Prairie Tale (17 page)

He looked straight at me. I’d been in close proximity to him at various clubs over the years. He knew full well who I was. As soon as I smiled at him, though, he took a few steps back and whispered in the ear of a pretty man who was part of his little entourage. The guy stepped forward and whispered in my ear, “Andy wants to know if there are any famous people here tonight.”

I turned toward this well-dressed little homunculus, aghast at the insult he had just delivered with a blithe ignorance.

“Tell Andy to eat my shorts,” I said.

The guy seemed stunned.

“Okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell him to eat my shorts.”

He smiled, relieved.

“Just tell him to fuck off,” I said.

My identity suffered another kind of crisis when I got back home only to find Rob wanted to break up. It was a new year, and after finishing
About Last Night,
he wanted to see other people. It was awful, heartbreaking, and inevitable. Despite getting along, our separate projects had caused us to spend too much time apart. I cried and wondered how I was going to get through it. At nearly twenty-two, I resigned myself to life with my cats and my beagle, Sidney, the only living creatures who understood me.

But I had people around who pulled me out of bed, picked me up, got me dressed, and dragged me out. Especially Katie. She was the one who kept me on life support when I wanted to pull the plug. She responded with pithy answers when I cried, “What am I going to do now?” She ignored me when I wailed that I was never going to get through the heartache. She kept me out of the house and social when I argued with her and everyone else that my life was over and I was better off spending the rest of my life under the covers in sweats and a T-shirt. And she was right when she promised that if I got my ass out of bed and got dressed, a new door would open.

I
n May 1986, NBC celebrated its sixty-fifth anniversary with a black-tie photo session, for which they gathered together the stars of its biggest shows from past and present. I took my sister, who enjoyed seeing all the stars. Numerous people said they couldn’t believe that I’d finally grown up, but Don Johnson wasn’t among them. The
Miami Vice
star hit on me the whole afternoon.

Not that I minded being the object of his attention when the room was practically overflowing with beautiful women in gowns cut much lower than mine. It was exciting, but I also knew nothing was going to come of it because if anyone in the world was dangerous to women, he was. Even with very little knowledge about Don and even less experience, I knew guys like him were unhealthy for women wanting to preserve their wits and sanity.

I was in my dressing room with Sara after the shoot when Don banged through the door, pushed me against the wall, and planted a kiss on my mouth. Not a polite good-bye, nice-to-meet-you kiss, it was the kind of kiss you felt in your toes. It lasted long enough that I had time to look at Sara with one eye and see her mouth hanging open. Don finally stepped back and looked me directly in the eye with a puckish half smile on his face.

“I’m going to call you,” he said.

Then he left.

I exhaled as if I had been holding my breath for two days. The whole thing freaked me out. At the same time, I had to admit that more than my curiosity was aroused. Then he called and invited me to dinner with a group of his friends. I put myself together for the evening and arrived at Sonny Bono’s restaurant on Melrose, not sure what to expect, but promising myself I would do nothing more daring than order dessert. Don seated me next to him at a large, round table, and things were fine until Patty D’Arbanville walked in amid a trail of spinning heads.

They had been in a long relationship and had a son together, though I didn’t know if they were still together, married, or what. All I knew was that she was one of those unattainably glamorous women. A total knockout way beyond my league and one tough dame. Once she sat down, I felt like I was intruding on something and the rest of the night seemed awkward. It didn’t help that I felt like I was a child who’d mistakenly gotten seated at the grown-ups’ table.

For a couple weeks afterward, I fielded calls from Don, who wanted me to visit him in Miami. He showed tremendous persistence. I considered going but ultimately, I chose to preserve my own well-being.

Instead, I hooked up with a different Hollywood bad boy, Billy Idol, who I met one night at Tramps when Katie and I were seated at the far end of his table in the VIP section. My first thought was wow, he is gorgeous. We started out shouting at each other over the loud music pulsing through the club. Then I moved to his end of the table. As I settled in, I thought if Don Johnson was a bad idea, this was beyond crazy.

However, as we talked, he impressed me as a sweet, gentle, and soft-spoken charmer. He wanted to know all about Michael Landon and he asked what it was like to grow up on television. At the end of the night, we exchanged numbers and a few days later he called and asked me out. We went on several dates, and of course the second we showed up anyplace, we were met by paparazzi. The tabloids had a field day trying to figure us out. In the public eye, we were the ultimate odd couple (though not to my mom, who liked Billy a lot—then again, she really had no idea what I was up to at the time). He even called me Priscilla, likening us to the pairing of bad-boy Elvis and his oh-so-sweet wife.

I never had any doubt it was more of an adventure than a long-term arrangement. When he returned to town after a brief trip abroad, he threw a party in his suite at the Bel Age Hotel and I saw serious drug use and people out of control. I stayed until the following afternoon, but afterward I was bothered by the glimpse of darkness I saw that night. The turning point was when Billy took me to Rick James’s house, which was the scariest place I’d ever been. I felt a bad vibe as soon as I walked in. Twenty minutes later, I made him take me home.

After that, I began to pull back from Billy. That I was even with him shocked the hell out of people, including myself. But I didn’t want to get involved any further and then have to disentangle myself from something I sensed could turn ugly fast.

I also grew wary of living too fast and loose. AIDS was making headlines as a fierce and mysterious killer mostly of gay men, but no one really knew anything about the disease except there wasn’t a cure.

I came of age right before AIDS, when people were obsessed with California cuisine, parachute pants, and partying all night at clubs. Everyone shared coke straws and glasses. People still hopped from bed to bed. No one talked about condoms or protected sex. The only time I heard anyone talk about losing their life from sex was when some guy half-jokingly expressed concern about the possibility of picking up a psycho stalker who might slit his throat.

At the time, Hollywood was indulgent and decadent, a nonstop bacchanal where everyone was doing everything and everyone all at once. But AIDS changed that sense of wanton freedom and promiscuity. It reshaped the geography of our lives. Some needed more time before they realized this. For me, it was almost immediate. But then I was never one who went on the prowl for casual sex to fill empty hours. Despite my few flings, my search was for a genuine relationship, a love that would last.

I
t was at this time I left the William Morris Agency and signed with Michael Black at ICM. Ordinarily, when an actor signs with a new agency, there’s a meeting in the conference room where agents from all the various departments say that you are brilliant, explain that your previous agents have done everything wrong, and promise to do everything different.

Uncle Ray tried something different by hosting a cocktail party at his apartment. But it was the same old thing, different location. I stood next to my mother and made small talk with the guys from the different departments, like the film guy who introduced himself and said he’d be sending scripts, and the theatrical guy who wondered if I had ever pictured myself doing Broadway, and the TV people who wanted to know how I felt about sitcoms, and so on.

It was just a lot of yada yada yada and listening to how fantastic I was, all of which put me on the verge of exploding from boredom and bullshit. My mother scolded me for rolling my eyes. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be out with my friends, and I was trying to think of an excuse to leave when the door opened and in walked the best-looking man I had ever seen in my life.

Rob was handsome. Michael Landon was good-looking. My father was a good-looking man, too. But this guy was phenomenal. At first glance, he struck me as a more chiseled and more handsome, blue-eyed version of the Doors’ lead singer, Jim Morrison. He wore a suit, as all the agents did, but I also noticed a braided rope bracelet around his wrist that revealed something more.

I didn’t know what more that could be, but it didn’t stop me from feeling like his arrival had changed the entire room. He turned to say something to an agent he knew and about forty-five degrees into that turn he saw me. Our eyes locked and I swear it was as if time stopped and the entire room disappeared so that it was just the two of us there. I pulled myself away from his gaze long enough to lean close to my mother and say, “I’m in deep shit.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Look,” I said.

She turned and gasped.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“I know. Have you ever in your life?”

“Never,” she said.

“Neither have I. What do I do?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

I didn’t have time to figure out anything. He walked straight across the room, shook my hand, and introduced himself. I’m pretty sure I heard him say his name was Alan Greenspan. He could’ve said Jack the Ripper. I was done. Gone. We chatted briefly, then visited with people around the room for a few minutes, until we met each other again on the other side of the room.

“I’m really bored,” I said. “How about you?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of silly, isn’t it?” he said. “Where are you going after this?”

“No plans,” I said.

“I’m going to meet friends at the Hard Rock,” he said. “Want to come?”

“Can we leave right now?” I said.

I found out more about him over burgers that night. Born in up-state New York, Alan had studied business and played football at the University of San Diego, and now he was rising through the film and TV ranks at the agency. We saw each other again the following weekend when he invited me to watch him play in the Hollywood Softball League at Balboa Park. Then he came back to my house for lunch and a relationship blossomed. It happened that easily. I would pinch myself whenever I thought about Alan. Not only was he breathtakingly handsome, he was also a kind, warm, generous, funny, easygoing guy. I’d lucked out.

Then this lovely new romance was interrupted by inquiries from the tabloids; they wanted to know my reaction to Rob’s new girlfriend, Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Assuming that I must be heartbroken there was another princess in my love story, they asked if I was okay.

Rob and Stephanie had spent ten days together early that September in Paris, apparently falling instantly and madly in love, which shouldn’t have shocked anyone since they were virtual look-alikes. He had also recently told Joan Rivers, then subbing for Johnny Carson on
The Tonight Show,
that Stephanie was his fantasy woman. Stephanie had then reciprocated through the press.

I instructed my publicist to say I had no comment, but truth be told, I could not have cared less. I was falling madly in love with Alan, who was not a shameless creature. I was bothered, though, when Katie called me one day after Rob’s royal romance had hit high gear, with tabloids reporting that he and Stephanie had exchanged rings and were already planning to wed (not true). She wanted to throw a party for Rob and Stephanie, and she asked, “Is that okay with you?”

That was the beginning of a distance between us. I was pissed. Here was my best friend, a girl I let myself trust, and she was suddenly as swept up by the whole stardom thing as anyone else. In retrospect, I don’t think our friendship would have taken such a hit if I’d said, “Dude, are you crazy? That’s the most hurtful thing you’ve ever said to me.”

But I wasn’t mature enough to tell her how I felt. Instead, I said, “Do whatever you want.” Of course, I didn’t want her to do anything. My damage.

In the meantime, I made the movie
Blood Vows: Story of a Mafia Wife
and then agreed to a small role in the movie of the week,
Penalty Phase,
after its director, Tony Richardson, called and asked if I’d sign on to play opposite Peter Strauss. Like
Blood Vows,
it was another step in the direction of more adult roles. I agreed and flew to Oregon.

The producers put me in a beautiful little Victorian home out in the country, and my day-to-day routine was pretty relaxing because I didn’t have to work every day. The downside of that was I had too much time on my hands, and I got bored and lonely. Alan came up to see me, but he couldn’t stay long, and almost as soon as he arrived, I got upset at the prospect he would have to leave. Okay, I didn’t merely get upset. I worked myself into a state, as I was capable of doing back then.

On the day he was scheduled to fly back to L.A., we went out to lunch. As we ate, I thought,
If I can get really sick, I bet he’d stay with me
. An hour later, I complained of an excruciating pain in my stomach. Within an hour of that, I was in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, being wheeled into emergency surgery for a severe bout of appendicitis. My white-cell count was through the roof.

It was all very dramatic and scary. As I went under, the anesthesiologist warned that I would feel pressure on my throat. I was able to ask why and hear him explain it was a nurse pressing on my throat to make sure I didn’t choke on my own vomit, since I’d recently eaten a cheeseburger. The next thing I knew I was waking up, my appendix was gone, and Alan was at my side, saying he’d stay an extra day. It was a large price to pay for a small victory.

After a few days in the hospital, I returned to work just in time for my big seduction scene with Peter. He stepped out of the shower to find me waiting for him wearing nothing but panties—and an enormous bandage across my stomach. Not only didn’t I feel sexy, I was scared to death to stand there with my boobies exposed to Peter and my panty-wearing butt facing the camera. To get through it, I drew smiley faces on my bandage. They caught Peter off guard, and that tiny distraction took the edge off for me.

A few nights later, like an idiot, I went out with a couple people from the crew, stayed out way too late, drank way too much, and within forty-eight hours I was sicker than I’d been when I first went into the hospital. Unable to sit up for more than a few minutes at a time, I managed to finish my last scene, and then I flew home. Somehow I survived the plane ride and got to my house. I remember Rob coming over and the next thing I knew I was being driven straight to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Delirious from fever due to a rampant case of strep that had invaded my entire body, I barely recognized Rob, who was very gallant in coming to my rescue even though he was still seeing Stephanie. Once he knew I was okay, he went back to his
other
princess. Then Alan took care of me.

Two months later, he took me to Tahiti for a proper rest. It was fall, and I thought we had been deposited in paradise. We had a hut on the beach. We woke up at sunrise, went to bed at sunset, and in between we ate, snorkeled, made love, napped, rode horses, drank, and made love again. It was a perfect place to decompress, a perfect place to be in love with a truly wonderful guy.

A
round the holidays, Rob called me from a Porsche dealer and said he needed my help. I had read the Princess Stephanie thing had imploded, as it inevitably was going to do, and he was back in L.A.