by Margaret Cho
Gradually, I started to feel better, and knew I would have to kick pot once again. Drinking wine to help ease the loss, and buying into that weird idea that two glasses of red wine a day would lower your cholesterol, I started another deadly trend. I had gained so much weight during the pregnancy and abortion and recovery period, that all the clothes that I had stolen from my TV show didn’t fit anymore.
The diet pills weren’t working, so I started taking larger doses. I shed many pounds again, and got confident enough to break up with my boyfriend.
My other lover, Gaines, took up the slack. He lived in San Francisco, and I remember arranging to meet him at Tosca on a Tuesday night. I got there early with Sledge, because I never went on a date alone. I quickly downed multiple shots of Herradurra Tequila. I saw Gaines at the end of the bar, looking tentative and tall as he always does, and I got all excited and couldn’t sit still.
I excused myself and went to the bathroom for like an hour, passing out in a stall in a pool of Chinese-food vomit. A waitress came in to check on me and then soon after, I was carried out by Sledge and Gaines, past the San Francisco drinking elite, to Gaines’s waiting, double-parked car. I was bruised and all sweaty and sour, a mumbled vow against Herradurra on my lips.
They took me up to the Nob Hill Lambourne, the scene of many crimes, and somehow I got from the car to the bed. I opened one eye to watch Gaines’s long legs cruise the perimeter of the mattress, and he took his pants off neatly and joined me underneath the puffy comforter.
The clock read 9:46 P.M. Feeling stupid, replaying the awful memory of my head lolling back and forth in an alcoholic daze, too sick to drink more to erase it, trying so desperately to make it camp, and all these thoughts swirling in bed with him, who could have enjoyed anything?
So much past we’d had, he and I, so much history. I thought of it, lying next to him. I remember seeing Gaines in the Punchline so many years before, thinking that I had to have him, that the search was over, that it was him and that was the end.
I obsessed and tried and tried and I finally got him, but I was a mess, a filthy, drunken, disgusting mess. Miraculously, Gaines still wanted me.
Even though I was burnt out, dragged on the floor, hungover, then drunk again, uneasy, had other boyfriends, pushed him around, pushed him away, didn’t call him back, decided one day to hate him for no reason, yanked his Kangaroo pin out of my jacket, lost it somewhere, forgot forgot forgot love, he still wanted me.
I think part of him wants me still. That is the miracle of him. Of his asbestos love. It was indestructible. Oh Gaines, I am so sorry. I didn’t love myself then. How could I love someone as good as you?
Those days, drinking was the thing and San Francisco was a good place for it. I didn’t drive, so there was no danger of driving drunk, which I did nearly every night in Los Angeles. I think my guardian angel is a crash-test dummy, who took all the hard knocks for me so I wouldn’t have to. I was protected and so was the Southland, from the menace of me behind the wheel.
The only time it was really bad was the Monday night I left the Good Luck bar on Hillhurst after twenty too many Lemon Drops, and I slammed right into the side of a gang member’s car. So many of them got out, it was like Barnum & Bailey’s Bloods and Crips. Even though it was completely my fault, I started screaming at them, demanding to know why they hit me. I had hit them! I went off about how I was gonna call my lawyer, which is ridiculous because I have an entertainment lawyer. We didn’t get any money from the insurance company, but we now all have development deals with UPN.
The gangstas thought I was crazy and left me there on the corner. The next day, feeling guilty and lucky, I found the card one of them had nicely given to me and sent him $200.
So, when I was in my hometown, I could drink without restraint, knowing wherever I landed, Gaines would be there to carry me to safety.
Sledge was easily roped into drinking with me, for he loved my wild company. We would walk up to Vesuvio’s in North Beach, order two shots of tequila at the bar without sitting, slam them down, and be on the street again in the space of a minute, with a total mood change and refreshed attitude.
It was all about attitude. I had gotten to the point where I had experienced so much tragedy, I thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, and if it did, then at least it would be my fault. I thought if I was going to be a failure in life, then I was going to do it in style. I wasn’t just going to fail, I was going to be a gorgeous disaster.
Taking tranquilizers with my booze, I felt like Marilyn Monroe. Carried out of bars, I felt like Frances Farmer. I thought if I died this way, that drag queens would dress up like me until the end of time. If I couldn’t be happy, at least I could be immortal.
15
WOODSHED
Then there was Glenn. I thought Glenn was the love of my life, the ONE, the relentless other, where I will go when I die, the glue factory, out to pasture, the zipless fuck, the Sizzler salad bar, my all and my everything.
We never even went on a date, or flirted, or had any sort of introduction to the affair. I was standing at my usual bar, a dark Hollywood place full of wine and development people. I might have been drunk, or on my way there. We looked at each other through the haze of cigarette smoke and idle conversation made while people are looking over your shoulder, and we just fell in love.
He put his hands on my legs. I just looked at them. I buried my head in his neck and breathed deeply. He was all I ever wanted. We went out to his car and made the window steam up like a clambake. I’d never had my body react to anyone so instantly. It was so natural and so easy. I pulled away from him, and it hurt. The only way to stop the pain was to kiss him again.
He was just another addiction, and I had already been on quite a downward spiral.
These were the days of short skirts and red wine and lots of cigarettes and the slowly exhaled declaration, “I am a creature of need . . .”
I put forth this image of decadence, eyes half closed with lust and self-absorbed angst, weaving in and out of bars and cars with a haste and hurry—when I had absolutely nowhere to go and nothing to do. I ate so little and drank to kill the hunger, so I was delirious most of the time. I was an accident waiting to happen, and Glenn was the oncoming vehicle.
Glenn was enthralled with the mystery of me, and he was just bored enough to do something about it. We met in dimly lit parking lots and shadows of clubs and alleys. We made love in the car and it didn’t even seem uncomfortable. I felt like I was fifteen years old. God, when I was fifteen I was never this fifteen! It was exciting—he was exciting, more than anyone else had been.
I wanted him, even if he was living with his girlfriend.
After some of the initial passion wore off, when it was possible to speak without touching or have a conversation that didn’t just dissolve into more fervent lovemaking, he started feeling guilty. At first it was just a little, but then, as we started to see more and more of each other, it got exponentially worse. He told me the guilt was killing him, that to sleep next to her night after night was to never stop lying, because he was falling deeper and deeper into me.
We’d started to meet at my house, late at night, and I’d turn on the pink lights and the room would glow, sexy and hot. There was a sense of commitment to it that hadn’t been there in the parking lot. I felt so loved by him and so excited to feel the love toward him, and all was love, but then around 4 A.M. Glenn would always have to leave and I’d stay in the pinky light all by myself, feeling ridiculous. There was nothing to do but go into the kitchen and try to drown myself in Chardonnay.
It was the summer of ’96, and the heat was unbearable—the months without a breeze, so many regrets just hanging in the air. He came around again and again, I suppose because it was simple enough to keep going. I am afraid he didn’t want to know what would happen if he let me go. He saw me as deeply unpredictable. Maybe he was afraid that the depth of my passion carried a heavy price, that my rage was always close by and would one da
y swallow him whole, or at the very least, that I’d tell his girlfriend.
It was true that he had awakened something deep and primal within me. I would cry so much over him, painful sobs that emerged from the red, hot center of my being.
On the fourth of July, Glenn broke up with me. I knew it was coming, but I still couldn’t have predicted the incredible feeling of loss. For the first time in my life, I was so upset that I was unable to eat. I wasn’t eating that much to begin with, but I still thought of food with much longing, and looked forward to the next time I could indulge. Suddenly, I had no appetite whatsoever and I dreaded the thought of having to get up from my despair-induced stupor and eat. This lasted for three days. It was shocking. I started to panic and ordered my favorite foods in order to tempt myself. Turkey Reubens and pizza and Chinese food cooled and congealed in front of me. I got kind of excited that maybe I would become emaciated, but no such fucking luck. I drank all my calories instead; my daily intake of entire bottles of Jameson’s and Merlot supplied me with a full day’s nutrition.
Missing him, knowing that a day would end without him, no calls, nothing, was too much to bear. This longing was so familiar to me. It was the same pain I felt for Jon. He kept me waiting by the phone forever—part of me is still waiting for him, and always will be. I never fully recovered from Jon. Some people, if you are not careful, will do that to you. It was the same with Glenn.
No, it was worse with Glenn.
Glenn Was a comic. I got the nightly schedule and went down to the club when he was playing. I was all dressed up, because the only thing I had to do during the day was to get ready for him. I looked at myself in the mirror over and over, not quite sure it was me. I looked at my body from all sides, confused. I looked too small, then too big. I would think I looked okay, even pretty, and then I would see myself from a different angle and be horrified at how ugly I was.
My house was hot and my air conditioning was broken, so all my makeup kept melting and sliding off my face. I’d try to put it back on, on top of slippery sweat.
We’d finally meet late at night, and since I had been thinking about him all day, and getting ready to see him for almost all that time, too, I’d be so nervous that it would take me two martinis to even be able to speak to him. I would have to be half-drunk to access my emotions in any way. Usually, I went too far, and by the time the check came I would be crying.
When we got to my bedroom, he would be filled with reasons why we had to end it, why he couldn’t see me anymore. I wasn’t listening. I was busy undoing his pants with my teeth. He would talk and talk, while I flew around the room, high as a kite that he was desperately trying to reel in. I always tried to find a way to force him into it, force him into having sex with me. It wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t very nice, either.
I went to Washington, D.C., in the stretchy black dress I wore all the time then. I went running up and down Connecticut Avenue with Vaughn, a musician who had purple eyes so beautiful you just assumed he always had sex on his mind.
Vaughn kissed me and I didn’t exactly want him to, but I didn’t really mind after he did it. I kept hoping that it would make Glenn jealous; that was just not possible. Not only were we 3,000 miles away, Glenn didn’t want anything except for me to get out of his life. I feel sorry for anyone that I am obsessed with. I am worse than gum in your hair, very, very close to the roots.
I beat vaughn up with the roses he gave me, so of course, for the entire weekend, he never left me alone. Nothing happened. I was obsessed with Glenn, and nobody could cure me of it.
I went to my hotel room and I wrote a screenplay about it—the whole story of me and Glenn, and the unlikely and tragic love we shared, the story that I thought was so dramatic and cinematic. I got so wired with my own creativity that I didn’t stop writing for many hours. I basically had the whole thing written in a day, and I brought it back to L.A. with a plan: If I could make this into a movie, and enlist Glenn to help me, there would be no alternative than for him to fall in love with me. Proximity combined with accomplishment was going to be my love potion, and I convinced myself of this as I typed my fingers numb.
I didn’t sleep and brought the completed screenplay into my manager’s office at the crack of dawn. The compulsive behavior was partly because I was so excited about the project and partly because Greer’s biggest client at the time was Michael Jackson, and so he seemed to respond to me only when I was acting completely insane.
Greer loved it, and immediately started to send it out to people. He began pressuring me to write an action film. “I get it. You’re a writer!” he said.
I showed the screenplay to Glenn. He loved it and was flattered, and probably terrified. I showed it to lots of people, and everybody loved it. They all wanted to help me build the force behind it to get the money together, to get it made.
Even though it was born out of this completely obsessive insanity over Glenn, the screenplay seemed like my ticket out of obscurity and alcoholism and longing and never getting. The writing was good, there was no question about that. There was truth and pain and a lot of humor in it. It could be inexpensively shot in relatively little time. It was the kind of independent film that could cause a stir. I could get all my famous friends to do cameos.
I wanted it to save me. Glenn wasn’t my prince. Maybe I was my prince. All-American Girl certainly hadn’t saved me, it just plunged me further into the abyss. I needed rescue. I thought maybe my writing would rescue me. My writing was the prince.
It would have been good to think I could save myself, but it wasn’t really true. I really thought the screenplay couldn’t just exist by itself. It had to be made into a movie. I would need someone to back it financially. So, I needed a producer to be my prince.
I worked on another draft of the screenplay and got all my friends together to do a reading of it at Largo. Glenn and I renewed our vows as we worked on it together in bed late into the night. I felt like Dorothy Parker lying next to him, pen and pad in one hand, whiskey glass in the other.
For a brief time, I was able to convince myself that I had it all— this new project everyone was fawning over and Glenn back in my bed. The reading was a smashing success, except for one small thing: Glenn’s girlfriend came. He introduced us.
The next day, I waltzed into the offices of Traitor Pictures and sold the film to a man named Roman. The way he looked at me over the conference table scared me, but he had real film money, and a real contract. He might have wanted me as well as the film, and I tried to act like I felt empowered by it.
At some point during the meeting, it actually took hold. Roman wanted to talk about bringing in another writer to rework the script. I exclaimed, “I am an artist—I am not a collaborator!” He was impressed enough to let me do the rewrites alone.
After the meeting, I was due on the set of Keenan. My frenzied energy and my newfound sexual “empowerment” fueled my performance, and I got a standing ovation for talking about dicks.
I started working with Lane, the film development executive at Roman’s company. She tried to teach me about story and structure, but it bored me. Her advice was not helpful, and she tried to make the story more and more conventional.
I still saw Glenn late at night, but I was losing interest in him and gaining interest in my new career as writer/director/star/ho. I went to lunches with Roman, growing increasingly alarmed by his advances toward me which were not physical, yet extremely intimate.
He called me up late in the business day, around 7, and wanted to come over and watch 91⁄2 Weeks. He bought me sushi and then tried to follow me home in his Range Rover. I kept telling myself that I had him under my control. I kept telling myself that I would do anything to make my movie.
My management scheduled a meeting for Roman and me at the Bel Air Hotel. We sat at a table, and he dragged my chair bumpily next to his. He picked lamb out of his teeth and worked a thread of the flesh between his lip and gum.
Lane briefly dropped in talk
about our progress. She was pretty disappointed that I hadn’t taken any of her suggestions with the rewrite, but she felt it was all turning out well anyway. Roman said he was making this film no matter what. His eyes never once left my cleavage.
Lane left us alone at the table to return to her Christmas shopping. Roman and I walked up to the valet. The attendants who had flirted so willingly with me before would not look at me. I felt like one of Heidi’s girls.
Roman wanted to take a walk under the hotel, by the creek that ran alongside it. I sensed danger, but I tried to be as calm as I could. It happened so suddenly. It was kind of like a bear attack. I was just walking in the woods. . . . He grabbed my breast and put his mouth on it and muffledly said, “I want to be your baby.”
I panicked. I didn’t want this, but had I asked for it? I searched my mind for answers. He was coming at me and I had to make up my mind fast. I wanted to make my movie, but at what cost? I fucked people for a lot less, but . . . I looked at Roman’s huge belly and his tiny hands, his dick that had grown huge in his baggy jeans. He had short legs, so his dick seemed almost longer than them, and it stuck out like a kickstand. I couldn’t do it. Not for the movie. Not for anything. I started yelling. “No. No! NONONONONO!!!”
He wouldn’t stop. He was backing me into a woodshed. I wanted to say something to make him stop. I wasn’t afraid that he would overpower me. I was so much bigger than he was. I just wanted him to stop on his own. Stop the tidal wave of hands and wet mouth with lamb-in-teeth and hard dick flopping this way and that but most of all toward me—and I said, “Don’t push me in there. There’re axes in there!!!!”
I think that was the right incantation, because he stopped.
I went home, after he paid for my valet parking. I felt like a whore who could be bought for the price of a conveniently parked car. Nothing really happened, but it was still disgusting, and I was glad to be safe and away from him.