Come Back (14 page)

Sid, on the other hand, was the end of the line, romance-wise. I sensed I needed something, and the easiest way to get what I needed was through my work. Ergo, I married my manager. Thank God he was a helluva manager. I kind of missed the fact that he wasn't shamefaced and vulnerable. However, those were two of the many things missing. But after Sid I realized I was over being attracted to men who wanted to manage my career. Mark was definitely the last straw when it comes to husbands who were in love with the
star.

With Mickey, at last, I found someone who was responding to
me
. Although it's important to remember that if you were famous the way I was, when fame meant something (I sound very old now because I am), you could not eradicate that element completely from relationships. On one level my identity — because I spent so much time onstage —
was
my work, my famous persona. So they would only love a part of me if a partner were to ignore that aspect. But there were still people at that time I knew — June Allyson was one of them — who didn't believe that Mickey was in love with the “real” me. Or perhaps she hated him because he
was
in love with that? Nobody ever wants you to change, even if staying the same means decaying and dying. “But he's a kid,” June said. “A sweet kid, but still a kid.”

Fuck, this infuriated me. I would like to know why the fuck June Allyson thought she should have a say in it. I mean, she can say anything she wants. But do you know who that woman married? I mean, she wasn't above Joan Crawford–like choices. What was going on with Dick Powell's barber — the one who physically abused her? (Or so she claimed.) How screwed up is it to marry your ex-husband's barber? I'm sorry to be so judgemental, but she really has never been charitable to me.

Okay, fine, she was a notch above Crawford, who for years fucked anything that could walk, male or female, as long as they could further her career. I wouldn't have put it past her to fuck a goat if it had studio connections. And then, finally, paradoxically, she got all pious and married the Coca-Cola salesman. Of all the hypocrites in the world, the pious are the most sickening. And what a thing to get pious about. “I'm marrying a big thief businessman who stole lots of money by addicting children to fattening sugar drinks that gave them diabetes.” Let me tell you, no one was happier than me when the powers that be made soft drinks illegal. Who would know that Muslims would be so obsessed with soft drinks? More power to them. It just tickled my funny bone back in the day to think about Joan Crawford bedecked in jewels and furs and giving press conferences about her marriage to that fat old thing with glasses. Nothing against fatness — it would have been fine if she was actually into fat. Many people
are
into ugliness, thank Christ. But no, she just realized she was too fucking old to get any hot tail, so she prostituted herself to the corporation. Congratulations, Joan, I'm so glad you fully realized, so late in your short life, that all along you were really just in love with money.

If I sound bitter it's because I am. June Allyson and the rest of the assholes came down on me about Mickey and that pissed me off. I don't think June Allyson actually had sex — I mean, an orgasm. What's worse is that she wouldn't want one. And she wouldn't think it was
right.
Dick Powell, who she was married to most of her life, was a bit of a numbnut with no chin. Although you know what they say about men with no chins — God giveth and he taketh away. . . . Sinatra was a chinless wonder. June knew exactly what was going on with Mickey. In that one crazy period with her husband's barber when she was always drunk she was probably deep down somewhere chasing sex. But she couldn't allow herself to admit it because she was such a prude.

And everybody else knew what was going on with me too. This old lady was getting laid
and
getting appreciated. I'd finally found somebody I got along with. And I was just being
myself
for a change. And not just onstage. I finally realized there was a difference between art and life. But, of course, I get punished for it because he wasn't a boring, fat, ugly executive with spectacles and money. Mickey was fucking hot, and he was
nice
to me, and it was
me
he was with, not
you-know-fucking-who
.

I'm telling you all this because of the comment made by the woman with the cantilevered face. It would really piss me off if it were to launch you on a lecture about fame and its dangers. Not that I miss it. Sure I got a little kick, a tiny jolt from it. You know, like when a baby kicks? But the way Lorna kicked, not the way Liza kicked. Liza was one crazy baby in the womb. I actually believe she started rehearsing for our big appearance at the Palace
in
there
. Very disconcerting at the time. . . .

Yeah, when Cantilevered Lady looked right at me, there was a frisson of old pleasure. But that's just about pride in the work, that's not fame. Fame is pernicious and evil. If anybody tries to tell you differently, they've never experienced it, never been there. If they had been, they would know how hard it is to be famous and still be alive. So, once and for all, I did not do it all for the fame or my fans. I did not love them. I did not need them, dream about them. But, on the other hand, living as a recluse, pulling a fucking Garbo and getting all hysterical when someone notices the gravel in my voice or the way I smoke a cigarette, is that sensible? Isn't it just a waste of time? Not only is fame over, but
my
fame is long over — and I am pleased to be rid of it.

I hope and dearly pray this discussion has done something to change your mind. It's been overly long and involved and digressive, but I miss you so much. Sometimes I could just taste you. I hope I will be forgiven, for I am flawed. I am returning to a very old excuse, but one that is tried and true — perhaps not with you and not now. I am human, and I am not perfect. I know you are human
and
perfect (as you never cease reminding me). At the same time, you are much less of a cyborg than I am. I respect that. You were born a human machine though. And I know those pretty little femme girls that you enjoy whipping now and then — do, now and then, in the words of Cole Porter (who said it all),
get under your skin
.

I miss you and I am not lying. Can I be clearer? To the best of my knowledge I am not lying. But as Derrida says, lying can only be conscious or else we are merely misspeaking. “Have I misspoken?” she said, I think, ungrammatically.

Thank you for listening. I promise I won't be a bad girl, and that's all that matters — along with youth, and the future, and tolerance, and cyber-reality, technological progress and the continuous free flow of information. Am I — perhaps in this singular, coincidental instance — correct?

N
ow I'm going to get down to it. I can't help it. You've upset me too much — as you know only you can. That's the problem with love. And this is why I wish I had never discovered it in the first place — and did, with Mickey, no matter what you or anyone else says. Love makes you vulnerable, and that's supposed to be a good thing. But is it? Because then you're easily hurt and when you're hurt you hit back. So that's what it's going to be. But remember, I'm doing this only because I love you.

At one point in the middle of your vile response — vile, because there is so very little there that is not accusation — you stopped to briefly mention how much you love me. I remember how we used to fight back in the day, before you moved away. I remember how your eyes would flash with hatred as you lashed out. It was because I didn't live up to your expectations. It was because I wasn't intimate enough. Because I hadn't yet learned how to bring down my guard and be close. Do you remember how you yelled at me?

I'm going to get very psychoanalytical here.

Why are you so wounded?

The amazing thing about my life is that no one ever molested me. The closest I ever came to that was from my mother. I do think, in her case, an argument can be made for emotional molestation. I'm not diminishing the effects of physical or sexual abuse; I'm certain they are in many cases lethal. But equally lethal is a mother who consistently violates your personal boundaries by manipulating you and tricking you into being vulnerable and then pulling out the rug. At every moment she knew what she was doing. She knew how to hurt me and she twisted the knife. Did something like that happen to you? Because you get so . . . angry. I know you will hate me asking, but I don't care. I really don't give a fuck anymore, and why should I?

The things that you said
. How am I to remind myself — even when you do so yourself — that they are being said out of love? Your tone is too close to my mother's. Maybe it's time for you to think about Cynthia. Yes, I know about Cynthia. How could I not? I know she is the reason you moved away. I'm sure you don't want to talk about her, and I'm only going to say one thing: don't tell me
you
never loved. Don't tell me
our
friendship has been the only close relationship you have ever had. I know you loved Cynthia, and that she cut your heart out and ate it for breakfast. And I know the reason you won't come back here and see me is because of
her
. You are afraid to set foot in this town because this is the town where your hurt is. These are the streets you walked with her, the street corners where you kissed. And if I know you as well as I think I know you . . . the alleys where you fucked her.

And now, to get really psychoanalytical, is it possible that whatever abuse you suffered relates to your attraction to sadomasochism? I know that I'm supposed to give that aspect of your life a philosophical pass, on the basis of some wretched Foucauldian notion of power that you have wrenched from post-structuralism — just to suit your purpose — after rejecting the rest of it as old-fashioned. Maybe it's not about power. Maybe it's just about someone who hit you. And now that's all you can associate with love.

This is an old opinion, I know. You may observe that I'm pulling out my old bag of tricks to wound you. Do you see what you've made me do? Madly thrashing about, I'm like a child. I'm like Helen Keller on the floor again. No, I'm like Patty Duke,
herself the actress
, trying to discover what acting actually might be — ineptly clawing the air with what was supposed to be impotent rage, beside a trash can in a badly lit pseudo-alleyway in
Valley of the Dolls
. They claim they had to fire me because of my famous instability on the set. But let me tell you, it was all about Patty Duke. I could
not
be around her. Oh, she was nice enough — but can anyone say deluded? Whoever gave that listless little thing the notion she could act? The fact is, anyone could have played Helen Keller — all you had to do was grunt and groan. And besides, no one else could imagine what it would be like to be born deaf, dumb and blind and still be alive. So Patty Duke could get away with anything. And she got an Oscar for that little Houdini act.

So are you hurt now? I hope so, because I'm letting the fangs out and turning into my mother. Why shouldn't I?

Let's start with this accusation — because this is the lowest and vilest of them all. You suggest that I am drinking. First of all, no, I'm not. And I resent the accusation
so much
. I also resent the fact that I should have to report to you. I know you have acted as my counsellor and my support over all these years, but you are now

a) not here

and

b) not my jailer.

Your physical absence, and your inability to act as witness to — I don't know what else to call it but my growth and change (I know these days I actually physically resemble a growth . . . oh the irony!) — is problematic.

The proof you look for is “in the pudding,” as you colloquially jibe. You say that when I get bitchy and angry, and swear it's proof that I am sitting in a drunken solitary stupor. I find this ludicrous. Yes, it's true that my tone wanders, and is at times excoriating in the extreme. But I didn't know I was to be subject to the style police.

I have addressed the subject of style over substance and its relationship to homosexuality. In this context I don't think anyone has really addressed the relationship between Oscar Wilde's aestheticism and post-structuralism. I don't see that there is any difference. Foucault, in fact, suggests, at the crux of his defence of his particular brand of historicism, that one should look at historical traces — evidence, forms, rules and so forth —
as reality
, rather than trying to find
the truth
behind them. Foucault's project could be viewed from a purely aestheticist angle. In other words, for Foucault, the world is a work of art (or its systems are, at any rate). This view of the world is not unrelated to the Renaissance view that saw the world as a book that had to be deciphered, interpreted, for fundamental truths.

Of course, Foucault does not believe in any such truths, but the methodology, the hermeneutics, is similar. One must look to the form — this is Adorno as well — to find the content. So I would say your obsession with the style of my text is a kind of old-fashioned and somewhat hoary post-structuralist aestheticism. I will not hesitate to disagree with your position. In my case, the form is most definitively
not
the content. In other words, a suddenly brash tendency to curse my mother, or to rail on about Munchkins, is not proof positive that I have lost my noodles or that I'm sitting with a Manhattan in one hand and a smoke in another, poised to pop a Valium. More accurately, I would probably be curled up with a drink, not sitting. Isn't it interesting that as we age some of us become more fetal? My perpetually curled-up status makes me less and less like a very old woman and more like a baby. But, speaking of Valium, can one even get it anymore? I doubt it. . . . The drugs I was addicted to are so old. How could I even manage to
be
a drug addict these days?

What I think you are finding hard to digest is the fact that I am changing. And this is only natural, since you have not seen my advanced deformed condition, which is literally making history as we speak. No one has lived so long while morphing into something beyond detritus — almost becoming afflatus. I imagine that eventually I will become a noxious gas. But will I still think? One thing is sure, I'll still be angry at you even if I'm merely vapour. At the age of 138 (at parties I'll admit to 135), I am still alive and vital. More importantly, I am still learning about life, who I am and who I might be.

What, after all — since I'm feeling profound, and not the least bit drunk — is death? It is certainly something I must approach soon. After all, I am not immortal. Or let's put it this way, even if I could be immortal, I would rather not. I know there is the theoretical possibility of immortality today. There are those who are picked for the experiment, those who are supposedly lucky enough to experience it. But that's not for me. And that certainly isn't because I enjoy the disintegration of my body or its poetic disfigurement, because I desire the inevitable decay. Instead it's because there needs to be a terminus. That is part of what makes us human — along with compassion, wit, vulnerability and the
ability to make mistakes
. I stress this last because you seem to value it so little.

When I first came to Toronto, so many years ago — after my first and nearly effective liver transplant — there was a place near the bus station with a very interesting name. (I arrived by bus; it was thought that the bus station was the least likely place anyone would look for me.) It was called the Terminus Baths. I have no doubt that it was an inglorious destination, and that many a depressed homosexual had died on his knees in the hot tub there. But seeing the name was one of those moments when I embraced my own mortality — which at the time seemed imminent. It was the glorious humanity of the name. This was before
AIDS
, but when the kind of suicidal ethos that permeates Dash's letters was in full swing.

One remembers the disbelief in Lady Bracknell's question. She distrusts someone whose “point of origin is a terminus.” But it was Wilde's fellow Irishman Beckett who so aptly reminded us that we give birth astride a grave. I am not looking forward to dying. But on the other hand, after living such a long life, some of it as what was once called a “star,” I will look forward to death as concrete confirmation of my humanity. I deserve that, at least — as everyone does — but I deserve it especially, because in my audacity I imagined I might be able to evade it. I don't mean through anti-aging technology, but by imagining my recorded voice would outlive me. It will, but those recordings are nothing but what we used to call
the real
. Anyway, I don't wish to think about immortality. It is anathema to me, the way death is to so many others. One need not be reminded of the persistence of the desire for immortality; all fundamentalist religions are based on it, as is the religion of our present government.

I remember when I was recuperating from my second liver transplant, I had to go to Hamilton, Ontario, for tests. It was a repulsive but strangely attractive town near the larger city. They had an effective cancer treatment centre. I dutifully took the same bus every day to Hamilton, which usually travelled a well-worn route — the local highway. One day I was travelling back late at night after an evening appointment at the hospital, and fell asleep.

This was during the last century, when I was very concerned with being recognized. I resembled an emaciated version of my former self (which was at times also emaciated). I had worn a man's hat — shades of “Get Happy.” But I wasn't thinking about these kinds of things at the time. I had slid down on my seat, and the hat had dropped over my face. So there was none of
that
kind of danger. But when I woke up, the bus had gone off course. It wasn't charting its usual path, and had left the highway behind. We were riding through unfamiliar territory. There appeared to be a mountain on the right, with what looked like grim little shacks perched in the valley on the left. Some of the shacks had sad but inviting chimneys pumping out the toxins. It was winter. I remember passing by a church that offered “Salvation” with an aggressive sign. There was a muffler-shop sign offering bargains with a similar abrasive tone.

I woke up to these unfamiliar and not particularly heartwarming images in a haze. It seemed to me we were lost. Had I taken the wrong bus? And for one terrifying moment it occurred to me that this was death's bus, a vehicle leading us all to the
terminus.
I was being driven to my death. I even for a moment imagined that we had slipped into an Einsteinish universe. I was on a bus without time, one that had veered off the edge of the space-time continuum.

It turned out that the highway was closed and the driver had simply decided to use a back road. But this was a reminder of the fear that those who embrace God must feel. They fear that death is a vast unknown, a chasm suddenly opening beneath their feet. It offers unknown untold horrors, unless, of course, they embrace God. Then there is the vision of heaven in Gounod's
Faust
, where God sits on a giant throne like the Ghost of Christmas Present, surrounded by costumed dancers and a table laden with food. Well, for me death is neither a vast chasm nor a hearty dinner. It is just the terminus. And it will make me at least more human than I perhaps have ever been before.

But to get back to the matter at hand . . . What is it with these digressions? I am not drunk. I am, I will admit, still so in love with you that even when I hate you as I do now, I miss you terribly. So there we have it — the eternal, inscrutable puzzle. But to get back on track (and perhaps prove that my digressions merely characterize me, though they are not character flaws) — I am not drunk. So hopefully that issue is settled: I do not drink or take drugs. One cigarette now and then is enough for me. And I seem to be able to control that (but not the expense of it). You need to understand this because there are changes happening in my life that I want you to understand because I do love you. But this may prove easier said than done.

Now, specifically, to your other points . . . You move to an intense and equally paranoid analysis of my remarks about the woman with the cantilevered face. You seem to find it significant that I thought you would be upset about the fame issue. You imagine you are one step ahead of me, and very perceptive about my faults. The key, you say, is not that I resisted the lure of being recognized — you seem to think there is very little danger of this now.

Perhaps you are right — how long it takes us to part with the image of our young selves! I have a mirror placed upon the floor, because I am too short to stand up and look at myself in a normally positioned mirror. Looking at myself from beneath is more horrific, and thus startlingly real, in just the right way. I will not give up on myself. I want to be a witness to my disintegration. This is not to save myself, but to be as fully conscious as I can be until the very end. It's comic to me that even though I remind myself on the quotidian of the monster that I have become, the image of the wistful
in-between
is still lodged in my brain.