Full Service (26 page)

A
NOTHER FASCINATING MAN
that I met during the fifties was that wonderful British actor, Charles Laughton. I think we were introduced at a party where I was working, and I soon began tricking him regularly, as well as arranging for him to see other guys. I also introduced him to my old pal Tyrone Power. Charles became very enamored with Ty and saw him often. Charles was married to the actress Elsa Lanchester who, in addition to many other roles, had played the bride in the campy horror film,
The Bride of Frankenstein,
in 1935. They had already been married for many years when I met him. I doubt the relationship could ever have been categorized as conventional. Charles, or Chuck as some people called him (much to his dislike), was openly gay. Elsa once told me that although the marriage began with the two of them having sex now and again, things changed as the years rolled by. Gradually, those encounters became more infrequent, so much so that eventually Charles’s sex life was exclusively gay. Yet she never held that against him. I always admired Elsa for her unstinting loyalty toward him. In fact, it was far more than loyalty. I do believe that Elsa loved Charles deeply. She stood by him for more than thirty-three years, from the time of their marriage in 1929 right up until Charles’s death in 1962. She went beyond the call of duty, tolerating his double life without ever questioning it. She was a remarkable lady. She knew full well that I was tricking her husband and arranging liaisons with other young men for him, but whenever she saw me she was always courteous and friendly. She never bore any animosity or ill feeling toward me or anyone else who was having a relationship with Charles. She unflinchingly accepted her husband’s infidelities and double standards. You don’t see that very often in either a wife or a husband.

Perhaps because of Charles’s sexual rejection of her, Elsa had developed a rather odd but quaint predilection. She had a passion for young gay men. She would seduce them by whatever means possible and then call upon her substantial talents to coerce them into having sex with her. The younger ones, who were often more experimental than their older counterparts, were the easiest to win over, and still willing to dabble in heterosexual behavior. She once told me that she loved nothing better than to “conquer” men who had never had sex with a woman before. Even though she knew it was a futile exercise she fantasized about changing them.

Charles was one of the most talented actors of his time. He appeared in his first film,
The Tonic,
opposite Elsa, in England in 1928. He went on to star in many movies including
The Sign of the Cross, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Private Life of Henry VIII, Rembrandt, The Canterville Ghost, Witness for the Prosecution,
and classics like
Hobson’s Choice, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
and
Young Bess
. He won an Oscar in 1934 for his performance in
The Private Life of Henry VIII
. Charles emigrated from England and became an American citizen in 1950. But there was one prickly thing that I always had to be very careful about in front of him. I was never permitted to mention the name of my good friend Laurence Olivier. There was no love lost between those two talented, strong-willed natives from the Sceptered Isle. It wasn’t only professional competition and creative jealousy but also a very deeply rooted personal antagonism stemming from heaven knows where. Larry would never mention Charles, even when others in his company talked about him. Charles, on the other hand, would fly into a rage or withdraw into a deep, dark mood and spout unending cynical remarks about Larry when he heard others talking about him. This clash of personalities would come to a furious peak when the two actors worked together in the 1960 production of
Spartacus
. That film has gone down in history as one of the finest and most intelligent of the great Hollywood epics about ancient Rome. It was written by the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and directed by the much-lauded Stanley Kubrick.

In their scenes together Charles and Larry often locked horns. They constantly tried to upstage and out-act one another. At many cocktail parties and dinners during and after filming, the subject of their contest of wills would often be brought up. When Larry was present at these gatherings he would merely shrug, wave his hand in disgust, and dismiss the whole affair as though it did not warrant discussion. Charles, on the other hand, would seize upon the opportunity to belittle Larry whenever he could. If someone brought up the subject around a dinner table he would visibly change expressions, his color would take on a distinctly purple hue, his eyes would glaze over, and he would lean back, take a sip of wine, and hiss like a viper.

Apparently their clashes on the set were extremely volatile, with neither giving in to the other. I heard that Kubrick and producer-actor Kirk Douglas often had to call for a five-minute break in filming as they tried to calm them down.

When it came to sex Charles had some decidedly odd habits. They may seem crude and disgusting but, to me, the dividing line between what many regarded as normal and abnormal had long since disappeared. Who can understand what turns some people on and some off? I had come to realize that I had no right to judge the tastes and preferences of others, no matter how excessive, unusual, or unappetizing they may appear. However, one thing I really had a hard time understanding about Charles was his reticence to wash. He seemed to enjoy being dirty. I distinctly remember him coming to a cocktail party from a shoot one day where he was heavily made up for a character part. He had not bothered to remove his makeup and, when I saw him again four days later at another function, he had still not washed the makeup off.

“Charles,” I said, “are you still shooting on that movie?”

“No, dear boy, why?” he replied.

“Well,” I said, trying to be as diplomatic as I could, “you still have your makeup on.”

“Most observant of you, dear boy,” he said, then turned around and swished off toward the bar. He hadn’t washed for almost a week!

Like the Midwestern farm boy that I was and, as with so many of his British counterparts, Charles was not circumcised or, as it is more commonly referred to, “uncut.” In fact, he had one of the largest foreskins I had ever seen. He had, in the nomenclature of the gay world at that time, a “BLC.” That stood for “big lace curtain.” Because Charles seldom washed, there was often a buildup of smegma, or a secretion of the sebaceous glands, under the foreskin. Uncircumcised guys have to retract their foreskins in the shower or the bathtub every day to wash this substance away or it accumulates, causing a slightly sour smell to build up. Charles, on the other hand, relished it. Many men—
and
women, I might add—who performed oral sex had developed a liking for the slightly pungent taste of smegma. It was, like oysters I suppose, a carefully honed or acquired taste! Some people referred to it as “cheese.” And it really is akin to an aged Gorgonzola or Roquefort.

Allow me to digress here for a moment. A very good friend of mine by the name of Bob Edelmann was heavily into giving head to uncut guys. Bob came from a wealthy Chicago family that had made their fortune producing brass fittings and other parts for the automobile industry. Bob hardly worked a day in his life. He had enough money to spend his time being a playboy, so he often came out to California to “play.” Bob was Jewish, which meant that he was circumcised. For some reason or another he had developed an obsession for guys with foreskins, and he loved it when those uncircumcised penises had a bit of cheese under the foreskin. I did him a favor by hooking him up with Charles Laughton one day and the two of them never looked back. Every time Bob was in town I would take him up to Charles’s house and the two of them would go at it for half an hour or more. This may all seem a little repulsive but I assure you that dear Bob was one of the sweetest, nicest men I ever knew. And so was Charles.

Charles had yet another rather odd habit. One day, at his request and while his wife Elsa was away on a shoot, I took a nice-looking young man over to his house. I really don’t remember his name so I’ll simply refer to him as Ted. The only thing I recall is that he was about nineteen or twenty years old, was blessed with a great body, and was very well endowed. When we arrived at Charles’s home on Curson Avenue in West Hollywood it was about two or three o’clock in the afternoon. Charles welcomed us, put a hand underneath Ted’s chin, squeezed his cheeks, and muttered, “Hmmm. Nice. Very nice.”

He said that he hadn’t had any lunch yet and asked if we would mind if he had a quick snack. He showed us into the kitchen where he darted from place to place making an awful lot of noise as he opened bread bins, drawers, and closets. He laid out a breadboard, plates, knives, and a napkin on a table and started slicing up a loaf of sourdough bread. He asked Ted to strip completely and perch up on a countertop where he could see him. I sat on a chair at the table. All three of us chatted while Charles placed the bread slices on a plate, buttered them, then removed some crisp lettuce leaves and tomatoes from the refrigerator. These he carefully washed under a faucet of running water at the sink. Every now and again he looked up at Ted, studied his groin and his large penis, which by now had grown fully erect. He kept commenting on how much he approved of his lean, well-formed torso and his muscular, hairy legs. Once he had finished washing the lettuce and tomatoes he sliced them, laid them out on the buttered bread slices, squeezed a couple of drops of lemon juice on them, and then sprinkled on a little salt and coarse, ground pepper.

Glancing up at Ted he smiled and said, “Almost ready.”

Ted and I looked at each other, wondering what the devil that remark implied but, no matter. Then Charles thoughtfully studied a shelf full of pans, pots, and skillets. He reached out for one of the smaller pots. Holding the pot with one hand he picked up the plate containing the bread slices with the other. Then he looked at Ted, and, in a very polite way, asked, “Could you follow me please, young man. This’ll only take a minute.”

Ted stared at me momentarily, a puzzled look written all over his face, and then he hopped off the counter and followed Charles a short way down the hall, his erect penis bobbing proudly as it preceded him. I watched Charles take Ted into a bathroom and close the door. How odd, I thought. Why the bathroom and not the bedroom?

They were gone for about fifteen or twenty minutes and in their absence I whiled away the time by rummaging through a collection of Elsa’s cookbooks. Charles was the first to return. He put the plate with the bread slices on the kitchen table. I could see that the lettuce and tomatoes had been lightly smeared with a light brown substance. It looked like gravy or peanut butter or some sort of sandwich spread. Seconds later Ted appeared in the kitchen. His erection was gone and he was looking decidedly sheepish, perhaps even a trifle embarrassed. I stared at him curiously and he pulled a face, hoping that Charles wouldn’t notice. He pointed at the bread slices on the plate and then lightly patted his backside. Was this true? Had Charles asked Ted to defecate into the pot? Is
that
what he had smeared on his sandwich? Well, apparently it was.

Charles sat down, carefully placed one slice of bread on top of the other, neatly cut the stack in two, and then, without saying a word or even giving us a cursory glance, bit into it. After he had downed the entire sandwich, he got up and went to the sink to rinse off the plate.

As soon as Charles’s back was turned Ted quietly padded over to me and whispered, “Jesus, why did he even take the trouble to wash the fucking lettuce and tomatoes?”

Seconds later Charles turned around and gave Ted an enticing “come hither” sign with his index finger. As the poor fellow meekly followed Charles out of the kitchen and into one of the bedrooms down the hall, Charles called out to me, “Back in a jiff, Scotty. Make yourself comfortable.”

And then I heard the bedroom door close. Half an hour later Charles appeared in a dressing gown, followed by my young friend. They both looked a little sweaty but decidedly satisfied. Ted also looked noticeably happy as he clutched a couple of ten-dollar bills. Charles came up and stood beside me with his hand on my shoulder as we watched Ted pull on his jeans and T-shirt.

And then Charles whispered into my ear, “Great lay, Scotty. Wonderful trick. Thanks, old boy, and thanks for waiting.”

C
HARLES LAUGHTON WASN’T
the only person I knew who thrived on unusual fetishes. Tyrone Power had his, too. He liked what is commonly known as “water sports” or a “golden shower.” This entails being urinated on by a sexual partner. I eventually got to know quite a few people who derived infinite pleasure from lying in a bathtub, a shower cubicle, or beside a swimming pool, while a bunch of handsome young studs stood over them and urinated. Taking what Charles Laughton liked to an even more provocative level, Tyrone occasionally enjoyed it when his sexual partners—especially young ladies—“dropped a deuce” or defecated on him. In the gay world, people with that inclination were usually referred to as “doo-doo queens.” That kind of behavior may seem disgusting but, you know, it’s surprising how much of it goes on. Every now and again someone would call me and request a sex partner who was happy to indulge in that sort of thing.

“Got a nice young doo-doo queen—or dyke or girl—for me tonight, Scotty?” I was occasionally asked.

The practice certainly didn’t turn me on but it was patently clear that it was regarded as a normal and acceptable part of sexual activity by its devotees, with Charles Laughton being one of them, and Ty Power another. So who was I to judge? To each his own.