A NEW JOURNAL, PLEASE NOTE—SMALLER THIS TIME BUT MUCH fancier, with maroon leatherette and pretty marbled endpapers. Neil bought it for me in a mall in Westwood after we finished a particularly obnoxious gig there. I’d fully intended to pay for it myself, but Neil was insistent, saying I could buy him a beer one night. The journal cost a lot more than that, of course, so it was a nice thing for him to do. I almost never write in Neil’s presence, but he’s heard me talk about the diary from time to time, and I think he senses how much it’s become central to my life.
The video went surprisingly well on our second day of shooting. Janet seemed looser and less fidgety, much surer of her objectives. I’ve even begun to get excited about it. Janet knows somebody with a chain of arty-type repertory movie theaters (if three is a chain), who might be interested in showing the film as a short subject between trailers. That’s such a quirky idea that it might just attract attention, generate a little press, at least. And the audiences would certainly be more savvy and receptive than your typical MTV viewer. This could be just the right venue for me, the more I think about it.
I’m on the balcony of Callum’s suite at the Chateau Marmont, six stories above Sunset. I’m in terry cloth after a noontime swim, cool-skinned and wet-haired, my nipples still pleasantly taut. A lovely, warm breeze is blowing. Callum and Jeff are down at Greenblatt’s, buying sandwiches, since there’s never been room service here. They’ve promised to bring me back a turkey on rye. Our view is toward the south: an unbroken sweep across the palmy, saffron-hazed plains of West Hollywood, with a four-story Marlboro Man looming preposterously in the foreground. The hotel itself is a funky jumble of towers and terraces, with a sixty-something-year history that’s almost inseparable from legend.
Most people think of the Chateau as the place where Belushi bit the big one, but it’s got a lot more going for it than that. There’s all sorts of gossip in a book Callum bought at the front desk. For starters, an extremely young and horny Grace Kelly used to cruise the halls here, looking for guys who’d left their doors open. Howard Hughes and Bea Lillie and James Dean all hid out at the Chateau at one time or another, in varying states of emotional disrepair.
What’s more, when Garbo was in residence, she always floated facedown in the pool, they claim, to keep from being recognized. (“Look, there’s a corpse in the pool!” “That’s no corpse, silly, that’s You-know-who!”) The very canvas awning above my head was the one that broke Pearl Bailey’s fall—well, caught her, actually—when she toppled from the ledge of her balcony after a festive lunch. She was feeling no pain, according to the book, and was in no particular hurry to leave when a hook-and-ladder came to her rescue.
As you must’ve guessed, Jeff and Callum are an item now. Having spent the better part of last week shacked up in this suite, they finally surfaced and invited me over for a morning of sun by the pool. Jeff is trying his damnedest not to look dramatically altered, but any fool can see he’s dorky with happiness. Callum, on the other hand, appears pretty much the way he did at our first meeting: just as sunny and steady and obliging, just as unreadable. Even in the midst of laughter he seems to be holding something back, as if observing himself—and everyone else—from a safe distance.
Callum did lose Jeff’s phone number. Or says he did, anyway. I guess it’s possible he never intended to call Jeff back and was merely shamed into a second date by the fact that they had me in common, but I seriously doubt it. Not the way they’re acting now. Earlier, down by the pool, I caught them swapping a look of such pie-eyed lovey-doveyness that I find it hard to believe anyone was pressured into anything.
Not that we’ve discussed such matters—or the question of those girlfriends back home. I’m assuming that was Callum’s way of getting me off his case. We’ve mostly just talked about Mr. Woods and my video and Callum’s new movie, which is a big-budget thriller that has no connection whatsoever with Philip Blenheim. Callum plays a rookie cop whose little brother is kidnapped by a psychopath. I hinted around coyly about any “small roles” that might be available, envisioning myself as a crime lab researcher, say, or an observant street person who provides the missing clue, but Callum just smiled sweetly and said the script was already set. They’ll be shooting in two weeks at Icon. Marcia Yorke is the other lead, playing Callum’s girlfriend. He told me the name of the director, but I can’t remember it.
I must admit it’s a novel sensation to see Jeff paired off with someone younger than himself. Ned Lockwood, after all, had a couple of decades on Jeff, so I guess I’ve come to think of the younger man’s role as Jeff’s natural, perennial state. Ned was a nurseryman, for the record, a big, hulking sweetheart of a guy whose bald head stayed nut brown throughout the year. He was a lot less serious than Jeff, a real joker sometimes, and I was just crazy about him. He was somewhat of a legend in his youth, Jeff tells me: a generous soul generously endowed. Ned was Rock Hudson’s lover for a brief period during the Pillow Talk era, when Hudson, in his mid-thirties, was clearly the older man.
Ned was no fading twinkie, though, when I knew him; he wore his age with an easy, shambling grace that was completely out of sync with the desperate pretenses of most people in this town. He and Jeff never lived together—Ned had a tiny cubbyhole next to his nursery in Los Feliz—but they borrowed each other’s lives with the offhanded efficiency of brothers who could wear the same clothes.
Maybe there’s a pattern here, after all, some unwritten law of gay genealogy that compelled Jeff to pass the torch to a younger man, just as his lover had done, and his lover’s lover before that. Whatever the reason, I’m glad he finally got laid. Jeff suffered for a long time after Ned died and deserves to be happy again. I’m not at all sure this is true love, but it’s a start, at least. I was beginning to think it wasn’t possible, that Jeff would bury himself so completely in the navel-gazing of his writing that he’d lose the knack for intimacy with another person.
After lunch. The guys have come and gone again. They invited me to join them on a drive, but I decided to stay here with my journal, basking in my solitude and the delicious oddness of this place. Just before they took off, Callum realized he’d left his sunglasses by the pool and raced down to retrieve them, giving me and Jeff the moment I’d been waiting for.
“I’m so fucking proud of myself,” I said.
“Yeah…well…” He gave me an embarrassed smirk.
“You look good together. I knew you would.”
He stood at the mirror and ran a comb through his remaining strands of hair. There was something so tentative and teenagery about this gesture that I couldn’t help but be moved.
“So what’s the deal?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“With Callum. He knows I know, doesn’t he?”
“Know what?”
“That he’s a homo, Jeff.”
He looked vaguely annoyed. “Of course.”
“He doesn’t act like it.”
“Well…”
“He knows I’m cool, doesn’t he?”
“Sure.”
“Well, tell him to lighten up. Tell him I’m the biggest fag hag this side of Susan Sarandon.”
“Tell him yourself.”
“Well, I would, but…he seems like he’d take that as an invasion or something.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“I hadn’t really noticed it.”
“You hadn’t?”
“He’s just young,” he said, laying down the comb.
If I’m not mistaken, it was I who first suggested this to Jeff, and not that long ago, either. That he’d loosened his moral requirements for a bed partner so drastically in such a short time could only mean one thing: Jeff’s poor little overworked politics had been no match at all for a great piece of ass. I gave him a long, hard look with a Mona Lisa smile.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I just figured something out.”
“What?”
“Why you weren’t wearing your nipple ring at the pool.”
“What?” He frowned and looked away, picking up the comb again.
“He asked you to take it off, didn’t he? It was too gay for him.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“This is getting serious.”
“Cadence…”
“Is this a permanent arrangement, or did you put it back on?”
“In the first place, nipple rings aren’t just a gay thing anymore.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Axl Rose has one, and he’s a homophobic pig.”
“Oh, well, in that case…”
“In the second place…”
He didn’t get to finish the thought, because Callum came bursting through the door, looking sleek and cryptic behind his shades. Seeing Jeff turn scarlet on the spot, I showed mercy and shooed them both out the door without further ado. I knew too much about what was driving Jeff to rag him any further.
Like I’ve always said, love wouldn’t be blind if the braille weren’t so damned much fun.