But Enough About Me (25 page)

After my chat with Loretta I decided it was time to change course in my career. Freed from
Good Morning America
and MTV2 and reaching Old Veteran status at
Rolling Stone,
I vowed to be more judicious in my choice of interview subjects. It was time to stop grabbing at every assignment. Instead, I would just take on people with whom I could really communicate, or ones I truly admired. I was getting weary of being that mechanical monkey, clapping my cymbals together and trying to ingratiate myself.

“That's why I liked Loretta so much,” I said to my mother one night as we dried dishes in her kitchen. I had traveled to their house from New York for “Steak 'n'
60 Minutes
Sunday.” “Loretta's house reminded me of Aunt Eunice's house, a little bit. I identified with her, in a small way.”

“Well, I think that's great,” said my mother. “Good for you. You don't need to talk to every sitcom star that comes down the road. Enough, already.”

“Get this,” I said. “Loretta used to eat fried squirrel.”

My mother put a platter on the counter. “Well, what the hell do you think I used to eat? Dad would take a shotgun out into the woods.”

I stared at her. I spent days feverishly preparing for some of these interviews, poring over celebrity research, and the irony was that I had a rich
trove of stories right in front of me. But who thinks to interview their own mother? As a self-fixated teen, I never imagined that she had an actual personal history. To my young eyes, she was Source of Cash Obsessed with De-Cluttering. After all of my preparation, I could recite Loretta Lynn's background from birth onward, but there were glaring gaps in my own family lore. Could I write a profile of my mother? I wasn't sure. Shamefully, I realized that I hadn't even been curious enough to ask her the celebrity questions that I used in case of emergency.

I decided to pull out one of my standbys for women's magazines. “Hey, Ma,” I said. “What makes you sentimental?” I was honestly curious. Overly emotional she was not. She was many things—funny, bright (she drove us kids to the library every week and made us pick out three books each, fostering a lifelong love of reading)—but my father was the hugger. She was the no-nonsense parent who briskly marshaled things along. Although I noticed that sometimes a glass of Pinot Noir could produce a little fissure in that coolly capable veneer.

I poured her some wine and sat down at the kitchen table, pushing the glass toward her. “I can't remember the last time I saw you cry,” I said. This was bold territory. Normally I didn't venture into the self-reflective with her, but now that I lived a whole hour and a half away in New York, I felt that we could chat as two adults.

“Well, that's how much you know,” she said. “I cried last week. Thinking about Dad.” Her favorite picture of our grandfather hung in our living room: Hershal Ray Corners, his skinny butt perched on an overturned bucket as he fished in a muddy stream near their hometown of Citronelle, Alabama. Small and wiry and universally respected, Hershel was the office manager of the Gulf gas station in town. He taught my mother to drive when she was thirteen and determined not to show she was terrified as the car barreled down the town's dirt back roads.

She laughed and took a sip of wine. “Dad's word was the law,” she said. “He was small but he had an incredible presence, so nobody went against him, including Mama. But he had a soft spot that he only showed occasion
ally.” She smiled, preoccupied. I thought maybe I should prompt her, like I did with famous people.

“Maybe you two are alike, in that way,” I offered.

“Maybe we are,” she said. “I was never afraid of him, but what he said went. I remember when I was a high school freshman, I went to the skating rink. When Dad went to pick me up, I had already left to go to the drive-in with an older boy. He was sixteen. You can imagine the horror I felt at the drive-in when I saw Dad's car cruising slowly between the aisles, with just his parking lights on.” She laughed. “It was like a shark. We immediately left. When I got home, Dad was furious and I was grounded for a month. But within two days he relented. You know, they looked the other way because I was the baby.”

She hesitated again. My years of indifference had probably made her mindful of talking too much. Oh, the shame. “Hershal loved to fish, didn't he?” I asked.

“Oh my God,” she said. “We used to get up at three in the morning so we could get there when the fish were biting early. My brother Bill told me once that they were fishing on the Tom Bigbee River, and it was getting dark, when they got into a huge mess of fish, and they were pulling them in one after another. Finally Bill said, ‘Come on, Dad, we have to go.' And Dad was saying, ‘Just one more. Just one more.' And he was actually holding on to an overhanging branch so that Bill couldn't pull away in the boat.” We both laughed.

“I remember that you used to go deep-sea fishing on the Gulf,” I said.

“That was kind of an unspoken test in our family, that when you went fishing on the Gulf, you did not get seasick,” she said. “It was a matter of pride, I guess. The only time I ever got seasick was when your father and I were first married, we went with Dad way out on the Gulf, and a squall came up, and that boat was rocking and rolling.” Unconsciously, her southern accent was thickening. “Your father and I went below with everyone else. We were literally green. I looked through the porthole, just to see who might still be fishing. And there was Dad, with his feet braced against the
railing, his line still in the water, and in the other hand he was clutching onto this greasy fried egg sandwich.” She laughed. “He was tough.”

“So what were you crying about last week?” I asked. “Were you just missing him in general?”

She sighed. “Oh. Well, I was thinking about when he died. It just comes into my head sometimes. Mother had called me home, because Dad was in the hospital and was dying of lung cancer that had metastasized to his brain. I left you two older girls at home and I took Heather, who was, I guess, five, to Citronelle with me. I think we got there on a Thursday. The hospital was very small, it was in Chatom, Alabama, where I was born. Everybody knew everybody, all the doctors and nurses.”

She sat quietly for a moment. “Dad was unconscious, we thought,” she said. “We didn't know if he could understand us, we didn't know if he could hear us or not. But I decided to talk to him, telling him what was going on, just in case he could understand.” She smiled. “Since he was so interested in you grandchildren, I told him about Heather's latest adventure at the pediatrician at home. I had taken her there and we were a little early, and the waiting room was deserted except for a very old horse-faced woman with a cane, who kept it squarely between her legs. Heather sat in the chair next to me and I remember I picked up a magazine and got so involved in an article—I think it was about gardening, or something—that I really didn't notice what was going on. When I looked up, Heather was not sitting in the chair any longer but had somehow finagled the cane away from the lady and was doing a soft-shoe dance. Jumping around, like some sort of vaudeville act.”

My mother threw back her head and laughed. “She was so happy. And the old horse-faced lady was silently laughing her head off. Never made a sound, with her hand up to her mouth covering her teeth! I thought that was one of the funniest things I had ever seen in my life.”

She distractedly wiped at a tear that slipped out when she laughed. “And when I told this story to Dad, he actually smiled. His eyes were shut, but I
knew he could understand. That he was there. So that redoubled my efforts to talk to him and tell him everything that was happening.”

I waited, motionless. “And then the next day,” she went on, “for the first time since he was in the hospital, Mama didn't go to visit him, and she kept Heather at home with her. It was raining, and I couldn't get their car to start, for some reason.” She fluttered her hand. “It was an old Chevrolet. After I finally got it started, your aunt Juanita and I drove up to the hospital. So I was telling Dad about my day, things that Mama and Heather and I had been doing—what we had for dinner, and that Mama had let Heather fix cinnamon toast for breakfast. I just felt like I had to keep talking, because I knew that he could understand, that he was in there. And I told him that it was raining that morning, and for some reason, I couldn't get the car to start.”

She paused. “And without opening his eyes, he said, ‘Sometimes the carburetor gets wet.' That's all he said.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Then, later on that night, he died,” she said. “That was the last thing he said.”

I jumped up to get her a tissue, and one for myself. “Oh, Mom,” I said, as we honked our noses. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

“I don't mind,” she said, dabbing her eyes. Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“I'm glad you asked,” she said.

After our talk in the kitchen, my mother introduced yet another family tradition to our already long list. At the close of our holiday dinners, she had me ask one of my questions (“What skill do you secretly wish you had?” was a recent one), and then each family member would give their answer. How else would I have known that Rob harbored a secret dream to play the banjo?

If your artist has a sizable gay following, sign right up. First of all, what's not to like about Cher, or Madonna, or Kylie Minogue, or Elton John? That said, even if you're not an admirer, anyone who carries on the old-fashioned idea of being an “entertainer,” the sort of person who nearly drops dead onstage from trying to hold your attention with singing, wisecracks, half-naked backup dancers, and seventeen costume changes, is at least worthy of respect.

At
Rolling Stone,
I quickly became the magazine's rainbow connection. The hipper writers weren't at all interested in spending an afternoon with the Pet Shop Boys or Sandra Bernhard, but I was. Give me a gay icon any day of the week over some shambling hipster who mumbles about his band's integrity. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part, they are interview gold. Being dull is unthinkable, particularly for veteran performers like Cher, who will reliably turn it on, even if she's giving her fifth “exclusive” of the day.

She won't get irritated if you're the two hundredth person to ask about the wig room that traveled with her from city to city on her endless farewell tour. She knows exactly what you're after, and she delivers. Her theory as to why she is beloved by gays? “Because I'm cool.” Once I asked her what the most decadent night of her life was. “I would say from 1974 to 1981,” she
said. Yes! Nothing was off-limits—or, on the rare occasions that it was, she would tell you to go to hell in a wonderfully quotable way. I freely asked her about the oft-repeated rumor that after she met Gregg Allman, they went to bed for fourteen hours. (No: She doesn't sleep with people on a first date.)

Your garden variety gay icon simply goes that extra mile, whether it's trashing their fellow artists (thank you, Elton John!), being entertainingly moody or unstable, or discussing their downward spirals in vivid, horrific detail. Stevie Nicks—saluted every year in a New York drag extravaganza called “Night of a Thousand Stevies”—likes to tell the account of her visit to a doctor who informed her that she had snorted so much coke in her lifetime that if she did it just once more, the tiny piece of tissue that remained in her nose would whoosh straight up to her brain and kill her on the spot. You can pack up your tape recorder and walk out the door after a gem like that.

Boy George dependably did all of the above when I stopped by his New York hotel room to chat about his autobiography. He flung open the door wearing a pair of red Chinese pajamas and a billowing robe. “Would you mind talking to me in the bathroom?” he asked. “I'm putting on my makeup.” Instant setting! Scattered around the counter were dozens of lipsticks, glittery eye shadows in every possible tint, and pencils. I sat obligingly on the toilet next to him and watched as George carefully shaded his eyes with five different colors, dispensing some useful tips along the way (remember: Pat on, rather than rub, your under-eye concealer).

As he applied lipliner, he told me about his first experience with heroin (the next day, he alternately slept and threw up, sweating and crying), talked about shunning the chance to talk to Keith Richards while on a vacation, saying he looked like a ravaged baboon, and claimed that Gavin Rossdale of Bush was the boyfriend of his drag-queen pal Marilyn in the eighties. Then his mood abruptly shifted, he tired of me, and I was ushered out of his hotel room. “Thank you very much for going,” he said, laughing, as the door cruelly banged shut.

Even though most of these subjects can be trusted to deliver, it is always necessary to take precautions. Before an interview, I consult any gay friends who might be serious fans and harvest their spectacularly detailed questions. Then, on the slim chance that my subject is having a dark day and is unable to entertain, I can loosen them up. “Before we begin,” I will typically say, “I have a few insanely obscure questions from your more obsessive gay fans.” Inevitably, they will perk up at questions that they haven't been asked in years, if ever. When Cher's energy flagged ( just for a moment, mind you), I announced that it was Obsessive Gay Fan Time and pulled out a query about her 1978 television special (the one that culminated in a spectacular song medley performed by her, Dolly Parton, and the Tubes), followed by a question about a song from her one-album rock band Black Rose called “Julie” (sample lyric: “Julie, oh, Julie, you're a liar, bitch”). She revived. We moved on.

Before a chat with Christina Aguilera, I conferred with a friend who once played Aguilera's self-affirmation tune “Beautiful” on repeat for an entire weekend.

“While she was on the
Mickey Mouse Club
I think she starred on this one series on the show called
Emerald Cove,
” he said. “It was a soap opera, ask her about some of the plotlines, that'll get her going.” He paused. “I notice her eyebrows are a little thicker lately, ask her what's up with that. Oh! And if you listen to that track “Singin' My Song,” there's this vocal effect that she does near the end, it sounds like a birdcall, what is it? And at the end of the song you hear her talking with someone named Wassim, who is that?”

I furiously wrote.

“She lived in Japan when she was four, I need to know what part of Japan. And why.”

As it turned out, Aguilera needed no contingency plan. She was in a perfectly fine mood, and livened up on her own accord when I asked her, randomly, when the last time was that she really got angry. To my giddy delight, she declared a jihad against some of my fellow journalists, first denouncing a duplicitous writer. (“He was a prick, everything was just blatant lies, just
personal bashing, and if he felt that way he should have just told me to my face, you put your whole heart and words into the hands of this person, he should really be fired and taken out of the whole job of being a journalist.”) Then she ripped into another writer who was pleasant to her face and then wrote an article that was “catty, stupid, and horrible, don't do me like that, it's not cool, I definitely put a thing up on my Web site and I had everybody call her; seriously she had to change her number after a while.”

And here's the thing: I sided with Christina. I never understood why there was so much animosity toward her. Writers should have been worshipping her. Were we not drowning in a sea of boring, prefab celebrities? Give me a gal who boldly speaks her mind, who isn't afraid of a fight, who wears a giant Afro wig one day and assless chaps the next. Christina Aguilera is the new Cher, if you think about it. Let us be glad. I never found her to be “difficult,” but then, the difficult ones never are. It's the poisonous “America's Sweethearts” that you should avoid.

The day that my profile came out, Aguilera sent me a huge bouquet of flowers, which never, ever happens. “Thank you for giving me one of the most honest interviews I've ever had. It was a pleasure. Love, Christina A.”