The Onassis Gaze: Celebrity, Privacy, and a New York Night

"One night last winter Mr. and Mrs. Onassis dropped into P. J. Clarke's, a kind of jet-set saloon on New York's Third Avenue, for some cheeseburgers and steins of beer. All eyes were on them from the moment they entered. When Mrs. Onassis left the table and went to the powder room, at least eight ordinarily well mannered women followed her. Jackie, after elbowing her way out of the overcrowded place, stomped back to her table mumbling angrily." ~ The $20,000,000 Honeymoon : Jackie And Ari's First Year

As the door opened, everyone looked around and saw that an oddly glamorous couple had entered the eatery. They were an oddly glamorous mismatch. She moved with the regal grace of Versailles, a tall, slender figure who seemed to transcend her slightly ungainly features. He was smaller, not as elegant or graceful, and certainly no Adonis on first glance. But even if they gave off a Tarzan and Jane vibe, everyone knew who they were; Manhattan native and America's Queen, Jackie Kennedy, recently come down off her pedestal, and her new frighteningly wealthy husband, Greek shipping tycoon, Aristotle Onassis. P.J. Clarke's was well known in Manhattan for being a jet set hangout, and if you wanted to see or be seen (or both) you came here, but no one had expected that America's Queen would walk in on the arm of Zeus, with the cloud they rode in on parked outside.

There was a silence in the room, as everyone stared at them, not knowing what to say. Even the music, Velvet Underground's "White Heat", seemed to have stopped. Some people had their mouths open. Time seemed suspended, and the tableaux was shattered by the beaming manager coming out from the back of the restaurant, and welcoming the esteemed guests. A private room was immediately found for them, but to get there they had to walk past the tables of people, alternately whispering and staring. 

Jackie heard a few comments as she walked past. 

"I thought he would be taller..."

"Looks nothing like her first husband"

"They say she married him because of his money"

"Well, you remember the opera singer, Maria Callas..."

Some women even reached out to touch her as she passed. Jackie nervously jerked her hands away. It was unladylike, but she shoved them in her pockets. 

The manager personally held open the door to the private room once they had navigated their course through what could be described as a sea of statues, ushered them in, and then closed the door to personally see to them. Once the door was closed, the restaurant erupted with people talking about what they had just seen. One man even got up out of his seat and listened at the door, before he was told to go and sit back down by the restaurant staff. 

Ari was privately pleased, and sat down looking slightly smug. What use was a trophy unless you showed it off? The comments hadn't bothered him. His competitors had said worst, but Jackie was perturbed, and swept a strand of hair behind her ear, always a nervous habit, her cheeks were flushed. She hated being stared at, even less being touched by strangers as if she were a statue come to life or a rare bird everyone wanted to pet, and asked for some water. 

"Are you okay, darling?" Ari asked reaching across the table as the manager vanished to get their drinks. He had positioned himself so he was facing the door. He wanted to see how people stared, and how the door was shut on them, leaving him alone with his fabulous prize, of whom they could only see part of. Out of all the artworks and Greek antiquities he owned, this was a one in a kind world famous exhibit, and it was all his. Let them stare. He knew the manager loved to talk, and loved publicity. Tomorrow this would be in the society columns just as Ari had intended.

"Yes, honey, I'm fine" Jackie said in her breathy soft New York accent (something was which stronger when she was here), "I'm just a little flustered". 

"It is natural people will stare" Ari pointed out. 

"But not that they will touch!"

Jackie reached into her purse for her cigarettes, and then seeing the look on her new husbands face, put them back. She really felt like a cigarette as she needed to relax, but he didn't like women smoking. She was grateful when the water arrived, and she gulped it back as if it were wine. 

"My darling, you have nothing to worry about" Ari reassured her squeezing her hands and looking into her big brown eyes, "you know I will never let anything hurt you. I swore on The Styx you know". 

Jackie didn't doubt that he possessed the power to offer to pay the bills of everyone in the restaurant that night, so they would all clear out, and they could be alone. She just had to command it. But, she knew that it would make the gossip column even longer if she did, and she was always careful about how she acted in public. They could accuse her of spending, of not "buying American", of gold-digging, of coming off her pedestal, of marrying below her, but they could and never would accuse her of being crass. She laughed at his comment and tried to relax a little, the tension leaving her shoulders. 

"So, Telis, lets talk about Skorpios". 

"You have that look on your face. You are going to ask me about the redecorating aren't you?"

Jackie smiled mischievously, "Not just Skorpios..."

"I know what you are going to say"

"But why can't I?"

"Skorpios is my playground, but The Christina is my home. You can do what ever you feel on Skorpios, and let it forever be said that Penelopi designed her Ithaca, but the ship belongs to Odysseus."

Ari's reverie was interrupted by the manager, who came to ask them what they would like to eat. They hadn't looked at the menu yet, and Ari told him to come back in about ten minutes. 

"This food, so American" Ari teased. He was a man who usually ate French or Greek, perhaps occasionally Italian, but didn't habitually chow down on cheeseburgers and chips. Jackie, in her elegant atmosphere, even less so. To her, this was ball game food, which her last husband might have eaten, and she herself occasionally partook of during summers at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.   

"Well, Tellis, we are in New York, and you know...when in Rome..."

"You steal everything from the Greeks!" Ari countered, making Jackie laugh coquettishly. 

"Don't let the Etruscans hear you say that!" 

"Etruscans, Romans" Ari shrugged dragging the ashtray to the middle of the table to tap some ash from his cigar into, "all part of Greek history. Now, weren't you saying you wanted a cheeseburger and beer stein?"

"No!" Jackie protested half laughing, "I am going to have a salad". 

"Weren't you just saying "When in Rome!" 

"Yes, and you tried to sidetrack me!" 

She couldn't stop laughing. 

"So, that's one big cheese filled burger for Mrs Onassis, with a chocolate milkshake..."

"I think you'll find that Mrs Onassis wants the salad and a white wine spritzer!"

"No, I distinctly remember her saying that when one is in Manhattan, they should behave as one does when in Manhattan"

"Stop twisting my words! Anyway, what are you having?"

"Fried shrimp and Martini" . 

Jackie gave him an exasperated look, and he stuck out his tongue playfully. He loved to provoke her. 

"I say to my children if you pull faces, and the wind changes, you will remain like that for ever."

Ari looked confused. This was an American-English expression he was not familiar with. Unlike Jackie, his own background was of growing up in Smyrna with Anatolian-Greek parents and other Turkish or Anatolian-Greek children. His knowledge of Americans and American slang came from primarily his adult life, and spending time with adult Americans, so he was not likely to have come across the expression before, which was used for naughty children. The closest association perhaps to naughty children and wind for him was the "Meltemi", the winds of the Aegean basin, which were blamed for children misbehaving (especially in the afternoon). 

"How can someone "stay like that" because the wind changes? What does that even mean?"

Jackie giggled at his frown, "Did your mother never say that to you when you pulled faces?"

"No! Do not mock me, madam!"

"I'm not "mocking" you. I just..."

In Ari's experience, Greek wives did not mock their husbands, and he didn't particularly like educated women. His first wife had been educated, and better than he had been. He waved his hand for Jackie to be silent and say no more. He was unused to her American humor and took something which was meant to be only light teasing, the wrong way. Jackie was also unused to his Greek temperament, as a few seconds later after sitting in an awkward silence and looking at the menu, he acted as if nothing had happened, and without even offering her an apology, as he read out the salads.

"Do those still appeal to you? You would rather have a salad than a cheeseburger?" 

Jackie excused herself to visit the powder room. She was a little more shocked than she was upset. There was also the voice in her mind that told her that maybe, just maybe, she didn't know him as well as she thought she did. If that was the case, did he know or understand her? But at the end of the day, as she told herself, love and understanding were not the bedrock of this marriage, it wasn't why she had entered it, but it helped when two people could get along. Marriages for money were common in her world, you had love if you were lucky. She didn't want to be her own unhappy parents. She was so lost in thought about her cold mother and her handsome dashing father and their incompatibility, that she didn't realize she was once again running the gauntlet in the main restaurant. She asked a staff member directions to the ladies bathroom, and everyone once again was staring at her and whispering about her, as if she was doing something so unusual and unexpected, and didn't have basic human needs like they did.  

Jackie came out of the stall in the ladies room and went to wash her hands, but froze in horror half way across the short distance to the basin. 

Eight women had gathered at the door, and were watching her, the ones at the back, craning their necks to get a glimpse of her. She could hear whispering and some giggling going on, and snatches of a comment that sounded like, "It's true, The First Lady does pee like everyone else". 

A cold sweat worked up from Jackie's back to her neck, and spread to her face. These women staring at her, reaching out to touch her as she passed had been bad enough, but for them to stand and listen to her during a very private moment, was horrifying. She felt sick. Just how long had they even been standing there? 

She took a deep breath, and turned on the faucet. Her hands felt hot and shook under the cold water, of which she barely registered. The eyes of the women were on her as she pumped the liquid soap dispenser into her hand. Jackie wondered if they would go as far as to strip the bathroom for relics...Jackie Kennedy-Onassis touched this, America's Queen used that soap, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis sat there...it was too horrible to think about. 

As she dried her hands with a towel, a thought struck her. If she was going to be treated like an animal in the Bronx Zoo, then she would act like one. If these women were so desperate to touch her, then she would give them a piece of her they would always remember. 

Jackie threw the towel in the bin (half expecting them to scramble for it) and turned to face them. Normally, she would have asked them politely to please excuse her so she could get past, but she was tired of treated as if she were a venerated painting, and so as she walked towards them with her usual grace, she suddenly elbowed her way through them, roughly jabbing out. She was a strong woman who had grown up on horseback, the deceptively soft looking woman, giving way to an inner Boudica who was driving her chariot into them instead of throwing roses from it, and she didn't hold back from making them squeal. The women were jostled and surprised, the shock registering on their faces, their mouths hanging open in stunned disbelief and eyes wide as America's Queen had lost her manners as she battered her way through. They did little more than watch, rubbing their arms and sides, as she stamped angrily back towards the restaurant, not even acknowledging them, shutting the door at the end of the corridor loudly and going back to her table muttering about how rude people were, and not caring who heard her. Let it be in the gossip columns. She no longer cared. She was no longer going to be treated like that. 

Jackie came back into the room and sat back down. She looked flushed, but oddly composed. 

Ari watched her as she sat down, gracefully pulling the chair out and then tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. 

She seemed different. He couldn't quite put his finger on what had changed. There was a new found air about her, almost as if she had rediscovered something, or left something behind.  

"Is everything all right?"

She reached for her cigarettes and lit one. Not caring if he liked it or not.

"Some women followed me into the bathroom"

"They didn't hurt you, did they?"

Jackie leant back in her chair, and blew smoke into the air. 

"No, but apparently, I "pee like everyone else".

Ari was alarmed to hear what had happened, or to hear her speak so bluntly, and he was even more alarmed when she revealed that she had to barge her way through with her elbows, and in a rage which characterized his temper, went to stand up to complain to the manager, but Jackie bade him sit down, and he did so simmering. 

She then picked up her cheeseburger, and took a bite. Chewing loudly and almost deliberately as she looked at Ari.

One of the promises Ari had made Jackie when they married, was protection from the outside world, which she sorely needed. He had once described her as "a little bird with a broken wing". Poetic, but very short sighted. The wing was broken, not snapped off. From that night on she refused to be the venerated idol of her former life, living only to please her husband, his family and the American people, and although she would never escape that life entirely, this was a new Jackie. That night when they left the restaurant, this was a different woman who walked out with her head high, her face gleaming in the electric light, and her hands in her pockets. Not so that people couldn't grab at them this time, but because the action gave her almost a swagger, and a difference sense of toughness. But, most importantly of all, she left respected as a person who had boundaries, not as an object who could be placed anywhere for everyone to admire.