Jerilyn
I find these words inadequate in writing about Jerilyn Caesar. This is really just a way for me to post some photographs of her so you can see how beautiful she was. Other people knew her differently than I did, and I hope they write about her to give a fuller picture of who she was. She deserves that. It’s five years to the day that she’s been gone.
I was a thirty-five year-old copywriter hired by the Ally & Gargano advertising agency in 1980. This was a storied place, responsible for some of the wittiest, most memorable advertising of its era, or any. I felt lucky to be part of it. Their office was on Third Avenue between 49th Street and 50th Street in New York City.
The first day I got there I was told to go see Jerilyn Caesar.
She was the office manager. That simple designation only begins to define her role at the agency. They didn’t have an HR department back then, so Jerilyn was it. When I went into her office, she gave me, in her inimitable way — “You gotta sign this shit” — the paperwork I had to sign, all the details about vacation days, sick days, holidays, benefits, medical, etc. Not to mention where my office would be, what furniture I might choose from, etc. All of this she did in an off-handed way. She was a bit like a gunslinger. If gunslingers came from Queens.
She used “Yeah” frequently. She wouldn’t have been out of place on a construction crew. She would have been the foreman. She had black silky hair, fair skin, and lovely eyes. And, later, when I got to know her, a radiant, open smile. I was instantly attracted to her, but she did not give off any vibe that I could sense to indicate she might have a similar reaction. She was all business. At one point, she dropped her pen. She bent over to pick it up, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She never did, as I learned. I don’t think she even owned one. This startled me and excited me. It was a gift. What a great ad agency!
I would see Jerilyn in the office every day, but just in passing. Either walking down the hall or sitting at her desk. I noticed her. She didn’t treat me any differently than she did anyone else. She was gruff, efficient, no-nonsense. Jerilyn would walk down the hall as if she owned the place. In a way, she did. She wasn’t afraid or intimidated by anyone. Not Amil Gargano, the creative director. Not Carl Ally, the crude, loud, disheveled founder who every once in a while would walk into her office and ask her to sleep with him. Though he expressed it more directly. “Get the fuck out of here,” Jerilyn would reply, barely raising her eyes. I know, because she told me the story.
But I had my eye on her. I didn’t act, because it was not wise to go out with someone you worked with. And because she intimidated me. She didn’t socialize with the copywriters or the art directors. If someone in management wanted something, they came to her or summoned her, and she dealt with it. She didn’t wander into someone’s office to chat, though, unless it was one of the people she knew. But I must have asked her out, because we ended up going out and dating. I wish I could remember her reaction when I asked her on a date. I’m sure I was awkward. I’m sure, knowing her so well now, she probably looked up from her desk and said something like, “Are you kidding?”
But go out we did. So, she must have said yes. Where did we go on our first date? I don’t remember. What I do remember about the beginning of it all was being in her apartment at 20 Park Avenue. The building was between 35th Street and 36th Street. Park Avenue has a reputation for glamor and money, so I wondered how she could afford to live there. This is the Park Avenue south of Grand Central Station, though. For those of you who don’t know New York, there is a part of Park Avenue that stretches about ten blocks until, at 32nd Street, it becomes Park Avenue South. This is not the Park Avenue you would normally think of — the Park Avenue of, say, The Waldorf Astoria Hotel. It is sort of a Park Avenue annex. Just east of it is Murray Hill, another enclave, with pretty brownstones.
Her building had a doorman, and she liked living there because she felt safe, and this was New York, and she was a female living alone. When did I first go there? After how many dates? Speak, memory!
I do know that on one of our first dates, we went roller skating. Not outside in Central Park on a weekend. No, at night, on a weekday. Late. I’d never heard of roller skating at night. But this was a thing. People went late at night and they roller skated to music. Hip music. Music I didn’t know. (The song I remember hearing over and over was “The Tide Is High” by Blondie.) They dressed in kinds of costumes. They took drugs. Jerilyn told me that. It was a scene. I didn’t know what a scene was. I was usually in bed at the time she went out to skate.
I think the place was downtown on the far west side. I didn’t roller skate that well, and that, along with my decidedly un-hip outfit, made me look like I entered a side door by mistake. Jerilyn skated well and glided around the rink coolly, never smiling, always in control. I desperately tried to keep up. You’ve seen awkward roller skaters. Picture that. Jerilyn would nod hello to various characters we’d pass. Maybe exchange a word or two. Nothing gregarious. Nothing bursting with affection. Cool, as I said.
I was in a different world, as if I was in an actual foreign country where I didn’t speak the language. I felt awkward. But feeling awkward wasn’t that bad. I just didn’t feel like I belonged. In the end, I didn’t enjoy myself very much. But here’s the thing: I wanted to be with Jerilyn, and this is what she liked to do, and so I did it.
And so it was that I entered the demi-world, a place I was completely unfamiliar with. It was inhabited by lost souls, eccentrics, transvestites, gays, people who led one kind of life during the day and another completely different life at night. Night! That was Jerilyn’s time. That was her domain. Not mine! I was a morning person, up early and trying to write before work. Jerilyn was an owl, a creature of midnight who loved to adorn herself in exotic clothing, in costumes and makeup, and venture forth only to fly back home at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning. She had a slew of friends and acquaintances she gathered around her or encountered in her nocturnal life, some of whose names she knew, others, no.
Some of these people were in the office, lying dormant during the day, in deep cover, working in the mailroom or at one of the bureaucratic tasks that kept the gears moving in the agency. I never knew who they were until we’d meet them at a club or disco, skating rink or bar. It surprised me. You? I would think? You, from the mailroom, you are this wild person?
The fact is that when I say wild person, I’m only comparing them to me, the most domesticated, plain-vanilla guy you could imagine. I entered her world like Walter Mitty, timid and awkward. The only way I got into that scene was, essentially, Jerilyn saying, “He’s with me.” I would nod smiling in my Brooks Brothers outfit as I’m certain they were thinking, “Really?”
Jerilyn, I found, was a kind of mentor, mother hen, therapist, advisor and savior to many of these people. They came to her with their problems, their love stories, their disappointments and struggles, and she always had something to tell them that they needed to hear. A lot of times it was simply, “To hell with them.” Or the equivalent. They trusted her. She never judged who they were. She never blinked an eye at their differences or their way of life. Not blinking an eye may be the best way to describe her. She was fearless. She didn’t care who she was up against. If they did something she didn’t like or thought was wrong, she said so. In very plain English.
I was enthralled with her. She was a badass and she was gorgeous and sexual and exciting. She also told the truth and had a big heart and had a tenderness she didn’t show everyone. Or maybe anyone. But I saw it. I came to know it. It was lovely.
She’d been married. And divorced. I remember her telling me once that she had been very unhappy when she was married.
“I used to sit on my roof by myself and dream that Superman would come and rescue me.”
She hardly ever revealed personal unhappiness, and so I was moved by this.
What is hard about writing about her is that she might have appeared tough, a badass, and she genuinely was, but she was also tender and sweet and giving and open. Not at first with me. But later, yes. Look at her face in the photographs. You can see.
We took a share on Fire Island the summer of 1981, on Atlantique, a small, isolated community near Fair Harbor. It was a trudge to get there, because at one point the boardwalk for Fair Harbor stopped, and then there was nothing but sand. It was a big house with some people we didn’t know, and a few of them were somewhat odd. But we were happy there. She loved the beach, loved the sun, was always drawn to it.
In New York, we would go to the Mudd Club to dance. It was a small dark place on White Street in lower Manhattan. We would dance and dance, loving every minute. We saw Buddy Guy there once, and he got off the stage with his guitar and walked into the bathroom where we followed him and where he continued to play. I loved dancing with Jerilyn. I loved holding her. She was in her element, night.
She loved orchids, and always had two or three growing in her apartment. If you knew her, it made sense.
If she didn’t like something or someone, she told you. Out loud. Her reasons were often ethical, and by that I got to know her. She didn’t like deceit, hypocrisy, betrayal, and misuse of power. If she didn’t like someone, it showed on her face, in her body language. It didn’t matter who it was, male or female, rich or poor, old or young.
We took a wonderful trip to St. Maarten in the Caribbean together. It was glorious! We went in the winter, just at the time when New York City’s winter begins to bog you down and almost defeats you. And then, there we were, on this lovely island, together, in love.
We kept our love affair secret. The night that we announced our affair was at my apartment at 302 West 12th Street in the Greenwich Village. I had invited Dennis D’Amico and his girlfriend, Ann, for dinner. Dennis and I were co-workers and friends, and I told him that I was having a romance with someone in the office, and, for the life of him, he couldn’t guess who. So, I said, you and Ann come over for dinner Saturday, and there will be a big reveal. Jerilyn and I prepared dinner, and when Dennis and Ann arrived, she went into the bedroom and closed the door. They came in, I gave them drinks, and, at a certain point, I made some sort of dramatic announcement,
“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…”
I knocked on the door. It opened, and out came Jerilyn.
“Ta-da,” she said, spreading her arms.
Dennis and Ann, mouths hanging open. Never in their wildest conjectures did they think it might be Jerilyn. It was just so unlikely. And it was.
We discussed marriage. I wanted children. She did not. She had no desire to be a mother. She had some physical problems as well, the nature of which I don’t exactly remember. She said she might be willing to change her mind, but it’s not fair to ask someone to do something like that, to be a mother, when she has told you she doesn’t want that at all. So I backed off but not before there was some tension between us about it. Instead, she had a niece and a nephew she was good to and for whom she could be the outrageous aunt, the cool aunt.
We didn’t last.
We did keep in touch, though, and many years later I visited her in Florida where she’d moved. She wanted to be close to the beach. Then we talked on the phone, and we exchanged e-mails frequently. It was all lovely. I was happy that we stayed in each other’s lives.
She did not take the best care of herself. She loved two things that did her harm—the sun and smoking. They took their toll. There were other problems. Her health declined. Then, badly.
Let me think about her when she was young, and I was young. Let me think about the woman who I found so alluring and attractive, so irresistible. The dark-haired Italian-American woman with the radiant smile and the large heart who often hid that heart behind a street toughness that could make her fearful indeed. The woman I loved. Who I learned so much from and who I will miss until the day I die.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful time in your interesting life. And a lovely tribute to Jerilyn and love.
This story is very simply "Dear"! All the emotions, your vulnerability and self-conciousness. Your willingness to get out of your comfort zone. Actually brings a tear to two to my eyes as I see your seeing the beauty in her. It is probably my favorite thus far.