Algren at Sea (36 page)

“And it isn't Grotto either. It's O'Connor.”

“I never heard of a grotto named O'Connor.”

“We changed the family name in honor of Tay Pay O'Connor. Before that it was O'Connaught. Tommy's the first name.”

“Not
terrible
Tommy?”

“None other. Been here ever since I broke out of the old County Jail. Only had to walk three blocks. Took the first job I found open.”

“Don't give
me
that. There wasn't anything like
Playboy
around in 1920.”

“No. But there
was
a grotto. There always was a grotto, Otto. The
Playboy
plant was built around a grotto, and the PR department was built around
me.
The whole
Playboy
thing developed around the concept of an Irishman in a grotto.”

“Being Irish ain't
that
great, O'Connor.”

“Not a matter of being Irish—I just knew that if I kept on being myself, Terrible Tommy, sooner or later Terrible Tommy was sure to be caught. Didn't the signs in all the post offices say TOMMY (Terrible) O'CON-NOR WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE? They didn't say DEAD OR MERELY EXISTING, did they? You see? A loophole! How can you pin a dead-or-alive fugitive warrant upon a man who isn't alive yet neither is he dead? You dig?”

“No, man, I
don't
dig.”

“Like simple, cat. All I had to do was to stop walking in the first person and start walking in the third. When I got the hang of that, I found myself
thinking
in the third person instead of the first. I found I could get as much kick out of watching somebody else fall in love than fall in love myself—and look how much safer! It was like doing the twist spiritually—you go through the motions like you're
very
excited—but the real point of all the motion is that, while you're moving you can't get caught. The only trouble is—”

“I know,” I cut him off, “the trouble is you can't get foot on the ground either way. I've been getting that from too many people around here lately.”

“Yes—but who started it? Didn't I
tell
you they built the system around
me?”

“I'll take your word. Now would you mind de-echoizing? Like stop haunting yourself? Or simply go into the fourth person? Like disappear altogether?”

“I
live
here, buddy.”

“You live nowhere. You said so yourself. Don't give me a hard time because you work for
Playboy.”

“You don't know what it's like,” he pleaded for sympathy.

“Stop whining,” I stopped his act, “go out and get a steady job, O'Connor.”

“If you'd get a steady job yourself,” he continued to sniffle around, “and settle down, you could have your
own
grotto,”—and a low faint whistling went along the walls like a wind out of times long gone.

I was alone.

I returned to my reading and came upon a typewritten memo planted, it became plain, by a West Coast counteragent between the pages of
Playboy.
For it bore a black M pendant on a field of gold, that I guessed stood for “Money,” which revealed itself as the seal of THE MILLIONAIRE CLUB:

“The nation's first penta-cabaret” addressed itself to TOP EXECUTIVES without qualifying what it was they had to be atop of. The way they were going about getting members, any farmer who did his own milking could get in and I hoped he would.

“You don't have to be a millionaire, just
think
like one,” the invitation explained. Now they'd gone and let in everybody in the country except the millionaires.

“The fact that you have been selected for charter membership will indicate without further elaboration the type and caliber of the gentlemen to whom this invitation is being made.”

As you are a well-known overstuffed ass, in short, you are entitled to bray with us other asses
if
you come well dressed.

“In a very special sense this is a very special sort of club. The reason is presaged in the name of the club itself—The Millionaire Club.

“The point is, this is more than just a gentleman's club. It goes considerably beyond being a first-rate restaurant and entertainment palace (with perhaps the finest bouquet of luscious mamsells in all the world to serve you).

“It's a club where you will meet the most outstanding group of successful, creative, accomplished, and forward-moving executives in the West. You will rub elbows with The New Millionaires . . . participate in the excitement of Million Dollar ideas . . . catch the tempo of Million Dollar deals.

“It's because of the very special character of our membership that you will receive the title MEMBER OF THE BOARD ROOM of the Millionaire Club.”

“O'Connor!” I hollered, leaping in fright to my feet. “Come back, Terrible Tommy! I want to join
you!
It's you or Billy Sol Estes!”

No echo returned. O'Connor was gone.

Gone with the light of Chicago past, when I earned seven cents every Sunday morning by going to the cigar store for a package of Ploughboy snuff for Mr. Kooglin, the newspaper agent who had never made me account for ten copies of the
Abendpost,
undelivered yet. Gone with the days, a little later, when if someone asked you for a cigarette, you had to give it to him and say, “How are you for spit?” Gone with noons when we made sun pictures of Blanche Sweet and streetcars had green trolly shades. When Ada Leonard danced at the Rialto and Kenny Brenna sang,
O Why Did I Pick a Lemon in the Garden of Love Where Only Peaches Grow?

And Billy Marquart looked like he could whip anybody in the world, and Milt Aron knocked out Fritzie Zivic, and Altus Allen put up the best fight of his career against Johnny Colan, and Lem Franklin kayoed Willie Reddish, and Davey Day knocked out Nick Castiglione, and a kid named Johnny Rock used to get knocked out, week in and week out, at the Marigold. And everybody went to see Johnny Rock get knocked out.

They had come up and gone down, some fast and some slower, those who got too good too soon and those who came along slower and got less. But had made it last longer.

When had this great change taken place? When had we suddenly come into a time when nobody said, “I'm counting my money,” but said instead, “I'm reviewing my holdings,” though it seemed he was still doing the same thing? When had it come about that it was said of someone, “He swings,” when all that was meant was that he consumed much more than he needed?

The reduction of the American dream to a race whose purpose, apparently,
was to see who would become a member of a make-believe board had not begun, I knew, with Hugh Hefner. What Hefner had done, consciously or not, was to effect a transition of the hope of an American aristocracy qualified only by capacity to consume, that had been proffered by
Time
in the 1930's.

“The
Time
community is an upstanding, right-thinking group,” its editors had addressed potential subscribers then, “shrewd as they are able. So far only one of you has insured himself for $7,000,000 and only one of you has become King of England. Most of you are just alert, intelligent Americans, quietly successful in your own fields or headed for success. Among you, for example, are thirty percent of the officers and directors of practically every well-known U.S. corporation. All told, you entertain 1,640,000 dinner guests each week.
Time
is more proud of its subscribers than of anything else—that is why we like to think of our subscribers as a unique
community
—the most alert group of men and women in America. And now speaking for the community, we invite you to join us.”

Time
walking streets she walked when young like an old whore in the rain, boggles blindly out from under her torn umbrella at that flashy new hooker working the other side of the street, yet sticks stubbornly to her own pitch—”one of you is the King of England, thirty percent of you entertain 1,640,000 dinner guests” (she's grown a little confused of late), while the new hooker is pulling in hundred-dollar tricks by giving each a tin key with the story: “Fulfill your dream world! Make money on everything! Become a member of the board and get into the tempo of million-dollar deals!”

The price I had paid for doubting the Divine Rightship of Business in 1937 had left me stuck in a woo grotto in 1962, I perceived, contending with the spiritual heirs of those who had believed. Yet I felt no sense of loss.

Where were they? What had they won, the young men and women of the thirties who had gained membership in the same community as that of the fantasist who had had himself insured for $7,000,000? Like myself in the narrowing years, by now they had either had it or they had missed it: neither those who had accepted the invitation of
Time
nor those who had declined it would be invited anywhere again. Yet among those who had sought the profferred success, I could not recall one to whom it had brought more than physical comforts accompanied by persistent anxieties. Of whose achievement was no more than that of having a bottle of one's own upon a
stool of one's own among other quietly successful Americans, each drinking a defeat of his own, I do not speak—yet by such failures as have had to be buried fast and forgotten faster, one may now surmise the casualties to be incurred and left unattended in order to keep bright the colors of
Playboy's
promise of an exclusive community built upon consciencelessness.

“Police said the body of Connie Petrie, 26, was found in her bed. In the room were four empty prescription bottles and a bottle half full of a powerful stimulant.

“‘We offer our girls lie tests,' Victor Lownes III, Playboy Club vice-president explained, ‘we try to protect ourselves and the girls if we hear any bad rumors about them. She had a delightful personality. Very sweet. She wasn't the prettiest bunny in the place, but she had such a nice personality that sort of made up for it. When she refused to take a lie test, that was no indication she was guilty of anything. But it was an indication that we could not afford to keep her in our employ. We don't necessarily believe every rumor, but we do feel an obligation to protect ourselves.'”
⁶

“The man with whom she was living told police she came in drunk at 5:30 A.M. He slapped her, and she went out for a walk. When she returned at 7:30 she went to bed, where she was found dead by her lover at 10:30 A.M.”
⁷

“‘What we have going is a cult,' adds Victor Lownes III. ‘The rabbit is a father symbol. We could tell them to go right out the window and they would follow our advice.'”

“‘I'm in the happy position of becoming a living legend in my own time,' Hefner said, ‘I have everything I ever wanted—success in business and identity as an individual.'”
⁸

 

Chicago's Playboy Key Club, its owners claim, is the most profitable bar, per square foot, in the world, and employs more talent than any other employer of talent in the city.

The Key Club waitress with a bunny tail pinned on her behind pays two dollars a night for rental of her bunny suit, contributes two dollars a
night to a bartenders' pool, and earns no straight salary herself. She is dependent upon tips, which average around two hundred dollars a week. Her foundation garments, of which she has two, cost fourteen dollars apiece. If she is one of the more fortunate girls, she may get to model as the Playmate of the Month.

This monthly nude featured by
Playboy
is never modeled by a professional. The girl is recruited from the offices of
Playboy
or the tables of the Key Club, and is by contract bound not to model elsewhere for two years after
Playboy's
use of her. She receives three thousand dollars upon signing a release and two more at later dates.

Although it is understood that key holders are forbidden to touch the girls, and that the girls are forbidden to date key holders,
Playboy's
public relations people have projected the image that these constitute Hugh Hefner's private harem.

This is purely for public consumption. What the bunny is to Hefner is what it is to his
Playboy
community: an object of temptation to be resisted. The psychology is that of the man who derives his morality by
not
drinking, by
not
gambling. by
not
making love: one whose conception of the successful man is he in whom all passions, all temptations have been diverted into a single devotion to
business, business, business.
The restrictive walls of which Hefner complains are those which he himself has raised to keep life away. The success of the key clubs is due to the fact that millions of young American males cannot function except within this same restricted existence. Although the projected image of Hefner is that of a man living spaciously, he is actually a man in a broom closet. The importance of this being that his success speaks for broom-closeted multitudes.

“My girl and I are having fairly frequent flareups about dating others,” one
Playboy
reader writes to the
Playboy
Adviser for help. “I agree with her completely that if I do, she should be allowed to also. I agree intellectually, but not emotionally. My feelings are, bluntly, that I don't like it a bit. She says this is unfair and I say, ‘How right you are. I'm selfish and illogical. But I don't feel guilty when I'm dating other girls and I do feel unhappy when you're out with other guys, and you've told me you want me to be totally honest in our relationship.' Then she cries or rants and I clam up and the evening is ruined. Last time it happened I got mad enough to say, calmly, that she could take it or leave it, we weren't married and had no obligation to each other. My point is that if I can't have a relationship on
my own terms I'd rather do without it, though I'd far prefer to sustain it. Her point is that any third party would see things her way. As a third party do you think she is right?—A.B. New York City.”