Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace (30 page)

The lawyers wrangled over everything, from permitting me to take cigarette breaks during my depositions to how to guarantee everyone’s safety and privacy during the proceedings. Lee’s people said they feared Rosenthal and I would turn the depositions into a media circus. My lawyers argued that I feared for my personal safety because of what I had construed as threats against my life from people associated with Lee.

Early in the case, Rosenthal and I decided we wanted Joel Strote removed as Lee’s attorney of record because he’d acted as my counsel on a number of occasions in the past. Technically, we were right: it did create a conflict of interest. But Lipschutz argued that Strote, although a competent lawyer, was far from being the best in the business. Lipschutz feared that having Strote dismissed would result in Lee’s hiring a heavy hitter. Again, we overruled Lipschutz’s very sound advice. And Lee did just what Lipschutz predicted; he brought in Marshall Grossman, a senior member of one of the most powerful and prestigious law firms in Los Angeles.

From that day on, it was to be an uphill battle for my side. Grossman was tops and he had unlimited funds at his disposal. Lipschutz was tops, but hampered by my inability to supply him with funds and by a sometimes obstructive client. My continued use of cocaine didn’t help me or my case. During my depositions, Grossman, who’d been thoroughly briefed on all my weaknesses, did everything in his power to upset me, to keep me off balance. And he succeeded. I didn’t make a very good impression as a witness on my own behalf. To my surprise, neither did Lee. He tried to impress the court reporter by telling her how much money he made an hour and, in general, he seemed unprepared. I hadn’t seen him for months and it was hard to control my emotions while I listened to him giving his version of how our relationship had ended. Looking back, the whole experience has a nightmarish quality.

Month after month and year after year, Lee used his money, his power, and his popularity to hammer away at us. I don’t know why we didn’t give up. I had no money to pay my attorneys, no money to hire investigators, no money to pay for depositions. The money from the original settlement had been quickly spent on lawyers’ fees and cocaine. Getting a job wasn’t easy because everyone in Hollywood knew, thanks to the tabloids, that I had a drug problem. I’d finally gone to work at United Postal Centers in West Hollywood, and worked there until I began this book, thanks to a very understanding employer named Carole Rosen. But I had no skills and it wasn’t a high-paying job. I made barely enough to support myself, let alone fight a prolonged legal battle. Lipschutz covered almost all of the case’s costs out of his own pocket. By 1985 I think he’d invested more than $10,000 in my suit. It had become a matter of principle for him, a David and Goliath battle.

There were occasional good days. In particular, one day before Strote’s dismissal from the case, he was making an attempt to get the presiding judge to dismiss my entire suit. Strote asserted that once I had signed the original April 22, 1982, agreement—which stated I was not forced to sign it—I had no further right to sue.

The judge looked at him long and hard before commenting, “Are you saying you believe I could
force
you to sign an agreement not to sue by pointing a gun at your head—and you couldn’t void the agreement by proving you weren’t forced to sign it?”

Strote replied confidently, “Yes, your honor.” The judge grimaced and said Strote could not convince him that that was the law of California. Lipschutz broke into a contented smile. But he seldom had much to smile about. I think he was probably the only man in the country who believed I’d told the truth about my past and my life with Lee. On his own, at his own expense, Lipschutz had traveled around California investigating my background, talking to people who’d known me when I was growing up. During his travels Lipschutz had come to know a very different man from the spoiled, drug-addicted, emotional mess who emerged from a five-year relationship with Liberace. Lipschutz had come to know the independent self-starter I’d been. More than anyone else, he’d learned how much I’d lost by loving Lee. Not money. Not cars. Not my home. What I’d lost was myself. Lipschutz knew it and I think that’s why he fought so hard on my behalf. His motivation sure as hell wasn’t the money.

While I slogged through each day, trying to get my head straight and usually failing, Lee had embarked on a relationship with Cary James similar to the relationship he and I had shared. Like me, James went everywhere with Lee. I occasionally saw them pictured together in some periodical and it hurt like hell at first. Gradually, the pain faded as I filled my life with other things. But it was never easy.

Early in 1986 Lee embarked on a powerful public-relations ploy. He began a book that would reinforce the bogus life history he’d been selling the public for so long. It would be published by Harper & Row in late 1986, and titled
The Wonderful Private World of Liberace.

After all the scandal, all the gossip, Lee said he wanted to set the record straight. The second paragraph of the book states: “This latest effort deals with my private life, the offstage person few people know about.” The text was classic Liberace: a mixture of truth, half-truth, and outright lies. On the first page Lee detailed the type of questions he faced when interviewed by the media.

To the query, “Have you had a face-lift?” he replied, “Not yet. But if you think I’ve already had one, it means I can still wait until my friend and authority on the subject, Phyllis Diller, tells me it’s necessary.”

In fact, Lee had had two face-lifts and a deep skin peel.

To the query, “Is that your real hair?” he replied, “The hair is real—but the color only my hairdresser knows.”

In fact, the hair
was
real but it had grown on someone else’s head.

The fiction continued. Lee, who’d always refused to discuss his sex life prior to my suit, titled chapter 16, “How I Lost My Virginity.” In it he claimed to have been seduced at the age of sixteen by a blues singer named Bea Haven. Then he wrote, “The thrill of making it with an older woman diminished as I grew older. Younger girls started to represent more of a challenge, probably because of their innocence.”

I was disgusted by Lee’s lies. The text bore no resemblance to the things he’d told me, unless you substituted football player for blues singer, men for women, and boys for girls. Then and only then does it come near the truth. The book is larded with pictures, including one of Cary James, Lee, and Kenny Rogers, all standing with their arms around each other. James is simply labeled as “my friend.” In other publications he’d been called a chauffeur, a secretary, a companion—all Lee’s usual euphemisms.

Looking through the lavishly illustrated text brings back a lot of memories of the houses we bought and decorated together, the dogs we both loved, the Liberace family—and most especially Frances, who I had come to care for. Those photographs fill me with nostalgia. But the misrepresentations in the text are so blatant that I get angry every time I read it. The one that upsets me the most deals with Liberace’s health.

By 1986 rumors about Lee’s health were circulating throughout the entertainment industry and the gay community. I don’t know for certain if he knew he had AIDS when he wrote the following words, but he certainly had to know he was a very sick man. For the first time in his life, Lee no longer had a weight problem.

He wrote: “He [meaning Lee’s physician, Dr. Elias Ghanem] was concerned over reports that I’d lost thirty pounds on a—would you believe—watermelon diet? In subsequent testing, he discovered I’d robbed my system of essential nutrients, which was causing me to experience a letdown in my normal high energy level.

“Some of his testing required special equipment and had to be performed in a local hospital. As a result, false rumors started to circulate about my health. According to the gossips, you name it, and I had it.

“Let me assure you, I’ve never felt better in my life!”

These words ring with pathetic bravado now. They were written by a man who, in less than a year, would be dead of AIDS.

By the beginning of 1986 the legal battle was so acrimonious that my attorney, Ernst Lipschutz, and Lee’s attorney, Marshall Grossman, had developed a bitter, adversarial relationship. Twelve of my suit’s original causes of action had yet to be settled despite the fact that Grossman had done everything in his power, using every weapon in his vast legal arsenal, to get the rest of my case dismissed. Everyone involved, from principals to witnesses to counsel, had been sucked into the mud-slinging, name-calling mire of accusation and counteraccusation. I’d never anticipated that so much time, energy, and talent would be consumed by what had started out to be nothing more than a lover’s quarrel.

There seemed to be no way to turn back. As Lee said in one of his depositions, he was caught in a “war he never made.” There were times when I too wished I could forget the whole thing. But we’d long since passed the point of no return. The suit had developed a life of its own. By then our attorneys had an interest in winning that was so consuming that at times it seemed as if they were the injured parties.

I sat in on the first of Lee’s depositions, feeling completely miserable every time I looked at him. Over the years it became easier to remember our relationship. I could look at him, even say a civil hello, without feeling torn by the desire to hit him or hug him. But we hadn’t spoken in private and I didn’t think we ever would. Cary James was still with him and, so far, Lee showed no signs of tiring of his new companion.

It came as a bolt out of the blue when Lee called me early in 1986. His voice sounded unchanged—still as familiar to me as my own. I remember thinking my imagination was playing tricks on me when I heard Lee say, “Scott, is that you?”

We’d been at war so long that I’d long ago given up any hope of reconciliation. But suddenly the four years since our last conversation disappeared. I felt as if we had talked just yesterday, as if all the bitterness, the anger had happened between two other men.

A part of me had been waiting for that phone call since the Academy Awards ceremony in 1982, and now that it was finally happening, I didn’t know how to handle it. So many things ran through my mind. Had Lee called, after all that time, to say he was sorry about everything? Was he going to make a personal appeal to me to settle out of court? Did he hope to be friends again in spite of everything? None of those ideas sounded likely and yet I couldn’t help hoping those were his reasons for telephoning. Hearing his voice made me realize how much I’d missed him.

“How have you been?” Lee asked, as if he’d been calling me every day and this was just another in a series of friendly conversations.

“Fine, just fine,” I replied, knowing that he hated a kvetch, that he wouldn’t want to hear I couldn’t seem to get my life back together without him.

“And your health,” Lee continued, with a tinge of anxiety elevating his voice, “how’s your health?”

“I’m fine,” I said again, although that wasn’t quite true. I still used cocaine despite a dozen attempts to kick the habit. It kept me thin, nervous, and broke.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Lee persisted.

“Sure, Lee, I’m fine,” I reiterated, wondering why, after four years of silence, he would call to inquire about my health.

Then it hit me: the unspoken fear that hides in the dark corners of every gay’s mind. Please, God, no, I thought, let me be wrong. Not Lee! Don’t let it be happening to Lee. So far, unlike so many other members of the homosexual community, I’d been lucky. None of my friends had died of AIDS, even though the obits in
Variety
reported an increasing number of deaths among young, single, show-business males. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines and figure out that many of those deaths were related to AIDS.

I’d even heard a few rumors about Lee. He’d lost weight in the last couple of months and gossip within the gay community had it that AIDS was the cause. But I’d ignored the gossip. Hollywood is often more successful at creating rumors than it is at making movies. There are always stories making the rounds. And Lee, by denying his homosexuality, had certainly alienated the gay community. No wonder they talked about him. But the stories were, I’d reassured myself, just vicious lies.

I could hear Lee clearing his throat. “Well,” he said, “I guess you’ve heard that I haven’t been feeling too well.”

“Sure,” I replied. “But I didn’t take it seriously. Are you all right?”

Silence. The wire hummed with it. It seemed to last forever. My God, I thought, it’s true!

Finally Lee said, “I just wanted to be sure you’re okay, Scott. And I’m glad you are.” He sounded genuinely relieved. We talked a little about mutual friends. I had a hard time keeping any hint of emotion out of my voice while we chatted. I knew that Lee had called me for a reason. I also knew he’d never be able to spell that reason out. We were still locked in a court battle and no matter what changes occurred in his life or mine, he’d never forgive me for suing him and publicly branding him as gay. But legal battles and personal vendettas aside, Lee wasn’t a big enough bastard to let me go on living my life without warning me about his condition. It didn’t take any special brilliance on my part to figure out what that condition was. I believe that Lee called me because he wanted to do the right thing, to warn me that he had AIDS. Then, despite his good intentions, he couldn’t go through with it. So he’d concentrated on making sure I wasn’t sick, knowing I’d put two and two together and go see my own doctor.

I sat still as a stone for a long time after hanging up, turning the brief conversation over and over in my mind, desperate to come up with some other reason for Lee to call. After all, I reassured myself, he hadn’t really come out and declared, “I have AIDS.” Maybe I was making too much of it, reading things into what he’d said that weren’t there.

I felt scared, more scared than I’d been the day Lee had me evicted from the penthouse. God! I didn’t want to think about Lee having AIDS because that meant there was a chance—a very good chance—that I had it too. I sure as hell didn’t want to die, not at twenty-seven. Like most gay men, I’d read everything there was to read about AIDS. It didn’t seem possible that Lee could have contracted it during the years we’d been together.