{"id":132452,"date":"2019-01-07T10:23:26","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T15:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=132452"},"modified":"2019-01-11T17:20:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T22:20:41","slug":"meeting-eve-babitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/07\/meeting-eve-babitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Eve Babitz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Eve Babitz. Photo strip from the collection of Mirandi Babitz.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u00a0arrived at Short Order straight from the airport. I was the first customer of the day, the hostess unlocking the door as I reached for it. The restaurant was Eve\u2019s choice, a fifteen-minute walk (she hadn\u2019t driven in years) from her condo, in the Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax. It looked like the kind of place that would have sold hamburgers and hot dogs to beach bums and bunnies had it been located on the water, only fancy. I sat at a table by the window, sipping a seltzer, my stomach a mess from nerves and travel and being six weeks pregnant, and waited for the woman who once said she believed \u201canyone who lived past thirty just wasn\u2019t trying hard enough to have fun,\u201d now sixty-nine.<\/p>\n

And then the second customer of the day entered. I stood up from my chair, half sat back down, stood up again as I thought, It\u2019s Eve, wait, it can\u2019t be Eve, wait, it has to be Eve.<\/em> She no longer looked like a bombshell, her hair gray, the cut short and blunt, her clothes a way of covering up her nakedness and nothing more, her glasses, black-rimmed, the lenses thick. She didn\u2019t, however, look like a burn victim either. (Her face had been spared in the 1997 fire, started when she tried to light a cigar, dropped the match in her lap.) She looked, remarkably, unremarkable, an older woman who didn\u2019t give much thought to her appearance out for lunch. She picked up a paper take-out menu from the hostess\u2019s stand, began studying it.<\/p>\n

I walked over to her, touched her shoulder. She smiled, toward me rather than at me. And I saw immediately that I\u2019d been wrong about her looking unremarkable. That was the impression she gave from a distance. Up close it was another story. Her glasses were smudged, greasy. She\u2019d applied lipstick to her mouth, only she\u2019d done it haphazardly, a streak of pink on her chin. She had, too, a smell about her. Not body odor\u2014it wasn\u2019t tart or tangy. Something else, something I could almost identify but couldn\u2019t quite, something heavy, sweetish. She said she was starving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No exaggeration, as it turned out. Our grass-fed burgers and russet potatoes fried in truffle oil arrived and she barely came up for air. I flashed to a conversation I\u2019d had with her longtime squeeze, Paul Ruscha, and his description of her M.O. at fetes during her party-girl heyday: \u201cShe\u2019d bypass the host or hostess and first head to the buffet table and dive into it like Esther Williams on Dexamyl. She\u2019d bolt if something made her uneasy, then barge back in and demand that I take her home. I\u2019d ask her why. After all, we\u2019d just gotten there, and she\u2019d say, \u2018So we can fuck!\u2019\u2009\u201d The second she cleaned her plate, she pushed it away. She wanted to go, she said. The whole meal had taken twenty minutes.<\/p>\n

I threw cash down on the table, afraid she\u2019d get impatient, walk out if I used a credit card. Trying to buy myself a little extra time, I offered to give her a ride home, even though I didn\u2019t have a car. I called for a cab and we talked a bit as we waited for it, a bit more when we were in it. But the conversation never really got off the ground. We couldn\u2019t get any rhythm going, any flow. I was uptight and overeager. And she, no doubt, was bewildered: Who was I exactly, and what did I want from her? Or maybe she was just checked out. The few remarks she made were addressed to an invisible point above my head or to herself. The cab turned onto Gardner and she was opening the door almost before the driver braked, disappeared into her building without so much as a wave.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t sleep that night. Was too upset. Because I\u2019d blown it with Eve, of course, and felt hot with shame at my failure. But also because sitting across from Eve at that restaurant table had been such an alienating experience. Technically she\u2019d looked at me, though she\u2019d refused to acknowledge my presence in any of the usual ways. Technically she\u2019d spoken to me, though she\u2019d refused to engage in dialogue other than of the Mad Hatter variety, each sentence unconnected from the sentence that came before. She never once said my name.<\/p>\n

Yet as strong as my urge was to back away, my urge to come closer was stronger still. You could even say that my repulsion was a form of attraction. That Eve, famous for her beauty and seductiveness, was now a ruin and a gorgon excited me. It heightened the beauty and seductiveness of her books, reinforced my conviction that she was an artist and an original. That her life had descended into either tragedy or folly or both also excited me. It meant that there was a grandeur about her, a magnificence. Logically this made no sense, but intuitively it rang cherries, one, two, three in a row. Besides, I believed that Eve was trying<\/em> to repel me. (If you reduced everything she said to me in those twenty minutes to a single word, it wouldn\u2019t be a word, it would be a growl.) She was putting obstacles in my path, which proved that the jewel she was guarding was precious indeed. And then there was this: she was my ticket out of publishing purgatory\u2014anonymous writer-for-hire assignments, dry-as-dust magazines that barely paid\u2014I was sure of it. It was starting to dawn on me how ambitious I was, how far I was willing to go. It was starting to dawn on me that I might be a gorgon, too.<\/p>\n

In the morning, I forced myself to call her, thank her for coming to lunch. I was certain she wouldn\u2019t pick up. But she did, even sounded pleased that it was me on the other end of the line. It was a brief exchange, three minutes at most. She brought it to a close, though, by saying, \u201cAnd next time, I want you to take me for barbecue.\u201d Next time<\/em>. The sheer relief at hearing those two words made my vision blur for a second. As I said goodbye, which she didn\u2019t catch (already hung up), my heart lifted, lifted, lifted.<\/p>\n

I was in.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Though Eve and I were eventually able to achieve a certain level of comfort with each other in person, perfect ease was beyond us. Is beyond us still, frankly. It\u2019s difficult for me to relax with her since I always feel like I\u2019m playing beat-the-clock. I know how quickly she\u2019s going to want to leave wherever it is we are, so I tend to overdirect the conversation, get impatient if she wanders off on one of her tangents: a sugar substitute found only in Japan, the queen of England\u2019s bra maker, an Israeli ambassador who\u2019s the spitting image of Jim Morrison. And I\u2019m sure my wound-up intensity is unnerving for her, that habit I can\u2019t seem to break of looking at her too hard, of lunging at her every remark as soon as it drops from her lips. Nor have I managed to completely shed my awe of her, my neediness around her, and it\u2019s a strain on us both. Another issue: physical pain, which she never mentions but which I guess at. I learned from her cousin Laurie and sister Mirandi that a number of her burns didn\u2019t fully heal, are still open. And her body can no longer efficiently rid itself of heat because the fire destroyed so many of her sweat glands. Sitting in a chair at a table for an extended period, especially in warm weather, must be excruciating.<\/p>\n

On the phone, however, where my gaze isn\u2019t merely averted, is eliminated, the story is entirely different. Our rapport is not just reliable but surefire, not just easy but instinctive. She takes my calls now, has ever since that lunch at Short Order. \u201cOui, oui?\u201d<\/em> she says, her favorite greeting. I tell her who it is though I know she already knows. Caller ID. And she says, \u201cLili!\u201d the exclamation point audible in her voice, which\u2014and I think this every time I hear it, the same thought, without fail\u2014is so charming, unusually charming. It\u2019s girlish and lilting, the enunciation softly crisp, laughter always bubbling up in it; yet it\u2019s drowsy, too, as if the phone\u2019s ringing has pulled her out of a heavy slumber. And this is what I start to picture, despite my knowing exactly what Eve looks like now: Eve then, Eve\u2019s Hollywood<\/em>\u2013era Eve, sitting up in bed, tousle-haired and mascara-smeared like a good bad-girl movie babe, a sheet wrapped around her torso, the receiver cradled between her chin and shoulder as she lights her first cigarette of the day and lets fly some deeply unfair, deeply funny observation, a man beside her, only his back visible, trying to stay asleep.<\/p>\n

I should add: that my fantasy is, I suspect, really our fantasy, mine and Eve\u2019s, not just shared with her, but cocreated by her, and necessary to us both. I\u2019d bet money that Eve is picturing the same Eve I\u2019m picturing when we\u2019re on the phone. It\u2019s obvious she\u2019d rather talk on it than face-to-face. And who can blame her? To have changed forms so abruptly, gone from, if no longer, in her early fifties, a sexual paragon, then still vital and enticing, fully capable of attracting, in her words, \u201cfun and men and trouble,\u201d to mundane in the span of a few seconds, must\u2019ve been beyond disorienting, must\u2019ve been dislocating, as if her life had suddenly become a case of mistaken identity. Small wonder that she prefers her communication to be disembodied.<\/p>\n

Mostly Eve and I talk about the past. What she says is invariably sharp and amusing, and her recall is exceptional. On the disagreeableness of Edie Sedgwick: \u201cI never met Edie. I didn\u2019t want to. I knew she was obnoxious, so I stayed out of her way. I did see her, though, a few times at Max\u2019s Kansas City, sitting at the bar with Bobby Neuwirth. She used to buy her clothes in the boys\u2019 section.\u201d On the strange case of Walter Hopps: \u201cChico [Hopps\u2019s nickname] had a room in his house filled with Joseph Cornells. He stole them from everybody. He even stole them from Tony Curtis.\u201d On fame: \u201cThere was a period there where it looked like a book I wrote might become a bestseller. It didn\u2019t. But for about a week people thought that it might, and that I might become famous. It was one of the most horrible weeks of my life. Why? Because I thought being famous would cramp my style.\u201d By the way, \u201ccramp my style\u201d is more Eve-speak, a phrase invoked by her here in response to fame, but I\u2019ve also heard her invoke it in response to higher education, to deadlines, to black-widow corsets\u2014to anything, basically, that threatens her ability to do exactly as she pleases.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s great on the present as well, if you\u2019re willing to wait out the political rants. (Her views took a sharp right turn post-fire.) She tells me about the book she\u2019s reading, Life<\/em>, Keith Richards\u2019s autobiography: \u201cThe reason Keith doesn\u2019t die is because he doesn\u2019t mix his drugs.\u201d Why she isn\u2019t writing: \u201cI\u2019d rather do nothing for as long as I can stand it.\u201d What her skin looks like: \u201cI\u2019m a mermaid now, half my body.\u201d It\u2019s the last remark that knocks me out the most. I love it not simply because it shows how tough she is, how unbowed, what a sport and a champ and a trouper, but because of its sneaky eroticism. She\u2019s comparing her burned epidermis, a painful and grisly condition\u2014a disfigurement\u2014to the scales on the tail of a mermaid, the seductress of the sea. As an image, it\u2019s grotesque and romantic at once. Not just sexy, perversely sexy. Not just perversely sexy, triumphantly perversely sexy. On the phone, she talks like she writes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at <\/em>Vanity Fair. Her work has also appeared in <\/em>Harper\u2019s, <\/em>Esquire, and <\/em>The Believer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>Hollywood\u2019s Eve<\/a>,<\/em> by Lili Anolik. Copyright \u00a9 2019 by Lili Anolik. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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