Partying with George Plimpton

FREDDY ESPY PLIMPTON People used to ask me what George was like when he woke up in the morning? What was his mood like? How did he answer the phone? How did he open the door? How did he start to work? Look, this is George Plimpton. He’s done some incredible speech the night before and had a thousand people applauding him—a great night. He wakes up the next morning. He looks like hell. He’s in these crumply shorts he slept in; he bumps into things; he can’t smile; he’s grouchy as hell. Has anybody else seen him that way? No. The wife sees it. He goes and gets his coffee and toast. By now, he would have pulled on a pair of pants, zipped up the zipper, but the belt’s still open, and he’s bare-chested, so he’s halfway sort of gotten on his clothes. He’s walking around the pool table, which is littered with piles of paper, sees something, leans over, picks up a page, leans back, reads it, and puts it back on another pile across the table. He’s editing his latest book as he’s waking up, and he’s got all this in his mind, and I watched this man nobody knew, this writer who wrote all the time…

The reason I’m going on about Bobby is because during these years, George and I talked about what we should do. We tried separating from each other, and that didn’t work. We always got back together again. George just didn’t want to get married. One day, after he had decided to run for the presidency, Bobby called George and said, ‘Why don’t you and Freddy come over to the UN Plaza. I need to talk to you about something.” So we went over to his apartment, and he greets us and sits cross-legged on this huge wing chair. There was a couch opposite that, where George and I sat. Bobby looked so small and vulnerable, I just wanted to go over to him and eat him up. He said, “Why don’t you two get married?” George said, “What?” Bobby said, “Ethel doesn’t like it. She thinks it’s bad for the kids. You’re always going places together, staying in the same room, and you’re not married.” He said, “So I think you should get married.” That’s what finally pushed George into it, I think. So, shortly after that, we went down to get the marriage license, at City Hall. It was a pathetic scene, because you filled out papers at these little children’s desks. Imagine George in one of those—so cramped, so unhappy. He was kicking viciously at the desk in front of him, in a rage, in an absolute rage that he was down there—he, George Plimpton, in a marriage license bureau—he couldn’t get over it. He didn’t talk to me for a few days after we got our license. He couldn’t forgive me for having put him through that, and months went by before I heard anything about an actual marriage ceremony to follow the marriage license…

Three days before the California primary, George and I drove through Chinatown with Bobby in his car, the three of us sitting up on the backseat, top down. Bobby was waving, waving, and these shots suddenly rang out. They turned out to be firecrackers, but George and I just fell on top of Bobby, like that. I’ve never seen anyone so exhausted and so pale and shaky as Bobby was. You just suddenly realized, My God, he’s been waiting for this moment, every moment.

KRISTI WITKER My very first job was at American Heritage magazine. I had been hired as an editorial assistant, but on the spur of the moment my editor decided to send me off to California to to cover Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. I was very naïve and really didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I had been a big fan of The Paris Review, and through it I had gotten to know and admire George Plimpton. When I discovered that he and Freddy were also on the campaign, I was delighted, and I spent most of the time hanging out with them. I became sort of the campaign mascot. I was young and had long blonde hair and wore little miniskirts. I certainly didn’t look or act like a serious journalist. I was also anything but objective. In fact, I absolutely idolized Bobby Kennedy. The night of the California primary, I was really happy to be included in a small group of journalists that Bobby had invited to his suite in the Ambassador Hotel to watch the returns with Ethel and several of their children. And I was even more excited when Bobby asked me to his victory celebration, which would be later that night. George had a rental car, so I asked if he could give me a ride. He said, “Sure, but here’s what you have to do so I don’t lose you in the crowd: just hold on to my jacket when we leave the stage, because it’s going to be a total mob scene and I’m going to work my way straight to the car.” It was even more of a mob scene than he had imagined. I remember that when Bobby finished his victory speech that night we all started moving forward on the stage and someone said, “No, we’re going out the back,” and we reversed our direction. I was holding on to George’s jacket for dear life and I wasn’t aware that we had gone into the kitchen. I wasn’t aware of anything except a crush of people pushing and shoving. And then, suddenly, I heard what sounded like firecrackers. They weren’t really loud, but they seemed to be in a pattern. First, there were three, then a pause, and then—during what seemed like an eternity—there were five more. I heard voices shouting, “Get the gun…get the gun!” and at that moment I realized with horror that we were being shot at, probably by a large number of people. Most people in the crowd began screaming and stampeding out of the kitchen back toward the hotel ballroom. But I didn’t move. Everything seemed totally unreal. I remember thinking, “This can’t be happening because I already have tomorrow’s schedule!” And then, “Why run? If they’ve killed Bobby, what’s the point?” The man on my left suddenly fell to the floor. He was bleeding from his head onto my shoe, and I remember just moving my foot. And then others were shouting. “This woman’s been shot!” She was right behind me, clutching her stomach, and I glanced at her and thought, “Who cares? Don’t you realize that Bobby’s been shot and probably killed?” At that moment, I had no interest in anyone else. Bobby was the only one that mattered. As the gunman—and now I say that there was nobody else—kept firing, George and Rafer Johnson were desperately struggling to get the gun out of his hand, and finally they succeeded. We were only about four feet away and Bobby was slumped on his back on the floor. I closed my eyes and clung to George. I felt that as long as I didn’t let go of him, life as it had been only moments before would suddenly snap into back into place. Of course, it never did.

JONATHAN DEE It’s something, isn’t it, that a man who made a career writing beautifully about his own amazing autobiographical exploits would never have touched the most amazing exploit of all, would never have written about it in a million years. I remember once I was in The Paris Review basement looking for something in a file cabinet and I came across a clipping of an old AP photograph taken seconds after the RFK shooting, showing two men pinning Sirhan to the ground. The caption identifies them as “Rosey Grier and an unidentified man,” and the unidentified man is George. I brought it upstairs to show the others, and as I’m doing so, George walks in. He takes a look at what everyone is passing around, and I swear, the color just drained right out of him. It was very clear from his demeanor that he was not going to discuss it. I’m told that in later years he loosened up about that somewhat, and would actually answer questions about it if asked.