That summer Laila and Hunter were on their final descent. Laila had discovered Al-Anon and realized that much of Hunter’s behavior was attributable to alcoholism. I had conversations with her on the phone, discussing whether Hunter would go to a treatment center, whether he would stay, and what her options were. She ended up giving him an ultimatum: either he went to a treatment center or she would leave. Hunter actually did go to the treatment center in Florida for a few days, but then rebelled and escaped with the help of a friend. Laila left him for good shortly thereafter. That was the beginning of a long dialogue over the years between Laila and me about Hunter as an alcoholic, which put Hunter’s behavior, and mine, into a context that I could start to understand.
—
THE HIGHLIGHT of that summer was meeting Susannah, a beautiful twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant at Rolling Stone. She was permanent staff and she got to write a couple of short items in the magazine now and then, but was essentially a secretary to the editors. She and I started dating, and at the end of the summer she quit Rolling Stone, I finished my internship, and since I had not applied to a college besides Bennington, which Hunter had vetoed with prejudice, we headed south to Florida to join my mother and William on her new thirty-seven-foot sailboat, on which they lived. We had some vague plans about going to India, or maybe Europe.
Susannah was an answer to my prayers. She was smart, funny, artsy, sarcastic, loved to read, and she liked me as I was, bowl cut and all. She became my person, and New York City transformed from a large and lonely place to an adventure. She was my mentor/lover. She introduced me to art movies—I saw Last Tango in Paris and Godard’s Breathless at a little theater in the Village. She told me about new bands, and we talked about books. I loved her and was devoted to her. We weren’t equals—I was her naïve puppy dog and her pupil—but I was fine with this arrangement. I had a real girlfriend. I was loved, and I wasn’t alone.
The Turkey trip had been tense, but this trip to Florida could have been the basis for a Tennessee Williams play. Start with a forty-five-year-old woman and her handsome twenty-seven-year-old husband (they had gotten married a year earlier). Add her twenty-year-old son with whom she has had an unusually close relationship, and his attractive twenty-six-year-old girlfriend, who happened to be almost the same age as the mother’s husband. Add a heap of tension between Susannah and the mother, put them all on a small boat for two months, add heat and my mother’s fondness for wine at the time, and wait for the fireworks to start.
And they did. After two months everyone was angry at everyone else, and Susannah and I fled the boat and went to Aspen. I had nowhere else to go, and Susannah came with me. In retrospect I think, Why would she want to go to Aspen with a twenty-year-old boy? Maybe because she didn’t know what the hell she was doing and she didn’t have a better idea. Like me.
But I was very happy to have her along. I had my person and she had me, so we didn’t each feel so terribly alone. We bummed along in Aspen for a year. I got a job at the Explore bookstore and Susannah got a job as an executive secretary. We had planned to house-sit at Owl Farm while Hunter was in the Florida Keys for the winter, but when we arrived Hunter was not ready. First, we stayed in a friend’s basement in Basalt, about fifteen miles from Aspen, and then we moved to a tiny apartment belonging to another friend. This went on for several more months, Hunter always on the verge, never quite ready to leave. Eventually it became clear he wasn’t leaving at all and we found a longer-term house-sitting situation. We ended up staying in a lovely house in Old Snowmass twenty miles outside of Aspen, in a quiet valley on several acres of land, right next to the river. We stayed there the spring and the first part of the summer until we moved to Boulder. On weekends I would take long walks up onto the mesas, or hikes up into the mountains, with Lolita, the Australian sheepdog we were taking care of. It was so quiet, so calm, and so beautiful in that valley that it made up for all the craziness leading up to it.
I spent the time in Aspen working at the local bookstore and then as a maintenance man for a property management company. It only took a few months of this to realize that I had to get back to college as soon as possible, that this was no way to live. There I was, retreating to Aspen after one year of college, with no solid skills and, more important, no reason to be there except that I had nowhere else to go. This was life without a plan or a goal, and I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I couldn’t stay in Aspen and that I had to get back in school.
Susannah and I had had dinner one night with Hunter at the Holiday Inn, which was at the base of Buttermilk, on the highway on the way into Aspen. After dinner we drove back to Owl Farm to pick up our car and head home. We stood in the living room by the front door, and while we were talking Hunter glanced at the bookshelves by the door and noticed that several books were missing. He got angry and though he wouldn’t accuse me directly, it was clear that he suspected us of taking the books. I took the logical approach: I didn’t take the books, I didn’t know who had, and there was nothing more to say. However, he would not drop the subject. In an angry tone he told us how he hated being looted, as if dwelling on the topic would somehow dislodge more information from us. I didn’t know what more to say. I was uncomfortable and ready to leave. Susannah took a different approach. She became defiant and emphatically denied taking any books. He and Susannah stared at each other, then Hunter backed down and said something about how sometimes he just had to yell. She said, “Can I yell too?” Then Hunter smiled, and hugged her, and said that sometimes we have to go through these things. I saw in that exchange that Hunter respected strength, and that sometimes, but not always, a fierce response would settle him down. But sometimes, it would spur him on to greater wrath. I could never be sure. My father was a warrior, not a philosopher.
—
THAT WHOLE YEAR seems unreal and disconnected. Susannah and I were not living toward something, we had no intention of ever getting married or having children, we were together almost by accident, like two survivors on a raft taking solace in each other’s company, drifting with the current.
The best thing that came out of that year was a strong desire to get back in school. I remember standing in the bookstore where I worked, surrounded by all that creativity, all that knowledge, those myriad worlds of experiences, and deciding that I had to get back in college and out of Aspen. I applied to the University of Colorado. I was a shoo-in and in-state tuition was affordable. Hunter agreed to continue to pay for school.
Susannah had no attachment to Aspen, and so that summer we drove over to Boulder, where I would be starting school in a couple of months, and found an apartment downtown on Pine Street. In August we moved what few possessions we had and started our lives there.
Susannah got a job working for the city or county of Boulder, I can’t recall which, while I started school as a sophomore, which meant that I was exempt from all of the required socializing with freshmen students, and that I could live off-campus. I was grateful for this, but it also meant that I had no real connections at school. I would show up for my classes and head home, talking to almost no one, making no friends. But Susannah was my friend, I didn’t need any others. I have heard the phrase “playing house,” and that’s what we were doing: playing house. I was enjoying it, not knowing any better. We had a wonderful apartment, we had a routine, and I had a best friend in Susannah.
That Thanksgiving Hunter called and said he was in Denver and proposed that we get together. This was short notice, but Susannah and I had no other plans, so we agreed. We considered having dinner at our apartment, but we had only two chairs, so we decided it would be better to go to a restaurant.
For the first and last time in my life, Hunter came to my home. Thanksgiving night Hunter and Maria, his new assistant and lover, came to Boulder. I remember it was dark and we came outside to meet them at the curb. This was the first time I met Maria. She was petite, as Hunter’s women tended to be, and young, beautiful, and
very intelligent. They always were. My second impression was of her kindness and sincerity. They came inside for a bit and then we went to the restaurant in the Hilton for Thanksgiving dinner, just the four of us in a practically abandoned dining room. It was a strangely stereotypical scene: my father and his beautiful girlfriend came to visit his son and his girlfriend at college, except his girlfriend was younger than mine. Hunter asked Susannah to pick the wine. We had a quiet and polite conversation with no yelling or embarrassing scenes. The only hints that this was not a normal family were Maria’s age, twenty-three, and the fact that she was assisting him with his article on the notorious Mitchell Brothers and their O’Farrell Theatre, a large and upscale strip club in San Francisco. That, and the number of whiskeys Hunter finished off during and after dinner. On the way home we stopped at Liquor Mart for a big bottle of Chivas, and when we parted at the curb at our apartment, Hunter handed Susannah an empty whiskey bottle to dispose of. In Hunter’s world, this was normal, like asking someone to throw away an empty Starbucks cup.
One of the most difficult paradoxes in Hunter’s character was the presence of both a strong, genuine caring for others, and a profound self-centeredness. One time at Owl Farm, I was talking with Maria about some issue with the computer. Hunter was in the kitchen at the counter, in his usual post-waking ritual of reading the paper, watching a game, and nibbling on breakfast. At one point Maria and I went into the office where the computer was located so I could show her something. We were in the office for ten or fifteen minutes when suddenly the lights went out and the computer went dark. It lasted maybe fifteen seconds, and then the power came on again. I assumed it was a power grid problem. After all, Owl Farm is in the country and power outages weren’t unusual. Maria said to me, “He wants us back in the kitchen.” It took me a few seconds to comprehend what she meant. What she seemed to be saying was that Hunter had turned off the power in that part of the house to flush us out. She explained to me that Hunter could not bear to not be the center of attention, and that he had reached the limits of his patience.
We walked back into the kitchen and Hunter was still there in his chair as if nothing had happened, yet he didn’t look entirely innocent. He looked as if he were trying to appear absorbed in the newspaper. Maria confronted him with something like, “That was very childish, Hunter.” He didn’t respond, yet he didn’t deny it either, as though now that he had gotten what he wanted he was going to continue his morning uninterrupted. Hunter often quoted in his writing a bit of political wisdom, “Never apologize, never explain,” and that is precisely what he did that day. I think he was also jealous of any friendship between Maria and me. I understood after that incident that my father was in some ways like a small child who could not imagine that the world did not center on him alone.
Hunter was on his best behavior when I was around. Things were much worse when I was not around. To those poor suffering saints, or masochists, who subjected themselves to Hunter daily for years, and sometimes decades as in Deborah’s case, Hunter could be a monster. I rarely saw these excoriations, and only occasionally heard about them. To be with Hunter day after day, while he was flogging himself, flaying himself with guilt, shame, and fear, trying to provoke within himself the energy, no matter how vile and poisonous its source, to complete whatever assignment was in front of him, was to witness something truly terrible. To see him turn his pent-up frustration against himself was in some ways the most painful, because he was relentless and complete in his self-degradation and despair. More often, though, he turned it outward, against those around him. Vicious, blistering verbal or written attacks. He was always a physically powerful man, even into his sixties, but it wasn’t physical violence that you had to worry about, it was the verbal attack. Hunter could be a southern gentleman, particularly with beautiful young women whom he had recently met and was trying to seduce. With interviewers he could be similarly charming, but with those who knew him best, who lived with him day after day, he was always brilliant, often monstrous, sometimes tender and funny, occasionally supportive, but never gentlemanly. There is a reason that no woman lasted more than four or five years, and as time passed, closer to two—he was impossible to live with. Over time he just wore his women out.
I find that I mark time in Hunter’s life according to the significant women in his life. First there was Laila. She had a long run, about six years. Then there was Maria, who made it for four or five years. Following her was Terry, who made it for a couple of years, then Nicole, for another couple of years. Then, one after another, there was Madeline, Heidi, and Anita, whom he married a little more than a year before his death. There were others, of course, between and during, I have no idea how many. They were almost always very young, in their twenties. At first they were somewhat older than me. Laila was like an older sister, since I was sixteen and she was maybe twenty-four. Maria was much closer to my age, a year or two older, and by the time Nicole came into his life, I was older than her at thirty-two while she was probably twenty-five. Hunter and I grew older, yet his women stayed about the same age.
I learned a lot about Hunter through his women, either from them directly or from watching the growth, maturity, and demise of the relationships. They began hopefully. I would meet them for the first time at Owl Farm, and they would have heard much about me. I knew nothing about them. They were anxious to please, and I was wary and skeptical. I wanted to understand who this woman was, and why she was here. Was she worthy of my father, and worthy of living at Owl Farm? However, Hunter didn’t ask me what I thought. He had his own reasons, and he wasn’t interested in my opinions on his women. After the new woman and I had negotiated the initial awkwardness and we had accepted each other, there arose a kind of unspoken collaboration between us, and alliance of understanding, particularly with Laila, Maria, and Nicole, the women he loved most deeply.
There was that initial phase of hopefulness in which the love between them was so evident. Hunter glowed with this calm joy. They were like two teenagers. I came to understand that Hunter was a hopeless romantic. He loved to fall in love, to be in love. This was a part of his life that he did not share with me, but from his letters I can see what a dedicated suitor he was. Romantic letters, faxes, notes, late-night rendezvous, road trips, flights to New York, L.A., or some exotic place, and the complete attention of a very charismatic, famous (in some circles anyway) older man, must have made a powerful impression on young women.
I realize now that it was usually, maybe always, his girlfriends, and later Deb, who orchestrated his family gatherings such as that Thanksgiving in Boulder. It’s not that Hunter didn’t want to see his family, it was that he was incapable of initiating it.
It was the same, I am sure, when Hunter and Laila spent Christmas with Hunter’s brother Davison and his family in Ohio several years earlier. No doubt Hunter had been meaning to reach out, feeling guilty after every Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthday that he failed to contact his family, and yet he never seemed able to translate that guilt into action. It was up to the new woman in his life to actually make it happen.
Perhaps I knew this deep down, but it didn’t matter. Whatever the reason for his visit that Thanksgiving in 1984, I was glad to see him.
The following March was my twenty-first birthday and Hunter had a surprise in mind. He was living in Sausalito with Maria at the time and spending a lot of time at the O’Farrell Theatre, where he had become the honorary night manager. What he actually did in that capacity he never did explain. He invited Susannah and me out for a weekend. I much later found out that the vice president and general manager of the theater, Jeff Armstrong, had arranged and paid for the entire weekend at Hunter’s request. When we arrived, we picked up a red convertible rental that I’m sure Hunter picked out for us. We stayed at the downtown Marriott high above San Francisco. Our room was large and had a balcony. Best of all, the city was sunny and warm.
We drove to Sausalito to see Hunter and Maria. I remember it was on the side of a
steep hill, not far from the bay. It was a small house stacked in among lots of other small houses that crowded the steep hillside by the water. The roads were narrow and curvy and there were no driveways. Their house, or cottage actually, had a wall of windows and a big deck that looked out over the bay.
That night Hunter took us to his office, just like any father might do, except in this case it was the O’Farrell Theatre. His “office” was a large room on the second floor with windows that overlooked the street, and resembled a recreation room from the basement of a suburban home, with a pool table in the middle of the room, black leather couches around the walls, and a variety of art and trophies. There was probably a bar as well, but I was aggressively opposed to alcohol at the time, so I took no notice. There was a tiny office off to the side with a couple of 1950s metal desks, two small windows and fake wood paneling that reminded me of a trailer, but the rec room was clearly the heart of the operation. This is where Hunter and the Mitchell Brothers held court, surrounded by beautiful women.
He told us about the various rooms in the theater. There was the movie theater that showed porn flicks, the New York Live stage show, the Ultra Room, and the Kopenhagen Room. He said one room involved naked women, a dark room, and customers with flashlights, while another of the rooms had a live peep show. The whole scene was, of course, titillating and awkward for me, and became more so when Hunter led Susannah and me through the dancers’ dressing room to the sound and light booth overlooking the New York Live Stage. I was intensely aware of walking by beautiful, partly or wholly naked women standing and chatting in front of their lockers, like guys in a locker room, completely unconcerned by our presence. I, of course, averted my eyes and acted casual, as if I were walking down an aisle at Target. The show was in full swing. In the booth, standing next to the lighting technician, we could see a woman stripping onstage to music, and at the end of the performance, disappearing offstage and reappearing a few minutes later in the audience dressed in lingerie. Hunter explained that they were providing lap dances, leaving the details to my imagination.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 11