Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art (9 page)

I bought a new dining room table, made of raw pinewood, and I antiqued it myself. I’m not a very good carpenter, but this had more to do with painting than carpentry.

On the morning of September 5, I bought some flowers, placed them in a little vase in the center of the table, and took a shower. When I got out of the shower, a telegram arrived:

Staying in Italy another two weeks. Stop. Mary.

I had the urge to break something. I sat still for a long time, trying to think of what I could do to release the rage in me. Then I searched through my address book until I found what I was looking for: “If you should ever get lonely, just give me a call.”

As I was about to knock on Karla’s door, I heard a man talking in her apartment, and then I heard Karla’s voice. I figured,
Well, a neighbor, a relative, who knows?
I knocked.

Karla came to the door. I saw what looked like a well-dressed businessman just finishing tucking in his shirt. He reached for his jacket, and Karla introduced us. I don’t remember what his name was—I just remember the tucking in of his shirt.

The man said a polite good-bye, and Karla asked me to come in and make myself comfortable.
(What is this? Am I supposed to pay her?)

She offered me some coffee and then invited me into her bedroom,
as if we had arranged all of this beforehand. Karla started getting undressed. After a few awkward moments of standing there, I got undressed.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve become something of a nymphomaniac lately.” She followed this with a little laugh.

“It’s just that, at this point in my life I get a little lonely. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Me? No, of course not.”
(What in God’s name am I saying? I sound like Woody Allen.)

I got into bed with her and sort of kissed her, after which she put “it” inside. I guess you could have counted to seven or eight, and then boom.

I tried to be as polite as I could manage to be in what was an absurd situation. And actually, she was trying to be polite as well. I just wanted to get out of there. After several polite thank-yous I said a polite, “Good night, Karla,” and left.

A day or two later a friend of mine, who saw that I was coming apart at the seams, suggested that I see his psychoanalyst—just for a recommendation. Her name was Ingrid Steiner. I made an appointment, and, after listening to me for a short while, Dr. Steiner called a therapist she knew named Margie . . . ever hear of her?”

Margie smiled.

A week after
The White House
closed, I walked into Margie’s office and gave her a cheerful, “Hi.” “

What’s the matter?” she said.

“What do you mean? . . . All I said was, ‘Hi.’ ”

“What happened?”

I got to the couch and lay down, staring at the ceiling.

“Is there a name for what I’ve got?”

“Repetition compulsion. Now tell me what happened.”

After about a minute of silence, I started to cry. Margie didn’t say a word.

“The Demon came back,” I said.

Margie waited.

“I saw a picture of three starving children on the cover of the magazine
section of the New York Times. Their stomachs were all bloated. A young doctor was leaning over one of the kids, trying to feed her.”

“So? What do you want me to do?”

“Oh, you’re just the Angel of Mercy, aren’t you? I’m talking about morality.”

“Morality is where you draw the line. If you want to hold on to your compulsion, that’s your business.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You think I like being this way?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Are you praying now?”

“Yes! To you! Please—I want you to get rid of my compulsion and get me out of this nonfucking marriage.”

“And what will you be doing—playing tennis?”

Long pause. Then Margie said,

“Are you still living with Mary?”

“Yes.”

“Not healthy.”

“I know it. I can’t afford another place.”

“Let her go to work.”

“Fine! Would you tell her? She thinks it’s a husband’s responsibility.”

“And what’s the wife supposed to do?”

“She asked me to please get out of the apartment in the afternoons because she’s writing a play now. She’s also joined a poetry group in the evenings, with four homosexual men.”

“Mister Wilder . . . your marriage stinks.”

“Thanks. How much do I owe you for that?”

“Have you seen any other women?”

“No. Not yet. Well . . . just the unhappy nymphomaniac I told you about. But . . .”

“But?”

“I met a little dancer at a party last week. I thought I might ask her out.”

“What do you mean by a little dancer?”

“She’s four-foot-eleven. She dances on Broadway.”

“What’s her name?”

“Well, I call her ‘Billie’ because she reminds me of an adorable Broadway actress I read about who was famous in the twenties.”

Margie wrote something in her notepad.

I asked Billie if she’d like to go to dinner with me on Sunday evening—her night off—and she said yes. She knew I was married but “sort of” separated.

We went to a small bistro on the West Side that she knew was open on Sundays, and where she also knew the owner. We shared a coq au vin and a nice bottle of Beaujolais.

Billie wore a very simple, but ever-so-pretty, pink-and-lavender blouse, which went awfully well with her shiny blond hair. She also wore quite a short skirt—with fairly high heels, of course. What she wore looked inexpensive, but still very special, in the way that dancers know how to choose things to wear. It was the best meal I’d had with a woman in a long time.

At the end of the meal, the owner came over and sat down with us, bringing his own glass of whatever he had been drinking. He was a jolly man and told some jokes and told us about a few people he missed very much who still lived in France. From the look
in his eyes, I think one of them might have been an old lover. Then he clinked glasses with us and said, “Des souvenirs!” (“To memories!”)

After dinner I went to Billie’s apartment. We sat on the floor, leaning against her sofa. She played some music—not classical, but mellow forties standards. I kissed her. She kissed back; I wouldn’t say passionately, but nicely. Almost politely. I inched my way up the side of her sweater and got close to her breast, which was hard to find because she was almost completely flat chested. My mind started racing.
Seema Clark, Seema Clark, angora sweater, “You’re just like all the other boys, aren’t you?”
Now here’s the thing that knocked me for a loop—she grabbed my hand and plunked it down over her left breast.

“You wanna feel? Then
feel!
”

Well, stop the world, I want to get off. We went into her bedroom, where two tiny Yorkies were sitting on her bed, yapping as we walked in. She took them off the bed, kissed them both, and put them in a little basket on the floor. Then she went into the bathroom to take off her things. I took my clothes off in the bedroom, hiding my nakedness slightly from the two Yorkies. Don’t ask me why.

Billie came out, naked, dimmed the lights, and got into bed.

“I don’t like anyone touching my privates with their fingers,” she announced.

She didn’t like using mouths or tongues either, except for kissing.

We made love, and after about twenty minutes—during which time she told me that she knew every inch of Marlon Brando’s body—to my great surprise, we did it again. That was a first for me. After another twenty minutes—to my even greater surprise—we did it again.

“Three times! My, my,” she said.

She had a strange way of complimenting and belittling me at the same time. However she meant it, I was grateful to her for cutting through my usual malarkey.

Later that night, when I got back to the apartment that I was paying for and “sharing” with Mary, I slipped into my side of the bed and slept without anger in my heart for the first time in many months.

Still no word from Mel.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
lasted only three months on Broadway. In March of 1964 The Actors Studio Theater was going to produce a comic opera called
Dynamite Tonight
, by Arnold Weinstein, with music by William Bolcom. I was asked to play a simpleton soldier who loved the movies. Paul Sills, of Second City fame, had done this project a short while before and was going to direct, with Barbara Harris as the only star.

When rehearsals began, it became obvious that Paul Sills didn’t want to be doing this. I suppose the prestige of being asked by the famous Lee Strasberg must have influenced his decision to direct
Dynamite
again. But Paul was tired and wanted to get back to Chicago. He had us do scenes in fast motion, then in slow motion, and then in every other kind of motion you could think of except “e-motion.”

After two weeks Paul Sills was replaced by the author, Arnold Weinstein—a decision that resulted in chaos. To make things worse, we were now giving preview performances each evening, with a small orchestra.

After a few days of humiliation for all of us, Arnold was replaced by Lee Strasberg. Thank God . . . to actually be directed by Lee.

I had several scenes, some of them quite funny, but I had one great scene in which I sang a song called “How I Love the Movies.” It had a verse, a chorus, and then a repeat of the chorus.

On the first day that Lee took over, he gave some general notes and then he said, “Gene, we don’t need a repeat of that chorus you sing. Once is enough. Otherwise, it stops the show. Tonight, do it without the repeat.”

My heart started to race.
Hold on. . . . Hold on
.

“Lee, I think that song is what this whole story is about. This simpleton I play is caught up in a war, and he just wants to be like all the singing and dancing heroes he saw in the movies . . . Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly. . . .”

Lee got agitated. Someone was actually doubting him on artistic matters. The other cast members—who were sitting in the first two or three rows of the theater—listened intently but were afraid to make eye contact with the legend they all worshiped.

“Lee, I don’t think there’s much point to my character if the audience doesn’t see that he—”

Lee turned red.

“CHARACTER? YOU’RE TALKING TO
ME
ABOUT CHARACTER? I’M TELLING YOU IT’S WRONG!”

An emotion I barely recognized came over me; there was no conscious thought. I suddenly screamed at the top of my lungs, “THEN FIRE ME! DO ME A FAVOR AND FIRE ME!”

Lee’s face changed from red to blue. He tried to speak, but the
words came out hoarse, as if he had laryngitis. “And you’re a good actor,” he squeaked, “You’re a good actor!”

That was the first time I ever had an argument with a director—the only time, I think. (But there have been one or two occasions when I wish I had—when some insecure director took out his frustrations by yelling at an actor or a crew member in front of the whole company.) That night I did the performance as Lee had requested—without the repeat, just singing the verse and one chorus.

The next morning, Mike Nichols took over the direction of
Dynamite Tonight
—at Lee Strasberg’s request. After we all said hello to each other, Mike said, “Gene, I saw the show two nights ago—what happened to the repeat of the chorus in your song?”

“Lee thought it was a showstopper,” I said.

Mike smiled, with a gentle sense of irony that formed at the ends of his lips. “It’s supposed to be a showstopper—that’s why they wrote it that way. Tonight, let’s put the repeat back, and then let’s add a second repeat.”

We rehearsed for another week, during which time Mike would say to all of us, “Now what could we do here? What do you think? Anyone have any ideas?” And we all started using our imaginations for the first time in five weeks.
Together
, we reconstructed the entire comic opera. And it was good. Now the audience loved it. I had never seen direction like this.