Early 80’s

Albert, the advertising exec with the closet full of whips I dated just the once, calls and invites me to an Oscar party. He’s been dying to get me on his rack and has called countless times inviting me to his apartment. I suspect a trap, and decline his current invitation, but like any sadist worth his salt, Albert keeps slapping away.

“It’s hosted by Judy Crist, the famous film critic,” he says, “I go every year.”

Albert is an old friend of Miss Crist. Remembering my desire to get into the movie business, he asked his old friend if he could bring a guest to her famous Oscar party.

“It should be fun,” Albert says to me, “someone famous always stops by, and you might just make a connection.”

With assurances that the party will not be at Albert’s apartment – where I would be trapped like a hamster in a python cage – I agree to attend. Who knows, maybe I will make a connection; and, oh, I have unfinished business with Miss Judy Crist…

The Warwick Hotel

I’ve been waiting on tables in the Sir Walter Raleigh Room for about three weeks, and have finally conquered the nausea that accompanies my first approach to a table. Customers no longer scare me…much. I tie my apron with confidence. I’m thriving on breakfast and lunch shifts. I’ve requested nights, but only the most seasoned waiter gets to work those shifts.

To my great surprise, Max the general manager tells Gunther the evening floor manager that I’m coming along beautifully, that I’m turning into a damn good waiter, and if he ever needs someone to cover a night shift, he should ask me. High praise and effective: Gunther asks me to work a night shift. He also asks if I’d be interested in a three-way with him and the pastry chef. I say I’ll have to think about the pastry chef, but I will most definitely sub into the night shift.

Nights shifts are the same set-up as breakfast and lunch, except lights are dimmed, candles lighted, and prices jacked. It’s also way less busy, which suits me – I can take my time and still make the same money.

My first table is Judy Crist and friends. Gunther informs me that Miss Crist and party are going to a screening at MOMA and need to be out no later than 6:30. I’ve never met Miss Crist, but I know of her. She’s the chief film critic for TV Guide, a weekly magazine that publishes the schedule of all television shows and films. I’d peddled TV Guide door-to-door when a teenager, and read and agreed with almost all of Miss Crist’s reviews. It feels like I’m about to wait on an old friend.

I introduce myself to Miss Crist as her waiter, but also as a former TV Guide peddler and a budding screenwriter. Miss Crist, a solid mass of growing impatience with a remarkably large grapefruit face, registers no interest in me, not even a begrudging curiosity. Flattery. That’ll do it. I tell her that I’m a big fan, that I grew-up reading her reviews, and ask is she has a movie recommendation. If I can get her talking movies, I’ll impress her with my extensive cinematic knowledge and she’ll most certainly hire me as her assistant.

Crist tosses me a suggestion like a bone to an annoying poodle, “Nijinsky,” she says, her mouth barely moving, “See “Nijinsky.” I tell her that I’ve already seen it. She rolls her eyes, grunts, and perfunctorily asks what I thought of it. With a professorial accent I make up on the spot, I drawl, “Well…it dragged in the middle and the masturbation scene both disgusted and intrigued me.”

Silence hits the table like a bag of rocks. Miss Crist asks to see Gunther. A couple of minutes later, Gunther corners me in the wait station and says it’s not as busy as he thought it was going to be. He tells me to go home.

Gunther waits on Miss Crist and company and never again asks me to sub into a night shift.

~~

Miss Crist’s Oscar party is an intimate gathering of family and friends crammed into her studiously untidy and unsparingly hot Upper West Side living room. Present are Miss Crist, her overly obedient husband, me, Albert, and perched at the library table behind the sofa sits Bruce Williamson, the film critic for Playboy Magazine. Sitting dutifully beside Bruce is someone they call Molly. Molly doesn’t say much; she stares at the walls with fixed, calculating eyes and jumps with a start whenever someone speaks to her.

An hour in, infamous director/screenwriter Paul Schrader shows up. He says “Hello” to Miss Crist, and, ignoring the rest of us, parks himself in the corner and begins brazenly snorting cocaine, offering his little brown bottle to no one. As Schrader snorts away, Bruce loudly asks me what I do for a living. I just as loudly tell him I’m a waiter, and the light leaves his eyes. Hearing my response to Bruce, Miss Crist fires a laser beam of disbelief across the room, hitting Albert between the eyes.

“Albert, you didn’t tell me your friend is … a waiter,” she says with an iguana smile.

I jump into the fray. “Why, yes,” I say, and gleefully remind her that I had once almost waited on her at the Warwick Hotel. I repeat my review of “Nijinsky.” She remembers. She doesn’t say she remembers, but I know she remembers, because the iguana stops smiling and becomes a disgruntled grapefruit again.

Miss Crist and guests hold a contest to see how many Oscar winners they can predict. Winner take all. I enter…and win. Thirty bucks. Bruce, who usually takes home the cash, sits back, and with quiet astonishment says, “No one has ever beaten me.” Molly speaks up, probably for the first time in decades, “He’s right. No one has ever beaten him. How did you do it?” I don’t answer because Paul Schrader calls for help. He’s locked in the bathroom and can’t get the door open.

No one can figure out how to rescue Mr. Schrader. Someone says, “If only we had tools.” I don’t know who said it, but it sounded like one of the men.

Miss Crist says, “You, Mr. Waiter. Go down to the lobby and ask the doorman to send the Super up with a screw driver. And since it’s getting late and you’re in the lobby, you might as well just keep going.”

I leave without saying my goodbyes because no one wants to hear my goodbyes and my date is pretending he’s asleep.

When I get home, I remember that I forgot to ask the doorman to send the Super up to Miss Crist’s apartment with a screw driver. I go to bed not caring if Paul Schrader remains stuck in Judy Crist’s bathroom.

I still don’t care.