TRUE STORIES OF Bitches

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Playwright DAVID MAMET names the three biggest bitches he knows: his sister, his mother, and his wife

DAVID MAMET

The bitchiest person I know is my sister. She

lives in Des Plaines, Illinois—which she refers to as "the City of Destiny."

One evening in said city we were out drowning our sorrows at a delicatessen, and I said of my pastrami sandwich, "How can we eat this food? This is heart-attack food. . . how can we eat this?"

"Listen," she remonstrated, "it gave six million Jews the strength to resist Hitler."

And there you have the difference between talent and genius. In a few impromptu words, my sister managed to malign me, the pastrami, restaurantgoers of like mind, and six million innocent victims.

Why? Because I ate a pastrami sandwich? Not exactly, as she, too, was eating a similar sandwich. All of the above incurred my sister's wrath because I had the bad taste to express an opinion.

"You are a fool," she was saying, "you are a fool to be eating food you disapprove of. Your inability to rule your life according to your perceptions is an unfortunate trait and, doubtless, it was in some wise responsible for the murder of the European Jewry. They, although they unfortunately couldn't be here to defend themselves, were most likely equally foolish in submitting by degrees to a deathlike oppression—much as you submit to that sandwich—and / am a fool for sitting here with you."

When we were younger, my sister put my stepsister up to calling me on the phone and pretending to be a friend of a friend from college who was smitten with me and would like to meet me for a drink. An affable chap, I acquiesced, and heard, and still hear twenty years later, the giggles of the two girls over the phone.

Often, when speaking of completely unrelated topics, my sister will ask if I remember the time I invited my own stepsister out for a drink; and then, honor being what it is, I riposte by asking if she remembers the time her boyfriend drowned in the bathtub. His death was elevated from the unfortunate to the remarkable by the fact that he drowned in the bathtub while testing out his new scuba gear; and reference to his passing tends to cap the argument, as being the ne

plus ultra of response, which is to say bitchiness. Similarly, in husband-and-wife arguments, or, as they are generally known, "marriage," the ultimate response the man feels is, of course, physical violence. People can say what they will, we men think, but if I get pushed just one little step further,

why I might, I might just_(Fill in the blank)

because she seems to have forgotten that I'M STRONGER THAN HER.

And there you have the raison d'etre of bitchiness and its identification as a feminine tactic. We've all got to have an ace in the hole when dealing with those who are stronger.

My wife, in the whirlwind early years of our marriage, disapproved of my playing poker. Looking back, it occurs to me that she felt I should have found her exclusive company sufficient, and indeed I would have, but she didn't play poker.

Many times she would resort to a cunning and wily ruse to lure me back home from my game. She would call, for example, and say that she was down the road at the filling station, as she had forgotten the keys to the house, and would I please come home. She once called me to ask me to come home because she was scared. "Why are you scared?" I asked. "Because there's a bat in the toilet," she said.

Man that I am, I resisted her blandishments, and, on arrival home, found that there was indeed a bat in the toilet. It was a rather junior bat and had folded its wings and gone to sleep on the floor behind the bathtub, and so I nodded my head and said, "Well..."

Speaking of which: once my wife called and spoke to me thus: "Why don't you come home? Why don't you leave that silly game and come home to a woman who loves you?" If my memory serves me, her voice became somewhat husky at this point, and lower in pitch, and she said, "You know I can't sleep unless you come home." Well, I hung up the phone and I thought. I looked at my stack of chips and, as I seemed to be winning, I said to my companions, "Fellas, I'm sorry, but I have to go home."

I went home, I entered my house humming to myself, and sprinted up the stairs, loosening my clothing. My wife was fast asleep. 1 rubbed the small of her back. "Wake up, honey," I said, or somesuch. "Mffff," she said. "Sleeping." I paused. "Yes, but," I said, "you said come home, 'cause you couldn't sleep if I'm not here." "Well, you're here," she said and went back to sleep.

So you see what I mean.

The culmination of which came one night when I had come home from the game quite late, and with less money than I went out with. My wife, at this point, was awake and took it up with me, my playing poker. Things escalated, as things do, and finally she shouted, "All right, if it's so important to you, just leave. Just leave, and never come back."

"All right," I said. And she stormed out and I got out my suitcase and started throwing versatile items of clothing into it. Boys, my mind was racing: I was free at last. I would play poker every night, and smoke cigars right in the house. I would look up all of those New York gals who understand what "freedom" means, I would live in cheap hotels. She came back into the room. "And take the kid," she said, and thrust our sleeping two-year-old daughter at me and walked out. There it is again: I thought I was winning. I thought I had won, and what was I left with? A very difficult form of behavior to negotiate with, that is, "I don't understand the rules, but I'm so nutsy that I might do anything.

I put the kid back to sleep and meditated that no one forced me to get married.

A further story of me and my wife:

One night by the fire she asked me, "Who was the most famous person that you ever slept with?" I was stunned. My wife is a genteel and sensitive woman, and that question, even in the protected intimacy of marriage, seemed crass and invasive. "Oh, honey," I said, "ha-ha-ha," and went | back to my reading. "Who was the most famous person | you ever slept with?" she repeated. I asked if I looked like i the type who'd kiss and tell, and she said yes, I did. After o some bantering—me truly on the defensive, as I couldn't 1 figure out what prompted this out-of-character question—I 1 hit on a response: "O.K.," I said, "who was the most S famous person you ever slept with?" She responded in-

stantly with a name. There, now I have you, I thought. "Him?" I said. "Him??? He was the most famous person that you ever slept with? You slept with him? That lox .. .are you joking with me? Ha-ha-ha!" And limitless was my mirth for some minutes, as I expounded on her lack of taste and choice.

When I'd run down, she said, "All right, now your turn: who is the most famous person you've ever slept with?" There was a slight pause, I lowered my eyes and said demurely, "All right, I slept with_" There was

a moment's silence and my wife said, "Who?" As Conan Doyle tells us: mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. People say that Bruce Lee was killed by the Touch of Death, a martial technique so occult and so advanced its adepts, with a simple touch of an unspecified part of the body, can reverse the vital mechanism and bring about death within twenty-four hours.

My mother knew and would do the usual required dressage of forgetting the names of girls of whom she did not approve, complaining that I had missed events whose existence she had neglected to inform me of, and so on. But she had one technique which, even though I was its victim, filled me with admiration.

It was in a period of my life when I was doing a lot of traveling—commuting between New York, California, and our home in Vermont.

On my stops in Chicago, I would have a fine dinner at my mother's house and discuss the lives of various members of the family who were fortuitously not present, for example my sister and her boyfriend, who had gone to both Davy Jones and Kohler of Kohler simultaneously, and so on.

After dinner, as I rose to leave, my mother would do the modem equivalent of "take a little something for the train." She would present me with a token to be taken home to commemorate the odd intervening birthday or anniversary. This was a charming habit of a charming woman, and my joy in the gift was dissipated only by the fact that (1) I was invariably traveling light and in the midst of a flying visit to five cities, and (2) the gift was invariably a Staffordshire serving platter. So there I was. Evening after evening. On the sidewalk outside her house—my go-getter shoulder bag with a notebook and a toothbrush and a spare pair of socks, and my arms endeavoring to protect this three-foot confection of spun porcelain.

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Now, you couldn't check it, you couldn't carry it on the plane unless you held it in your lap, and then it was odds-on to break. The most intelligent course would be, of course, to throw it in the trash, but HOW COULD ONE ACT LIKE THAT TO ONE'S MOTHER? And so, lashed to this fragile anchor, one thought about one's mother for the length of the trip. What did one think? Surely she must know. . .surely she could have sent home a nice antique pillbox. . .surely some part of her must know I'm going to have to dedicate my life to this monstrosity, and let alone "Put it in the closet, we'll take it out when she comes over," I would have to encase the damn thing in glass to try to prohibit it from shattering spontaneously.

It occurs to me that the three prime examples of bitchiness are three of the four women closest to me (the fourth being my daughter, who is too young and partakes of too much of my forthright nature ever to be a bitch). So I would, for a moment, speak like a member of the "helping professions" and suggest that people can't be bitchy to us unless we let them be close to us. This is a splendid theory and would hold water unless one has ever tried to complete a transaction in a New York bank.

I once spent about an hour in line at a New York bank waiting to make a deposit. When my turn finally came, I handed the teller my savings passbook and a check for twenty-five hundred dollars, meant for deposit. The teller credited the money to my passbook, then returned the passbook along with twenty-five hundred dollars in cash.

As I am a well-brought-up individual, my cupidity was inched out by my fear of being caught, and I said to the teller, "Excuse me...?" to which she responded, "You've had your turn. If you want another transaction, go to the back of the line." I stepped aside and meditated on how much sharper than anything it is to do business with a New York bank, and again my fear of capture came to the fore. I got in the somewhat shorter line, which led to the bank officers. After about a half-hour it came my turn, and I explained the situation to a vice president. She nodded, took the twenty-five hundred, and began and ended her speech of thanks with the simple "Well, what are you waiting for?"

And speaking of the Capital of Bitchiness:

I was walking down the street on a beautiful New York day, hurrying to a business meeting. I had on a sportscoat, as I thought I would comport myself in a deferential manner. I was not wearing a tie because I do not own a tie.

Passing Bendel's, I thought I would improve the few moments before my business meeting by buying a tie, so completing my "professional drag," and, in the very act of the transaction, becoming one with the mercantile society around me.

I went into the men's boutique section and smiled approvingly at the wellturned-out young woman in charge.

Ingenuously, I said, "Hi. I got dressed up for a business meeting. I put on a special outfit, and it occurs to me that I should wear a tie. Which tie do you think I should choose to go with this outfit?" The young woman looked at me for a moment and responded, "Get a new outfit."

Yes, I admire it: the ability to spew those pungent periods right on the spur—the bile of a wasted life tempering the steel of a vicious disposition .. .for the world is full of cruelty, and how can we cease being cruel if we are not cruel?

Once, in the midst of a particularly

bad day, I was having lunch at a crowded eatery. I was asked to share a table with a pretty woman in a proclaimedly unpleasant mood.

Being by profession, experience, and inclination suspicious and not a bit paranoid, I took her truculent silence personally. On arising to pay the check, I nodded at my accidental table partner and said, "Nice chatting with you." She looked up and said, "My best friend died today," to which I responded, "Hey, Bitch, / didn't kill her. Laugh if you will, cry if you must, but I like to think, like bitches everywhere, that my quick and elegant rejoinder raised that woman from the morass of her legitimate personal problems, and enmired her in mine. □