Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences (16 page)

“I look pretty,” he said finally.

“You sure do, T.J.,” I said, picking a stray eyelash off his cheek. “Here,” I added, holding it on my finger. “Make a wish
and blow.” There was a knock; it was the maître d’.

“You’re on next.”

We stood behind the kitchen door listening to the accompanist vamping the intro to T.J.’s number.

Ba-dum badum badum bum. Ba-dum badum badum bum.
Ba-dum badum badum bum.

“Remember,” I told him, draping the boa around his neck, “make sure you look him in the eye,
then
drape the boa around his neck, you know? Sell it!”

T.J. nodded. Nikki announced his name, and he marched through the kitchen doors. I followed and crouched down, so that I had
a stage-left view of T.J. and a direct view of the audience. There were ten or so round tables; Allan Carr was at the center
table next to a few youngish-looking guys. Nikki was seated opposite him.

T.J. got into place and looked up at the “imaginary best friend” we had talked about in rehearsals. I had told him that he
needed to make sure he found his light, that it should feel like the sun, warming the bridge of his nose.

Ba-dum badum badum bum. Ba-dum badum badum bum.

The vamping continued as T.J. bobbed his head up and down, trying to feel the light, but since there really wasn’t any light—or
there was; it just wasn’t a key light or a special—T.J. looked like a hound trying to catch a scent.

Ba-dum badum badum bum. Ba-dum badum badum bum.

The room quieted to a hush. A photographer named Mau-reen, who we found out later was once Cary Grant’s girlfriend, snapped
a few photos, her flash bursting like fireflies. And then, T.J. began to sing. He was so tentative—so quiet and small—it was
as though it were some kind of mistake, something we shouldn’t have been privy to. Like one of those Strasberg “private moment”
exercises where you watch someone pretending to do the dishes, and then the teacher—usually some hoary old commie eating a
bruised banana—asks the actor being observed to “sing a little something” while doing their “activity.” For all of his horn
blowing, T.J. was blowing it; he was dazed with terror. And not being a real performer, he had no automatic pi lot to resort
to. “Make it stop,” I thought. “Make it rewind.”

As T.J. whispered the lyrics in a stupor, with only a hint of a voice, I anxiously watched the audience. Suzanne Pleshette
was into it for a few seconds, but then just gave up and buttered a roll; Nancy Sinatra fished for something in her handbag;
Angie Dickinson looked, well, just like she did on
Police Woman
; and Allan Carr stared straight ahead, expressionless. Then T.J. skulked toward Allan for the pièce de résistance moment
with the boa. By now, Allan was talking to the youngish guy on his right. T.J. minced around the table.

I am what I am and what I am needs no excuses

I deal my own deck sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces

Grabbing Allan’s face, into which had just been shoved an enormous forkful of poached salmon in champagne mango emulsion,
he croaked,

There’s one life and there’s no return and no deposit

One life so it’s time to open up your closet

Allan looked a little scared but kept chewing. After T.J. let go of his face, he went back to his conversation, never looking
at T.J. again. Then T.J., running out of time, threw the boa at Allan’s head before limping back to the piano. A busboy tried
to hand him a drink but then, realizing it was for the accompanist, scurried out of the way as T.J. valiantly squawked out
the last lyric:

Life’s not worth a damn ’til you can say, hey world

I am what I am

Because T.J. didn’t have enough breath to sustain the last note for the planned mind-blowing finale, the accompanist covered
by modulating the final notes in that two-fisted Broadway style, concluding with an extravagant
BUM-BUM BUM.
There was some polite applause. A cake was wheeled in; the accompanist started playing “Happy Birthday.” Everyone sang. It
was over.

I watched people milling around, eating cake, swallowing champagne. Standing on the periphery, I started to wake from the
dream: There would be no kibitzing or cavorting, no partners-in-crime Hollywood success story, no follow-up act. T.J. was
never going to be a star. There would be no coattails to feel guilty about attaching myself to. It was absurd, the whole thing,
really, and in a sense, not much different than any other day in L.A. I watched one of Allan’s young male companions helping
him up out of his seat. It looked like it took great effort to haul him up, and not just because he was chubby; the heaviness
he carried on his frame was clearly the weight of defeat.

Deciding to salvage a little something, I suppose, I had Mau-reen take a picture of me and Nancy Sinatra with our arms around
each other: “Two Nancys with a Laughing Face!” we joked. Then I went to find T.J. He was at the bar, drinking a glass of wine
and talking to the bartender.

“Hey!” he said cheerfully as I approached. “Mark here was just telling me that he used to know Sammy Davis Jr.!”

“Oh yeah?” I said, taking a sip of T.J.’s wine. “Cool.”

“And of course, I was telling him what big fans we are and how we sing all his tunes!”

T.J. started singing “I Gotta Be Me.” He was big and bold and he meant every word. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it
was too late.

Nikki Haskell swept into the bar on her way out to give T.J. his hundred bucks.

“Thanks,” she said flatly, looking through him, then gliding off.

A few hours later, we were still at the bar. Maureen the photographer was furious.

“How dare that
cunt
Nikki Haskell treat me like the bloody
hired help
!” she ranted. “I am not
just a photographer
! I
know
these people; we used to
socialize
!” On and on she bitched and moaned.

The Le Dome staffers were methodically setting up for the dinner shift. T.J. sat on his stool, a star manqué, staring at his
reflection in the mirror behind the bar, amidst the shiny liquor bottles, twirling the wine glass stem between his fingers.
He was back in his khakis and a Brooks Brothers baby blue oxford, but his slack face was streaked with mascara, thick pancake
makeup, and remnants of glitter. He had wiped off his red lipstick, but his lips were still bright red, as though they, too,
couldn’t quite let go.

Maureen left, and the bartender put on a Jo Stafford CD. The first track was “The Party’s Over.”

We sat silently for a few minutes, listening to Jo’s lush voice, finishing our wine.

“You know,” T.J. said, nudging me, “Angie Dickinson said I was amazing. She came up to me on her way out and said, ‘You were
so great. It’s
really, really, REALLY
nice to meet you.’ ”

I nodded. “She seems cool.”

“Oh,” T.J. said, nodding his head vigorously, “
very
.”

Jo finished her song and began another.

“Here,” T.J. said, sighing heavily and handing me fifty bucks.

“Thanks,” I said, getting off the stool. “You wanna have a bite? I’m starved.”

“I’d love to,” he said. “But I’m . . . I’m . . .” He shook his head.

“What?”

“I don’t have any money,” he said finally. “I spent it all at the bar.”

I smiled at him. As ludicrous as it seems, I was having trouble letting go of T.J.’s star status myself. Only hours before,
he’d had the whole world in the palm of his hand. Or had he? Allan Carr was in no more position than I was to change someone’s
life with the snap of his fingers. He was a defrocked star-maker. Either way, I thought, as we packed up our junk and T.J.
took one last look around the tacky dining room, nothing is for keeps. Except maybe an ashtray.

“Here,” T.J. said, handing me one he’d snatched off a table. “Put this in your bag.”

“Come on,” I said, wrapping the ashtray in Mama Michelle’s boa, then putting my arm through his. “Let’s go to Denny’s. We’ll
order some Moons over My Hammy, my treat.”

We left the way we came: through the kitchen.

“You know, at first I thought maybe I kind of blew it,” T.J. said as we slid into his car. “But Angie was so enthusiastic,
you know?”

I nodded.

“Goes to show, you never can tell.” T.J. shifted the car into gear. “You just never can . . .”

We drove slowly out of the back parking lot, wending our way toward Hollywood as the sun, a smudgy blood orange orb, slipped
away behind the giant palms on Sunset Boulevard.

9. Fen-phen Made Me Fat!
(Easter in Vegas, 1996)

I honestly don’t
remember why I decided to go to Vegas with T.J. I guess I was restless, needed to get out of L.A. for a minute, and since
I’d had fun there once before, I figured, why not? There’s something oddly cleansing about the spectacularly tawdry splendor
of Vegas, attracting the fat, the high-rolling, the middling, the fanny-packed, the lost, all collectively shaking out their
weary souls like dirty welcome mats. Bets are on, so all bets are off.

“I got us a room opposite Caesar’s,” T.J. said. “There’s air-conditioning, free breakfast, and porn.”

We left on Good Friday, two days before Easter, at around noon, stopping first at the Rexall pharmacy on Beverly so I could
pick up my third prescription for fen-phen. It was the middle of pi lot season, and I had put on a bit of weight. It wasn’t
horrendous; most people wouldn’t really have noticed. But it was the kind of thing that makes you invisible in L.A. My agent
at the time claimed she could eyeball a person’s weight within two ounces.

“You’ve gained eight pounds,
three
ounces,” she told me when I went in to deliver more head shots and résumés. Pretty impressive. She could have worked at a
carnival.

“Seven pounds is a size, you know.”

I didn’t know that, actually.

“I’m on the phone with casting people, and I’m getting lotsa ‘
too fat
’ feedback, and you’ve got
carb face
.”

I nodded solemnly.

“Do Atkins. That and fen-phen. Maybe throw in a colonic or two. Here—” she flipped through her massive Rolodex, scribbled
something down, then handed me a slip of paper. “Call this doctor. He’ll get you started.”

A few hours later, I was holding a fen-phen script. I started the diet and made an appointment for a series of colonics where
every other day a withdrawn woman named Daisy would shove a tube of warm water up my ass in her office in Culver City. For
an hour, we’d stare at a screen in a partially darkened room watching my insides float by, Daisy, totally deadpan, announcing
things like “There’s an old carrot . . .”

After my “irrigation” was complete, Daisy would update my chart methodically while I put my clothes back on in the bathroom.
I felt disgusting. I never felt energized the way other people claim they do following a good colonic; I just felt sad. And
gross. But I would try to convince myself that I felt better, lighter, clearer, before writing the diffident Daisy a check
and scheduling my next appointment.

“
Carb
face?” T.J. muttered as we pulled into the Rexall parking lot.

“Yeah. It’s when your face looks all puffy from eating pasta and stuff. Think Alec Baldwin.”

“He got that from spaghetti?”

“Or penne . . .”

“Hmph,” T.J. fiddled with the air-conditioning.

“Anyway, this is some crazy diet,” I told him. “It’s all protein all the time. I eat meat, meat, and more meat. Everything
you thought was bad is good, and everything you thought was good is bad. Bacon, cream, eggs, cheese—all good. Apples, bad.”

“Apples are bad?”

“The worst.”

“I eat them every day!”

“Well, they’re terrible for you.”

“Says who?”

“Says Dr. Atkins. It’s all right here in his book,
Dr. Atkins’
Diet Revolution
,” I held up the book like they do on soup commercials.

“It’s a
revolution
?”

“Damn right. I lost six fucking pounds in a week.”

“So what is that, another two pounds to go?”

“Yup. And three ounces.”

“And three ounces,” T.J. repeated.

I explained to T.J. that as part of the whole Atkins thing, I needed these little strips that diabetics pee on to test for
sugar in their urine to make sure I was still depriving myself enough to keep my metabolic pendulum swinging toward
loss
.

“Once you pee on enough sticks and stay off carbs for however long, you go into ketosis, which is the Atkins holy grail, which
is what I’m in. My body, at this point only subsisting on protein, has begun to metabolize stored fat, which is essentially
a highfalutin way of saying that my body is eating itself.”

“And that’s good?”

“It’s great! You should do the diet with me. Get rid of your paunch . . .”

T.J. waited in the car reading
Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution
while I picked up my loot.

“It says here that after you get past the two-week induction phase, you can eat macadamia nuts and drink booze,” he announced
cheerfully as I slid into the passenger seat.

“There’s also a hotline you can call and speak to an Atkins specialist twenty-four hours a day if you’re freaking out,” I
said.

“Hmmm,” T.J. nodded, examining his pencil-thin mustache in the rearview mirror. “I think I will join you on this diet, Nahn-cee.”
For some reason, T.J. liked to say my name theatrically, as though he were David Niven on holiday. “But I’m starting post–induction
phase so I can enjoy cocktails. How many carbs do you think are in Tanqueray?”

“I dunno. But Liz Taylor and Richard Burton once went on an all-booze diet together.”

“What did they lose?”

“Their livers.”

T.J. snorted.

“Well, that’s gotta be at
least
a size!”

We made pretty good time driving east on the 10, then burning north through the desert, blasting Sammy Davis Jr. in T.J.’s
Lincoln Mark VIII. It was a car more suitable for a golfing grandpa than a thirty-year-old personal assistant, but T.J. liked
to live high on the hog. Upon scoring his most recent gig—personal assistant to eighties actor Judge Reinhold—he immediately
walked into a car dealership and signed a five-year lease, with all the bells and whistles, slapping the whole shebang onto
his heavily charged-up Visa card.

“I’m surprised your card didn’t explode when they tried to run it,” I said when he drove over to show me his new ride afterward.

T.J. just laughed and waved me off.

“It’s fine. The Hollywood Assistant Employment Agency told me that Judge is up for several films back-to-back. I’ll be
on set
with him for close to two years. There’ll be overtime, lots of perks—I’ll be in the pink in no time!”

Unfortunately, the “short ten-hour day,” consisting of picking up homeopathic herbs, batteries, and dry cleaning all over
town, then schlepping them back to Judge’s cliffside cottage in the Palisades, lasted less than two months. Shockingly, Judge
wasn’t cast in any films after all.

“Things fell through,” Judge told T.J.’s answering machine as he was firing him, summoning the same ho-hum dolefulness that
had made him a star in
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
. “They went in a different direction.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Gee, sorry, I know you just got that big car
and everything,” before hanging up.

T.J. was crestfallen. That night, at a 7-Eleven near his apartment where he went to pick up a hot dog and a Slurpee, he saw
one of those Starscroll horoscopes they sell at the register. He bought one for his sign—Gemini—and perused it while eating
his dinner in the car he could no longer afford, certain that what he was reading was kismet. Something about rebirth, travel,
risk, blah, blah, blah, and T.J.—a balding Jay Gatsby with no money, delusions of grandeur, and a closet full of Tommy Hil-figer
anoraks—decided that what he needed in that instant was to borrow five hundred dollars from our friend Matthew and spend Easter
in Vegas at the roulette table.

“I’m feeling lucky,” T.J. said a few hours into our trip. “Everything is a sign—everything!”

“Uh-huh.”

I, on the other hand, was feeling cranky; the fen-phen made me dizzy.

“Hey, look!” T.J. pointed to some turbines, those white windmill-looking energy generators that dot the California freeways.
“There’s another sign! They rotate just like the roulette wheel! See what I mean?”

I watched the turbines spin languidly as we whipped along. In my speedy daze, they beckoned us onward, flip-flopping back
and forth between sinister and soothing, one minute looking like milky swastikas, the next like the Flying Nun’s wimple.

We stopped at a Carrows near Barstow for an Atkins-friendly lunch: scrambled eggs with cheese, two cheeseburgers (NO BUNS),
and a side of bacon.

“That was great,” T.J. said as we got back in his boat. “I didn’t miss the bread at all.”

We arrived in Vegas in the early evening and found our accommodations, a dinky hotel and casino on the Strip right next to
Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel. As soon as we were shown to our room, I whipped out my pee sticks for a quick carb check before
we hit the casino.

“Oh, no!” I cried out to T.J., who was unpacking his pastel Brooks Brothers seersucker suits, which had been painstakingly
wrapped in tissue to avoid wrinkling. “I’m out of ketosis! The pee stick is supposed to turn purple. It’s
beige
!”

“Shall I phone Dr. Atkins?”

“T.J., this is no joke. I have no idea what happened! I was in ketosis when we left and now—”

“All right, all right, calm down,” T.J. said, picking up the phone. He was able to get an Atkins specialist on the phone—some
lady all the way in D.C.—and after thirty minutes of tense analysis, I was off the ledge.

“So she just thinks the extra cheese at lunch threw you outta whack, huh?” T.J. asked as we rode the elevator down to the
casino.

“I should be back in ketosis in no time.”

“Phew,” he said. “Glad that’s figured out.”

“She even said I could have a cocktail or two!”

“The first Seven and Seven is on me,” T.J. said, pulling out his wallet to buy chips.

We stayed down at the casino playing blackjack (me) and roulette (T.J.) and drinking cocktails until almost dawn. By that
time, I was up by sixty bucks, and T.J. was down by over two hundred. My gambling edict is pretty simple: number one, I only
play blackjack, and number two, I bring a hundred dollars. If I lose it, that’s that. I’m done. If I’m up and lose more than
two rounds in a row, I cash out. Following these rules, I usually depart gambling sojourns with winnings, unlike those who
are up squillions, keep on gambling until what was won is lost, then with barely a shrug rationalize it all by saying, “I
didn’t
really
have that money anyway!” I am forever baffled by this: they
would
have had the money, had they
stopped
. I was with such a person on this par ticu lar Vegas excursion. T.J. would go on to lose the entire five hundred dollars
he borrowed from Matthew, as well as an additional hundred he borrowed later from me. But that first night, he was still in
a sanguine froth about “signs,” and even losing two hundred dollars couldn’t quell his chipper mood. After we cashed in my
chips, we went to the coffee shop and had our free breakfast of eggs and bacon (HOLD THE TOAST, OJ, AND HOME FRIES, PLEASE!),
then went to bed. Sometime in the afternoon, we woke, showered, got dressed, and, of course, I peed on a stick.

“I dunno what I’m doing wrong,” I fumed to T.J. “It’s
still
beige!”

T.J. got another Atkins specialist on the phone, this time some guy in Green Bay, Wisconsin. After some frantic troubleshooting,
he informed me that even though the stick wasn’t turning purple, I might, in fact, still be in ketosis.

“Seriously?”

“I’ve seen it before,” Green Bay said. “Problem could be with your urine just not being particularly
potent
, thus not having the possibility of
color spectrum
, you know?”

Buoyed by this latest epiphany, T.J. and I headed to the casino coffee shop and had dinner (ROAST CHICKEN; SIDE OF SAUSAGE),
then walked around Caesar’s Palace. We gambled there for a bit; T.J. lost the rest of the five hundred he had borrowed, then
decided that as a way of “regrouping,” he wanted to explore “Gay Vegas.” I was too hungry and tweaked out on the fen-phen
to sleep, so I decided to join him. We drove to the edge of town and there discovered one of the most truly marvelous establishments
on the face of the earth: a Western-saloon-motif discotheque, bedecked with an enormous rhinestone cowboy boot and disco ball
suspended over an immaculate dance floor. Bette Midler was in Sensurround, rainbows and glitter abounded, and posters for
rodeos sponsored by the International Gay Rodeo Association (and Budweiser) adorned the walls. There were gay cowboys everywhere.
If hetero Vegas attracts a wholly disparate group of visitors who wander around disconnected from one another, gay Vegas is
where yin and yang blend to create one totally perfect entity: masculine and feminine, the ridiculous and the sublime, highbrow
and lowbrow, deconstructed, then all rolled up into the most perfect bar scene ever.
Urban Cowboy
meets
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
with a soupçon of
Star Wars
.

“I think we’ve arrived at the pearly gates, Nahn-cee,” T.J. said as we made our way up to the bar. The cowboys all nodded
to us as we passed, tipping their hats mischievously. We loitered by the bar, sipping our cocktails, and a cowboy across the
dance floor started to make his way toward us.

“Look at that one, high noon, T.J.,” I hissed. “He looks like he means business.”

“Oh, but how I would love for him to pistol-whip me . . .”

He was very blond, wearing chaps, boots with spurs, and a red flannel shirt. His jeans were tight and faded at the crotch.

“Aloha,” he said, then introduced himself. Though he dressed like a cowboy, he talked like a surfer, freely throwing around
terms like “gnarly” and “rad” without the slightest irony. He was drunk and launched into a rather convoluted tale about a
recent altercation he had had with some person whom he kept referring to as a “smogbreather,” a surf-slur for an inhabitant
of L.A. who doesn’t ride the waves.

“I was, loik, totally
stoked
to be done with the
smogbreather
,” the Cowboy slurred. “Dude was, loik, nothing but a
hater
with a nasty
swamp-donkey
girlfriend. It wuhn’t
righteous
, wuhn’t
righ teous
at all . . .”