[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: 27 October 2008]
Any devoted fool following this gilded, gluttonous saga will understand that I am reproducing, with little discretion, my diary pages from ten years ago, keeping up more or less week by week. There are, therefore, as in the life lived, highs and lows. We soldiered through endless weeks of poor health.
We endured a number of trips to St. Paul's Minnesota. Nothing so drastic in this week's edition, but you will excuse me if there's a minimum of eating and entertainment, because this week ten years ago I moved apartments.
I had been ensconced since my arrival in Manhattan in a gorgeous rented space many floors above 57th Street, with views down Eighth Avenue and across the Hudson to Jersey. At the other end of the same floor, one S. Sondheim - whose Turtle Bay house was, I believe, undergoing renovation - enjoyed the more expensive view uptown, across the Park. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell lived in the Penthouse, and Ms Hawn and I had duetted beautifully in the elevator one evening ("As Time Goes By", since you ask; she started, and I joined in before I realized who it was).
After some apartment hunting, the vote had gone to an eccentric space near Gramercy Park: a first floor apartment, in complete contrast to the 57th Street pad, with a garden terrace in the rear. The main room was a dizzying height, the bedroom built into a sturdy wooden platform above it, reached by a dangerous spiral staircase.
The kitchen was beautifully equipped, with black marble surfaces; the bathroom likewise mainly marble. There was even a marble topped cabinet which begged to hold my liquor collection. I designated the second bedroom the library. Not much detail about the move in my diary: the page reads simply "MOVE" in stark capitals, and I am sure it was a nightmare. Since the next day is similarly blank, suggesting that supper consisted of bread and cheese, I assume the time was spent unpacking.
Finally, two days later, I staggered a couple of blocks down Third Avenue to a sports bar called Barfly for a steak sandwich.
Just to ratchet up the stress, this week also saw me book dinner - my first, and so far my last, at Ye Waverley Inn for some special guests from out of town. I thought they would find some quaint Americana rewarding - this was the Inn in its homely phase, of course - and I even laid on a limousine. The driver, needless to say, could not find the restaurant; neither could I, and the street plan produced for my inspection hid the obscure West Village junction in the deep crease of its spine.
And so we drifted round and about for the best part of an hour, while I kept up a hopeful barrage of small talk. Dinner, when we accidentally happened upon our destination, was uninspiring. Oysters followed by crab and salmon cakes and coleslaw. No Graydon Carter.
I can only hope and assume I spent Saturday evening getting hammered. I certainly seem to have explored the neighborhood bars, visiting Live Bait, The Old Town Bar and Bar 81 before finishing up at the Nightingale on Second Avenue - now a velvet rope lounge, then a crusty dive - by the immortal (or at least not very young) Fleshtones.
Sunday morning furniture hunting, and boggling at the prices in ABC; then a pulled pork sandwich at the indomitable Rodeo Bar and home to pack. London-bound again.
