I'm Your Huckleberry

by Val Kilmer

  The genius of this literary enterprise floored me and had me reading Twain—all of Twain—night and day. Like his books, he was both a comic and a tragic figure. He was the most famous American of his time. He earned and lost fortunes. Fiedler is right to see Twain as primarily “a poet, the possessor of deep and special mythopoetic powers whose childhood was contemporaneous with a nation’s.” Twain understood the troubled souls of this nation’s citizens with the acuity of a devilish saint. He was a lonely leader of a tribe looking for hope. In that regard, he reminds me of Moses.

  Oddly enough, I’ve played Moses three times. The first was in The Prince of Egypt, a sleeper Disney hit with a massive all-star cast that included Michelle Pfeiffer and Ralph Fiennes, with music by Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz, sung by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Though making the movie was a solitary experience—me alone in a sound booth—the final product was charming and beloved family fare.

  My second Moses was in The Ten Commandments, a mortifying-at-best live musical at the Kodak Theatre with a very young Adam Lambert and a bunch of other Broadway kids too talented for the material. The saving grace was that the ridiculous mishaps onstage served to entertain me, bloopers in my mind for many lifetimes. Columns rose and fell. Lines were forgotten. Without realizing it, we were Monty Python and the Holy Fail.

  My third and final Man of the Mountain moment was an audio recording for a hip-hop gospel musical version of the story by composer-lyricist Walter Robinson. It was fascinating, and I was delighted to participate.

  I suppose you could say I’ve played Jesus-like characters as well, Jim Morrison being one, Doc Holliday perhaps as well. It’s a trip to play superhuman characters while dealing with the most human things in your off time. Custody. Divorce. A looming recession. A very expensive ranch. A dream life that sometimes mirrors your reality and sometimes dwarfs it. A career in which make-believe is real and everything else is just the rehearsal.

  I found it grounding, as many make-believers do, to surround myself with friends and lovers who were real. One such female friend was an earthy, unpretentious muse, someone with whom, in my dreams, I could still reconcile. She’s a yogi and a healer. Jaycee Garnet Gossett.

  Soft Opening

  It was 2001. I was forty-one. I had briefly been dating a British woman who was severe, austere, and competitive. But her cool factor was unmatched. In many areas, there was undoubtedly stimulation. Our competition lasted through our entire short, spicy, scary relationship to the final meeting, at which point we agreed to dissolve our relationship in New York and began to quietly argue about where exactly the breakup dinner should take place. I wanted to take her somewhere lovely. I still wanted to impress her. I thought maybe a chef’s table at a fine restaurant, where we would be walked through a tasting menu of rarefied delicacies. No. Maybe at the top of a tall building. Or a jazz club. She called all my charming ideas lame. Her notion was to take me to a place in SoHo so chic that the general public knew nothing about it. The restaurant had yet to open. But because she knew the chef, and because tonight he was having an invitation-only super-exclusive soft opening, we could get in. What could I say?

  “You win,” seemed the right response.

  The moment I walked into this soft opening, I saw her. Jaycee Gossett. I might have been hunched over with self-doubt from this failed fling, but Jaycee had me standing straight. She was the maître d’ and she was smiling deep from within as golden curls fell all around her shoulders. She was Titania and Helena and Hermia. She was everything.

  We locked eyes, and without saying more than five words, she seated us. I listened as my about-to-be-former girlfriend accused me of being irresponsible, impulsive, and childish. I didn’t argue. I just wanted to steal secret glances at Jaycee. Right then and there, I wanted to irresponsibly, impulsively marry her. Of course, I couldn’t say anything that night.

  The following day I went through the motions of errands. Work prep. Calls. Dry cleaner. As the sun set, I put on a crisp linen shirt and sauntered back to the spot. There she was. Freedom. Peace. Connection. Kahlil Gibran says a soul mate is the guardian of the other person’s solitude. Gibran was describing what Jaycee meant to me. I knew it. Soon she knew it. We belonged together.

  Jaycee and I embarked on a three-year love affair that lives in my body-mind like nothing else. She was a real-life angel, and she was up for anything, as long as it was good for the soul. She was good for the soul. In my Inside the Actors Studio interview, James Lipton asked about my favorite sound. I answered, “Any sound coming from my beloved, Jaycee.” Most people watching, especially between California and New York, might have thought I meant Jesus Christ. I’m fine with that interpretation.

  Like summer camp, everything with Jaycee was fun and new. Because she wasn’t a celebrity, she was free of celebrity baggage. We took tourist boats on the Hudson River and felt like we were in Prague.

  Once I took her to a party at the Waldorf Astoria, invited by a friend who was an ambassador to the UN. Well, who should show up but the president of the United States, Bill Clinton. He beelined straight for us, and like the cliché of an actor that I am, I foolishly thought he wanted to talk to me. He indulged me for a few minutes, asking a few questions and answering mine, and then stuck with Jaycee for the next hour and a half. She remained composed without returning an ounce of Clinton’s flirtation. She was honored yet unimpressed.

  With Jaycee Gossett, 1999

  Through her blood ran the salt of the earth, plus some sea salt and a few little shells. She glistened.

  So why did it end? ’Cause I’m a fool.

  Oh, you want more detail?

  ’Cause I’m a big fool.

  A big stupid fool.

  And beyond that, I’m not sure what to say. It’s not an issue of fidelity but one of neglect. I disappeared into my role in The Salton Sea, and Danny Parker as a partner left a bit to be desired. He’s a lethargic, depressed musician addicted to methamphetamine, who moonlights as an informant for corrupt policemen after his wife is gunned down by masked thieves. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em might be the subtext of the film, as Parker spiritually sinks deeper and deeper until his only remaining joy is a partnership with a notorious dealer who lost his nose to meth. Well, you saw how much I sank into the Lizard King, and, though it made for good acting, it ruined my relationship. I let the character of Parker swallow me whole, and I was miserable, desolate, without a single sparkle in my eye. In honor of the project and in honor of art, I let Jaycee slip away. And I had done it so many times before her. But Jaycee was perfect. And I think about her every day.

  Declarations of Independence

  It was the dawn of a new millennium. I had just hosted Saturday Night Live, which was every bit as ecstatic as I had imagined in my flannel pajamas in Chatsworth. A perfect digestif to finish off the past twenty years of my career.

  At this point, meanwhile, Hollywood was high on its own strange energy drink of ego, flash, and cash. In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors, and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio. I looked at the industry from the inside out, and from the outside in, and in a conscious and deeply satisfying act of authenticity, I hung up my hat.

  In my mind, I retired. I decided that my priorities would undergo a massive cognitive shift. In the words of Thoreau, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” I remember Mike Ovitz, one of the founders of CAA, telling me I couldn’t leave Los Angeles. I had to stay or, at the very least, get a Los Angeles phone number. If I was going to get off the grid, the players would keep on playing. The game of Monopoly would continue at ever-increasing velocity and I would be there, at the very beginning, waiting for someone to pick me up or get me out of jail.

  I weighed the options. To constantly chase the high, or to let my feet touch the earth, let my
toes feel the sand. And I thought of New Mexico. And I thought of my own dreams of making art and telling stories. And I vowed to myself that I would bring them to life, or die trying.

  Gay as a Pink Hairnet

  To fully understand my move to New Mexico and why I bought a ranch and kept on buying acres of land like they were vintage T-shirts, you must understand the state. Remember my first visit as an adult? It was to see a sexy older lady with a wealthy swagger, Jane Smith, who lived with Betty Stewart. Jane had coaxed me there when I was a mere youth. On my drive to Jane’s, where as a kid I’d seen real cowboys dismount their horses and tie them off in the middle of the town square, all I saw was strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts. All my childhood memories of real cowboys were gone. Discouraged, I called Jane to voice my disappointment. “Just keep going,” she said. “You’ve left hell. You’re in purgatory. Paradise is but a few miles away. Have faith, Dante.” I soldiered on, past the tourist shops, into the wilderness. Thirty miles later, I arrived. I was transported to the New Mexico of my dreams. Ruins and remnants from old churches and brothels, wild horses, and a little stone path to her glorious ranch, maintained by herself and Betty. As I walked up, they were engaged in a non-lover’s quarrel. Jane listened as her tomboy counterpart croaked, “That Sam Shepard’s a phony. And he can’t even ride a horse.” I’d later learn that was untrue. And also later learn to love Betty for her irreverence.

  In the comfort of their strange yet familiar home, I felt angels all around me. It made no difference that Jane and Betty were bickering; I couldn’t have been more comfortable. Just as I put down my bags, another character entered the scene. Gordon Edmunds Miller. He was gorgeous and obviously gay. “We’ve met before,” he whispered.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I never forget a face.”

  “Well,” he countered, “I’m afraid you have.”

  Gordon jogged my memory of earlier that year, when, while I was living at Caesars Palace with Cher, there had been a fire that forced us to evacuate. The entire hotel had emptied out.

  “You and I,” he reminded me, “were standing outside on the Vegas strip half-naked. As vain as I might be, I’ll forgive you forgetting.”

  “No, no,” I said. “Now I do remember.”

  He rewarded me with a hug. Gordo was acerbic, rad, and one of a kind. He soon became one of my dearest friends. We had a holy connection. So was my connection to Sam Shepard, horseman, cowboy, writer, actor, poet, and enthusiastic drinker. Later in my New Mexican life, his enthusiasm was demonstrated when one night he drove to my ranch and couldn’t get the gate to open. He’d forgotten the code. Rather than turn around and go home, or think to call me, he rammed through the gate that bore the beautiful brand of my ranch, a logo designed by my dad, and a dream I had been proud to realize for him. Like a real cowboy, instead of apologizing, he eventually did something deeper. He gave me his most precious vintage pair of sterling silver spurs. He correctly understood that they’d be worth more to me than any gate. Tell me that’s not a cowboy.

  Sam and Gordo were friends, but I suspect that the only cowboy film Gordo ever saw was Brokeback Mountain. That was fine with me. I loved the film myself. Gordo was a world-class wit and elegant advocate for the LGBTQ+ community before they found their nomenclature. He lived beyond labels. An enlightened soul, his circle of tight-knit comrades included Jane Fonda and a host of members of the literati. Gordo was as refined as they come, hailing from a hoity-toity California family with recent roots in San Francisco but blue blood from back east. I mean, so blue Gordon’s family told him they didn’t have to hop on the Niña, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria. When Gordon asked his uncle why, the answer was, “My dear boy, those ships were for those who couldn’t afford their own.”

  Gordo would tell me how every few days his dad wandered into one of the banks he owned to work as a teller, just for the sake of humility. Unlike his dad, Gordo showed no interest in clerical duties. He admonished his experts to play with his money strictly with the aim of making more. I loved the cavalier nature of his buying and selling. A quick fax. A five-word phone call. He executed complex transactions with all the grace of Fred Astaire in Funny Face. Gordo’s dinners were grand affairs. Like Elliott Templeton in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Gordo was the perfect balance of polite and outrageous. He chose his guests judiciously but always with an eye for entertainment. Queens were invited to his table along with ranchers, gardeners, dancers, painters, and priests.

  Gordon Miller

  I’m afraid I wasn’t always the best guest. With certain groups, I can come on a bit strong. The New Mexican art elite found me feral, and I found them vapid. Yet Gordo’s innate humanity and extreme sensitivity always brought me back into the fold. He made me feel welcome.

  Gordo trained show horses. He himself was an accomplished horseman. Rain or shine, he and I rode for hours. Our only obstruction was a ravenous wild dog scouring the area for scraps in all its diseased bliss. We had some close calls but managed to avoid the deranged beast, galloping off in the nick of time, riding into the sunset as our equestrian guides, covered in joyous sweat, led us home.

  Gordo was the first of my friends to surf the initial wave of the World Wide Web. He combed sites for poignant stories and perfect punch lines to share during his sophisticated soirées. At Gordo’s, a Michelin-level meal was always awaiting me, not to mention vintage wine and just the right mixture of sages and fools. His poise cracked only when he told jokes at my expense. They usually entailed a fabulously exaggerated story insinuating some queer love triangle between him, myself, and an unknown third party. He built so slowly and powerfully to the climax of the story that it was too heartbreaking (or just not worth it) to correct him. And at the same time, it was annoying to have things hinted that were simply made up. He went so far as to tell a woman who was interested in me that he and I were living together. The truth is that, due to whatever crazy circumstances I happened to be in, I was living in a tent on his expansive property with the ulterior motive of running inside to grab bacon and eggs in the morning. The woman presumed we were sharing a bed.

  Gordo couldn’t resist a joke in which the straight man turns out not to be straight at all—either that or is portrayed as a buffoon.

  One evening I had had enough. I pulled him aside and said, “Gordo, you’re a Republican. I’m a Democrat. But I’ve never ridiculed or even mentioned your politics in public, have I?”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Well, I feel like there are times when you ridicule my heterosexuality.”

  “An interesting perspective.”

  “More hurtful than interesting. I’m straight, and being straight doesn’t give you the right to turn me into the punch lines of your jokes.”

  “I didn’t know you see it that way.”

  “I think you’d see it that way if I made gay jokes and used you as the punch line.”

  “Don’t get all huffy, Val. I’m the first to describe myself as gay as a pink hairnet.”

  “That’s cool, but that’s you making light of yourself.”

  “You can treat me as lightly as you like, Val.”

  “I’m not looking for a shooting match. I’m just asking you to treat me well.”

  I could see Gordo was ready with a quick retort. But instead he said nothing. Several seconds ticked by. His battle-ready body language relaxed. He looked at me with softened eyes.

  “I hear you, Val,” he said. “I really do. And I know you’re speaking out of friendship and love.”

  And so our Love and friendship grew even stronger. From that day forward, Gordo was always my first call during the most meaningful moments of my life. He was always prepared with a worldly line of poetry—Seamus Heaney was a favorite—to honor whatever moment I was in.

  Gordo, who died at age fifty-four in 2006, left us all with the hope that true friendship, like Love, can heal the deepest wounds. His close friend the writer Dominick Dunne said in his eulogy, “Gord
o treasured his friends and his friends treasured him back. He was a social historian who lived removed from society; the telephone was his connection to a world that he had forsaken. He was hilariously funny. He loved to dish. He was wonderful.”

  BIG DEAL HAIKU

  I told you—

  You tell her & you tell everyone

  You have what of that

  The honey drips off our

  California lineage tree

  Trillionth of a second

  Our world human history

  Big deal

  Our affair

  Big deal

  You and me

  —Ware, England, 1987

  Siren on a Snowboard

  New Mexico was every bit as healing as I’d hoped. I’d managed to marshal my financial resources. I had my ranch. I had my career. And then the universe smiled and said, “Meet Daryl Hannah.” Daryl was and always will be a spirit ahead of her time. (Neil Young, I always loved you, but I’m afraid I hate you now.) She was kind of the female me, except better. She’d found fame at seventeen and then turned her back on it. She thought, analyzed, and articulated ideas so rapidly that by the time I caught up she was already on to a new cycle of insights. She had been rock royalty since befriending U2 at the start of their careers. The Irish boys recognized her divinity.

  She and I were once at the Grammys while U2 was racing at a ferocious clip along the trailers outside the auditorium. They were due onstage. Yet when Bono saw Daryl, he hit the brakes so suddenly that his über-expensive handmade working-class boots screeched like he was in a Laurel and Hardy sketch. (Not to ridicule Bono’s boots. It’s just jealousy. I’m a boot fanatic myself.) Bono and the band stacked up like dominoes atop one another when they realized it was Daryl. She let go of my hand and crowd-surfed into their arms. The rock stars turned into teenage superfans, their worship of this woman authentic and pure. I knew that even if they scored a dozen Grammys that night, after the show they’d still be talking about running into Daryl.