I just adore that witty actress, raconteur, podcaster, and welder Anna Mann. I do! Did you know she was once half of ZZ Top? She was! She’s done everything—big screen, small screen, very small screen. She’s played Desdemona, for Christ’s sake. She has! Why, I haven’t known such a polymath since my dear, dear Uncle Oswald.
I’m sure you recall that 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of Uncle Oswald’s tragic passing. It was an untimely death what with the funeral scheduled during my annual Cap Ferrat sojourn avec my (chronically bloated) childhood friend, Eugenia. I graciously rescheduled our trip for the following week. Family first.
Uncle Oswald was absolutely beloved by those of us who matter. Bawdy raconteur, absinthe connoisseur, occult expert, Bilderberg Group co-founder, scarab collector, personal hygiene device inventor, and celebrated cunninlinguist: He was a Renaissance man through and through. He was!
Well, Bippy and I conducted a seance at Casa Effluvia but we never—EVER—learned the true cause of Uncle Oswald’s death. The coroner's report read asphyxiation by ascot but who ascots in South Florida in October when it’s still hot as Hades out? Who? Who? No one: That’s who.
Slim (who was bedding Papa at the time) told CZ that the word in Havana was that Uncle Oswald had expired from a snort of Sudanese blister beetle, a dare he accepted during a cognac-fueled round of Spin the Bottle of Louis XIII with a splinter group of Palm Beach Coconuts. Well CZ told Marella who told Gloria who told Babe who told Tru and that little runt wrote about the incident in that dreadful La Côte Basque 1965. I don’t tolerate gossip and I won’t: He deserved everything he had coming to him. He did!
I recall the day of Uncle Oswald’s death as though it were yesterday. I was sunning at the Everglades Club pool with that trout-eyed Auchincloss clan; Bippy *claims* to have been luncheoning at The Breakers, but we ALL know that Rudolf was touring The Americas with the Grand Ballet de Marquis de Cuevas at the time—say no more; and much to the dismay of the entire Ta-boo staff—as well as several Worth Avenue passers-by—Mother and a melanotic George Hamilton were carrying-on at the bar like a pair of lovesick, googly-eyed, public-school teenagers, positively bashed on those execrable bloody wallbangers they’d concocted. Tomato juice, Stolichnaya, and Galliano should be mixed under only the most dire of circumstances. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Speaking of vodka, all this tripping down memory lane is unsettling my nerves. Nothing a dose of vitamin V won’t cure. Maurice! MAURICE!! Do be a dear and fetch me another gimlet. Are those filberts fresh? You know I cannot abide fusty nuts. And shake another for yourself as well. Merci. Sit here. Not there, Maurice, here. HERE.
Where was I?
Oh yes, dear Uncle Oswald. Why just last week (or was it last month?) Divya read Mother’s cards, which revealed that he’d fallen victim to FOWL PLAY at the hand of a band of nefarious, sneaker-clad guests huddled in a darkened corner of the Leopard Lounge Bar. In touch with the spiritual world Divya may be, but tout le monde knows that sneakers are not allowed in The Chesterfield. Why, that regrettable footwear should not even be allowed on The Island! The world is going to hell in a goddamn Macy’s handbasket. It is!
Polymaths both, I just know Uncle Oswald and Anna Mann would have gotten along swimmingly. But what with him being dead, never the twain shall meet. If only he’d lived long enough to enjoy the starlet’s brilliant and—dare I say—hilarious podcast, I AM ANNA MANN. It would have brightened his days, as it has mine. And Maurice’s.
