Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (3 page)

Lording over the remote in what looks like a moment of deep pubescent rage

Donny and Marie were perfect brunette Mormon smiling Barbie dolls and I dug their happiness, purity, and glitz. My uncle indulged me, and several times successfully blew my hair straight and parted it in what looked like a cross between Donny and Steve Schiff, the local anchordude on TV.

My devotion to the Osmonds peaked around the time all us kids collected “pics,” which were precisely cut celebrity photos curated from
Tiger Beat
and
Teen Beat
. Pic collecting was sport for Emily and Jodi and me while we schlepped all over the Midwest to watch Josh’s soccer and baseball games. The pics were mainly of the Charlie’s Angels (though I also had a weird fetish for the Captain and Tennille). The electric blond luminescence of Farrah seared through the pictures; flanked by Jaclyn and Kate, she only glowed more. Whenever I got myself into a situation where I was “playing” Charlie’s Angels, which was never often enough but always exciting, I would invariably wind up playing one of the brunettes. Always a Kate, never a Farrah.

Back then, each year came to a thrilling biannual climax in what was my very own version of the Super Bowl,
Battle of the Network Stars
. (In case you’re wondering, I did have one interest that didn’t scream G-A-Y: the St. Louis Cardinals.)
Battle of the Network Stars
was, I now realize, my first reality-show extravaganza, a pop culture Olympiad. It was an incredible gathering of every major TV star of the day—Farrah! Joyce DeWitt! Chachi! Gabe Kaplan! Valerie Bertinelli! Loretta Swit!—all wearing as little as possible (my lifelong appreciation for a fine Speedo and headband can be traced to this moment) and divided into teams by their network affiliations to compete in swim races, tennis, relays, and the infamous tug-of-war. I had a fierce devotion to ABC and was physically ill any time NBC won, which usually occurred under the “leadership” of (in my opinion, very unsportsmanlike) team captain Robert Conrad—probably best known from his roles in
The Wild, Wild West
and Eveready battery commercials. In this pre–
Entertainment Tonight
era,
Battle of the Network Stars
presented something completely original: celebrities being themselves, interacting with other celebrities in inconceivable combinations. (I loved a crossover then, and I still do. When Mork had Fonzie set himself up on a date with Laverne, I’m pretty sure I had an accident in my pants.)

For as much escape and delight as television provided me, there were times when it also became a difficult mirror—and not just when it was off and the glass was dark. I’m talking, of course, about
CHiPs
. When
CHiPs
premiered, I was suddenly all too happy to forswear my hatred of NBC programming. On the surface, this might not seem unusual. After all,
CHiPs
was made expressly for boys my age. It had motorcycles, exciting chases, and lots of cop-talk. But for this ten-year-old boy in St. Louis, it had Mr. Erik Estrada. When Emily and Jodi and I were trading pics, I paid special, trancelike attention to any pic of Señor Estrada. He was like Donny Osmond on Mexican steroids with exploding genitalia. Actually he was nothing like Donny, it’s just funny to juxtapose them now. Estrada’s entire presentation was captivating, his walk, smile, super-white teeth, jet-black hair, and the air of possibility that he was going to completely burst the seams of his tan pantsuit.

The Estrada trance was different from what I felt when I looked at Farrah. She made me feel happy and clean, but he made me feel dirty and excited. I had flashbacks to the way I’d felt in my dad’s tennis club locker room. In the back of my mind I knew what was happening, but I didn’t really allow myself to go there. I continued to hold out hope that Farrah and I could have a future. In my mind, that was the only real option, anyway. (Well, not marrying Farrah Fawcett—I wasn’t that naïve—but marrying a woman. A woman who looked and acted exactly like Farrah Fawcett. And was possibly named at least Farrah, if not Fawcett.)

*   *   *

When I tell people I grew up in St. Louis, their first reaction is usually either Susan Lucci’s (“There are very bright people from the Midwest!”) or “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Here’s what: apology not accepted—or needed.

I loved growing up there. Little dramas due to my talkativeness aside, I was in a cocoon of happiness and simplicity, untouched by any real societal or domestic problem (blackouts, race wars, robbery, divorce) that could get in the way of a happy childhood. What I wanted to be was a latchkey kid like I’d seen in after-school specials—that seemed so urban and self-sufficient. A tragedy did come for me in 1978, when my parakeet, Pork Chop, died suddenly while my sister’s nasty old bird, Perky, soldiered on for years. I held a funeral, invited all the neighbors, and read a eulogy encouraging mourners to go to the neighborhood candy shop and buy Pork Chop’s grieving “master” some sweet nibbles. The only sour note to the whole affair was when Mom took pictures of the entire thing. I was furious. This was a solemn occasion! No paps!

In the rearview mirror, our family life seems like something out of a fifties television show. Em and I were a team, and our biggest arguments may have related to wanting to listen to different records on the massive wooden phonograph (with wicker speakers) that lived in the hallway. How Beaver Cleaver do I sound when I tell you that I even had a freaking paper route when I was ten? I went to office buildings in “downtown” Clayton after school, dragging around a cart with the afternoon edition of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
. (Remember the days when big cities had an afternoon paper? Or two competing papers? How much news was there to report? And how did Pork Chop’s death not get any coverage?) It bums me out that today it wouldn’t even be possible for a ten-year-old to roam city streets the way I did, in my first official news gig. After school I’d usually hang out with my friend Mike Goldman and watch TV and play board games. Sometimes we would tape ourselves playing a board game, then listen to the tape and marvel at how mind-numbingly boring it was. I guess it was our version of early reality radio. My favorite days by far were Wednesdays and Fridays, when our housekeeper, Kattie, came to our house. Okay, weird but true: Kattie’s nickname was Blouse, and my sister, cousins, and I call her Blouse to this day. Her moniker came about when we kids, at a very young age, became enraptured to the way she ebulliently pronounced the word “blouse.” I’m sure this is funnier if you are listening to the audio edition.

On the days I didn’t see her, Blouse and I communicated through notes we left each other in my room. Hers were punctuated everywhere with “Smile” in quotes and parentheses, sometimes both. And when I got them, I did.

But on the majority of Wednesdays and Fridays, I came home, made myself a snack, and stuck to Blouse like glue. I would join her in the part of our basement that was unfinished, next to the garage, with my snack and something for her, too. The radio would be blaring KMOX and she would be ironing and interrupting herself to maneuver clothes in and out of the laundry machines. I didn’t lift a finger and didn’t stop running my mouth. What did a twelve-year-old Jewish kid and a thirty-nine-year-old African American cleaning woman talk about for hours on end!? A lot. But mainly:

1. Soaps. (She was a CBS devotee, so it was a stretch for both of us to meet in the middle, but we made do.)

2. Diana Ross. (She wasn’t a fan and I was—so it was a debate. She was on Team Gladys.)

3. The family. (She worked for my aunt and uncle, too, and told me every damn thing that went on at my cousins’ houseful of chaos and dogs and cats and a real ice cream parlor, all gossip that I would report to my family at dinner.)

4. The mailman. (What on earth could we have said about Mr. Collins? No clue, but I know he was a major subject.)

From the basement, I would follow her upstairs, room by room, as she put my family’s clothes away. Occasionally I would carry the laundry basket up the stairs for her. I did try to keep her entertained, so that was something.

Though I rarely lifted a finger to help Blouse with her housework, I wasn’t a totally spoiled kid. Every summer, my parents sent us to work at the family company, Allen Foods. While Emily and my cousin Jodi thrived and later went on to work there, I was terrible at every task I was given, from driving a forklift to, in my schlemiel, schlemazel moment, working on the assembly line screwing bottle tops. One summer I made deliveries and most notably delivered cheese to a hospital and forgot the cheese. Still, it was fun being around my whole family, all of whom paged each other over the loudspeaker incessantly. My dad was always a relief to the eyes, strolling around the manufacturing plant making gentle conversation with ungentle forklift ladies—Large Marge types—looking to me like a model in a Ralph Lauren ad. No matter what the job, we always went to lunch at Steak ’n Shake with my uncle and Grandpa, who would completely tear the waiters apart. For about twenty-five years straight, Gramp ordered a small salad in a large bowl at Steak ’n Shake. As soon as it came, Evelyn’s father would bark, “YOU CALL THIS A SALAD!?” He was out the door and back at his desk in thirty minutes, ever more respectful of being on the clock than I. The family business was always a tremendous source of pride, but what I did there never felt like a real job because I knew that I couldn’t get fired and that I wasn’t going to spend my life in the food industry.

*   *   *

To be clear, I’ve been gay since the day I was born, but even though I knew it somewhere in my head, I didn’t want to face the facts of what that meant. Biltmore Drive wasn’t exactly Christopher Street, and I didn’t know anyone who was gay, unless you count the waiters at a few St. Louis restaurants. My mom always doted on such men—she called them “cheerful.” But I didn’t have any faith that her love of cheerful waiters would translate to her son if I ever admitted that I, too, was … cheerful.