by Doug Sanford
“We’ve already worked out the snoring problem, Mrs. Rastin,” replied Leslie.
“Call me Ada, dear.”
“Ada.”
“And,” I said with my fingers crossed for Bart and Leslie to see, “we don’t leave our clothes lying around for a week, Ada. Maybe a day or two on rare occasions.”
“She already knows we don’t cook much, Mom. She hates cooking, too.”
Ada also had one of the funniest comments on the whole situation: “So, Jack, now our only son has presented us with both a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law at the same time.”
Jack, being the academic he was, couldn’t resist a more historical perspective on the whole thing. He mentioned Nietzsche, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jack Kerouac, and several others I can no longer remember who had been involved in ménage relationships—with other people, not with each other, he was quick to point out—although thinking of a ménage made up of Nietzsche, Roosevelt, and Kerouac set us all to laughing.
But he was very pleased that we were taking it seriously enough to meet with a lawyer in advance. Jack was always practical. We promised to keep them up to speed on all the details.
Chapter 30
Why four attorneys? That was Buddy’s doing—well, three of the four were.
As planned, we met Buddy for dinner the following Friday, and on the way over, Leslie filled us in a bit.
“Uncle Buddy is my dad’s younger brother by four years. He’s a really great guy. Despite the fact that Uncle Buddy is gay, the two of them have always gotten along really well.”
“Unlike Bart’s dad and his brother,” I interrupted, “neither of whom is gay.”
“Anyhow, he’s a big-shot civil attorney, involved in high-end cases, particularly pre-nups and divorce.”
“I hope not for the same couples,” I said with a smile.
“You know, I don’t know the answer to that,” Leslie answered thoughtfully. “That would be pretty funny. Whose side would he take in the divorce? Oh, I guess you meant that as a joke. But it is kind of interesting.”
“Anyhow,” she continued, perking up, “in LA, he’s never at a loss for clients, usually wealthy ones.”
“It would be funny if Marc were selling houses to Buddy’s clients,” Bart laughed.
At dinner, I found Buddy to be a really interesting guy. I thought he was aptly named because physically he reminded me of a taller Buddy Hackett: a bit heavy and with an almost contagious smile. But he was no comedian, and while friendly and obviously very fond of his niece, I could tell he was serious about his work.
During the course of the dinner conversation, I learned something unexpected about Leslie’s family. It turns out that the great job that caused her father to leave Tucson was to become president and CEO of a major California company headquartered in L.A. in its own skyscraper. This explained Leslie’s revelation that her parents gave her a condominium for a graduation present. They could well afford it.
Up until dessert, things had been very friendly, but after Leslie tried to explain what we were planning to do, the atmosphere changed.
“Phil and Marian will never understand this, Lessey, never,” said Buddy after she told him what we had in mind.
Lessey, we learned at the outset of the dinner conversation, was what Leslie’s whole family called her because when she was just starting to talk, she couldn’t pronounce the second L in her name, so she called herself Lessey. Her family followed suit, and that’s the way it had been ever since.
“Phil’s always been fine about me being gay, but his daughter in a three-way with two gay guys to have children? Never. Even I don’t understand why you would want to do something like that.”
“If I can make a few comments?” Bart said, looking at Leslie and jumping in before I could.
“First, we’re not two gay guys. I’m straight—if we have to use labels. I want to marry Leslie because I love her and probably have ever since I met her during our first year of college, fool that I was for not having told her then.” He smiled at her.
“I know it’s hard to understand my relationship with Marc who is gay, but we’ve been living together for eight years, and, yes, I do also love Marc, and yes, we do have sex with one another. But I don’t like men; I just love Marc.
“We know how hard it is for the few who know about us to understand. We just don’t fit into the standard gay, bi, or straight categories.
“Because you’re Les’s uncle, I have to respect you, but you’re way off base and totally misunderstood what she was trying to explain if you really think Marc and I are just using her to have children.”
On the last sentence, his voice grew angrier than I’d heard him since that time I suggested he bring a girl back to our house for sex. Leslie grabbed one arm and I grabbed the other one.
“Excuse me,” Bart said, immediately calming down. “I didn’t mean to get upset.”
“And to add one more thing,” I interrupted. “We’re not having a three-way. There is a term for it—a ménage à trois, which is something quite different.”
Buddy sat back and looked at us with what seemed to me to be an expression of amusement, and I began to feel some anger welling up inside me as well. It must have shown on my face because he held up one hand in a calming gesture.
“I’m sorry if what I said upset you. You yourselves admit this is a bit of an unusual situation, and Lessey is my favorite, not to mention my only, niece, so I replied without thinking and not at all the way I would if you were clients seeking my advice. I sincerely apologize.”
The temperature at the table went down significantly at this honest and graceful apology. Buddy did have class.
“It appears that you three are really serious, aren’t you?” he said with some bewilderment but perhaps with some admiration as well.
He turned to his niece. “Lessey, you know how I feel about you. Tell me something. Do you really love Bart?”
“Yes,” she replied simply but firmly.
“Are you sure he loves you?”
“Not the slightest doubt.”
“And are you sure—don’t get angry, guys—this is something I need to have answered—that’s he’s not just using you to get money or children?”
“Yes and yes. We want children, but they’ll be raised by all three of us. And we came to you specifically to help us with the money issue—to make sure that no one is taken advantage of financially. Does that clarify things? “
“If all my clients would answer so concisely, I’d have a much easier job,” he replied with a smile.
The three of us breathed a small sigh of relief. Some sign of progress.
“I’ve been an attorney for twenty years,” he went on, “most of them dealing with marriages and divorces. Here in LA, I’ve seen a lot more than you could probably ever imagine in terms of relationships between people. I’m not nearly as naïve as you assume.
“I do know about ménages, Marc. In fact, I’ve helped with the legal setups of five of them so far in the course of my career. Three of them are still going on very successfully. A fourth ended several years ago when one of the trio died. The fifth was a definite mistake from the outset and was dissolved within a year. Still, an eighty percent success rate is pretty good.
“In my experience up until now, they’ve involved a man in love with two women or a woman in love with two men. Your case certainly has a new twist—a man in love with a man and a woman. This one is really going to be a challenge.”
“See, old man,” said Bart with a smile on his face. “I said you were twisted.”
“Private joke,” I said to Leslie and Buddy. “Don’t take twisted the wrong way.”
“By challenge, Uncle Buddy, I assume you mean you’ll help us?”
“Yes, but it’s a good deal more complicated than you probably suspect. And I won’t be involved unless your parents know what you’re doing.”
“Of course,” Leslie replied. “We have nothing to hide, and we’re all f
or complete honesty, but I felt it would be easier to start with you. If we couldn’t persuade you that what we want to do is serious, we’d have no chance with Mom and Daddy. I strongly doubt that we have a chance anyhow, but I’m used to dealing with them.”
“I know. I still remember how you got them to let you and your friends go to the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia without a chaperone in—what was it?—your junior year in high school?”
“Yes, although this might prove a little more difficult than that. But I’ll handle them. Will you help us with whatever paperwork we need?”
“And just so there’s no confusion,” I said, “we’re not asking for charity. We can afford to pay your fee and all expenses for whatever needs to be done.”
“Well, to begin with, I can’t help you all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Leslie.
“I can be your attorney, Lessey, if you want me to, but Marc and Bart each has to have his own attorney, and they can’t use the same one. We need three attorneys, each working for a different party to the ménage. That’s the only way to be sure that everyone is fairly and equitably represented.”
And that’s the story of the three attorneys. The fourth was a real estate lawyer we needed to handle the house purchase once we decided on a place.
Bart and I had an attorney we’d used a few times, and he became my attorney for the process. Bart got an attorney through his agent Norm, one who was probably on the same professional level as Buddy.
We trusted them and, after an initial conference with all six of us present, left them to work out the details. Their job was to make sure everything would run smoothly on a daily basis and that no one would get financially hurt in the event we split up or one of us died.
A ménage sounds very Bohemian and easy-going, and we laughed and made a lot of jokes as we were going through the process of setting things up, but, beneath it all, we had a serious sense of purpose about what we were doing and wanted to leave nothing to chance. In no way were we going to be Otto, Leo, and Gilda larking about on a sofa as the curtain came down.
In the following months, we spent countless hours in the offices of attorneys, various accountants, investment counselors, bankers, and a doctor—we all had physicals and blood tests.
As part of the process, Bart and Leslie had to settle on an official married name. It would be Rastin-Miller. However, Leslie would use it unhyphenated at school so that her students could still call her Dr. Miller, and Bart would continue to use Bart Rastin as a stage name, but for both of them, their legal name would be the hyphenated one.
When the time came, Leslie, totally in character, insisted that the three of us read every single piece of paper together and out loud, with her Uncle Buddy present to answer questions, before signing anything, to be sure we had a clear understanding of what was happening. That was one long Saturday, from nine in the morning until almost six in the evening.
Phil and Marian, Leslie’s parents, were another problem, but one that Bart and I didn’t have to deal with. Leslie, true to her word, “handled them,” and so when we all met and had dinner together for the first time a few days after our initial meeting with Buddy, her parents were as cordial as we could have wanted.
In the car on our way to the restaurant to meet them, Leslie filled us in. “They remembered you from last Christmas, Bart, and of course we’ve talked since then about the fact that I was still seeing you. They were fine with that. In fact, Mom gushed over your good looks.”
Bart groaned, and Leslie said, “Oh, shut up. It’s a gift. Be grateful.”
“Now you do sound like my mom,” said Bart with a big grin.
It was a small interaction between the two of them, but one I hadn’t seen yet, and I was tremendously encouraged by it. It showed pretty clearly that Leslie wasn’t afraid of Bart or intimidated by his looks, an excellent sign since that meant she’d be honest with him—something he appreciated and needed.
“When I explained what we were going to do, they didn’t really understand why we all needed to live together,” she continued. “But I didn’t expect them to. I felt it was best not to go into your feelings for one another or your sexual relationship at first. They’ll figure it out eventually as they watch you two interact. Then they’ll ask me about it—or not. Who knows? I just said the two of you had been really close friends for years, and that Marc had no family. That will do for now.
“I suspect Uncle Buddy will have a word with them at some point—or at least with Daddy who is more open to new things. Probably because of growing up with a gay brother and being a CEO, he understands the real world better than Mom. She’s more insulated and has a difficult time dealing with situations that are out of the ordinary and less than socially ‘proper,’ if you know what I mean.” Leslie spoke the word with quotes in her voice.
“She can’t help it. It was the way she was raised. Fortunately, the one thing she wants more than anything else—at least the one thing that Daddy can’t buy her—is grandchildren. I got her to see that she’d only be hurting herself in terms of seeing our children if she put up resistance.”
“You wouldn’t really do that, would you?” Bart asked.
“Actually, probably not, but she doesn’t have to know that,” she replied with a smile.
Eventually they both came to genuinely like us as a threesome and individually, but conversation that first evening was limited to non-controversial topics and the wedding.
August 26 was the date decided upon. It was a Saturday and, as I noted in what Bart would call my anal way, was coincidentally just a day before the anniversary of our first phone call. Leslie’s classes wouldn’t have started, and Bart would be okay because his show was down the week before Labor Day.
Planning the wedding was something that Marian wanted to take on and one which we were happy to leave to her almost completely. Bart did insist on a Unitarian Universalist minister. Leslie’s parents were non-practicing Episcopalians, and Leslie herself had no interest in a religious ceremony at all. As a result, Bart got his way so that the minister and the service would be liberal and non-creedal.
For Marian, the actual ceremony and who officiated were probably in her mind the least important things about the wedding, so she could care less about who performed the service as long as he or she looked the part. She was much more concerned about the venue, the caterers, the florists, the guest list, the invitations, and the like. Phil seemed pleased that she had a project to keep her busy.
Chapter 31
Bart’s twenty-fifth birthday was a few days after the dinner with Leslie’s parents. There were a lot of places we could have gone to celebrate, but Bamboo seemed the most appropriate. With all the excitement of becoming a household of three, beginning to take steps to legitimize it, and making plans for the wedding, quiet and comfort were what we needed most. We got that, but we also had a conversation which would eventually have some unforeseen consequences.
“There is one thing we need to talk about,” said Bart. “The Emmy awards this year are coming up in three weeks.”
“At least now I get to hear about it,” said Leslie. “Up until two weeks ago, I didn’t even know you’d gotten one. Are you nominated again?”
“Yeah, Norm and Marc did their usual number on me and made me send in the paperwork and videos. They notified me about the nomination a few weeks ago. I’d have to go anyhow because as a winner last year, I have to present the female award in my category this year.”
“So what’s there to talk about?” I asked.
“I think we should all go. I know we said last year, Marc, that it wouldn’t be good for my career, but I don’t care. It was no fun being there with only everybody from the show. I mean they’re great people, but I want you two there with me.”
“You and Leslie can go. That would be natural, but how would you justify my being there?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. How would you like a job?”
“I know you got a
nice raise, but I don’t think you could afford me.”
He punched me in the arm. “I didn’t say you’d get paid, but it would give you a title. How’d you like to be my manager?”
“Manager?” I thought for a moment. “That might just work. It could get around some of the questions we’ll probably run into in the future. Actually, kid, that’s a smart idea.”
“I’m not just a pretty face—as someone I know is fond of saying,” replied Bart.
“You know, that would be our first official outing as a trio,” I said.
“I think we should make the most of it,” Bart followed up. “We’ve had to hide things for too long. I want to be open about us.”
“That could be dangerous,” Leslie warned.
“I don’t care, Les. The last two weeks, I’ve felt like a huge weight’s been lifted from my shoulders. For the first time, I can be completely honest with you, and we can be together all the time—no more of this Saturday night and weekly phone call crap. You don’t know how happy that’s made me.”
“Of course, I do. It’s done the same for me,” she said.
“And,” I added, “it’s been pretty obvious in the way you two act with one another. It’s been great to see.”
“And thanks to you, Les, Marc and I now have a real future together.”
“Amen and Hallelujah,” I said.
“That’s been hanging over us from the beginning,” he said. “Even when we never talked about it, it was always in the air.”
“I thought I was the only one that felt that way, kid.”
“How could I not think about it? No matter what you said, it’s been clear you’ve had the hardest time accepting how I feel about you, Marc. You’ve never thought it was real. I’ve always blamed it on your normal anality—if being anal can be normal.”