[Another installment in the ongoing true life adventures of Periphery Man, who has had myriad peculiar encounters with celebrities while not being one himself.]
In the early '80s in New York City, I wed a woman named Sue. As a freelance writer married to a just-relocated theater manager, we were poor, but not starving: While I started churning out a series of romance novels under a female nom de plume, Sue worked at the original Dean & DeLuca’s in Soho. We didn't have too many dinners out, but we had world-class gourmet sun-dried tomatoes at home.
One of Sue's co-workers, soon a close friend and complicit in the occasional um, borrowing of imported extra-virgin olive oil and the like, was Jamie Harrison, daughter of Jim, himself as famed a gourmet as he was a master of the western literary novel. One summer Jamie (then a beginning, now a successful novelist) invited us to visit her and her family in Montana.
We drove from the airport up to their place in a rent-a-heap so trashed that we expected to lift its rusty hood and discover a caged couple of pedal-pushing squirrels. This dyed-in-the-cardigan city boy was wearing too tight, just bought blue jeans, because I’d suddenly realized I didn’t own a pair. How could I greet Jim Harrison wearing my usual urban pleated pants over my loafers? Might as well hang a ‘Wussy NYC intellectual’ sign from my belt.
I was profoundly uncomfortable, physically and psychically, en route to meeting this mythic figure whose prose spoke of riding a Percheron through the chaparral on the arroyo (I’m sorry, the what? Through the where, now?). He would surely see by my outfit that I was no cowboy. So Sue and I were bickering most of the way, punctuated by our mobile junk-pile’s burps of auto-indigestion. By the time we’d come to the end of Jamie’s directions, we were in full marital fight mode, which only made me more anxious. “Are we going to be okay?” I asked my wife. “Yeah,” she said, “although it would be even better if I could pretend I’d never met you.”
We pulled into the driveway of the Harrisons’ appropriately isolated, rustic ranch house. I saw the hulking form of the great man trundle toward us with a greasy-looking paper bag in his mitts. No sooner had I climbed out of our heap than he thrust it under my face, grinning, with a cry of “Fish!” I passed my first test of manliness by not reeling back from the bag’s stench, and made a sound of savvy appreciation. Intending to make a bouillabaisse for dinner, Harrison had just caught this batch, perhaps by diving into treacherous whitewater and grabbing the trout with his bare hands.
Inside the house the Harrisons did their best to put their guests at ease, though for me ease was impossible. Anyone who’s been married knows that frustrating, frightening phenomenon: embarking on a high-stakes social mission when you’ve lost your most trusted ally - and horribly, you and your mate have to fake a united front.
For the first hour it was touch and go. But the rapport between Sue and Jamie, the calm exuded by gracious beauty Linda, Jamie's mom, and Jim's own lurching garrulousness diffused our tensions - as did generous glasses of wine from what he gleefully referred to as “the Warner Brothers cellar” (he’d sold some early works to that studio for a small fortune). Soon other guests were arriving to fill in the gaps.
By nightfall, Jim's bouillabaisse bubbled and steamed up the kitchen like a benign warlock’s cauldron stew, with a party in full, boisterous swing. Somewhere in the midst of this, Sue and I came face to face in a quiet corner of the living room, alone for the first time since our rancorous arrival. The olive branch I proffered came like second nature to rom-com maven me, whose go-to question in such circumstances is: What would Cary Grant do? Remembering Sue’s parting shot in the car, I feigned flirtatious intrigue. “I'm sorry, have we met?”
“Sue,” she said, extending her hand. I shook it and introduced myself, asking: “So… how do you know our hosts?” I was rewarded with a familiar sparkle reappearing in her eyes and her little snort of a laugh. “Actually, I’m a friend of Jamie’s from New York,” she said, and just then Jamie called her away.
In the movie version, we’d have stayed in character all night. In real life we fell back into our real roles. After all, we just wanted to enjoy where we were. Jim Harrison had a colorful good-time-loving group of friends, and the stew was stupendous. Buoyed by detente with that cute woman named Sue and various combinations of controlled substances, once I got comfortable with Jim's wall-eyed gaze ("My left eye is blind and jogs like/a milky sparrow in its socket") and accepted the fact that he really didn't care about either my literary or agricultural pedigree, I even got to share a few laughs with our host.
The rest of the night is a blur in happily addled remembrance. I do clearly recall that as Jamie drove Sue and I to the guest cabin in the moonlight, I was standing up through the sunroof of her car, yelling and nearly getting decapitated by a tree branch as Sue and Jamie shrieked and laughed at me. I believe there was awesome makeup sex. And that's how Cary Grant saved my first marriage.
Though in fact, it was Jim Harrison's fish.
Cool story. Thanks for sharing. I think everyone can relate to putting on a front when in the presence of strangers. Usually this comes in the form of dealing with family, maybe over the holidays. At least your story had a happy ending. ;0 - E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Posted by: E.C. Henry | October 23, 2011 at 06:41 PM
EC: Like I said, it had a happy ending... for the moment.
Posted by: mernitman | October 25, 2011 at 06:34 PM
What a great story!
Posted by: Barbara | October 28, 2011 at 11:47 AM
Barbara: And despite what's been left out of it... non-fiction!
Posted by: mernitman | October 31, 2011 at 07:32 AM
Ah, but fiction or non, this story is surely a "Periphery Man" best.
So, how about giving us the movie, about ...
A male Romance Writer who comes in from the "periphery" (and his "female nom de plume" day job) to get his own-name best seller story ("Under The Influence"), and by conquering the Wild West, wins back the girl of his (then) dreams.
Great story for these austerity times - to remind us all that humour and romance are all we REALLY need in life!
Posted by: Joanna Farnsworth | November 04, 2011 at 07:40 AM
Joanna: Well, I like the setup... And I once did a kind of variation on this, in very first spec I came out to Los Angeles with... Which now you've got me thinking about again, actually - so thanks (I think)!
Posted by: mernitman | November 05, 2011 at 07:16 PM
Keep thinking on that spec. It's Hollywood worthy.
It has that core of universal truth. You know, what I call the "BE" elements. About being an outsider or insider. Being on the periphery or at the centre. Being in the wings or centre stage. Ego centric or others centric. Celebrity or self.
Even better, it's Romancing The Stone with a gender twist. It's JOE Wilder, crying over his female nom de plume's bodice ripper, who gets the call to go west to pitch as ghost-writer for Jim, and ends up with his first own-name bestseller romance.
Mr Periphery becomes a centrifugal force. Romantic fantasist becomes ideal romantic. Stone meets Tootsie meets City Slickers.
Great stuff, what? Go for it.
Posted by: Joanna Farnsworth | November 10, 2011 at 03:27 AM
Your notion to ask yourself "What would Cary Grant do?" is the best bit of advice for males I have ever heard. I shall be spreading this advice to every male I come across for the foreseeable future. Thank you!
Posted by: Elizabeth Ditty | November 11, 2011 at 06:25 AM
Joanna: If you were a studio, I'd have an outline ready for you by Monday... But for now I'll have to add this worthy notion to the small pile of same, as I'm slaving away on my current project. "Romancing the West," eh? Something to look forward to.
Elizabeth: Glad you find it useful - it's often worked for me. Meanwhile: you seem to have had a riproaring time at the Austin festival. Nice pics.
Posted by: mernitman | November 11, 2011 at 06:32 AM
Wish I were a studio.
Just for you I'd be Fox, resurrecting the attitudinal structures of 20th Century Hits like "Stone" into new story packaging.
Yours has all the elements I'd be looking for, and I know I could rely on you to deliver it.
Now all we need is Robert Zemeckis.
Posted by: Joanna Farnsworth | November 16, 2011 at 10:29 AM