A Lotus Grows in the Mud

by Goldie Hawn

  success

  Success is just a word, a relative concept.

  It’s how we handle success that matters.

  Entering the elevator of the Hilton Hotel on Sixth Avenue in New York, I hear the doors slide shut behind me and stare at my reflection in the smoked-glass interior.

  I barely recognize myself. My hair has been coiffed, my clothes are new, and I have just walked out of the luxurious thirtieth-floor, three-room suite that CBS has provided for me.

  I am two blocks from 888 Eighth Avenue, where, just over a year ago, I was sharing a three-room apartment with five other dancers. Now I am a guest at this brand-new hotel I could never previously afford, near the Stage Deli, where I used to sit with Max eating blintzes.

  The doors slide open when the elevator reaches the lobby, and I am faced with a wall of people I have never met.

  “Goldie Hawn! Miss Hawn! Over here!” Cameras flash, and strangers press in on me, thrusting pens and pieces of paper into my hand. “Can I please have your autograph?” they ask.

  “I can’t wait to see your new show, Miss Hawn,” someone tells me, squeezing my arm a little too tightly.

  “Thanks,” I reply shyly, trying to find enough elbow room to write my name. All the while, I’m thinking, Who are these people? How do they know me? The CBS publicity people did warn me that there had been a lot of hype about this new show in New York, and that the press would jump all over us, but this is crazy. I haven’t shot a single scene of Good Morning World, and nothing has been aired yet.

  Pushing my way out through the crowd and into the vast lobby, I try to look for the public relations woman who has organized this parade of new fall shows for the CBS affiliates meeting at which I am an honored guest. I want to ask her if this is normal. But she is nowhere to be seen among the milling throng of journalists and invited viewers. Nor are any of my costars—Joby Baker, Ronnie Schell, Julie Parrish—whom I haven’t even met yet.

  “Miss Hawn? Miss Hawn? This way, please.”

  Another photographer. Another flash. I am left blinking into the glare.

  “How does it feel to be one of CBS’s rising stars?” a pushy young reporter asks me.

  “Well, gee, I don’t know,” I reply, trying to smile.

  “Your promotional material says the writers created a character especially for you,” a woman tells me. “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”

  “Oh God no! I only just started really. I left New York a year ago with just fifty dollars in my pocket.”

  “Fifty dollars? That’s great, thanks.” She disappears.

  The elevator doors ping open behind me. Spotting an escape route, I slip through the doors impulsively, getting out while I still can. Hurrying to my suite, I open the door and slip in, pressing my back against the door once it is closed. The momentary peace is shattered by the sound of the telephone, which sits on a polished mahogany table laden with bowls of fruit and vases of flowers.

  “Miss Hawn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you please come down to the lobby immediately? We need you for a photo call.”

  Replacing the receiver, I take a deep breath and head once again for the door.

  The yellow taxi turns into my dead-end street and I finally exhale.

  Cleveland Avenue, Takoma Park. My childhood home. The Holy Grail of my mind. I feel the car bump over the potholes that still haven’t been fixed, and I sigh with relief.

  This’ll be great, I tell myself. Mom’s matzo ball soup. Dad’s crazy jokes. They’ll love to hear all the stories. I can hardly wait to sleep in my old bed, between Mom’s crisp white sheets.

  Paying the driver, I grab my bag and hurry toward my parents’ redbrick duplex, savoring every step closer to home. In one bound, I am up on the front porch where dear Nixi always used to wait for me and through the door that is never locked.

  “Mom? Daddy? I’m home,” I call, rushing into the hallway and dropping my bag at the foot of the stairs. I can’t wait to see them, to run into their arms and just be held. “It’s Goldie. Are you home?”

  Silence greets me. I wander into the living room and no one is there. Glancing at my watch, I realize with dismay that they must still be at work. Walking into the kitchen, I take stock and look around. Was this room always so small? Have they done something different? Did Mom really bathe me in this sink as a child?

  I open the door to the basement and peer down at the tiny space where Jean Lynn and I played house, where David Fisher helped my father with some of his inventions. Daddy’s workbench is still there, littered with watch parts, strange objects and tools.

  In the living room, the stuffed pheasant is no longer on the mantelpiece. Searching for it, I find it in a cupboard in the back room, its feathers moth-eaten. Stepping lightly on the unfamiliar wall-to-wall carpeting I just sent my mother the money for, I revisit all the rooms of my childhood, as if I am seeing them for the first time. There is the piano I learned to sing on. There is the mohair armchair Daddy sits in to drink his scotch and sniff his sauces.

  Climbing the stairs, past the balusters I used to peer between at the Christmas tree, I see that my parents now have separate bedrooms. With me gone, there is no longer any need for pretense. I walk into my little green bedroom and sit on the bed. Outside are the oak trees that no longer seem as tall. I wonder if the descendants of the squirrels I fed as a child still live inside their trunks.

  I want to feel happy. I want to feel comforted. I want to feel safe. But, for some reason, I don’t. Outside, I hear the sound of a car’s wheels on gravel. Jumping up and looking out, I see my parents walking wearily from the car toward the house. Throwing open the window, I lean out and say hello.

  “Hi, Mom! Hi, Daddy! I’m back!” I wave excitedly.

  My father’s face lights up. “Hi, Go!” he says, beaming. He gives me his little glide-step and dances around my mother as she bats him away with her hands.

  Running downstairs, I meet them in the hallway and allow them to enfold me in their arms. “I’m home,” I tell them. “Oh, Mom, Dad, it feels so good to be here.”

  “Okay, Kink,” Daddy says, uncomfortable as ever with physical contact. “Let’s get a cup of coffee and sit down. I want to hear everything.”

  Dad looks just the same, but Mom seems a little fuller-figured, a little quieter. She makes the coffee, and I sit at the dining-room table, answering a thousand questions from Dad about how I feel and what my trip to New York was like.

  “I flew over the Grand Canyon on the way back, Daddy,” I tell him. “You really must come out and see it someday.”

  “Aw, no,” he says, dismissing this great wonder of the world with a wave of his hand. “Once you’ve seen one ditch, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Oh, Rut, shut up,” Mom growls. “So, Goldie, how was the Hilton Hotel?”

  “Well, kinda busy. I was really there for the affiliates meeting.”

  “The affiliates meeting?” Dad interrupts. “That’s where everyone goes to promote their shows, isn’t it?” His eyes are on fire; this is nectar to him, someone to talk show business with. This is his world.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rut,” Mom interrupts, “let her finish.” Bustling around the kitchen making cheese blintzes with sour cream—I can hear them crackling in the butter on the stove—she brings me in a plateful when they’re done and says, “Here, honey, eat.” Sitting next to me, her head in her hands, she watches until I finish every bite. This is her world.

  While Dad grills me on and on about every detail, my mother puts her two cents in. “You see, Goldie, you studied, you went to dancing school, you got the audition, and then you had the goods to back it up. See, I told you, Rut. I knew this was how it would happen. This is the way you do it.”

  Dad jumps in. “Laura, I was the one who got it right. I told you. First, she’ll act, then she’ll sing, then she’ll dance.” Turning to me, he adds, “You got a lucky break, kid.”

  “Oh, for God’s sa
ke, Rut,” Mom spits, lighting a cigarette.

  “Well, I was right about it! I knew how it would go. Laura, you don’t know how this business works.”

  “What do you mean I don’t know how this business works? It’s not about the business; it’s about talent. You either have it or you don’t have it. Goldie has talent; she has it!”

  They are so busy bickering over who is most responsible for my success, so excited about my lucky break, that I can’t possibly tell them how I am really feeling—which is out of sorts with all that is happening so fast. I feel ashamed of my feelings; I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, because everyone else seems so happy. Apart from my parents, that is. They aren’t happy together. I can see that now.

  Watching them, I realize that all these two people ever did was bicker. I realize how far apart they’ve grown. I have probably been the only thing keeping them together. Patti is grown and married with a child and another on the way, and I am all they have left.

  I want to tell my parents the truth. I want to say, Hey, guys, stop! I’m not feeling that great inside. I know you’re excited and everything, but I feel really scared and unprepared. Everyone’s asking me for my autograph, and I know that sounds cool to you, but I don’t even know who I am yet.

  Instead, I sit sadly between them as they move on to the subject of what’s best for me. All I can think of is how awful it must have been for them to be left alone in this house with each other.

  Patti walks in and says hello, her son holding her hand. I am happy to see her. I always feel so guilty that all the attention is on me. She works so hard, such long hours, as a social worker and being a mom at the same time. I want to tell her, and my mom and dad, Hey, this isn’t a fait accompli. I might fail yet, you know. Anyway, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll just go back to being a dancer. And, you know what? Right now, that would be fine with me.

  Aunt Sarah and Uncle Charlie turn up, along with some of my other relatives. Word soon gets out that I’m home, and half the neighborhood is suddenly milling around the house, walking in unannounced, congratulating me, asking me one question after another about my life.

  “Hey, Goldie, you’re on television now!” Uncle Charlie grins. “Oh boy, you’re going to be a big star. You better give me some of those fancy-schmancy pictures of you so I can show them to my clients. Boy, I guess you’re a big schmear. Gee, how am I supposed to treat you now?”

  “Just the same, Uncle Charlie,” I say with pleading eyes, desperate to hold on to my fantasy of still being the baby. “I’m still Goldie. I’m just the same.”

  Nothing has changed, I want to say. Only your perception of me. I thought going home would be nectar to my soul, but it isn’t. Instead, I am caught between two worlds. I can’t go back, and I don’t want to move forward. The fear is choking me.

  I fall asleep on the plane, and don’t know I’ve arrived back in L.A. until the stewardess wakes me up. Walking the long concourse at the airport, carrying my small suitcase in my hand, I feel as if I am in a metaphorical birth canal, about to be reborn into a new life.

  My boyfriend picks me up at the airport. Sitting in the car on the freeway headed home, I feel so strange. I am not in my own skin. Staring out the window at the same Sunset Strip that filled me with joy not so long ago, I can’t understand why I feel like curling up in a ball and hiding from the world.

  I push the palm fronds away from the front door of my new, three-bedroom apartment in the Hollywood Hills. I put my key in the lock, and my boyfriend follows me in.

  “Why don’t I pour us some wine?” I say. Putting on an act, I pretend that I am completely happy with the turn of events in my life. Walking in my little kitchenette, I get some glasses.

  He puts Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the record player and settles down on the couch in front of the low coffee table. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him rolling a joint. I’m not much of a pot smoker; I’ve tried it a few times and never much liked it. Gee, I’m not sure I’m in the mood for a party tonight, I tell myself with a sigh. But—once again—I hold my tongue.

  Reaching for the stereo, he turns the music up loud, and I think, Okay, well, looks like the party’s on. I slide onto the couch next to him and hand him his wine.

  He asks about my trip, and I lie some more. “My parents were over the moon”—I smile—“which was really great. Oh, and it was amazing to be at the Hilton Hotel with all those celebrities and fans.” It is not worth telling my version of the truth at this point. After all, why ruin the moment?

  I sip my wine, and he hands me a joint. What the heck. Maybe it’ll help me relax. I don’t want to say no because I’m afraid he might leave if I do, and I really don’t feel like being alone tonight.

  I don’t inhale much at first because I don’t like the way it feels as it travels to my lungs. Even though I smoke cigarettes, pot scratches my throat and makes me cough. He laughs and I smile. “I don’t do this very often,” I say, handing it back. “I’m not much good at this.” I drink a little more of my wine to soothe my throat, and I guess I loosen up a little because, before long, I am taking another puff.

  The music seems to get louder and louder. John Lennon seems to be right there in the room with us, singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” about the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. The sound surrounds me. It is all I can hear. I feel my legs turn to liquid and my heart pounding in my chest. My friend puts his arm around me to pull me close and I feel the room spin.

  “No! Something’s wrong,” I say, pushing him away. Sliding off the couch and onto the floor, I am breathless. “What’s in this? Is this just pot? I don’t feel so good.”

  The music is inside me now, thumping away deep in my chest cavity, making my heart jump restlessly. I close my eyes and feel as if I am floating in black space, completely alone, with no reality to hold on to, where no one knows or understands me.

  My friend kneels on the floor next to me. “What are you feeling?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I cry. “I don’t know what I’m feeling.” My entire body starts to shake uncontrollably. I can’t get a grip. My heart is thumping in my throat; the room is spinning; the noise is deafening. I feel sick to my stomach.

  He starts to stroke my hair, to caress my arm, my breast.

  “No, no! Don’t touch me! I don’t feel well. There’s something wrong; there’s something very wrong.” I crawl across the floor to the bathroom and throw my guts up. My friend just sits there watching me, in his own drug-induced style.

  I want him to do something, to save me. I want him to tell me what’s wrong with me. I lie back on the floor and images of my mother and my father flash before me. I see Mom’s face, and then Dad’s. What is this? Is this guilt because I’m doing something wrong? What is happening? I don’t know.

  I open my eyes and I can still see them. Then I begin to hallucinate big-time, my parents’ faces swirling and melding into shafts of color, of yellows and blues so bright they hurt my eyes. I am no longer in my body. I am no longer somewhere safe. I am somewhere else, somewhere strange and frightening and lonely that scares me half to death.

  Where have I gone? Where is Goldie? The happy girl? The joyful creature who loves to laugh and everyone thinks is so silly? Who embraces life with no questions? Who thinks she has all the answers? No one can answer me. No one can help me.

  Shivering uncontrollably from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, I crawl to the bed. I’m shaking so violently that my teeth chatter. It is as if it’s thirty degrees below zero.

  I watch my friend walk across the moonlit bedroom and sit down in a chair next to my bed. I squeeze his hand and tell him again, “There’s something terribly wrong with me.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he says, wincing under the grip of my fingers. “I don’t know what to do.”

  His admission only makes me feel worse, for I was sure he would. Seeing my eyes darting right and left around the room, he takes me by the shoulders an
d speaks into my face.

  “Tell me what you’re seeing, Goldie. Talk to me!”

  “It’s—like—there—are—no—walls—around—me,” I tell him, my throat closing as I hyperventilate. “I can’t hold on to anything anymore.”

  He stands up for a moment and steps away from the bed with a look of horror.

  “Please don’t leave me, please don’t go,” I tell him. “I can’t be alone tonight.”

  My friend holds me in his arms and strokes my hair as I lie there crying, more afraid than I have ever been in my entire life. Every cell in my body feels poisoned, and my body shakes uncontrollably all night long. My eyes never close—they dare not—and despite the minutes ticking away into hours, I sense no improvement or respite. The night is relentlessly, miserably without end.

  I stare at the window, waiting for the dawn, willing it to come. When it eventually arrives, its cold gray light pushing through the windows, I am horrified to find that I don’t feel any better. That scares me even more.

  “I’m sick,” I whisper hoarsely to my friend as he stirs from his awkward slumber. “I’m sick and I’m scared. I need a doctor.”

  Smoking that one joint triggered something in me psychologically that took me to the brink of a deep abyss. Thus began one of the scariest periods of my life. A time that still makes me shiver to think about it.

  Every morning I had to force myself to get out of bed, take a shower, get dressed and go to work. Arriving at the studio each day, I put on a face and an appropriately upbeat voice and did exactly as I was told. Between takes, I hurried to my dressing room, where I lay in a nauseated faint, holding on to the sofa with both hands, afraid of falling off. No one knew what I was going through, and no one guessed. Until I eventually found my doctor, a man who would begin to lead me through the untapped passages of my mind, I was alone and scared in the big wide world called Hollywood.

  It has always been my primary goal to be as happy as I can be. Like most of us, I believed that fame and fortune would make that elusive cocktail of happiness, giving me the elixir I sought. But I have learned that success does not always translate into personal happiness. Fame and fortune do not automatically grant you joy or even inner contentment. Some of the unhappiest people I know are some of the most successful.