You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures

by Alan Cumming

  I liked Bozeman. It had a nice feel. There are restaurants that look like they serve veggie things. (I became a little tired on the trip of asking if there was anything on a menu that wasn’t meat and hearing “chicken” as the reply.) Also I loved that Bozeman is surrounded by big hills. I realized that day that I love hills. I crave them. I think that’s what I missed most when I moved to London from Glasgow—the hills. And after days and days of flat it was so nice to be among hills. I think hills are great because there is always something new or unexpected or different to look forward to on the other side of them.

  I had such a desire for there to be a Starbucks in Bozeman, which, in 2004, was one of the few places offering the magical luxury of connecting online wirelessly. The Holiday Inn charged me an arm and a leg for the local calls I had made to go online the night before (also, it was mega slow). So that, as well as the notion of buying a cup of coffee that was not too heavy to carry back to my car, sparked my desire for Starbucks. I didn’t find one though.

  I honestly think the mark of a great hotel, one with dignity, is that they offer free Internet access. I mean, come on, it costs them hardly anything, and they often charge exorbitant fees for it. I would rather pay a little extra on my room charge than have to piddle around with my credit card or tick loads of boxes just to get online once I’ve checked in. I think it’s ironic that the most expensive hotel we stayed in on our journey was the only one to charge us by the minute for local calls! But here we were in luck, because the Blue Sky Motel offered free local calls!!

  Back on the road, I foolishly listened to one of those right-wing talk shows again, and the man was spouting forth about how foreigners can’t comprehend diplomacy and all they understand is the “iron fist” (whatever that actually means). President Bush had signed into law the Unborn Victims of Violence Act that day, which had engendered a lot of chat about when exactly we become a person and worthy of legal protection. The man on the radio believed it was the second the sperm fertilized the egg, which is pretty early on by anyone’s standard. I began to muse that soon we would be told that masturbation was a crime against an unborn child, and we might have swarms of sperm police scouring the South arresting bemused young adolescents as they innocently pleasured themselves. Of course, it would no longer be called “pleasuring.” It would become “denial of the unborn child’s existence” or “recreational birth waste.”

  The man on the radio, though, was more concerned with John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate at the time. Kerry, who had apparently missed 78 percent of Senate votes that year because of his campaign, had flown back to Washington especially to vote against this bill, and how could anyone vote for a man who condones violence against unborn children? The whole argument seemed to me so insane and a semantic minefield and just stupid, and it really got me down that people were listening to this and presumably agreeing with it. So I turned over to good old NPR, which I had abandoned earlier because they were having one of their fundraising drives, and Casey Flintoff had actually done an impersonation of Winston Churchill. I didn’t get the connection unless, unbeknownst to me, Churchill also took to the airwaves to recruit supporters by boring them into submission. There is truly nothing more annoying than those swotty NPR types trying to convince us what a good conversationalist Terry Gross is! We know, we know! She is amazing! (Although, sidenote, the last time I was on, Terry did spend an inordinate amount of time talking about my sexuality and then my armpits—it had felt as though if I squinted, the NPR acronym had morphed into TMZ.)

  Anyway, I went back to NPR to discover I was listening to the local station in Laramie, Wyoming, and I thought of poor Matthew Shepard, and I wondered which radio station the people who killed him listened to.

  It turned really cold that night, after driving all day in my tank top. It even snowed. I snuggled up with Honey and prepared for the journey to Washington, the last American state of my odyssey.

  FRIDAY/SATURDAY

  WELL, we did it! As Blanche DuBoise said, “I can smell the sea air!” Honey and I had gone from sea to shining sea! We had traversed a continent!

  We decided to drive straight through to Seattle on our last night and, as you can see, we were both really happy to see my then boyfriend, Rob.

  More radio doublespeak: The United Nations is corrupt. That is why we (the United States) had to go into Iraq and pick up the slack. And now that US civilians were being hung and burned, it was the UN to blame. Duh.

  I have always thought that a really big problem in America is the inability to accept or seek other points of view, especially at that point in 2004, when there was so much anti-US feeling in the world. So it was all the more galling to hear xenophobia being openly encouraged.

  Maybe that’s why we just decided to drive on and not spend another night in a hotel en route. I think the lovely Rob and hippie, lefty Seattle were what Honey and I needed.

  Okay, so I know this picture of Honey lounging on board Rob’s houseboat is enchanting but I feel I have to report a bit of bad Honey behavior: I bought a bag of pork rinds in South Dakota and was giving her one or two at a time to quell her appetite on the long drive. I kept the bag under the driver’s seat of the car. Then, at a service station, when I returned after pumping gas, I discovered Honey sitting on the floor amid a sea of pork rind crumbs, her nose jammed into the corner of the bag, the sachet of salsa that came with the rinds the only thing that had not been snaffled. (She wasn’t big on salsa.) The look of guilt on her face was palpable. And this, remember, after her flagrant theft of a bull’s penis from an NYC pet shop a few months ago. I was pretty worried by this trend, but then I remembered it was well past her dinnertime and she had been trapped in a car for an entire week, so one little misdemeanor wasn’t too bad, I suppose. But still …

  Saturday was a whole day without driving! My shoulders were very happy. The next day we were to leave the good ol’ USA and head for our final destination, Vancouver.

  SUNDAY

  AFTER MORE than three thousand miles Honey and I were at the end of our travels. We arrived in Vancouver, unpacked, and settled into a suite on the fifteenth floor of a downtown hotel. The next day I was to begin work on Reefer Madness, the movie musical.

  Maybe it was the thin air up there that made us both so sleepy, or maybe it was the three thousand miles. We had ended our odyssey. But where we arrived was less important than where it had taken us. We were back together again, man and dog united in our adventures traversing life.

  At the end of Reefer Madness, Honey and I drove back home together, across Canada this time, in a 1978 Volkswagen Westfalia camper van named Herb that I’d bought impulsively from a lady on Vancouver Island. It was to be our last transcontinental road trip together, as shortly after we got back something happened that ensured Honey would always be able to stay at home with her dad, even when I went off to some foreign clime. Well, when I say something, I mean, of course, someone …

  GRANT

  GRANT IS MY husband and I love these pictures of him because it reminds me of when I first fell in love with him.

  He wasn’t wet, of course, but you get my point.

  I took these at a lake near Niagara Falls, on a road trip in our since-deceased Volkswagen camper van. We were actually en route to the Toronto International Film Festival, where I had two movies opening. Later that evening we stopped at a campsite and cooked our dinner on an open fire, and it was one of the loveliest nights I can remember.

  Honey, though, wasn’t so keen. She was not an outdoorsy kind of girl and kept begging to be let back inside the van as we sat around the fire, looking at the stars. In the middle of the night we heard bears rustling about outside the van so Honey probably had the right idea.

  The next evening I was smiling and waving on the red carpet, a far cry from the unkempt camper covered in ash and bug spray of the night before.

  But back to the point. These pictures are as close a visual representation I can muster to describe how it felt
when Grant arrived in my (and Honey’s) life, with his kind eyes and his rocking bod, in a blaze of blinding sparkles, like the angel he is.

  Grant, Medieval Times, 2014.

  People often come up to me and think they know me from somewhere. And of course they do, kind of, but they know me from a film or TV or some magazine article. It happens a lot to Grant too. People are always coming up and saying they recognize him. They’ve never met him, they’ve most likely never seen a picture of him before, but what I think they are recognizing is kindness in his face. That’s why they feel comfortable enough to ask. That’s what they feel drawn to. Kindness just exudes from his being.

  This picture was taken at my birthday party a few years ago. My friend Eddie and I have birthdays close to each other and often we celebrate together. That particular year we hired a party bus and took a ton of friends to New Jersey, to a magical place called Medieval Times. It’s one of those faux olde worlde knights-and-damsels extravaganzas where you sit in bleachers and drink out of pretend pewter flagons and watch people with very amplified but not very accurate English accents say things like “and now, I kill you!” before trying to knock each other off their horses with jousting sticks. It’s great!

  I looked over at Grant at one point during the evening, just after, if I remember correctly, the knight our color-coded section had deemed us loyal to had successfully seen off a challenge from an opponent in a rival color. He looked such a geek, but with his party hat on and his beaming smile, he was also like a little boy. And that is why we are such a good match I think. We’ve both got a little boy close to our surfaces, we’re always game for adventure, but we’re both grown ups too, ready to support or challenge or catch the other.

  Before he knew what was happening I snapped this picture, and it reminds me of the blur of fun that moment was, that indeed my life is now. I lucked out. We both did.

  SNOW MAN

  IT WAS ONE of those magical nights when the snowfall was stealthy and huge and I was in a bar and missed the whole thing. When we stumbled out later and found it, it was as if someone had done a magic trick, like the whole city was part of an elaborate illusion and any second David Blaine would jump out and wave his hankie and everything would be drab again. I felt like someone on those home-makeover TV shows, eyes welling with tears at the wondrous beauty of streets that a few hours before I’d walked along without a second glance. As we crossed Tompkins Square Park we saw that someone had already built this snowman.

  The reflected light from the streetlamps made the whole world look sepia or like one of those computer-animated cartoon films where characters aren’t really real, but they’re too real for a drawing. It was weird.

  And then the sound. I love the sound after snow. It’s all dense, heavy and light at the same time.

  The next morning, when I walked the dogs, he was gone. But this is the proof I didn’t imagine it.

  POOL BOY

  ALTHOUGH THIS picture looks as though it was taken at some swanky birthday party in the Hamptons or Saint-Tropez, or even on some oligarch’s superyacht, it was actually on very dry land, in the swanky splendor of terra firma that is the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City. It’s one of those old-school places that old-school people think of as quite modern. There is a big reflection pool in the middle, though it doesn’t necessitate the employ of the type of gentleman you see in this picture, and the huge windows are masked by weird metal mesh curtains that sway rather mesmerizingly in a breeze.

  My friend Glenda Bailey had invited me to a bash there one evening for her magazine Harper’s Bazaar, and she was about to make her speech so I was trying to position myself to get a good snap of her at the podium.

  Then this boy, who was part of the evening’s theme—I suppose you could call it “nautical but nice”—stepped in front of me. Although my view of the stage was now obscured, I made an executive decision not to ask him to move but instead just listened to Glenda and enjoyed the vista of his magnificent and massive corn-fed back.

  Glenda understood.

  AFTER DARK

  I AM a party animal.

  I used to think it was just because I was Scottish, and it was part of my cultural identity.

  Then I thought I must be so eager to dance and have fun because in some way I was seeking the unadulterated joy I so rarely felt as a child.

  I used to think it was a phase and soon I would become one of those people who have things programmed on their DVR and go to bed early and “hit” the gym before work.

  Now I think it’s just who I am—how I’m wired. I am in touch with my bacchanalian side. I am a sensualist. I understand the need to let go.

  Over the years I’ve seen a few people go too far, though, and lose their balance on that tightrope between thrilling fun and joyless need. Others have just become tired, or older, or attached. I am very lucky in that I am growing older attached to someone who hasn’t tired of revelry, but also gives me good counsel when it’s time to hit the hay.

  This is my friend Edie. We were at an annual New York City event called Broadway Bares, where hundreds of dancers get nearly naked and do incredible routines and then let people stuff money in their underwear and it’s all for charity. It’s my kind of a night.

  It’s debauched, it’s clever, it’s appreciative of beauty and talent, and it’s doing good too. Anyway, before the start of the show, there’s a ritual of everyone doing a shot of tequila, and I caught Edie slugging one back in her very ladylike manner.

  I once arrived at a friend’s house in Los Angeles in the early hours of the morning only to find that the Halloween party he was throwing was over. That is sort of a metaphor for my experience of LA. When I first went there in the mid-1990s, I couldn’t get to grips with it at all. I had this anxious feeling I was missing the party. But I don’t think I was. I think in LA you have to make your own party.

  I’d let my taxi go and so I just hung around on the sidewalk watching the rejected revelers pile out onto the street, hoping I would know a sober one of them who could give me a lift back to my hotel. I turned around and there was this boy, totally smashed, wobbling next to me in his amazing outfit, smoking a cigarette. I asked him if I could take his picture and he simply nodded. I think he was actually incapable of speech. I did so and then some people I knew appeared and when I looked around again for him he was gone.

  I am slightly alarmed by the stains on his pants.

  I know I sound a little bit down on LA. But when you think about it, it’s a city built around an industry with self-consciousness at its very core. Everyone needs to look good, and everyone is looking at how good everyone else is looking. So I understand why that could make letting go in a public place a little more taxing for its denizens. However, there is fun to be had of an evening if you know where to find it.

  I don’t really know what to say about this picture. Anything I say will probably alter the impression already forming of it in your mind and I don’t want to interfere with that. Suffice to say nobody was harmed in the capturing of this image. In fact, everyone, including the people watching, was having a very good time.

  There’s an old-school strip joint on the west side of downtown Manhattan called Westway, and on Tuesdays there used to be a really fun gay party there called, naturally, Westgay. Each week there would be some sort of performance on the catwalk that traversed the dance floor, and one evening this androgynous wonder totally captivated me.

  As did the go-go boys watching, waiting for their turn to get back to the grind.

  The below picture was taken at a party called Rasputin. Of course, because it was Hollywood, the boys in the picture were behind a screen. You can see me reflected in their beauty.

  Eastern Bloc is my favorite little dive bar in the whole of NYC. It’s also conveniently within stumbling distance of my home. I’ve had many great nights in it. I even had a fundraiser for Obama’s first election campaign there and auctioned off various choice items from the DJ booth, like a Wonder Wo
man cookie jar donated by Lynda Carter herself, and my parking pass for the ill-fated wedding of my old chum Liza Minnelli and David Gest.

  Talking of the DJ booth, it’s always my first port of call. This particular night I went to say hello to Darren, one of the owners, and didn’t realize I was capturing a moment of tenderness when I took the pic on this page.

  Unknown cute boy somewhere in New York City, sometime this century.

  Once I went to a party that had a candy-floss room! This girl was not as impressed as I was.

  Smith and Chris.

  He needs no name.

  I love waking up in the morning after a night out and finding pictures in my camera like this one.

  I’ve done a lot of impromptu photo shoots in bathrooms.

  I suppose I like finding beauty in places that are a bit taboo. I saw a documentary about the New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham, and there was a bit when he received the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture in France and he said, “He who seeks beauty shall find it.” I totally agree.

  This is me and a man in some bar who also had a mohawk.

  I was playing Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera at the time, so I was out every night exorcising the Brecht/Weill demons.

  It’s amazing what you spy in doorways, minding your own business walking down the street.