Saint Ladybird
by David Erlewine (derlew1@yahoo.com)
At the 2002 Texas Book Festival After Hours party, Neal Pollack battled for Ladybird. I asked a rude question about her in front of 100 people. In Austin, Texas. The equivalent of asking whether Dennis Rodman was right that Larry Bird wouldn't be anyone if he were black. In French Lick, Indiana.
I'd once read that Ladybird "prettied up" her now-deceased hubby Lyndon Baines Johnson's mistresses before they went in for a little in out in out. As a poor writer I was doing anything to impress Neal at the After Hours party. I'd stood up to ask a question but didn't have one. Earlier, Neal had made fun of the Festival's literary gala, saying it was full of Lyndon's biographers who had nothing better to write about these days. Since Neal had his intense gaze fixed on me, I asked why Neal didn't write about Ladybird prettying up those bitches.
I got booed and hissed. The woman next to me pinched my thigh and said, "You little shit."
"You her daughter?" I said.
"Just call me LBJ."
"Big help," I hissed. "Everyone knows all their daughters had those initials, maybe their grandkids, too."
She said something but I'd turned my attention to Neal. "Sir, dear sir," he said, "I won't have Ladybird's character attacked, not while she's alive. Or at least sort of alive."
The crowd murmured its approval. I couldn't have given two shits because LBJ was stroking my thigh. "How's Pokey?" she said, flicking it a little too hard.
"Was that your longhorn's name growing up?"
She laughed.
"I spent a month at LBJ's ranch one weekend," I said. "Lotta longhorns out there. So, your mom was very understanding, eh?"
Neal must have chastised me again because the whole crowd hooted and pointed at me.
I flicked him off. He belched and yelled, "Asshole, you ever dated Liz Phair?"
Later, I bought "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature." Then I got in line for his autograph. There was a line of about 500. While I waited, I flipped through the book.
As I got up closer, I stopped reading. Bulletproof glass encased his signing booth. Each person who got up kneeled. He sat on a chair at least eight feet off the ground. He looked put upon. "Not like he's Joyce Caroline Oates," I yelled. "Or Ann Beattie! Stay standing!"
"You mean 'Carol,'" a woman with puffy lips and a black eye said. "Carol?" I said. "What do you mean?"
"Carol, Carol, like Carol Seaver from 'Growing Pains.'"
I had to ask about her face but needed to be delicate. "You get in a fight with Jonathan Safran Foer?"
"Who?" she said. "I wouldn't put my head where Neal wanted it," she said. "So I had to get back in line. Funny show, that 'Growing Pains,'" she said, tentatively licking her gigantic, Babs Hershey lips. "Speaking of funny shows, you know 'Dawson's Creek' mentioned Neal! They called him the greatest living writer! Can only go down from there!"
"Greatest AMERICAN living writer," a Cuban woman said. She had a "Dub" tattoo on her right cheek, "Ya" on her left. When I got up to Neal, he pointed at the ground. I kneeled.
I focused on the nut-brown wood. Or was it tile? I didn't care. I was woozy. Shyly, I said, "My favorite line is when you tell Toni Morrison you loved 'The Pinkest Eye,' and she--"
"You talk too much," he said. "You an attorney?"
"Oh my God!" I said, "But how did you k--"
"Simmer down," he said. A little door by his crotch opened. "Get your head in there." He jotted something down in my book.
I shoved the Cuban woman's head in. He smiled and tossed my book over the top of the glass. It conked me on the head, breaking my glasses.
I tore it open to see what he'd written. Since I couldn't see, I asked an old man that looked like Norman Mailer to read it. He cleared his throat. "Don't fuck with Ladybird! Love, Neal"
"Mailer?" I said.
"Who?" he said.
"I'd have loved to see Gary Gilmore fry." "Glad they shot him," he whispered, "At least I got a nice chalet in Utah out of it."
"Did you have an editor for 'The Executioner's Song'?" I said. "What was it, like 950 pages?"
"While Lyndon was whining about pulling out of Vietnam," he said, "I was putting it in Ladybird every which way but loose."
"Did she really pretty up Lyndon's bitches?"
He nodded. "Even pulled their nose hairs."
"You're up Norm," I said.
He kneeled in front of Neal. I helped the Cuban woman pull her head out of the door. I didn't help clean her face.
Then I took her home and one-upped Neal by showing it is very easy to take a Cuban lover in Austin.
I pictured Neal and I tag-teaming Ladybird the whole time my American missile penetrated her Cuban port like the word embargo didn't exist.
