The Things We Leave Behind
Andy Warhol once said, “Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.”
I don’t recall where I first read it, but the notion has troubled me since I did. Death never was again a question of assets so much as one of liabilities. If I were to die tomorrow, just what would I leave behind?
I’m a wanderer, traveling the world on gypsy feet. I’d rather buy a new wardrobe than carry what I own—fashion’s the fastest expiring art anyway. One should never become attached to more than she could pack in the dead of night and carry under the cover of darkness. (With comments like these, why am I so surprised when people write me asking if I’m a spy?)
Seriously, though, nothing is irreplaceable. Except the mementos. Pictures and diaries and letters and lists and notes have followed me around the world in boxes. They’re still making their way to me now. Some from as far south as Peru and others as far out as Micronesia.
Imagine I died. What would people find?
THE MARILYN FILES
“You can tell a lot about a woman from the things she left behind,” opens the Vanity Fair piece about Marilyn Monroe. The magazine has dedicated much of its 25th anniversary issue to the gorgeous and tragic starlet.
The main feature, written by Sam Kashner, is the story of two filing cabinets filled with Monroe’s personal effects, which until this year had been in possession of Marilyn Monroe’s (ready for this brainful?) business manager’s sister-in-law’s son, Millington Conroy.
At Frank Sinatra’s suggestion, Marilyn Monroe kept her life inside two filing cabinets—letters, invoices, financial records, and the mementos that meant the most to her. After her tragic death, in 1962, at the age of 36, the cabinets, together with an assortment of jewels, fur coats, and other personal belongings, were stashed away by the actress’s business manager, Inez Melson. This secret trove would remain virtually unknown to the world for more than four decades, until photographer Mark Anderson began an epic two-year project of documenting it. His photographs, made public for the first time, offer new insights into the life of Hollywood’s most iconic figure.
LOCKING EMPTY BOXES
How we are perceived to be isn’t really who we are. To a large extent, we can control the kind of information we release about ourselves and the kind of impression we make on others, both online and offline.
I don’t have secrets, really, but I’m an insanely secretive person anyway. My sister does a mean impression of me at thirteen, letting her come into my room after having sworn she would keep her hands in her lap and not look at anything but my face. Nothing has changed: when she came to visit me in Peru in 2006, she saw first hand how rarely I let even my dearest friends into my apartment.
People who know me think it’s endearing. “She locks empty boxes!” my aunt told my husband before we got married. “Don’t try to open them and she’ll show you the world.” They think it’s endearing. And I’m glad because looking at it objectively, I think it’s downright neurotic. Well, thank god I’m a writer: to a certain extent this kind of eccentricity is expected.
WHO AM I?
On impulse shortly after reading the Kashner piece in Vanity Fair, I pulled out a desk drawer and spilled all the contents on my coffee table and began to look through the contents objectively, as through a stranger’s eyes.
Who am I?
A woman who receives thank you notes and postcards and keeps them, though she doesn’t keep a single bank statement. A woman who travels a lot by plane and occasionally by train and who scribbles on maps when she travels by road. A woman who is photographed a lot (who took these photos?) and who keeps photos of other people with no indication of who they are (lovers? Friends?). A lot of pictures of places, the sort a tourist would take, except with no people in them (why? Did she actually go there or did people send them to her? Or does she travel alone and therefore have no one to take photos of her in these wondrous places?).
She gets a lot of letters that begin with, “I’ve never met you, but…” What does she do? Why do people send her things–letters mention art, perfumes, chocolates, books, clothes, shoes, flowers, manuscripts? Why?
“How does it feel being the one person in the world I can send this to?” a letter asks. “Everyone who reads these pages comes away with a loathing for their author. That is how I measure their worth.”
The postmark shows this letter came from a prison.
Why her?
I couldn’t answer that now even if I wanted to.
COUNTING PI
We were driving back from Arizona when we got the call.
I had my head out the window, enjoying the sun and wind as we cruised 80MPH across the border into California. I turned to look at my husband, who looked at me briefly before saying, plainly, “Henry died.”
Henry was eighty, but age didn’t really matter. He was a mathematician and even though I can’t do math to save my life, I still love it. We connected through this appreciation and a mutual love of horse races.
My clearest memory of him is sitting before him as he sat in for dialysis. He was wearing a shirt that said, “you’re young and stupid, I’m old and treacherous. You don’t stand a chance.”
He seemed ashamed of being there and needing that machine. I took his hand and smiled.
“How many decimals of pi do you know off the top of your head?”
Oh, he went on forever.
THE WARHOL DIARIES
One of the first gifts I got from someone who read my blog, someone I’d never met, was at the age of seventeen or eighteen. He bought me over a hundred dollars worth of Andy Warhol books for no reason other than that I loved Warhol and he, the reader, loved my writing. (To date, I’ve not met him.)
It’s possible that I read the quote I mentioned earlier among these, though I don’t think so. What sticks most in my mind from these books is how in Pat Hackett’s Warhol Diaries, Warhol mentioned the cost of everything, so cabbing uptown with Bianca Jagger always something like, “split a cab with Bianca ($4).” There is a weird magic in seeing how human the people you adore are. Andy Warhol, one of the few examples of an artist who was successful in his own time, was insanely frugal? He fussed about sharing cabs? Really?
Hackett’s dedication to Warhol is admirable and that’s not hard to miss, especially when you compare her comments to those of, say, Mary Woronov, author of Swimming Underground.
Just as you can’t separate the scientist from the experiment, you can’t separate the person doing the remembering from the memory of you. The amount of regard with which you are remembered is what spells the difference between a prurient exploitation of your memory and a tribute.
A LITTLE IN LOVE
“Much of the ‘side of Marilyn that no one has ever seen before’ includes ordinary things like receipts, telegrams, bottles of Chanel No. 5, and checkbooks,” writes Dodai Stewart, senior editor at Jezebel. “Does this stuff just seem mundane in this day and age, because we live in a celebrity culture where we know all about Britney’s meds, Lindsay’s post-rehab life and Paris Hilton’s Valtrex prescription?”
It’s the typical vulture culture reaction. But there is something different in the way that the Monroe items are presented. This isn’t a spread in a gossip rag or a vulgar shot offered at PerezHilton.com. The pictures of Monroe’s effects are taken against a backdrop of rose petals and flowers.
Kashner writes:
By the time I first spoke with [Mark Anderson], he had been photographing Monroe’s personal correspondence, her jewelry, her furs, and her handbags for almost two years, and he admitted he had fallen a little bit in love with her, just as all her photographers had… Anderson was haunted by the ghost of Marilyn. He was having trouble sleeping at night, at one point he was drinking too much, and on occasion he called Marietta, his wife, “Marilyn.” He had decided that the best way to photograph the items in the archive—the 400 canceled checks, the ledgers and memos and letters—was to place them against a backdrop of rose petals. So he was spending his mornings at the Los Angeles Flower Market buying roses, like a hopeful suitor. “Imagine the power of this woman who has been dead for 45 years,” Marietta observed, “that I was becoming jealous.”
As creepy as it may sound, Anderson’s love for the icon shows. I’m no Marilyn Monroe junkie and even I was moved looking over some of those letters and receipts, presented with the care and attention to detail that only someone who loved you could exercise.
EULOGY
It’s with this love that I look over pictures of Henry and his notebooks where he played with numbers day after day.
For the first time since I became obsessed with the notion of what people would see of me were I to suddenly die, I smile and hope that one day, someone will care enough to go through my stuff and remember who I was with love.
I’m going to miss you, Henry. You genius, you darling, you cranky eccentric.
I can hear you now, telling me to quit with the emo shit and get back to work. All right, all right! But only because I know that you know that I mean every word.
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September 10th, 2008 at 4:33 am
What a fascinating post. I’m sorry about Henry. I was just telling my son about Pi last night…he loves math.
What I leave behind when I die is not much at this point. I like the idea of leaving something different and standout though…and God help the person who gets all my many journals from over the years. I do leave behind children in which my memory shall live on. And I do my best to make sure it’s worthy.
OMG, rheas last blog post: Bubba & the Trombone Tackle
AV Flox Reply:
September 10th, 2008 at 9:41 am
That’s a charming sentiment, Rhea! I have a feeling it’s more than worthy.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
A wonderful piece, Rhea, moving, funny and everything in between. Congrats.
But: as so many others, many hundred thousands of people, millions, maybe? who stumbled over the VANITY FAIR piece with is triggering any eye to grab and buy it–due to the magic spell of Marilyn Monroe–you were pranked!
The reason why photographer Mark Anderson was photographing the Millington Conroy FAKES and the spare authentic documents against a ‘backdrop of rose petals and flowers’ as you realized and noted–they were trying to lead the eyes of the onlooker away from the facts. The http://www.pr-inside.com/marilyn-monroe-media-hoax-involving-vanity-r812303.htmfacts that are visible for any critical to constant happening frauds, such as the very common memorabilia fraud.
And when I purchased a VF myself here in Los Angeles, where it was released earlier than nationwide, I was in shock.
They published, on page 331 very prominently and visible–one of the documents that are in my collection, for which I paid a small fortune, years ago at a professional auction. (still have the receipts and paper work) plus: I have the envelope for this letter, matching town where Mr. W. Somerset Maugham lived at the time in 1961, when he wrote this heartwarming thank you note to the as constant fu*ked up (by VF) movie icon. Mark Anderson could not have photographed it with more tackiness in his mind, some spreads were reminding me of ‘a nursery which run out of water.’ I have never seen more dead roses in my life.
The common law and rule of Feng Sui: Dead and dried flowers are BAD for your home. Don’t keep them, don’t display them.
This rule came shockingly into power, because the duo of story teller and desperate photographer (they sued each other later for more show effect) were creating for over two years, that is according to the VANITY FAIR article which points to July 2006 when VANITY FAIR editor Sam Kashner started this nonsense ’sensation’ about some real documents (which do not bare anything spectacular at all) and fabrications, FORGERIES by Mill Conroy in form of ‘Monroe typed letters to the Kennedys, herself as a dog and cat (yeah right), and literally the majority of all the other junk that was created. Sick. Wrong, too.
To claim that Marilyn Monroe had an abortion, when she desperately tried to have a child is a malicious claim. It is a crime on its own. It is false.
Yes, you are absolutely right, Rhea, because we all keep letters, notes, birthday cards from beloved ones. But then some ‘fame suckers’ and forging spectators such as Mill Conroy come into play and would you like to see yourself having written notes that make you look like a complete tramp and alcoholic?!
No?
Why?
Well, do you think that Norma Jeane Baker aka Marilyn Monroe would be happy about what happened in the case of VANITY FAIR?
I caught Millington Conroy in committing fraud. A criminal, liable fraud.
He sold the original letter years ago through a middleman, a memorabilia dealer and before he gave it up, he made a photo copy and kept it. He then, years later presented this copy, with all the many other copies (the hand written letters by MM are photocopies and NOT in the possession of Mill Conroy–that is a FACT), and presented this to VANITY FAIR editor and hoax victim Sam Kashner, who would brush me off as if I was an idiot when I alarmed him immediately when I realized the scam. Instead of being supported by this arrogant VANITY FAIR crew, you are being attacked, despite that I was defrauded by Millington Conroy, despite that VANITY FAIR committed Copyright Infringement, because we published that Somerset Maugham letter last year, in 2007 in our booklet: ‘A MARILYN MOSAIC.’
Besides all of that: Millington Conroy has followed our trail for the past three years. He attacked me right in the beginning and he made clear that he has no clue about Marilyn Monroe history.
Here is Mill Conroy’s very scary and absolute ridiculous email he sent me, right after I published my very first blog on blogcritics in February of 2006.
Mill Conroy–he was sending me this weirdo email under the moniker ‘Anthony Berholtz’
anthony berholtz
to me
show details 2/23/06
Reply
DEAR MARK,
SINCE YOU CLAIM TO BE AN EXPERT ON MARILYN MONROE, WHY DID YOU NOT KNOW ABOUT MY AUNT, INEZ MELSON , WHO DISCOVERED HER IN 1948 AND SIGNED MARILYN TO HER FIRST CONTRACT WITH THE WILLIAM MORRIS AGENCY? I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOU, SINCE I AM THE ONE WHO ABC TELEVISION CALLED ON TO DISPROVE THE KENNEDY PAPERS FOR PETER JENNINGS. MY NAME IS MILL CONROY, AND I AM THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE EXPERT ON MARILYN MONROE, AND I CAN PROVE IT. TRY ME ON IF YOU THINK YOU CAN, SOME OF WHAT YOU SAY MAY BE TRUE, BUT YOU ARE NOT THE END ALL EXPERT ON MARILYN, AND I DEFY YOU TO PROVE ME WRONG. YOU HAD BETTER THINK ABOUT SOME OF THE THINGS YOU WRITE, BECAUSE YOU CAN BE SUED YOURSELF. MY AUNT WAS HER MANAGER FROM 1948 UNTIL SHE DIED IN 1962 AND SHE ARRANGED THE FUNERAL WITH JOE DIMAGGIO AND BERNICE MIRACLE, MARILYN’S HALF SISTER. SHE WAS THE EXECUTRIX OF THE ESTATE AND LEGAL GUARDIAN OF MARILYN’S MOTHER, GLADYS ELEY. millconroy@XXXXXXX.com
He seems a ‘little obsessed’ and dangerous, he also would call me and scream at me, literally! He would attack me verbally and claim that ‘June DiMaggio’ was indeed a friend of Marilyn Monroe for 11 years (despite the fact that I successfully disproved her with facts, photographs and other proof), and that her hideous 1974 produced Clairol Hairsetter electric plastic curlers were owned by Marilyn Monroe…who–BTW died 12 years before said curlers were made. Wow. A miracle?!
no
Fraud.
or better: a MEDIA HOAX.
VANITY FAIR WAS DUPED and they paid a lot of $$$$$$$ for this cover idiocy which is as bad as the fake Hitler diaries which fooled Stern magazine in Germany in the 1980’s. Or the Howard Hughes hoax, which made it into the movies.
Please pass this link around and on to your (Marilyn loving) friend, it will be leading you to a sense making article, written by Jennifer J. Dickinson, VP of MARILYN MONROE PRODUCTIONS, LLC, mother of two and also working as a journalist.
We debunked successfully and within 24 hours the ‘Marilyn Monroe sex tape’ as a hoax, just five months ago.
And now we have the VANITY FAIR MARILYN MONROE HOAX.
http://www.pr-inside.com/marilyn-monroe-media-hoax-involving-vanity-r812303.htm
September 19th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Ops, so very sorry AV–of course I meant you, not Rhea. Sorry for the mix-up. It was a stressful day when I threw in this comment above.
We have published more details on the VANITY FAIR HOAX, which is really a sensation on its own.
I mean look at the 54 year old Sam Kashner’s interview and see how he was fooled completely by Milli Vanilli Millington Con (artist) roy.
He never met him in two years ‘doing’ this piece of rotten crap and garbage piece? A shocking low in anything, from writing (he STOLE my quotes and findings left and right from my blogs. Which I should take as a compliment….! But it would piss any writer off if you read your copyrighted postings, stolen for a piece of shit writing which supports the claims that Marilyn had an abortion! WTF! She never killed a baby, she always wanted one you stupid loser Sam Kashner or is it CASH-ner?
And to believe this Kennedy bull is really tiresome, when loser king Anthony Summers is the biggest hoaxer of them all!
So sorry AV to leave my anger out on your blog, but these high paid ‘journalist’ or ‘contributing editors’ such as Kashner think they can write a sensation when he was totally pranked by a scam duo, because that Australian photographer/liar who claimed ‘he saw those letters’ is of course in with crazy Milli Conroy Forger.
But: too bad, because now is hunting time again.
The bait: Marilyn Monroe memorabilia fakes such as 80% from that hideous junk which made it into the 25th anniversary issue of–yep: VANITY FAIR!
Wow.
Watch the favorite DVD of Millington Conroy–it is called HOAX and depicts the Clifford Irvin produced Howard Hughes HOAX.
And Clifford Irvin and Milli Vanilli are Mill Conroy’s biggest heros.
You bet!
I already posted an open letter to Graydon Carter, the editor-in-chief has emailed me and promised that he would take this scam very ’seriously’ but since I never heard back from busy Graydon.
He used to work for SPY magazine and he should be a bit more down to earth than Kashner, who gave me the most arrogant brush-off after I confronted him towards his committed plagiarism.
Anna Strasberg was sipping champagne was mentioned by me in numerous blogs, and since Cashy wasn’t in NYC in 1999 at least not at the auction at Christie’s–how would he know?
Through OUR MARILYN BLOG. But why not name at least the reference like any good (or bad) journalist would do it?!
Because they are stupid, arrogant and they think they are better because they wrote some shit article and it made it to the front page of VANITY FAIR.
Whatever.
This excellent piece of journalism was written by Jennifer J. Dickinson, a much more qualified and also TALENTED writer than Sam Kashner.
http://www.pr-inside.com/marilyn-monroe-media-hoax-involving-vanity-r812303.htm
This piece was done by Ernest W. Cunningham and my support in details about the Mill Conroy media stalking and slander he committed on us, just because we published our true findings. That man is seriously sick in his mind.
http://www.pr-inside.com/marilyn-monroe-vanity-fair-hoax-the-r813346.htm
This one I just published:
http://www.pr-inside.com/marilyn-monroe-vanity-fair-hoax-r815170.htm
Flo & Eddie Reply:
October 1st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I’m not a lawyer and I don’t pretend to be one on the internet, but isn’t it libellous to accuse someone of criminal fraud?
September 25th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Who is this piece of work Mark Bellin…? Why he has to tust a beautifull story?
Please we don’t care about your thoughts or your silly web site
October 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
[...] AV Flox – COUNTING PI My clearest memory of him is sitting before him as he sat in for dialysis. He was wearing a shirt that said, “you’re young and stupid, I’m old and treacherous. You don’t stand a chance.” (tags: blogs) [...]
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
Of course, the wonderful people who have been supporting one sick fraud after another–they post so ‘innocent’ and sweet as ‘mimi’ for example.
Well, how would you feel if you had found proof that Mr. Millington Conroy forged the huge majority of his ‘collection.’
Want some details? Sure:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-10-01.html
Flo & Eddie Reply:
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
No offense, but that’s not proof. The Vanity Fair article isn’t very kind to Millington Conroy, but at least it’s based on something.
You’re saying that it’s a “fake” and a “hoax” because you think that it says 1960? That “zero” looks nothing like the other zeros on the receipt. They’re quite distinctive, actually. If that’s the basis for your “criminal fraud” allegations, you should start looking for a good lawyer.
Oh, and there’s this: http://marilynfansagainstcyberharassment.blogspot.com/
December 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
A great piece! It makes one think how you’d like to be remembered. At this age and time, you’d be very surprised…
December 10th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Nice piece, made me think.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:03 am
I read your whole post in one breath! That has got to be one of the best posts that got me to think about stuff in the blogosphere. A nice write-up. And I wholeheartedly agree with “Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details” – How profound!
January 16th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Henry seems to have been a great guy, I am really sorry to hear this. You manage to write a very touching and lovely story, I am sure that Henry would have laughed reading it, I know I did. It is great that you can look at the past with a simile on your face, even when something like this happens. Henry will be missed.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Well that was a lovely writeup. Simply amazing. Loved ever bit of it and didn’t stop reading until the last word. Great work. And yes, Henry seemed to be an awesome guy. and I’m sorry to hear about him. anyway your post has given light to many of us to think more about life. Lovely story.