My Trip Down the Pink Carpet (6 page)

W
HEN
I
need a good laugh there are a couple of people I call. One person is my dear friend Jane Abbott, who is intrinsically one of the funniest people alive. She definitely has the gift. So when I am feeling down, I call her up and beg her to tell me “that funny fart story.”

I am always up for a good fart story.

Oh, lighten up! Farts are funny. Rude noises are funny. Situations created from a bad smell are funny. And in this day and age of constant turmoil and strife, I’m up for anything that gives me a chuckle.

Jane Abbott was raised in Dallas, and she is a Texas gal through and through. When she starts spinning a yarn, I feel like I’m back where I belong. Even though she’s from Texas and I’m from Tennessee, there’s something about her vocal patterns and how she knows the right place to pause to get the desired effect that takes me home.

When Jane was growing up in the 1950s, her favorite person in the whole wide world was her aunt Matt. Aunt Matt was known as “the town character.” Everybody in town knew her. She was a large woman who raised chickens for a living. She wore dungarees twenty years before it was fashionable for women—she’d wear them right up under her big, blousy, homemade housedress. Aunt Matt’s bra straps were always flapping down her big, fleshy arms, and she wore men’s brogans.

A large woman with a man’s name who loves the outdoors, and who wears blue jeans and men’s shoes? It sounds to me like Aunt Matt was a lesbian way ahead of her time. Now, Jane has certainly never mentioned Aunt Matt’s sexual preference. That is something a well-brought-up gal from Texas just wouldn’t do. It is just a thought of mine.

It was Jane’s job when she was a little girl to go down to the chicken yard once a week. She’d go running to and fro all around the yard chasing the baby chickens. When she caught them, she put them in a shoe box, which had holes poked in the top so they could breathe.

Once Jane had a full load, she and her beloved Aunt Matt would walk up the long driveway to the highway, shoe box in hand, catch the county bus, and take a ride into town to sell the chicks at the local farmers’ market. After the chicks were sold, Jane was treated to an afternoon at the picture show.

One balmy summer Texas morning they sat side by side, riding the bumpy bus into town. All of a sudden, the bus hit a big pothole and—
BAM!
—that shoebox went flying through the air. Moments later, baby chickens were running up and down the aisles. The bus driver almost veered into a ditch while looking in the rearview mirror to see what the commotion was all about.

Aunt Matt heaved herself forward, lumbering up and down the aisle, calling out in a low singsong voice, “Here, chickie, chickie! Here, chickie, chickie, chick!”

The other passengers watched intently, and they all tried to stifle their giggles as Aunt Matt’s big ass made its way up the aisle. Jane was at the age, around eleven or twelve, when she was beginning to realize that Aunt Matt was something of a spectacle. Jane loved her aunt dearly but was becoming embarrassed by Aunt Matt’s odd ways of dressing and acting. As she sat there watching Aunt Matt all bent over trying to catch the baby chickens, she wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.

And then it happened.

Aunt Matt farted.

Not once. Not twice. But three times! Right there in the middle of the bus. Jane was absolutely mortified. She told me she’s been haunted by the sound of those farts to this very day. She said they sounded like gunfire.

Now, in the back of the bus sat an old cowboy with a mouth full of chewing tobacco. When Aunt Matt cut the cheese, that old cowboy just about blew a gasket.

He let out a huge war whoop, and yelled, “That’s right, Aunt Matt. If you can’t catch them chickens,
shoot ’em
!

I
HAVE
a friend named Austin Hanks who hails from LA. Lower Alabama, that is. He is a tall, gorgeous drink of water covered in tattoos. He can sing like an angel, play the guitar like the Devil, and spin a yarn that will hold you spellbound. He is sweet as cherry pie.

I first met him at a Chinese restaurant where he used to perform on the second Tuesday of every month. The restaurant is called Genghis Cohen, and it sits in the middle of Hollywood, on Melrose Avenue. It hosted a showcase for up-and-coming Southern musicians called “It Came from Nashville.”

I never missed a Tuesday for years and years. I would arrive early, have a big plate of Queen’s Chicken (naturally), then move into the showcase lounge, sit in the front row, and adore Austin Hanks.

When I need a laugh and Jane Abbott’s stories won’t do the trick, I know who to call. I beg Austin to tell me about his grandmother back in Alabama. Everyone called her Mamaw. She was hard of hearing and had a terrible habit of mixing up words.

One night, the whole family was gathered at the dinner table.

“Mamaw, this roast is delicious,” Austin hollered.

“Well, it ought to be,” wailed Mamaw. “I urinated it all night long.”

Another time, it was the day after the big Fourth of July festivities.

“You look tired, Mamaw. Did you not sleep good?” Austin asked.

“Who could,” yelled Mamaw, “with them kids throwing Roman Catholics up against the wall all night?”

“Roman
candles,
Mamaw!”

Someone had once bought Mamaw a bottle of shampoo that she really liked, but she could not remember the name. “What’s that shampoo called?” she would ask repeatedly.

“It’s called Pantene, Mamaw.”

Well, one night over dinner, someone complimented Mamaw on her hairdo.

She smiled broadly. “I been washing it with that poontang!”

In the South we do not put crazy people away—we put them out on the porch so everyone can enjoy them!

Another time, I looked up at the stage at Genghis Cohen and almost swooned. There was this boy named Travis Howard singing a song he wrote called “Ruby Falls.” I felt like he had written it just for me. Ruby Falls is a real cheesy tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee. We used to go there all the time when we were kids. It was a child’s wonderland. Concrete gnomes! A cave called Fat Man’s Squeeze! And all kinds of fairy statues and such. I guess I was easily amused.

Travis Howard was full-lipped and fine-figured. He wore his ripped Levi’s jeans real tight. He had a butt you could serve tea on. I had never seen a butt like that on a straight boy. It bordered on the obscene.

I went home, sat down, and wrote him a love letter. I knew he was straight (and half my age), but I couldn’t help myself. In the letter, I told him he reminded me of a Hindu deity. He was like something “not of this world,” like a beautiful, guitar-playing Lord Krishna, the Blue God. I told him such beauty needed to be recognized and I felt sure he was going to make it big. And I would be his fan till the day I died.

I don’t know what came over me, gushing and simpering like that. And to make matters worse, I sent flowers! What was I thinking? I found out he was appearing at a club called the Gig and I sent the flowers with my love letter attached.

The next night, I was in the dressing room of the Zephyr Theatre, getting ready to go onstage in a play called
Southern Baptist Sissies.
The stage manager brought me a note. Travis Howard was waiting in a restaurant across the street and asked if I would care to join him after my performance.

I screamed and locked myself in the bathroom.

I could barely contain myself. I sat on the toilet in full stage makeup with my costume on, reading and rereading his note. I thought I was going to fall apart. I’ve decided almost all gay men my age have what I call “Marilyn Monroe syndrome.” We love to fall apart. We love to take pills and cry and carry on. We love self-created drama.

The stage manager didn’t know what was going on. He had no idea what was in the note he handed me. He thought someone had died.

I have to admit that my performance in
Southern Baptist Sissies
suffered that night. It was all I could do to get my lines out. My mind was already across the street with the beautiful young Travis Howard.

After the curtain fell, I ran across the street. I thought he was the most stunning man alive. He was so flattered by my attentions, and he told me that gay men had been coming on to him for years and he considered it a huge compliment.

He told me that back home in Georgia, where he grew up, everyone thought he and his best friend were gay because they hung out together all the time, and both loved Christian music and were not very good at sports. One time, his daddy walked into the bedroom and just flat out asked Travis’s best friend if he was a homosexual. Travis almost fell over.

Without missing a beat, Travis’s friend said, “Well, Mr. Howard, I don’t think so. Why? Are you asking me out on a date? Because if I was gay, I don’t think I’d date older men.”

Travis’s daddy turned red and walked out of the room without saying a word.

Travis Howard and I talked deep into the night. We struck up an amazing friendship that has lasted to this day. He appeared on
Nashville Star,
which is sort of the country-and-western version of
American Idol.
He didn’t win, but he met another amazing singer named Miranda Lambert. He writes a lot of her songs and is often on the road for months at a time. I miss him. I miss my beautiful, straight, guitar-playing friend with a butt you could serve tea on.

One of my most memorable nights at Genghis Cohen, a young man named Waylon Payne took the stage. I discovered that he was the namesake of Waylon Jennings and was the son of Sammi Smith.

Well.

Miss Smith was a country music legend who had a huge crossover hit in the 1970s with the Kris Kristofferson song “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” I loved that song. I loved her husky voice. I played that record over and over until I wore the grooves out.

Now here was Miss Smith’s son in the flesh!

He looked just like a skinny James Dean. Years later, I went to see
Walk the Line,
the movie about Johnny Cash, and there was Waylon Payne, playing a young Jerry Lee Lewis!

The first night I laid eyes on Waylon Payne, it was like seeing a sad, skinny puppy that I wanted to take home and feed. He sure was named appropriately—he really was “wailin’ pain.” He had the ability to infuse every song he sang with such angst, you almost had to lay down and rest afterwards.

Someone from the crowd yelled out for him to sing his mother’s signature song. I suppose the patron had no idea that Sammi Smith had recently died, and it had torn Waylon to pieces. I held my breath. Waylon hesitated. Was he going to sing it or not? He shut his eyes and strummed a chord. I shut my eyes, too.

Could this be happening? The son of Miss Sammi Smith? Time stood still. Waylon’s high tenor brought his mama’s song to life.

In the Southern Baptist church, there is always a group of women who cry all the way through the testimonials. They are affectionately called “sob sisters.” When Waylon started singing his mama’s song, I became a sob sister. Yes, ma’am, tears were streaming down my face. I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. I began to sob harder and sing along.

I was not alone.

I wanted to stand before the crowd and give my testimony: “Ain’t it the truth, people! Don’t we all? Don’t we all just need a friend?”

At that point in the song, Waylon sang just like his mama did in her version. He got real soft, so soft you could barely hear him. He put his guitar aside and whispered the words. We all leaned forward in anticipation.

“I don’t want to be alone. Help me make it through the…night.”

The place went ape shit.

Right after that, Levi Kreis, who hails from Knoxville, Tennessee, jumped onstage and tore into a rousing rendition of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Levi is a tall, skinny white boy, but when he opens his mouth to sing, Mahalia Jackson pops out. His singing could make a Pentecostal put on lipstick!

It became a free-for-all.

We sang every hymn in the Baptist hymnal that night. The drunker we got, the more we sang. Hymn after hymn after hymn. By the time we reached “The Old Rugged Cross,” even the Jews were singing and clapping along.

I am here to tell you, it was a night to remember.

I
’VE BEEN
extremely blessed to have worked with some of the best writers in television. I learned early in my career that film is a director’s medium, stage is an actor’s medium, and television is a writer’s medium. So to have been chosen by all these amazing television writers has been a real source of pride.

I have worked on and off with David E. Kelley for years. And do you know, I have never even met him? Well, that is not exactly true—he once poked his head in the door, waved, and gave us all the thumbs-up during a table read of
Boston Public.

But he and I have never spoken a word to each other. This is probably a good thing. Knowing my track record with handsome straight men, I would more than likely have developed an angst-ridden crush on him, had he even glanced in my direction. And my simmering resentment of his beautiful wife, Michelle Pfeiffer, would have been exhausting.

One of Mr. Kelley’s producers (and a dear friend of mine), Alice West, saw me in
Southern Baptist Sissies
and brought me in to audition for an episode of
Ally McBeal.
I was to play a cloning expert named Dr. Benjamin Harris. All of my scenes were with Robert Downey Jr. I had recently spent a little time in the slammer with him, so it was a reunion of sorts. (There will be more on my unfortunate incarceration later.)

After the episode aired, my agent called and told me I must have scored a coup, because Mr. Kelley was writing me into another episode. An unknown actor and singer named Josh Groban had been hired to play a high school student who wanted to sue his prom date because she backed out at the last minute. I played Josh Groban’s choir teacher, Dr. Benjamin Harris, cloning expert / church choir director.

Josh Groban was about nine feet tall. He was a sweet, gangly kid, but as soon as he opened his mouth to sing, he became a swan before my very eyes. It was like magic. What a crush I had on young Josh Groban!

Over the summer, I was cast in David E. Kelley’s new show,
Boston Public,
to do five episodes as a science teacher. I became Dr. Benjamin Harris, cloning expert / church choir director / science teacher. One of the early episodes of
Boston Public
involved my character encouraging his students to do a gay version of Thornton Wilder’s famous play
Our Town.
The gay version was called
Our Town Too.
It caused a huge stink, as it involved a smoking-hot lesbian kiss between two students. I was now Dr. Benjamin Harris, cloning expert / church choir director / science teacher / drama teacher / gay activist.

Then, apparently to send my character out on a high note, in my final episode of
Boston Public
I went online and talked dirty with some of my female students. I was caught and dismissed. In true David E. Kelley fashion, the teachers’ union intervened and took the principal to court, and I got to keep my job. But my character soon realized that word of his disgrace had spread among the student population, and he would never truly regain their respect. I quit, and walked away with my head held high as Dr. Benjamin Harris, cloning expert / church choir director / science teacher / drama teacher / gay activist / heterosexual pedophile.

My real journey under the brilliant pen of David E. Kelley began when I was cast in
Boston Legal.
I played a murderer who was so darn nice, the people around the law firm had to keep reminding themselves that I was indeed a murderer. I killed my mother by bopping her on the head with a skillet. I then killed a neighbor in the same fashion. Then, in a beautifully engineered turn of events, Miss Betty White bopped me on the head with a skillet.

Bless her sweet heart! Betty White was concerned about hitting me with a skillet. I showed her that it was made of rubber, not cast iron, and I gave her permission to give me a real hard wallop so it would look good on camera. I had been given several furniture pads stacked on top of one another in case I fell.

The director called “Action!”

Betty White hauled off and smacked the bejesus out of me. I flew out of my chair, sailed past where the furniture pads were placed, and landed unceremoniously on the soundstage floor with the wind knocked out of me. Betty White was horrified, and I had to pretend it didn’t hurt at all. But it hurt like hell. I saw stars! In her eighties, Betty White still packs quite a wallop.

I assumed my character on the show had died, until my agent called with news that they needed me back.

“Perhaps they’re keeping me around?” I asked, hopeful.

Nope. But Betty White was going to keep me locked in a freezer for the next couple of episodes. So I spent several hours with my lips painted blue, covered in itchy fake ice crystals and lying on a wooden board in an unplugged freezer. Once I was loaded into the freezer, I could not get out, since camera equipment blocked the door. As I lay there, I noticed that I was half hidden with TV dinners that were covered in fake frost.

What was the name on the boxes?

Freezer Queen!

So I surreptitiously placed the fake TV dinners all around my face. Just a little joke for the boys in the back room!

There is a mistaken notion that Los Angeles is a theatrical wasteland. This could not be farther from the truth. Trust me, theatre is alive and well and flourishing in Los Angeles. I am convinced that stage experience is what sets the really great actors apart from the good actors. It is very easy in film and television to act “from the neck up.” It is truly amazing what can be done in the editing bay with an awful acting performance on film. I have worked with actors who were believed to be at the top of their craft and immediately realized on the set that their entire careers were made in the editing bay.

The writer to whom I owe most of my career is Del Shores. Although Del has written for many television shows, including
Queer as Folk, Dharma & Greg,
and
Ned and Stacy,
he is best known for his enormously successful plays. All of his plays take place in his home state of Texas and are known for eliciting both gut-wrenching laughter and heartrending moments of truth. Almost every acting job I have been hired to do can somehow be traced back to my appearance in one of Del Shores’s plays.

I had heard that his first play,
Cheatin’
(which I saw five times before I even met Del), was holding auditions at a dinner theatre in Kansas City. I had been in Los Angeles only a few years at that point, but had been lucky enough to get into two of the three actors’ unions: the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. I also wanted to get into Actors’ Equity, the stage union, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I went in to audition for the part of Bo Bob Jasper, a dim-witted, lovestruck mailman. I walked into the room and delivered the first line.

“Mornin’, Sid. Nice day, ain’t it.”

Del Shores almost fell off the couch. He laughed all the way through my audition. I was hired on the spot and he has not stopped laughing—at me and with me—for almost twenty years.

Del, who is now openly gay, was engaged to a woman back then. Kelly Alexander was the daughter of Newel Alexander, who, like myself, had appeared in all of Del’s plays. We were one big huge family of displaced Southerners who relied on one another for love and support.

I was asked to be a member of Del and Kelly’s wedding party. When their first daughter, Rebecca, was born, I was asked to be the godfather. Del Shores was my “straight” friend for ten years. We spoke three times a day on the phone.

I have always considered my “gaydar” to be excellent. I can spot a fellow homo at forty paces. But never once did it cross my mind that Del might be homosexual. He is very masculine, and back then, like all good Texas boys, he wore Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots. He is the son of a Southern Baptist preacher and had graduated from a big Baptist college in Waco, Texas.

In retrospect, I think he was a little too interested in my sexual shenanigans. This was years before I got sober, so my drunken, drug-addled sex life was like a soap opera unto itself. I do not think most straight men would want the details.

Trust me, Del Shores wanted details.

I had once gotten drunk, taken some pills for my nerves, and had a bad reaction. I somehow passed out inside the gates of a lumberyard that sits among all the gay bars in the middle of West Hollywood. How I got inside the gates of this lumberyard is anyone’s guess—but the really horrific part of the story is that when I got home, I realized
I did not have on any underpants.

When I told Del, he kept pressing me for more information.

“What do you think happened?” he asked.

“Delferd, I don’t know what happened. I got home and I was not wearing any underpants.”

“Well, think hard! Think back real hard!”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a wonder they didn’t press charges for
trespassing
!” Del exclaimed. “Do you think you had hot, steamy, homosexual sex on a forklift?”

But back then I did not think twice about his sexuality.

When he called to tell me the sad news that he and Kelly had separated, I was at a loss for words.

“Leslie, I just cannot live this lie one more minute,” Del said. “I am a homosexual. I’ve known it forever. But because of my whole religious upbringing I could not bring myself to admit it. It is not fair to Kelly. I always thought it was something that would go away, but it has not. And I feel like my whole life is a lie.”

The only thing I could think to say was, “Oh, honey, we are going to have so much fun!”

He told me years later that remark brought him a lot of comfort during those dark days. The divorce was horrendous. We were all so close. We all tried our best to not take sides, but I felt caught in the middle because I was Del’s only gay friend at the time. I had to lend him the most support as I was the only one who truly understood what it meant to come out.

The only ones who seemed to take it all in stride were the ones we worried about the most: Del and Kelly’s daughters. They were six and four at the time. I remember once, right after the divorce, the girls wanted to get a hamburger at Carl’s Jr. Del pulled the car over to explain why we couldn’t eat at Carl’s Jr. I thought they were a little young to have any kind of understanding of the whole ordeal, but Del was adamant about explaining everything.

“Girls, remember what I explained to you about being gay.”

The girls were sitting in the back seat, bored stiff. They nodded their heads, looked out the window, and chomped their gum.

“Well, there was this gay girl named Ellen. And Ellen had a television show that was very popular. When Ellen came out and told everyone she was gay, Carl’s Jr. pulled their advertising. So I don’t think we should give them our money.”

The four-year-old, Caroline, sat there twirling her hair.

Finally she said, “Well, thank God it wasn’t McDonald’s.”

I am not proud of the fact that I was not around a lot during Rebecca and Caroline’s formative years. I was too busy drinking, doing drugs, and running around on the streets of Hollywood. But I sobered up, turned around, and there they stood: grown, accomplished, confident young women. They are both wonderfully nonjudgmental and they seem to take everything in stride. They have an amazing relationship with Kelly, Del, and Del’s longtime partner, Jason, who once flew eighteen hours all the way to Japan to see Madonna on the last leg of her world tour.

How cool is that?