excerpt from "american dream machine"

7/28/2019 Excerpt from "American Dream Machine"

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T h e y c l o s e d d o w n the Hamlet on Sunset last night. That old plush pal-

ace, place where Dean Martin drank himsel to death on Tuesdays,

where my ather and his riends once had lunch every weekend and

the matre d was quick to kiss my old mans hand. Like the one they

called the other Hamlet in Beverly Hills, and the regular other

Hamlet in Century City . . . all o these places now long gone. Hol-lywood is like that. Its orever institutions, so quick to disappear. The

Hamburger Hamlet, the one on Sunset, was in a class by itsel. Red

leather upholstery, dark booths, the carpets patterned with a radical

and problematic intaglio. Big windows ung sun in ront, but arther

in the interior was dim, swampy. Waitresses patrolled the tables, the

recessed depths where my athers clients, men like Stacy Keach and

Arthur Hill, sat away rom human scrutiny. Most oten their hair

was mussed and they were weeping. Or they were exultant, ash-ing lavish smiles and gold watches, their bands mesh grain muted

by the ruinous lighting, those overhead bulbs that shone down just

ar enough to make the waitresses aces look like they were melting

under heat lamps. And yet the things that were consummated there:

divorces, deals! I saw George Clooney puking in one o the fcuses

back by the mens room, one time when I was in.

Unless it was somebody else. The one thing Ive learned, growing

up in Los Angeles: its always someone else. Even i it is the personyou thought it was the frst time. I helped him up. I laid my hand

on the back o George Clooneys collar. He was wearing a blue jack-

et with a deeper velveteen lapel, like an expensive wedding singer.

This, and white bucks.


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Are you all right?

Yeah. He spat. They make the Manhattans here really strong.Do they?

We were near the kitchen, too, and could smell bacon, rying

meat, other delicacieslike Welsh rarebitI would describe i they

still had any meaning, i they existed any longer.

Ill buy you one and you can check it out.

I helped him back to his table. I remember his touch was eathery.

He clutched my arm like a shy bride. Clooney wasnt Clooney yet,

but I, unortunately, was mysel. 91? 92? The evening wound on,and on and on and on: Little Peters, the Havoc House. Eventually,

Clooney and I ended up back at someones place in the Bird Streets,

above Doheny.

Why are you dressed like that? I said.

Like what? In my mind, the smile is Clooneys exactly, but at

the time all hed said was that he was an actor named Sam or Dave

or (in act, I think he actually did say) George, but Ill never know.

Why am I dressed like what?Like a ucking prom date rom the retro uture. Like an Italian

singer who stumbled into a gol shop. I pointed. What the hell

is with those shoes?

Hey, he said. Check the stitching. Hand-soled.

We were out back o this house, whosever it was, drinking te-

quila. Cantilevered up above the city, lolling in directors chairs.

Those houses sell or a bajillion dollars nowadays, but then it was

just some crappy rental where a riend o a riend was chasing agirl around a roomul o mix-and-match urniture, listening to the

Aghan Whigs or the Horny Horns or the Beach Boysmy avor-

ite band o all time, by the wayor else a bunch o people were

crowded around a TV watchingBeyond the Valley of the Dolls on vid-

eocassette. It didnt matter. Mr. Not-Quite-or-Not-Yet-Clooney and

I were outside watching the sun come up, and we were either two

guys who would someday be amous or two rudderless uck-ups in

our midtwenties. He was staring out at the holy panorama o LosAngeles at dawn, and I couldnt get my eyes o his shoes.

Why am I dressed like this? My new riend wrung his hands to-

gether limply. I ought to sell that act to a tabloid, to prove Clooney

is gay. I was at a unction, he said.


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A m e r ic a n D r e a m M a c hi n e 9

What kind o unction? A convention o Tony Bennett ans? A

mob wedding?I dont remember what he said next. I think he said, I was in Vegas,

and I asked him how much hed lost. I probably gave him a sloppy

kiss.I knew it was you, Fredo! There was an empty swimming pool

nearby. It mustve been February. Italian cypresses rose up in inviting

cones, the scalloped houses dropped o in stages beneath us, and

eventually the whole hill attened out into that ash-colored plane,

that grand and gray infnity that is Los Angeles rom up above: Gods

palm, checkered with twinkling lights and crossed with hot wind.I can never remember the words to this one . . .

What? I said. Its mostly moaning.

Theyre all mostly moaning.

George and I went digging into the old soul music catalog, to

prove our masculine bona fdes. None o those Motown lite, Big

Chill-type classics that turdscaped so many o my athers late

eighties productions. We went or the nonsense numbers, the real

obscurities. We sang Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, The WhapWhap Song, Oogum Boogum, Lobster Betty. A couple o those

might not have been real, but we did em anyway.

Nice pipes.

Thanks, he said. I was up or The Doors but I never got a callback.

We spent the rest o the night drinking and singing. People blame

Los Angeles or so many things, but my own view is tender, orgiv-

ing. I love LA with all o my heart. This story I have to tell doesnt

have much to do with me, but it isnt about some bored actressand her existential crises, a troubled screenwriter who comes to his

senses and hightails it back to Illinois. Its not about the vacuous

horror o the Caliornia dream. Its something that couldve hap-

pened anywhere else in the world, but instead settled, inexplicably,

here. This city, with its unortunate rap. It deserves warmer witness

than dear old Joan Didion.

Dont do that, man. My voice echoed. I clapped my riend on

the shoulder. Dont do the pleading-and-testiying thing. Youllhurt your knees!

Im all right.

By the time we were done, we were deep into the duos, those

reaky-deaky pairs rom Texas or Mississippi: Mel & Tim; Maurice &


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Mac; Eddie & Ernie. Those gap-toothed couples whod managed to

eke out a single regional hit beore ading back into their hard-wonobscurity. My new riend seemed to know them all, and by the time

we were fnished I didnt know which o us was Mel and which Tim,

which o us had died in a boardinghouse and which, the lucky one

I presume, still gigged around Jacksonville. Him, probably. He was

dressed or it.

I should get going, he said, at last.

Right. Not like either o us had anywhere to be at this hour, but

he needed to go o and get amous and I needed to fnd my jacketand a mattress. A man shouldnt postpone destiny. Later.

We embraced, and I believe he groped my groin. Ater that I never

saw him again, not i he was not, as I am now orced to consider,

George Clooney. I just watched him climb the steps out o the swim-

ming pool, into which wed descended in order to get the correct

echo, the right degree o reverb on our voices. This was what it was

like inside a vocal booth at Stax, or when the Beach Boys recorded

Good Vibrations at Gold Star Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard.So we told one another, and perhaps we were right. For a moment

I remained in this sunken hole in the ground that was like a grave

slathered with toothpasteit was that perect bland turquoise color

and sang that song about the dark end o the street, how its where

well always meet. But I stopped, fnally. Who wants to sing alone?

This is what I remember, when I think o the Hamlet on Sunset.

This, and a ew dozen aternoons with my dad and hal brother, the

adolescent crucible in which I elt so uncomortable, baed by mypaternity and a thousand other things. Clooneys cus; the aint

are o his baby-blue trousers; the mirrored aviator shades, like a

cops, he slipped on beore he let. It was ten thirty in the morning.

I held a bottle o blanco by its neck and looked over at the pine

needles, the brittle conierous pieces that had gathered around the

drain. Clooneys bucks had thick rubber soles and made a ricative

sound as he crossed the patio, then went through the house and

out. I heard the purr o his Honda Civic, its ading drone as hewound down the hill and let me behind with my thoughts.

excerpt from "american dream machine"

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