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New London Diary

Chapter I.

Aruba Chambers puts down her cigarillo. Her head is splitting like a melon because of her persistent insomnia. Her best friend Heather Zoloft is wearing a panther skin suit with a few missing buttons to show her decolletage.

"I missed the Miss Universe pageant, Aruba. They say Miss France is a man and Miss Israel has to wear a bulletproof bra."

"Ghastly, this Universe contest. I should have been a man."

"That's your problem, Aruba. You've been arrested to death at an early age. Seventeen."

"How I used to dream of modelling there. All the way in the States. I used to have a vision of myself as Scarlett."

"You and a thousand drag queens."

"I'd believe in States' rights or even slavery if I had Clark."

"You reactionary. On the contrary, today everything is community."

"I got an invitation for a fundraiser from the leather community. I sent in a check and they whipped me up an invitation. I wore a pink belt and garter. Afterwards I needed the sulphur treatment."

"You are a garter snake. Wicked Heather."

"I went out with Rice, the baseball guy with that insatiable knuckle curve always trying to get me into foreplay. He told me he's been in and out of asylums."

"He was a switch hitter, that one. I caught him in the men's room with St. John, that ex-priest turned pimp who wore his old purple rosary beads on his chastity belt so no one would check him out as he checked others out. He was arrested at the Nines."

"I saw Miss Leopard with her cubs. Did you know they were black Irish orphans? Their mother was -- you remember Catherine Main -- a dear Dublin Catholic saint -- she always carried a green crucifix in her belt. Turned into mold like Pope Pius' nose at his death. What is she up to? Spiritualism. So unhappy, she always had a Druid heart. I always distrust converts, myself. Except for Conversos. I met a darling Jew once who convince me he was related to Columbus and I rode with him to Athens."

"You get around."

"I have to, my publisher insists on it. I write all my novels on white napkins before tea."

"My characters are usually like my dogs, mixed breeds. They are the best kind, except for mongrels from Mecca where they are decapitated."

"How I miss Carobbini, the handsome young opera singer from Milan. We were engaged until he admitted his sexual appetites when I lost my own."

"Poor thing. What happened to him?"

"Besides a vasectomy, he was sold into white slavery."

"Is he out now?"

"I heard he plays to the deaf in the Catskills."

"Poor thing, in the winter he's taken up the Palm Beach shuffle with a Mrs. Swartz."

Chapter II.

The tram rode along the white road. Heather fell asleep dreaming about a sailor she once knew from the Azores.

Aruba was fixing her make-up when she noticed her newspaper's society headline. Aruba Chambers and Heather Zoloft are wanted in Grosvenor Square for a ceremonial reward for designing their fashionable hats.

"It's about time, Heather, we gained some recognition from the fashion establishment."

"Only New York or Paris gave us a nod. And Tokyo Rose."

"Why do you call her that?"

"Because she betrayed us even by her apt criticism of the pillboxes we built for Jacqueline Kennedy."

"When I was a little girl I kept a cricket in the basement. One day while playing with my tea cups I felt a pang of compassion toward the cricket and though it was still March I let it out and spent the next full hour apologizing to the cricket for the cold."

"I feel I'm incorrigibly cold."

"Put on the crinoline that handsome Mr. Fitzwater gave you. I miss the Fitz."

"He did you your first job."

"I worked on my knees for him."

"You still have a soft spot for him."

"He loved my fruity bandanas."

"Why did he ever marry? He was a confirmed bachelor if there ever was one."

"Lupe got him in the Catholic sense after nine months."

"I do love his young Bloody Mary."

"You are a softie for babies."

"Your mother had nine; at least they went to work for her. Except you."

"I left her for you."

"When you first wore that Tennessee Williams panama I knew you were my partner."

"In business?"

"In bed as well."

"I need a nap and a cucumber sandwich."

"Dream on."

Chapter III.

"Do you remember Judy Applebaum, who ran from Hitler to Hollywood, whom the studio calls Judith Grape?"

"The anorexic anarchist?"

"Rumor has it she has moved back to Berlin to become a rabbi and married the son of an S.S. guy."

"Did she marry for money?"

"She found all his father's stolen jewelry, furs and art in the basement. They came from nine countries."

"What's the moral of the story?"

"I wish I could tell you, but I feel faint."

"I must confess I miss Crisp, except the dust in his apartment."

"They say he was celibate."

"In New York?"

"I miss McQueen much more. I played an extra just to lay my eyes on him."

"Do you remember demanding those Liberace candleholders from that needy Brooklyn pawnbroker?"

"That was the day I met Roy the lion tamer, half-dressed in his sexy khakis. He ran after me. I never really got over his legs. Unfortunately, he was eaten by a Kenyan tiger who was jealous of his lion love."

"And I miss my Mister Spencer who opened his own sperm bank in New York, closed in August because of psychiatric considerations."

Chapter IV.

"Did your late Aunt Marie receive an invitation for Miss Hiss and Miss Hoover's wedding? Alger says J. will be wearing a crinoline bridal train. Roy Shine Cohen will be the worst man. The Right Reverend Ahab Thugs will officiate from the Maryland Civil Wrongs Commission, along with Senator Bobbie Bobby from the Stalin-McCarthy Wing of the Whiz Kid Party. Marilyn couldn't make it. She was murdered even after her untimely death."

"What was the cause?"

"Does it really matter in America?"

"And the effect?"

"To make the Great Society."

Chapter V.

"You don't say."

"In the powder room my Aunt Marie met an intelligence officer, Colonel Jenkins Jacks, after the war, who told her the Nazis are now working for America and Russia out of West and East Berlin."

"You don't say."

"The Japanese warlords, according to the Colonel, work for our intelligence service against the boneless China."

"How could the Nazis and warlords of Japan be evil in 1944, and the Russian Communists and China be good, and by 1945, the tables were turned?"

"It all has to do with the dishes."

Chapter VI.

"I just adore these tarts and eclairs. I've eaten several while you weren't watching."

"My feet are killing me. I've been soaking them in epsom salts. But I must tell you about Miss Pittsburgh, the former Sojourner Good, who won the Drag King Texas Pageant. She was tried for bribing a petty officer and almost executed a la mode."

"By the by, did you read in the Sunday Times society page that that Texas tart married a skateboarder from Tarzana, California?"

"Ghastly."

"And to think Sojourner once had a crush on the Beastie Boys. I prefer Boy George myself and would love to have him up for tea."

"Sometimes our gossip columns come in too late. I remember though when we first got that wire about Hitler."

"How I hated that dreg, that ugly, deadly bully. And you knew right away what a truly pig he was. He should not even be allowed into decent society. He who used the word decent or wrote about art."

"You had it right."

"Or what about that four-toed toad Stalin?"

"I think Hitler and Stalin deserved each other."

"And I'm sure they're enjoying the flames."

"And I wish everyone in the twentieth century could have a peephole."

"Darling, don't get your nerves up or you'll get in a German mood."

"Hardly."

Chapter VII.

Remember when we attended that church basement auction of all that Christian kitsch. I have that baby Jesus made from skulls the missionary ladies found. Outrageous and the horror of it. Yet I've kept the baby Jesus from all those cannibals out on the porch -- real maneaters are our punk neighbors who've tried to steal the baby for their own creche. The nerve of those skull and bones! I've put some termite traps around the Jesus. Thank God.

There is something about American motels that gives me the heebie jeebies. I can't put my finger on what it is. It's not the nouveau riche crowds; maybe it's the cheap decadence of false names and one night stands, all the forced abortions by bad doctors with bad motives. it's all the creed of greed, where everything is down to basics, named as a cheap vanity dress found in a factory outlet. And those cheap perfume smells in the lavatories. God forbid they should have a unisex bathroom. I once went to a seedy seaside motel that had signs, "If you have to go" marked ducks or drakes. Disgusting. I had to put drapes over the mirrors to undress. I felt so ashamed. And then I saw an elderly bald-headed man steal the Gideon Bible. That was it; I checked out.

Do you remember that big Afghan you housed on the living room couch? The one who you put up with on the Oriental stair. He had eyes for you. We called him Muttie or was it Mufti? I can't remember for the life of me. He told me he used to be in the white slave trade. When I asked him a question he answered with a question. I think he wanted us for his own business. No mind. He ran off with Pastor Shepherd's tot on the go. It still frightens me when I think of the innocence in his eyes.

He wasn't half as bad as part-time actor and one-liner, Rex Bagelman, stand-up comedian who told us he was from royalty.

Forgive me, the one from Drancy by way of the Borscht Belt? He wanted us to play with his private part.

The worst one was Chancy, the fashion designer, Mr. Fancy Pants himself, who wanted us to go fishing for his eel. I thought I'd had it with men after Mr. Chancy. But then there was the Munich artist who told us who was Munch's brother and all he did was mooch off us. I could scream.

Last night I dreamed about Teresa, the one who thought she was the Virgin. They caught her at the New London schoolyard. She was pushing a baby carriage, talking with the mothers of newborns. No one could see under the blanket that her baby was a doll. When no one was looking she took someone's little boy, baptized him John and told us he was her cousin. I called one of Sergeant O'Malleys cops but he believed her, crossed himself and hoped to die. They soon were wed.

What happened to John?

He became one at a young age. Poor baby.

I thought I overheard (for the first time in my young life) a spiritual remark on an American bus: "I was into Jesus." But with my grey silk stocking hat on, I was mistaken. The remark was, "I was into cheeses." And I sank back into a depressive state which is Arkansas. The bus driver, Bill, on my quick instructions pulled the Greyhound by its throttle and sent us toward Kentucky where an inbred hillbilly named Chuck carried on board his white bread sandwich of ham and cheese with his oreo cookie of a broad of three hundred lbs. and vertically challenged as well, with a gravelly thoroughbred and future breeders for America of toothless children. Chucky called me "mom" and asked me for thermometer, which I assumed was my thermos. And though as a good Christian woman I believed in giving a glass of cold water in his name, just the sight of this rebel-yelling soul turned my other cheek. "I want your thermos, mom. I'm dry." And he proceeded into my seat, grabbing me, until I was rescued by trusty Bill. I felt in mortal danger. Chuck was dropped head off first, and we proceeded to the fairgrounds and the Kentucky Derby where my horse "Misfit" won and made me independent.

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