Not only did I survive, I triumphed. I owned the goddamn table.
My triumph was my undoing.
I had to open those old wounds, letting out the bad blood. Maybe the doctors from the eighteenth century weren’t so far off when they applied leeches.
I remembered what I didn’t want to remember: how I’d stared in the mirror, wondering what I had done wrong. Why did my mother leave me? She kept Patty. Why didn’t my father find me? He lived less than ten miles away.
The answers are adult answers. Of course I know why. But the pain is the child’s pain and I had to feel it. Juts made sure I wouldn’t feel it around her. She hated weak things. For her pain was weakness.
Mom was wrong but you take people as you find them. I forgave her. She was too lovable at her best not to forgive her.
The person I couldn’t forgive was myself. Why didn’t I know everything? Why wasn’t I perfect? I was the strongest, the smartest, the best. Everyone told me so. I had track ribbons, tennis trophies and novels on the best-seller lists to prove it.
Victory isn’t peace.
Valor isn’t self-understanding.
My victories brought me to the point where I could examine my frailties. Had I not written those successful novels, I don’t know if I could have taken the time or energy to consider myself. The icon of success would have pulled me away.
The danger in dressing and addressing old wounds is self-indulgence. I fear that like the plague.
The person I thought about at this time was Senator Thomas Eagleton, chosen to be George McGovern’s running mate in 1972. The McGovern camp later discovered that Senator Eagleton had once sought help for depression. Eagleton was dumped. McGovern, a man I personally like, having met him three times, sank to his lowest. He hadn’t a prayer of winning the presidency anyway. Had he stuck by Eagleton he would have looked less “handled.”
That’s the trouble today. Public figures don’t follow their instincts, they follow opinion polls. Wimps.
Where is Harry S. Truman when we need him?
The reason I thought about Eagleton was that he was punished for seeking health. Had he broken his arm no one would have said a word when a doctor set the bone. His mind hurt him. He went to a doctor. He was crucified.
The fallacy is that to be president or to lead, you can’t admit weakness. I now fear the person who doesn’t know s/he can be broken. If you don’t know where your fault lines lie, that San Andreas of the heart, you will perish.
Certainly, I was afraid to admit weakness.
My struggle isn’t darkly glamorous. I didn’t take drugs, drink or become wildly promiscuous. I didn’t rush into therapy or a rest haven. I worked it out, day by day, puzzling, piecing together, looking inside.
Today people rush to television to display their insides, seeking absolution in publicity. I really think the Catholic Church is missing the boat. A show called Mea Culpa, a public confessional, would be the smash of the decade. My mea culpas aren’t that melodramatic.
I’m reserved and sometimes withdrawn.
I’d rather be the chief than the Indian.
I have trouble making room for other people’s frailties and I have zero tolerance for my own.
I have no self-doubt, even when it might be a prudent response.
I never understood the connection between sex and love until well into my thirties.
The job comes first with me. You can nurse your feelings later.
I am capable of evil just as I am capable of great good.
I like to think of myself as an angel with lice on her wings.
None of the above would earn me a berth on a talk show. Maybe we’re glued to those talk shows because a cannibal’s confession makes us feel better about our own flaws.
Truly, I loathe admitting I have flaws. People have been pointing them out since my birth, and I don’t see why I should waste my time doing it! But there are moments when the ironies of my own life, the ironies of being an American, give me the giggles.
We’ve got our pants on backward, so to speak. We confuse rigidity with strength. We want people without blemish.
Why are we punishing people for their lives? We punished Thomas Eagleton. We punished Adlai Stevenson because he was divorced. We punished Richard Nixon because he was unlovable.
In Oliver Stone’s movie Nixon, Henry Kissinger said, “What would he have been had he been loved?”
Nobody’s good enough. We raise up actors only to plunge them into the abyss because we’re tired of them or because their personal lives disappoint us.
Some people learn from their experiences. Some don’t. The ones who learn are the ones who can and should lead.
We want a leader who is faithful to his/her spouse, rarely drinks, doesn’t smoke, never smoked marijuana, never smashed up Dad’s car, etc., etc.
Who is this person?
The most boring human being you have ever met.
I have made some whopping mistakes. I’ve written down the ones I know. What don’t I know, or what mistakes am I making now? I’ll learn from them.
I am not the master of my fate but I am the captain of my soul.
I no longer have any desire to control my life. I simply want to live in divine chaos.
I trust that I will. I have to trust you, too. We aren’t going to get anywhere as individuals or as a nation if we don’t negotiate our differences with trust.
The dog-eat-dog way of thinking doesn’t work. It did for many centuries. It will lead us to mass destruction if we continue it. Hitler should have taught us that. “Us or them” is death. It’s “we.”
Those are the conclusions I drew from my two years of quiet reflection.
All the issues that I had thought were real, such as black and white, straight and gay, rich and poor, are fragmentations of the key issue. The only issue is life or death.
Are you here to save and nurture this planet or are you here to destroy it?
67
A Cat Can Look at a King
Los Angeles rests on the Pacific Ocean like a beached galleon. I enjoy a piratical relationship with the city. I sail in, board the ship, fight, sail out with booty.
I needed booty, both kinds, I guess.
For whatever reason, Los Angeles is good to me. I knew I had to return in order to pay my bills. Norman Lear hired me and Rick Mitz to frame up a two-hour variety special about the First Amendment, later adding Arthur Seidelman and Richard Alfieri, each of whom has made a place for himself in the film and television business.
I packed up the car. Baby Jesus was the copilot and Cazenovia, quite a beauty queen now, was the navigator. We drove across the United States, taking the southern route, which means we cruised in on Route 10.
Driving across the country gives one plenty of time to reflect. Mostly what struck me as ironic was that in ditching me, Martina had linked our names together in the press. We had become a pair like Abbott and Costello, Fred and Ginger, Frankie and Johnny. The gay community couldn’t get enough of it and at this point the press was giving everybody more than they needed to know.
I made my way. She made hers. I didn’t want to be linked with her in that fashion and I know she didn’t want to be linked with me either. Also, I have enormous pride. I didn’t want her money. I could make my own. She’d earned her place in the firmament and I’d earned mine.
However, I had sense enough to know that life isn’t fair. Exuberant, dreadful, rollicking, but never fair. While I was getting beaten up, someone else was getting a break. It all evened out.
Much as I would like to regale you with stories about my tour of duty with Norman Lear, I can’t. I rose at five, tried to reach the office by seven and often didn’t return to my small rented house in Studio City until eight or nine or later. Once we started shooting I Love Liberty, I lived at the site.
One moment stands out. Norman Lear, king of television at that time, would fire me, then rehire me. He’d heard yes too many times. I said no. Whenever a figure, be
it Czar Nicholas II or Norman, becomes muffled in a cocoon of great wealth and obedience, trouble follows.
This hymn to the First Amendment was saccharine and sentimental initially. Norman had been a bombardier in World War II. He had served the United States. My generation only knew a Disunited States. I’d argue for the problems of the country to be included in the program. Back and forth we’d go.
He fired me. I packed. He called and said, “Go home this weekend and write a piece with a black, a Jew, a gay person, a woman, a Hispanic. Did I forget anyone?”
I did the piece. Bland doesn’t describe it but we had to get it through the censors. Norman, bless him forever, taught me how to combat these guardians of television morality, Broadcast Standards and Practices. Here we were writing a show about the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and we had to pass the censors.
Censors are nothing compared to sponsors, however. Television exists to sell you Preparation H. Anyway, we managed to include this watered-down version of people’s discontents and Desi Arnaz Jr., Patty Duke, Rod Steiger, LeVar Burton and others performed the parts.
Mary Tyler Moore performed my piece on Mrs. Stephen Douglas. She shook throughout the rehearsals. She fears a live audience, as do many performers, but when she had to tape before a coliseum filled with people, she transformed that nervousness into character. She was Mrs. Stephen Douglas, a fascinating woman because she clearly understood what was at stake during the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Lincoln’s credentials for the party’s nomination, much less for the presidency itself, were not impressive; her husband’s were stronger. Yet she’d seen Abe Lincoln be as slippery as an eel. I’d love to write a complete screenplay about that woman because it would be an incredible way to experience the tensions of the time, still with us despite the War Between the States. As for Mary Todd Lincoln, she would be a foil for Mrs. Douglas. Poor Mrs. Lincoln, she wasn’t wrapped too tight.
Kristy McNichol opened the show with my piece about a high-school senior giving her valedictory speech and breaking down in the middle of it.
I didn’t get to meet but one of the performers. Writers don’t these days, which is a pity. The only actor I was able to meet was Christopher Reeve because he wanted someone in the pit to throw him his lines. Figuring I wouldn’t be dazzled by him, and because it was my dialogue after all, Norman assigned me the task.
What woman wouldn’t be dazzled by Superman? Today, after his accident, he really is Superman.
I learned to love Norman. He understands the politics of television better than anyone I’ve ever met. If he’d return to where he was raised, forgo his wealth for a while, he’d find his true inspiration all over again. Creativity knows no age limit.
Bud Yorkin was Norman’s partner at the time. A large, powerful man, he sifts through material with a fine-tooth comb. This wasn’t Bud’s project but he was happy to talk to me or anyone else involved. Once Bud commits to a project, film these days, he becomes totally involved. He’s a wonderful producer.
At that time he was married to Peg, a woman passionately committed to righting the wrongs of this world, promoting relevant theater and raising her children.
They were and remain fascinating people.
Peg Yorkin has become a bulwark for the women’s movement and a force for women in film, too.
I wished I could have spent more time with such people but time was one thing I didn’t have.
Baby Jesus and Cazenovia would attach themselves to me like ticks when I dragged through the door at night. If I could have taken my cats to work I would have, because I have only to chat with a cat and the writing flows. I need animals.
Once the project was finished I moved to San Francisco for six months. I wanted to drink in that city, one of the most beautiful in our country. Armistead Maupin and I wanted to write and produce a gay half-hour show for KGO. Anything but reverent, we knocked out skits such as a gay man and lesbian returning from vacation. This was Armistead’s inspiration. The customs official goes through their bags with hilarious results. I wanted to drop a giant prophylactic from a helicopter over Coit Tower in support of Planned Parenthood. Between the two of us we carried on much in the manner of Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley except that I don’t drink.
Armistead, a navy man from North Carolina, suits me to a T. However, KGO blanched before our raucous humor. We made Saturday Night Live look tame. Perhaps they had envisioned tepid talks on gay life in San Francisco; you know, thoughtful pieces addressing the question, Is there a gay culture? Is there gay literature? We wanted to take on the world. We parted ways with KGO, but without rancor.
Armistead, marching on to greater glory, had written the first of his Tales of the City. KGO’s loss was public TV’s gain.
I lived on Jackson Street, right by the Presidio. Each afternoon I could hear the fog banks. Baby Jesus and I would open the windows and watch as the silver mist cast its net over the trees, quickly followed by a dampness that was anything but beautiful.
San Francisco prides itself on its sophistication and artistic largesse. There are moments when that pride turns to self-satisfaction, an insularity close to Boston at its most precious. However, both cities ought to be self-satisfied. They’re still on a human scale, still beautiful.
San Francisco seduced me on many levels. Ladies accosted me daily, a not always pleasurable experience but a vaguely flattering one. Jerry As-trove, the second Jerry in my life, became my constant companion. We fueled the gossip mill, since we were inseparable. We pretended to be above all that attention, but we loved it.
No one can make me laugh the way Jerry Astrove can. He is endlessly witty. When I Love Liberty was done, he helped me pack and move back east. Donald Alex, strong as an ox, put his back into it, too, as did Deborah Mogelberg, a charming woman who owned two restaurants. Deborah’s sense of humor is as caustic as Jerry Astrove’s. I adored her.
I belong in the South. My heart is there. My stories are there. The horses are there. We rumbled across the desert, the plains, the Midwest, curling up through Tennessee, rolling into Virginia. Our little caravan crossing America, Lewis and Clark in reverse, kept everyone laughing.
I reclaimed my farmhouse after the buyer went bankrupt, since I held the second mortgage. I had offered him the exact price he paid for the house when he bellied up on the payments. Arrogantly, he thought he could sell it for $500,000, and he spurned my offer. Needless to say, I got back my old farmhouse for a song.
I needed more than a song to fix it. He’d ripped out everything of value, including a stove that had been mortared into the brick. The way the laws work, until bankruptcy proceedings were completed, which usually takes a year, I could not maintain the house. The pipes were broken. The lawn and gardens hadn’t been attended to. The small outbuildings had endured the neglect better than the big house. The barn, which was the most important building to me, was fine.
Jerry, Deborah and Donald worked like mules. The guys climbed in the trees, pruned the branches, mended fences. I had to buy all new appliances and the plumbing bill made me gasp. But within one week Firefly Farm twinkled again.
When those three climbed on the plane, I cried. I don’t cry in public but I couldn’t help it. They busted their asses for me and they wouldn’t take a penny.
Baby Jesus, happy to be in her old house, meowed, nosing in this corner and that. She moved slowly. At seventeen and a half, time was running out. She caught a chipmunk. We celebrated.
The next day Baby died at home. Dr. Chuck Wood had her cremated. She sits with me in my workroom in a Thai funerary urn. When I die Baby’s going in the ground with my bones, too. I will never be parted from the one creature who suffered poverty, hunger, hostility and the later traumas of success along with me.
When Betty Burns heard I was home and Baby had died, she rushed to the house. She cried, too. Betty, a sensitive, perceptive woman, saw that the repairs had stretched me thin. Cottage cheese and Coca-Cola provided my sustenance.
The following day
she and Edward, her lively husband, drove down the driveway with half a dressed lamb. She put it in the freezer and put a pot of her cabbage on the stove.
“You aren’t going hungry again.”
I said to Betty, once I dried my eyes, that I was grateful. I was. I love Betty and I can’t always express how much I do love her. I’m not so hot in that department with anyone.
I felt an odd pang that day and I blurted out, “Betty, Mom’s next.”
Her face registered both shock and recognition. She said nothing.
68
Easter Sunday
In 1983 Nelle Nugent, the producer, hired me to write Thursdays ’til 9, an adaptation of a funny book by Jane Trahey that was an insider’s look at a big department store. I adored working with Nelle, who has so many Tony awards she needs a room or a new apartment just for them.
I was to fly to New York with the completed first draft on Easter morning. I don’t like to work on Easter but as long as I could go to early service or the earliest mass (never telling Mother), I was fine. The rain steadily beat down for two days but the sun shone brilliantly at last on Easter morning.
I drove up Route 20 north, turned onto Proffitt Road and crossed the new state bridge there over the floodplain. Preddy Creek was high, but not near the top of the bridge.
A roar to my right, seemingly out of nowhere, caught my attention. A six-foot wall of water headed straight for me. The spring flash flood had broken and crested, roiling down from the mountains, at that precise moment.
There are a few things to remember in a situation like that. Floor it. Whatever you do, don’t stall your motor because it’s going to stall soon enough. Put the driver’s window down.
I jammed the pedal down. I surged across the bridge. The water hit me full force right on the other side. Had I been on the bridge I would have been crushed against an abutment. I was driving my 1981 Mercedes 420 SEL, my pride. The car spun around and nosed down. Not a drop of water seeped in through the engine chamber. The water poured into the window as the nose began to sink. As the car and the water swirled, I crawled out of the driver’s side window. Then I struck out for the meadow, which seemed a long way away.
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