Fame and Fortune
When
I was eighteen I went to New York City to become an
actress. I imagined that success would fall into my lap if
I only put myself in the right place. It happened just as
I'd expected— one day on the street a man introduced
himself, saying he was an agent. He could spot a model a
block away, he said. He wanted to arrange an interview for
me. I didn't want to be a model. I didn't believe in
modeling, I told him, but he said it was what you call a
stepping stone. First I'd be a model and then later I could
be an actress.
I was eighteen, living in a tenement house on the lower
east side with a gay man who worked part time at Tony the
Greek's, which is code word. I guess everyone understands
that. We were living on spagettios, rum and cigarettes.
My interview was in a fancy office uptown. The office had a
mahogany desk, black leather swivel chairs, a bar, cocaine
if you wanted it, and, in the corner, a leather couch. The
man interviewing me was twenty-nine years old and already
the head of a belt and handbag company, he told me.
I didn't approve of using women's bodies to sell products,
I said. He said they could pay $100,000 a year. He told me
it was modeling job but there was another part that came
first. I told him I had something in mind more on the lines
of Judith Malina and the Living Theater, and then, even
though I wasn't a particularly moral girl, I walked away.
I wrote about this experience a few years ago in The Sun. I
thought I could write about even the most embarrassing
things, because here I was in Yachats, Oregon, alone in my
kitchen. Who was ever going to read it?
I few months later, while I was at a Halloween Party,
dressed like Jackie Kennedy, I heard a woman ask, "Does
anyone know Alison Clement?" She was an older woman with
glasses and gray hair. She said someone had sent her a copy
of The Sun after noticing that one of the writers was from
Yachats. There are only about six hundred people in
Yachats.
It turned out she owned a bed and breakfast on the beach.
She needed someone to clean the rooms. I met someone on the
street in Manhattan one day and thought it would lead me to
a life of fame and fortune, but what actually came of it,
fifteen years later, was a job as a maid.