Wry Martinis Read online

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  Among his many extraordinary qualities, Lawton, at only two and a half years old, displays a fine musical ear. His favorite afternoon activity, aside from reading … chewing on books, actually … is to sit on the lap of his nanny, who has, I understand, already taught him the rudiments of conversational Lithuanian, which suggests an exceptional language ability on his part, and to play some of his favorite tunes … that is, pound on the piano with his fists until the dog urinates on the carpet … admittedly simple ones, but with a brio that is striking in a child so young.

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  Let me tell you about a special young man named Lawton.

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  Lawton is most definitely not your normal two-and-a-half-year-old.

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  What can I tell you about Lawton? That by the time he was two and a half he was already conversant with the work of Stephen Hawking?

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  Lawton! Just to hear his name fills me with hope for the future of our country.

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  Look, what do you want from me? He’s two and a half, for Chrissake. He’s a toddler, an infant. A kid. He does what kids do: squirms, spits up on your new silk Hermès tie, sticks his fingers into electrical sockets, hits other kids, tries to set fire to the dog, swallows sharp objects, falls downstairs during dinner parties, crawls into sooty fireplaces and then across the new wall-to-wall carpet. What do you want me to say—he’s got a one-man show at the Whitney? You know, schools like you give me a big fat

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  I am delighted to be writing on behalf of my godson Lawton. Since he’s only two and a half, I’m not sure what to say about him except that he seems pretty happy and normal and smart and clean. He doesn’t have lice. I can’t see why he shouldn’t get along with the other kids in your school. His parents

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  Lawton’s parents, as you may already know from their application, have a combined household income of well over $400,000 p.a., with a very attractive projected earnings potential. And I am not even counting bonuses, which, if I’m not speaking here “out of school” (ha-ha), I understand from recent conversations with them should be in the 100—150K range (combined) this year. Additionally, as dedicated Episcopalians, they tithe, and I happen to know that their favorite charities are educational ones.

  SAVE PRINT

  —The New Yorker, 1993

  The

  Con Channel

  A group of conservative political operatives is

  expected to announce today the launching of the

  Conservative TV Network, a 24-hour pay cable-television

  channel expected to debut in early 1996.

  —USA Today

  MORNING

  5-6: PRAYER (Mandatory).

  6-6:30: NIKKEI TODAY—Highlights from the day’s trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

  6:30-7: ¿DÓNDE ESTÁ MI CAFÉ? (Educ.)—Communicating with your servants.

  7-8: GRRRR!—Host G. Gordon Liddy lets Camille Paglia shave his head; N.R.A. chief Wayne LaPierre on why White House shooter Francisco Martin Duran missed.

  8-9: GIRL TALK WITH MAUREEN REAGAN—Does liposuction work? Also: Is Patti Davis really Ronald Reagan’s daughter?

  9-11: PHYLLIS! WITH PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY—Pacific tuna fishermen explain how dolphins commit suicide by hurling themselves into the nets; also: how to tell if your son is queer.

  11-11:30: GET A JOB!—Talking back to the homeless.

  11:30-12: HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (Educ.)—Hostess Arianna Huffington shows how to find out how much he’s really worth; guest Mercedes Bass talks about her new seven-billion-dollar studio apartment on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

  AFTERNOON

  12-1: PERLES BEFORE SWINE—Strategic thinker and gourmet chef Richard Perle whips up a perfect soufflé atomique.

  1-2: AS THE WORLD BURNS (Drama)—Kent is forced to reconsider his views on multiculturalism when he learns that Binky is actually Scottish and not Senegalese.

  2-4: MIDDAY MATINEE—Red Dawn (1984): Communist paratroopers occupy a Colorado high school. With Patrick Swayze. (Violence; Russian profanity.)

  4-4:30: MIDDAY MATINEE PANEL (Public affairs)—Michael Medved asks: Could it happen again? A Colorado school principal argues that students today are well armed enough to repel any invasion; N.R.A. chief Wayne LaPierre disagrees.

  4:30-6: HOW’D YOU MAKE OUT TODAY?—Stock-market update, with Wall Street Journal editor Bob Bartley; guest Malcolm Forbes, Jr., talking about how he did.

  EVENING

  6-6:30: EVENING NEWS WITH BRIT HUME—American Addenda: Liberals who drive expensive foreign cars.

  6:30—7:30: IRV—Irving Kristol demands that Daniel Patrick Moynihan personally apologize for black illegitimacy; guest Hilton Kramer denounces French Impressionism.

  7:30-8: CROSSHAIR—R. Emmett Tyrrell calls Donna Shalala a “Druze dwarf”; Florence King goads ACLU head Ira Glasser by repeatedly mispronouncing his name.

  8-8:30: DESTINATION: SINGAPORE—Tour guide Margaret Thatcher takes you behind the scenes in the best-run country in the world, where sneezing in public brings a ten-thousand-dollar fine.

  8:30-11: BIOGRAPHY: NEWT (“The Gathering Storm,” Part 6 of 12)—Despite his anguished pleas that they can “work it out together,” Newt’s first wife shocks him by serving him with divorce papers as soon as she comes out of the anesthesia after her cancer operation.

  11-12: BEDTIME WITH BILL BENNETT—Virtue czar reads from his favorite Brothers Grimm tales and talks about his one date with Janis Joplin.

  LATE NIGHT

  12-12:30: MARY AND SERPENTHEAD—Mary throws up in a tony restaurant when she accidentally learns that Serpenthead has agreed to manage Clinton’s Presidential campaign. (Mild profanity.)

  12:30-1: PERSPIRING LINE—Liddy Dole tests the new NordicTrack 2000.

  1-2: THE GREAT BOOKS—Tom Clancy talks about how he has grown as a writer.

  2-3: OH YEAH, WELL, WHAT ARE YOUR SHOES MADE OF?—Talking back to PETA activists.

  3-3:30: CAPITAL GANG—Tonight: Utah’s crack firing squad. Also, Florida State Prison’s Old Sparky electric chair. Host: Pat Boone. (Mature.)

  3:30—4: LETHAL INJECTION—More executions. (Mature.)

  4-5: JIM BAKER III

  —The New Yorker, 1994

  Yowl

  For Jay McInerney

  I

  I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by stress

  frazzled overtired burnt-out,

  jogging through suburban streets at dawn

  as suggested by the late James Fixx,

  career-minded yupsters burning for an Amstel Light

  watching Stupid Pet Tricks,

  who upwardly mobile and designer’d and bright-eyed and high sat up

  working in the track-lit glow of the Tribeca loft skimming

  through the Day Timer while padding the expense account,

  who passed through universities and saved their asses hallucinating Grateful

  Dead posters and eating Sara Lee while watching the war on TV,

  who were graduated and went on to law schools burning to save the world,

  who brewed decaffeinated coffee doing their yoga in alligator shirts and

  listening to the latest Windham Hill Sampler,

  who ate chocolate croissants in outdoor cafés and drank blush

  wine on Columbus Avenue washed down with a little Percodan

  with Dove bars with Diet Coke with Lean Cuisine,

  stopping by on the way home for a pound of David’s cookies

  telling each other of their fears of intimacy and their need

  for space and inability to commit—for now,

  who watched Mary Tyler Moore reruns and wept for Rhoda and worried about

  acid rain and the mercury in the swordfish while strung out on cyclamates

  faces flushed with MS
G even after specifically making a point of mentioning to the waiter not to put it in,

  who prowled through uncertain money markets chewing Turns and

  doing lines with the Hispanics in the mail room

  sitting in the gents with baby-laxative runs while the boss buzzes

  and the secretary says you’re on the phone to Bonn,

  who stayed up too late working out their relationships ’n’ things feeling

  the gnawing rat-fear that they hadn’t been communicating lately and

  the urgent pounding screaming need to think about their priorities,

  yacketayakking analyzing thinking it through making constructive

  suggestions as the eastern sky flamed in raw Ralph Lauren pastels,

  got to get away for a few days but the Hartmann luggage is being repaired oh,

  who needs this wandering through Needless-Markup wailing (inside) for

  the baby seals and the bunnies slaughtered for lipstick

  remembering all the unanswered antivivisection junk mail on the

  way to the appliances section to beg another blade for the Cuisinart,

  who subscribed to Gourmet and the American Lawyer and after an exhausting

  search found Jamaica time-shares in the classifieds for only

  $1200 a month coping as best they could with the Negro beach boys

  wanting to sell them ganja,

  paying outrageous sums for bottled water and having to complain

  about the maid service and the warm orange juice knowing they should

  have gone to Cape Cod instead where the Peugeot mopeds fart carbon

  monoxide and the half-eaten lobster rolls rot in wax paper on the

  sidewalks and the Republican men in lime-green corduroys with little

  orange elephants bray as their wives buy overpriced scrimshaw,

  who nudged and nuzzled over margaritas and dreamed of endless

  throbbing hot sticky sex but Not tonite dear I have a yeast infection,

  running on spongy Reeboks to sublimate their lust

  then plunging into Bright Lights, Big City,

  who upped their nightly hits of Valium from two to five mgs and

  worried if they were going to be groggy in the morning,

  who hollow-eyed and febrile read the theater reviews in unread

  issues of The New Yorker yes The New Yorker,

  who watched re-reruns of Mary Tyler Moore and decided they hated Rhoda,

  who skimmed the Banana Republic catalog with brain-dead gaze

  wondering if they really needed Ethiopian saddlebags,

  who padded back and forth to the John for endless glasses of water while

  worrying about refinancing at ten and an eighth and waited for the

  fiendish tweet of birds and the thud of The Wall Street Journal on the porch,

  who took a little tootsky after their Yoplait just to get going

  and buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzed along in the carpool

  yattering to the gray-flannelled bottisatvas in the backseat

  about rowing machines and Eddie Murphy’s homo jokes,

  ah Jay while you are not safe I am not safe and now Ransom

  is remaindered at Waldenbooks and you’re really in a bind—

  and who therefore drown in butter-flavored popcorn at the Cineplex as the

  answering machines cutely speak to strangers and Discover cards are

  mailed to the incorrect addresses while Mohawked clerks at Tower

  Records with little crucifixes in their ears play “Pillow Talk” and

  everything you want they only have in Beta.

  II

  Yuck! Gross! Eeewww! Buying crack from the zombies in the

  park! Closing out the trust fund! Checking into the rehab!

  III

  Jay McInerney! I’m with you at Area

  where the shark swims on the wall

  I’m with you David Letterman on the tower

  where you drop watermelons and TVs and bowling balls

  I’m with you Gary Hart in New Hampshire

  where you stammer and yammer about New Ideas

  I’m with you Don Johnson in Miami

  where you don’t wear socks

  I’m with you Jerry Rubin on Wall Street

  where you only hear yippie when the Dow hits a high

  I’m with you Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue

  where Steven Spielberg has an apartment in your building

  I’m with you John McEnroe in England

  where you appear on world television treating people like scum

  I’m with you Maria Shriver in Hyannisport

  where a wedding gift from Kurt Waldheim has arrived

  I’m with you John Zaccaro at Middlebury

  where you pursue independent study projects

  I’m with you Doctor Ruth on cable

  where you giggle with your guests about orgasm

  I’m with you Ron Jr. cavorting

  in your underwear on national television

  I’m with you Mike Deaver in Bitburg

  where your mind was on buying a car

  I’m with you Billy Crystal in too many places

  where your routines have not aged well

  I’m with you Brooke Shields at Princeton

  where you—but who cares?

  I’m with you on the Upper East Side

  pricing modems

  I’m with you on the Upper East Side

  stopping into the Food Emporium for a quart of lo-fat milk

  I’m with you on the Upper East Side

  eating sushi and Ecstasy

  I’m with you on the Upper East Side

  looking for myself in People magazine

  Christopher Buckley

  Paul Slansky

  —The New Republic, 1986

  Royal

  Eavesdropping

  Well-placed observers convincingly argued that the 1989

  recording [of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles]

  must have been made by the national security agency MI5—

  the elite service whose duties include state security—and

  speculated about other tapes said to exist.

  —People, February 1, 1993

  CHARLES: Gladys?

  CAMILLA: Fred! Darling, I’ve been sitting by the phone all afternoon.

  CHARLES: Couldn’t get away. They had me—God, if I have to “inspect” another bloody milk pasteurizing bloody facility again I’m going to bloody well let Wills have the bloody throne.

  CAMILLA: Oh darling, it’s not fair, the things they make you do.

  CHARLES: I’m off milk for a month, that’s a bloody fact.

  CAMILLA: Don’t you want to know what I’m wearing?

  CHARLES: “Inspection tour,” what am I supposed to be “inspecting” for? Rogue bacilli? Anthrax spores? Dirt under their bloody fingernails?

  CAMILLA: I’m lying here in my Wellies, and not a stitch else.

  CHARLES: Well, I suppose it’s better than what they’ve got me “inspecting” tomorrow, at seven-bloody-fifteen in the bloody a.m. Bloody poultry plant.

  CAMILLA: I was thinking of our last meeting and—

  CHARLES: Have you ever smelled a poultry plant? My God, how people can live like that is beyond me. It’ll be no chicken for a month after tomorrow and that’s another bloody fact.

  CAMILLA: Darling, I can’t bear to hear you like this. Why don’t you just hop into the Range Rover and pop over for a spot of … tea.

  CHARLES: Tea and strumpet? (Laughs) Sorry. Don’t tempt me. They’ve got me scheduled for another bloody “morale-boosting” pop-in at the bloody Salvation Army in an hour. Won’t boost my morale, I can tell you. (Imitates sound of “Now We Gather at the River” being played badly on a Sousaphone)

  CAMILLA: But it’s so lonely here. Just me and my Wellies.

  CHARLES: What, home alone? Where’s the Silver Stick in Waiting?

  CA
MILLA: Here somewhere, I suppose. That’s the nice thing about big houses, isn’t it? You’re not cheek by jowl. What I mean is, it feels so empty without you. I feel empty when you’re not—

  CHARLES: I’ll tell you what empty is. The inside of her skull. Last night I tried to explain to her why modern architecture is so bloody awful. Might as well explain organic farming to one of those bloody heads on bloody Easter Island. “Knock, knock, anyone bloody home?”

  CAMILLA: Oh darling, how frustrating for you.

  CHARLES: Then she announced she was going to kill herself—

  CAMILLA: What, again? With the lemon peeler?

  CHARLES: Oh no, a soup ladle. This time she meant business.

  CAMILLA: Well, I never understood what the fascination was in the first place.

  CHARLES: Oh, spiffing, rub it in.

  CAMILLA: Speaking of which, guess what I’ve got on my bedside table? A jar of Marmite. Family size.

  CHARLES: Um. (Sound of lapping)

  CAMILLA: Oh stop, you know what that does to me.

  CHARLES: What time is it? I’ve got a good mind to tell the Salvation Army to sod off. (Clicking sound, followed by dialing) Is that you?

  CAMILLA: I’m on the pho-one.

  MAN’S VOICE: Oh, sorry, ducks.

  CAMILLA: Andrew, I said I’m on that bloody phone.

  ANDREW PARKER-BOWLES: All right, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Is that Charles?

  HIGH-PITCHED, NASAL VOICE: Neow. It’s … Wiltshire Telecom.

  ANDREW: Who?

  HIGH-PITCHED, NASAL VOICE: The phone company. Someone reported a thing with the line. A problem sort of thing.

  ANDREW: Oh. How odd.

  CAMILLA: Andrew, will you get off the phone? (Sound of phone being cradled)

  CHARLES: God, that was so close.

  CAMILLA: Darling, you were inspired.

  CHARLES: Well, I—do you think so?