Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
I did it on a dare.
It started in January of 1982. I was 22 years old and struggling to stay afloat in New York City. I had moved to the Big Apple in 1979, hoping for a big theater career, but had not gained much traction. I was waiting tables and scratching around trying to be serious, but not really knowing how. I worked at a restaurant in the theater district called J.R. The chef was Barry, but most of us called him Baaaar with a long “a” so it sounded like “bear.” He was “the bear” long before the fictional character of the same name who is captivating audiences on HULU these days. His best friend Harvey (Harv) was on point as the host.
I applied for a position well before the doors swung open to receive customers, the bulk of which would turn out to be folks trying to grab a bite before whichever show they had plans to see. We also became popular too among many of the performers who made their way to the stage. Jennifer Holliday, the original Effie in Dreamgirls, used to come by often, as did many of her castmates. There were a lot of people from the cast of Nine who dined with us regularly as well.
I was a good waitress, from a technical standpoint. Fast on my feet, with a dependable memory. I knew exactly who ordered what and how to serve it to them efficiently. I was also wild. I challenged customers to push-up contests during off hours, used the railing against the south wall of the place as a kind of makeshift ballet bar. I was definitely not a subscriber to the notion that “the customer is always right.” A lot of times the customer was rude, demanding, or lascivious, and I wasn’t the picture of tact when it came to coping with those behaviors.
Once, a man seated at a large table was trying to establish himself as the alpha boss of all thing’s dinner. He kept pointing at me from across the room with a menacing finger and shouting:
“Waitress! Hey you! Waitress. Over here!! Hey waitress!!!
I had taken that table’s order and turned it in to the kitchen, supplied everyone with drinks and a few baskets of bread piled high with pumpernickel rolls and sourdough sticks. They didn’t need anything more; he just wanted a preponderance of attention. He was showing off for the rest of his party. When I had had enough of his abusive behavior, I marched over to the table and said loudly for all to hear:
“Sir. I am doing everything I can for you and your guests. If you keep shouting and pointing that finger at me, I am going to bite it the fuck off.”
This did not sit particularly well with the owner, but Bear and Harv went to bat for me, and I managed to avoid being fired for a time. They were both very aware of how young I was and how much I had to learn. They tried to teach me about the unspoken rules of New York etiquette and keep me from plunging headlong into dangerous waters with difficult people. I did not then, nor do I now, have an adequate sense of judgement about whom to trust and whom to be wary of. I was raised in a crazy-assed household and had zero experience with standard intrapersonal interactions. My behavior was not normal. How could it be? I had no idea what normal was. I am still challenged in this area.
EVERY ROSE HAS IT’S THORN.
A woman named Susie, a fixture in the district, decided to befriend me and take me under her wing, and I was more than happy to be a part of her world. She was fun and savvy and knew everyone in town. She subsisted on a modest trust fund, had never really held a job, and so had lots of time to make friends and dash around the city being the life of the party. She had made a few halfhearted attempts to get somewhere in showbiz, but she had no appetite for hard work and having a career in the arts is nothing if not a tough proposition.
(Wages are so low these days that I think you might have to have a trust fund to even entertain the idea of being in the biz of show. Somebody is making money, I can assure you, but it ain’t the artists. )
Susie loved attention and fancied herself a bit of a legend. She was tiny, hella busty and had white, blonde hair cut short. At one point in her life, she had done a lot of stunts to get press coverage. She had dressed up as a newsboy circa the 1930’s and went to fancy establishments like Elaine’s hawking the late edition of the New York Times for a then-hefty five dollars. People paid it. It was a fun gag. She got interviewed on a few local talk shows and even made a brief appearance on Johnny Carson as a sort of bon vivant New York city character.
Susie was certain that I needed to pursue something equally attention-getting in the hopes of launching my up-til-then dormant acting career. The idea came to her in a fit of inspiration. I would dress up as Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady and sell violets on the streets of the city, with my target audience being theatergoers. I was to go up and down the length of the crowds of folks waiting to get into a show and sell my wares. Susie thought it best that I do a pre-show round of sales and then go back when the shows ended and work the late-night crowd. She dared me to take a chance on doing something odd and unique and sure to get noticed and I I took the bait.
I found a vendor in the flower district who was willing to order violets for me. Susie made me a hat that was an homage to the Broadway Musical. I found a blouse and skirt and used Susie’s old shawl to complete the look. I also went to Lincoln Center to study the Cockney dialect. Tom Courtenay, a wonderful actor starring then in “Nicholas Nickelby,” was a J.R. customer and he was kind enough to coach me a bit. I was going to use the line from the film “Violets here. Violets for your furs!” but Tom nixed the fur part; felt it was too limiting. When I began making my rounds in earnest, I would sing out “Violets here. Get your lovely violets here!" in my best Eliza impression.
It was kind of fun at first. Susie pointed me towards Shubert Alley and then headed for the bar at Charlie’s. She had found a sweater at Goodwill with a giant C (for coach) emblazoned on it and showed it off as she savored her beer. I had long underwear on under the blouse, and that was keeping me in pretty good stead. Lots of folks smiled and thought my getup was adorable, but sales were not strong. I was entertaining folks and that felt good, but the act was not exactly a money-maker.
Susie got someone at the Daily News to come out and cover the story. I was thrilled that I was going to make the papers. I suspected it would have zero effect on people’s interest in me as an actress, but at least I was doing something creative, and folks would know about it. Bear and Harv thought it was ridiculous, of course, and were pissed at Susie for talking me into doing the stunt and then sitting cozy at the bar, while I hustled in the cold. They repeatedly suggested that it was pointless and a waste of time, but I kept at it.
This went on for a good while. The weather went from cold to bitter cold. The winds were harsh and cut right through my flimsy blouse and single layer of thermal protection. My hands were stiff and blue, but every week I dutifully went out and purchased my violets and made them into little bouquets to sell. One night outside of Dreamgirls, a couple of gay men confronted me on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing out here?” one of them said. “It’s too cold. You are not dressed.”
“I’m selling these,” I said through chattering teeth and pointing to my basket of flowers.
“We’ll take them all,” the other man chimed in.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out way too much money, and insisted I take it. Then they gathered up all of the flowers and headed off. I made a beeline for Charlie’s to tell Susie about this stroke of luck. As I entered, the warmth hit me like a blast from a fiery engine. It burned. My hands hurt more as they began to thaw. We had a few drinks and chatted with a bunch of the regular customers at the bar. I had enough on me to take a cab home, and that felt luxurious and, more important, warm.
Any normal person would have given up the ghost, but I did not know that I could say no. I did not want to fink out on my commitment to the dare, and I did not want anyone, especially Susie, to think I didn’t have the grit and guts to keep on going. So, on I went.
March blew in on the tail of a blizzard. The streets were icy with dirty half-melted snow, and folks picked their way along carefully, mindful not to fall. The Daily News article finally came out, and I was excited to see my photo in the Arts section along with a personal-interest story about my life thus far and my motivations for pulling such a stunt in the middle of a cold New York winter. I still have a copy. Reading between the lines, it is easy to surmise that I came from a troubled background and was determined to make good, though the fact that I was doing such a nutty thing would lead any sane adult to see that there was something amiss.
One night I was outside the show Sugar Babies on Shubert Alley, trying to keep myself in the violet game. I was frozen stiff and exhausted, and I knew this was stupid and had proven to indeed be pointless, but I just did not know what to do about it. At last, the chimes rang, indicating the curtain was about to rise and the final stragglers went inside to take their seats. I started the long walk back to 46th street. It was not actually long but, with me in a blouse and high-heeled boots with only a shawl and a prayer for protection in 10-degree weather, it seemed a million miles away.
I was trudging back, bent over against the wind, when I heard their voices.
“Hey," Bear called out. “Enough already!”
They approached me, and tears came to my eyes. Bear took his coat off and held it out to me.
“Give me the posies!’ Harv said and took the whole basket and marched it to a trash can and threw it in.
They wrapped me in Bear’s coat, and each held an arm as we made our way back to J. R. Once inside, Bear kissed me on the head and told me to keep the coat on for a while, then went back to the kitchen. Harv ordered me a hot toddy and sat with me.
“You are done with that now. That crazy Susie is over at Charlie’s with her stupid Coach sweater, and you are a mess. Two people came in and told us that you looked really bad, miserable. This is dangerous what you’ve been doing, and it’s done now. Tell Susie no more, or I will.”
“It’s okay. I will tell her. You are right. It was getting so hard.”
“Yeah well … you did it. It took guts, but we are done now.”
Susie and I stayed friends for what might have been a record amount of time for her. A heavy, heavy drinker and, let’s face it, a dilettante, she had a hair-trigger temper and no interest in seeing anyone else’s side of the story. She had never grown up, never had to compromise or reason with others. As she drank harder and harder, her world got smaller and smaller. She broke up a friendship with anyone who dared to disagree with her, banished them if they looked at her sideways. Our relationship ended on the same low note as all of her others. I disappointed her somehow and she wrote me a hate-filled letter so overflowing with vile sentiment that I had to go outside and throw it in a dumpster because I did not want the ugliness of it inside my apartment. I cried reading it, and cried many times after, but I was also relived. It was hard to be her pal.
I have been life-long friends with Bear and Harv. They have been staunch supporters of mine through thick and thin. I had lunch with Harv and his lovely daughter Christina recently, and we laughed about this story. She looked at both of us like we were nuts. She might be right.
I still think of Susie fondly. I have never been able to hold any kind of a grudge against anyone. She was generous in her way, and she taught me a lot, even if it was not what she meant for me to learn.
On we go …
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"Rescue Me" The series. Chapter Three: "Lovely Violets"