Full Service (7 page)

Though hiding it from their congregations and the outside world as best they could, those inventive clergymen engaged in a wide range of erotic behavior. I learned a lot and I enjoyed keeping everybody happy, myself included, since I was making really good money. I came away from every session with an eagerly anticipated handful of coins and even the occasional dollar bill or two.

Momma never questioned where the cash came from. As far as she knew I was earning all of it by shining shoes and delivering and selling newspapers. My brother, Donald, never once suspected what I was up to, either. Each night I would creep into our tiny bedroom where he had already been asleep for hours, silently undress, and fall into bed, utterly exhausted, catching just enough shut-eye to be up in time for school in the morning. I had my private little world, and my family was none the wiser.

You might think that all that same-sex activity would have suggested that I was gay, but I was much more interested in females. Around the time I turned twelve, I discovered a sweet blue-eyed curly-haired blonde of about my age who lived in a small apartment building near us. She used to take her little black Scottish terrier dog for a walk every day. One afternoon just as I was preparing to go out on my newspaper and shoe-shine rounds I saw her approaching. I quickly dumped my newspapers and other paraphernalia in the hallway of our building, ran a comb through my hair, slicked it down, straightened out my windbreaker, and, as casually as I could, stepped out onto the sidewalk to intercept her. Falling into step next to her I introduced myself and, to my delight, she was happy to engage in conversation. She told me that her name was Gillian. As we walked, her Scotty dog huffed and puffed and pulled frantically on the leash, urging us on. Our conversation topics ranged from the weather to the school we each attended to who our favorite movie stars were. We had a nice thing going and became the best of friends. Unfortunately, much to my disappointment, she never permitted our acquaintanceship to blossom into anything that would allow us to explore one another’s bodies. Try as I might, there were never any sexual overtures between us. But she and I would meet up to walk that cute little black dog of hers on more occasions than I can remember. Folks eventually got to know us as we passed by, and pretty soon they would say to one another, “Here come the Scotties.”

As we passed by they would smile and call out “Hi, Scotty!”

The name caught on. Everyone began referring to Gillian and me as Scotty—even my friends and my brother, Donald. When Momma first heard Don call me Scotty she thought it so appealing that she immediately dropped the name George that Grandma Boltman had bestowed upon me. To her, Scotty was imminently preferable. Gillian eventually moved away from the neighborhood and I would never find out what became of her, but thanks to her I had a new name.

T
HOUGH THE PRIESTS
proved to be a great source of additional cash, I could not entirely rely on their payments as a primary source of income. Once the novelty wore off for them they didn’t see me as regularly as they once did. My shoe-shine service and newspaper route remained active, but the job came with hurdles. Chicago winters were brutal. Not only did I face heavy snowstorms, icy sidewalks, and sleet- and wind-whipped flurries as I went about my work, but I had the arduous task of delivering papers to subscribers’ front doors. It wasn’t simply a case of tossing them into the front yard of a house or throwing them onto a porch. Tenement blocks and apartment buildings were especially difficult. In some cases I would have to walk up many flights of stairs to reach an address so that I could leave the paper neatly folded on a mat outside the front door.

One day I was on my way to drop off a
Tribune
at the apartment of a guy called Frank Risnick. I usually got to his place at around five thirty every afternoon. Mr. Risnick was a friendly, stocky, middle-aged guy in his fifties with jet-black hair and a babyish face. He was originally from Europe and spoke with a thick accent. He lived alone, had few friends, and verged on what we would nowadays refer to as a “nerd.” He worked for the Buell Horn Company, a local small-industrial plant that made loud horns for trucks, trains, boats, and buses.

Mr. Risnick was always very kind to me. Knowing that by the time I got to him I had already been doing my rounds for a couple of hours he always used to await my arrival and then invite me in for a glass of milk and a cookie or a sandwich. He could hear me coming as I plodded up the stairs to his apartment. The door would be left open and I would go in, drop my pile of papers and shoe-shine equipment in the hall, then spend six or seven minutes seated with him at his small kitchen table gulping down the refreshments on offer while he scanned the day’s headlines. One day, out of the blue, he suddenly put down his newspaper as I slurped some milk and ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had prepared for me. He just sat there, an elbow on the table, his chin resting in the palm of his hand, staring at me.

Then he got up, came around to where I was sitting, dropped down on all fours, unbuttoned my fly, and took out my cock. It took me completely by surprise. Because of my priestly liaisons I was familiar with this kind of thing but certainly not with Frank Risnick. With peanut butter and jelly smeared all over my face I stared down at him as he took my penis in his mouth and then, as gently as he could, began sucking on it. I was speechless. The guy was good, belying anything that I might ever have expected of him. I became awash in the most incredible sensations as his soft, warm tongue worked its magic. I spread my legs wider, then gripped the seat of the chair with both hands and leaned backward. Waves of unbelievable pleasure that I had never felt before surged through my body. Those recently awakened seminal vesicles were pulsing with energy. Elsewhere within me, muscles were contracting, glands were pumping. With his other hand Risnick had unbuttoned his own fly and began masturbating. Within a couple of minutes I could not hold back any more and reached a state of overwhelming ecstasy. The session ended in a cataclysmic mutual climax. My heart was pounding like a sledgehammer as I looked down at Risnick. He smiled up at me, kissed my penis, and handed me a napkin. It was the first time I had experienced an ejaculation. It was a defining moment in my life, signifying that I had finally reached sexual maturity. In retrospect I’m glad it happened in the company of Frank Risnick. He was such a decent, gentle, unthreatening man. Nothing would ever be the same again. Regular masturbation would now result in a couple of very satisfying ejaculations every day, something that I had been looking forward to ever since my buddies and I talked about it in the school playground back in Ottawa.

O
ne evening during my days as a pump jockey at the gas station in Hollywood a man I had never seen before pulled up in a brand-new four-door sedan. I can no longer recall the make, but the driver was a slightly stocky fellow in his late forties with dark hair and thin wire-framed glasses. He was grasping the steering wheel like a nervous elderly lady would do. When I asked him what I could do for him his eyes flicked up and down, taking me in as he made a quick assessment of me. Then he asked me to fill up the tank. We got to chatting about the weather and how he liked his new car. He struck me as being a bit worn out and crabby so I asked him whether he’d had a rough day or had just been working late. He admitted that he was exhausted. He had just come off the set of a picture that he was shooting on a soundstage over at Universal. He said that he was the director.

I can’t remember the exact details of our conversation but he told me his name was George Cukor. I also know that he was directing
A Double Life
at the time. The film starred Ronald Colman, Edmond O’Brien, and Shelley Winters. Cukor was a legend in the motion picture industry. He had directed
Camille,
starring Greta Garbo, a movie I loved when I saw it as a teenager in Chicago. He also made
Romeo and Juliet
and one of my all-time favorites,
The Philadelphia Story.
Another of his more recent films at that time was
Gaslight,
featuring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in the starring roles.

I quickly warmed to the guy. He definitely seemed a bit odd, and nervous, but there was something fascinating about him. There was a lot about him to like. The feeling was obviously mutual because, even though I cannot remember exactly how or why it happened, he invited me over to his home in West Hollywood the following Sunday. He gave me his address and drove off, saying, “See you on Sunday, about noon.”

My normal working routine included Sundays from ten in the morning until midnight. I would have to ask Mac McGee, the mechanic, to stand in for me. Mac was a sweetheart of a guy. He usually worked in the service and repair bay on weekdays only, but I expected that he’d fill in for me at the pumps on Sunday. In retrospect I don’t know how much Mac ever really knew about what was going on in my life or at the gas station itself after dark. He was a square no-nonsense kind of a guy who pretty much stuck to himself and to his nine-to-five weekday work schedule.

As I went back into the office that night I began to think about Cukor. I had to stifle a chuckle. He had a very strange manner of speaking. Every word he had said he articulated unusually clearly. He had bared his teeth, hissing as he precisely pronounced each syllable. It was as though he were trying to enunciate the exact way to say something in a complex foreign language, his face becoming very expressive and animated as he spoke. It was hilarious, but in looking back on it now I figure that it was his way of imparting his innermost feelings, thoughts, directions, instructions, and ideas to people who worked under him. Perhaps that was how he managed to get such superb performances out of all his stars.

On Sunday I drove over to Cukor’s place on Cordell Drive in West Hollywood. The property consisted of a beautiful orange grove in the middle of which stood an ambling white house, surrounded by a high wall and gates. There was a large yet secluded pool at the side of the house. The main house was a single-story structure but because the grounds sloped downward to accommodate the pool area, the guest suite beneath the main house was on the same level as the pool. It was all very well-planned and beautifully executed, in keeping with George’s tastes and personality. When I arrived just before noon, lunch had already been laid out around the pool and Cukor was entertaining a small group of people
.
I didn’t recognize anyone and felt a little out of place as I walked up to the crowd. As soon as he saw me Cukor broke away from his guests and welcomed me with a very friendly, “Hello, there, dear boy. So glad you could come.”

He insisted that I call him George, asked me to remind him what my name was, and then he paraded me around, introducing me to everyone. I cannot remember who they all were, just that they were all famous and influential people. I do recall that they did their best to politely welcome me into their fold. I almost never touch alcohol, I just don’t enjoy the taste of the stuff. Ditto for tea and coffee. I was fascinated to learn that, like me, George was also a teetotaler, so there was no alcohol around except for a couple of bottles of champagne that one of his visitors must have brought along.

Although I didn’t recognize her until we were introduced, among the guests was Katharine Hepburn, who on-screen seemed so feminine. And yet here was a woman with a severe short hair cut, tightly cropped and combed with a boyish side part. She was wearing a suit with trousers and had no makeup on at all. She looked infinitely more masculine than feminine. I thought of her in
The Philadelphia Story
and could barely make the connection.

Because Hepburn was such an illustrious individual with a really sparkling personality I only recall talking to her that afternoon, though I’m sure I spoke to others. She intrigued me. There was, no doubt, considerable intellect behind her stark yet fascinating facade. She strutted around, cocksure; she was clearly cognizant of the fact that she was a rapidly rising superstar.

By three o’clock the summer heat had become stifling. It was time for the party to break up. Everyone had adequately partaken of George’s hospitality, bid their good-byes, and was slowly starting to drift away. Hepburn was one of the last to leave. As I watched her go, George tapped me on the shoulder. He whispered that she didn’t know how to behave in public. When I questioned him about that he replied, “It’s not that she’s a dyke. I have no trouble with that. But the studio does. They’ve been pleading with her not to advertise the fact in public but she ignores them.”

I waited for more. He fussed around with plates and leftovers and then went on, telling me that Hepburn was very arrogant. He said that she thought she knew best about everything. I wasn’t going to comment. What did I know of any of this? It was the first time that I’d met her and I really didn’t know anything about her behavior, her personality, or her lesbianism until that day. My first impression was simply that George didn’t like her very much. He went on to tell me that Hepburn had once been married to a guy named Ludlow Ogden Smith but the marriage had lasted just five years and they had divorced in 1934. He said he thought she ought to be more discreet about her sexual orientation.

In time I was to be proved wrong about George’s dislike of Hepburn. During the years that followed I would remain close to both of them and throughout that period George and Hepburn would turn out to be the very best of friends. They understood one another. I would eventually also learn that Hepburn relied heavily on George’s opinions about her career. She hardly ever made a film without consulting him about her performance.