Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (5 page)

When summer ended, though, and I reported to London for a semester of serious study, I was back to reality, which meant pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Some friends from BU were in my “programme.” (I’ll drop the quotation marks from now on, but is there anything that bugs you about this word, or is it just me?) Everyone was anxious to share tales of their amazing summers, while I couldn’t conceive of telling anyone about what I’d just experienced. Which, I realized, was going to be an ongoing challenge. Because from the moment I got there, everywhere I looked and listened was gay, gay, gay.

You couldn’t walk one foot in London that year without hearing Erasure’s super-gay pop song “Chains of Love.” Oh, and my flat was in the gayest part of town, Earl’s Court. How the hell was I supposed to stay in the closet when living in a neighborhood where everybody looked like a Village Person? I certainly wasn’t complaining, but it just seemed ironic.

I was committed to my secret, though, because I truly did not believe I had an alternative. I was terrified of being ostracized by my friends and family. I’ve always said that gay people and fat people are two of the last minority groups that it’s acceptable to make fun of across America. That’s finally starting to change now, but gay-bashing was still de rigueur in the eighties—and Eddie Murphy was hardly the lone offender.

On the trip from Paris I’d concocted a fairly elaborate story about my summer, and the minute I got to London, I began relaying it to friends back at BU and in St. Louis. I told them—through letters and phone calls and eventually just word of mouth—that I had taken a train from Switzerland to Paris (true), where I’d met a German girl (true) with hair under her arms (true) who asked me to get drunk with her (true) and that I did (false) and she attacked me (false) with her hot body (eew, false) and hairy underarms (again, true, but I didn’t touch them). We spent a mad, passionate night together fucking and fucking and fucking some more on the rails and had a very dramatic good-bye in Paris (false, gross, false, gross, and no).

The Tale of the Fräulein Who Took Me on the Night Rails made an immediate impact on my friends, to whom I must’ve always seemed like a Ken doll (sans the stunning Aryan looks) with no genitalia and just smooth flatness “down there.” They swallowed the Tale of the Fräulein like a fresh Slurpee, simultaneously happy for me and relieved that whatever questions they’d had about my—at best—asexuality were unfounded. And if it made any of their brains painfully freeze up for a moment, well, that was just from drinking it all in so fast.

Within one day of being in London I met two women who would become my best friends for the rest of my life. Amanda Baten was a petite, blond, earthy stunner with an infectious laugh and appetite for fun and drama; she was on the road to her eventual career as a psychologist and was already figuring out all our problems. Graciela Braslavsky was Brigitte Bardot on steroids, a New York City girl with an anything-goes vibe and a razor-sharp wit who was also enrolled at BU. That I’d never been somehow magnetically drawn to her on campus back in Boston seemed unfathomable. I connected with both women deeply and immediately. The image I portrayed to them was of a hetero hippie, and when I shared the Tale of the Fräulein Who Took Me on the Night Rails, they had no reason to question it.

The programme itself consisted of a couple of (fairly bogus) courses and an internship at United Press International Radio, which sucked. My hoped-for internship at the ABC News London Bureau never materialized, so I was stuck in this dead-end job in the Docklands, which was essentially the middle of nowhere. At this point I’d had several amazing internships already. I started young, as the “littlest volunteer” for Senator Tom Eagleton’s re-election campaign (I was twelve and felt strangely at home among adults wearing corduroy sport coats). At sixteen, I was the youngest intern at the CBS affiliate in St. Louis. Then came the internships at the CBS radio station in St. Louis and a classic rock radio station in Boston (where I worked the switchboard and felt like Jennifer Marlowe on
WKRP in Cincinnati
, except that I was nowhere near as hot as Loni Anderson and way more efficient), so maybe I was spoiled with regard to internships. And maybe spoiled in general. I had decided already that there was absolutely no way I’d ever work in radio. My plan was to graduate, move to a small market, and become a reporter and local anchor. So it all seemed pointless and for naught.

Graciela, Amanda, and me. No, that is not a pot pipe in my hand.

My life in London became a balancing act. I spent most of my time hanging out with Amanda and Graciela, doing stupid things around London like smoking buckets of hash and going to all-you-can-eat pasta nights at Fatsos in Soho. One night Graciela dared me to slide down the median of what was probably a four-story escalator in the middle of a packed tube station; I did it and cut my hands to bits. I was in massive pain, but to us it was hilarious and proof that I was completely under Graciela’s spell. I was—and am still—powerless to resist her dares. Decades later, when she was sitting in the audience of
Watch What Happens Live
, Jimmy Fallon was the guest, and during the commercial break she dared me to do a large shot of Maker’s Mark. Jimmy looked at me like I was a madman to be considering this dare, but with the clock ticking down the seconds until we were back live on the air, I had to comply. She’s like a Siren!

When I wasn’t acting like a fool with my girlfriends, I was checking out gay spots around town on the DL. I had an affair with an aspiring pop star. In my rearview mirror he appears absolutely ridiculous, but at the time, he was spectacular—Mr. Barrel Chested Gay UK 1988. He’d recorded a truly pathetic techno cover of the Petula Clark classic “Downtown,” but his total lack of talent did not dissuade me from loving his angular A-Ha look and enormous chest. Concurrently, I feigned interest in Rebecca, a red-haired beauty (I liked Gingeys even then) in our program, who had a crush on my roommate. Thus, she was safe. (And there’s that word again.)

I was also quietly empowered by some of my openly gay classmates. I remember running into one of them one morning on the street. He told me he was just coming home from his night and that it was “wild.” He winked and walked away. I couldn’t imagine being open and cavalier like he was. Later he invited me to his flat with a bunch of his friends, and we all watched
Sudden Fear
together. At the time, sitting with a group of gays watching a Joan Crawford movie seemed downright revolutionary. Now it sounds like a Sunday afternoon.

The dark side of my initial forays into the gay world was that I was absolutely terrified that I was going to get—or had already gotten—AIDS. I questioned every scab, cough, bruise, cut, and cold sore as though it were the beginning of the end for me. It was 1988, and the AIDS crisis was generating massive paranoia and uncertainty. Being gay seemed to go hand in hand with AIDS, like an inevitable one-two punch.

*   *   *

As I went on with my double life, letters kept arriving from home:

September 1988

Dear Andy,

Well, by now you are quite the experienced traveler. I saw Jackie and she sounded as up about the trip as you. Can you take a Shakespeare course rather than a politics or some kind of English art course at least?? Are there any Jewish kids there? I can’t believe that your damn coats and your polo towels and that damn white sweater are lost. Furthermore, it was not insured—can you believe it? Hopefully the tracer will find it. You better find a flea market and buy yourself a coat or you’ll freeze. We have tickets to “Les Miserables” on the 15th, which is the evening we get to London. If you could get tickets to Phantom on Nov 16th, that would be fabulous. I do not wish to pay scalpers prices. The play we must see is
Lettice and Lovage.
Will you see about tickets to that and MasterCard them too? It’s a comedy with Maggie Smith. I am so damn mad. I forgot to set the recorder in my room and didn’t change the clock on the recorder in the basement back from daylight savings. So today I have 2 recorders and no soap! Palmer really set up Natalie and Jeremy to make them look guilty as hell. Nina had a baby boy. Erica’s on a long trip. Nothing else major is happening.… Well, I hear the garage door opening and it is your dad. We love and miss you and look forward to hearing about all of your experiences. Don’t forget to keep the journal. Have the time of your life.

LOVE MOM

A letter like this, brimming with the wonderfully mundane details of my former existence as a closeted mama’s boy, now filled me with dread. The longer I was in London the more I knew that I was living a lie and that there could be no going back to my old life.

My anxiety intensified with each day. I honestly believed that if I chose to be open about my sexuality, I would be shunned by everyone I loved. It sounds so melodramatic now, but at the time, the decision of who to tell and when loomed like a life-or-death question.

To make matters more complicated, there was an added and potentially uncomfortable energy around my relationship with Graciela. We were in the midst of a love affair that happened to be absolutely devoid of any physicality. I hungered to be around her. She made me laugh, surprised me, stimulated me, and I wanted to tell her everything. She had a boyfriend back home, so I figured she thought that was why I wasn’t making a move. Still, I did some deflecting. And I now know that she did a lot of wondering.

On October 19 (yes, I remember the date), I took Amanda to Pizza Hut (no comment) to tell her the news. Amanda seemed like the best place to start, like a loving sister with psych credentials. I explained that I had something urgent to tell her, something incredibly personal.

“I know exactly what you’re going to tell me,” she said. I was so relieved: She knew!

I said, “What?”

“You’re in love with Graciela.”

“I am,” I said. “But I’m also gay.”

Amanda’s reaction was one that I didn’t expect: utter joy and complete acceptance. “I think that is so natural and beautiful, and I’m so proud of you!” she said. “This is great news!” What I thought was going to be a tearful pity party, or bitter recriminations about betrayal, evolved into a celebration. I told her about Jean-Marie. I told her that the Tale of the Fräulein Who Took Me … was a lie. She asked me what I was going to do about Graciela.

I wanted to be truthful with Graciela, but the fact that we’d be going back to BU together when the semester was over complicated things. I wasn’t ready yet for the information to return with me to Boston. So I didn’t tell Graciela, or anyone other than Amanda and her accepting boyfriend, Paul. The closet door was finally open—just a crack.

But on the plane home from London something in me shifted unexpectedly. I felt like I was hurtling not only through the sky, but toward a new phase of my life, and a chance to have a new beginning. This new identity I’d revealed to Amanda was shimmering just underneath my dirtbag Deadhead costume, and I needed to devise a plan of action for revealing it. I wanted to be precise about how I told people. I wanted to answer every question that could possibly come to mind, clearly and in one sitting. I wanted to put their fears about me—or the “new” me—to rest.

On the long flight back to the US, I wrote a journal entry that I wound up reading directly to each friend after I told them my secret. It was a pages-long, very intense, and super-earnest explanation of who I was and a plea for acceptance. Some snippets:

I’ve known I was gay for as long as I’ve had a sexual identity. Around the time that I started getting horny, I realized that my affection for men was not widely accepted, and was widely considered abnormal.

I knew I was not abnormal, but that I had to make a choice as to whether I craved acceptance or full individuality. I chose acceptance out of basic social needs. I decided to try to suppress my feelings for other men in hopes that, by thinking heterosexual, I would just sort of become one. It obviously didn’t happen, and no one can begin to imagine the pain and hurt that lurked deep within me when I would hear all of my friends—people that I loved and respected—deriding gay people. This happened daily. I lived two lives. My outer, gregarious, happy self, and my inner self, which thought a lot about sex. The inner self often overrode me, and I became overcome with depression, fear, and self-hatred.

I was born a homosexual. I did not choose to be gay. I did not have a choice. I wondered how I was ever going to live with myself and this sinister need to have sex with men. I was convinced that no one would accept me, and I wouldn’t get anywhere in the world if everyone knew that I was gay. And what would I do otherwise? The other choice, of course, would probably be worse—suppressing my feelings altogether, in hopes of leading a “normal” life. A wife and kids would give me a key to the world, but would also bring me further into hiding, and I would do things completely out of my control. When you have this feeling that you don’t think you can act upon, it is crushing.