Shockaholic Read online

  Not that Chris Dodd lacked these qualities. On the contrary, you could see why they were such good friends. In effect, these men were as close as you might get to royalty in America. And there I was, a few cards short of a royal flush, as the senators held forth on all manner of important issues of national and international consequence, dominating the table. The rest of us were witnesses to these compatible political gladiators. But as the meal wore on, the dynamic began slowly shifting. Not dramatically, just ever so slightly.

  Having recently entered the wide world of recovery, I was in a feisty sort of mood. I used to call my drug-taking “putting the monster in the box.” It would reduce the spectacle of my personality to something a little more socially appropriate. But now that drugs were out, so was the monster.

  It’s not as if I didn’t know my place, or thereabouts. But just because I knew it didn’t mean I could be counted on to stay in it. I meant to be this respectful, newly sober girl in her late twenties, but, sadly, these intentions weren’t meant to be realized. This night, while I wasn’t looking, my cute little monster tiptoed out of her box and waited to see who would have the nuts—or be nuts enough—to take her on.

  Wine continued to be served—I drank Coca-Cola—and meals were ordered. I sat quietly and listened, hoping perhaps to learn something, but more importantly to remain as charmingly unobtrusive as possible. Knowing very little of current, and not-so-current, events—“So, how many senators are there, actually?”—I wasn’t eager to further embarrass myself. I remember Kennedy’s date being rather quiet as well. Along with Ethel Kennedy’s charming neighbors, we were kind of innocent bystanders to this happy accident.

  Then suddenly, their pagers went off! A series of beeps was followed by a cryptic exchange, which was most likely a secretary (as they were still referred to in those days) informing them that they would not be returning to the floor that evening. All right, then! Relax and let fly. And fly they did! The red wine was replaced by vodka tonics—they went from the grape to hard liquor, the type that softens any sharp edges that might still be standing guard. Now that they were officially off duty, they let their elder statesmen graying hair down.

  As I said, at the start of the evening I had been in awe of them. Who was I to contribute to a conversation being conducted by such lofty, learned men? Men who ran things. Men who talked the talk. Men who not only knew the law, but wrote it! Surely I was as out of my depth as I ever would be. It wasn’t even my depth, it was theirs! I was sinking to the bottom of this erudite, senatorial swamp as they rose higher and higher with each cocktail. These were important men who could argue with the president if they wanted! And who was I but some dumb girl who had never graduated from high school? Not only that, but an actress currently filming some movie. Not even a real movie, a TV movie. Something that would eventually fade into that void where all the streams of images eventually flow, a stagnant pool of all unremarkable entertainment.

  Oh, sure, I’d been in plenty of movies, but the films were important, not me. Even with Star Wars, the character I played was famous. We just happened to have similar faces. Still, I wasn’t thirty yet and I’d had quite a colorful life, if viewed from a generous, all-American slant. But perhaps it was best to keep my mouth shut, lest my lack of education and breeding blow my cover. There was also the business of my sobriety. Having abused my access to the altered state, I was consigned to sip my Coke and watch these amazingly educated and entitled men—now temporarily relieved of their senatorial responsibilities—indulge in Washington’s brand of hard-core happy hour.

  And who could blame them? Who could blame anyone who’d put in a hard day’s work keeping our nation’s government working? It was only natural to want to take leave of at least some of your senses, and these men had so much sense to start with. Surely, they could easily afford to take leave of an ample store of it without causing too much notice.

  So, in the darkened private dining room, we all sat around our white-clothed, silver-set table and listened as these once-noble voices now laughed and, accompanied by a soundtrack of clinking and swirling ice, devolved into bawdier tones. Suddenly, Senator Kennedy, seated directly across from me, looked at me with his alert, aristocratic eyes and asked me a most surprising question.

  “So,” he said, clearly amused, “do you think you’ll be having sex with Chris at the end of your date?”

  Wow. How did we get here from . . . well, essentially anywhere? What had I done to provoke his eloquent scorn? To my left, Chris Dodd looked at me with an unusual grin hanging on his very flushed face. To my right, the really nice couple said nothing, trying to pretend they hadn’t heard what we all so clearly did hear. Senator Kennedy’s blond girlfriend, sitting to his right, nonreacted accordingly.

  What was he doing? Why had he asked me that? Could it be that he meant to cause me an untold amount of embarrassment? What other explanation was there? Why ask someone a shocking, taunting question like that unless it was your intent to make that someone look and feel like a fool?

  No!

  This would not do. Seriously. There was no other way to look at this than completely not okay. Even if this man’s brother had been a hero. Even if two of his brothers had been heroes. Even if he, in his legislation-passing, cause-confronting way, was a hero. I was not just going to lie down and let this man moonwalk all over me.

  “Funnily enough, I won’t be having sex with Chris tonight,” I said, my face composed and calm. “No, that probably won’t happen.” People blinked. “Thanks for asking, though.” A fork clinked on a plate.

  “Why not?” the senator demanded of me. “Are you too good for him?”

  I tilted my head, my mouth pursed, and glanced at Senator Dodd’s expectant face. “Not too good, no, just . . . ” I shrugged. “I’m newly sober, you see, and I’d have to be truly loaded to just fall into bed with someone I’ve only very recently met. Even if that someone is a Democrat.”

  Now the air around us hung back, holding itself in check to see what would happen next. But I knew that I would not let this man get the upper hand, or somehow discomfit or shock me. I had some laws and this was one. Whatever this imperious . . . I want to say drunk, but he wasn’t that, not yet . . . whatever this imperious inebriate-to-be threw at me, I’d say something right back.

  “So you were a drinker?” he said. “What did you drink?”

  I uncrossed and recrossed my legs. A waiter hovered with a bottle. “I didn’t drink really, so much as take pills alcoholically. And do acid. I liked acid a lot.” I smiled at him without my eyes, watching my unexpected antagonist seated opposite me.

  Four sets of liberal eyes now slid from my face back to his. There was a smell of bread. Bread and chicken.

  “Did you have sex on acid?”

  Wow. This was serious. There was no turning back. I looked to the ceiling for help and found it. “Acid isn’t that great for sex, you know? Well, maybe you don’t.” I tilted my head, schooling him socially.

  Game on.

  “It intensifies everything. It complicates the simplest things and simplifies the most complex.”

  Now, the Senator was watching me with mild eyes set back in his famous handsome face. All the others were watching us, riveted. I was hyperalert now, ready for anything.

  “What about masturbation?”

  My eyebrows raised, as my hand almost unconsciously closed around the butter knife.

  “What about it?” He was about to answer when I continued on, unabashed, “Oh, do you mean do I do it? On LSD?” I squinted my eyes and peered into one of the corners of the room. It occurred to me that this was funny—funny with an emergency in it. I smiled without losing much of my footing. “Play with yourself is the term that I like best.” I spread my smile around the table generously. “You know, like playing with a child.” I looked down into my un-napkined lap and covered my eyes with both hands, then uncovered them a moment later. “Peekaboo, I see you!” I cooed down to the vicinity of my lap. “Peekaboo! You’
re it! Bang, bang, fall down!” I made a gun with my thumb and forefinger and began to shoot. I felt five pairs of very astonished round eyes staring at me from around the table.

  This was a circle of privileged people gathered together to enjoy their privileges. And although, as I said, in our country there’s no actual royalty—no generations of fragile fine folk sitting on thrones and wearing shiny crowns—everyone knows that if there is anything like American aristocracy, then it’s them. The Kennedys. Always seeming to be in a class all by themselves. As a priest with a thick Irish brogue once told me, “No one understands what this family goes through. I think of them as ‘the Special Ks.’ ”

  And then there’s what I’ve heard called “Reel Royalty”—the scandal-laden kings and queens of the silver screen. It is from this seed that I sprouted. This is the heredity that claims me, informs me, defines me. This is part of what had led me—and not blindfolded—to this room in this restaurant where I was on a blind date with a senator. A senator who laughed at my pantomime of playing peekaboo with my privates, in an effort to entertain, yes, partly, but mainly to place myself outside the grasp of Senator Kennedy’s sarcasm.

  Did he take me on like that because I was merely an actress by profession—a job requiring little or no intellect or education? Did he turn his blazing bright scorn on me because I looked like a willing victim?

  Maybe.

  I guess I’ll never know, as he has now gone from us. A great man, making those who dined with him on this night near great. But I was just a cute little thing, barely big enough to be worth tearing down with gentle teasing, let alone this full-on assault.

  By now we had blundered headlong into a world of who could outshock who. Which one of us would say the thing that would stun the table into silence? Not that most of those assembled weren’t silent already, having stepped back without moving to get out of the way of the business at hand.

  Somehow, the subject of my father came up. “My father?” I shrugged. “I didn’t see that much of my dad when I was growing up. He left when I was small.” Kennedy must have asked more about my father, somehow daring or double-daring me to go further than someone would normally go. At least socially. At a table with two senators who, until this night, had been strangers to me, and those other three humans in attendance. All of us waiting to see what would happen. Just how far would we each go? Would I take the bait and reply to each all-too-intimate question? When would one of us, or the evening itself, hit the proverbial wall?

  “The night before I got married I was talking to my father on the phone from my future ex-husband’s house. And my father said to me, ‘You have a great ass. You should be marrying me.’ And you know what I said?” I fixed my brown eyes on Senator Kennedy’s blue ones.

  “What?” he obligingly asked.

  “After thinking about it for a second, as one would, I said, ‘Thank you.’ ” These sorts of stories beg for a pause, while everyone tries to sort out what was just said, blinking back the thoughts forming behind our eyes.

  “Do you think he actually meant that?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, taking a sip of my soda. “I think he was just high and was saying things for conversation’s sake.”

  I don’t believe we could have gotten to this place if I hadn’t thought, Oh, you think you can embarrass me by asking me something shocking? And what? I’ll sit there flipped to the tits, rendered speechless from the shock and awe of it?!

  The senator and I stared at each other across the table. Whose move was it? Surely not mine.

  “What do you do with your father that you like to do?” he asked finally, to which I responded, “Sing.” He tilted his head and rubbed his chin. “Sing, then,” he ordered me mildly. “Sing what you would sing with your dad.”

  It was a dare, I swear it was. I have a clear image in my mind of sitting quite tall, or as tall as one can sit and still be quite short. I sat and opened my mouth and out came my voice, clear and bold and loud, singing a signature tune from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel.

  “If I loved you,” I began—and I do have a good voice, I swear. I’d almost have to with both of my parents being singers—“Time and again I would try to say / All I’d want you to know.” Everything was quiet in the small room except for my singing. “If I loved you / Words wouldn’t come in an easy way / Round in circles I’d goooo!” And the whole time my eyes held his, his eyes holding mine right back. The others at the table were startled witnesses.

  “Longing to tell you / But afraid and shy / I’d let my golden chances pass me by!”

  Years later, I was in Washington at a party celebrating Clinton’s second inauguration, when a woman rushed up to me, her face shining, “Do you remember me? I was there! That night in the restaurant with Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd.”

  I blinked at her. “Sure, I remember,” I said. “Who could forget a night like that?”

  We were on a staircase and she was holding both of my arms, breathless and smiling bright. “We spoke of that night for ages. It was incredible. We’d waited for years for someone to take him on like that.”

  So it did happen! I didn’t make it up, didn’t hallucinate it, didn’t forge it out of some gray lying part of my brain where dreams go to die. There really was a night that I sat and sang at this famous senator from New England. Sang the entire song without once breaking free from the cage of his gaze. And these neighbors of his sister-in-law Ethel, they proved it. We were all really there.

  Back at the table in 1985, Senator Dodd beamed at me on my left as I sang: “Soon you’d leave me / Off you would go in the mist of day . . . ”

  “Why haven’t I met you before?” he asked me later in the car. And much later still, the good senator ran for president, and while he was running he at some point admitted—declared?—that we’d dated long ago. Probably a bid for the Comic-Con vote. “A courtship,” he explained when asked the nature of our relations all those decades past. “It was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” he added.

  Oh, no, I thought, when I heard about it. You didn’t. You couldn’t possibly have said something so lame. But he did. At least it was reported that he did. And hearing it, I cringed. A courtship? Is that what they call sleeping together a few times? A courtship? Or a spaced-out one? Not a relationship, that’s for sure.

  “Never, never to know / How I loved you / If I loved you.”

  I came to the end of the song. The song I sang with my dear old dad and now to Senator Kennedy, God rest both of their unsettling souls. The notes hung in the air between the six of us seated round that table in Georgetown a quarter-century ago.

  The bill was paid. The evening was at an end. We began walking down the stairs toward the futures that lay beyond the dark that awaited us outside.

  “Would you have sex with Chris in a hot tub?” Senator Kennedy asked me, perhaps as a way to say good night?

  “I’m no good in water,” I told him.

  And that’s where that memory ends.

  President Harry Truman playing golf on island of Kailua, Hawaii. June 1911.

  The Princess and the King

  I did not know Michael Jackson that well, at least not in the sense that I think of as knowing someone. But in the climate that developed in the wake of his death, to not have known him well was, for some, enough to be seen as having known him intimately. And from this certain skewed slant, I could even be perceived as one of Michael’s closest friends.

  He and I had just two people in common. Michael was very close pals with a former stepmother of mine, Elizabeth Taylor, and we had the same dermatologist. I would say we shared the same dermatologist, but that sounds so unsanitary. Especially when that dermatologist is Arnold Klein, the original fount from which all collagen and Botox could flow.

  The thing is, I do know Arnie Klein well, and Arnie—the Dermatologist to the Stars—was fastened at his rather ample hip to Michael’s very skinny one. You see, they each had something that the other desperately coveted
. Arnie wanted to be friends with not just an otherwise inaccessible celebrity but the biggest star on the planet for him and his friends to cavort with. (“Ben, this is my friend, Michael! Michael, this is my friend, Ben . . . the guy I told you about!”) Michael wanted access to the farthest reaches of the medical community 24–7, at a speed and with an ease that would ordinarily be unavailable to almost anyone at all, at any level. Therein lay the swap.

  I’m not saying that this was the sole reason for their friendship. Far from it. Michael trusted Arnie. He trusted him enough to choose one of his nurses to have children for him. Yes, I know. A very strange/unusual way to demonstrate trust, but there you have it. “Hollywood” is an unusual place. And where celebrity is a factor, things become less predictable.

  The moment that I actually met Michael is vague in my memory, as is—have I mentioned it?—quite a bit these days. You would think that meeting someone as unique as Michael would somehow stay in my mind, but unique was not extraordinary to me. I’d become, if not immune to its charms, then certainly fairly far from thrilled.

  To be sure, Michael was very unusual. For one thing, his relationship to his appearance was . . . let’s be kind and call it atypical. That he could have consistently hammered away at his perfectly nice original face until he arrived at that strange place he paused at—that he was able to look in the mirror and essentially say, “Yes. This is a face I’m more comfortable presenting to the world than the one I was born with.”—well, the word “dysmorphic” doesn’t approach it, let alone cover it.