Author's Sala: Alice Denham,
Aug 11, 2006
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San Miguel Authors' Sala Readings by Alice Denham and Alma Luz Villanueva, Friday, August 11, 5-7pm, Posada San Francisco, Plaza Principal 2, 50 pesos |
Alice Denham is the only Playboy Playmate whose revealing short story was published in the same issue as her revealing Playmate photos. Originally published in Discovery, a hot 1950s literary review, the story was later made into a prize-winning festival film. In 2003, her first novel, My Darling from the Lions, about independence vs. obsessive love, was reprinted by Authors Guild Backinprint.com. Her second novel, AMO, is a cult classic (feminist centerfold from outer space).
As a founding member of NOW, Denham spoke with Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News in the first national interview with feminists, and she participated in the famous feminist takeover of the Ladies Home Journal in 1970. Her most recent story appears in the 2006 New York literary review Confrontation. Denham lives in Greenwich Village.
She will read from Sleeping with Bad Boys, to be published in September 2006. In this memoir, a 1950s Playboy Playmate pulls the naughty covers off literary New York. Her lusty book is a juicy, funny tell-all about a time when men writers were gods and women's work was to worship them. Between the sheets in Sleeping with Bad Boys are Adele and Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, James Jones, Marlon Brando, Gore Vidal, Hugh Hefner, David Markson and William Gaddis.
Excerpt from Sleeping with Bad Boys:
Mailer the Mauler's Strip Show
Spring 1954
In those fabled fifties days three celebrated young novelists vied desperately for Hemingway's crown-the lightweight slugger, the middleweight puncher, and the large drunk. At college I'd mooned over their handsome photos on the backs of their famous first novels, which were my first contemporary reading. They were my movie stars-James Jones, who wrote From Here To Eternity; Norman Mailer, The Naked and The Dead; and William Styron, Lie Down In Darkness.
The triumvirate was predicted to overcome the previous iconography of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. I was beside myself with desire to meet them. For we literary romantics of the fifties, film stars-with few exceptions-were cheap-shot celebrities. Writers were venerated.
Tonight I'd meet the middleweight puncher. I was invited to Norman Mailer's party.
Everything in New York frightened and exhilarated me-writing, modeling, literary importance most of all. My ego had been blasted, shattered, when my Ex left me for Karen. I felt I was climbing a steep rock face, with hardly holds for my toes, to get up to myself. I'd slip and fall and break, huddle at the bottom broken in self-hatred, revulsion at my lack of worth, then start to climb again. If I'm not happy by the time I'm forty, I'll commit suicide, I comforted myself, before entering the party on the arm of the Liontamer.
Where was Norman?
Around the foyer slouched a group of pale gray anxious young men-far too serious for small talk-who guarded the entrance. Arms crossed, eyes wary-editors, critics, social scientists and bluffers-they inspected applicants as they entered. I tried to saunter and smile.
"What don't you do?" a gray carnivore shot at me.
"I don't sleep with men for money," I said with deadly aim, gaining provisional acceptance amidst chuckles. Once I started modeling, my studious scowl lessened and my graduate school back straightened. I was getting used to focus, acting important for the camera. I pretended to be secure: I acted. That photographers paid me for my looks astounded me.
I'd been invited because of my short story in Discovery, the avant-garde literary review edited by Vance Bourjaily, author of The End of My Life. Discovery also published Norman Mailer and Hortense Calisher, Saul Bellow and May Swenson. When Vance bought it, I wept. It was my first published short story.
Where was Norman?
Norman and Adele's loft was jammed with people looking picturesquely undone-shaggy hair, bright scarves, black leotards, ethnic beads, cowboy boots, cleavages to there, jeans hugging genitals, slitting vulva. Ambience of ancient sofas, old dirty floor boards with faded Oriental rugs. At the edges people sat on different levels, a living theatre propped on pillows. Those who sat upright were more uptown proper than the sprawled slouching Village Bohemians. The Liontamer headed for the bar. "Tequila," I called.
Someone behind me said, "You come into the room like a Christmas tree."
Laughing, I whirled, and it was the middleweight puncher himself, our host, the esteemed novelist Norman Mailer, who looked shorter than I'd expected. Poor Norman, everybody expects him to be as huge as his reputation. A bright-eyed jujube, Norman postured about like he longed to be a tall blond fighter pilot, or even a liontamer. He just missed being a Jewish dumpling, having large shoulders and a sturdy-legged build. Norman had tender canny blue eyes, a halo of dark brown curls that shone, and pimples. Over thirty, with pimples. A literary hero with pimples? He looked boyish.
"You look like a Southern Belle," Norman said in the Texas accent he'd ingested in his Army unit.
"I am," I teased, "a decadent aristocrat." My exemplars were Katherine Anne Porter and Tallulah Bankhead.
"Fabulous smiles, you Southern girls."
As a proper Southern girl, I was bred to be good at men. I was, too. Good at getting them, not keeping them.
Norman's bright blue eyes danced with scintillating light. Norman liked Southern girls even more in later life, first Beverly, his third wife, then Norris, his sixth. He perched beside me, curls artistically tousled, and flirted.
"Vance tells me you can write."
"Thanks," I blushed. "I hate to fawn, but I loved your novel."
"Which one?" I was unaware of Barbary Shore. "Wait'll Deer Park comes out, you'll like that," he grinned.
Norman stood like a fixed pole of the magnetic North. People sucked up to him, salaamed, and peeled off. Literary celebs floated through the flowing booze. Who were all these important people madly chatting together? I didn't know a soul. Then I spotted Vance Bourjaily with Anne Bernays and Bob Kotlowitz, editors at Discovery. I ran up to them like saviors and huddled in their protection till they whirled away into other friends.
Suddenly a furtive fellow, a critic, handed me a note and ducked away.
I opened the note. "Meet me by the bathroom. I have something to ask you. Norman." Since flirtation is a way of life down South, I didn't take it personally. I met Norman outside the bathroom door off a narrow hall. The only hiding place in the loft.
Norman put his finger to his lips and whispered, "Can I call you?" He wished on me his best sexy pimply leer, like a college kid.
It never occurred to me to intrude on a marriage, even if intrusion were invited. But it was flattering, so I gave him my number and wandered back into the melee. Norman spotted Adele's suspicious glare and marched off away from both of us.
Suddenly up came Adele Mailer, the fiery Latina, who was flashy and fetching, spilling out of her red satin blouse.
As I smiled, she grabbed me by the upper arm. Hard.
"Hey, there," I wrenched my arm free. Mother always grabbed me by the arm, and I don't like it.
"Hey, my ass," said Adele, totally zonked.
"Pardon me?"
"You think you're pretty fucking cute, don't you?" hulked Adele.
"Now that you mention it," I huffed back, loathing the rudeness that seemed the order of the day in New York. New Yorkers were crude. They had no imagination when swearing.
Maybe Adele thought I was interested in Norman. Intensely, but only as a friend and literary buddy. I was too insecure to know I could inspire jealousy. As a novice in the Big Apple, my main concern was to keep my anxieties from spilling at everyone's feet.
Suddenly it was quieter. Friends glanced at Norman and Adele. Friends left in great bunches, especially proper couples, as if they knew what to expect. Now there were only about twenty guests left.
Adele was clearly out of her skull with boozy anger. She paced back and forth, raving drunkenly, as Norman smiled and we blinked.
Adele stopped in front of me and shrieked, "Take off your clothes and we'll see who's the best woman."