Family Plots

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Dear  Relatives and Members of the
Gold  Family Fraternity,

            At  the risk of sounding like the voice of doom and gloom, I just want to observe that  the rich are getting richer,  the  poor are  sleeping in the streets and  artists  too have their backs against the wall   Before the streets of New York resemble the sidewalks of Calcutta and your relative becomes a bundle of rags propped against  a wall, I would like to make you a proposal.  Lest you think this just  another begging letter, I want you to know that  I'm not only thinking about  myself,  but of the others in our family who might soon be in the same boat.

            My proposal is this.  Let us  turn around  the Gold Family Burial Society, virtually moribund (!) these last four decades, though I understand there is still a good deal of money in the kitty   I suggest that we return it to the ideals of the first Gold Family lantzman's  group which staked each uncle, aunt and cousin to a bank roll as soon as they got off the ferry from Ellis Island.  Now that the government has gone out of the business of funding artists or offering generous student loans, instead of perpetual care for the dead, why shouldn't we help the living by setting up a grant-giving, non-profit family fund.  As I said, I'm not just thinking of myself  There are other artists in the family. Tante Elke's, Alan, the cellist, could stand a little grant and even though his mother is probably exaggerating when she claims he's another Rostropovitch,  he's really very good.  Sheryl, the family drug addict used to throw a mean pot and though I understand its hard to get into public drug programs these days, she would probably come around if we sent her to a good private clinic. As for me, in spite of my reputation as a ne'er do well, the fact is I'm just beginning to make it as an artist and have sold a few pieces here and there--not enough, however, to allow me to give up any of my part-time jobs as waitress, artist's model, salesgirl office temp, bicycle messenger and massage therapist

             On the other hand, we could use the money to send a worthy, but  poor member of our family to college.  As in any good investment, you should be able to look forward to both spiritual and financial rewards from this mitzvah.   As for professional people, the doctors, lawyers, etc., they would repay the fund in full and we would have every right to expect generous contributions from them after they begin earning all those bucks.   This is not to mention the salubrious effect on the family tree now glittering with the talented and grateful wealthy.

 Finally, remember that in today's  business climate even the richest among us could go bust and find their home and possessions on the auction block (look at Manny in Massachusetts back in the 80's, or Sarah in Orange County, California, who lost everything when county investments went belly-up).  I hope you will take this letter in good part, not as an attempt to hold you up but as a way to provide for us all against the exigencies of poverty, old age and the indifference of the world

                                                                                                  Love, Eliza

 
Dear Daughter:

            Here in Florida I do nothing but worry about money.  Your father was, as you know, not generous in his divorce settlement with me and the little your grandfather left me seems to be dwindling away, thanks to my business manager , that momser, your cousin Harry.  Look darling, it wouldn't do either of us any good if I got sick  and ended up in  a nursing home.  And believe me that's all I worry about night and day.

            Listen, sweetheart, I just read in  People magazine  that Andy Warhol spent ten hours  a day  at the Factory,  painting.  Don't be mad at me if I say this, darling,  but you were always a little lazy, sleeping late, working  just a few hours, then gallivanting off to the museum or the park.

            Oh, before I forget, tell me what happened to portraits?  You used to do such wonderful sketches of the family .  Remember I  framed a few and hung them up on the walls.  Of course you were only fourteen when you did those and I'm sure you're much better now.  And, darling, portraiture is such a lucrative field.  I bet if you advertised  they'd be lining up in the streets and I wouldn't have to be humiliated by you sending begging letters  to all the relatives.

              Be well and think of your poor mother sometime.  Tell me darling, how we can have any kind of family when there is no family anymore?

Love always,
Your Mother

            P.S. Did your father send  you anything?                                                                                                                                                           

 Liza,

              I just want you to understand how frivolous it is to take money out of the investment loop.  You  know I never invest in anything without a reasonable rate of return,  or that doesn't have a triple A rating or isn't tax-deductible.           

            You 're just trying to make a laughing stock out of me with Max and Herman who, thank God, have nothing to laugh at because of Sheryl and Harvey   Now I'm not even safe at my club where the other day someone passed around a copy of your letter.  You can imagine what I had to put up with!  (Of course I still belong to the club even though I often have cash flow problems.  As I try to explain to your mother when I'm late with alimony payments-- the club is a business investment.)

Your Father

Dearest Lizzie--older sister :

            If you only knew how often I think of you.  After all we are only sixteen months apart-- almost twins.  So even though we've had our violent battles, I love you and wish that I were a better person so that I could help you.  The worst of it is that I remember saying that I would  help you ,if you ever needed money.  Even though I'm selfish and even neurotic about money, Eliza, I'm very conscious of the difference in our incomes and lifestyle.  Believe me when I say it hurt me to read your plea and realize that you needed to go to the rest of the family like a schnorrer.

             Listen, sweetie, last year my income was in six figures .  The big role in the Warner film took me over the top.  Thought my money worries were over -- especially after I was cast as Laura in that popular soap, Hold Back the Dawn.   Hell, then I got greedy.  Half my money went up my nose, another  chunk landed on my back the rest of it went to a shrink so he could tell me why  I was putting my money up my nose,  and last but not least, there was the genius independent film maker I lived with for awhile who borrowed a hundred thou. to make  this brilliant documentary and then ran off to South America with another woman who had more money than I do.  I wouldn't have minded  so much if at least he made the damn movie.  It was  truly brilliant and had a social message too .  The whole thing takes place in a whore house for coal miners in Appalachia --like the Robert Altman movie with Julie Christie and Warren Beatty.

            The Warner film is long finished (unfortunately it flopped at the box-office),  my agent tells me I'm getting too long in the tooth to do any modeling and in last Thursday's episode,  my character in the  soap was killed off.  So, now I'm living "marginally",  though, admittedly poolside, at my Beverly Hills house. 

            The trouble is that you get used to this California style of living and think you can't do without it.  So although my doctor tells me that I'll die of a heart attack in a few years if I don't watch it (remember, All That Jazz ?) I try not to listen to him and I just keep going on as usual.

            I'm renting out the Malibu house, my Mercedes is on the block, I'm living on last years wardrobe and getting my dope off friends and lovers.  Like any actor, I'm hoping to catch the next wave.  Hey,  I'm even willing to play Godzilla's younger sister if they want me to!  Anyway, kid, catch me next time I'm flush .

Your truly phony but loving sister,
Suzie

Dear Eliza:

            You have a nerve to talk to me about your  money worries!  Surely you know that interest rates are still too high, the bond  market's flat, my customers are screaming and I was heavily invested in Asian bonds. 

                     Your Brother ,
Herb

Dear Elizabeth,

            You know how much Milton and I disapprove of your lifestyle.   We've certainly told you often enough in the hope that you would change your ways.  I don't see any reason why you can't work full time at a real job and do your paintings on week-ends or at night.  I often run up  a little dress or sweater (not to mention the self-designed needlepoint pieces I sometimes sell to friends) at night after a full day of shopping, chauffeuring and cooking --all those womanly chores you refuse over and over again to make part of your life.  It was the last straw for me when you turned down Milton's friend Seymour.  After all Seymour likes art--even offered to build a studio in the backyard of the Great Neck house for you.  I often wonder just who you think you are.

            As for money--we have just made  extensive investments in our family lifestyle.  We've bought a backyard swimming pool, , a home computer with CD -Rom for the children and an annuity so they can go to the best colleges. There is nothing left for burial societies or artists.  We believe in the proposition that each of us must be responsible for our own lives.

Your sister,
Patricia

Oh Lizzie:

            Again last night it was four in  the morning ,then five, then six--you know what I mean.  I worried about money, about you,  but mostly about nursing homes.  Yesterday they came and got Mrs. Schwartz who lives in the next apartment.  So, she was drooling a little  and put her cat in the dryer by mistake.  Does that mean she should go to a home where it stinks piss and vomit ?  

            But that's enough  depression.  Remember when I met Norman Mailer's mother in the elevator at the Fountainbleau.  She told me then that Norman works at least ten hours a day at his typewriter.

Love,
Your mother who  wants only your happiness 

Dear Cousin Eliza:

            When we were young our parents were feuding and we were forbidden to see each other.  I thought you were pretty stuck-up then and hated your father's guts.  He said my father was a communist and should be sent back to Russia just because he was a union organizer and sang the Internationale  before the Hatikva  at the Gold Fraternity meetings along with other dissident  family members.

            So Eliza, though I disliked you once, it has done my heart good to welcome you among the family pinkos.  You certainly tossed a well-aimed dart into the family tree.  However you've had to pay the usual price .  At the last  meeting of the Gold Family Burial Society, which was attended  full compliment, except for those in far flung places --and you who were wise to stay away, the family rose up and in their wrath roasted you on the spit of malevolence unseen since Aunt Gittle wanted to bury her jail bird husband in the family plot.  Discussions about her chutzpah  went on for so long that she was finally forced to bury him someplace else since the body was beginning to decompose.  In any case I wouldn't be surprised if now you were denied a place in the family plot.

              I want you to know that I too, worked as a waitress . When I was a member of the Young Socialist Labor Party it pissed me off that waiting on tables was not considered worthy to rank as true proletarian labor.  Surely standing on your feet eight hours a day is equal to an assembly line job any day. 

            Its just your luck that even though I admire your guts I don't have a sou.  But listen, kid, if ever you are in  need of a bed or a piece of bread or someone to listen to your troubles, here I am.

Your Older Cousin,
Sarah

Hey Coz:           

             I'm a musician too--but unlike Alan,  I'm into acid rock, remember ?  I was lead singer and played the guitar in a group called, The Undead,.  We wore fangs, Dracula cloaks and long, claw-like fingernails.  That was in Alice Cooper's time and like you say we were beginning to "make it".  Then Reagan and Thatcher came along, dragging the fucking Punk Revolution behind them.  Shit!  We tried to keep up.  Dyed the Dracula capes shocking pink, our hair green, wore safety pins through our nostrils and dead rats around our necks.  But it was no use.  So now I live from hand to mouth on the fucking lower East side.

            So, you know, I was going to defect to  the East .  I  figured Moscow was twenty years behind us, was just getting hip enough to appreciate me.  Then, too, I heard all kinds of good shit could be found on every street corner.  Man, it blew my mind just thinking about it!  So what happened?  The fucking walls came down and goodbye Cold War!  Since then they've been over run with every kind of pop music from rap to hip hop. Quel bummer!    

            So coz, how about if I come uptown to your Canal street pad.  If you get any money for this scam of yours I'll help you manage it .    Like we could do a performance.  You get the gallery.  I'll bring the music--and the grass!

         Stay cool,
Harve

P.S.  My father, the Red Scourge is sending you some hate mail.  But hey, don't freak out.   He's still under indictment for arson and criminal neglect of the apartment house he owns in Harlem.  Like, you know, he's probably the only living Stalinist  slumlord around these days.

Dear Niece Elizabeth:

            You were, are now and always will be a narcissistic American Princess.   When did you ever sleep on the street or do without a piece of bread?

            As for your bourgeois art.  Its is nothing but elitist bullshit.  Horse manure is more important to the coming proletarian triumph (and  make no mistake it will come, no matter what happens in the short run) then your romantic middle-class shmearachs.

            Uncle Harry

Darling Lizzie:

             When I got up this morning I decided enough depression!  So I got up, got dressed and went to Hialeah.  Guess what?  That's right, I played a long shot on a hunch.  The horse came in and paid twenty  to one!  The horses name ?  Gainsborough!  So, darling, I'm sending you five hundred dollars for art supplies--paints and canvasses to make the portraits and pay for the advertising.

Your lucky mother,
 

P.S.  Remember that Gainsborough worked day and night to earn his big salary.  Not that Leonardo, though.  He was lazy and let other people do his work.

Dear Eliza:

             The more I think of  your tasteless jokes the angrier I be-come.  For instance, you want to talk about perpetual care ?  O.K., we’ll talk about perpetual care.  Only I mean  my care of you since you were born.  First there was  that ritzy ,"progressive", private school your mother insisted I send you kids to.  It was there that you first took up art instead of learning how to earn a living for yourself.  Then you went to the most expensive, private college you could find--more art,  next there was graduate school, then the studio in SOHO, the cost of your painting materials, the shrink you needed in order to deal with your painting blocks. So far we're talking at least seventy-five thousand dollars.  

             As I have tried to explain to you, when it comes to laying out money I'm not interested in houses, art or people, only something  that earns interest--compounded, until one day you've got a mountain of money --continually turning itself over --rich, satisfying and hot as compost.

Best,
Father

Dear Lizzie

            What a shame a rich man like your father can't do something for you.  Besides all the money he has in that " investment port-folio" of his he can always make a dime.  All he has to do is go to  his office and pick up another  divorce case or a whiplash.  I told Suzie she should ask him for some help too.  After all, she has money problems now.

            Did I tell you that Milton Berle's daughter-in-law goes to my doctor.  For years he worked twelve hours a day.  He even made his own dresses.  He used to say, "art/shmart--give 'em what they want!"

Love and kisses,
Your mother

Dear Pa:

              Lizzie isn't asking for the moon.  If the family doesn't go for it maybe you could help her out with a temporary loan.  She's really  a very good painter and will probably make a lot of money someday.  All my friends think she's terrific.  Some have even bought stuff from her. 

            Still, I have to admit there's a tiny bit of a selfish motive on  my part here.   You probably have heard that I' m in  major financial straits these days due to a temporary downturn in my career.   On the other hand, because I'm in a position to provide very upscale  collateral you know I would be good for any loans.

            So why don't you give it some thought?                                   

Love ya,
Suzie

Dear Suzanne:

            You're as bad as she is!  Why don't you give up the Whore of Babylon life you lead?  The only kind of money I'd be willing to give either of you would be to stake you to a small business.  If you and your sister feel willing  to do what I suggested years ago when you complained to me about Hollywood's boom and bust proclivities, why I would be willing to give you a small. low cost loan.  My suggestion is that you open a small  but elegant boutique in the suburbs of L.A. or New York (I can't make Madison Avenue rents). That way your artistic instincts would get full play.  (why I bet if your sister turned to designing dresses she would discover she had a flair for it)  With her talent and your personality  I'm sure you could make a go of it.  In fact I might become very enthusiastic about such a project.

Dad

Dear Eliza :

            Here is dad's letter.   No comment!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Suzie

Dear Lizzie and Suzie:

            Thanks for passing your daddy's letter on to me.  What would be so terrible if you took him up on his proposition? Don't forget the Gabor sisters and  their mother ran a very successful little boutique on Madison Avenue for years.  But not in the suburbs.  Tell him its Madison Avenue or nothing .

Love,
Your excited mother

Dear Ms. Gold:

            The Gold Family Burial Society regretfully informs you that due to overcrowding there is no more room in the family plot for your future remains.

Very Truly Yours,
Hyman Gold
Sec. of The Gold Family Burial Society

The End