Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins

by Rupert Everett

  “You must have got a bit frustrated in between,” I reasoned.

  “Not a bit. For me nothing could ever be as intense as the embrace of two people who thought they were about to be slaughtered. After the war it was all fireworks—no bombs. Until ‘68.” (The French word for fireworks is feu d’artifice, which literally means artificial fire.)

  So I expected the west side of Flamingo Park to be jumping. But there was no one there. Just three police cars lying in wait in case any queers got the wrong idea. Oh no! Even the queers had been broken by the New America. We had become spineless virtual geeks. Cruising on line for a chemical fuck, or holding hands in a mega-church praying for forgiveness. There was nothing in between except maybe cardio and weight training.

  Suddenly, and with total clarity, I knew it was time to leave.

  CHAPTER 52

  Goodbye, Miami

  Christmas was upon us, and Miami tried to straighten herself up for the oncoming season. Someone held a party for the homeless and had given them all a Father Christmas outfit. On my last cycle ride down the beach, the low coral wall dividing the park from the dunes, where the homeless spent the day, was now dotted with miserable careworn Santas, sitting glumly in their fake-fur-trimmed hats. Only in America could such a breathtaking vision be seen. Even the mad old Hari Krishna monk was gobsmacked. He, too, sat alone on the beach wall, momentarily drained of faith and disciples. In high season, three or four regretful drug casualties might dance behind him past Wet Willie’s on Ocean Drive, clashing their little cymbals in the faces of the hip hop kids who drank Sea Breezes out of paper cups. But they always went back north in summer with the bums, and each year the mad monk seemed to edge closer to the sea wall, which was a kind of dividing line between society and the vagabond world, his coral robe bleached white and ragged. He knew that once you moved out of your room for that first night huddled among the dunes, there was no turning back. Our world became an impenetrable screen in front of which they sat.

  It was a cartoon world, and I had become a part of it. Out of the blue, Jeffrey Katzenberg offered me the voice of Prince Charming in Shrek 2, a role I would never get in a live-action film. I was ecstatic; I loved Shrek. It is a strange fact that America is only prepared to look at herself through the safety of cartoons: Shrek, South Park and The Simpsons hold the mirror to society. Only the titles of live-action films give you any indication about the absurd state of our world: Mission Impossible, Failure to Launch, Maid in America. (Professor in Guatemala.)

  Being the gay guy in films was another cartoon. There was only so far I could go before being run over by the steamroller. Now I was walking flattened. I would pop back out, but only to be knocked on the head by the giant hammer, because now the winds were changing. In the aftermath of Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica, two excellent and beautifully performed films, one paper reported that Brad Pitt had told his agent to find him a gay part. Another one said that while gay actors were good for comedic gay roles, straight guys were better as the serious queers. The hairdryer has been grabbed from my hands. Now Tom will present it to Russell in a fireman’s outfit on the edge of some burning skyscraper at the emotional clinch before the final abseil to freedom. (“My ex gave me this after the White Party, before this whole mess started. Remember me, buddy, when you backcomb our kids. Now jump!”)

  Hey-ho. Does that mean that I will play the serious straight role? Possibly not, I think, as I ride in the taxi over the causeway for the last time. An escaping Father Christmas is walking by the side of the freeway, trying to make it back downtown. Behind him a row of gigantic Norwegian liners sit in the harbour. They are beautiful and lethal. They have killed the reefs that surround America.

  Yesterday it all felt huge but this evening, as the sun sets over the skyline that coke built, downtown Miami, I feel weightless, as if I had shed my skin. I am going to disappear. In the airport, I sit at La Carretta. It was at this stool, years ago, that I discovered I had been living with a bigamist. Difficult in the gay world, you might say. But I managed. That day I had sat frozen as flight after flight came and went, unable to move from the bar. Now, I begin to laugh. A drunken English tourist with a chubby red face is watching me.

  “You were a bit of okay in Maurice,” he says expansively. “And Four Weddings and a Funeral is my daughter’s favourite film.”

  At this stage in my career, there seems to be little point in correcting the small error, and so I graciously acquiesce. “Thank you. I loved making both those films,” I say modestly.

  Bad move. He moves to the stool next to me and surveys me with bloodshot eyes. In the bubble between destinations, we are suddenly best friends.

  “But then you went off the boil, right?” His face is very close. “What happened, mate?” He puts his giant paw on my shoulder.

  “I have a very small willie,” I say. Very Hugh reply, I think, but he pays no attention.

  “Yeah. That film with Julianne what’s-her-face. Nine and a half . . . ?”

  “Months, Nine Months. Moore.”

  “There you go again. Mumbling. It’s your trademark isn’t it?”

  The flight to São Paulo is announced. I get up. He grabs my arm. “Sign something for me before you go.” It is a command. He gives me his ticket folder.

  I write inside it with a gothic flourish:

  Drop dead!

  Love,

  Hugh Grant XXX