by Joe Keenan
“Well, I think most people my age have some idea how —”
“ No idea!” he snapped. “They weren’t there. Back then if you were gay you hid it. And if you were, like me, someone too honest, with too much integrity to pretend to be who you weren’t, well, forget it, baby. It was over. And of course the casting directors never had the guts to say, ‘Oh, Rex, I’m still in the closet and your courage frightens me.’ And they’d never say I was ‘too gay’ either. No, they had their little code words. I was the ‘wrong type’ or ‘too fat’ or ‘off pitch.’ Though one director actually said to me, ‘God, Rex, you’re such a pansy! Can’t you hide it?’ ”
“Well,” I asked unwisely, “could you?”
“Could I what? Hide it?”
“Just when you were acting? If the part demanded it?”
“Why should I hide it? It’s who I am! Would you tell Glenn Close to stop being such a woman?”
“Well, if she were playing a man—”
“I refuse to pass!”
There seemed no point in arguing with a man too dementedly self-righteous to concede that acting was pretty much about “passing” and that a gay man cast as Stanley Kowalski should keep the flouncing to a minimum. I tried to change the subject but Rex refused, decrying “self-loathing” young queers like me who’d sooner side with their straight oppressors than defend their wronged brethren. Lily and Monty, dismayed by the turn things had taken, began discussing our progress on her memoir. This only prompted Rex to pillory “that closet case Miss Stephen” and urge Lily to expose him as a hypocrite who’d taken the coward’s route to success.
On hearing my beloved so maligned, I could no longer contain myself. I asserted sharply that I had no need to loathe myself, as Rex was handling that chore quite ably. And had it, by the way, occurred to him that “wrong type,” while possibly a discreet euphemism for “too gay,” might just as politely stand in for “can’t act to save his fucking life”?
“Well said!” boomed Monty, slapping the table. “And shame on you, Rex, for haranguing poor Glen that way. He’s been an angel to us and I won’t have him abused at our table. Now change the damn subject or as God is my witness I won’t open the second bottle.”
This was not a threat Rex took lightly. He calmed himself and spent the rest of the night spouting well-rehearsed anecdotes and cracking himself up. Whenever one of his zingers struck him as especially hilarious, he’d extract a small voice recorder from his pocket and repeat it to make sure it was not lost to posterity.
“For tomorrow’s show: ‘Nicolette Sheridan’s a real girl-next-door type — if you live next door to a whorehouse! ’”
After dessert I beat an understandably hasty retreat. Monty walked me to my car, offering another apology plus an assessment of his old friend that would prove fatally inaccurate.
“Don’t mind old Rex. A bit of a crank, I know. But quite harmless.”
THE NEXT MORNING I canceled the day’s writing session with Claire, pleading a dental emergency. That afternoon Gilbert and I drove in jittery silence to Les Étoiles. Never having seen the place when I’d extolled its wonders to Stephen, I feared I might find I’d oversold it. But the minute we passed through its stately gates, I saw that my fears were groundless and that Les Étoiles was emphatically not, having grounds as far as the eye could see. Our tires crunched over white gravel as we followed a long gracefully curving drive that ended in a circle around a grand fountain with smiling cherubs peeing in perpetuity.
The house seemed to have been built by some prosperous southerner who’d felt that, while Tara had been a nice little starter home, it was time to open the wallet and get serious. On pulling up we saw that Stephen and Gina had arrived just ahead of us. As our car crunched to a stop, Moira, chastely clad in a peach silk suit, her cloven hooves concealed in matching Manolos, emerged from the house, followed by a waiter bearing champagne.
“Welcome to Les Étoiles!”
I could tell from her patrician air and suddenly mid-Atlantic diction that Stephen and Gina were in for quite a performance. She embraced Gilbert and me affectionately, then bestowed courtly handshakes on the stars.
“I can’t thank you enough for visiting my little labor of love! Champagne anyone? I know it’s early, but don’t forget, you’re here to be pampered!”
We accepted the proffered Cristal and Moira led us inside, Stephen regaling her with fond recollections of Albert, who’d produced Chamber Music fifteen years ago and who even then had been valiantly battling emphysema.
We entered the spa’s foyer, which was palatial yet warm, with two majestic staircases that curved gracefully up to join at a second-floor landing. To the left was a reception desk and a hall leading to guest rooms, to the right a richly paneled lounge with an inviting mahogany bar. Straight ahead through a wide archway was a large sumptuously furnished salon that for sheer acreage dwarfed even Diana’s digs. Soaring French windows at the far end gave onto a broad elegant terrace with tables overlooking the arcadian grounds.
It was, as one of Lily’s film-noir dames would have remarked, one sweet little setup. As Moira led us into the salon, she tenderly recalled how dear Albert had invited her to lunch here for their very first date. I had no doubt that the minute she’d left she’d choppered straight to the bridal shop, phoning the tobacconist en route to order the groom some nice unfiltered Gitanes.
As it was quite warmish for December, Moira led us out to the terrace, seating us two tables away from where a producer famed for his tantrums sat serenely taking tea with his mistress. We sipped our champagne and admired the charming, ivy-covered guest cottages while Moira, sounding more and more like Dame Diana Rigg, expounded on her spiritual commitment to high-end hospitality.
“When I designed Les Étoiles I thought mainly about my many friends who are, like you, brilliant and accomplished, but forced to live every day with the stress and scrutiny such careers bring. I asked myself, ‘What can I provide these people that other spas can’t?’ And the answer was simple — sanctuary. A place of beauty where they can escape every outside pressure. A place that pampers their bodies straight to nirvana, even as it nourishes their souls. A place of complete privacy where no cameras are permitted — even the guests are forbidden to bring them. A place where those two ravenous beasts, the Public and the Media, aren’t allowed to set foot.”
She continued in this vein, wrapping ruthless exclusivity in pretty new age ribbons, and Gina was eating it up, oh-yessing and how-trueing her head off. Moira then gave us brochures detailing the broad array of treatments available. Stephen and Gina opted for simple shiatsus followed by facials and I said that sounded fine by me. Gilbert rather showily chose two of the more esoteric options and I was pleased when Moira corrected his pronunciation. Then she led us back into the salon, where frosted glass doors on one end led to the treatment center.
Since my income pre-Hollywood was such that my concept of “luxury” did not much extend beyond dental care and wines requiring recourse to a corkscrew, I’d never before experienced either of my treatments. I found them both so agreeably soothing that even my anxieties about Moira began to subside as I surrendered to pure sybaritic serenity. After my sessions I toddled off to the bar. Gina and Gilbert were already there, looking thoroughly blissed-out, and soon Moira and Stephen joined us. Stephen said he couldn’t recall a more relaxing day, and if Moira’s purpose in extending such largesse had been to win a new customer, she could consider her goal achieved. Moira took her bows modestly, telling us to come back whenever we liked as we were now part of the Les Étoiles family.
Driving home I allowed myself not only to hope but to believe that the danger had passed, that Moira, having gotten what she wanted, would plague us no further. If this view seems, in hindsight, lethally naive, the weeks that followed offered little to contradict it. Stephen and Gina became regular visitors to the spa, and as each day passed with no additional demands from Moira, my outlook steadily brightened.
Claire
’s spirits rose too as we grew closer to completing the script, and they positively soared when our agent informed us that a producer wished to option Mrs. McManus. This heartening glimpse of a post-Greta future helped us both to unclench a bit. We started getting out more, accepting Gilbert’s invitations to join him at the parties thrown by his many new friends, and we soon found ourselves immersed in the frenetic social whirl of the industry’s younger set.
Though I did not “go Hollywood” half so shamelessly as Gilbert, I’ll admit that I began to display a tendency toward, not arrogance quite, but that breezy self-satisfaction one glimpses in many a young Hollywood turk who finds his star on the rise and cannot at present conceive of its descent.
How pleasant it was to meet new people and ask them what they did. How simple to feign interest while waiting for them to pose the same question to me. How lovely to tell them. I took particularly nasty pleasure in meeting other writers who were even more puffed up than me but on far flimsier grounds. I’d draw them out, letting them prattle about their meager toeholds on fame before casually letting drop that I was a writer as well.
“Right now? Oh, I’m writing a picture for Stephen Donato. His mom’s in it too. So this Lifetime Original of yours —do you really think you can get Delta Burke?”
Not even my gym acquaintances were spared the details of my glory. True, it was harder to coax boys bench-pressing two hundred pounds into career chat, but I was nothing if not persistent and it was not long before the whole gym knew what air I breathed.
One day as I was there, attempting to coax one more rep from my biceps—which, had they been masochists, would have been screaming the safety word—a voice behind me exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s you!” Turning, I saw a tall, vaguely familiar fellow in shorts and a tank top. He had a lithe gymnast’s physique and carrot-colored hair. His face was densely freckled and, if not quite handsome, open and instantly likable.
“Sorry, have we met?”
“I served you drinks! At Vici! You were with Stephen Donato! Your heads were really close together!”
“Oh, right,” I said, remembering now the little hearts that had danced around the bartender’s eyes each time he’d looked our way.
He said his name was Billy Grimes and asked if he could buy me a coffee next door. I agreed and for the next twenty minutes he pelted me with questions about Stephen, no detail of whose life, however mundane, failed to inspire his rapt fascination. He begged, of course, to know if Stephen was gay. I replied, of course, that I didn’t know but could not resist doing so in a tone so coy as to practically scream that I did know and from personal experience. My evasive replies to his cajoling follow-ups only heightened this impression, and a halfdozen “Oh, c’mons!” later I finally changed the subject.
“So that was your dad who came over to hassle us?”
“Don’t bring it up!” groaned Billy. “I was so embarrassed!”
“He must love it that you’re such a fan.”
“You think I’d tell him? I don’t even mention Stephen around my dad.”
I asked if he was out to his parents. He blushed and said he was not. He’d been on the verge some months ago but then Dad had decided to run for governor and this had sapped him of his nerve. I offered my sympathy, ceding that there were easier things to be than the gay offspring of an archconservative politico. We parted with a friendly hug and he beseeched me to come back to Vici, promising to comp me as many drinks as he dared. I said I would and soon Gilbert, Claire, and I took to going there Fridays after work to rinse off the sauerkraut with nice cold martinis.
I grew fond of the place. I liked the odd clientele and the memories it stirred of Stephen and the promise that had smoldered in his eyes in our little love booth. I also liked Billy’s charming habit of introducing me to his regulars, never once, bless him, failing to mention what I was up to just lately.
“Sweet boy, Billy,” remarked Claire. “Saves you so much trouble.”
THE PROMISE THAT HAD simmered in Stephen’s gaze had, of course, been firmly predicated on my persuading Lily not to tell the world of his teenage discovery that strong, hairy thighs make swell earmuffs. At first I couldn’t think of any reason to suggest this that didn’t risk exposing me as a double agent. I finally decided to appeal to her vanity by arguing that the Stephen revelations might prove so explosive as to monopolize public discourse about the book, siphoning the spotlight from Lily to her already overhyped nephew. Did she really want to risk being upstaged in her own memoir?
Alas, in attempting to exploit Lily’s vanity I’d underestimated its staggering magnitude. To Lily, the idea that any hullabaloo about Stephen might eclipse interest in herself was absurd, resting as it did on the altogether spurious premise that Stephen was more interesting than she was.
“He’s only in a few chapters! The rest of the book’s all me and far more compelling. Let’s not forget I reveal some pretty juicy secrets! That affair I had with the boy who played my student on Sorry, Miss Murgatroyd!? We’d best brace ourselves for that tempest! No, I don’t think there’s any danger of people forgetting who the real star of the book is. By the way, I adored the new scenes for Amelia. At this rate we’ll be ready to shop it in time to take advantage of all the heat I’ll be getting.”
“Heat?” I asked, mystified.
“When my picture opens — Guess What, I’m Not Dead. I met Shawna, our wardrobe girl, at the Liquor Locker yesterday. She’d seen a rough cut and raved about my performance, especially my death scene. ‘Awesome,’ she called it! Mark my words, Glen, this picture will open a lot of doors for me! So who should we send it to first? Spielberg or Scott Rudin?”
“IS SHE OUT OF her fucking mind?” howled Stephen when I reported this exchange to him.
“I’m sorry. I really thought that argument might work.”
“Hey, it was only your first try. Just keep at it, wear her down. I’m counting on you, Phil.”
“I know. And I won’t let you down, Stephen.”
“I know you won’t,” he said, his voice a caress. “Smooth guy like you can find a way to get anything he wants.”
“Anything?” I asked, weak-kneed.
“Anything,” he replied, his tone so lubricious as to pass beyond the realm of innuendo into that of contract law.
IT WAS MID-DECEMBER by this point, the holidays fast approaching. Stephen got his Christmas gift a week early when the Hollywood Foreign Press, that bafflingly respected assemblage, bestowed a Golden Globe nomination on him for his performance in Lothario. I longed to congratulate him in person but he and Gina had flown off to spend the holidays in Aspen. I knew I would not see him again until the New Year, by which time I hoped to have bent Lily to his will.
I’ve always been a bit of a sap for Christmas and looked forward each year to celebrating the season with my cheery if perennially cashstrapped circle of friends. I never minded, in fact rather sentimentalized, our meager traditions — the cheerfully tacky decorations, the thrift-store presents, the disgracefully affordable “champagnes.” Though I still look back on those customs with a misty eye, I can tell you flat out that nothing spells “holiday cheer” like a whopping paycheck and a spendthrift mogul for a host. The holidays passed in a pleasant blur of pricey gifts and Dom Pérignon and my only care in that festive week was that my hard-won progress at the gym would be undone by Maddie and Max’s overabundant buffets.
On the afternoon of their hot-ticket New Year’s Eve party, Claire arrived late for our writing session. It was clear from her elegant new coiffure that she’d come straight from the salon and clearer still that she had fresh gossip to share. Her eyes glinted and her smile was the twisty one she only wears when savoring the taste of a secret.
“Gosh, ma’am,” I said, “you want some fries with that canary?”
“Sit down, boys. You’re going to love this! I was just at Umberto getting a new do —”
“And quite a fetching one.”
“Yes,” concurred Gilbert. “
Très quelque chose.”
“ I thought so. Anyway, I’m sitting bored to tears under the dryer when I pick up this Beverly Hills newspaper—just some society rag for the plucked and privileged set. But I’m leafing through it and just guess, me laddies, whose picture jumps out at me?”
“Stephen’s?” I said, having him much in my thoughts.
“Nooooooo,” she teased. “Not Stephen...”
“ Who?” pleaded Gilbert, who can dish out the suspense when delivering gossip but can’t bear it when anyone else does. Claire paused for effect, then adopting an arch, clipped Bette-Davis-when-crossed voice, said, “Little. Miss. Moira. Finch!!”
“No!” I said, my stomach lurching like an old washing machine. “Yes! She’s living here!”
“ Moira?” gasped Gilbert.
“In LA?” I exclaimed, all but slapping my cheeks in an effort to feign surprise.
“Yes! And get this—she’s just opened some posh new spa!”
“Wow!” marveled Gilbert. “Who’d have thought it?!”
“Not me!”
“There was a whole article about it,” said Claire, breathlessly summarizing the basics regarding Moira’s tragically brief marriage, her failed attempt to launch a film career, and her subsequent decision (shaming in Claire’s eyes) to become a full-time star-pamperer.
“So,” she concluded with a diabolical smirk, “when shall we go?”
“ Go?” I repeated, my tummy now well into the spin cycle. “Go where?!”
“To her spa of course.”
“Why would we do that!” yelped Gilbert.
“Well I grant you it’s a bit small, but isn’t there a part of you that would love to pop by and let the little minx know how well we’re doing?”
“No!” I replied.
“No part at all!”
“And you’re right —it is small.”
“Childish,” agreed Gilbert.
