In and Out of Hollywood: A Biographer’s Memoir

Chapter 12

12
141 M y relationship with Richard, which continues to this day, was triggered by a circumstance in New York. In town for briefings at Time-Life Books and the Times, I went one night to the Everard Baths, known in gay circles as The Everhard. It was a Grand Central Station of sex. One entered the place, paid a fee, and, if lucky, survived a tough looking-over by a custodian; passed as fit, one undressed , put clothes in a locker, and then wrapped a towel around a waist that was by requirement fat free and defined. There were numerous rooms with slightly open doors; the men inside were naked, often erect and waiting. The swimming pool was green and inviting under a brilliant array of light, and as one slipped into it, mouths would consume genitals under water; the suppliers of pleasure were seldom seen. In an orgy room, I joined a young, handsome dark man from Manila. He came to my hotel, the Waldorf, and spent a passionate night with me, followed by several more. He was sweet, not bright, a plumber by trade who could never have shared a life with me. We parted, and he cried helplessly , touchingly; he said he was in love with me. I arrived in Los Angeles to receive a phone call from David Bradley. He told me that a young Filipino nurse was pursuing him but he wanted only Caucasians. He passed Richard on to me, and we began an affair. Richard was far removed from Ramon, my New York lover. He was aristocratic in bearing, fierce and gentle in shifting moods. He came from a line of Spanish grandees who had settled in the Philippines in the eighteenth century and had married scions of rich local families. World War II had shattered the world of refinement and luxury in which his parents had grown up. The Japanese took their lands, their house, their money. In desperation , the parents farmed out their children, including Richard, in nursing , engineering, and farming. He obtained a medical degree at the University of the Philippines, cooking and waiting tables to pay for his course. Norine was also a nurse, as I have written, and they were similar: devoted, unpredictable, romantic and sentimental, yet tough and controlling. Fate took a hand: at the same time that Richard and I decided to live together, Norine died in a hospital in Sydney of stomach cancer and intestinal blockage. And my stepmother, Jill Deacon, also died, due to an accident during heart surgery in London. I moved into the apartment block called Fountainview West, today Westview Towers, on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. It turned out to be a halfway station for celebrities moving between Los Angeles and New York who had not yet bought a home in the West. Gene Hackman, sour and distant, was often seen in the elevator clutching a bag full of groceries; James Coco was a chubby sweetheart; Broderick Crawford, who lived across the corridor from me, was genial and warm, far from the terrors he portrayed in pictures, and we became friends. Despite Richard’s presence in my life, my fickle spirit needed other replenishments . I met a young painter and we enjoyed a torrid, brief romance . He was overjoyed when I introduced him to Phil Ochs, the rock star, soon to die; then he drifted away. I advertised for “intellectuals only” in the classified ad pages of the gay weekly the Advocate, which specialized in physical descriptions; I was surprised to receive several replies, only one of which worked out. The schoolteacher I will call Brent was exactly my type: slight, defined, his well-arranged muscles supple rather than overdeveloped . He also had a brilliant mind. The problem was that, even while we shared nights of intense sex and long, drawn-out talks afterward, Brent couldn’t get work in Los Angeles and told me he would have to leave town. Thus I settled on Richard instead , and, after writing Brent a brutal note of dismissal, I saw Richard place it with a flourish in the mailbox outside the House of Pies. I had spent one late afternoon and evening at Mae West’s apartment. Our friendship had deepened, encouraged greatly by her manager, Stanley 142 143 Musgrove, whom I saw often at the gay Roman Holiday Baths in the San Fernando Valley...