A View From a Broad (4 page)

But even they could not keep me from my rendezvous with misery, for my most pressing problem was one that only I could solve. What I needed to make life worth living again was simply this: an Entrance. I have always believed that the way you first appear on stage is the way the audience will remember you for the rest of the show—perhaps, if they are the sensitive type, for the rest of their lives. Keeping this in mind, I had, on previous outings, come as a clam, as a jukebox and as a patient in a hospital bed—which was not, may I take this opportunity to say, a cheap and tasteless plea for audience sympathy, as some benighted critics have charged, but rather a bold foray into the political arena which contained within its small but swollen framework a thoughtful, even angry cry for socialized medicine.

In any case, for this new and most important of tours I needed something different; something wonderful and astonishing, yet easy to pack. Something with a message from me to all the peoples of the world. Something, above all, that would be seen as unmistakably American. I imagined myself as the Long Island Expressway; as the Grand Canyon; as a Q-Tip. But all that seemed too expected, too Holiday on Ice, if you dig my drift.

For days I feverishly racked my brain for an answer to this question of questions. Then, one afternoon, whilst I was preparing some Oscar Meyers in the kitchen, I happened to overhear the Red Sox game that Miss Frank—half deaf from endless hours of band rehearsal—had blasting on the tube. Suddenly, I realized that the answer was lying—or in this case, frying—right before my eyes.

I would come as a Hot Dog!

How brilliant! How perfect! First I’d have my girls come on as waitresses. Then I would make my grand entrance, mustard and relish glistening in the lights. I would shake my wiener, wiggle my buns. How could anyone resist such a delectable vision?

There was no stopping me. I would become the hot dog and the hot dog me. We would be as one. Like all true artists, I was determined to bring my own mighty vision before the public, no matter what that effort might entail. Let the Philistines spit on my wiener now. Time and the public would prove me right, as they had so many times before.

Of this I was blissfully, pigheadedly sure.

“What I needed to make life worth living again was simply this: an Entrance.”

O
h, how I love to be interviewed! How I look forward to answering certain questions which have, since they’ve been asked so often, become like old friends, family even, expected company whenever the interviewer shows up, perspiring and poorly dressed, notebook open, cassette recorder recharged. Oh, those old familiar questions, questions that make me twitch with discomfort at the
déjà vu
of it all, questions that occur to members of the Fourth Estate with such killing regularity that I have often considered the possibility of a vast intrigue against me, a conspiracy to make the worst of my wit. Here I am, one of the most colorful women of my time—if not of my block—being made to sound positively legumelike in printed interviews. Now, I adore deceit and don’t give a damn about being misrepresented or misquoted, but I will not be made to sound boring to the thousands who are convinced that I am, if not Jackie O, well, certainly the next-best thing. The decline in the quality of my interviews stems directly from the lack of challenging questions put to me. You’d be in the same boat if year after year you were faced with these dreary queries:

Q: How did you get your start?

What they really mean is: What was it like to work in a steam room with all those fairies dressed in towels? EEEUU! For some reason which will forever remain a mystery to me, the idea of a woman entertaining an audience dressed only in towels—an all-male audience, and homosexual, yet—is to every reporter I have ever met at once repulsive yet endlessly fascinating. They cannot hear enough of it.

This is inevitably the first question in any interview, and even though I know it’s coming, I always wince when it lands. It gets very depressing, you know. I’m certain that whatever I may do
in my life, whatever I may achieve, the headline of my obituary in
The New York Times
will read:

I will now say what I pray to God will be my final word on the subject.

It was a great job and a great experience. I did
not
perform in the middle of a steam room but in the poolside cafeteria
next
to the steam room. And I always performed
en costume.
It’s true that occasionally I did wear a towel. But on my head, with some bananas and cashews hanging from it, as part of my tribute to Carmen Miranda and all the fruits and nuts of the world. The audience there treated me with more respect than I deserved, considering I was brand-new at entertaining that many people, clothed or naked, for more than ten minutes at a time. My act, if you could call it that, was more like a mishmash of possibilities than the cogent, noble work I am offering nowadays. I was able to take chances on that stage I could not have taken anywhere else. Ironically, I was freed from fear by people who, at the time, were ruled by fear. And for that I will always be grateful.

And by the way, just for the record, I never laid my eyes on a single penis, even though I was looking real hard.

And this:

Q: What was it like growing up in Hawaii?

I must confess that the undying popularity of this question is entirely my fault, because I encouraged the asking of it in the first place. I thought it would amuse, and I was right. But I have lived to regret it. Lately I have begun to embroider the tale something fearful, with cockfights, Tong Wars, furious Fire Goddesses, volcanic eruptions, and escapades with all branches of the Armed Forces. This is not to say that all this embellishment is untrue, because I HARDLY EVER LIE. I do, however, forget, so here’s the naked truth as well as I can recall it.

My first memories of Hawaii are of the oleander bushes that surrounded our apartment house. Their flowers gave off a sweet —almost too sweet—smell, and the white milk that spilled all over your clothes if you picked them was impossible to remove. My mother tried everything. Banana stains were rough too. But my mom wanted us to look great, and we did. We were four, three girls and one boy. My two sisters, Judy and Susan, were older than I, and my brother, Danny, is younger.

As children we were all dressed alike. My mother loved to sew, and she was terrific at it. She made all the clothes we wore, and I grew up listening to the sound of sewing machines. It was comforting to hear her go at it. In the beginning she sewed, and in the end she only mended.

The house was always littered, in the early days, with swatches of fabric and other things my mother meant to get to eventually. In one corner of the room were boxes and boxes of patterns that friends had given her, as well as cartons of rickrack, piping, laces and buttons, and a magical thread box with its rows and rows of brightly colored silk threads.