by Doug Sanford
“Both questions, of course, are asinine. As reporters or critics, they should be interested only in how well the character is depicted.”
“Thanks. It’s good to hear that from someone in the media,” said Bart.
“My personal answer to that last question—how well you play the character—has been that you do it very well. Surprisingly well—with the emphasis on surprisingly.
“As soon as Shaun’s coming out was decided upon—last May or June I believe?—I noticed that there were small, subtle differences in the way you played Shaun which anticipated the change that was coming. I went back and looked at some tapes of the show to verify my impression.”
“I’m surprised and flattered that you noticed that,” Bart said. “No one else has commented on it, but that was something I tried to do.”
I think my jaw dropped. I said that Leslie and I watched the first few weeks after Shaun came out, but we never watched the show otherwise, and this was something Bart had never mentioned. My admiration for him as an actor shot up quite a bit at that exchange.
“The question that has nagged at me, before and after the actual coming out,” continued Lynette, “is what informs your ability to portray a gay man so well, with such sensitivity and with so little stereotypical behavior? Why are you so good at this? That’s what I think makes a much more interesting story.
“There are two possible answers, of course. One is that you yourself are gay, and so you’d have very personal knowledge of the subject. That would explain your working with the writers on the development of the story and character. But that would also imply that your marriage is a cover-up—something hardly unheard of in this business.”
Even without touching him, I could feel Bart stiffen and saw Lynette watching him carefully.
“The other answer is that you’re straight, but you have a very close friend or relative who is gay and from whom you’ve learned and observed a lot.”
Bart glanced at me quickly, but not quickly enough for Lynette to miss.
“Yes,” she said. “The mysterious Marc.”
“This may seem a digression,” she went on, “but I’m always surprised how things which are commonly known in one field of work are completely unknown in other fields. The most obvious example in show business, of course, was Rock Hudson. There probably wasn’t anyone in the entertainment business who didn’t know he was gay, but the general public had no inkling.
“When I started asking questions about Bart in our industry, the assumption by almost everyone was that he was straight, and in fact that he, Marc, and Leslie were involved in a three-way relationship. Those bow ties at the Emmys, the rings at your wedding, the fact that Marc accompanied you both on your honeymoon—”
“How did you—” Bart began.
“I do like to conduct my background research thoroughly, Bart. At any rate, all of that pointed in one direction: a straight three-way relationship, unusual, but again hardly unheard of.
“But as soon as I began asking questions outside of the entertainment industry—in Marc’s field of work, real estate, I found out very quickly that it was well known by everyone there that Marc was gay and out. Indeed, a number of people in that field, strongly believed that Bart was gay as well and was Marc’s lover. That seemed to support the sham marriage theory.
“So here was my dilemma. Did Bart play Shaun so well because he’s a very fine straight actor, as the entertainment world believes, or was it because he’s actually gay, as many in the real estate world believe?
“Lynette, stop,” Bart interrupted. “This is ridiculous. You’re making my head spin with these questions which are every bit as silly as the ones you criticized others for asking.”
“Dorie said I could—” Lynette began.
“You’re making it all much too complicated. It’s not one or the other. It’s both.”
“Both?” she asked.
“Yes, both. It’s really pretty simple. There’s no three-way; there’s no sham marriage. I love Les and I love Marc, and they both love me. I know that’s unusual, but it’s true.”
Leslie got up, came up to the table, sat down next to Bart, put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek—very untypical behavior for her—while I reached across the table and squeezed his hand at the same time.
“Lynette,” said Jay, “let me interrupt here. The three of them decided yesterday that whatever the purpose of your interview this morning, whether you’d figured out their relationship or not, they were tired of hiding, and they wanted to tell you their whole story.
“In my position as executive producer of Mt. Sinai Heights, I’m not sure I entirely approve of their decision, but because I was the person who first told Bart to keep things quiet and who, for over a year, has watched what he’s had to go through to do that, I know it’s time to give Bart the same privilege we’ve given Shaun, and let him, Leslie, and Marc come out about who they are.”
Strong murmured approval from the rest of us.
“So they’re perfectly willing to explain their situation to you in more detail.”
“I’m not entirely sure I understand,” Lynette started, but Jay stopped her.
“It will all be clear shortly, but I’m going to let them take over from here.”
And with that, Bart, with the two of us to fill in as needed, began to relate to Lynette our story. It probably took close to two hours. Lynette recorded it, with our permission, and took notes as well.
Bart retained the doctored beginning which didn’t involve my phone sex call and left out some of the unnecessary details, but it was pretty much an honest account of how Bart and I became phone friends, personal friends, and finally lovers, and how Leslie appeared, disappeared, and reappeared to become the keystone in a relationship which could only work for Bart if he had both of us.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m quite sure I’ve never heard a story like yours,” said Lynette, after we’d finished. “And you’re sure you want this out there for everyone to read?”
“Yes. I don’t want to have to lie anymore about who I am and who we are,” said Bart. “That doesn’t mean the world has to know every intimate detail of our lives, and we’re counting on you and the reputation Jay says you have in the media to be fair with all we’ve told you.”
It was surprising to me and to Leslie to see the business-like, no-nonsense way Bart dealt with Lynette, and we were both very proud of him. It was much like the attitude he’d displayed in the televised media interviews after Shaun came out.
“I’ll do my best, Bart,” Lynette replied, “to live up to your expectations. I really appreciate the exclusive. It’s going to be a bit of a bombshell, I think. Can I call you with questions, clarifications?”
“Anything you need,” he responded, “and if you can’t get me, Marc or Les can tell you whatever you need to know.”
We all rose. Jay and Dorie left with Lynette who, I thought, was still in a state of shock. Bart just looked at us, and said, “Wow! What have we just done? Are we gonna regret this?” The more familiar Bart was back. “Well? Somebody say something.”
“You sound just like you did the night after you told Leslie about us. Did you regret that?” I asked.
“No way!”
“You better say, ‘No way’,” said Leslie with a big smile.
“I never regretted it for a second,” said Bart. “But that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared as hell the night we all finally met.”
“We got through that, and we’ll get through this,” she said,
“If you handle yourself with the press as well as you handled this meeting with her, you won’t have anything to worry about,” said Norm.
Bart grabbed him and pulled him into one of our huddle hugs.
Chapter 45
Of course, we got through it.
And, as Bart predicted, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary.
The article appeared about two weeks later. They handled it a bit more discre
etly than they usually did these things. Soap Opera Digest always had a bit of the tabloid look about it, and they did use a photo on the cover of Bart as Shaun in scrub pants and cap but no shirt, of course—though where they got a photo of him wearing scrubs since he wasn’t a surgeon, we didn’t ask—with the front banner reading More Than Shaun Is Coming Out.
The article itself was titled Coming Out—Bart and Shaun Both Share Secrets. It certainly was designed to pique the interest of the readers with the implication that Bart was also gay, but it quickly killed that expectation in the first paragraph, and followed it up with the knockout in the second and third.
Viewers have been watching breathlessly the past month or so as Dr. Shaun Zachary on Mt. Sinai Heights finally faces the truth about himself: he is gay. It turns out that Bart Rastin who plays Shaun on this very popular soap has his own secret, but it’s not the same as that of his character—at least not quite.
As fans know, Bart was married a year and a half ago, and he and his lovely wife Leslie are the proud parents of a seven-month-old son. We recently published exclusive photos of the new family in our February 4 issue. Bart, his wife, and his manager, Marc Gruber, are frequently seen at charitable events in the LA area. What hasn’t been known, until now, is that in addition to sharing charitable interests, the three also share a home and a relationship which is more unusual than any we—and we suspect our readers—have ever encountered.
Bart, Leslie, and Marc sat down a few weeks ago to talk exclusively with me about their domestic arrangement. Just as Shaun is trying to come out of the closet, Bart feels it is time for the three of them to be honest about who they are as well.
It went on in fairly bland but accurate detail to recount our history and the closeness of our relationship. Lynette was careful to point out that Bart’s relationship with me was an emotional as well as sexual one, and that he was not bisexual in the way that word is generally used. There was even a sidebar which included background information about the meaning and history of ménage a trois. Since the magazine was aimed mostly at women, the article featured a number of quotes from Leslie in order to reassure readers that she was an equal partner in the trois and not being used or taken advantage of in any way.
Most importantly, it explained what Bart had wanted dealt with most: the futility of using labels when talking about people and their relationships. Lynette took Bart’s words almost verbatim about the fact that none of the available terms—gay, straight, or bi—really applied to him or even that ménage a trois really explained the depth of the relationships the three of us had.
We couldn’t have asked for a fairer treatment of a complex subject in a popular magazine. We were pleased, and Bart called Lynette as soon as received his advanced copy to congratulate her.
None of us, however, was quite prepared for the reactions of our friends, our co-workers, and the general public. While the article itself, appearing as it did in Soap Opera Digest, would probably not have been seen by very many people other than soap fans, the Associated Press picked up the story, and it appeared widely in the entertainment sections of papers and magazines throughout the country.
Ada and Jack, of course, knew everything, so there were no surprises for them and, in their usual discreet manner, not much of a reaction at all. Ada did mention that The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana’s only paper, was pestering them for an interview, but that they had both been firm in resisting it—finally getting it to back off only by threatening to cancel their subscription and saying that they would tell all their friends to do the same.
Everyone who worked with Bart on a daily basis mostly confined their comments to congratulating him for having had the courage to discuss such a personal matter and giving him their support. But AJ told Bart that the story was responsible for practically all of the on-set gossip and discussions for several weeks with half of them claiming that they hadn’t been fooled by the three-way story and they knew what was up all the time. AJ just laughed at that, as did we.
My colleagues and clients seemed to treat it all as a non-issue. For years most of them had thought of Bart and me as a couple. When he married Leslie, there were some raised eyebrows, but the article helped everything fall into place. They were able to see the marriage in the context of what they’d always suspected about our relationship.
Weirdly enough my business increased. Whether people were curious and just wanted to see me or they admired what Bart had done and said about us, I was getting calls out of the blue from people interested in the kind of properties I was selling. In the next couple of months, I made two exceptionally good sales which could be directly attributable to the article.
Similarly, at the university, Leslie’s classes suddenly became very popular—at least for a short while. “You wouldn’t believe the number of students who have developed an all-consuming interest in Jane Austen and the 19th Century novel and are showing up as informal auditors,” she said with a broad smile. “I don’t know what they thought they were going to hear, but since I’ve said nothing, their interest just as suddenly dissipated. I guess they wanted to get a look at me. I will say that the attendance of the enrolled students has improved dramatically. They don’t want to miss a class—just in case.”
The right wing and the religious bigots, of course, had a field day and raised questions about morality, group sex, orgies, bigamy, polygamy, polyandry, bisexuality, homosexuality—all without showing much understanding of any of the terms they threw around so glibly. Fortunately, in 1997, there was no Fox News cable TV channel of any import, but Rush Limbaugh and his talk-radio cohorts throughout the country picked up the story and ran with it. Their comments were filled with dire predictions of slippery slopes which all seemed to end up with people marrying their relatives, pets, or inanimate objects.
The most unexpected and welcome reaction came from Marian of all people. Leslie had warned her parents about the upcoming disclosure and got them a copy of it as soon as she could so they would be prepared. After reading it, Marian called and said, “If only you’d explained it all to me this way from the beginning, Lessey, things would have been a lot easier to understand.” And that was pretty much all she had to say on the subject. I think it was one of the few times in her life that Leslie’s mom had ever shocked her.
But Marian’s reaction was important because it seemed to represent the reactions of a significant number of the program’s viewers and even of the general public. Lynette had explained things so clearly that there was no big backlash or uproar. Curiosity and interest, yes—a lot of it—but condemnation, not that much.
Bart was more in demand than ever for radio and television interviews, talk shows, and the like, but he declined every one of them.
“The true story is out there, and I don’t have to lie about it anymore, but there’s no way I’m going to spend the rest of my life talking about us,” was how he put it.
Dorie, it was clear, would have liked him to do personal appearances, but she respected his feelings and didn’t push the issue. Her predictions about the show’s ratings had played out pretty much as she said they would. There was a real spike in ratings for the first couple of weeks, but they began to level off, and by the end of the first month, the ratings were almost exactly at the same high level they had been at before the story broke—no loss of share.
One unexpected and interesting side effect of Bart’s refusal to give any more interviews was that media reporters and investigators, in an effort to exploit the story, were actively seeking other non-traditional families, and the newspapers, magazines, and networks were paying well for similar personal accounts.
From this country and abroad, it seemed new stories were emerging every day from those who had been living below the radar. Some came out for the same reason as Bart: they were tired of hiding and wanted to be honest about themselves, using Bart’s story as an excuse for what they’d wanted to do anyhow. Others probably just wanted to take advantage of the money they could make fro
m it.
These accounts were amazingly varied. Households of three people were the most frequently related, though as Uncle Buddy had pointed out when we first met with him, usually they were one man in love with two women or one woman in love with two men. In most of those, the same-sex pair generally did not have sex with one another. There were also others like us: a man in love with a man and woman or a woman in love with a man and a woman.
But there were also permanent households in which the relationship among the three was what is normally described as a three-way in which all three had sex with one another—either at the same time or separately. There were even accounts of households of four: some with two couples and some with four individuals.
The permutations and combinations amazed all of us, as did the fact that most of the stories came from those who had been together for more than just a year or two. The longevity award probably had to go to a man and two women who met in their twenties and had been living together for more than thirty years.
If there was one problem, it was that Lynette’s account of our situation and the media’s publicizing of others’ stories all seemed a bit too romantic. As a result, many young, and not-so-young, people began considering entering into their own ménage-type relationships. The idea of three people in love and living together became faddish for a while, but like any fad, it didn’t last long. A lot of people must have gained some first-hand appreciation of the difficulties inherent in a relationship like ours. Few of those people had either the interest, the resources, or the resoluteness we had in establishing ours.
The topic became so pervasive for a month or so that Newsweek and Time both did competing cover stories about it, one entitled Is Three the New Two? and the other, Three’s More Than A Crowd Today.