Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2006 Rich, Attractive People In Attractive Places Doing Attractive Things Tonya Walker Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons © The Author Downloaded from http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/992 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Rich, Attractive People Doing Attractive Things in Attractive Places - A Monologue from Hell - - by Tonya Walker, Master of Fine Arts Candidate Major Director: Tom De Haven, Professor, Department of English Acknowledgement This thesis could not have been completed - completed in the loosest sense of the word - had in not been for the time and involvement of three men. I'd like to thank my mentor David Robbins for his unfailing and passionate disregard of my failings as a writer, my thesis director Tom De Haven for his patient support and stellar suggestions that are easily the best in the book and my husband Philip whose passionate disregard of my failings and patient support are simply the best. Abstract RICH, ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE IN ATTRACTIVE PLACES DOING ATTRACTIVE THINGS By Tonya Walker, M.F.A. A these submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006 Major Director: Tom De Haven, Professor, Department of English Rich, Attractive People in Attractive Places Doing Attractive Things is a fictional memoir of a dead Manhattan socialite from the 1950's named Sunny Marcus. The novel is Sunny's monologue from Hell and features many well-known figures from American pop culture including Truman Capote, Ernst Hemingway, Clark Gable, William Powell and Babe Paley. It traces the upward trajectory of Sunny's life from a modest childhood in 1920's Los Angeles to the heights of social success in the unforgiving world of Cafe Society to her murder. It may be that the enduring swan glides upon waters of liquefied lucre; but that cannot account for the creature herself-her talent, like all talent, is composed of unpurchasable substances. For a swan is invariably the result of adherence to some aesthetic system of thought, a code transposed into a self-portrait; what we see is the imaginary portrait precisely projected. Truman Capote Every rainy day, when I couldn't be on the beach, I'd walk around the lake, where I used to watch .the swans by the hour. The beauty of those swans! Of course they're angry beasts, like peacocks; but where peacocks are common, there's nothing common about swans. Diana Vreeland I believe in fairy tales. For six decades I have concentrated on photographing attractive peopIe who were doing attractive things in attractive places. Slim Aaron Prologue We were from the generation before the generation that let it all hang out. We were Truman Capote's swans. The swans that Tru cultivated were the lovely ladies of New York society. We weren't all from New York, but like homing pigeons, it was a place we returned to again and again. He christened us his swans because of our beauty, elegance, and curiously long necks. Writer George Plimpton counted Babe Paley, Marella Agnelli, Gloria Vanderbilt, Gloria Guinness, Slim Keith, and I among the pack. Like Ivy League schools, everyone's list combines a slightly different group. However, in every permutation of Tru's flock, the undisputed Swan queen was the exquisite Babe Paley, at one time my dear, dear friend. Next in line was the Swan-abee Gloria "The Ultimate" Guiness, so dubbed because she always had the in ultimate clothing, jewels and men. I found her quite vulgar. The Ultimate is followed by Pamela Harriman, the Swan Whore. Her hobbies included politics and the entertainment of a high-powered array of lovers like Edward R. Murrow, CBS President William S. Paley - yes the husband of the Swan Queen - Jock Whitney, Averell Harriman and Elie de Rothschild. Pammy was probably the most accomplished of us all. She ended up Ambassador to France, but my goodness, what a bore! Politics, world events, she was earnest, earnest, earnest. Still, bore or no, she managed to mess with my life but good. I, of course, was the other Swan, and thanks to Truman, the most infamous one. In the spirit of full disclosure I should tell you I am dead. You should have gathered that from the subtitle, but not everybody reads subtitles. If you did you will also know that I am in Hell. No metaphor, this is not some cute way of saying I'm in New Jersey or Idaho or my mother-in-law's house. This is the real Hell - Satan, hopelessness, despair. Before you go too far picturing Dante's version I must stop you. I am not there - which is not to say it does not exist, just that I'm not there. Hell is, I suspect, custom- tailored to be punishment that fits the crime. And since I was fairly frivolous and highly social in life, concerned with few things more pressing than clothing and gossip, my Hell is nothing. There is no color where I am. There are no people. I remain bodiless in a glaring white space, much like the bathroom I died in. There is nothing to see or hear. It is so desperate I'm not even sure that I am here. Maybe I have imagined this. I cannot trust my senses because technically I have none. So I think, and because I never learned anything in my lifetime to fuel my thoughts or foster new ones I think on me. And now I think on you. Yes, you. I've created you in my mind or what's left of it for me. You are for me to tell my story to. You are not real, but neither am I anymore so what does it matter? If I think hard enough of a time or a place in my life sometimes images emerge. Sometimes I get to actually see and hear the places and times I am thinking about in my mind and that is my reward. For a few moments I get some distraction from my own thoughts and this merciless white glare. I make you no promises. I may not be able to conjure a memoir or a monologue. We may get only a garbled collection of images. Or we might get a full auto-biography. If we get a bizarre bunch of incohesive scenes too bizarre to be believable we'll call this post-modernist fiction and be done with it. I don't care, as long as I get something to distract me from my relentless nothingness. Chapter One My funeral was not as well attended as it should have been. Bad timing really. What a difference a decade makes - actually twenty-two years, I'm so used to shaving years off my birth date I shave them off my death date automatically. My murder on the other hand was exquisite. Elegant and well-planned, it remains undetected. I don't even blame my grim reaper for ending my life, I suffered no pain, he saw to that. It might have been revenge, but he wasn't vengehl. And truly by the time he slipped into my apartment my body was barely sputtering. I designed a lovely bathroom, white. Arctic snow. A pure, clean gray white. Imagine white absent of warmth, completely tiled - even the ceiling - if my maid Marta cursed the grout once she cursed it a thousand times. If we create our own heaven - I'm still not sure - then we create our own hell, too. Marta's hell is a room with endless white tiles and endless grout. They found me on my bathroom floor, arranged on the oversized terrycloth bath mat. Truman was the one who called for help. He popped by to bring me a present, one of his famous snakebite kits. Accidental overdose, the coroner deemed it. No surprise really, considering all the meds I was on, and of course, I was a lavish drunk, nobody denied that. Truman was questioned of course. Our falling out was famous. But he easily proved we'd started up a friendship again, 'made our peace.' I had visited his apartment in recent years, as his doorman later attested. Tru created hundreds of these snakebite kits, and gave them to the significant in his life. He covered each box with bits of colored and metallic paper. Very clever things - some astonishingly pretty. He glued images he snipped from magazines and newspapers or even art books - he was terribly irreverent about his books, odd for a writer. Sort of cannibalistic. Tru considered this gift an honor. Mine was covered in yellow paste stones and jet beads. Post-death I'm simply delighted with how pre-occupied people are with me, how my name has become an adjective for American style. 'The original California girl,' that's what they call me. America needs us now more than ever, icons to her industry and self-importance. Proof that all that glitters is gold - high-end, high-brow and precious. We weren't exactly Grande dames, but we sure as hell were great dames. Even that Harriman whore, she wasn't American of course, though she did manage to win the American Ambassadorship to France.