Joan Crawford's black market babies

The fate of Joan Crawford's adopted children has become common knowledge since the publication and movie adaptation of Christina Crawford's Mommie Dearest.  In it, she tells the horrific stories of the abuse she and her adopted brother Christopher suffered while the twins Cynthia and Cathy allegedly experienced none.
There is a darker side to the tale that prequels all of that.   Through news sources and gossip columns, media reports of the way Joan Crawford obtained her children were once public knowledge.

The Chicago Tribune May 24, 1940 announces:

Joan Crawford became a foster mother today.

The screen star adopted a blue eyed, flaxen-haired two-month-old girl and named her Christina.

Miss Crawford’s business representatives said she obtained the baby from an eastern institution and had just completed legal details.

She recently obtained a divorce from Franchot Tone, stage and screen actor, now appearing on Broadway.

(Other biographical sources say that Joan adopted the child in Las Vegas and that Christina had lived with her for the past 11 months.) This month, the two travel to Miami, Florida, for reasons unknown.

June 3 1941 Marcus Gary Kullberg born. Joan adopts him 10 days later, renaming him "Christopher Crawford."

June 11. Joan celebrates Christina's second birthday with 15 child-guests, a merry-go-round, and a scary clown.

June 13. Joan picks up her new son at baby broker Alice Hough's house.

November. After threats from the mother, Joan and broker Alice Hough return baby Kullberg to his mother's house. (After a year of abuse, he is given up for adoption a second time by his mother in November 1942.)

Rebecca Kullberg was the birthmother of baby Marcus. Judging from here behavior, she never got over giving him away. The following was a newspaper clipping that appeared after her arrest in  1941. 

 Kullberg, Rebecca. (9/28/1914 -    )  Natural mother of Joan's first adopted son, who was the result of the married Kullberg's affair with a local liquor-store owner.

After Joan adopted baby Marcus through a broker 10 days after his birth in June 1941 (re-naming him "Christopher"), Rebecca Kullberg saw press articles about Joan's new adoption that gave the baby's birthdate and decided she wanted him back. After Kullberg sent threatening letters to both Joan and MGM, Joan personally returned the child after Thanksgiving, 1941. Kullberg kept the child for the next year, during which time he was abused, then gave him up for adoption a second time in late 1942. In December 1944, Kullberg read articles about a second "Christopher" now adopted by Joan. Incorrectly thinking it was her son, she forced her way into Joan's home on December 20 demanding to see him. She was arrested and sent for psychiatric care.

(Baby Marcus was eventually adopted by kind parents and renamed "Gary Deatherage." In the late 1980s, he began a search for his roots, which resulted in his 1991 book The Other Side of My Life. He recounts in the book his rather bizarre adult conversations with his mother, who was then living in a gloomy hotel near Sacramento after years of wandering the country and telling people that her son had become Elvis Presley.)

Here is the text of the LA Times article of January 17, 1945, detailing Kullberg's "visit" to Joan's home. (Thanks to Norman for sending this in.)

Woman Held After Row at Joan Crawford Home

A confused woman, apparently believing that Joan Crawford, film star, had adopted one of her children yesterday was arrested by The Federal Bureau of Investigation for sending threatening letters to Mrs. Alice Haugh, welfare worker, who, she thought, had a hand in the adoption.

The woman taken into custody is Mrs. Rebecca Kullberg, 30-year-old housewife of 2017½  Berkley Ave.

A wild scene was created In Miss Crawford's home, investigators reported, when Mrs. Kullberg went there on Dec. 20, forced her way into the actress' house and ran through it demanding to see "my son Christopher whom you adopted two years ago."

Arrested at that time by West Los Angeles police, Mrs. Kullberg was questioned by both police and psychiatrists and later released. At that time, she denied that she intended to carry out threats she may have made in letters to Mrs. Haugh concerning the "adoption."

When she was taken into custody yesterday by the FBI, which had reopened investigation of the case, Mrs. Kullberg informed agents that “an angel of the Lord” had told her that her son was in Miss Crawford’s home.

Investigators reported that Mrs. Haugh said that the actress had not adopted any of Mrs. Kullberg’s children.

The second Christopher 

Phillip Terry Jr. was born on October 15, 1943 and was adopted by both Joan Crawford and her then husband Phillip Terry in 1943. After Joan divorced Terry in 1946, Crawford changed her sons name to Christopher Crawford. Christopher Crawford was a quiet child, but became defiant at home when he found out he was adopted. Christopher became difficult and defiant at home, he was labeled as a "problem child" by many schools that he was kicked out of. Christopher ran away from home on many occasions, searching for his "real" mother and father. Christopher admitted later in life he was a "brat" as a child and "difficult." At the young age of 16 he stole a car, Crawford could not control his wild behavior and Christopher left home before he was 18 years old. Christopher married a waitress and had his first child with her by the time he was 19 years old. In 1962, Christopher was living in Miami and working as a lifeguard. In 1962, Christopher visited his mother with his wife and baby. Crawford said, "It doesn't look like you. It's probably a bastard." That was the last time Christopher ever saw his mother, Joan Crawford.

Me and the Girl Who Went Away

In adoption related circles there is a term called triad that refers to the specter of participants in an adoption, the adoptee, the birth and adoptive parents. For my whole life as an adoptee, I have never thought much about the experiences of the other groups. My own orphaned path with all of its implications and social stigma has been the only one that mattered in my narrow narcissistic POV. Suddenly, through Facebook, I have become friends with a host of birthmothers mostly from the baby scoop era that refers to the boom of orphans given up between 1940 and 1970. I have chatted with many of them who relay stories of having been coerced and assured that they were doing the right thing for their unborn child. They were promised anonymity and instructed to go on with their lives and forget the ordeal had ever happened. There is a book written by Ann Fessler called The Girls Who Went Away that is a compendium of accounts from the aforementioned birthmothers who describe being sent away to institutionalized homes for unwed mothers where they were issued a fake wedding ring to wear during their pregnancy to prevent gossip and scandal from harboring. I have a friend whose mother was sent two states away to carry out her pregnancy which she explained as being called to care for sick aunt. It is a wonder that he was reconnected after they went to  such lengths to prevent that from happening. 

My own birthmother doesn’t qualify as one of Fessler’s described girls who went away although she was sent away for a different reason.

Kathy Domino was barely 30 when she gave birth to me at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in 1973. She had been there before just two years prior when she gave birth to my sister. The first time she got pregnant she and her boyfriend Tom were still romantic and googly—eyed enough to imagine that they could become a family and raise the baby on their own but they were deluding themselves. Tom said it became apparent in Kathy’s third trimester that he could never marry her. The day he came home to find her sobbing surrounded by broken dishes helped him make up his mind. Still, he did everything he could to come to the hospital when he learned Kathy was in labor. Because he was barred at the door and deemed a pariah, he went on his way and tried to forget. Back then being a birthfather of a “bastard” was anathema to expecting custodial rights or consideration. When I asked her family what they knew about him, I received a curt brush off as they claimed ignorance. I later learned they knew exactly who he was but didn’t approve and therefore ceased to exist. If Kathy had been normal and married a man of her family’s station she would be hosting luncheons for the local Junior League as wife to a stockbroker or something like  it. She was from old world immigrant Sicilian stock whose offspring had elevated to leadership positions all over the South Bay in the generations since the  first WOPs descended the boat.  Sicilians stick together and eschew affiliation with the vile Italians they’re always being lumped in with. “We are NOT Italian”, said my uncle Fred when I told him that was the only detail I was allowed to know. The face sheet I was issued with splotches of white-out clearly shows the word Italian stamped in the box describing my mother’s nationality. My adoptive surname of Angelo scored me points when I introduced myself as the long lost son of his schizophrenic sister but it didn’t hold. “What can I do for you,?” he asked as if I was inquiring about a loan.   Maybe he worried that I was keen to  their mother’s lineage that  produced the corporate behemoth that became Contadina Foods. Kathy and Fred’s parents divorced before she was tnree and their  mother brazenly moved to CA as their father faded to the background. Their father was a Chicago bar owner who was prone to throwing his 4'11 wife down the stairs. Their mother was descended from the founding families of Contadina Foods and used her connections to finagle a job in a California cannery in order to get divoriced and head west with the children. This was quite a liberating step in the years immediately following WWII  They lived in the comfortable Willow Glen suburb and her brother attended Bellarmine,  the Catholic boy’s high school for future rulers of business and industry. Fred went on to become district attorney after graduating University of Santa Clara. Kathy went to Europe when she was 15 to study art and had visions of painting professionally. Her high school graduation picture is tragic in the way it suggests what could have been. It was displayed on the church alter at her memorial service and I balked upon seeing it. “That’s when she was normal,” said her brother wistfully. I had never allowed myself to imagine or consider that there was once a time that she was normal. The schizophrenia was at the forefront of everything I thought or dreamt about her since I was conscious. It was the first thing revealed in the letter I received from Santa Clara County the first time I inquired about where I came from. “Based on your mother’s diagnosis of schizophrenia, you were given up for adoption…and she was conserved”.  The schizophrenia obscured her identity and parental claims.  It was evident in the way she drifted from one tangent to another unrelated topic in every attempt at conversation. “Tell me about the day I was born,” I once said to her. “It was a miracle… miracle… Miracle Worker, ..Helen Keller… Who played Helen Keller in the Miracle Worker,..” went one tangent.

“Patty Duke,“I interjected…now back to me… “ I became better at redirecting her focus and learned to tolerate her unorthodox public persona and then appreciate it as star quality. When she rubbed elbows with winos and hit them up for a spare cigarette and some change, I didn’t bat an eyelash since it was the first thing she had said to me the day I found her. The velveteen baby doll dress may not have been age appropriate for her generation but it complimented the plastic bow hair barrettes and streetwalker makeup that she liked to reapply in windows. After her death, I came across a letter she had written to my father two months before my ninth birthday when she was 39, the same age I am now. “I never ask much of you or my brother,” it began but I need you to send me a picture of our 8 year old son Thomas Charles. “ I froze when I saw my original name and immediately hijacked the letter from my father[‘s pile of memories. He would have never let me have it but I deemed it mine as much as my sealed birth certificate was mine. Kathy’s fragile mental state had led to her becoming convinced that my father was harboring pictures of me when the reality was he knew even less about me than she did. He wasn’t near the hospital when I was born and didn’t believe I was his until he saw a picture years later. It made absolutely no sense that he would have a set of current pictures  but there it was in ink under an ancient coffee stain on springtime themed stationery. “I’m still eating to curb the loneliness, up to 150 lbs.” That was the last line she wrote before signing off, “Love Kay” which I imagined people calling her as short for Kathy. It is an eerie timestamp of evidence that she never got over giving me or Trista up.  Her brother told me she would ask about us years after the adoptions. “Where are my babies,” she would cry. “They’re with families who can take care of them,” was the stock answer.  I don’t think she ever completely comprehended what became of us. I was left in foster care for over  a year as she refused to sign my relinquishment papers. “She would have eventually been forced to…It would have been disastrous (if she had kept us),” said my uncle. Kathy’s mental state had absolved her of any hope of claiming parental rights. She was relegated to eternal mystery as they erased her name from my records.  I was born in 1973, the hallmark year of Roe vs. Wade and it escapes me why she neve exercised the option  to not have children. She gave birth to another boy 7 years after me from another man although she claimed for years that we were all from the same father. My half-brother David’s adoption was handled out in the open as his foster parents knew the people who adopted him and Kathy was able to visit him regularly until he was 5 years old. He always knew where he came from unlike Trista and me who were as good as left on a doorstep for the information we were given.

Sometimes, when I’m in the company of other adoptees, someone usually points out how my case was different from the majority because Kathy was schizophrenic. “Your mother had a reason to give you up. Not like us,” they chime.  This detail sets me apart from the norm in my circle of commiserating lost bastards The pool of orphaned adoptees I usually affiliate with have been predominantly female and have struggled with why they were given up. I have been described as lucky to have escaped all that rejection because Kathy was schizophrenic. I just nod and smile when accused of this because my reality hasn’t been any easier to accept knowing that her hand was forced. She may not have been an unwed teenager but as a ward of the state who was free to avoid medication and pursue random relationships on the street she suffered  consequences that only alienated her further from her family.  By the time Trista and I met her,  the  closest confidante she had was the batty bag lady she battled with in the bed next to hers in a sleazy halfway house.  My sister and I couldn’t comprehend what we were witnessing the first time we saw it.

I empathize with my new group of friends from the other side of the triad. Identifying as an adoptee and more than affiliated with the adoptive parent’s angle based on the experience of my own, I had always regarded birthmothers as a mysterious, anonymous clique who lived in fear of opening their front door to find the kid they gave away. My mother had a close friend who had given up a child for adoption before she married and had more children. She didn't want to search for her son because she was told it might ruin his life if she suddenly showed up so she avoided it for years. Eventually she did search and find her son who was 25 by that time.  He confessed he had avoided searching for her because he had been told she was promised anonymity and showing up might ruin her life. The lies and lack of logic kept both parties frozen in fear for many years. 

Hollywood typecast me as a fairy and ruined my career.

As an arbiter of the mid-90s nihilistic fashion trend of starvation, I was cast as  a pixie.  

Circa 1995, Santa Monica Blvd @ La Cienega (Boyztown)

I made lattes at the first Starbucks in the heart of West Hollywood, right on front street as it could get since it sat directly across from the gym where all the gay porn stars worked out. That included every third person within 90069. Porn paid the bills and ruled the aesthetic.
I became curious about a group of men who worked in the offices upstairs after overhearing bits of their conversations. As the months went by, I was finally invited up to see for myself what went on at Alluvial Entertainment. As I was led around a suite of cubicles down hallways adorned with wall-to-wall Tom Bianchi black and white nudes,  I took notice that every single employee was a drop dead gorgeous model perfect male specimen. They explained that they were revolutionizing the gay entertainment industry by introducing a tasteful line of artistic films with homoerotic themes. Erotica is the new thing, they explained.  As the executives talked up erotica, we passed teams of gorgeous employees mesmerized by their monitors that seemed to be showing porn.  Erotica is the new porn, huh? In whose world?, I thought.  The Alluvial execs spoke as if they had struck gold with their idea and named their company Alluvial, accordingly.  
They pitched me their next project and asked  if I would play a golden pixie explaining that my body was perfect for it. I had played an elf in the Bellevue Youth Theater production of The Hobbit when I was 17 so I figured it was along the same reasoning.   When they explained nudity was required, at first I pleaded with the costume designer to design just a little something extra besides the cape and Spock ears. "Oh, you'll be wearing more than that," he said. I was relieved until he told me they were gold wrist and ankle cuffs.
"You do know that you absolutely have to do it, don't you," said my BFF  from USC, where I was a senior.
I knew in my heart that he was right. How could I face myself if I chickened out and missed the chance to participate in something bound to be so campy Susan Sontag herself would endorse it.  The USA Today had reported that the 90s would be about the gamine which the dictionary defined as slender, impudent and playfully mischievous. I put the gay in gamine and knew it  was my duty as the embodiment of the ruling fashion trend to take advantage of exploitation.   I would do it. 
 "Now you better get to the gym, " he added. I was already an obsessive anorexic with a  Nazi-like self-discipline fueled by years of low self esteem egged on by body dysmorphia that was wrapped up in my identity. But that helped me set record breaking distances running up and down the blvd of broken dreams... east of Fairfax into the Jewish area, all the way down until I passed the cemetery holding Marilyn Monroe and even past that and around and back down Sunset the opposite way. I passed thru the ghetto that used to be Hollywood High School and  silently ticked off its list of famous graduates. I passed the casting director''s office where I had met a codger who told me about little Taffy Paul, an HHS cheerleader who became America's fantasy wife as Amanda Hart played by Stephanie Powers.  I passed the Gower Champion studios, Crossroads of the World off Hollywood and Highland, past Paramount where Norma Desmond once ruled,...one by one the Hollywood landmarks faded into memory before they were visible as the Director's Guild swallowed  the Whiskey that became Rock n' Roll Ralphs and then the  Beverly Hills bistro where Cookie Mueller goes... and now I was past Doheny across the Beverly Hills border. I ran and ran and continued to run until the streets became familiar again and I knew I was back where I had started. It was to become my ritual which became an obsession that became a prison.
 On a Tuesday in the following month of mid-February,  I had to cut my afternoon Cinema class to  make my call time but knew that it was the best department to understand the demands of show business.  At 11 minutes to 8 AM,  I arrived at a warehouse somewhere in San Fernando Valley and took off my lavender Lucite Jackie (crackie)  O sunglasses  that were my mainstay.  "Look at you, like a 50s screen star, said my British director. "This is my new Schwabs," I explained since they had discovered me at Starbucks, the modern gay version of Lana Turner's myth.  Having a European director comforted me since it was known that Europeans were much more refined than Americans and this project would have that kiss of Euro stamp of approval to insure taste, I was sure.
I was introduced to the lead actor of my vignette but learned more about him by listening to the fanfare and blatant starfucking that a grip with a country  accent exhibited when he bragged, "Man I knew that boy Lee before he was Lee," which piqued my interests since I was too young to be so cynical. "She's a hookah, honey," whispered the photographer I had just met that reminded me of Thelma Ritter.  Lee existed side-by-side on the set with me all day but since we had no spoken dialogue he didn'ty bother to utter a word. "I guess he's really trying to hold character," I explained to the other person in my pixie pair.  Also, I was unsure why he was present at my early morning makeup call time since the only thing he would be wearing was a winsome smile in his eyes.  My 5'10 of gold paint paled in comparison to the cosmetic chassis caboodle he dragged out, that I hadn't seen since the last drag show. He proceeded to apply so much base, concealer, contour, highlighter, shadow and gloss with a traceless top to his visage that I had to remind myself it took more effort for him to look natural than it was taking me for supernatural.  He couldn't have been less than 37 if he was a day and the script did say "blond youth" so he obviously needed the extra time in the makeup room.  He was certainly blond enough to suggest innocence but in Hollywood it's common to gloss over details as he was demonstrating with the way he applied copious lipgloss. (Might as well, just paint the camera lens with it for the same affect."), I thought to myself.
 Since most of the talent was too self-absorbed to make conversation, I chatted up my Thelma Ritter, the voice of reason amid this twisted queen-iverse.. Years later, I would liken it to the madness I imagined on the set of Vegas in Space when lead actress Doris Fish insisted on personally applying makeup to all the characters with no exceptions.  Thelma or  John-Bijon as he called himself seethed with a bitterness that was punctuated by a camera concoction that he wore as armor around his neck.  "Girl, if all goes well, after this, I'll be 26 with my own book", he said.  I couldn't begin to wonder what I would be doing at 26 because I was barely 22.
 When I was finally gold as I would get and emerged on stage, I recognized a queen I used to hang out with at school tossing handfuls of faux snow onto the set. White birch trees buried in banks of white snow...."white, white, so white it was trans---parent", I mimicked in my best Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer voice.  "White,  white,!!, I cried as no one laughed except my new friend Thelma. 
The morning went by uneventfully until Equine, the Chaval arrived on set followed by an entourage of sycophantic handlers they insisted be called trainers. As Equine was fitted with his seraphim wings to suggest but not steal from Pegasus' trademark, I had to call for my tattoos to be touched up. "Never get another tattoo, it will destroy your modeling career," said a light tech. "You think I'm a model,?", was all I got out of that exchange.  The impish British director had ascended to the heavens inside of a construction cherry picker I saw used on  Wilshire to wash windows.  He used a bull horn to build a back story for the pixie's character development.  "Remember, the main character in Morning Music is the last dancer left on the club floor in the morning" . (Hence the title!) And the ecstasy he did last night is causing him to have fantasies," he continued.

"YOU'RE one of his fantasies," was my raison d' etre. "Oh, how the hell is this going to go over?" I thought to myself. The director instructed me and my elvin castmate to affect a series of mythical, whimsical, ethereal, organzafied fluid flourishes of fancy choreography that he described as fantastic. We moved as if under water, arms slowly undulating as we cast spells and spilled golden glitter from our every being. We had to repeat some takes several times and by the fifth time  I had to gingerly assist la chaval who was now a beauhunk man with white hair and a cape like the pixies to nestle the blond back into the snow where they found him, I was angling for a piece of the apple the "trainers" were lovingly cutting into pieces with a pearl handled paring knife to feed to Equine.  I was used to perpetual hunger but still missed the concept of food and silently mourned that it was a part of my former life. My mind snapped back to the present when I heard, "If you're not going to help," pretend!!, " screamed the nelly limey director huffing and puffing as if he was Demille himself.   I was prepared to skip class that day but suddenly felt that I couldn't possibly let it happen and was overcome with an overwhelming urge to make it to my evening CNTV class on time. Sliding into my seat just under the bell,  I made nu apologies for showing up gilded as no explanations were offered because everyone in Hollywood understands a gig is a gig and sometimes you just gotta be gold.

• 

 

My life on the ho-stro-- Revised

I loathe religion but came across a lay person's translation of the Whore of Babylon allegory from the Bible's Book of Revelations recently and was disgusted to see evidence that it was yet another example of them scapegoating the ills of the world off on whores. The Babylon whore was a symbol for Rome according to most accounts and Mary Magdalene wasn't a prostitute at all but actually. an early disciple. That bloated gas bag pope with the inflated, self-imposed title, Gregory the Great rewrote her historical storyline and relegated her to a common whore in need of salvation. That was one of two options available for women back then, complete hellbent whore or whore in need of salvation by stoning or eternal repentance. It got me to thinking about the way this theme of the whore has played out in my own life. I have come to see it as an empowering measure that can be used to get from point a to point b. That is, doing what you gotta do.

Circa 1997  Polk Street Gulch,   I was barely 24 and my post college life exploits were being explained as my little bout of growing pains but in reality I was going through the most powerful depiction of Hell my sheltered suburban spoiled life had ever encountered.  Always the model student and kid who never did anything wrong, when I graduated college, I started acting out all the rebellion I never did as a teenager.  One summer night in 65 degree San Francisco, I was being coached by a cute, hustler boy who was schooling me on the way to gain the attention of drivers as I trolled the ho-stro on Polk Street. Back then, the Polk Gulch  was notoriously rife with boys and some who had arrived as sailors and never left.  "There was a boy on every corner back in the day" was the truth being echoed by the area's long time gay denizens. I looked up to them as my elders and pioneers of my gay heritage that I was eager  to learn from the old fashioned way.  It was an exploratory  time for me evidenced by the ways I could rebel against the privileged bourgeois opportunities I had been granted through the efforts and love of my parents whom I resented for not understanding my angst. It was all very dramatic and embarrassing to recall but at the time I was determined to prostitute on Polk Street and prove I could survive and make my own money even with no prospects of getting a real job. I was in no condition to trot out the Banana Republic and be quizzed in MS Office  for yet another reception desk job. I had been doing that for years and after being fired from my last gig at an Embarcadero mortgage company for excessive tardiness, I was determined to prove it didn't matter..

"Walk against traffic so you can see the drivers faces," said my tutor, Jeff, a scrawny yet sexy skateboarder and self described Ritalin kid that I had flirted with in a drug treatment program one month prior.  As I lingered around the telephone booth at Polk and Pine in front of the now defunct drag club Kimo's, my performance was vindicated when a man came walking up and invited me for a drink. I signaled my tutor to make scarce, confident I would meet up with him after the deal was done.  We went to the QT, a packed little bar complete with a box for the amateur dick dancers. While the hookahs shook their junk in g-strings I found a space at the crowded bar and squeezed in with my guest. Trying to pretend as if I didn't notice or know Jeff who was nursing a bottle from a few paces away, I sank into just another gig for a character actor. I had been an actor in LA and had even achieved the ultimate actor's challenge by pulling a Tootsie in LA night clubs as I routinely dressed as a woman and fooled even the Persian mafia at the Roxbury. If I could do that, I could pull off the little lost boy routine for this mark.  He bought me a drink and quizzed me about my story which I created as that mirroring a suicidal runaway. I saw right through his Captain Save-a-Ho routine but had no interest in being rescued. As we made our way out of the packed bar, I made eye contact with Jeff that signaled he would be waiting for me when it was over.  I think I was taken to the Leland building across the street,  but since it was gutted by fire less than a year later, I couldn't be sure but it made a good story. Forever after, I always identified the Leland as the place I had once lost my hooker virginity even though it was remodeled and reopened as a senior community.  I knew Jeff was expecting me to come out with profit but I hated being nickel and dimed.. As I insisted on fares that were continuously marked down by the trick, I finally succumbed at a very discounted rate of $50 and all the change he had in his pockets.  With my back against a tabletop, I went through the motions and was surprised it didn't feel any different than normal sex, i.e. non-paid.  I was under the impression that my mission was purely mercenary. Pro hustlers didn't enjoy tricks, they just did them. When I exited the Leland feeling ever so accomplished and grown up, my balloon was deflated when I had to hand over my entire wad to Jeff who insisted he knew what to do with it.  I never got any of what he did with it and went home  feeling confused and icky for just being blatantly used.  From then on, every time someone tried to recommend me to turn a trick, I was always informed when it was over that the fee had already been paid to someone else. I usually failed to negotiate for myself becoming caught up in the moment and a little cock-crazy.  If I could trust someone to take over the financial aspect of it for me, I may have been moderately successful but I was always left without after I had given it up. The Gulch was razed to make room for the Upper Polk and Russian Hill fancy merchant association and a great big church was built where the hustler bars used to be. It's all too painful for me to retrace since they tore down the stomping grounds of my 20s.

Ten years later, in a new apartment in the heart of the Tenderloin, I found myself enmeshed in a group of sex workers and seekers.  For whatever reason, I had made acquaintance with a couple Nob Hill professors who  started coming to me to find  straight acting boys to fuck with. I had an arsenal of names I could call upon just from the trade I regularly came into contact with from living in the belly of the beast at Turk and Leavenworth. I had been mingling with the Polk street set of boys for a decade and knew how to gingerly tap dance around their fragile, sexual identities. Not one of them, no matter how many men they had been with would ever dream of identifying as homosexual. That was anathema and sure grounds for getting your ass kicked if the charade was ever challenged. I humored them along but was never able to ultimately convince them to take advantage of the easy money they could earn by merely whipping it out for a few minutes. "The view from his loft is fabulous. You can see all over the city and he doesn't require much," I tried to persuade.  In the end, I usually had to convince that I could offer services just as good as the next best thing and came to insist on being duly paid. So, I wasn't exactly straight acting but my equipment was equal if not better than any closet case hustler I could find on Polk and I didn't steal.  

 The  UC Berkeley profs who had a fetish for trade lived in a Nob Hill high rise across from the Academy of Art. I could speak their language of academia and the cover I was trying to convey as a street-savvy prostitute peddler was blown. Coupled with my increasing grey hair that giving me a seasoned salt n'pepper look, I knew I was getting too old for this behavior to be acceptable.  In the words of Sylvia Sidney in Broadway Damage, I was one of the few who knew what a semi colon was. The quote is out of context but the sentiment is the same: I was slumming. My efforts at harnessing the trade were failing and I ended up accepting quick cash in exchange for oral sexual favors but no longer deemed in appropriate for what I had going for myself.

My little studio at Turk and Leavenworth was never short of eager hookers needing a way to do business.  I decided to help some of them market their services on Craigslist by offering to write their ads. I had majored in Journalism, after all so this would be the perfect way to contribute.  Back then Craigslist was pretty lax about who could post for what and they looked the other way on blatant solicitations for prostitution. That is, until I started getting creative with my copy. "Raunchy Rob fucks your filthy fetish," read one headline.  Or buxom blond will be your bitch for the best buy." All were subsequently flagged and taken off the website. I was being singled out for my wit and my clients were left with no prospects.   I started letting some guys use my computer and apartment to host their own trysts while I agreed to take a walk around the block for a cut of the profit.  But more often than not, when the mark showed up, he was more interested in me that the person he had responded to in the ad. What was I supposed to do when opportunity knocked? It wasn't my fault they found me more attractive than the scrubs I was letting share my space. Sometimes, a hooker friend recommended me and my attributes to stand in for him with one of his regulars. I was supposed to cut my friend in but was expected to work as an indentured sex servant for a pittance while my friend got most of my coinage. I had grown smart after so many years and refused to give up my earnings which led to resentment and behind closed doors secret meetings with the client who urged me to keep my dalliances with him secret from the Rentboy.  I was never comfortable going all out and just getting an account on Rentboy because I expected hookers like that to be supermodels and my self esteem couldn't muster the audacity to tread in those waters. The friend I had who did it had long since gained weight past the hard body pictures he posted on the site and was getting by for virtue of his sizable assets. I would never have felt comfortable blatantly misrepresenting myself as an Adonis and showing up with adipose tissue. Plus there was the sticky, uncomfortable topic of money that I never liked to talk about. I did become better at asking for the fee upfront after too many times of having sex only to be told that pay wasn't understood to be part of the equation.  The Castro doctor client I had gained through my Rentboy benefactor's proclivities soon became too peculiar for my personal taste and  I was not attracted to him in any way which made it difficult and unpleasant for me to perform and put on the face just to be paid.  I lost his number and let Rentboy continue working him.

A year or so later, the cast of boys I had accumulated were replaced by a group of gals. They related to me as one of the girls and I became an advocate for them to pursue sex work. I had long been supportive and sensitive to the plight of sex workers through my affiliation with St. James Infirmary vis-a-vis the needle exchange where I volunteered. I am a firm believer in the principles of harm reduction and champion San Francisco's status as an advocate of such tenets.  I believed in any positive change, the first rule of harm reduction and was eager to see it play out in managing drug use and sex work.  The girls I let hang around my apartment didn't know or really care about the political implications of the importance of harm reduction but needed a place to post ads on myredbook.com and craigslist before the latter site started basically requiring a blood test and fingerprints. It soon became a common sight to see a number of girls lounging around my place while they wrote their online ad copy or put makeup on to prepare for the next date. If a girl wanted to do an in-call, I threw a slip cover over the clutter, spritzed a few vanilla notes into the atmosphere and created instant ambiance. Then I would greet the suitor in the lobby, take a walk around the block and receive a cut of her fee when I returned. It was an arrangement that worked most of the time until a couple girls started abusing the privilege by losing control of the situation. One girl broke my pedestal sink by using it as a perch one too many times and then emerged from the bathroom in hysterics and completely naked as she argued with the trick about crossing boundaries.The volume was getting too high for me to keep a low profile on the setup and I had to curtail the arrangement.
Through the drama, I was enjoying the connections I made with the girls. For instance I had one friend who went by Candy Carnegie that set the tone of executive sophistication that I was trying to recreate. She was old enough to be described as the trendy term cougar but eschewed such pedestrian monikers and let her body speak for itself. Her measurements may have been purchased but her body was a virtual canvas of tattoos to rival Kat Von D. She had left her life as a divorced suburban housewife  from Santa Rosa and recreated her look modeled after Marilyn Monroe and Betty Page before putting the pro in prostitute.  She was blond, built, buxom and inked enough to draw stares from the tourists we enjoyed taunting at Starbucks. :"Don't scare the straight people," we would tell each other.  She was a mentor and mother hen to many of the girls such as 22 year old Hyacinth who would sometimes team up with her and market as a mother/daughter tag team package. Hyacinth's working class roots were made obvious by the unpolished and brazen way she chomped her gum and screamed four letter epithets to get her point across. This was in stark contrast to the high brow ways of Minerva, another "hooker" who demonstrated her capacity for the finer things in life by charging three figures for the same services that Hyacinth was peddling for a  pittance.  Minerva was an heiress whose inheritance was becoming less likely the more she rebelled and ran away from her roots to seek liberation she was exploring as a sex worker. She fashioned herself as a commodity which was evident by her expensive weave extensions and Ungaro lingerie. Felicity, perhaps the most experienced of the group instructed the girls in the art of obtaining their fee upfront. "The bills should be fanned out when they're handed to you," she said. Felicity was 40 and had been working since she had graduated high school. She dressed in flowy whispers of black and her hair was always hidden beneath a scraggly brown or dirty blond wig. She piled on too much pancake foundation to hide years of acne scars and had once left my bathroom in a shambles after an entire container of tinted face powder exploded and mingled with the puddles of water she left on my floor from not closing the shower curtain. She had left in a hurry to introduce Genevieve, a fresh faced 20 something with a body to double date with one of her regulars. It was becoming increasingly more difficult for Felicity to satisfy her roster of regulars since she had been resting on her laurels and letting her appearance suffer. In an effort to keep them interested she had recruited Genevieve, a beauty who would surely upstage her if she didn't take care to control the way she was brought into the fold. "Every time I bring a new girl, I kind of sit in the back while they go at it," she sighed.  Her desperation was evident in the harried way she left the mess in my bathroom and I empathized with her inability to age gracefully like Ms. Carnegie.
Sabrina was an MTF trannie hayseed from Arkansas who transitioned from gay boy to girl in the short year since she had washed up in the Tenderloin after the car she was travelling in from the South had broken down and been towed away. She had been working the ho stro on Hyde and Larkin ever since. She was in the habit of routinely robbing her tricks and burning bridges. She had a slew of sugar daddies she depended upon to supply her survival ranging from a Mexican cab driver to an older white guy she called Fred. She cycled through them pretty regularly in the tradition of burn and turn.
Lacy was a 50 something MTF trannie who I had met when he was still going by Rick before she got double D breast implants and started making her way as a trannie sex worker. Rick was a man with a short fuse when I met him but after the female hormones kicked in, her personality became as lovely as she set her appearance to be. "I never should have gotten these damn things," she often bitched about her implants.  She hadn't grown accustomed to the attention she garnered from living blatantly on the gender divide.  She had lived several lives, first as a straight, married man, then a gay guy and finally settling on trannie which she exploited to make money as a sex worker. These were my girls, my hookahs and my friends.  I admired the way they were managing to make ends meet for themselves and sought to capitalize myself by hitching my train to their wagon. I moved out of that apartment 2 years ago and everyone scattered to the wind. I am very close to 40 now and know the sex work trade ship has long since sailed for me.  I look back on that window of time with fondness because I did what I had to do. After all, a girl's gotta eat.

Sodomites and Fornicators sentenced to death in SF

It seems I've been dragged into another smackdown on YouTube. The last time I got into a back and forth like this it was back when Chaz Bono was tripping his terpsichorean tranny self all over America's airwaves on Dancing with the Stars. A Youtube user called SomeRandomFeller spewed the usual blanket hate speech only to hold me personally responsible for the "decay of our once great nation." when I had to explain the etiquette of pro-nouns where everyone chooses the one they most identify with. Now someone has objected to this report of MTF Teresa Sparks promotion to police commissioner in SF.. It includes a soundbyte from our boy Gavin, the sexiest mayor our city's ever had as he confirms San Francisco's culture of tolerance and acceptance of pansexual paradigms. A Youtube user called DeathPenaltyCrime was incensed to the point he posted a long list of quotes from (sing it) the BIBLE to justify and support his belief that we are all sinful Sodomites. He even went so far as to coin a new moniker for SF (which I am stealing) calling us Sodom-cisco. It's brilliant in the way it describes sodomy [sod-uh-mee] the definition of which has been broadened to include straights and blowjobs along with the original association with queers and butt sex. It's named after the Biblical city of Sodom which we know was so evil it had to be destroyed along with the gonorrheal Gomorah The trickle down effect today just means anything wicked or sinfully delicious. Based on the Latin vulgate it's vulgar at its basest root.
 DeathPenaltyCrime has named himself in reference to the historical origins of sodomy which was actually punishable by death when it was first put on the books back in the day. That was an early effort to eradicate queers.
 DeathPenaltyCrime writes: "This Fox News report, edited for brevity, exposes San Francisco and the perverts on the "Left Coast". Homosexuals are not "cute" and their behavior is not a "freak show". They are criminals committing death penalty crimes. While watching this freely-practiced depravity, remember what the Righteous Judge has already ruled for such abomination: Here's his supporting documentation from the BIBLE which we know means it must be true. "If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." - Lev 20:13, Holy Bible "For if God ... turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; ... then the Lord knows how to ... reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment" - 2Pe 2:4-9 Holy Bible "Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, ... nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, ... will inherit the kingdom of God." - 1Co 6:9-10, Holy Bible
 I tried to be succinct when I chimed in with my reply:

 "Oh, don't be such a hater. If you insist on taking random quotes from the Bible out of context to justify your phobic-vitriol, you are merely revealing your many shortcomings and limitations. It's evidence of you're lacking education, personal development, maturity, intelligence, tolerance, taste and a host of other traits attributed to a healthy homosapien or let's just say homo because isn't that what you're really afraid of? You probably wouldn't be so homophobic if you were comfortable with your own sexuality. Here in SF, we promote a sex positive, pansexual culture that's free to fornicate and sodomize at will. So go ahead and bang your Bible to beat the band if you must but you might feel better if you just  beat off. We don't judge whatever material you choose to inspire you. That's the kind of perverted practices we're famous for in Sodom-cisco.

Why Open Records still matter in open adoption

This is a wonderful article championing the cause for adoptees access to OBCs. The author makes the point that even though her son's adoption was open and he had no need to see his OBC, he should  be able to maintain the right.  That mirrors my own situation. Though I circumvented the system of secrecy and was able to forgo a successful search and reunion, I still have no access to my OBC.  I am still relegated to anonymity and deprived of my basic right to know the origin of my own blood.   As a native born Californian I am ashamed at the way the state treats its wards. I know my bio parent's names and all the identifying information printed on my OBC but it's still off limits.  Does this make sense?  
As the author writes:

.
Why Open Records Still Matter in Open Adoption

There is a single copy of my son’s original birth certificate in the fire-safe box in my office. Because both of his first parents continue to be part of his life he also has access to whatever information they will share with him about his origins.

For awhile I thought that was enough. I thought that the openness in our adoption negated his personal need for open records. If he had his first parents in his life in the flesh, why would he need to see their names on a piece of paper? Open records would just give him access to information that he already had, and while I supported open records in principle I was grateful my little guy didn’t need them. I thought it was ridiculous that the state sealed those records, but ultimately unimportant.

Then I started thinking about his life as an adult. And I thought about trying to nurture openness in his adoption. And I realized open records were actually very important.

At the most basic level, I believe my son has a civil right to the legal record of his birth. As an adult he should be able to contact the State of California and receive copies of both of his birth certificates–original and amended. The fact that he cannot is simple discrimination. He shouldn’t have to rely on my fire-safe box or on his first parents’ willingness to share information with him. There is already quite a bit of informal privilege denied adopted persons. But this denial is codified into state law. And, as an adoptive parent, that pisses me off.

I also began to see how sealing records works against those of us advocating for open adoption. They are simply an outdated and unwarranted part of adoption. Closed records arose in most states within my parents’ lifetime. (Closed records–available to no one–are distinguished from confidential records, which are available to involved parties but not the general public.) They were premised on the idea that adopted children needed to be protected from the wayward parents who conceived them and the stigma of illegitimacy. First parents needed to hide their shameful secret from prying eyes. Adoptive parents needed to be able to pretend they were a biological family. Sealing birth records provided a legal framework for all these purposes.

Maintaining closed records perpetuates those stigmas and, in doing so, works against open adoption. Closed records play into the fiction that there is something shameful in adoptees’ pasts, something which needs to be hidden away for everyone’s protection. They reinforce the idea that first parents should disappear into the shadows after relinquishment if they know what’s best for them and their child. They suggest to adoptive parents that the only way to be their child’s real parent is to see themselves as replacements for the biological parents. Those are baneful ideas in open adoption.

Keeping records closed perpetuates the myth that open adoption is a fringe movement, flirting with the potentially dangerous idea of not cutting adoptees off from their families of origin. Closed records and the system built around them are why so many people ask, “Isn’t it confusing?” and “Doesn’t it make you nervous?” when they hear about open adoption. Because they’ve picked up the notion that the only way adoption can really work is to erase one family completely and create another in its place, shrouded in secrecy and anonymity.

So I advocate for open records for two reasons: because adult adoptees are being denied their rights and because I care about open adoption. The openness in my son’s adoption doesn’t change the fact that the State of California still treats him as a second-class citizen. And there are far too many others–including his first mom, also an adoptee–who have neither the openness nor the access. That is wholly unfair.

(Originally posted here.)
“For the Records: Restoring a Right to Adult Adoptees,” Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
This publication, released in November 2007 for National Adoption Awareness month, represents the most comprehensive examination to date of one of the most controversial, emotional issues in the modern adoption world: whether adopted people, once they become adults, should have access to their original birth information. This report suggests that all states change their laws so that the answer is “yes.”

This policy paper is the result of the broadest, most extensive examination to date of the various issues related to state laws governing adult adopted persons’ access to their original birth certificates and/or adoption records. The information and recommendations in this paper are drawn from a review and analysis of past and current state laws; legislative history in states across the country; decades of experience on relevant issues; and the body of research relating to sealed and open records on the affected parties.

From the linked web page there is access to an executive summary and the full report.
Honesty in Adoption
Mission

To provide support, encouragement and guidance to all members of the adoption community in a positive and healing manner.

To enlighten those connected to adoption by encouraging them to follow their bliss and to use their creativity as a means of finding the path to healing.

To promote truth and understanding both within the adoption community and society as a whole.

To educate professionals and the general public regarding the issues relating to the adoption community.

To assist in bringing accountability and consistency to the highly unregulated adoption industry.

Honesty In Adoption fully supports equal access to original birth certificates for everyone.

Our goal is for everyone in the adoption community to embark on a journey of healing by acknowledging truth and embracing a path of health, prosperity, creative expression and abundance.

My review of Valley of the Dolls on Goodreads

This caused quite an uproar in its day upon first being published. The genre of trashy pulp literature or the kind that one finds among the tabloids at the supermarket checkout register had not yet come into frame. This book made it en vogue. The tale of three struggling actresses and their descent into drug abuse as a price of fame provided juicy adaptations of lesbian sex scenes that read like a bitchy back stage gossip rag.  Susann had intended it to be a fictionalized account of her own personal experiences gleaned from her years trudging around Hollywood as a failed actress. The axe she had to grind was undoubtedly the source of her acerbic tone.  A phenomenon was created that trickled down to the campy, Technicolor film that has come to symbolize the essence of gay camp and paperback porn.  The scandal surrounding the making of the film was played out much to the delight of its fans and served as an appropriate homage to the crux of the story's themes.  A star's ego and a career addled by drug abuse was what caused Judy Garland to be fired from the set shortly after she was cast as the aging diva Helen Lawson. The part eventually went to Susan Hayward, long past her day in the sun, who played the caricature of Bette Davis and Norma Desmond like a quarterback queen. She chewed up the scenery with as much aplomb as appropriate for a catfight scene that no doubt served as the inspiration for future duels wracked on the Dynasty set between its two polar power-femmes.The Lawson character was supposed to have been based on Judy Garland, a detail that she refused to acknowledge. The film gave credence to Patty Duke's box office appeal into her adulthood and earned iconic status after the assassination of its other star Sharon Tate. The Manson massacre occurred a few short years after the film's debut and the death of Jennifer North hauntingly foreshadows the death of the buxom beauty.  Most people I have encountered are only aware of the film as few have actually read the book or seem aware of its existence. I urge anyone listening to pick up a copy and read it from cover to cover. It can be done without stopping, from my experience. A hollow sequel published about five years ago aims to capitalize on the fame of the Dolls brand but earns less merit than a recycled Danielle Steel vehicle. Shadow of the Dolls should have remained so, from my opinion.  A 2000 film called Isn't She Great starring Bette Midler parodied the life of Jackie Susann around the time Valley of the Dolls was published. Shot in Pepto pink celluloid, it was fluffier than the book aimed to be and was subsequently panned.

My review of My Mother's Keeper on Goodreads

When this book was published, I was in the 6th grade and I snapped it up immediately upon encountering it in a hotel convenience store while vacationing with my parents at the Epcot Center in Miami Florida.  It provided great reading for the airplane trip home.  I was already a long time Bette Davis fan by the time I read this book at age 12.  I was shocked and appalled at the author's assertions and not at all sympathetic having already read and sympathized with Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford. This meek attempt at trumping that book read like a desperate, media hungry rendition of Ann Blyth's character in Mildred Pierce. Veda, the ungrateful daughter of that film stopped at nothing to wreck her doormat mother's nerves.  Knowing a little more than the average consumer about the character of Bette Davis, I found her daughter's overblown claims of "abuse" to be a study in histrionic hyperbole.  We all know that Bette had a sharp tongue that left its targets to fend for themselves in a game of survival of the fittest,  but it's a shame that the dowdy dimwitted daughter wasn't intelligent enough to rival it.  She withered under the shadow of celebrity and cigarette smoke wafting from her mother's presence and used the 200+ pages to recount arguments with her mother ranging from ludicrous to laughable on the scale of sentiment. It is unbelievable to assume that the author's intention was to warrant sympathy from the reader. My gut feeling after reading the horrific waste of trees is that BD Hyman was too negatively influenced by her husband who she married at age 16 and her fundamentalist born-again Christian cult of a faith that she espoused as a way to "recover" from the scars she purportedly suffered at the other end of a jab from Bette's hand gestures.  Bette Davis never recovered from the scandal begat by the publishing of this book and the damage it did to her relationship with her beloved daughter. I watched a clip from an interview Bette did on Good Morning America in the early 1980s where she speaks glowingly with love beaming from her aura about her daughter and their relationship. Was she completely in the dark about BD's true feelings or was BD a two faced snake in the grass that spun a yarn of BS at her husband's behest for motives of financial gain?  My feeling rests on the latter theory.  Bette Davis had a chance to tell her side of the story when she published her last autobiography, This n' That in 1987 which she dedicated to her faithful nurse and confidante Kathryn Sermak.  In it she devotes a letter to BD on the last page. Addressed to "Hyman", the letter succeeds in writing the bitch off once and for all but between the lines, it is rife with a mother's bewilderment at having raised a daughter she inevitably knew nothing about. I have cursed the essence of BD ever since.
Bette's adopted son Michael discredited BD's account of her childhood. Bette's adopted daughter Margot, named for her character in All About Eve was sent to live in an institution after she was diagnosed as developmentally disabled which they called retarded back in her day. To date,  BD Hyman has since spoken out against homosexuality as if it's any of her business.

Guys Gone Wild where the GC Be.

This review is from: Guys Gone Wild: Everything's Bigger in Texas (DVD) The ubiquitous off camera narrator girl is in Dallas, TX this time to cajole and lure college age boys into the GGW van to play with themselves on camera. Unfortunately, the film featured the cutest guy they found in the first vignette but he refused to drop trou and audiences were forced to imagine what he looked like under the boxers. The line up of men were disappointingly lacking. There was nothing inherently wrong with them per se; it's just that they could have been cuter. I wouldn't have picked any of them up if I had seen them at a club. In that regard, I wouldn't have thrown them out of bed either. While watching past GGW videos, I usually mute it because the voice of the girl coaxing and cajoling the trade to take off their skivvies in annoying when I'm trying to focus on the visuals. But in this video, the girl seemed familiar enough for me to regard her as an ally. As she performed the requirements of what has to be the best job in the world, I realized her presence was a necessary evil that must be present in order for straight boys to feel comfortable being naked. Although a man's voice would have been hotter for the fantasy factor, his presence surely would have prevented any of the boys from feeling comfortable enough to play with their junk on camera. I found myself feeling grateful to the narrator girl who I felt was doing her best to produce the same outcome, pardon the pun. I appreciate the regional nuances of the different GGW videos as each place brings something slightly different to the parade of cock that gets pranced out in front of the camera. I have lived in Dallas, the site where this video was filmed and couldn't help thinking that it would have been better if the GGW crew had scouted at gay bars such as the Brick or Crews Inn. Guys there are undeniably hotter than the peach fuzz parade featured in this video and would have made for better entertainment. I don't feel the boys in this video were cute enough to justify the $20 I spent on it.

the night I played Butterfield 8 at Numbers

As the piece de resistance to my first evening out in drag, I was witness to the most melodramatic acts of over the top machinations I had ever seen in person. I had only seen episodes of the like on Dynasty before it all erupted in a West Hollywood bar one night. After the first round of cocktails, an argument between a couple of drag queens I had just met erupted over something inane as it was asinine. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a queen called Kylie Jean Lucille actually reach across a sea of shoulder pads and yank the wig right off another queen's head. Their escalating screeches soon gave way to the roar of the mostly male crowd who loved the front row exposure they had only seen on television during the days of Dynasty. Krystal and Alexis never did it up as grandly as these queens were chewing up the scenery and tossing insults in glasses filled with tears. From across the bar, a 35 year old broken down alcoholic the queens would adopt and name Kingsley the first time he did drag was busy snapping pictures of the hijinks in between trying to film it for inclusion on the public access television show he hosted in West Hollywood. Paul Trent had graduated UCLA film school 15 years prior and regaled audiences with stories of the way his sexuality was explored in restroom glory holes on and around campus.  He had taken a liking to me when we met for the first time in an aerobics class at the West Hollywood fag gym they called Sports Erection Connection. I had made quite an impression in my signature spandex combinations of pinks and purples with a torn sweatshirt worn off the shoulder as inspired by Irene Cara.   My meretricious apparel was meticulously chosen to match the setting in what was a microcosm of the gay universe. It was a virtual bath house amid a backdrop of hyper masculine camp carried out by muscular God-like clones in a locker room that still sported orange carpet from the 1970s before AIDS wiped everyone out. I spent every moment out of class at the gym in pursuit of a weight I could whittle down to double digits on the scale. The day after the episode and drag brouhaha, I spoke to Kingsley or Paul as he liked to be called in pants. “They’ll be friends again before next weekend. It happens all the time,” he said shrugging off the drama as if it was nothing. I would soon come to learn that the god-awful cryorama jags of pure unadulterated spectacle were delicious in the right dose. But too much of a good thing can spoil the appetite for anything, as I would soon find out. As I drove along Sunset Blvd. the evening I had overtweazed my eyebrows, I was pleased as punch to be back in what appeared to be  Kylie’s good graces. I had looked up to Kylie as the big sister I never had even if she was a he.The Dynasty bitch contest was beneath her, in my estimation. She had vowed never to speak to me again only four days prior when I confessed that I had unknowingly slept with her ex boyfriend. I had no idea I was dishing out sloppy seconds when I bedded the beauhunk to the bane of Kylie's existence. Kylie's issues soon came to the spotlight when it became obvious that it was All About Eve as in all about me. I was Eve to Kylie’s interpretations of Margo Channing with the bravado and hubris to work the room. She could chew up a scene and spit out the lines like a bulimic puking acid.. For the rest of the time I would spend in the lair of Kylie Jean,she made it her life’s mission to have me ruined. I was crushed after she cut off our friendship and sought advice from all who would listen about ways to woo her back . So when I was invited out for a night with the “girls” the next weekend, I couldn’t hide my glee. It didn’t even dawn on me that the sickening sweet tone of Kylie’s voice was meant to mask the venom he meant for my bloodstream.
We arrived at Numbers, the place on the Sunset strip for daddies and their boys. Quilted tufts of red pleather lined the luxurious booths that dotted the dim night spot. The place was built for high priced Hollywood hunk hustlers to ply their trade to the rich, well-heeled and oiled power brokers of Hollywood. David Geffen was rumored to have a private booth reserved there. I had been to Numbers before, having been introduced by my college guy pal Steed who lambasted me for my lack of understanding about the high price of USC tuition as mine was always paid for. “Some of didn’t have rich parents,” he would point out. I have to work for a living.” I lived vicariously through his high priced hustler routine as I eavesdropped on more than one occasion from the adjacent booth while he outlined on a cocktail napkin what it would ultimately cost his companion to elicit his services.  He had the routine down to a science and would always call me the next day with tales of the wealth he had gained by setting high standards. When I waltzed into Numbers on the arms of Kylie flanked by the drunken Kingsley, I regarded that I was indeed noticed. Murmurs of “an all American boy,” could be heard as I walked to a rich red booth. I hopped up on the table and threw one leg over another in a kick-up-my-heels celebratory power gesture. I loved being young, gay and single and looked it in my pink jeans that everyone thought were made by Versace. A bright, polyester top bedecked with butterflies in baby blue hue contrasted with my tight pink painted on jeans. I had youth on my side and knew I was a commodity for the moment. I was the number one It girly boy of the minute in that Sunset Strip boy bordello. I was surrounded by some of the most gorgeous seemingly sophisticated men I had ever seen and none of them were within my grasp as we were all prey to the predators at large. Soon, I found myself scrunched into a lavish center booth nuzzled up next to an overweight, aging self-described Hollywood power broker named Dick after what he tried to see of me. The drinks flowed and my lightweight frame soon fell victim to the effects of too many fruity daiquiris that didn’t feature a hint of alcohol. I drank them down like Slurpees until my world was spinning. In a surreal dreamlike sequence of images, I flashed in and out of states of awareness. The graying geezer feeling me up underneath the table was clearly trying to impress me with tales of his affiliation with ToddA-O the groundbreaking wide screen film format developed in the 1950s by Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband Mike Todd before he perished in the crash of his plane lovingly christened Lucky Liz after his voluptuous wife with the violet eyes. Entranced at the prospect that I was sitting a degree or two shy of affiliating with Elizabeth Taylor, I let myself be wooed by this poster candidate for Viagra with one foot in the grave. I was old enough to be his grandson which would have made him a pedophile to my prepubescent prey if I was a handful younger. As the drinks clouded my judgment, I could feel myself growing under the pink Versace knockoffs. Something about being desired was a thrill. But then, I saw a would be buzz kill as a guy I had brought home to my dorm a few months prior suddenly spotted me and my hard-on being groped by the troll of Todd A-O fame. I was mortified that someone from my burgeoning fuck web should see me doing business like the type I prided myself at learning by the ropes in this working boy bar.“Glad to see you’re still in school", smiled this cute guy who had once climaxed all over my dorm bed.  It was one of my earliest conquests having been brought home from an early night out in the Weho bars. I didn't quite know the rules of the male dominated makeout room when I had hosted the hottie who now mocked me from across the table. He took up a seat next to Kingsley and glared downward at the groping grip of the gray haired geezer who was trying his best to unsheathe my candy table-side. “What are you doing now?” I inquired half-heartedly as I feigned disinterest in a been-there-done-that kind of weariness. He launched into a litany reciting a slew of activities he purportedly did in the months since we had fucked in my student dorm room. “What am I doing now? What am I doing now?” he repeated in seething spurts of spittle. “I’ve been…da da deed ah dah tum."; but his words were a blur. All I could hear was the laughter spat by a drunken Kingsley who took great delight in the episode unfolding before him, what with the graying geezer groping me in between tales of Liz and Todd A-O and the mad like a hornet former boy toy of my early sexual half-life spewing swords like a snake into my space.
The name of the plane that killed Mike Todd was named Lucky Liz as in the way someone was getting lucky at my expense while I did my best turn as Butterfield 8, one of Liz’s best roles.

 Just ask anybody. And on the other side of the booth sat Kylie Jean who weaved a web of cigarette smoke and smut as she described events taking place across the bar where someone was negotiating with her Argentinean heartthrob actor friend, a man called Giorgio like the perfume. "There he is,“negotiating with Giorgio”, which I soon learned was a euphemism for drug dealing or black market sex or anything ferreted across state lines in cadavers used for mules. It was all sweetly sordid and my head slimed in strawberry daiquiri Slurpeed decadence with a twist of lemon. When they rang last call for alcohol, my next moment of clarity occurred sometime around 3:00 AM on the rooftop pool deck of the West Hollywood Palms Apartments, a fag infested, overpriced ratfuck tenement on prime West Hollywood real estate that Kingsley had lived in since the decade he was sober. At my most present moment of clarity in the wee hours of the morning, I lounged languidly in the chaise as the graying geezer of Todd A-O fame tried to lure me into committing unseemly acts.

Gushing over Grey Gardens

This is a missive I hammered out to my old college friend Timothy Brod who went to high school with Michael Sucsy, the director of the HBO Grey Gardens film.


 Dear Tim,

 You can tell Michael (Sucsy) he ought to be canonized as far as I'm concerned. See, like Edie, it can be said that I "only care about three thigns, the Catholic church, swimming and dancing.". Michael Sucsy has done an absolutely superb job, heaven on earth, no less of brining the sacred Edies to the narrative screen.

I have been waiting for this film to come alive since I first heard of Edie sometime in 2001 after I moved back to San Francisco. With my life up in arms again, I depended on everything Edie to right my world. I had never related to someone as much as I felt infinitely drawn as she described the revolutionary costume. Dressed for battle, she wore her full length glove to hide the fist raised in protest against the establishment that espoused long established norms of what we as people were supposed to abide by.

When I stumbled upon a niche market crowd of Edie followers, we traded observations on a Yahoo chat group. There were people from the East coast that included someone who had met the Edies personally. His name is Walter Newkirk and he has since published a number of Edie related treasures from his own dealings with the mavens.  He was the first person to tell me about the narrative film that was rumored to be brewing in pre-production.  Starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, I was thankful that it wasn't going to feature Julie Christie, because like Edie, although I'm not disputing that she is a splendid actress, if anyone's going to play Edith Beale, it ought to be Edith Beale, (or the closest living portrayal available)

For Christmas that year, I received a copy of Little Edie, Live, -- Newkirk's original college interview that he completed at Grey Gardens while he was a student at Rutgers University.

And as I've related before, there is evidence that my path was destined to cross with the Edies in the scene from the documentary where Big Edie writes the check to Brooks Hyer for $25 for three cuttings. It is dated September 13, 1973, two days before I was born. I knew the film Walter spoke of and the one I would be reading about in the trades would simply have to come to fruition for the universe to be right. And when you told me that the director was an old friend of yours, I knew that it was a Divine message that it was all meant to be. Because you are such an old and very special friend in my life and someone who has  known me since I was barely 20, the fact that Michael Sucsy was someone close to your life seemed entirely apropos. I am only a degree away from direct affiliation with the film. And how exciting is it that you had lunch with Michael and Christine Ebersole after the Broadway debut. Because I can't afford trips to Great White Way to attend Broadway shows, I am relegated to watching clips of the musical on Youtube but when I saw Christine sing Around the World as Little Edie, I cried real tears when she sang of Edie's plans to hang the birdcage for a bird that flew away. Like her, I have put many plans on the shelf that I mean to complete someday. When Edie feuded with her mother and acted out by singing "incorrectly" I knew it was a last ditch effort to stage rebellion.

I lamented her lost suitors one by one all the way down the Getty because I understand that she was a staunch character who didn't simply want to marry a stockbroker she had played tennis with at the Maidstone Club since she was `12 years old. I have scoured the Internet for scenes from the musicals first act when Big Edie sang melodies for the Junior League with George Gould Strong. Not in 20 years did he and Edie ever get along. And although it may be a hard pill to swallow, no more than the pate was really giblets for the cat, I understand how easy it is to become accustomed to one's environment even when it turns into squalor. I have adjusted to the bottom when my environment has turned to squalor more times than I care to remember and I can truly see how the mess just gradually overtook the Edies existence while they lived in blissful ignorance around it.
In the words of Big Edie, "Everything is good that you didn't do. But at the time, you didn't want it. You can't go around saying, 'sure I feel gorgeous right now.', because everyone thinks and feels differently, don't they."
And because of that, I shall have no regrets. I finally feel like the missing piece of my relationship with the Edies is bringing closure. The documentary is the historical corrective account  and the first record but Michael Sucy's adaptation will dance the Edies in mainstream culture and live into eternity. They'll go together like birds of feather, two peas in a pod, tea for two, two for two. And I loathe Marlene Dietrich, says Edie.

You look absolutely wonderful, honestly!

Because the Edie's never go out of style, I decided to repost some old correspondence I had upon the advent of Grey Garden's rebirth.

H urray. Hurrah. Finally, at last the feature film version of the best thing in the whole world, Grey Gardens is premiering on HBO, Saturday, April 18. I rushed and ordered the network on my cable service as soon as I heard the news. I have long been obsessed with everything Edie. I was intrigued about the story the first time I read about the film in an unnamed festival program. The famous photo of Edie in the ratty fur coat standing in front of the mansion haunted me. Was it taken during "another winter in a summer town"? Edie's iconography astounds me. Anyone who dares ask me the question, "what is Grey Gardens?" deserves my venom as I have little patience for those who are not as culturally evolved as I am. How do I begin to explain the Edies and my inherent devotion? Oftentimes, when coming across her (during a forced viewing of the DVD) people will ask "what is wrong with her? Was she schizophrenic?" Just as there are some people born with the gift of clairvoyance, I believe there are those of us who understand the gifts that Edie had. My own biological mother, herself schizophrenic once said, "I'm not crazy, just extra eccentric". I truly believed she was. Edie was just as kooky and unconventional. Her words and phrases have transcended time immemorial.  Because of my ultra devotion to GG, I was even more thrilled when my old friend Timothy (from USC) explained that the director, Michael Sucsy was a long time friend of his. Wouldn't the members of my online fan groups be thrilled for me? Being the starfucker that I am, such a degree of separation is unbelievable. This is a transcript of the communiques passed between me and Tim with a brief bon mot from Michael, the director.

From Timothy Brodt April 8 at 11:28am
 I cried the first time Michael showed it (the feature film) to me. I'm so proud of my good friend having made something so beautiful. I'm going to the premiere on the 16th. He's even in awe that his first film is premiering at Manns Chinese and the Zigfield (sic) in NY

This is what I wrote to Michael Sucsy
. Hello Michael,
 Timothy Brodt is a friend of mine from college. When I saw your name on his friend list, I asked him if it was the same person who directed Grey Gardens as I had been following the scuttlebutt of the film since its inception. Needless to say, I am decidedly in awe of being so closely connected to Grey Gardens via the degrees of separation inherent in our lives.Tim told me he sent you an email I wrote after seeing promotional snippets of the film. You are to be commended. Based on what I've seen, you've done the Edies tremendous justice. I presume Julie Christie's name didn't come up in discussions of casting? I'm being facetious in reference to Edie's insistence that only she, herself be allowed to play Edith Beale. An interesting parallel, I noticed in the Beales of Grey Gardens, Al or David threw out a name and asked Edie if she would consider Ethel Barrymore to play herself. She responded positively although she had no idea who would play her mother. The casting of Drew was homage to that conversation. I am waiting with bated breath until the film debuts on television. I am happy Tim is going to the premiere. Thank you for deciding to pursue this project. I can't believe I'll finally be able to see what life was originally like at Grey Gardens. Grey Gardens, the brand resonates with me on so many levels. With adoration, Michael Thomas Angelo

 Michael Sucsy's reply: "You are so sweet. I hope you enjoy the film."