Pages from a Cold Island (14 page)

In
Newsweek
, Dick Boeth had written that Gloria gave freely of her time to the disaffected women of the republic. He said she was scrupulous about answering her mail and had even been known to take women
’
s long distance calls and to those lonely grief-wrought souls patiently dispense advice over the wires. Dick did not say what kind of advice Gloria was dispensing. In her classic
The Female Eunuch
, Ms. Germaine Greer had written that one of a woman
’
s profoundest fears was of discovering she had a twat as big as a horse collar, and I thought that if Gloria were accessible enough to take the time from her busy schedule to assure a lady that this did not make her a
“
bad person
”
—that is, if Gloria were all that approachable —I
’
d just call her up and cry,
“
Gloria, baby! Fat Freddy Exley here! Listen, O magnificent woman, never mind that nasty Leonard Levitt in
Esquire
, or even my brilliant acquaintance Dick Boeth in
Newsweek
, I
’
m going to put you in a book, yeah, real hardcovers, six ninety-five, the whole smear! You with me—you incredible creature from the ethereal regions?
”

If Ms. Gloria Steinem were approachable, she did not prove to be so with me. It did not of course hurt or surprise that she
’
d never heard of me. Aside from some generous gestures extended by my peers, and a certain limited and somewhat dopey cult following among university students, my royalty statements and present indebtedness told me more than I wanted to know about my following. Still, I could not guess I would be approaching Elizabeth Taylor Burton and in fact honestly believe I could have been through to Mrs. Burton quicker than I got through to Gloria. In my days as a publicist I
’
d once set out to ask John Wayne a favor regarding a charity we were promoting and in which we
’
d heard he was interested. Beginning without even a telephone number for him, I was through to him in seventeen minutes (I timed it) and found myself batting the breeze with the Big Duke himself.
“
Can
’
t help yuh out with a personal appearance, kid, but if yuh give my little gal here your address, I
’
ll see yuh get yuhself a check.
”

The girls around Gloria in the offices of
Ms.
were a most formidably haughty crew and said things on the phone like what-is-it-you-want-with-Ms.-Steinem? in a lofty tone that suggested who-are-you-that-you-have-the-audacityto-approach-Queen-Gloria-directly? I of course refused to tell any lackey what I wanted with Ms. Steinem. It was going to be difficult enough explaining to Ms. Steinem what I wanted, I
’
d be damned if I
’
d risk an as yet unarticulated notion being further garbled in translation, and on follow-up calls I continued to be informed by the ladies that I
’
d have to put what I wanted in writing. I was assured that my note would be brought to the attention of the Empress. The girls felt confident that Gloria might even get back to me. Still I refused to put anything on paper, still I continued to make a pest of myself. On my fourth call over a period of days the palace guardess rose up in indignation and went right for my balls. She said that Ms. Steinem had never heard of me, could not imagine what I wanted with her, and unless I complied with her wishes and did as I was told there was not a prayer of our getting together. By this, the last call, I
’
d become so bored and amused with the whole preposterous charade that when the girl came out with her half-whining, half-nasty but-what-is-it-you-want-with-Ms.-Steinem? I came within a hair
’
s breadth of employing the vernacular of that long-ago darling Gretchen.

“
Oh, I don
’
t know, my dear. I haven
’
t as yet decided what I want with Ms. Steinem. It may be as simple as that I
’
ll want to fuck her face for her.
”

On hanging up, I drank a couple more vodkas, then abruptly thought of a new tack. It occurred to me that I knew two or three writers in New York who knew Steinem, if not well at least well enough to act as intermediaries. I called the first guy collect. He was rich and famous, and whenever I know a writer to whom providence has been gentler than it has to me, I al
ways call collect. This particu
lar guy, a prince, never even waits until he learns who
’
s calling. As soon as the operat
or identifies the call as a
col
lect
one—
”
Mr. So and so? Would you accept a collect call from …
”
—he issues a heartfelt groan, mumbles an irate
shee
-it, and to the blameless operator says,
“
Yeah, I
’
ll take the goddam thing. It
’
s either that fucking Exley or that fucking Cecil.
”
Although I see the guy whenever I
’
m in the city, and though most of the time I am of course fully cognizant of who that fucking Exley is, I keep forgetting to ask the rich and famous writer who that apparently equally impoverished fucking Cecil is. My friend wasn
’
t home, and to my red-faced embarrassment his wife accepted the call.

“
If that
’
s
that
”
—that
that
had rather a bite to it—
“
Exley, I
’
ll take the damn thing myself.
”

We exchanged pleasantries, threw a couple funnies at one another. She told me the rich and famous writer was in London working on a screenplay, here appended a battery of ironically pointed ha
’
s—Ha! Ha! Ha!—by which I gathered she meant that among creating epic scenes for The Big Screen she had no doubt the rich and famous writer was getting his spermatozoa drained by Cockney starlets. I then came to the point of my call. As though I
’
d wrecked her day, she moaned.

“
Aw, Exley. Whadda you want to do that for? What happened to
Pages from a Cold lsland
?
”

I explained that the Steinem bit was going to be a part of
Pages from a Cold Island
; was going to raise the manu
script to new and glorious heights.
“
Aw, Exley, no it won
’
t. You won
’
t like Steinem. she won
’
t like you. And if you don
’
t like her, you won
’
t be kind. Let me tell you something. This chick is not only very nice but vulnerable as hell. For all that worldly crap about her bedding down with all those famous men, she can
’
t be unaware that she
’
s carried a great head and a lovely body a hell of a long ways. I mean, it isn
’
t as though she were Germaine Greer or Mary McCarthy who could fight you toe to toe, son, and kick the shit out of you, now is it?
”
She paused. With no little wariness she said,
“
Look. Exley, are you just trying to fuck Steinem or what? I mean, I
’
d rather
do my damnedest to arrange some
thing as grossly unlikely as
that mating as anything as mani
festly preposterous as you have in mind.
”

She wouldn
’
t under any circumstances lift a finger to bring Ms. Steinem and Mr. Exley together, but she would give the word to the rich and famous writer on his return from London.
“
I
’
ll bet he won
’
t call her either. He
’
ll just laugh. He
’
ll think the booze has finally destroyed your brain cells completely.
”
I then called two other writers I knew, Joe Flaherty and Jack Newfield, and a week later, at nine in the morning, I answered the phone and it was Gloria. She was nice. She apologized for the trouble she
’
d put me to and agreed to see me on one of her upcoming swings into Florida.

Ms. Steinem and I did not get together on the occasion of her visit to Palm Beach. I had taken too long to make contact with her and by then her speaking engagement was already upon us and I was in no shape to meet her. My ribs were such that I could now breathe, my balls no longer looked as if I were suffering elephantiasis; but I was still on a bender and because it had become apparent to me that Ms. Steinem took herself as piou
sly as the saint Dick Boeth sug
gested she might be, I thought I
’
d best sober up, reread the gurus of her movement, and everything I could find by and about her. On the phone Steinem had suggested she
’
d still like to know in some detail precisely what I had in mind and my last gesture before going on the wagon—because I was too drunk to put it in writing—was to talk my ideas onto a thirty-minute cassette tape and mail the tape off to her.

I was so smashed I don
’
t vividly recall what I said into that recorder, but I remember enough so that even thinking of it in retrospect forces the blood to my face, causes some embarrassed aw-shucks gulping, and an incipient vertigo takes over. Steinem and Mailer were rumored to be friends.

He claims it was she who planted the seeds of his political ambition by asking him to run for mayor of New York City (though how she could reco
ncile this with her whole philo
sophical outlook escapes me), and for that reason I thought I
’
d pull a Norman (which ill behooves me, which ill be hooves any of us!) and on the tape I came across almost as full of shit as he is. With great solemnity I began by setting forth my portfolio (it consisted after all of one fucking book!); I gravely related the difficulties I was experiencing with
Pages from a Cold Island
; and I then really went as batshit as Norman talking about the Proustian-Tolstoyan-Joycean novel he is one day, one day, one day going to lay at the public
’
s feet, leaving all his peers for dead, and told Steinem that the next time I came to Fun City people would be pointing me out and breathlessly exclaiming,
“
See that fat gray-haired guy down the end of the bar? He
’
s one of the best writers in America!
”

As it happened, the tape made no difference at all. Steinem was too busy to listen to it—she had one of her lackeys do so and report its contents to her—and at last we agreed to meet on a morning in early December at the Miami airport. In league with Ms. Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a black advocate of state-sponsored children
’
s day-care centers, she was the night before addressing the student body of some rinky-dink sounding college up in the redneck country of northern Florida. The following morning she was coming on to Miami for a fund-raising dinner in George McGovern
’
s behalf and she told me if I wanted to meet her plane she
’
d give me the time between her arrival and the moment she
’
d have to take a nap and primp herself for the night
’
s festivities. A Ms. Joanne Edgar—Steinem
’
s secretary, I gathered—assured me it
’
d be the longest inter
view Ms. Steinem had ever granted.

I said,
“
Golly.
”

By that time the dingbats on Beach Court had got thoroughly caught up in my zealous yearning to engage Ms. Steinem. What little business I still had with the outside world was conducted over the phone on the back bar. These conversations were invariably overheard and known all over the Court by nightfall, and now that I was once again sober, swimmin
g and taking the sun, and my de
meanor had taken on a certain sad-eyed dopey earnestness, the gang, partly out of affec
tion, partly out of lack of any
thing better to do, began planning the whole outing as though they were planning their prepubescent son
’
s first journey to dancing school.

Because she was sure I
’
d wear what she called my
“
foul fucking Bermudas,
”
Big Daddy
’
s wife went through some cardboard boxes in my closet and found some white shirts, a pair of gray wool J. Press slacks and my black wing-tip Flo
rsheims and had the shirts laun
dered, the slacks pressed and the shoes reshod. Diane Rent-A-Car (we called her that to distinguish her from Diane the day barmaid), one of the
cocktail-hour regulars who man
aged an automobile rental service, had read in Levitt
’
s
Esq
uire
piece that Steinem owned all kinds of hang-ups as to what was and wasn
’
t seemly and in this regard cited Levitt
’
s saying that in order to receive some corny award or other at Harvard Gloria had refused to arrive there in anything less than a great long limousine (Gloria later denied this, as well as every other contention of Levitt
’
s), and for that reason Diane wouldn
’
t hear of my meeting her in my lime-white beautiful Nova. Because it would take
“
a fucking week to clean the fucking empty Bud cans
”
from the car
’
s interior and
“
the rusty fucking fenders
”
would doubtless fall off as I was suavely trying to tool Gloria from the air port
’
s parking lot, Diane put at my disposal a chauffeur-driven electric-blue Buick Electra!