I Was Christopher Walken’s Dresser
My Wardrobe Supervisor got the new schedule. Christopher Walken was the lead in Coriolanus at The Public Theater and he needed someone to be his personal dresser.
I begged to be his personal D even though I’d had mishaps with zippers and nightmarish quick-changes in one on one situations with actrons
Walken didn’t want to share a row of public dressing tables, so stagehands built a shack in the adjacent loading-dock-floor next to the theater’s green room/common area. It had everything but a roof.
The cast wore modern-minimalist costumes for this interpretation of Shakespeare. Chris didn’t like his costume…except for the massive fantastic black leather duster. He told the director he’d wear his own imported duds
Chris created the mad French Supermodel hairdo he’s so well-known for. Every show day, depending on tired, stoned or drunk he was, the plot of the hair on his head aimed at a different compass point.
Even though he was the STAR of the play he only had 2 changes in the show that required my assistance.
I had to meet him right outside his shack with shoes and his duster. He’d usually greet me with, ‘Viki…my angel…’ It was better than the few times my folks were nice to me, I swear.
Also had to connect in ‘the voms’(a dark tunnel under the stage). Chris would approach me in the purple darklit VOMS, removing his silk shirt. It was my job to throw an small purple woman’s bathrobe on him for the next scene. I noticed that he’d stationed paper cups all over the VOMS-full of red wine (of the humongous jug origin).
The brew stained his teeth and thin lips. Scary in the purple darklight-until he started miming the grabbing of my boobs from 10 feet away, falling over laughing in a wheeze. Not for all , but most shows.
His musk is implanted in my brain, consisting of: sweaty actor, red wine and tabasco shooters (for his voice?), silk, slathered with deodorant.
During the day , before showtime, he’d hang around swaggering like a 6’2” Elvis on light feet.
No one knew how to act him because he’s not normal. Chris is a sparkling maniac that transcends just being in a room with somebody-ness. He’s a showbiz sphinx but totally just a guy from Astoria, Queens simultaneously.
Astoria was the other part of the Coriolanus kismet. I lived off the same main street in Queens where the Walken family bakery and bar dwelled. Chris made the connection when I gifted Walken Bakery danishes to the green room.
Coriolanus was also timed to run during the Christmas holiday season.
The last show before Christmas break…and true to this young girl’s dreams, it snowed in NY. Not a blizzard, but John Cusack snow. It lands on his lips as he’s trying to convince some hot girl that she’s really the one. He looks skyward, begging her to answer before he freezes to death…that kind of Manhattan snow globe movie moment.
Being just 22 , my supervisor told me to expect a traditional personal-dresser tip. I think he also said something about getting my boobs in Chris’ mouth. Being tact-free, I harassed Walken during every besotted wardrobe change and any passing moment about my TIP. He was celebrating the break from our show schedule and letting-go hard and early. Show was over, no tip yet?
I ran into his shack without knocking in a hurry to get home too. I smelled the joint he and two friends were passing around from the not-roof. Head down grabbing shoes and wardrobe. Chris referred to me with a wheezing laugh, “See, she wants some too!”.
I stopped, took a deep drag off his purple weed. He gave me the roach. I guess this was my tip.
Arranging his shoes at the wardrobe rack, I was stoned and there was Chris telling me my name I looked up at him.
He handed me a card in a red envelope.
Then he asked me if I needed a ride home because he had his nephew bring his new town car and it’s snowing and no need to take the subway.
We find ourselves outside on Astor Place staring at Walken’s new big black Lincoln.
Chris, who’s been shooting Dixie cups of hillbilly jug red wine and sucking weed most of the evening orders his nephew to, ‘get out, give me the keys, I want to drive.’
I know we have to cross a bridge over very cold water to get to Astoria.
Pot makes you paranoid and I had the additional benefit of having a paranoid hallucination that was real: Chris pressing and clicking buttons in his new car, not knowing how to use the thing yet…laughing as he goofed around. Checking the mirror, I saw the nephew and the kid’s girlfriend sitting in the back seat saying aloud through mind control…’oh look, another bimbo girl Uncle Chris is making me say hello to.’
Then as we get on the snowy slushy road, I suddenly remember that scene from Annie Hall where Walken’s character is driving a terrified Woody Allen from the airport…asking if he ever ever also thought about driving into oncoming headlights…
I was so fixated on how high we all were, how insane this was and how jealous my mother would be and how fucking disinterested out of spite my brother would be and how deadly envious my failure actor boyfriend would be deep down. I’d forgotten to tell him my address and he’d passed my basement apartment dwelling.
I’d already opened his card while waiting for him at the theater, now I could rub it in my boyfriend’s face, along with my genuine Chris Walken roach (which he said out of envy probably contained PCP.)
Inside the card was cold hard cash and a note, “I wanted to get you a see through negligee but my wife thought this would be better, love, chris.” His handwriting had the same personality as his hair. I loved it.
I ran into Chris in Hollywood a few years later. He had expresso and wine. I think I stuck to a cappuccino. My hideous 78 Chevy Caprice didn’t kill the flirt in him. He might’ve been worked up staring at all the chicks in spandex tube dresses. I supposed he wondered why I dropped a note to his waitress as he sipped breakfast outside Book Soup and traded calls to plan a hello. He a huge incredible person made the time for me still. I signed the note, ‘from Viki, ‘your Angel’.
As I got ready to make an awkward embarrassing exit, he dawdled with my shirt collar and stole a trace of a smooch but I resisted. My imagination finishes that night in a wholly different way, a better ending to this story but I know that it’s not the end. My ego prefers to sleep with the plan to meet again. I long to be so special.
There was one night after Coriolanus when special guests galore came back to pay homage to Chris. Al Pacino, Rebecca DeMornay, Anthony Zerbe and partneress, John f’ing Hurt and Mikael f’ing Barishnikov, Chazz Palminteri. Usually everyone ran to the subway once out of their costumes. Tonight everyone found a reason to linger.
So here I stay…waiting for my story with Chris to come full circle as we meet as comrades in a green room surrounded by magical people like him- and me of course.
