I remember my time in the city, 1986-88, as the walk from the 63rd and Lexington station to my work on 65th street, between Park and Madison, the old Mayfair Hotel. The first floor and basement of the hotel were occupied by Restaurant Le Cirque, where I worked the line for evening service, cooking seafood for the rich and famous.
The walk was not long or especially interesting, but it was a fifteen minute reprieve from the hustle of the subway and the madness of Le Cirque’s kitchen. I took my time. I normally arrived at work just as the midday screaming started, which would continue until about 2:00, then a welcomed hiatus until about 6:00 when it started up again, lasting until 11:00.
Strolling along to work I found myself in front of a clothing boutique on the corner 64th and Park. It seemed so incredibly out of place. Along Park and Madison there were large apartment buildings, most with doormen, while down the numbered streets there were beautiful 3 or 4 story brownstones of equal or greater worth. And here, on a prime corner without the lightest whiff of modesty was a clothing store for high priced escort girls.
There were tall windows both avenue and street side where the most curvaceous mannequins displayed tight, strapless leather dresses in red, yellow and blue, an unconcealed zipper, bottom to top, along the side; the highest, sexiest stiletto heals with fine, thin straps in all the primary colors, plus black; of course the little black dress, this worn by a buxom wench splayed on a loveseat after one too many Champagne cocktails, her long legs open just past the point of flirtation to the edge of certainty. Inside the displays were more suggestive, more raucous.
I ran into a fellow cook, Rick Nifenecker, one day walking past the store. “Can you believe this place?” is all he could mutter as we made our way to work. Rick worked previously at The Four Seasons and lived in the Times Square area, and still was dumbstruck at the audacity of the lust for money and sex on display. My own experience of Paris, with all of the lingerie stores, long before the US saw a Victoria’s Secret at the local mall, but nothing so brazenly marketed to the gold-digger escort. Avert your eyes or avoid the corner distraction altogether was our only defense.
I thought about the walk this week when I read Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, a short novella about an escort girl living in Manhatttan. Published in 1958 the work describes the life of a class of women who earn a living entertaining men for cash while also seeking a rich partner. Think of it as genteel prostitution. The protagonist of Capote’s Breakfast is Holly Golightly, a 1940’s version of the New York escort, more demure perhaps, in long gowns, pearls and stylish hats, but in the same business. Capote was an honest writer and did not go to lengths to conceal Holly’s ‘business’ nor her character. Unfortunately, the Holly Golightly most Americans know is not the high priced call girl of Capote’s novella, but the genteel, captivating, even girlish Holly, portrayed in the movie adaptation by Audrey Hepburn:
The narrator of the story relates an interaction with a Hollywood agent who describes Holly as “a phony, but a real phony,” Hers is a world of artifice, which Holly acknowledges, a world where she adorns herself in the costume of high society to instantly become high society. The rub is that she believes in it. Her play is the pursuit of a rich man, the costume is the necessary lever to the action. Nightly she prowls among the businessmen and government types of the city, plying her trade, always on the lookout for the proper mark. When her ego protrudes to remind her of her chosen livelihood and she has the “mean reds,” she stops in the early morning on her way home and has a bakery roll and a cup of coffee in front of Tiffany’s New York store. There, she worships the window displays and replenishes her belief that a fine costume can indeed create a fine life.
The novella is unsparing in its depiction of Holly and her delusions, and likewise the delusions of the men who surround her. The movie on the other hand asks the audience to believe otherwise; that Holly is a nice kid, just looking for love in all the wrong places. Watching her perform Henry Mancini’s Moon River on the balcony is the high point. Like Holly, the movie adorns Audrey Hepburn in a costume all too familiar to Hollywood movies in the belief that a fine costume makes a fine movie. It’s a horrible compromise, amplified to 11 in the casting of Mickey Rooney as a Japanese photographer. In the novella this is a very minor character, but the producers sought a bit of comedy to lighten the mood, and stumbled badly. His scenes are cringe, but only slightly more than the movie as a whole. Hollywood actually succeeded in making a movie more deluded, more phony, than Holly Golightly of the novella. Amazing.
You will enjoy the novella, excellent writing and character development, good plot. Unless you want to look at a young Audrey Hepburn, avoid the movie is my advice; it’s completely forgettable.
Apparently, after the publication of Breakfast, there was quite a competition among New York’s models and socialites and wannabees about the woman Capote based his Holly character on. Capote, ever the wit, called it the “Holly Golightly sweepstakes.” From Wall Street to the Upper East Side, from traders to escorts and gold-diggers, intense competition is the one common thread of New York City life. “You think you’re phony? You don’t know phony!”
Before the war, New York achieved a light sheen of class and humanity by sanding the rough edges of life. By the late 1980’s it was all rough edges. The boutique on the corner of 64th and Madison was no outlier, it was mainstream. As a cook at Le Cirque in those days I was witness to a constant stream of the life only money can buy. Dudley Moore took a table with a girl straight from the boutique and, to impress, he sent back two bottles of wine, the second, more expensive than the first, was over $800. I remember the owner Sirio walking around the kitchen in circles, befuddled. Another fellow, an idiot, came with three darlings of the boutique and ordered champagne and Petrossian Beluga Caviar for the table. The beautiful Petrossian tin was set into chipped ice, as was the Veuve Clicquot champagne, and surrounded with blini and condiments. After several bottles of bubbly, and many, many ounces of caviar, the tin returns to the kitchen to be weighed and the bill settled. I remember the owner Sirio walking around the kitchen in circles, befuddled about how to present a $4,000 bill to the idiot, who was also now drunk. Everyday was like this, and women who shopped at the boutique were often in the mix. Tall African women were highly sought after that year, they often strolled through the kitchen to the private party room where they became instant guests of honor.
I glided through my year at Le Cirque, never having the time or energy to become part of New York in any meaningful way. I lived across the river in working class Queens. My apartment was on the first floor of a three story brownstone walkup owned by a plumber who emigrated to the US from Poland. The neighborhood could have been any small American town with hardware and clothing stores, a few groceries, bakeries and restaurants. It woke up every morning at eight, and twelve hours later, exhausted, went to a sofa or a bed. Every morning but Sunday I had a three stop ride to 63rd and Lexington, and a short walk to Le Cirque. For a year I listened to Daniel Boulud scream like a madman to little if any effect. I’ll never forget the night David the grill man fucked up the King of Spain’s filet of beef. I honestly thought someone was going to die.
The only thing I knew about Donald Trump at that time was that the New York Post always referred to him as ‘The Don’ and that he had fixed the skating rink in Central Park, where I spent a few winter mornings before work. When I heard about the tape wherein he tells some guy “I grab their pussy” I had to smile. That sounds like a night at Le Cirque. But when the cable news commenters, live from New York, in their well orchestrated round table were “shocked, shocked I tell you to find out there’s pussy grabbing in this city” I rolled with laughter. Consistency being an important element of success, it was good to see that New York was still a real phony.
In early spring of 88 I rented a truck and, with what little I owned, drove back to Michigan. Thirty minutes outside the city I stopped for coffee and a fill up. When I returned to the truck the smell of gas was noticeable - there was a large visible puddle of it under the truck. Turn back for a new truck or carry on? The thought of spilled gas hurt deeply, but once you leave New York you’re in no hurry to return. Onward.