The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (28 page)

Along with my relationship with Maks, I’ve inherited his fans. Of course there are the amazing, loyal, sane ones. But then there are the trolls. I’ve not inherited them as
my
fans—rather I should say as my antifans. They prattle on endlessly to get their vital messages through to Maks’s thick skull! “She’s older than your mother!” “She’s using you!” “She betrayed us! She led us to believe you were in a love affair.” “She’s perverted!” “If she’s going to be at your event, I’m not coming!!” “I’m trying to warn you! She’s DANGEROUS!!!!!!” To them I quote the great prophet, Kelly Clarkson: “You don’t know a thing about me.”

Now this is where Maks and I truly differ. If it were reversed and my fans were attacking him, I would come swooping in like a mighty eagle to devour them, to rip them to bloody shreds. Perhaps this trait comes from having a career that spans 30-some years. I’ve seen friends, costars, and people I love maligned, lied about, and chewed up by the press. I have zero problem publicly defending them. Suffice it to say if I had destroyed my career by coming to the aid of my comrades, I would still have intervened. Maks needs to learn how to take a stand, publicly. Not do “nothing” when his compadres are being attacked. Which is what he did with me and what I’ve seen him do with other people he loves. He needs to learn the art of defending his friends. If I were to give Maks one solid bit of advice, as his oracle, it would be to rethink sincerity, courage, loyalty, and generosity. It’s the “family” thing to do.

If I were to acknowledge his finest attributes, I would commend him on tenacity, strength, talent, ability, sweetness, perceptiveness, and intelligence. I’d also throw in a nod to humor. I would be remiss not to include the good with the bad, as Maks is a mixed bag of tricks dominated by mostly good traits. But the jury is out on which location he will finally reside in.

It amazed me that I ended up loving Maks so much—“AH HAH!!” the skeptics proclaim. “She DID fall for him!” Duh, wasn’t that pretty obvious?? The amazing part is HOW I fell for him and WHY. That part might surprise a lot of people. I did not, as most would think, fall in love with Maks. My definition of the kind of love you “fall in” has future connected to it. Like I fell in love with Parker, Bob, Jake, and a few others, with the intention of marrying them or being with them forever. That’s my definition of falling in love with someone.

Maks was not that for me. For as much as I loved him, I always knew there would be no future with him. Strangely, for me, that was not because of the 29-year age difference, although I wasn’t keen being dubbed Harold and Maude. I knew it was a moment in time, sort of a porthole punched in the universe that got me to fall for him—as I once told him.

Those moments in life are strange and magical, yet fleeting. They are gone as quickly as they arrive, but the opportunity to have loved Maks for that five-month period of my life was breathtaking. He was like oxygen to me. He woke me up.

I told him everything. He became my confidant. He confided his love problems to me and sought advice about life, women, love, and business. We have talked business for hundreds of hours. We got very close. He was my best audience. He thought I was hysterical, and I thought he was unintentionally hysterical. I’d catch him staring at me in a sort of awe sometimes, not as other men have in my life, but that kind of awe children have when you’ve shocked or surprised them. I felt Maks yearned for a certain freedom that perhaps he saw in me. I perceive a spiritual lostness and lack of freedom in Maks sometimes, and a struggle for a lightness of being.

We had so much fun together, yelling at each other, trying to get the upper hand and controlling each other, dancing, falling, losing our shoes, almost winning, texting each other crazy fake-love texts that weren’t really loverish at all. Freedom was going on there, freedom to communicate freely and wildly, and for me like I’ve rarely communicated with men before. I could tell him anything. Weirdly, the men I’ve actually lived with or been married to have been the opposite. They were never my confidants, and I never told them my deepest thoughts, concerns, or passions.

Poor Maks probably to this day has no idea what he truly meant to me. I think that at the end he sorta bought into the publicity view of who we were. We were not that—we were superior to friends and lovers but without the future of people who fall in love.

Before I did
Dancing with the Stars
with Maks there was a part of me that was so broken and so tired of loving men and then fucking it all up that I honestly had zero desire for any kind of relationship. I somehow sorted through my own demons, while dancing with a demon.
Ahhh, Maks.
I certainly never set out to love Maks, and it shocked me that I ended up loving him to the degree that I did.

The thing about love is that it doesn’t even exist unless it is continually created, and to continually create something you have to work at it. To this day I have no idea the role Maks will play or not play in my life. I know this: I would like to love him forever. I would like to work hard to keep him happy. I would like to be there for his wedding and the birth of his children.

I say, “would like” because as I said, one never knows for sure where you stand with the Cheshire Cat. The Dark Angel doesn’t make it easy for people to love him. He won’t agree with what I’ve written here, but then agreement has never been our forte.

Alas, I hope my stint as a Chmerkovskiy was not a sprint but is a marathon.

I’ve been holding on to the offer to dance again on
Dancing with the Stars All-Stars
since before Christmas. Oddly, this time around, they gave us “stars” the choice to dance with our original partners or to choose a new partner. That seemed sort of like wife swapping. My first reaction was
Oh hell no!!! I can’t go through it again!
You have no idea how physically and mentally grueling that show is.
IT’S A BIG PASS!
, I thought to myself. But I was told by ABC, “There’s no hurry, take your time making your decision.” Then around February I started giving it some thought, as sly ABC knew I would, by not forcing me to make a decision.

I certainly wouldn’t want Maks to dance with me if he had a better chance at winning with someone else. And I certainly didn’t want to choose some other pro. How weird would that be? What a mighty slap to Maks’s beautiful face and ego.

The months passed, and I still wouldn’t and couldn’t commit. I would have two projects to shoot in the fall and one book to release within the same time frame as
DWTS
. The offer still not accepted or refused, I began wondering,
If I did it again, could I be better? Have I become a better dancer or just a road show cha-cha-er? Would we have fun as we had the first go-round, or were we jaded about each other?

Then in May the north wind blew in, and I suddenly got a wild yearning for another voyage down the rabbit hole. Perhaps it was a glitch in the Matrix. Perhaps it was my desire to dance with the Cheshire Cat one last time. Perhaps I’m certifiable. Yeah—that’s probably it. So come September, the bad boy of the ballroom and the unbroken actress will throw down, one last time, on the dance floor—or throw up, depending on how mean he is.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

—WOODY ALLEN

The Art of
Knights on White Horses

I
’D INVENTED these reading glasses called Looky-Loos. I even have the patent on them! Looky-Loos work like this: they have magnets in the temples, and no, this is not some New Age shit. Looky-Loos are accompanied by a gorgeous, color-coordinated picture frame. On the back of the frame, under the felt, the arm thing that props up the frame is metal. When you’re done wearing your readers, you pop ’em on the back of the frame. The magnets connect with the hidden metal and voilà! You know where your glasses are! They aren’t lost in your purse, swimming around with the other debris getting scratched. They aren’t in a kitchen drawer with the scissors and disposable diapers. They are right there on the back of the frame where you left them! Looky-Loos!!

I really think I need to make a trip to the
Shark Tank
and pitch the idea . . .

I’m aware that this is an uncommon introduction but it’s what led me directly to Mr. New Kids on the Block boy bander . . . to my Jonny-Boy.

As I recall, we started talking to each other via Twitter, mostly about the glasses. But our first encounter via Twitter was when Jon boldly defended my religion and fired away at my attackers.

Religion is a hot-button topic. And on social media sites, religion can become explosive. Personally, I’ve never been harmed by any religion, although I have been harmed by a few people who happened to be members of certain religions. But the harm was not connected to their religious persuasions; they were just dickheads.

Anyway, the important part of the story is that Jon jumped in to defend me, without even knowing me. WOW! That’s some admirable stuff right there. It’s indicative of the bravery and loyalty that IS Jonathan Knight.

Men are not naturally brave, but when duty calls, the courageous ones rise to the occasion to defend and protect. That’s Jon’s beauty. He is an honestly good, brave, valiant man. I’m sure he’s come under fire for defending me, but the truth is, he’s willing to take the bullets.

I took my Looky-Loos to HSN midway through filming my TV show
Kirstie Alley’s Big Life
. They gave me a whopping seven minutes to sell them. I was exhausted from flying and filming and agreed to HSN’s ungodly hour of 3:00 a.m. My Looky-Loos are both innovative and beautiful, something you would see in a department store for $200 for the combo of glasses and frame. They were also of that quality. And I was selling them for 39 flippin’ dollars!!! They sold all right, not great, but all right, and one of the people who bought them was Jon, for his mother. Then he tweeted about the glasses he bought and how much his mom loved them. It was just common chitchat.

The first time I saw Jon in person was when I invited him to be my guest on
DWTS
. He came up behind me in the makeup trailer, flashed his pearly whites, and the rest is history.

We were like peanut butter and jelly, we just belonged together. You can’t help but love him. He’s sincere and funny as hell and, as I said before, loyal.

Jonathan is the first to tell you his shortcomings. He’s much harder on himself than on other people. His self-deprecation makes up most of his comedy genius. He came to most of the
DWTS
shows, and we always went to dinner, then out afterward.

It’s impossible to communicate the love I have for Jonny. If one of us weren’t gay, we would be married. You choose.

We are almost like twins. We both love gardening and house repairs, interior design, telling stories, lying around in bed watching movies. We’re homebodies, basically. Together, we are happy being anywhere and doing nothing.

Here’s another thing I love about Jon. When most people come to visit, especially for extended stays, they need to be entertained. They have an agenda—shopping, dining, sightseeing. UGH!! They are high maintenance. I loathe high-maintenance GUESTS!!! GO STAY AT HOTELS!!!!

When Jon came to Italy we were just as content to lie in bed watching movies as we were zooming around the Amalfi coast on a yacht! We left Positano only once, to sail off to Capri. Other than that, we just hung out, eating watermelon. He doesn’t care and neither do I, as long as we’re together, we’re happy. It’s REFRESHING!!

We also like to do really dumb stuff, like shoot bottles at cheesy rifle ranges. We both adore animals, all animals. Jon tells a hysterical story about his beloved pony June, being given away to an amusement park when he was at school!

We’re both from middle-class families. Jonathan is game for anything, anywhere. This past January 12—my birthday—my kids and I were holed up in Maine during a blizzard. After my kids made breakfast for me and gave me gifts, they said, “Let’s go out on the porch and plan our next dance.” This was in the beginning of this crazy fiasco I created called “100 Days of Dance.” I kid you not, it was a flippin’ blizzard, but I went out on the back porch . . . and there stood Jonny, all bundled up, smiling that killer smile he has. “Happy birthday!” he said with his crooked grin. For me he was the damn Christ child. I flew across that porch like a G6 into his now-frozen, outstretched arms!

There’s a quality that I’ve noticed with only three of the men I’ve been in love with. Our bodies fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, like a hand in a glove (unlike OJ’s glove). It’s this bizarre physical sensation. I’m one of those girls who sticks her ass out when you hug her, can’t get too close, you can’t press your junk against this girl, oh no . . . But with these three men it felt like melting into them, just the right height, arm length, temperature, just the right feeling skin, warm, soft, cozy. I melt into Jon every time we hug. That’s another thing we have in common. We’re not long huggers, and I never pat him like a child.

Maks and Sergey go berserk when I do that to them. Mid-hug, I pat them on their backs like I’m their granny. The reason is, they stay in too long for the hug. I like a nice, solid, warm hug . . . then a release! If you hold me there too long I panic and start patting you. It’s my escape route. Jonathan is like that, too. If too much attention is on him, he gets nervous.

There’s NOTHING about Jonathan that bugs me. Now
that’s
saying something. Even if one of us was gay, I would still marry him. I wouldn’t care. That part of life is actually pretty boring to me. It’s all hot and heavy for what, a year? Then you get down to the real business of living a life together. I figure on a good day, two hours of sex is about all I could tolerate and to be honest, sex more than three times a week (save for that first 12 months of a fuck frenzy), yep, three times a week for an hour sounds good to me. I get bored so terribly fast, and sex usually doesn’t feel like the romance of the relationship anyway.