Peter Lawford's Beach House

...from 1998, but there's a NATO-expansion reference that seems timely!

On a hill above the beach in Santa Monica, hemmed in on two sides by the grimly New Frontier-style RAND Corporation, there sits a little beach shack bar called “Chez Jay.”  Legend has it that back in the early 60’s, when the RAND Corporation was hip, Bobby Kennedy would sit at a back table in Chez Jay, right by the telephone, sipping a (I like to think) martini, and waiting  for the call to come to tell him that Marilyn Monroe had arrived at Peter Lawford’s beach house.  He’d get up, pay (I like to think) for his martini, and cruise down the hill in his (I like to think) jumbo convertible, a big-finned chartreuse gas hog, pull into Peter Lawford’s beach house, and moments later, pull into Marilyn Monroe herself.

The whole idea of Peter Lawford’s beach house – the gestalt of it, if you will – is a personification of everything sexy.  The slightly-seedy bar, the martini (now there’s a sexy drink! Even the glass is a turn-on!), the swaying palm trees, the clickety-clack of Marilyn Monroe’s (I like to think) beach sandals hitting the Mexican tile lining the stairs…whoo boy.  I need to sit down for a moment.

The phrase “Peter Lawford’s beach house” has even evolved, among my friends, into a swank euphemism for sex.  As in: “Fellas, drinks are on me! I went to Peter Lawford’s beach house last night!” Or, more usually:  “I’ve gone out with her, like, a dozen times and I STILL haven’t been to Peter Lawford’s beach house!”

Now imagine, please, that same scene with a different actor.  Send Bobby Kennedy back to his trailer, for white-shirt pressing and forelock teasing, and send in Bill Clinton.  Places!  Stand-by!  Action!

Bill gets the call, drives to the house, Marilyn calls out “I’m upstairs, darling!”  Quick trip to the kitchen for a snack, pads upstairs, sees Miss Monroe in pink satin, like a sexy kittenish delicious bonbon.  He leers.  “You look hot, baby,” he coos.  Then sits on the edge of the bed, removes a cigar from his pocket, and starts making phone calls.  She looks at him quizzically.  “Betty, will you get me Dick Gephardt?  Thanks,” he says into the phone.  Marilyn taps him on the shoulder and gives him a what-am-I-chopped-liver? look.  He smiles, caresses her face – careful not to touch her in any of the places delineated in Jones v. Clinton – and cheerfully points to his zipper.  “Hello, Dick?” he says into the phone.  Marilyn is too stunned to move.  “Yeah,” the president oozes into the phone, “let’s talk about the budget bill…” As he talks, he shrugs to Marilyn, makes a give-me-five-minutes gesture, points to his zipper again, then picks up the cigar and winks at her.  She would not need to take her own life a few weeks later in her bungalow on Helena.  She would die laughing, right there in Peter Lawford’s beach house.

So let’s add things up.  Similarities between Clinton and the Kennedy’s:  one, plump, not-too-bright girlfriends with self-esteem issues and houses in Brentwood; and two, fascination with Hollywood.  Differences:  one, glamour; and two, penetration.

And the differences matter.  One of the things that confuses Hollywood so much about this president – a man they worship for his charm, his hair, and his approval rating – is the sheer downscale squalor of his women, and his incredibly cheap gifts.  A T-shirt?  An old book?  If the rumors are true, and Clinton is planning to spend his long ex-presidency out here among the palms, he had better learn how to shop. 

People out here take sex seriously, placing it in importance somewhat south of money, but north of an organic diet.  We are not moralists, of course.  (One famous actress is reported to have dealt with her husband’s philandering thus: “As  long as he only has affairs with other men, I refuse to get jealous.”)  And we understand that the long, slow days of filming on location create the kind of atmosphere that Balzac wrote about: rich, bored aristocrats with nothing to do but seduce each other.  But it’s supposed to be fun, or therapeutic, or both.  Furtive, guilt-ridden demi-sex is not only déclassé, but also downright creepy.  Profit and power are also figured into the calculus – which is why short, unattractive fat men carrying Robin’s-egg-blue Tiffany boxes look taller, thinner, and “totally hunky.” 

Randy Bob Packwood, of the juicy diaries and the tireless self-congratulations (“I satisfied the wench most handily,” his diary entries seemed to say, “and pleasured her so deeply that she covered me with gratified kisses!”) was a lot more Hollywood.  No T-shirts were exchanged, or airport gift-shop trinkets.  It was all door-locking, deep-kissing, and wham-bam-thank-you-Senator.  And John Tower, who liked his drinks cold, his hair slick, and his stewardesses (if the FBI files are to be believed) on his lap – now there was a guy who might have enjoyed an afternoon in Peter Lawford’s beach house. 

Amid the cluck-clucking about “this puritan country” and “those hypocrites on the far right,” there is the low hum of concern out here about a man who could have anyone – anyone – in Hollywood, have her often and with complete discretion, have her in a kind of droit de seigneur way, and who chose, instead, a sad, insecure pseudo-sophisticate sex-pot-wannabe, a little girl in a blue Gap dress without a clue about what makes people tick.  What kind of man picks that kind of mistress?   What kind of man engages in half of a sex-act, in a split-the-difference gambit to afford himself some small pleasure while protecting his “deniability”?  And what kind of man boasts as his ace-up-his-sleeve that it was not sex because he did nothing – nothing – to pleasure the poor girl at all.  His hands were busy, he says, doing important things like dialing the telephone and flipping through memos and, presumably, folding a slice of pizza in half better to cram it into his gullet.

I am talking to a film producer friend of mine.  We are talking about Clinton and Starr and Lewinsky.  He is making the point, as many people do around here, as I do, actually, that if the president had had an affair with, say, Sharon Stone (which was a hot rumor for a couple of years) or had a big-haired somewhat hippy girlfriend (he likes ‘em plump) lounging on a tufted round bed in a safehouse in Rosslyn, there would be very little to talk about.  “I mean,” says the producer, “all we’re talking about here is that the president had a girlfriend.”

“But he didn’t,” I say, referring him to the relevant passages in the Starr Report.  “It wasn’t like she was his mistress.  It was like she was his…blow-up doll.”

“Yeah, I know,” the producer says, ruefully.  “That is some weird kind of hang-up.”

“And he used the Secret Service, the White House staff, the Department of Defense, and the Office of the UN Ambassador to try to keep it quiet.”

The producer nods.  “And the really sick thing is,” he says in a low voice, “the guy never…I mean they never…they didn’t even…”

He is suddenly attacked by a common form of Hollywood modesty.  Some things are just too peculiar to utter.  This is a guy who can swear like a pirate.  He has described to me, in a booming voice in a small restaurant, just what was found inside the colon of a well-known actor, and just exactly how an Oscar-winning actress satisfied her two male co-stars, simultaneously.

But now, talking about what did not happen between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky,  he’s suddenly got the jitters.  Sometimes, the reasons why something didn’t happen are more alarming than what DID.

But then, coitus interruptus (or, more accurately, coitus never-had-us) is about the sharpest metaphor yet for the absurd muddle of the Clinton administration.  This is a president, after all, who couldn’t even complete the simple act of inhaling marijuana smoke – trust me, not too taxing – and wouldn’t allow his little office hottie to complete the act of inhaling HIM, so it’s not hard to put the rest of his official half-acts into perspective.  Health care, social security reform, tax cuts, Lani Guinier, NATO expansion, Bosnia, welfare reform, school uniforms, affirmative action – there’s practically no issue on which the president hasn’t flip-flopped.  He has, in other words, pulled out of everything.  That weird bit with the cigar wasn’t perversion.  It was evasion.  And that stained blue dress!  Sort of like sitting at the back table in Chez Jay, getting the call, putting down the Evian, puttering down the hill in the minivan, and pulling into the house next door to Peter Lawford’s beach house.

And that, ultimately, will be Clinton’s sad little legacy.  Not impeachment, not welfare reform, not even a stratospheric Dow – no, he’ll be remembered as a guy who, despite the Black Dog T-shirts, the Walt Whitman editions, and the teeny-tiny frog pins, never got to Peter Lawford’s beach house.  not once.  Liberalism has finally reached its comic (I like to think) last act: it has created the eunuch ladies’ man, the philandering masturbator, the guy who would not, could not, finish the job.