Lots of attorneys–the law attracted bright kids who didn’t know what else to do with their lives. Josh Trabulus–doctor. Lizz Gill–TV writer. The Great Berko–Berko’d out somewhere unknown. Cynthia Gardner–last seen as a Mormon housewife. Leslie Jacobson–allegedly a shrink.
Steve lent me his “Burr” yearbooks. The photos served as synaptic triggers. My backlog of faces and events expanded fiftyfold.
Howard Swancy almost trades blows with Big Guy Huber. LeslieJacobson twirls to the “Peppermint Twist.” JayJaffe wins a penny stomp that leaves a half-dozen kids bloody. Herb Steiner rags the folk song craze at the Burr Frolics. I disrupt a classroom postmortem on the Bay of Pigs invasion. I contend that JFK should A-bomb Havana. Kids bomb me with wadded-up paper. I dig the attention and launch a counterattack. The teacher laughs. The same teacher laughed when Caryl Chessman got fried.
Steve and I deconstructed Camelot. We conceded the predictable nature of fifty-year-olds looking back. We traced the known arc ofJ.B. lives and the mass reconstellation at Berkeley in the late ‘6o’s. We tagged it as predictably emblematic and explored it as a cliché and an issue of enduring ideals. We questioned J.B. as a substantive endeavor or a freeze-frame from some ditzy teen flick. I categorized it as an auspicious L.A. lounge act.
We opened strong. The curtain went down before we had to take it any further.
Steve said, “Let’s get some motherfuckers together.”
I said, “I’ll fly out.”
The Pacific Dining Car defines my L.A. continuum.
It’s a swank steak house west of the downtown freeway loop. It’s been there since 1921. It’s open twenty-four hours, every day of the year. It’s dark, cavelike, and lushly contained in the middle of a poverty zone. I was born in the hospital half a block south. I met my wife at the Dining Car and married her there.
Steve found most of the people. A private eye found the rest. The RSVP list tallied in at 99%. One dinner turned into three.
Steve and I attended them all. The Dining Car fed groups of thirteen, twelve, and nine. We convened at the same long table in the same dark room. I can’t break down the specific guest lists. The whirl of laughter and reminiscence ran seamless over three nights.
Camelot redux.
There’s Berko and Jaffe. There’s Donna Weiss in a new pageboy. Howard Swancy–a preacher instead of a cop. Helen Katzoff, Lorraine Biller, Joanne Brossman–bright faces out of a big crowd thirty-six years back. Lizz Gill and Penny Hunt from Hancock Park. A big Kosher Kanyon kontingent that I knew by name and yearbook photo only. Josh Trabulus–a small boy, a tall man. More lawyers than an ABA convention. Jill Warner, in your face a la 1960. Steve Price with the same fucking grin. Tony Shultz in saddle shoes. Leslie Jacobson sans bouffant and the Peppermint Twist.
We toasted the dead and the missing. Wallet photos went around. Nobody asked the childless people why they didn’t breed. We all agreed that J.B. was a blast. Anecdotes passed as insight into why. We decided to throw a mass reunion early next year and elected a steering committee.
One person in ten remembered me. I recalled every name and face and could have picked half the people out of a thousand slot lineup. It told me how hungry and lonely I was then. It confirmed everything I’d come to believe about my cut-rate Camelot.
We agreed that we were all observers. We all superimposed our shaky psyches against the boss bods we wanted and wished we had and came up way short. We punted then. We conformed or got raucous to cut the edge off the pain.
Everyone came off prosperous and well cared for. We looked like a prophecy of affluence fulfilled. I didn’t detect much smugness. The braggarts boasted too hard and vibed Naked more than middle-aged Dead. I picked out two functioning drunks. I judged as I laughed and observed. It didn’t mar my enjoyment or subvert my affection one bit.
I listened more than I talked. I table-hopped and found the people I carried around in my head. They told me their stories and filled in that big gap in time.