GROWING UP WITH GANGSTERS – Page 7 – LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

THE CHELSEA AND THE COPA

January 24th, 2012

The first twenty-four hours. I stepped out of the cab and into the froth of a seasonally warm Saturday night Halloween crowd. The Chelsea Hotel Bell Captain trotted over to greet me.

“I’ll get those.” He grabbed the bag.

“You go inside.”

The pathway to the lobby entrance was red carpeted; a very old skeletal one that had been stepped on by plaque famous artists, writers, and bohemian debutantes. The Chelsea was built in 1883 as an apartment house. The neighborhood of 7^th and 23rd Street used to be the theatre district. The theatre crowd was replaced by the literati, and more recently by film and television celebrity. The hotel is crumbling with novelettes. Even though it has recently been restored, it has the feel of a craggy lady of the street.

The lobby was crusading with costumed ready to party extras. My traveling ensemble and exhausted expression didn’t fit into the scene. I needed to eat, drink, and take off my coat. The desk clerk was very young,

“Your in Room 624–you’ll like the room, it’s a really nice one. Here’s the key.” When I opened the door, my vision parachuted as if the room was expanding the closer I got. It looked staged rather than decorated: minimal pieces, colors that drew the eye in, and nothing to get in the way of feeling insignificant. The walls were bare and the drapes partially opened. I pulled them back to see the city; a jagged puzzle of gray brick buildings staring back at me. I watched the faint silhouette of people moving behind the glass and suddenly felt very alone and uncertain. In haste I added a smudge of lipstick and left the room. The clerk looked up as I came out of the elevator,

“You like the room?” I nodded a bit falsely, because I wasn’t sure I really liked it. The room had more to say to me.

“Where is the closest Bistro?”

“Next door.”

I stepped across the red carpet and into the restaurant. At that moment I landed in Manhattan; the gravity sucked me down into a red leather cushioned booth. Then I remembered why I was here, the next day was the Copa reunion.

Twenty-four hours later Room 624 was mine. Victor, one of three Chelsea staff doorman who zapped formality with the grace of a king met me at the entrance. He had time to wave to half a dozen people passing by, hail a taxi from the middle of 23rd street, open the door for a guest, and still talk to me.
“Hey! How you doing today?”
” I’m rested and on my way now.” A young girl stepped out of the lobby.

“Hi honey,” Victor said,” Where areyou going? I worry about you.”
“Shopping,” she answered unconvincingly. “I like your outfit,” she said to me.
“Thank you. I’m going to an event I’ve waited for a very long time.”
“Oh yea, where to?” she asked.
“Have you heard of the Copa?”
”Sure, the Copacabana.” Victor started to hum the lyrics from the song and I dug out the book from my purse.

“I’m going to a Copa reunion–my mother danced there in the 40s.”

They looked at the photographs of the original Copa for the first time. New Yorkers will stop anything for New York anecdotes, especially history. Moments later the cab pulled up and I waved good-bye. I sat in the taxi and thought about my mother. She was seated next to me; an imaginary yet distinct vision that kept returning.
The moment I walked into the Copafest reception room a voice called out, “Louellen!” It was Kris, the author of the book. We embraced as our first meeting converged with written correspondence over the last year. The Copa dancers inched closer and I was anointed with their acceptance and love.

“This is them–they met at the Copa,” I said and showed them the photograph I had brought. One woman examined the photo and turned to me, I recognize him,” and she pointed to my father.

“And I recognize the man next to him.” It was someone I’d never been able to identify.

“Yep, I knew them. Your mother was beautiful, she was here before me.” Terri Stevens took my hand in hers and led me to the place where she was seated.
“What did you say your mother’s name was?”
“Lucille Casey.”
“Girls-girls! Come over here and meet Lucille Casey’s daughter.” Engulfed in their presence for the next five hours, I had time to talk with each one. I’d written about these women in fictional detail eighteen years ago. Now it was there turn to talk.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

THE SIEGEL SMILEY LEGACY

January 24th, 2012

When I was eleven, our home burnt to the ground in the Bel Air fire, and everything we owned burned to ash. Shortly after my mother moved us to an apartment in Brentwood, a mammoth carton arrived and was placed in the center of the living room. My mother cut it open and urged me to look inside. I sat cross-legged on the avocado green carpeting, and discovered bundles of garments; Bermuda shorts, blouses, sweaters, and shirts.

I quickly shed my worn trousers and stepped into a new outfit, dancing about as I zipped myself in. My mother watched, and echoed my childish yelps of elation.

“Mommy, who are these from?”

“They’re from your Aunt Millicent.”

“Who is she? I don’t remember her.”

“You were a little girl. She loves you very much.”

Years later, my father, Allen Smiley, called and told me to come over to his apartment in Hollywood.

“Why Dad?”

“Millicent is coming by; I told you she moved here, didn’t I?”

I’d learned Millicent was Benjamin Siegel’s daughter, and Ben was my father’s best friend. Dad was sitting on the same chintz covered sofa the night Ben was murdered.

“You mean Ben Siegel’s daughter?”

“Don’t refer to her that way ever again; do you hear me? She is Aunt Millicent to you.”

When my father answered the door, I watched as they embraced. Millicent had tears in her eyes. She walked over to me, and took my hand. I looked into her swimming pool blue eyes and felt as if I was drowning. She sat on the edge of the sofa and lit a long brown Sherman cigarette. I studied her frosted white nails, the way she crossed her legs at the ankles, her platinum blonde hair, and the way her bangs draped over one eye. What impressed me most was her voice; like a child’s whisper, her tone was delicate as a rose petal.

I spent the rest of that afternoon memorizing her behavior. She emanated composure and a reserve that distanced her from uninvited intrusion.

Over the next few years, Millicent and I were joined through my father’s arrangements, but I was never alone with her. When he died in 1982, she was one of only three friends at his memorial service.

As the years passed, and my tattered address books were replaced with new ones, I lost Millicent’s phone number. I had been researching my father’s life in organized crime, and had gained an understanding of my father’s bond with Ben Siegel. My discoveries were adapted into a memoir and recently into a film script about growing up with gangsters. During this time, I had reconnected with several of Dad’s inner-circle, but Millicent was underground, and now I understood why.

Last year I received an email from Cynthia Duncan, Meyer Lansky’s step-granddaughter. She told me about Jay Bloom, the man behind the Las Vegas Mob Experience, a state of the art museum that will take visitors into the personal histories of Las Vegas gangsters. Cynthia contributed her significant collection of Meyer Lansky memorabilia, and assured me Jay was paying tribute to the historical narrative of these men by using relatives rather than government and media sources. She wanted me to be involved.

Despite my apprehensions about the debasing and one-sided publicity that characteristically surrounds gangster history, I contacted Jay. In his return note, he invited me to participate, and added, “Millicent would like to contact you.”

A month later I was seated in Jay’s office waiting for Millicent. When she walked in, I stood to embrace her, and this time the tears were in my eyes.

Millicent’s voice was unchanged and so was her regal posture. “Our fathers were best friends, attached at the hip. Your Dad was at the house all the time. I’ll never forget when he and my mother met me at the train station to tell us about my father’s… death. Smiley was very good to us. My mother adored him too.”

Jay took me on a tour of the collection warehouse, and the history I’d read about unfolded before my eyes. The preview room was like a family room to me, because some of the men had been my father’s lifelong friends and protectors. I stopped in front of the Ben Siegel display case and saw an object that was very familiar.

“My father has the identical ivory figurine of an Asian woman. I still have it.” So much of their veiled history was exposed; between these two men was a brotherly bond that transcended their passing and was even evident in their shared taste in furnishings.

Jay showed me a layout of the Mob Experience in progress. I turned to him and asked, “Is it too late to include my father? All the rooms are assigned.”

“Millicent and I already spoke about it. She wants your Dad in Ben’s room.”

After I returned home, Millicent and I talked on the phone.

“Your father belongs in my Dad’s room. They’ll just have to make Mickey Cohen’s room smaller.”

“My father hated Mickey,” I said.

“So did mine! When are you coming back? I’ll kill you if you don’t become part of this.”

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

MY FATHER, THE GENTLE GANGSTER

January 18th, 2012

This is an excerpt from the memoir I’ve been working on many years. The first manuscript was 800 pages; about three of them were worth reading. The book mutated about 2000 times.

“What’s it like knowing your father is a gangster? Did you know when you were a teenager? Did your father kill anyone? Did you ever meet Bugsy? Aren’t you afraid of his friends? You know they kill people.”

I was thirteen years old when my best friend told me my father was a gangster. She didn’t mean any harm. We told each other everything. We were standing in the Brentwood Pharmacy one day in 1966, and we turned the book rack around until we found ”The Green Felt Jungle.”

“That’s the book, let me look first and see what it says.” She whispered. I waited while she flipped trough the pages.

“Oh my God, there he is,” she said grasping my shoulders. We hunched over the book and read the description of my father beneath his photograph.

“Allen Smiley was the only witness to the murder of Bugsy Siegel.”

“What does that mean, who is Bugsy Siegel?” I asked.

“Shush, not so loud, I’m afraid to tell you this Luellen, it’s awful. I don’t believe it. “

“What is it? Tell me.”

“Bugsy Siegel was a gangster, he killed people. Your father was his friend.”

I don’t think I should read this, “I said replacing the book on the rack.

“Don’t tell your father I told you,” she warned.

“Why not?”

“My mother told me not to tell you, swear to me you won’t tell your father.”

“I swear, come on let’s go.”

My father called himself Allen Smiley. The FBI tagged him “armed and dangerous.” The Department of Justice referred to him as the “Russian Jew.” I called him Daddy. e had salty sea blue eyes blurred by all the storms he’d seen. When I said something funny, his eyes crystallized and flattened like glass, smoothing out the bad memories. He was always a different color, dressed in perfectly matched shades of pink, silver and blue. My small child eyes rested cheerfully on his silk ties, a collage of jewel tones. The feel of his fabric was soft like blankets. He was very interesting to look at when I was a child and open to all this detail.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

AFTER MY FATHER DIED.. I DROVE TO DEL MAR, CA

January 14th, 2012

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — DEL MAR BEACH, CA.

: Image via Wikipedia

Dreams we all have; comfort, love, and health, peak through the brown stalked winter trees, through the blinding white cloud cover pushing through icy winds, and snow storms that settle on the lonely sidewalk, and rise to my drape-less window.

On such a Saturday, I am slacking on the downstairs sofa with a tray of coffee, and all that separates me from my dreams is the rustle of fear. The windows reflect snippets of promising outcomes to developing friendships, travel, a script in progress, and properties on the edge of default. Overlapping these is a mirage of life experiences tucked into memory prescriptions you take on a stormy day. A relic of my history rises, and reminds me of the fear I once broke through.

It was 1982, and I was poised on a terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Venice Beach. It was March, the month my father died, and I stared at the horizon at dusk, and imagined my freedom taking flight. Where would I go? Without his presence in Los Angeles, and my sister who had already moved to New York, I was terribly alone. The replacement came in summer flings, with men who had crossed my path; a photographer, a New Jersey computer technician with a brassy voice and Joe Pesci humor, and every few days, Kenny, a former boyfriend, dropped by to smoke his pipe of philosophy and blow long-winded ideas on where I should move.

“I really want to move to Canada.” I said.

“For what? To go ice-skating?” He said between puffs.

“I have family in Vancouver.”

“What family? You’re an orphan now.”

“I am not. I have cousins in Vancouver. My father’s nephews.”

“Oh Yea. When was the last time you saw them?”

“When I was twelve.”

“Terrific! That’s a solid-ass plan. So what will you do in Canada?”

“Get a job in real estate.”

“Lue! Wake-up. You can’t get work in Canada unless you’re a citizen. Forget that idea. You’re better off staying here; look where you are; Santa Monica, the beach at your feet. Are you crazy?”

“I don’t belong here any longer.”

“You don’t belong to anywhere; what you need is to stop trying to be a big-shot like your father.”

“I am not.”

“When was the last time you left the country; when you were eighteen? Go to Rio, you’ll have the time of your life, or Italy, or Greece–it doesn’t matter. Just take the chance and see how you land on your feet. You’re a dreamer, it’s about time you made one of your dreams come true.”

In the next few weeks, I met with Larry, my boss, who was liquidating his real estate portfolio to retire at forty-five years old. Larry wasn’t just an investment visionary; he was passionate about social, political, medical, scientific and human interests. He was a genius.

“You can stay here another year–I’ll find something for you to do, but you’ll be bored.” Larry told me.

“Larry, I don’t know where to go.” I wiped a tear. He ignored it.

“You have to get out of LA. You’ll never meet anyone here. You think you’ll be introduced to someone riding up and down the elevator in Century City. I’ve spent a lot of time in Del Mar, and Rancho Santa Fe. They’re nice people. You have a chance there, go down and spend a few days and tell me what you think. I’ll help you. Now, stop crying. “

I drove down in Dad’s black El Dorado, and parked at Del Mar Beach right next to the life guard station at the Poseidon Restaurant. I opened my suitcase, took out a bathing suit and went into the beach bathroom. The tile was wet and smelled of seaweed and salt. I walked barefoot down to the beach. It was early spring, the sand was unmarked. A few surfers jogged past me, blonde and bronzed like the Beach Boys. I followed them down to the seashore. In every direction, there was this untouched canvas of light and color; even the beach houses retained their natural sandy simplicity.

After I swam in the ocean, I went back to the bathroom, changed into dry clothes and walked into town. A man with a beard rode past me on a horse and waved. I picked up a Reader and read the rental advertisements on the patio of Carlos n Charlie’s, corner café. A roommate advertisement caught my eye; “Roommate Wanted to Share large two bedroom overlooking Torrey Pines Reserve.” I called and a man who went by the name of Smokey answered the phone. He invited me to come by for a look. His voice was predominantly ranch friendly, so I took a drive over. It did occur to me on the drive that I was taking that chance Ken was blowing in my ear, and I was listening to Larry who told me that people in San Diego were different.

“Hi, I’m Smokey. Come in—would you like something to drink? Too early for cocktails, unless you want one.”

“No thanks. How long have you lived here?”

His eyes were animal alert, his face tanned and his hair cut short but made to look long. His smile was unfiltered with hidden motives, and he was bull-legged.

”I moved from Pittsburgh; I’ll never go back except to see my folks. This is paradise. Don’t you think? I’ve lived her two years. I rent out one room, because I hate full time work. I’m more entrepreneurial. You don’t have to worry about my motives. I have a girl-friend, and I’m in love with her. She doesn’t stay here. I go to her house. You’ll have your space, and if you need a friend I’m here. Come out on the balcony.”

I followed Smokey and we stood on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and marshlands of the reserve. To the west, the ocean and the stump of Torrey Pines Mountain.

“Wait till sunset; you’ll never want to leave. Come look at your room. I can help you move if you want.”

The room was downstairs, his upstairs, and a stairway of trust in between.

“I’ll take it. When can I move-in?”

“Whenever you wish.”

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

THE ST REGIS, THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, AND BOBBY SHORT

January 11th, 2012

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I was about twenty-three at the time, living in one of the blandest bachelor apartments in Westwood, working in an office cubicle, and daydreaming about places in Travel & Leisure magazine. My father called one afternoon with a no reply command to come to his apartment.

“I have something to discuss with you.” Growing up with gangsters involves many face-to-face meetings because the telephones are tapped. It is of no consequence what I happen to be doing at 7:00 PM that night– if Dad has something to discuss, we have to meet in person.

“What about?” I ask.

“What did I say? Didn’t I say we have to discuss it here?”

In those years, my head was waxed with false perceptions that Daddy was what Daddy told me – in the oil business. It did not occur to me that all those meetings at his apartment, in restaurants and parks were because he did not want any uninvited listeners from the FBI or other government agency.

After clearing my passage with the receptionist, I rode up the elevator to his Century City Park apartment. After peaking through the peephole, and asking if I was alone, he opened the door. I greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, and he asked, what kind of out fit is that. My attire on any given occasion should be a colorful coordinated double-breasted pants suit.

“I have some zucchini and rice in the refrigerator –will you make your old dad that vegetable dish? My father didn’t cook anything beyond boiled eggs, and broiled fish. I nodded and started for the kitchen.

“Wait a second, I’m not through talking–sit down. Well– I’m finally able to do what I’ve wanted to do for some time. It hasn’t been possible until now; I’m sending you to New York. Can you take a week off work?”

“I will of course-but aren’t you going?

“No. I’ve lived New York in the best years and wouldn’t go back if you paid me a million dollars.

‘Why?”

“Why? Because I did it all, and now it’s your turn.” I moved closer to him on the couch so I could wrap my arms around and kiss his cheek.

“The first thing you have to do is get a new outfit. You won’t go to Manhattan in those jeans-for crying out loud. You’re staying at the St. Regis Hotel… I have it arranged, the guy owes me a favor and I had a bit of a windfall this month. Your mother and I stayed there. ”

“When? Where is the St. Regis?”

“Don’t interrupt-don’t you think I know where to send you? As I was saying, I booked a week for you. Now, I have it all set-up. You’ll have a driver, and do not get into a cab or any other car, you stay with the driver I hired, do you hear me Luellen?”

“Can’t I walk?

“You can walk after he takes you to the places you want to go. Do not argue with me, I know what I’m doing. You’re just a little naïve about New York. Anything can happen; it’s a jungle and you’re little red-riding hood. A fella will walk pass you on the street, clip your purse, and you’ll never know, a guy will carry your bag for you, and you’ll never see it again.”

The year was 1978, but I cannot remember which month. It was still cold enough to wear the mink coat he had given me for this occasion. I wrapped that mink around me everyday for a week. The Hotel Valet was familiar with the name Smiley, as was the hotel manager and the driver he hired was a double agent. He was also a bodyguard. The black Lincoln continental never left my sight.

The St. Regis is on West 55th, a few short blocks from Tiffany’s. That was my destination of choice, not for the diamonds, but a glimmer of where Audrey Hepburn sipped coffee and nibbled on a doughnut. I didn’t really care where the driver led me; I was visually climaxing on the traffic cops, the horses in central park, the side walkers streaming in one band as if all connected, horns blaring, lights flashing and the hi-rise silhouettes against slices of the sky.

My father expected me to have lunch at the World Trade Center, dinner at La Cirque, and in between long drives through Little Italy, Central Park, and Riverside Drive. My breath stopped when we were launched into the sky to have lunch at Windows on the World. While sipping my first Manhattan the city spun me around and for the first time I realized I was a real nobody-that I’d been no where– if I hadn’t been to Manhattan, and the impression cut off my short tail of confidence. The psychological departure that turned me from Daddy’s little girl into Luellen the woman will continue.

a continuation.

Windows on the World for anyone who has not been there supplied even the sourest puss, a great big slice of hope, because you were on the same level as the tallest building.

I wish I would have saved the matches or the napkins from that day. The fact that my father and Bobby Short are both gone, the World Trade Center is gone, and I am still a nobody amplifies the memory.

The night I went to see Bobby Short I was seated at a table, and while I tried to inhale the glitterati of the evenings crowd, I was ineffectually blowing cigarette smoke into the thick stream of smoke lingering above our heads. The room was New York jammed every table a colorful mixture of cocktails, handbags, and beautiful arms adorned with strands of gold. I had been on the town in Hollywood, seen movie stars up close, and dined with them. This crowd generated more mystery. Their body language was fluid; they did not purposely draw attention, because they were not there to be discovered by Lefty Lazar, or Robert Altman.

Bobby Short was a nightclub piano player after everyone went home. You could picture him sitting at the piano, as you would Will Rogers on his horse, long after the image was diluted. His eyes tap-danced with the eyes of the audience; they were all together. I was young, naïve and impressionable, and that is why my father sent me so I would get the impression.

During the day we were driven around by the tight lipped body guard, and we watched New York. It wasn’t until we met Al Davis (not the Raiders Owner) but a man who owned a distillery in Kentucky and liked my father enough to buy him a new Cadillac. Dad told us we were to meet Al at the Carlyle for Sunday Brunch. There is a stage like ambiance walking on 5^th Avenue on a Sunday in New York. New Yorkers dress for a walk and I was again impressed at how sophisticated everyone looked so early in the morning.

Al Davis brought along a tall good looking man, that reminded me of a run around guy; he does everything he’s told and is of good temperament until somebody insults his boss. He poured Champagne, made phone calls, and Al Davis was WC Fields liquored by the time the eggs benedict arrived. He was not only a prankster, and a tease, he was bloated with years of drink and laughter, and anything else was just not worth his time. Knowing that my father was not going to walk in and surprise us, allowed us to feel slightly deserving of fanning that freedom. Al’s associate moved closer to me, and taunted my feminine prowess, which until that particular day had not been taunted by any friend of my father’s. It was then that I felt like a woman in New York. I have not felt that particular brand of womanliness since. No offense to any other gentlemen that spoiled me on occasion. It was that Sunday in New York, sitting in a booth, with worldly older men that made the lasting impression my father didn’t anticipate. During the brunch Al kept repeating, “ Don’t tell your father, he’ll have me shot.”

Several weeks later Al and his friend were in town and asked me to join them at a nightclub for dinner. Was I to tell my father, or just go along. I decided to go. We ended up going to Pip’s, an exclusive night club in West Hollywood. That evening, I tossed my adolescence around and swirled on the dance floor with frightening vulnerability. I didn’t get home until very late. The next day, my father called.

“ What time did you get home?”

“ I went out with Al Davis, he kept me there.”

“ I know where you were, and I know who you were with, and everything else you do. Don’t you ever accept an invitation from one of my friends unless I am with you! What kind of idiot are you? Haven’t I taught you anything? I cannot be responsible for a guy like Davis if I’m not there! I’m too upset to look at you; don’t bother coming to see me. ”

I returned to the Carlyle one more time to see Bobby Short, but I have never enjoyed a more outrageously mischievous Sunday in New York like that day with Al Davis.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

THE SHOVEL OF TRUTH

January 4th, 2012

It seems once a month; I am jarred into this part of my family history. Just last week, a woman emailed me information she pulled off a website that I’d never seen. There in the document, was a story about my mother and father.

I began my research fourteen years ago. It started with what I had, one of my father’s books; “The Mark Hellinger Story.” I leafed through the index and there was my father’s name along with Ben Siegel’s. According to the biographer, my father visited Mark at his home the night before he died. Mark had stood up in court for my father and Ben at one of their hearings. He was fond of Ben, like so many people were, that aren’t here to tell their story.

After reading the book I rented, The Roaring Twenties, written by Mark, and from there the connections, relationships, and characters began to leap out from all directions. I submerged myself in history and photocopied pictures of my father’s movie star friends, George Raft, Eddie Cantor, Clark Gable, and his gangsters friends. I found photographs of the nightclubs he frequented, the Copacabana, El Morocco, and Ciro’s and nightclubs that he referred to in his mysterious conversations. I made a collage of the pictures and posted them board above my desk. I played Tommy Dorsey records while I wrote. This microcosm of life that was created, allowed me to listen to the whispers and discover the secrets.

I dug into my father’s history without knowing how deep I had to go, or what shattering evidence would cross my path. In my heart I felt this was crossing a spiritual bridge to my parents. The flip side was a gripping torment, tied to my prying mind. I needed to break into the files in order to break my silence, and discover real people, not glamorized stereotypes that fit into the category of Copa dancer and gangster. No matter what I uncovered, I always knew it would be ambiguous, and controversial. I did not expect to find a record of murder, dope peddling, and prostitution. I believed that his crimes were around the race track, and in gambling partnerships. Even so, I could never understand the similarities we shared, unless I knew them as people. Though I have not rebelled against authority as my father did, I‘m not a team player, I resist authority, and I don’t like waiting in lines.

I had to reinvent my mother through the subconscious. I skated over thin ice trying to set her truth apart, from what I had invented, dreamed, or had been told. I listened to Judy Garland’s recordings, and premonitions surfaced, of how my mother loved Judy, how it felt to be under the spot lights of MGM, and dancing in ginger bread musicals while her own life was draped with film noir drama.

I studied my mother’s face in all her films, rewinding and stopping the tape, as if she might suddenly return my glance. She had dancing and background shots in the musicals produced by Arthur Freed. I remembered dad talking about Arthur, and how prestigious it was to be in his department.

When I discovered the Museum of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, I went down and filled out a slip of paper with my mother’s name on it and waited for my number to be called. I felt something like a mother discovering her child’s first triumph. They handed me a large perfectly stainless manila envelope, and a pair of latex gloves to handle the file. I had to look through it in front of a clerk.

“That’s my mother,” I proclaimed. He blinked and returned his attention to a memo pad. Inside the envelope were black and while glossy studio photographs, press releases, and studio biographies of my mother. The woman who pressed my clothes, washed my hair, and made my tuna sandwiches. There she was in front of the train, for Meet Me in St. Louis, and a promotional photograph in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, dated 1947. That was the year Ben was shot. I looked further to find more clues. I needed to know where she was the night Ben was murdered. Maybe she was on location when it happened. Maybe she was in New York at the opening of the film. I could not place her on June 20, the day Ben was murdered. I imagined my father called her and told her the news. The marriage plans were postponed, their engagement suspended. My father had to get out of town.

I spent everyday picking through the myths I’d heard and read. I heard a clear chord of scorn, for exposing family secrets, “It’s nobody’s business what goes on in our family, don’t discuss our family with anyone, Do You Hear Me!” I must have heard that a thousand times.

I began to dig with an iron shovel. I asked every question I wasn’t supposed to ask, and preyed into every sector of their life. I wanted to know about his childhood, where he grew up, and why he left home when he was thirteen years old. Who were my grandparents, and why didn’t he talk about them. How did he meet Ben Siegel and Johnny Roselli, and when did he cross over into the rackets?

I contacted historians, archivists, judges, attorneys, Police Chiefs, FBI agents, authors and reporters across the United States. He always said, “Reporters can destroy your life overnight.” And here I was, uncovering what he had sheltered all his life.

I wrote to the INS in WDC and asked for their assistance. Six months later I received a letter from the INS in Los Angeles. They acknowledged his file, it was classified and they could not locate it. The progress was tediously slow, and the waiting oppressive.

While I waited for the files, I read Damon Runyon, and Raymond Chandler stories and attempted to identify which character personified which gangster. The stories were about the people that came to my birthday parties, Swifty Morgan, Nick the Greek, Frank Costello and Abner Zwillman,(the Boss of the New Jersey syndicate.) The dialect of Runyon and Winchell mimicked the same anecdotes my father used over and over! By understanding Runyon’s characters I began to know my father. At night I watched old gangster movies and that opened another door of familiarity.

I read almost every book in print about the Mafia and ordered out of print books from all over the country. They began to topple on my head from the shelf above the desk. Allen Smiley was in dozens of them. Every author portrayed him differently, he was a Russian Jew, a criminal, Bugsy’s right hand man, a dope peddler, a race track tout, and sometimes the words bled on my arm. To me, he was a benevolent father, a wise counselor and a man who worshipped me.

The INS claimed my father was one of the most dangerous criminals in the United States. They said he was Benjamin Siegel’s assistant. They said he was taking over now that Ben was gone.

That day I put the file away, and looked into the window of truth. How much could I bear to hear more?

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

MOB MEMORIES

December 27th, 2011

A LITERARY AGENT I know emphasized the importance of rounding up readers. That’s not so easy when you’re exposing your own guarded family secret.

My mother married my father two years after Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was murdered. Sitting beside Ben the night of the murder provoked an immediate response from my father; it was time to get the hell out. He promised to reform, and she agreed to marry him. One of her compromises was her religious faith. She was Irish Catholic. She stopped going to church, and she didn’t convert. It was a bitter irritation between them. My father raised us Jewish, we attended Hebrew School and went to Synagogue every Saturday morning. The complexity of being half Jewish and half Catholic surfaced, when some classmate told me I wasn’t really Jewish. I told this to my father. I still remember his answer coming at me like a round of bullets.

” That’s an idiot! It doesn’t matter if you’re half Jewish or a quarter, you’re a Jew! Don’t you ever forget it, and don’t let anyone tell you different. DO YOU HEAR ME?” To this day when people remind me that I’m not really Jewish I say,” For my father, God made an exception.”

Friends are different for men in the Mafia, and for their wives. Real friends have to be connected. You cannot trust anyone else. My mother had three friends. Marianne was married to Gus Alex a powerful political fixer in the Chicago syndicate. She had been a model like my mother. She was the stunning Grace Kelly sort of beauty with coolness much like my mother. She and my mother whispered when I was in the room.

More than any other person, Aunt Bess was beholden to my mother. She wasn’t really an aunt. Bess was Benjamin Siegel’s little sister. The one he favored over the others. I suppose Bess met my mother way before I was born, when Benjamin was alive. She had the same bedroom eyes of her brother, big hound dog eyes that swept sentiment in every glance. She had a heart too big for the turmoil in her life, and she cried about everything. She squeezed my face, and forever referred to me as her gorgeous baby. Bess was as content crying as she was laughing. There wasn’t any in between. She dressed in high heels, tailored suits and carried a hand bag with lots of tissue. She and my Nana, my mother’s mother were very close friends. Bess, her husband, and daughter lived in a house on Doheny Drive that Ben Siegel bought for her. Bess’s husband Solly never uttered a word, and worked for Ben doing odd jobs.

In later years I would live across the street from them, but by then my father had distanced Bess’s family for reasons never revealed.

How I loved to watch Miriam; a saucy brassy Italian from Brooklyn. She propped up her bosom like two statues, waved a long red lacquered nail, and smoked one cigarette after another without ever taking a breath. She shopped everyday, charged everything, and when we were in the room she did not change her act, she let us see what it was really like to be a gangsters wife. Beneath all the enamel and cosmetics she loved my mother unconditionally. Although their characters were strikingly different, they shared that bond. Miriam was married to Doc Stacher, who rose in the ranks to become enforcer for Abner “Longy” Zwillman, the boss of New Jersey. Doc walked with his hands clasped behind, a cigar stub lived on his lip, and he was bald and heavy lidded. He lived in short pants and little white sneakers. Beneath his somewhat harsh and metallic skin was a wreath of worship for Joanne. He didn’t restrict her humor, appetite, or spirit. The more outrageous her behavior the more he approved.

Mafia men make the most outrageously entertaining hosts; nothing is ever out of the question. All they have to do is pick up the phone, and someone in the network will make it happen.

Mafia men don’t get up and go to work. Not one day in his life did my father ever report to an office. When I wasn’t in school, he took me with him in the powder blue Cadillac and we drove the streets of Hollywood visiting friends in delicatessens. We sat in big leather booths while my father and the owners talked. I didn’t know what work was all about. No doubt the conversation was the rackets, the races, or Vegas. I was a very good decoy. What kind of a man takes his daughter to mob meetings? The kind that doesn’t want to look like a mob guy. My father didn’t think I was listening, but I heard a lot.

Rory Calhoun was one of the characters that stood out. He was a western movie star; the Clint Eastwood of his day. Rory was also in the same reformatory as my father as a teen. The Calhoun family and ours spent a lot of time together. They had two daughters and lived in an exotic Spanish villa on a corner of Sunset Boulevard. Inside it was like a movie set, with animal rugs, oil paintings of Spanish Troubadours and Moorish decorations. Rita, Rory’s wife, wore tiny stacked high heels and she clicked across the Spanish tiles like a flamenco dancer. The whole family was blessed with dreamy looks. I remember looking at my reflection in the mirror as Rita combed my hair, and discovering I was not at all pretty. I didn’t realize that I was surrounded with extraordinary beauty; everyone had these exceptional vogue looks. The importance placed on that kind of beauty was just as distorted.

Rita exhumed a stern feminine demeanor, extremely seductive but not without a battle. I learned my first lessons about temptation just by watching her. She fanned the room with perfume and laughter, and men just succumbed like drugged animals. I felt my first tingle of sexuality in the arms of Rory. He was a treasure of natural emotion, conversation, and jokes. They both gambled, borrowed money from the other, and bet on everything.

My mother was raised in East Orange, New Jersey, before the neighborhood changed. My grandmother always said that East Orange used to be a very nice place to live. There is a photograph of my mother at age seven or eight posing in the garden with her German Shepard. She is holding a ruffled parasol, and dressed like a doll. Her face is a bud of innocence, but with a hint of pained modesty. She didn’t flaunt her beauty; it was more of an embarrassment. When her father died suddenly, she elected to help her family financially, and entered her photograph in a Redbook magazine contest. At seventeen years old she won a modeling contract with John Robert Powers in New York City. My mother ascended to an identity that suited her in some ways and restricted her in others. The Powers girls were invited to grand openings of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. She appeared on stage at New York’s Copacabana Night Club in 1943. On one of those nights my father was in the audience, and that was where the Smiley Casey bridge from East Orange to Hollywood began.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

DEL MAR RACE TRACK

December 27th, 2011

Déjà vu made a sounding explosion when I was seated in the Del Mar Turf Club with my friend Rudy. I wore the best outfit I had, which was Victorian compared to other dolls at the track. After observing the fans for a few minutes, I noticed one table of serious bettors that looked authentic. That’s when the memory of me and Dad at Santa Anita came rising up, and the expression he wore the entire time we sat through six races. He never took off his tinted shades, and he did not speak to me at all, not once, except to hand me a twenty-dollar bill and say, “Play the Trifecta,” and named the horses. I ran off assured I’d be a winner, and returned to my seat anxiously. Dad gave me his binoculars when my race came up, and within two-minutes, I’d gone from winner to loser. I looked at him and he said in a neutralized manner, “Now you know nothing is a sure thing; even with your old dad.”

The horse races were the one secret he couldn’t keep. He talked about the races, the jockey’s, and his handicapping because he couldn’t repress that part of his life. It was like asking a woman not to talk about her ex-boyfriend or husband. Rudy was not inflamed with the fury of the races, but he stayed there, and gave me money to pick the winners. When the Shoe entered the Winner’s Circle, I said to Rudy, “My Dad was close to Willie, one of his trainers used to be around us a lot.

“Go over and introduce yourself.”

“Not now. Maybe afterward if I see him.”

“Come on, let’s go stand by the exit so you can get close.”

“I don’t want to. I’m not sure what their relationship was.”

“What could it be? Your Dad played the track.”

I followed Rudy and when Willie rode by waving at the people, I waved back.

“No, it’s not right to approach him now.”

“Your wrong; but it’s your decision.”

I didn’t go looking for Willy because he was Dad’s friend, not mine. We didn’t socialize like I did with Johnny Roselli or his other pals. My dad did tell me that “Meyer had a great saying: You don’t inherit friends,’” and I felt that was the situation. The rest of the day; while the scenery liquefied into a nostalgia of the nineteen forties, my eyes were unblinking at all the activity.

I’d read enough about the tracks to know that it was the club to join back then, and if you were on the inside, the parties lasted all night. And so did the gambling and practical jokes, and staged busts. I understood what drew my Dad, because the same thrills were touching me, and I liked it a lot. I took notes on what I’d experienced that day, because it was a new culture I’d just discovered.

I wasn’t interested in winning really, I just adored the characters behind the scenes; the speaker calling out the race, the girls leaping out of their seats and kissing their betting boyfriends, the waiters in tuxedos serving salads, and champagne, the oldies music, horses, costumes, and the Jockey’s, those little guys who control a two thousand pound animal going thirty-five miles an hour and more.

The next day I took the notes out and wrote a few pages about the track. It wasn’t researched or reported, just the ad-lib observation of a gal with a gangster past. It came so easy, it was like writing about a familiar subject. Rudy read it and said to send it to the local newspaper. I fought him a few rounds, and then finally succumbed to the idea of publishing my writing.

A few days later the editor called and asked me to submit more pieces… and he’d pay me twenty-five dollars a column. He mentioned I’d have a press pass to go to the track galas, and write about the track. I got off the phone feeling empowered and drove to Office Depot to buy a tape recorder. I’d just finished reading the Damon Runyon stories, and so I thought, here’s my chance. I started taking morning runs around the track when the horses are warming-up. It is one of the most exhilarating sensations, to see that polished hide bursting through the entrance to the track, nostrils flared, lips crunching the bite, and those burning brown eyes pointed to the track. In the afternoon I walked around the track with my press pass and knocked on barn doors. The reception was immediate, yes, they would love to be interviewed. So I spent one whole summer writing about the Del Mar Race Track, and didn’t bet a dime. I did begin more research into the horse-racing industry and was eager to see a movie about this spectacular sport. Seabiscuit was a treat because I attended the Premier in Saratoga Spring’s, NY and met the trainer’s grand-daughter. Now I am looking forward to LUCK, premiering this month on HBO.

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This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

AN UN-ENDING LEGACY

December 21st, 2011

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Sixty-four years have passed since Ben Siegel was murdered, and my father stood in the Beverly Hills police station defending his innocence. I am the link to his truth.

Last week, I received an unrecognized e-mail. It was from a relative of Mr. Robert’s; who was a friend of my father’s in Houston. I met Mr. Roberts on a business trip to Houston back in the 70’s, he pulled a royal flush in the oil business.

This relative discovered one of the Smiley’s Dice memoir columns. He wanted to share some stories with me, and so I responded I would love to hear them. A few weeks later, Susan, a former classmate from Emerson Junior High, sent me a link to a New York Times feature, “Looking For My Father in Las Vegas.” Susan suggested I read it, get inspired, and go back to my own memoir. A week later, I received two DVD’s in the mail from a man I never met. A friend had informed me this man was on a synagogue lecture circuit, and that his subject was Jews in Sing Sing Prison. He was using Ben Siegel and Meyer Lansky as models in his presentation on genealogical research.

The DVD’s went into the drawer, and only recently, I pulled one out and played it. Ben and Meyer were used as subjects to add humor to his presentation. Everyone in the audience laughed at his Siegel/Lansky anecdotes. I ejected the disk, relieved Allen Smiley was not part of the presentation.

In the middle of reinventing a new life, having placed my memoir in a trunk in a storage unit, so it will not be visible or even accessible, the memoir haunts me. A story that has to be written cannot be hidden. About a month ago, a pastor wrote to me, and related this story:

“I am pastor of a church in L. A. I have studied the mob for years. I ran across your name as I studied about your father that night on Linden Drive. I have been approached by a man who claims to have knowledge about who killed Mr. Siegel. The guy was a right-hand man of Mickey Cohen.(and claims Mickey told him). Well, I wondered if you had any preference on the theories that have been put forth. What stories you must have to tell. God Bless you and yours.”

What am I supposed to think? Did the killer confess in his church? This brings to memory another letter I received about a year ago. The name mentioned in the letter was one I had hunted for many years. Harry Freedlander was discovered back in 1995 in the pages of my father’s testimony before the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Harry was a friend to my father back home in Winnipeg. They were childhood chums. When my father stowed away to Detroit, he wrote letters to Harry who informed my grandmother of my father’s travels. A few years later, Harry joined my father in Detroit and began working in the automobile industry. I remember Harry stating to the INS officer that he was very close to Allen’s family.

When an e-mail arrived from the grandson of Harry, the letter remained on the screen for a long time. Truths revealed by government documents, informants, and books are harsh on my father. The companions, friends, and associates are the ones who give me introspection. The grandson remembered hearing stories about my dad, and he wanted to know more about his grandfather. I told him that his grandfather had testified in court to their early friendship. Harry said my father stopped corresponding after he was in Los Angeles.

Several books were released this year with references to dad. The first book arrived compliments of the author, who interviewed me in 2003. I’d forgotten all about it. In Gus Russo’s “Supermob: The Story of Sidney Korshak,” Russo referred to my father in an incident in 1988, with attorney Robert Shapiro, and a lesser know Las Vegas club owner, Gianni Russo, no relation. According to Gus, Korshack told Gianni to see my father in his penthouse apartment on Doheny Drive, after Korshack shot someone in his Vegas nightclub. This is highly impossible, since my father passed away in 1982, and had moved out of the Doheny Towers several years prior.

Throughout the year, I am jabbed, teased, and taunted by the ruminations of strangers on my dad. I feel protective of his legacy. I feel protective of Ben Siegel too. It is part of growing up with gangsters.

Last month, a man who had given me the very first insight into my father passed away. I never met Ed Becker in person. We corresponded regularly. I found my journal marking the first entry of our correspondence. Ed guided me through the labyrinth of half-truths and myths. Without his perspective, the story was all trumped-up headlines. Ed Becker was the one man I could always turn to when I was tangled up in truth. It appears growing up with gangsters is still a work-in-progress.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

SHALLOW END OF THE BEVERLY HILLS POOL

December 18th, 2011

In this segment I am in my mid-twenties, living alone in a sparse studio apartment in Westwood, and I do not have a boyfriend. On Saturday mornings, my father would call me before I had decided what to do.

“Irv has room in the cabana today. What time do you want to go over?”

Irving was my father’s walking partner. Whenever my father wanted to walk, he called Irv. They discussed business deals, and talked a lot about Marvin Davis. That meant nothing to me, because I did not want to know my father’s business. Irv could have been a pinup for everything Beverly Hills. He was George Hamilton, evenly tanned all year, dressed in seasonal custom suits, Gucci loafers, carried a Gucci attaché, drove a Cadillac and like my father, dined out five nights a week. Irv reserved a poolside cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel most weekends to play rummy, maintain his tan and watch the women.

“Daddy, I was going to do something else today.”

“Yea, like what?”

“I wanted to see a movie.”

“Well, you can see a movie anytime, Irv doesn’t always have room for you and I’ve made special arrangements, so for Christ’s sake take advantage of it.”

“Who else will be there?”

“Friends, I don’t know who exactly, what the hell does that matter.”

“How come you never go?”

“What the hell do I need to go for—I’m not looking to meet anybody, and I can’t take the sun anymore, you know that.”

I conceded in going, otherwise my father would slam the phone down on the receiver and refuse to talk to me the rest of the weekend, or maybe the whole week depending on his mood.

The first few times I went, it was educational, on the art of superficiality. After that, I denounced the routine charade of women imitating movie stars and men mimicking movie moguls.

Reluctantly I submitted to the agony of my own disguise. I dressed up in a ghastly bathing suit ensemble I bought at Saks, and presented my forced smile to Irv on Saturday.

“Hey, there she is–come in sweetheart, that’s Al Smiley’s daughter,” he said to his friends, and without looking up from their hands, they shouted hello. Irv stood up in his Clorox white shorts and matching shoes and kissed me on the cheek. His skin smelled of coconut oil and cologne.

“Luellen honey, take a lounge, the towels are in the dressing room, what’s Dad doing today?”

“I don’t know, why doesn’t he come here?”

“I’ve asked him a million times, haven’t I Sammy, why doesn’t Al come over here. You can’t argue with Al, right Luellen?”

“Right Irv.”

“Tell your Dad I saw Jimmy here today.”

“Jimmy who?”

“He’ll know, OK, Luellen, you all right – I gotta get back to my hand, before these guys start cheating,” and the laughter of all three filled the room.

I undressed in the dressing room, lathered up with sunscreen, applied more make-up, and wrapped my hair in a terry cloth bandana. Then I self-consciously stretched out on the yellow terry cloth lounge and closed my eyes. The sunlight bounced off Irv’s sun reflector, and within minutes, my entire body was steam bath wet.

“Sun’s great isn’t it?”

“It’s hotter than Las Vegas in here, I’m going in the pool.” The men laughed again, without taking their eyes from their cards.

Only a handful of bathers broke the surface, almost everyone waded. Even under water, I could hear the faint resonating echo of the paging operator, calling guests to the telephone. From the shallow end, I watched the poolside games people play in Hollywood’s desirable circles. Some girls were my age or younger, and they gleefully participated in the poolside masquerade. Beneath my scorn and disapproval, I imagined myself wearing a strapless bikini, tanned and glowing in my strut around the pool, calling out ‘darling, let’s have lunch,’ to some handsome actor.

From the pool, I would then return to the cabana, dry off, slide the lounge upright, and try to read. All of my actions discouraged interest, because I was positive, I would not like anyone, and if someone did come over, he’d have to cross over Irv, and eventually my father, and none of this seemed to have a happy ending.

At the end of the day, I reported to my father on the days events.

“Well, did you meet anyone?” he asked.

“No, not this time.”

“Well you keep going, you will if you give someone the chance.”

“Daddy, I have other things I like to do on the weekends too.”

“Yea, like what?”

“I like to be with my friends.”

“Well, this is an opportunity to meet a different caliber of person. You haven’t had much luck on your own.”

“Daddy they’re all so phony, it’s not like it used to be when you went there in the forties.”

“How do you know? You’re something else! You think you know better than I do? Do you know how many young girls would chop off their leg to be sitting in a private cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel? What do you think I’m doing this for? It’s not for my benefit; I’m sitting over here trying to keep things going, amidst all this turmoil. I want you to meet the right sort of man who can help you, and introduce you to some real advantages.”

“Daddy I’m doing fine, I like my job and….”

“Yea, yea, I won’t ask you again. I won’t even think of it, you don’t deserve it. I’ll invite a girl who will appreciate the offer.” While he tried to ensure my financial security, I molded myself into an idealistic, rebellious fool.

What I did take advantage of were my father’s dinner parties. The men that we dined with did not go to an office, or meet in conference rooms with secretaries taking notes. They took their meetings in restaurants, and delicatessens. They never ordered off the menu, and fought over the check. They witnessed corruption the rest of us do not even know exists, and they killed one another. They are far more interesting than the Gucci men at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Between the two groups, I favored the gangsters, which was of interest to any therapist I have met in the past.

Recently I have learned that during the time of these cabana visits, many of my father’s friends were under investigation with the government. My father was also under federal investigation, and that is why he did not join us at the Beverly Hills Cabana.

Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

THE DOHENY TOWERS-HOLLYWOOD LIFE

December 18th, 2011

I was thirteen the summer I moved into my father’s apartment in The Doheny Towers. My mother just died, and my father had weird habits. I didn’t understand why suddenly I had to ‘behave like a lady.’ It seemed like yesterday that I was running with a pack of friends up and down the hallways of the Hilgard House in dripping wet swimming suits, while Mommy was barbequing hamburgers on the balcony for all of us.

My father wasn’t prepared for a teenager; I had to grow up quickly, or pretend I was grown up. I sat on my bed in my new bedroom looking at the drapes. They matched the lime green and royal blue crushed velvet bedspreads. The drapes and spreads were so heavy I could barely lift them, and when the drapes were closed, the room was so black I couldn’t see my feet. My father had the room decorated by a friend who owed him a favor. Friends were always doing us favors.

Every morning I opened the drapes, and wrapped them around my body, pressed myself against the glass, and watched the Hollywood sunrise. Some days there was a coating of thick brown paste that hung over everything. Other days, after a rainstorm, or in the aftermath of a Santa Ana wind, all the soot dispersed. The colors splashed across the Spanish tiled roofs, palm trees, the big dreamy Sunset Boulevard billboards, and the crystal sharp edges of the San Bernardino Mountains. The East was my favorite view from the 12 th floor; because I didn’t know what was out there. It got me to thinking a lot about the East. The farthest I’d been was downtown Los Angeles to the Good Samaritan Hospital.

My father ran back and forth in the apartment barking orders to house maintenance, decorators, and telephone installers. He was adjusting things–furnishings, phone lines, new locks on the door; and he was removing guarded personal items. As I observed all this preparation, he kept telling me, ‘everything’s going to be all right, he has everything in order, new phones, more hangers, food in the refrigerator.’ I had no idea how many adjustments my presence required. Thinking back now, I know he was trying to erase any evidence of gambling, or mafia activities.

My father’s apartment belonged to him as a bachelor, and we did not fit together comfortably at the dining room table because it was really a card table. The hifi ensemble was polished mahogany wood with gold leaf trim. My father liked gold; it seemed to frame everything in the house, even the silverware. I ran my fingers along the corners of his record collection to see whom he liked: Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mercer, and Tommy Dorsey. The records were in perfect condition and I wanted to play them.

“ I spent all my life in night clubs with music–I can’t stand it in my home. You can play the stereo when I’m out.”

“When were you in nightclubs all the time?” I asked.

“What? Don’t be concerned with my life; concentrate on yours.”

From our terrace facing west, the view was organized beauty. Every thing was in squares and straight lines in Beverly Hills 90210. I liked to sit on the terrace and look out; imagining all the lives going on at once. Every time I sat down, my father asked me to come inside and do something. He didn’t like me sitting on the terrace, exposed and vulnerable. When he came in to say goodnight, he reminded me to close the drapes. The drapes pestered him all his life; ever since the night the bullets shattered the glass of Benjamin Siegel’s undraped window.

I loved my father’s shadow in the door before I went to sleep. He blew me a kiss, and said, “Sweet dreams my little girl.” He liked me being a little girl at certain times.

I came to live my father in 1966, when he was fifty-nine. He wasn’t active int he oil business, but he received royalty checks every month . He had tiny gold oil-well paperweights on his desk. When his checks came in, he showed them to me and said, “That’s royalty income from my oil wells in Texas.” I heard him talk about his friend, Lenoir Josey, who sponsored him in business. Josey died the same year I was born, but my father wanted me to know the name–Lenoir Josey. I was proud to fill in “Oil Engineer” as my father’s occupation on school applications. None of my friends had fathers in the oil business. I imagined my father was very rich.

When he left the apartment, I studied his possessions. He had a black-and- white photograph of my mother hanging on the wall above the couch. It was one of those glossy modeling photographs that she had hidden from us. My father told me it was published in the newspaper, an advertisement for Bullock’s. After inspecting my own reflection in the mirror, I considered myself adopted. At thirteen, I was flat-chested, with thick frizzy brown hair that I continually tried to straighten, long shapeless legs, and braces on my teeth. My lips quivered when I was forced to smile, and my eyes were so light that the sun bothered them. I despised the way I looked.

There was a swimming pool on the roof garden of the Doheny Towers. On the weekends, a lunch counter opened and served hot dogs and hamburgers. Every Saturday my father went up to the roof to swim, and kibbitz with the neighbors. He cheerily demanded that I join him, because he said, “I want to get to know my girl.” I think he wanted me to watch him as he entertained everyone. He told the best stories. Even tough I didn’t understand most of them–the neighbors laughed like they do on television shows when the applause sign flashes on and off. All of them sat around Allen Smiley and listened. Telling stories was my father’s favorite past time.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

GET OUT, I’M WRITING

December 16th, 2011

The throw of the dice this week falls on chapter One. Like any creative endeavor, the work is organic and has a life of its own. A garden doesn’t always grow with your plans; there are seeds that fall outside of the planter. There are disasters that drift though our arrangements and cause chaos. I am beginning to believe nothing ends how we imagine it. A beautiful day is hijacked by a tornado, a child is murdered while taking a walk with a girlfriend, and a chapter runs away from the author.

The desk where I sit and write is engulfed with books files, index cards citing important events, and characters, note pads, FBI files, and outlines. Period photographs are scattered through-out the room to further sedate any intrusion of the present. I live in a cubicle of my parent’s and famous gangsters.

I was writing a lengthy portrayal of Ben Siegel one day and it occurred to me that he had become a major character in my life. He played a role that someone else should have; a noted author, or journalist, or poet. Ben Siegel changed my history because I had to learn to love him. Learning to love him, meant erasing everything I had read or heard. It is said he was a ruthless killer, a savage, violent, and he loved to kill. I turned my head to look at a photograph of my mother. I was told that she loved Ben too.

Where once I believed my mother was naïve and uninformed about Ben; now I know this wasn’t the case. She knew from the beginning. I‘ve read the news articles of the day, the columns, and I’ve spoken to people who were there. My mother traveled by train to New York with my father, Ben and Esta, and the FBI was in the next compartment. My mother fit into this strangely singular and controversial group of people. A long stemmed Irish Catholic beauty, an original John Robert Powers Model with a future on stage, in film and in print was friends, very close friends with the wives of Ben’s group. I see her in the full frame of who she was, and not the imaginary mother. I like her this way because it reduces the outrageousness of my former years.

Why I continue to seek answers and probe into their lives is because they never told me anything. Children feel the repression of truth as clearly as they do the pain of bruise. The more you hide the more they seek. At my root is the inclination to question the world around me, and to mend the breaks in our lives.

Along the way of the first chapter, I discovered that people like to know how it works, how we write in a state of solitude and selfishness. It seems unnatural until you pick up a book. While a story is moving through the author, they or at least I refrain from answering the phone, checking email, or listening to the voices downstairs. A story or any work of art lives in the artist, it sounds sort of spooky, but that is how it feels to me. So when intrusions come, these disturbances are exaggerated into surrealistic proportions.

I could easily write about the life of the hotel across the street, the many characters that take care of the guests, and the grounds. It would be an easy writing assignment because I am not related to the hotel. But writing about your parent’s, the people who introduced you to the world is like grinding down your memories from stone to powder, and then picking up each grain and examining it’s meaning.

At the end of the day, as other lives intersect with mine, I see people engaged in human activity, the stimulation of common interest comes from living among people and their needs. In writing you interact with your head. The narrative is like water; it can run smooth like a river over all the rocks and debris or it can break into a million bubbles and lose everything.

When it breaks apart like a wave on the beach, you begin again, and the erosion of impatience and self-doubt allows you to continue.

This is not a “How to Recognize Gaslighting” or a “Step-by-Step Guide to Gaslighting.” This is a true story, drawn from my experience.

First Paragraph: Without a partner, lover, or relative nearby during our feared and festive flights of life, our ribs cave. You cannot eat cake alone on your birthday, attend a funeral without a shoulder next to you, or celebrate a finished project without your best friend.

I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.

LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

Where Gaps of Expression are Liberated

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