Letters to Montgomery Clift

by Noël Alumit

  He looked at the professor, and he looked back at me. I met his gaze every time. What the hell are you looking at, loser? I thought to him, knowing that he probably thought the same about me.

  •

  I told Mrs. A to leave me alone. She called and I told her I didn’t want her in my life.

  “Bob?” Mrs. A said over the phone, “Amada tells me you won’t be home for New Year’s Eve. You didn’t come for Thanksgiving or Christmas either.”

  “No. I’m busy.”

  “Bob, this is the third time you won’t spend time with us on the holidays. What did we do, Bob? What did we do that you don’t want to be around us anymore? Please come home. We are planning a special dinner. My husband’s business seems to be picking up. Why do you want to be alone?”

  I wasn’t alone. I had Monty. Amada and I bought a pathetic little tree and decorated it with her earrings. On Christmas Eve, Monty sat across from me, sharing some eggnog. He wore a tuxedo. I felt underdressed in my flannel pajamas. We looked at each other all night, longing in my heart. I reached out to touch him, but my hand went through his apparition. I tried repeatedly to hold his hand, but the attempt was futile. When Christmas morning came, Monty left, disappearing before my eyes.

  “I’m not going over for Thanksgiving or Christmas or anything else. It’s because of you I don’t have parents. It’s because of people like you!”

  “Bob, what are you talking about?”

  I told her about my folks.

  “Bob,” Mrs. A said, “we had nothing to do with it. We would never hurt you.”

  “BUT YOU DID!” I said. I had an incredible urge to tell Mrs. A to fuck off and eat shit. So I did: “FUCK OFF AND EAT SHIT.” I slammed the phone down.

  I sobbed, pulling out a bottle of red wine. After a few glasses, I hopped on my bike and cruised. I went down Hoover Street, then down Alvarado. I hung out at MacArthur Park, watching homeless guys find shelter in some bushes.

  Then I was off again, jumping onto the Santa Monica Freeway, cruising, just cruising. I went so fast the lights of the city turned into long lines of neon blurs. Wind rushed through my hair like a furious river. I opened my mouth and screamed. My voice got lost in the wind, muffled by the sound of the freeway, falling away like dead leaves.

  I swerved in front of a car, and it honked at me. I sped up some more hearing the hoooooooonk become a distant whistle. I got to the beach, and stood by the Pacific Ocean.

  I waited. I waited for Monty. He walked up the shore in cuffed gray trousers, a camel hair coat hung over his shoulder. He looked romantic walking on the sand, glowing like a silver screen, shining in the dark evening.

  We looked at each other, and I embraced him. My arms went right through him. I tried to embrace him again, but I ended up holding myself. I kicked the sand, getting on my hands and knees, throwing the sand everywhere, screaming. I screamed into the cold night air, into the deep purple sky. I screamed until my voice was gone.

  He gave me a little smile. A smile that comforted me, that said he loved me, that said he wanted to feel me, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Our First Touch

  Dear Monty, April 17, 1989

  We connected! We finally did it. Touch, kiss. We’re together. I will never forget tonight. We’re bound now. Forever, and ever and ever.

  It was better than I’d expected. I know you love me, you love me. I love you, too.

  Loser Frat Boy was in the library. He saw me. I didn’t feel like dealing with him; I went to a different part of the library. He followed me. He got on my nerves so I left. He followed me out. I turned around, but he looked like he was just examining the floor. I got to the parking lot. He was still behind me. I turned around and said, real annoyed, “What?!”

  He looked at me funny, and motioned me to a darker part of the lot. I followed. He came up real close to me and started sniffing me. He kissed my neck. I didn’t stop him. He put his lips on my mouth. He smelled of Ralph Lauren Polo cologne. And with the moon bright like a silver dollar, I thought of Monty, Montgomery Clift. He entered my head, my mind, pouring out of me, through my eyes, nose, and mouth until he was standing in front of me.

  He was the one I was kissing in that parking lot, not Loser Frat Boy. It was him. He put his tongue into my mouth, tasting like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The breath from his nostrils blew onto my right cheek. He cupped his hands around my head, pressing against me. BABY OH BABY.

  I was lost in him, feeling the width of Monty’s torso: the shoulder blades writhing there; the pull of tense muscles encapsulating ridges of the rib cage; the stomach, expanding then falling back like the tides of a sea; the roots of the spine sprouting from the small of the back. I held him close because he belonged to me.

  It was my very first kiss and it was with him.

  I wanted more, so much more. I felt his hardness through the denim Levi’s. I played with the buttons of his button fly, undoing them. I felt the cotton briefs. Then he disappeared.

  “Kissing is the farthest I’ll go,” Loser Frat Boy said. He buttoned up his jeans, straightened his hair. I saw the glisten of my spit on his upper lip. He wiped it away, and walked toward the row of Greek houses, where he lived. Kissing is the farthest I’ll go…he was afraid of the Rock Hudson disease.

  I got on my bike and cruised around L.A., down Wilshire Boulevard, up Olympic. I celebrated our first touch, our first kiss, laughing all the way. I stopped next to cars and said, “How’s your evening coming along?” Most rolled up their windows, stared straight ahead, praying for the light to turn green. Others said, “It’s cool, bro. How’s yours?”

  “It’s awesome, dude, just awesome,” I said.

  I stepped on the gas, and was off. I left the West Side and headed east, cruising downtown, up Hope Street, down Hill Street.

  •

  I couldn’t just kiss him once. I had to kiss him again, feeling his breath blow against my upper lip. I was addicted to him.

  “Where you going?” Amada asked me.

  “Out.”

  “Again? That’s all you do. Help me memorize lines. I have an audition for a soap opera tomorrow. I play a hospital patient with cancer. I choose to die so I can join my dead husband who was hit by a bus.”

  “I don’t think so. I have to meet a friend.” I was out the door, on my bike, searching.

  I kissed him. Again and again and again. It got easier every time. I found him in a dark bar, where other men look for men of their dreams. In the bars, where the lights are low, and facial features shift like sand in the deep ocean, I found him. I found him in West Hollywood.

  A man bought me a drink, and introduced himself as Paul. We talked about nothing. Later in his apartment, we rolled around on the floor. I summoned Monty.

  Montgomery Clift held me. He told me to take off my shirt and I did. He told me to take off my pants and I did. He told me to taste his nipple and I did. We rubbed together like two sticks trying to start a fire.

  “I need you,” I said.

  “I need you, too.” And hearing him say that was sweet, sweet honey down my throat. I wanted him to need me, want me.

  We lay in our wetness, sweat and semen and saliva.

  “You wanna beer?” somebody said.

  Monty disappeared. Paul returned, hideous Paul.

  “You wanna beer? I got some beer.”

  “No, uh, thanks though.”

  “I hope I didn’t give you those,” he said pointing to bruises on my thigh.

  “No, I got a bike. Sometimes, when I ride, I straddle my seat a little too hard.” I didn’t tell him that I gave those bruises to myself.

  “Never been with an Asian guy before. What are you? Chinese? Vietnamese?”

  “Filipino.”

  “You were tasty. Gimme your number.”

  I wrote down some made-up digits on a piece of paper and gave it to him.

  I took off.

  On my bike, wind brushed by me like a rude stranger. Boozed up from t
he bar and high from making love with Monty, I cruised home, hoping he wouldn’t eat garlic next time.

  I zoomed through the hills, the Hollywood Hills. I knew somewhere around there, Monty had his car accident. The accident that smashed up his beautiful face. I didn’t know where the exact spot was, though. I just knew he was coming from a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s house. He got a little drunk. He had gotten into heavy booze and drugs by then, some say because he couldn’t accept his homosexuality. Elizabeth Taylor’s husband Michael Wilding was there, Rock Hudson was there, his friend Kevin McCarthy was there. I read that he enjoyed the company of Kevin McCarthy and his wife.

  Monty was supposed to follow Kevin down the canyon road. Somehow he lost control of his car, maybe blacking out. He hit a tree.

  Kevin McCarthy went back to Elizabeth’s house. He told her that Monty was in a car wreck. She drove down, and found the mangled car. She climbed in and saw Monty on the floor of the front passenger seat. His head was bloated beyond belief. His face split open. Blood was everywhere, on the floor, on his clothes, staining Elizabeth’s white dress. Monty was choking, heaving like something needed to get out. Elizabeth thought he might die. She reached into Monty’s mouth, and dug out two teeth that were lodged in his throat.

  People tried to pull him from the wreckage of his car. One of those people was Rock Hudson.

  I drove through the hills looking for the spot of the accident. I wanted to know all aspects of Monty’s life, the tragedy and the joy. I couldn’t find the exact spot where the accident occurred. I tried but couldn’t.

  Monty was never the same after the accident, getting addicted to painkillers on top of the other drugs and booze that became a part of his regular diet. He was slowly dying, withering away like a useless limb. And so was I.

  •

  I’d thought of Mrs. Billaruz, especially when the man who started it all was dead. The dictator was dead. Ferdinand Marcos died in that year of 1989. I read it in the paper. Funny. He couldn’t take all of his power and his wealth with him. He spent his presidential term attaining wealth, stealing from the Philippines, billions of dollars gone. He placed people in prison who disagreed with him. He took parents away. He died and couldn’t take his fortune with him. Now he was the master of dirt and dust.

  I kept hearing Mrs. Billaruz’s voice, sometimes retelling me what happened to my father. I didn’t want to think of Mrs. Billaruz or my father, but her voice entered my mind, particularly when I slept. I’d wake up, unable to sleep, lying there and feeling nothing. The only thing that comforted me was scratching myself, breaking skin, biting what limbs I could bring to my mouth. There was a kind of release when I did it, a kind of pain that freed me. I saw the hurt on my body.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  An Offering to His Spirit

  Dear Monty, December 25, 1989

  Amada doesn’t ask me to spend time with her for Christmas anymore. She knows better. I’d rather stay in the dark with a single candle illuminating the picture of you by my bed, creating a warm glow around your face.

  I like writing letters to you during moments like these, a stillness that settles on the bones. And the only sound I hear is the scraping tip of my pen on paper.

  I’ll head out in a moment to find you, perhaps sitting in a bar waiting for me. I’m coming. I’m coming.

  Dear Monty, July 1, 1990

  I rented A Place in the Sun last week. I know what you went through in that movie. A regular guy from nowhere trying to get somewhere, anywhere. You played a man looking for someone, something to feel complete. Now that I’ve graduated from college, I don’t exactly know what I’ll do.

  Elizabeth Taylor held you close to her. Her face pressed against your shoulder. Dancing slowly. Severe close-ups frame your beautiful face: gentle, welcoming, hurt. There’s a scene in the car where you fall asleep on her shoulder. She cradled you. She pretended to be your mama.

  Mrs. Billaruz’s voice still haunts me. Her voice carries stories. Her stories have grown to pictures in my sleep, dreamy movies I don’t want to see. I keep seeing my father. I keep seeing him naked. “They made him take off his clothes,” Mrs. Billaruz told me. “They made him stand there naked. It was a common form of torture. They put wires on him, they put—how you say—electrodes on him, they tied the wires around his thing, around his penis…and they shocked him. He screamed. They didn’t do it once. They did it to him again and again…”

  I woke up and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to dream of my dad that way. I had to take sleeping pills to feel drowsy.

  I closed my eyes and whisked away to A Place in the Sun. I was with you by the lake. You held Elizabeth Taylor, cherishing the moments. Loving her. You wanted to be with her, but felt you couldn’t. Elizabeth was too good for you. You knew that. She represented everything that was glorious. All that you aspired to be. She was sheer perfection. Instead you had Shelley Winters, dumpy, plain, ordinary. You wanted so much. So much.

  I’ve been doing as many extra gigs as I can find to make ends meet. I go from job to job, wherever I’m needed. I spent last week, every day, eight hours a day pretending to be an Indian for a new western. They put a long wig on me while I stood around in a loincloth. Yesterday, I wore a suit and pretended to be a businessman for a commercial pushing a construction company in Santa Monica. And today, I sat on a bus, being a passenger for a new television series.

  As an extra, Monty, I spend most of my time waiting. I wait for the cameras and lights to be set. I wait while the actors rehearse. I wait for those few precious moments when the camera rolls, and the director says, “Action.”

  Being an extra can be a mind-numbing experience. Lately, after work, I find myself wound up. I end up at the neighborhood bar to wind down. I sip my gin, crunch the ice left in the glass.

  I want an Elizabeth Taylor. I want someone to love.

  Amada and I went to West Hollywood to celebrate her latest role. She played a woman who had just been bombed in Hiroshima. It was an experimental play in Santa Monica. At the end, she killed herself because she couldn’t stand life after her home had been devastated.

  We went for another reason: Amada wanted me to meet somebody in the cast.

  “If you want a boyfriend,” Amada said, “you have to start meeting guys.”

  “I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t want anybody.”

  “Look. I know you need somebody. I hear you jacking off.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Yes, you do. Beds don’t make creaking sounds by themselves.” I knew I should have bought a futon. What she didn’t know was: I had Monty, and we dated on a regular basis and we made love on a regular basis. Sometimes, late at night, if I was too tired to search for Monty, too tired to hop on my bike and search Los Angeles, I dreamed of him instead, imagined him loving me, passionate love. I masturbated with him in mind.

  Amada introduced me to a guy named Oliver Yen. He was a little guy, the top of his head barely reached my chin. He seemed pretty nice, though.

  “Amada tells me your folks are still in the Philippines,” Oliver said.

  “Yeah, they live there.”

  “My father lives in Taiwan. He does business over there. My mother is out here. How about yours?”

  “My dad is a pilot,” I said, “and my mom is a stewardess. They do a lot of flying together. I haven’t seen them in a while, because they’re so busy. But they’re a beautiful couple. They look so good in their uniforms, you know.”

  Oliver nodded. His chin bobbed over his polka-dotted bow tie. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry Amada made you go on this date with me, but I already have a boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I see. Amada said you were single—”

  “She doesn’t know about him yet.”

  “Is your boyfriend a nice guy?”

  “He’s the greatest. Just the greatest. He loves me very much.”

  “I guess that’s all you could ask for.”

  “I guess.”

  “Amada
hasn’t met him?”

  “No, but she knows who he is.”

  •

  I drove Amada into Hollywood. She had an audition for a movie. A callback actually.

  “I play a hooker,” she said, “who tries to straighten out her drugged-out life, but overdoses on Seconal and dies.”

  “For once,” I said, “I’d love to see you in a role where you live.”

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be, so just hang out.” She disappeared into a building.

  I strolled Hollywood Boulevard, looking into store windows. The stores carried memorabilia from the bygone days of cinema: photos of old stars like Rudolph Valentino with that come-fuck-me stare or Shirley Temple dancing a jig or Greta Garbo showing off her perfect bone structure, Judy Garland as Dorothy toting Toto. Tourists took pictures at Mann’s Chinese Theater, feebly fitting their hands and feet into John Travolta’s prints, photographing Betty Grable’s leg cast in cement.

  I walked east on Hollywood Boulevard, checking out the Walk of Fame, recognizing the names of stars beneath my feet, gliding over Lucille Ball or Diana Ross or Bruce Lee. I discovered Monty’s star. It’s on the corner of Gower Street and Hollywood, behind a bus bench and in front of a gas station.

  Some shithead left gum on the pink tile carrying his name. I scraped it off. I lit a cigarette and put it by his star, an offering to his spirit. I watched the cigarette dwindle away to nothing, gray ashes blowing away with the slightest gust of wind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Flying, Flying Away

  Dear Monty, August 14, 1990

  I love dancing with you, slow dancing: our bodies are together, moving like one entity, our muscle, skin, and bone melted together.

  I went to a bar last night. I waited for you for hours, hoping you’d come. A few burly men hit on me, but I waited for you: handsome and slender. I don’t dance with anyone until you come along.