George, Being George

by Nelson W. Aldrich

  LARISSA MACFARQUHAR I guess a lot of people left to be fiction writers or to work in publishing, but I decided I wanted to go into magazine journalism, and George was incredibly helpful. He called people up and said, “Talk to this girl! Terribly nice girl!” I ended up going to Spy through Nelson Aldrich. He called up Nelson, who I knew of slightly anyway, because he knew my mother slightly, and his daughter Liberty and I went to school together. George called up Nelson and said, “Interview Larissa!” Anyway, I interviewed with them, and Terry McDonell, who impressed me greatly by smoking during our interview, and smoking menthols of all things. Nelson didn’t have a job for me, but he called up Jim Collins, who he knew because Jim had dated his stepdaughter, Immy Humes, and Jim was at Spy, so I went to talk to Jim. George was incredibly nice. He was recommending me for the post of dogsbody, but paid dogsbody. I wouldn’t have gotten the job without him. Apart from everything else, I had never even heard of Spy.

  ANNE FULENWIDER When I got there, I wanted to be a magazine editor. I remember Elizabeth and Elissa asking me, “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” I said I wanted to be a magazine editor, and it was as if I’d said, “I want to be a businessman.” It was so not what everyone else there was doing; but now, Dana Goodyear, Eliza Griswold, Andy Bellin, all ended up being nonfiction writers, which I think is a testament to George, because he made the world, the actual world, look like so much fun.

  ELISSA SCHAPPELL George was very upset when I left to start up Tin House [a literary quarterly]. I asked his opinion about whether or not we should do it, and I made the mistake of talking to him about it at parties, after I’d had a few drinks. Then when the magazine came out, he was so mad. He said to me, “You’re putting The Paris Review in the gutter. How can you do this? I can’t believe you would betray me like this.” He wrote me a letter that upset me so much. I had just lost my father, and I felt like George was my literary father. I said, “Tin House exists, in part, because of you, because you’re so inspiring, because of what you created, and because we love what you’ve done. This is something you can take pride in. You have a piece of this.” He wrote me an apologetic note that said, “I love you, and I don’t mean to upset you.” So then we had this really tearful talk about the magazine, what he was doing and what I was doing. He said, “I go down into the office and see those kids, and I don’t know who any of them are. Would you ever come back?” It was touching. In retrospect, if we hadn’t both been drinking and emotional, he might not have said that, but at the time, it meant an awful lot. He still refused to call the magazine by its proper name. He’d say, “So what’s up at Tin Shack?” and I’d say, “Well, we’re coming for you, George.”

  TRIANGULAR DESIRE

  FREDDY ESPY PLIMPTON I went out with George from 1963 to 1968, pretty much from our dinner date with the president until we were married. At first he found me an apartment in the same block of apartments as his, at 527 East Seventy-second Street. Then, after about a year or so, I moved in with him at 541 for about three years before we got married. We actually spent more time alone together than most people would think. He would write, or we would play backgammon or just rest up. We had quiet nights at home. We were living together, but we were not married. We were free spirits. And he was traveling a lot. I took it for granted that he would go out with women at every port, and he took it for granted that I would see people when he was gone.

  CHRIS CERF Freddy is a very complicated woman, with a lot of demons; always has had. Adorable, and smart as hell, and gorgeous. She’s a little bit revisionist these days, thinking sometimes that it should have worked with George in a way that maybe it couldn’t have. She couldn’t change George, but she was pretty hard on him, trying to change him. On the other hand, I’m not sure that it would have made her any happier if she’d succeeded. It seems to me that Freddy may have been more needy for control than needy for devotion, and the need for control tormented her. Sure, she resented George’s being away so much, but it was more like a power thing, perhaps, than an emotional need to be with him. Freddy had millions of friends, too.

  FREDDY ESPY PLIMPTON No, it wasn’t only when he was traveling that we’d see other people. But what happened when he was around was really weird. I’d have dates. And most of these forays began at the apartment at 541, where, sometimes, he’d be. So this guy would come to pick me up, and while I was getting ready he’d wait in the living room, and then George would come out of his office and greet the fellow as only George could: “Oh, how do you do?” or, “Well, hello, John, would you like a drink?” And then he’d sit down and they’d start chatting each other up and having a good time. Sometimes George would even change his plans and come along. I mean, it really pissed me off. It was a very, very odd sort of relationship. There was no jealousy on either side as long as we weren’t doing things for the sake of upsetting the other one, but just doing things as they came up. It was almost as though George were my dear uncle. He certainly didn’t act like a jealous boyfriend. In this way, I gradually became a sort of link between George and these other interesting and attractive men—and we all became great friends.

  CHARLES MICHENER I think that for George the threesomes were a way of spreading—that is, diluting—intimacy. I don’t think George was a person comfortable with one-on-one intimacy. He also liked an audience. For a great performer, two are better than one. I can see George being more comfortable in the company of men than of women. I’m not aware of any close women friends—or close men friends, for that matter. I think the idea of the threesome, in the Jules et Jim sense, is a very compelling fantasy for a lot of people. Freddy was beautiful, and perhaps he basked in the light of having another man finding her beautiful as well or lusting after her. I know a lot of women who’d love to be with two men. It’s a very common fantasy. I’ve seen it more with women than with men. It’s kind of a wonderful fantasy on some level.

  NANCY STODDART There was a period, after he and Freddy were living together, when I would see a lot of both of them. One particularly funny night when I was staying with them, Freddy and I went out and picked up some really cute young guys, like college kids, and we brought them back and pretended that George was our father. And then, all of a sudden, all the air was taken out of our big practical joke because they all knew who George was, and they gathered around him like, you know, to listen to his stories of The Paris Review or stories of him doing this, that, and the other. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me to pretend that George was our father. I always thought of him very much as a father figure. He gave me my wedding, actually. I mean, my own parents had very little involvement in it. And before that he was always trying to get me involved with his friend Teddy Van Zuylen, with whom, in fact, I did get involved before my marriage. Maybe George appeared to be kind of a lech to a few girls, but he was extraordinarily discreet about his sex life. I certainly didn’t know about it. I don’t even want to think about it. The idea of George having sex, just makes me kind of . . . eeewww, it’s almost like the idea of my father having sex.

  MARJORIE KALMAN George was there and cared about Freddy, but you couldn’t expect him to always be home for dinner. He had a big life of his own. To make someone change was hard, if not impossible. I think George thought, “What do you want from me? You have a great life. You can do whatever you want.” He had this big life, and he wasn’t going to give it up for anyone. But he didn’t want you to be hurt for it, either. It was neglect, but it wasn’t a deliberate neglect. I always thought that he needed someone like a professional businesswoman. They’d have their life, and he had his life, and then you met up for vacation or when it’s open school week or something.

  PETER DUCHIN George would have loved to be looked at—the voyeur being watched. For instance, long before he was married, when I was seeing Minnie Cushing and he would take out a girl he called “the Bip,” we would double-date. It would get into a “necking on the beach” kind of thing. It was no orgy—we were quite far apart—but I think he enjoyed our b
eing there, nearby. I think he needed something to stimulate him. Whereas I could see Mr. and Mrs. Plimpton just shutting off the light and doing that which WASPs did in the twenties, a sort of quick and hasty coupling. But with George, you know he’s not going to turn off the light and do that. You know, it’s got to be a show.

  GAY TALESE In the seventies, America was the most sexually permissive place in the history of the world. It was quite amazing. It was the era of Oh! Calcutta!—full-frontal nudity on the Broadway stage, in movies, in magazines. There was Screw, and the advertising in Screw, but even in The New York Review of Books, with those little personal ads. It was really a remarkable time. I did the best I could to see it, enjoy it, and write about it. Thy Neighbor’s Wife is my story, my reportage, my war-front coverage of the wayward life that was the indulgence of many, many people, in private and in public. George never wrote about it. Mostly fiction writers wrote about it. Philip Roth, John Updike. Updike is the most literary, pornographic, lyrical writer we’ve had—it’s amazing what he got away with. He can thank pornographers for that. I’ve always felt that mainstream publishers and their writers owed a debt to the so-called smut peddlers who challenged the obscenity laws in court and ultimately triumphed in having these laws overturned.

  PAMELA DRAPER I met George a long, long time before I ever went out with him. It was around 1970, when I was about twenty. I met him at a party at Jim Moran’s. Jim Moran was an eccentric guy, extraordinarily creative, very much like George, passionate about books and passionate about women. I’d come to his party and was wandering around this vast apartment on West End Avenue, jam-packed with people. I wandered into the study, and there was this lone man sitting behind a desk, reading a book. He said, “Hello, I’m George Plimpton,” and I said, “I’m Pamela Draper,” and that was the beginning of a long relationship—thirty years or more. He was having trouble with Freddy almost from the beginning. I don’t know how I knew that; he certainly didn’t talk about it. He opened up about his enthusiasms—literature, or music, or women in general. He could be very forthcoming about those subjects. But his sadder thoughts and feelings he didn’t often express. And when you did so yourself, it was uncomfortable for him. He had a very New England upbringing. My father was the same way.

  WILLIAM BECKER I don’t think George had affairs of the heart, as they say. What he did do, as I did, was to go to orgies. They were called “scenes” and were presided over by a big, bearded fellow by the name of Jim Moran, one of the great characters of our time. George was much taken by Moran, and not just because of the orgies. The man was pure mischief, a lord of misrule who managed to make money at it. He was a publicist, specializing in doing crazy stunts that would get lots of news coverage for his clients. For example, when David Merrick produced Look Back in Anger, Moran planted a woman in the first row and had her climb up onstage and attack Jimmy Porter. It made all the papers, and the show ran forever. His orgies were informed by the same careful planning and imagination as his stunts. They happened about once a month, usually on weekends, starting at eight o’clock sharp, after which no one would be allowed up the elevator. He invited the men, whom he knew personally or were vouched for by someone he knew personally. Each of them had to bring a woman, and he planned for a week or so to be sure that she wasn’t a loony or a hooker, that she was a real person. Which in fact they all were—the sort of women you might meet at Elaine’s or at one of George’s parties. His apartment was huge—ten rooms or more, more than enough for the ten to twenty people he invited. One of them was entirely filled with costumes—what would an orgy be without costumes? Group sex, I suppose. My costume was a monk’s robe with a big cross in front, George’s was that of a French country priest, with a little hat. Moran insisted on dressing all the girls himself. Drinks were available, but I don’t recall anyone doing any serious drinking. No food. The rules of engagement, so to speak, were clear. You were allowed to approach anybody you wanted, but if she wanted to go off with someone else, you were not allowed to pursue her. I went to some other parties where there were people who were just dreadfully aggressive; they would push you off some girl and jump on. One fellow who did that later became a well-known American diplomat. At Moran’s, things were more civilized. I remember one time when he himself was in a bedroom, down on his knees giving oral sex to a girl, when some noisy people came down the hall, and he called out to them in a booming voice, “If you want to laugh and joke or whatever, the place to do that is the library, but this room is my church, and I am at worship.” And back he went to his prayers. Actually, though, there was very little at these parties to satisfy the hard-core voyeur or exhibitionist. George was of course a bit of both—New Journalist that he was—but privacy was to be had at Jim’s. The orgiastic stuff was a matter of glimpses and glances, opportunity and variety, all in one place. It wasn’t Plato’s Retreat, a pay-as-you-come public orgy in the Ansonia Hotel, where you had three hundred people fornicating in a huge room all covered with mattresses. In any event, I always thought that George considered the “scenes” another of the many sports that he pursued.

  FAYETTE HICKOX When I think about George going to orgies, I think of him not as leering with his tongue dangling out, but just as George as George. Like, okay, wow, let’s see where this is going to take us.

  BEN LA FARGE I had been living with a woman for over a year when she left me to marry another man, a well-known poet she had previously been involved with. George had been seeing Freddy Espy for several years, I think, and one day I heard he had left her. I called her up and asked her out. At dinner I said, “Look, I can’t pretend I’m in love with you, and I know you’re too unhappy about George to give a flying buttress about me, but how about having an affair?” She saw the humor of it and without hesitation agreed. Later, at her apartment, I said, “I’ll bet you, once he hears about this, George will want you back.” And that is what happened.

  JOANIE MCDONELL Can I tell you what I think about George and women? They were like great athletes to George, like playing on a team with great athletes, and you have to understand I’m saying that with a lot of affection. George was always an admirer, first and last, and when women looked good and played well, so to speak, he was an extravagant admirer and wanted to play with them—even if they were better in his head than anywhere else. They were like—oh, Archie Moore or those guys from the Lions, like Alex Karras and Night Train Lane. Like Pancho Gonzales. It was fun for him to play with them, but I don’t mean play in the unattractive sense of the word. George looked for what he thought were the best ones, or at least the ones he liked best. No, I take that back. He wasn’t looking for anyone; he was never interested in “scoring”; girls were just always there, coming across his path. Nor did he ever try to “knock ’em off their feet,” as they say. That would ruin everything. The last thing he wanted was for some girl to fall madly in love with him and ask him to leave Freddy for her—that is, to change his life in any way. He was never into heartbreaking love affairs. Or heartbreaking marriages, either: Those happened, though not to him. Of course, every little affair can’t always have been fun and made him feel good about making the team. But that was okay. We all know that he never spent a day without Scotch, so he obviously needed several things to feel good. But you know what? I’m sorry to say that there came a time when, if he had to choose between women and Scotch, I think he would have chosen Scotch.

  FREDDY ESPY PLIMPTON After almost five years of this, it’s 1968 and I’m in a weird place where I’m not quite sure who I am or what I’m doing, or why. But by now I’ve gotten stubborn on the marriage thing just because it’s been such an old saw, year after year after year. Now it’s like “Hey, come on, let’s get married and start a family, or release me to go off with somebody else!” I wasn’t entirely bluffing, either. One man even asked George for my hand, sort of. He had been one of the oldest of President Kennedy’s friends, a tall man with a long, pockmarked face, absolutely charming, absolutely delightful. He was divorced, and I’
d been out with him quite often after we met at the party for the president. One day when I was in bed with the flu, he called and said he wanted to see me. He asked if George was there, and I said he was. He said, “Great, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” So he came upstairs to where I was in bed and gave me some flowers. Chat, chat, chat. Then he turns to George and says, point-blank, “If you don’t marry her, I will.” I was stunned. I mean, I had sort of led him on, as I am wont to do, but I hadn’t led him on to the marriage point: My God, the man was older than George. I don’t remember exactly what transpired after that, but we all remained friends.

  DEBORAH PEASE He did everything so easily, without friction. Something occurred to him to do, and if there was no obstacle he could see, not even a categorical one—like “This is my wife, this is my mistress”—then he would do it. There were no demarcations. That way, he would be able to be married and love his wife and see other people. But even saying that makes it seem like some sort of agenda or plan or arrangement, when there weren’t any. I think he just did as he pleased. Perhaps he was a little like Jack Kennedy in that way; he did what came naturally to him. If there were any hurt feelings incurred, it would not have been intended. He had a certain shallowness of feeling. He wasn’t a Lothario, a lech, a womanizer. He would have genuine enthusiasm, wonderment, even gratitude—like a good boy presented with a marvelous treat—for whoever he was involved with. He often used to speak of acting in joie, in French, and I’m sure he knew what jouissance meant, too. He wasn’t being pretentious, it was just that he wanted you to get past the banality of the English word. He wanted joie to come through in the magazine, in everything he did, not least in making love. He wanted to create joy, and he wanted to share it with his friends, who were potentially all the world. I don’t think he had soul-wrenching relationships—not wrenching for him, certainly, but not for the woman, either, if he could possibly help it. He cared about that.