A WEDDING

So I am inspired and amused by the news that they have a TV movie, FEUD, about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. 
 When I was getting ready, organized and spirited to marry Don, I went to the Plaza to book the place where we would be married, on a day when my mother couldn’t have my father arrested for failure to pay child support, for me.  I was 29.
  I put that in numbers rather than words because it makes it look the more stupid and ridiculous, both of which it was.  My mother had been suing him from the time I was a child, when he owed it, and ducked it, everywhere he went, which included Tucson 
where he’d gone because Selma couldn’t breathe.  She was his wife, and had been a friend of my mother’s to whom she’d introduced him because she was sure Selma would mean his death.   Instead, they’d fallen in love and he’d moved there and become Mayor.  He’d never been in politics, or a Republican, both of which he did, apparently it never being too late in life to change your skin. 

     So I went to the Plaza, booked the place for April 28th, and left.  In front of the
elevator stood Bette Davis, a great ribbon on her ass, also great.  If she hadn’t been a movie star, it would have been overwhelming.  I had gone to make the reservation, and told the woman in charge I was Miss Davis, causing some excitement and confusion as Don had announced himself as Miss Davis’ s fiancee, and they thought he meant Bette, who had an appointment at the same time. 

       Having been emboldened by the large, sequin-bordered ribbon on her butt, I told The Bette of the confusion.  She’d said in true Bette style: “How (breath)…very (breath)… amusing.”  It was almost as memorable as the wedding.

The process server my mother had gotten to serve my father had to wait outside the wedding the whole day for it to turn midnight so he could serve 

him, as you couldn’t be served on a Sunday.  Inside, all those there sat on which
side of the aisle and lawsuit they were.
   
      It was not a huge cast, but it WAS colorful.  Sue Mengers, later to become a major Showbiz Celeb, was among those present, being at the time a close friend which she could be until it wasn’t convenient.  Also there were my close friends from Bryn Mawr and David Begelman, later to commit suicide. 

 
     My mother and my father sat on different sides of the aisle, along with their newer, present partners, and my father-in-law Harry who’d gotten us the champagne wholesale.

         I have been told often in life, at least the earlier part of it, of my penchant for
comedy.  The truth is I never have to make anything up.  What I am handed in life,
or have always been proffered, is plot, my weakest suit. 

A KESEY LOOK-ALIKE

So I am feeling in an unaccustomedly creative mood-- unaccustomed because who has felt inspired with what has been going on with our manipulated and potentially disastrous politics-- when I open this week's New Yorker, and there is an article about writer-director Mike Mills, and his film, 20th Century Women.  He looks exactly, from the angle they have him, like Ken Kesey who was a great friend of mine when I went for my Master's Degree in Creative Writing at Stanford under the allegedly great writer  Wallace Stegner, except he was on sabbatical but they didn't tell me that till after I had paid my tuition, which they wouldn't give back.  It was a dedicated and hilarious, if less than greatly productive time, and I probably wrote a book or two about it that I don't remember, as I am don't remembering many things at this point, but I am still ahead of Kesey, though he is better known and loved, since I am alive.  I think.
      I had what I hope is a really good idea for a comedy, and if I can remember, I may indeed write it, and if there is a comedy god, Susan Sarandon will play the lead, who is, indeed, based on me, as a gifted Goy.  I can say that it begins with an older woman strolling the beach, telling a much younger woman of her great love, who died early on, not that long after the relationship had just begun to mature.  The rest I can't tell because that is what makes it clever and fresh and ripe for theft.  Not that anyone necessarily reads these things, but you never know, especially with the accessibility of the Internet, and Donald Trump coming to office.
     What a time.  It is not easy to be an American who loves and prizes her country, and, when she was much younger, believed in reincarnation.  I used to think I had been friends in a previous life with Benjamin Franklin who really did.  But I hope for his sake, and that of probably the rest of us, that I was wrong.  To have been as smart, wise and creative as he was, and have to come back for this shit would be indefensible.
     How will it all turn out?  Will anyone be alive to know?  What will she wear to his funeral?