nights, when the opportunity presented itself, fidelity, never my strong suit, was right out the window, without a second thought. Whiskey was and is a wonder to me in that it made me comfortable enough to be something of a lady’s man, and it transformed me in my mind from a guttersnipe to a wit, a sophisticated, erudite man-about-town. I prided myself on never stuttering, stammering, or stumbling in the course of an evening’s peregrinations. I had the ability to speak the most arrant nonsense and appear as if I were in command of facts and statistics to confound any listener.
There was a night when I did a long monologue on the accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci, ending it with a peroration on the magnificence and beauty of his sculpture the Pietá. Some know-it-all spoilsport piped up that it was Michelangelo had done the job. I tried to oil out of that one by saying that I wanted to make sure everyone was paying attention.
Late in 1964 Diana suddenly told me, quite upset, that she didn’t think our relationship was going anywhere and that it had to come to a halt. She had to look out for herself, she said, and it was true that I was taking her very much for granted. I gave her no sense of commitment, but assumed that she would always be there whenever I was ready to grace her with my company. Not infrequently, I didn’t bother to show up when I said I would. Nonetheless, this was completely unexpected, and I was stunned. Not having a terrific speech ready, I agreed we should separate.
There followed days of grief, anger, and sorrow over my latest loss, which of course called for some serious drinking. When I thought about what Diana had said, in my few sober moments, I had to agree she was right to be quit of me. Here I was, stuck running a smelly saloon that not only was losing money, but was a totally illegal operation anyway, as the man on the license was only a front. We were always late with our taxes and with Con Edison, always failing health inspections because a damn sewer pipe was leaking into the cellar, where large gray rats didn’t bother to scuttle off when we came down for beer and supplies.
Sometimes I’d have no money left to pay myself after the secret owners came and took their weekly share. I was trapped in this place by my fear and self-loathing, feeling savagely inferior to everyone around me. There didn’t seem to be any exit in sight.
Now, the woman of my enveloping dreams, the woman who seemed to hold out some hope of a future, had seen fit to leave me because our relationship was going nowhere. I managed at frequent intervals to curse God and the donkey he rode in on.
But for once in my life, instead of saying, “Bollox on it!” I took a positive action. After a week of this, I picked up the telephone and called Diana and poured out from my soul a torrent of love, of loneliness, of longing to see her and be with her again. I yowled that I would lay down my life for her, that all I had was hers and that she must marry me.
There was a silence on the other end of the phone, and then that gentle voice spoke, saying she had missed me too. “Yes,” she said. She would marry me.
“When, when, when,” I said, rushing headlong.
“December first,” she said, after a moment’s thought.
It was September then, and as soon as I realized how little time there was between then and now, I slammed on the brakes. “That’s too soon,” said I. From the loneliest man in the world to the most terrified: elapsed time, two seconds.
“All right then, when would you like to get married?”
“March first,” I blurted, for no good reason.
“That’s fine,” sez my beloved, and so we were engaged and committed to say the I dos and live happily ever after.
Ha.
Of the bad habits available, I missed very few. I drank too much, ate too much, philandered too much. I had managed, though, to somehow remain a nonsmoker, a state I remedied at about that time. There were still commercials for cigarettes on television then, and an advertising campaign for Lark cigarettes featured a truck traveling around the country with someone on board shouting, “Show us your Lark!” to people in various walks of life.
I auditioned to be one of the sham workers and, not being a smoker, I had to practice. I reasoned that I’d never get addicted like my mother and father before me, as I really disliked the damn things, but in the course of doing the commercial I got hooked. I got paid around three hundred dollars for the day’s work and proceeded to spend thousands of dollars to maintain my new habit, not to mention my damaged health and yellowed teeth and the hundreds of little burn holes I put in various garments (my own and others’) over the years.
I also got to do some other commercials during this period. I played Henry VIII for Imperial margarine and again for Reese’s peanut butter cups. Large, bearded Irishmen seemed interchangeable with English kings on Madison Avenue. My pal, Dick Hope, husband of the witty Marilyn, took up a professional challenge one night at the bar, to wit: Could he create a commercial for his client’s product, Colgate-Palmolive lime shave, using me, a bearded man. Not only did he do it, I got the part. What he had me do was act the bartender role (less a stretch than Henry VIII) and squeeze a lime into a drink. Instead of lime juice, out comes shaving cream, which I lathered onto my beard, saying, “Now why would they go and tempt me to shave?” A poet, a scholar, and, above all, a decent man was Richard Hope.
I also found myself a panelist on The David Susskind Show, a syndicated television program that had a huge viewing audience. This particular show had as a theme folks who had to deal with the public and the difficulties they encountered. There was a waitress, a hairdresser, a taxi driver, and myself, from the saloon business. As was my wont, I had fortified myself against vocal aridity with a few jorums of whiskey.
Susskind was his usual expansive self, very sincere, trying to accommodate the nervousness of the neophyte panelists. Many successful people get the backlash from the begrudgers, and David Susskind did not escape. In those days, people were quite vociferous in their opinions of him, which were quite low, similar to those who speak ill of Geraldo Rivera in this generation, saying he’s not to be taken seriously. However, it was not generally known that this man Susskind, a successful producer of television shows, movies, and Broadway plays, employed many of the writers and performers who had been blacklisted by the Hollywood and congressional scumbags, and risked his own career in doing so. I believe he should be judged by the good he did, which was quite a bit, and more than enough for me.
On this panel, the talk wandered about the table—complaints about the vagaries of the public, and the stupidity of certain segments thereof, the paucity of tips, and the insecurity of jobs. There were calls from the public as well, one of which was from a hairdresser who could only be described as extremely effete in manner. He complained that because of his profession, he was always being teased about being a homosexual (the word “gay” still being public property at that time), though he said he wasn’t. He added that he had ample proof of his manhood, being an ex-Marine.
The gruff New York taxi driver who sat beside me said, “Why dontcha wear your Marine uniform while you’re woiking?” The image struck me, in my somewhat liquored state, as so funny that I began to laugh and couldn’t seem to stop. As I leaned back in my chair, it broke, tumbling me to the floor, helpless, on national television, with the cameras following me. Eventually, I recovered, got back onto a new chair, and continued the discussion.
What I didn’t know was that Diana had alerted her mother and father, who had yet to meet me, to the fact that I was going to be on the show. Her father’s response the next day was, “You are going to marry that?”
Diana’s parents, John and Bernice Huchthausen, didn’t exhibit a wholehearted acceptance of me at first, and understandably so. That had been their first glimpse of me, drunk and falling off a chair on national television. Not long after, Diana and I spent a night together at the parents’ apartment while they were safely away in the country. We thought. Early the next morning, sounds of a key being inserted in the lock heralded the arrival of the mother, who was quite shocked to see her daughter in the parental bed in the company of a naked, bearded man. There was a grim set to the lady’s jaw and a steely glint in the eye, which I felt boded ill for our future relationship.
For