The Right Places (21 page)

From the west coast of Mexico one can fly east to Cozumel and Isla Mujeres, two of Mexico's Caribbean islands that are promoted as still “unruined.” Cozumel, the larger of the two, is where Jackie Kennedy Onassis has stayed, and this gives one an immediate idea of the decorous gentility of the place, quite a different mood from that of Puerto Vallarta (a raunchy mood set by Elizabeth Taylor). Everyone is very
dressy
in Cozumel. Men wear jackets and ties at dinner, and the women, in pearls and cashmere sweaters from Peck and Peck, sit about conversing in low, cultivated voices over bloody marys. The hotels—there are several, all large, modern, and expensive—are marbled, air-conditioned, and antiseptic. The east coast also lacks the landscape of the west coast—all those plunging mountains—and is flat for almost its entire length. On the other hand, the water of the Caribbean is calmer, bluer, and clearer—with excellent snorkeling and skin-diving. From Cozumel, too, there are side trips into the Yucatán wilderness. There are the
cenotes
, curious geological features of the area—wide, circular wells, often so symmetrical that they look man-made, which suddenly open up in the jungle floor, and which contain deep, sunken pools of black water. A
cenote
was first an underground cavern, or dome, formed by water erosion of the limestone which forms most of Yucatán's substructure. Eventually, after enough erosion, the top of the dome collapses, leaving a mysterious-looking round hole. The Mayans believed that these eerie holes were sacred to the rain god, and when he seemed to need appeasing, virgins were dropped into the
cenotes
until rain came. Also, a few air miles down the coast and across the Yucatán Channel from Cozumel, the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Tulum can be visited. The tombs, temples, and pyramids here are interesting because they are among the few remaining in Mexico that have not been restored. They lie untouched, just as they have lain for hundreds of years, high on a bluff overlooking the sea with the green and steamy jungle pressing around them.

At Cozumel, too, the conversation tends to run to how long it will be before this is “another Acapulco,” and “ruined.” Everyone has his favorite estimate—two years, three years, and so on. Heads shake and
tongues cluck as prices inch higher. There has been a small exodus of sorts from Cozumel to Isla Mujeres, a twenty-minute plane ride to the north. But Isla Mujeres (which means “Island of the Women”; Cortés, they say, landed there and found only women on it, but no explanation for their presence there) is merely a smaller version of Cozumel, and so a number have returned—taking comfort, perhaps, in the fact that an island favored by Mrs. Onassis cannot—not this season at least—be completely vulgarized.

But in the meantime, where is the Acapulco that was? Perhaps the curious combination of elements that is responsible for what is present-day Acapulco cannot exist anywhere else—the combination of the beaches, that magnificent bay, the sheltering mountains, the soft, warm, still, moist air that has made Acapulco from the time tourists first started going there a particularly—there's no other word for it—a particularly sexy place. That has always been Acapulco's special quality—brown-skinned young men and women half-naked in a pool that has underwater bar stools, couples embracing each other on the sand, clinging to each other on the dance floor. Acapulco is like a large, very classy bordello, with the atmosphere of sex so thick you could cut it with a butter knife and spread it, like caviar, on canapés. Sex and personal indulgence—a place where, you are sulkily told, Merle Oberon—the town's leading hostess, as everyone in the world must know by now—has a dressing room bigger than her husband's bedroom, and where somebody else has perfumed water in all the toilet bowls. It is the hot, damp air that helps do it—air trapped and pocketed by the green encircling mountains and floating steamily from heated swimming pools and saxophones.

But there is something else that may be what Acapulco was. It is a great stretch of beach that lies about sixty miles to the north of Acapulco, just south of the little town of Petatlán. The mountains come to a thundering point here, then cascade down. The Pacific comes thundering in, dashes against rocks, then subsides against miles of sand. Flying fish flash against the sky. It is a long climb down the rocks from the road to the beach, but worth it. The place is called Playa del Calvario—perhaps because the promontory of rock that addresses the beach reminded someone of Calvary. In any case, in the
amphitheater between the sea and the outlying arms of rock there is the same warm, moist,
sexy
air. There is no town here, no buildings—nothing. But perhaps some such lovely, lickerish Eden as this was what Acapulco was before anyone came there—anyone at all.

Photo by the
New York Times.
Courtesy of P
.
J. Clarke's

A quiet night at P.J.'s

11

New York, N.Y. 10022: Indestructible P.J.'s

Meanwhile, in thoroughly spoiled New York City, as everyone knows, it is no longer chic to be elegant. The wrong places of yesteryear are becoming the right ones of today. That is, anything that is not somewhat disreputable is presumed to be somehow impertinent, and this supposedly accounts for the decline of, among other things, New York's “pretty” restaurants—the closing of the Colony, Le Chauveron, the sudden abysmal emptiness of the Four Seasons, the rapid fall from grace of Raffles. Consider, on the other hand, the saloon at the corner of Fifty-fifth and Third which has just completed the most successful year in its eighty-year history, and is a happy gold mine for all concerned. “This place,” confides the slender young man with the over-the-ears hair to his blond ladyfriend in the knitted skullcap, “is perhaps
the
place in New York. You won't find anything like this in Altoona. Down there, that guy in the blue sweater is what's-his-name of the New York Knicks.”

What's-his-name of the Knicks, seated in display position at the corner of the bar, is surrounded by kids, many of whom cannot be of legal drinking age but who are drinking beer nonetheless. He displays the easy grace and confidence of a star among fans, grinning at the kids' questions and shrugging off their “oh, wows.” What's-his-name is not a regular, but drops in occasionally because he's sure to be recognized. Down at the other end of the bar, near the garbage cans, sit two regulars, a pair of ladies whose favorite topic of conversation is
New York under Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. Tonight, they are discussing what has happened to the subway fare since La Guardia's day. The regulars sit at this somewhat less appetizing end because there is a better chance of seats here. It is five o'clock, and the place is filling up again after the brief post-luncheon slump. Outside, the city is a mixture of rain and unsatisfactory air, and the Third Avenue bus stop on the corner is disgorging passengers headed for the swinging doors with the cut-glass panes. Inside, against mirrored walls that are not only flyspecked but in desperate need of resilvering, the decor consists largely of signs which warn against the danger of overcrowding, the management's lack of responsibility for lost articles, the fact that minors will not be served, that tax is included in the price of each drink, that gentlemen without escorts might think twice before coming here to meet other gentlemen without escorts. Over the bar hangs a sign that says, “
BEER
—
THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
.” A vase of plastic lilacs blooms among the bottles. “This is really New York,” says over-the-ears-hair solemnly.

He may be right. As the hour approaches six, the noise level reaches din proportions, with Joan Baez contributing lustily from the jukebox. Rocky Graziano—a regular—has just arrived with Jake Javits, and is moving along the bar greeting friends with “Hi, guy!” (They call him “the Thespian” here.) At one of the corner tables, Bobby Short is showing off his new fur-lined overcoat. “Something gorgeous happens when I put this on—watch!” he burbles, putting on the coat and briefly parading the gorgeousness. A blond young woman enters carrying an ocelot on a leash. The place frowns on pets, but the young woman explains prettily, “He's just like a little putty-tat,” and is allowed to stay. What at first appears to be a tiny child has just pushed through the cut-glass door, but it is quickly clear that she is a midget with a five-year-old's body and a rather pretty fortyish face. She is apparently known here, for a chivalrous male patron hoists her by the armpits onto a bar stool, a position she could not achieve unaided.

But the clientele is not composed just of oddities and celebrities and put-ons. There are also intense young men in J. Press suits with skinny briefcases, silver ID bracelets and gold wedding bands, waiting for wives or girl friends and discussing parking places. Hairy, bearded types in denim jackets and beads and boots glare truculently at one
another and talk sporadically of Film. A very pretty airline stewardess wearing a diamond wedding band flanked by sapphire guards is explaining to three very interested young men the availability of free passes to exotic ports on her carrier. She seems to suggest that these passes could be theirs for the asking. Behind a counter in the corner, a short-order cook is setting up his grill for hamburgers, lining up his bags of buns, bottles of catsup, and plates of onion slices in neat rows. Behind the bar, the two bartenders are shouting jovial obscenities to one another as they work, epithets accompanied by appropriately indelicate gestures. Two off-duty patrolmen are in earnest conversation (this is, after all, an Irish bar, and the Irish have always had the Police Department in the family), interrupted by a drunk who keeps tugging at their sleeves, trying to tell them something. The drunk speaks in syllables, but the syllables do not form words in any recognizable language. (“There's a medical term for that,” one of the bartenders explains to a customer. “Brendan Behan used to get that way in here after he'd had a few.”) The policemen shuffle their feet in the sawdust on the floor, in embarrassment or perhaps to keep warm; this saloon, perhaps because it encourages the consumption of alcohol, is drafty and underheated. Through it all, via another swinging door, there is a frank and unlimited view of the men's room that opens, closes, and opens up again. To anyone who giggles over this circumstance—or who, heaven forbid, protests—the bartender's reply is “Them that's proud never complains!” It is, in other words, a typical evening at P. J. Clarke's, the pub where the primary rule is never be surprised at anything.

There are one or two other rules—unwritten, of course. For example, one is not supposed to enter P.J.'s expecting such a queer reward as solitude, or even privacy. P.J.'s is a determinedly social saloon, and anyone standing at the bar is expected to engage in lively conversation with whomever he is standing next to. Nontalkers are frowned upon, sometimes even asked to leave. Not long ago an uninitiated customer had the poor taste to bring out a paperback book and start to read it at the bar. The bartender's reaction was swift and decisive. “If you're going to read,” he announced, “go on down to Tim Costello's. That's where all the goddamned
intellectuals
hang out!”

At the same time, P. J. Clarke's customers are expected to take the
unexpected in their stride. One is not supposed to react to the sight of the famous blue eyes of Paul Newman across the room, or to Mr. and Mrs. Aristotle S. Onassis dining quietly at a corner table. Arlene Francis and Martin Gabel are regular customers, as are Artie Shaw, John Huston, and Mayor John Lindsay. Nor was anyone particularly surprised to read, among the 1971 findings of the Knapp Commission, that P. J. Clarke's was the payoff spot where two men—one of them a police officer—negotiated the price that would allow a lady with the unlikely name of Xaviera Hollander to continue operating one of the neighborhood's glossier brothels (specializing in kinky sex) free of police harassment. (Mrs. Hollander's price for peace, according to tapes from the bugged P.J.'s bar, was twenty-one hundred dollars in three installments.) This was regarded as simply another aspect of P.J.'s raffish charm. “They always did get a lot of gamblers and racketeers and crooks up there,” sniffs Fred Percudani, bartender at the rival Tim Costello's down the street. “Here, we attract more of an executive-type crowd.”

P. J. Clarke's is possibly the only saloon in town where the jukebox offers the latest hit by Melanie as well as “Paper Moon” as selections. (Tim Costello's provides discreet radio music from WPAT.) When, for reasons that have never been quite clear, a definitely non-executive type named Lawrence Tierney found his head involved with one of Clarke's old-fashioned ceiling fans, nobody thought a thing about it, not even Mr. Tierney, who not only announced that he would not sue anybody for the lacerations incurred in the encounter, but apologized, and offered to have the fan repaired. When, after a particularly bibulous evening, a well-dressed young couple lay down on the dining room floor and went to sleep, no one paid them any heed except for Eddie Fay, one of Clarke's ex-wrestler bouncers, who gently tried to coax the pair back to consciousness with cups of strong coffee. About a year ago, two men wanted by the FBI on narcotics charges were arrested while relaxing at P. J. Clarke's. A few months later, Clarke's became the first Third Avenue saloon to be the subject of a snooty
New Yorker
cover. And through all these varied goings-on P. J. Clarke's customers rejoiced in the knowledge that their favorite watering hole has achieved something of the status of a New York monument, that it will now in all likelihood remain at the corner of Third
and Fifty-fifth for as long as the Statue of Liberty remains in New York Harbor. As the sole holdout in the block otherwise occupied by a new forty-five-story Tishman tower, Clarke's is a nineteenth-century anachronism, a dowdy oasis in a street of tall steel and glass. Clearly, shabbiness is not only chic but offers a kind of passport to immortality.