show, collapsed on a pile of old curtains. A ten-minute doze, and I’d be restored, ready to take on the city once more, as soon as the applause died down.
You can live this way when you’re nineteen (or pretending to be nineteen, in Celia’s case).
“Those girls are on the road to trouble,” I heard an older woman say about us one night, as we were staggering down the street drunk—and that woman was absolutely right. What she didn’t understand, though, is that trouble is what we wanted.
Oh, our youthful needs!
Oh, the deliciously blinding yearnings of the young—which inevitably take us right to the edges of cliffs, or trap us in cul-de-sacs of our design.
—
Ican’t say that I got good at sex during the summer of 1940, although I will say that I grew awfully familiar with it.
But, no, I didn’t get good at it.
To get “good” at sex—which, for a woman, means learning how to enjoy and even orchestrate the act, to the point of her own climax—one needs time, patience, and an attentive lover. It would be awhile before I had access to anything as sophisticated as all that. For now, it was just a game of wild numbers, executed with a considerable amount of speed. (Celia and I didn’t like to hover too long in one location, or with one man, in case we were missing something better that might be happening on the other side of town.)
My longing for excitement and my curiosity about sex made me not only insatiable that summer, but also susceptible. That’s how I see myself, when I look back on it now. I was susceptible to everything that had even the vaguest suggestion of the erotic or the illicit. I was susceptible to neon lights in the darkness of a midtown side street. I was susceptible to drinking cocktails out of coconut shells in the Hawaiian Room of the Hotel Lexington. I was susceptible to being offered ringside tickets, or backstage entrances to nightclubs that did not have names. I was susceptible to anybody who could play a musical
instrument, or dance with a fair amount of panache. I was susceptible to getting into cars with just about anyone who owned a car. I was susceptible to men who would approach me at the bar with two highballs, saying, “I seem to have found myself with an extra drink. Perhaps you could help me out with this, miss?”
Why, yes, I would be delighted to help you out with that, sir.
I was so good at being helpful in that regard!
—
In our defense, Celia and I didn’t have sex with all the men we met that summer.
But we did have sex with most of them.
The question with me and Celia was never so much “Who should we have sex with?”—it didn’t really seem to matter—but only “Where shall we have sex?”
The answer was: Wherever we could find a spot.
We had sex in fancy hotel suites, paid for by out-of-town businessmen. But also in the kitchen (closed for the evening) of a small East Side nightclub. Or on a ferry boat where we’d somehow ended up late at night—the lights on the water all runny and blurry around us. In the backs of taxicabs. (I know it sounds uncomfortable, and believe me it was uncomfortable, but it could be accomplished.) In a movie theater. In a dressing room in the basement of the Lily Playhouse. In a dressing room in the basement of the Diamond Horseshoe. In a dressing room in the basement of Madison Square Garden. In Bryant Park, with the threat of rats at our feet. In dark and sweltering alleyways just off the taxi-haunted corners of midtown. On the rooftop of the Puck Building. In an office suite on Wall Street, where only the nighttime janitors might hear us.
Drunk, pinwheel-eyed, briny-blooded, brainless, weightless—Celia and I spun through New York City that summer on currents of pure electricity. Instead of walking, we rocketed. There was no focus; there was just a constant search for the vivid. We missed nothing, but we also missed everything. We watched Joe Louis train with his sparring partner, for instance, and we heard Billie Holiday sing—but I can’t
remember the details of either occasion. We were too distracted by our own story to pay much attention to all the wonders that were laid before us. (For instance: the night that I saw Billie Holiday sing, I had my period and I was in a sulky mood because a boy I liked had just left with another girl. There’s my review of Billie Holiday’s performance.)
Celia and I would have too much to drink, and then we would run into crowds of young men who’d also had too much to drink—and the whole lot of us would crash together and behave exactly the way you might expect us to behave. We would go into bars with boys whom we’d met in other bars, but then flirt with the boys we discovered in the new bar. We caused fights to break out, and somebody would take a wicked shellacking, but then Celia would choose among the survivors for who would take us to the next bar, where the uproar would begin all over again. We would bounce from one stag party to the next—from one man’s arms to another man’s arms. We even traded dates once, right in the middle of dinner.
“You take him,” Celia said to me that night, right in front of the man who was already boring her. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. You keep this guy warm.”
“But he’s your guy!” I said, as the man reached for me, most obligingly. “And you’re my friend!”
“Oh, Vivvie,” she said to me, in a fond and pitying tone. “You can’t lose a friend like me just by taking her guy!”
—
Ihad precious little contact with my family back home that summer.
The last thing I wanted was for them to know anything about what I was doing.
My mother sent me a note every week, along with my allowance, filling me in on the most basic news. My father had hurt his shoulder playing golf. My brother was threatening to quit Princeton next semester and join the Navy, because he wanted to serve his country. My mother had defeated this-or-that woman in this-or-that tennis tournament. In return, I sent my parents a card every week telling them the same stale and uninformative sort of news—that I was well,
that I was working hard at the theater, that New York City was very nice, and thank you for the allowance. Every once in a while I’d toss in a bit of innocuous detail, such as, “Just the other day I had a charming lunch at the Knickerbocker Club with Aunt Peg.”
Naturally, I did not mention to my parents that I’d recently gone to a doctor with my friend Celia the showgirl, in order to get myself illegally fitted for a pessary. (Illegal, because it was not permitted back then for a doctor to outfit an unmarried woman with a birth control device—but this is why it’s so good to have friends who know people! Celia’s doctor was a laconic Russian woman who didn’t ask questions. She suited me right up without batting an eye.)
Nor did I mention to my parents that I’d had a gonorrhea scare (which had turned out to be nothing more than a mild pelvic infection, thank goodness—though it had been a painful and frightening week until it all cleared up). Nor did I mention that I’d had a pregnancy scare (which had also cleared up on its own accord, thank God). Nor did I mention that I was now fairly regularly sleeping with a man named Kevin “Ribsy” O’Sullivan, who ran numbers around the corner in Hell’s Kitchen. (I was dallying about with some other men, too, of course—all equally unsavory, but none with such a good name as “Ribsy.”)
Nor did I mention that I now always carried prophylactics in my pocketbook—on account of the fact that I didn’t want any further gonorrhea scares, and a girl can’t be too careful. I also didn’t tell my parents that my boyfriends regularly secured these prophylactics for me as a kind favor. (Because you see, Mother, only men are allowed to purchase prophylactics in New York City!)
No, I didn’t tell her any of this.
I did, however, pass along the news that the lemon sole at the Knickerbocker Club was excellent.
Which is true. It really was.
—
Meanwhile, Celia and I just went right on spinning—night after night—getting ourselves into all manner of trouble, big and small.
Our drinks made us crazy and lazy. We forgot how to keep track of the hours or the cocktails or the names of our dates. We drank gin fizzes till we forgot how to walk. We forgot how to look after our security once we were good and tight, and other people—often strangers—would have to look after us. (“It ain’t for you to tell a girl how to live!” I remember Celia yelling one night at a nice gentleman who was politely trying to do nothing more than escort us back home safely to the Lily.)
There was always an element of peril in the way that Celia and I thrust ourselves into the world. We made ourselves available for anything that might happen, so anything could happen. Often, anything did happen.
You see, it was like this: Celia’s effect on men was to make them so obedient and subservient to her—until the instant they were no longer obedient and subservient. She would have them all lined up before us, ready to take our orders and serve our every wish. They were such good boys, and sometimes they stayed good boys—but sometimes, quite suddenly, those boys were not so good anymore. Some line of male desire or anger would be crossed, and then there was no coming back from it. After that line had been crossed, Celia’s effect on men was to make them into savages. There would be a moment when everyone was having fun and flirting and playing taunting games and laughing, but then suddenly the energy of the room would shift, and now there was a threat of not only sex, but violence.
Once that shift came, there was no stopping it.
After that, it was all smash and grab.
The first time this happened, Celia saw it coming moments before it occurred, and she sent me out of the room. We were in the Presidential Suite of the Biltmore Hotel, being entertained by three men whom we’d met earlier in the ballroom of the Waldorf. These men had a great deal of loose cash, and they were clearly in a dubious line of work. (If I had to guess, I would wager that their line of employment was: racketeers.) At first they were all in service to Celia—so deferential, so grateful for her attentions, sweating with nervousness about making the beautiful girl and her friend happy. Would the ladies like another bottle of champagne? Would the ladies like some crab legs ordered up to the room? Would the ladies like to see the Presidential Suite at the Biltmore? Would the ladies like the radio on or off?