Three Scenes from My Life
(With Special Guest Star Truman Capote)By Richard Grayson
--------------------------------------
West 89th Street off Central Park West
Wednesday, April 6, 1966I am in the office of Dr. M.C. Spahn, headmaster of The Franklin School and former All-America basketball player for CCNY in the 1930s. Students refer to his office as “the cigar box” because of the wood paneling everywhere. I am sitting in a leather chair, all 103 pounds of me, thinking that the office doesn’t at all resemble one of my Grandpa Nat’s Havatampa cigar boxes.
My heart is beating fast. The buttons on my Franklin School blue blazer are open. I’ve got on a pale blue Drip-Dry button-down shirt and a red-and-brown rep tie as well as one of the pairs of worsted slacks Grandpa Nat and my father manufacture in the garment center, 70 blocks to the south. My loafers are black. My blond hair is parted on the side, and on the other side it flops down my forehead just the way my Grandpa Herb said his hair used to when he was my age, which is 14.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” Dr. Spahn says. There are basketball trophies and other awards on the bookcases behind me.
I had transferred to this private school in October because I hated my public high school back in Brooklyn, where I live. I had few friends there and didn’t like having to swim in the nude every day, which was a rule for boys in New York City public school pools. Now, unhappy with the 90-minute commute home (A train from 88th Street to 59th Street; D train from 59th Street to 34th Street; Q train from 34th Street to Kings Highway; Mill Basin bus to two blocks from our house in Brooklyn), I want to transfer again, to another public high school in Brooklyn, but one with no pool and with some of my friends from junior high.
In just six months I have caused Dr. Spahn a lot of trouble.
“I can remember a boy here who also was unhappy, just like you,” Dr. Spahn says. “His name was Truman Capote. You remind me of him.”
Then he says he wants my father to come up to see him the next day and dismisses me with a sigh.
As I walk downstairs to Mrs. Youman’s literature class and a discussion of Racine’s Phaedra, I wonder if Dr. Spahn knows I want to be a writer.
In Cold Blood has been number one on the best-seller list for weeks.
East 58th Street off Church Avenue, Brooklyn
Saturday, March 13, 1971I am parked in my mother’s green 1969 Pontiac Custom S, with my first girlfriend in the passenger seat. We have been steaming up the car windows and then talking for a while.
My girlfriend starts telling me about the problems of her best friend, a guy who seems to me to have no problems: he’s got a trust fund, incredible good looks, a large supportive family, and a very sweet girlfriend of his own.
Then my girlfriend says, “You know, Mike says you talk like Truman Capote.”
That isn’t the first time I’ve heard that. But somehow it seems to hurt more this time. I don’t say anything, but just by doing that, my girlfriend can tell that her best friend’s comment has bothered me.
A few days later, I will say something nasty about her best friend, and then, after we have a fight, I will tell her about his remark about my talking like Capote and saying I guess I was wrong when I thought her friend liked me.
Next Friday evening we will double-date with her best friend and his girlfriend, and while we are waiting for the girls to come out of the ladies’ room Mike will say, “You know, Rich, I didn’t mean anything when I said you talked like Truman Capote,” and I will become so embarrassed that I will wave my hands and say, “Oh God, I wish she hadn’t told you, I was just being stupid.”
And a few years later I will smile when people tell me I talk like a famous author.
870 United Nations Plaza
Thursday, February 22, 1979I am standing in the lobby of this incredibly fancy building waiting for the elevator with Wesley Strick, the 25-year-old editor of my forthcoming book of short stories, being published by the company his father owns; Wes’s old friend and future brother-in-law Stan Stokowski; and Stan’s 11-year-old half brother Anderson Cooper, whom we are taking back to the apartment of his and Stan’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt.
Stan’s father was the conductor Leopold Stokowski. Anderson’s father, who recently died, was the writer and actor Wyatt Cooper.
I am 27 and still live with my parents at our house in Brooklyn.
Suddenly, up walks Truman Capote, wearing a fur coat over blue linen pants that seem too light for this weather. I’ve read that he has been off drugs and booze for a year now, has taken to swimming a mile every day at the gym, to dieting.
In the lobby of my grandparents’ apartment house in Rockaway there’s a photo of him in a warm-up suit tacked to a bulletin board, with the caption: “Look who might join us for our daily jogs on the boardwalk! Meet in lobby every morning at 8:00 a.m. for some good exercise!”
I decide not to tell Capote about this. He seems quite mellow and smiles at all of us.
Wes says, “Barbara Walters asked you such stupid questions last night.”
Last night Walters was filling in for Johnny Carson, and Capote was her first guest.
“That woman is incapable of asking any other kind of question,” Capote tells us as we shuffle into the elevator. It’s always been a shock for me to meet famous people, to find that they look and sound just like they do on television.
Then he proceeds to imitate Barbara Walters: "Truman! Sit right down and insult a few people." That was how she greeted him when he came out on The Tonight Show set.
Capote goes on and on, mimicking Walters perfectly, getting down her lisp and cadences better than Gilda Radner’s “Baba Wawa.” He puts a twist on each of her questions and comments that make her sound so silly that we all can’t help giggling. The more we laugh, the funnier his performance gets, and that makes us laugh more.
Then his floor comes up. Exiting with a serene smile, Capote says, “You boys have a good evening.”
“He’s such a weirdo,” Anderson says after the elevator door closes behind Capote.
Then he looks directly at me, whom he’s never seen before a few hours ago.
“I like weirdoes,” the boy reassures me.
---------------------------------------
Richard Grayson is a native Brooklynite and the author of several short story collections, including The Silicon Valley Diet, I Survived Caracas Traffic, Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, and With Hitler in New York. Recent work has appeared online at McSweeney's, Eyeshot, Yankee Pot Roast, Spillway Review, Uber and Maladapted. Here is his website. He can be contacted here.
© 2005 Me Three