Behind the Candelabra

by Scott Thorson

  When Lee buried his mother he buried all his unresolved feelings about her. He’d loved her and resented her; but he’d never dealt with those emotions. And now he never would. Sometime late on the evening of the funeral, after everyone had gone, Lee turned to me and made the only comment he would ever make about his mother’s death. “I’m finally free,” he said.

  Although we would live together for two more years, Lee seldom spoke his mother’s name in my presence again. Liberace, the entertainer, made much of his beloved mother’s passing while Lee, the man, put it behind him as he’d put so many other unpleasant things behind him. His reaction to Frances’s death was a chilling example of his ability to close the door on the past, an ability that would one day serve him well with regard to me.

  21

  In 1977, shortly after I moved into the Vegas house with Lee, I came across a number of pornographic tapes that he’d left in the night table by our bed. When I questioned him about them he said he enjoyed watching porn and had a small collection of tapes and films. It was the only time I ever heard Lee minimize a situation. In fact, his collection was extensive and well used. Before my arrival he’d watched hard-core pornography as a steady diet.

  During our first weeks together he showed me some of his films. They all depicted homosexual acts and, even at the age of eighteen, I found the movies offensive and boring. Sex, in the privacy of your own bedroom, can be thrilling, romantic—a real bond between two people. But sex on screen is just sad. The positions look awkward, the bodies unattractive, the photography poor. Worse, from my point of view, was the fact that homosexual pornography seemed embarrassingly faggy. The dialogue, what little there was of it, was so stereotypically gay as to be laughable. I believe a man should still act like a man, no matter what his sexual preference. But Lee’s porn films often starred men who in the vernacular would be called “flaming fags.” There are guys like that out there but they’re not representative of the homosexual population as a whole.

  I hated those films, hated the fact that Lee liked them so much and wanted me to watch them with him. They aroused him while they turned me off. Each time Lee viewed one of his tapes he’d want to have sex. The variety of sexual acts he saw on screen fascinated him. Nothing made him hotter than watching a three-way—three men in bed going at it. At the beginning of our relationship I was afraid his fascination with hard-core porn would cause a real problem between us. Fortunately, back then Lee cared more about me than about watching those movies. Since I disliked them so much he stopped asking me to view them with him and, to the best of my knowledge, stopped watching them himself.

  Although sex was important to Lee and he liked a variety of sexual acts, it was never the most important thing in our relationship. That was fine with me and for a long time, it was fine with Lee too. He hungered for companionship. He couldn’t stand to be alone and needed to know someone would always be there for him. That need fit perfectly with my desire to have a father figure. Lee became my father figure. I looked up to him; in fact, I put him on a pedestal. Considering the difference in our ages and his immense talent and charm, it’s no surprise that I came to admire him so much. The public Liberace, the great entertainer, deserved all the admiration I could muster.

  But the private man had traits and tastes that were less than admirable—foremost among them his consuming interest in pornography. Although I cared for Lee more than anyone I’d ever known and saw him through rose-colored glasses, there were times—more and more of them as the years went by—when ignoring or excusing his faults came hard.

  When things went well we laughed a lot. The thing I remember most from 1977 to mid-1981 is laughter. In the privacy of our home, I poked fun at Lee, saying scandalous things that no one else would have dared say. He didn’t mind me calling him an “old queen,” teasing him mercilessly about his makeup, his clothes. I was probably the only person in the world who didn’t treat him like a star twenty-four hours a day, kissing his behind at every opportunity.

  But I began to sense a subtle difference in our relationship sometime in 1981. Lee didn’t laugh at my jokes as much as he had in the past. I had to be careful not to anger him. He’d always been flirtatious toward other attractive young men, but now his flirting became so obvious that it embarrassed me. When he had a few drinks he’d come on to teenage boys as though I wasn’t even there. I’m sure the other people who worked for him realized what was happening, even though I didn’t at first. Lee was tiring of me. The plastic surgery and the weight loss that had drastically altered my appearance helped maintain his exclusive interest in me for a while. But underneath, I was still the same old Scott and, at twenty-two, past my prime for a man who liked younger, more malleable companions. Lee was a chickenhawk and he would soon be searching for new prey.

  At first I tried to ignore the symptoms of his growing restlessness. When I couldn’t we usually wound up fighting. Then I’d take a little cocaine to help me over the rough spots. As the frequency of our arguments increased, so did my drug usage. With the wisdom of hindsight I realize that my drug habit caused some of the difficulty between us. It made me less malleable and harder to reach. I’d been a kid when Lee and I met. His opulent lifestyle had been completely alien to me. So I followed his lead. By mid-1981 following his lead had lost its appeal. I’d become a man with opinions of my own, opinions I probably expressed too often. Now when Lee tried to tell me how to dress, what to eat, where to go, I often ignored him.

  He resented it but, being Lee, he never openly expressed his resentment. Lee didn’t confront his problems head-on. That wasn’t his style. He kept quiet while his dissatisfaction ate away at our relationship. As a result he became more dictatorial and in turn, I became more rebellious. We were on an accelerating downward spiral and everyone seemed to know it but me. I kept on thinking, “This too shall pass.”

  Lee, who’d insisted on my being with him morning, noon, and night, began to give me a little freedom. It started with my taking Frances Liberace to the Hilton to gamble. Sometimes Lee went with us but more often he said he had errands to run. After Frances died I continued to do a few things on my own. Having time to myself, after being what I still think of as a “prisoner in paradise,” made me so happy that I didn’t question what Lee was doing when we weren’t together. I made a few friends, tried my hand at songwriting with enough success to be encouraged. Looking back, I realize being Lee’s favorite had gone to my head. I’d been given too much too soon. I didn’t know how to handle my good fortune and my snorting coke didn’t help. I had begun to think of myself as Lee’s son, the power behind the throne, even as his equal. I felt I deserved to have my say and my way, at least part of the time.

  That proved to be a mistake. Lee didn’t want an equal, he wanted a subordinate—someone who’d jump when he said jump. There were still good times, enough of them that I didn’t realize how close we were to playing out our string. Both of us were drinking more, smoking heavily; and we began to have serious disagreements about our sex life. Lee, who wanted more variety, tried to talk me into acts I found repugnant. “If you loved me, you’d do what I want,” he complained bitterly.

  “If you really cared about me,” I replied, “you wouldn’t ask me to do things I hate.” The arguments became more acrimonious with every passing month. Lee wanted me to engage in anal sex and I hated even the thought. Our sexual encounters were creating even more tension between us.

  During our last year together Lee and I made our annual pilgrimage to Fort Lauderdale, where he had a standing engagement. While we were there Lee renewed an old friendship. The two of them made me feel like a total outsider as they talked about the “good old days,” people and places and incidents I knew nothing about. The man owned a string of adult bookstores and had supplied Lee with many of his pornographic films and tapes. We became a threesome for the next few days. Lee’s pal kept on sniggering and telling me I ought to check out one of his bookstores. Obviously, Lee had already told him what I thought
of porn.

  “Try it, you’ll like it,” he insisted.

  I didn’t have any desire to and told him so, rather graphically.

  But Lee had other ideas. “Boober,” he said, “you’re a goddamn party pooper!”

  One night after we’d all had too much to drink I finally agreed to check the place out. The three of us piled into a car and took off for one of Lauderdale’s sleazier neighborhoods, where the so-called bookstore presented a blank, windowless face from the street. Inside, racks loaded with pornographic books and magazines lined the front of the store, while shelves of merchandise—whips, chains, other objects used in sadomasochistic sex acts, even dildos and other things I’d never heard of and had no idea how to use—were near the back.

  Lee’s eyes gleamed as he took it all in. There was a series of viewing machines, like old-fashioned nickelodeons, where you could watch sex flicks to your heart’s content—heterosexual, homosexual, sex acts featuring animals or children; they had it all. Lee was soon going from viewer to viewer, grinning all over the place. The bookstore also had private cubicles in the back with what are known in the gay world as “glory holes.” For a small fee a man could rent one of the cubicles, put his penis through the “glory hole,” and wait for a response.

  I was drunk when we arrived, a circumstance that prevented Lee from staying longer and enjoying the full use of the facility. We weren’t there fifteen minutes before I threw up, making an unintended but valid commentary on my surroundings. Lee, who was thoroughly disgusted with my behavior, had no choice but to take me back to our hotel. The next morning I woke up with a killer hangover. But I made up my mind to have it out with Lee. A couple of aspirins later, I finally felt well enough to confront him.

  “About last night,” I said, “you’re a well-known star and you’re out of your fucking mind to go in a place like that! What the hell would you have done if someone, a reporter, had seen you in there? How would you explain that to all the little old ladies?”

  Lee didn’t have any answers. In the sober light of day he agreed he’d made a mistake. Never again would he insist on going into an adult bookstore, but his interest in pornography didn’t end.

  By 1981 Lee had tumbled from the pedestal where I’d rightly or wrongly placed him. I still loved him, dreaded the thought of losing him, but I no longer idolized him. Even then I recognized the fact that we both had problems. In the years to come, I would be able to analyze them realistically. Mine had to do with drugs. Lee’s had to do with sex. Although his interest in sex was at an all-time high, his ability to achieve satisfaction had greatly decreased. Despite the silicone implant he had difficulty achieving full arousal. Our sex life was diminishing, in part because Lee was much too proud to discuss his virility, or lack of it, with me. Instead, he used pornography to become aroused and ready for sex. Since I had no way of knowing why he did it, I interpreted his constant viewing of pornography as a complete lack of consideration for my feelings. We’d reached an irreconcilable impasse.

  I didn’t know where to turn or what to do. If I lost Lee—and I still refused to face that possibility—I’d be losing a lot more than a lover or a meal ticket; I’d be losing the person who meant more to me than anyone I’d ever known, the man who’d become my family. I knew Lee so well I could even hear a difference in the way he played piano as we grew further apart. He was more emotional; it showed in his eyes, his voice, but most of all in his performances. Looking back, I guess he too was going through some pain—and a lot of regret.

  We still cared for each other, enough to try to resolve our problems. When Lee suggested that we experiment with an open relationship, I agreed. At the time I’d have agreed to anything that had a chance of stopping our arguments and keeping us together. An open relationship would have given Lee the sexual variety he needed, while we would continue to live together as friends and companions. It sounded reasonable. I wouldn’t be losing Lee and he wouldn’t lose me, we’d just be sharing a part of ourselves with other people.

  Unfortunately, what sounded like a rational way to go on living together when we discussed it in the Jacuzzi turned out to be an emotional hell. I soon learned I couldn’t stand the thought of Lee seeing anyone else, and he blew his stack the first time he saw me with another man, even though I explained that the man was a friend, not a lover.

  “It’s him or me,” Lee declared.

  We both realized that an open relationship wouldn’t work for us. But we’d given each other one hell of a scare. For a while, it seemed we’d both learned a lesson. No matter what, we decided to stay together.

  But, from then on, I felt I couldn’t trust Lee. My response to his ever roving eye was to retreat further and further into drugs, using them to escape reality. Like most addicts, I still believed I could handle drugs. When Tony Orlando tried to warn me that my habit was out of control, I refused to listen. It was a hell of a lot easier to rationalize taking drugs, to blame it on Dr. Startz or on Lee for causing my unhappiness, than it was to try to deal with my problems.

  I don’t mean to give the impression that I’d become an out-of-control drug addict. That wouldn’t happen until I faced the reality of actually losing Lee. I could still go for days without taking as much as an aspirin. But gradually what had been a monthly habit became biweekly and then weekly. I continued to try concealing my cocaine usage from Lee, who—despite his own fondness for amyl nitrite, cigarettes, and liquor—professed to hate drugs. I never did coke around him, but he would have had to be blind not to know what I was doing.

  At the same time, although I hadn’t caught him with another man, I was convinced he was seeing someone. Weeks would go by without Lee initiating a sexual encounter, and I knew Lee too well to think he’d gotten hooked on celibacy. The pattern of fighting and making up accelerated.

  When friends like Tony Orlando tried to talk to me about how much coke I was using, denial was the name of the game. “I’m not addicted, I can handle it, take it or leave it,” I argued.

  Then, of course, there were friends like Mr. Y, who were interested in seeing my addiction escalate so they could sell me more drugs. By late 1981 I was listening to all the wrong people. The more I used drugs, the more Lee pulled away from me. Although I didn’t realize it then, he’d already started looking for a new “protégé.” The casting call was out.

  22

  I’m not a psychologist, a social worker, or a doctor, but I believe that promiscuity is and always has been the most serious problem facing gay men and the gay community. Today everyone realizes that such behavior is a major factor in transmitting AIDS. But back in 1981 I was more concerned about what promiscuity might do to my relationship with Lee than about what it could do to my prospects for a long life. Too often gay men roam from partner to partner, indulging themselves in a series of one-night stands, acting like randy male dogs. Their code seems to be, “If it feels good, do it.” From my own observations and experiences, I’ve reluctantly concluded that the gay male sex drive is so strong, so powerful, that even today—confronted with the possibility of contracting AIDS—some gay men seem willing to die just to have a new experience. Lee was one of them.

  We’d agreed to have a monogamous relationship, but Lee’s track record, coupled with his constant flirting, kept me from trusting him. I was always on the lookout for signs of trouble. Two of Lee’s oldest and dearest friends served as a role model for the relationship I hoped he and I would share. Fred and Bob were a dance team, retired from their many years with Lee’s show and living in Connecticut when I first met them in 1977. They’d been together two and a half decades and seemed completely happy. We visited them every time Lee had an East Coast engagement, and my esteem for them grew with each meeting.

  When Lee decided to open an antique shop in his museum complex I immediately suggested Fred and Bob as prospective managers. They were well settled in their Connecticut home, and moving would mean a major upheaval in their lives, but they accepted Lee’s offer out of their affect
ion for him. I hoped their obvious stability, so different from most of the gay behavior that we saw day in and out, would rub off on us. Most of all, I hoped that Lee and I would have a long-lasting relationship like theirs.

  But that wasn’t in the cards. Lee’s desire to have sexual variety with a younger lover, coupled with my drug problem, continued to drive us further apart as 1981 drew to a close. We had terrible fights, instigated by me when I caught Lee paying attention to a younger man, or by Lee when he thought I was stoned. We’d wind up in a shouting match that always ended with Lee calling me a “monster.” Those words evoked memories of his final fights with my predecessor, Jerry O’Rourke. Lee had called him a monster too.

  “I’ve created a Jekyll and Hyde,” he sobbed when our fights threatened to become physical. And he was right. My years with Lee had turned me into a spoiled, pampered, cocaine-using jerk who no longer liked himself. Lee and I stayed together for a complex variety of reasons: habit, mutual dependency, caring.

  There were still happy times, among them the day Lee was asked to play all the nominated musical scores at the 1982 Academy Awards ceremony. For Lee, that was the culmination of a lifelong dream. He wanted to be an actor, a star, to win an Oscar. Being asked to play at the awards ceremony—not just one nominated song but all of them—was the next best thing. A jubilant Lee looked forward to the evening of March 25, 1982, when he’d make his appearance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion before a star-studded audience. To Lee, it signified the acceptance he’d always wanted from Hollywood; at long last the film industry seemed to be taking him and his talent seriously. One of his last unfulfilled wishes was about to come true. I couldn’t help being happy for him, but that happiness didn’t last.