Briss for the Mill

the early 80’s

Albert the hairdresser with the closet full of whips I dated last summer calls and invites me to an Oscar party. He’s been dying to get me back on his rack and has called countless times inviting me to “gatherings” at 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 Briss, the famous film critic,” he says, “I go every year.”

Albert does Miss Briss’s hair. During her last blowout, Albert – remembering my desire to get into the movie business – asked Miss Briss if he could bring a guest. She agreed.

“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 Briss.

I first ran into her about year ago. At the Warwick Hotel. I’d been waiting on tables in the Sir Walter Raleigh Room for about three weeks, and had finally conquered the nausea that accompanies my first approach to a table; customers no longer scared the shit out of me. I tied my apron with confidence. I worked the breakfast and lunch shifts. I’d requested nights, but only the most seasoned waiter got to work those shifts. Then, one day, Max the general manager told Gunther the evening floor manager that I was coming along beautifully, that I was turning into a damn good waiter, and if he ever needed someone to cover a night shift, he should ask me. High praise and effective: Gunther asked me to work a night shift. He also asked if I’d be interested in a three-way with him and the pastry chef. I said I’d think about the pastry chef, but I’d most definitely sub into the night shift.

Nights shifts were the same set-up as breakfast and lunch, except lights were dimmed, candles lit, and the prices jacked. It was also way less busy, which suited me – I could take my time and still make the same money.

My first table was Judy Briss and friends. Gunther informed me that Miss Briss and party were going to a screening at MOMA and needed to be out no later than 7:30. I’d never met Miss Briss, but I knew of her. She was the chief film critic for TV Pride, a weekly magazine that published the schedule of all television shows and films. I’d peddled TV Pride door-to-door when a teenager, and read and agreed with almost all of Miss Briss’s reviews. It felt like I was about to wait on an old friend.

This was my chance.

I introduced myself to Miss Briss as her waiter, but also as a former TV Pride peddler and a budding filmmaker. Miss Briss, a short, solid mass of growing impatience with a remarkably large grapefruit face, registered no interest in me, not even a begrudging curiosity. Flattery. That should do it. I told her that I was a big fan, that I grew-up reading her reviews, and asked is she had a movie recommendation. (If I could get her talking movies, I’d impress her with my extensive cinematic knowledge and she’d hire me as her assistant.) She tossed me a suggestion like a bone to an annoying poodle, “Nijinsky,” she said, her mouth barely moving, “See “Nijinsky.” I told her that I’d already seen it. She rolled her eyes, grunted, and perfunctorily asked what I thought of it. With a professorial accent I made up on the spot, I drawled, “Well…it dragged in the middle and the masturbation scene both disgusted and intrigued me.”

Silence hit the table like a bag of rocks. Miss Briss asked to see Gunther. A couple of minutes later, Gunther cornered me in the wait station and said it’s not as busy as he thought it was going to be; he and Carmine the busboy could handle it. Why don’t I just go home?

Carmine the busboy waited on Miss Briss and company, and Gunther never again asked me to sub into a night shift.

~~

Miss Briss’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 Briss, her overly obedient husband, me, Albert, and perched at the library table behind the sofa sits Bridger Williams, the chief film critic for Junk, a glossy men’s magazine. Sitting dutifully beside Bridger is someone they call, Sally. Sally 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 screenwriter Saul Pfeiffer shows up. He says “Hello” to Miss Briss, 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 Pfeiffer’s snorts away, Bridger Williams 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 Bridger, Miss Briss hurls a javelin of disbelief across the room, striking Albert between the eyes. Miss B says nothing, but says it loudly: You brought a waiter to my party? She doesn’t wait for a response – unspoken questions don’t require answers – and slips into attack mode.

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

“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 grapefruit again.

I’m about to casually drop the bomb that because of her and Bridger and Silent Sally over there, I was blocked from working nights, but Bridger – with a “this’ll get him” wink to Miss Briss – hands out ballots and announces that it’s $5 to enter.

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. Bridger, who usually takes home the cash, sits back, and with quiet astonishment says, “No one has ever beaten me.” Silent Sally speaks up, probably for the first time in decades, “He’s right. No one here has ever beaten him. How did you do it?” I don’t answer because Saul Pfeiffer is calling for help. He’s locked in the bathroom and can’t get the door open.

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

Miss Briss turns from the bathroom door, aims her grapefruit at me, and says, “You, Mr. Waiter. What don’t you 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.

I take myself out for a late dinner at the Westway Diner: Hungarian Goulash and a carafe of red wine. With a generous tip, the bill comes to thirty bucks. When I get home, I remember that I forgot to ask the doorman to send the super up to Miss Briss’s apartment with a screw driver. I go to bed not caring if Saul Pfeiffer is still stuck in Judy Briss’s bathroom.

I still don’t care.