PLAYBOY

THOSE DOLLS ARE BACK!

Holiday
7 TOAST THE NEW

VMN CUA Y
Jae YEAR WITH
PLAYBOY INTERVIEWS A ROUSING
THE ASTUTE ENCORE
STEVE MARTIN FROM THE
20 Q. WITH
THE PASSIONATE BARBI
SEAN YOUNG TWINS
;
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E
SECRETS / K Í ANDRE
OF A DUBUS - COLONEL DAVID
PARTY HACKWORTH
MAL RY BRUCE
ANIMAL BY JAY FRIEDMAN - DAVID
WILLIAM F MAMET
BUCKLEY, JR. « PLUS: THE 1992
PLAYMATE REVIEW

AND A FLAMBOYANT
YEAR IN SEX

| 01
|

) 500955110

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pum Т _
ыж

Joel Bizal

Somewhere along the
way he lost

his baseball
card collection.

He misplaced his letter sweater.

And he forgot to pack
the trophies.

But he always remembered
his sneakers.

(Es
(es

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pum

PLAYBILL

CHANGE IS our founding birthright, the promise of the Ameri-
can dream: When in the course of human events you get
bummed out by the way things are, hey, dude, change ‘em!

Consider recent change—or The Age of Turnaround, to use
the term of author Geoffrey Norman. Turnaround means doing
а 180—socially, culturally, politically. Outmoded landmarks
(the Berlin Wall) vanish, old ideas (big is best) are tested and
found wanting. That's turnaround. Kevin Pope supplied the
artwork. Other writers in this holiday issue echo a similar
theme. Bruce Jay Friedman, in My Prague, found the city enjoy-
ing newfound fame as the Paris of the Nineties. Change is on
the mind of Colonel David Hackworth, author of Nuke the Pen-
tagon. Hackworth quit the Army after 25 years (he's the most
decorated living soldier). His verdict on the Pentagon —and
you read it here first: Let's convert America's biggest boon-
doggle into a hospital for the criminally insane.

Or take gender madness. Please. And while you're at it,
consider the self-righteous, that sad, shrill army of prudish
misanthropes who march not for the right of free expression
but for the legislation to destroy it. Now comes Carping Kitty,
University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon, who
would throw laws at the First Amendment until it went away,
as author Pete Hamill exposes in Woman on the Verge of a Legal
Breakdoum. The artwork is by David Levine, who won the Gold
Medal for Graphic Art awarded in 1992 by the American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

More on the sex wars—fictional, this time—with Bluebeard
in Ireland, John Updike's sharp-eyed story of married tourists
on a doomed excursion. The illustration is by David Hodges.

Sex—and warfare of a kind—is the subject of Gates of Eden,
which marks a roguish debut in PLAYBOY for Ethan Coen, well
known for movie collaborations with brother Joel in Blood
Simple, Raising Arizona and Barton Fink. Donald Соһеу did the
artwork. The Colonel's Wife, by Andre Dubus (illustration by
Chuck Walker), completes January's fiction list.

Playwright David Mamet (he wrote the screenplay for the
film Hoffa, which opens this month) gets personal with The
Watch (artwork by Pot Andrea), an evocative memoir in which
youthful disappointment paves the long road to understand-
ing. The lifelong mission of William F Buckley, Jr., is to scatter his
civilizing mantras among the socially needy, and he does so
with typical panache in Querencia, a subtly witty guide to find-
ing the comfort zone at holiday get-togethers.

Less than subtle—by her own admission—are recent career
moves adopted by the explosive actress Sean Young. The sound
you hear in the 20 Questions posed by Contributing Editor
David Rensin is the sound of Sean going ballistic.

Quite the opposite is this month’s interview with Steve Mar-
tin, who tells Contributing Editor David Sheff why the wild and
crazy guy is a character Martin keeps under lock and key. Be-
ing stuck in a role—that of a black man—is also a concern of
novelist Trey Ellis, this month’s guest essayist in Mantrack.

We rejoin the celebrity circuit in Bonehead Quotes of the Year,
Lorry Engelmann's annual review of famous faux pas, all guar-
апеей genuine—unlike the you-missed-'em invitations to
Holiday Parties of the Rich t Famous, dreamed up by stand-up
comedian/writer Robert S. Wieder. Also this month: The Year in
Sex, Playboy's Playmate Review and Echo Johnson, our resonant
choice for Miss January 1993, plus Twice More, with Feeling, a
boisterous reunion with the Barbi twins, whose debut in
September 1991 led to a blizzard of happy reader mail.

Which brings us to our Caribbean yacht adventure, Hoist
Anchor and Happy New Year. Champagne, anyone?

680 North Lake Shore Drive,

FRIEDMAN

HACKWORTH

HAMILL

UPDIKE

COLLEY

ANDREA

BUCKLEY

Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), January 1993, volume 40, number 1. Published monthly by Playboy іп national and regional editions, Playboy,

ELLIS

‘ago, Illinois 60611. Second-class postage paid at Chicago, Illinois, and at additional mailing offices.

Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 56162. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $29.97 for 12 issucs. Postmaster:
Send address change to Playboy, PO. Box 2007, Harlan, lowa 51537-4007.

Welcome to the state of relaxation. Enjoy your stay.

CHRISTIAN BROTHERS BRANDY. e

Ele

vol. 40, no. 1—јапиату 1993 CONTENTS FOR THE MEN'S ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE
PLAYBILL 3
DEAR PLAYBOY . + n 9
PLAYBOY AFTER HOURS 13
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A PROBLEM?—guest opinion........... TREY ELLIS 54
MEN 3 ‘ isles " безгек» ASA BABER 36
WOMEN. Я ges eee CYNTHIA HEIMEL 37
THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR a
THE PLAYBOY FORUM : 4, “48
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: THE MESS IN MOSCOW—opi ROBERT SCHEER 55
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: STEVE MARTIN—condid conversation 59
THE AGE OF TURNAROUND—article ade E GEOFFREY NORMAN 74
TWICE MORE, WITH FEELING—pictorial mM T rS. B1
BLUEBEARD IN IRELAND—fiction .... » Es JOHNUPDIKE 94
QUERENCIA—orticle . + ++ + + + + + + WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. 98
HOIST ANCHOR AND HAPPY NEW YEAR—modern living JOHN WOOLDRIDGE 102
PLAYBOY'S GUIDE TO FUN ASHORE . n mo... 108
THE COLONELS WIFE—fiction ANDRE DUBUS 110
MY PRAGUE—orticle ........ sees BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN 114
20 QUESTIONS: SEAN YOUNG .. А Sosa A
NUKE THE PENTAGON—article EUG DAVID HACKWORTH 118
SHOUT ECHO!—ployboy's playmate of the month 122
PLAYBOY'S PARTY JOKES—humor š ive 0180)
GATES OF EDEN—fiction x s .....ETHAN COEN 136
WOMAN ON THE VERGE OF A LEGAL ENE ADO WN illia PETE HAMILL 138
THE WATCH—memoir ....... sessi DAVID MAMET 142
THE YEAR IN SEX—pictoriol А 144
HOLIDAY PARTIES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS—humor .. . ROBERT 5. WIEDER 153
PLAYBOY'S PLAYMATE REVIEW—pictorial НАРАТ E E TES 158
BONEHEAD QUOTES OF THE YEAR—article . . 2.2... LARRY ENGELMANN 170 "
PLAYBOY ON THE SCENE 201 Fon Ahoy E P 102

COVER STORY

The ultrasexy Barbi twins, Shane and Sia, are back with a twice-os-nice New
Year's toast. Our cover wos produced by Senior Photo Editor Jim Larson,
designed by Senior Art Director Len Willis, styled by Lane Coyle-Dunn and
shot by Contributing Photographer Stephen Woydo. The Barbi twins’
hair was styled by Jonathan Setaro for Cloutier. Their mokeup was by Daniel
Blanco for Cloutier. Our Rabbit admits that he enjoys being pinned down.

[CEREAL OFFICES: PLAYHOY, 620 NORTH LANE SHONE ORIVE. CHICAGO, LLINOIS вои PLAYBOY ASSUMES КО RESPONSIBLITY то RETURN

nsoucıren колоти on нме on OTHER матин. мы. Ts LETTERS

PLAYBOY

THEY HEARD П. THEY WANTED IT. THEY GOT I

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Call: 1-215-292-4700 to sample | 7
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PLAYBOY

HUGH M. HEFNER
editor-in-chief

ARTHUR KRETCHMER editorial director
JONATHAN BLACK managing editor
TOM STAEBLER ant director
GARY COLE photography director
KEVIN BUCKLEY executive editor

EDITORIAL
ES: JOHN REZEK edilor: PETER MOORE
senior editor; FICTION: ALICE к. TURNER editor;
FORUM: JAMES R. PETERSEN senior Maj] writer:
MATTHEW CHILDS associate editor; MODERN LIV-
ING: DAVID STEVENS senior editor: Ep WALKER dsso-
ciate editor; BETH TOMKIW assistant editor: WEST
COAST: STEPHEN RANDALL edilor; STAFF: BRUCE
KLUGER, BARBARA NELLIS associate editors; cas
TOPHER NAPOLITANO assistant edilor; JOHN LUSK
traffic coordinator; покотну arcuison publish
ing liaison; FASHION: HOLLIS WAYNE. director
VIVIAN COLON assistant editor; CARTOONS: мг
CHELLE URRY editor; COPY: LEOPOLD FROEHLICH
editor; ARLAN BUSHMAN assistant edilor; MARY ZION
lead researcher; CAROLYN BROWNE Senior re
Searcher; LEE BRAUER, JACKIE CAREY, REMA SM
researchers; CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

ASA
BABER. DENIS BOYLES, KEVIN COOK. GRETCHEN
EDGREN. LAURENCE GONZALES. LAWRENCE GROBEL
KEN GROSS (aulomolivey, CYNTHIA HEIMEL, WILLIAM

1 HELMER, WARREN KALBACKER, WALTER LOWE, JE
D. KEITH MANO, JOE MORGENSTERN, REG POT
TERTON. DAVID RENSIN, RICHARD RHODES, DAVID
SHEFF, DAVID STANDISH, MORGAN STRONG,
BRUCE WILLIAMSON (movies)

ART
KERIG ГОРЕ managing director; BRUCE HANSEN.
CHET SUSKI, LEN WILLIS senior direcors; KRISTIN
KORJENER associale director; KELLY O'BRIEN assis-
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pasle-up; PAUL CHAN. JOHN HOCH, RICKIE THOMAS
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PHOTOGRAPHY
MARILYN GRABOWSKI wes! coast edilor; JEFF COHEN
managing editor; LINDA KENNEN, ИМ LARSON,
MICHAEL ANN SULLIVAN senior editors; PATTY BEAU
рет assistant editor/entertainment; STEVE CONWAY
associate pholographer: DAVID CHAN, RICHARD FEG-
LEY. AKNY FREYTAG, RICHARD IZUI DAVID MECEY
BYRON NEWMAN, POMPEO POSAR. STEPHEN WAYDA
contributing photographers; знал кк weus stylist:
TIM HAWKINS librarian: ROBERT. CARNS manager
studio/lab; vorre FLORES business manag
studio west

MICHAEL PERLIS publisher
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PRODUCTION
MARIA manpis direrlar; RITA JOHNSON. manager

JODY JURGETO, RICHARD QUARTAKOLI, CARRIE LARUE
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CIRCULATION
BARBARA GUTMAN subscription circulation director:
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ADVERTISING
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DIRECTORS: DON SCHULZ detroit, STEVE MEISNER
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READER SERVICE
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STRATIVE

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PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES, INC.
CHRISTIE HEENER chairman, chief executive officer

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DEAR PLAYBOY

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600 NORTH LAKE SHORE DRIVE
CHICAGD ILLINOIS 60611
OR FAX 312-440-5454

SISTER SOULJAH

In the preface to the Playboy Interview
with rapper Sister Souljah (October),
Robert Scheer says that she is “pedantic
sometimes, but nasty, never.” This guy
must have an extremely high nastiness
threshold, Scheer repeatedly asks her if
she has ever met any “good white peo:
ple" and her answer is “J haven't met
them." That statement reflects an odious
racist. attitude. Whether such vitriol
comes from Sister Souljah or David
Duke, it stinks.

Too many black—and white—people
buy into Sister Souljah's inflammatory
rhetoric as serious social commentary.
Its loud, it’s aggressive and it sells
records. However, Scheer neglected to
k Souljah, who castigated the entire
white race for not spending every hour
of every day in atonement for the sins of
the past, whether she was putting her
record and concert profits back into the
black community or jus: living large.

Dennis G. Doss
Stuart, Virginia

Perhaps you skipped the portion of the in-
troduction that mentions the fact that Souljah
has founded and funds a camp for homeless
children.

1 applaud you for giving pages to a di-
versity of views: Betty Friedan in Sep-
tember's Playboy Interview and Sister
Souljah in October's. However, while we
need to respect their views, we are not
compelled to remain silent on them.
The editors of rLAvnov should con-
demn the view of Sister Souljah that
“good” white people are hard to find
We cannot argue with her when she says
that she has never met any good white
people; she may not have. But the un-
derlying implication that she is a good
person, that she knows what goodness is
in another person and that this goodness
is in short supply among white people is
hugely arrogant and self-righteous.
James Martin
St. Louis, Missouri

Sister Souljah's critics are right on the
money. She's a callous, egotistical radical
who is guilty of the same stereotyping
that she herself despises. I can only hope
people like her and her white counter-
part, David Duke, don't transform the
Nineties into the decade of hate.
Stephen S. Choolfaian
Ossining, New York

CRY INCEST
Congratulations to rLaysoy for having
the guts to publish Debbie Nathan's ex-
cellent article Cry Incest (October), in
which she dares question the current fad
of incest accusations by celebrities and
celebrity wanna-bes
I find it hard to swallow Roseanne
Arnold's tale that her parents molested
her when she was six months old
‘Tragically, many innocent people ac-
cused of molestation are serving long-
term jail sentences, thanks to cocka-
mamie therapists. It's about time these
dangerous mind manipulators were put
out of business.
Jackie Starmer
Redondo Beach, С

2alifornia

Debbie Nathan's article suggests that
the failure to remember isa valid reason
to discredit the pos: ty of traumatic
child abu Denial is one of the most
powerful forces operating within a fami-
ly where abuse has occurred, permeat-
ing the minds of all involved, induding
the victim, until any chance of normal
family relationships is destroyed.

As a survivor of sexual abuse, I am
thankful that I don't remember every in-
cident of my abuse; the ones I do are hell
enough.

Lisa Scott
Seattle, Washington

I was absolutely appalled by Debbie
Nathan's Cry Incest. It seems to suggest
that almost every person who has had a
memory of sexual abuse is a li

Four years ago, at the age of 20, 1 had

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10

a sudden memory of being molested by a
cousin when I was nine years old. 1 had
totally blocked the incident out of my
mind. It sure put some perspective back
into my life. Nobody, induding myself,
had known why I turned from a happy-
go-lucky nine-year-old into a depressed
ten-year-old, an alcoholic 11-year-old,
began using drugs at 13 and hooked up
with an abusive boyfriend at 14.

Since the memory of the molestation
came back, I've dealt with it the best I
can. I've had alot of ups and downs over
the past four years, but the biggest slap
in the face was Nathan's article.

(Name withheld by request)
Porterville, California

Nathan replies: Read the article again. In
suggesting why some incest memories appear
1o be false, it never implied that all—or even
most—aren't true. There are people who say
public discussion of the difference isn't worth
it, that it hurts “survivors.” I disagree. Incest
is serious social problem. Ultimately, confus-
ing reality with fantasy will only trivialize the
problem

І was almost as surprised by Debbie
Nathan's bellwether article as | was
when I read my daughter's leuer in June
1989 accusing my husband and me of
having abused her—and her three sib-
lings—since their early childhood.

In meticulous color and detail she de-
scribed the abuse she alleges occurred
when our local coven got together in our
living room to have intercourse with our
children and to murder infants and el-
derly persons.

The letter required us to make a full
confession of our misdeeds or we would
no longer have contact with her or with
our grandchildren. We were instructed
not to make any telephone calls. We
made two. One was to our son-in-law,
who claimed it must have happened
since our daughter remembered it all
under hypnosis. The second was to our
daughter, who became hysterical and
informed us her therapist calls us “mon-
sters” and spends “two thirds of my hour
locking the doors so you can't get in.
Our daughter also informed us that
copies of her letter were filed with the
family lawyer and with the police.

We have experienced three years of
hell. We expect the sheriff will arrive at
our door any day with a warrant for ou
arrest. We watch what we say—about
everything

Early this year, we discovered the False
Memory Syndrome Foundation and
found we are not alone. There are many
parents who are suffering and dying a
Іше every day because we don't know
what has happened to our children,

What is consistent among the parents
we have contacted is that the accuser is a
daughter who has for some reason
sought the help of a therapist or coun
selor. All the therapists or counselo
refuse to allow their clients to contact

s unless the parents abide by
the conditions included in the initial ac-
cusation. The credentials of the thera-
pists or counselors or facilitators or val-
idators that we have been able to track
down are nonexistent or are qui
able at best

The point of my letter is to thank
PLAYBOY for having the courage to do
what no other magazine would do: to
take the lid off a can of worms that
has serious potential for damaging the
mental health profession as well as for
inflicting more harm on the already
fragile psyches of many vulnerable wom-
en and men

Thank you, Debbie Nathan.
you, PLAYBOY.
(Name withheld by request)
F Worth, Texas

Thank

TIFFANY SLOAN

I've seen many beautiful women in
PLAYBOY, but none comes close to com-
paring with Miss October, Tiffany Sloan
(Tiffany's a Gem). Having read PLAYBOY
since I was 13, it’s nice to see Playmates
who are younger than 1 am, and Tiffany
the most gorgeous 19-year-old I've ev-

seen. She makes my 20-year-old heart
jump. I would do anything to have a
chance to be stranded in the wilderness
h her.

Jason Owchar
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Alter reading your interview with <
ter Souljah, I was tempted to writ

те-
sponse to it, when I was pleasantly sur-

prised to over that one of my former
students, Tiffany Sloan, was your fea-
tured Playmate of thc Month.

od for you, Tillany! You deserve
every bit of fame and good fortune that's
going to come your way. You have
definitely come a long way since seventh
and eighth grade, and I'm sure you have
lots of friends here in Bullhead City who
are extremely proud of you.

T's wonderful to sce a student who
has made such success.
Paul Bowers
Bullhead City, Arizona

My family has known Tiffany Sloan
for several years, and she is just as nice as
she is beautiful. She has a unique abi
to make everyone she talks with feel im-
portant, probably because she has a sin-
cere interest in people. My 1 1-year-old
daughter, who briefly appears in her
video, now wants to be a Playmate of the
Month when she’s older because her
friend Tiffany is one. My nine-year-old
son now wants to be a cinematographer
because Tiffany took time out of a photo.
session to dance just for him so that he
could videotape her
If personality plays any part

selection of Playmate of the Year,
should win, hands down.

Ronald D. Morrison

Fort Mohave, Arizona

п your
Tiffany

THE RETURN OF CARRY NATION

I have never read such an elegant and
beautifully venomous critique as Camille
Paglia’s Guest Opinion, “The Return of
Carry Nation” (PLavBoY, October). She's

ght on target. Catharine MacKinnon
and Andrea Dworkin are horrors of fem-
inist perversity, and Paglia seems to the
oughly enjoy her thrashing of the pai
for one, want more Camille Paglia.
Arthur E. Buffington
Pompano Beach, Florida

There is one element of Camille
Paglia's rant against Catharine MacKin-
non and Andrea Dworkin that I find dis-
g. This is Paglia's repeated invoca-
tion of Dworkin's being Jewish as a hook
on which to hang mockery and con-
tempt. She writes that Dworkin is guilty
of “levitall-hang-out ethnicity” and
self-lacerauing Jewishness”; that her
writing is “hvelching .. . buckets of chick-
en soup spiked with spite”; that she
spouts glib Auschwitz metaphors”; and
that she is a “fuming dybbuk." There is
plenty to loathe and fear about Dworkin,
but this does not include her religion—
or at least, it should not. That it appar-
ently does for Paglia undermines her
otherwise persuasive essay.

Charles Ardai

New York, New York

CORRECTION

The September 1992 issue of PLAYBOY
includes an article entitled La Cosa Nostra
Takes the Big Hit. The article states that
Peter Chiodo had testified about his
volvement with the International Broth-
erhood of Painters and Allied Trades.
одо did not testify about activities
with the International Union. His in-
volvement was limited to District €
cil Nine, in New York City.

El

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PLAYBOY AFTER HOURS

PARTY OF THE MILLENNIUM

Unlike survivalists waiting for the end
of the world, the Millennium Society has
devised a sensible—but expensive—way
to greet the advent of the year 2000 on
December 31, 1999. The society is a
charitable group that plans to stage the
largest New Year's Eve party in history
“It will probably be a combination of the
closing ceremonies of the Olympics, Live
Aid and Woodstock," says the society's
chairman, Edward McNally. The organi-
zation plans to charter the Queen Е
beth 2 to ferry celebrants to the party
site at the Great Pyramid of Cheops. But
there are additional plans to party closer
to home. “We hope to stage a seminal
celebration in each of the world's twenty-
four time zones," says McNally, current
ly the district attorney in Anchor:
Alaska. “The whole world is invited

The Millennium Society began on a
much smaller scale, founded in 1979 by
a group of Yale buddies who, inspired by
a classic O. Henry story, agreed to meet
again in 20 years. Since then, 6000 peo-
ple have paid $19.99 to join the club and
another two dozen have donated $1999
to the group's scholarship fund. “They're
only buying the right to buy a ticket,” ex-
plains the club's executive director, С
ol Treadwell. “Our fecling is, as 1999 ap-
proaches, people are really going to
want to get on that boat.”

SMOKEHOUSES

According to The Seattle Times, some
federal agencies are planning to erect
hundreds of outdoor shelters—similar
10 those at bus stops—to protect employ-
ces who have to go outside to smoke.
Such protection, it is esti

cost about $8000 a unit

ed, would

FIELD OF STREAMS

British sculptor Helen Chadwick, 38,
creates Piss Flowers—bronze casts of her
own urine streams that fetch $2000 even
in this deflated art market. She described
the artistic process to the British publi

En

tion Guardian this way: “1 would build a
mound of snow with a good density and
then urinate in the middle of it. Then 1
would get a man to encircle my urine
with a stream of his own. The shapes
would be like petals with a series of
droplets.” She then makes a plaster cast
of the dribblings that is used to build a
mold for the bronze casting.

GIVING SOME SLACK

For those of us who don't get family
values, the Church of the Subgenius is
thankfully still preaching the virtues of
Slack. Part stand-up comics, part Zen
masters, the Subgeniuses are Dallas-
based misfits united against
what they call the conseiracy—Cliques
of Normals Secretly Planning Insidious
Rituals Aimed at Controlling You. To
better understand just how Slack saves,
we bought tickets to their recent revival
meeting in a Chicago theater

Our first taste of Slack came from a
Subgenius pamphlet entitled Eternal Sal-
vation—or Triple Your Money Back: “True
Slack is Something for Nothing. lt is a

cultural

ILLUSTRATION BY PATER SATO

kind of direct perception, unfettered by
so-called common sense. It's not exactly
laziness, but a kind of active sloth.” But
after listening to various attempts at ex-
pressing the inexpressible, we felt a gid-
diness that, as we look back on it now,
prepared us for a minirevelation. A
voluptuous sister of the church stood
and said, “The curve is mightier than
the sword.” Suddenly, everything started
making sense

NOT PRO BONO

Even revolutionaries need good PR.
Otherwise such gems as the Handbook for

Edward de
Bono, might go unnoticed. A recent ad
for the book claimed, “The hand is the
symbol of the new Positive Revolution
The thumb is for effectiveness. The in-
dex finger points the constructive way
forward, The longest finger represents
human values. The ring finger is for self-
improvement.” De Bono, billed as “one
of the world’s few creative and construc-
tive thinkers,” is also the author of / 4m
Right You Are Wrong. Guess which finger
we're holding up

the Positive Revolution, by

CHILD'S PLAY

After receiving complaints from Cin-
cinnati-area teachers and parents about
the violent image of its Savage Mondo
Blitzer dolls, Kenner Products is chang-
ing the names of several of the toys
“While the figures are based on zany
fantasy characters,” a Kenner spokesman
noted, “it appears that some consumers
are concerned with the choice of names
selected.” The more vile characters were
dubbed Snot Shot, Puke Shooter, Load-
ed Diaper, Bad Fart and Projectile Vom-
it. We feel safe to add that test-market
sales exceeded company expectorations.

CATCH OF THE DAY

Hands down, the most unusual item
аға recent baseball auction was “a vial
of thick liquid extracted from the mu-
cous membrane of Ty Cobb shortly alter
his passing.” The fluid came with a

13

RAW DATA

FACT OF THE
MONTH

Americans im-
properly dispose of
more than 400 mil-
lion gallons of oil a
year—about the size
of 35 Exxon Valdez
oil spills.

QUOTE

“We have gone
through this before
and we'll be back. Af-
ter all, we have a
solemn duty to pro-

FLORIDA
'OWER, ASSESSING THE DAMAGE
OF HURRICANE ANDREW

AS THE WHEEL TURNS

Average acceleration time from ze-
ro to 60 miles per hour for American
<-cylinder cars in 1975: 18.7 sec-
onds; for 1991 models: 11 seconds.

.

Average acceleration time from ze-
ro to 60 miles per hour for American
eight-cylinder cars in 1975: 13.4 sec-
onds; for 1991 models: 10.6 seconds.

STUBBLE TROUBLE

According to Gillette, number of

whiskers on the face of the average
American man: 30,000.
.
Number of inches whiskers grow
per year: 5.5.

.
Number of feet of facial hair a тап
will grow in his lifetime: 27.5.

.
Number of hours he will spend
shaving during his life: 3350.

SINGLE AND PROUD
In a recent sur

er than their married friends:
percentage of single women: 57.
.
Percentage of men who said that
being single is a lot easier than being
:d: 70; of women: 60.

SIGNIFICA, INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS

PHONUS
INTERRUPTUS

According to Men's
Health, percentage of
men who let their
phone ring unan-
swered while they
are having sex: 60;
percentage of wom-
en: 65. Of those who
answer, percentage
of men who continue
to have sex while
talkingon the phone:

119; percentage of
women: 20.

WORKING GIRLS

According to Charles R. Mann As-
sociates, percentage of officials and.
managers in the U.S. in 1980 who
were women; 25.1; in 1990: 36.

A SPORTING LIFESTYLE

The amount of money that the
typical professional athlete—earning
ion a year—pays annually in
taxes: $834,000; amount spent on real
estate: $600,000; on mutualfunds and
annuitics: $450,000; cars: $150,000;
cash investments: $141,000; agent
fees: $125,000; insurance: $50,000.

CHANCES ARE

According to What the Odds Are, by
Les Krantz, tbe odds that an Ameri-
can has performed a striptease for
or her spouse: 2 in 3; shared a show-
in 10. The odds that
aman has fantasized about his wife: 9
in 10; his friend's wife: 2 in 3; his sec-
retary: 2 in 5

e

The ratio of American adults who
prefer having sex in the missionary
position: 6 in 10; with the woman on
in 4; with the lights off: 6 in 10;

Of American cities with the largest
numbers of single people, the odds

New York: Lin 7. — BETTY SCHAAL

certificate of authenticity; bidding start-
ed at $30,000. The stuff is prized by
pitchers, we're told, who use it to im-
prove their sliders.

FEELING SHEEPISH

University of California researcher
Anne Perkins studies a not-so-wild but
woolly subjeci—the sexuality of sheep.
“It's very difficult to look at the possibili-
ty of lesbian sheep,” she noted in New
Scientist, “because if you are a female
sheep, what you do to solicit sex is to
stand still. Maybe there is a female sheep
out there really wanting another female
but there's just no way for us to know it.”

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Philadelphian John Hudak has started
a trend that isn't going to grow by word
of mouth. He and a small group of
friends from the Silent Meet Club as-
semble at various locales and then pur-
posely refrain from speaking to one an-
Other. Hudak, the founder, feels that
many people are obliged to sp
they have nothing to say and thought it
would be nice “to have a group of people
where you wouldn't have to talk.” ICs
called a movie theater, John.

when

WESTERN LIT 10001

Perhaps Beverly Hills, 90210, the epito-
me of pimplevision, gets big ratings be-
cause of the zip code in its title. I so,
maybe we could turn today’s square-
eyed youth into rabid page turners by
adding actual zip codes to the titles of
poems, stories and novels. Hey kids!
Check out this cool stuff to read

Winesburg, Ohio, 44690.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 89109,

Walden, 01742.

Washington Square, 10012.

Hawai, 96761.

Last Exil to Brooklyn, 11231.

The Bostonians, 02114.

Coming of Age in Samoa, 96799.

And to Think That 1 Saw It on Mulberry
Street, 10012.

WOMB-LINERS

There's an excellent example of
provocative copywriting—or feminist
metaphysics—inside the package for Re-
ality, a female condom. The instruction
booklet reads: “Packet holds one Reality
Take out Reality and look at it close.
ly. Take your time and push Reality
up to where you can feel the bone. 11
Reality is slippery . . . let it go and st
over. Will Reality bunch up inside the
vagina? Will I feel Reality once its in
place? What do 1 do if Reality does not
stay in place during intercourse?” We
don't know what it’s like for you
but for us, reality rarely stays in p
during intercourse.

The Franklin Mint
Franklin Center, PA 19091-0001

Please send me Wings of Gold Pendant by Gilroy
Roberts.

I need SEND NO MONEY NOW. | will be billed for a
deposit of $49* prior to shipment and for the balance,
after shipment, in 4 equal monthly installments of
$40* cach.

"Plus my state sales tax and a one-time charge
1 for shipping and handling

Distinctive sculptured

pendant shown actual size.

Solid Gold Majestic Eagle.
Genuine Onyx.

The American Eagle. The ultimate symbol
of those things we value the most. Our his-
tory. Our pride. Our American ideals. Now
brought to life in a bold new pendant bear-
ing the original art of Gilroy Roberts, for-
mer Chief Sculptor of the U.S. Mint:
Sculptured in solid 10 karat gold. Hand-
set on a field of genuine onyx. Showcased
on a bezel of solid sterling silver richly
coated in 22 karat gold. And suspended
from a matching 24" chain. Issued at $245,
payable in convenient monthly installments.
Wings of Gold Pendant, a proud posses-
sion today...a treasured heirloom for gen-
erations to come.
RETURN ASSURANCE POLICY
If you wish to return any Franklin Mint pur-
` chase, you may do so within 30 days of your

receipt of that purchase for replacement, credit
or refund.

world-renowned artist Gilroy Roberts
portrayed in an emblem of
strength and power.

Please mail by January 31, 1993

SIGNATURE —
MRIMBS/MISS
ADDRESS
CITY/STATE

TELEPHONE =

16238-65AE- 6

16

CHARLES M. YOUNG

ever since Radio Free Europe, for which 1

had lloyed love back in 1983, my
love for R.E.M. has been decidedly al-
loyed by .. . | don't even know. M

found them a tad too deli
and roll. And I just didn't like th
OK? Upon release of their latest albu
Automatic for the People (Warner), | am
forced to change my mind. 1 suddenly
like them again a whole lot. Here their
minor-key Appalachian song structures,
starting spare and building in lush
crescendos with the string arrangements
of John Paul Jones. set the standard for
contemporary folk music. Maybe that's
why I converted: R.E.M. does folk music
better than rock and roll. Michael Stipe's
ruminative lyrics need a meditative set-
ting. Although Peter Buck's guitar offers
plenty of hooks and nifty chord progres-
sions to hold your interest, | found my-
self trancing out through the whole
bum. In that state, you may want to
check out Stipe's explorations of mortal-
ity. When was the last time you heard a
song about parents’ dying, as in Sweetness
Follows, strike exactly the right resonance
in your unconscious? 1 used to think
Creative Writing 101 whenever 1 was
able to discern Stipe's lyrics, but now I
think the guy is a poet.

FAST CUTS: AC/DC, AC/DC Live (Atco):
World's greatest riff-rockers have re-
leased a two-CD version (more than two
hours) and a one-CD version (70 r
utes) of their live show that ranks up
there with Kiss's Alive! and the Who's
Live at Leeds as the best live albums. Get
the longer one. The extended renditions
of Jailbreak (14:43) and High Voltage

(10:32) are the most revelatory.

ROBERT CHRISTGAU

Diving back into the static and turmoil
of real life doesn't so much piss you off
as remind you how angry you already
were. So when 1 returned on Labor Day
from a month in the country. I turned
5 March ór Die (WTG/E|
y's Psalm 69 (Warner/Sire) for

ol. These years, no other rock-and-
rollers c lessly with the
waflic, the telephone and the scumbag,

who just jimmied your trunk.

Led by grizzled campaigner Lemmy
Kilmister, Motörhcad epitomizes
as-hard-rock: a gui
room for pop nic
faraw. After floundering in the e:
Eighties, Motórhead sustained its tens
tuneless rant for four straight albums. If
March ór Die lets up.
ison with 1986's Orgasmatron ог 19915

R.E.M. does folk.

Songs of Freedom from Bob
Marley, R.E.M. explores
mortality and Prince is back.

1916. New songs such as Stand, Bad Reli-
gion and Hellraiser make their point like
a bare-knuckle knockout.

Ministry is а studio-concocted duo-
plus that's equally brutal but less reas-
suringly human. Its music is always cold,
but Psalm 69 is frozen. However, the craft
Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker put into
their latest opus eventually hits home.
Even the eight minutes of surgical waste
that is Scarecrow thrill and chill. Buzzsaw
percussion, oratorio, grandeur, synth
sludge and George Bush and the Buu-
hole Surfers all serve a naysaying post-
metal sensationalism that is contrived to
cauterize you

That's why it will get you.

FAST CUTS: Lun lunapark (Elektra):
Dean Wareham isn't mad, he's just pre-
maturely weary—and he makes sweetly
acerbi
Man with a Plon (С
crowded with freeze-dried hunks, thi
one cou
the

VIC GARBARINI

Alice in Chains is the ultimate Seattle

lendrix in Neil Young's base
tight modal harmonies and
warped crunchola chords crossed. with
searingly intense lyrics centered. on

addiction and death. On Dirt (Colum-
bia), the band's remarkable sopho-
more album, Alice dives into the abyss
with the clear intention of finding the
light on the other shore. Them Bones’ lo-
comotive riff deals with exorcising fears
about mortality. Then there's the four-
song суде told from an addict's point of
view. which shows him going through
various stages of denial, confrontation
and eventual self-revelation. Even Lou
Reed would be proud. On Dirt, Alice
proves that the juxtaposition of enlight-
ened lyrics and stark, brutal music can
produce catharsis.

FAST CUTS: Alice's haunting hit Would?,

f found on both Dirt and the Singles sound

track, is a play on Andrew Wood (get it?),
lead singer of the seminal Seattle band
Mother Love Bone, who died of a hero-
in overdose shortly before the release of
his band's first album. Inevitably, Apple is
being rereleased, packaged with the
band's earlier EP and titled Mother Love
Bone (Mercury/Stardog). Mother reveals
MLB to be a harder-edged proto-Pearl
Jam, with Wood's vocals recalling early
Axl Rose. Included is its only real mas-
terpiece, Chloe Dancer/Croum of Thorns,
which can also be found on—you guessed
it—the Singles sound track.

DAVE MARSH

The records Prince has given us after
Purple Rain süll lack a climactic moment,
or even a focal point. His new album, f
(Paisley Park/Warner), does little to clar-
ify what he's after: The music ranges
from utterly splendid (most of the fast
tracks) to somewhat sappy (most of the
slow ones). But in spite of these quibbles,
Prince is singing and playing with re-
newed purpose and playfulness. Indeed,
4 marks the first time since Purple Rain
that all his ranting and prancing will
eventually culminate in something spec-
tacular, or at least coheren

The title, the most mystical, mystifying
and maddening album title since Led
Zeppelin's runic fourth LP suggests that
ce continues to play tug-of-war be-
tween sex and salvation—or, rather, con-
tinues his quest to fuse the two. But the
music makes greater demands: Sexy MF
ranks with his best provocations,
cause it's so raunchy (though t
but because it extends his repertoire of
funk beats and licks, particularly with
the guitar and horn charts. At the same
time, Prince now makes his songs more
explicitly personal—particularly the
opening My Name Is Prince and The Sac-
nfice of Victor, the first song in which a
child of the forced-busing generation
attempts to show us the scars. Prince

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FAST TRACKS

Christgau George | Marsh
5 7 7 7 6
8 9 10 10 10
7 7 7 8 8
b 8 8 6 7
7 10 8 4 9

EXPLETIVES NOT DELETED DEPARTMENT:
For the first time in its history, pub-
lishing giant Time Warner is letting
the words fall where they may—in
print. Quincy Jones’ hip-hop publica-
tion Vibe features rap stars uncen-
sored. Yo, Henry Luce.

REELING AND ROCKING: Graham Nash,
John Lee Hooker and Les Paul are
among 30 artists interviewed for a
documentary on Bill Haley & the Comets
that the producers hope to release in
theaters. . . . Filming is nearing com-
pletion on a musical starring Nick
Nolte, Julie Kavner, Joely Richardson,
Tracey Ullman and Albert Brooks called
ГИ Do Anything. It will include songs
by Prince, Sinéad O'Connor and Carole
King. . . . Little Richards forthcoming
movie, The Pickle, is just one of a num-
ber of his new projects, which include
commercials, a children’s LP and the
college lecture circuit. Good golly!

NEWSBREAKS: Hit record producer
Jim Steinman has tried his hand at writ-
ing a TV series. Pandora s Box is about
a nationally televised dance show and
features story lines about the host and
the dancers. Steinman will produce
music for the series. . . . A musical
about singer Patsy Cline apy head-
ed for New York. Always . . . Patsy Cline
is a two-woman, two-act play about
Cline and a Texas fan that features 17
songs, including Crazy and Walkin’ Af-
ler Midnight. . . . То celebrate their 40
years together as a team, Jerry Leiber
nd Mike Stoller, the songwriters best
nown for the likes of Jailhouse Rock
and Chapel of Love, have established
music scholarships for young com-
posers and musicians in New York
and LA. Yet another Presley
sighting: Lisa Marie, Elvis’ daughter, is

recording songs for a debut LP She is
said to have a strong R&B voice.
Hot on the heels of Jerry Gorcia ties
comes a clothing line designed by Jack
Casady and Jorma Kaukonen (Hot Tuna
and Jefferson Airplane). Caps, denim
vests, shirts and shorts are first up.
Curtis Stigers and Al Green cut a duet of
the Temptations' Don't Look Back, which
will probably show up on Green's
next LP... We don't know about
you, but the idea of Kiss and Bob Dylan
writing songs together gives us a ma-
jer chuckle. We don't yet know where
the songs will turn. up, but we do
know the Kiss tour has been de-
scribed as "bombs and lasers up the
wazoo.' ... Have you kept time on
eal boxes with pencils long
enough? Get Levon Helm's video Drums
and Drumming from Homespun Tapes
(call 800-33-TAPES). . . . The Boss taped
his MTV Plugged gig, and if he goes
ahead with plans to release the disc, it
will be in your record store any day
now. .. . A new Lynyrd Skynyrd CD is
due out early this year. . . . Former
Free and Bad Company singer Paul
Rodgers is working on a disc tribute to
Muddy Waters. Expect some big names
to lend musical support. . . . Tina Wey-
mouth still hopes for a Talking Heads re-
union because “life is full of very sur-
prising twi nd turns.” Roger
Taylor of Queen says there is enough
fresh material for one more LP be-
cause Freddie Mercury “was determined
to work up to the last minute.” . .
Finally, the last word on Ozzy Os-
nent comes from the
eat Oz himself: "Who wants to be
touring at forty-six? I screwed all the
groupies when it was safe. . . . It's
time to go home." — BARBARA NELLIS

falters only when he tries to articulate his
ng of Revelation, or writes florid
rics. Those drawbacks mean th
might not be one of his half-dozen best
albums, but it definitely ranks thar high
among all recent releases.

FAST CUTS: Bob Marley's Songs of Free-
dom (Tuff Gong/Island): At last, a multi-
disc set without a hint of padding. This
collection ol
blockbuster international. hits
odd rarity or three enhances Mai
ready enormous stature as the first giant
of both reggae and world music. Songs
of Freedom shows him as a dignified rock-
er, sensual singer-songwriter, profound
soul man, master of the Caribbean in-
version of the Yankee backbeat and, in
Redemption Song, a man whose eloquence
transformed a parochial world view into
a universal vision of humanity. Marley's
rarely heard early music ranks with the
best reggae, rock and soul of the late Six-
ties. Nothing else offers such an over-
view—and few other contemporary com-
pilations are as likely to leave listeners
gaping with awe

NELSON GEORGE

Bobby Brown's Don't Be Cruel was a vi-
brant, even rude, breakthrough effort
that announced the former New Fdition
member as an exciting proponent of
new jack swing. It also showcased the
burgeoning producing talents of Teddy
Riley, L. А. Reid and Babyface. Four
years later, Brown is a brand-name star
with a famous wife (Whitney Houston)
and a few extra pounds on him.

Bobby (MCA) isn't а band record. It re-
unites the Boston n е with Riley for
seven cuts and the LaFace team for
three, so there's a high level of produc-
tion professionalism and booty-shaking
beats, Yet, where Dont Be Cruel was
inspired, Bobby feels Hat. The blend of
Brown's reedy, raw vocals and these
state-of-the-art producers is competent,
but most of the record sounds sadly
mechanical. Remarkably, i's Brown's
self-produced tracks, College Girl and
Storm Away, that project the most per-
sonality on a recording that is other-
wise too slick.

FAST CUTS: Freddie Jackson is the most
underappreciated performer in black
music today. On album after album, he
delivers hit records, mellow production
and a sweet, breathy style that's distinc-
tive and warm. Jackson
which is why ci

ily pleasing music by
staying true to his upscale R&B style.
The Ar din-produced All PU Ever
Ask, f Najee's saxophone, is one
beautiful song and performance.

MOVIES

By BRUCE WILLIAMSON

THE MOVIE VERSION of Josephine Hart's
short but sizzling novel Damage (New
е) oozes upscale passion. Producer
director Louis Malle works from a liter-
ate screenplay by David Hare, with Jere-
my Iron е on a roll as the
seemingly detached British M.P who ru-
ins his political hopes in reckless trysts
with the mysterious young woman his
son intends to marry. Rupert Graves
wins instant sympathy as the naive lad,
Martin, with Juliette Binoche enticingly
enigmatic as the amoral fiancée who
seems supercool about boffing her fu-
ture father-in-law. “Damaged people are
dangerous,” she warns to no avail
“They know they can survive.” After the
love triangle reaches its tragic point of
no геш! however, Miranda Richard-
son makes her Oscar-worthy move, play-
ing Irons’ betrayed wife
blind fury that shatters the mood of re-
strained sexual tension. A master at
stylishly mounting scandalous tales,
Malle shows family values reduced to
rubble in his brilliant Damage. УУУУ
.

The people gathering to ring in the
New Year in one of England's stately
homes are Peter's Friends (Goldwyn)
Onetime intimates in an amateur musi-
cal troupe, they reunite to pool their
neuroses about success, failure, sex, alco-
holism, parental angst and selling out to
Hollywood. Peters Friends makes auld
lang syne a delicious, slyly malicious par-
lor game for grown-ups. Co-authored by
comedian Rita Rudner and her hus-
band, Martin Bergman, the movie occa-
sionally zeroes in on Rudner, playing a
IV sitcom star from America, whose
caustic, hard-drinking husband (Ken-
h) is one of the d nal mu-
gh, England's
multimedia sta ected—with а
far frothier touch than he showed in
Henry V or Dead Again. Branagh's gifted
wife, Emma Thompson, puts teeth into
her role as a sexually needy spinster: Pe-
ter himself is portrayed by Stephen Fry
as an amiable, well-bred lout who more
or less backs out of his closet to host a
highly civilized weekend of wit, wooing
and revelation. ¥¥¥

once me

.

Another bravura bundle from Britai
is The Crying Game (Miramax), by write
director Neil Jordan, who earned his
reputation for bristling originality with
Mona Lisa and. The Company of Wolves
This time, Jordan outdoes himself in a
perverse romantic thriller about. IRA
terrorists (Stephen Rea and Miranda
Richardson are the main Irish zealots)
who take an American soldier (Forest
Whitaker) hostage. Unlikely to survive,

an outburst of

Binoche and Irons causing damage.

Some Brits in flagrante;
others celebrate auld lang syne;
and the Irish do dark deeds.

the soldier persuades his softhearted
captor (Rea) to take back a message to
Dil (Jaye Davidson), the sexy beauty
presumably waiting for him ina London
bar. After the initial shoot-em-up action,
everything that happens in The Crying
Game is fresh, mesmerizing and tailor-
made to shake up audience expecta-
tions, There is dramatic dash as well
mordant humor in the pairing of R.
nd Davidson, a couple caught up in a
wickedly ambivalent double cross you
won't soon forget. УУУУ
.

The few grains of truth embedded
Becoming Colette (Castle Hill) produce |
Ше more than a crop of candy corn
Mathilda May portrays the celebrated
French her major
claims to fame was writing Gigi—as a vir-
ginal country girl about to discover the
naughty pleasures of marriage, Р:
and joie de vivre. Klaus Maria Bran-
dauer co-stars as the the rakish husband
who takes author's credit for Colette's
published diaries, with Virginia Madsen
he worldly actress who becomes her
first lesbian liaison. Directed by Danny
Huston (son of John Huston, and Mad-
sen's husband) with more attention to
vintage flavor than 10 verisimilitude, the
movie is a void populated by colorful
top-rank actors in search of an author. Y

.

The current cult of celebrity жо
may have its delinitive
Painting the Town (Zeitgeist E

novelist—one of

ship

manifesto in
ns). Written

by Richard Osterweil, who appears solo
for most of this documentary self-por-
trait, the movie is a confessional by an
artist who obsessively crashes. parties,
charity balls, art shows or funerals for
the rich and famous. “When you're go-
ing someplace to which you're not invit-
ed, it gets very scary,” says Osterweil,
who drives a New York cab or checks
coats to keep himself solvent while paint-
ing and indulging his fondness for lumi-
naries. He has in fact screwed up his
nerve to attend memorials for Chairman
Mao, Richard Rodgers and Roy Cohn, to
name a few. Painting the Town is frank,
funny and about as significant in the
scheme of things as a party favor. ¥¥
.

The downtown spontaneity of in the
Soup (Triton) made it a 1992 favorite
with film festival audiences from Sun-
dance, Utah, to New York. Director
Alexandre Rockwell's black-and-white
comedy about a would-be New York
moviemaker (Steve Buscemi) and his
misadventures with a madly eccentric
small-time crook (Seymour Cassel) also
won Sundance's Best Film award, while
Cassel was named Best Actor. Cassel, as
the irrepressible Joe, agrees to finance
Buscemi's script but deals in sex, drugs
and burglary with such zeal that he
makes real life look like much more fun
than “just making movies.” That pretty
well sums up Rockwell's subject, which
dissipates into chaos—but not until the
winsome flavor of the piece has been
established by Cassel, Buscemi and Jen-
nifer Beals (Rockwell's wife, first spot-
lighted in Flashdance) as a sultry Hispan-
ic neighbor. By the time you realize it’
coming apart, /n the Soup compensates
for every plothole with what-the-hell ir-
reverence and charm. ¥¥/2

.

Keith Carradine has the title role іп
The Bachelor (Greycat). based on a Vien-
nese novel by Arthur Schnitzler. Beauti-
fully photographed by Giuseppe Rotun-
no, whose work has enhanced epics
by Fellini and Fosse, the movie is an
elegant, leisurely drama about a man
defeated by being indecisive. Carradine
is perfect as the prudish but discreetly
passionate young doctor who dillydallies
while everything he wants slips away
from him. The beautiful young woma
(Kristin Scott-Fhomas) he hopes to mar-
ту gets tired of waiting in her country
manse while he amuses himself in town
with a beautiful mistress (Sarah-Jane
Fenton). The woman who seems likely
to finally claim him is an
cunning widow—played bewitchingly by
Miranda Richardson (see Damage and
The Crying Game)—who does double du-
ty in early scenes in Africa as the doctor

icquisitive,

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24

Rudner: Peter's closest friend.
OFF CAMERA

It has been a big year for
вис Rudner—stand-up comedian,
movie star, co-author of the Peter's
Friends screenplay (see review) and
of a hot-selling book, Naked Be-
neath My Clothes. When we found
her at home in Los Angeles be
tween tour dates, Rudner noted,
“I never know where ГЇ be pe

Her age is “thirty-seven. and
holding.” Originally a dancer, she
wasn't sure she could do comedy
when she came to New York from
Miami at 15 and appeared in such
Broadway musicals as Promise
Promises and Annie. “I studied
comedy—going to the Museum of
Broadcasting, watching Buster
Keaton and Preston Sturges mov-
s. My role models are Woody
Allen and Jack Benny

She was performing stand-up
when she met her husband, Aus-
tralian-born Martin Bergman, at
Catch a Rising Star. He booked
her a 4 Edinburgh Festi-
val d four years, they
co-wrote a cheeky BBC-TV variety
show that made her a star in Eng-
land. Bergman had gone to school
with actress Emma Thompson,
Kenneth Branagh's wife, which
begot the friendship that blos-
somed into Peters Friends. She
doesn't mind critics’ calling it a
British Big Chill. “Just so they don't
call it a British Heaven's Gate,” says
Rudner. “It was so easy. We were
all friends—everyone sleeping
with the person they were sup-
posed to sleep with and nobody
doing drugs in the basement.”

The Rudner-Bergman team has
another movie script in the hop-
per, currently titled Moon Valley
“There is a role for though
that's not a prerequisite.” To date,
she's not big on homemaking or
motherhood. “We're so busy we'd
have to leave the kids if we had.
any. We seem to produce scripts."

suicidal sister. Director Roberto Faenza's
costume piece has the tasteful air of a
Merchant-Ivory production and reeks
quality. That, folks, is to be taken as a
compliment. УУУ

.
For everyone who ever wondered
what Hugh Hefner is really like, David
Lynch and Mark Frost, the fun folks who.
gave us Twin Peaks, have provided a
slightly skewed answer certain both to
please and to provoke. Hugh Hefner: Once
Upon a Time (1.К.5. Media) is an intimate
profile of the man and his eva. Director
Robert Heath had complete access to a
gold mine of compelling material: The
film opens with glimpses of Hefs preco-
cious and irreverent childhood scrap-
books, teases us with a high school at-
tempt at a science fiction film, then
delivers a look at the prototype of
PLAYBOY—a college humor magazine
founded by Hef that featured a Coed of
the Month. Clearly, the fantasies of the
child fueled the adults inner fire. The
film provides a fascinating psychological
backdrop for the more familiar images—
the pipe, the pajamas, the publishing
empire. Narrated by James Coburn, the
film captures the adventure of one man’
rebellion against the puri
of his time. Vintage TV clips chronicle
Hef's confrontations with the religious
and political establishments. Home
movies show the more personal side-
travels with Barbi, the Mansion parties,
his wedding to Kimberley, But Once Up-
on a Time is more than an episode of
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The film
gives an unflinching account of the
hounding of Hefner's personal
Bobbie Arnstein, the bizarre spin the
press and Peter Bogdanovich put on the
murder of Playmate Dorothy Strauen
and the censorious machinations of the

s

n repression

ssistant

Meese commission. Not to give away the
ending, but the good guy wins. УУУУ»

.

Spectacular locations in Vietnam and
Malaysia are about evenly matched with
Catherine Deneuve's dazzling screen
presence in Indochine (Sony Classics). Set
in the restless period when French In-
dochina was a political hotbed, the
movie stars Deneuve as the glamourous
owner of a rubber plantation. Her affair
with a handsome naval officer (Vincent
Perez) hasn't really ended when he gets
involved with her adopted Vietnamese
daughter (Linh Dan Pham). After much
travail, the young couple become fu-
itives and wind up having a baby as
they tour the countryside with a theatri-
cal troupe of undercover leftist rebels.
N mind. In French with subtitles,
this overlong but engrossing drama isn't
always easy to follow—though Deneuve
is dearly a national treasure in any
language. УУУ;

MOVIE SCORE CARD

capsule close-ups of current films
by bruce williamson

The Bachelor (Sec review) A guy who
just can't make up his mind. vvv
Bad Lieutenant (Revi
Keitel’s one-man horror show. УУУ
Becoming Colette (Sec review) She de-
serves better than she gets. y
Bob Roberts (10/92) Politics pinned to
the wall by Tim Robbins. wah
Close to Eden (12/92) Absolutely splen-
did. But would you believe Inner
Mongolia? yyy
The Crying Game (See review) Irish ter-
rorists and major surprises. | ¥¥¥/2
Damage (Sce review) From the book,
brilliantly directed by Malle. УУУУ
Ethan Frome (12/92) Wharton's book
filmed with a seething Neeson. ¥¥¥/2
Glengarry Glen Ross (10/92) Mamet's
play. played to the hilt MS
Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time (Sce
review) The life and times of Mr.

Playboy. УЛА
Husbands and Wives (12/92) More fine
urban angst from Woody vey

Indochine (See review) Deneuve gives
the place a true touch of dass. ¥¥/2
Intervista (12/92) Fellini looks back con

brio, as usual. vvv
In the Soup (Sce review) On the loose
with some cinemaniacs. wu

The Last of the Mohicans (12/02) You
don't want to miss Day-Lewis on th
warpath. Rating upgraded. УУУУ
The Lover (11/99) Quiet French school-
girl learning it all. WV
Martha and I (Listed only) She's his
German wife under the Nazi yoke. YY
Mr. Saturday Night (11/92) Pure Crystal
and plenty of fun. yyy
Night and the City (11/92) De Niro and
Lange light up the dark side. yyy
Painting the Town (Sec review) A party
crasher on the go. yy
Peter's Friends (Sec review) Brisk Brits
bring in the New Ye vy
The Public Eye (11/92) Behind his cam-
era, Pesci takes New York.

Reservoir Dogs (12/92) A gri
per with no surv
A River Runs Through It (11/92) Redford.

hooks a real winner ww
Traces of Red (12/92) A good old-fash-
ioned murder mystery YY)

Under Siege (Listed only) Steven Si
gal proves his seaworthiness. — ¥¥¥'/2
Unforgiven (11/92) Eastwood brings

back the class ww
Venice/Venice ( her here nor
there with Henry Jaglom. yv

¥¥¥¥ Don't miss
¥¥¥ Good show

жұ Worth a look
¥ Forget it

VIDEO

ДИЙ

Although she’s Dean-
na Troi on TV's Star
Trek: The Next Gener-
ation, actress Marina
Sirtis favors videos
that are down to
earth. “I like romantic

stories," she says,
"such as Steel Mag-
поііаѕ and Terms of Endearment—even

though Brent Spiner, who plays Data on
the show, tells me | only like movies that
people die in.” Other Sinis faves include
the original Wuthering Heights, with Lau-
rence Olivier, Gone with the Wind and
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. “But you see, people
die in those, too." For “stupid enjoyment,”
Sirtis goes for Grease, and when she's
with her guy, it's Terminator 2 and surfing
movies. But doesn't the Enterprise's en-
chantress ever watch science fiction?
"Back in England, | used to look at Star
Wars. But that's just because | had a crush
оп Harrison Ford." IHN CHANPION

VIDEO SIX-PACK
a ver new year: firsts for the first

The Jazz Singer: Hollywood's first talkie is
virtually silent—save the priceless croon-
ng of Al Jolson (MGM/UA).

The Greatest Adventure: The Story of Man's

the history of space ce light, culmina!
that “one small step” (Vestron).

Mount Everest: American Firsts: Features first
American women to tackle M.E. and first
men to hang-glide off its slopes. From
TV's Spirit of Adventure series (MPI)
The Challenge of Niagara Fal
the falls’ appeal to daredevils includes
tale of first man t0 survive over-the-edge
barrel ride (IVN).
In Search of Amelia Earhart: She was the
first woman to try winging it around the
globe—thi
still fly (Py
The Beginning: 11
the earth’s First Е
Eve and the boys (Pauli
TERRY CATCHPOLE,

VIDBITS

MPI Home Video has you covered—in-
doors and out. This year it will serve up
194 episodes of The Frugal Gourmet, PBS”
popular cooking's-a-cinch series hosted
by kitchen whiz Jeff Smith; and the four-
Lape Complete History of Golf tells you
everything you may (or may not) need to
know about the gar
century tee-off to tod
dollar industr E
longer need drift through vid store aisles

with the whining mantra, "Whaddya
wanna see, honey?” From Random
House comes The 1993 Must-See Movies
desk calendar, a 365-page flick-a-day
renter's companion featuring cinematic
facioids and thumbnail reviews (e.g,
“Jaws; the blockbuster that put Spielberg
ón the map and single-handedly ruined
family beach vacations everywhere”).
One comment: Yes, Miracle on 34th Street
is the perfect Christmas Day rental. But
Viva Las Vegas on January first?

YESTERDAY'S NEWS

Nightline makes for stirring drama—ma-
jor news events reported as they are un-
folding. Why does it work on video? Lots
of hindsight and no commercials.
Freeing of the Hostages (1981): Ron's Janu-
prise, same night as his gaudy in-
n. Surreal twist: lady reporters
gowns.

Student Protest in China (1989): Democracy
movement before the massacre. Heart-
breaking—and still inspi
John Lennon Murdered (1980): rhe last in-
dignity: a eulogy by Geraldo Rivera.
John Belushi's Career (1982): Better: praise
from Milton Berle. But no drug talk—
this was pre-autopsy:

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (1987): Jim and
Tammy vs. Falwell at height of PTL
scandal. A little scum around the font.
What Constitutes Sexual Harassment? (1991):
"The Clarence Thomas hearings spark a
good d sion. Bummer: no John
Doggett clips.

Assassination Attempt Against President Rea-
gan (1981): Sorry, Al Haig—Nancy was
in control.

Midnight Deadline (199
off Bush's ultimatum.
rockets over Baghdad.

Lovis Farrakhan (1984): Flaying Jews and

: Saddam blew
ell vigil, but no

g it

Yasir Arafat (1988): Slaying Jews and de-
fending

Jackie Robinson (1987): Amid anecdotes,
Dodgers vet Al Campanis says black
players don't want to be managers and
black swimmers lack buoyancy. He was
canned after the show. —]JAMES HARRIS

(All tapes $19.98, from MPL)

LASER FARE

Escapism, anyone? From MGM/UA
comes a pair of behind-bars classics.
Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958)
stars Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as
convicts shackled together and on the
lam. And Paul Muni is the in-again-out-
again prison escapee in the pre-Produc-
tion Code FAm a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
(1932). Both d each, include
films’ theatrical . All that jazz:
Pioneer's eight« Montreux Jazz Festival
pays homage to the annual rites held on
the banks of Lake Leman. Best sets: hip-
sters Ray Bryant and Tommy Flanagan
(Vol. 2: The Piano Masters) and the incom-
parable Joe Pass (Vol. 8: The Jazz Guitar).
Completists may want all eight discs;
novitiates can sample with impuni

— GREGORY P FAGAN

Housesitter (conniving flake Goldie Hawn seizes Steve Mar-
tin's dreom house; nice Thirties feel); Sister Act (Whoopi
hides from Mob in convent; nun stuff's a riot, script doesn't
have a prayer]; Prelude to a Kiss (Alec Baldwin loves Meg

Newsies (ће 1899 NY. paperboys' strike—song and dance
from Disney); Shadows and Fog (Woody's uneven but OK

WORTH A LOOK

tale of a strangler on the loose when the circus comes to

town; with Mia and Madonna); The Return of Spinal Tap (rock
legend’s 1992 Break Like the Wind reunion tour; direct to vid).

25

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By DIGBY DIEHL

NOBODY REA
spread out und

y wants to see Madonna
neath the Christmas
wee, do they? Well, if you insist on shar-
ing the Material Girl's unusual erotic
fantasies for the holidays, open up Sex
(Warner)—with photographs by
Meisel—and pop the accompany
мо your player. As usual, Madonna is
on to something: This is clearly the year
of the book-and-CD combination.

The Complete Beatles Chronide (Harmo-
ny), by Mark Lewisohn, doesnt have a
, but it does document practically ev-
day in the life of the Fab Four from
their origins as a Liverpool skiflle band
in 1957 to Paul's announcement in April
1971 that the party was over. Fans will
find the exhaustive discography of The
Beatles: The Ultimate Recording Guide (Facts
on File), by Allen J. Weiner, another wel-
come addition to the Beatles shelf. Linda.
M«Cariney's Sixties (Bulfinch) is a happy.
eclectic portrait of many rock legends of
that decade in addition to the Beatles.

Another book-and-CD multimedia
package is presented in My Twenty-Five
Years in Fleetwood Mac (Hyperion), by Mick
Fleetwood, with a never-belore-released
song on disc. The photographs in The
Jozz People of New Orleans (Pantheon), by
Lee Friedlander, are so vivid and joyous
you don’t need an accompanying CD—
the music just bubbles off these pages.

There are two CDs included with Rick
Smolan's photographic journey across
the Australian outback, Alice to Ocean
(Addison-Wesley)—but only one con-
tains music. The first is a Kodak Photo
CD of Smolan’s images, and the second
is an Apple interactive CD with images.
narration and movie segments. Another
superb travel adventure book—just a
book—is Nowhere fs a Place: Travels in
Patagonia (Sierra Club), with text based
on talks to the Royal Geographical Soci-
ety by Bruce Chatwin and Paul Therou

That grand old underwater adventur-
er Jacques-Yves Cousteau has passed the
scuba tanks on to his son, Jean-Michel,
whose latest book, Cousteau’s Great White
Shork (Abrams), with Mose Richards, is
a fascinating combination of scientific
study and dramatic underwater photog-
raphy. Another extraordinary book
about ocean life is Seven Underwater Won-
ders of the World ( 'homasson-Grant), by
Rick Sammon, which takes us beneath.
the icy waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia
and into the submerged crevices of Dar-
wi nds for le
marine conservation. Div
want to miss The Greenpeace Book of Coral
Reefs (Sterling), by Sue Wells and. Nick
Hanna, with its haunting pictures of
these “under in forest or
David Doubilet’s spectacular Pacific An

Bountiful books.

The best of the
holiday books
make great gifts.

Undersea Journey (Bulfinch). From oceans
to rivers: Sports artist Arthur Taylor's
paintings accompany text by James E.
Butler for Penobscot River Renaissance
(Down East).

Two new gifi books illuminate the
iajesty of one of America's greatest na-
tional monuments. The Grand Canyon
(Hugh Lauer Levin), by Letitia Burns
O'Connor. features four-foot-long pan-
oramic foldouts among the 190 color
photographs. As his last project, a great
nature photographer leaves us a fining
tribute in Eliot Porter: The Grand Canyon
(Prestel/ART news).

This is a stellar year for sports books,
ncluding two by Sports Mlustrated pho-
tographer Neil Leifer. Sports (Collins),
with an introduction by Roy Blount Jr.,
is a magical collection of Leiler's 150 best
shots of athletes around the world; Mu-
hammad Ali: Memories (Rizzoli) documents
30 years in the Ше of the great champ.
with Leifer's incomp:
In additionto the moving zi
Magic Johnson: My Life (Random House),
with William vak, and Bob Greene's
intimate biography of Michael Jordan,
Hang Time (Doubleday), basketball fan:
will be looking for the big-picture ce
bration of America’s Dream Team (Turner),
with 275 color photographs and text by
coach Chuck Daly with Alex Sachare.

LeRoy Neiman captures the excite-
ment and color in Big-Time Golf (Abrams)
with both lavish, high-style acryli
scorecard sketches. The Historical Dictio-

nary of Golfing Terms: From 1500 to the Pres-
ent (Michael Kesend), by Peter Davies,
traces the extraoi ry vocabulary of
the 500-year-old game. The Guinness Book
of Golf (Canopy/Abbeville). by Peter
Smith and Keith Mackie, takes an analyt-
ical approach to the players and the in-
ternational history of the game. A tribute
10 the history of the Negro Leagues in
baseball is oflered in When the Game Was
Black and White (Abbeville, by Bruce
Chadwick.

Topping the list of entertainment gift
books this year is А Day in the Life of Holly-
ed by Lena Tabori
T's a colorful, star-studded tour of Tin-
seltown at work. Movie stars in more for-
mal poses are the essence of Shooting
Stars: Contemporary Glamour Photography
(Stewart, labori & Chang), by Ricky
Spears. Of course, if you want a collec-
tion of classic Hollywood glamour po
traits created by the master of the form,
get Hurrell Hollywood (St. Martin's), by
George Hurrell, which features 140 un-
forgettable pictures іп duotone. Herb
Ritts calls it like it is, Notorious (Bulfinch),
with three dramatic eight-page gate-
folds. And Those Lips, Those Eyes: A Celebra-
tion of Classic Hollywood Sensuality (Birch
Lane), by Edward Z. Epstein and Lou
Valentino, shows us what sex appeal
meant in the golden age of movies.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of
the making of Casablanca, Aljean Far-
metz has written Reund Up the Usuol Sus-
pects (Hyperion), which documents the
making of the film with wit and scholai
ship. Cesablonca: Behind the Scenes (Fire-
side), by Harlan Lebo, covers some of

the same territory in a paperback origi-
nal. Frank Mill Casablanca: As Time
Goes By (Turner), with 275 photo-

graphs, has been reissued in paperback.
And there's even The Casablanca Cook-
book: Wining and Dining at Rick’s (Abbe-
ville), by Jennifer New: . Vicki
Wells and ah Key.
must note that it is also time for the 30th
anniversary pictorial history of Lawrence
of Arabia (Doubleday), by L. Robert Mor-
ris and Lawrence Raskin.

heater is paid respects in a dazzling
contemporary collection of photographs
and famous actors’ memoirs in Broadway:
Day & Night (Pocket), “presented by” Ken
Marsolais, Roger McFarlane and Tom
Viola. And two giants of the Broadway
musical are given a thoughtful tribute by
Ethan Mordden in Rodgers & Hammerstein
(Abrams)—a book that is filled with pic-
tures from Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The
King and I, The Sound of Music and other
БЕН hits.

"The most astonis|
photography
Lois

g book of dance
п this or any other year
cenfield's Breaking Bounds
onide), with text by William A.

Ewing. d catches movement
and energy in mid-air—these are pic-
tures of people flying. A comp
dance survey that accompanies
part PBS series is Dancing (Abrams), by
Gerald Jonas, which runs the gamut
from Cambodian ritual to Michael Jack
son. Philip Trager evokes the work of 34
choreographers im Dancers (Bulfinch),
ic Leibovitz focuses on Mikhail
Baryshn Smithsonian)

Although Matisse has the big MOMA
exhibit, Gauguin has the big books this
y Gauguin ( Flammarion), by Francoise
Cachin, Gauguin: Letters from Brittany ond
the South Seas (Clarkson Potter), edited by
Bernard Denvir, and Gauguin’s South Seas
(Universe). Each offer different aspects
of the painter's carcer. Matisse is hardly
forgotten, however: The huge MOMA/
Abrams catalog of the exhibit, by John
Elderfield, and the reissue of Matissc's
Jozz (Braziller) should keep his paint
from peeling. The gorgeous volume
Claude Monet: Life and Work (Rizzoli), by
Virginia Spate, is a definitive work that
contains more than 300 illustrations
from his paintings. Calloway
has created yet another lavish book, Two
Lives (HarperCollins), which juxtaposes
Alfred Stieglitz’ photographs with Geor-
gia O'Keefle’s paintings.

It appears as though every photogra-
pher who ever clicked a shutter has a
book this season: Karsh: American Legends
(Bulfinch), by Yousuf Karsh, Photo-
graphed by Bachrach (Rizzoli), by Douglas
Collins, Form: Horst (Twin Palms). Mop-
plethorpe (Random House), H We Shadows
(Thames and Hudson), by David Bailey,
Cornell Cape: Photographs (Bulfinch), At-
get's Seven Albums (Yale), by Molly Nesbit
Double Exposure, Take Three (Morrow), by
Roddy McDowall, Public Appearances
(Vendome), by Lord Snowden, and Pole
Women (Schirmer/Mosel), by Helmut
Newton, an endlessly fascinating combi-
nation of fashion and erotica.

For food fanciers, we are at extremes
this season. It's either Real Beer and Good
Есі: The Rebirth of America’s Beer and Food
Traditions (Knopf), by Bruce Aidells and
Denis Kelly, or Champagne & Covior: A Con-
noisseur's Survival Guide (Capra), by Ar-
thur von Wiesenberger. For those more
interested in recipes for the funny bone,
uy Penn and Teller's hilarious How to
Play with Your Food (Villard)

Finally, everyone will tingle with joy
at the sight of the carnival of colorful
illustration in The Sign of the Seahorse
(Abrams), by Graeme Base, the Gnomes-
like fantasy of Dinotopia (Turner), by
James Gurney, and the dark, brooding
illustrations іп Тһе Widow’s Broom
(Houghton Mifflin), by Chris Van Alls-
burg. Make someone happy this holiday
scason with a book.

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MANTRACK

a guy’s guide to changing times

COED BOOT CAMP

Despite the brutishness of the Tailhook sexual harassment
incident, there is some good news for men and women serving
together in the Navy. In Orlando, Florida, where the Navy has
its only coed boot camp, men and women seem to bring out
the best in one another. While less than one percent of segre-
gated boot-camp grads earn top honors, Orlando boasts 38
cent who make the grade. TI benefits as well

The males don't have the camaraderie that females have, and
the females bring them out of their shells,” says one petty offi-
cer. “The females that ki
training with the males, it comes out.
“They helped me with my homesickness. They sort of replaced
my sisters.” OF course, cleverness is allowed to go only so far.
“We look for who is studying with whom, who's ironing clothes
with whom, and if we sec a pattern, we stop it right there,” says
one commander. “Romance is simply not tolerated.”

" Adds one male recruit,

TRAVEL TIP OF THE MONTH

those into male bonding, the Real n's Mid-Life Cri-
sis Tour offers a 15-day guided tour through Thailand. The
tour is heavy on typical ation treats such as sampling the lo-
cal cuisine, shopping for exotic items and sport fishing. At the
t to Bangkok's Kanga which is
renowned as one of the world's five sleaziest bars. The trip is
studded with arsions to macho attractions such as the

World War ‘Two, and a glimpse of the infamous Golden
gle, the source of much of the world's illicit drugs. The tourists

and visit othe
tural attractions such а
lors, nude beaches, back-all
pots and the world’s sixth and seventh
most sleazy bars. Cost for the two-
week getaway: $3500."—CHARLES
DOWNEY, Stabbed with a Wedge of Cheese

WHEN IS A MIATA LIKE A WOMAN?

“When you ask American men what is
sexy, they talk about the curve of the
hip and thigh and leg. They like the
rear three-quarter view,” explains ‘Tom
ough, but why does
mple—he's the top
U.S. designer for Mazda, and he uses
that information to help him and his
crew design new cars. "I like to take
new designers to restaurants where
they have a lingerie show, models walk-
ing around during lunch, and I ask
ber how the light falls on
s of the body," he told Automotive
"hen I take them out on the free-
way and we watch the cars go by, and I ask
them, What is the view you see most of
other cars? The three-quarter rear.” Appar-
ently, Matano has solved more than a design
mystery: He's also found a foolproof way to
get his co-workers to join him for lunch.

HEALTH UPDATE

Average sperm counts worldwide dropped
from 113 million in 1938 to 66 million in 1990,
according to scientists at the University of Co-
penhagen. Such a drastic decrease over such a

short time suggests environmental rather than genetic cau:
says Professor Niels Skakkebaek, It may be linked to an al
ing rise in testicular cancer, which is three to four times more
prevalent than it was a half-century ago.

WHY AMERICA ISN'T ALL THAT BAD

In South Kor the government has decreed that adultei
is a crime punishable by one year in prison, plus fin

THE ONE-MINUTE BOOK EXCERPT

pointless relations
though it's hopeless.

“All the boo!
no books that told the truth I had learn
er women talking about their

s Í was reading were devoted to making relationshi
-d—that some men simply aren't w
ences.’ 1 got a post-office box numb

'm glad I found out my man was a jerk before I got too involved. But I was still angry about the energy I wasted on a
p. Fhere are a lot of jerks out there, and a lot of women who are furiously trying to please them, even

ted a project to get oth-
Then I called my local newspaper. Letters

from women across the country flooded into my post-office box.

“I had hi

a nerve, It was very comforting to r

jer
crazy trying to ple:

c that I del
e. I wanted to share the stories of the hundreds of women who had contacted me so other women would see that there are
out there. I thought if I described some typical jerk behavior, women would recognize it and stop driving themselves

e men who could not be pleased. Almost every woman ha

nitely was not the only woman who'd had a jerk in her

had a ‘jerksperience’ in her life.

"Stop blaming yourself when things go wrong in your relationship. Because maybe he's just a jerk."

—CAROL ROSEN, Maybe He's Just a Jerk

31

32

THE RETURN OF THE WOMAN DRIVER

Before it was politically incorrect to do so, comics had a field
day with women drivers. You remember the jokes: Women are
slow, bumbling and indecisive; they cause, but are ly in,
numerous accidents, But as the reputation of women drivers
improves, some recent research indicates their actual driving
has gotten worse. Studies show that while male drivers’ fa
ities dropped by ten percent from 1975 to 1991, women's
c 3
percent. Carol Popkin
of the University of
North Carolina's High-
way Safety Research
Center is quick to
point out that women’s
total traffic fatality rate
is still a quarter of
men’s, but she admits,
“My suspicion is that
women have diflerent
driving skills.” As we
all know, different isn't.
always better. [he
my: Why have
women suddenly be-
come more dangerous
on the road? Is it
difficulty with spatial
relationships? Lack of
aggression? PMS? Too much Michael Bolton on the radio?
Not according to Pat Waller of the University of Mi
gan's Transportation Research Institute. She puts the blame
for the rise on women who drink and drive, noting that alco-
hol packs a bigger wallop in women: *We may have equality
under the law, but [nor] physiologic Especially affected
have been 30- 10 39-year-old womet ne of age in the
late Sixties, when, claims Waller, *
age adopting men's bad habits.”

talities sed

егу i

LIP SERVICE

“When I see women eat with men, they pick. But then you
get five women at a table and the pastry cart is upended.”
— JAY LENO

“1 for one was grateful when Kirstie Alley, in accepting her
пту Award, thanked her husband ‘for the big one.’ Size does
matter to us. So does shape. Length and width and degree of
curviness matter. They all describe a penis that may wind up
standing (or not) for the man himself.”

— WRITER LESLEY DORMEN IN Glamour

“| still have problems as a result of growing up in Catholic
Ireland, brought up to believe that sex is something dirty. As a
result of being told that sex is а sin and dirty and wicked. I un-
derstood that the woman's body was something to be ashamed
of, so I'm not comfortable with my body. In the church, you're
not brought up to be proud of being a woman.”

SINEAD O'CONNOR

always seemed streaks ahead of any other
y other form of social expression. Alter ай; food,
water and fucking, I th be music is the next human
necessity." — KEITH RICHARDS

WHO LIVES ALONE, WHO STAYS HOME AND WHO'S IN SHAPE

HOME ALONE

The tough economy has forced many men to live with
their parents or find roommates to help share expenses,
but one tenth of adult men live alone. Do they like it? Not
necessarily. According to a recent Roper survey, only 42
percent of lonely guys prefer solo living, while 50 percent
say they're forced to live alone because of current circum-
stances. But that doesn't mean they think they'll be finding
companionship any time soon: 50 percent predict
they'll live alone for the foreseeable future and only 27 per-
cent describe their current condition as temporary.

HOME NOT ALONE

ome men home alone, others are home taking care
of the kids. But there aren't many actual househusbands.
Only one percent of men take care of the home while their
wives go off to work, but the conservative l'd-rather-die-
than-stay-home-with-the-kids attitude is slowly softening.

pa

WOULD YOU BE A HOUSEHUSBAND?

49%
PERCENT MEN: M1992 Ml 1984
e 31%
4 19%
18% Я
PERFECTLY MIGHT ONIY F NO NEVERA
WILLING CONSDER IT OTHER CHOICE POSSIBILITY

THE SHAPE OF OUR SHAPES

‘The fitness boom has now been around about a decade,
and what do we have to show for it? Washboard stomach:
Well-defined pecs? Longer lives? Turns out we're less active
now than we were ten years ago. Comparing current data
to polls conducted dur-
ig the past decade, it’s
easy to see how Ameri-
can men got ca
the fitness
to slide bacl

into their

30% usual couch spud be-
havior. Fewer men say
they enjoy working out

25% and 33 percent admit
they do no ing

atall—the largest num-
ber of lard butts Roper
has discovered over ten
years. The antifitness
craze shows up every-
where: The number of
adults taki il
is dropping; same wi
men buying warm-up
suits, riding stationary
bikes or lifting weights,

20%

15%

10%

TENNIS

5%

1982 1985 1988

“Great Spirit, Guide Me Today”

š a x
em * 23K gold rim.
* Limited edition

In the shadowy mist of early
morning, а noble Indian warrior
raises bis arms to tbe heavens,
asking the Great Spirit to send bis
guidance on this day

This is the breathtaking scene
captured in “Deliverance” - the
remarkable, first-ever collector
plate by acclaimed Western artist
Chuck Ren. Ren has created a strik-
ing portrait of an Indian warrior -
dressed in buckskins and beaded
vest, his head crowned with a mag-
nificent full-feathered war head-
dress, representing a stately portrait
of great courage and strength.

“Deliverance” premieres the
artists Mystic Warriors Plate
Collection. Each fine porcelain
plate will be limited to a total of 2:

DELIVERANCE

firing days, hand-numbered on its
reverse, and accompanied by a
Certificate of Authenticity. The
Hamilton Collection 100% Satisfaction
Guarantee assures that you may
return any plate within 30 days of
receipt for a prompt replacement or
full credit.

Considering the popularity of
Ren's original works and the fact that
this is his first-ever collector plate, а
strong response to “Deliverance” is
anticipated. Send in your order with-
out delay!

01992 HC. All Rights Reserved

by

Sbown smaller than
Vu der О

Respond by: January 31, 1993

| Please enter my order for “Deliverance”. Limit:
| One plate per collector. н

9 507 when my plate is shipped.
i WTZIQQGA |
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The Hamilton Collection

MANTRACK

E.B. DU BOIS.

“How does it [eel to be a problem? "—

Du Bois was putting words into the mouth of a
white questioner, No one ever actually came out and asked
him to k them. No one has ever actually come out and
asked me, either, yet 1 know that many are itching to. 1 know 1
would be. Black men are this nation’s outlaw celebrities. It
doesn't matter what other modifiers also describe our individ-
ual essences—mechanic, police officer, le anded, Virginian,

kind, gangbanger, tall— black man” overrides them all and
makes us all, equally, desperadoes. My friends and I sometimes
take perverse pride in the fear the combination of our sex and

skin
arms wa

still in everyone else: The taxis that bolt past us as our
ve high over our meticulously coiffed heads, the re
ceptionists who mistake us for
suit-wearing bike messengers, the
cops who clutch their 45s when
they see us saunter out of Häa-
gen-Dazs. Imagine the weird
power you'd feel if you were a
bank teller, a postal worker or a
postmodern novelist who is able
to make a cop quake with fear
and call for backup. Unfortu
ly. these expectations cam get to
us after a while. Listen to black
comedian Franklin Ajaye: “1 was
walking down the street last night
and this old white couple kept
looking back at me like 1 was go-
ing to rob them. . . . So I did.

Dont get me wrong, 1 know
that black men commit a dispro-
portionate number of America's
nes. In fact, I need to know
that, since murder at the hands of
another black man is the leading
cause of death in my age group.
Ironically, black men have more
right than anyone else to rur
hide when another black m
heads our way on the
Yet we don't (most of us,
because we bother to зерлі

few bad from the legion of good.
American society as a whole,
however, tars us all with the same brush. We have become the

international symbol for rape, murder. robbery and uncon-
trolled libido. Our faces on the news have become synonymous
with anger, ignorance and poverty.

Increasingly, America seems to be painting us into two cor-
ners. In onc, we are the monsters they've always said we were.
In the other corner, we're fine, but all those other black men
are monsters. We are anointed honorary whites, so long as we
abandon every trace of out ethnicity

Black conservatives such as Shelby Steele espouse
liberation through assimilation. In one way, he is
correct. H is irrefutable that if we African Americ:
doned our culture, stopped griping
pot, we would be better off. The catch is the very real limit to
ambition. If we play by Steele's rules—work hard, scrimp.
па study —then one we just might become the vice
м of the United States. Therein lies the rub. In thi

individual
absolutely

Trey Ellis is the author of "Platitudes." His forthcoming novel,
“Home Repairs," will be published іп June by Simon and Schuster.

GUEST OPINION
BY TREY ELLIS

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A PROBLEM?

land of opportunity we can be promised riches, a
espect and respectability. But we know

we are sull са trom the highest corridors of
power. I's a crippling message. How can you expect someone
to dedicate his entire life training for the Olympics if
hope for is a silver medal?

Drug dealing and other crimin
s that offer us unlimited possibilities. Since we are already
goes the twisted logic, at least the sky's the
та. Tm not making excuses for the black c
nal—1 despise him for poisoning and shooting more of my
people than the cowardly Klan ever did. But we need to un-
derstand him asa human being if we're ever going to save him,
or at least save his younger brother or son.

When black folks mention slav-
ery, the rest of America. yawns.
But our county, with its history as
the home of the slave, has yet to
reconcile its тери as the

degree of

all he can

| activities are the only pur-

one on the planet. Naz
Khmer Rouge—that's not the sort
of company Americans like to
keep. И may seem like ancient
history to whites, but it doesn't
to blacks. Today's problems have
deep roots, and until we under-
stand the dark side of our history,
our nation will never pull itself
out ol its current racial morass.
Ш in American popular cul-
е, black signifies poor, ignorant
nd angry, then white signif
upper-middle class, educated and
moderate. From Ozzie 5 Harriet to
Home Improvement, upper-middle-
class white households are passed
off as average white families. The
lives of white folks are cleaned up
and idealized. Popular culture as-
sumes you will attend some sort of
college, own a home and marry
the mother of your child. You are
defined by the richest, hand-
somest, smartest and кайыр of
you. We are defined by our worst. Although
bl: men never have anything to do with the c
system, we are looked on as anomalies, freaks of nature or,
worse, thugs-in-waitin
diy, black people

we string two sente

ting to believe the bad p:
ces together, other black folks say, “Oh,
my, how well-spoken he is.” Hf we are married to the mothers
of our children, Delores Williams, a black activist in Los Ange-
les, hands cate and invites us to an awards banquet.
So little is expected of us that even our half efforts are wildly
and inappropriately praised.

Finally, and curiously, some of the ster
seem the least human—and the most animalistic—also make
us seem the most male. We are famous around the world for

wur physical and sexual potency. And what is more at the
essence of stercotypical machismo than bulging muscles and
big dangling balls? Although we hate being America’s villas
its not I bad. In Ame: always been
perversely revered.

ti

a ce

types that make us

always

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36

H owie Mandel gave a concert to
an audience of Naval Academy
midshipmen in Annapolis, Maryland,
this past August. At one point during his
manic routine, Mandel invited the wom-
en in the audience to step up on stage
and “perform oral sex,” as the Associat-
ed Press so delicately stated it. In other
words, Howie asked for a blow job.
Which is vintage Mandel.

If you have seen his act, you know that
Mandel captures a certain kind of crazy
male humor. But his humor is also what
gets him into trouble. Male humor—di-
rect, bawdy and unashamed—is under
ge today, and what happened to M
del at Annapolis proves it.

If you claim that you are shocked by
Mandel's invitation as reported by the
AP let me ask you three basic questions
(1) Breathes th a man with soul so
dead who doesn't think frequently about
the glories of oral sex? (2) If you were
giving a concert at Annapolis and had
some adoring female fans out there,
would not the wild and crazy part of you
want to say exactly what Mandel said?
(3) If you deny both of the above, have
you looked in a mirror lately?

Lets admit what Mandel admits: As
men, we are a perpetually horny bunch
of guys. We love sex and we love to laugh
about sex.

But I can hear the voice of the prude
as I write this. The voice of the prude
wants to stifle our male humor. It wants
to make us live by the standards of the
most puritanical and prim.

"So, Ace,” the voice asks, "you adm
that in matters of sexual humor, men are
often immature and juvenile?

Absolutely.

"And that men are rude, crude and
beyond salvation when they joke about
sex and love?"

No question about it.

“So when Howie Mandel does his rou-
tine, you want people to simply sit back
and enjoy his lewdness?

Mandel is a comedian. If you invite him to
perform, give him room to work. Those who
are offended can leave the hall. But don't
make your standards our standards

There is only one way to deal with the
folks who would censor male humor
And that is to get in their collective face
and be blunt about it. Call their blufi—or
give up your right to laugh at sex.

Still, the voice of the prude is every
where. The academy superintendent

PRUDES
AT SEA

was shocked by Mandel’s performance.
“As superintendent, I apologize to every

one in the audi Admiral
Thomas C. Lynch ademy
newspaper. “Ко one should be subjected
to that brand of humor at this great

institution."

Commander Mike John, an academy
spokesman, added his own support to
the admiral's rem: F we hadn't al-
ready cut a check for the concert, we
wouldn't have paid [Mandel], he was
quoted as saying.

In addition to fearing for the future of
male humor, I now also fear for the com-
bat effectiveness of the Navy. If Lynch
nd John
nd women to be
officers in battle, our cou
may be at risk.

Clearly, the academy is schooling
exquisitely polite and politically correct
group of naval leaders—but if the men
а polis shrink before the likes of
Howie Mandel, are they not too pure
and sweet for the grit and grime of w.

My guess is that the officers, staff and
midshipmen of Annapolis will probably
take the shami
officer and his spokesman without pro-
test. Those who go along, get along.

Between rumors of sexual shenani
gans during the Gulf war and the dar

c training our young men
Navy and Marine
future

гуз

publicity about the Tailhook Association
convention, maybe the Navy is running
scared. Whatever the case, censoring
Mandel's humor is counterproductive.

Most likely, there will be no faculty-
student petition demanding that Admi-
nch retract his puritanical pose.
There will probably be no editorials in
the academy newspaper praising Man-
del as a comic and celebrating his brand
of humor. There will be no public talk of
diversity of thought.

No, the midshipmen at Annapolis will
suppress themselves. They will condone
their superintendent's morality, and
they will hope thereby to avoid all con-
frontation with him. (They will not stop
fantasizing about oral sex, of course, but
their public pose will be that of the
neutered humanoid—a pose very few of
them are comfortable with.)

Sadly, today’s Americans (especially
men) tend to shut up and guiltily beg for
pardon whenever they are scolded about
their love of sexual laughter and play.
They know that a smile or chuckle or
gullaw at the wrong moment can lead to
charges of high crimes and misde-
meanors. H has come to this: Inap-
propriate humor can get you sued or
fired... or threatened with nonpayment!

I don't know about you, my fellow
American men, but 1 am really tired of
our hushed reactions to these people
who would shut us up and clean up our
act. I happen to be a man who has re-
fused to be quiet in the face of cen
and harsh judgments for
years now, and [ want some company

1 need backup. I need close air sup-
port and naval gunfire. How about it,
Navy midshipmen? Are you ready to
take back your humor? Soon, somet
soon, roll out a big banner in the dining
hall that says FREE HOWIE MANDEL. Give
him a cheer. Let your voices be heard.
Kick some ass. Take some names.

Mandel is your к not your ene-
ny. He has the com to say what most
of you guys thin Don't go along with
those who spu Make some nois

It won't be easy and it won't be pretty.
but you'll feel better after you do it, I
promise. And youll strike a blow for
freedom, for laughter, for blow jobs—
and for our right as men to proclaim our
universal love of sex and pleasure

Go, Navy!
El

ne

wei.

э

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WOMEN

n the Irish night, the moon looked
smudged and insecure through the
microscopic mist. My face and raincoat
were soaked. I had a huge scarf tied
around my head, looking like my own
Jewish grandmother as I stood at the
edge of the lake іп a quiet valley sur-
rounded by the hulking mountains of
Connemara. I heard a dog bark from a
farmhouse a mile away. The 18-year-old
boy put his arm around my waist. “Kiss
me," he said.

1 don't like the way things shaped up
with this Woody Allen thing. When the
news first came out, I didn't want to be
one of the knee. ninists booing
during Husbands and Wives. I was pre-
pared to be magnanimous, prepared not

actly to forgive but to feel compassion
for the self-destructive behavior of our
beloved tortured genius. I wanted every-
one to pity the man, not to ostracize him.
Vhat I wasn't prepared for was the
elasticity of our collective unconscious.
Somehow, society has stretched itself to
absorb Woody's problems. Somehow, ev-
erybody thinks it's OK that he's sleeping
with his ex-girlfriend's daughter. In fact,
it's more than OK. Woody has made old
men with young girls downright trendy.

Jesus. If Mia had done the same thing,
she would have been the object of every-
one's ridicule. People regard older wom-
en who have young lovers as predatory
and pathetic. Whereas geriatric men
with college girls are studs. Men get ev-
cry fucking break

Just before I went to Ireland, I accom-
panied my comedian friend to a Malibu
party. There was this guy there (I'm not
mentioning names, but he was a famous
activist in the Sixties and then became a
lefty politician). Dogs and с
romped in the waves as bodybuilding
rers served turkeyburgers. Mr. Ac-
t picked up the phone and dialed.
"Gould you please bring the dog over
now?" he said and paused. "] know
you're sick, but I'd really like you to
bring the dog over now, please.

Moments later a pretty girl with runny
eyes and a red nose arrived with a pant-
ing yellow Lab. "You're not mad at me,
are you?" she asked the activist.

I

“Goddamn it,” I s; to my friend.
"You know why men like younger
women?

“Because of their petal-soft flesh and
perky breasts?" he asked.
“A young woman is the perfect status

By CYNTHIA HEIMEL

NATURE IS
A BITCH

symbol for men to show off to their
friends. Plus, they think it will be easier
to boss a young girl around. They're
ght. Grown women don't take as much
shit from men as young girls do.”

“Although some guys want total con-
wol" the comedian said, "other guys
want a woman to have adventures wi
and tell everything to and fall down
laughing with."

"That makes me feel better,"
grudgingly.

"Of course, if she's a twenty-two-year-
old leggy supermodel, so much the bet-
ter," he added.

Not that I blame men. OK, I do, but
only because Lam a bad sport. It's biolo-
gy’s fault. Nature is not a feminist. If na-
ture were a feminist, women would have
no biological clock and no menopause.
Instead of being born with all the eggs
we'll ever have, women would produce
new eggs until we were 80, giving birth
would be a breeze and there would be no
such thing as a stretch mark. Men would
run out of sperm when they were 50,
whereupon everyone would approve as
we dumped our flabby husbands and
scooped up young dudes and started a
whole new life, a whole new family.

But nature doesn’t care about women,
nature cares only about the perpetua-
tion of the species. Nature is a bitch.

I said

On the way to Ireland I stopped in
London to visit Louisa. We lay on the
floor of her flat stuffing ourselves with
cream cakes and discussing why men
chase babies. I told her my theories of
status and power

"I don't think it’s that,” Louisa s:

think men fear aging, which m
fear death, which means if they find a
young popsy without crow's-feet, they
think they'll live forever."
But it doesn't work that way at all," I
said. "When I was with the Kiwi, who
was eleven years younger, I felt old and
silly. If anything, being with him under-
lined my fears of aging, my fears of
death."

“Which,” said Louisa, ^:
you are not a man."

In Ireland I looked up my friend Jen-
ny. Jenny had had a fairy-tale romance
with her boss, 15 ycars older. She was the
most ecstatic bride, going from a low-
paid clerk to Lady of the Manor with a
glamourous, dashing husband. We ar-
ranged to meet in a pub

Jenny arrived, thin as a stick. “I'm
leaving him," she said, puffing greedily
on acigarette. “All he wants to do is hang
around with his old friends and play
bridge. He never wants to go out danc-
ing or anything, and it’s gross when he
wants to have sex. He has so many love
handles he needs a bookmark to find his
shorts.

“If hed only do things at the spur of
the moment, just once in a while, I could
take it. But he's so careful, so bossy, so
dull. I'm young. I need fun! I need ез
citement! In twenty years he'll be dead
and I won't be pretty anymore!”

“and here everyone thought you were
Cinderella," I s

Jenny put out her cigarette. "IH there's
onc thing Гуе learned, it's that there's
no such thing as happily ever after."

There was a baby cook at my hotel in
gly beautiful Irish country-
е wasn't even fully formed. I
didn't feel right about going out with
him, but what the hell, I didn’t want to
kiss him, but what the hell.

The real mistake was sleep
him. I felt the chasm of the de
tween us. He was so far away I felt I was
sleeping with another species. It was like
bestiality. It was really funny.

Тат definitely not a man.

Ei

simply proves

ng with
ades be-

37

FAMOUS MAGNAVOX TV
SPOKESMAN CAUGHT ACTUALLY

USING THE PRODUCTS.

X] SUNDAY, 1:10 PM.
Mr. Cleese is caught
with his secret love: the
brilliant Magnavox
Portable CD Player.
Apparently he has

fallen under the spell
of the Bitstream
conversion that
gives pure digital
sound, and the fact
that it’s also a Car
CD Player with
an anti-shock
mechanism.
This photograph
also shows that
Mr. Cleese is
one of five
people in the
world who
actually likes
butterscotch
ice cream.

SATURDAY, 3:09A.M. ©
“J use the incredible Magnavox С t
VHS Camcorder all the time,” Cleese confessed. “Its light
weight. Has an 8 to 1 power zoom lens. And with a 1 lux sen-

sitivity, 1 can shoot this annoying owl who appears by my
window every night" When we asked the owl about Mr. Cleese,
he said, "Who?"

1992 Philips Consumer Electronics Company A Division сі North American Philips Corporation

A MONDAY, 6:48 Р.М. This shocking series of photographs proves that the Magnavox CD Radio Cassette Recorder
is so incredible thar it inspires everyone, even Mr. Cleese, to carry it everywhere. Perhaps it's because the CD Radio Cassette
Recorder has digital tuning, auto reverse, and a turbo bass generaror for greatly enhanced bass reproduction. When asked,
Mr. Cleese summed it up brilliantly: “Hey, Dude, its totally awesome.”

TUESDAY, 10:42 Р.М. 7
This photograph
exposes the ingenious
Magnavox 27" Stereo
Color TV for what it

really is: a brilliant,

state-of-the-art televi-
sion that comes with
a Universal Remote,
Sterco Sound and-
when hooked up to the
clever Magnavox Hi-Fi
VCR-features a color
Smart Window™ that
allows Mr. Cleese to
watch the game and
practice his Russian
Folk Dancercizes ...at

the same time!

MAGNAVOX

Smart Very Smart:

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF “BEVERLY HILLS COP”

МАСС I NOS

Col. Frank Slade has a very
special plan for the weekend.

It involves travel, women,
good food, fine wine, the tango,
chauffeured limousines
and a loaded forty-five.
And he's bringing Charlie
along for the ride.

Ew
A x

UNIVERSAL PICTURES ra a үп TIS pú a MARTIN BREST ИШ! T Mise AN? CRIS DIL
NUS NEWMAN us WILLA SINAN? MICHAEL TRONIOK "5s ANGEL) GRAHAM ШАКАТ ШЇ
иы BOCOLDMAN COMING SOON "el MARTIN IS Al

THE PLAYBOY ADVISOR

Kay day I sce attractive women who
arouse me sexually. My гіепа knows
and doesn't mind, saying, “I don't care
where you get your appetite. Just come
home for dinner.” But by the time 1 get
home, even my sexy lover has trouble
ning me on. Maybe I'm too tired.
be all those sexual zings during the
day deplete me. What do you think?—
W. T, Forest Hills, New York.

We think you should try hanging on to
those daily turn-ons by “simmering” them, a
technique sex therapist Bernie Zilbergeld de-
scribes in his recent book, “The New Male
Sexuality.” Whenever you're aware of а sex-
ual feeling, get into it. Take some time and
imagine in detail all the hot fun you'd like to
have with each woman who turus you on.
Then let the fantasy go. An hour later, return
to it and relive it. Continue replaying your
fantasies every hour or two, bul as you leave
work, substitute your real lover for your fan-
tasy ladies. You might also call her and let
her in on your imaginings. Simmering keeps
feelings of arousal bubbling until you and
‘your love are ready to connect

Frequently, after coming, I experience
atightness in my chest that lasts about 15
minutes. I don't smoke. I'm not ill. And
my wife and I do it in the same house, in
the same bed, with the same sets of
linens we've used for years, so I don't
think I’m allergic to anything. After two
years of postsex chest tightness, I asked
my doctor about it. He didn't have a
clue. Do you? Could sex cause i2—
G. N., Tampa, Florida.

Researchers say the symptom is similar
to exercise-induced asthma, the postathlelics
chest tightness and shortness of breath that
many top athletes experience, among them,
Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Of course,
lovemaking isn't nearly as strenuous as an
Olympic track event, but it can produce the
symptom you describe, which typically clears
up within a half hour. Consult an asthma
specialist, who may give you a prophylactic
medicine lo use before having sex.

Being an avid scuba diver, I used to
make a yearly pilgrimage with my bud-
dies to exotic dive sites in Hawaii or off
the Florida Keys. Now I want to turn my
girlfriend on to the sport, but I need to
find someplace where she doesn't have
to rough it. Ud also like a place where
she can earn her certification—she's not
into spending her free time after work at
the bottom of the local community pool
Any suggestion? —P N., New Haven,
Connecticut.

You're actually a short plane ride from а
few places that boast modern resort-style ac-
commodations above the waterline and that
are close to pristine reefs below it. Marina

Del Max, on the island of Key Largo, is a 30-
minute boat ride from the only living coral
reef in the continental U.S. To add a more
Joreign flavor to your trip, consider Palmas
Del Mar on Puerto Rico, or the Hyatt Re-
gency on Grand Cayman. At both hotel com-
plexes, shallow and deep dive sites are a bit
closer (fue to 20 minutes away), and the
wildlife of Grand Cayman is stunning:
Stingrays and turtles abound. The newest
resort is Club Med's Columbus Isle (reputed-
Б, Columbus first landed here 500 years
ago) on the largely uninhabited island of
San Salvador in the Bahamas. Unlike other
Club Meds—with their singles’ scenes and
dormitory-type atmospheres—Columbus Isle
was buill specifically for couples. Coral reefs
and wrecks start 300 feet offshore, and other
dive sites are less than half an hour away. All
of the above offer PADI or МАШ certifi-
cation courses for beginners. They are great
places where your girlfriend doesn't have to
worry about her next meal—she can just
worry about learning how to dive. And then
you can lake her to Belize for your next trip.

Combining sex and television, my girl-
friend and I give each other long, slow
hand jobs as we watch our favorite
shows. Alter caressing her between the
legs, I insert a finger or two, which
makes her squirm with what 1 thought
vas delight. But recently she confessed
mfort when I go “low and
What am I doing wrong?—A. C.
mosa Beach, Californi

Inserting those fingo
it low and inside, but your girlfriend is
clearly not one of them. Despite what you
may have seen women doing with dildos and
cucumbers in X-rated videos, few women in-

side.

, Her-

Some women like

ILLUSTRATION BY PATER SATO

sert anything when masturbating. Many
women prefer gentle caresses of the pubic
hair, vaginal lips and clitoris

One of my fantasies is to pick up а
woman in a bar and have her join my
wile and me in bed. My wife says that no
one does that. I don't imagine ména
trois are common, but surely some cou-
ples must try it. Any idea how many?—
T. L., Boulder, Colorado.

A lol fewer than have the fantasy. In a
recent survey by Kinsey Institute sex re-
searchers at the University of Indiana, three
percent of married men and one percent
of married women admitted having tried a
threesome. The vast majority said they'd
done it only once.

Having hooked up a video primer to
my television set, I am now considering
adding a photo CD player to the mix.
The question is, will I be able to make
prints from the CD2—F. W., Chicago,
Illinois,

Yes... but. Video printers can reproduce
any image on the television screen, including
those from a photo CD, but only at current
TV-quality resolution. Compared with what
youd gel if you went lo a photo finisher,
that’s significantly inferior (about 458 lines
of resolution versus the equivalent of 1048).
Of course, if you're interested іп printing
only wallet-sized photos of your girlfriend,
a video printer is a convenient and quick
alternative.

Taking the advice PLAYBOY gave in the
June 1992 fashion feature, I purchased a
washed-silk suit and a selection of silk
shirts. Now I need to know how to clean
them. Any advice®—G. R., San Diego,
Californi

You've gone six months without washing
them? To maintain the suede texture of
washed silk, your best bet is to haud-wash the
suit and shirts yourself. Use cool water with
a mild detergent such as Woolite, and then
either lay the garments flat or hang them up
so ihey retain their shape while drying. If
hand-washing is too much of a hassle, you
can machine-wash silk. Just stick with the
gentle cycle for the best resulis.

ІМ, vite and 1 have our best sex after
fights. The sex is fantastic, but 1 worry
that we're picking fights just to have fun
in bed afterward. Is this a problen
. E., Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Only if one of you gets hurt. Anger and
sexual arousal both involve powerful ema-
tions. They cause a buildup of physical and
emotional excitement and ultimately lead to
its release. After arguments, some couples
feel closer and more intimate, which is why

41

PLAYBOY

42

fights can be preludes to great sex. If thats
how il is in your relationship, then your
spats may be a mutually satisfying part of
your foreplay. But beware if fighting always
precedes lovemaking, if physical violence
occurs during your fights or if there are feel-
ings of increased emotional distance after-
ward. These suggest a need for professional
counseling.

ІМ, girlfriend and I plan to travel
abroad extensively during the усаг. How
can we get information on yaccinations,
health precautions and other travel ad-
y E., Baltimore, Maryland.
There are several numbers that come in
handy when you're looking for consistent, re-
liable information: The Centers for Disease
Control's International Travelers Hotline,
404-332-4559, provides information on
diseases, vaccinations and food and water
precautions for any number of countries.
The Aviation Safety Institute, 800-848-
7386, gives advice aboul airport securily
and flight safety. Travel advisories on crime,
health and polities in foreign countries are
available through the State Department's
Citizens Emergency Center, 202-647-5225.
For an update on weather conditions in a
specific area, call 1-900-wexinen, and for
95 cents a minute, they'll tell you when the
plains of Spain are mainly wet with rai

Although I've been lucky to have many
of my college friends live in the same с
as I do, it seems I never see any of them
Do you have any suggestions for getting
friends together without throwing a big
bash every few weeksz—P S. Miami,
Florida.

Try creating a supper club—what you
might call a salon with an appetite. A dozen
friends alternate keeping the good-old-boy
(and girl) network alive by hosting a Sunday
evening meal and sharing conversation and
commentary. The host provides the food and
liquor, so there's no scrambling around Sun-
day morning by the guests to find а good bot-
Ше of wine or red peppers for the salad. And
there are no expectations of grandeur; pasia
is perfectly acceptable if you put some effort
into the sauce. Each week's host also can in-
vile a few “ringers” 10 network or stimulate
conversation, Another alternative: Meet
once a month at a restaurant famous for its
Sunday brunch. We've even heard argu-
ments that such gatherings have become “the
sex of the Nineties.” We wouldn't go that far.
But it is a regular meal.

Sox in the nude is fun, but lately my
wile and 1 have discovered the special
turn-on of doing it clothed—not just in
pajamas or lingerie but fully dressed in
business attire. We've been wearing
loose clothes for easy access: boxer shorts
and pleated slacks for me, and for her,
billowy blouses, front-closing bras and

flared skirts with stockings instead of
panty hose. Any suggestions for doing it
dressed?—B. R., Creve Coeur, Missouri.

Why limil yourself to business attire? Try
doing it in baggy warm-up suits, strelchy
beachwear, old gardening duds or the
tumes you wore lo your last masquerade par
ty. We can imagine a wonderful evening
spent digging into each other's closets for
clothes lo model and test for easy access, es-
pecially anything you no longer wear. Try
cutting out pockets and crotches. That way
you can reach a hand through in а crowded
elevator:

T tike the took of faded jeans, but they're
more expensive than unwashed denim.
Is there any way to get that used look
without having to pay for it?—R. R., Salt
Lake City, Utah.

Try this: Fill your washing machine with
hot water. Add two cups of fabric softener
and one teaspoon salt. Mix the solution well
and then add the jeans. Soak them for half
an hour and wash as usual.

WI, erections have always curved a lit-
Че to the left. but recently they've be-
come considerably worse, making inte:
course a problem. Ten years ago a
doctor told me my penis could be
straightened surgically. But I couldn't
see getting cut there. Has medical sci-
ence come up with any new ways to treat
this problem?—N. N.. Sedona, Arizona.
Sorry, the treatment is still surgical.
Nowadays doctors make a small tuck with
stitches, which causes less bleeding, less risk
of overcorrection (winding up with an erec-
tion bent in the opposite direction) and less
loss of sexual sensitivity. The procedure is
called penile plication, according to a report
in The Journal of Urology. Of 40 men
ages 17 lo 44 who had the procedure, the re-
searchers said 96 percent were "complelel
satisfied” with the results.

Tin seriously considering marrying a
woman I truly love, but our sex is not
the best Гуе ever had. It's not bad, j
not great. Her desire isn't the problem,
but she's not very experimental, so our
lovemaking feels routine. Should 1 let
this stand in the way of popping the
questionz—H. N., Saginaw, Michigan.
Not necessarily, but we suggest postponing
it until you feel more positive about your love
life. Sexual boredom is no way to begin a
marriage. Of course, there’s also some com-
fort in routines. We suggest a nice-and-easy
approach to adding some zing to your love-
making. Encourage your almost-fiancée to
try just one new move а week. Take turns in-
troducing Й уон one week, she the next.
Keep the process light and playful. Show her
how much fun you both can have surprising
cach other. After а month or so, we hope
youll be enjoying an expanded sexual reper-

toire. Your ability to work out this problem
before you head for the altar could provide
important clues to your abilily to work out
other marital issues later.

Three months ago a friend's apariment
was burglarized, and she hasn't been too
cheery since. Apparently, the insurance
company covered only a fraction of her
loss. Now that I'm paranoid, is there
anything I should know before I call
insurance agent and get an earful of
mumbo jumbo?—A. C., Los Angeles,
California.

Be certain lo ask for replacement-cost cov-
erage, which, while more expensive, guaran-
tees your payoff will be enough to replace the
items that were stolen or destroyed. Other-
wise youll get only the depreciated value,
calculated by the insurance company (you
can imagine how that works). Have Ihe
agent explain each section of the policy, and
ask about “floater” coverage on personal ar-
ticles if you оит any particularly valuable
йет». Keep an inventory, photographs, те-
ceipls and appraisals off-premises to avoid
losing your documentation and having too
much interaction later with prickly, bargain-
hungry claims adjusters

Living in Manhattan, Im concerned
that if I buy a new car, it might turn up
AWOL. Does anyone track which cars
re stolen most often?—J. W., New York,
New York

The government tracks thefts, but don't
expect any automaker to brag that its models
are “the choice of thieves.” (Insurance com-
panies find the numbers useful, however, in
determining which car owners pay higher
rates.) Because pros strip stolen cars Jor
parts, which they then sell to unscrupulous
hody-shop owners, the hottest cars among
crooks are several years old. Topping the list,
the 1986 Chevrolet Camaro, followed by the
1987 and 1988 models. The 1987 and
1988 Pontiac Firebirds also disappear [re-
quently. (Older models also are popular be-
cause pelty thieves usually need a few years
to figure out how to beat factory-installed
antitheft devices.) Among new cars, those
with the highest ratios of pinched to produc-
tion include the Mazda 626, MX-6 and
RX-7, the Ford Mustang, the Volkswagen
Cabriolet, the Nissan 300ZX, the Toyota
Supra, the Cadillac Seville and Brougham,
the Porsche 928 and the Geo Metro. Station
wagons weight the bottom of the list.

All reasonable questions—from fashion,
food and drink, stereo and sports cars to dat-
ing problems, taste and etiquette—will be
personally answered if the writer includes a
stamped, self-addressed envelope, Send all
letters to The Playboy Advisor, FLAY HOY. 680
North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois
60611. The most provocative, pertinent
queries will be presented on these pages

cach mouth,

San Conlon Compan) 1 ea, 150% Не by Volume, Lisl KY 00992"

Itsa fresh blanket " snow, |

Acracklingfire; з.

` A warm feeling inside... . . d.
It's Southern Comfort... . :*

PLAYBOY Y

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THE PLAYBOY FORUM

RENCE TH

An evaluation of the newest justice's
first year on the bench, this article was
deemed too controversial (or ironic), ac-
cording io the New York Times law
column, for Reconstruction, the noted
black journal that commissioned it. The
article is presented here with minor edit-
ing. The author is a law professor at Indi-

ana University

When I was a youth, my mother
often admonished me: "If you can't
say something good about someone,
don't say anything at all" Heeding
this advice, I will not discuss the cyni-
cal and perverse use of racial politics
that led to Justice Thomas’ nomi-
nation to the Supreme Court, his
lack of qualifications, his duplicity

in daiming that he had never
formed an opinion on, or even se-
riously discussed, the constitu-
tional right to an abortion and his
hypocritical claim that Anita Hill's
allegations against him constitut-
ed a “high-tech lynching for uppi-

ty blacks." 1 will leave these un-
pleasant comments to those whose
mothers did not adequately ac-
quaint them with the finer tenets

of polite behavior.

Atthis point, uncharitable rcad-
ers may be thinking, If you can't
say anything bad about Clarence
Thomas, what's to say? To these
Thomas doubters 1 say, "Pshaw!
Look at his record last term in
criminal law and procedure.”

At first glance, it may seem that
Justice Thomas is about as warm.
to the plight of criminal suspects
and prisoners as that frosty can of.
Coke on his desk at the EEOC. But,
what the heck. These people are
scum anyway, right? Justice Thomas
is for giving them exactly what they
deserve.

Take, for example, Hudson vs.
McMillan. The majority opinion de-
scribed Hudson's injuries as follows:
Hudson was in handcuffs and shack-
les; one guard “punched him in the
mouth, eyes, chest and stomach,"
while another "kicked and punched
him from behind. . . . The blows loos-
ened Hudson's teeth and cracked his

: IN PRAISE OF

By CRAIG BRADLEY

partial dental plate, rendering it
unusable for several months."

In his dissent, Thomas argued that
Hudson did not suffer cruel and un-
usual punishment because he did not
demonstrate a “significant injury.”

Only Justice Scalia agreed with
this narrow reading of the Eighth
Amendment, while such weak-kneed,
soft-on-crime liberals as Rehnquist,
White and O'Connor held it was a
violation of Hudson's constitutional
rights and the basis for a federal
civil action.

In another criminal case, Riggins us.
Nevada, Justice Thomas again de-
murred from the same lily-livered
majority that prevailed in Hudson.
Even Justice Scalia did not fully
appreciate the wisdom of Justice
‘Thomas’ "don't mollycoddle crimi-
nals" approach. In this case, the pusil-
lanimous majority objected to a
defendant's compulsory medication
prior to trial. The majority accepted
the defendant's claim that he may not
have fully comprehended the pro-
ceedings against him. They also ac-
cepted the argument that forcing him

to appear at the trial in a medicated
state deprived the jury of the oppor-
tunity to observe the psychotic behav-
ior underlying his insanity defense.
Justice Thomas began his dissent
by pointing out that Riggins wasa no-
good murderer who stabbed his vic-
tum 32 times. He then said that the
state court's findings—that Riggins’
defense was not impaired—were good
enough for him, and that Riggins
should be required to prove that the
result of the trial would have been
different if he had not been medi-
cated. (Lots of luck proving that,
Riggo!) Finally, in a portion of the
opinion that even the usually
staunch Justice Scalia did not have
the guts to join, he asserted that
once a psychiatric patient has
agreed to be medicated, he waives
any future right to demand that
medication be discontinued.
Despite Justice Thomas’ largely
unblemished record of voting for
the state and against the defen-
dant, there was one case in which
he cast the deciding vote in a five-
to-four decision reversing the de-
fendant's conviction. In so doing,
he disagreed with Justice Scalia,
with whom he usually sings in har-
mony. What case caused the milk
of human kindness to run in Jus-
tice Thomas’ otherwise icy veins?
The case of the hapless Keith
Jacobson, who was entrapped by
wily government agents into plac-
ing a mail order for child pornog-
raphy. How can Thomas, a man
undisturbed by shackled prison-
ers being beaten by prison guards,
find a constitutional error in this kind
of enterprising police behavior? Why
was he sympathetic to this man? Spec-
ulation on this point would be utterly
without redeeming social value.
Justice Thomas is now in place to
strike blow after blow against the kind
of wild-eyed judicial activism that
brought us school integration, free-
dom of choice and the right of crimi-
nal defendants to counsel. Let pinkos
like Hodding Carter ІП call him one
of the “kept men" of the Reagan- Bush
era. 1 dub him Bork's Revenge.

45

46

R E

1 enjoyed The Playboy Forum's
“The Blameless Society II" (Au-
gust). As an avid biblical re-
searcher, I've found that the
first record of blame shifting is
in Genesis 3:12, when, after
committing spiritual suicide by
disobeying God, Adam conve-
niently blames the woman for
his actions and blames God for
giving her to him. The actual
sin is hidden in a figure of
speech. The moral? In a spiri-
tually bankrupt individual, the
first. characteristic of human
nature is to shift blame. It's
only natural.

Nick Ritter

Westmont, Illinois.

AIDS
Your editorial response to
the letter by Tim Wilkes on “No
Sex Ed" (“Reader Response,”
The Playboy Forum, August)
identifies three major contribu-
tors to the transmission of HIV:
homosexual sex, IV-drug use
and blood transfusions. You
further state that teenagers
need more information be-
cause they haven't gotten the
message. There is no one in
America who does not know
that the transmission of AIDS is
directly associated with sexual activity
and IV-drug use. To make a claim to
the contrary is pure bullshit. We are
asked to pour millions of dollars into
education to accomplish nothing more
than a restatement of the obvious. It is
fruitless to spend more money to cor-
rec a problem that begins with the
people, not with the government.
Kirby L. Wallace
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Whatever happened to "we, the people"?
While most Americans may be aware of the
most common forms of transmission of the
AIDS virus, they still do not consider them-
selves at risk. The difference between know-
ing and acting is the difference between life
and death. Life is worth the effort.

CLEAN BREAKS
lmagine that, though totally inno-
cent, you are mistakenly charged with
"possession of a schedule II controlled
substance with the intention of distri-
bution." Six months later, when the
charges are finally dropped, your

REALITY GHECK

Gwen Jacob was arrested for indecent acts
because she shed her shirt one warm day in a
town in Ontario, Canada. In court she argued
that breasts are not sexual organs and that
men's and women’s breasts should be equal un-
der the law. Judge Bruce Payne didn't think so.
His judgment: “Anyone who thinks that the
male breast and the female breast are the same
is not living in the real world.”

E R

record is again clean—right? Wrong.
How many hundreds of American citi-
zens who have found themselves in a
similar situation don't yet realize that,
even though cleared of charges, they
still have a criminal record? That is the
usual practice. In Anderson County,
South Carolina, an effort has blos-
somed to encourage our representative
to introduce legislation that would re-
quire all dropped charges to be purged
from federal records. Ask your con-
gressperson to follow suit —sponsor-
ing such a bill might turn out to be
good privacy insurance. Ignore the is-
sue and it could become an act you'll
live to regret.

Gus Wentz

Sandy Springs, South Carolina

BACKLASH

Last February a group of Canadian
feminists, aided by Catharine MacKin-
non, convinced Canada’s Supreme
Court that violent or degrading sexual-
ly explicit material is harmful to

women. Since Canada essen-
tialy adopted the new stan-
dard, only one publication has
been prosecuted: a lesbian
magazine produced by women
for women. The magazine, Bad
Altitude, features pictures of
bound naked women that, un-
der the Canadian criminal
code, have the dominant char-
acteristic of “undue exploita-
tion of sex" and are therefore
in violation of the regulation.
The feminists cried foul, claim-
ing that crotic images of wom-
en produced by women differ
from the pornographic images
produced by men and are, in
fact, political statements. Give
mea break.

Matthew Falk
Ontario, Canada

BATTERED WOMEN
In response to feminist pres-
sure over the past two years,
several governors have par-
doned women imprisoned for
killing their mates, citing the
battered-woman syndrome as
cause for mercy. Courts now
routinely accept as a defense
the profile of the battered
spouse who, having endured
long-term abuse, feels inca-
pable of extricating herself and
kills her husband in self-defense. I
don't buy it. What this defense really
implies is that men are fair game for
homicide because of some innate bru-

tality. Where's the justice in that?

Michael Rose
Jamaica, New York
Good PR does not justice make. There has
been a good deal of judicial sympathy sur-
rounding cases of spousal homicide. Statis-
tics reveal that while wife battering is a real
trauma, it has been used to justify acts that
closely resemble premeditated murder. The
Baltimore Sun and The Columbus Dis-
patch investigated several of the women
pardoned under this defense: One woman
hired a hit man to kill her husband, then col-
lected on his life insurance. Six had dis-
cussed killing their spouses before doing so,
and two had tracked down and then killed

hushands from whom they were separated.

CHURCH AND STATE
As a resident of San Diego, I read
with interest about the Christian ac-
tivism in my neighborhood (“The

FR Buss

P Оо

Myth of Church and State," The Playboy
Forum, October). It’s sad that these so-
called Christians continue to rely on an
archaic, often altered and routinely
misinterpreted manuscript to judge
other people's existences. To live one's
life based on principles outdated by
human experience, reasoning and sci-
entific discovery is to live in the dark
recesses of godly inspired intellect.
Jeffrey David Allen
San Diego, California

In response to Bob Howells' article
on Christian activism, the Christian
Coalition must be stopped. If its beliefs
become any more warped, it should be
committed not only for its own safety
but for that of each and every US. citi-
zen. Without freedom of religion, this
country could easily become like many
countries of the Middle East, where a
single state-endorsed religion controls
everyone's lifestyle regardless of indi-
vidual belief. Remember the restric-
tions placed on our U.S. service people
during Desert Storm? All non-Muslim
religious artifacts had to be hidden,
and there were restrictions on food, al-

A recent issue
of the Reverend
Donald Wild-
mon's American
Family Association
Journal offered
a congressional
scorecard for
"family values."
The idea was to
indicate the cor-
rect vote for congressmen. Our
idea? Look at what Wildmon calls
family values. To wit:

Senate members had 13 chances
to score big by voting for term lim-
its, abstinence-based sex education,
confirmation of Justice Clarence
Thomas (Thomas, in case you for-
got, said he didn’t have an opinion
on abortion), school prayer (the
amendment tied the benefits of
prayer to problems such as teen sui-
аде, pregnancy, low SAT scores and
sexually transmitted disease), choice
in education, a presidential line-
item veto (in effect, giving the presi-
dent rather than Congress the abili-

cohol, women’s dress and actions. That
was a theocracy at work. Any wonder
most of us want—and the country
needs—a guaranteed separation of
church and state?

David Kveragas

Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania

VERDICTS

In the interest of maintaining а right
to privacy, freedoms of press, assembly
and speech and other constitutional
freedoms, a coalition called the Fully
Informed Jury Association is working
to resurrect the little-known legal doc-
trine of jury veto power. Under this
doctrine, trial jurors can acquit a de-
fendant, regardless of submitted evi-
dence, on the basis of jury disagree-
ment with the law itself. America’s
founders considered this power to be
the final check on government. To this
day, jurors legally retain the waditional
power to vote according to conscience,
without fear of reprisal. Without it
there would be the frightening possi-
bility that the Bill of Rights could come
to be prohibited by law. Unfortunately,
judges routinely—and wrongly—tell

ty to micromanage federal law).
holding down taxes and the bal-
anced-budget amendment (which
would curtail such entitlement pro-
grams for the poor as Medicare).
Senators needed 10 vote against
abortion counseling at federally
funded clinics, the midnight con-
gressional pay raisc, abortions in
overseas military hospitals, taxpay-
er-funded “pornography” (e.g., the
National Endowment for the Arts)
and fetal-tissue research.

House members also had 13
chances to prove their worth to the
family values pit bulls by voting for
holding down taxes, abstinence-

N <S

jurors that they must follow the law as
they explain it, so most people are not
aware of their tremendous power. The
FIJA has been working to restore that
knowledge for the past three years. For
more information, call 1-800-TEL-JURY.
Don Doig, FIJA National
Coordinator
Larry Dodge, FIJA Field
Representative
Helmville, Montana

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

If a man says to a woman employee,
“Sleep with me and I'll give you a pro-
i it's considered sexual harass-
ment, whether or not the woman con-
sents. Now, if a woman proposes to her
boss, "Give me the promotion and ГЇЇ
sleep with you," has the man been sex-
ually harassed? Most people would say
no. If the woman goes back on her
promise after he promotes her, has the
man then been sexually harassed?
Probably. Is she guilty of breach of con-
tract? Definitely. Can the man sue her

for it and win? Not a chance.

David Harten
Williamsville, New York

based sex edu-
cation, congres-
sional term lim-
its, "economic
growth" (versus
"raising taxes")
and the bal-
anced-budget
amendment—
cutting back
programs for
the poor. They had to vote against
franked mail service for Congress,
surveys of human sexual behav-
ior, taxpayer-funded abortions, hir-
ing quotas (so employers wouldn't
have to "defend" personnel deci-
sions to civil rights commissions),
abortions in overseas military hos-
pitals, taxpayer-funded "pornog-
raphy," abortion counseling at fed-
erally funded clinics and fetal-tissue
research.

Hold on. Term limits? Line-item
veto? These are family-value issues?
Not in our house. As for the other
issues .. . we don't have to tell you
where we stand on those, do we?

47

48

READER RESPONSE
(continued)
JAILED IN THE U.S.A.

In response to Reg Potterton's “A
Criminal System of Justice” (The
Playboy Forum, September), I thought
you might want to hear one person's
experience with the war on drugs and
mandatory minimum sentencing:

At seven AM. on August 7, 1991, a
knock on the front door woke my girl-
friend, Debbie, and me.

“DEA—open up!"

“You got a warrant?”

my

“OK, стоп in. It's open."

With guns drawn, matching wind-
breakers, baseball caps and jogging
pants, 20 or so agents entered the
beautiful house Га built with my own
hands over the past nine years. Identi-
fying myself, 1 showed them the mari-
juana plants they demanded to see. I
thought that they couldn't be seriously
worried about a 50-year-old lawyer
growing pot for his own use on his own
property. I was going to be coopera-
tive: I knew they could make this stage
of the process horrible. They promised
me Debbie wouldn't be arrested.
Naively, I believed them

Of course, they lied to me and ar-
rested Debbie, too. After a few hours in
jail, we were taken before a magistrate,
who released us on our signatures
pending trial.

I've smoked marijuana for the past
20 years, on a daily basis for 15 of those
years. During that time I raised my two
daughters (one's a lawyer, the other a
high school history teacher). I've also
learned three foreign languages, hung
out with a guru and built a beautiful
log and stone house from trees and
rocks on my property. My house was
heated with firewood I cut, and I grew
my own vegetables. I even made jam
from berry bushes on my property. I've
maintained a successful law practice,
winning precedent-sctting cases in the
highest court of New York. I was about
tobe installed as president of our coun-
ty bar association.

The first thing the government did
was to take my home and surrounding
property, where I grew my pot. Then
my license to practice law was put in
Jeopardy. All my work of the past 15
years was threatened.

Growing pot in New York is only a
misdemeanor, but on the federal
level, the charge was manufacturing
marijuana, which carries a mandatory
minimum sentence of five years if more
than 100 plants are found. Five years!
That's more than you'd get for a feder-

al armed bank-robbery conviction.

My lawyer and I urged the U.S. dis-
trict court that the federal threshold
should not apply—only 55 of the plants
seized should count since the rest were
male and incapable of producing a
high. The court didn't buy it.

1 got five years. No one thought the
five-year sentence was just. However,
there it was on the law books, passed in
1988 as part of the Controlled Sub-
stance Act, a mandatory minimum sen-
tence. It was an attempt to intimidate
dealers and drug lords.

“I've had people charged with dis-
tributing dangerous drugs on the
streets before me constantly during the
past three years,” Judge Vincent Brod-
erick said when he sentenced me. “I've
been able to sentence them to far less
than what I'm sentencing Mr. Proyect
to. . . . I'm very unhappy about impos-
ing this sentence.”

Judge Broderick allowed me to re-

“It was dumb

and he should

be punished.

But, my God,

ten years!”

main free until my appeal. I don't ex-
pect to win. I'm fighting the law, but
the law is winning—and 1 now know
that it's been a lot harsher for others in
similar situations.

What I didn't realize was that they—
the Bushies and other conservatives
who profit from drug-war hysteria—
can't afford to permit people like me to
exist. It ruins their smoke-and-mirrors
routine to have productive members of
society who are also pot smokers. So
what do they do? They ruin them.

Joel Proyect
South Fallsburg, New York

Joel Proyect, an attorney for 25 years, of-
ten defends the homeless and indigent on a
фто bono basis.

I want to thank you for running "A
Criminal System of Justice." I hope you
keep this issue in front of your readers
until Congress amends mandatory
minimum sentencing laws. My son-in-

law, who had no prior convictions, was
just sentenced to ten years with no pro-
bation for making a phone call in con-
nection with a narcotics deal. It was a
dumb thing and he should be pun-
ished. But, my God, ten years! Society
is not being served by locking up peo-
ple and throwing away the keys.

Cal Conniff

Longmeadow, Massachusetts

Structuring criminal sentencing with
mandatory guidelines is a dehumaniz-
ing approach to justice. The creation of
these guidelines under the guise of
fairness and consistency has reduced
the role of the judge from decision
maker to courtroom attendant. Judges
can no longer formulate sentences
based on their judgments. They are
bound by an inflexible, impersonal and
formulaic approach. The current sys-
tem makes the wrongheaded assump-
tion that all drug cases are identical
and therefore the same formula can be
applied to yield a fair result each and
every time. In reality, justice is not a
mathematical equation. You can't plug
in variable factors and obtain a consi
tent outcome. The legislature is forcing
the judiciary to impose а consistent
sentence, no matter what the mitigat-
ing factors. That's like jamming a
square peg into a round hole.

Robert J. Roque

Miami, Florida

I am presently being held as a feder-
al prisoner. Your article, "A Criminal
System of Justice,” is applauded by all
of the federal inmates here who are
fighting for their lives. Thank you for
bringing the topic to the public's atten-
tion. Mandatory minimum laws and
regulations are grossly disproportion-
ate to the crimes committed. Alternate
programs should be available, or the
spirit and well-being of this country are
in danger. Keep up the good work.

David Jines
Plymouth, Massachusetts

After reading Reg Potterton's mov-
ing article, І could not help but picture
our forefathers who fought so hard to
ensure our individual rights and liber
ties. These men, at great personal cost
to themselves and their loved ones,
founded a system of government guar-
anteed to protect every American from
the tyranny they were forced to endure
under another government's control.
They must be spinning in their graves
over how our government has de
stroyed what they created. Immediate-
ly after reading The Playboy Forum, I

GE

wrote to each and every senator and
congressman in my state about chang-
ing mandatory minimum sentences for
first-time offenders. Although manda-
tory sentences may be a deterrent for
serious repeat offenders, we must safe-
guard the rest of society from the abus-
ез of their application.

Kathleen A. Schrama

Franklin, New Jersey

I just finished reading Reg Potter-
ton's article and I'm horrified that our
government could enact such a ridicu-
lous piece of legislation. 1 am an active
member of the NRA and have for years
been a strong believer in its views on
mandatory minimum sentencing for
violent crimes and violent criminals.
But I do not believe that a lopsided ap-
plication of the law to drug-use cases
will do anything but crucify otherwise
peaceful, law-abiding citizens who have
done nothing more damaging to our
society than if they had made an illegal
left turn. I believe drug dealers and
pushers should get stiff sentences for
their crimes. Drug users are the ones
who should be considered for proba-
tion or community service, not mur-
derers and rapists. If we're going to
spend billions of dollars each year on
our jails and justice system, then we
damn well better get—and keep—the
right people behind bars.

Mark M. Porter
Sparks, Nevada

Reg Potterton's article mentions Ju-
lie Stewart, who began Families Against
Mandatory Minimums. | would like to
obtain her address, as I am interested
in trying to change mandatory mini-
mum jail terms.
Karen Lee Baker
Medford, Oregon
The address for FAMM is 1001 Pennsyl-
vania Avenue, N.W, Suite 200 South,
Washington, D.C. 20004; 202-457-5790.

Federal law on mandatory sentenc-
ing is flawed and distorts the true
meaning of a crime. Tobacco is a drug,
yet the tobacco industry is allowed to
promote smoking through print and
billboard advertising, and the federal
government collects taxes from tobacco
sales. Alcohol is a drug, yet commer-
cials abound on television linking beer
consumption to being sexy, athletic
and having fun. And the federal gov-
ernment collects taxes from beer, wine
and liquor sales. The federal law that
makes growing 100 or more marijuana
plants а felony punishable by a manda-
tory five-year prison sentence is cruel.

It should be amended or taken off the
books. Or maybe the federal govern-
ment should just find a way to tax
the stuff.
C. Richard Read
Parksville, New York

How long will it take the public to re-
alize that first-time nonviolent offend-
ers are in prison while violent repeat
offenders are on the streets? I am a
first-time drug offender with a 24-year
mandatory sentence and I know just
how true these stories are. The courts
rely on the abuse of the individual's
rights to obtain a conviction, all in the

name of a useless war. Money spent on
education and rehabilitation, not pris-
ons, will deter drugs and crime.
Blake Anderson
Crowley, Colorado

On behalf of myself and my family,
we wish to thank you for Reg Potter-
ton's article. He did an outstanding
job. Please keep up the good work.
Loren Pogue
Three Rivers, Texas
Pogue, the inspiration for Potterton's ar-
tide, is serving a mandatory minimum 27-
year sentence. His 25 children and foster
children are waiting for his release.

The World Health Organization
tracks the status of global repro-
ductive health as part of its man-
date. In its 1990-1991 biennial
report, it found the following:

More than 100 million acts of
sexual intercourse take place
daily, resulting in about 910,000
conceptions and about 350,000
cases of sexually transmit-
ted disease.

Of the 150,000 abortions
induced daily, one third
are performed under un-
safe, adverse conditions,
resulting in approximately
500 deaths.

A fertility rate decrease
from 6.5 to 3.5 (the aver-
age number of children
per woman), in itive of
successful family plan-
ning, was achieved in sev-
en years in China, eight in
Thailand, 15 in Colombia,
27 in Indonesia and 58
years in the U.S.

The report further indicates
that progress in emphasizing re-
productive health concerns has
been discernible but slow:

Less than $63 million is spent
annually on the research and de-
velopment of new contracep-
tives. In the face of liability, de-
velopment costs and political
controversy, contraceptive re-
search raises a red flag, and the
pharmaceutical industry is taking
a pass.

Globally, WHO found that more
than 300 million couples still do
not have access to family-plan-
ning services.

The WHO report concludes
that reproductive health affects
the global balance between pop-
ulation and netural resources.
People who have inadequate ser-

vices and little information are
more likely to overpopulate and
overuse natural resources. WHO
‘sums up the need for global sta-
bility and cooperation with a nod
to the technological revolution:
“The last decades of this century
will probably go down in human
history as the decades of global
consciousness. We live in the
generation that had the first
chance to see our planet from
space for what it is, a small glob-
al village in an infinite universe."

What were the top news stories this
past year? The trial of William Ken-
nedy Smith? Woody Allen? Gennifer
Flowers? Madonna? Murphy Brown?
The dream team?

Now for the tough ones: Who killed
the most Americans in the Persian

heroes from the front line of free speech

bank robber. I turned to writing.” Mar-
tin, a convicted felon, began reporting
about life in prison in August 1986 with
an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
He quickly learned the price of criticiz-
ing his keepers: His 1988 article about
a warden's new restrictions landed him

Apparently, literary aptitude is a phase
of intelligence under FBI jurisdiction.
In Alien Ink: The FBI's War on Freedom
of Expression, Robins writes about 148
authors—from Ezra Pound and John
Reed to James Baldwin and William
F. Buckley, Jr—who had to endure

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Gulf? How much will the savings-and-
loan bailout cost you, the taxpayer?
Why do we know more about Rose-
anne than we do about Bosnia?

A free press doesn't have to be free of
content or courage. Every year, Carl
Jensen, a professor of communications
studies at Sonoma State University,
puts together a list of the top ten junk-
food news stories. Jensen then lists the
ten mostimportant-butignored sto-
ries. For that effort—reminding the
press that we are watchdogs, not lap-
dogs—we gave Carl Jensen an HMH
First Amendment Award for education.

There are some individuals who
keep alive the spirit of the First
Amendment, who pursue soul rather
than celebrity. They are not your usual
heroes. Dannie Martin says of himself:
"] failed as a citizen and I failed as a

STS

in solitary confinement. Peter Suss-
man, an editor at the Chronicle, took up
his cause and fought attempts by
prison officials to silence Martin. Both
Martin and Sussman received HMH
First Amendment. Awards for print
journalism.

Natalie Robins is a distinguished po-
et and author. In 1984 she read about
the FBI's surveillance of John Stein-
beck. Curious, she made a random list
of more than 100 authors and sent it to
Washington with a Freedom of Infor-
mation Act request. The FBI claimed
that it had “no program of maintain-
ing files on writers or anyone else in
the communications profession, unless
that individual or individuals con-
cerned the subject of a possible legal vi-
olation of the law, or else some phase of
intelligence under FBI jurisdiction.”

phone taps, mail searches and charac-
ter assassinations. She discovered an-
other 250 writers whose views on civil
rights were sufficiently inflammatory
to merit an FBI file. Robins’ one-wom-
an crusade won her an HMH Award
for book publishing.

Not everyone who reads stories of
government repression feels anger. At-
torney Bruce Rogow has a different
perspective. “He feels that those who
would restrict speech and censor oth-
ers do so with the best of intentions,”
says colleague Beverly Pohl. "Govern-
men's goal, when limiting First
Amendment freedoms, is often to try to
better the community or to protect
those who need protecting. Too often,
those good intentions run afoul of the
First Amendment. But the Constitu-
tion, as a restraint on governmental

power, is the true protection—protect-
ing minority views from overzealous
government and majoritarian censor-
ship.” Rogow takes that attitude into
court and wins. He has successfully
used the First Amendment to defend 2
Live Crew against charges of obscenity;
to challenge the city of Miami when it
threatened to evict the Cuban Museum
of Art; to protect poor people demon-
stating against housing discrimina-
tion, police harassment and unfair
employment practices; to protect anti-

nuclear demonstrators, gay groups,
women’s groups, Vietnam veterans,
American Nazi Party members and
Seminoles. He makes justice work for
the people. In honor of this, he re-
ceived the HMH Award for law.

Jules Feiffer, winner of the award for
individual conscience, has been a foe of
human inequity and a champion of
the First Amendment for the better
part of his life. The cartoonist, satirist,
playwright, novelist and winner of a
Pulitzer Prize says that he continues to

draw because “they still aren't doing
things my way. - . . My God, we've gone
through this so many times, why can't
we have it right just once? Everybody
knows what's happening. It seems so
little to ask that things go right."

"Things go right only when we pay at-
tention to what is important. While too
often the media spend time on cotton-
candy coverage of famous people mak-
ing fools of themselves, we recognize
a few individuals whose consciences
keep the First Amendment alive.

c

52

МЕ М

SFR

O N T

what's happening in the sexual and social arenas

OB/GYN, NO FEE, FINS

JERUSALEM—News of the latest in holis-
tic birthing comes from Israel. Eight expec-
tant British mothers are flying to the Red
Sea resort of Eilat, where they will spend

their days swimming with dolphins. When
the moment arrives, the gentle mammals
will, it is hoped, attend the birthing. “The
babies will be more calm and open,"
promises the dolphins’ trainer.

VICTIMS" SYNDROME

GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA—A
survey of women students at the Universi-
ty of North Carolina at Greensboro found
that those who experienced rape situations
as college freshmen were much more likely
to have been victims of childhood sexual
abuse. These women had a 239 percent
greater chance of being the targets of rape
or altempled rape than other women.
Psychology professor Jacqueline White
speculated that perhaps rapists sense vul-
nerability in women. Now, don't go ош on
a limb, Professor White.

CONDOM USE

WASHINGTON, D.C—Public opinion is
beginning to accept what politicians
can't—that condoms should be distributed
in schools. Responding to a Gallup Poll,
68 percent of those surveyed supported dis-
tribution. However, 43 percent said con-

doms should be given to all students, while
25 percent approved of distribution, but
only with parental consent.

HEAL THYSELF +

LOS ANGELES—Psychotherapy appears
10 have a remarkably high percentage of
practitioners who suffered psychological,
physical or sexual abuse. A study in the
journal Professional Psychology: Re-
search and Practice found 70 percent of
the women and one third of the men who
work as clinical or counseling psycholo-
gists reported childhood sexual abuse,
physical assault or harassment. "The most
common slip that therapists make is to sub-
stitute the word ‘parent’ for "patient," said
Dr. Jesse Geller of Yale University. "It sug-
gests that ın some symbolic sense, many
therapists go into the field to cure their par-
ents, to undo how they were raised.”

GAY BRAINS

LOS ANGELES—Dan Quayle may believe
that homosexuality is the result of negative
parental influence or misguided personal
choice, but scientists now say it has a bio-
logical basis. UCLA researchers report that
an important structure connecting the left
and right sides of the human brain, larger
in women than in men, is even larger in
male homosexuals.

PRE-CHILD ABUSE

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT—Several
years ago, state officials removed а child
from its mother’s custody because she'd shot
"up cocaine as she went into labor. The
Connecticut Supreme Court found the ac-
tion unconstitutional. It based its decision
on a strict interpretation of a state law that
does not grant prenatal civil rights or rec-
ognize the existence of a legal parent-child
relationship until the time of actual birth.
This ruling could set a precedent in abor-
tion rights cases across the country.

AIDS UPDATE

mUFFALO—AÀ federal judge awarded
$155,000 to a 38-year-old woman with
AIDS who claimed she was a victim of ab-
surd precautions while confined to a coun-
ty jail on bad-check charges. Jail officials

isolated her in a five-cell forensic unit usu-
ally reserved for the mentally disturbed,
forced her to wear rubber gloves when us-
ing the jail library typewriter, denied her
regular attendance at church services and
plastered her belongings with red stickers
to indicate she had AIDS.

RICHMOND. VIRGINIA—The Red Cross
has to reveal the name of the donor whose
HIV-tainted blood was used in а 1985
transfusion. The transfusion led to the
HIV infection of an infant who later died
of AIDS. A federal appeals court ruled—
despite privacy concerns—that the baby's
mother should receive enough information
from the Red Cross about Ihe donor and
the screening process to determine whether
negligence was involved.

GOLDEN OLDIES

cHicaco—When a reviewer dismissed
the passion of Father Andrew Greeleys
middle-aged characters in Greeley's latest
novel, “Wages of Sin,” as “safe sex for
senior citizens," the priest-turned-author
produced a study that found married cou-
ples over 60 still going strong:

© About 37 percent of these seniors have
sex at least once a week.

© Forty percent say that they enjoy dis-
robing for their partners, and about 20
percent report that they sometimes make
love outdoors.

© Those over 60 were as likely as those
under 60 to find thetr spouses attractive.

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Give friends a sprig of imported greenery.

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Reporter's Notebook

THE MESS IN MOSCOW

do-good liberals should think twice before squandering their tax

dollars on the g

The sight of Carl Bernstein being
pecked at by Gypsy women, their kids
ng the shins of this famous journal-
ist when he didn't pony up the hard cur-
rency, told me all I needed to know
about the sorry state of Mother Russia.
Bernstein and I were in Moscow
conference with Russian investig
Journalists, but it doesn't take much а
ging these days to discover how messed
up things are.

Carl was to be a featured speaker that
night at the Writers’ Union. In the old
days a car would have been waiting for
him and the streets outside his hotel
would have been swept clean of unsight-
ly human spectacles. Now a tourist is re-
minded constantly that there is hunger
in paradise as people hawk war medals,
state secrets or their bodies in pursuit of
hard currency. With hard currency you
can buy anything in one of the special
stores—without it you have nothing. So
physicians become cab drivers and
physicists sell the secret of the bomb.

Not that I am nostalgic for the law and
order that made Moscow one of the
safest big cities in the world. Freedom re-
quires chaos, and I like the fact that you
can now buy PLAYBOv instead of ri
the gulag smuggling
recently the second most boring, puri-
tanical and repressive society in the
world (after Saudi Aral
the American right-wingers nuts to dis-
cover that the long-prayed-for fall of
communism has resulted in Hungarian,
Czech and Polish editions of PLAYBOY.
But that's consumer sovereignty for you.

Unfortunately, freedom of the press
invites the freedom to hustle, which is
what the sorry Russian economy is now
all about. J don't mean hustling in the
productive sense, such as in figuring out
how to build and market a better mouse
trap. No, what we have here are entire
families of well-educated people being
supported on the earnings of a hooker
niece who used to be a violinist and now
earns more in a night with the right Ger-
man businessmen than the string section
of the Moscow Symphony earns in a
week. That's after she turns over a good
chunk of the proceeds to one of the
crime syndicate pimps who crowd the
dark corridors of the hotels. And forget
the cops—they, like most figures of au-

opinion By ROBERT SCHEER

thority here, are alert only to the bribe

I tell you this not to encourage a flight
of mendacious Americans eager to ex-
ploit the situation further, but rather to
warn about the fate of your tax dollars
sent over as aid—as well as to warn about
the future instability of the world. The
part of the vast former Soviet empire
that still works is on autopilot. No one
knows who is in charge, people are not
paid for work and the crazy, careening
and often drunken caravan is headed for
a monstrous fall

Western loans, in the tens of billions of
dollars, which you will pay for on de-
fault, have disappeared into the pockets
of a burgeoning Mafia whose members
live like Middle Eastern potentates while
the rest of the country stares empti
hungry disbelief. They have had the
shock without the therapy. Not since the
devastation of World War Two have food
and physical safety been the life-and-
death issues on this resource rich and
potentially productive soil.

What went wrong? Simple. No one
had a plan or even a due to what was in
the offing when the Cold War ended.
The U.S devised the most detailed sce-
narios for winning a nuclear war but not
for maintaining a postcommunist peace.
With the first of the Gorbachev reforms
seven years ago, the West should have
been poised to move in with a Marshall
Plan heavy on technical and managerial
advice as well as prudent financing for
the herculean task of redesigning what
was, for all of its glaring defects, the
world’s second largest economy.

Instead, the Reagan and Bush admin-
istrations played political games that
were time-consuming and that will
prove very costly to the American tax-
payer. The Soviet Union was long de-
nied mostfavored nation status. This
shouldn't have been a big deal since
most countries of the world have it, but it
would have permitted Gorbachev to ex-
port to the U.S. at a free-trade price.

No. we said, invoking the religion of
pure capitalism that we ourselves honor
only in the breach. Just adopt the crazy
schemes of some American professors,
who are the only ones left who believe in
Adam Smith, and the invisible hand of
the free market vill take care of all.

. He bought the line

im ruin of mother russia

of the Chicago school of economics,
thinking that the market, if left to its own
devices, would bring prosperity. And
failing that—or so he and his top advi-
sors thought—at least the West would
bail them out for having tried. When it
brought neither, they got pretty bitter.

Just such a feeling of beu
obviously sweeping the remna
old Soviet empire, where the cry for a
good czar is heard once again. The edi-
tor of the pioneering Ogonyok magazine
told us that Stalin is now recalled fondly
by those too young to have felt his lash.
Others blame the Jews, Gypsies or for-
eigners for their country's plight

Before we give them additional bil-
lions, the Russians need a government
that functions and an economic plan that
makes sense. Our president ought to get
the word to Yeltsin to sober up and make
his peace with Gorbachev, whose advice
he desperately needs in order to find a
third way between the authoritarian
model of the past and the rogue free
market of the present. How about a New
Deal-style mixed economy based on the
thoughts of Chairman Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, the prophet who saved Amer-
ican capitalism and who could do the
same for the Russkie version? If they do
that, we should help out.

What is the alternative? Can we just ig-
nore the disintegration of eastern. Eu-
rope? The day before writing this, I sat
in a bright fall sun on the edge of the
harbor in Newport Beach with one of
southern California's more enterprising
businessmen, Milan Panic, chairman of
ICN Pharm: icals. He left Yugoslavia

to make his fortune back in 1955 after
resisting both fascists and communists
His family soon lost the old tongue, his
kids became surfers and Pai
much the happy U

ye

was very

S. citizen.
г, he was tapped to be the prime mi
of his native country as it crumbled.
When I caught up with him, he was in
California, after speaking at the UN, try-
ing to take a quick cruise on his yacht be-
fore flying back to the war zone. I asked,
Why bother? His answer was simple: “I
know it sounds naive to say this, but as a
hardheaded businessman, | tell you, be-
lieve it or not, it is one world."

55

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READY FORA
MIRACLE?

y - E
STEVE MARTIN DEBRA WINGER

- Leap of Faith

CHR ie 1992

Cri
AVID

[ ІС

LEAP OF

umor OI EVE MARTIN

а candid conversation with a former wild and crazy guy about his new life in

movie:

People still approach him on the street and
ask for his autograph (they don't get it—he
hands them a preprinted card instead). They
plead with him to do the shtick they remem-
ber from his many appearances on “The
Tonight Show” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Steve Martin refuses. Long gone are his
days onstage in his trademark white suit
with a fake arrow sticking through his head.
The new Steve Martin plays an evangelist,
an architect, a producer or a sentimental
dad in hit Hollywood movies. The wild and
crazy Steve Martin has given way to the ma-
ture and sedate Steve Martin, right?

Maybe yes, and maybe no. During Johnny
Carson’s final week hosting “The Tonight
Show" last spring, Martin appeared in а
turban in front of a tiny placard that an-
nounced one of his many alter egos, the
Great Flylini. After reciting the requisite
magic words and unzipping his pants, he
conjured forth an egg, then a telephone, then
a puppet singing like Pavarotti, all through
his fly.

The Great Flydini, of course, is vintage
Martin, a throwback to his earlier days of
offbeat, zany comedy. His new movie, “Leap
of Faith,” is strictly a dramatic role. Perhaps
only Robin Williams has accomplished what
Martin has—achieving fame as a stand-up

“AU the articles about Johnny Garson said that
he survived with his dignity intact. Well, he
almost never did interviews and he never

showed his house in
That's the way to do il."

rchilectural Digest.”

comic and translating it into success as a se-
rious actor. But Martin hasn't stopped there.
He has also written some of his most success-
ful movies, including “Roxanne” and “L.A

Stor

His acting work is eclectic: He played ro-
mantic leads (in “Roxanne” and in 1992's
“Housesitter”), earnest and endearing dads
(in “Parenthood” and “Father of the Bride”)
and semi-straight men (to John Candy in
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” to Lily
Tomlin in “All of Me" and to Michael Caine
in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”). He stole the
show in “Little Shop of Horrors” (in which
he played a mad drill-wielding dentist) and
“Grand Canyon” (in which he portrayed a
movie producer whose artistic sensibilities
were insulted when the blood and guts were
cut from one of his films). Iu other movies he
sang and danced (“Pennies from Heaven")
and read the weather (7L.A. Story”). Some
were comedies with a bit of drama and others
were dramas with some comedy.

Most of Martin's movies have done well at
the box office and he has won numerous
awards—though the Oscar has eluded him,
even when he was rumored to be a shoe-in
Jor best actor for “Roxann
him “this decade's most charming and re-
sourceful comic actor,” and Entertainment

“I feel kind of silly humping on-screen. 1 think
there's something nice about watching Rich-
ard Gere and Kin Basinger having sex, but
there's nol something nice about watching
Groucho Marx and somebody else having sex.”

his old life in comedy and his favorite screen kiss—with john candy

Weekly estimated that audiences have spent
three quarters of a billion dollars to see his
movies.

Asa child, Martin had no plans to become
an actor. He was born in Waco, Texas, and
raised in southern California, where his fa-
ther worked as a real estate salesman. Fortune
brought the family to live in Garden Grove,
an Orange County suburb in the shadow of
Disneyland, where the young Martin found
work selling guidebooks and, latex, hand
buzzers and fake vomit in a gift shop.

As a college student at Cal State-Long
Beach, Martin earned money performing
at Knoll’s Berry Farm, where he did magic
Wicks and sang, accompanying himself on
the banjo. But show business was just a hob-
by; Martin planned to teach philosophy after
graduation.

Instead, a girlfriend helped him get his
first. Hollywood job, as a writer for “The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” He wrote
hundreds of skils, won an Emmy and went
on to write for shows hosted by Sonny and
Cher, Pat Paulsen and Glen Campbell.

Although his agent predicted he would fail
as a performer, Martin left television writing
to take his stand-up act on the road. Stand-
up comedy was still in ils dark ages then—it
would be a few years before comedy clubs

Ñ
`

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BENNO FRIEONAN
“In that way the riots were good because they

made us look. There will be action. But as to
understanding that part of town, Гт too well
off and too happy even to have a comment,
even to pretend to understand it.”

59

PLAYBOY

60

started springing up across the country—
and Martin had little choice bul to serve as
the opener for such acts as the Nilty Gritty
Dirt Band and Linda Ronstadt.

Those audiences, unfortunately, were not
particularly receptive to comedy, so Martin
made another career change. In 1975 he de-
cided his days as an opening act were over
and his days as a headliner should begin. He
started touring small music clubs as a solo
aci, losing money and trying to establish his
oddball brand of comedy with audiences
around the country. His move paid off Rave
reviews in Miami and San Francisco gave
his career a gigantic boost, and he was final-
fy invited to appear on television talk shows,
including “The Tonight Show.”

No one quite knew what to make of Mar-
tin. He wasn't political or topical along the
lines of George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Robert
Klein or Richard Pryor. He did gags and
one-liners with props (the fake arrow
through his head, balloons). Much of his
comedy was physical, in the tradition of Lau-
rel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.

Even Lorne Michaels, the executive pro-
ducer of “Saturday Night Live,” was con-
fused. “His act seemed too conventionally
show business.” Michaels said. "H was so
new il looked old." Al first, Michaels dis-
missed Martin as too unhip for "SNL." But
he later relented, and Martin became the
show's most popular guest host. Soon, Mar-
tin was playing 20,000-seat arenas

His comedy records sold millions and won
Grammys, and he had a best-selling book in
ruel Shoes.” A film he made (“The

Absent-Minded Waiter.” which he showed
during his concerts) was nominated for an

Academy Award. He had become, as Cart
Reiner said, “the first rock-star comedian.”

As abruptly as he had started headlining,
Martin quit stand-up for a movie career. In
“The Jerk,” directed by Reiner, a friend from
his “Smothers Brothers” days, he played the
title role, the adopted son of a black

share-

Cropper: Although Ihe movie was trashed by
reviewers, who called it sophomoric, The
New

York Times, in а TV listing for
recently called it “a sophisticat-

Martin has been in at
least one movie а year. He has also had a run
on Broadway in “Waiting for Godot,” oppo-
site Robin Williams, and has continued to
pop up on “Saturday Night Live,” where his
comedy seems as antic and silly as ever

Offscreen, his life is quiet and bus,
met his wife of the past six years, Vi
Tennant, on the set of Al of Me.” The
British-born actress, goddaughter of Lau-
rence Olivier, was also his co-star m “LA.
Story," which he wrote and co-produced.
When he's not on location, he lives with Ten-
nant in Beverly Hills. The couple also has
an apartment in New York City.

Although Martin hates the glitz of Holly-
wood, he counts many fellow actors among
his good friends. He is an avid art collector
whose laste runs [rom a David Hockney por-
trait of Andy Warhol to works by Roy Lich-
tenstein and Stanton Macdonald-Wright

He

He says he’s nat political, though he and Vic-
toria traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with
servicemen sent to fight the Gulf war:

In his 20th and latest movie, “Leap of
Faith,” Martin portrays a con man evange-
list managed by Debra Winger. IVs a far cry
from his first vole in “The [er hen he
was the subject of an earlier “Playboy Inter-
view.” In that interview, he wondered aloud
if he was going to last.

Martin did more than last, he soared.
Now, 13 years later, he has become one of the
exclusive group of subjects that eLavsoy has
interviewed twice (joining Fidel Castro,
Robin Williams and Gore Vidal). Contribut-
ing editor David Sheff, who conducted last
month's interview with Sharon Stone, was
sent to Los Angeles lo face off with Martin.
Here is his report

“Martin uses the restaurant at the Four
Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills as his living
room for business meetings and interviews.
Ws a hotel that’s teeming with movie stars.
As Martin drove into the parking lot in his
steel-blue BMW, Tom Cruise and Nicole
Kidman were slipping into a Porsche and
Sam Shepard was reclaiming his Jeep. Later,
Ron Howard and Harvey Keitel wandered

“In ‘Parenthood’ I was
really a real person.
Up until then,
the comedy was

carrying the acting.”

through the lobby.

Martin was given the best table in the
restaurant, and the waiter was unfazed
when he ordered ‘Just water, since he had al-
ready eaten lunch.

“AL first, Martin was anything but re-
laxed, though he eased up by our final ses-
sion. Still, he fulgeted. folding his napkin,
rocking in place and drumming his fingers
on the linen tablecloth. Today, it seems as
though Martin no longer feels he needs to
hide behind a joke. Offstage, he doesn't try to
be funny, at least not on cur. That's a sig-
nificant change [or him. He told PLAYBOY in
1980, ‘TU be funny when there's a question 1
don't want to answer” Instead, he spoke can-
didly, albeit cautiously, and chose his words
carefully. There were many subjects he was
reluctant to speak about—because I don't
have to,’ he said. He usually relented, but it
was often like pulling teeth—as if 1 were the
demented dentist he played in ‘Little Shop of
Horrors.”

PLAYBOY: Why are we here and not at
your house?

MARTIN: | don't do interviews at home
because I'm a private person. 1 don't

the house talked about or de-
scribed. It’s an intrusion into our lives.
PLAYBOY: Did someth make vou
gun-shy?

MARTIN: I've always tried to separate my
home life from my work. I did a few
things early on when I was living in
apartments, and Гус done some things
in my New York apartment, but the sto-
ry becomes about art on the walls and
bath towels. All the articles about Johnny
Carson said that he survived with his
dignity intact, as if that were a rare thing
in Hollywood. Well, he almost never did
interviews and he never showed his
house in Architectural Digest. That's the
way to do it.

PLAYBOY: But?

MARTIN: But you sort of get trapped
PLAYBOY: How? It would seem that
you are successful enough. now to call
the shots.

MARTIN: Incumbent on an actor who
makes movies is publicizing the movies.
You have to do it. Is something that you
deal with, like

want

instead of autographs
MARTIN: It’s а way to deal wi
and not to be rude. Most of the times
that people ask for autographs, it's a way
of proving that they saw you. 1 know this
from when I asked for autographs, Peo-
ple always want to know, "Whats he
like? Did he say anything funny? Was he
nice?" You have thirty seconds to be all
those things. My card covers it all: It says
that you found me nice. you found me
funny and you found me charming and
friendly.
PLAYBOY: Do some people get mad? По
they want more than a card?

MARTIN: No, they like it,
sionally somebody yells at me.

PLAYBOY: Whose autographs have you
asked for?

MARTIN: Bobby Fischer, Jerry Lewis and
Earl Scruggs.

PLAYBOY: Were they funny, charming.
nice and friendly?

MARTIN: All of those things.
PLAYBOY: Why did you want thei
graphs in particular?

MARTIN: Earl Scruggs was the first guy 1
ever heard play the five-string banjo,
which motivated me to pick it up. Bobby
Fischer was a legendary hero—1 play
chess a bit, too. | grew up watching Jer-
ry Lew
PLAYBOY: lt sounds as if you haven't
much liked the trappings of celebrity
MARTIN: At the same time, 1 wouldn't
want to go back to the years of struggle
1 recently visited Paris and it was perfect.
You have enough fame to get into
restaurants but not enough that you're
constantly bothered.

PLAYBOY: Do you ever tell people to leave
you alon
MARTIN: Yeah, I do.

PLAYBOY: Do they get angry?

MARTIN: You cant please everybody. 11

though occa-

Paris. FRANCE. DRESS UP AS MUCH AS YOU PLEASE, BUT WEAR AS LITTLE
AS YOU LIKE. AND ALWAYS HAVE A LITTLE MUMM CORDON ROUGE UP YOUR SLEEVE.

CHAMPAGNES FROM REIMS, FRANCE, SINCE 1827 Cranes wasta мс.

PE & YV R D Y

62

really used to bother me to think that 1
had made somebody mad. Now I realize
that it's inevitable, so I draw the È
That’s why I don't talk about things that
are personal to me.

PLAYBOY: Are you shocked at how per-
sonal the press can get? What have you
thought about the Woody and Mia soap
opera?

MARTIN: [t feels as if it’s so much their
business that I’m opinionless.

PLAYBOY: Just the other day, at a press
conference, you were asked if you were
America's next Woody Allen and you
said, “I haven't slept with one of Mia's
daughters yet.”

MARTIN: Yes, and I regret having said
that. The f I like them both.
PLAYBOY: Do you ofien stay home be-
cause you don't want to deal with the
attention?

MARTIN: No. There are places we can go
where we won't be bothered. It’s like

having a hump. You have it, so you deal
w

1 it. You sort of ask for it if you do this
ind оГсагее

PLAYBOY: ticularly when you succeed
such visible media as stand-up, televi-
sion and movies. Do you have a favoi
of those?

MARTIN: Movies, because that’s what I'm
doing now.

PLAYBOY: How do you choose your
movie:
MARTIN: A lot of people think we actually
make decisions about what we want to
do next. But it’s really about what is of-
fered. More often, you make choices by
what comes to you at the time.

PLAYBOY: Can't you do whatever kind of

movie you want to do?
MARTIN: It has to exist. Finding some-
thing that is well-written is extremely
difficult.

PLAYBOY: 15 that why you write scripts?
Does that make you less dependent on
what's available?

MARTIN: Yeah, but the one:
not career moves. They're
write this." Or, "I think 0
good movie."

PLAYBOY: What is a career move?
MARTIN: When you say to yourself,
want to do a drama with a showy role
and I'm going to make sure that no one
else shines in the movie.” [Laughs] A le-
gilimale career move I want to show
them that I can do more than pratialls,
so l'm going to do something that will
show th: ly doesn't work out
that way, but you try anyway.

PLAYBOY: What's an example of a legiti-
mate career move?

MARTIN: Parenthood. 1 wanted to show
that 1 could play a real person.

PLAYBOY: You had never played a real
person before that?

MARTIN: 1 had played a real person in
Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but in Par-
enthood 1 was really a real person. Up un-
úl then, I think, the comedy was carry-
ing the acting, not the other way around.

1 write are
"I want to
would be a

PLAYBOY; Meaning what?

MARTIN: Meaning that I didn't play char-
acters as much as I did jokes and gags
and gave looks.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about those
who think | that your goofier roles are
your fines
MARTIN: I'm glad people like them. It’s
funny because they used to be consid-
ered stupid. Pm interested in what I'm
doing now, comedy, but comedy within
the confines of real characters.
PLAYBOY: Is it casier when
someone else's movie and rca
one else's lines?

MARTIN: Yes. I love doing scripts I didn’t
write because | am only a hired actor
and I have only that one thing to worry
about. If I write it, I have another whole
set of problems.

PLAYBOY: Then why do you wri
MARTIN: IL gives you something to do
when you're off, for one thing. You don't
want to just sit there. Mainly, Lama writ-
er. [just am.

PLAYBOY: When you are in someone
else's movie, do you change lines and
come up with jokes, or do you stick to
what's written?

t depends. Grand Canyon w:
writer's script, written by Larry Kasdan.
I didn't add a line. In a movie like that,
you play the character as honestly as you
can. In other movies you always try to
think of jokes. That's what I'm good at.
laybe that's why they hire me.
PLAYBOY: In Grand Canyon you played a
cynical Hollywood producer who has
had a momentary lapse and has imag-
ined making socially conscious movies.
He comes to his senses and realizes that
he would go on making what people
want—insipid violence. Was he typical of
the kinds of people you run across in
Hollywood?

MARTIN: For all the talk about those peo-
ple, I don't run into them much. I don't
think Га be around very long if I did.
PLAYBOY: Was your Grand Canyon charac-

you're in

No, not at all. There are people
with crass taste who know that violence
sells. They also justify what they're der
ing. Victoria and I argue about them.

I think it's a

question of style.
PLAYBOY: What.
MARTIN: She cquates that behavior with
some kind of moral flaw. But not
murder, lying, cheating or stealing. You
may not like it, but it's not a horrible
thing. You hear all the time that good
films are no longer be
baloney. They say mov
more about money than movies. They're
right about that. Movies cost twenty-five
or thirty million dollars. How can you
ask them not to care?
money and it always has been

PLAYBOY: Did Robert Aluman, in The
Player, go too far in portraying the movie
business's ruthlessness?

your wife's vi

It's a question of

MARTIN: The movie business gets a lot of
attention because of movie stars, and
people tolerate bad behavior in movies
more than they would in other busine
es. In any business, one’s power is de-
fined by one's position. In advertising or
banking, you know who you control. In
the movie business, it’s amorphous. The
producer may have the power, or the
star may, or the director or the studio—
it changes. Since it is undefined, every-
one vies for power. It's all about bluff,
seeing what you can get away with.
There is also this insecurity. No one can
bc completely confident, because even
geniuses fail in this business. Except me.
[Laughs]

PLAYBOY: Is everyone insecure?

MARTIN: The truth is that no one knows
what they're doing in show business. A
ting is one person's vision. In show
ness, you need this unpredictable
nal called the audience. Ultimately,
no one knows how to do it right every
time. If we did, we'd always make hits.
Our insccurities are such that we always
put it on others—that they know. You
begin to think you need these other peo-
ple. If they happen to be behaving badly,
you still think you need them. It gives
people enormous power. All the time we
hear, “So-and-so is the only one who can
play this part.” Once you start thinking
that way, you're screwed.

PLAYBOY: Screwed how?

MARTIN: If you have been shooting a
movie for three weeks and an actor or
actress decides to show up late, you ca
fire them. You've already shot three
weeks. IF somebody ма
badly—unless you want to reshoot the
entire movie—you can't fire them.
PLAYBOY: Do actors, perhaps. have the
most power of all?

MARTIN: [t all depends. But one thing
seems to be true: The worse the behav-
ior, the smaller the talent
PLAYBOY: And how easy
work with?

are you to

s been pretty easy. I
come from television writing.
PLAYBOY: What makes TV

writers so

Five guys sit in a room and
shoot ou as. It is friendly but brutal.
ideas are shot down all the time. It
humbles you.

PLAYBOY: In The Player, Alunan suggest-
ed that the art is lost when movie-
makers have to modily their movies de-
pending on audience responses. Do you

don't think you can ignore the
nice. At the same time, you can't cut
the picture for the audience.
PLAYBOY: At least that's not a wishy-
vashy answer.
MARTIN: [Laughs] 1 mean you can't just
give an audience what it wants. An audi-
ence won't be fooled. It has to be chal-
lenged and surprised. On the other

TANYA BEYER

ANGELA MELINI

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CORINNA HARNEY

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O. R

hand, testing is valuable because we have
to be sure we're communicating what we
want to communicate. If audiences don't
get an important plot point, you've lost
them. For comedy, its really important
to test. The great jokes—the ones we
love the most—don't always work. When
you screen a comedy for an aud j
a new day It’s like starting over.
PLAYBOY: Why can't filmmakers tru
themselves?

Maybe movies are too big.
are too many factors to con
We just never know if we're seeing
things objectively. Our best jokes fall flat.
PLAYBOY: What's one of your favorite
jokes that didn't work?

MARTIN: In The Jerk, L play a gas station
attendant. A carload of criminals comes
in for gas and 1 don't want them to es-
cape. So I tie their car to a fireplug,
which in turn is attached to a church.
The criminals drive away and the church
vips in һай. [Laughs] I thought, This is
going to kill them. The movie came out
and the audience watched the church
being dragged down the road—there
were chuckles, but it was no big thing.
PLAYBOY: Is it devastating when a joke
doesn't woi
MARTIN: They don't all have to work. I
think it was too big to get a laugh. The
real laughs always come from something
very small and surprising—although an-
other one they didn't get in The Jerk is

when Um hitchhiking to St. Louis. My
characters name is Navin Johnson. A
guy pulls over in his car and asks, "St.
Louis?” and I go, “Uh, no, Navin John-
on.” I told the line to Carl Reiner [the
movie's writer and director] and we
laughed for forty-five minutes. It's so
stupid! But in the movie, it just kind of
goes away
PLAYBOY: If you're in a theater and you
hear nothing at one of your favorite
jokes—or worse, if you hear a groan—
how do you feel
MARTIN: It depends. What's really satisfy-
ing is when one person gets it. It’s quiet
except for someone laughing alone.
There's usually something that strikes
people, at least someone, as peculiar. In
Sophie's Choice
very funny mo
MARTIN: Well, no, but there is a great
line. Struggling with the language, So-
phie says, “Why don't you wear your
cocksucker suit?” Ten minutes later I'm
still laughing. By then it's embarrassing.
People are looking at me.
PLAYBOY: You cited lines in The Jerk that
didnt quite work. Do you view the
movie as a failure?
MARTIN: No. It did what I was trying to
do at the time. It put my comedy act in-
to a movie. When I look at it now, I think
I yelled through the entire movie. But I
like it.

Which of your movies are your

personal favorites?

MARTIN: I like the simple, elegant come-
dies that ten ycars from now will comc
on channel five and you'll go, “Hey,
that's funny.” An example is Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels, which OK when it came
out. But as time went on, more and
more people came up to me—they rent-
ed it or saw it on TV. Planes, Trains and
Automobiles is another one. So is Roxanne.
It did fine when it came out. As time goes
on, you can see it again and it holds up.
PLAYBOY: you good at anticipating
the reaction to a movie?

MARTIN: Yes, although the thing that has
changed is the number of sources of c
icism. There are a million rev
There are the TV shows, big pape!
small papers, twelve cable channels. You
used to get a clean sweep—all bad or all
good. Now you can'L Now there's a
bell curve because there are so many
opinions, from stupid opinions to bri
liant ones.

PLAYBOY: The stupid ones being the neg-
ative reviews, the brilliant ones prais-
ing you?

MARTIN: Exactly.

PLAYBOY: Is your confidence level such
that you know when something's good,
no matter what the reviewers say?
MARTIN: No. But 1 realize that their opin-
ion isnt the final opinion. The final
opinion comes five or ten years later.
Is the movie still around? Are people

watching it? Or did it come and go? |
picked up The New York Times the other
day and was so pleased to see that The
Jerk, which was vilified when it came
it got ninety-nine percent bad re-
s—was described as an “eccentric,
sophisticated comedy.” It was moronic.
Now it’s sophisticated.

PLAYBOY: Do you have a special place in
your heart for Roxanne, the first movie
you wrote on your own?

MARTIN: Yeah, because it was a real strug-
gle to write it. I was very fearful of it.
PLAYBOY: Fearful of what?

MARTIN: It was my first solo screenplay
and, in addition, I was taking on a
classic. It took me a while to write it—
four or five years. There wasa great deal
of self-doubt.

PLAYBOY: Why tackle Cyrano de Bergerac?
MARTIN: 1175 very emotional and the hu-
mor comes out of the emotions. Nothing
is better. As you're getting a joke, you're
crying.

PLAYBOY: Did you view it as a risky idea?
Wasn't it like remaking Gone with the

doing it. The humor had to be updated
because of the nineteenth century refer-
ences—stulf about the Greek gods, for
instance, who no one pays much atten-
tion to anymore. At the worst, though,
I knew it was a place for some good
one-liners.

I didn't know if I was capable of

PLAYBOY: Was it tough to persuade a stu-
dio to make the movie?

MARTIN: I told the first executive I saw
that it was an update of Cyrano de Berge-
rac and he asked, "What's Cyrano de Ber-
gerac?” 1 had to pitch Cyrano, which is
sortof like pitching Romeo and Juliel. The
second studio I went to was Columbia,
where I saw Guy McElwaine, who was
then the president. ] told him it was an
update of Cyrano de Bergerac and he
stood up, went to the window and began
reciting lines from the play. He gave me
the go-ahead.

PLAYBOY: Were you a fan of the other
Cyrano movie:
MARTIN: I liked Gérard Depardieus
Cyrano. The Jose Ferrer Cyrano was fabu-
lous. He won an Oscar foi I met him
and told him how great I thought the
performance was and he said, “All I re-
member is how bad I was.
PLAYBOY: Are you generous when you
view your movies?

MARTIN: No. | сапт stand to look at
myself.
PLAYBOY: Never?

MARTIN: Occasionally. But it has to come
as a surprise, like flipping through the
channels and suddenly you see a mo-
ment and say, “Hey, that was OK."
PLAYBOY: You also wrote L.A. Story by
yourself, How much does the movie
show of your real life?

MARTIN: My life kind of looks like that.

Those houses and the restaurants arc
places I would find myself. Is funny
that it ended up being. considered. this
A, movie when I really set out just to
make a love story that happened to be
LA.
PLAYBOY: But much of the humor is
about L.A. Where else could freeway
signs spout spiritual riddles?

MARTIN: That's true. It's a fun city to
make fun of. Its not hard to do.
PLAYBOY: Because it was a love story star-
ring you and your wife, people said the
movie was an homage to Victoria. One
reviewer called it a love letter t
MARTIN: That would be awfu was. I
don’t want to spend seventeen million
dollars of someone else's money on an
homage to my wile. ГЇЇ do that at home
with a box of candy. You could take an-
other actress and put her in there and
tell the same stor he movie was an al-
legory about romance—how it feels. It
happened to star my wife. | wanted 10
movieize that state.

PLAYBOY: As opposed to the state of love?
MARTIN: Yes. They re very different. This
is about the first blush of romance.
opposed to L.A. Story H. which, if there
were one—don't worry, there won't be—
would be The Married Years. Alier ro-
mance is love: trust and. knowing the
person. You love for different reason:
PLAYBOY: At which stage is your relat
ship with Victoria?

67

FRATE O Y

MARTIN: Definitely a love story. 1 never
really had long-term, steady girlfriends
until Victoria. It’s really because of Vic-
toria that [ understood what it meant to
be married.

PLAYBOY: What does it mean?
MARTIN: I can't describe it specifically,
but it is more about an attitude. We're a
couple forever. I came from the philoso-
phy that it lasts as long as it lasts. As soon
as you accept the vision that it is going to
work forever, it can. І once went to a psy-
chiatrist who said that your emotions fol-
low your intentions. If your intent is to
last forever, your emotions go that way.
Once I saw that, I could see that it can
last forever. As our marriage goes оп, 1
like her more and more and admire her
more and more. Romance is about a
feeling and marriage is about so much
more: the intellectual, the compassion-
ate, the friendship. It has to do with а
way of life, too, a circle of friends. Part of
the deal is that you strive to be together
as much as possible. We've been together
for eight years and we recently took a va-
cation in vhich we spent seven wecks es-
sentially in one room. And it was great
It was, like, better than ever. [Laughs] Га
better be careful. People say, "We have
this perfect marriage" and two weeks lat-
er they're divorced.

PLAYBOY: But not you?

martin: Not us.

PLAYBOY: You said that L.A. Story wasn’t
about Los Angeles—it was just set there.
But Victoria said that L.A. is unmistak-
ably you—"like Baltimore is unmistak-
ably Barry Levinson or New York is un-
mistakably Woody Allen." What do you
think?

MARTIN: I guess I'm thought of as a West
Coast comedian. My style seems to war-
rant that label. There's probably some-
thing California in me.

PLAYBOY: What are the California things?
MARTIN: I don't know. Lack of ethnicity. I
have no accent.

You made another Los Angeles
rry Kasdan's Grand Canyon.
MARTIN: When I read the script, I told
L.A. Story: The Dark Side.
The film was prophetic.
MARTIN: When the movie was first
screened, people complained that it
didn't present L.A. in a nice light. It w;
spooky how much it revealed.
PLAYBOY: Since the riots, are the worlds
portrayed in the movies more opposed?
MARTIN: | don't think so. That's the
problem. L.A. is not where I live. 1 live in
West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and
ta Monica. It’s a different place.
PLAYBOY: Did the riots blur the lines?
MARTIN: The problems are definitely en-
croaching. In that way the riots were
good because they made us look. There
will be action. But as to understanding
that part of town, I'm too well off and
too happy even to have a comment, even
10 pretend to understand it.

PLAYBOY: That may be honest, but it's à

limited view. The message in Grand
Canyon was that you can make a differ-
ence in other people's lives.

MARTIN: It was and you can, but the
problems are enormous. First is to un-
derstand that all our talking about it
doesn’t do anything.

PLAYBOY: Do you get involved? Have you
done political benefits?

MARTIN: Politics really doesn't interest
me. Except to get mad.

PLAYBOY: Do you get really mad?

MARTIN: I do.

PLAYBOY: What makes you maddest?
MARTIN: Politicians who have an answer
for everything. When I was in college,
studying philosophy, I had an answer for
everything. People get that way in their
religion, too. You can ask a Christian, “If
Adam and Eve were the first people on
earth and they had three sons, where
did everybody else come from?” and
they'll give you an answer. Well, all those
answers don't begin to touch the real
problems. That makes me mad. The
problems are bigger and different from
the quick answers we are given.
PLAYBOY: If you don’t work for candi-
dates, how about for causes?

MARTIN: 1 haven't done a lot, but I will do
more as I get older, when there's more
time. I've done benefits, though.
PLAYBOY: In 1982, you said you were go-
ing to vote for George McGovern. Have
your politics changed since then?

MARTIN: Everything that's happened to
me could be predicted, As 1 get older, I
get more conservative. I'm certainly not
on the right, but on issues such as taxes I
don't know where 1 am. I've always been
a Democrat, but 1 don't even know what
that means anymore. Gore Vidal said we
don't have a two-party system, it's a one-
ty system with different factions, I
think it’s true.

PLAYBOY: You made a strong political
statement when you v
Gulf before the war.
MARTIN: It wasn't a politic:
hum; ian. If there м:
motivation, then I'm saying I'm for war.
Being an old Sixties guy I can't say that.
Still, 1 know that it was hot out there.
The soldiers needed some people to tell
them that we were thinking about them.
I wanted to see some of them and show
them that they were not estranged from
the country.

PLAYBOY: You have said that you never
would have fought in Vietnam—you

would have gone to Canada. Was part of
your mot

ation to go to the Gulf guilt
position during Vietnam?

It's better to talk about after
Vietnam. The vets came home and were
hated. It seemed wrong. The war wasn't
their fault. Even if you were against the
IF war, you couldn't take it out on
the soldiers. That's why I felt good about
going.

PLAYBOY: What was the experience like?
MARTIN: It was incredible to one day be

walking down the streets of New York
and the next flying in an open helicopter
over a camel train. You land and it's not
pretend.

PLAYBOY: Press reports said the State De-
partment stopped you from performing.
MARTIN: No. There were several reasons
1 didn't perform. I didn't have anything
to perform and the Saudis were very
nervous. They don't know what enter-
tainers mean. The main thing was that
they didn't want to collect ten thousand
people in one place. It would have been
very dangerous. Instead, I flew to places
where they had a little stage set up.
Sometimes I just signed autographs and
posed for pictures.

PLAYBOY: Were you there when the fight-
ing began?

MARTIN: No. It was still chilling, though.
We were instructed in how to mix in
Saudi Arabian secicty. Never expose the
bottom of your foot. Never look at a
man's wife or talk about a man's wife.
Victoria and I were in a car and she had
taken her Army fatigue jacket off and
was wearing a T-shirt. A guard stopped
us and went crazy. He sercamed, "Wom-
en shouldn't be dressed like that." It was
a whole ordeal to get back to the base.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel good about having
gone there?

MARTIN: Absolutely. It was an incredible
experience. You cant just go from movie
to movie.

PLAYBOY: When you look back on your
life, do you see where your sense of com-
edy came from?

MARTIN: No, 1 don't. 1 was just alw
terested in it.

PLAYBOY: What brought your parents to
California from Texas?

MARTIN: This was the prom
"Texas was too hot and humid.

s in-

ed land.

PLAYBOY: So when did you think about
performing?

is that 1 always loved
comedy, whether it was on TV or in
magic shows or movies. Milton Berle.
Laurel and Hardy. Jerry Lewis. Jack
Benny. There are lots of names. Steve
Allen. Lenny Bruce. I loved anybody
who made me laugh. They made me
want to do it.

PLAYBOY: Are they your most important
influences?

MARTIN: They all a And Buster Kea-
ton, Jackie Gleason, Chapli
PLAYBOY: Did you have a favor

seemed so effortless.

PLAYBOY: Do you think of him when you
act in movies?

MARTIN: Sometimes. He's an ideal. 1
would never hope to be that good. | love
what he did in Arsenic and Old Lace. He
was just very big, very broad. His
smoothest stuff is really broad. Big,
goofy takes.
PLAYBOY: Do you
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PLAYBOY

70

family not moved west?

MARTIN: I do. It was one of those twists
of fate. 1 wouldn't have had the prox
imity to show business or the outlets. It's
impossible to think of what | would
have been
PLAYBOY: Does a lot of the drive to per-
form have to do with the recognition?
MARTIN: I've never been able to analyze
that part of it. The main thing I think
about is making the thing, the perfor-
mance or the movie or whatever it is. All
that other stuff is subconscious,
PLAYBOY: What was your first act at
Knott's Berry Farm?

MARTIN: We did a play and then they had
what they called olio acts, a singer or
comedian would do four or five minutes.
I was going to college at the ume. I
planned to be a professor and all that. I
was very serious about it

PLAYBOY: Was your interest in philoso-
phy theoretical or personal?

MARTIN: It started out as personal and
became academic because you realize
that the personal thing will never be
answered,
PLAYBOY: What р
trying to answer?

MARTIN: 1 was just looking to the future.
When you get into college, you realize
ihe world is a lot bigger than vou
thought it was. Particularly in the Sixties.
PLAYBOY: Were you involved in the stu-
dent movement
MARTIN: Yeah, although I wasn't that
volved. I was on its side, let's put it that
way It didn't quite hit Long Beach,
where I went to school.

PLAYBOY: Was your college life serious or
more in the tradition of Animal House?
MARTI! Very serious. One or two
friends. Small, enclosed, not part of the
social scene at all. 1 missed the Beatles. 1
wasn't listening to the music. I just stud-
ied and on evenings and weekends
worked at Knott's Berry Farm

PLAYBOY: What diverted you from a ca-
reer as a philosophy professor?

MARTIN: | realized I would never know if
I could have been a performer if I didnt
try it. My girlfriend at the time was a
dancer on the Smothers Brothers show.
We met and fell in love in college. She
gave some of the material Fd written in
college to Mason Williams, who was the
head writer. They went for it. [t was a
miracle because the material wasn't that
good. They just wanted writers under
thirty because of the Sixties thing. I just
happened to be in the right place at the
right time.

PLAYBOY: How brutal is TV writing?
MARTIN: Actually it was a great job. I
wrote with about five other writers.
Sparks flew. 1 love collaborating
PLAYBOY: But you do it less and less.
MARTIN: The only reason I don't collabo-
rate on my scripts anymore is that 1
don't want to have a meeting. I want to
work when I want to. Still, it was great.
PLAYBOY: Do you e people you

sonal things were you

bounce things off of now?

MARTIN: It's different each time. Frank
Oz. Carl Reiner. We spark off each other.
We share this odd thing of appreciating
each other's twisted visions. C;
up with one of my favorite lines. He just
said it one day and I said, “That's too fab-
ulous.” I called him about five years later
and said the line would go perfect in L
Story and asked him if 1 could use it.
PLAYBOY: What was the line?

MARTIN: “I could never be a woman be-
cause Га just sit around the house all
day and play with my breasts."
PLAYBOY: We remember another great
joke about breasts in that movie.
MARTIN: [ was filming a sex scene with
arah Jessica Parker and I didn't have a
line. It was just a basic sex scene. I
thought, There's something wrong here.
It looks like Steve Martin is feeling up
Sarah Jessica Parker. It needs some-
thing. So I came up with the line. I had
him feel her up and ask, "Hey, what's
wrong with your breasts?” She said,
"They're real.” You never know where it
comes from. | was so happy when I
found the line. It made the scene.

* Most of the sex in your movies
y discreet and subtle. Does that
reflect your sensibility

MARTIN: I think that there's somed
nice about watching Richard Gere and
Kim Basinger having sex, but there's not
something nice about watching Groucho
Marx and somebody else having sex.
PLAYBOY: You see yourself as Groucho?
MARTIN: I've never been known as a sexy
star. I feel kind of silly humping on-
screen. Also, something bothers me
about it: the idea that if I did a heavy sex
scene, it would be Steve Martin doing it.
PLAYBOY: As opposed to?

MARTIN: As opposed to the character.
Bernadette Peters said it to me first: “I'm
not going to do a nude scene because
when you take off your blouse you're not
the character anymore, you're Berna-
dete Peters with her blouse off.”
PLAYBOY: Do you object when other ac-
tors do it?

MARTIN: Definitely not. Believe me, Га
love to be in a great sexy scene or have a
fabulous screen . But the movie has
to engender it and I'm not in those kinds
of movies.
PLAYBOY:

In The Man with Two Brains,
Turner let you suck her finger.
least enjoy that?

MARTIN: It was all very pleas
were doing that scene now
wear a little finger condom.

PLAYBOY: When you have to climb into
a bed and make out with a relative
t the same as acting any oth-
t of a script?

MARTIN: It’s different because it's more
tense. You're kissing someone you hard-
ly know. Victoria had a scene once on
her first day of shooting a movie in
Berlin or somewhere like that. She flew
in and the male actor flew in, they came

ant. But if we
she'd have to

onto the set at noon and had to do a sex
scene against a wall. So yes, it's weird
Victoria says that Michael Caine has a
great attitude about it. If he has to do a
sex scene, he gets in bed vith his boots
on, shoots in some mouth spray and
says, "OK, ready." He uses humor to dif-
fuse the tension

PLAYBOY: Who has been your favorite
movie kiss?

MARTIN: John Candy.

PLAYBOY: Of course! Now that you've
brought it up, lets talk about romance.
Did lots of women throw themselves at
you when you were on the road?
MARTIN: It didn't happen. It always hap-
pened to the other guys, I guess. I've al-
ways been a loner type, so that never
bothered me. The fact is, when you're
finally a big enough star, you become
very isolated. I suppose the people who
wantto throw themselves at you can't get
to you. Also there was something very
unsexy about groupies.

PLAYBOY: So we can assume you didn't go
on the road to meet women. Why did
you leave your life as a TV writer?
MARTIN: [ just knew I had to quit writing
for television and go on the road. I was a
t frustrated because I'd write the mate-
rial and they'd kill it. I wanted to be able
to show my work and not have o
through a committee. I decided to go on
the road.

PLAYBOY: As a stand-up comedian.
MARTIN: Yes. So I did it and lost money
on every performance. I was working as
an opening act for bands like the Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band. They were great but
the audiences were rock-and-roll audi-
ences and not friendly to comedy. That's
when I decided to headline, even if it
meant a big drop in income and the risk
that nobody would show up.

PLAYBOY: What made you think you
could get away with it?
MARTIN: All [ knew is that I could have
opened for a million bands and nothing
would have ever changed. | would open
and be killing the audience—killing
them—and the singer would come on
and would do fine. In the review the
singer would get three quarters of the
column and I'd get one sentence. You
have to be the headliner to get the atten-
tion. So I went to Florida and got into a
club and got a rave review. It was the
first time I was ever singled out as an en-
шу. I worked in a few other clubs
around the country when I started to get
some rave reviews. It just started to
happen

PLAYBOY: You were part of the wave that
brought stand-up comedy into the main-
stream. Now there are comedy clubs
everywhere

MARTIN: The Comedy Store came into
existence after I had my success. I
played music clubs. I think it would be
very rough out there now. God, to find
something original. . . .

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PLAYBOY

72

audience that goes to comedy clubs to
laugh. When you were plaving music
clubs, audiences didn’t always know
what you were trying to do up there.
think of that as an advantage
They didn't know what to expect. If 1
was going out there now, Ud perform
anywhere except comedy dubs. It be-
comes too homogenized. You should be
like Andy Kaufman, off by yourself go-
ing nuts. At least it's different from what
one else is doing.

PLAYBOY: In those carly years, who was

b ii ms came a little alter me—at least
with his success.
PLAYBOY: What changed so that comedy
became such a big business?
MARTIN: lt was a practical question. They
could put on a show with only one guy

There didn't need to be a band or sets.
The background was a wall. For me it
ause I didn't have to audi-
ra TV show

was great Бе
tion. Once I
and couldn't si
else's hands. With stand-up—or whatev-
er it was that I was doing—it was up to
the audience, not to a producer or a
writer or somebody else.

PLAYBOY: C

that Robin
Williams, on stage, was possessed, man-
ic, while you were more in control, more
disciplined. Is that accurate?

here was a time when all this
was being developed that | was very
undisciplined. It was about freeing you
self and finding new things. There was a
time when the act was very spontaneous.
You can't come up with two, three or
four hours of ma ing rigid. You
know, there's this thing about Robin be-
ing spontaneous, but he had material,
too. It all looks spontaneous. That was
the point, There was a time when I was
walking out in the audience, picking up
objects and ad-ibbing, not knowing
where | was going. | used to do forty
minutes after the show was over, in the
audience or out in the street

PLAYBOY: Did you ever die onstage?
MARTIN: About three times I did a joke
and then, twenty minutes later, 1 did it
again. I just forgot. 1
through Utah at night with some
iends. We stopped in the middle of the
desert and just sat there. Without the
roar of the car and the conversation, a
wave of silence came over us. It was
shocking. That's what it was like when I
did the joke the second time. It just dies.
All this silence hits you.

PLAYBOY: How do you view your stand-
up days?

MARTIN: It was hard work but that was
the funniest I ever was. I was new, the
audience hadn't quite gotten it yet. You
could sull blow their minds.

PLAYBOY: Was that the goal—to blow
their di
MARTIN: Any way you could.

PLAYBOY: Arc you nostalgic for
MARTIN: Not at all. I don't like tal
about it because Pd rather have the
memory as à good one than look back
and realize that it wasn't so good alter
all. At the time, you feel good about it be-
cause that’s what show business is: get-
ting hot, getting cold, getting hot again
getting cold, getting hot. But there's
nothing quite like getting hot for the
first time.

PLAYBOY: How does stand-up compare
with acting?

MARTIN: In the movie business, you can
be subject to variables. They might not
e the movie. Doing stand-up the
ables are drunks yelling through your
show, You might not even have the
chance to get it right.

PLAYBOY: There's no buffer between you
and an audience when you're doing
stand-up. If they don't like your stand-
up, they don't like you

MARTIN: No, that isn't it. With stand-up, I
had to go to Detroit, to Baltimore. With
movies, the movie goes to. Detroit, to
Baltimore. 1 stay home. It stays the
same. You did it as best as you could and
it doesn't change from night to night
PLAYBOY: Is there a quantifiable difler-

g

ence in the kinds of expression in
both forms?
MARTIN: In movies it's richer. First, I was

sick of doing the same thing every night.
But also, the range of emotions
greater for me in the movies. Larger sto-
ries can be told. With stand-up, I felt as if
I didn't have anything else to say. My
early act had a definite point of view. It
had a feeling of new. I don't have any of
that in me.

PLAYBOY: 15 stand-up comedy a young
man’s game?

MARTIN: For me. But I don't mean to be
minimizing those days. I feel like 1 res-
urrected a kind of comedy, even a kind
of fun. I believe 1 was the first to be
doing anticomedy, when the joke
nonsense and it is how outrageous you
can get.

PLAYBOY: When was the first time you
did your stand-up on television?
MARTIN: Oh, I did all the TV shows—
Steve Allen, Della Reese, Merv Griffin,
Virginia Graham. 1 lived on those
shows—not financially, but 1 was always
billed, *as seen on the Steve Allen Show."
PLAYBOY: Do you remember your first
time on The Tonight Shaw?

MARTIN: Yes. I did a magic act. | did a
magic act the last time I was on, too. The
Great Flydini.
PLAYBOY: In which you materi
jects from the fly of your pants.
emotional for you when Carson r
MARTIN: It was. There was a sense of
passing. I was on the show so many times
that I found myself sitting on the panel
conversing, in a sense, as a peer. There
was a feeling of accomplishment and
disbelief

PLAYBOY: Were you nervous?

MARTIN: The first time I was because it all
came down to this. In a weird sense I felt
that same feeling the last time I was on
the show. Flydini is a very difficult act to
perfoi I had to practice lor three
ays. There's always a chance you will
blow it when you're out the

PLAYBOY: What could happen:

MARTIN: Everything could fall apart in-
side your pants. When it came time for
the show in Carson's last week, I came
out and was nervous for about a minute
and then you have a job to do.

PLAYBOY: What do you think is going to
happen with The Tonight Show?
MARTIN: I don't know. There wi
be anyone like Carson. He influenced a
ming is precise. All come-
ns praise him because he is so good at
setting us up for our bits. lt truly was an
end to an era.

PLAYBOY: Did you cver want to be thc
new host?

MARTIN: [ had a fantasy fifteen yea
but not now.

What do you think of Jay

never

MARTIN: I think he'll do great, He does a
good job.

PLAYBOY: You also reached a huge aud:
ence from appearances on Saturday Night
Live. What do you remember most abou
that time?

MARTIN: It was very exciti
how petty this sounds, you feel as if
you're in the avant-garde for that little
while. It was the coming together of two
avanı-gardes, myself and the show. It
was good times.

PLAYBOY: What are your favorite
ments when you look back to your ti
on SNL?

MARTIN: 1 like some of the monologs I
did with Bill Murray. He's the fastest ad-
lib 1 ever saw. 1 was doing a monolog
and I called him up out of the audience.
We rehearsed it, and on the air 1 asked.
him something 1 had never said in re-
hearsal: “Have you ever been on TV be
He said, “Once at a ball game in a
long shot.” 1 enjoyed working with him
and with Gilda Radner. There were a lot
of high points. Working with Dan
Aykroyd was one.

PLAYBOY: Did you know John Belushi
well?

MARTIN: Vagucly, not well. He was a big
ity. Before he died, just afier he
shed Continental Divide, he was at my
у Hills. He said, “1 just
ovie and it's like a whole new
er

No matter

mo-
е

PLAYBOY: Meaning?

MARTIN: He had a vision that he could

become an actor beyond his stand-up

and SNL. He realized he really had a fu-

ture. And then he died.

it devastating?
(continued on page 80)

Sometimes only Black suits the occasion.

Ultimately theres Black:

(© 1992 SCHIIFELIN & SOMERSET CO, NY, NY JOHNNIE WALKER BLACK LABEL" BLENDED SCOTCH WHISKY 40% Ac/Vol (907)

eee AI mJ
А ы, me

©
< Z.

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kiss the status quo goodbye. in the time it takes you to turn this page...

76

... there is no telling what may bave happened

article by Geoffrey Norman Welcome to
the 21st century. It seems to have arrived sooner than
anyone expected, but then, most things do these
days. Everything happens fast. Blink and you'll miss
the latest trend. Go on a two-week no-media vacation
and entire empires might fall without your knowing a
thing about it.

This is an age of change in which virtually every-
thing is changing, ng the nature of change
itself.

In the 20th centu
ly meant growth

у EC 8
r destruction. Small
things became big things, and then
even bigger things. What was good

for General Motors was good
for the country. As GM
got bigger, the country

got richer There
seemed to be no
end to this process.
‘hange was unend-
ing growth.

In the 90th century,
wars became such vast, ur
differentiated. enterprises
that we assigned them Ro-
man numerals, like cen-
turies. The atomic bomb
was the perfect weapon
for the century of ever-
bigger things. With nu-
clear weapons, the state
could destroy not just
its enemies мш... ev-
erything. George Or-
well was the great-
est prophet of the
20th century. No
book penetrat-
ed the century's
monolithic se
crets more deep-

old guard had the decency to commit suicide.

How did it happen? The way everything happens
now: suddenly and decisively. Turnaround does not
loiter. The metaphor for change used to be biology
Mostly it was orderly growth; occasionally it was un-
expected mutation—cancer. Turnaround has more in
common with quantum physics. Change happens in-
stantaneously across both space and time.

The 20th century was the age of great institu-

tions—siates, corporations, bureaucra-
cies—that controlled information. The
individual had less and less access to
formation. (In Orwell's dystopia.
the state manufactured truth i
cording to its convenience and
needs.) Truth became harder to
know because it was either classified
state secret or was tlie. property
of some monopoly. Remember
the Pentagon. papers, the of-
ficial history of the Vietnam
war that the government went
to great length to keep out of
the hands of its citizens?
The great tool of turnaround
is the computer. Or more pre
cisely, the personal computer.

With the PC, there are no

secrets, When the Soviet

Union died, the state had

the tanks but the civilians
had the PCs and the
fax machines. The old
guard had been woeful-
ly outgunned.
The PC itself is
a perfect metaphor
for the age of
turnaround. It
evolved more fu-
ously in a year
than the auto-
mobile did in a

=>

4ғ

ly than 1984.
Then ever
thing changed
The Cold War
ended. Just like
that. H didn't

DETROIT

decade—and got
lighter, faster
and cheaper al-
most by the
week. The pro-

It is still a little carly to start talking about a renaissance in Detroit, no mat-
ter what they call overrated downtown buildings. You still have a better chance
of getting killed than getting a job in most neighborhoods there. But the sweet
happen in the scent of turnaround is in the air. Both Chrysler and Ford are now producing ve- cess is too much
с i “Clr pieles at a lower per-unit cost than the Japanese. Chrysler, in fact, did the nn- ion Ко M
with planes ‘inkable with its Dodge Viper; designed by Carroll Shelby. At a time when every computer revo-

dropping bombs өле else was selling prudence, the Viper put sex back into cars. That’s turnaround. lution has left its
that killed lots of founders in the

people. Instead, civilians went out and knocked down
the Berlin Wall. And when the old guard staged a
coup in Moscow, the people took to the streets. There
was no new Stalin among the plotters. Nobody with
his 20th century iron hand. Only a handful of
protesters died in the process of liquidating an em-
pire that had killed millions. Some members of the

dust. That is a case of pure turnaround.

The revolution in information has created an en-
tirely new set of expectat a mood that is the soul of
turnaround. It is a new dialectic. It is not strictly that
which is old that is in peril. Turnaround doesn't pun-
ish or reward merely on the basis of age. But the es-
tablished, the large and the complacent—such as GM,

IBM and the former Soviet Union—are in trouble. It
is a time to be lean and alert. Turnaround feeds on
corpulence and complacency.

There are no maps to the new world of turn-
around. Irs still too early. Anyway, how can you map
a landscape that is constantly changing? But there arc
some indicators and signposts. There are some trend
lines and rules, though few, not surprisingly, that are
hard and fast.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

CNN is a winner. Network news is a loser. The rea-
sons are simple enough. CNN is there when you need
it. Since it isn’t weighted down with prima donnas

and their salaries, it can tra

IBM isa loser. Bill Gates and his innovative Mi-
crosoft team are winners. GM is a loser,
though Saturn—its one accommoda:
to the forces of turnaround—is a
winner.

South Korea is a winner. If.
Korea is ever reunited,
Japan had better watch its
flanks.

Macy's and other de-
partment stores are
losers. Direct mail is a
winne!

jans and pickups
are winners. Station
wagons are lose

Harleys and
dirt bikes are
winners. Travel
light and move
fast if you want
to keep up with turn-
around.

Fhe NBA is a winner.
Major-league base-
is a lose:

vel light.

THE CELLULAR PHONE

was pure 20th century—an abstract bureaucratic
by force. Much of the
world’s map, as we've known it, was drawn this way.
A lot of shotgun marriages are going to be breaking
up. In many ca the divorces will be bloody. Con-
sider Yugoslavia. But make no mistake, it took blood
to maintain the old factions, too.

The forces of turnaround will continue to move the
world toward smaller, more logical political arrange-
ments. The union of Europe, so confidently assumed
last year, now appears dicey. The trend is toward se-
cession, not union. Already there is talk in Scotland of
going it alone. Quebec wants out of Canada. And
northern California has had it with its profligate

south. Staten Island wants out of New

York City. And there is a secession-

ist movement in

Vermont. Come

to think of it,

what do Social

Circle, Georgi

and Venice Beach

have in common,
anyway?

ROYAL FLUSH

The House of
Windsor survived the
20th century through
massive infusions of
sentiment (money

helped) and, after the
wedding of the centu-
ry between Di and
Chuck, looked impreg-

nable. The adoring
magazine cover stories

rolled on endlessly until
it seemed that nothing in
life could be more
sublime than polo

The Pittsburgh Remember bow it used to be? Something was pressing and you just had and charity balls.
Pirates (poor but n 5 Then turn-
ER A Winters to get to the phone, ла well, you were stuck in traffic. Or the beens; Lag a Thee” dur
The New York 30% finally got to it, bad been disassembled by some thug using a pipe tions of royalty
Mets (rich but wrench. The phone was a static device, and if you wanted to talk, you bad could. not. survive

dumb) are losers.
Congress, cash
and the Roman
Catholic. hier
are losers.
Electronic—as in mail, banking, shopping—i
instant winne:
Rifles, mortars and hand grenades are winners,
while ICBMs and poison g
Sarajevo, are losers.
Ihe end of history—a trendy little intellectual
conceit—is history, Things are going to get quite
interest

an

THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD.

The opening act in the age of turnaround was the
collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire. There
was nothing organic about the old arrangement. 1t

no use in the streets of.

to get to where the phone was. Even Superman bad to find a phone booth ‘he truths ol the
before be could change clothes. Now you call from wherever you are. Infor-
rchy mation is fluid, and as long as the information moves, nothing else bns to.

information age—
not with scanners
aimed at cellular
phones. Princesses
can be suicidal, narcissistic and bulimic, and princes
can be insensitive horses’ asses. Even the supporting
cast can behave like a bunch of plebes. Hey, Fergie,
show us your tits. Will the last duke out of Bucl
ham Palace please turn out the lights? And will he
bring the bulbs?

FROM THE PENTHOUSE TO THE BIG HOUSE

Turnaround loves a big, stationary target.

Mike Milken went to jail because he believed what
was written about him. He could do any deal, he
owned the junk bond market and he would transform
American finance. He was a master of the universe.

7

78

Now he is an inmate. It’s a
not allowed to wear his rug:
Mike ‘Tyson heard it all the time. He was the
youngest man to win the heavyweight championship.
It was his for as long as he wanted it. He was too big,
too strong and, above all, too mean to lose or even
to get hurt. He ruled the world, until a journey-
man took his measurements and then left
him flopping on the canvas, looking for
mouthpiece.

Mike still didn't get it. Maybe a man
could stop him but, for sure, no woman
could. Now he is doing six years of
hard time in Indiana. If you want to
get into the ring with turnaround,
you need to be a counterpuncher.

ight lockup, but he's still

ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH

There are other conspicuous peo-
ple who should have known better.
Even in the nation's capital, they didn’t
catch on when the rules changed. When
turnaround cut them off at the knees, they
were bewildered and hurt. lt seemed so
unfair.

Clark Clifford made a career out
of being thought of as the shrewdest
man ngton. As advisor
to presidents and. wheeler-dealer
extraordinaire, his reputation and
cozy relationship with the p pro-
tected him. These days, a reputation
can be a liability, and a man in power
can't be sure of his friends. When the pros-
ecutors charged fraud, the smartest man
in Washington said he'd been duped by a
bunch of Arabs—that he was just an i
norant but innocent fool. The grand ju-
ries didn't believe him.

Jim Wright made a career out of
logrolling in Congress. He was from
Texas and believed that if it had worked
for Lyndon Johnson, then, hell, boy, it
ought to work lor him. But LB]
lived in an age when one man
could bully all of Washington
had the stones. Times changed.
Washington became a town of
scalp hunters. A Speaker of the
House would do until it was time to
knock off another president.

25

SURVIVING AND THRIVING

he VANESSA WILLIAMS

The old institutions would ruin you
if you didn’t go along. Their way or the nea
highway. Vanessa Williams played the
Miss America game well cnongh to

when he retired. Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones of
the Dallas Cowboys got it. Turn it all around, broth
Mike Lynn, who gave them the store for Herschel
Walker, didn't have a clue. Leona Helmsley didn't get
it. Neither did Donald Trump—but then, arrogance
is made to be undone by turnaround, Knowledge
makes you humble. People on the front lines of
turnaround, such people as
Václav Havel, make the point.
Havel went from playwright to
political prisoner to the pre
dency of Czechosloy
then to private life with the
peace and grace that comes
with understanding. He is à

KISS OF DEATH

Talk about not getting it:
Time named Mikha эгһасһеу
Man of the Decade only two years be-

fore he was sent to pasture. It was in-
evitable. Time is the perfect 20th century insti
tution, where news flows m the
eporters in the field up through lay-
ers of bureaucracy. The clerks and
ministers. rework and rethink
until it becomes the vision of a few
suited men sitting in big offices in a
tall, sealed-glass building. Like Gor-
bachew they would be the last to
know. Like him, they believe the pro-
cess can be managed. As Emerson knew,
events are in the saddle and ride man-
ind. Those who try to manage turn-
around will be buried by it.

YOU WANT TURNAROUND? FLI GIVE YOL
TURNAROUND

Ross Perot. From bantam rooster to
cock of the walk to the Dallas chick-
en to feisty phoenix—all in one season.
The experts were a day late and a dol-

lar short the whole time, and, for

Perot. turnaround kept turning.

INSTITUT

The United States military was
ly ruined by its misadventure
in Vietnam. But there are advan-
tages to having nothing left to los
The olħcers who were blood-

INAL TURNAROUND

Some people understand almost
intuitively what the new world calls
for. Where €
back, Bill Clinton hunkered down
and let the media punch them-
selves arm weary Bill knows
turnaround. Alan Dershowitz is the
derstands: Your best chance to win
Lynch of Fidelity understood it. E
Peaks did not. Roger Smith at Gene:
never heard of it. Lee Iacocca was |

Hart tried to fight 2

lawyer who un-

id Lynch of

win, but some Sapphic photos forced
ber to resign in . . . disgrace? Eight
years later; ber album, “The Comfort
Zonc,” went platinum. Miss America
basn’t been the same since Bert Parks.

эп appeal. Peter
y win the we
ral Motors had Iraqi
ust catching on

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KEVIN POPE

ied and disillusioned by Vietnam
but chose to stay in uniform r
made their services with volunteers
nstead of conscripts. Alter shaky
road shows in Grenada and Par
ma, the military met the (conscript-
ed) forces of a nation that had won

its last war (and that had, according to popular wis-
dom, one of the finest, most battle-tested a
Id). The Am
But the Ai
ogy the motivation, thc

mies of
ns had fewer men than the
nerican military had the technol-
(concluded. on page 200)

“TU tell you what it means. It means thal you and your
friend here have made a mess of year one.”

P L À V B O Y

80

STEVE MARTIN onina fon 2

“I have a quiet side. It's not depression. It's a kind

of shyness or maybe insecurit

»

MARTIN: Devastating? No, because 1
wasn't that close to him. It seemed so
t of the mystique and pei
sona. mber seeing him standing
in the middle of a street in New York.
He was directing traffic, shouting, try-
ing to get a taxi, and you could tell
he was doing it for show, because he
thought he should. He was living the
myth. That was my impression.
PLAYBOY: Did his death cause you to
reevaluate your own life?
MARTIN: I had nothing to do with that
kind of lifestyle.

PLAYBOY: Never?

MARTIN: No. I never got close.

PLAYBOY: You never had to le:
gs and alcohol the hard wa:
MARTIN: No. When 1 was about twenty,
I smoked some marijuana. That was
about it. 1 think some personalities are
just addictive. John felt like it was his
duty to do it. I have no sense of that. I
noticed the difference in the times that.
I allowed myself to drink and the times
I didn’t. There was a big difference
my energy and how I slept. Those guys
were doing it all the time. It had to take
a toll.

PLAYBOY: So you have what might be
called a nonaddictive personality?
MARTIN: I wouldn't call myself non:

rn about

dictive. I'm obsessive.
PLAYBOY: Was it a conscious decision
to stop doing stand-up and start mak-

ing films?
MARTIN: I just decided to do it. I still
had some stand-up bookings, but I
knew that there was only one way to go
as a stand-up and that was down.
PLAYBOY: Many stand-up comedians
fail when they try to get into the
movies.

MARTIN: | guess I had enough residual
power from stand-up that I could do
those five or six films that it takes to
learn your craft. I thought it would be
ап easy transition, but it wasn't.

low so?

MARTIN: | can't describe it because it's
subconscious. It's more about acting
In the early movies, the comedy was
way more important than the acting.
Then. as I got older and I learned
more, it was about learning to let the
acting support the comedy. But all this
is bullshit. 1 don't know what I'm talk-
ing about. I'm just saying that some-
thing happens that makes you better.

PLAYBOY:
there was
win an A
about thatz
MARTIN: It's hard to answer. No deci
sion is ever made in my lile for the
Academy. I wasn't expecting anything
because. Um not Academy material. Be-
g Academy material is like a hurri-
cane. It just happens. It has its own
course. There's nothing you can do to
affect it.
PLAYBOY: Have you been overlooked
because of your roots in comedy?
MARTIN: Yes. | came from silly stand-
up. But then, as with Roxanne, people
start talking, "Oh, it's a cinch"—the
L.A. Times said it was a shoe-in—it be-
comes kind of puzzling.
PLAYBOY: Do you think the bias against
comedy is changing a bit?
MARTIN: Well, it certainly changed for
Robin Williams. 1 mean, hes very
nominatable.
PLAYBOY: What made that happen?
MARTIN: | don't know. He did a re
markable thing. He turned his film ca-
reer completely around. He once com-
mented that he used to get scripts with
my fingerprints on them. He doesn't
anymore. He turned it around
through drama, though, not comedies.
Good Morning, Vietnam, which was sort
of both, and Awakenings and The Fisher
King.
PLAYBOY: Both of your careers were
built around comedy. Is there more at
stake when you do dramas, as you do
when you play a preacher in Leap of
you intimidated by dramas?
MARTIN: Not at all. I have had enough
n the movies I've done, starting
with. Planes, Trains and Automobiles and
Roxanne. Leap of Faith is a drama,
though there is some showy stuff. I'm
rüst evangelist. When you're
preaching and yelling and singing and
dancing and all that, it’s very much a
show. I'm not asking the audi
there while I do Hamlet.
PLAYBOY: There's s
far to go—how c
MARTIN: Yes
tion. Is not
this case

When Roxanne

came out,

comedic question. In
I didn't have to go bigger
than the character. Evangelists go pret-
ty big on their own.

PLAYBOY: Is your character modeled af-
ter any evangelist? Maybe Jimmy Swag-
gart or Jim Bakker?

ggart and were
were also sincere.

This guy's not sincere at all.
PLAYBOY: There were reports of trouble
on the set—the producer was fired and
your agent was canned for not taking
better care of you.
MARTIN: | saw that report and it was
unfortunate since it wasn't true. The
producer left because he had a dispute
with the studio over money. My agent
left the agency because of long-stand-
ing problems. None of it had anything
to do with me.
PLAYBOY: Tom Smothers said that when
you stop being funny, you reveal very
little about yourself. 15 it true?
MARTIN: Was he talking about me or
about comedians in general?
PLAYBOY: You.
MARTIN: Yeah, I think that’s probably
true. You go through a time when you
become famous and the demands are
constant. Then everyone starts to get
offended about what you're not doing.
When they get around you, they stand
and look at you, waiting for you to do
that thing that they know. When it hap-
pens once or twice, it’s fine, but when
it's constant, you start to get mad and
you actively withhold that thing to
show to yourself that уоште not a
puppet.
PLAYBOY: How about when you're not
around fans who want you to perform
for them? How about when you are on
your own, with friends.
MARTIN: Perhaps. I have a quiet side
and it can certainly appear. I have no
idea what generates it. It’s not depres-
n. It's a kind of shyness or maybe in-
security. Around my friends Е never
feel that way. Not my really close
friends. But they number, like, fou!
PLAYBOY: Who are your best friends?
MARTIN: Marty Short. Chevy Chase.
Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon. Kevin
Kline, Some of the people you meet in
show business are just so fantastic. It's
great when you meet someone who's
clever, creative and on the same wav
length.
PLAYBOY: Is that why so many of your
friends are also actors?
MARTIN: They re just the kind of people
you meet. | met most of them in
movies. There are Rick Moranis,
ry and Meg Kasdan, Frank Or. ты
Hanks—he's y. very funny guy. 1
had dinner the other night with him
and Ron Howard and their families.
They're the people in comedy I like to
hang around with. Their comedy is dif-
ferent from what they do on-screen
Its more sarcastic or sal Mar
Short, for example, can do an impres-
on of an assistant director he just
worked with. You've never met him,
but irs hysterically funny. Glenne
Headly has that ability, too. You know
who else? Phoebe Cates and Kevin
(concluded on page 92)

TWICE
MORE,
WITH
FEELING

the barbis
are back, and
more
bodacious
than ever

PHOTOGRAPHY BY
STEPHEN WAYDA
AND

GREG GORMAN

Motu o un manco ron COMER

HATS more than 11% feet

tall, hotter than a fire-

| cracker, sultry as sin, able to
spin glamour into gold and to
flip coins with superb stomach
| muscles? Has to be the Barbi

| twins. Sprung from San Diego
on an unsuspecting Hollywood
three years ago, they're the
5/9" pair with identically incen-
diary looks and surprising tal-
ents. “We're a fantasy,” says
Shane, the rationalist. “We're a
freak show,” says Sia, the kid-
der. In 1989 they were belly
dancers doing back bends

and flipping coins around
their navels. A billboard on
Sunset Boulevard led toa
PLAYBOY debut and the rest, as
they say, is winning twinning.
Fans in Paris cried “Les Barbis!"
and formed a Barbi queue to.
touch Shane and Sia. Where
are they now?

"We're back,” they say. We've
noticed. The Barbis are back in
PLAYBOY to give you a pleasant
case of double vision. “The first
time wasn't sexy enough,” says
Shane. “We wanted to go all the
way.” Says Sia, “That's right. All
the way over the edge to ultra-
sexy.” For even more, catch their
number one top-selling calendar.

The twins cohabit twin ranches—one in Coli-
fornia, one in Oklahoma. Their horses, mules,
ducks and a pig named Barbi Q mob them, as
Barbi cultists do on the road. (We're not sur-
prised.) But men con be a much tougher crowd:
“Too many of them only want us as a prize.”

The panther (above) is Sara. The
sleeker ones are Sia and Shane.
They adored Sara's keeper, but he
was married. Shane likes police-

men and loves L.A. County sheriffs,
ia goes for bad b

cop, Shane gets him. If he's

wanted by the cops, he's mine."

PLAYBOY

92

STEVE MARTIN (continued ion poge so)

“People point their cameras and say, Act crazy.’ But
hey, what do they want from me? I’m forty-six.”

Kline. Chevy and Marty Short and I
hang outa lot since we got to be good
friends while doing Three Amigos. In
real life they are some of the funniest
people there are.

PLAYBOY: Would a dinner conversation
among the three of you sound like the
dialog from a movie?

MARTIN: It would be much hipper.
PLAYBOY: Is there a sort of comedy
cocksmanship when you're together,
with each trying to outdo the others
with cleverness?

MARTIN: In the circles I run in it's not.
about outdoing the other guy, it's
about building on the other guy and
then he builds on you. That's when it's
best. It's just about being funny. It's
like the comedy god entered the room
and you want to see how far you can go
with him.

PLAYBOY: Do you have to be careful not
to lose touch with ordinary life when
you're rich and famous?

MARTIN: We have our problems, too,
and they're just as real as anybody
else's problems and, for the most part,
they're probably the same. Maybe you
don't have to worry about paying a bill,
but we're not stupid and we can figure
out what it would be like not to be able
to pay a bill.

I saw The Last Boy Scout on laser disc.
It's very ugly. It's about a family falling
apart. The wife is having an affair and
the husband is a detective who's always
at work, The daughter is just plain re-
pellent. Her language is horrible. To-
ward the end of the movie she supplies
the gun to her dad to blow away the
people. Early on, the wife is trying to
get a rise out of her husband and she
says something like, "You don't care
about me. Why don't you just say,
‘Sarah, fuck you. I'll spit in your face if
I ever catch you with another man
again.” By the end of the movie, this
has become the love theme. When he
says to her, "Fuck you, ГЇЇ spit in your
face if I ever see you with another
man," she melts.

I'm thinking, Is there a world out
there I don't know about? Is that the
way a lot of people are in this ugly, ug-
ly world? Well, I don't know about
those problems. I know about the
problems in Parenthood.

PLAYBOY: But you have no children.
MARTIN: Well, I know those kinds of
people, so I understand them.
PLAYBOY: Do you want kids?

MARTIN: It's not something I talk about.

PLAYBOY: You once said that any time
you get the urge to have children, all
you have to do is spend some time with
one.

MARTIN: Yes, but since then lots of my
friends have had children. I have seen
what it means to people. So who
knows? But I don't want to go into it.
PLAYBOY: Let's talk about your art col-
lection then. That's safer.

MARTIN: I don't talk about that, either.
Talking about personal parts of your
life cheapens them, I think. I collect art
but Pd rather not talk about it.
PLAYBOY: Was roller-skating through
the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art in L.A. Story a boyhood fantasy?
MARTIN: It was wonderful but very
scary too. The floor is very slippery
and you dor't want to crash into any of
those paintings.

PLAYBOY: You donated an enormous
canvas to the museum, didn't you?
MARTIN: It's not something I want to
talk about.

PLAYBOY: Excuuuuuuse us.

MARTIN: [Smiles]

PLAYBOY: How does it feel to have your
lines—such as that one—find their way
into the vernacular?

MARTIN: It's sort of funny but it's not
anything to be really proud of. It's pop.
PLAYBOY: Where did some of them
come from? How about that onc:
"Well, excuuuuuuse me"?

MARTIN: When I was fifteen, I worked
at this shop in Disneyland. A woman
there from New Orleans always said,
"Well, excuse me for livin." It came
from that. It was never meant to be a
catchphrase. The routine was always
about getting mad over nothing. For
instance, Га get mad at the spotlight
operator because he went to a blue spot
when it was supposed to be a white
spot. It always made me laugh when
entertainers were so self-important
that they freak out over these things.
PLAYBOY: How about the "wild and
crazy guy" line?

MARTIN: It all started with the idea of
playing a folk hero that was completely
contrary to the way I look. The folk
hero was a rambling man—you know,
"Lord, | was born a ramblin’ man,”
from the song. It struck me as funny
because of the contrast—somebody
who considered himself wild, but who
was anything but. One of the SNL writ-
ers took the line from my act and used
it in his sketch for Danny [Aykroyd]
and me. I think the idea was Danny's.

That's how the Czech brothers became
the two wild and crazy guys. After mil-
lions of nights ad-libbing on stage,
some things stick,

PLAYBOY: Your wife said you have spent
years living down that phrase. Are you
ever wild and crazy anymore?

MARTIN: Hanging around with friends,
never because people want me to be.
PLAYBOY: Is it difficult being Steve Mar-
tin, as opposed to another famous per-
son, because people expect you to be
funny?

MARTIN: Yes, although I don't give in to
it. Worse than that is that people laugh
at things you say that aren't meant to
be funny at all. And yeah, a lot of peo-
ple want me to, like, go back and do
routines I did when I was twenty. They
want me to be the wild and crazy guy.
People point their cameras and say,
"Act crazy." But hey, what do they want
from me? I'm forty-six, you know.
PLAYBOY: At forty-six, you're playing
the father of the bride. Was it a jolt to
find that you're no longer cast as the
groom?

MARTIN: There's that moment where
you go, “I can’t play a father!” and you
start counting and you realize, “Oh. I
guess I can." I think one of the secrets
of maturing in the movie business is
knowing when something is over and
something new is beginning.

PLAYBOY: Is there a bittersweet aspect
to the idea of maturing?

MARTIN: No, it fecls good. About the
stuff in the past? I did it. There's a cer-
tain satisfaction in making it through
all those years and still being around,
knowing that you were not a flash in
the pan.

PLAYBOY: Was that a big fear?

MARTIN: When you're a sudden hit like
I was, the first thing that enters your
head is, when's it going to be over?
PLAYBOY: Have you joined those people
in show business who, in spite of good
years and bad years, won't go away?
MARTIN: Well, maybe. I never like to
take things for granted, but I feel way
more at peace with that question. It
doesn’t now depend on your latest hit
or flop.

PLAYBOY: Many of your recent movies,
such as Father of the Bride and last sum-
теге Housesitter, came on quietly yet
earned more than the so-called big
movies. What is it about them?
MARTIN: They deliver. They're nice.
Certain audiences feel too sophisticat-
ed and will never like them. But other-
wise, it’s hard not to like those movies,
unless you've got a chip on your shoul-
der. I've been happy with them. I am
happy to realize Гтп now a young old-
er leading man. It's nice to know you
can be funny, even at forty-six.

“Look, we can either ring out the old year or ring in
the new, but we can’t do both.”

سا ——

BLUEBEARD
IN IRELAND

fiction

BY JOHN UPDIKE

the allensons vowed
never to travel
together again. now,
touring the emerald isle,

george remembered why

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID HODGES

"THE PEOPLE are wonderful,” George
Allenson had to agree, there in Ken-
mare. His wife, Vivian, was 20 years
younger than he but almost as tall,
with dark hair and decided sharp fea-
tures, and it placed the least strain on
their marriage if he agreed with her
assertions. Yet he harbored an inner
doubt. If the Irish were so wonderful,
why was Ireland such a sad, empty
country? Vivian, a full generation re-
moved from him, was an instinctive
feminist, and to him, an instinctive
male chauvinist, any history of unre-
lieved victimization seemed suspect.
Not that it wasn’t astonishing to see the

80-room palaces the British landlords
had built for themselves, and touching
to see the ruins—stone end walls still
standing, thatched roofs collapsed—of
the hovels where the Irish had lived,
eaten their potatoes and drunk their
whiskey, and died. Vivian loved the
hovels, inexplicably, since they all
looked alike from the outside, and
when it was possible to enter a doorless
doorway or peak through a sashless
window-hole, the inside showed a
muddy dirt floor, a cluuer of rotting
boards that might once have been fur-
niture and a few plastic or aluminum
leavings of intruders like themselves.

She could see he was unconvinced.
“The way they use the language,” she
insisted, “and leave little children to
run their shops for them.

“Wonderful,” he agreed again. He
was sitting with his, he hoped, not
ridiculously much younger wife in the
lounge of their hotel, before a flicker-
ing blue fire that was either a gas imi-
tation of a peat fire or the real thing,
he wasn't sure. A glass of whiskey,
whose one ice cube had melted away,
added to Allenson's natural sleepiness.
He had driven them around the Din-
gle Peninsula today in a foggy rain and
then south to Kenmare over a narrow

mountain road from Killarney, Vivian
screaming with anxiety all the way,
and it had left him exhausted. After a
vacation in Italy two years ago, he had
vowed never to rent a foreign car with
her again, but he had, in a place with
narrower roads and left-handed drive.
During the trickiest stretch today, over
fabled Moll's Gap, vith a Mercedes full
of gesturing Germans pushing him
from behind, Vivian had turned in her
seat and pressed her face against the
headrest rather than look, and sobbed
and called him a sadistic fiend. After-
ward, safely delivered to the hotel
parking lot, she complained that she

had twisted so violently that her lower
back hurt slightly. What he resented
most about her attacks of hysteria was
how, when she recovered from them,
she expected him to have recovered,
too. For all her feminism she still
claimed the feminine right to mean-
ingless storms of emotion, followed by
the automatic sunshine of male for-
giveness.

As if sensing the sulky residue of a
grudge within him and determined to
erase it, she flashed there by the slug-
gish fire her perfect teeth, teeth whose
fluoride-protected whiteness was em-
phasized by the almost-black red ir

PLAYBOY

96

which she painted her lips. Her lips
were long and mobile but thin and
sharp, as if—it seemed to him in his
drowsy condition by the gassy flicker-
ing fire—her eyebrows had been dupli-
cated and sewn together at the ends to
make a mouth. “Remember,” she said,
as if it had not been mere hours ago,
“the lady shopkeeper out there beyond
Dingle, where I begged you to stop?”
“You insisted I stop,” he corrected.
She had said that if he didn’t admit he
was lost, she would jump out of the car
and walk back. How could they be lost,
he argued, with the sea on their left
and hills on their right? But the facts
that the sea was obscured by fog and
the stony hills vanished upward into
rain clouds reinforced her conviction
to the point that he slammed on the
brakes. As if he might be the one to run
away, she had got out of the car with
him. The dimly lighted store looked
empty, and they had been about to
turn away from the door when a shad-
ow materialized within, beyond the
lace curtains—the proprietress, emerg-
ing from a room where she lived, wait-
ing, rocking perhaps, watching what
meager channels of television reached
this remoteness. He had been sur-
rised, in southwestern Ireland, by how
ittle television there was to watch, and
by the sound of Gaelic being spoken all
about him, in shops and pubs by the
young as well as by the old. It was part.
of his provincialism to be surprised by
the provincialism of others; he expect-
ed America by now to be everywhere.
This was indeed a store; its shadowy
shelves held goods in cans and
polyethylene packets, and a cloudy
case held candies and newspapers
bearing today's date. But it was hard to
see it as anything but a stage cleverly
set for their entrance and exit, rather
than as a real focus for the economic
needs of the village around them,
which seemed deserted. The propri-
etress—her hair knotted straight back,
her straight figure clad in a dress of
nunnish gray—felt to him younger
than she looked, like an actress tricked
out in bifocals and gray rats. She de-
scribed the local turnings with a lilting
soft urgency, as if in all her years in this
unlit store on a cliff above the sea, she
had never before been asked to direct a
pair of tourists. There was a grave cer-
emoniousness to the occasion that
chastened the fractious Allensons. To
pay her for her trouble, they bought
a copy of the local newspaper and
some bags of candy, which they ate in
the car—Licorice Allsorts for him; for
her, chocolate-covered malt balls called
Maltesers.
They got back into the car enhanced
by the encounter, the irritating cur-
rents between them momentarily

quelled. Yet, even so, for all those sac-
erdotally careful directions, he must
have taken a wrong turning, for they
never passed the Gallarus Oratory,
which he had wanted to see. It was the
Chartres of beehive chapels. In Ireland.
the sights were mostly stones. The Al-
lensons found themselves driving end-
lessiy upward on the north side of the
Dingle Peninsula, needing to traverse
the Slieve Mish Mountains to avoid
Tralee, and being tailgated by the Ger-
mans on Moll's Gap, while Vivian had
hysterics and Allenson reflected on the
unbridgeable distances between peo-
ple, even those consecrated to intimacy.

He had had three wives. He had
meant Vivian to see him into the grave
but unexpected resistances in her were
quickening, rather than lulling, his will
to live. In his simple and essenually in-
nocent malehood he had married into
a swarming host of sexist resent-
ments—men were incompetent (his
driving in foreign lands), men were
bullies (his occasional desire to share in
the planning of their itineraries), men
were ridiculous (his desire to see, faute
de mieux, old Ireland’s lichened gray
huts, dolmens, menhirs and ruined
abbeys), men were lethal. Two years
ago, out of sheer political superstition,
she had become furious in Gabriele
D'Annunzio's estate above Lake Garda,
all because the poet and adventurer
had enshrined himself and his 13 loyal
followers in matching sarcophagi, lift-
ed up to the sun on pillars. Men were
fascists, this had led her to see; she had
become absolutely unreasonable con-
cerning poor foppish D'Annunzio,
about whom she knew nothing. She
proved to be violently allergic to histo-
ry, and her silver-haired husband
loomed to her as history's bearer. So he
had, for their next trip abroad, sug-
gested Eire, a land whose history was
buried in legend and ignominy. Just its
shape on the map, next to Great
Britain's spiky upstanding island, sug-
gested the huddled roundness of a
docile spouse.

“You insisted,” he said, “and then we
got lost anyway and saw none of the
sights.”

Vivian resisted having her bad tem-
per revived. “The whole countryside is
the sight,” she said, “and the wonderful
people. Everybody knows that. And all
day, with you jerking that poor little
Japanese compact this way and that
like a crazy teenaged hood, I couldn't
enjoy looking out. If I take my eye off
the map for an instant, you get us lost.
You're not getting me back into that
car tomorrow, I tell you that.”

Itching to give the fire a poke, he
gave it to her instead. “Darling, I
thought we were going to drive south,
to Bantry and Skibbereen. Bantry

House in the morning and Creagh
Gardens in the afternoon, with a quick
lunch at Ballydehob.” He smiled.

“You're a monster,” she said cheer-
fully. “You really would put me
through a whole day of you at the
wheel on these awful roads? We're go-
ing to walk.”

“Walk?”

"George, I talked it over with a man
in the office, the assistant. manager,
while you were putting on a shirt and
tie. He couldn't have been sweeter, and
said what the tourists do in Kenmare is
they take walks. He gave me a map.”

“A map?" Another whiskey would
sink him to the bottom of the sea. But
would that be so bad? This woman was
killingly boring, like a schoolteacher
from his youth. She had proudly pro-
duced a little map, printed by photo-
copy on green paper, showing a pat-
tern of numbered lines enmeshing the
phallic thrust of the Kenmare estuary.
"I've come all this way to take a walk?”
But there was no arguing. Vivian was
so irrational that, because her prede-
cessor wife had been called Claire, she
had refused, planning the trip, to in-
clude County Clare, where the good
cliffs and primitive churches were, and
off whose shore part of the Spanish Ar-
mada had wrecked.

e

Next morning the devil in him,
prompted by the guidebook, could not
resist teasing her. "Today's the day,” he
announced, “to do the Ring of Beara.
We can see the Ogham Stone at Bally-
crovane, and if there's time, take the
cable car to Dursey Island, the only
such wonder in this green and pleasant
land. The blessed roadway meanders,
it says here, through mountainous
coastal areas providing panoramic
views of both Bantry and Kenmare
bays. A famous stone circle there is,
and just two miles farther, the ruins of
Puxleys mansion. A mere hundred
and forty kilometers, the entire ring is.
That's eighty-four miles of pleasure,
not counting the cable car."

“You must be out of your gourd,”
Vivian said, using one of those youthful
slang expressions that she knew he de-
tested. “I'm not getting back into any
car with you at the wheel until we head
to Shannon Airport. If then.”

Allenson shrugged to hide his hurt.
“Well, we could walk downtown to the
local circle again. I'm not sure I dug"—
tit for tat—"all the nuances the first
time.”

Ithad been charming, in a way. They
had driven up a little cul-de-sac at the
shabbier end of Kenmare, and a small
girl in a school jumper had been
pushed from a house, while her moth-
er and siblings watched from the

(continued on page 172)

97

98

the man who can
talk to anyone tells how
you, too, can enjoy the

holiday social whirl

QUERENCIA

article by WILLIAM Е. BUCKLEY, JR.

HE PARTY SEASON! Raptur-
ously welcomed by some; by others, greeted with fear and
loathing. But everyone understands that in some social situ-
ations there are shoals, and these have to be navigated with
care. Some demand of you a facility for small talk, which
some of us simply don't have, requiring us to make do with
what we have, or to veer sharply to one side or another of
the reef. Then there are those special perils, the awful bores.
"These are all the more difficult to circumvent because—un-
like the shoals that lurk hidden by at least a few inches of wa-
ter—the bores are more like stalagmites, rising directly be-
tween you and your objective: the bar, the beautiful widow,
your best friend.

The questions arise: How to maneuver? What to do? What
to stress?

I had a professor who took to writing me four or five times
a week for several years, many of his letters seven or eight
pages long and almost all of them describing his then-cur-
rent plight. One of his plights lasted about nine months and
had to do with his failure to pay enough money to the IRS a
year or two earlier. I don't think Dante devoted more pages
to The Inferno than my professor did to whether, how, at
whose expense and with what recrimination he should come
up with the $1300, plus interest and maybe a penalty, to pay
Internal Revenue.

His obsessive quandary became amusing enough, after six
or seven months, to cause me to make mention of it at lunch
to a friend in common. My tax-torn professor knew the
great French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel
intimately, I only in my capacity as a protégé of the profes-
sor. I recounted at lunch the agonies with which my friend

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE BENNY

PLAYBOY

100

belabored in his letters the question of
his taxes. And M. Jouvenel smiled and
said yes, he knew the professor was
that way about all matters, had always
been that way. “And it astonishes me,
for so intelligent a man. Because every
subject in the whole world is more in-
teresting than oneself,” said M. Jou-
venel, some years before writing his
autobiography.

In fact, 1 think him quite wrong. 1
don't pretend that my friend mightn't
have seized on a more interesting sub-
ject than his tax delinquency, but I re-
member reading all those letters with
fascination because they composed, re-
ally, a portrait of his mind, which—it
happened, happily—was among the
most interesting I have ever encoun-
tered. It was all there: extraordinary
analytical skills, extraordinary capacity
for self-justification; paranoia, an inno-
cent perplexity, dependence, a capacity
to exfoliate from a routine problem a
comprehensive weltschmerz about our
life and times.

But for some reason, the general so-
cial rule—don't talk about your per-
sonal concerns—continues to govern,
especially at large parties where social
contacts are fleeting and especially at
large parties of the kind that generally
abound at holiday time. These parties
are an institutional imperative, so that
just as the blossoms come out in May,
so do the large parties constellate about
the holiday season. It is then that it is
likelier that the ratio between the peo-
ple you know and the people who are
simply there becomes smaller and
smaller. It is then that, entering the au-
ditorium, you scan the horizon anx-
iously in search of a familiar face. And
having found one, what do you talk
about?

Неге is my point! Talk about his af-
fairs. M. Jouvenel is wrong in this mat-
ter, and 1 will give you a hypothetical
example. The man you recognize is a
banker. Yesterday the Labor Party beat
the Likud Party in a general election in
Israel. The day before that, Gerald
Ranck played 31 Scarlatti sonatas at the
New York Society for Ethical Culture
auditorium, the same day that John
McEnroe defeated Ivan Lendl at the
French Open in Paris. Hypothetical
question: Unless you know your mark
extremely well, what reason do you
have to suppose that he will discourse
on any of these events authoritatively,
originally or amusingly?

The answer is, you have no grounds
for faith in the matter. You do know
that the man you have just approached
is interested in banking. If it happens
that he is a banker only because his fa-
ther made him vice president at the
age of 22 and he has secretly hated

banking ever since, my rule still ap-
plies: You are in rare luck, because he
can confide to you how much he hates
his profession, how filthy, rotten, bor-
ing and exploitative it is, and that
makes for interesting banter. More
ikely he is a banker because banking is
his thing, so that you can come up with
something that encourages him to ex-
patiate there and then on a subject he
knows a great deal about, and your
question will inflame his didactic spirit.

“Say, Elmore, about the discount
rate—is it possible in the futures mar-
ket to gamble on the discount rate
down the line, say, six months or
maybe a year?"

1 don't happen to know the answer
to that question, but I can promise you,
sight unseen, that a banker—or, for
that matter, a broker, or an economist,
or an informed businessman—will
gambol off that question for just about
as long as you want him to. By this I
mean that if he tries to give you an ob-
jurgatory reply ("Course пов”), you
are still left free to draw him out (“But
explain to me exactly why not. It seems
to me that . . .").

As he winds into the subject, you can
keep him wound up. The subject at
hand will inevitably abut on another
question and you skate right along with
him. One thing you absolutely know is
that he will be saying more interesting
things to you than in answer to the
question "How do you account for Ross
Pero''s appeal?" The reason for this is
that you have, in the past eight months,
read more about Perot than about
AIDS, the rich and the homeless. So
the chances are infinitesimal that you
will hear anything new or engaging on
the subject. But you are talking to a
banker and he does know about the va-
garies of the discount rate. Moreover,
he can illustrate his points by recount-
ing personal experiences. And the
most interesting experiences are, real-
ly, personal. Would you rather read an
account of the Battle of Austerlitz or an
account of what Napoleon was think-
ing during that battle?

However, some people are manifest-
ly incapable of saying anything inter-
esting, even about themselves. On the
other hand, some people famously dull
by reputation can surprise you. It may
happen that the dullard you are talk-
ing to will decide that this is the mo-
ment to confide that during his youth
he was a serial murderer. It is unlikely
that in recounting whom he murdered,
how and why, he can bore you

But it is true, as 1 said, that some
people can be boring when talking
about any subject. I know someone
who would cause my mind to wander
between the moment he told me he

spotted those funny fighter planes
coming in over the hills in Honolulu
and the moment, only two minutes lat-
er, that they were dropping their
bombs on Pearl Harbor. With people
such as these, either you are or are not
qualified to defend yourself.

The British historian and diplomat
Harold Nicolson was famous for,
among other things, observing in his
diaries that 99 people out of 100 are in-
teresting, and the 100th is interesting
because he is the exception. Well, if you
have the lepidopterist's interest in the
rare butterfly, you сап manage—by
saying to yourself: I will interest myself
in this encounter by analyzing and
committing to memory the reasons
why he or she is such an infernal bore.
You begin, in your mind, to frame the
list of his vacuities: He is inarticulate.
He is repetitious. He laughs incessant-
ly. He tells you in such excruciating de-
tail how many ducks went by before he
shot for the first time, that you find
yourself toying with stupid tangents.
(Is duck overpopulation something of
an ecological problem?)

But most of us aren't well developed
as bore taxonomists. It is therefore a
good idea to develop means of self-de-
fense when, at a party, you find your-
self locked in with the great bore. The
first line of defense is, of course, to
train your face to register appropriate
responses: the half-smile, following on
his little wink; the eyebrows raised in
suspense, as his voice indicates that
what he is about to say is a revela-
tion; and the barely enunciated “I'll be
damned!” when it is clear that he is say-
ing something he accounts unusual.
The French have the all-purpose word,
liens, that is appropriate in absolutely
every situation. Depending on the lilt
you give it, you can use it to respond
to news that your interlocutor's wife
has just died of cancer (“Tieeeeeens”), or
that he just married Miss America
("Tiens"). The closest equivalent in
English is "I'll be damned." ("I'll be
daaaaaamned." "I'llbedamned!")

These are the rudimentary skills to
develop—some kind of facial and spo-
ken reaction to what has been said—
and if you have had a lot of practice,
which, given the unfortunate incidence
of bores, almost everybody has had,
you can become very good at it. But
there has to be a second line of defense.

You catch the word Mabel, and you
jump in. Now, you have to be dogged
about this. “Mabel?” you interrupt. “Is
she related to Susan Mercer?" He looks
at you, surprised—he's never even
heard of Susan Mercer (nor have you).
He is maybe just slightly annoyed.
because his narrative was interrupted.

(continued on page 182)

“It isn’t New Year's yet, Tricia.”

101

an ANCHOR
an
HAPPY NEW YEAR

this hollday, go down to the sea
in black-tie style aboard a
caribbean-bound charter yacht

modern living

By JOHN WOOLDRIDGE

“You have shortened sail and it is late
at night and there are only two of you
in the cockpit. You are moving at rac-
ing speed, parting the buttery sea as
with a scalpel, and the waters roar

themselves exuberantly subdued by your
powers to command your way through
them.” — WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

H, THE RONANCE of the sea. An
À ocean voyage aboard a chartered

acht provides a sense of freedom
and escape that even the most opulent
vacation spots can't offer. And if you
decide to set sail over New Year's—as
we've done in this feature—you trade
screaming revelers in paper hats for
champagne and a catered black-
tie dinner. Surprisingly, when divid-
ed among four couples, the cost of
chartering a luxurious yacht such as
the Drumbeat IT (the 68-foot ketch
pictured in our story) is no more
expensive (text concluded on page 108)

On o 68-сі chartered yacht, such as the
Drumbect II at left, you can expect to sail
in complete comfort. Spacious staterooms
end a lerge cockpit with room for dining
alfresco are standard accommodations.

103

Instead of dodging throngs of tourists in such crowded cruise-
ship ports as St. Thomas’ Chorlotte Amalie ond St. Croix, ask
your captain to anchor in one of the more secluded coves, such
as Howksnest Boy (ор) on St. John. Then jump ship and swim
in the crystal-clear waters, bask in the sun or board a dinghy
(above) and explore the remote recesses of the island. Want
to catch dinner? Go ahead—but watch out for those claws

(right). You can also snorkel right from the ship as are the ex-
plorers on the opposite page, or hail one of numerous ren-
dezvous dive services that will meet your charter boat, provide
geor and guide you to the dozens of reefs, drop-offs, caves,
conyons ond even wrecks, such as R.M.S. Rhone, the mail
steamer made famous in some of the scenes from The Deep.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD FEGLEY

Think of your charter experience as o weeklong party at which you can do as much or cs little
as you please. Left: If you like to live life оп the cutting edge, for exomple, there's bound to
be a friendly helping hond on deck. Then kick bock with your able-bodied crew members
(below) and enjoy the sights. Clothing, cs you cen see, is casual—T-shirts, shorts ond slacks
and a sweoter for cooler evenings. If you like your ton without lines, let your coptoin know, as
all islands have different regulations regarding sunbothing and skinny-dipping. And if you're
plonning a New Yeor's Eve party, moke it black-tie as these revelers (bottom left) hove done.
The formol attire will add an oir of elegance and romance to the celebrotion—even if it ends in
the hot tub (bottom right). Yes, the minispa is one of the mony omenities of the Drumbeot Il,
shown opposite with soils bellied in the breeze, returning to its home port of St. Thomos.

108

PLAYBOY’S GUIDE
TO FUN ASHORE

Besides the seemingly countless
bays and anchorages to explore
while sailing through the British
and U.S. Virgin Islands, there are
hundreds of things to do and see
ashore. Each island group has its
own attractions. Here are a few:

Tortola: The delights in this, the
largest of the British Virgin Islands,
begin with the J. R. O'Neal Botanic
Gardens. Located in Road Town,
the island’s chief town, this beautiful
stop features about three acres of
tropical plants, herbs and flowers,
such as frangipani, which grows
wild on many island anchorages.
Take a ride up Sage Mountain, the
highest point on Tortola, and enjoy
the views, or hike through the 92-
plus acres of mahogany and rain
forests. Cane Garden Bay's 1.5-mile
beach is studded with coconut
groves and is home to Rhymer's
Beach Hotel—a great spot for
lunch. And on the far eastern tip of
the island is Trellis Bay, a mecca for
board sailors and shell collectors.

Virgin Gorda: The massive boul-
ders, sea pools and grottoes of the
Baths at Virgin Gorda are consid-
ered to be too touristy for some vet-
eran charterers but are definitely
worth exploring for first-timers.
There's also the Yacht Harbor
home to luxury vessels, charter
companies, a variety of shops and a
popular night spot called the Bath
and Turtle. Spring Bay and Trunk
Bay are two of the favorite snorkel-
ing and exploring stopovers. And
resorts such as the renowned Bitter
End Yacht Club & Resort offer ten-
nis, water sports and fine dining.

St. Croix: The largest of the U.S.
Virgin Islands, it's home to Island
Center. a 600-seat theater in the
Kingshill section of Christiansted.
It's also home to the Crucian Christ-
mas Festival, an energetic mixture
of parties, music and parades punc-
tuated by Mocko Jumbis—clever
athletes who stroll through town in
costume on 17-foot stilts. Look for
French perfumes, china, crystal, ba-
tik clothing and jewelry of all kinds.

St. John: Of the populated U.S.
Virgin Islands, St. John is the small-
est and most undeveloped, with
nearly two thirds preserved as a na-

tional park. Abandoned 18th centu-
ry sugar plantations dot the land-
scape—one, Estate Annaberg, is
even open for exploration. Coral
Bay, Hurricane Hole and Caneel
Bay are frequent destinations for
visiting yachts. And the selection of
fine hotels, excellent restaurants, dive
centers and jeep rental shops makes
it a great one- or two-day stop.

St. Thomas: In addition to being
a bustling commercial and tourist
center, St. Thomas is replete with
restaurants and resorts for every
pocketbook. The largest crewed
yacht charter fleet in the world
docks here and is right at home
among the melting pot of calypso
music and Danish architecture. If
you're a gambler, you can place
pari-mutuel bets on Thoroughbred
horses (you can do the same on St.
Croix). Then spend your winnings
in the world-famous shopping dis-
trict situated just off the waterfront
in Charlotte Amalie.

With an individual $1200 duty-
free allowance every 30 days, vaca-
tioners find the U.S. Virgin Islands
a top destination. Five bottles of
spirits—six, if one is of local origin—
are also duty free, as are loose unset
gems, five cartons of cigarettes and
anything made in the USVI.

A few pointers while you're out
island hopping. First, the American
dollar is the basic currency of the
British and U.S. Virgin Islands.
Most—but not all—major credit
cards are accepted. And while banks
and large hotels will often cash trav-
eler's checks, you may have to pay a
ten-cent per check duty on those
cashed in Tortola, Virgin Gorda and
the other British Virgin Islands.

If you plan on renting a car on
the islands, you'll need a valid driv-
er's license and a temporary BVI li-
cense, usually available for $10 from
rental companies.

For more information about the
British Virgin Islands, call the BVI
Tourist Board in New York (800-
835-8530) or San Francisco (800-
232-7770). And call or visit the U.S.
Virgin Islands Division of Tourism
offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Los An-
geles, Miami, New York or Washing-
ton, D.C. — JOHN WOOLDRIDGE

than skiing the runs at Aspen, chasing
down tennis balls in Palm Springs or
perfecting your golf swing at Hilton
Head. In fact, $3000 per couple will
get you the four-cabin yacht—com-
plete with crew, food and a fully
stocked bar—for a full week. Charter-
ing a vessel smaller than that will cost
less, but you're likely to wind up with a
single captain as crew or a bareboat—
that is, a charter yacht available to ex-
perienced sailors who accept full re-
sponsibility for the voyage.

There are plenty of places you can
sail to this time of year, from the Ba-
hamas to the Grenadines. We chose to
take the Drumbeat II to the Virgin Is-
lands. The perfect spot for virgin
sailors, the Virgin Islands are situated
just east of Puerto Rico, about 1000
miles from Miami and 1500 miles from
New York. They may look minuscule
on the map, but don't be fooled. St.
Thomas is one of six large islands
among a group of 56 that form the Sir
Francis Drake channel That means
you'll be sailing in sheltered waters,
never too far from a secure anchorage.

The beauty of chartering is that you
can do as much or as little as you like.
In fact, the toughest part is finding a
broker or agency that will connect you
with the right yacht and crew. How do
you find one? Don't count on your
travel agency for much help, since
most of them know little about the
charter industry. Instead, look for ads
in magazines such as Yachting and Sail-
ing. When you contact a broker, ask for
references and agency affiliations, such
as membership in the Charter Yacht
Brokers Association or the Mediter-
ranean Yacht Brokers Association.

Keep in mind that some yachts are
booked months in advance, especially
during the holidays. When booking,
lay all the specifics on the table—loca-
tions, dates, budgets, interests (sail-
boarding, scuba diving, snorkeling,
fishing, etc.), food and drink prefer-
ences and any dietary requirements.

Before signing away a week of your
life, inspect the charter contract and be
sure that you and your group are
ready to live by its terms. If you have to
cancel, the 50 percent deposit is gen-
erally forfeited—unless the yacht is
booked by someone else in the interim.

Other than all of that, chartering is a
breeze. There is only one problem: It's
addictive. But if you get through the
first trip without throwing someone
overboard, the guest list for next New
Year's cruise is set. Happy sailing!

For more information on the yacht
we chartered for this feature, the
Drumbeat II, contact Jennifer Saia at
the Sacks Group, 305-764-7742.

y

109

Year!”

“Happy New

the once proud officer
is housebound and helpless.
so where does his wife go
every moming?

Fiction By Andre Dubus,

Colonel $

no

THE RETIRED Marine
colonel had two bro-
ken legs, both in casts
from the soles of his
feet to the tops of his
thighs. His name was Robert
"Townsend; he was a tall and broad-
shouldered man with black hair and
a graying mustache. In the hospital
in Boston, he had had five opera-
tions; neither leg was healed
enough to bear his weight, he had
rods in both femurs and his right
tibia, and now at home he was
downstairs in the living room on a
hospital bed whose ends he could
raise and lower to evade pain. The
bed was narrow, and his golden-
haired wife, Lydia, slept upstairs.
He refused to eat in bed, for this
made him feel he was still in the hos-
1; so at mealtimes Lydia helped
im into the wheelchair. He raised
the bed ШІ his back was upright, she
handed him a short board with
beveled ends, and he pushed one
end under his rump and rested the
other on the chair. Then she held
his legs while he worked himself
across the board and into the chair.
He wore cotton gym shorts and
T-shirts. Before the horse fell on
him, he and Lydia had eaten break-
fast and lunch at the kitchen table.
He could not go there now. He
could wheel through the door from
the dining room to the kitchen;
then his long legs, held straight out
in front of him by leg rests, were
blocked by a counter, and at his left
the refrigerator stopped him. On

his first morning at
home, he tried to
turn between the
counter and refrig-
erator by lowering
the leg rests; when he pressed the
switch to release the rests, they
dropped quickly, and he gasped at
the blades of pain in his falling legs.
Lydia bent down and grabbed his
ankles and lifted them while he
moaned and began to sweat.

His feet in their casts would not fit
under the long rectangular ma-
hogany table in the dining room, so
he sat parallel to his end of it, re-
moved the right armrest of the
wheelchair and ate, as he said,
sidesaddle. He looked to his right at
his food and Lydia. She had brown
eyes and had lately, in the evening,
worn her hair in a French braid; she
liked candles at dinner, and after
her bath in late afternoon she wore
a dress or skirt. Her face was tan
and pink, her brow and cheeks
creased, and lines moved outward
from her eyes and lips when she
smiled. Every morning after break-
fast, she walked two miles east to a
red country store. She did this in all
weather except blizzards and light-
ning storms. At the store she bought
The New York Times and a package of
British cigarettes and sat at the
counter to drink coffee and read
Then she walked home for lunch,
coming in the front door each day
as precisely as a clock striking noon.
She had not done this since the sun-
lit morning of January thaw when

ILLUSTRATION EY CHUCK WALKER

PLAYBOY

12

Robert's brown mare broke his legs.

To Robert's left, while he ate, was the
living room, and to his rear the
kitchen. Behind Lydia was a large win-
dow, and beyond it the wide lawn end-
ing at woods. They had four acres with
many trees and could not see their
neighbors’ houses; even now, in winter,
there were enough evergreens so all the
earth they saw from the house was
their own. Before dinner, Lydia drew
the curtains at her back; she felt ex-
posed through the glass. On Robert's
second night at home, he asked her to
open the curtains; he said he was sorry,
but the covered window reminded him
of the hospital. The hospital had been
very difficult. He had served in two
wars without being injured and had
never been confined to a hospital. Now
when he saw the curtains behind Lydia,
he felt enclosed by something that
would take away his breath.

He could wheel slowly down the car-
peted hall that began where the living
and dining rooms joined, but the hall
was too narrow for him to turn into the
rooms it led to; one of these was a bath-
room. He never felt truly clean and
longed for a shower. He kept a plastic
urinal hooked by its handle over a rail-
ing of the bed, and Lydia emptied and
cleaned it. For most of his four weeks
and five days in the hospital, he had to
use a bedpan, and nurses cleaned him.
In his last week, the physical therapist
and a nurse helped him from his
wheelchair onto a hospital commode;
they removed the inside arms from the
chair and the commode, pushed the
transfer board under him and held his
legs as he moved across. Then they
propped his legs on pillows on a chair
and left him alone. He needed both
hands to push himself up from the
seat, so when the two women returned,
they held his legs and tilted him and
the nurse wiped him. Now he did this
in the living room with Lydia. He knew
Lydia did not mind wiping him; she
was cheerful and told him to stop feel-
ing humiliated because his legs were
broken and he had to shit. But his
stench and filth, and the intimacy of
her hands and voice, slapped his soul
with a wet cloth.

Five mornings a week, a home-
health-aid woman helped him to
wash and shave on the bed. The house-
keeper came on three mornings and
worked upstairs while the woman
bathed him. A visiting nurse took his
blood pressure and temperature and
pulse. A phone was on the bedside
table, and their son and two daughters
called him often; they had flown to
Boston to see him during his first week
in the hospital. On some nights friends
came; they tired him, but he needed
these men and women. He felt re-

moved from the earth as he had known
it, and they brought parts of it with
them: Its smell was on their coats and
hats and scarves. its color was in their
cheeks, its motion in their beautiful
and miraculous legs.

During his first ten days at home,
Lydia left the house only to buy gro-
ceries, and she did that while someone
was with him. Then on a Friday night,
while they were eating dinner, he said,
“I'm starting to feel like a cage. I want
you to walk to the store tomorrow."

“It's Saturday. You'd be alone."

“Туе got the phone and a urinal.”

“I don't want you to feel alone.”

“Till be fine.”

Next morning, she hung a second
urinal on the bed railing, put a pitcher
of water and a pitcher of orange juice
and two glasses on the bedside table
and wrote the phone number of the
store on notepaper. She was wearing
jeans and boots and a dark-blue
sweater. She bent over him and looked
at his eyes.

“Listen: If you have to shit, you call
me. I'll be through the door in twenty-
eight minutes.”

She kissed him and put on a blue
parka and black beret, and he watched
over his right shoulder as she went out
the door. He lay facing the mahogany
table and the dining room window and
the winter light. He could not see the
lawn, but he could see trunks and
branches of deciduous trees and the
green pines. His wheelchair was beside
the bed, the transfer board resting on
it, but he could not go to the stove,
could not even get far enough into the
kitchen to see it, and for breakfast they
had eaten scrambled eggs; Lydia al-
ways turned off burners and the oven,
but in his career he had learned to
check everything, even when he knew
it was done. He had not thought of fire
till Lydia was gone, and Lydia had not
thought of fire, and he saw himself
in the wheelchair pushing away from
flames. The back door was in the
Kitchen, so he could leave only through
the front; outside was a deck and four
steps to the concrete walk that curved
to the long driveway. He closed his eyes
and breathed deeply into his stomach
and told himself: Proper planning pre-
vents piss-poor performance. Years
ago in California a gunnery sergeant
had said that to the company at morn-
ing formation; Robert was a second
lieutenant, watching from the barracks
porch; the gunny had fought in the
Pacific, and Robert, unblooded still,
looked at the man’s broad, straight
back and believed this was a message
brought from the dread and chaos of
war. I can call the fire department, then get
on the wheelchair, take the blanket, go ош
the front door and sit on the deck and wait

for the firemen; if it gets bad, ГЇ tuck ту
chin and go bass-ackward down the steps
and hope the casts hold and I don't crack my
head; then if I have to, I can drag myself all
the way to the fucking road. He opened
his eyes and looked around the room.
He was still afraid, and for a while he
read War and Peace. Then he slept, and
he was dreaming of white-trousered
soldiers on horses when Lydia opened
the door. He was happy to see her,
and said nothing about fire. He said
nothing about it when she walked to
the store Sunday morning; and when
she went Monday, the home-health-aid
woman and the housekeeper were with
him for all but the last hour.
.

Не had started reading War and
Peace a week before his horse slipped
and fell on his left leg, scrambled up-
right, then slipped again and fell on
both his legs; then Robert was scream-
ing, and finally the horse got up and
watched him. Then he moaned, and
breathed in quick rhythm with the
pain, and called toward the stables be-
yond a stand of trees, called for help,
and knew he had screamed under the
horse because he could not move, and
such helplessness felt like drowning in
sunlit air near the shadows of pines. In
the hospital he had morphine and now,
in the bedside table Lydia had carried
downstairs, he had Demerol and Per-
codan. When pain cut through his con-
centration so he could not focus on
talking with Lydia, he took Percodan;
when pain was all he could feel of his
body, and it filled his brain and spirit so
he moaned and tried not to yell, he
took Demerol. Always there was pain in
his legs, but if he kept them elevated
and did not move his body, it was bear-
able for hours at a time, and he read;
and resting from that, he looked out
the dining room window, and at the
mahogany table.

He had never had any feelings about
the things of domestic life. In them, he
saw Lydia's choices, and his admiration
was not for the objects but for her. If all
the furniture in the house were carried
off by thieves, his only sorrow would be
for Lydia. She had bought the ma-
hogany table early in their marriage.
She had money, and when each grand-
parent and parent had died, she had
accumulated more. The table had trav-
eled in moving vans back and forth
across the nation. It had remained un-
marked by children, and by officers
and their wives from Hawaii to Vir-
ginia; it had stood amid quarrels and
silence and laughter, amid boisterous
drinking and storytelling and flirta-
tions, and here it was, in this house in
the country north of Boston, without a
scar. He had lived with it for decades,

(continued on page 190)

“You are, Miss Louise, one of those rare persons for whom
love and friendship are not empty words.”

13

114

OUR BOHEMIAN SNIFFS THE NEW AIR
OF FREEDOM IN THE CITY THAT’S

BECOME THE PARIS OF THE NINETIES

RAGUE. A gemstone in the heart of Eu-
rope. So haunting in its beauty that
Hitler, the great sensitif, could not bring
himself to ravage it, choosing instead to
add the city, untouched, to his collection
of architectural treasures. If cities can be
said to have a gender, Prague falls into
the feminine column and is best de-
scribed in terms that are politically incor-
rect—languorous, coquettish, alternately
sly and accommodating. Landlocked,
surrounded by covetous and historically
unreliable neighbors, the gray enchantress has
had to use what once were called feminine wiles in
order to survive.

I arrive at a time of crisis. Vaclav Havel, the
great Czech playwright who took a reduction in
status to become Czechoslovakia’s president, has
resigned his position. Slovakia, bursting with eth-
nic pride—some say misguidedly—has made
known its intention to become an independent
country. I've barely checked into the Palace Hotel
and half the country I've come to visit is gone. But
the mood in the lobby is philosophical. The Czechs
feel that Slovakia doesn't have much to offer and
the country will be better off without it. An engi-
neer from Seattle assures me that I'm not to wor-
ry. He's there to buy up a shipment of the fabled
L-39 Albatross jet trainers and feels confident that
the tiny Czech nation, with its pool of brilliant sci-
entists and craftsmen, will rival Germany and
France as an economic power within ten years.

“Just leave them to their own devices."

But will they be left to their own devices? All
about me, hustlers and schemers from around the
globe have arrived in force: Americans to buy up
buildings, Canadians to swallow up farms, Ger-
mans to snatch up breweries. An Australian pulls
me aside and tells me to stay away from crystal and
get into light manufacturing. Then he describes an
advertising campaign he's concocted that will take
Prague by storm: The (continued on page 156)

ARTICLE BY BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN

ILLUSTRATION BY ERICH SOKOL

SEAN YOUNG

q Young is not so crazy, How could

$: woman who wouldn't even steal the
bathrobes from a hotel possibly leave mutilat-
ed dolls and other horrors on the doorstep of
actor James Woods—much less affix his pe-
nis to his leg with Krazy Glue? And just be-
cause the 33-year-old actress wore a latex
Catwoman suit when she invaded the War-
ner Bros. lot to face off with “Batman” di-
rector Tim Burton, does this mean that she’s
unbalanced?

Sean Young's talent has never been in
question. After noteworthy parts in films as
diverse as “Stripes,” “Blade Runner” and
“Dune,” she scorched herself into our memo-
ту while having sex in the back of a limo
with Kevin. Costner in "No Way Out."
Young followed that performance with roles
т “The Boost” (m which she met co-star
Woods), “A Kiss Before Dying" and “Love
Crimes,” as well as with singing and danc-
ing in the musical “Stardust.” Recently she
made her country-singing debut. Contribut-
ing Editor David Rensin met with Young in
Santa Monica, California, when the Se-
dona, Arizona-based actress was in town
lining up new projects.

“Га assumed Sean would be reluctant to
talk about her various travails—from James
Woods to Warren Bealty to Catwoman and
Tim Burton. Wrong. The woman is hurt
and angry and won't stop until some apolo-
gies are made. Come on, guys. Bend a knee.
Send flowers.”

1.
PLAYBOY: When director Tim Burton

wouldn't meet with you about the
Catwoman part in Batman Returns,

you crashed the
hollywood's Warner Bros. lot

to confront him.

Burton hid in the
renegade — Wha
star defends possessed you?

YOUNG: It was just
her sanity, too much shit to

" eat. Apparently,

‘bod: t
exacts her ene ie

Bati

revenge and G son bat
id Е.
Im oe
to abuse T was he somes

thing out of Play
Misty for Me. 1
know what I did
was reckless be-
havior, but the

krazy glue
=|

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GWENDOLEN CATES

option for me was to eat shit and say I
loved it. So I went because I wondered
if, after all that had happened, Burton
had any concept of how rude it was to
not allow us to meet for five minutes. It
was unacceptable. I feel a lot better
now that I got it off my chest.

2.

PLAYBOY: If you had one day to be
bad, without consequences, what would
you do?

younc: Twenty-four whole hours, with
all the money and resources I'd need?
Га have a Spinner [air car] from Blade
Runner built. Pd fly directly to Tim
Burton's house and completely demol-
ish it. I'd leave a little message saying,
THE REAL CATWOMAN STRUCK. Then I
would rush over to [Warner’s former
senior executive] Mark Canton’s office
and hold him at gunpoint until the
four-foot-two-inch mouse shook in his
shoes and hid under the desk and
begged for forgiveness. I'd make him
apologize for being a phony, fake liar.
And then I would probably leave him
tied up, hanging from the ceiling, like
Dabney Coleman in Nine to Five.
[Laughs] Then Га visit the balding
Bruce Wayne and make him apologize
for causing my horse accident on the
first Batman. We were оп. stable horses
and were told to ride them back to the
middle of the ring. Instead, he rode off
to the stable and my horse followed. I
wasn't an experienced rider, so my ac-
cident was directly related to his arro-
gance. I'd tell him to go get more hair
transplants. Then I'd take Burton,
Canton and the balding Bruce Wayne
and lock them up in a room and let
them argue and wave their dicks
around at one another to figure out
whose fault it was that they didn’t make
the right decision regarding me in Bat-
man Returns. Then Га visit Warren
Beatty. Га strip him down, tie him
spread-eagle to the bed and walk away.
[Laughs] Then Td see [James Woods's
ex-wife] Sarah Owen and I'd make her
apologize to me for being a lying bitch.
Then I'd tic her up, take her over to
James Woods's house and tie them up
together, since they're so fond of each
other now, and then hang them over a
vat of oil, like in Romancing the Stone.
That takes care of all my revenge
needs. These people should pay for
their wicked behavior I would also
visit Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep,

Whoopi Goldberg, Ceena Davis, Julia
Roberts and Madonna, because I really
like them. It would be to say hi and to
show them I’m not a monster. Every-
body's convinced I'm a monster.

3.

PLAYBOY: Why do people seem to want
to believe that there's something crazy
about you?

YOUNG: I am a little crazy. But to say
there's something mean or malicious
about me, or to suggest that I would
ever try to harm another person on
this planet, is outright crap. I fucking
dare anybody to say that to my face.
That's what hurts the most. You can't
meet a nicer person.

4.

PLAYBOY: You were replaced in Batman
and in Batman Returns by blondes.
What do brunettes know?

YOUNG: That there aren't very many
authentic blondes.

5.

PLAYBOY: Women complain, "Men don't
get it.” What is it that Hollywood men
just don't get?

vouNc: Do you have a week? Jesus.
Men in Hollywood need to grow up. If
I could, I'd replace all the men in pow-
er with women so that we could have
more interesting movies to watch. I saw
this comedian on TV—I don't recall his
name—who said, “Women cooperate,
men negotiate.” If women were in
power in Hollywood, you might find all
of a sudden a new cooperation. In the
past, people of culture from a Euro-
pean background ran the industry.
There's nobody with culture running a
studio today. They're in diapers.

6.

PLAYBOY: Most people wouldn't criticize
Beatty publicly. Why would you risk his
displeasure?

YOUNG: His firing me from Dick Tracy
looked very bad, and he was really cal-
lous. He had talked to me about play-
ing Breathless Mahoney, though it
turned out to be Tess Trueheart by the
time we began the movie. He called me
for a month before production—inces-
santly. And then, a week into principal
photography, he took me home and
tried to kiss me. He put his hands on
my ears and tried to force me. I pulled
myself away (continued on page 198)

n7

N UK E THE
PENTAGON

america's most decorated living soldier says
it’s time to shut down the military clown show

David Hackworth joined the U.S. Army in 1946, when he was 15 years old,
and quit with the rank of colonel in 1971. Along the way he was awarded more
than 80 medals for valor and eight Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in
combat in Korea and Vietnam. In 1989 he published the best-selling “About
Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior,” co-authored by Julie Sherman.
Hackworth stays in close touch with soldiers and wars. He provided distin-
guished reporting for Newsweek during Desert Storm and more recently from
Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. He is one of America’s preeminent military jour-
nalists and has fought in or reported on eight wars. PLAYBOY asked him for his
assessment of the U.S. military at the end of the 20th century.

Now THAT the Cold War is over, the only military entity that threat-
ens the U.S. is our own defense establishment. If we want to save
ourselves militarily, we must destroy the way the U.S. military is
run. That means shutting down the Pentagon. It is a corrupt, bleak
place filled with many people whose mind-set is warped by traditions
that are as obsolete as the sword. It is also the anchor of the mili-
tary-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), which has to be dis-
mantled as well The Cold War created a military Frankenstein
that must be destroyed to free our national energies for more
constructive ends.

"The first step in the process is to terminate the role of the Pentagon
and to move military headquarters as far as possible from the slime
and corruption of Washington, D.C., and the army of Beltway ban-
dits. The new HQ would be the center of a brand-new entity—the
American Peace Force (APF), which would unify our current military
branches into a single service. The Army and Marines would become
asingle ground force supported by one air arm formed from the air
forces of each of today's services. The Navy would also cease to exist
as a power unto itself and would join the united team. These moves
would eliminate interservice rivalry and gross duplication, which cost
us money we do not have and, in combat, make unity of command
impossible and casualties from “friendly fire” all but certain.

Turning off the lights in the five-cornered concrete squirrel cage
would also have powerful symbolic value. It would signal to the world
that we've closed an era and that we're putting America's real priori-
ties—problems at home—into focus.

The Pentagon is incorrigible and impervious to reform from

orticle by DAVID HACKWORTH

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID WILCOX

PLAYBOY

120

within. The awful twin of its dead
Kremlin counterpart, it has had
no master. It must be put down like a
mad dog.

If we started moving people and jobs
to the new HQ immediately, the trans-
fer could be complete by the year 2000.
Then, the APF would be cocked and
locked to meet the many challenges of
the world. But don't let the Pentagon
building rot. Turn it into a hospital for
sociopaths and the criminally insane.
Only they would truly appreciate the
weird, evil, distorting vibes that rico-
chet through its corridors.

.

If you work at a place where the sole
purpose is self-perpetuation and where
there is a concentration of death and
destruction, you will find that person-
ality distortions are inevitable. Hang-
men seldom like ballet.

I saw it from inside after I finished
my first tour in Vietnam. 1 wanted to
go to Fort Benning to teach leaders
how to fight the Viet Cong, but I was
ordered to a make-work desk job at the
Pentagon. I refused to go, but a senior
officer laid down the law: If you don't
come to the Pentagon, your career will
be over. He also tried to stress how
valuable the experience would be for
me. “Pentagon duty is a must,” he told
me. “This is the place where the stars
are made.”

I served five tours in Vietnam and
one at the Pentagon. I quickly under-
stood why the vibes there were so bad.
On one occasion I ghosted an article
for a major general that appeared in
Army magazine. I didn’t mind that he
took the byline, but when he also took
the check, I asked for my dough. He
refused to part with it and claimed he
was going to use it for an office party. I
never saw the party. This puke went to
four stars.

The real problems of the place were
not so petty. I tried to do something
about what 1 had decided was the
biggest mistake the Army was making
in Vietnam—rotating combat officers
too frequently. Just when a leader got it
together and learned how to fight Un-
cle Ho's military machine, he would be
pulled out and given another job. The
entire military career system is based
on these regular changes of assign-
ment. It's called punching your ticket,
or getting the right jobs in the right or-
der so that you rise in rank. Back then
the Pentagon wanted to have as many
combat-seasoned people as possible
ready to fight the Soviets.

In the war we were losing in Viet-
nam, that policy was a disaster. A CO
should stay with his unit like bark on a
tree, because he is the continuity, the
institution, the memory, the father and

mother. This was especially important
in Vietnam because the war was so
goddamn complicated that it took time
to learn its nature and how to fight it.
Whenever a commander got his ticket
punched, his shift gutted the unit. The
military did it repeatedly. We lost a
winnable tactical war preparing to fight
an unwinnable, mostly nuclear war
against the Soviets.

Many leaders wanted to spike the ro-
tation policy. When I triggered a paper
about how to fix things, I was opti-
mistic. After a few months, the paper
made its way through the bloated bu-
reaucracy and, ironically, came to ту
office for action. It looked as if the civil-
ians in the Pentagon's powerful E Ring
bought my idea, and the strange Pen-
tagon system was now giving me op-
portunity to approve my own idea. Far
out. I was ready.

“The man says to shoot it down," my
boss told me. That was the guidance he
had received from the top ranks, near-
ly all of whom were master ticket
punchers and wheeler-dealers.

“Lain't doing it," I said. They went to
some staff weenie and got him to write
this fucking paper that said the exist-
ing rotation policy was a great idea, just.
fine. The rotation policy stayed the way
it was and tickets kept getting punched
for eight fucking years while men kept.
getting killed, until we lost the war with
Nixon's "peace with honor."

.

The Pentagon system has always
tried to squash mavericks, and it has al-
ways been mavericks such as George
Patton who win wars. Bill Carpenter
was a maverick when he was the Lone-
some End on the 1958 and 1959 West
Point football teams, and he somehow
managed to stay that way. 1 knew him
in combat, and he was the kind of guy
who said what he thought. He was a to-
tal professional, a Patton-like fighter
and a great commander. He wouldn't
compromise. He rocked the boat. We
need people like him at the top. They
keep the system straight, build hard
units and make tough but honest calls.

Carpenter hated the Pentagon. He
avoided it through nearly all his career
and stayed with troop commands. The
Pentagon went nuts when he refused
ticket-punching assignments, but Car-
penter didn't care. He was famous and
he was good, so he survived. He got
three stars, but there was no job for
him above three stars because he
wouldn't sell his soul and become what
warriors call a “Pentagon pussy.” He
retired at 54. America lost a rare and
uniquely talented leader.

We both knew a man who was very
outspoken when we were with the
101st Airborne Division in Vietnam in

1966. There had been some heavy
fighting. After one firefight this lieu-
tenant was raging and raising hell. He
smashed down his M16 in front of his
CO, declaring it a piece of junk: “I had
two soldiers killed because this rifle
jammed. Why don't they get the
teething problems out before they give
us the goddamn things?"

He went on to become a great war-
rior and I was proud to see him be-
come a major general. I ran into him
when I was lecturing about some of the
problems I had seen in my visits with
soldiers at bases around the country.
One problem I mentioned was a new
weapon the Army was introducing that
often didn’t work. I wanted the people
in the audience, people with the power
to fix things, to know about it.

In the question-and-answer period
after my talk, my old pal referred to
the controversial weapon. “Hack,
you're barking up the wrong tree on
that one,” he said. “That's a good
weapon. I’ve fired it many, many times.
It's dynamite. So cool it.”

1 did, and we moved on to other sub-
jects such as why the Army didn't have
a decent shoulder-fired antitank weap-
on or a new family of infantry weapons.

A few weeks later somebody sent me
a copy of a letter from the Chief of Staff
of the Army to the manufacturer of the
weapon. It threatened to cancel the
contract.

I sent a note to the major general
and included with it a copy of the
letter. "I guess I wasn't barking up the
wrong tree," I wrote. "What have you
got to say?"

He replied that it was a good
weapon, even ifit had a few small prob-
lems. It was a brush-off letter. “It just
has teething problems,” he wrote. “All
new weapons have teething problems.”

‘Teething problems. CRS is a disease
in the military, and irs a plague at
the Pentagon. It means Can't Remem-
ber Shit.

Nearly all of today’s top brass served
in Vietnam. They may recall Vietnam
but, like my friend the major general,
they don't really remember it. If they
did, they would put their hard-learned
lessons into practice. If the Pentagon
did remember, today's grunts wouldn't
be packing Vietnam-vintage rifles and
gas masks and wearing the boots that
their fathers wore. If the Pentagon re-
ally understood the lessons of Vietnam,
it would not have allowed the dangers
of friendly fire to remain unattended.

Close air support is what they call ef-
forts of the fly-boys to help grunts
fighting on the ground. It can be terri-
fying and deadly as I know. I was
bombed and strafed from one end of

(continued on page 176)

“Well, 1993 is going io be a year to watch.”

121

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARNY FREYTAG AND GREG GORMAN

a glimpse at miss january will make you . . .

SHOU Eco!

ou DONT need psychic
powers to surmise that
a girl with the offbeat

name of Echo has parents who
were products of the Sixties.
But Echo Leta Johnson herself
is very much a woman of the
Nineties. Take the way our Jan-
uary centerfold—who turns 19
this month—chose to celebrate
her 18th birthday. "My best
girlfriend and I jumped into
her convertible and drove
straight through from Santa Fe
to Las Vegas and had a blast
gambling and going to floor
shows every night, sleeping in
late and then basking in the sun
all afternoon. We blew our
stash in three days, but the
memory is worth every cent.
We were like Thelma and
Louise, only we didn't pack a
pistol.” Not that Echo needs
one. Her good looks and her
flat-out attitude toward life are
lethal enough. Last June, just
after graduating from Santa Fe
High School (Echo was born,
and now lives, in Austin, but she
grew up in Ecuador—her fa-
ther was a hat exporter there—
and Santa Fe), Echo entered a

On a trip through the rugged
foothills of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains outside Sante Fe, Miss
Johnson dofíed her hat to her nat-
ural habitot, Naturally, the New
Mexico hills echoed her praises.

local beauty pageant and was promptly crowned Miss Santa Fe. She caught the attention of a photographer shooting for
Playboy Germany and suddenly was the toast of New Mexico. Although Echo's triumphs have accelerated the pace of her life,
they don't seem to have turned her head. “People keep asking me why I don't go to Hollywood, but the starlet route has
never appealed to me. I want more control over my life than that.” Her intention is to move to Dallas—the apparel-mart
capital of Texas—to attend SMU to earn a degree in fashion merchandising. “My dream is to someday own and run a hip,

MASAS

One of Echo's favorite spots in Texas is a botanical garden in Austin’s Zilker Pork. As she leads us on a tour of this packet paradise, Echo
reveals environmentalist leanings. In the power struggle between develapers and canservatianists aver nearby Barton Springs’ swim-
126 ming hole, our progressive Playmate sides with—who else?—Mather Nature. After all, the lady has been very kind to Echo.

de

128

upscale clothing store for men and women. My boyfriend, Alex, and my brother both have absolutely
great builds, and I just love to dress them.” They are also both naturally great dancers, she adds. “I love
everything from the Texas two-step to dirty dancing and hip-hop. Ifa man can't dance and doesn't look

good in his clothes, he'll never get mine off,” she vows—a promising threat if we've ever heard one.

| ШІ "5

PLAYMATE DATA SHEET

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BUST: 556 5 mise: aS E ЕСЕ
НЕІСНТ: МЕІСНТ: Oa
BIRTH DATE: | BIRTHPLACE: Aus w, Texas

AMBITIONS:

MY BEST ASSET:

Romans OS Suet mod [сода as Me ange |
<culpludes she Среде <.

Miss SAO Te Win vo o
Suwe (MARA EASA QUAL Siuko 4

PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES

woman asked the detective she'd
id you trail my husband?"

“Yes, ma'am, I did. I followed him to a bar,
to an out-of-the-way restaurant and then to an
apartment."

A big smile crossed the woman's face. "Aha!
Then I've got him!” she said, gloating. "Is
there any question about what he was doing

“No, ma'am,” the sleuth replied. “It's pretty
clear that he was following you.”

ara ©

When the ne'er-do-vell son refused to get a
job, his father insisted he join the Army. At the
induction physical, the Army doctor directed
the reluctant recruit to read the eye chart
across the room.

“What chart?” the young man asked.

“The one on the wall,” the medic said.

“What wall?”

Sensing he had a deadbeat on his hands, the

doctor asked a beautiful nurse to walk in

B-
“Well, you may not see anything,” the doctor
said, “but your indicator is pointing toward
Fort Dix.”

The Roman senate was desperately trying to

f something that would please Caesar

hday. The senators finally settled on

ng the Appian Way with 10,000
crucified slaves.

Caesar was delighted. He rode along in re-
view, smiling broadly, until he heard one of the
slaves feebly mumbling. Caesar dispatched a
centurion to decipher what the wretched man
was saying. The centurion climbed up the
cross but reported that he could not make out
the words. “Let me up there,” Caesar roared

He climbed up and put his ear to the dying
man's lips but still could not hear him. “I am
Caesar," he bellowed, "and I demand that you
speak up!”

The slave mustered his remaining strength
and took a deep breath. "Happy birthday to
you,” he sang, "happy birthday to you. .

How do you get three little old ladies to say
"fuck"? Have another little old lady scream
“Bingo!”

A motorist was struggling to change his punc-
tured tire outside the grounds of a mental in-
stitution when the four lugs dropped down a
storm drain. “Damn!” he cried. “Now what am
I supposed to do?"
“Take one wheel nut off each of the other
three tires,” came a voice from behind him.
The man spun around to see one of th
mates of the asylum. “I can tell you're sur-
prised,” the inmate said. “But just because I'm
mad doesn't mean I'm stupi
“On the contrary,” the motorist said, “you
us capacity for clear and logical
as I get home, I'll phone the
tution and recommend

thought. As 50;
authorities at thi:
that your case be revi

The man shook the inmate's hand and
walked back to his car. Just as he opened the
door, he was felled by a rock. As he lay in a
semiconscious di he heard the inmate
shout, "You won't forget, will youz"

How many divorced men does it take to screw
in a light bulb? None. The sockets go with the
house.

Quasimodo, the bell ringer of Notre Dame,
was performing his usual duties when the
great cathedral caught fire, Climbing to the

ighest tower to escape the flames, the hunch-
back teetered on the edge.

“Jump! Jump! Jump!" thousands of Pari-
sians shouted from below

Quasimodo responded by pointing to his
back and grunting.

"What is he saying?” a newcomer asked

“He is saying, ‘What do you think this is, a
parachute

Heard a funny one lately? Send it om a post-
card, please, to Party Jokes Editor, PLAYBOY,
680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois
60611. $100 will be paid to the contributor
whose card is selected. Jokes cannot be returned.

“You look sensational, baby, but I think you've got
it on upside down.”

PULLED into the self-serve island of Herve's
on Highland, up where it meets the freeway. I got out my two
five-gallon provers. I put the regular nozzle into the red
prover and squeezed. When the pump read five gallons, the
bottom of the meniscus rested on 4.59. Herve was coming out
to watch, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

I started gassing up the green one, this time unleaded.

“Looks bad, Herve.” The pump was humming away, a hap-
py little bandit.

“1 had those pumps fixed, man.”

“I should hope so, Herve. I
gave you three months.” We

both watched the numbers ates
dimbing on the pump. “But the

regular sure did look bad. od

He looked at the can and
licked his lips. “I got those suck- < 2
ers fixed.” en

'The pump was turning over

my name is joe gendreau,
california weights
and measures. i^m the only
thing standing between
you and chaos

to four gallons but the gas in my
state-issue can was bubbling
short of its four. "The unleaded
doesn't look good either."

I was easing off on the pump.
One more spurt.

The pump read five State of California gallons.

The meniscus read 4.41.

Herve paled. “I don’t understand.”

“You don't understand." I holstered the nozzle, affecting
calm. “Well, let me try to explain." When I wheeled, my right
fist caught his throat.

He dropped, clutching at his Adam's apple and trying to
suck air.

“I told you three months ago. Calibrate these sons of bitch-
es!” I kicked him twice. "Don't fuck with the public! The
meniscus don't lie!” He was still scrabbling at his throat, turn-
ing the mottled red of an L.A. sunset. "Read the state manual,
greaseball!" I bounced a copy of the 400-page book off his ear.
“It'll tell you everything you need to know!”

I grabbed a tire iron.

Herve was moaning, trying to (continued on page 152)

136 fiction by Ethan Coen

ILLUSTRATION BY OONALD COLLEY

138

PLAYBOY PROFILE

oman on the verge of a legal breakdown

HERE THEY COME, with their steel faces
and inflamed eyes, their fearful visions
and apocalyptic solutions: the New Vic-
torians. The Cold War is over and
Americans are desperate for a new en-
emy. The New Victorians have found
one and, as usual, it is other Americans.

Look there, in a museum, there are
photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Of naked men! Of sex! And in maga-
zines and movies and video stores,
nothing but smut and filth and degra-
dation! The New Victorians tremble at
the terrifying sight of the naked female
breast, the curly enticements of pubic
hair, the heart-stopping reality of the
human penis. Disgusting. Degrading.
Moral collapse! And if the republic is to
be saved, the enemy must be cast into
eternal darkness. Or at least returned
to the wonderful iron hypocrisies of
the 19th century.

The collective public face of the New
Victorians is made up of the usual
suspects: Senator Jesse Helms, Pat
Buchanan, the television Bible-whack-
ers. But in the past few years, these уа-
hoo crusaders have increasingly found
themselves marching with unfamiliar
allies. For there, at the front of the pa-
rade, loudly pounding the drums, is a
small group of self-styled radical femi-
nists. Sexual crusades indeed make
strange bedfellows.

The unlikely Lenin of the feminist
wing of the New Victorians is a 46-
year-old lawyer named Catharine
MacKinnon. She isa tenured professor
of law at the University of Michigan,
but that is a blurry job description. Ba-
sically, MacKinnon is a professional
feminist. That is to say that, like a
priest, a theologian or a romantic revo-
lutionary, she is exclusively dedicated
to the service of a creed. MacKinnon's
feminist m is not limited to the
inarguable liberal formulas of equal
pay for equal work, complete legal and
political equality and full opportunity
to compete with men. Like Lenin, she
doesn't want mere reform. She wants
to overthrow the entire system of what
she sees as male supremacy. During the
past decade, when the country shifted

to the right and millions of American
women rejected the harder ideologies
of feminism, MacKinnon labored on
with revolutionary zeal.

That zeal was shaped by the social
and sexual upheavals of the Sixties and
Seventies. MacKinnon was born in
Minnesota, where her father wasa fed-
eral judge, a major player in the state's
Republican Party. Like her mother and
grandmother, Catharine MacKinnon
attended Smith College. In the Seven-
ties she went to Yale Law School,
worked with the Black Panthers and
rallied against the Vietnam war. But
when many of her classmates moved
on to the real world and its dense tex-
tures of work and family, she stayed on
in New Haven and found both a focus
and an engine for her life in an almost
religious embrace of the women's
movement. MacKinnon's basic formu-
lation was simple: “Sexuality is to femi-
nism what work is to Marxism: that
which is most one’s own, yet most tak-
en away.”

At Yale, MacKinnon created the first
course in the women’s studies program
but was never given tenure. For a
decade she served as an itinerant lec-
turer or visiting professor at the best
American law schools, including Yale,
Chicago, Stanford and Harvard, deliv-
ering sermons on the problems of
women and the law. As a legal theorist,
she is credited with defining sexual ha-
rassment and was frequently cited dur-
ing Justice Clarence Thomas’ confir-
mation hearings. As a public speaker,
dripping with scorn and cold passion,
she was always in demand. The elusive
guarantee of tenure was finally granted
at Michigan in 1989.

But for all MacKinnon’s passion and
occasional brilliance, even some femi-
nists and legal scholars who applaud
her work on sexual harassment find
the rest of her vision indefensible. She
dismisses them all, firm in her belief
that she has discovered the truth. In
a series of manifestos and lawsuits,
MacKinnon has defined the legal
agenda of the New Victorians. Their
common enemy is that vague concept:

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVIO LEVINE

RADICAL FEMINISM IS
HER GOSPEL, THE LAW
IS HER WEAPON.
CATHARINE MACKINNON
WON'T STOP
UNTIL YOUR LIBIDO
IS BEHIND BARS

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140

pornography. MacKinnon's basic legal
theory is that pornography is a form of
sex discrimination. She says that it’s
made by men for men, but it is harmful
only to women. Therefore, women
should have the right to sue those who
produce it and sell it. Pornography, in
MacKinnon's view, is a civil rights issue.

Andrea Dworkin (author of Inter-
course and Pornography: Men. Possessing
Women) functions as Trotsky to Mac-
Kinnon’s Lenin, providing rhetorical
fire to her analytical ice. Dworkin came
to speak before one of MacKinnon's
dasses at the University of Minnesota
in 1983 and the women have been
friends and allies ever since. Here's an
example of Dworkin's style: "Know
thyself, if you are lucky enough to have
a self that hasn't been destroyed by
rape in its many forms; and then know
the bastard on top of you."

Together, MacKinnon and Dworkin
have had some limited successes.
Hooking up at various times with such
odd fellows as antifeminist Phyllis
Schlafly, local opponents of the Equal
Rights Amendmentor various mounte-
banks from the religious right, they
drafted antiporn ordinances for In-
dianapolis; Bellingham, Washington;
Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Min-
neapolis and supported them with arti-
des, interviews and public hearings.
These proposed laws were either de-
feated by the voters, vetoed by local
politicians or ruled unconstitutional by
the courts. But the New Victorians did
not surrender.

Last February, Canada’s Supreme
Court ruled that MacKinnon's basic
theory on pornography was correct. It
upheld a law suppressing “obscene”
material that “subordinates” women,
stating that “materials portraying
women as a class as objects for sexual
exploitation and abuse have a negative
impact on the individual's sense of self-
worth and acceptance.” Yes, the court
admitted, this decision limits freedom
of expression. But there was a super-
seding need to halt “the proliferation
of materials which seriously offend the
values fundamental to our society.”

This obviously was a major victory
for the New Victorians and for Mac-
Kinnon herself; she had worked with a
Toronto women's group on the draft-
ing of a brief that supported the Cana-
dian bill. The Canadian court's deci-
sion also provided a legal model for
what the New Victorians want to see
done in the United States. They are
now trying to pass similar legislation in
Massachusetts.

MacKinnon told. The New York Times:
“It's for the woman whose husband
comes home with a video, ties her to
the bed, makes her watch and then
forces her to do what they did in the

video. It's a civil rights law. It's not cen-
sorship. It just makes pornographers
responsible for the injuries they cause.”

That is the heart of this grim little
crusade. They want pornographers to
disappear under the threat of civil law-
suits. But Massachusetts obviously is a
limited target, the focus of parochial at-
tention. They have grander plans for
us all. Like che wonderful people who
brought us Prohibition (and the Mob),
MacKinnon and her allies among the
New Victorians want to impose their
vision and their rules on the entire
country The likes of Orrin Hatch,
Arlen Specter and Alan Simpson
moved Senate Bill 1521 out of commit-
tee, thus urging their colleagues in the
Senate to make the furious, fear-driven
visions of MacKinnon and Dworkin the
law of the land.

The bill is officially called the Por-
nography Victims’ Compensation Act,
and it would allow victims of sex crimes
to sue producers and distributors of
sexual material if the victims can prove
the material incited the crimes. The
legislation has been nicknamed the
Bundy Bill, after mass killer Ted
Bundy, who claimed on the eve of his
execution that pornography made him
do it. If it passes and is upheld in the
current right-wing Supreme Court,
Bundy’s final victim will surely be the
First Amendment.

MacKinnon believes that in America
the law is the essential tool of social
change. In a narrow sense, this is cer-
tainly true. The civil rights of blacks,
for example. were more radically al-
tered by Brown vs. Board of Education
than by many years of prayer, argu-
ment and human suffering. But she
goes on to insist that the law is not neu-
tral but male, conceived by men to
serve the interests of male power. To-
day, MacKinnon insists, the law serves
the interests of male supremacy. And to
change the present power arrange-
ments in the United States, the law
must be used against itself.

“Our law is designed to . . . help
make sex equality real,” MacKinnon
has written. “Pornography is a practice
of discrimination on the basis of sex, on
one level because of its role in creating
and maintaining sex as a basis for dis-
crimination. It harms many women
one at a time and helps keep all women
in an inferior status by defining our
subordination as our sexuality and
equating that with gender.”

Surely, that assigns far more power
to pornography than it could ever
have. But even if you agree with its
claims, the question is whether more
laws are needed. MacKinnon knows
that if a woman is coerced into making
a porno film, the people who abused
her are subject to a variety of charges,

induding kidnapping, assault, impris-
onment and invasion of privacy. But
MacKinnon and Dworkin insist the
present laws are not enough. In a dis-
cussion of Minneapolis’ proposed an-
tiporn ordinance, they said of porno-
graphic acts: “No existing laws are
effective against them. If they were,
pornography would not flourish as it
does, and its victims would not be vic-
timized through it as they are.” In oth-
er words, because the present laws
don't work, add another law. Maybe
that will work.

The world as MacKinnon sees it is
now "a pornographic place" and, as a
result, women are being held down,
tied up and destroyed. "Men treat
women as who they see women as be-
ing" MacKinnon writes. "Pornogra-
phy constructs who that is. Men's pow-
er over women means that the way
men see women defines who women
сап be. Pornography is that way... . It
is not a distortion, reflection, projec-
tion, expression, fantasy, representa-
tion or symbol, either. It is a sexual
reality.”

Of course, common sense tells us
otherwise. The vast majority of men
simply don't use pornography to “con-
struct" women, because the vast major-
ity of men don't ever see much pornog-
raphy. And the vast majority of men
don't spend their days and nights
dreaming of inflicting cruelties on
women and then carrying them out. If
they did, Americans would be up to
their rib cages in blood. There are vio-
lent men and there is violent pornogra-
phy (estimated by one study at about
five percent of the total produced in
the United States). But MacKinnon
isn’t attacking only the violence she
says suffuses the "pornotopia"; she is
after pornography itself, as she and her
allies define it.

.

The word that names that concept,
as Walter Kendrick points out in his
1987 history of the subject, The Secret
Museum, can be traced back to the
Greek pornographer (“whore-painter”),
apparently coined by the second centu-
ry writer Athenaeus and promptly for-
gotten. The word was revived, appro-
priately, during the Victorian era, and
by 1975 the American Heritage Dictionary
was defining it as “written, graphic, or
other forms of communication intend-
ed to excite lascivious feelings.”

The inequality of women and men in
this poor world goes back at least to the
late Neolithic Period, long before the
creation of pornography or its naming.
But MacKinnon and the radical femi-
nists insist that such inequality was
“constructed” by pornography. And
obviously, the current usage of the

(continued on page 184)

“My pastor says Christmas is a time for
thoughtfulness, so I’ve thought it over and I think you should
come home and make love to me.”

141

THE

some promises are never kept.
some promises are kept in ways
we never expect

MEMOIR BY
DAVID MAMET

HE CHICAGO in which I wanted

to participate was a worker's

town. It was, and, in my
memory, is, the various districts and
the jobs that I did there: factorics out
in Cicero or down in Blue Island, the
Inland Steel plant in East Chicago,
Yellow Cab Unit 13 on Halsted.

I grew up on Theodore Dreiser
and Frank Norris and Sherwood An-
derson, and I felt, following what
I took to be their lead, that the
bourgeoisie was not the fit subject of
literature.

So the jobs paid my rent and
showed me something of life, and
they were irrefutable evidence of my
escape from the literarily unworthy
middle class.

For not only was I a son of the mid-
dle class, I was, and perhaps 1 still am,
the ne plus ultra of that breed: a Nice
Jewish Boy.

And, as that Nice Jewish Boy, I
went to college.

I went to college in the East, at
a countercultural institution, a year-
round camp, really, where I and
those of my class griped about the
war and took ourselves seriously.

The college was in the very lovely
midst of nowhere in New England. It
was ten miles from the nearest town,
and those who either did not possess
an auto or have a good friend with an
auto were under a de facto house ar-
rest on the college grounds.

1 did not have an auto. My father
was a child of immigrants and born
right off the boat. He had sent his
first-born (continued on page 178)

ILLUSTRATION BY PAT ANDREA

143

=
=

THEY'RE STILL KEN NAMED IN

, THERE, PAT PATERNITY SUIT
In a year in which Barbie's latest competi-
everybody was pa- tor (Judy, the "pregnant"
rading around (or doll with the snap-on

getting caught) in baby pouch on her tum-
his or her unmen- my) was ridiculed by
tionables, erstwhile | moms who found child-
presidential candi- y birth a bit more difficult.
date Pat Buchanan DS

demonstrated that
he was just one of
the boys. after all.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A J MAKES
Rumors of extramarital affairs with singer Gennifer Flowers
and bureaucrat Jennifer Fitzgerald plagued
the Bill Clinton and George Bush cam-
paigns, respectively. But while Gen-
nifer with a G offered to show and tell
z all, Jennifer with a J kept a properly
Republican zipped m. lip.

A NEW KIND OF RUSSIAN BARE
Says a striptease student at Moscow's Institute of
Erotic and Commercial Studies: "We
study as hard as anyone at
university." Р

Ей ?е-
ЕМ TUTU SEXY FOR MY CLOTHES
In his next film, Rough Stuff, wrestler-cum-
movie-actor Hulk Hogan plays a nanny to
a couple of brats who talk him into, among
other things, a prima ballerina's costume.

ciao to 1992, a bum
year for royalty but

a boomlet for
the underwear biz

M IS FOR THE‏ می
EMMY VOTES YOU‏ 4 ”
q soe GAVE ME‏

After Vice President Dan

Quayle took aim at TV's Murphy

Brown for demeaning dads by becoming a single mother,
THANK PREVIN FOR LITTLE GIRLS the show won a trio of Emmy awards. "I want to thank the
Everything we never wanted to know about sex and vice president,” said Candice Bergen as she picked up her
КЕШУ Allen surfaced when the tale of his relation- best-comedy-actress prize. "You owe me big time," re-
ship with Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, adopted daughter sponded the veep, saying that he’d been misunderstood.

of his longtime lady Mia Farrow, came out in a cus-
tody case marred by a charge of child molestation
and countercharges of plain unadulterated craziness. Dl OS

BUM RAP

Her own is delectable, but
there'll be no parliamen-
tary seat for Italian porn
star Moana Pozzi,
whose Party of Love

ticket lost,

WHY IS THIS
MAH SUING?

` ü Sex-harassment

$ = suits are їп. Ех-

T4 Dance Fever host

Deney Terrio al

leged romantic ad-

vances by Merv

1 Grifin. The judge

3 tossed the charge.

WHERE'S THE MATERIAL, GIRL?
At a fashion show in Los
Angeles, Madonna previewed
the contents of her titillating
tome Sex, easily the years
steamiest cause célebre.

145

BUM RAP II
New York City
hostess Nell
Campbell's skirt
of cards caught
опа chair at a
party. Nell's
loss, our
gain.

Š —
THE ROOK, THE KING, HIS QUEEN AND THEIR LOVERS
This erotic chess set was sold recently at a London

auction house. We would like to know how anyone
who bought it could concentrate on his (or her) game.

WHAT SORT OF MAG READS PLAYBOY?
Vanity Fair and Spy, apparently. Last year's
hot magazine-cover trend was pregnant
women. In 1992, it was brushed-on fashion.
Vanity Fair trotted out a postpartum Demi
Moore exactly a year after her nude great-
with-child appearance in August 1991. Spy
countered in September with a paint-by-
numbers Ma-
donna. Nice try,
but we were
there first—
nearly a quarter
of a century
ago. Check out
the lady at
left, from our

March 1968
issue.

A March Spy exposé re-
vealed that conservative
Republican editor Angela
Wright (above right) had
expected to add to Anita
Hill's testimony against
Clarence Thomas. The
Senate committee failed
to call her as a witness.

WEAR A CONDON,
JUST IN CASEY

That was the message on
Tshirts peddled in Dublin
when Eamonn Casey,
bishop of Galway, admit-
ted fathering Peter Mur-
phy (who's shown with his
mother, Annie, above).

The Not So Merry
Wife of Windsor >

ROYAL PAINS
The years most reliable newsmakers were its bluest
bloods. At bottom left, Monaco's Princess Stephanie
and her ex-bodyguard Daniel Ducruet conceived a child
out of wedlock. But Prince Rainier's family problems
paled beside those of Britain's Queen Elizabeth. Clock-
wise from the cartoon below left: Princess Anne di-
vorced Mark Phillips, reportedly to marry ex-equerry Tim
Laurence; Phillips faced New Zealand equestrienne
Heather Tonkin's claim that he'd fathered her daughter
Felicity; a columnist branded thespian Prince Edward
gay; Fergie, Duchess of York, split from hubby Prince
Andrew amid allegations of relationships with Texans
Steve Wyatt (in fanciful headgear) and balding tycoon
John Bryan, with whom she was photographed frolick-
ing topless in Saint-Tropez; Princess Diana was por-
trayed as suffering, while Charles dallied with old pals
Lady Dale “Kanga” Tryon and (inset) Camilla Parker
Bowles. That was before tapes of lovey-dovey phone
conversations, supposedly between Di and bachelor
James Gilbey, aired on the Brit equivalent of a 900 line.

THE EVES OF DESTRUCTION
Figuring it would lure more tourists to Australia’s Gold Coast (and
boost his mayoral campaign), entrepreneur Christian Jocumsem
staffed his new demolition firm with well-endowed topless females.

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME
Barry Humphries’ better known alter
ego, Dame Edna Everage, arrived
from England to entertain viewers
with a pair of NBC television spe-
cials on her Hollywood adventures.

іы.

PLAY BALLS!

Some 300 women at a Chicago White Sox
“women in baseball” clinic oohed, aahed and
covered their eyes when catcher Carlton Fisk
dropped trou to display the hazards of guarc-
ing home plate: an ugly inner-thigh bruise.

4 MEMO TO ASPIRING |
y WRITERS: SHARE A COLD

> n SHOWER WITH MRS. BROWN
HOW TO GET HEAD IN ADVERTISING When Tina Brown was
Right after we published a com- named New Yorker editor,
prehensive feature on sex in ad- media buffs feared she
vertising, Wilke-Rodriguez came would pick stories as she
up with some wild ad pages in the had done at Vanity Fair. Per
September issues of Details and VF writer Kevin Sessums: “If
GQ. Of course, the models were it makes Tina's nipples firm,

concentrating on fashion. Not. then she goes with it."

THE BREASTPLATE SPECIAL;
WHOLE LOTTA

‘SHAKIN’ GOIN’ ON
George Michael picked top
models to star in his steamy
video Too Funky. In one scene,
Shana Zadrick opens Linda
Evangelista's dress and fondles
her plated breast; in another,
Tyra is shaking those tassels.

WHAT SORT OF MAG READS PLAYBOY?
CONTINUED

In their layout for Vanity Fair's Octo-
ber issue, Madonna and lensman
Steven Meisel were clearly in-
spired by our 1967 centerfold of
April Playmate Gwen Wong.

a sd.
tutti mv fall bem
ШУ,

AGONY OF DE FLEET
Navy brass looked the
other way about the
Tailhook sex-harass-
ment scandal until
a victim, Lieutenant

Paula Coughlin, went

public with her account of

being pawed by drunken
officers at a reunion in Las Vegas.

To promote Baby Got Back, rapper Sir Mix-
&-Lot's ode to big-bottomed women, publi-
cists sent giant inflatable buttocks floating
over record stores throughout the country.

SELLING SHORT(S)
Has anybody seen
rapper Marky Mark
with his pants on
lately? Now

hes pos-

ing for a

Calvin

Klein ad
сат-

paign.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

“With any luck, Dan Quayle will watch and we'll be on forever," said
Mariel Hemingway of this scene from ABC's Civil Wars—more of
Mariel than viewers had seen since ғілүвоү 5 January 1984 issue.

THEY SEE LONDON, WE SEE FRANCE

Reasoning "they're French, after all,” Brits
blinked shutters but nary an eyelash when
confronted by Gallic performance artists
llotopie, outside London's Royal Festival Hall.

FROM MANILA
An officially ac- 7
cepted report
that Philippine
midwife Ed-
win Bayron,

who claimed

to have been

bom a her-
maphrodite,
was pregnant
turned out to
be a hoax.

BUM RAP IV
“Every man's dream
lawn ornament, says
Kansas State University
senior Steve Adams of
his Lawn Babe, on sale
for $25 from Crazy Ideas
Co., 2079 Tecumseh,
Manhattan, KS 66502.

Two suburban women alleged ex-Mets pitcher

David Cone lured them into Shea Stadium's bullpen and
masturbated in front of them. So far, no similar incidents have
surfaced in Toronto, where Cone has played for the Blue Jays.

ARNOLD SCHVANTZENEGGER

It's a safe bet that control freak Amold Schwarz-
enegger wasn't pleased over this pic (and even
more revealing bio), which appeared in Spy's
March issue—not to mention the June letter to the
editor recalling his early posing for gay mags.

CHER AND CHER ALIKE

Cher and Diana Ross performing onstage? Nope,
these are astonishingly realistic impersonations of
the famed pop divas by the Fabulous Fakes—
New York City drag queens voguing at the Apollo.

WILLIE'S EXCEDRIN HEADACHE
A new venue for underwear: the
courtroom telecast. Alleged vic-
tim Patty Bowman—her identity
concealed by a blue dot dur-
ing the trial—saw her bra and
panty hose displayec to the
world on TV as William Ken-
nedy Smith attempted—suc-
cessfully—to strike down
her accusation of sexual as-
sault at the Kennedys' Palm
Beach, Florida, compound.

EMBRACE ME, MY SWEET
INFLATABLE YOU

For bathing beauties who feel
their figures need amplification,
Cole of California's Top Secret
bikini bra sports a pump-up
valve not unlike those devel-
oped earlier for athletic shoes.

|

PLAYBOY

152

Gates оф Eden (continued from page 136)

“I hate а

сур. І hate it more than anything. The

man who laughs at standards must be put down.”

crawl away with one hand clawing at
the pavement, the other pressed to his
inflamed left ear. “That green card you
got ain't a license to steal.” I hefted the
tire iron. “This is your second warn-
ing," I bellowed. "The state don't give
three!"

I spun, around and around and
around, and let go the tire iron. There
was a crack like a pistol shot and the
plate-glass front of Herve's went away.

I tossed the provers into my car and
took off.

My name is Joe Gendreau. Califor-
nia Weights and Measures.

.

Our bureau works out of ап ауоса-
do-colored bunker in Hollywood. It
isn’t much, but then I don't have clients
to impress. My duty is to the public—
not that they ever thank me. Your av-
erage consumer doesn’t know that I'm
the only thing standing between him
and chaos.

Standards are what make us a soci-
ety. A community agrees. A gallon is a
gallon. A pound is a pound. He who
says 15 ounces is a pound—he must be
put down. A pound is a pound, or we
go bango.

I hate a рур. I hate it more than any-
thing. The man who laughs at stan-
dards—that man must be put down.
We are none of us perfect; I know that.
But we must agree on what perfection
is. 1 thought Га met the perfect woman
once. I was wrong, yes. Terribly wrong.
But that doesn't alter the fact.

.

As usual, there was a knot of idlers
laughing around Marty Shechter's
desk. He was doing his Charles Nelson
Rcilly impression. Marty is a skillful op-
erative, but he lacks commitment. For a
lawn party—sure, ask Marty Shechter.
For a job of work—no. Or rather, for a
job of work—yes, Marty Shechter, pro-
vided there's no one around for him to
showboat to. That's how I feel about
Marty Shechter.

On my desk were messages from two
gypmeisters who were contesting. I
would have to make court appear-
ances. And then there was a new com-
plaint, from a Miss O'Hara, a colleen
with a West Side number. Ordinarily I
call to make ап appoinument for an in-
terview, but her line was busy and,
what the hell, she'd left her address.

.
1 knocked at the door of a big sort of
ranch house up Brentwood way. The

Jap maid who opened the door was got
up in native dress. She was young, and
pretty in that dolly way of theirs.

“Hiya, sweets,” I swept my hat off my
head and grinned. “I’m here to see
Miss O'Hara."

She exploded into tittering laughter,
like the sound stars would make if they
bounced off one another like wind
chimes—or for that mauer, like the
sound of wind chimes.

I wasn’t in on the okejay, but sweet as
her laugh was, I didn't mind. 1 did a
fast little sofi-shoe and kidded her:
"Tell her it's Fred Astaire."

She tittered some more, her hands
flying to cover her cute litle dolly
mouth, her knees punching at the
front of her kimono. “Missa Astaire,”
she finally gibbered, laying to rest my
fear that she didn't savvy the English.
"Name not a O'Hara. Ohara. I Ohara.
Ia house a head a house a.”

It took a moment for me to decode
it, that she was the mistress and not
the maid. She titered and bounced
around some more, geuing quite a kick
out of watching my face drippin' egg.

I kicked at the stoop and mumbled,
"I'm terribly sorry, Miss Ohara. I guess
my message—I thought it was from a—
well, never mind. But my name isn't
really Fred Astaire—it's Gendreau, Joe
Gendreau. California Weights and
Measures.” I flipped out my leatherette
wallet and flashed the buzzer. “I hope
you'll excuse the misunderstanding.”

"A Missa Gendreau,” she was still
giggling in her girlish, dolly way.
“Come in a talk."

I did go in. The place was pleasant
like I somehow knew it would be, with
clean gleaming wood and paper-paned
partitions. It felt all open and airy, like
a Jap restaurant but without that
plinky-plink music.

Her little dolly head bounced in
front of me as she led with a mincing
walk, hands gathering the kimono in
front. I reflected on how she hadn't
been offended by my іше gaffe,
whereas her Western sister would un-
doubtedly have pitched a mood. Well,
that's the beauty of the Eastern female.
We might tag her submissive or unlib-
erated or what have you, but to my
mind she has a grace and dignity all
her own, bred by centuries of tradition.
Her purpose in life, which she will ever
strive to perfect, is the serving of her
master, Jap though he may be.

Ме were entering a little area with a

low wood dining table set out for two.

“We eat a fuss."

“I appreciate that offer, Miss Ohara,
but I really couldn't impose. Whatever
I can help you with, if you'll just s

"We eat a fuss. Fussa we eat."

She bowed and grinned, not giving
an inch. Departmental regs have things
to say about chumming up with com-
plainants, but they don’t tell you to be
rude either, and the woman had it in
her head that we were going to eat.

I sat down on the floor, as chairs
there were none. Little Miss Ohara,
still grinning, slipped off my shoes and
briefly rubbed my feet. I was embar-
rassed, but if she was aware of any foot
odor, she didn't let on. She poured
something from a litle crockery doo-
dad into the little crockery cup in front
of me, then went away chirping. I
reached for the cup and smelled. Sake.
I tossed it back. Nice stuff, sake. Easy
going down.

The little duchess was trotting back
in with a lacquered board upon which
were various fishments and wrapped
textured tidbits, laid out with plenty of
grace and charm, like a little garden. I
marveled at the grace and charm.

She knelt before me, giggling, hold-
ing the board above her bowed head.

“Thanks, Miss Ohara, but why don’t
you sit down also and”

"You eat a. Man muss eat a."

I shrugged and popped one of the
morsels into the old boccarino. It was
tasty, delicate. I reached for more. My
fingers felt big and clumsy on the cool
daintiness of the food. “You finis,” she
said, setting the platter in front of
me. She poured some more sake and
bounced to her feet. As she did so, I
couldn't help noticing some chestiness
where her kimono hung momentarily
open. I knocked back more sake, danc-
ing in hob boots on departmental regs.
What the hell. Some bureaucrat sitting
in an office in Sacramento can't possi-
bly anticipate all the situations faced by
the man in the field.

The little contessa had skipped out
of sight, into the living room. “Miss
Ohara,” I called after her, “I sure do
appreciate the hospitality, and you
have a beautiful house and whatnot.
But if we could just get down to cases
here, we——"

1 heard humming and, naked as a
jaybird, she flitted across the wedge of
living room open to my view. She did it
in a dancing, carefree kind of motion,
her arms held out at her sides, Zorba-
like, with a faraway smile on her face.

It was the damnedest thing.

I sat quietly, watching, hoping, I
guess, that she would Zorba back the
other way.

Well, no such luck. She reappeared,

(continued on page 194)

ШІ PARTIES OF Т Ш ШІ E "y

п (E (ow tT g

here are some invitations that may not have made it to your mailbox е

Іні ІШ у 18 ВЕУ; R € [E

From: Montrose Peete,
Lord Chamberlain to Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II
To: Members of the Palace Personal Steff only

With regard to the Royal Family's annual private holiday obser-
vance, please take note of the following: Place settings for
Duchess Sarah Ferguson and Captain Mark Phillips will not be re-
quired. There are to be no knives at Princess Diana's setting. The
electronic sweep of the Palace for surveillance devices must be
completed by sunset. All current Royal Family members will be in

itis dace Сой ve he Queri

5:15 Light yule log; burn negatives.

5:35 Presentation and introduction to the Royal Family of Princess
Anne's escort and Prince Andrew's date.

5:45 Prince Andrew and Duchess Sarah officially present petitions
to the Queen.

6:00 Her Majesty to issue Royal Decree (Who Gets Custody of the
Children, Who Gets Land in Wales).

6:10 Queen's Attendants to separate family members, restore order.

6:30 Formal Holiday Banquet. (Staff to remove and replace broken
glassware and china as needed.)

8:00 Her Majesty's Toast: 1993—A Year of Wiser Choices.

8:30 Party games for Royal Children (Musical Thrones, Bobbing
for Scotland, etc.).

9:30 Ritual of Reassurance: Her Majesty's annual pledge to Prince
Charles that she will seriously consider abdication this year.

10:00 Queen's Indulgence: Her Majesty to present jocular novelty
gifts to Prince Philip (King O'Lawn riding mower), Prince
Charles (case of Royal gelatin), Princess Diana (crying towel),
Prince Andrew (locking codpiece), Princess Anne (subscription
to Glamour).

10:30) СЕА Roll Rda анине] ннн o personal

NOTE: It is impossible, as always, to anticipate precisely when the Queen Mother
will launch into a chorus of Roll Me Over. Staff is reminded to be prepared to with-
draw discreetly from the room at that point.

Official Schedule of Events and Ceremonies

Consort Prince Philip offers “Roast in Hell” toast to the
British press.

holiday sentiments. (Royal Physician to remain in atten-
ince.)

153

La

a + Sr

* SUSAN FALUDI =

REQUESTS

THE HONOR OF YOUR

PRESENCE
oy

rs
Join Susan, Gloria Steinem, Susan Brown-
miller and others for an evening of male-free
jubilation, a celebration of the Year of the

OUR HOLIDAY AGENDA

* A toast to role models Glenn Close, Geena

* Formally redesignate mistletoe as Mstietoe.
* Trim the tree (with custom vagina-shaped oma-
ments in lieu of phallic glass balls).

* Assemble the feminist manger scene (Mary,
Josephine and Baby Jessica).

* Sing-along: At Christmas, we abandon the op-
pressive patriarchal hymns (read hims) and re-
joice with self-affirming, aptly named carols. In
that spirit, let us raise our voices in ferninist song:
Good Queen Wenceslas, Arrest Ye Merry Gentle-
men, Single Belles, Chet's Nuts Roasting on an Open
Fire and more.
* RC Skit: “The Three Wise Women” (Anita Hill,
Patricia Ireland, Kate Michelman).

* Contests: Pin the Penis on Camille Pagiia, Pissing
Names inthe Snow.

You owe it to yourself and to your country to witness and
participate in “The Grassy Noel: A Christmas Cover-up”
CONCEIVED, PLOTTED AND DIRECTED BY OLIVER STONE

Come in disguise as your favorite assassination conspirator: Lyndon
Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro, Earl Warren, Jack Ruby, Judith
Exner, G. Gordon Liddy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Surprise us (if you can)
Enjoy dining and dancing in a soundstage magically transformed into a

replica of Dealey Plaza. Then follow this crucial sequence of events:

9:00—Santa arrives by sleigh, waving to partygoers

9:02—Sound of gunfire; Santa slumps over, mortally wounded

9:03 —Elves spotted hurriedly leaving the scene.

9:10—Police arrest suspect named Lee Harvey Crarchit.

930—Suspect is shot by underworld figure known as Dasher.

9:45— Jim Garrison, Mark Lane and host appear as the Three Wise
Men bearing subpoenas.

10:00—Guess give depositions. How, and when, will it end?

= Midnight Finale: “Mother Time" (Catharine
MacKinnon) appears, performs ritual-emascula-
tion Scythe Dance.

We'll have lots of “party theme”
munchies for you to sink your teeth
into (gingerbread men, melon balls,
mixed nuts, Vienna sausages, etc.)
and a festive feminism-packs-a-
punch instead of phallocentrist
cocktails. There will be gifts for all
(Mace, scissors, Rush Limbaugh dart
board, Thelma & Louise Charm
School sweatshirts) and a vibrator
in every Christmas stocking.

Be There, ov Be Unaware.
“Have Yourself a Wary Litile Christmas.”

Don't miss (correction: Don't Ms.) this celebro-
tion of Peace on Earth, Good Riddance to Men.
You've earned it.

яғ MR. JOHN GOTTI WOULD TAKET =
AS A PERSONAL INSULT IF YOU DECLINED ТО ATTEND HOLIDAY ON ICE

A CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION FOR ALL HIS FRIENDS IN DETENTION BLOCK E

Неугуои can stilllftaye a good time, even when you're doing time, right? Mr. Gotti thinks so, and he's having a little party at
his place to, prove {he point. We'll rim the tree with handmade ornaments (grazie to the guys in License Plates) and play
party games (and no getting frisky during Bobbing for Apples). We'll get a visit from the Three Wiseguys bringing authentic-
looking full pardons suitable (like us) for framing. Plus, everybody gets a Christmas stocking filled with stuff: cigarette pa-
pets, lice powder, blow-up doll, Vaseline, Preparation H, soap-on-a-rope, the works. We'll have a closed-circuit ТУ linkup
with special МР guests Charles Keating, Manuel Noriega, Mike Tyson, Jim Bakker, Leona Helmsley and Michael Milken. ГІ
be just like the Christmas parties on the outside (except without the mistletoe), so don't miss it. You know how Mr. Gotti hates
to take no for an answer. There are two ways to cement our relationship. This is the easy one.

: H 3 SISTER SOULJAH WANTS YOU
АТ HER PARTY SCENE.
“SHOOT-A-WHITE CHRISTMAS”
IS THE THEME.
Santa will be black,
Pissed and female, tco,
With "gifts" (talking ammo)
" For each of yov.
$ CHEDULE No sorry-oss cider,
(is tentative, like everything) 1 No jive charades.
Gonna trim our tree
«Тоа George Bush or whoever is US. president. WEE hada елесі.
«Toast U.S. vice president. if president noL looking well lately. | We've got a holiday skit,
* Light festive yulc fire (bales of rubles, chcapcr than wood). Dia aths sodet

“Father Christmas
“Toast U.S. presidents Washington through Reagan, in order.

Meets motherfucker.”
= Sumptuous Official Banquet (Kentucky Fried Chicken Kicy). We'll take a hayride

= Toast IBM, McDonald's, Disneylend, New York Yankees, Coca-Cola, Exxon, | Through the nice white hoods,
the Alamo, Elvis, Morgan Guaranty, Wheatics. Singing hard-rap carols

^ chill theii ds,
= Games: Pin the Tail on Stalin, Hoard the Salani, I've Got a Secret (official ust to chill their moods,

Like Jungle Bells
KGB home version). And We Be Kings

“Напсі out VID party gifts: socks, toilet paper. turnips, gum. And Duck!
*Toasl Hollywood. Levi's, Michacl Jordan. Nashville, World Scries. Madonna. | The Smith & Wesson Sings.
Kmart. Simpsons, Rocky Balboa. ӛрісі MacKcnzic. Fourth of July. | Rich bitches will shake

= Annual Good-Spirted Prank: Stripping unconscious members of parlie- каче тек мане

To Deck the Halls
ment t it i
Lo underwcar and Icaving outside іп snow. With Parts of Whitey.

“Тоғы. Fortune 500 U.S. companics, Super Bowl winners (1967-1992). Bil- | Í it's Xmas with a message,
board Top 40, all U.S. state capitals, etc. (Conlinucs till dawn.) So spread it around:
“Kunta Claus is
Coming to town.”

PLAYBOY

156

My PRAGUE (continued from page 114)

“The Czechs may have engineered a glorious revo-
lution, but they can't believe they've pulled it off."

Rainbow Man Is Coming to Town.

Mir product are you selling?" I
ask.

"What difference does it make?" he
says snappishly. Then, retreating a bit,
he adds: "In Sydney, it was bread."

I visit Wenceslas Square in the center
of the city. Its grandeur and size hit
you in the face with an almost physi-
cal force—much in the manner of the
Piazza San Marco in Venice. I’m drawn
into a great multinational orgy of buy-
ing and selling. Shoppers from all over
the world have come to join the Czechs
in buying imitation Seiko watches, Led
Zeppelin T-shirts and dresses that look
as if they've been taken from a truck in
Passaic, New Jersey. Havel has de-
scribed the velvet revolution as being
“a revolt of color, authenticity, history
in all of its variety and human individ-
uality against imprisonment.” But here
on the square, it’s as if the Czechs re-
volted so that they could shop for dis-
continued jogging suits.

The shopping is eerie and silent,
since there is no automobile traffic on
the square and the enormous cobble-
stoned space (about halfa mile long, 60
yards wide) absorbs the shouts of a
thousand hawkers. There may never
have been such a vast international
stewpot. Icelanders and Uruguayans
line up to buy U.S. popcorn and pizza
from Bosnians who've managed to es-
cape the carnage in Sarajevo and set
themselves up in stalls. Bolivian Indi-
ans serenade French teenagers as they
have their hair braided with colored
cotton by spike-haired Boy George
look-alikes. Black softball stars from
the Netherlands, cash in hand, circle
the square, asking where the girls are
(they are told to check the hotel lobbies
at night). Czechs, who've been known
to get in any line no matter where it
leads, queue up to pay 30 crowns for a
look inside a stretch limousine whose
occupants, a pair of Brits, are present-
ing themselves as rock stars.

Kafka merchandise is in hot de-
mand, the brooding novelist having be-
come an unlikely pop icon. T-shirts,
beer mugs and even cuff links bearing
his likeness disappear quickly from the
shelves. There may be an explanation
in the Prague Baedecker that points
out that “two of his novels were made
into films." Close on Kafka's heels as
the James Dean of Prague is Mozart,
whom the Czechs have seized as one of
their own, though, strictly speaking,

the composer spent only a short time іп
the city, having gone there to have his
operas produced after they'd received
poor reviews at home. Gorbachev T-
shirts fly out of the stalls along with
hats said to have been left behind by
Soviet military commanders (all, mys-
teriously, in small sizes).

"Threaded in among the crowd are
young Americans (there may be as
many as 40,000 living in the city), many
of them with a Czech in tow, delivering
paid instructions in English on the run.
Chris Scheer, formerly of Santa Bar-
bara and editor in chief of the English-
language newspaper Prognosis, has
defined them as Posties—post-Sixties,
postmodern, post-sexual revolution,
post-Reagan, post-everything—living
in something of a moral vacuum with
nothing to be for or against. They've
come to Prague because the living is
cheap (50-cent lunches, ten-cent sub-
way rides) and because there is not
much for them in the States at the mo-
ment. But to be fair about it, it isn't on-
ly the economics that has drawn them
to the Golden City. The overthrow of a
40-year-old Communist regime, ar-
guably the most repressive in eastern
Europe, had a literary flavor to it, driv-
еп as it was by artists and writers and
particularly by Havel, who is a hero to
the Americans here. Alan Levy, editor
in chief of the English-language Prague
Post, suggests, perhaps too sweepingly,
that the Americans in Prague are the
equivalent of the Lost Generation in
the Paris of the Twenties and that there
are future Isherwoods, Audens and
Fitzgeralds among them. He concedes
that not a single glittering paragraph
has yet been produced but insists that
many are holed up in garrets, “work-
ing on their novels.” Many more have
been taken on by government minis-
ters as “consultants.”

“What are they consulted about?” I
ask a Czech journalist.

“Tt doesn't matter,” he replies. “For
many years Americans were held up as
the enemy. Now it's fashionable to have
one as a consultant.”

Although the Czechs have seized pri-
vate enterprise with a passion, the tran-
sition from Marxism has not been an
entirely smooth one. Czech women
haven't quite learned to negotiate their
miniskirts, with the result that there
are exquisite blunders on the trams
and in the taverns. Czechs in their 60s
and 70s shake their heads dolefully at

the skyrocketing prices for sausage and
cabbage, and there’s little question
many would welcome a return to the
old system. On Národní Street, a mer-
chant, confident of becoming rich
overnight, stocked his store with fur
coats and gloves and seems puzzled
that they are not being snapped up in
the suffocating July sun. An American
grad student from the Wharton School
of Business is proudly taken on a tour
of a 1300-employee factory by a 30-
year-old Czech who's replaced an old-
line Communist Party figure as manag-
er. Suddenly panicked, he takes the
American aside and says, “What on
God's earth do I do now?”

There is a desperate need to get it
right, to getit Western, as though there
were a precise mathematical formula
that eludes the Czechs. At privatized
restaurants, bartenders, with quaver-
ing hands, carefully pour vodka as if
its a rare elixir, as supervisors, with
folded arms, sternly oversee them. The
waitresses and chambermaids seem
scared out of their wits, as if one incor-
rectly positioned saucer would cause
the entire new society to crumble.

‘The Czechs may have engineered a
glorious revolution and sent the Sovi-
ets packing, but they can’t seem to be-
lieve they've pulled it off. At night, I
ask a cabdriver to take me to a highly
recommended jazz club on Krákovská
Street. When we arrive, the streets are
dark and deserted. The cabdriver is
nervous about stopping but finally
does so. I knock on the door, which
opens slightly. I'm scrutinized and then
admitted, tentatively, as if we're back in
Prohibition days. Inside, several hun-
dred sweating Czech jazz lovers are
packed together in a cloud of smoke
and haze, listening intently to a trio
led by a spin-off Gerry Mulligan. The
mood is clandestine, quietly defiant, as
if being present at this white-bread
performance is an act of defiance, a
show of the irrepressibility of the hu-
man spirit. Eyes turn from time to time
toward the entranceway, anticipating
the KGB, which will smash down the
door. But this is 1992 and the KGB is
long gone. Any prerevolution inform-
ers are happily dispersed among the
crowd. There's nothing to rebel
against. Yet the Czechs continue reflex-
ively to resist a phantom regime.

After dark, the prostitutes come out
in force. They are blonde and pretty,
for the most part, and no one seems to
have made sure they're of a correct
age. “The Russians,” I'm told by a jour-
nalist, “have made off with the really
beautiful ones" Droves of couples
cross the Old Town Square, hand in
hand. It’s a city for lovers, but there is
also a field day to be had for the lonely,

(concluded on page 181)

PON A LIME
ALYNCH/FROST PRODUCTION

narrated y JAMES COBURN Executive Producer MARK FROST produced by GARY H. GROSSMAN, ROBERT HEATH

2 Executive in charge of Production KEN SCHERER Original Music CHARLOTTE LANSBERG

LBS: Writendy GARY H.GROSSMAN, MICHAEL GROSS, ROBERT HEATH Directe ny ROBERT HEATH

1992 ALTA LOMA PRODUCTIONS, INC.

Pan 0Y'S ІШІТ!
REVIEW

a zoundufr of the past delightful dagen

WHO SHOULD BE

PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR?

They want you. Twelve of the
most famously fabulous women
on earth are sitting around talk-
ing, checking their watches, tap-
ping their long, shiny fingernails
beside the phone. They want you
to call. It's that time of year—a
time for champagne, confetti,
parades and Playmate perusal—
when you help us settle the first
great question of the year. Who's
the best of the best? Of the dozen
Playmates of the Month whose
beauty was unfolded before you
in 1992, which one outshone the
rest? Call her and you'll hear a
message she has recorded espe-
cially for her supporters in our
annual phonefest (calls cost one
dollar. If your Playmate pre-

In 1992 Corinna Harney (above) was our
Playmate of the Year. Who will win the
crown in 1993? Moke your choice by
calling 900-680-4000. Only $1 per coll.

HELP US CHOOSE

vails, you'll see her again in a lav-
ish Playmate of the Year layout
featured in the June issue of
PLAYBOY. She'll receive a sleek
new sports car with a $100,000
check in the glove box. She'll
reign for a year as the fairest and
sexiest of the fair sex. And you'll
tell everyone you were part of it.
"That's my Playmate,” you'll say.
“I knew she was the one. That's
why I called her.” You'll be right,
too—if you made the right call
(or if you called all twelve). Every
clue you need can be found in
this pictorial encore. So can our
Playmate of the Year 1993, and
all you have to do to hear her
voice is call us and pick the right
month. Why keep her waiting?

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above number, and when instructed, punch in the code to make your pick: Miss January, 01; Miss February,
02; Miss March, 03; Miss April, 04; Miss May, 05; Miss June, 06; Miss July, 07; Miss August, 08; Miss
September, 09; Miss October, 10; Miss November, 11; Miss December, 12. Polling ends February 28, 1993

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MISS FEBRUARY MISS MARCH MISS APRIL
E

dt

MISS SEPTEMBER MISS OCTOBER MISS NOVEMBER MISS DECEMBER

Miss November
STEPHANIE ADAMS

Stephanie (left) did some
heavy-duty modeling in
1992. After guesting in a
video with rapper Heavy D.,
she appeared in ads for Miss
Clairol and starred іп a
campaign for Tropez cos~
metics. A veteran of runways
and fashion spreads, the
New York-based Elite model
says she hopes to be the first
black model to sign a major
cosmetics contract. Still, she
Says, “PLAYBOY WAS MY
favorite modeling job of all.”

Miss December
BARBARA MOORE

“Can I switch to my walk-
around phone?” asked Bar-
bara (right) when we called.

She is back home in N:
ville, taking in the view of
the swimming pool outside
her condo. But this South-
ern belle is getting ready for
Hollywood. Since you last
had a look, Barbara has
joined an acting class.
Goldie Hawn is a role model
for Miss December

Miss October
TIFFANY SLOAN

Yes, she still wants to bea
cop. Tiffany (right) is a
dancer, gymnast, choreogra-
pher and mi f all goes
as planned, she'll be officer
Tiffany soon, with a degree
in criminal law, a husband
and two kids. This Las Vegan
has toured Germany and
Spain in Playboy's Girls of
Rock ’n’ Roll show—some-
thing to tell the grandkids
about when they’re old
enough to see pictures of
their grandma in her prime.

Miss April
CADY CANTRELL

When last you read about
Cady (left) in these pages,
she was living in Atlanta and
studying acting. Now she’s a
Floridian, and her screen
dreams have been upstaged
by modeling work. “I love it!
T'm the center of attention.
People are running around
getting things for me. It's
great." Between assign-
ments, Cady attends to her
other passion of the
moment: luxuriating іп

the sun and surf.

Miss July
AMANDA HOPE

Amanda (right) held the
rank of specialist in the U.S.
Army’s First Armored Divi-
sion band when stationed in
Germany in 1992. A clar-
inetist, this Texan used her
furloughs to travel the Ger-
man and Austrian country-
sides on what she calls "the
$11 tour," which featured.
deutsch hospitality and free
rooms and meals for U.S.
soldiers. Back in Texas, she’s
on the move: “I'm finally
learning how to drive a car."

Miss January
SUZI SIMPSON

“1 know this sounds real
John-Boy Waltonish, but this
year has been like a dream
to me,” said Suzi (left). She
was home for one day

between modeling jobs in
Mexico and Greece. Let oth-
ers suffer jet lag. Suzi is
“happy and grateful.” This
sunny southern Californian
has also modeled in Jamaica
and Hawaii. Living out of
suitcases hasn't lost its
charm. Good thing—Suzi's
"caught the acting bug."

Miss September.
MORENA CORWIN

She hasn't yet driven a race
car or walked on the moon—
two ambitions listed on her
Playmate Data Sheet. More-
na (right) has been too busy
getting her career together.
The Korean-born model and
aspiring actress has settled
in Jacksonville, Florida. She
has audited acting classes
and strikes poses for fashion
photographers. It's no
surprise that her

specialty is formfitting
“bodywear clothes.”

Miss. August
ASHLEY ALLEN

When Ashley (left) hit the
stands as PLAYBOY'S center-
fold, her phone jumped to
life with calls from friends.
“People said, ‘Why didn’t
you tell us?" Why didn't she
tell them? "I'm not one to
brag. I guess I was ner-
vous,” Ashley confesses. Set-
tled in Dallas with an eye on
L.A., the Hawaiian Tropic
suntan lotion model spent
two memorable weeks in
Spain last summer at

the Olympic Games.

Misa March
ТҮШ JOHN

Motorcycle racer Tylyn
(right) went straight from
our pages to a fast-track act-
ing career. The producers of
the upcoming film Rising
Sun, which stars Sean Con-
nery and Wesley Snipes, saw
Tylyn in ғілівоу and chose
her over 350 other actresses
for a cameo role. “I play a
crazy redhead who jumps
on Wesley's back at a party,”
she says. “I punch him,
cuss him out. I feel so
lucky I got to do it!”

Miss February
TANYA BEYER

“I need the flavor of Europe
in my life,” says Tanya (left).
The Minnesota-born model
is speaking from her apart-
ment in Hamburg, Ger-
many Soon she will jet to
Paris and Milan for couture
shows. Earlier this season
she watched her beloved.
Denver Broncos play an ex-
hibition game in Berlin. She
was stateside, though, for
her 2154 birthday in June—
club-hopping in LA. with
her two sisters.

ШЇЇ] wm

wi

Miss Zune
ANGELA MELINI

Saigon-born Angela (left)
still occasionally styles hair
in a Seattle salon. That's one
ofa few things that haven't
changed. “I’ve auditioned

for a TV show about the
Seattle music scene,” she
says. She has also become
pals with Miss March, Tylyn
John, modeled swimwear
coast to coast and turned
heads on Seattle streets. As
one friend said upon seeing
Angela’s pictorial, “Man, you
are so beautiful!”

Miss, May
VICKIE SMITH

Guess what? Texan Vickie
(right) is now seen in Guess
jeans ads. You know—the
ones that made Claudia
Schiffer so famous. Guess
what else? Her number-one
fan is six years old. “My son
Daniel is so proud. He's got
my pictures up all over his
room. "That's my mommy!”
he says." Mom makes mu-
sic videos, too, and in her
hometown of Mexia (pop.
6933), "Everyone's my
best friend now."

WE REVISIT THOSE CELEBS WHO COULDN'T KEEP THEIR FEET OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS LAST YEAR

Jol CHeAD

COS ESTES CIE

“We're finally going to wrestle to the ¿

ground this gigantic orgasm that is
just out of control.”

—Senator Dennis DeConcini (D.—
Ariz.), talking about a balanced-
budget constitutional amendment

$699
“I just can't wait till this campaign is
over so І can say, “Bob, open the ga-
rage and get out the Maserati. Open
up the safe and get out the jewels.’”

—Georgette Mosbacher, wife of Robert
Mosbacher, chairman of George
Bush’s campaign on enforced fru-
gality in Washington

Gos
“We're enjoying sluggish times, and
not enjoying them very much.”

—President George Bush on the trou-
bled state of the American economy

LI
“Will had to reluctantly admit that
was true, which has certainly helped
him with dates since then."

—Auorney Roy Black, joking about
William Kennedy Smith’s testimony
that he had sex twice in 30 minutes
with Patricia Bowman

$ ss
“Until recently the word fascist was
considered shameful. Fortunately,
that period has passed. In fact, there
is now a reassessment of how much
Grandpa Benito did for Italy.”

Alessandra Mussolini, the grand-

daughter of Benito Mussolini, an- :

E 2 E ЧЕ s

nouncing her plan to run for parlia-
ment as a neofascist candidate
€
“I have no problems with Mississippi.
You know why I like Mississippi? Be-
cause they still sell those little pick-
aninny dolls dewn there. And I
bought me a few of them, too.”

—Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas
LE

“This country’s tires are bald. People
are going to look at their own tires
and say, ‘I'm ready, I can do this. I
begin to feel better about things, and
"m not going to drive my family
around оп bald tires.”

on how he thinks the recession will
end in the U.S.
LE
“J know this will sound Pollyannaish
o you, but I wasn't basically focused
on making money.”

—Michael Milken, serving a federal
term in Pleasanton, California, for
securities fraud

Go
“Unlike the show, the majority of
cars are not Porsches and Corvettes.
There are lots of BMWs and Jeeps.”

—Beverly Hills high school student
Sara Mayers on the difference be-
tween her school and the one por-
trayed on “Beverly Hills, 90210”

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE BRODNER

RHE YEAR

“Tim so excited to meet you. Гуе al-
ways modeled myself after Ginger.”

—WMarla Maples on meeting actress
Tina Louise, who played Ginger on
“Gilligar's Island”

Ы
“It's the best book Гуе certainly
read. And he goes through it; he
tarts around the turn of the century
up through Vietnam. And it’s a very
good historical book about history.”

—Vice President Dan Quayle on Paul
Johnson's “Modern Times”

60
“He's a rarity as a father. He's so
there. It’s all about purity, honesty

i and that cliché: unconditional love. 1

i always knew he was that way, though.
— Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady

He was that way with his dogs.”
—Robin Wright on husband Sean
Penn
“-
“Тат like a natural amphetamine. I
can be sitting in the recording studio
for ten hours without making wee-
wee. Forgetting that I have to make
wee-wee.”
—Julio Iglesias
“»
“It’s been a very good trip, with the
exception of the tear gas.”

—White House spokesman Marlin
Fitzwater, trying to make the best
of a visit to Panama when Presi-
dent Bush was forced to flee an
anti-American protest rally

E ГІ < E L ^A A nr г

PLAYBOY

BLUEBEARD IN IRELAND „шук

“с

Which of these would you recommend?’ said Vivian.
"We don't want to start him out on anything too steep.

ووو

window, and shyly asked for the 50p ad-
mission. Then through a swinging gate
and up a muddy lane the couple had
walked, past stacks of roof tiles and a
ditch brimming with plastic trash, arriv-
ing at a small mowed plateau where 15
mismatched stones in a rough circle held
their mute old pattern. He had paced
among them, trying to unearth in his
atavistic heart the planetary meaning of
these pre-Celtic stones. Sacrifice. This
must have been, at certain moments of
heavenly alignment, a place of sacrifice,
he thought, as, in the corner of his eye,
Vivian stood at the ring's center like a
stranger in too vividly blue a raincoat.

“We're walking,” she agreed with him,
“but not back to those awful rocks that
got you so excited, ГЇЇ never know why.
It's stupid to keep looking at rocks some-
body could have arranged yesterday, for
all we know. There are more of these
prehistoric beehive huts today than
there were a hundred years ago, the nice
young man in the office was telling me.
He says what people who come to Ken-
mare do is take long walks.”

“Who is this guy, that he’s become so
fucking big in my life suddenly? Why
doesn't he take you for the walk if that’s
what's on his mind?”

Did she blush? "George, really—he's
young enough to be my son." This was
an awkward assertion, made in the
sweep of the moment. She could be the
mother of a 21-year-old if she had been
pregnant at 19; but in truth she had nev-
er borne a child, and when they were
first married and she was in her mid-30s,
he had had enough children by other
women. Now the possibility had slipped
away He theught of her as racily
younger than himself, but she was 40,
and since they had surreptitiously court-
ed, in the flattering shadows of Clairc's
unknowing, Vivian's face had grown ап-
gular and incised with lines of chronic
vexation. She was old enough to be the
mother of an adult, but was not.

The young man in the office—a kind
of rabbit hole around the corner from
the key rack, in which the Irish staff
could be heard buzzing like bees in a
hive—was at least 25 and might have
been 30, with children of his own. He
was slender, black-eyed, milky-skinned
and impeccably courteous. Yet his cour-
tesy carried a charge, a lilt, of mischief.
“Yes, and walking is the thing in these
parts—we're not much for the organized
sports that you Americans are used to.”

“We passed some golf courses, driving

172 here,” Allenson said, not really wanting

to argue.

“Would you call golf organized?” the
assistant manager said quickly. “Not the
way I play it, I fear. As we say here, it’s an
ungrateful way to take a walk.”

"Speaking of walks"—Vivian pro-
duced her little green map—"which of
these would you recommend for my
husband and me?"

With his bright black eyes he looked
from one to the other and then settled
on looking at her, with a cock to his neat-
ly combed head. “Well, how hardy a fel-
low is he?”

Dear little wife, Vivian took the ques-
tion seriously. *Well, when he drives, his
reflexes are poor, but other than that he
can do most things."

Allenson resented this discussion.
"The last time I saw my doctor,” he
announced, “he told me | had beautiful
arteries.”

“Ah, I would have guessed that,” said
the young man, looking him benignly in
the face.

“We don't want to start him out on
anything too steep,” Vivian said, again
with an offensive seriousness.

“Currabeg might be your best option
then. It’s mostly on the level road, with
fine views of the Roughty Valley and the
bay. Take an umbrella against the mist,
along with your fine blue coat, and if he
begins to look blue in the face, then you
might fancy hailing a passing motorcar
to bring his body in.”

"Are we going to be walking in traffic?"
She sounded alarmed. For all her as-
sertiveness, Vivian had irritating pockets
of timidity. Claire, Allenson remem-
bered, drove on a motor scooter all over
Bermuda with him, clinging to his
midriff trustfully, 20 years ago, and
would race with the children on bicycles
all over Nantucket. He and his first wife,
Jeaneanne, owned a Ford Thunderbird
convertible when they lived in Texas and
would commonly hit 100 miles an hour
on the stretch between Lubbock and
Abilene, the top down and the dips in
Route 84 full of watery mirages. He re-
membered how her hair, bleached
blonde in Fifties-style streaks, would
whip back from her sweaty temples, and
how she would hike her skirt up to her
waist to give her crotch air, there under
the steering wheel. Jeaneanne had been
tough, but her exudations had been nec-
tar, until her recklessness and love of
speed had carried her out of his life.

The assistant manager appeared to
give Vivian's anxiety his solemn consid-
eration; there was, in his second of

feigned thought, that ceremonious
touch of parody with which the Irish
brought music to the most factual trans-
actions. “Oh, I judge in this off-time of
year there won't be enough to interfere
with your easiness. These are high coun-
try roads. You park at the crossroads, as
the map shows clearly, and take the
rights to bring you back."

‘Still, Allenson felt their advisor had
some politely unspoken reservation
about their undertaking. As if also wary,
Vivian tried to hold her tongue from
criticism while he drove their left-hand-
drive rental car, with its mirrors where
you didn't expect them and a balky jum-
ble of gears on the floor, out of Kenmare,
past a cemetery containing famous holy
wells, over a one-lane hump of stone
bridge, up between occluding hedge-
rows into the bare blue hills whose sil-
houettes, in the view from the Allensons"
hotel room, boiled upward like clouds
from the mirroring sheen of the lakelike
estuary. They met no other cars, so Viv-
ian had less need to tense up than on the
ring roads. The map was in her lap. She
announced at last, "This must be the
crossroads." A modest intersection, with
only enough parking space on the dirt
shoulder. They parked in the space and
locked the car. It was the middle of a
morning of watery wan sunshine. A bit
of breeze told them they were higher
than in Kenmare.

On foot they followed a long straight
road, not as long and shimmering as the
straightaways in Texas, yet with some-
thing of the same sense of mirage. They
crossed a stream hidden, but for its gur-
gle, in greenery. A house being built, or
rebuilt, stood back and up from the
road, with no sign of life. Land and
houses must be cheap. Ireland had been
emptying out for ages. Cromwell had re-
duced the Irish to half a million, but they
had stubbornly bred back, only to be
decimated by the potato famine two cen-
turies later. Allenson found himself won-
dering about the Irish who stayed—if
they didn’t have a softness, an elfin un-
reality, which had been left behind by
the American Irish, with their bloated
brick churches, their grim theology,
their buttoned-shut pugnacious faces.

At first Vivian athletically strode ahead,
hungry for hovels and unspoiled views.
She had brought new running shoes on
the trip—snow-white, red-chevroned,
chunky, with the newest wrinkles of ped-
al technology. They were not flattering,
but then, compared with Jeaneanne's,
this wife's ankles were rather thick. Her
feet looked silly under the hem of her
bright blue raincoat, flickering along the
road surface, striped like big birds.
Where were the real birds? Ireland
didn’t seem to have many. Perhaps they
had migrated with the people. Famines
are hard on birds, but the last one had
been long ago.

The hedgerows were thinning, and

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PLAYBOY

after the invisible stream, the road had a
steady upward trend. He found himself
overtaking his young wife, and then
slowing his pace to match hers. “You
know,” she told him, “I really did twist
my back in the car yesterday, and these
new sneakers aren't all they were adver-
tised. They have so much structure in-
side, my feet feel bullied. It's as if they
keep pushing my hips out of alignment.”

“Well,” he said, “you could go bare-
foot.” Jeaneanne would have. “Or we
could go back to the car. We've gone less
than a mile.”

“That's all? I wouldn't dream of telling
them at the hotel that we couldn't do
their walk. This must be the first right
turn already, coming up.”

The ‘T-crossing was unmarked. He
looked at the green map and wished it
weren't quite so schematic. “This must
be it,” he agreed uncertainly.

A smaller road, it continued the up-
ward trend through emptier terrain.
Irish emptiness had a quality different
from that of Texas emptiness, or that of
the Scotch Highlands, where he and
Claire had once toured. The desolation
here was more intimate. Domes of stone-
littered grass formed a high horizon un-
der roiling clouds with leaden blue-black
centers. There was little color in any-
thing; he had expected greener grass,
bluer sky. The landscape wore the dull,
chastened colors of the people in the
towns. It was a shy, unscreaming sort of
desolation. "I suppose," Allenson said to
break the silence of their laborious walk-
ing, "all this vas once full of farms."

"I haven't seen a single hovel," Vivian
said with a sharpness that he blamed on
her back.

“Some of these heaps of stones—it’s
hard to tell if man or God, so to speak,
put them there." Jeaneanne had been a
liberated Baptist, Claire a practicing
Episcopalian. Vivian was from a deter-
minedly unchurched family of ex-
Catholic scientists whose treeless Christ-
mases and thankless Thanksgivings
Allenson found painful. Strange, he
thought as he walked along, he had nev-
er had a Jewish wife, though Jewish
women had been his best lovers—the
warmest, the cleverest. Next time?

“Yt said in the guidebook that even up
in the hills you could see the green
places left by the old potato patches, but
1 haven't seen any," Vivian complained.

Allenson cleared his throat and said,
“You can see why Beckett wrote the way
he did.” He had lost track of how long
their forward-plodding silence had
stretched; his voice felt rusty. "There's
an amazing amount of nothingness in
the Irish landscape.” On cue, a gap in
the clouds sent a silvery light scudding
across the tops of the dull hills slowly
drawing closer.

“I know this isn't the road," Vivian
said. "We haven't seen a sign, a house, a

174 Car, anything.” She sounded near tears.

"But we've seen sheep," he said with
an enthusiasm that was becoming cruel.
"Hundreds of them."

lt was true. Paler than boulders but no
less enigmatic, scattered sheep populat-
ed the wide fields that unrolled on both
sides of the road. With their rectangular
purple pupils, the animals stared in
profile at the couple. Sometimes an es-
pecially buoyant ram, his chest pow-
dered a startling turquoise or magenta
color, dashed among the ewes at the ap-
proach of these human intruders. Single
strands of barbed wire reinforced the
stone walls and rotting fences of an older
pastoralism. Only these wires and the
pine poles bearing wires overhead
testified that 20th century people had
been here before them. The land dipped
and crested like a vast sluggish ocean;
each new rise revealed more sheep,
more stones, more road. A cloud with an
especially large leaden center darkened
this lunar landscape, but by the time Viv-
ian had put up their umbrella, the sprin-
kle had passed. Allenson looked around
for a rainbow, but it eluded his vision,
like the leprechauns promised yesterday
at Moll's Gap, in the roadside sign 1ЕР-
RECHAUN CROSSING.

“Where is that second right turn?”
Vivian asked. “Give me back the map.”

“The map tells us nothing,” he said.
“The way it's drawn, it looks like we're
walking around a city block.”

“1 knew this was the wrong road; 1
don't know why I let you talk me into it.
We've gone miles. My back is killing me.
Truly, George. I hate these bossy, clunky
running shoes."

“They're the newest thing," he re-
minded her. "And far from cheap." Try-
ing to recover his streak of kindness, he
went on, "The total walk is four and a
half miles. Americans have lost all sense
of how long a mile is. They think it's
a minute of sitting in a car.” Or less,
if Jeaneanne were driving, her skirt
tucked up to expose her thighs.

“Don't be so pedantic,” Vivian told
him. "I hate men. They grab the map
out of your hands and never ask direc-
tions and then refuse to admit that
they're lost."

"Whom, my dear would we have
asked directions of? We haven't seen a
soul. The last soul we saw was your cow-
eyed pal at the hotel J can hear him
now, talking to the police. ‘Ah, the Amer-
ican couple,’ he'll be saying. ‘She a mere
colleen and he a grizzly old fella. They
were heading for Macgillicuddy's Reeks,
wi' scarcely a cup of poteen or a pig's
knuckle in their knapsacks.’”

"Not funny," she said in a new on-the-
edge voice. Without his noticing it, she
had become frantic. There was a silvery
light in her eyes, tears. "1 can't walk an-
other step," she announced. "I can't and
I won't.”

“Here,” he said, pointing out a conve-
nient large stone in the wall at the side of

the road. “Rest a bit.”

She sat and repeated, as if proudly, “1
will not go another step. 1 can't, George.
I'm in agony.” She flipped back her ban-
danna with a decisive gesture, but the ef-
fect was not the same as Jeaneanne's
gold-streaked hair whipping back in the
convertible. Vivian looked old, worn.
Lamed.

“What do you want me to do? Walk
back and bring the car?” He meant the
offer to be absurd, but she didn’t reject
it, merely thinned her lips and stared at
him angrily, defiantly.

"You've got us lost and won't admit it.
I'm not walking another step.”

He pictured it. Her body would weak-
en and die within a week; her skin and
bones would be washed by the weather
and blend into the earth like the corpse
of a stillborn lamb. Only the sheep
would witness it. Only the sheep were
watching them now, with the sides of
their heads. Allenson turned his own
head away, gazing up the road, so Vivian
wouldn't see the naked mercilessness in
his face.

"Darling, look," he said after a mo-
ment. "See, way up the road, the way the
line of telephone poles turns? I bet that’s
the second right turn. We're on the
map!"

“I don’t see anything turning,” Viv-
jan said, but in a voice that wanted to be
persuaded.

“Just under the silhouette of the sec-
ond little hill. Follow the road with your
eyes.” Allenson was feeling abnormally
tall, as if his vision of Vivian stuck in the
Irish landscape forever had a centrifugal
force, spilling him outward, into a new
future, toward yet another wife. Still, in
а kind of social inertia, he kept pleading
with her. “If there’s no right turn up
there, then you can sit down on a rock
and J'll walk back for the car.”

"How can you walk back?" she de-
spairingly asked. “Ir'll take forever."

“I won't walk, I'll run,” he promised.
‘ou'll have a heart attack.”

"What do you care? One male killer
less in the world. One less splash of
testosterone." Death, the thought of
somebody's death within the marriage
felt exalting in this green-gray landscape
emptied by famine and English savagery.
British soldiers would break the roof-
beams of the starving natives’ cottages
and then ignite the thatch.

^I care,” Vivian said. She sounded
subdued. What an effort they are to win,
these tiny submissions within the marital
entanglement! A constant wrestle. Seat-
ed on her stone, she looked prim and
hopeful, a wallflower waiting to be asked
to dance.

"How's your back?”

“ГІ stand and see,” she said.

Her figure, he noticed when she
stood, had broadened since he first knew
her—thicker in the waist and ankles,
chunky like her aggravating shoes. And

developing a bad back besides. She took
a few experimental steps on the narrow
macadam road, built, it seemed, for the
Allensons alone.

"Let's go,” she stoutly said. Then she
added, “I'm doing this just to prove
you're wrong."

But he was right. The road branched;
the thinner piece of it continued
straight, over the little hill, and the thick-
er turned right, with the wooden power
poles. Parallel to the rocky crests on the
left, with a view of valley on the right, the
road went up and down in an animated,
diverting way and took them past houses
now and then and small plowed areas to
vary the stony pastures. “You think those
are potato patches?” he asked. He felt
shy, wondering how many of his mur-
derous thoughts she had read. His vision
of her sitting there, as good as a corpse,
kept widening its rings in his mind, like a
stone dropped into black water. The mo-
mentary ecstasy of a stone briskly ap-
plied to her skull, or a piece of flint sharp
as a knife to her throat—had he enter-
tained these visions, too, in that biblical
wilderness back there on the level?

Now, on the higher, winding road, a
car passed them, and then another. It
was Sunday morning, and unsmiling
country families were driving to mass.
‘Their faces were less friendly than those
of the shopkeepers in Kenmare; no
waves were offered, or invitations to
ride. Once, on a blind curve, the Allen-
sons had to jump to the grassy shoulder
to avoid being hit. Vivian seemed quite
agile in the pinch.

"How's your poor back holding up?"
he asked. “Your sneakers still pushing
your hips around?”

“I'm better,” she said, "when I don't
think about it."

"Oh. Sorry."

He should have let her have a baby.
Now it was too late. Still, he wasn't sorry.

"The road turned the third right on
their map gradually, unmistakably, while
several graveled driveways led off in-
to the hills. Although Kenmare Bay
gleamed ahead of them, a thin tongue of
silver in the smoky distance, the road still
tended upward, dipping and turning,
ever closer to the rocky crests, which
were becoming dramatic. There were no
more fences; a ram with a crimson chest
skittered down a rock face and across the
road, spilling scree with its hooves. In
what seemed another nation, so far away
did it now appear, a line of minuscule
telephone poles marked the straight
road where Vivian had said she would
not move another step. Overhead, faint
whistling signaled a hawk. A pair of
hawks, drifting near the highest face of
rock, hung motionless in a wind the Al-
lensons could not feel. Their thin hesi-
tant cry felt forgiving, as did Vivian's

voice announcing, “Now 1 have this
Killing need to pee.”

“Go ahead.”

“Suppose a car comes?”

“It won't. They're all in church now.”

"There's no place to go behind any-
thing,” she complained.

“Just squat down beside the road. My
goodness, what a fussbudget.”

"I'll lose my balance." Young as she
was, she was physically timid, and he had
noticed on other occasions, on ice or on
heights, how precarious her sense of bal-
ance was.

"No you won't. Here. Give me your
hand and prop yourself against my leg.
Just don't pee on my shoe."

“Or on my own,” she said, letting her-
self be lowered into a squatting position.

"It might teach them a lesson," he

„said. “It might soften them up."

“Don't make me laugh. ГЇЇ get urinary
impotence.” A concept of Nabokov's, out
of Pale Fire, that they both had admired
in the courting days when they were
sharing books. She managed to let go. In
Ireland's great silence of abandonment,
the sheepish splashing sound seemed
loud. almost to echo. Allenson looked up
to see if the hawks were watching.
Hawks could read a newspaper, he had
once read, from the height ofa mile. But
what would they make of it? The head-
lines, the halftones? Who could tell what
a hawk saw? Or a sheep? Only what they
selfishly needed to see, he suspected. A
tuft of edible grass, or the twitch of a vole
scurrying for cover.

Vivian stood, pulling up her under-
pants and pantyhose, and the couple

moved on, not unpleasantly numbed by
the miles that had passed beneath their
feet. They reached the road's highest
point and saw far below, as small as an
orange star, their Eurodollar Toyota
compact, parked ata tilt on the shoulder
of their first crossroads. As they descend-
ed to it, Vivian asked, “Would Jeaneanne
have enjoyed Ireland?”

What an effort it seemed, to cast his
mind so far back. “Jeaneanne,” he an-
swered, “enjoyed everything, for the
first seven minutes. Then she got bored.
What made you think of Jeaneanne?"

“You. Your face, when we started out,
had its Jeaneanne look. Which is differ-
ent from its Claire look. Your Claire look
is sort of woebegone. Your Jeaneanne
look is fierce.”

“Darling,” he told her. “You're fanta-
sizing.”

“Jeaneanne and you were so young,”
she pursued. “At the age I was just enter-
ing graduate school, you and she were
married with a child."

“We had that Fifties greed. We thought
we could have it all,” he said rather ab-
sently, trying to agree. His own feet in
their use-softened cordovans were be-
ginning to protest; walking downhill,
surprisingly, was the most jarring.

“You still are. You haven't asked me if
1 like Ireland. The shy sort of nothing-
ness of it.”

“Do you?” he asked her.

“Ido.”

They were back where they had
started.

"So, bottom line, the options are—we go for a car that
pushes the envelope or we have a kid."

175

PLAYBOY

THE PENTAGON

(continued from page 120)

“More than anyone, the top brass realize how desper-
ately they needed their Kremlin twin.”

Korea to the other by U.S. air. And the
same thing happened to me in Vietnam.
When I was covering Desert Storm, it
happened а)

“Incoming,” a Green Beret NCO
yelled. He thought the Iraqis were
shelling us.

“Incoming, hell. That was our own
ir,” I said. I could see the U.S. plane
climbing away. It had dropped two 500-
pound bombs within our perimeter. One
fourth of all American casualties in
Desert Storm were caused by U.S. air

power.

.

Did Desert Storm provide any lessons
about the dangers of the current system,
especially about the lethal consequences
of continued interservice rivalry? It cer-
tainly did. But one of the most impor-
tant lessons and most effective weapons
has been deliberately abandoned.

The performance of the Air Force's
Al0—the Warthog—was a happy sur-
prise for Schwarzkopf's troops. It
turned out to be one of our best weapons
in the desert. It was perfect for close air
support because it flew slowly and could
loiter and make deadly passes over a tar-
get. The pilot could get a clear view of
targets and could talk to the grunts on
the ground. And the Warthog could take
hits and keep on flying. I saw some А105
that had more holes in them than Sad-
dam Hussein's tanks. They limped back
to base and three days later they were up
kicking ass and painting Iraqis red. The
А10 was so heavily armored that it was as
if the pilot were wearing a steel bathtub
for a flak jacket.

Goodbye Warthog. The most effective
killing machine of the war—the one
most feared by the Iragis—has been re-
tired from frontline duty. It has been re-
placed by the Air Force F-16. The F-16 is
a fast burner, which means a pilot can’t
hang over the battlefield and get to
know where everything is. One rifle slug
сап zap it. It's designed for other mis-
sions, not just close air support, because
that was what the Air Force wanted. His-
torically, the Air Force has never given a
rat's ass about close air support. It always
plays second fiddle to other tasks such as
interdiction bombing. That's why the
Army has helicopter gunships. It doesn’t
trust the Air Force.

It doesn't make sense if the users—the
troops on the ground—do not have con-
trol of the close air support that is sup-
posed to help them. It’s as if the post

176 Office kept all the fire department's

hoses. Then, when there was a fire, the
fire fighters had to go over to the post
office and negotiate to get their hoses.
The hoses should be screwed to the fire
engines, ready to ride, ready to be used
to put outa fire.

But the Pentagon recoils from com-
mon sense. And besides, upgrading the
F-16 for a closc-air-support role is great
for the MICC. It keeps the money wheel
spinning in high gear. Just as the top
brass ignored the value of the А10, they
show every sign of ignoring our need to
adapt to the post-Cold War period.

The U.S. can no longer toss away dol-
lars for defense like a drunken recruit.
Soviet defense spending killed the bear,
and if we don't cut spending, it will kill
America. But the Pentagon is practically
a government by itself; after all, it dis-
tributes close to $300 billion a year. And
it is a government that has declared
war—a war of survival—in which the
country it supposedly serves is its foe.
The top brass see the threat quite clear-
ly. Without an enemy such as the Krem-
lin, the Pentagon has no job. Now the
Pentagon fears that the American public
will realize that it is an old war horse
with no war and should be put out to
pasture or shot for glue. More than any-
one, the top brass realize how desperate-
ly they needed their Kremlin twin.

Since the Sixties, with rare exceptions,
the wrong people have become generals
and admirals. The Pentagon has few
leaders with vision who have the guts to
bring about the reforms that would blast
our armed forces from the past. Most of
the guys at the top are slicker at staff in-
fighting than they are in real war fight-
ing. Most are writers, not fighters. Most
are perfumed princes brainwashed to
sell their service over the good of Ameri-
ca or their own warriors. Most of the
guys who get to the top are quick to go
along. They don't fight for the right
stuff, which explains why our warriors
who get in the arena with the lions don't
have the right killing gear. Decent rifles,
radios and ground-support aircraft
don't pad up the budget like the big-tick-
et Stealths and exotic choppers. These
slick dudes are protecting their own bil-
lets at the expense of the fighters.

Many of these guys with stars cash out
to cash in. They jump aboard the de-
fense contractors’ money train, making
big salaries selling the stuff they used to
buy. Then they call back to the people
still at the Pentagon and massage them
with promises of good jobs later. Or they

ask, “Remember when? Remember
when I got your ass out of a crack—or
when I got you promoted?”

Ifthe Pentagon isn’t winning its war to
date, it certainly is holding its own.
Spending for the wrong weapons contin-
ues unabated. The Pentagon still gives
priority to heavy-duty, high-priced won-
der weapons—the top end of the mil
tary market. The big-bucks items get pri-
ority because they are the direct
connection between the defense indus-
try and Congress. The MICC is a greed
club wrapped in an American flag. It
will take as much money as it can until
everything goes pop. It is armed and
dangerous.

Inside the Pentagon the momentum
of the Cold War hasn't slowed. Day in
and day out, the basic mission of hun-
dreds of Pentagon officers is to get more
money for their individual services. Se-
nior military officers become master
salesmen, and the MICC determines
how America is defended. The Pentagon
can't go broke until the taxpayer has
nothing more to give, which ain't far
down the track The nation can no
longer afford such waste. If the services
continue to do their own thing, America
will end up broke and with a hollow mil-
itary, to boot.

.

At last count there were more than
1000 generals and admirals on active
duty. During World War Two, when the
military was six times larger, there were
2058. For the brass and their entourage,
the trenches more often than not are
Washington cocktail parties where they
dress in medal-bedecked uniforms and
sell their service and hustle their needs. I
saw an episode of the Pentagon process
at a gathering a few years ago. A Marine
Corps officer buttonholed a U.S. senator
and spoke about the need to extend the
Corps’ reach to get in deep behind the
shoreline. For this, the Marines (joined
by the Navy and Air Force) decided they
needed a new type of aircraft.

Listening to this pitch, I thought my
drink had been laced with LSD. Here
was the Corps hustling for a new billion-
dollar bird for a questionable mission.

"The cocktail party encounter showed
the MICC at its most proficient and most
dangerous. Out of conversations such as
that one came the Osprey—an aircraft
that is half helicopter, half fixed-wing
airplane and all problem. The protorype
performed two functions well: eating
money and crashing.

For the defense conuaciors the Os-
prey was an entirely new candy store. If
the military could get money to build a
wacko contraption such as the Osprey,
the MICC might one day get away with
brave Marines in flying submarines. In
Pennsylvania and Texas, where the
prototypes are built, political muscle

protects and promotes it. The Osprey
means jobs for the local voters, pork and
hefty political contributions to keep the
bums in Congress. So far the cost has
been over $2 billion and seven lives.

"The Pentagon has two weapons that
work in concert with big spending in its
campaign of self-perpetuation: promot-
ing fear that a bad guy is going to eat up
America and duplicating make-work.

Right now, for example, you can be
sure that an Army colonel, Marine
colonel, Air Force colonel and Navy cap-
tain are all at work on papers that one of
them alone could do. It may be a study
on what to do about senior officers’ piles,
or whether or not blow-driers should be
standard issue. The four services have
dozens of common functions: service
schools, entry and specialty training,
personnel, finance, intelligence, quarter-
masters, laboratories, storage, weapons
testing, research and development,
lawyers, medics and chaplains. Work is
now duplicated like a hot-wired auto-
matic copier churning out copies at ten
bucks a pop.

.
Until the president pulls the Pen-
tagor's plug, we remain in danger. Only
then can our military begin moving in a
new direction. Federal law must limit the
size of the American Peace Force HQ.
and abolish ticket punching, which has
killed more men than friendly fire.

The APF won't happen overnight. It
will take years before the mergers
“teething problems" are fixed. But now
is the time to strike, because America
does not have an external enemy. Over
the next decade, wars will be like those
in Eastern Europe, Peru and Burma—
what the military calls low-intensity
conflicts. The U.S. must take extreme
care before jumping into such fights.
But we must be ready to support friends
and freedom.

With only one service, by the year
2000 the U.S. military will look very dif-
ferent from what it is today. Our active-
duty armed forces, which now total
nearly 2 million men and women, would
total no more than 800,000, and the re-
serves would be scaled down. Annual de-
fense spending would be cut by two
thirds, to $100 billion. Yet with all the
cuts, we would have a more flexible and
effective military defense than we have
today.

The worms that crawl in the Pen-
tagon's dead brain will say that if defense
spending is reduced, the U.S. economy
will take a hit. There is some truth to
this. But America is in a crisis and we
must take action. In fact, with proper
planning to convert from war to peace, a
reorganization of the military will help
make America healthy again.

In time the new HQ can make logical
consolidations and slowly cut away the
layers of duplication and redundancy.

Unification would create a faster ex-
change of information. There would be
less waste, more efficiency and big tax-
payer savings.

There are a million things to do. Here.
are just a few first steps:

e It's time for West Point, Annapolis
and the Air Force Academy to fold up
their tents. They breed interservice ri-
valry. The American Peace Force will
require one academy that would take the
best traditions of all service academies
and produce future leaders to run the
new defense team. The academies
should continue their roles as teaching
institutions, perhaps as national univer-
sities devoted to the environment, ecolo-
gy or conflict resolution.

e Merge the Seals, Green Berets, Air
Commandos and Marine Recon. A new
special-operations branch of the APF
would have one headquarters, one train-
ing place, one budget, one staff, one sup-
port system and would be the key play-
ers in low-intensity fights. It would be
dynamite.

e Streamline military intelligence.
Take a major step away from the secret
wars of recent years that have been so
disastrous and shameful.

e Keep Star Wars in the lab.

* Cut nuclear weapons to the bone.

e Park the B-1 and B-2 bombers next
to Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose and
charge admission to see two of the
MICC' biggest rip-offs.

e Dump the National Guard. This
force, though valiant in the past, as was
the horse cavalry, is too inefficient and
corrupt to fit into a modern military.
Merge the Air Guard into the Air Re-
serves. It has some of the hottest pilots
going. Retool the reserves and give them
active-duty priority.

e Reinstate the draft, but make it an
obligation of national service with the
military as one option. Put everybody

through eight weeks of basic training
that includes U.S. history and citizenship
in general. Afterward, some would go to
the military and others could perform
domestic Peace Corps-type work.

Unification would mean that, after
specialty training, you would go to a
unit. Let's say you were a close-air-sup-
port fighter pilot. You go to a squadron
that would always work in direct support
of the Seventh Infantry Division. The
units would train together and become a
tight team.

What nearly happened to me in
Desert Storm when the Air Force pilot
thought we were the enemy would not
happen with one defense team. The
guys on the ground and the guys in the
air would all work together. The prob-
lems would be ironed out early The
guys on the ground would demand
damn good communications and reli-
able systems to mark their positions.

Ideally you'd stay in one assignment,
as we used to, perhaps for your entire
career. You wouldn’t have the turnover
that comes with ticket punching, which
rips the vital cohesiveness out of a unit.

Because units won't be rotating to
Germany and around the world (our
post-Cold War overseas commitments
can be scaled back drastically), the Amer-
ican Peace Force warriors will not be-
come isolated from the American com-
munity and values. The military would
not be as removed from the rest of soci-
ety as it is now. No more Fort Nowhere.

Reforming the military will be a tough
job. The brass, the politicians and the
arms merchants won't like it and will
fight change just as a bronco fights its
rider. But change is overdue. Unification
will provide the lean military muscle
needed to guard America’s future in the
troubled times ahead.

“ГЇ sure be happy when he gets his filing
system on computer.”

177

PLAYBOY

THE WATCH .. im

“The gift was magnificent, and his effort to under-
stand me—that was the gift, the magnificent gift.”

son, in effect, to finishing school, and it
never would have occurred to him to
compound this enormity by supplying
that son with the sybaritic indulgence of
а саг.

Nor would it have occurred to me to
expect the same. However, I had been
told, from what seems to me to have
been my earliest youth, that on my grad-
uation from college, I would be given a
convertible.

It was not any car that 1 would receive,
it was The Convertible. How it got start-
ed, I don't know. But my grandmother
said it and my father said it, and I
looked forward to it as a fixed point in
my life.

Was it a bribe, was it to be a reward? I
don’t know. It was an out-of-character
assurance on my father's part, for he was
capable of generosity and, indeed, on
occasion, of real lavishness. But both. in
my memory, were much more likely to
stem from impulse than from a thought-
out plan.

However, he had promised it, and not
only had the family heard it but we joked
about it. [t became, it seemed, part of
our family phrase book, eg. “Study
hard, or you won't get to college, and
then you know what you aren't going to

eb

S eo much atl forgot about it. It was
nothing to long for, or even, truly, to an-
ticipate. One event would bring about
the other, as retirement, the agreed-up-
on pension. It was not a subject for an-
ticipation, or even, on receipt, for grati-
tude, but the correct conclusion of an
agreement.

It was my final year at college. Gradu-
ation was to come in May, and in the pre-
ceding November I would turn 21.

In three and a half years at college 1
had learned not a damned thing. I had
no skills or demonstrable talents.

Upon graduation I would be out in
the world with no money, no prospects,
no plan. Not only did I not care, I had
given the matter no thought at all, and I
believe I assumed that some happy force
would intervene and allow me to spend
the rest of my life in school. Just before
the Thanksgiving break my father
called. He told me he vas looking for-
ward to my return to Chicago for the
holiday.

Now, this was news to me, as we had
not discussed my going to Chicago, and
I'd made plans to spend the long week-
end with friends in the East.

But, no, he said, the holiday fell two

178 days before my birthday, and it was im-

portant to him that I be back home.

I tried to beg off, and he persevered.
He pressed me to come home and told
me that it vas essential, as he had some-
thing for me. He was sending me a tick-
et and I had to come.

Well. There it was. It was the convert-
ible. My father had remembered his
promise and was calling to tell me that
he was about to make good his pledge.

I left the phone booth smiling and
quite touched. And I told my friends I
would be flying to Chicago, but I would
be driving back. I flew to O'Hare, took a
bus downtown and took a city bus to the
North Side.

On the plane and on the bus I re-
hearsed both my gratitude and my sur-
prise. Surprise, I knew, was difficult to
counterfeit, and this troubled me. I
would hate to disappoint my father, or to
give him less than what he might consid-
er his just due for the award of a mag-
nificent gift.

But, no, I thought, no. The moment
boded well to sweep us up in sentiment
free of hypocrisy on either of our parts.

For was he not the child of immi-
grants? And was he not raised in pover-
ty, in the Depression, by his mother, my
beloved grandmother? Had we not
heard countless times, my sister and I, of
their poverty and our ingratitude?

And here before us was a ceremony of
abundance—a ceremony, finally, of man-
hood. lt was my 21st birthday, I was
graduating from college.

I got off the Broadway bus and walked
down the side street, rehearsing all the
while, and there, across from his build-
ing, was the car.

No. I had doubted. I realized that as I
saw the car. No, I would admit it. To my
shame. I'd doubted him. How could I
have doubted? What other reason would
he have had for his insistence, his almost
pleading, that 1 come back home? Of
course it was the car, and I was ashamed
I had doubted him. I looked at the car
from across the street.

It was a Volkswagen convertible. It
was a tricked-out model called the Super
Beetle. It had, I remember, outsized
bubble skirts and wheels, and it was
painted with broad racing stripes. I
chuckled. I'm not sure what sort of vehi-
cle Га expected—perhaps I'd thought
he'd take me shopping down on Western
Avenue and we'd be buyers together at
the horse fair. I don't know what I ex-
pected from him, but when I saw that
Beetle, I was moved. It was, I thought, a
choice both touching and naive. It

seemed that he had tried to put himself
in the place of his son. It was as if he'd
thought, What sort of car would the
youth of today desire?

And there was his answer, across the
street. I thought, No, that’s not my style,
and then reproached myself. And I was
worthy of reproach. For the gift was
magnificent and, with the gift, his effort
to understand me—that was the gift, the
magnificent gift. Rather than insist that I
be like him, he'd tried to make himself
like me. And if my chums thought that
the car was somewhat obvious, well, they
could go to hell. For I was not some kid
in the schoolyard who could be embar-
rassed by his parents, I was a man and in
possession of a valuable possession. The
car could take me to work and it could
take me from one city to the next. And
finally, my father had given it to me.

As I walked close to it, I saw the error
of my momentary reluctance to appreci-
ate its decoration.

It was truly beautiful. That such a car
would not have been my first choice
spoke not to the defects of the car but of
my taste.

I try to remember the colors, and I
seem to remember a metallic black, with
stripes of yellow and orange.

I remember the new-car sticker on the
window, and I remember thinking that
my dad must have expected me to go in-
to the building by the other door or he
wouldn't have left the gift out here so
prominently. Or did he mean me to ob-
serve it? That was my question as I rode
the elevator up.

He met me at the door. There was the
table, laid out for a party, in the living
room beyond.

Did he look wary? No. I wondered
whether to say which route I had taken
horne, but, no, if he'd wanted to test me,
he would ask. No. It was clear that I
wasn't supposed to have seen the car.

But why would he have chanced my
viewing it? Well, I thought, it’s obvious.
They'd delivered the car from the show-
room, and he'd carefully, as he did all
things, instructed them on where it
should be parked, and the car salesman
had failed him. I saw that this could pre-
sent a problem.

If we came out of the building on the
side opposite from where the car was
parked—if we began what he would
refer to as a simple walk and could not
find the car (which, after all, would not
be parked where he'd directed it should
be), would it be my place to reveal I had
seen it?

No. For he'd be angry, then, at the car
salesman. It would be wiser to be igno-
rant and not to be part of that conflu-
ence that spoiled his surprise.

But I could steer our progress back in-
to the building by the other door. Aha.
Yes. That is what I'd do. There was an-
other possibility: that we would leave the
building by the door near the car, and

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179

PLAYBOY

180

that he'd come across it in the unexpect-
ed place and be caught off guard.

But that need not be feared, as, if I
stayed oblivious to his confusion for the
scantest second, he would realize that
the surprise would in no way be mitigat-
ed by the car’s location.

He would improvise and say, “Look
here!" And that he'd doubtless have
words with the car dealership later was
not my responsibility. We sat down to
dinner. My father, my stepmother, my
half siblings and several aunts.

After the meal, my father made a
speech about my becoming a man. He
told the table how he'd, in effect, de-
manded my return as he had something
to give me. Then he reached into the
lapel pocket of his jacket, draped over
the back of his chair, and brought out a
small case.

Yes, I thought, this is as it should be.
There's the key.

Some further words were said. I took
the case and fought down an impulse to
confess that I knew what it contained,
etc., thus finessing the question of
whether or not to feign surprise. No, I
thanked him and opened the case. In-
side there was a vatch.

1 looked at the watch and at the case
beneath the watch, where the key would
be found. There was no key. I under-
stood that this gift would be in two parts,
that this was the element of the trip
which was the surprise.

I'd underestimated my father. How
could I have thought that he would let

an opportunity for patriarchal drama
drift by unexploited?

No mention had been made of the car.
It was possible, though unlikely, that I'd
forgotten that the car was owing to me.
Butin any case, and even if, as was most
likely, 1 had returned to Chicago expect-
ing the car, such hopes would indeed be
dashed before they would be realized.
He would make me the present of the
watch, and then the party would go on,
and at some point he'd say, "Oh, by the
way," and draw my attention to the key,
secreted in the lining of the watch case,
or he'd suggest we go for a walk.

Once again, he would keep control.
Well, that was as it should be, I thought.
And a brand-new car—a car of any
sort—was not the sort of present that
should be given or accepted lightly. If he
chose to present the gift in his own way,
it came, I did see, not primarily from de-
sire for control but from a sense on his
part of drama, which is to say, of what
was fitting. I thought that was fine.

"That I had accidentally discovered the
real present parked outside was to my
advantage. It allowed me to feign, no,
not to feign, to feel true gratitude for the
watch he had given me. For, in truth, it
was magnificent.

It was an Illinois pocket watch. In a
gold hunter case. The case was covered
with scrollwork and, in a small crest, it
had my initials.

The back of the case had a small dia-
mond set in it. There was a quite heavy
gold chain. And, in all, it was a superb

i

"If your wife's are slightly smaller, then I would
suggest you go with the C cup."

and an obviously quite expensive pres-
ent. 1 thanked him for it. He explained
that it was a railroad watch; that is, a
watch that was made to the stringent
standards called for by the railroads in
the past century.

The railroads, in the days before the
radio, relied exclusively on the accuracy
of the railroaders’ watches to ensure
safety. Yes. I understood. I admired the
watch at length and tried it in various
pockets and said that, had 1 known,
I would have worn a vest.

As the party wound down, I excused
myself from the table and took the watch
and the case into a back room, where
I pried up the lining of the case to find
the key.

But there was no key and there was, of
course, no car, and, to one not emotion-
ally involved, the presence of a convert-
ible with a new-car sticker on the street
would not be worthy of note.

.

I pawned the watch many times, and
once I sold it outright to the pawnbroker
under the el on Van Buren Street.

He was a man who knew my father,
and several years after Га sold it, I ran
into him and he asked if Га like my
watch back. I asked why such a fine
watch had lain unsold in his store, and
he said that he'd never put it out, he'd
kept it for me, as he thought someday
Td like it back.

So I redeemed it for what I had sold it
for. I wore it now and then, over the
years, with a tuxedo. But most of the
time it stayed in a box in my desk.

I had it appraised at one point and
found it was, as it looked, quite valuable.
Over the years I thought of selling it but
never did. I had another fantasy. I
thought, or felt, perhaps, that the watch
was in fact a token in code from my fa-
ther, and that the token could be re-
deemed after his death.

I thought that, after his death, at the
reading of his will, it would be shown
that he’d never forgotten the convertible
and that the watch was only a test; that
if I would present the watch to his ex-
ecutors—my continued possession of it
a sign I had never broken faith with
him—I would receive a fitting legacy.

My father died a year ago, may he rest
in peace.

Like him I have turned, I'm afraid, in-
to something of a patriarch and some-
thing of a burgher. Like him I am, I
think, overly fond of the few difficulties I
enjoyed on my travels toward substan-
tiality. Like him I will, doubtless, subject
my children, in some degree, to my per-
sonality and my affection for my youth.

I still have the watch, which I still
don't like. And several years ago I
bought myself a convertible, which, 1
think, I never drive without enjoyment.

My PRAGUE (continued from page 156)

“Is this the picture of a society in transition, or has
Prague always been the city of irony?”

if such is your persuasion. The streets
are maze-like and it takes little effort to
walk for an hour only to end up at your
starting point. There is an aimless quali-
ty about the city that is infectious, so
that a visitor may start with the intention
of having a look at the Schwarzenberg
Palace and end, instead, spending hours
inspecting antique Czech muskets at a
Národní Street gun shop. In the eve-
ning, the entire population seems to
shift to the 600-year-old Charles Bridge.
The city is at its most stunning when
seen from that vantage point. A strolling
Englishman stops for a moment and is
overcome by the massive Hradéany Cas-
Че and its surrounding fairy-tale com-
plex of medieval palaces and chapels, all
haloed in gray and gold.

“My God!” he exclaims. “This is more
beautiful than Venice. Why wasn't I told
about it?”

The huge crowd that comes under the
inspection of 31 baroque statues of saints
on the Charles Bridge seems to be a
Woodstock nation come alive again. It is
held together by music, both good and
bad. It’s irritating to see a guitarist from
UCLA hold the locals in thrall with a fra-
ternity-level version of Hotel California
while making them feel as if they were
on the cutting edge of Western music.
But then a mad Czech jazz violinist lures
them away and is backed up by a gifted
Senegalese percussionist. Still another
wing of the crowd falls in behind a Dix-
ieland combo, which pipes it off to an all-
night jazz club in Mala Surana. The hope
arises that this multination of people in
their 20s will never make war on one an-
other, held together as they are by a com-
mon music. Of course, Hitler wasn't de-
terred by his love for Alice Faye movies.

Prague is a study in wild swings and
contradictions. The Vltava River, which
curls importantly through the city, is
decorative but has absolutely no com-
mercial or navigational use. Czech food,
with its base of cabbage and duck and
dumplings, is numbingly routine—but
then one is presented with a masterful
and possibly life-changing goulash at
Vladimir Vacek's spectacular restaurant
adjacent to the Old Town Square. A
bloody mary will cost $11 at one bar and
less than a dollar at a more attractive
spot across the street. Caviar pro-
hibitively priced at one restaurant, is
practically given away by the bucketful at
another. The entire world seems to be
trooping to Prague at the moment.
Much of the city is under construction,
yet the streets are somehow immaculate-
ly clear of litter. Czechs are tremendous-

ly polite to one another, but the result is
often chaotic. A young man on a crowd-
ed tram will yield his seat to a young
woman, who in turn gives it up to an old-
er man, who immediately offers it to
someone he insists is more decrepit than
he is. The resulting disorder is greater
than it would have been if everyone had
stayed in their places. The ultimate irony
is that many of the Czechs who support-
ed the velvet revolution are still in $100-
a-month jobs, while the evil Communists
of the old regime are cheerfully en-
sconced in their old government and
managerial jobs. Banned from govern-
ment, the dreaded secret-police func-
tionaries have grown prosperous in pri-
vate security firms. Is this the picture of
a society in transition, or has Prague al-
ways been the city of irony, taking for its
saints and heroes individuals who have
thrown themselves from balustrades in
defense of some forgotten principle?

I decide to stop chasing after Prague
and take up shop outdoors in a pivmize,
or beer bar, on Na struze Street to see if
the city will come to me. Before long,
I'm joined by a middle-aged Czech who
describes himself as a financial consul-
tant. He is 50 and looks 70, a condition
I've noticed in many residents of this
much-traumatized city. He points to-
ward a villa in the hills that he has been
able to build with the single word of ad-
vice he's given to foreign investors: wait.

“For what?" I ask, always the dogged
investigator.

“For stage three,” he says. “In stage
one, right after the revolution, outsiders

arrived with ten thousand dollars in
hand, pointed to a building and asked:
How much for that one? In stage two, we
politely showed them to the airport.”

"And stage three?”

“The good stuff,” he says, and then
quickly calls over a textiles salesman he
describes as “the most sophisticated man
in Prague.”

He joins us just asa woman with a sub-
stantial bosom passes by.

The world-class sophisticate winks.
"It's what's up front that counts, no?”

The two men—as do all the Czechs I
meet—begin to list their grievances with
the current government. Prices are too
high; the man who pushed a broom un-
der the Communists is still pushing a
broom. The bureaucracy is worse than
ever, one big game of musical chairs.
The minute you make contact with a
minister, he’s replaced by some new id-
iot. Drugs now flood the city—though,
in a sense, this is a good thing, since the
laboratory-produced concoctions under
the Soviets caused more havoc than the
currently available heroin and cocaine.

A beautiful young dancer joins us and
adds her litany of complaints. Her rent
has been raised and she’s about to lose
her apartment. Yes, she's free to travel
abroad now, but where will she get the
money to do so? The arts—music, ballet,
theater—have shriveled up. At least un-
der the Communists they were state-
supported and there was always money.

She seems defeated by the system. Yet
when I ask her if there’s anything she
has now that she didn’t have before, she
looks at me with surprise, her shoulders
straighten and she breathes freshness
and passion into a single word I would
have thought had become stale through
its overuse by politicians and ninth-rate
patriots: “Freedom.”

“Hi. Come on in. We're watching reruns of
Johnny Carson.”

181

PLAYBOY

182

QU ERENCE (sei

“The woman we had interrupted turned around and
smiled. She was our hostess, the Queen of England.”

You need to dig in.

“Who is Susan Mercer? She was
Mabel's half sister, wasn't she? You re-
member, of course, the famous lawsuit?
God, what a case! One of my best friends
was working at the law firm that took Su-
san's case. He spent over a year on it, he
said, tracking down all the evidence,
what with the disappearance of the will
and the stepmother’s refusal to confirm
that Susan had been legally adopted. [
remember the lawyer saying that it—the
case, Mercer vs. Mabel What's-her-name—
introduced the legal concept of 'plead-
ing in the alternative’ You know:
Lawyer stands up, addresses the court.

and says (1) Mabel didn't have the mon-
ey, (2) Mabel had the money and it was
her right to have it or (3) Mabel had the
money but gave it back to Susan.” You
look up in turn for a reaction. Ah, but
your friend has dematerialized.

But that course of action, needless to
say, requires a certain histrionic resolve,
and most of us don't have it and need
then to go to another line of defense.
There are several of these, but the easi-
est to get away with is to gulp down your
drink and then confess you must go to
the bar and fetch another, but you'll be
right back, har-har.

There is the special problem raised by

the party at which you have a social ob-
jective. There are difficulties here be-
cause it may be necessary, having spotted
your mark, for you to move over to him
or her, passing by 11 people with whom,
in the normal course, you would feel
obliged to dally, even if only for a mo-
ment. And then in the pursuit of your
quarry, you may find yourself guilty of
behavior if not exactly boring, certainly
boorish.

I have a memory of this. Along with
my wife, I arrived at a boat party with
Mrs. Dolly Schiff, whom I liked, who was
among my employers (she published my
syndicated column in the New York Post,
the newspaper she owned) and who was
an important political presence in New
York at a time when my brother James
was its junior senator, preparing to run
for reelection. Boarding the boat, Mrs.
Schiff said to me: “Do you know, I have
never even met your brother?” Well,
said I, I shall certainly cure that to-
night—I knew that my brother was
among the invited guests.

A half hour later, chatting with my
brother on the crowded deck, I spotted
at the extreme other end the imperious
forehead of Dolly Schiff. I grabbed my
brother and told him we must forthwith
go to the other end of the deck, past the
80-о44 people sipping champagne, so
that he could be introduced to Mrs.
Schiff. Ignoring a dozen old friends, we
reached her—at a moment when her
head was slightly bent down, exchang-
ing conversation with a petite woman
whose back was to us. I charged in, “Dol-
ly, this is my brother Jim, whom you
wanted to meet. Jim, Dolly Schiff.” The
little woman we had interrupted turned
around slowly to us and smiled.

She was our hostess, the Queen of
England, but it was too late to undo the
damage, so I proceeded with the intro-
duction to Mrs. Schiff (Jim had sat next
to the queen at dinner and needed no
introduction to her; the rest of us had
been through the receiving line). Jim
said he was sorry to interrupt Mrs.
Schiff, who smiled down at Her Majesty.
1 thought I'd break the ice by suggesting
that the entire company join me in
pleading with Mrs. Schiff to give me a
raise. The queen reacted with a half-
smile and excused herself to greet an-
other of her guests. There can be casual-
ties of a determined mission at a party.

It is, of course, the objective of some
guests to mingle with absolutely every-
body at the party. I remember at the ca-
sual cocktail hour in California talking
quietly at the edge of a social congrega-
tion with the president-elect of Yale Uni-
versity. I told him that a year earlier the
outgoing president, Kingman Brewster,
had been at this same affair. “The differ-
ence between King and me,” Bart Gia-
mati said, “is that when he walks into a
social gathering, his eyes fix instinctively

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PLAYBOY

184

ty and he homes
social animal. My own instinct is to look
10 the farthermost edges of the gather-
ing and head sofily in that direction.
Where I am standing right now," he
said, smiling.

Yes, and that raises the question of
one’s querencia, a favorite word of mine,
that I learned many years ago from
Barnaby Conrad and have tirelessly
used, The word describes a tiny area in
the bullring, maybe 50 square feet, with-
in which the fighting bull fancies himself
entirely safe. The difficulty lies in that
each bull has his own idea exactly where
his querencia is, and it is up to the mata-
dor to divine, from a ferociously concen-
ated study of the bull's movements as
he charges into the ring, its location; be-
cause the matador must, at peril to life
and limb, stay well clear of it when exe-
al passes. The bull who
finds himself close to his querencia and
pained or perplexed will suddenly
head for it, and in doing so jerk his
horns in an unpredictable direction, the
same direction the matador's groin or
abdomen might find themselves.

We all have, in any social situation, an
undefined querencia, and we instinctive-
ly seek it out immediately upon entering
the crowded room. Most usually, it is
where one's spouse is—but that is a
difficult sanctuary to avail yourself. of
because it is deemed socially backward at
a party to glue yourself to your spous
So you look elsewhere for your queren-
cia. Generally, it is one human being,
someone with whom you feel entirely
comfortable, whom you сап trust to
greet you as if your company were the
highlight of his day. You have tons to tell

him, and he has tons to tell you, all of it
of common interest. Is he... she...
there? You look around.

No.

Is there an alternative querencia any-
where about?

Well, yes. Somebody told you that Al-
gernon MacNair was going to be there.
Not quite the company you most looked
forward to attaching yourself to, but
quite good enough to avoid the high stilt
of tonight's social affair, and there
specific point of interest. Maybe hi
ed piece this mor
those peculiar positions about taxation.
But no. He is not there, nor is anyone
else who will fill the bill in the same way.

Ah, but then the querencia can be
greatly elastic. You can develop a con-
suming interest in the appointments of
the sumptuous apartment. Every picture
deserves close attention, worth at least
three minutes of your time, as you look
first this way at it, then that way, Шеп ex-
amine the artist's signature. And the
books! You pick up one from the fourth
shelf and open it with delight transfigur-
ing your face. How is it that this neglect-
ed volume found its place into this li-
brary? How discriminating the taste of
our hostess! By the time you have exam-
ined that book, perhaps two or three
others and a dozen pictures and a score
of family photographs—it is time for
dinner!

With some apprehension you look
down at your card and wonder who will
be seated on your right, who on your
left; and it is at such moments, as when
in a foxhole, or on a sinking boat, that
you rediscover God and the need to ut-
ter a silent prayer.

ғ

op-
ing, in which he took

“I miss the evil empire.”

MacKinnon

(continued fiom page 140)
word was too mild to serve their pur-
poses. They needed to make it more
specific. In Pornography and Civil Rights, a
1988 pamphlet that MacKinnon wrote
with Dworkin, it is defined as follows:

Pornography is the graphic, sexu-
ally explicit subordination of wom-
en through pictures and/or words
that also include one or more of the
following: (i) women are presented
dehumanized sexual objects,
things or commodities; or (ii) wom-
en are presented as sexual objects
who enjoy pain or humiliation; or
(iii) women are presented as sexual
objects who experience sexual plea-
sure in being raped; or (iv) women
are presented as sexual objects tied
up or cut up or mutilated or bruised
or physically hurt; or (v) women are
presented in postures or positions
of sexual submi servility or
display; or (vi) women's body
parts—including but not limited to
vaginas, breasts or buttocks—are
exhibited such that women are re-
duced to those parts; or (vii) women
are presented as whores by nature;
or (viii) women are presented being
penetrated by objects or animals; or
(ix) women are presented in scenar-
ios of degradation, injury, torture,
shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding.
bruised or hurt in a context that
makes these conditions sexual

The use of men, children or
transsexuals in the place of women
in [the acts cited in the paragraph]
above is also pornography.

Obviously, in spite of the specifics, this
is a great vague glob of a definition.
MacRinnon would most certainly ban
PLAYBOY, which she says reduces women
to mere objects for the use of men. But
her definition of pornography limned in
Pornography and Civil Rights could cover
everything from the latest Madonna
video to the novels of Henry Miller, Al
Capp Moonbeam McSwine and Gus
tave Flaubert's Salammbó, acres of su
alist paintings, the Koran and James
Cagney hitting Mae Clarke with that
grapefruit. We would see the last of Black
Bun Busters, but we could also lose Don
Giovanni. The great flaw in the antiporn
agitation is that it’s based on a mystery:
the elusive nature of sexuality

MacKinnon and Dworkin assume that
descriptions of sexual cruelty incite men
They write: “Basically, for pornography
to work sexually with its major market,
which is heterosexual men, it must ex-
cite the penis." And "to accomplish its
end, it must show sex and subordinate a
woman at the same time.

And they follow with an
leap of logic: “Subordination includes

immense

objectification, hierarchy, forced submis-
jon and violence,

None of this elaboration solves the ba-
mystery of sexual excitement. Across
the centuries, men have been excited by
everything from high heels and nuns
habits to veiled faces and the aroma ol
rose petals. Some find erotic inspi
in Rubens, others in Giacomett
complex mesh of sexuality, there
rules. Some men may get excited at writ-
ten or visual images of women being
subordinated, others may see those im-
ages as appalling and many would be in-
different to them.

But to think that banning po nog
phy will bring about the politic:
eliminating hu!
archies is absurd.
been composed of
strong over the weak, the smart above
the dumb, the talented above the ordi-
nary. MacKinnon may not like the exis-
tence of those chies (nor the liber-
al project of protecting the weak, the
dumb and the ordinary), but they are
unlikely to be changed by a municipal
ordinance banning Three-Way Giris
Some feminists would tell you that just
being a wife is a condition of subordina-
tion. There have been hundreds of nov-
els written by literature professors that
elate sexual affairs between male teach-
ers and female students; are such works
aphic? The boss-

worker equation has been examined in
hundreds of thousands of novels, short
stories, movies and cartoons. Does that
mean that their relationships include
"objectific hierarchy, forced sub-
mission and violence”? 2 And if, heaven
forbid, they have sex, are they actors in
pornography?
MacKinnon and Dwor
room for such question:
as they define it, is ever

in allow no
Pornography,
where around

them, the defining presence in American
society. They write:

Pornographers’ consumers make
decisions every day over women’s
employment and educational op-
portunities. They decide how wom-
en will be hired, advanced, what we
are worth being paid, what our
grades are, whether to give us cred-
, whether to publish our work. . . .
They raise and teach our children

nd man our police forces and
speak from our pulpits and. write

our news and our songs and our
aws, telling us what women are and
what girls can. be. Pornography is

their Dr. Spock, their Bible, their
Constitution.

If that torrid vision were true, you
would be forced to lose all hope for the
nation; there would be almost nobody
left who is not part of the pornographi
lodge. But common sense tells us th

the assertion 15 not true. It is an
clinically paranoid view of reality (try
substituting “communists” or “Jews” for
"pornographer's consumers”). Perhaps
more important, it is based on a pro-
found ignorance of men.

Like most men I know, I haven't seen
or read much hard-core pornography. I
gave up after 90 pages of The 120 Days of
Sodom, the alleged masterpiece by the
rquis de Sade. 1 found the anony-
mous Victorian chronicle My Secret. Life
as repetitive in its sexual scorekeeping as
a sports autobiography. Deep Throat and
The Devil in Miss Jones held my attention

more than the average Doris Day movie
ever did, but I thought Eric Rohmer's
Claires Knee was lar more erotic.
me. One person.

But

That's

n a lifetime as a man, growing up
oklyn slum, as a sailor in the
as a student in Mexico, as a re-
who moved among cops and
Is, schoolteachers and preachers,
musicians and athletes, drunks and ba
tenders, 1 have never heard anyone cel-
ebrate pornography as defined by
MacKinnon and Dworkin. Men talk
about sex, of course; though the men
who talk the most are usually getting the
least. And they talk about women, too;
but not so often as women think they do.
Most S&M books (and acts) are di
missed by most men as freak shows.
Even by the bad guys. Every criminal

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PLAYBOY

186

I've known (there are many) has told
me that in prison the rapist is the
most loathed of all prisoners, except,
perhaps, those | ig chil-
dren. Pornography simply wasn't central
to their lives and usually wasn't even
marginal.

I'm hardly an innocent about the
ities of sexual violence. As a repor
more than three decades, I've seen more
brutalized bodies of men and women
than most people. But their degradation
certainly does nothing at all for my pe-
nis. 1 don't think there is any such an
mal as a "typical" man. But most men
I've known are like me: They have no in-
terest in this junk

My own lack of interest in the hard-
core is based on another critique: The
people are not people, they are abstrac
ns. In all pornography, men and
women are reduced to their genitals.

Oddly enough, that is precisely the
way MacKinnon, Dworkin and most of
the New Victorians see human being:
abstractions. They speak of generalized

women who are given names and faces
only when they are victims. And over
and over again, MacKinnon speaks
about men as if they all behaved in the
same way and were sexually excited by
the same imagery. But which men are
they talking about? Read this chilly
e and you are asked to believe that

y and Francois Mitierrand,
a Márquez and Arnold
ger, along with auto me-
chanics, bread-truck drivers, carpenters
and guitar players, are all fully covered
by the same word, respond to the same
stimuli and are equally dedicated to the
subordination of women. That is absurd

But this sectarian narrowness docs
help define their vision of human life in
this world. That vision is descended
from a basic Victorian assumption: All
men are beasts and all women are inno-

cents. Women fall into vice or degrada-
эп only at the hands of cruel, un-
scrupulous, power-obsessed men. They

have no free will and never choose their

LAN!

BAD VIBES Ta

"I always get depressed at Christmas.”

own loss of grace. Men only see women
the way they are presented in pornogra-
phy and use pornography as a kind of
male inst ion manual to maintain all
forms of supremacy. Women are never
brutal, corrupt or evil and they never
truly choose to make porno films, dance
topless, pose for centerfolds, work as sec-
retaries or, worst of all, get married.
Original sin was the fault of men. Eve
was framed,

These women claim to know what bil-
lions of other women were never smart
enough. or enlightened enough. to u
derstand: Sexual intercourse is the es-
sential act of male domination, created
by a sinister male cabal to hurt and hu-
тїшє all women and thus maintain
power over them forever. As Maureen

Mullarkey has written in The Nation: “In
the Dworkin-MacKinnon pornotopia.
there are only the fuckers and the fuck-

ees, The sooner the fuckers’ books are
burned, the better.” She doesn't exag-
gerate. According to Dworkin, all wom-
en are "lorce-fucked," either directly
through the crime of rape or by the male
power of mass media, by male economic
power or by the male version of the law

It doesn't matter to the New Victor
ans that the уам majority of women,
even many proud feminists, don't see
the world the way they do. With the
same amazing knowledge of the entire
human race that allows her to speak so
glibly about men, MacKinnon dismisses
their viewpoints as well

At a 1987 conference organized by
Women Against Pornography, MacKin-
non was blunt about the pro-sex fem
nists who had formed the Feminists
Against Censorship Taskforce. That
group included such women as Betty
Friedan, Adrienne Rich and Rita Mae
Brown. “The labor movement had its
scabs, the slavery movement had its Un-
ce Toms," Mac non said. "and we
have FACE” In another enlightening
specch she simply dismissed her feminist
opponents as “house niggers who sided
with the masters.”

Today. absolutely ce
tude, totally free of doubt, equipped
with an understanding of human beings
that has eluded all previous generations.
MacKinnon, Dworkin and their allies
have been shaping a. Victorian solution
to their Victorian nightmares. That solu
tion is. pardon the expression. paternal-
istic. As Mac ion writes: “Some of u
asons children are granted some
al avenues for redress . . also
for the social position of wom-
ce women
in the MacKinnon view, essentially chil-
dren, they must be shielded from harm.
corruption and filthy thoughts. The sav-
age impulses of the male must be caged
And women must be ed to the true
nature of the beast.

“If we live in a world that pornogra-
phy creates through the power of men in

ol their recti-

le:

vated situation,” МасКіп-
non writes, "the issue is not what the
harm of pornography is but how that
harm is to become visible.”

That's it: Simply make harm visible

and we shall live happily ever alter.
Common sense and wide experience
count for nothing. They know that men
are loathsome and are clear about how
10 tame them. Once tamed, they can be
subverted, their powers over women will
vanish and the grand utopia of complete
equality will arrive for all. That bleak vi-
sion of human nature has its own esca-
lating lo
abstraction of the proletariat led
evitably to the gulag. Іп her bizarre 257-
page book Intercourse, Dworkin repeats
the theory that MacKinnon and other
academic leminists accept as provei
Gender is a mere ^social construct," en-
forced, in Dworkin's elegant phrase, by
vagina-specific fucking."
Once more, the Victorian sense of sex-
ual horror permeates the discussion. If
men are the source of all savagery to
women, then sexual intercourse with
men is itself a savage act. Women who
claim to enjoy heterosexual lovemaking
are, says Dworkin, “collaborators, more
base in their collaboration than other
collaborators have ever been, experienc-
ing pleasure in their own inferiority, call-
ing intercourse freedom.”

Forget whips, chains and handcuffs.
All heterosexual intercourse is disgi
n act of physical and psychic inva
As Dworkin writes: "The wom:
intercourse is a space inhabited, a literal
territory occupied literally: occupied
even if there has been no resistance, no
force; even if the occupied person said
yes please, yes hurry, yes more.”

Obviously, this is a total denial of any
biologically driven sexual need. lo lol-
low the logic to its inevitable conclusion,
the only pure feminists, the only noncol-
laborators with the enemy, would be сей-
ns. Alas, billions of human
male and female, from Tibet to
Miami, don't see the world—or the na-
ture of sexuality—that way. They keep on
doing what men and women have been
doing since before history or the inven
tion of religion. To the New Victorians
this must be infuriating. And so they will
attempt an act of hubris that even the old
Victorians, in their imperial arrogance,
did not try. They will correct nature.

As Americans, MacKinnon, Dworkin
and their allies have one major road-
block to their crusade: the Constitution.
In their attack on “First Amendment ab-
solutism,” the New Victorians want to
discard a basi ict of our lives: It
doesn't matter what we say, it is what we
do that matters. That is a mere senti-
me y, beloved of the hated liberals
and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Feminism first, says MacKinnon, the le-
gal theorist, the law second. Or pu
another way: “The bottom line of the

a male-doi

gic, just as Lenin's sentimental

First Amendment is that porn stays. Our
bottom line is that porn goes. We're go-
ing to win in the long term.”

For the past few decades there has
been a growth in the making and distri-
bution of pornography. The reasons are
complicated: the liberalizing of obscenity
laws, the development of cheap offset
printing and desktop publishing, the tri-
umph of the VER, the fear of women
among some males that was caused by
the ferocious oratory of the early days
of the feminist movement itself and, late-
ly, the fear of AIDS.

But there is no proof that pornogra-
phy—even as defined by MacKinnon
and Dworkin—causes all human beings
to act upon the bodies of women. As
MacKinnon herself points out, pornog-
raphy is essentially an aid to masturba-
tion. And as Gore Vidal once wrote, mas-
turbation n the sense
that it is surely the most frequent prac-
tice among all the world's billions. Cer-
tainly the old Victorian belief that mas-
turbation itself is a loathsome evil, a
mortal sin, underlies much of the public
rhetoric about pornography. But there is
one effect that it may have that the New
Victorians can't admit. Rather than іп-
spire men to loathsome acts, pornogra-
phy may actually prevent them. For ev-
ery rapist who is discovered to have
pornography at home, there may be a
thousand men who are content to look at
the pictures, read the text, whack off and
go to sleep. Nobody can prove this, but
MacKinnon can't prove that pornogra-
phy creates monsters, either.

At the various public hearings she and
Dworkin have staged, MacKinnon has
brought forth a number of women to
relate tales of horror. Some were forced
into the making of pornography, others
were forced by lovers or husbands in-
to imitating the sex acts described by
pornography. Those stories were painful
and heartbreaking, and their narrators
were clearly damaged by their experi
ences. But it is unlikely that any future
hearings will present balanci
ny from a man who says that he li
perfectly respectable life, except when
he gets off a few times a week in private
with a copy of Water Sports Fetish. As far as
I know, even Geraldo hasn't done a show
on the joys of masturbation and its amaz-
ing social values.

The Meese Commission on Pornogra
phy. called into existence by the

is "normal" sex,

porn forces of the Reagan administra-

1986 belief that
pornography causes sex crimes. But the
fine print in its 1960-page report
showed that it couldn't prove it. Six of
the 11 commissioners were committed
to the antiporn position before studying
the evidence and they still could not
make a convincing case. They heard
from many experts, including Mackin-
non. But even an examination of those
incidents where pornography was found

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187

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188

in the homes of rapists couldn't. prove
the longed-for assumption.

The reason wasn't elusive. It
error in logic—heightened
logical certainty by the New Victorians—
10 confuse correlation with causality. A
survey may discover that 97 perc
heroin addicts consumed white bread in
grade school, but that would not prove
that white bread caused heroin. addic-
tion, Pornography, as defined by Mac-
Kinnon and Dworkin, may insp
small percentage of men to expe
with more elaborate forms of their own
preexisting sexual deviances. But it is
just as likely that if they ! Y sec
the material, they would have commit
ted sexual crimes anyway. Alcohol is
probably involved in more sex crimes
than pornography is, and there have
been many cases where religious or so-
cial repression led to the explosion, par-
ticularly among the young.

But one legal and social principle that
ihe Bui 1 other New torian
legislation casts aside is one of the most
cherished conservative beliefs: persona
tof law, you cai

a classic
о an ideo-

it of

go free by saying that your upbringing
made you do it, or your environment,
your mother, father or friends. Stull,
many try to make that c g has
become one of the most widesprea
char

cteristics of Americans, even among
sic

excuse of the amateur American mu
derer has been “God made me do it.
Guys shoot up post offices or obliterate
entire families and claim that God was
in the getaway car giving orders. Cha
Manson said he was inspi
Book of Revelations. John Hinckley
he knew he had to shoot President Rea
gan after reading The Catcher in the Rye,
and though J. D. Salinger is God only to
а small number of fans, the reasoning is
the same, When Ted Bundy said that
iphy made him do it, the New
ns cheered. But he was still only
ng a plea. He did it. Nobody else.
Murderers are responsible for their
murders. And in every country on earth,
rapists do the c collective
called men.

The le
nography-made-me-do-it, i

| theory that endorses por-
cepted,

‘Are we saying goodbye to 1992, hello to 1993 or
am I just being a nosy husband?"

would have no limits. Someone could
claim that his family was destroyed as the
result of published feminist theories at-
tacking the family, and that feminist
writers and their publishers must pav for
the damage. Environmentalists could be
sued for articles and speeches that place
the spotted owl above the jobs of loggers.

And it could go beyond such possibili-
ties. Violence permeates American soci-
ety, and most of its victims are male. If
the producers of Debbie Does Dallas can
be held responsible for the crimes of
someone who watched the video, why
"t the same be done to the producers
of Terminator 2 ov Halloween 5 ov The Wild
Bunch? You could go after the Road Run-
ner cartoons, too, or Hamlet or the opera
Carmen. In order to cleanse the Ameri-
can imagination, you would need to

eliminate the works of Hemingway and
Faulk along with hundreds of thou-
sands of other novels and theoretical

works that could make violence socially
acceptable, thereby causing murder and
yhem. You would end up abolishing
boxing, hockey and football. You would
be forced to censor all war reporting,
perhaps even the discussion of war, on
the grounds that Nightline is the theory
c practice.

Obviously, this is pushing the а
ment to the frontiers of the absurd. But
there is an absurd assumption behind
the suppressionist argument: that men
are a kind of collective tabula rasa on
which the pornographers make their
indelible marks. An innocent lad from
Shropshire picks up a copy of one of the
books that MacKinnon cites—say, Ene
mas and Golden Showers—and goes rush-
ing out into the night, enema bag in one
hand, cock in the other. That might have
made a glorious scene in а John Belushi
movie, but common sense tells us that it
doesn't happen very often in what we
aghingly call real Ше
One minor problem with this theory
of human behavior concerns MacKin-
non and Dwor They've obviously
pored over more pornography than thc
ordinary man sees in a lifetime. "Look
closely sometime,” MacKinnon writes,
“for the skinned knees, the bruises, the
welts from the whippings, the scratches,
the gashes.” If human beings are хо
weak and pornography so powerful,
why aren't MacKinnon and Dworkin
playing the Krafft-Ebing Music Hall with
the rest of the perverts? There a

and war is

Iw

possible answers. The first is that Mac-
Kinnon and Dwe ind. other
searchers for the New Victorians) are

morally superior to all men and most
women and are thus beyond conta
tion. The second is more likely: The ma
terial is so vile that it is a psychological
turnoff to all human beings except those
with a preexisting condition. Those peo-
ple do They have been shaped
by many variables, none of which are
they do. But from the

experience of the torian era, we

know that if such people can't find their
pear

preferred reading at adult bookstores,

they will not give up their sexual fan-

tasies. The fantasies will simply fester in
the dark. And they will use what such
people use in countries where pornogi
phy is now banned—their imaginations,

In such countries—say, Saudi Arabia,
i—the equality of women
established by banning

pornogr

sexual impulse, and the instinct to dom-

ns alive. Those instincts are
part of human nature, and in spite of
centuries of effort by archbishops and
commissars and even a few philoso-
phers, they are not truly alterable by the
power of the state. The sexual impulse,
including sexual fantasy, is not subject to
the force of reason. Recent history teach-
es us that most tyrannies have a puritan-
ical nature. The sexual rest ns of
al Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany
and Mao's China would have gladdened
the hearts of those Americans who fear
nd literature, Their iron-
nism wasn't motivated by a
al ineq They
тей to smother the personal ch
that can accompany sexual freedom.
subordinate it to the granite face of the
state. Every tyrant knows that if he can
control human sexuality, he can control
life. In the end, every tyrant fails.

fisted purit
need to er

w

MacKinnon, Dworkin and their allies
in the American right insist that they
speak for freedom, for the liberation of

women from the demeaning or disgust-
ing images of pornography that moti-
vate the male ruling class. They would
not be the first human beings who limit-
ed freedom while proclaiming allegiance
10 its virtues. All of these utopians would
benefit [rom a study of the first Victorian
era. There was a legal ban on pornos
phy but women had no rights at all (they
were later won by m of brave
suflragist women and liberal men).
Pornography certainly existed, but it was
rarched, expensive and available only to
rich “gentlemen.” Official. London ad-
hered (o the supermoral antis
codes, but in wal London syphilis and
gonorrhea were rampant. Some 80.000
women were engaged in pr
virgins were sold to the highest bidders
and the most infamous character of the
era rose from the festering 5
derground and called himself Jack the
pper. What reasonable man or woman
would go back to that futur

In a way, the work of MacKinnon and
Dworkin is some of the saddest writing
I've ever read. It's narrow and sectaria
often vicious and totalitarian in its insi:
tence on submission by other feminists
But it is also thoroughly withour joy or
wonder. In this bleak house, nothing el
matters except the eruelties of sex and

power. Not laughter. Not love. Not the
simple luminous pleasure of a summ
afternoon. There is no room in this dark
vision for Fred Astaire or Buster Keaton,
for Lucille Ball c ‚for Betty
Comden or Willie Mays. There is no fan-
tasy or magic. no awe in the presence of
human beauty, no desire for spiritual or
carnal union. Nobody closes the door for
a night of joyous, heart-busting, time-
bending, mind-obliterating full-out hu-
man fucking. Nobody goes to the
track, either. Nobody dances at
midnight hou
In this airless, sunless world, we doi
encounter the glorious moment when a
child learns to walk or to read, We hear
nothing of decent husbands and loving
fathers, of fai that have triumphed
over poverty, or mothers who have lived
hard lives with their intelligence, heart,
sensuality and pride intact. Such people
exist, in the millions, but they are not in
this hercely correct world of rules and
anathemas. Above all, in the sad and
bitter world of Catharine MacKinnon,
there is no wide tolerant understanding
of a species capable of forgiving our end-
less gift for human folly. There are only
the lacerated and the harmed and the
odor of the charnel house. 1 don't envy
their dreams. And | hope I'm never
forced to live in their fearful new world.

E

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189

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190

Соботе 4 Jf. Ye ^ (continued [rom page 112)

“He could not finish a meal, did not want lo smoke or

drink a martini. He could not feel pass

ion for Lydia.”

and now, lying helpless and in pain, he
began to feel affection for the table. In
the morning he opened his eyes to it: at
night in the dark he looked at its shape
in the pale light of the window as he
waited for one drug to release him from
pain and another to give him sleep
The shock of the horse crushing hi:
bones, then anesthesia, surgery, pain
and drugs had taken his vitality. He
could not finish a meal, he could not re-
main either awake or alert from morn-
ing till night, he did not want to smoke a
pipe or drink a martini, and he could
not feel passion for Lydia. One night in
his third week at home, when shebent to
kiss him good night, he held her to hi:
chest, his cheek pressing hers, and all hi
feeling for her was above his loins, filling
his breast, and one or two joyful tears
moistened his eyes. Then he watched
her cross the room to the stairs; she wore
dark shades of brown: a sweater and
skirt and tights and high-heeled boots
He watched her climb to the hall and
disappear into the light she turned on at

the top of the s ned to her
footsteps going to the bedroom, then the
hall was dark again, and his bedside
table lamp was the only light in the
house; it warmed his cheek.

He had not climbed the stairs for two
months, and now he saw that all of the
second floor was Lydia's: the bedroom,
the bathroom with its sweet scents of
things for her body, her room whet
read and wrote letters and paid bills
ays she had paid the bills, and this had
nothing to do with her inheritance; it
was common for officers’ wives to man-
age all elements of the household, so the
man could be rushed off to war withou
pausing to brief his wife on debts, ашо-
mobile maintenance and so on. Upstairs
a sun porch, two guest bedrooms
and a television room with a wet bar. For
three years he had inhabited that floor.
But Lydia had given of herself to those
spaces enclosed by wood and glass, col-
ored by paint and light, and he felt they
mysteriously alive and female.
‘Then he realized this was true of the

wer

“Gee, I don't know his name. We just refer to
him as the lookout.”

first Hoor as well. At cocktail hour he had.
mixed drinks in the kitchen, and some-
times cooked there or on the patio with
charcoal; but certainly the kitchen was
hers. So were the dining and living
rooms and, down the hall, the bedroom
and study and the bathroom, where he
had showered after fishing or hunting or
iding, lifting weights or running. Only
his den, at the end of the hall, was truly
his: the pipe stands and humidor on the
desk, the ashtray always emptied, the
desktop clear; the rifles and shotguns,
pistols and revolvers locked behind
wood and glass; the barbell and wei;
and bench; the closet door closed
behind it tackle boxes and boots, waders
and running shoes on the floor and, on
hangers above them, the clothing of his
passions. His lishing rods hung on pegs
оп one wall, his hats and caps on pegs on
another, above a bookcase filled with tit-
erature of war. His rear wall was glass
and through it he could sce nearly all of
the back lawn and watch squirrels on
trees in the woods, crows, gliding hawks;
sometimes a doe suddenly appeared at
the edge of the woods and Robert
"Townsend watched it with joy.

Every other room in the house was fe-
male. If he closed his den
things from the downstairs bathroom
and lowered the toilet seat, there would
be no sign of a man in the house. In the
warmth of the bedside lamp, he smiled:
Probably he never would have made this
discovery if he had not lost the freedom
of walking in his home. They could not
have built the house without her money
but her money had never been impe
tant to him; it had come with her, like
her golden hair, and if she lost it, he
would love her as dearly as he would
when her hair yellowed and grayed and
no longer shone in the sun. The money
had spared him worry about the chil-
dren's education and the nuisance of
worn-out cars and appliances; but it did
not touch what he loved in his life; his
salary was sufficient for that. Reading
War and Peace drew from him a compari-
son of himself and Lydia with Tolstoy's
officers and ladies: Lydia's money had
given them the ease, the grace, of the
aristocracy, but it had not spared them
the rigors and the uprootings of military
life, the sorrow of two wars, and the grief
for dead friends and their widows and
children, and for the men he had lost:
men who were like sons he was given
when they were 18, boys whom he loved
for only months before they died. Their
names and faces stayed in his heart; if
you looked closely at his eyes, you could
sce them. Lydia knew his grief well, and
tenderly; were it not part of him, she
might have loved him less.

He took a sleeping pill and turned off
the bedside lamp. He liked this new way
of seeing the house, as il the entire struc-
ture w female, and he entered it to be
at its center with Lydia; and she had

removed his

made a place for him, his den, as she
gave him a place in her body. A great
tenderness welled in him. He regretted
his rebukes of Lydia through the years
and also his infidelities when he was
overseas. These were with prostitutes.
He had acted in privacy and had never
told anyone. Afterward, he had forgiven
himself in the same way that on hung-
over mornings he had absolved himself
for being a drunken fool: He sloughed
off remorse as he shaved his whiskers,
then he put on his uniform and went to
work. He did not justify his adultery; he
believed a better man would have been
chaste, but he saw it as an occupational
hazard of soldiering. He was an active
man, and his need for a woman's love
was nocturnal, or it seemed to be. But
during months of separation from Lyd-
ia, that need moved into daylight: a
tender loneliness, a sense of being
unattached, of floating near the bound-
aries of fear. Also, Robert Townsend
loved women: A woman's eyes could
move his blood as the moon pulls the
sea. It was neither easy nor simple for
him to live for a vear without the naked-
ness of a woman; he had done his best.
and on more than a thousand nights he
had prevailed.

He wished this night, drugged in the
living room, that he had been perfect,
that he had made love with no one since
he met Lydia on a blind date in La Jolla:
He was a second lieutenant wearing.
dress blues, the date was for the Marine
Corps birthday ball, and while his friend
waited in the car, he strode up the long
walk to the lighted front door; she was
living with her parents still, and he was
unabashed by the size of the stone
house, its expanse of lawn and accumu-
lation of trees, In his left hand he held
his white gloves and her corsage. He
rang the doorbell, then stepped back so
she would see the height and breadth of
him when she swung open the door. Be-
hind him was the ocean, and he smelled
it with every breath. Then she opened
the door: She was in a silver gown with a
full skirt, he was smelling her perfume,
and he looked at her tanned face and
arms and golden hair and felt that he
was looking at the sun without burning
his eyes.

E

In the hospital the surgeon told
Robert that his knees would not fully re-
cover, his left one would probably never
bend more than 40 degrees, and һе
would live more comlortably in a one-
story home. The surgeon was a trim
young man with gentle brown eyes;
Robert liked him and told him not to
worry about an old Marine climbing a
flight of stairs. One afternoon when Lyd-
ia was in the room, the surgeon talked
again about stairs and Robert's knees,
looking at her. He said there would also
be atrophy of the legs because the casts
would not come off for months. Then,

until Robert came home, Lydia looked at
houses and land, but she did not love
any of it. She spoke to the building con-
tractor and phoned orthopedic surgi

in Arizona, near her family's ranch.

Now she talked of their going to the
ranch and staying there while the con-
tractor removed the second floor and
put those rooms on the ground. Robert
believed his knees would be as they һай
always been until they were broken, and
while Lydia talked about Arizona, he was
eating without hunger but to gain
strength, or pushing a urinal between
the casts on his thighs, or feeling pain
from his feet to his crotch. Every day and
night he thought of men he had seen
wounded in war. He had never told Lyd-
ia about them and did not tell her now.
How many times had he yelled for
corpsmen, controlling his horror, and
done everything he could to help, and
everything correctly? He knew now that
his horror had kept him separate from
the torn meat and broken bones that an
instant ago were a man, strong and
quick; and kept him, too, from telling
Lydia. Now his own pain opened him
up. and pity flowed from him, washed
timeless over those broken men lying on
the earth I

On a Saturday morning in his fifth
week at home, while (hey were eating
breakfast, snow began to fall. When Lyd-
ja walked to the re. he watched the
snow through the dining room window,
then slept. He woke to the sound of Lyd-
ia's boots on the front steps. He looked
to his right and behind him at the door
as she opened it: She was looking down
at her gloved hand on the knob,
was quickly melting on her shoulders
and beret and hair, her cheeks were
flushed and her brightened eyes were
seeing something that was not in the
room, some image or memory, and fear
rose from his stomach, he felt shackled
to the bed and suddenly he was sweat-
ing. Then she looked at him and came
quickly to him, took his hand and said,
“What is it?”

“My legs.

Did you take something?
о.

Her brown shoulder bag was damp,
ing at her side; always he had teased
her about crammed purses; now this one
seemed filled with secrets that could de-
stroy him. She placed a palm on his
brow.

“It's passing,”
right.”

Are you hungry?

No.

"Try something."

“I will."

She smelled of snow and winter air.
She unzipped her parka and climbed the
stairs. He shut his eyes and saw nothing,
but nameless fear rushed in his blood.
He listened to Lydia's footsteps going
to the bathroom. She was wear

“Wil be all

he said.

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moccasins. She flushed the toilet,
washed her hands, and he watched the
head of the stairs, focused on the spot
where her face would appear; then it
was there, descending, and in her eyes
and mouth he saw nothing. He had been
іп bed for too long, this fear must be
madness, and when she helped him into
the chair, he looked away from her, at
the dining room window, the snow
falling.

He watched it while she was in the
itchen. She brought black bean soup
she had made the night before, a green
salad and hot rolls. He dipped a spoon
into the soup and raised it to his mouth
and swallowed: he put the spoon down
and ate a piece of roll, then a slice of cu-
cumber. He kept doing this, watching
her smile and talk and chew, until he
had eaten everything. She helped him
onto the bed and then cleared the table;
he listened to her putting the dishes into
the dishwasher. He closed his eyes be-

fore she came into the living room; he
felt her looking at him as she walked to

the stairs, then she climbed them and
went down the hall to her room. He did
not want to be awake, and soon he slept.
When he woke, snow was still falling; it
was gathering wetly on the pine branch-
es; the house was quiet and as dark as it
could be in midafternoon with so many
windows. He turned on the lamp. Pain
squeezed his bones, and his heart was
breaking. Lydia’s face when she opened
the door at noon was the face that for
years he had given her: that blush of her
cheeks and light in her eyes. He knew
she had a lover.

He listened to the house. She was in it,
but where was she? She could be in her
room, the door closed, talking on the
phone to—he could not imagine a man.
He wanted to feel rage and jealousy, but
all he felt was absolute helplessness and
dread and sorrow. He held the phone
and slowly lifted the receiver and lis-
tened to the dial tone as he stared at the
snow. He opened the table's top drawer,
got the bottle of Percodan and shook one
into his palm. He saw himself as he
would look to Lydia: a man in pain, lying
on his back with casts on his legs, reach-
ing for the glass of water beside him; a
man whose stinking shit she cleaned
from the commode and wiped from his
body. For nearly three hours the images
had waited, perched and watching just
beyond his ken, and now they gathered
and assaulted him, and he breathed
deeply and fast, opening and closing his
hands. and saw in the snow and the
pines Lydia making love

The hall upstairs was darkened; the
only sound in the house was his breath-
ing. All his life with her he had believed
he knew where she was. When he was at
a desk eight miles away from her
drinking coffee from a canteen cup at
dawn in Vietnam, he ima
their home, or within its natu

ned her in
al bound-

aries. She was at a wives’ luncheon or
tea, or in a restaurant for lunch with one
or two women; she was walking, she had
always loved a long walk alone and, since
their courtship, had walked more miles
than Robert, an infantryman, and this
was a family joke; she was siuing with a
cup of tea before the fire, or iced tea on
the lawn; she was buying dresses, blous-
es, sweaters, bracelets, necklaces with the
endearing pleasure he saw in his daugh-
ters, too, before they could spell what
they wore; she was making peanut but-
ter sandwiches for the children home
from school; she was talking on the
phone held between her shoulder and
ear while she sautéed onions. In his
three years of retirement, his view of her
had not changed; he did not know that
úll now. He had been hunting and
fishing with new friends, had bought the
mare and boarded her, read books, writ
ten letters to friends, and waked some
mornings feeling surprised, disoriented
and tardy. He had worked each day with
his body and mind, and at sunset had.
turned to Lydia's merry brown eyes and
the mingled scents from her bath. He
knew her face when she slept, when she
woke in the morning, when she was pale
and sick, when fatigue hung like weights

from her eyes and cheeks. Yet when he

handed her a martini and looked at her
red lips and shaded eyelids and smelled
her, he did not think of bottles and tubes
and boxes on her dressing table. This
face, these smells, were her at sunset. He
called into the darkness, his voice soft
and high, cresting on his fear: “Lydia?

He could not bear the pain in his legs,
not with this, and he called her name
again and again and again, and the
nothing he heard was so quiet, and he
listened so intently to it, that he believed
he could hear the snow falling. It would
fall until it covered the house, until the
power lines broke from their poles, and
he would die here, not from cold or
hunger or thirst but because he was
alone and could not move. Then he was
sobbing into his hands, and he heard on-
ly that and so was startled as by an angel
of death when Lydia s hands gripped his
wrists and strongly and genily pulled his
hands from his eyes, then her voice was
in his heart: “Bob,” she said. “Bobby

He held her. He pulled himself up-
ward and groaned as the pain tightened
and turned in his broken bones, he
pressed his face to her breasts, and Lyd-
ia's arms came around him. Her hands
moved up and down his back. He heard
her tears when she said, “I fell asleep. 1
didn't hear you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry
this happened to you. I'm so sorry about
your knees.”

Grief shook her body in his arms. He
wanted to stand and hold her face at his
chest, stroke her hair, speak sofily to her
He sniffed tears and moved his head
from her breasts, looked up at her wet
cheeks and eyes and trembling mouth,

and he lowered his arms and with a
hand patted the sheet beside him.

“Here,” he said. “Here. Lie down.

She lay beside him, and the first touch
of her weight on the bed moved his legs.
and he clenched his teeth and swallowed
a groan and kept silent. Her head lay on
his right bicep, and he brought that
hand to her face and hair. His fingers
lightly rubbed her tears. He closed his
eyes and in that darkness saw snow and
felt his legs; but above them he was emp-
чей of pain, and now he did not sce
snow or darkness but sunlight in La Jol-
la, and Lydia as a small golden-haired
child on that vast and shaded lawn; then
he saw her gray and thin and dying in
pain. In the orthopedic ward, people
screamed, and many nights he had
pushed the call button again and again
and finally cried out for a nurse to give
him morphine. He did not know
whether or not there were atheists in
foxholes; he believed now there must
have been many in held hospitals. and in
the naval hospitals afterward, and in the
hospital he had come home from so long
ago. In Korea and Vietnam, it was Lydia
he prayed to, if turning in fearand lone-
liness to someone was prayer. Certainly
it was hope and faith and love. He lelt
these now, with his eyes closed, holding
Lydia, seeing her weeping above his bed,
her body slowly falling toward him as he
patted the sheet, seeing the lines of her
face she said were from smoking and the
sun, but they were time, too, She loved
him; and if he had never known precise-
ly where she was, she had finally always
been here. Then her head and body
jerked and she was keening, and he
opened his eyes to immense sound, and
the lamplight, the darkness in the di
room, the snow: ^You won't be able to
climb those fucking stairs. You can. But
ІСІ be awful, it's awful. irs awful, you
don't know how badly you're hurt, Bob,
you don't know, because its yo
yo

She stopped. He waited until she was
no longer crying and her breath was
slow again, then he said sofily, "1 know
about you.”
You de
“I know ус

Li

its

rre having an affair.”
It just ended.”
Because my legs are broke
1 don't know. Yes. Because your legs
are broken.” She held her breath for
а moment, then released T's not
my first.”

"No."

“I need a cigarette for this.”

His body started to sit up, to rise from
the bed and climb the stairs 10 get her
purse. Then she was gone, to her room,
then the bathroom, and she came down
with fresh makeup and her cigarettes,
а beside him and looked into
his eyes. She said, “I've never loved any-
one else.”

“Гуе cheated, too.”

“That's all it is.

"p know."

"What do you know?

“Japan. Okinawa. Hong Kong. Viet-
nam. Maybe some in the States.”

"Not in the States. How did you
knowz"

“Tm your wife

“Why didn't 1 know?”

"Because I'm your wife. How much do
you want to hear?”

“I want to hear everything, and go
to Arizona, and sleep in the same bed
with you.”

Now his heartbreak was like the p:
in his legs: It was part of him, but he
could breathe with it, think with it, listen
and see with it. Until the light outside
faded and darkness gathered around
the lamp at the bed, her voice rose softly
from the pillow, and snow moved ou
de the window. When she told him she
had never had a lover while he was at
war, Robert said, “In case I got killed?”
Yes. I just didn't know | had to i
clude riding a horse,” and laughter came
to them as suddenly as weeping had, it
took their breath, it drew tears fro
them, it shook his body and hurt his
bones, and he held Lydia and laughed.

.

A week later they were іп Arizona,
watching purple spread over a mountain
range in the sunset. They were on the
patio; she lighted coals on the grill and
stepped back from the flames, then
poured martinis from the pitcher and
sat beside him. He looked at the mou
tain and sun and sky, then looked at her
eyes and told her of maimed and dying
boys, of holding them while their lives
flowed out of them onto snow, grass.
mud. He told her of terror that came
like thunder after lightning, after the ex-
plosions and gunfire, afier everything
was done. He told her of his terror u
der the horse, and on the bed in their
living room when he was alone in the
house. He said, “I'm glad that damned
horse fell on me. It made me lie still in
one place and look at you."

"I hope you haven't seen ioo much.”

“There's never too much. There's not
enough time.”

“Nor

“Time makes us the
me. That's all I know.”

He knew this: sunlight on the twist of
lemon in her glass as she lifted it by the
stem and brought it to her red lips. On
the day the snow fell till midnight, she
had made no promises and had not
ked any of him. He did not want any
promises. They were words and feelings
wafting about in a season he or Lydia
may not live to see. He wanted only
to know what had happened and what
was happening now, to see that: brilliant
as the sky, hot as the sun, bright as

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>

Yates of Eden (continued from page 152)

“Miss Ohara pushed her body toward mine. ‘Fussa
yaw needs.’ My privates had become swollen.”

after a minute, in a different kimono,
tightening the sash. 1 guessed it was che
alier-lunch job, maybe for the tea cere-
mony. Once again 1 tried to put across
the theme of my business:

“Hello again, Miss Ohara.
you know that I'm responding to a call
you made to Weights and Measures.

1 gather

“Come look a garden,” she said, and
spun on her heel

What the hel

was done argı
.

The garden was—well. it was пісе. А
nice little flagstone path led through
nice beds tiered with flagstones. Some of
the beds were dirt; some were crushed
white rock. It was a hell of a collection of
greens and flowers and little trees, but
not all gaudy and overstated like some
gardens you see. No, somehow it was all
just right, just like lunch had been, all
sort of pleasant, with a lot of thought be-
hind it, careful thought. Somewhere I
heard a fountain gurgle. Yes sir. It was
one hell of a thoughtful arrangement

The princess was leading me wi
little mincing step, like a champion show
horse. My feet were landing harder than

hers—t the thing with sake, it goes
down so smooth you can forget how
much you've drunk. The path rounded
some low shrubbery and ended in flag-
stone steps leading down to a little rock
pool. The eucalyptus trees rustled in
a light breeze, and somewhi bees
droned. I was feeling pretty damn good.

1 stood there swaying. I watched Miss
Ohara’s shoulders work as she tugged at
her clothing. Her broad satin sash fell
a and when she gave a
іше shrug, her kimono slipped off her
porcelain shoulders onto the ground.
She was a naked little dolly. She stepped
daintily into the rock pool, like some del-
icate creature slipping into a mountain
Take to perform its natural bathing activ-
ities. When her steps cut the water, there
was barely a splash.

1 loosened my tie. The garden was fat
with life, like a drowsy bumblebee at a
pond in the woods on a scented summer
day. But this man-made garden was
more beautiful even than п; it was
perfectly composed, as if civilization at
its highest had fused with nature, and
each had made the other something
higher still, I seemed in that moment to

“Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes the one you
love falls in love with another, and when that happens, it is very
sad indeed. It парта to те, and I wrote this
song. It's called ‘Fuck You, Steve.”

undc

tand what Miss Ohara was trying
that she, too, was part of this

moving in oneness with the wa-
g in it and letting it roll over
here was no shame in the garden.
only beauty, beauty not just to look upon
but to join in and be onc with. Human
beauty, natural beauty. I, too, could be
beautiful. I could be part of the garden.
perfect, just as she was. We could be man
and woman, in the garden, without
words, without shame. We could abide
in beauty and be one

With thick fingers I pulled off my t
my banal tie. I pulled on my shirt but-
m 1 ripped the last
few away and tossed the shirt. I sat to
take off my stockings; they were too
; E pushed hard, got my f
ally got them off. Back on
my feet I unbuckled my belt, dropped
my trousers, then stepped out of my
horts and was free. 1 was free in the gar-
den. The warmth of the sun bathed my
shoulders. A breeze played across my
privates and made the eucalyptus rustle.
Somewhere, far away, bees droned on

Miss Ohara swam lazily, unsell-con-
sciously corkscrewing through the water.
The water pushed unbroken over her
body like a stream slipping over a
smooth stone. I stepped into the pool.

The sun had warmed the water. Its
warmth drew me in, ti my flesh
and drawing my weight away. As 1 im-

sed myself. | was as light and grace-

ful as Miss Ohara, a creature of the wa-
ter. She laughed and pushed her body
toward mine. “ Fussa yaw needs.” My pri-
yates had become swollen, enormous,
not from lust, as you or I know it, but as
an expression of nature. M
ated it not with dirty shame but with
joyous love. “Help me, Miss Ohara.” She
smiled, and gasped a litle when w
achieved oneness. The extent of my love
surprised her; I guess they don't grow as
big as mine in the shadows of Fujiyama.
But then she moved with me in the shal-
lows of the pool, and we obeyed the com-
mand of the garden, Our bodies swayed
in the waves that we created. We were
carried along by each other and by the
gently rocking pool, and we performed
the ancient act.

to tell mi

It was slow қой

.
1 opened my eyes

ng facedown on the flagstones
near the pool. My feet trailed into the
water The water was cold
ring the eucalyptus was chill now,
ay. Ir was evening.
hed whale. My body ached

The wind st

ind

I was a be:
from its own weight on the flagstones.

Shivering, 1 struggled to my knees. The
flagstones dug into my knees; 1 pushed
myself to my feet. The mov nt made
my eyes pound and roused sumo wres-
ders who blundered inside my head.
slapping bellies, their weight tilting this
way and that. As I looked for my clothes.
my head swam about, adjusting late for

the wrestlers’ trundling inertia. I real-
ized how I must look, and cupped my
hands over my privates

"Miss Ohara?

The wind made rustling noises in the
trees. There was no other sound

I pressed my hands against my head
to stop its swaying. I saw my clothes
nearby, where I'd dropped them. But
stooping for them squeezed my stomach,
which squirted acid into my throat. I
tried by force of will to calm my leaping
stomach, and clamped my eyes shut as I
stepped into my shorts, I straightened
slowly, but not slowly enough. The
wrestlers were back into their stagger,
my head swimming with them.

Things spun dizzily. The flesh on my
back was tingling, yet numb. When 1
squinted down at my shoulder, it seemed
far away, as if I were 2 giant looking
down on someone else's body. The flesh
was very red. | pressed thick fingers into
ir. It turned ghastly white around my
fingers, then quickly red again when 1
stopped pressing. My chest and stomach
were still pale, marked by flagstone
ridges. My penis was small and gray.

My back had been roasting in the sun.
That, and the alcohol, explained the
dizziness. But what was the terrible ache
thumping in my buttocks? I pushed my
shorts gingerly back down and reached
back with both hands. As I lightly grazed
my buttocks region, the pulsing ache
flashed into bolts of pain. My posterior
was swollen and inflamed, skin stretched
tight over irregular bumps, as if some-
one had sewn roasting chestnuts into the
flesh. I remembered the drone of bees,
now silent. That was it. Bee stings.

“Miss Ohara

Only the wind

As I withdrew my hands, the stinging
lapsed back into a throb. But the pain
had reawakened my nausea, and now
something else stirred deep within my
bowels. I knew the feeling. Pressure
dark and deep, it was the herald of an
approaching stool. I tightened my bu
tocks. This recalled the stinging buttocks
pain, but I needed to contain myself
til I could dress and find a bathroom

I aimed one foot at a leg hole in my
pants, thrust. desperately, missed. My
hands were shaking with the rumble of
approaching freight. I shouted at my-
self, words of calm, and guided my foot
into the hole. The pressure was unbear-
able. My posterior muscles quaked with
the effort of staying shut. 1 hopped in-
to the second pants leg, convulsively
clenching my buttocks against the on-
rushing tide. No longer rhythmic, it
pushed steadily, mightily, it did not ebb.
The pressure grew, pushed, ballooned—
1 was not going to make it. This was it;
there was no denying the clamor at the
gate; beating, roaring—this was it. 1
kicked away my pants and was dropping
my shorts when the thing was upon me.
I could only hunch forward, knuckles of

one hand on the flagstone, buttocks
thrust out behind me, in the three-point
stance of the scrimmage line

1t came splushing out all liquidy and
with a lot of fanfare, if you catch my
meaning. There was no containing it, no
way to let out just enough to ease the
pressure. It blew, but good

It had been cooked into a thin paste by
bee poison and sun. Most of it blew back,
but as it petered out, some dribbled onto
my shorts and calves and ankles.

It smelled as if it belonged to some-
one else.

Alter the last of it had sputtered out,
stayed crouched, frozen there, for seve
al moments, my sphincter quivering. 1
hunched there, hot yet cold, flushed yet
clammy, until 1 became aware of my
knuckles aching against the stone. 1
straightened up. I stepped out of my
spattered shorts and turned round,
trembling, 10 survey the damage.

My feces were all over the garden
They flecked the entire flagstone area,
and some had even reached the borde:
ing flower bed. They were a dark brown-
black.

The expulsi
weak and dizzy,

"Miss Ohara?

Only the tree-rustling wind

My buttock cheeks were slick against
each other. I had to clean myself

1 picked up my soiled shorts and,
holding them out away from my body,
waded into the pool. The water was cold
now; as it crept up, it pushed out
gooseflesh and made my skin feel heavy
and dead. When it reached my thighs,
paused, sucked in my breath and did a
fast knee-bend. The ice water slapped at
my anus, igniting the bee stings, and
sloshed angrily around my testicles. 1
did several more knee-bends, then stag-
gered, shivering, out of the pool

1 realized that 1 was no longer holding
my shorts. I looked back at the pool
There they were, floating away like a lily
pad in the failing light, a charcoal
smudge on dull linen paper.

I stood there fora moment, trembling
in the breeze. I picked up my trousers.
Their texture, as I began hopping in,
seemed terribly rough. I looked at my
penis, and forced myself 10 look away.
Sull shriveled and gray, it had looked
like a dead man

Miss Ohara's house was locked and
dark; I left the garden by a side gate. 1
won't bore you with the details of how I
managed to drive home. Leave it at this:
that I was cold and hurting, and the
whole way back I wept with shame.

.

That night Hay on my stomach, think-
ing. I had my fan aimed at my buttocks.
besmeared with salves and unguents.

What did it all mean?

.

When I got to work the next morn-

ing, Marty Shechter was doing his Paul

m had left me feeling
zy and weak.

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ak

Lynde. People were laughing. I went in-
to my office and dialed the number I
had for Miss Ohara.

No answer.

I drove the streets, a donut cushion on
the dr . I was sapped, listless,
still weak from sunburn and all the rest.
Over on Van Nuys I walked into a Hap-
py Burger and ordered one. The bald
counterman said, “Delu
“What?”

“Fries widdat?”

“No.”

“Bevidge?”

“Just the burger.”

He stooped to open a minifridge fac-
ing the counter and raised his voice over
ll fan: "How do you want it,

“Raw.

“You, huh?”

"Raw.

Slowly he straightened, eyes on me,
holding a papered patty. "Real rare,
huh?”
aw," I said for the third time. “And
never mind the roll and pickle.”

He looked at me, then down at the
patty. Slowly, sadly, he slapped the patty
facedown onto the plate. His hand came
away with the paper backing. He
shuffled reluctantly toward me, staring
at the plate; when he reached my stool,
he stopped but didn't put it down. He
stood motionless, frowning at the plate,
feeling the distress that any good coun-
terman would feel on serving a naked
raw meat patty:

At length he mumbled, “I put it on а
bed of lettuce,” and started to turn away.

I grabbed one elbow, snarling, “Give it
here." He watched as I opened my kit
and took out the scale. “Who owns the

He have a first name?” The burger
weighed in at just under б/і ounces.
guess.
This is Happy Burger, Home of the
Seven-Ounce Bun-Buster?"
guess.
You don't seem sure of muc!
“I don't get paid but for kno
to cook.”
I flipped him my card. “Tell your boss
to call if he wants the padlock taken off
the door.”

in’ how

.

1 drove past the house in Brentwood,
staring like а lovesick schoolboy. 1
thought of ringing the bell but couldn't
picture what would come next. Where
would we begin? Could we begin again?
Could | ever explain the mess in her
garden? The whole thing—had it even
been real?

.
Ап 87х10” envelope was on my desk.
It had been hand-delivered. On its face

was handwritten my name and, under-
neath that, the word PERSONAL.

Somehow, | knew.

1 closed the door to my office, put the
donut on my chair and stared at the en-
velope for a long moment before I
opened it.

They say that pictures don't lie. Well
then, I guess I dreamed all of what hap-
pened between me and Miss Ohara.
‘These pictures didn't show a man and
woman celebrating their oneness. They
showed a sagging middle-aged guy
screwing a Jap. Shame, shame—all I felt
on looking at those pictures was dirty
shame, shame that Miss Ohara had seen
me naked. I mean, hell, she looked pret-
ty damn good. And I was—well, if Í just
had a month or so to work out a little,
get back in fighting trim. . ..

But there were more than just the ac-
tion shots. There were a couple of
angles of me with Miss Ohara, later s
I didn’t remember. She'd wrestled one of
my arms over her shoulder and had me
lolling in the pool next to her. Her gaze
was cool and businesslike; I was grinning
like Crazy Guggenheim. Jesus, 1 needed
a brassiere worse than she did. Anyway,
afier these posed shots—meant to leave
no doubt that it was me with the naked
litle missy—there was a picture that
showed what had happened before I
woke up. I was sprawled out facedown
on the flagstones, mouth gaping like a
fresh haddock's. Miss Ohara, in a ki-
mono now, was squatting over me, along
with a Jap guy in rimless glasses. Miss
Ohara was holding a jar open-end down
against my buttocks. The guy was tap-
ping at the jar. The picture wasn't so
sharp that I could see the activity inside
the jar, but of course I knew.

Well, that was it. There weren't any
pictures of my last adventure in the gar-
den. the one І remembered all too well.
They had probably left long before I
woke up. There was only a short mes-
sage. a slip of paper with an awkward

|: LAY OFF A YATSIMURA BROS.

Yatsimura and his brother, Wa,
uit stand in Santa Monica. I'd
been looking into them since their scales
never seemed to match their customers’.
But so far, somehow, they'd spotted the
DWM shoppers and we hadn't been able
to pin anything on them.

The message was clear. If I didn't toe
the line, these gyp artists would show the
pictures to my boss, to the public at
large, to whomever. Except for the last
picture, the one with Jimmy Yats
They'd just thrown that in to twist the
knife, so Га know how the bee stings got
there, that it wasn’t just happenstance. It
got my goat, all right—not just the point-
less spite but the planning that must
have gone into the whole thing. The act
with Miss Ohara, whoever she was
(Ohara probably being Nipponese for

ye Dokes or what have you).
‘The mickey finn in the sake. Hell, maybe
they'd aho slipped
Tokyo depth charge to help loosen my
bowels. I slowly flipped through the ріс-
tures, ag; nd again, at the end of ev-
ery суйе coming to the slip of paper—
LAY OFF A YATSIMURA BROS. | looked at
them, at her, at myself. Again and again.
Dirty shame. Again and again.
.

I doni know what | was thinking
when I drove out to Santa Monica that
evening. | hadn't planned anything.
was just going there. There was no plan.
I was still in а dave. There was no plan.

| walked into the fruit stand and
browsed along the table of iced lettuces.
1 thought, What the hell are all these dif-
ferent lettuces? Did the Japs bring them?
The Koreans? Why did they bring so
many? What kind of society has ours be-
come, when one kind of lettuce is no
longer enough? Isn't the need for var
ety, рам a certain point, a sign of deca-
dence? Why do we need to be teased
with subtle flavorings and exotic strains?
The kind of person who needs that
much variety in his sex life, we call a per-
vert. The true man, who is hungry, eats

The true man eats.

I ripped a plastic bag off the plasi
bag roll and started dropping in navel
oranges. When the bag was full, I ripped
off another bag and filled it. 1 brought
the two bags over to the register and put
them down on the counter. “Two bags of
navel oranges, please,” I said.

Behind the counter, Jimmy Yatsimura
picked up the bags and put them on his
scale. He gave no sign of recognizing
me. He punched in the price per pound
and waited for the numbers to settle.

I looked at him looking at the scale.
He stared through his rimless glasses,
his tongue stuck between his teeth. 1
wondered if he was having a sex rela-
tionship with Miss Ohara. 1 felt certain

and Miss Ohara. I wondered if they
in the garden. 1 felt certain that
did. 1 could see him clearly, en-

they
gaged in the act, wearing nothing but his

Mr: Moto glasses, his tongue міс
between his buck teeth, his fa

ing out
ce red, mak

ing soft oofing noises, people screaming.
] saw

My muscles were locked. his
face, at the end of my
from red to blue.
his throat. 1 felt his fingers prying use-
lessly at mine. He was twitching. I didn't
see any of the people screaming. I heard
gibbermg and did just see. out of the
corner of my eye, Wa Yaisimura trotting
toward me, raising a length of pipe. I
turned and started—but only started—
to raise my arm, Then I went visiting in
a land where the trees hang with
cauliflower and lotus blossoms fill the air.
.
Joe,” said the old man, sitting next to
my hospital bed, “you're the finest field

in some kind of

agent Гуе had in twenty years in Wei
and Measures. You don't know
hard it is for me to say this."

“Then don’t,” I mumbled through my
bandages. They'd wrapped my head up
preity good—and had needed to, as
much as Wa Yatsimura had worked on
before the police had managed to drag
him off.

“There were witnesses, Joe. ‘They all
said you attacked the Jap. You're lucky
he’s not filing a criminal complaint.”
Check his scales. They're piped.
We already did. They're clean, Joe.”
"Then he's a thumb weigher. The Yat-
muras are dirty, Fred. I can't tell you
how I know, but 1 know

The old man took olf his glasses,
breathed on them, started wiping them
h his tie. He wasn't looking at me
when he said, "You've taken state regula-
tions into your own hands. ГИ need your

how

E

plastic, Joe." I thought there were tears
in his eyes.
1 know there were tears in mine.

.

When I checked out three days later,
my head was still bandaged, but I was
able to drive. The old man, or someone,
had arranged to have my car brought
over to the hospital in the Valley. 1 was
fighting rush hour so it was early
evening by the time I got to Brentwood,
dazed from the drive, from being out in
the world.

The neighborhood was cool. The palms
and jacarandas rusted in the breeze as I
stepped ош of my car. The door slam
echoed crisply up the street. I was sweaty
from the drive and hadn't shaved in
three days. I must have been a sight, had
anyone been looking—my jaw dark with
stubble, my head swathed in white.

1 leaned against the car and looked at
her house. The lights were just starting
to go on along the street, though none
did in her place. It wasa Jap design, with
rich, low-slung wood, its eave a long arc-
ing brow. The house looked out darkly,
placidly, over the gentle rise of its lawn,
like a ship perched on a rolling wave.
Redwood fence dropped away from ei-
ther side to enclose its back garden.
Faintly, very faintly, I thought I heard its
fountain gurgle.

1 folded my arms, leaning against the
car, watching the house that seemed
mutely to watch me. Under its bandages
my head itched. But the breeze stiffened
and crawled through my hair where it
pooled out on top, and 1 heard the wind,
the sound through my bandages like a
seashell at the beach, and it was садат as
1 stood there and hugged myself,
g. 1 don't know how long, I don't know
what for. Maybe 1 was waiting for Miss
Ohara, or for any woman, to open the
door, invite me in, rub my feet and take
the pain from my heart

I stood there as it grew dark.

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197

PD A Y É Y

198

SEAN YOUNG na fiom page 117)

“God won't allow me to be like just another actress,
though that’s what I am. Pm outspoken. Гт moral.”

from him and asked, “What are you do-
ing?” and he said, ^l was just testing
you." 1 said, “Well, are you clear on this
issue now? I don't want to sleep with
you, 1 don't want to suck your dick, 1
don't want to have anything to do with
you on that level. I have enough prob-
lems.” Two days later I got a call from
the production assistant, who said,
“Warren's rewriting the scene, you don't
work tomorrow." I didn't hear from any-
body for five days. Then my agent called
and said Га been fired from the movie
and replaced with Glenne Headly. Then
Warren issued a public statement about
how concerned he is about me, Isn't he a
sweet guy?

7;
PLAYBOY: This hasn't been easy for you,
has it?
YOUNG: It hurts. It's never fun being a

warrior, but it's better than being a loser.
‘Those are the options. You gain courage
by being willing to fight for what you be-
lieve is right. I got the job in Batman.
I got the job in Dick Tracy. The issue is
not my talent. The issue is whether oi
not my behavior is sound. My behavior
isn't ordinary. I can't argue with that.
But is it insane? That question comes
from horrendously uncreative people.
And that’s not my problem. I don't have
to make my creat
their lack of imagination. And that's
what its like being an artist.

8.

PLAYBOY: If things are so awful, why do
you continue to aci
YOUNG: Believe it or not, I'm not try
to paint an awful picture. In all bad
there is some good, and vice versa. I
choose to act because it’s something 1

“Quite frankly, until I met you, I was determined to
resist Christmas this year.”

ty stop at the level of

can do and do well. And if I continue to
get opportunities to do it, I will, and if I
don't, ГЇ move on. But so far, enough
people respect my abilities to put aside
whatever they've heard about me.

9.

PLAYBOY: When asked why he lived in the
desert, Lawrence of Arabia said, “Be-
cause it's so clean.” Why do you live
there?

YOUNG: The desert was the farthest place
from Hollywood I could find and yet be
close enough to show up when things get
friendlier.

10.

PLAYBOY: As much as your reputation has
hurt you, it has also thrust you into
the public eve. Would you give up your
notoriety?

YOUNG: I would. I told my husband, Bob,
that | thought all this was ironic. My
whole life Гуе always wanted to fit in,
and yet my whole life has been one i
dent after the next where I couldn't.
‚od won't allow me to be like just anoth-
ciress, even though that’s what I am,
just another actress. I'm outspoken. I'm
moral. I will always do what I think is
If E have to be the first one to go
just because I'm willing to tell the
truth, then I'm there. But sure, I would
like to be able to walk into any of
without having to prove all over again,

could give that up in a second.
XL.

PLAYBOY: What's the last t
from a hotel or restaurant.
YOUNG: I don't steal. I know that sounds
5 laced, but even little things таце
Bob and I even bought the bathrobes at
the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki

PLAYBOY: Tell us something about your-
self that would really surprise us.

YOUNG: I'm a major trekkie. I love Star
Tiek and The Next Generation. 1 had а
crush on William Shatner when I was
growing up. 1 also really dug Spock. I
like Picard and Data on the new show. I
want to be on but turned down a script
it wasn't with my favorite char-
acter, Guinan, played by Whoopi Gold-
berg. I want to do an episode where
an is thrown for a loop. Maybe we
could even tie in Rachael, the replicant I
d in Blade Runner. She'd still be
Maybe а romance between Rachael
Wild. I also asked about being
a Vulcan, but they wanted 10 create a
whole new species for me: a creature

who can change gender at will. You're
given as а gift and become what the
recipient needs.

13.

nilar subject, your love
th Kevin Costner in the back of a

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limo in No Way Out was a gilt to us all. We
heard he was a little nervous. True?
YOUNG: [t wasn't an extreme
heart was beating really fası and he was
kind of flighty, that’s all. Nicolas
the only person Гуе intimidated, but he
had this huge ulcer on his mouth that
day. I didn't mean to intimidate him, I
just informed him we would
ing. The nicest guy I ever did a love
scene with was Matt Dillon, because he
suddenly became very generous. Un-
generous is when Nicolas Cage brought
his girlfriend on the set during the
scenes where we had to make out. I felt
uncomfortable, though I didn't mention
it. Now I fnd it important to ask, “Who's
gonna play the guy?” I check things out
Т don't just say. “Oh, OK.” anymore.

14.

avtov: Jack Nicholson said that he ap-
aches his characters through their
sexuality. Care to comment?

YOUNG: [Laughs] 1 can see that being true
for him. It's funny Jack would say that,
because when Jack says it, it sounds like
this really mysterious, wonderful ap-
roach to a character. But I don't know a
man on earth who doesn't approach ev-
erything from a sexual point of view.
Only Jack makes it sound so important.

15.

PLAYBOY: You're now married to actor
Robert Lujan. What stops with marriage
and what doesn'!
YOUNG: Sex doesn't stop. You don't stop
argu ou don't stop eating, you don't
stop going to the grocery store. Mar-
age can be terrifying. You get so close
to your spouse that often it's more than
you bargained for. You see every flaw
and every good thing, and he sees уо!
105 important not to lose your indepe
dence. Is very easy to let your mole-
cules intermingle. However, ma
terrific precisely because of the
challenge. It’s teaching me empathy,
which I didn't know I lacked.

16.

pravsoy: You keep a diary. Is there any-
thing you won't tell it?

younc: When 1 did The Boost, 1 kept a
journal from the first day I read the
script to the last day of the shoot. It’s
really intense. It's as if there were three
people writing it: Mary—that's my real
first name—the sort of withdrawn per-
son; Sean, the act and Linda, the
character. The writing jumps from one
point of view to another. I called the
journal “Dancing in the Woods." 1 even
gave a portion of it to James Woods, as
а friend. When 1 was sued by the pock-
marked madman and his ex-wife, when
they decided to blame me for all their co-
dependent problems, they took that por-
tion and used it against me in a deposi-
1. He made me, through his lawyer,
explain every line of writing. They tried

10 make it sound as though it was really
weird that 1 would write so observant a
journal. They tried to make me out to be
a basket case. So I didn't write again un-
til this year, because 1 couldn't. 1 was
stunned, | couldn't believe someone
would use my own writing against me.

17.

mavsov: Did you attach James Woods's
penis to his leg with Krazy Glue? Did
you leave dolls and pictures of muti-
lation on his doorstep? Give us the fi-
nal word.

young: What did I do? Sneak into his
room in the middle of the night, creep
over pull back his covers and start
squirting glue on his dick? And he didn't
wake up until the glue had dried? Brian
Dennehy says he heard that firsthand
from James Woods. That tells me Woods
is a liar who created the rumor. People
believe it because James Woods is an ex-
cellent salesman. Bur intensity does not
mean honesty. Woods is smart but con-
nected with dark forces. 1f James Woods
had the courage and integrity to get
down on his knees and be honest about
his participation in that bogus lawsuit
he and his ex-wife filed against me, he
might have the chance in this lifetime to
be forgiven and to forgive himself.

18.

playboy; What matters in Hollywood?
vovxc: Talent. Hollywood forgives peo-
ple who are talented.

19.

AYBOY: You spent years studying ballet.
What is the fuss all about?

YOUNG: Ballet was commissioned by con-
querors. It's not a natural form of danc-
ing. Its contorted, though beautiful.
Ballet is a lot like the wrapping of feet in
China. The big challenge is to make bal-
let look easy, to make something that ts
not easy look totally effortless. Its weird
to turn your legs out. Dancers get prob-
lems in their shoulders, hips, knees, an-
kles, toes. All from overturning. I re-
member thinking during ballet practice,
"This isn't any fun at all, this is all work
and no play. And that's why, at twenty, I
switched to tap dancing. It took me a
good five years to get down from the
clouds, because the whole concept of tap
dancing is down-into-the-earth, like a
tree—the opposite of ballet. Tap dancing
is a hybrid, and it is the only form of
dance indigenous to America that isn't
tribal Indian dancing.

20.

PLAYBOY: Who's your favorite male Seas
YOUNG: Sean Penn. He's good at what һе
does and he's not a bullshitter. Whether
or nor you like him, you get something
real instead of prefab.

EJ

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TURNAROUND

(continued [rom page 78)

nce and the speed—the four
around.

intelli
horsemen of t

DON'T BETON IT,

In the age of turr
riskier than a sure thing. Betting that
things will continue on their present
courses is high-
of nearly рен
create counter
and in the agc of tu
less than

Remember when oil was a sure thing?
ite supply, infinite demand. No way
the price could go anywhere but up.
This was what being said in the oil
patch ten years ago when sweet crude
was at $35 a barrel. Before the end of the
century it would hit $100, everyone said.
Now the p ound $20 and
bumper stickers on the pickups say,
Lord, please give us another oil embar-

trends
. Nothing is forever,
rnaround, forever is

ДЕ
|=
%

TECHN SHOT LIEFT

y this

go. I swear I won't piss it all awa
time”

And Japan was recession proof, IBM
could never go anywhere but up, lend-
ing money to Donald Trump and Third

World governments was risk free.

APRES MOL LE DELUGE

Some individuals are strong enough
to hold back turnaround all by them-
selves. But nobody lives forever.

e the Pope

e Deng Xiao]

e Fidel Castro

8

RETURN OF THE WILD.

wound does not favor monocul-
i Wild things
specially in the creas

come
wolves

the water holes of Florida golf cours
dangered, my ass. I'm going to
somebody.

“Of course 1 love you! Is just thal
you're two—or is И Ihree?—rungs below me on the
corporate organizational chart.”

SOME THINGS HAVE BEEN TURNED AROUND,

The telephone

SOME ARE STRUGG

Eastern Europe

- AND SOME ARE HOLDING OUT

e The CIA, The Cold War
son d'etre. But the agency seemed. well.
rprised by just about
event of the Cold W. ng its end.
Now the boys at Langley say the CIA
more l than ever. Observe the buz-
zards over Langley.

. Public edu

дап kids are eating his lunch, and it
things don't change, the only job open to
him will be cooking it for them. When
Chris Whittle proposed a modest little
network of competing private schools
and hired Benno Schmidt of Yale to run
it, the National Education Associati
lobby as powerful as the NRA) squ
like a stuck pig. Hark, it is the sound of
turnaround.

FED EX

It has been around for a while, so we
tend to take those little red-white-and-
blue trucks for granted. The overnight
mails have made literal turnaround pos-
sible, Busines in be do n a day. Lob-
5 go from Maine to Minneapolis
ne for lunch. A contract is out to the
coast tomorrow. Fed Ex did more than
move the mail. it raised expectations and
demonstrated that even the most stub-
born forms of gridlock can be broken.

as the inevitable next
ive to move and, some-
is just, well, too slow.

NOTHING IS FOREVER

In the age of turnaround, it is impossi-
ble 10 make predictions based strictly

on the way things are now. Ароса
prophe: best, usel
greenhouse енесі, the spread of hetero-

І AIDS, gridlock
proliferation of nucle:
lawyers—none of these evils is table,
no more than “progress,” which we all
once believed was our birthright. Things
change, sometimes even for the better.
But you shouldn't count on pro}
more than you should expect 5
curity to take care of you in your dotage.
Be a good animal and рау clos
10 the signs. Live for the short run be-
cause the long run is unknowable, and
“In the long run, we are all dead," as
1. M. Keynes said.

n Congress, the
and

STEVECONWAY

Z IPIE AN BOYS

VESTED INTEREST

unky conversational ties may have been the big thing last
season, but these days, talk has switched to another
menswear accessory: the vest. Available from virtually all of
the top designers—Gianni Versace, Donna Karan and Paul
Smith, to name a lew—this once conservative fashion item is now
the focal point of the holidays’ hippest looks. Trendy? Perhaps. But

The five slick styles shown here include, center: Multicolored si

the latest vests are also versatile, so you'll get more than your mon-
ey's worth in wear. In fact, all of the colorful styles shown here
team as well with a sports jacket and trousers as they do with a
T-shirt and jeans. Some, such as the leaf-patterned look by Gas-
par Saldanha, can even be wom in place of a cummerbund and
braces when going black-tie. How's that for a wise investment?

button silk vest with hand-painted faces on front, by Dunford White for Paul

Smith, about $500. Left, top to bottom: Four-button rayon vest with geometric- and line-pattern paneling, from Streets Ltd. Design Group, $60.
Multicolored four-button sand-washed silk vest with explorer motif, by Silk Club, $60. Right, top to bottom: Five-button vest with silk twill leaf-
pattern, by Dunnington, $145.

patterned front and satin back, by Gaspar Saldanha, about $170. Multicolored silk Jacquard vest with f

GRAPEVINE

Getting a Grip
on Karen
KAREN RUSSELL is a
dancer, in videos for
Billy Joel and Bon
Jovi, on TV and in
shows such as
Michael Jackson's
and Alice Coo-
per's tours. She
even danced her
way through a
Budweiser
commercial.
We'll two-step
with her any
time.

her husband,
singer Bobby
Brown,
WHITNEY
HOUSTON
expects to
produce her
magnum
opus, a new
baby, in the
spring. Until
then, Whitney
can be found
on the screen
in The Body-
guard, co-
starring Kevin
Costner.

A Fine Development
We supp:

Us possible that you haven't
heard Tennessee by ARRESTED DEVELOP-
MENT. 1f that's the case, get the LP 3 Years,
5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of... and
hear rap's brilliant future.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Fence
Who's popping gum and making sense? Singer JULIANA HATFIELD. Wil
solo debut, Hey Babe, the songwriter and singer of Blake Babies

her
going

for a harder edge. “There are only a handful of women who really rock,”
says Juliana. And she does.

Sitting Pretty
Does PAMELA RUNO
look familiar? She's
had feature roles on
TV in Cheers and Mur-
phy Brown and in
movies such as The
Marrying Man and
Ford Fairlane. Or
maybe you saw her on
MTV in the Beastie
Boys’ video. Pamela's
got a leg up on us.

Goes the
Distance
When a guy can
take a few years off,
come back with two
LPs, Human Touch
and lucky Town, go
on tour and get audi-
ences rocking for four
hours at à time and
keep his own energy
level high, he can only
be the Boss, BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN. It's the
glory days again.

Brown's Back

On her way to med school, DIANNA BROWN got
sidetracked by a pageant made into a pay-per-
view TV show, The Girls of Hawaiian Tropic. One
close look is all you'll need to appreciate
the carcer conflict. We do.

POTPOURRI

noe
cr rn»
ішішешісее

HOLIDAY WITH
THE HONEYMOONERS

Remember when it was the night before Christ-

mas at the Kramdens and Ralph had to hoc

his new bowling ball to buy Alice a presen
This show and vintage yuletide episodes from /
Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Twilight
Zone ave all available on CBS Video's Christmas
со Cards—four episodes that
each come in special wrapping with a greeting
card attached. The price: $9.95 each at gilt
shops and video stores.

TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT

lendar that you create yourself. Instead of see-
jg one of the Chippendale dancers up on Mriend’s wall,
can be you (or, better still, her picture on your wall). Here's
how it works. You send 1? of your favorite prints (no slides,
tives or copyrighted photos) to Love Shots at 21 West 74th St
Suite 2A, New York 10023, and you get back a custom
12-page calendar with a different photo featured each month, all
for $36, postpaid. You can also get a six-page calendar (two pho-
tos per page) for $33. And all shots will be returned

Love Shots is a

FOR SERIOUS SWINGERS ONLY

Fischer Travel Enterprises calls the $125,000
Global Golf Challenge the “ultimate gift for the
golfing couple,” and we understand wh
your money, the two of you get five night
unlimited greens time at Turnberry Isle
Florida, the Phoe: in Arizona, Mauna
Lani Bay in Hawaii, 'otland and
The Regent in Aust meals,
limos, golf clubs and much more pampering
Now the bad news: Airfare is extra. For more
information: 800-533-4040.

COLOR US RELAXED

Santa's elves aren't the only ones who get st
on. At least that's what the people
ration, 4460 Redwood Highway. S
, believe, To combat the in
ss Shield, an ove

that allow the w
red or yellow

Сой the Human
ts depression, green
ncourages creativity. The price for a
Suess Shield is $150, postpaid, including a stand. Call 800-156-
9887 to boost your spirits or color your thir

EXECUTIVE ETCHMANSHIP

The next time you're at a meeting and a
fellow biggie begins to doodle with his
Mont Blane fountain pen, one-up him
with a gold-plated Etch-A-Sketch. Yes, this

snazzy-looking executive model is just like
the one kids toy with, and its $30
postpaid, won't dent your bank ba

Place your order with Deutsch Luggage.
40 West Lake Stree

NEW BOND MARKET

EMI Records Group has released The Best
of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited
Edition, a wo-CD set that’s a tribute to
the James Bond films and their sound
tracks. Matt Monro's From Russia with
Love, Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger and, ot
course, the James Bond Theme, played by
John Barry, are featured, along with
several radio spots, plus 27 other

cuts. The price: about $30.

THE JIGSAW IS UP

Mer wine, women, song and
a good book, there are always
jigsaw puzzles to while away
the winter. But the latest from.
St. Clair Specialties ing
Heights, Michigan, aren't just
more pretty pictures to
assemble. These are houses,
castles and even the U.S. Capi-
tol in Washington, D.C., that
go up piece by рісес until
you've put together a scale
model that has width, height
and depth. The Victorian
house shown is $24. Other
styles include: old mansion,
$29; the Capitol, $38; and a
900-plus piece Bavarian castl
$43, all postpaid. Call 800-6
6789 to order

MORE BETTY PAG
If our tribute to Betty Page last
month whetted your interest in
owning an original photo of
one ol the world's most famous
pinups, contact Eric Kroll. A
photographer himself, Kroll
also represents the work of
Bunny Yeager, Peter Basch,
nd other photogra-
ers from the Fifties, Sixties
and Seventies. An 8^x 10”
black-and-white print of Page,
shot and signed by Yeager,
costs $200; x 14 is
$400; anda 1 0" version
gots for $600. Kroll can be
contacted at PO, Box 464,
Grand Central Station,
New York 10017. Two dollars
gets you an extensive list of
his latest pinup catalogs,

RETRO LITE

Scripto has introduced a lir
of disposable electric lighters
featuring vinta ichbook
cover art from the Thirties and
Forties. Fire up the one depict-
ing a bathing beauty in a tug-
ol-war with a Scottie while
lamenting “Young dog:
old uick" or the Big
ief Wahoo chewing
gum lighter, and sec if
you don't get a nostalgic rush,
even if you don't smoke. The
series will be limited, and ver-
sions with diflerent artwork
will be released periodically
throughout the уе ice:
about $2 in tobacco shops and
drugstores.

205

206

NEXT MONTH

LUSCIOUS LINGERIE

HIDDEN AGENDAS—THE BEAUTIFUL FIANCEE OF RYAN'S
BEST BUDDY WAS TEACHING HIM THE SECRET OF PICKING
UP WOMEN. BUT WHAT DID SHE WANT IN RETURN?—FIC-
TION BY MARSHALL BOSWELL

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE: THE FIRE IN AMERICAN
CITIES—WITH AN OUTRAGED EYE ON THE LOS ANGELES
RIOTS, VINCENT BUGLIOSI DISSECTS THE NATIONAL AF-
TERSHOCK AND THE FAILURE OF PROSECUTORS TO CURB
POLICE BRUTALITY

PAN AM 103 THE BOMBING REMAINS A TANGLE OF HYPE
AND DECEIT. PLAYBOY UNVEILS THE FINDINGS OF MORGAN
STRONG'S SIXMONTH INVESTIGATION INTO THE MYSTERY

БОР TILL YOU DROP—PLAYBOY'S HISTORY OF JAZZ AND
ROCK, PART FIVE, SALUTES CHARLIE PARKER, DIZZY GIL-
LESPIE AND MILES DAVIS, FATHERS OF THE MOST INNOVA-
TIVE ERA IN JAZZ—BY DAVID STANDISH

TIM ALLEN, THE SAWHORSE JOCKEY OF TV'S HOME IM-
PROVEMENT. SINGS THE PRAISES OF BRUTE STRENGTH,
BAD JUDGMENT AND THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE
IN A ROLLICKING 20 QUESTIONS.

SIZZUNG STEPH

DANNY DEVITO, HAIRDRESSER TURNED ACTOR-DIREC-
TOR, DELIVERS THE LOWDOWN ON MICHAEL DOUGLAS,
KATHLEEN TURNER, THE GREATEST SCENE FROM TAX! AND
HOW HE CAME TO MAKE HIS OSCAR CONTENDER, HOFFA,
IN A REVEALING PLAYBOY INTERVIEW

STEPHANIE SEYMOUR, VICTORIA'S SECRET AND SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED SUPERMODEL, ATTRACTS THE ELITE—THE
LIKES OF WARREN BEATTY AND AXL ROSE. YOU'LL SEE
WHY IN A SIZZLING PLAYBOY PICTORIAL

ROMANTIC COUPLES—SOME VERY HOT HOLLYWOOD
TWOSOMES RELAX IN LUXURIOUS STYLE FOR A VALEN-
TINE'S DAY FASHION SPECIAL

PLUS: OUR LUSCIOUS COLLECTION OF SPICY LINGERIE,
WITH SOME VIVID COMMENTARY FROM NOVELIST HARRY
CREWS; PLAYBOY'S AUTOMOTIVE REPORT—THE WORD. AS
ALWAYS—FEATURING OUR 1993 CAR OF THE YEAR: FOR-
MER LOS ANGELES POLICE CHIEF DARYL GATES STANDS.
UP FOR WOMEN COPS IN MANTRACK; THE LATEST ON
SONY'S BREAKTHROUGH MULTIMEDIA PLAYER: AND MUCH,
MUCH MORE

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking

By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal
Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight.

© Lorillard 1992

Kirgs 17 mg “tar', 13 mg ncoune av per cigarete by FTC Method

188 Blended Scotch Waly, 40% Aic. by V, € 1992 ingrid by The Робб Сорок, ft ша, NU

The holidays aren't the same without - ~

Justerini & Brooks since 1749