You Can Say You Knew Me When (42 page)
Read You Can Say You Knew Me When Online
Authors: K. M. Soehnlein
Tags: #Gay & Lesbian, #Literature & Fiction, #Fiction, #Gay, #Contemporary, #United States, #Contemporary Fiction, #American, #Literary, #Genre Fiction, #Lgbt, #Gay Fiction
Dean regained his composure. He focused his stare on me, asking, “You ever had your heart broken?”
“I guess.”
“If you gotta
guess
, then you ain’t. I’m talking
the rug pulled out
.”
“It’s complicated,” I said. Was my heart broken now, after Woody? Can you throw love away and still wind up with a broken heart—the boomerang of rejection? The thought of Woody brought an unexpected flush to my neck; or maybe that was the vodka, as I sucked down a mouthful,
gulp,
and felt it rise back up,
bam.
The boomerang of hard liquor. “I guess I’m usually the one pulling the rug.”
“So you’re as bad as your father.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“Your father broke my heart,” he said.
“He broke mine, too,” I shot back.
Tommy hopped to his feet, saying, “I gotta step outside to make a call.” I watched him leave, fists swinging, gold wedding band on his left hand, chrome cell phone in his right, ready, no doubt, to dial Colleen.
“I don’t trust any son of my brother’s,” Dean said.
“He’s the best of the bunch. I wouldn’t have brought him here if—.”
“I don’t trust you, either,” he said.
“From the first time I saw your picture, I knew I had to meet you,” I said, trying for a language he might understand. “I had to hear your side of the story. If I could just have an hour to ask you my questions.”
Tommy returned before I got a response. “Colleen’s wondering if we’re gonna go meet her for that drink we talked about. Whaddaya say, cuz?” His eyebrows lifted, broadly telegraphing his need to be excused from this stifling room.
Dean was pouring himself more vodka. He glanced at me over the top of his specs and wiggled the bottle.
“You go,” I told Tommy. “I’ll take a cab back to the hotel.”
“You sure about that?” I nodded. He approached Dean Foster’s upholstered throne. “I’m very glad to have met you, Uncle Danny, and I hope to stay in touch.”
“It’s
Dean
,” he said.
“If you need any help with anything, call me.” Tommy presented a business card, offered a handshake, clasped his second hand onto their mutual grip.
He let himself out, and then it was just me and Dean, a couple of drunk drama queens arranged in an unlikely proximity on Teddy Garner’s scorched earth. “It’s ironic, you being homosexual,” he said to me. “Because otherwise he got what he wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“A son! He wanted a son.”
This sounded like a cue: I pulled out my tape recorder, set it between us. Dean looked at the machine with curiosity. He had questions about it: How it worked, what it cost, where was the tape? We were inching towards an interview. “Let’s do this,” I said.
“Aw, hell,” he muttered.” You’re gonna ask me again? If I had sex with him?”
“There’s a lot I want to ask you. But sure, for starters: Did you?”
“Yes. Once. The worst mistake of my life.”
I didn’t get that on tape. But he said it. Word for word, I’m sure of it. I remember the stupefied silence that followed as I went rigid from this admission. Forgetting to press
RECORD
. Forgetting, it seemed, to breathe.
Finally, composing myself, telling myself,
This is it, don’t blow it,
I started the recorder and began.
Near as I can figure out, we’re talking about June 1961. When my father came to visit you.
I came to Hollywood in, what, ’59 or ’60. Probably Rusty showed up with his suitcase about a year later. He wasn’t going back to Frisco. We didn’t have phones, see? You just drop by, leave a note if I’m not there. I have a definite memory of his note slipped under the door, because he had that scribble.
I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering it.
He shows up, no money, no job, trying to impress me with this and that about San Francisco—the artistic types, beatniks, what have you. But wearing the same clothes from a year ago in New York. I said, “You look like a bum.” Look, I’d done pretty well for myself right away, got an agent, met some showbiz folks. Six months in, I had a screen test for
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone—
which went to Beatty but shoulda been mine. I was a kid, but they saw I had
it
.
What did he tell you about his time in San Francisco?
Sounded to me like he spent a lot of time getting drunk by himself. And was always broke. And I got the feeling he might have made a few bucks hustling. You know the phrase “rough trade”?
Sure. But he wasn’t—.
I suspected it, because he’d come to LA with a couple of homosexuals. I’m thinking he let one of those guys blow him in exchange for the ride.
I know about them. A guy named Don and—.
All I remember is something happened to get Rusty’s knickers in a twist. “Can’t trust these queers,” and so forth. But in a way that made him more attractive.
I don’t understand.
Because the thing you wanted was a real man. If you were a homosexual, you didn’t want to have an affair with a pansy; what was the point of that? With “trade” you got someone who’s masculine but also lets you blow him.
But was a guy who was “trade” considered straight or gay?
Trade was its own category, though many a time the trade turns into a fag himself. “Trade for a week, gay for life,” was the joke.
Did you two ever have anything physical before this? Back in New York?
We dated girls, but it was more talk than action. Tell each other about your date, make it sound good and sexy, and meanwhile we’re, you know…with ourselves. Next to each other on the bed, but not touching. Kid stuff. All guys do it, right?
I guess a lot of guys do. I did.
Rusty was my best friend. He took care of me. This was the West Side; they grow ’em tough there!
West Side Story—
that was our neighborhood, with the gangs. It’s all gone now. They knocked it down for that place, the opera place—.
Lincoln Center?
Exactly. When I met Natalie Wood, I told her I shoulda been in
West Side Story
, because I
am
the West Side! Plus, I had my looks. Not to say anything, but most of those guys in that movie, they got nothin’ in the looks department. I don’t care how high they can kick.
You guys weren’t part of a gang in your neighborhood, were you?
Rusty could have been; he had the temper. And his dad was a famous drunk. Once, I saw him throw Rusty down the stoop onto the sidewalk, arguing about who knows what. Did it right in front of all of us. Never forget it. And my brother, Angelo, was another one. What you’d call macho. He’d swat you on the head in front of your pals. Rusty wasn’t like that, though he had a temper. So the tougher fellows would leave me alone because of him. The thing is, he was an A student. He got a prize once for an essay in high school, on the subject of citizenship, I think. We’d go to the museums or an art gallery or a foreign film. Not too many from our neighborhood went down to the Village for a foreign film.
So why’d you go to California?
I went for Hollywood! I had the looks. Me and Rusty argued about it, because he said San Francisco’s the place. Not for me. Plus I figured, put some distance between us. I was pretty hung up on him.
It seems like he wrote you a lot of letters, but you didn’t write back much.
He sent me pages of that chicken scratch. I burned them all.
You burned them?
Look, kid, don’t get upset. I was crazy about him, but there was no point with a guy like Rusty. He got bent outta shape because I took him to a bar—it was an actor’s bar, but he looked around and saw a lot of homosexual clientele. He said he’d had enough of that in San Francisco. “You better not be one of those fruits, too.” And so forth.
Were you “out” at the time?
Well, discreetly. You didn’t just walk around like today with your so-called pride. What are they proud about? Because their ass is hanging out? You didn’t talk about it—but that’s Hollywood. Always been that way, and still is today. I met Henry Wilson, the famous agent. He had Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue, all of them. Let Henry blow you, and he gets you a part. I had talent, but they can’t see your talent; first thing they see is the face. Any pretty boy who’s made two pictures in Hollywood can fill a book, because the casting couch ain’t just for women. Which is the title of my memoir
, The Casting Couch Ain’t Just for Women.
If you catch my drift.
I catch it.
So there’s Rusty saying, “I’m gonna stay with you in LA.” “Okay,” I say, “but you gotta give me some privacy.” “For what?” Which is when I let him know.
So how did he respond?
First the temper. “No way, you can’t be one of them, Danny,” and so on, as mean as his father. Then he calms down and gives me the theory he’d come up with. He had some name for it—“The Theory of Three.” A guy was a one.
A worm?
A
one
. A guy was symbolized by number one. Like a stick. And a woman was symbolized by number two, because, I don’t know, she had two tits, or two sides to her twat, or something. Pardon my French.
This was a concept he came up with himself?
I’ve never fucking forgotten it. One plus two equaled three, which was the baby, and that was the Law of Three. But one plus one equals two, see? Two guys together make a woman out of both of them. He had it all worked out, psychologically speaking. So after we make it, he’s telling me this theory.
After you “make it”?
Yeah. Since you’re dying to know, that’s what wound up happening.
What wound up happening?
What you’d call a quickie. Like with trade. Jesus Christ, you’re a ballsy one!
All through this, he’d poured a steady stream of vodka down his throat, and here he swept his arm wide and lost his grip on the glass, which crashed into pieces. The noise set off a volley of muffled barking from the Doberman. Dean raised himself from the armchair, calling out, “I know, Victor, I know,” as if the two of them were in telepathic agreement on some familiar subject. When I rose to help, Dean told me to sit. He kicked the shards under a table and left the room without explanation.
As I waited through the sounds of Victor’s howling and Dean’s shuffling feet, I phrased and rephrased my next question, searching for the right words to ask what he meant by
a quickie—
what Teddy, for all his theories and protestations, permitted himself. This was not prurience. I had accumulated so many words about my father, but together they clouded the truth. I wanted the specificity of an image, of an action, even if it came from the drunken memory of Dean Foster. I knew I would never hear it from Teddy himself; Dean had burned the letters.
But when Dean returned, already in mid-sentence, my tongue, swollen and sluggish with booze, betrayed me. I couldn’t force myself to demand the gory details. I wasn’t as ballsy as he thought me to be.
—so I wake up and he’s gone. The next day. Not even a note. I kept thinking I’d hear from him, because he was the writer, but—nothin’.
Did you ever see him again?
One time in New York, when I went back for the movie. The beach picture—you saw that one. He showed up, and afterwards we did some drinking at my hotel. Come to think of it, maybe that’s when he gave me the Theory. And he said some nasty things to me; I should get help, I was sick.
Is that why you didn’t go home for the wedding?
I had a picture to shoot. Did you see
Encounter in Tijuana?
We had Ava Gardner on that one, but it did lousy box office. I played one of the cops. I had a scene with her where I say, “A lady like you might want to remember what she was doing on the night in question.”
You didn’t skip the wedding on purpose, but because of work?
They said I should squeeze in the trip, and maybe I could’ve, I don’t remember. I woulda had to stand up there with Rusty, in the wedding party, two groomsmen, after the thing he’d said to me. No way. Katie says, “If you don’t come, your brother’ll never speak to you again.” No one ever let me forget it. Angelo, Katie, no one. Like I said, biggest mistake of my life. Don’t fall for a straight guy.
So you think Teddy was straight?
Not as straight as they come, but yeah, in the end. Straight. And then here’s the kicker: He tells my brother that I’m in Hollywood with a homosexual crowd, and my brother tells me he wants me back in New York, to keep an eye on me. Let me tell you, there was no respect, not from a one of them. Then I was on my own, and my career would have taken off, but because of the arrest.
This is the arrest you mentioned before?
That was entrapment. By the police. And they never had proof of anything!
Entrapment?
Sure. You’re in a public toilet just taking a leak. And the police used to do that—they’d go into a john, and the stinkin’ guy would be undercover, right? And he’d have his, you know, hanging out at the pisser—not hanging, at full mast, gettin’ himself aroused on the taxpayer’s dime. Good work if you can get it! All I did was give it a look. What’re you supposed to do, ignore it? But they arrested me for lookin’. Then they tell your employer, which in my case was the studio, and then your agent can’t get you work. And the kicker is, my agent was dabbling with all the young actors who had good looks and wanted a career. If you let him suck you, you got a part. The casting couch ain’t just for women, which will be the title. And I got all the names. You listen to these tapes, you’ll hear every one.
Did anyone back home know about this?
The word got out. I had no work in Hollywood after that. I said, “Angelo, send me some money,” and he said I had to come to New York to pick it up, but no way. I couldn’t have a career in New York. And I was supposed to get the Cadillac and split the bonds and the jewelry, and Angelo said only if you come to New York. “I’ll come for the funeral, but I’m not staying.” And they didn’t give me any of my inheritance, not even after the funeral.
Your father’s funeral? Did you see Rusty there?