Chapter sixteen

I'm okay now.
	I'm tan. And healthy. And rested.
	In fact, I'm even better than I ever was.
	I'm sitting in the sunshine by a pool in Beverly Hills.
	I took two stretching and dance classes this morning.
	I don't drink as much as I used to, but I play just as hard.
	I broke up with Cindy Lang, but we're still best friends.
	My liver and I are now on speaking terms.
	I live in a rented house perched on a hillside. I'm staying here while
they rebuild a house I bought. I was watching the Eleven O'Clock News in New
York one night when they started to play "Weleome to My 
Nightmare" and showed newsfilm of my house burng down to the ground.
	The ugly Alice is gone for good. I've totally divorced him from real
life. I never even see him till I'm on stage.
	I play golf, with a passion, and I shoot in the high 70's.
	I have a mustache now because Alice would hate having one.
	Grandmothers in Florida hotels love me.
	I'm a deputy sheriff in Nashville and a deputy senator in Kentucky.
	I'm on the National Arts Committee for the Bicentennial.
	I do TV shows whenever I have the chance. One of the first I did was a
guest spot on the Virginia Graham show. She hadn't even heard of me before. They
just told her that the singer Alice Cooper was on and 
she thought I was a female folksinger. They promised me they would have five
hundred kids in the audience, but when we got there we found five hundred
middleaged housewives out front. Peter Lupus was on - doing push-ups - and
Morgana King sang. Then they announced Alice Cooper and the curtain parted to
reveal me in a straightjacket. There was complete silence. I did "The Ballad of
Dwight Frey" for them and Virginia Graham's mouth dropped to the floor. Peter
Lupus was even more shocked. I treated the old ladies just like I treated the
kids and I even threw the straightjacket into the audience at the end. They went
to a commercial break and when they returned to the show two minutes later they
were still applauding.
	The first thing I did after I sat down with Virginia was to say hello to
Cindy over the air so Virginia would know I wasn't queer. She said I looked like
a cute orthopedic body stocking. She was insecure with 
me at first, but I was really nice to her. By the end of the interview she was
holding my hand and saying, "You have the prettiest blue eyes. You just keep
doing your thing."
	Peter Lupus was offended. "Do you ever go out with girls?" he asked.
Morgana King teased me and said, 'Who does your hair?" I said, "Peter Lupus."
	I see Groucho all the time.
	I had the honor of being presented to him as one of his birthday gifts on
his eighty-fourth birthday. We were introduced in the outdoor garden of the Polo
Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he found out that I was actually shy and
retiring in real life he enoyed embarrassing the hell out of me.
	"I understand from my people that you don't use any drugs ? Is that so?"
he asked during lunch.
	I told him it was.
	"Well, why not?" he screamed. Heads turned everywhere. Groucho called
over the waiter. "Dope!" he shouted. "Do you have any dope for my friend? He
needs dope." I sat there saying "shhh, don't do that!"as the waiters rushed
around the table looking more embarrassed than me.
	Groucho came to visit me at my old house one night, but I didn't have any
furniture and he refused to sit on the floor. The next day he sent me a round
bed that he had slept in for five years. "I never had any luck in it. Maybe you
will," the note read. Some time later Groucho and I decided to give the bed to
Paul and Linda 
McCartney as an anniversary present. We sent it to them in London, with a big
brass plaque on the headboard that says, "May all your stains be large ones.
>From Groucho and Alice."
	I rang Groucho's bell one day and he came to the door wearing a bathrobe
and Mickey Mouse ears. He slammed the door right in my face, and after a few
confused minutes I rang the bell again. This time his 
housekeeper opened the door. She sighed when she saw me and said, "Alice, thank
God it's you! Groucho said Charles Manson was at the door."
	I had one of the greatest successes of my career with my solo album,
"Weleome to My Nightmare," and the single, "Only Women," which proved to
everyone Alice Cooper really can sing!
	I'm happy.
	I'm only twenty-seven years old.
	Ha-ha!

		(TO BE CONTINUED IN TEN YEARS)
			"Don't forget the Coop!"