Like most people, I had first heard of the Baroquian Club when the California Fair Employment and Housing Department brought a suit charging them with sex discrimination. The legal action was taken because of the club’s policy of not hiring anybody who lacked a penis. (“What have girls got there?” we used to wonder. “How can they stand it'?”)
The resulting publicity revealed that, in addition to discriminatory employment practices, the Baroquian Club, just like my boyhood club, barred all women from both membership and guest privileges. The Baroquians also excluded all blacks, Jews who were not either former Secretaries of State or former National Security Advisors, Italians who did not own casinos or run major automobile manufacturing corporations, and all other minority group members who were not board chairmen of one of the Fortune Five Hundred. The exceptions mentioned within these groups were, of course, not eligible for membership, but they were allowed guest privileges.
Unlike my club, the Baroquian Club did not discriminate against the obese, the spindly, the pimply, the near-sighted, the smart-asses, or the athletically uncoordinated. Indeed, most of the Baroquian Club membership seemed to fall into one or another of the categories my boyhood organization had blackballed. So it goes. One group’s pariahs are another group’s elite.
Their elite ranged in importance from former and present Vice Presidents and Presidents of the United States to oil company executives and bankers who regularly decided the Prime Rate. These select gentlemen awoke one morning to find that a Baroquian Club spokesman had revealed to the press the club tradition of holding frolics and staging shows in which the members dressed up as women. Such transvestite activity, he pointed out (not, however, in those words), required a suspension of inhibitions which would most certainly be hampered by the hiring of non-male menials. How, he asked the reporters man-to-man, could a fellow feel comfortable in pantyhose if he was to come under the eye of a gender trained from childhood to detect flaws in feminine dress? The Baroquian Club’s male members, after all, were an executive group with tremendous responsibilities causing daily strain and pressure. Weren’t they entitled to relax?
(“There’s nothing so relaxing,” feminist Stephanie Greenwillow had remarked when she read this, “as slipping into a girdle and putting your feet up.”)
It was shortly before noon when Rhino and I turned onto the access road leading to Baroquian Orchard. Driving between evenly-spaced rows of giant redwoods, we approached a high, chained iron gate. There was a guard booth outside. Two uniformed men holding shotguns brought us to a halt beside it.
“I’m Steve Victor, and this is Mr. Elmer Dubrowski,” I told them. “We’re guests of Mr. Charles Putnam. He’s expecting us.”
“One moment, sir.” The first guard’s politeness as he retreated to the booth and picked up a telephone for confirmation was cancelled out by the second guard’s shotgun still held at the ready.
“Tight security,” I remarked to Rhino.
“Tighter than a constipated Presbyterian center’s anal cavity.”
“You’re expected, sir. Welcome to Baroquian Orchard.” The iron gates were opened, and we were waved on through.
As we followed the road winding beside the river up the mountainside, the redwoods gave way to gardens of sculpted flower beds and meadows being grazed by sheep and cattle. The last half-mile provided a view of rolling lawns, some with croquet setups; a beautiful, geriatrically banked golf course; tennis courts which, although carefully maintained, didn’t look as though they got much use; and a selection of heated swimming pools, jacuzzis, and natural baths. Rising from these, on the tip of the mountain, overlooking the river on one side and the blue-green vista of the Pacific Ocean on the other, and framed by another careful planting of giant redwoods, stood the mansion-clubhouse of the Baroquians. Done in the baronial style of a Portuguese castle, its turrets and parapets were not so much reminiscent of San Simeon as an enlargement upon its vulgarity which nevertheless could not fail to impress a first-time viewer like Rhino Dubrowski.
“Holy fecal matter!” he exclaimed, massive jaw agape.
“Onward to the Crusades!” I responded.
“Huh?”
I didn’t bother to explain. I pulled the rented Mercedes around the circular driveway to where a liveried footman waved me to a halt. When Rhino and I alit, he slid behind the steering wheel and, I presume, drove the car to where it was to be parked.
A second footman escorted us up the steps to the huge, oaken castle door. Here he turned us over to an elderly gent who resembled a skinny penguin in his black and white formal butler’s garb. “Mr. Putnam is waiting for you two gentlemen in the library,” he informed us. “If you’ll come with me, please.”
We followed him on a safari through halls of Byzantine marble, trudging dutifully over polished redwood floors, eyeing Moorish tapestries and Dresden figurines and artifacts from looted Egyptian pyramids arranged on weavings from sacked Buddhist temples. All this was illuminated by the bright California sunlight streaming through the high, long castle windows. Here and there, an occasional original abstract print by Kandinsky provided a particularly jarring note. But the decor was such an incredible hodgepodge of all that money could buy that a critic would have been hard put to justify any criticism. Since the Medicis, artistic taste and moneyed indulgence have increasingly gone their separate ways.
“Hey, look!” A nudge from Rhino broke into my musings.
“Isn’t that--?”
I looked. “Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”
Walking towards us was a former President of the United States of America. As he came abreast of us, he craned his head to look at a display of prize-winning Ruth Orkin photographs taken from the window of her apartment on Central Park West. “Drop dead, New York!” he mumbled, stumbling as he popped his chewing gum. He shot us a sort of sheepish grin, ducked his head and continued on his way.
We rounded a corner and almost bumped into a world-famous evangelist coming down the hall. He was holding a Bible in front of him with both hands and paraphrasing it aloud. “. . . and Nelson begat Henry and Henry begat Zbigniew and Zbigniew begat Alexander and Alexander begat9 . . .” He passed out of our hearing.
“This way, gentlemen.” Distracted, we had not been keeping up with our formally-garbed guide. Now, we performed a fast shuffle and fell into step with him. A few moments later, he stepped aside, so that we might pass through the doorway to the library.
It was a large room and, while there were murmurings from various groups which had arranged themselves around it, the atmosphere was, on the whole, quite hushed. Waiters in livery glided about on soundless ball bearings. Their trays held large snifters of brandy so rich in color as to create a positive aura of investment capital. The waiters themselves looked as if they had been selected by Central Casting to portray New England church elders in a period drama about Cotton Mather10 .
Across the room Charles Putnam rose to greet us—or, rather, rose and waited for us to cross the room and greet him. He was not much changed from the last time I had seen him. The grey flannel suit; the navy blue tie with the Old School design dotting it sparsely with grey; and the high, white, round-collared shirt all looked the same as always. Likewise the unflinching steel color of his hair and the noncommittal, blander greyness of his face. The years may have added a line or two to his frozen features, but they weren’t pronounced enough to be read as evidence of any aging process. And his blue eyes were still as clear and sharp and friendly as diamond chips.