Wry Martinis Read online

  As for the politicos, here’s the stump speech I’m waiting to hear:

  “My friends, I’ve done a lot of rotten things in my life. Cheated on my wife, gotten drunk, fallen down the stairs, hit the kids, kicked the dog, dodged the draft, smoked dope, snorted coke and mainlined crystal meth. I’ve cut so many deals with shady people it would take ten grand juries working overtime just to keep up with the indictments. As President, I will stand on the White House balcony holding a licked finger up to the air to see which way the wind is blowing. I’ll put my friends and cronies, even the ones who should already be in jail, in positions of authority. There will be so many special prosecutors looking into my administration that you will never lack for entertainment. As for the problems facing our nation, I’ll do what I can, but, frankly, I don’t think there’s a hell of a lot anyone can do at this point, things are so screwed up. But I really, really want to be President. I want the limousine and the motorcade and the flashing lights and the big, big airplane.”

  I’d love to write that guy’s inaugural speech.

  JONES PLEDGES ERA OF ‘SAME GAME, DIFFERENT NAME’;

  WILL ‘MOST LIKELY RAISE TAXES FIRST CHANCE I GET’

  Where were we? Karp! Oh yeah, titles.

  By now I was sort of despairing. I had that thousand-yard-stare of the creatively challenged. I was unresponsive with the kids, the way I am when they remind me that it’s time for “us” to swab out their hamster’s disgusting cage. (Highlight of my week.) I would sit silently amidst family gaiety, mumbling to myself like one of the inmates in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  “What about …” I would say, biting down on a pathetic pun. One night I looked up from the Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and said, imploringly, “Crave the Whales?” You see, there’s a piece in the book about—oh, never mind. By now Lucy was sugar-coating her reactions. A bad sign. What fun it must be, being married to a writer.

  My dog, Duck, sniffed the aroma of failure about me and no longer went about his game of unplugging my fax machine from the phone jack. It pleases him to do this every couple of days and listen to me on the phone berate my correspondents angrily for their defective fax machines.

  One day, in the grip of this despondency, I thought about the first piece that I sold to The New Yorker. That was a big day for me. It was about Clinton and Bush getting drunk during their presidential debate, and it was called “The Three-Martini Debate.” And suddenly there it was, my title.

  I know, I know, what a lot of fuss over—nothing. But this time Karp looked up from Dostoyevsky and said, “Hmm. Yeah.” Lucy sighed heavily with relief, satisfied she could go back to taking care of only two children instead of three. Duck again took up his pastime of rendering me incommunicado.

  The title itself means, of course, absolutely nothing. It’s just an excuse to get the word “Martini” onto the cover in the hopes that someone will mistake it for a book on mixology. But it works on at least one level, as a small homage to The New Yorker, much owed in my case. I’m grateful to a number of people there, starting with its editor, Tina Brown, who has been more attentive and kind to me than she ever needed to be, which made it all the sweeter. The New Yorker still sets the standard for thoughtful editing (to say nothing of the fact-checking). I’ve been lucky to work with a number of superb editors there: Rick Hertzberg, Chip McGrath, Deborah Garrison, David Kuhn, Chris Knutsen, Henry Finder, Susan Mercandetti and Hal Espen. An all-star team, that.

  Thank you, Harry Evans, for publishing yet another book of mine; and thank you, Binky Urban, for making Harry pay for it.

  I’m grateful, too—oh god, here it comes, his I’d-like-to-thank-the-Academy-speech—to the editors I’ve worked with over the twenty years of freelancing covered in this book. Clay Felker gave me my start in magazines and was the kind of editor who leaves you with a lifetime of great stories, and a lifetime of gratitude. I was privileged, and that’s not putting it too grandly, to have the chance to work with and learn from some of the other people who made Esquire the legend that it was: Byron Dobell, Don Erickson, Rust Hills and Gordon Lish.

  The pieces in here originally appeared in a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Regardie’s, Esquire, Forbes FYI, Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, Allure, American Health, and Architectural Digest. But there are some pieces in here that have not been published previously. This was Karp’s idea; he thought it would let him off having to put the word “collection” on the cover.

  I’d be ungrateful, if not downright ungracious, not to thank my boss at Forbes FYI, which has been my happy professional home for over five years now. So, Bob Forbes, thanks for the great memories, the support, the friendship and last but hardly least, all the great times on The Highlander. A boss shouldn’t be this nice, and a day job shouldn’t be this much fun. Thanks, too, to his brothers Steve, Tim and Kip for their friendship and support.

  Geoffrey Norman has been a buddy and colleague since the old days at Esquire. Now he’s editor-at-large of FYI. I talk with Geoff sometimes three, four times a day, and each time, I come away a little smarter and a lot calmer. For years, Geoff has been the first inflictee of much of the stuff in here, and as such has suffered mightily. There’s nothing I can do to repay this debt, except to say, All right, you can have a two-week extension handing in your New Zealand piece.

  This book is dedicated to my father and mother. I was going to dedicate my first book to them, but then John Lennon died while I was writing it, and so I dedicated it to his memory. I was going to dedicate the second one to them, but I got married, so I dedicated that one to Lucy. Then I was going to dedicate the third one to them, but my friend Reggie Stoops took ill and I promised him that I would dedicate it to him. Then I was going to dedicate the fourth book to them, only we weren’t speaking at the time—happens in the best of families—and anyway my friend John Tierney had been such a help it only seemed right to dedicate it to him. There was also a play I wrote with James MacGuire about Edmund Campion that was published as a book. I was going to dedicate that to them, too, but then seven Jesuit priests were murdered in El Salvador, so we dedicated it to them.

  But this time it really is for my parents, with thanks and love, no matter who, between now and publication date, gets shot or comes down with cancer. It was with them that I had my first laughs.

  Washington, D.C.

  May 15, 1996

  POSTSCRIPT: A few hours after I FedExed this book off to the publisher, my good friend Richard M. Clurman died. I’ve postponed dedicating a book to my parents for too long, so I’ll stick to the original plan. But this book would otherwise be dedicated to Dick, and to his wife, Shirley, my extra set of parents.

  Aperítífs

  House-Guest

  Hell

  Since my wife and I live in Washington, D.C., where summers are bummers, we and the kids and the dog go to Maine. This insures two things: taunts about being idle Republicans, and house guests. This season’s triple-digit temperatures have provided a bumper crop of calls from friends old and new, and what I have learned is that, just as the most beautiful words in the English language are “You’ve lost weight,” the most dreaded surely are “We can only stay for a week.”

  I want to apologize in advance for the hasty quality of this article. I don’t have time to make it very good, because I have to leave for the Bangor airport in one hour to pick up the new arrivals, and on the way I have to stop at the laundromat and drop off the twenty pounds of dirty bed linen left by the ones who’ve just left. Lucy, my wife, would drop them off, except she’s already in Ellsworth, shopping for the hypoallergenic foodstuffs required by the incoming house guests. I’m sorry about this. For now, then, here are my notes toward a Field Guide to the North American House Guest.

  1. The Foreign House Guest from a Non-English-Speaking Country (Domesticus aeternus helveticus). A visitation by this variety generally coincides with an entire week of rain and fog, forcing a cancellation of
all outdoor activities and necessitating uninterrupted togetherness in one living room. Indications of ennui generally begin toward the end of the fourth day indoors, with conversation taking the form of “How many brothers and sisters does your brother’s new wife have?” followed by “And what are their ages?” Alternatively, “What is the principal industry of Appenzell Inner Rhodes?”

  2. The House Guest Who Injures Him/Herself (Domesticus aeternus calamitosus). This variety is particularly prevalent among the sports-minded house guests. One calamitosus, having visited a host we know for a weekend, broke his ankle during a distinctly unvigorous round of Frisbee-catching. Togetherness was extended for eight days. This required a number of adjustments, including turning the master bedroom, on the first floor, into a hospital room, and attending to his every need twenty-four hours a day.

  Suggested protocol for coping with calamitosus: As you will be providing the injured party with all meals, and most likely in bed, you will have unobserved access to his/her foodstuffs. Halcion .25 mgs. (a.k.a. triazolam or “the blue oval ones”) crushed into powder and added to food can significantly reduce the house guest’s demands, but hosts are advised to check with doctors for possible contraindications.

  3. The Cash-Challenged House Guest (Domesticus aeternus britannicus-journalisticus). Easily recognized by his distinctive warble “Bloody hell, I must have left my wallet in the city.” Britannicus is common along the eastern seaboard during the summer months, but is also apt to appear at any time of the year, anywhere, usually with little notice. Another distinctive cry is “Could I ask you to cash a cheque?” However, caution should be exercised, as the “cheques” are often drawn on unrecognizable banks, such as the Second Bank of Aran, or Unión de Crédito Agrícola de Uruguay.

  4. The Telephone-Dependent House Guest (Domesticus aeternus fiberopticus-praeferrissimus). Closely related to britannicus, above, fiber-opticus is identifiable by the telltale question—usually asked within moments of arrival—“Could I use the phone?” and, thereafter, by his habit of cheerfully miming the words “Be off in two seconds” as his host approaches, scowling. Tying up the telephone is not the only pitfall associated with this variety. One host reported feeling physically ill upon hearing his guest shout loudly into the telephone, as if to an overseas operator, “Vladimir? Da. Da. Yes, I accept collect,” and on another occasion overhearing a conversation in which occurred the words “Myanmar” and “That’s ridiculous, I’ve only been on for an hour and forty minutes.”

  5. The Laptopless House Guest (Domesticus aeternus lotus). Key identifying phrases are “I didn’t feel like lugging mine all the way here” followed by “How many megs does yours have? I’m going to need all you’ve got.” (Important warning: lotus has been known to reemerge after an hour with his host’s computer, frowning and saying, “I don’t understand. Your hard drive seems to be completely empty.”)

  I should say that we like our house guests. They are good people. So if any of them should read this, do understand that this is not about you. It is about the people who came the week after you did.

  —The New Yorker, 1995

  The

  Three-Martíní

  Debate

  “They both come to my house. We serve them a Martini.

  And we have an exchange between the two.”

  —Tom Brokaw in The New York Times,

  proposing an alternative presidential-debate format

  BROKAW: Mr. President, Governor, thank you for coming. I’m sorry Mr. Perot declined, but he’s a teetotaler. How do you take your Martinis?

  BUSH: Dry as a bone, with fruit, and on the rocks.

  CLINTON: I’ll just have a beer, thanks.

  BUSH: Whoa, what is this, Miller Time? I thought we were going to be hefting Martoonis.

  CLINTON: Where I grew up, in a place called Hope, people drank corn liquor. Gin was for country clubs.

  BUSH: I wouldn’t start in on country clubs if I’d got my putter caught in a wringer for belonging to an all-white club. If you see what I’m driving at … heh-heh.

  CLINTON: I was never in that club. OK, maybe I played a little golf there with businessmen, so I could target a few incentives on them. We can’t all buy infrastructural investments out of our trust funds, ya know.

  BROKAW: How do you want your Martini, Governor?

  CLINTON: In a beer glass. Olives on the side. Got any peanuts or crackers?

  BUSH: What’s the matter? Got the munchies?

  CLINTON: Tom, I govern better stoned than he does straight. Not that I ever did get stoned.

  BUSH: Hold on. But I’m glad the subject of peanuts came up, because I think everyone in our wonderful country remembers Mr. Peanut, from Plains.

  BROKAW: Your point being, sir?

  BUSH: Exactly. Mmm. I’ll have another. Little less vermouth this time.

  CLINTON: Thank you, Tom. First, Al Gore and I happen to believe that there is a place for mixed drinks in today’s post—New Deal Democratic Party. So I’ll have another, too. Second, I’m proud to have an environmentally aware running mate who’s orthographically sensitive to basic tubers. Third, could I get some more olives? In Arkansas we’re working closely with the horticultural community on issues of olive-grove deforestation.

  BUSH: Thank you. Mmm. Much better. Still a little wet, but getting there. I’d like to ask the Governor what he drank over there while he was learning social engineering at Oxford during the Vietnam War. Draft beer? Oh, Bar, Poppy’s throwing ringers tonight!

  CLINTON: That’s been gone into again and again, so I’m not going to go into it. Could I get another, with olives?

  BUSH: You know, Tom, after I was shot down by the Japsters while serving my country, which Governor Elvis here wouldn’t know about, I was paddling like a wet cocker spaniel in those shark-infested waters down there. Not fun. Know what I couldn’t stop thinking about? Aside from that fellow some people don’t like to talk about—G-O-D? Wrapping my lips around an ice-cold see-through. How about another? Thirsty just thinking about getting shot down.

  CLINTON: Tom, it’s hard to enjoy getting tanked when so many people in this country can’t afford gin. The Germans and the Japanese are way ahead of us in terms of gin availability per capita, and Japan has the highest gin-to-vermouth ratio in the world.

  BUSH: Seems to me the last Diberal Lemocrat, capital “D,” capital “L,” we elected was also anti-Martini.

  CLINTON: There you go with that negative stuff. OK, one more. And keep those olives coming, Dan—er, Tom.

  BUSH: Just wave the vermouth bottle over the glass. Don’t even have to take the cap off. That’s how Uncle Herbie used to make ’em. So where were we? Losing track. Out of the looped.

  CLINTON: Isaiah Berlin used to say that Hank Williams was like a fox but Elvis was like a badger.

  BUSH: Berlin, great city. Wall. Down. But didn’t see any foxes there and darn sure didn’t see any badgers. Ah. Thank you. Mmm … Now, that’s a Martini. Just the way Gorbachev liked his. How do you think I got him to give up the Commie thing? That’s right, gave him Uncle Herbie’s recipe. Worked.

  CLINTON: The Germans are way ahead of us on walls. For failed Quayle four years of … I don’t know who’s driving home, but it better not be me. That’s why I’m proud to have Al Gore for my designated driver.

  BUSH: Gotta say, Hillary—a fox. Hair band, love it. Tipper—more of a badger, maybe, but still, good woman.

  CLINTON: Hey, weren’t we supposed to have some TV cameras here?

  BUSH: Hold on, por favor. That was all worked out ahead of time. So don’t cry for me, Bosnia-Herzegovina. But, Tom, gotta say, good format. If you gotta debate, this is how to do it.

  —The New Yorker, 1992

  An Unsentimental

  Educatíon

  TO THE DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS, ST. EUTHANASIUS SCHOOL: I am writing on behalf of my godson Lawton, who is applying for admission to your pre-pre-nursery program. At only two and a half, Lawton displays a precocity remarkable for
his years, and a noticeable interest in geology. Only yesterday I saw him purposefully at work in his sandbox. I asked him what he was doing, and he held up a fistful of sand and said, without hesitation, “Sand!”

  BACK CURSOR DELETE

  I have known Lawton literally all his life. From the very first day I met him—the day he came back from the hospital, in fact—I have been tremendously impressed by his intellectual … by the fact that he didn’t throw up on me.

  BACK CURSOR DELETE

  Lawton, though only two and a half, has packed more into his life than many a three-year-old. Just last summer, he went to Richmond to stay with his grandparents for a week. When I asked him about his observations on the city, he told me … “Rishmond! Gaaa!” … that he only wished he had known it before the war.

  BACK CURSOR DELETE

  I am godfather to several children, but none of them, by the time they were two and a half, had exhibited quite the grasp—or depth, certainly—of spatial relationships that Lawton so manifestly does. For instance, when I gave him an engraved wooden box, he immediately understood that the lid was hinged and … slammed it down on his fingers, possibly foreclosing a career as a concert pianist.