want to approach a delivery going forwards. Every blind person in the neighbourhood is safe from unexpected death by tyre but only deaf people can get any sleep.
The news people move on to Barbra Streisand. She is giving a farewell concert at Madison Square Garden in NYC that night and I feel depressed. I will never see her sing. How awful. It reminds me of being a kid in New York. Of hearing that Judy Garland had died and feeling bereft. I do so love the divas of show business and it is a peculiarly American love. The news reporter, wearing a staggering amount of make-up for the time of morning, is managing to be very earnest about la Streisand.
‘A woman picking up her $2,500 ticket before the show told a friend, “It was either another face-lift or Barbra. I chose Barbra.”’
I hope Barbra feels bad. Standing on stage looking out at all those saggy-f aced punters.
As soon as it was light I headed out for coffee. On the way I passed a huge 24-hour shop promisingly called Tower Books and went in. There were only ten books in the apartment. Nine of them were self-help programmes for co-dependency and the last was Volume I of Contract Bridge. I did read that and now know more about bold bidding than might be useful. Inside Tower Books there were acres of racks holding magazines on every subject imaginable and one or two that I had never even heard of. There was a substantial amount of very tacky gay stuff and, bizarrely, a thing called Scandinavian Press with news from Denmark.
I wandered around but really I wanted something more substantial than a magazine, so I went over to the counter. Here a very smiley young man was keen to help me.
‘What can I do for you today?’ I liked the question. It suggested he was going to come to my aid on a regular and future basis.
‘Yes, hello. I was wondering where the books are?’
He smiled again. ‘Right. We don’t sell books … as such.’ This caused us both to pause for a moment.
‘But there is a huge sign outside that says Tower Books,’ I said, feeling like a pedant.
‘Yes.’ He nodded in agreement. ‘We’ve been thinking about taking that part of the sign down. If you want books you really need to go to a bookstore.’
‘Right.’ I couldn’t let it go. ‘How will I tell it’s a bookstore? It could say Bookstore and sell something else.’
By now the young man was confused but still smiling.
‘Barnes and Noble sell books,’ he finally managed. We both smiled. ‘But they’re closed,’ he added.
I bought the New Yorker, MS magazine and the Gay and Lesbian Review. Then, as a kind of homage to my great-grandfather and his failed Danish newspaper in Albany, the Scandinavian Press. The latter was a cracking read. It appeared to have been printed on paper so recently recycled as to contain living memories of a former existence. Small pieces of Scandinavian log floated through all the articles. Apart from an ‘In-depth guide to rune reading’, the big news of the week was an interview with Helge Ingstad, the hundred-year-old Norwegian who had definitively proved that the Vikings discovered America. Old Helge was clearly full of beans and was quoted as saying, ‘Now, even UNESCO accepts it. So now it is no question at all.’
Bless. How my old English teacher would have hated him. Great explorer, lousy grammarian. Still, one in the eye for old Columbus. Despite my Scandiwegian leanings it was, however, the New Yorker that hit home. Inside was a cartoon of a woman being served by a clerk in a large shop. The young man was clearly trying to be helpful. ‘The guy who knows about the books isn’t here today. I’d be more than happy to suggest a bookmark.’
On the way back I did a very New York thing and hailed a yellow cab to take me home. There was a strange pot-pourri of street life out and about at this early hour and I tried to get the cab driver to wait till I got in my front door. I think he probably would have, except he didn’t really speak English or even seem all that aware of which city he was in. He dropped me half a block from where I needed to be. A rat scuttled across the sidewalk from a pile of rubbish towards the Cocteau Theater on the corner of Bond Street and Bowery. A man was sleeping in the doorway of the theatre. Homelessn
ess or true desperation to get first-night tickets? The rat stopped to look at me so I spoke clearly to it, ‘There is no reason to be afraid. The military has everything in hand.’
I missed my dad.
CHAPTER 3
Rita — Gladys Two
Susan B Anthony
knew to rock the boat.
Carrie Chapman Catt told the la-
Dies they could vote.
Stanton was relentless, and Steinem unforgiving.
So how did we end up with ‘Mar-
tha Stewart Living?’
Bruce Kluger, Los Angeles Times, 13 Jan 2002
I’ve been in touch with Rita on and off over the years since I left high school. Indeed, she was one of the first Gladyses that I met back in the autumn of 1971. After we had all auditioned, the results were processed and posted on the door of the music room later in the week. I remember the excitement when they went up. There was a great crush of would-be Gielguds and Redgraves in the narrow corridor trying to get a look. I was small and managed to squeeze in ahead of the throng. It was a tense moment but there I was on the list. It read:
‘Sandra Toksvig… Gladys 1.’
I was thrilled. I had no idea what it meant but I was thrilled. I recognised a girl behind me, Rita, from the auditions. She had lustrous dark hair cut into a shoulder-length bob and a wide Italian-looking face with slightly olive skin. She was well groomed and wore a polo neck decorated with a single pearl on a gold chain. There was nothing ill-thought-out or ungroomed about Rita. She was sixteen and not that much taller than me. She was craning to see what the notice said.
‘You’re Gladys Two,’ I informed her. ‘Whatever that is.’
Gladys Reunited Page 4
