I became introverted and diminished. What started as a wild, cool, controversial game was turning into a living hell. Every fight and every weird sexual experience was followed by “I love you, baby, you know that, right? You know how much I love you.”
I would always answer the same thing, “Yes, I love you, too,” with all the zeal of a zombified robot.
My daily routine was to go film. I’d get up in the morning, we would have an intense psychotic fight, and I would get in the car and cry and shake all the way to the studio. My driver, my assistant LeeAnn, would say the same thing every day: “You’ll work it out, you always do.” Ten minutes after I hit the studio, one of us would call the other and beg forgiveness and everything would fall calm again. I would have an amazing day filming, but every day one of the actresses would ask me, “Is someone hurting you?”
“Of course not, who? Who would be hurting me?” was my reply. Each day the actress would ask me this same question, trying desperately to get me to simply take a look at him. She never said his name or mentioned him in particular, just “is someone hurting you?”
But endless flowers, diamond-encrusted crowns, exotic gifts flooded my dressing room and life.
There were hundreds of perverse sexual encounters, all followed by me feeling more and more and more dead. It never dawned on me to tell anyone what was happening, because by then it was “normal.” It was probably what every Hollywood couple did behind closed doors.
The only reason I’m not going into all the perverse details of my life with Black is because this book is not intended to be erotica.
My intention is to alert young girls and not-so-young alike to hold dear that keen antenna that warns you of danger and that it won’t remain keen if you, yourself, chip away at it. I’m sure most thieves don’t start by robbing banks; they start by stealing from their little sister. It’s like acid erosion. The acid’s intention is erosion. The perverted man’s intention is to destroy the woman, second by second, minute by minute, slowly eroding her good sense, her morals, her soul. The target is not to sexually pervert her for the sake of sexual perversion. It is for the sheer pleasure of using sex as the tool to destroy her life.
These men know that they themselves are worthless with no power. They despise creativity, power, talent, and success in others, so they seek to destroy the other because she is a constant reminder of what he is not.
Beware the person who uses sex, drugs, and pain to dominate you. You are signing your own death certificate if you comply. And believe me, death is the goal, no matter how gentle the tiny kisses.
While with Black, I all but destroyed my career. His poison wreaked havoc on my body. I had four concussions, six bouts with pneumonia, injuries and types of accidents I’ve never had before, and countless weird illnesses.
I take full responsibility for my journey into hell. I spent a good three years making amends, rekindling all my friendships and rebuilding my life.
The more responsibility I took for what I had become, the more well I became.
I’m a lucky person. I reestablished my relationships, and they grew stronger than before.
I have not seen “Black” since I walked out the door. The only time I hear about him is in a phone call or letter from one of his unfortunate subsequent victims.
He was not, and is not, unique. He represents all men like himself whose destiny includes the destruction of women.
His existence in my life is only relevant to me helping other women, especially young women. Especially in a society and within a time that glorifies men like these in novels, movies, and television.
Right and wrong do exist in this universe, and the way to prove it is to observe one’s happiness at any given moment. Right decisions create life, love, beauty, and solutions. Wrong ones create chaos, pain, and death, if only of the mind and spirit.
To suppose that men like Christian Black are heroes and role models is as ludicrous to the outcome of a woman’s life as is the notion that Ted Bundy was a nice man, other than killing all those girls.
I think it’s important for women to be aware of men like these and the real damage they cause when they affix themselves to you. They are calculating. They are lifeless. Black’s real name has no importance. He exists only if I let him. He only existed because I allowed him to. I harbor no animosity.
He is invisible to me now.
Why slap them on the wrist with a feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.
—KATHARINE HEPBURN
The Art of
Closure
PARKER IS the man I spent the most years with. I dated him for two years and was married to him for fourteen. During those years, I experienced the most stability, the most peace, the most gentleness, the most learning. Yet Parker is the love of my life whom I know and understand the least. Parker was and to this day remains an enigma.
I was 30 years old, and I’d just been told I was starring in my first movie. It was my first real job as an actress. The night before I began filming Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I decided to go out and celebrate instead of learning my lines, a very bad habit that has remained with me through my entire career.
I was, of course, on top of the world! I was the James Cameron of women. I was the “Queen of the World!”
My girlfriend Mimi Rogers and I started off at a chic, hip restaurant in West Hollywood called Kathy Gallagher’s.
Mimi and I walked in, dressed to the nines. I’m five foot eight and she’s five-nine. We had no question about “if we were pretty,” and the adrenaline surging through me knowing I was the female lead of a $40 million film in 1981 was, in itself, an aphrodisiac.
Our table wasn’t ready, so Mimi and I perched ourselves at the bar, directly in front of the entrance doors. There was a huge mirror covering the wall in front of us, behind the bar.
We had been sitting there for about 10 minutes when my attention went to the reflection in the mirror. Parker Stevenson, his best friend, Wally, and two blondes were walking in. It was like time stopped. I’d never seen eyes that blue. Parker gave a new meaning to the word “stunner.” I paid no attention to the date he had on his arm. After all, I was 14 hours away from being a movie star. I kept my eyes focused on him, and out of the corner of my mouth I whispered to Mimi, “For him, I would die.”
I don’t think he saw me or noticed me at all. The maitre d’ escorted the quartet to a nearby table. When the maitre d’ led Mimi and me to our table, we had to pass Parker’s. I’ve been told since I was five years old that I have “bedroom eyes,” so I tried to flash the bedroom eyes at Parker when I walked by his table, but he was consumed with Blondie.
Kathy Gallagher’s was the stomping ground of young actors, directors, and pervs. It was a restaurant, but also the gateway to the after-hour hubs, sort of the Stargate to the stars.
Mimi and I were whooping it up with the likes of 10 or 15 well-known movie and TV personalities. Nonstop flirting was the agenda (and remains the agenda to this day in hip Hollywood hot spots). Kathy’s wasn’t a meat market, per se, just a portal to the next location.
This guy heads for our table. It’s Wally, Parker’s best friend. “We’re going to the Daisy after dinner, if you girls wanna join in, come on by.” Wally wasn’t talking to me, either; he knew one of the other girls at our table.
I casually asked my new “connection” after Wally left, “So, um, who’s that guy with that guy who just left the table?” To this day Parker doesn’t know that I asked about him.
“Oh, that’s Parker Stevenson. You know who Parker Stevenson is, right?”
“Yes! He was the star of a John Knowles novel-turned-feature-film.”
“You idiot!!! He’s one of the Hardy Boys!” she said.
“I know that,” I quipped. But I didn’t really. I remembered him from the movie A Separate Peace in a riveting performance as the troubled, introverted Gene. And I remembered trying to decide which WASP I had a bigger crush on—Gene or Phine
as.
“So! You guys want to swing by the Daisy after dinner?” the blonde clone of all blonde California bombshell clones asked.
I gave my typical noncommittal answer, “Maybe.” Maybe? Maybe, my ass! If I could have had Scotty beam me up to the Daisy I would have already been waiting there an hour early to greet Parker Stevenson at the door!
Wow! I knew it was going to take some hooch to relax me a little. Take the edge off, cool my jets, whatever you wanna call it. So I began drinking. It worked, I got a little buzz, and my fake confidence started to kick in. About two hours later, over walked Wally, Parker, and their two blondies. “So, you guys gonna come to the Daisy?” Wally asked our table’s spokesperson. She replied, “Yes, I think we might stop by.” It seemed Parker made eye contact with me, yet because my eyes were slightly glassy by then, it was hard to tell. But maybe he thought my bedroom eyes were ultrabedroomy . . .
About an hour later my friends and I, all girls, came flying into the Daisy. I’d left my car parked in Kathy Gallagher’s parking lot because I was too buzzed to drive. I get buzzed on half of a drink, so whenever I drink ANYTHING I don’t drive.
The Daisy was hopping, filled with famous actors, sports figures, blonde clones, and the usual clubbers. Mimi and I sat at a table with a few girls, the tennis pro Spencer Segura, and some other rich guy whose family owned everything Doheny. Doheny Drive, Estates, and Mansion. Ned was a real rich guy—a real rich, drunk guy.
I couldn’t see Parker and his blonde Barbie anywhere, but I was getting a lot of attention, as someone, not me I swear, brought up Star Trek and that every ingenue in town wanted that role. This chitchat boosted my ego and confidence even more.
Then it began: the blonde waitress saying, “Round of drinks from Mr. Stevenson,” as she lay a silver tray of tequila shots on the table. I was honestly, at this point, so full of booze that I became confused as to whether it was me Parker was interested in or one of the four hot girls sitting at the table with me, including my hottest, best friend, Mimi Rogers. Another round came, then another. I was filled with curiosity real, fake, and chemically-induced. I excused myself from the table, walked to Mr. Stevenson’s table, politely thanked him, took his hand, and said, “I want to talk to you.” I walked him to the dance floor and we began to dance. It was some awful ’80s tune. Then out of the blue I just grabbed him and shoved my tongue down his throat. It was a terrific icebreaker, and I thought it was a good way to find out if it was me he was interested in.
Then I did something I’ve never done before or since. His date came up to Parker and said, “We’re leaving.” I didn’t even let Parker speak. I said, “That’s cool, ’cause Parker’s leaving, too—with me.”
What??!! Seriously???
I’d never been that brazen. I was the girl who sat around aloof, beaming men with my bedroom eyes, then looking away.
I know by today’s “let’s all get drunk and fuck everybody” standards this seems tame, but to me, it was monumental! All Lombard and Gable! Now I was doing what REAL actresses do!
Parker didn’t protest. He apparently thought I was the cat’s meow. Actually, I think he thought he was going to have a three-way with Mimi and me.
When we got to the parking lot of the Daisy he said, “Where’s your car?” I’d honestly forgotten, and so had Mimi. But then I remembered that it was at Kathy Gallagher’s.
He said, “Why don’t you guys come to my place for a drink?” Yes! Because I really need more alcohol . . .
We walked into swank Shoreham Towers, behind swank Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s first swank LA restaurant. Parker’s penthouse was straight-up 91/2 Weeks, all gray flannel, Le Corbusier chairs, gray on gray on gray—on gray.
This Kansas girl had never seen nothin’ like this.
When Mimi excused herself to the restroom, Parker said, “I’d like you to stay. I’ll have a cab take Mimi home. I’ll take you to your car tomorrow.”
What?! I may be an actress, but I’m no LA ho. I don’t do one night stands, Daddio . . . well at least not since that guy with the toddler dick, I thought. “I’m so sorry, I just can’t, I have to be at Paramount at eight tomorrow morning.”
How freakin’ fun was that to say?! I was born for this movie star lingo.
I kissed him good night. He said, “Can I have your number?”
“Sure,” and I gave it to him. Mimi was sober by the time the cab drove us back to Kathy Gallagher’s to get my car, and I was soberish, too.
The parking lot was locked! I started to panic. Mimi said, “Just take a cab in the morning,” which was now four hours away. That gave me two hours to sleep and two hours to get showered and changed. Cabs in LA, by the way, are expensive. Not like the $10 fares in NYC. So I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and in true Hollywood fashion, called Paramount studios and asked them to “send a car for me.” Those were the good ole days, my friends, no questions asked. They sent a car for me.
Parker and I began dating immediately, not exclusively but frequently. He had some mud wrestler and an Italian contessa on the side, and I had a famous actor and an ex-boyfriend on the side.
After six months of dating, I THOUGHT we were exclusive. Apparently half of us weren’t, so I almost broke up with Parker. It shattered me and led to an insanely long grudge. Probably THE most important lesson I’ve learned about men is that if they cheat on you, you either work it out and forgive them—I mean TRULY forgive them—or you end it. I stayed midway, in a split decision. “I love you, I forgive you, not really, but I’ll try to, not very hard, and we’ll move on, no fucking way, I’ll make you suffer for a very long time.” And for a very long time I did. I never fully trusted him, and I gave him plenty of reason to stop trusting me.
Still, Parker and I eloped in 1983 to Neil and Leba Sedaka’s house in Westport, Connecticut. I was midway through shooting a TV series and we had a few weeks off for Christmas. I’d been married before, and we didn’t have time for a proper wedding with both sides of our families flying to wherever. So we decided to elope to Connecticut, then drive to Philadelphia to be with his family for Christmas.
We got married on the morning of December 23, 1983, and our justice of the peace was a woman who read Kahlil Gibran. Leba Sedaka had made the house into a fantasyland. There was a crystal-adorned Christmas tree, and the setting looked like Dr. Zhivago meets Currier & Ives.
As we were about to get married, the snow turned to rain, and Neil Sedaka stood before us and sang “Laughter in the Rain.” His audience was just me, Parker, Leba, the justice of the peace, and Kahlil Gibran. An hour after we married I called my dad. He was happy for us; he loved Parker.
Parker and I were polar opposites. I’m rowdy and impatient. He’s conservative and “lovely.” I use that word in quotes because Parker used to use it a lot to describe things, “It’s lovely.” I’m a Kansas girl, and I’d never heard a man say the word “lovely,” but I found it refreshing, artistic, and “lovely.”
We first moved into a Richard Meier–type white-on-white-on-white modern house. It was a sexy house, and it looked like it was built for adult brats. We fit the bill.
Our relationship was interesting: we were close but not close. We were always friendly and respectful, but we were not each other’s confidants. I don’t recall us discussing the deeper aspects of life. Both of us were always busy working, and my career was on a full-fledged roll. I bounced from movies to miniseries to movies to Cheers. Parker and I had our share of ups and downs, but mostly it felt safe and consistent. People like me can do with a little conservatism in their lives. If you hooked people like me up with other people like me it could end in a free-for-all.
Parker had gone to Princeton, and he was a preppy guy. He had been in a singing group there, the Tigertones. Everything about him was fancy, and his family hailed from blue-blood Philadelphia. They were on the Social Register, a far cry from my midwestern roots. There once was a photo of Parker and me in Las Vegas from when we were dating. He was wearing a suit, and I was in a red dress
with a neckline that plunged to my navel. Within 24 hours he received a phone call from his mother. “Who IS this GIRL?!” Parker liked my shocking wild ways, and I was enamored by his East Coast Ivy League intelligence. We were definitely the odd couple, but it somehow worked.
Parker is hard to read, and he keeps it all close to the vest. If you suspect something is bothering him, you have to draw it out of him like a splinter from a foot. And when he does talk, he won’t reveal much. It was never easy to decipher the truth with him. Not about big, secretive, bad things, just the kinds of things people bitch about to each other on a daily basis. “Man, that idiot at work pissed me off!” was the kind of thing I would share. Parker would pace or sit on the porch and smoke cigars and ponder life, which looked painful to me. I wished he would just run out to the middle of the yard and scream now and then, for his sake.
Over the course of our 14-year marriage we gave each other unique gifts. I gave him a red Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer for Christmas when I had precisely $67,000 in my bank account. The Ferrari cost $65,000, leaving me $2,000 to pay bills. Parker started buying me pets while we were dating. The first animal he surprised me with was Cinderella, a giant brown English lop-eared rabbit. Throughout the years we were married, my dad referred to Parker as a saint for putting up with my menagerie of creatures. Funny—Parker bought me most of them, including my first pair of ring-tailed lemurs, Ricky and Lucy. And one Christmas morning, when I headed down the staircase of our beautiful Encino bungalow, I was met by a tiny gray miniature horse standing in the entryway, which I named Buckwheat.
During the Cheers years, a lot of cash was rolling in. I was doing 24 episodes a year, then movies in my hiatus. That left two months every summer to go somewhere. We bought a 22-bedroom “cottage” on the coast of Maine. It was perfect! With all that work going on during the year, it was hard to make time for family and friends, especially if they didn’t live in LA. Maine was the perfect place to congregate. We had upwards of 30 people as our guests at one time, and the place was spectacular. There was a deepwater mooring dock and a clay tennis court surrounded by Essex Green Victorian lattice. There was shuffle-board, a pool hall, croquet, a swimming pool, a children’s garden. It was magnificent. While Parker took interest in boats and more boats, I spent my days arranging flowers and planning meals for our guests. It sounds so perfectly Americana. So Martha Stewarty. I dressed the part wearing Laura Ashley dresses and big brimmed sun hats. Parker took me aside once and said, “You do know I didn’t marry an East Coast girl on purpose, right?” But it was SO exciting to be who I wasn’t. I’d never been exposed to these kinds of people, with their pink shirts and those pale yellow pants with whales on them. I’d never experienced cocktail parties where people still actually drank martinis and ate Ritz Crackers with cheese spread and olives on them. True, I have a bad habit of becoming a chameleon when I’m with a man. I tend to get all caught up in HIS lifestyle. With Bob I became a little hippie. With Jake, cowboy chic. With Parker, naughty coed mixed with Gibson Girl. But I’m an ACTRESS, for crying out loud!! What good is life without drama and costumes!!?
The Art of Men [I Prefer Mine al Dente] Page 12