My Trip Down the Pink Carpet (11 page)

L
UKE
P
ERRY
broke my heart. I know this is getting ridiculous. I know it sounds like I am lovestruck and boy crazy, but he really did. Before he became famous as Dylan McKay on
Beverly Hills 90210,
he lived across the street from me for two years. This was during the time I was living in the bad part of Hollywood and cavorting with a seedy cowboy. Luke warned me constantly about the company I was keeping, but I did not listen. I would not listen to anyone.

“I got a bad feeling about that boy,” Luke would tell me. “He’s got a teardrop tattoo below his eye. Do you know what that means?”

“No. And I don’t want to know. I’m having enough problems concealing the awful swastika tattoo he has on his hand.”

Luke and his friend David lived together in straight-boy squalor. I had huge schoolgirl crushes on both of them. As a neighborly gesture, I sent my long-suffering maid Irma over to clean on Saturday mornings. She came back with horror stories in broken English of filth involving David’s dog, Sasha, and Luke’s potbellied pig, Jerry Lee. Let’s just say that both David and Luke existed happily in conditions that would have driven a gay man to desperate measures.

One time they were trying to arrange their Salvation Army furniture in the best possible configuration for beer drinking and TV viewing. They asked my advice, since gay men are supposed to know about these things.

“Leslie, if this was your living room, what would you do?”

“Kill myself,” I said, and swished out the door.

Right at that time, Luke landed the pilot of
Beverly Hills 90210
and I landed the pilot of
Top of the Heap.
We were both ecstatic, as he had been laying concrete to pay the bills and I had a cowboy with a very expensive drug habit to support. Both shows were on the Fox network, which at the time was fairly new. We had high hopes.

Luke’s series made television history, while mine bit the dust after six episodes.

Luke Perry became famous almost overnight. It happened for him so fast it was mind-boggling. One day he was laying concrete and within a few months he was a household name. I walked into the grocery store and there was Luke Perry on the cover of
People, Vanity Fair,
and every
Teen Beat
magazine on the rack.

I looked out of my window once and there was a news van parked in front of Luke’s house—and there was Maria Shriver, long before she married Arnold What’s-His-Name. She was standing in the dirt yard, checking her makeup with a handheld mirror. I was so embarrassed. I tried to send Irma over to at least clean up after the pig, but she refused. I suppose Irma had her limits. Luke was oblivious. He and Maria Shriver paraded up and down the street chatting away, followed by a cameraman.

After the story aired, some really ambitious teenagers must have spotted a street sign, because suddenly we were besieged with young girls desperate to catch a glimpse of Dylan from
90210
! They would drive up and down the street at all hours of the day and night. I got fed up with the whole scene and started chasing the hormone-crazed teenagers away, shouting obscenities.

One time, the Fox network was hosting some sort of charity softball game and the publicity department asked all the actors on the Fox TV shows to participate. I certainly cannot play softball, because I throw like a girl, but I had an ulterior motive in participating. I had a little speech planned in case any roaming news unit stuck a camera in my face.

“Hey, everybody! I’m Leslie Jordan from Fox’s new show,
Top of the Heap.
I’d like to tell all those mean boys in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who tortured me during dodgeball to kiss my very rich TV-star ass!”

My big moment never came. I sat on the bench the whole time and was completely ignored. Luke and his new buddy Jason Priestly arrived in a brand-new white Mercedes, and the TV crews went ballistic. It was like those two were the Beatles. It took hordes of security guards to keep the screaming girls at bay. I was worried that someone would get hurt, as all the teenage girls had their perky little breasts mashed against the fence. At one point Luke and Jason lit cigars. Why they were smoking cigars during a softball game was a mystery to me—must be a straight-boy thing.

But one little girl who could not have been more than twelve yelled, “Hey, Luke! I’ll smoke your cigar!” And then she licked her lips! I wanted to march over there and wash her little garbage mouth out with soap.

Eventually, David moved out and Luke lived in his little house all alone. He spent a lot of time in his bedroom with the drapes closed. I was worried about him, but I soon realized he just needed a break from the insanity of his new life. He told me he really needed a place to call his own, and to please not give Irma a key. It was important to him. I asked how she was going to get in his house to clean up, because I knew Luke liked to sleep in on Saturdays, and he asked if I would come over and let her in. Well, my goodness gracious, that meant that I had to get out of bed on Saturday morning at an ungodly hour, traipse across the street, and let
my
maid in!

But since I was lovestruck and boy crazy, I did just that. Sometimes Irma would come waddling back over to my house, wake me up, and complain that Luke would not let her into his room to retrieve the dirty laundry. So I’d schlep back across the street in my pajamas and bang on Luke’s door. I suppose it made it all worthwhile to be able to see Luke Perry, the young heartthrob of America, tangled up in his bedsheets half asleep! I would stand and stare longingly as if he were a Botticelli painting.

Even though I was cavorting with murdering trash straight from hell myself, I was worried about the company Luke was keeping. I was like Gladys Kravitz on
Bewitched.
I would sit for hours and hours peeking out my curtains, observing the goings-on across the street. I saw Luke hopping in and out of limousines at all hours of the night with Alexis Arquette (youngest brother to Rosanna, Patricia, and David), who was then performing drag under the name Eva Destruction. I knew there was not a gay bone in Luke’s body, but who knows what the tabloids could cook up?

I worried myself sick. I thought it might end his career. Luke didn’t seem to care. When I broached the subject, he told me that Alexis was a good friend and he did not give a shit what people thought. In retrospect, I realize I was insanely jealous of their friendship. It is a minor miracle I did not borrow my cowboy’s crossbow when I was high and shoot that damn drag queen dead in her tracks.

And then one day Luke was gone. Gone! The house across the street sat completely deserted. He had moved out in the dead of night. I called his cell phone but it had been disconnected. I was beside myself. At the time, Luke’s assistant was Amanda Anka, daughter of the singer Paul Anka. When Paul wrote his smash-hit single “Having My Baby,” Amanda was the baby he was singing about! She is now married to Jason Bateman. Anyway, Amanda told me that Luke had bought a house out in Tarzana. I asked for his new phone number.

“Leslie, I promised him I wouldn’t give it to anyone.”

“Amanda, come on. He is my friend. I fed him Thanksgiving dinner two years in a row when he couldn’t fly home. I shared my maid with him! I’m not some obsessed fan.”

I was almost in tears. I felt so abandoned.

Amanda thought long and hard. “Listen, I’ll have him call you and give you the number. That way I won’t get in trouble.”

I never heard a word. Not one word. He became more and more famous. When people discovered that he’d lived across the street from me, they would press me for information. But I would clam up. “Oh, I barely knew him,” I’d say. “We only spoke once or twice.”

Almost fifteen years later, I was eating at my favorite watering hole. It’s a wonderful café on Beverly Boulevard called the Kings Road Café, where they bake their own bread and the waiters are the cutest boys on earth. Well, who should I see walking up the street but Mr. Luke Perry. I screamed and ran up to greet him.

He was no longer a boy. He was a grown man. And he had aged beautifully—his once-cute features were now ruggedly handsome. I felt almost shy and, suddenly, all seemed to be forgiven.

He joined me and we sat and talked. He had two kids, a boy and a girl. He showed me pictures and they were adorable. He and his wife had split up, and he’d bought a farm somewhere in the South. He had fourteen calves and when he got fourteen more he would be able to live off that farm. His kids loved it. He said he might even give up show business and move there.

I completely forgot to be mad at him. I cannot tell you how it lightened my spirit to see him doing so well. Luke told me that I looked exactly the same. He told me that I had not changed at all. He gave me a big sweet kiss on the cheek, said goodbye, and off he went. I could not help but notice he still had a cute ass.

As he was walking away I yelled, “Hey! I finally got to see you naked!” referring to his nude scene on the television show
Oz.

He turned around.

“Leslie, I had to take twelve steps butt-naked. I counted them. And do you know, on the second step I thought to myself, Leslie Jordan is going to love this!”

C
HRISTINE
C
AVANAUGH
is a brilliant actress who veered into voice work and enjoyed huge success. Christine has the look of a lost waif. She is all eyes, and she is real tiny, like me. She is blessed with this adorable, high-pitched voice that has become her claim to fame. She landed the voice of one of the main characters in the popular kids’ cartoon
Rugrats
and also was the voice of Babe, the pig, in the Oscar-nominated film
Babe
.

The last time I saw Christine was when we both worked on a project with George Clooney. George was having a lot of success on
ER
and was trying his hand at producing. He had found an amazing script called “Nowhere Man,” written by Ellen DeGeneres’s brother and his writing partner at the time. George thought that “Nowhere Man” would make an excellent pilot, and his plan was to get a group of actors together, march us into the office of the president of NBC, and do a staged reading.

We were all invited up to George Clooney’s big new house in one of the canyons above Studio City to rehearse. George shared the house with his beautiful French girlfriend at the time, Celine, and his pet pig, Max. After the rehearsal ended, Celine presented each of us with a blue Tiffany box. Inside was a sterling silver pen, beautifully engraved with the words
Thank you. Love, George.

George Clooney is a real champion. He was born in the South (Lexington, Kentucky), where good manners are of the utmost importance.

As we were all leaving with our lovely presents, Christine asked me if I’d like to get a bite to eat or go have a drink. I told her that I couldn’t. I had to return to the hospice where I volunteered, because one of my patients was about to make his “transition.”

Project Nightlight was founded by a force of nature named Cassandra Christensen. In the early 1980s she was walking through the Miami airport and bumped into Mother Teresa. She physically bumped into the tiny nun and her entourage of sisters.

“Mother Teresa,” Cassandra said, “I am a transition nurse who works with patients dying of cancer. You have been such an inspiration to me.”

Mother Teresa looked up at Cassandra. “Do you work with AIDS?”

At that time, men and women were dropping like flies in the AIDS unit at Los Angeles County Hospital, which was the only AIDS unit in the county then. Because of the stigma attached to the disease, people were dying all alone. AIDS was seen as shameful and terrifying. Friends, family, even lovers were walking away, unable to deal with death on such a horrific level. Project Nightlight had a very simple mission statement: No one should die alone.

The volunteers started out wandering the halls of the AIDS unit with boxes of Popsicles. I am not sure whose idea that was, but it was genius. One of the side effects of the early medicines used to combat the virus was a dry mouth—and besides, what better reminder of an easier, simpler time than sharing a Popsicle with someone?

We would poke our heads in the doorways of complete strangers and ask, “Want a banana Popsicle?”

The patients were bordering on sensory deprivation because of their lack of human contact. Even the nurses were afraid to come too close. We would just sit, slurp our Popsicles, and let them talk. And boy, did they talk. We also found masseurs who were willing to come in and do back rubs while we all giggled and ate Popsicles.

The results were magical. The resiliency of the human spirit is astounding.

I had been assigned to Linn House, a hospice where gay men went to die after they had been given a prognosis of six months or less. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was almost a daily occurrence.

I buried an entire phone directory.

That’s what I did back then. I marked names out of my phone book and attended memorial services. And I would go on horrendous benders involving vodka and crystal methamphetamine. But who wouldn’t? We were all too young to be burying our brothers and sisters. At least, that was the excuse I made back then. The excuses had changed over my many years of substance abuse, but that was the best one I’d come up with.

Now, in front of George Clooney’s beautiful home, Christine spoke up. “I want to go with you.”

“Trust me, Christine, you don’t. It’s not like the movies. It’s not a bunch of friends sitting by the bedside whispering, ‘Just let go…just let go.’ It’s horrible.”

I explained what we had learned in our training about hospice care and the dying. The body is like an old clock, winding down. There are awful, awful noises. There really is a death rattle. And in this particular case, the patient had asked to not be resuscitated and was basically drowning as his lungs filled with fluid. It was almost too horrible to imagine.

But Christine had her own agenda. What that was, I was not sure, but she looked feverish and flushed, and very determined.

So off we went. Linn House sat in an old Hollywood neighborhood, on a lovely tree-lined street. The hospice was housed in a brand-new building that blended in with its lush surroundings, and inside there was soft music, art, lots of color, and nicely furnished rooms. It was a safe place to end a life’s journey. It takes a certain kind of person to work with the dying, and Linn House had found the best of the best.

Christine and I were greeted with the news that Brian, my patient, was fighting hard. Brian was a fighter. He had the most difficult personality I had ever encountered. It seemed to be his mission in life to repel anyone who tried to love him. The volunteer coordinator at Project Nightlight had thought we’d make a good fit.

I had stuck with Brian through three other hospices he’d been booted out of for bad behavior. His crimes mostly involved mistreatment of the staff. He tended to think of the staff as his personal servants. He had also been kicked out of a few places for sexual misconduct. I did not want to know the particulars of those misdemeanors.

The one good thing that came out of the AIDS epidemic was that gay men began to seek new spiritual paths. So much of what we dealt with as kids seemed bogus when compared to what we faced now. We sought new paths to God.

Brian had embraced Hindu teachings. We would take little day trips to see his guru when she was in town. This proved to be a little difficult, as Brian was incontinent and wheelchair bound. But we made do with diapers and threw his wheelchair in the back seat of my beat-up VW Rabbit convertible.

Guru Ma Jaya is a magnificent creature who is half Mother Teresa and half Bette Midler. In the 1970s she was a Jewish housewife in Brooklyn when she had a spiritual awakening. She had a vision of Christ in which He told her, “Teach all ways, for all ways are my ways.”

I loved Guru Ma Jaya. She was so seductive. She was love incarnate. And boy, did she know how to make an entrance! No wonder the gay boys loved her. There was music, banging of drums, dancing and singing disciples, throwing of flower petals, and a lot of kissing and swirling about until everything reached a crescendo. Then Guru Ma Jaya would come out, dressed to the nines. Her washboard abs peeked out from the midriff of her brightly colored gold-trimmed sari, she wore chic mule slippers and dangling gold earrings, and her black hair was cut short, in punk spikes. The red dot on her tanned forehead made her a gorgeous creature not of this world.

Guru Ma Jaya would plant herself on the dais, arrange her robes, and begin to talk. This was not what I was used to. There was no talk of hellfire and damnation. No hollering about lost sinners. No feverish altar call offering salvation from the Lake of Fire. Guru Ma Jaya offered a simple message of love. She stressed how the key to happiness on this plane of existence was to be of loving service to others. It was so personally cathartic.

When the AIDS epidemic hit, I had jumped into the trenches. We all did. Never let it be said that gays and lesbians do not take care of our own. And looking back on those days, I do not remember the sadness, I remember the love. Even though I was deep into my own disease of alcoholism, I was somewhat happy to be of loving service to others.

Brian was going to make his transition, and I had promised him that I would be there. I slowly led Christine down the hushed hallway to Brian’s room. It was worse than I expected. Even though the nurses had lit candles around Brian’s altar to Guru Ma Jaya and there was a tape of Hindu chants softly playing, he was in a tortured state. The skin of his face was stretched tight in a death mask. A horrible rattle was coming from his open mouth, and he would try repeatedly to sit forward so he could breathe. Up and down, like some macabre Halloween display. He was completely incoherent. He had been in a coma-like state for days.

I felt so helpless. Our hospice training had taught us that at this stage the only thing to do was make the patient as comfortable as possible. I set about arranging pillows under his neck to try and see if there was a position where he could breathe better.

I was startled from my busywork to see Christine standing at the foot of the bed. There were tears streaming down her face, and her mouth was open in a silent scream. I thought bringing her had been a huge mistake.

Then she spoke. “Crawl in bed with him and hold him.”

“Christine, Brian was not a hugger. Trust me. Most of his waking energy was spent keeping people at bay. He kept everyone at arm’s length.”

“That is all the more reason to do it,” she argued. “Crawl in bed with him and hold him. It’s human nature to want to be held. If you don’t do it, I will.”

That seemed terribly inappropriate. I hesitated.

“My God,” she said, “doesn’t he have family? He’s dying all alone.”

I explained that there was a brother but they were estranged.

“You have to get in bed with him.”

So I did. It was very awkward at first. I tried cradling him like a baby. I rubbed his arms and even touched his face. He seemed to relax a little. The death rattle almost stopped completely.

“Talk to him. Tell him it’s okay to go. You have to give him permission.”

How Christine knew all of this, I will never know. A lot of what she was saying had been brought up in our training. I began to talk softly in his ear. I tried to remember as much as I could about the teachings of Guru Ma Jaya. I tried humming along with the hypnotic Hindu chants.

“Om Namah Shivaya…. Om Namah Shivaya…. Om Namah Shivaya….”

But mainly, I just cooed. It was like talking to a baby. I’m not sure how long this went on, but when I looked up, Christine was gone.

And so was Brian.

Or so I thought.

Another horrible rattle came from his throat and I knew that I could not take another minute in that room. Christine was waiting outside. I walked past her, down the hall, and out into the balmy Hollywood night. It’s odd what you remember about times like this. Something about being close to death gives a heightened sense of the ordinary; I remember palm trees swaying in the moonlight and the exotic smell of the night-blooming jasmine. Christine followed but did not say a word.

We walked up to Santa Monica Boulevard to a bar I used to frequent. It was my home away from home. Hunter’s was a real dive, what is known as a hustler bar. The patrons of Hunter’s were primarily young, rough boys, thirty days out of Soledad prison. Most of them had chipped teeth, tattoos, dirty fingernails—and big monkeys on their backs. They were willing to do anything, and I do mean anything, for forty dollars.

Right up my alley. No high-priced hookers for this old whoremonger. I sat in Hunter’s regularly for years, perched on a bar stool with a cocktail in one hand and my ATM card in the other.

My accountant once remarked, “You can always tell when Mr. Jordan is working—there’s not a boy on the boulevard that does not have on brand-new tennis shoes.”

Sometimes, when alcohol did not do the trick, I had to call the witch doctor. I would use the excuse when one of my patients died to go on a horrendous speed run. It was my dirty little secret. I was doing it years and years before it became popular. I had been using speed since all the way back in my college days. Back then it was in diet pill form. Black beauties, white crosses, speckled birds—“trucker speed,” we called it. Rumor had it that a trucker with a handful of black beauties could drive from California to the tip of Maine in ten minutes.

Speed revs most people up and gives them a lot of energy and spunk. It makes them real talkative and lively. It works the opposite on me. It is the same principle as giving hyperactive children uppers. My whole body used to give a huge sigh of relief when I ingested amphetamines.

This was my routine, which I saw as a break from life. After barricading myself in my bedroom for six days (peeing in a jar because the speed made me too paranoid to go down the hall to the bathroom), mainly cleaning and watching tons of porno, I would venture out in the daylight to hire a hustler. It was never about sex. I seldom had sex. I would hire one of those unfortunate boys simply to come home and sit with me until I could fall asleep. I had become so isolated in my disease that I just needed human contact. And for some reason, those boys were beautiful to me. They were my damaged lower companions. Once I was sound asleep, they would rob me. It happened time after time after time. Sometimes I would forget and bring the same one back to rob me again!

But I had realized that the speed was going to kill me. Or make my teeth fall out, which was even worse. So I gave it up. I gave up speed cold turkey. It was pure hell. And then I began to drink with a vengeance.