I thank each character I’ve tried to portray. I’ve learned to feel more through them. They have helped me know more about myself. They have helped me to be less judgmental as to what is right and what is wrong where human behavior is concerned. They have helped me celebrate the defects in life with more gusto.
I still think of myself as an enthusiastic adventurer willing to try anything new. When people approach me on the street with “my goodness, you’re still here?” it gives me pause. How many of them were three months old when their parents first saw me? It is somehow in conceivable to me that I am not thirty anymore. What happened and why so fast?
Yet, in the stark night of being alone and sometimes unwanted, there is a small voice that still resides wisely and comfortably in my heart which whispers, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
17
THE ANSWER
As I have wandered around in time, through my recollections and reflections, I wonder what is the connective tissue that makes me remember the people and events in the particular order that I do.
There is an invisible harmony underlying my life and there always has been, as I believe there is in all lives. Our task is to sense it and be true to it. “There is a divinity that shapes our ends—rough hew them how we will,” said Hamlet.
I believe there is something unknowable yet certain about why we are compelled to our individual positions in the universe that is often reflected in the most unlikely places and with the most duplicitous people.
Such was the case with the most meaningful person in my life … my husband.
There are basic personal and fundamental reasons why I believe in some of the practices and truths I have come to know in metaphysics.
I came to a crossroads in my life one day and my spiritual beliefs saved me.
For those who do not share my beliefs, I can only say that what I am about to describe is inexplicable, even to me. I therefore offer no explanation. It is the truth and it happened.
I had had many spiritual channeling sessions because of my interest in metaphysics. Channeling is a process by which a disembodied spiritual teacher or guide (some would say an angel) uses the body and mind of a channeler to impart information and teachings. Sometimes the information is correct, sometimes only partially correct, sometimes not at all correct.
During one particular channeling session, I discussed my private life, especially my growing concerns regarding Steve and our marriage. The channeler stopped talking. I wondered what was wrong. Then he spoke again as though he was about to make a difficult but necessary presentation.
“Your husband,” he said, “is not what he says he is.
“He never lived in Japan with his father. In fact, the first time he was in Japan was as part of a USO entertainment group after the Second World War. His father was not a diplomat. He was a poor cobbler who was illiterate. His mother did not die when Steve was young, she left her family because life with them was too difficult.
“Steve never served in the armed forces as he claims. He was a private first class who never left his base. He was obviously not one of the first troops into Hiroshima and he never adopted a Japanese child he called Sachiko. He is living now with a woman in Japan whom you are already aware of. What you are not aware of is that he has transferred most of the money you hold in your joint account to this woman’s account. All the investments he has controlled over the years have been made in her name. He has been building a legal case for his style of living which in the event of a divorce, a judge in a court of law would claim you willingly endorsed. This has been the reason for desiring that your daughter live in Japan. The woman is there, his office is there, his life is there, so it was easier for him to manipulate the money away from you.
“He has more than tolerated your relationships with other men. In fact, he welcomed such possibilities as long as you didn’t leave him.
“Your parents tried to warn you on several occasions, as did your daughter in her own way. I believe you received a letter to that effect which you disregarded because you knew your parents were prejudiced against Steve from the beginning.
“But when you presented your parents with a trip around the world and they found themselves in Japan, they asked questions of people closely associated with your husband. They summarily wrote you that there were too many parties, too much liquor, too many geishas, and too much reckless immorality. You did not wish to register this information because you knew they didn’t like him.
“What they didn’t understand was that it was worse than they perceived. Your husband betrayed you for material gain, and you will find if you investigate your finances that you are bankrupt.”
I couldn’t process what I heard. It was too shocking, but the next day I hired a detective and an attorney. I closed the bank accounts and waited.
I didn’t hear from Steve.
A few weeks later I was apprised of the detective’s findings, which verified everything the channeler had said, in graphic detail, fact by fact.
I called Steve in Japan. I told him what I had found out. There was a long pause. Then he said, “And you believe these things about me?”
I was surprised at how strongly I answered him. “Yes, I do,” I said. “I’m shocked and really hurt, but yes, I think that you are not what you have led me to believe, in almost every way.”
Another long pause. “Well,” he answered finally, “I find this extremely sad.”
I waited for an explanation. Then he said, “I’ll come to LA right away. I’m very busy but we obviously need to talk.”
For a moment I thought everything would be all right. Perhaps there was an underside to his story that I didn’t know about. Then he said, “Will you send me some money?”
“No,” I answered so firmly it shocked me.
There was another pause.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I won’t be living in the style to which I’m accustomed anymore.”
“I guess not,” I replied.
He said he would cable me his flight arrival information.
I waited. Nothing came. I called his office in Tokyo. He wasn’t in the country. I continued to call his secretary. Finally she cabled me his flight arrival time. I was relieved.
I met the plane but he wasn’t on it.
He cabled me his regrets and apologies and said he would contact me later. He never did.
The next time we met was during our divorce proceedings.
He looked at me sheepishly across the table. Then he shrugged. Point by point Steve’s and my attorneys questioned him about his fabrications and his handling of the money I had earned over the years we were married. He admitted everything. When I asked him if the mob-kidnapping story in Vegas was true, he answered evasively. “It was better for Sachi to be in Japan.” When I questioned him about Yves Montand’s bet with him, he said he couldn’t remember.
I sat looking at him, this stranger who had been my best friend for twenty-five years, this person whom I had believed and trusted and loved. I had been living a lie that had plummeted me into a jolting reality. And I was bankrupt. He had squandered millions and transferred the rest. I had to start all over and I was in my middle forties.
I had joined the ranks of successful female stars who had been betrayed and bilked out of a fortune by a husband who seemed to have played the role of understanding best friend/protector.
Steve was the best actor I had ever “worked” with and Hollywood had taught me to believe in illusion if I wanted to survive.
But Hollywood had also taught me something else: whenever a dreadful experience occurred, I could deal with it by asking myself, How did I contribute to this reality?
If I had the power to create or allow unhappiness and misery, I also had the power to uncreate it.
What Steve did was obvious; what I did was more subtle and took some searching. I decided to go through a course of past-life regressions, because I couldn’t understand why I had drawn this to myself. I wanted to
determine what Steve and I had perhaps meant to each other in some other time and place. I know how this must sound to people who have been through bitter divorces of their own, but since all reality in life is what you perceive it to be, this was and is mine.
As I lay on the table using the Chinese acupuncture technique of psychic regression, with an experienced facilitator, the truth I longed to understand came up in my mind like pictures. I saw that Steve and I had loved each other through aeons. That was why I loved and trusted him so much this time around. I saw that he had interrupted his own journey to the light to act as a teacher of discernment for me. Yes, he was a con man; yes, he was dishonest; yes, he was a cheat; but these traits were traits he chose to express during this lifetime so that he could serve others, namely me. Our meeting and loving was meant to be, and even today I feel he has been the most important person and teacher in my life. I think I drew him into my life to do just exactly what he did in order for me to learn. I am equally responsible as he for what happened. I didn’t pay attention; I chose to remain blind, and in fact I aided and abetted his behavior by being so willing to avoid the stark truth.
As a matter of fact, during our divorce, the “mandatory settlement” judge not only allowed the money Steve had taken, he also claimed community property laws dictated that Steve was entitled to half of everything I’d ever make in the future because I had allowed and encouraged him to live the way he was living with no complaint. At first I was enraged and vowed to take our divorce to the Supreme Court if I had to.
Then something happened that was almost beyond my control. We were meeting in the judge’s chambers. I began to sob from a place so deep I frightened the judge and Steve’s lawyers as well as my own. I hardly knew what I was thinking, I heard myself say, “Give Steve whatever he wants now and in the future.”
My attorney took my arm and tried to restrain me.
“What are you doing?” he pleaded. “Fight him. You know he doesn’t deserve any more from you. He’s bled you enough.”
“It’s worth it,” I sobbed. I turned to Steve’s attorneys and said, “Tell him he can have whatever he wants.”
They left the chambers, presumably to call Steve.
“Why are you doing this?” asked my attorney.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But I know it’s right.”
Steve’s lawyers returned.
“Steve only wants a hundred and fifty thousand dollars spread out over ten years,” said one of the attorneys.
My attorney nearly fainted. “This is how you win a divorce settlement?” he asked in confusion.
“I guess so,” I answered. “Maybe there are other kinds of laws operating here.”
He blinked. I left the judge’s chambers.
Steve and I have never talked since. He and I both know in our own way what we meant to each other. We will meet again in some other time and place, of that I am sure. I wonder what we will remember? Another thing I am sure of: we will recognize each other and there will be love there.
I believe that each of us human beings serves ourselves and each other as we try to understand our soul’s journey through time.
I believe that the people in our lives who hurt us the most are true servants to our learning. I believe it is time to get off the wheel of victimization and pay tribute to those who open our eyes, regardless of how harsh their methods might be. They are masters in their own way. They stimulate us to know ourselves.
Steve has been a master for me if for no other reason than because of him I became free of blinding dependence upon a man.
Afterword
JUST “DESSERTS”
Once you’ve tasted the pungent, sweet-sour banquet of Hollywood and its lessons, you can’t walk away from the table. It is with you forever. It rumbles inside you as an undigested feast, reminding you that you gobbled too much, too fast, with too rapid a relish, motivated by an urge to indulge yourself because it all could be taken from you.
Many of us like to say our real lives are conducted elsewhere, away from the sticky, seductive fame-and-fortune mongering that force us to confront how greedy and profane and corrupt we are all capable of being. In the real world, we feel that we “like” ourselves better. But that’s because the real world doesn’t challenge us the way Hollywood does.
Nowhere else in the world are we afforded the opportunity of seeing just how far we’ll go to fulfill our fantasies. Since the fulfillment of visions, dreams, and desires becomes possible in Hollywood, what becomes more possible is the genial talent we have for sabotaging our emotional fulfillment as we achieve our longings.
I don’t know many really happy people in Hollywood. There is always that look lurking behind the eyes of the accomplished. It’s the look of “lostness.” There is little “foundness” in the faces of the rich and famous who have achieved their champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Any one of them would be nostalgic for the days of struggle, when relationships seemed more meaningful, days more filled with passion and outrageous ideas, surroundings more precious because there was a deeper awareness of work and value. Struggle was how we identified ourselves, then as well as now, and without it we can feel bereft.
Hollywood is a land where the talented, accomplished, and wealthy live in two emotional territories simultaneously. We are not secure that we deserve what we have in a world that is suffering and predominately-poor; yet we will do almost anything to ensure that we are never again part of that other world. We long for the meaning of the past, yet we never want it back again.
So where are we? We have not found the place in ourselves that is ready to embrace the abundant creativity we render for payment. It is somehow not all right that we love what we do and get paid outrageously for it. We find it hard to accept. We find we always need to do more to earn such a state of being. Our identification with struggle is so inbred and so profound that we can’t let it go. We are not willing to esteem our dreams and allow ourselves to surrender to the accomplishment of them. Somehow we feel we need to struggle more, need to compete more, need to connive and strategize and manipulate in order to stay in the race. We presuppose that there is a continual race. Yet, we feel the race is never over. That it is neither won nor lost. It slows down, it speeds up. There is always someone gaining on us, so we fretfully look over our shoulders to calculate their oncoming speed—and meanwhile trip over a hole in front of us. Yet we discover that when we surrender to loss, the town often finds us again. Yet we can’t establish an MO because the rules keep changing. Prediction is impossible. The only constancy is change.
And so we attend the succulent Hollywood banquet school with wide-eyed gluttony. We take what we can because if we don’t, we feel somebody else will. We sometimes watch our fellow artists behave as though they were hungry monsters from an alien planet. We know there are impulses of those monsters in ourselves, and as we observe a loving and civilized friend behave like a crazed, enraged animal because his or her hidden buttons are pushed somewhere under the table of the sweet-and-sour feast, we see ourselves and we are afraid.
As we see some of our friends turned away from the table and can’t determine why, or how we can help them, we wonder when and if it will happen to us. We always feel there are dictatorial hosts presiding over the banquet, handing down judgment on our talent, bequeathing or denying the prizes of rich and just “desserts.”
We see relatives and children of our feted favorites scorned and needled into positions bestowed by nepotism, which is a guarantee of starvation, and we wonder if we would do the same.
We know that rejection is our fundamental fear, yet we place ourselves daily in situations that ensure it. Then bravely we adjust and go on. Is this foolish? When we are praised, applauded, and rewarded, we cry. Why? Out of relief at finally being loved and acknowledged?
Would any of us attend this mouthwatering feast if we had been loved enough as children? Are we here in this soul-shaking place because we were never noticed enough? Did we inherently unders
tand that Hollywood was our golden key light so that attention would be paid?
If we traced each of our routes to this land of illusion, would we find similar baggage strewn along the road?
And we know we can never go back again. Once you’re part of Hollywood, it is your home. The home of the heart of your dreams and your created reality, where the most evolved emotion is the sensitivity to have your feelings hurt without retaliating. You don’t want to become a successful well-functioning unfeeling thing. You want to live a life behind your eyes without feeling lost, yet admitting there is so much to find, and you want to continually remind yourself that to retain the capacity to have your feelings hurt is proof that you are still learning.
This Hollywood cosmic school is internal and external. It is as big and as deep, or as limited and superficial as we wish to make it. It leads out that which is within us. It is our vision without end. It is our Alpha and our Omega. When we arrived, we had stars in our eyes, and when we lucky stars leave, it will be because the scenario has been decreed from above. Because no one ever really leaves Hollywood. No one really leaves unless they are called away by God. Even then, the impulse would be to come back again and make a movie about the experience.
About the Author
SHIRLEY MACLAINE’s accounts of her professional and personal journeys have all been national and international bestsellers, beginning with the publication of “Don’t Fall Off the Mountain” in 1970. Six additional autobiographical works have followed: You Can Get There from Here, Out on a Limb, Dancing in the Light, It’s All in the Playing, Going Within, and most recently, Dance While You Can.
was aware of the camera angles even then.
Warren loved our grandmother’s perfume
My Lucky Stars Page 34