(Barbara Sohmers, Susan Sontag and Harriet Sohmers in Paris, 1950s)
Harriet Sohmers Zwerling was born in New York City in 1928 and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At the age of 17, she started attending Washington Square College, which is part of New York University. Harriet immersed herself in the bohemian Village, hanging out in the San Remo Café and fending off advances from the famously ugly crime photographer Weegee.
In 1950, Harriet moved to Paris,
where she lived with a Swedish painter, worked for the International Herald Tribune as a clerk-typist, translated a book
by the Marquis de Sade and kept a diary of her prolific sexual adventures with
both men and women. Excerpts from Harriet’s frank and scandalous diaries were
published in 2014 as Abroad: An
Expatriate’s Diaries, 1950 to 1959. Her lovers included Susan Sontag and
and the future playwright Irene Fornes.
(Harriet's Facebook photo)
(Harriet's Facebook photo)
Harriet returned to New York at the
end of 1959. After a sudden brutal break up with Susan Sontag, where Susan left
her for Irene, Harriet flew up to Provincetown, Mass., and wound up dating Bill
Ward, the editor of the Provincetown
Review, where she became an editor.
Back living in New York, Harriet
frequented the fabled Cedar Tavern, where she was friends with the painter
Larry Rivers, and often got into public fights with Bill Ward and various
women.
Bill Ward was close friends with the
writer Norman Mailer, who was married through the early 1960’s to the firebrand
Adele Morales Mailer. In the summer of 1960 in Provincetown, Adele Mailer
attacked Harriet, provoking a legendary fistfight. Several months later, Norman
stabbed Adele multiple times in front of horrified partygoers at their
apartment on West End Avenue. Norman was not indicted in the stabbing. Norman
and Adele divorced shortly after the stabbing.
In the 1960’s, to support herself,
Harriet worked as a nude model at Cooper Union and the Art Students League.
Very briefly, she also worked as a “Rent-a-Beatnik,” where Beatniks from the
Village were sent to parties and paid to perform, read poetry and play the
bongos.
In 1962, Harriet met her future
husband and merchant seaman Louie Zwerling at the Cedar Tavern, when he tried
to pick her up as a hooker, offering to pay for sex, which she laughed off.
They had their son Milo in 1963.
For 28 years, Harriet taught elementary
school in the Irish and Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Years
after she retired, she published a collection of autobiographical stories
called Notes of a Nude Model,
detailing her wild days in Greenwich Village, from being an artist’s model to
doing heroin once. The collection brought new attention to Harriet’s life and
writing. She has since been featured in documentaries like “Still Doing It,” on
older women and sex, was interviewed for the film “Norman Mailer: The American”
and was in 2014’s “Regarding Susan Sontag,” where she stole the movie by
regaling viewers with stories of her love affair with Sontag.
In 2009, Sontag's early diaries were published, edited by her son David Reiff, who made the decision to refer to Harriet as "H" in the diaries and not by her name. Harriet confronted Reiff on the censorship, and later editions included Harriet's name.
In 2009, Sontag's early diaries were published, edited by her son David Reiff, who made the decision to refer to Harriet as "H" in the diaries and not by her name. Harriet confronted Reiff on the censorship, and later editions included Harriet's name.
Harriet Sohmers Zwerling and I also
have a history. I was introduced to her by Edward Field in 2005, when I
interviewed her for “The Last Bohemians” project my photo-and-text exhibit
about writers and artists who came up in the 1950’s, which was shown at the
Westbeth Gallery in January 2006. With her frank stories of her personal
history and opinions (“Being married to a seaman was great for affairs,” and
“Kids today, they don’t fuck.”), Harriet became the star of the exhibit. She
became the center of a New Yorker
“Talk of the Town” piece on the exhibit, referred to by the writer Lauren
Collins as a grande horizontale for
her many love affairs.
We spoke at Harriet’s orderly
apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. Harriet stands almost six feet tall
and wears her white-blonde hair long with bangs, a look that Edward Field calls
her “Prince Valiant Haircut.” Over her
dining table hangs a nude oil portrait of Harriet, painted by one of the
students she modeled for in the 1960’s. On the bookshelf are bound copies of
the long-defunct Provincetown Review. This interview took place in March 2008,
when Harriet was 80.
(A recent picture of Harriet Sohmers Zwerling)
(A recent picture of Harriet Sohmers Zwerling)
Q. How did you know you were sexually free in the 1940s?
A. It started during World War II. I was still in high school when I decided I was free. I can’t tell you where it came from. It certainly didn’t come from my parents, who were in business, kind of. My father was artistic. He had been a singer in vaudeville.
I had bohemian friends in high school.. We went to French movies. We were too young to go to bars, but we saw ourselves as bohemians. We hung out in the Village in high school. I was so taken by the lifestyle. There was this guy Jimmy Cucciarra, a painter with a limp who was a few years older than I was. He had a place on Cherry Street, an apartment that went for $14 a month. He was living someplace else, so he rented it to me and my sister. That was our hideout. We were both virgins. There were boys, but we weren’t doing anything yet. It lasted a couple of months.
Q. When did you start going to the San Remo?
A. I went to NYU for my first two years of college. The San Remo was where people hung. It was a mix of people. Max Bodenheim was there. Bill Manville was there. Did you ever hear of him? He had a gossip column in the Village Voice. He was slick. He had a girlfriend named Rosemarie Santini. She was Manville’s girl at the time. She writes detective novels now. This was all before I went to Europe.
The Village was a big thing for me. As soon as I started going to Washington Square College, I started hanging out on MacDougal Street. Our campus was Washington Square. It was my dream to be part of the Village, the whole bohemian thing, so I started hanging out in bars. I was too young to drink, but they didn’t care.
It was a great scene. I hung out with artists I knew, like the painter George Morrison. He was Native American. He died a few years ago. I also hung out with Al Kresch, a very sweet guy.
We went to Provincetown when I was 17 and my sister was 15. My parents, it was dumb of them, but they let us go. No chaperone. My sister was friends with Beryl Oppenheimer. Her family had a house in Provincetown. Her grandparents were artists. She reassured our parents that her grandparents would be watching us. We rented a room at Bryant’s Rooming house. Bryant’s was a famous market. My sister and I got a room there. We ended up having all these hippie guys, like Larry Rivers, hang out with us. They were all junkies. Buddy Wirtschafter, who called himself Jay Worth, was there. He was one of my first lovers. He was a painter, but at the time he was a jazz musician. They were all jazz musicians. There was a guy named Charlie Leeds. He was my special boyfriend. I was still a virgin, but he was the one who would take me out. My mother couldn’t stand him. He was a skinny, blonde bass player. He was a junkie, too. My mother know there was something off about the guy and he wasn’t Jewish. She disliked him intensely. We all slept in this one room. Anne Tabachnick. Did you ever hear of her? She was my buddy at Julia Richmond High School. She was an early bohemian. She became a very famous painter. She was a very hot number, a very beautiful girl with great tits. Anne was sleeping with black guys before anyone else. She showed up in Provincetown and knew all these guys who were playing in a club there--Larry, Buddy, Charlie. Larry Rivers played sax. Anne Tabachnick came up. She was fucking everyone. They were sneaking up to the rooming house to sleep in my sister and my room. That’s how I met all these people. I never slept with Larry Rivers, but we were friends. He was great. I saw more of him in Paris. He was AC-DC. He was lovers with Frank O’Hara, then he went straight, married and had kids. I was also AC-DC in those days. He met me in Paris when I was with Susan [Sontag]. Susan and I were living in Stan Wolfenstein’s apartment. He said to me, “Which part of the clock are you on?” He had gone straight by then. I was gay, because I was living with Susan. In Paris, he was still shooting up. They were all junkies and living on the G.I. Bill. We were all back in the Village together. The story that I wrote, “Night Out,” was when I shot heroin and that was with Larry Rivers.
(The cover of Harriet's first book...a 1960's portrait of her.)
Q. Did you know Sheri Martinelli and Anatole Broyard?
A. Sheri was Anatole Broyard’s girl. Everybody knew them as a couple. They were at the Remo. He was gorgeous. I took a writing course with him at NYU. With those looks, he could be whatever he wanted. Of course, everybody knew he was black. He supposedly was passing, but everybody knew it. It was bizarre, especially because he didn’t look very African-American.
My sister wrote a story years ago. It’s about me at the San Remo, when I was having my first lesbian affair with Peggy Tolk-Watkins from Black Mountain. She ended up in San Francisco, famous on the lesbian scene. She was a friend of Lenny Bruce. In my sister’s story, Howard Mitchum was this deaf guy, an artist and brilliant, but he talked really loud. I walked into the San Remo with my sister. Howard was sitting with Marty Bloom, also a painter on the scene. Marty was a friend of mine. When we walked in, Howard said at the top of his lungs, “Hey Mar-ty, is that girl a LES-BIAN?” The whole bar looked at us. It was pretty embarrassing.
I went to Black Mountain for the summer of 1947. I was 19. That’s where I met Peggy. Peggy seduced me. She was a wonderfully exciting person, and very famous. Peggy seduced me by asking if I’d read “Nightwood.” She had a bar in San Francisco called the Tin Angel, a famous jazz bar. She was at Black Mountain. I was 19. She was 26. Peggy was bi. Everybody was mad for her. She married this guy at Black Mountain named Rags Watkins, a very aristocratic Southerner, also bisexual. She was pregnant by Rags. We all decided to go to San Francisco. Peggy had a Model A Ford. She didn’t want to drive because she was pregnant. We didn’t have any money, but Peggy raised money by scamming people and took a plane. Rags and I drove to San Francisco with hardly any money. We had this girl Ginny that we found somewhere. Peggy had probably seduced her. She was a rich girl and she paid for the gas and everything. Ginny sat in the rumble seat. We drove all the way across the country, sleeping in barns. My parents had no idea where I was. I just split. It was my first adventure. We were living together in San Francisco, Peggy, Rags and me. We were living off Blanche Phillips, a painter and former lover of Peggy’s. We all moved in with her. Peggy introduced me to a bunch of dykes and one of them asked me to move in with her. I started going to Berkeley so I could get support from my parents. They started sending me money. I moved to Berkeley, got a room and that’s where I met Susan. I was working in a bookstore and she came in. I was Susan’s first lover. I used the line, “Have you read Nightwood?” That was the same line that Peggy used on me when she seduced me at Black Mountain. Susan and I lasted about six months, then I went to New York for the summer. My sister came down with TB. Instead of going back to Berkeley, I felt I had to stay with her. I took a leave of absence from Berkeley and never went back. Susan came to New York. I worked at the Partisan Review. That’s when I hung out at the Remo more. That was 1949. I was a receptionist and worked on subscriptions. I met Delmore Schwartz and I met his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth and I took a course at NYU in 1947 with Anatole Broyard. Elizabeth was in my class. I had a big crush on her.
Q. What was the Partisan Review like?
There was a woman there named Eve Gassler. She and I became friends. She was the editorial assistant. There was Phillip Rahv and William Phillips. Delmore was around, but I didn’t really know him. He was psychotic.
I was just the girl at the front desk, but I was able to save up the money to go to Paris. I saved $500, which was a good sum in those days. I bought my boat ticket, which was one way and got to Paris with $200. Susan came to see me before I left. That was it.
Susan got married when she was 18 to her professor, Phillip Reiff. They came to Paris on their honeymoon. I was living with a Swedish painter. We were in Italy. When we got back, I went to get my mail from the old AmEx office in Paris. There was a letter from Susan saying she was coming to Paris on her honeymoon, but she could not see me with her husband’s knowledge, so would I meet her at Notre Dame on August? I didn’t get the letter in time, because I was in Italy at the time. I use the letter in my diary. She then wrote this letter to me, or maybe she said this to me—she was this character from the George Eliot novel Middlemarch, who had married an awful person, a sexless, nasty man.
A. It started during World War II. I was still in high school when I decided I was free. I can’t tell you where it came from. It certainly didn’t come from my parents, who were in business, kind of. My father was artistic. He had been a singer in vaudeville.
I had bohemian friends in high school.. We went to French movies. We were too young to go to bars, but we saw ourselves as bohemians. We hung out in the Village in high school. I was so taken by the lifestyle. There was this guy Jimmy Cucciarra, a painter with a limp who was a few years older than I was. He had a place on Cherry Street, an apartment that went for $14 a month. He was living someplace else, so he rented it to me and my sister. That was our hideout. We were both virgins. There were boys, but we weren’t doing anything yet. It lasted a couple of months.
Q. When did you start going to the San Remo?
A. I went to NYU for my first two years of college. The San Remo was where people hung. It was a mix of people. Max Bodenheim was there. Bill Manville was there. Did you ever hear of him? He had a gossip column in the Village Voice. He was slick. He had a girlfriend named Rosemarie Santini. She was Manville’s girl at the time. She writes detective novels now. This was all before I went to Europe.
The Village was a big thing for me. As soon as I started going to Washington Square College, I started hanging out on MacDougal Street. Our campus was Washington Square. It was my dream to be part of the Village, the whole bohemian thing, so I started hanging out in bars. I was too young to drink, but they didn’t care.
It was a great scene. I hung out with artists I knew, like the painter George Morrison. He was Native American. He died a few years ago. I also hung out with Al Kresch, a very sweet guy.
We went to Provincetown when I was 17 and my sister was 15. My parents, it was dumb of them, but they let us go. No chaperone. My sister was friends with Beryl Oppenheimer. Her family had a house in Provincetown. Her grandparents were artists. She reassured our parents that her grandparents would be watching us. We rented a room at Bryant’s Rooming house. Bryant’s was a famous market. My sister and I got a room there. We ended up having all these hippie guys, like Larry Rivers, hang out with us. They were all junkies. Buddy Wirtschafter, who called himself Jay Worth, was there. He was one of my first lovers. He was a painter, but at the time he was a jazz musician. They were all jazz musicians. There was a guy named Charlie Leeds. He was my special boyfriend. I was still a virgin, but he was the one who would take me out. My mother couldn’t stand him. He was a skinny, blonde bass player. He was a junkie, too. My mother know there was something off about the guy and he wasn’t Jewish. She disliked him intensely. We all slept in this one room. Anne Tabachnick. Did you ever hear of her? She was my buddy at Julia Richmond High School. She was an early bohemian. She became a very famous painter. She was a very hot number, a very beautiful girl with great tits. Anne was sleeping with black guys before anyone else. She showed up in Provincetown and knew all these guys who were playing in a club there--Larry, Buddy, Charlie. Larry Rivers played sax. Anne Tabachnick came up. She was fucking everyone. They were sneaking up to the rooming house to sleep in my sister and my room. That’s how I met all these people. I never slept with Larry Rivers, but we were friends. He was great. I saw more of him in Paris. He was AC-DC. He was lovers with Frank O’Hara, then he went straight, married and had kids. I was also AC-DC in those days. He met me in Paris when I was with Susan [Sontag]. Susan and I were living in Stan Wolfenstein’s apartment. He said to me, “Which part of the clock are you on?” He had gone straight by then. I was gay, because I was living with Susan. In Paris, he was still shooting up. They were all junkies and living on the G.I. Bill. We were all back in the Village together. The story that I wrote, “Night Out,” was when I shot heroin and that was with Larry Rivers.
(The cover of Harriet's first book...a 1960's portrait of her.)
Q. Did you know Sheri Martinelli and Anatole Broyard?
A. Sheri was Anatole Broyard’s girl. Everybody knew them as a couple. They were at the Remo. He was gorgeous. I took a writing course with him at NYU. With those looks, he could be whatever he wanted. Of course, everybody knew he was black. He supposedly was passing, but everybody knew it. It was bizarre, especially because he didn’t look very African-American.
My sister wrote a story years ago. It’s about me at the San Remo, when I was having my first lesbian affair with Peggy Tolk-Watkins from Black Mountain. She ended up in San Francisco, famous on the lesbian scene. She was a friend of Lenny Bruce. In my sister’s story, Howard Mitchum was this deaf guy, an artist and brilliant, but he talked really loud. I walked into the San Remo with my sister. Howard was sitting with Marty Bloom, also a painter on the scene. Marty was a friend of mine. When we walked in, Howard said at the top of his lungs, “Hey Mar-ty, is that girl a LES-BIAN?” The whole bar looked at us. It was pretty embarrassing.
I went to Black Mountain for the summer of 1947. I was 19. That’s where I met Peggy. Peggy seduced me. She was a wonderfully exciting person, and very famous. Peggy seduced me by asking if I’d read “Nightwood.” She had a bar in San Francisco called the Tin Angel, a famous jazz bar. She was at Black Mountain. I was 19. She was 26. Peggy was bi. Everybody was mad for her. She married this guy at Black Mountain named Rags Watkins, a very aristocratic Southerner, also bisexual. She was pregnant by Rags. We all decided to go to San Francisco. Peggy had a Model A Ford. She didn’t want to drive because she was pregnant. We didn’t have any money, but Peggy raised money by scamming people and took a plane. Rags and I drove to San Francisco with hardly any money. We had this girl Ginny that we found somewhere. Peggy had probably seduced her. She was a rich girl and she paid for the gas and everything. Ginny sat in the rumble seat. We drove all the way across the country, sleeping in barns. My parents had no idea where I was. I just split. It was my first adventure. We were living together in San Francisco, Peggy, Rags and me. We were living off Blanche Phillips, a painter and former lover of Peggy’s. We all moved in with her. Peggy introduced me to a bunch of dykes and one of them asked me to move in with her. I started going to Berkeley so I could get support from my parents. They started sending me money. I moved to Berkeley, got a room and that’s where I met Susan. I was working in a bookstore and she came in. I was Susan’s first lover. I used the line, “Have you read Nightwood?” That was the same line that Peggy used on me when she seduced me at Black Mountain. Susan and I lasted about six months, then I went to New York for the summer. My sister came down with TB. Instead of going back to Berkeley, I felt I had to stay with her. I took a leave of absence from Berkeley and never went back. Susan came to New York. I worked at the Partisan Review. That’s when I hung out at the Remo more. That was 1949. I was a receptionist and worked on subscriptions. I met Delmore Schwartz and I met his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth and I took a course at NYU in 1947 with Anatole Broyard. Elizabeth was in my class. I had a big crush on her.
Q. What was the Partisan Review like?
There was a woman there named Eve Gassler. She and I became friends. She was the editorial assistant. There was Phillip Rahv and William Phillips. Delmore was around, but I didn’t really know him. He was psychotic.
I was just the girl at the front desk, but I was able to save up the money to go to Paris. I saved $500, which was a good sum in those days. I bought my boat ticket, which was one way and got to Paris with $200. Susan came to see me before I left. That was it.
Susan got married when she was 18 to her professor, Phillip Reiff. They came to Paris on their honeymoon. I was living with a Swedish painter. We were in Italy. When we got back, I went to get my mail from the old AmEx office in Paris. There was a letter from Susan saying she was coming to Paris on her honeymoon, but she could not see me with her husband’s knowledge, so would I meet her at Notre Dame on August? I didn’t get the letter in time, because I was in Italy at the time. I use the letter in my diary. She then wrote this letter to me, or maybe she said this to me—she was this character from the George Eliot novel Middlemarch, who had married an awful person, a sexless, nasty man.
I came back from Paris to New York
because my mother was very ill. I met this young man, Peter, who was my first
really great fuck. The Swedish guy I was
living with was not. Do you know who Sam Menasche was? He got an award recently
for being the best unknown poet. Edward hates him. He is one of the people I
slept with in Paris who ended up being gay. He’s at the San Remo in my sister’s
story. Peter, this fellow, I met him at the San Remo.
The bars were all around MacDougal
Street. There was the Kettle of Fish. It was a nice little bar then. I hate it
now. The Kettle of Fish was a macho bar. That was part of its charm. Alfred
Chester used to go there. We went there when he lived on Sullivan Street.
I remember the San Remo because
Weegee came on to me there. It was the glamorous place, but I was too young.
Weegee was a little, short fat Jewish guy. He asked me if he could take me home
and massage me with baby oil. Of course, I was not interested.
The Cedar, that was a great scene.
When I came back in ’59, I was
living with Susan on West End Avenue. She went off with Irene Fornes. Irene
took her. Irene was my great love in this lesbian thing. She was the only
really sexual lesbian affair I had. I had a lot of affairs with women, but I
really preferred men sexually. We had a very hot relationship.
I met Irene in New York in 1952. It
was madly passionate. She came to live with me in Paris. We were together for about
3 years. She was incapable of being faithful. She was a terrible Don Juan and a
flirt. She was adorable and everybody fell in love with her.
(Irene Fornes and Harriet Sohmers. Irene was one of Harriet's great lovers.)
Susan referred to Irene as that
“dumb spic.” Irene never read a book in her life. Her plays are wonderful, but she’s a
primitive. In Paris, she was being a painter.
I
came back to New York because my mother was dying, then she wouldn’t die, I had
to make two trips, then I went back to Paris. On my first trip to see my
mother, that was in 1952, that is when I met Irene. I was living with a man in
Paris, but it was mad passion with Irene. I was mostly in love. I went down to
Florida to stay with my father. Irene came down to stay with us. He caught us
making love in the bedroom. He heard something and we had the door locked. It
was a big crisis. He said, “Get that woman out of the house.” It was bad, but
we were madly in love. I went back to Europe and I broke up with Sven, this guy
I was living with. Then Irene came to live with me, six months later. It must
be 1953. We were together until 1956 or ’57. After Irene went to the States,
Susan came.
Q. You and Susan resumed your
relationship?
A. Yeah.
Q. That’s when the party with
Ginsberg took place?
A. Yeah.
[Editor’s
Note: Harriet and Susan had had a fistfight the night before they were going to
host Allen Ginsberg and other American writers at their apartment in Paris.
Susan had a big bruise on her face. Ginsberg said something to Harriet like,
“You hit her because she is better looking than you.”]
Q. What happened when you went back
to New York?
A. When I
came back to New York, I was living with Susan. She took up with Irene and
kicked me out of her apartment. I was
working as a temp-typist. I had no money. I was really fucked up and shattered
by this thing. I was still in love with Irene. The problem was the betrayal
from Irene’s side. That was the rough one. I was never in love with Susan.
A friend of
mine lent me $25. I went to Provincetown. It was May when this happened. I had
to get away. I had no place to stay in New York. Somebody suggested Provincetown.
I had loved Provincetown when I was a kid. Twenty-five dollars was the airfare
to Provincetown. I flew to Provincetown, thinking that I could stay with Marty
Bloom from the San Remo. I walked with my little duffel bag from the airport
into town. Marty was gone. He had broken up with his wife. The wife was a
darling. I stayed with her until I met Bill Ward. Bill Ward is the one that
took me to the Cedar Tavern. He knew that crowd already. The Cedar was great.
I was with
Bill for three years. It wasn’t totally an open relationship. It started
falling apart. He started sleeping with other people and I was, too. We started
having fistfights. I got very violent at times. I met Lou at the Cedar while I
was still dating Bill.
I met Lou in
’61 or ’62, when I was still living with Bill. We went to Europe together. Milo
was born in ’63.
Q. Was the Cedar a macho bar?
A. It was
those guys. They were the stars…Pollock, the sculptor John Chamberlain, Franz
Kline, de Kooning. I talk about the “old ladies,” the girlfriends. Joyce
Johnson was Kerouac’s girlfriend.
There was Mira,
this black woman, who had an affair with deKooning. Her kid was supposed to be
deKooning’s, a beautiful little girl. She and I became very friendly. She’s an
addict. I am sure she’s dead by now.
Then there
was Ruth Kligman, Jackson Pollock’s girl, the “death car” girl.
Q. What was the sexual vibe at the
Cedar?
A. Everyone
was fucking everyone. It was very heterosexual. The Cedar was very straight and
there was a real sex vibe, a lot of flirtations, and a lot of interesting
people. That’s where I met Lou.
The painter
Emilio Cruz was a friend from the Provincetown crowd. The Provincetown crowd
connected with the Cedar. There were a lot of Provincetown people. Franz Kline
went to Provincetown.
Q. Did you sleep with any of the
Abstract Expressionists?
A. I don’t
think I interested them. I was living with Bill Ward, so I was known as Bill
Ward’s girl. We picked up people. There was a famous night when I was with Bill
and a group of people at the Cedar. I was seeing Louie Zwerling on the side.
Louie was a great lover. Bill was not. There was a blizzard. I struggled over
to Lou’s apartment. He stood me up. That night, we all wound up at the Cedar.
Louie was living above the 55 Bar on Christopher Street. When the Cedar closed,
we were all stoned out of our minds on reefer. (We were all heavily into pot.)
We were walking down the street yelling. I snuck off and went to Louie’s apartment.
It was 4 in
the morning. I went into Louie’s bedroom and jumped on him. I was wearing a fur
coat. He said it was like being attacked by an animal. I leapt on him, cursing
him and beating him up. We had great
sex. Soon after, my father died and left me some money. Louie and I went to
Europe together. Bill didn’t know about it. I told him I was going alone.
Somebody must have told Bill about it. I got a sad letter from Bill at the
American Express office in Paris telling me how much he loved me. I was crazy
about Louie then. I went back to New York and broke up with Bill.
Q. You had a fight with Adele Mailer?
Adele, oh
yeah. The fight was either ’59 or ’60. You know Lenny Green? He’s like that
extra single man that people want to have at the party.
Lenny said
to me recently, “I remember you as clear as day in 1959, when you arrived in Provincetown.”
I told you
about the guy at the Jefferson Market, who came up to me and said, “The Cedar
Tavern. Franz Kline. DeKooning.” He looked like a bum but he shops at the
Jefferson Market. He must have money. {Editor’s note: The Jefferson Market was
on 6th Avenue. It was a West Village institution. It closed for the
last time several years ago.]
Q. How did you know Adele and Norman
Mailer?
They were in
Provincetown and the Upper West Side. They had had a three-way with Irene. In
my diaries, there is a nice passage about Norman and Adele coming to Paris. I
was living with Irene and hanging out with Alfred Chester. Irene and Alfred had
become friends in Ibiza. When Norman and Adele came to Paris, they looked up
Irene. They had an affair with Irene before Paris. She dropped them when she started living with
me, which they resented. That, apparently, was the reason for the fistfight.
That’s when Adele said to me, “This is for Irene.”
They went to
Paris. They knew me from Provincetown. They were staying at this very fancy
hotel. They invited us over to watch the fireworks for July 14th,
Bastille Day. The fireworks were over the river and beautiful. We watched the
fireworks from their room. In my diary, I wrote that “Norman is hostile, I
guess because I am twice his height, and Adele is just a dumb fat cow.” I wrote
it in my diary…I did not say it to his face. I wrote, “I would have rather been
on the quay with the people, watching the fireworks.”
Irene was
one of the most seductive people I have ever known. She’s not now, but she is
still flirtatious. [After a long career as a playwright, Irene Fornes is at the
end stages of Alzheimer’s and is living in a nursing home near Columbia.]
Q. Did you know Susan Sontag’s son David
Reiff?
A. I knew
him as a child. He probably hates me. I lived with David and Susan when I came
back to New York. David was six years old, a very neurotic and very unhappy
child. She was a really nasty mother. She came to visit when Milo was a baby.
We were very happy. She came up to Provincetown when David was 9 or 10 years
old. We went out to the dock. She wanted David to go into the water. He was
scared and didn’t want to go. She picked him up and threw him in he water. He
was panicked, screaming and terrified. She was mean to him, and of course, he
adored her.
Q. What was the Cedar Tavern like?
A. The bar
was wonderful. There were these two guys. John was the big Polish bartender.
His partner was this nice, bright and charming guy. John was a real blue-collar
Polish guy. The atmosphere was very BAR. Everybody was drinking a lot. If you
smoked pot, you went to the bathroom. It wasn’t encouraged at all. At the good
old 55 on Christopher Street, they encouraged it. The 55 was a great bar. It
was a hot scene. David Burnett was the son of Whit Burnett, who had a magazine
called Story in the 1930s and 1940s,
which was an important journal. David had a magazine called New Story in Paris. That was my first
real publication. They published three of my stories. They published Jimmy
Baldwin and Alison Lurie in New Story.
David Burnett hung out at the 55, and died of an overdose of methadone there in
the bathroom.
The 55 was a
bar with a lot of black guys and a lot of sex going on. The bathroom was always
occupied by more than one person at a time. There were a lot of older white
women at the bar and I was one of them. I was in my thirties when I started
hanging out there. Milo was a baby. I picked up black guys and had a great
time. It is so dead now. It is a jazz bar.
The Cedar
died. The building was sold and they moved to 12th Street. It’s lost
its cache. I was at the opening night. I threw a glass at someone. Lester was
the name of John’s partner. There was a
whole literary crowd there, too. Did you ever hear of a woman named Mary Grant?
She was the wife or mistress of Newton Arvin, the critic. A whole lot of the Commentary crowd were hanging at the
Cedar at the time. Some of them came to the opening. I was very drunk and threw
up on someone, but they never 86ed me. I was one of their pets at the Cedar. I
had affairs with the bartenders. It became a food place and it lost its charm.
Dillon’s was the place up the street from the old Cedar. That was a much
hardier kind of scene, much more working class.
[Editor’s
note: The Cedar moved from 8th Street to 12th Street in
1963. It became an upscale hamburger joint, long ago losing the reputation as
an artists’ bar. The bar closed after Thanksgiving 2006 for the last time.]
Dan Wolf had
an affair with Irene Fornes. Ed Fancher was Adele’s boyfriend. Adele wants to
be my friend. She comes to my New Year’s Eve parties. Adele was at Mary
[Dearborn’s] party. That’s why Beverly Mailer [another ex-wife} didn’t go.
Since Norman died, she’s gone into deep mourning, which is ridiculous because
Norman couldn’t stand her.
Norman had a
lot of girlfriends. I met Lady Jane. I met her when I was still with Bill Ward
then. We were up in Provincetown. Seymour Krim was around. We were very good
friends. I slept with Seymour actually. I felt bad about that because he was
close friends with Bill Ward.
Seymour was a
loveable guy. He published me in Nugget
and Swank, two girlie magazines. He put my “Notes of a Nude Model” in Swank. He was the literary editor of
Swank. He was very generous as a writer. He liked me and he liked my
writing, and he pushed me. He got my piece about the abortion into an anthology
called Bold New Women. He was fired
for some reason and the job went to Barbara, Norman Mailer’s sister. She hated
me. I’m the one who put the lit cigar down her decollage. That was in Provincetown.
I was living with Bill. I was crazy. That was my early incarnation. I was
drinking heavily. I was very violent and crazy. I was always getting into
fights. Bill fucked her[Barbara]. Alson was her name in those days. That was
the name of her first husband. She had this low-cut dress on. For some reason,
I was smoking a cigar. She came over and for some reason, I stuffed it down her
dress. I was always getting into fights with women. They were throwing beers at
me. I was hitting them.
I don’t think I ever had any fights at the Cedar. I did get
into fights with Bill, that ended up at the Cedar. where he’d knock me down,
punch me on the chin, on the way to the Cedar or at a party before going to the
Cedar.
Bill was shorter than me. Norman and he were good friends
When I saw Norman two summers ago [in 2006], when he was already ill, Bill had
just died. I saw Norman at a gallery opening and told him about Bill. He said,
“Bill Ward had more integrity than any man I ever knew.” It was nice to hear
him say it.
Norman had mellowed. He was such a shit when he was young.
He hated me. “Cancer hole,” that was his favorite insult. After my fight with
Adele, we were both staggering down the hill, weeping profusely with our
different entourages. The party was on a hill in the back of town. Norman was
shouting at me, “You cancer hole, fuck you, cancer hole.” It was so ironic.
Norman was obsessed with cancer. He had this Reichian idea that you get cancer
because you don’t have the right orgasms. He was insulting me, when years later
his beloved wife Norris came down with ovarian cancer. It sort of came back at
him.
Q. I had heard the
men were betting. Is that true?
A. No, they weren’t. They were cheering us on. I don’t know
about bets. They were encouraging us. In Adele’s book, she refers to me as
Angelina or something stupid. She says I’m a lesbian schoolteacher. I wasn’t a
lesbian at the time, nor was I teacher
then. Everybody was bombed out of their minds at the time. Everybody was high or drunk. It was ridiculous.
The next day we met at a party. We were all covered in bruises, Adele and I.
You know the story at the party, where he stabbed her? She
told me that he made her do that[start the fight.] She took me into the bathroom. He used it as
part of his excuse.
The stabbing was after the summer. The fight was in August.
The stabbing was in the fall. He invited Bill to the party because Bill was his
pal. I was living with Bill, so I came along. I was so provocative in those
days. If I was drunk, I was looking for trouble. Did you ever hear of Richard
Olney? There is a quote from his book Reflections,
where he talks about his lover Eliot Stein going to orgies with this tall,
handsome American girl Harriet Sohmers, who was always looking for trouble.
I don’t know where Olney got that from. I did go to orgies,
but not with Eliot Stein. I have a story about an orgy that no one wants to
publish. I was la vedette, the star
of the orgy. The story’s called “The Gift of Eros.”
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