All's Hallow

If you needed evidence that people need something to take them away from themselves, last night should have been it. I gave in, put on a mask, and went to a party. I knew before I went. I've seen it all before many, many times. But people have always had the need. How many festival days were there in the middle ages? Royalty loved to dress up. I suggested, after reading a review of "George Being George" in the New York Times, that costumes were for orgies. That didn't go over well. Seems, though, that Plimpton attended a monthly orgy in Manhattan. There was a costume room and he liked to dress as a monk. Yes, it appears people like to switch identities from time to time.

I met George Plimpton at the Kennedy Library in Boston. It was the Hemingway First Fiction awards ceremony. I was invited, I think, due to a paper I had delivered at a Hemingway conference in Havana. That is the reason I could think of, anyway.  My dissertation director was just finishing a book on Updike and told me "to tell John hello." Great. Updike was talking to Plimpton, Patrick Hemingway, Annie Proulx, Caroline Kennedy, and others when I said, "Hello Mr. Updike. So and so told me to give you his regards when I saw you." Updike is a very tall man, and he suddenly drew himself up to his greatest height, looked down his terribly long nose at me as if I smelled, and turned on his heels. I had simply been removed from his vision. I was only upset because I was certain that Caroline Kennedy liked me (not knowing that she had JUST gotten married), and I thought that this was going to queer the deal. Suddenly, Plimpton, who was also very tall, put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Don't be upset. John's an asshole to everybody." He and I talked for a long while about a book I thought I wanted to put together about him and Peter Matthiessen and the others who made up the Tall Young Men in Paris in the 1950s. Plimpton liked the idea, but like most things in my life, I never brought it to fruition.

Plimpton told me several sexual stories about Updike, but he didn't mention the orgies in Manhattan. Good Old George.