It's all so <em>Valley of the Dolls</em>

by Bill Richardson on August 3rd, 2006 at 9:00 AM

A couple of seasons back, on the street, I crossed paths with a writer. We are casually acquainted. We talked. The conversation turned, as it will between people who are intermittently or unreliably salaried, to money. Each of us was broke. What to do to cobble together a smattering of cash? I told her that I had never had carnal knowledge of women and was thinking that maybe I could auction off my very ripe cherry””Memoirs of a Geisha–style””to some cash-encumbered curio collector, a biddy bidder who could tolerate the splints that'd be required to effect such a joining, given the al dente situation that would arise (not) were I ever so embroiled.

The woman to whom I disclosed this””a lesbian””revealed that my situation was hers. She, like me, had never made the beast with two backs with a member of the opposite sex. We marvelled at the chance that had brought us together, two broke virgins””consider the irony””on the corner of Union and Gore. (How apropos!) Maybe we could lubricate the cash flow by peddling tickets to our mutual deflowering, a one-time-only public display, perhaps undertaken with the engineering assistance of Cirque du Soleil. Ah, how we chuckled. Then she got back on her bike””I feared, just for a moment, for her intactedness””and I trudged on. We've rarely met since and certainly never spoken of our plan. Its trail has gone quite, quite cold.

The only reason it comes back to me now is that I've been concerned that nothing much is being done to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the publication of Jacqueline Susann's great classic, Valley of the Dolls. When I say “great classic” I'm not being snide. It's an altogether amazing piece of work. It caused a sensation when it appeared in 1966, but if you quiz people about it now, their memories or impressions are mostly of the film that appeared the following year and was only just released on DVD. It starred the soon-to-be butchered Sharon Tate, the Vancouver-born Barbara Parkins, and the fresh-from-prime-time Patty Duke, whose camp excesses as Neely O'Hara made her a gay icon, albeit a minor one, in a way that the wrestling scene with Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker never did. It's too bad, because the book is so much more complex and fraught than its ersatz adaptation. I'm doing my bit to keep it afloat by re-reading it, yet again, and it amazes me now, as it did the first or second time through, how often and how seemingly vituperatively the word faggot is tossed around. It's kind of thrilling, in a way, to see how much Susann””her characters, rather, though I suspect they're the agents of her own sentiments””loathed gay guys, seemingly for their degenerate habit of wasting themselves on each other rather than making the nozzle available to any Vulva that pulled up to the pump with the gauge stuck on Empty.

The two fuels that mostly drive the novel are sex and money. It's no wonder Valley of the Dolls leeched that street-corner conversation about using one to get the other from the folds of memory. Also, there's the terrific scene where the handsome Lyon Burke wrests the hymen from the previously frozen Anne Welles. “She clung to him. She didn't care about the hurt or discomfort””just to belong to this wonderful man was the greatest happiness she could ever know. When the pain came she clenched her teeth and made no sound.” (Note to self: come the hour, bring night guard.)

Valley of the Dolls is also hugely evocative of a time and place I wish I could have known: New York City just after World War II. All that optimism and opportunity! A time before Disney ruled Times Square!

My boyfriend and I were in Manhattan in June. One day, we had lunch in a little restaurant at the corner of 70th and Lexington. Who should arrive, looking very much like herself (if a tad stockier than one might have imagined), but Liza Minnelli.

“Oh my God,” we said, betraying our mutual gift for the original utterance in shared and febrile moments. “It's Liza Minnelli.”

It was clear she was a regular. There was much air kissing with the staff. She downed two huge Diet Cokes in about two minutes, did some more air kissing, then made to leave. On her way out, she looked over at our table””we were the only other patrons in the place””and smiled. We smiled back, in a detached and decorous northern way””you look familiar, but we're not sure why, maybe you once worked at Tim Hortons?””and forced our eyes back to the soup.

Dr. Squander to emergency! Dr. Squander to emergency! This is a moment that will make it impossible for me ever to sing “Non, je ne regrette rien” with anything like conviction. Had we but spurned minestrone for Minnelli, had we not gone all Canadian on her, she would no doubt have stopped for a moment and allowed us to lick her up one side and down the other. I could have steered the conversation into the Valley; could have asked about how her mother felt being the model for Neely O'Hara; could have chewed on the postmodern weirdness of Judy being cast in the film as Helen Lawson, and wrung from her the inside story about how Ms. Garland lasted a week on the set before she was replaced by Susan Hayward. I could have spoken to her about my money-making venture as a deflower vendor. As someone who, like her ma before her, has demonstrated a penchant for bedding gay guys, she might have had some, uh, tips. All that could have happened had I but stood and trilled, “Liza!”

But even if the deference to which I'm bred hadn't got in the way, standing would have been an embarrassment. I had such a schoolboy chubby. I like to think that Jacqueline Susann might have looked up from hell at that moment. I think she'd have been proud. I think she might have thought “Nice work, faggot. There's hope for you yet.”