My Trip Down the Pink Carpet (12 page)

Christine and I marched into Hunter’s and took a seat at the bar, and without a word I began to drink. The last thing I remember is the bartender telling Christine that if she ordered drinks in her “Babe the Pig” voice, drinks were on the house.

I woke up the next morning sick as a dog and in a panic. I could not find the silver Tiffany pen George Clooney had given me. I called Christine.

“I think you gave it to the Black Angel.”

Apparently, as Christine and I sat at the bar, a black man came in and lurked behind us. Christine said he was dressed like a homeless person, with his pajamas sticking out. He stood behind us forever. Finally, I turned around and rudely asked him what he wanted.

“I’ve come from the Linn House,” he said. “I thought y’all might want to know that Brian passed away right after y’all left. I’m in the room next to him. The nurses let me come over here to give y’all the news.”

I became convinced he was an angel because I did not remember him residing in the room next to Brian, and no one from the hospice knew where we were. Had he followed us? Christine was almost certain I gave him my George Clooney pen as a token of my appreciation for bringing us the news. I was very distraught at this news. But it did make sense. I was a very giving drunk. I was always giving things away, mostly my money.

I ran over to Linn House. Brian’s room was already stripped, awaiting another patient. So was the room next to Brian’s. I asked the nurse about the Black Angel.

“Honey, that ain’t no angel. Trust me. That was the Devil. We caught him hitting the crack pipe, right here in the Linn House! We tossed his butt out late last night.”

Well, shit.

Many months later, I was perched on my bar stool at Hunter’s and one of the bartenders walked over.

“I never really got a chance to thank you for the gift you gave me that night. I will always treasure that pen. I really will.”

I sat there openmouthed. So I hadn’t given my George Clooney pen to the Black Angel after all! Christine and I had run out of money, and I had used it as collateral to drink on. By the end of the evening, I had given the pen to the bartender for his kindness.

That was the last time I saw Christine. I miss her a lot. I think about her often, and hope she’s well. I hope she has fond memories of our night with George Clooney, Brian, and the Black Angel. And most of all, I hope she treasures her pen.

S
HORTLY AFTER
yet another failed sitcom went off the air after only six torturous episodes, I was cast in a play that was being directed by my friend Renée Taylor. It was called
Wall of Water
and it starred a bunch of soap opera celebrities, and me. On opening night, Renée presented me with a lovely live gardenia bush. I was so touched. It already had a perfect bloom that gave off a scent that took me right back to the South of my childhood.

At the time, I was battling a teeny-tiny crystal methamphetamine addiction. I would go for days and days, unable to sleep. I was living in a craftsman-style bungalow in a rather seedy part of Hollywood. I had rented it because it was adorable and it had a banana tree in the front yard. But it was located two blocks south of Sunset Boulevard, where the female prostitutes hung out, and two blocks north of Santa Monica Boulevard, where the male prostitutes hung out. I had a front-porch swing where I could sit and observe everything. There was a steady stream of undesirables parading up and down my street every night. They were all heading either to the boulevards where they plied their trade or toward the crack houses that lay just blocks away from my cozy little home.

I sat on my porch thinking that I was above all that riffraff because I would
never
stoop to smoking crack. That was way too “ghetto” for me. I was too busy snorting crystal meth to calm my frayed nerves and having psychotic breakdowns. Yes, ma’am, slowly going bananas.

Since I never slept, I had to figure out all kinds of delightful projects to while away the time and keep me occupied. One night, at about 4 a.m., I decided to plant the gardenia bush that Renée Taylor had given me. As I dug in the dirt, I looked up and, to my surprise, I saw a cowboy strutting up the street. A real cowboy, with a belt buckle you could serve a turkey on, dirt-crusted boots, and an honest-to-goodness ten-gallon hat. He certainly wasn’t coming from Oilcan Harry’s—a gay cowboy bar over the hill in the San Fernando Valley where the boys look like cowboys, but when they open their mouths, fifty yards of purple chiffon flies out. No, ma’am. This was the real thing.

“Hey, man, you got a cigarette? I’m a little down on my luck.”

Aren’t they all?

He pulled off his hat, wiped his forehead—and I almost fainted. He was a redhead! I couldn’t even speak. He was freckle-faced and had blue eyes that bored a hole through me. I put down my gardening tools, ran in the house without a word, and stole a cigarette out of the pack that Irma kept hidden in the kitchen drawer. She was wily like a fox, but I was always one step ahead of her.

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

My God, he sounded just like Elvis. I have always harbored a secret desire to have a boyfriend who looks and sounds like Elvis Presley. I almost had one once. His name was Don and he looked just like a young Elvis, at about the time he joined the military. But Don was from Cape Cod and quacked like a duck. This cowboy didn’t look like Elvis but he sure sounded like him. I couldn’t stop staring.

“You must be parched with all this traipsing around Hollywood at night. Would you like to come in for a glass of sweet iced tea?” I asked sweetly.

“You don’t got no crystal meth, do ya?” he politely replied.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do. Please, come this way.”

And being a properly raised Southern hostess, I dusted the dirt off my knees, left my gardenia bush half-planted, and coyly led the way. He walked into my house and into my life and did not leave for four years. That gardenia bush sat in the yard unplanted until it turned brown and ugly—as did my life.

The cowboy was like a bad rash. I could not get rid of him—but Lord knows I didn’t want to. I lived in desperate fear that he was going to leave me. He was a voracious drug user, had a horrible temper, and rarely even brushed his teeth or took a shower. He was a bigot, too, and even had a swastika tattooed on his hand! When I asked him what that was all about, he charmed me with a horrible story about his time in prison. After almost being raped by nine black men, he had gone to the only organization within the prison system that would help a good-looking white boy: the Aryan Brotherhood! The swastika was part of his initiation. It had been tattooed into his skin with ink from a pen, heat from a match, and an old rusty guitar string. He said he felt bad about it, but it saved his life while he was behind bars.

I could not bear to look at that tattoo. I told him when I could afford it I would pay to have it removed. But until then, I insisted he wear a Band-Aid. And off we’d go to industry parties, where I would make small talk with important Jewish people in the entertainment world standing beside my “boyfriend” with a hidden swastika tattoo.

It was a perilous existence, to say the least.

He was so dumb, he thought Farm Aid, Willie Nelson’s yearly concert to help impoverished farmers, was in fact Willie Nelson’s contribution to the fight against AIDS.

“You don’t think about farmers getting AIDS, but they do. And when they get it, Willie’s there for ’em. I got a lot of respect for him.”

All I could say after that amazingly stupid observation was, “Please don’t ever tell anybody what you just told me.”

I have no idea why I am so attracted to the underbelly of life. I have always had an insatiable curiosity for anything that smacks of the tawdry. Perhaps it was because he was so good-looking and masculine. Or it could have been what was hiding in those tight Wrangler jeans. It was truly the eighth wonder of the world.

He was a big, strapping hunk of Southern manhood and I could not keep my eyes off him. Even the way he moved around the house fascinated me. It was terrifying, the hold he had over me. I would have done anything for him. What if we ended up on a cross-country crime spree? I was raised better than that!

Even with his mean streak and bullying ways, he could be as sweet and cuddly as a kitten when he wanted something, which was most of the time. Once he told me a very touching story. His daddy was a trucker who left the family of three boys when they were all little, but showed up again when they were in their early teens. He would take each boy on a long haul across the country during the summer. Since money was tight, instead of checking into a motel, they slept in the small bunk behind the driver’s seat.

“Them times were the best times of my life,” the cowboy said. “I’d curl up like a little ball right next to my daddy’s big ol’ beer belly. That’s the only time I have felt safe in my whole miserable life.”

At that moment I made up my mind that I would do anything within my power to give this boy a safe home. I would give him everything that life had denied him up to that point.

And then he asked me to buy him a dirt bike.

I often felt that there was not a homosexual bone in his body—he’d just learned to do whatever he needed to do to continue his drug habit. Deep down I knew that if I didn’t make so much money working on those god-awful television shows to keep us high and buy him whatever he wanted, he wouldn’t stay.

One time I bought him an Italian motorcycle that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. When the cowboy woke up it was parked in the driveway.

I handed him the keys. “Here. Now promise me you’ll never leave me.”

My accountant called and said, “A Ducati? Are you crazy?”

My life became a constant barter. Forget sex or even a little affection—I had to haggle just to keep him home and out of trouble. It was a major negotiation to make it through twenty-four hours without any drama. My self-esteem spiraled down to a little puddle of nothing. Addiction is not just about alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, or whatever someone’s particular vice is. We get addicted to people as well. I have never met an alcoholic or a junkie who did not also have issues of codependency. We give our power to other people. We let our happiness become dependent upon another person.

And that is hell on earth.

I have witnessed first hand the rage that crystal meth can induce. My four-year “relationship” was emotionally and physically abusive. And I was doing a lot of the abusing. I am four foot eleven and a wall of white blubbering flesh, but I learned to take care of myself. I am too much of a sissy to throw a punch, but I could certainly bitch-slap. And I learned to grab something like a kitchen chair or a beer bottle to hit back with when I got smacked.

Like a battered wife, I believed I was always the one at fault. I knew he had been up for days on speed. I knew his blood sugar was all messed up! So why did I push him to the point that he hit me? Why couldn’t I control my temper?

Again and again the cops were called. It got so bad that Irma started doing her job with her pocketbook over her shoulder. She would vacuum, holding her purse. She’d be down on all fours, cleaning the toilet with her bag tucked under her arm. I told her it was okay to put it down, but she just pretended she didn’t understand me. I never could figure out if she thought the cowboy might rob her or if she thought she might need to make a quick getaway.

That woman must have loved me more than my own mother did.

I walked into the house on New Year’s Day and found him watching football. There was a case of beer in the fridge and he was drunk. I was livid. I had just spent an enormous amount of money sending him to rehab. I stomped into the kitchen and began banging pots and pans around to let him know of my dissatisfaction. He ambled in and stood watching me pitch my little fit.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

At that point he leaned on the kitchen counter, tried to balance himself with his elbow, and a beautiful two-hundred-dollar ceramic fish plate crashed to the floor.

“See!” I screamed.
“See how you are!”

I told him that gay men love their fish plates as much as straight men love their tools.

He snapped to attention. “Don’t you dare touch my tools!”

Then he staggered back in to watch the game.

I decided right then and there I was going to fix his boat. I waited until he was almost asleep and tiptoed out into the garage. I stood for a long time staring at the big rolling tool chest I had bought him from Sears. He was so proud of it. He would spend hours and hours arranging and rearranging the tools. That tool chest was off-limits! So I rolled it out by the swimming pool and slowly and methodically began to toss all his precious tools into the pool. Hell hath no fury like a little homo scorned.

I heard him come tearing out through the glass doors, but I didn’t look at him.

“Look at this wrench, straight boy! Wheee!”
Plunk.
Right in the deep end.

“Leslie, I love you, but I will take…you…out.”

Something about the tone of his voice made me turn around. He was swaying drunkenly, tears streaming down his face, one eye shut, and he was staring at me through the crosshairs of a crossbow.

I stared death right in the face and my first thought was,
Gee, he’s crying. That is so sweet! He must really love me.
Was I a candidate for the rubber room or what?

We had rented a cabin up at Big Bear Lake that summer. When he got bored with his dirt bike he asked me to buy him a gun. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “You’ll get high and shoot me.”

Well, he caterwauled and carried on until he wore me down and I finally agreed to let him at least have a crossbow. I didn’t really pay any attention to what it looked like. I just made him promise that he would not kill animals. He promised to use it only for target practice.

I would rather stare down the barrel of a gun than at that contraption. It was scary beyond belief. He had it cocked and ready to do harm. I screamed like a woman, and then he fired.

I ducked, but not quite in time. It caught the fleshy part of my arm. The cowboy took off running, and within seven minutes the place was swarming with cops. To this day, I do not know who called the police. But within minutes the cops had the cowboy on the ground in the front yard with their boots planted firmly on his neck. I got hysterical and cried that it was all a big mistake.

The police were very familiar with our “situation.” They were appalled, and told me that brandishing a crossbow was a huge violation of his parole. And so they carted my beautiful, lost, redheaded cowboy back to prison.

He was eventually extradited back to Texas.

Many years later, my phone rang and I was informed by a recording that an inmate at a Texas penal institution was on the line. Would I accept the charges?

My heart started beating so hard I thought it would jump out of my chest. Against every cell in my body screaming to just hang up the phone, I accepted the call.

“Baby?”

Damn him! He still sounded just like Elvis.

“What do you want?”

“Hey, check this out, if you can come up with five grand, I got me a lawyer willing to reopen my case. I could get out! I could come back and live with you again in California. And I promise I’ll be good this time. I promise, baby.”

I could not believe what I was feeling. He still had a hold over me after all these years. I sat there with my eyes shut for a long time. I took a deep breath, and quickly cataloged all the things I had learned in recovery about self-love. I started talking slowly and deliberately because I was afraid I would run out of courage.