This is a letter my dad wrote to me on July 5th, 2011:
Dear Charlene - Elena -
As I have appreciated your continuing work on our Jewish part of the family, I am reminded of another Jewish connection to your birth:
Over this July 4th holiday, I retro'd to watch the movie edition (1987) of Norman Mailer's "Tough Guys Don't Dance" (written in 1984). The movie version was also directed by Norman Mailer and based on the screenplay he also wrote based on his own book. The connection to you, is that in June 6-10 in 1984 as I was expected my first child (the one and only Charlene-Elena!) I was anxious to know the results of the amniocentesis just done, but I was to be in Boston, Massachusetts, with Clyde Martin, M.D. (who baptized you) where I was giving a few lectures related to sleep-deprivation to the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex ("Quad-S"), and the American Association of Mental Health Professionals in Corrections.
After the meetings, I had arranged to spend a few days on Cape Cod where I had met Norman Mailer a few times. On this trip, I met Mailer in a restaurant off Commercial Street in Provincetown, which is on the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I learned that he had been fast-writng "two months" in sobriety (to pay some tax bills) "Tough Guys Don't Dance" which is a mystery based in off-season Provincetown, where it was also shortly thereafter filmed. Because your mother did not want to know the results of the amniocentesis, I pre-arranged before the trip a telephone appointment which I placed from an outdoor pay telephone outside of a restaurant on Commercial Street in Provincetown at the scheduled appointment time to the obstetrician's office, and learned that the results foretold that I was going to be the father of a healthy baby girl! (A check of my calendar suggests that the telephone appointment may have been on Monday, June 11th, 1984. It was a bright and sunny afternoon Cape Cod time when I made the call, and I was wonderfully distracted and thrilled by the news of YOU!)
In August, 1984, "Tough Guys Don't Dance" was first printed. and on November 2, 1984, you were born! Having met Norman Mailer on that Cape Cod trip when I got your "amnio" results, I feet a special connection to "Tough Guys Don't Dance" and Norman Mailer and Cape Cod and your birth. By the way, Norman Mailer spoke of the "Pilgrim Monument" in Provincetown as copied from an old tower in Siena, Italy, where you did one of your UC internships about 2004 -- does the tower look familiar? -- try googling "Pilgrim Monument Provincetown" and the Wikipedia entry for "Siena" which show the same tower in different towns!
The book itself, "Tough Guys Don't Dance," is probably best remembered for its pithy title. Norman Mailer loved boxing (which is how he met Ryan O'Neal, star of the film). and tells the story of Frank Costello, the chief of the Jewish-Italian mob "Murder Inc." who sometimes ordered boxing-acquaintances to dance with his girlfriend at New York's Stork Club. One boxer suggested that Costello himself dance with her, and Costello replied, "Tough guys don't dance." Mailer was born into a Jewish family with the Hewbrew name Nachem Malek Mailer, but used Norman Kingsley Mailer. He wrote over 40 books, plays, poems, and other literary concoctions in Provincetown and New York City.
As you and I have been thinking together especially recently about our family history, I thought that the events of your birth and connection to the Jewish writer Mailer might be of interest. OF COURSE, I have two 1st Edition copies of "Tough Guys Don't Dance," both signed by Norman Mailer. Would you like one of the pair to memorialize the event before your birth tying you to Norman Mailer?
Love, Daddy
I--of course--said "YES!" What a wonderful story!
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