Ham (2 page)

I needed a different kind of church and a different kind of Heaven. And I found it at Tulsa Little Theatre.

I was cast in their production of William Inge's
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,
a straight play set in 1920s Oklahoma. It was my first semiprofessional role, where the actors actually played their own ages. I was Sonny Flood, a misfit child who was regularly beaten up by the town bullies for being a sissy, choosing to escape through movies and his scrapbook of the stars. Hmm . . .

My mother ran lines with me. Not just mine. The entire play, including scenes I wasn't in. She said it was for a sense of story line, but I think she really just wanted to read all the parts. She longed for the theater, and my doing a play trumped the times we sat cross-legged and face-to-face on the green-flecked shag carpeting while she read poetry. Kahlil Gibran's
The Prophet
was recited cover to cover, but Edna St. Vincent Millay's “Renascence” was her favorite. It said everything she couldn't about the need to break free, death and resurrection, and the quest for spiritual awakening. Though the words were beyond my understanding, her reading made it accessible. She was as committed to my performance in
Dark
as I was, but she refutes the story that during rehearsals she was asked to leave the theater by the director because her notes on my performance conflicted with his.

My next role at Tulsa Little Theatre was as one of the newsboys in
Gypsy
—my favorite musical. We were only in the first act, along with Baby June and young Louise, but we had to stick around for the curtain call.
Gypsy
is a long show. So, to kill time during Act Two, all of us would climb the narrow stairwell up two flights to the costume room, where they kept the monkey and the little lamb, both of whom were also idle in the second act. We would throw on layers of various costumes: Dickensian sacque jackets, World War I khaki breeches and canvas-wrap leggings, feathered Elizabethan hats, a crown of thorns from
The Glory of Easter
pageant, multiple gloves—and play strip poker. We were all ten to thirteen years old—I was the youngest—but we considered ourselves veterans and we were, after all, in a show about stripping.

Five card, Seven card, Hold 'em, Stud! We shared cigarettes pinched from adult actors' dressing room stations and enjoyed an occasional nip of something stolen from Baby June's parents' liquor cabinet.

“I'll raise you.”

“I call.”

“My jacks beat your tens.”

“Strip!”

The girls always chickened out when it got down to our regular layer of clothing. Baby June was a tease and little Louise a bore. But strangely, the boys usually stayed. One night, long about time for the showstopping finale, “Rose's Turn,” the game had siphoned down to me and two kids named Daniel and Jason.

As the three of us betted in (and for) our Fruit of the Looms, I couldn't help but notice that Jason, who was thirteen years old, was getting a conspicuous erection. There is a big difference between a ten-year-old penis and a thirteen-year-old penis. Growth spurts and pubic hair and hormones and all sorts of other things are kicking in. I was entranced, and determined to win so that Jason would lose and have to drop his skivvies.

I had three eights. Daniel folded. It was me and Mr. Boner.

I forged poise but the excitement was overwhelming. The monkey could sense the tension and began screeching and throwing monkey shit out of his cage.

Jason asked for two cards.

I called.

The room stood still and a rivulet of sweat inched down my cheek from beneath my crown of thorns.

He had a measly pair of prophetic queens. “Strip!” I said, and waited breathlessly to see if he would remove his clinging briefs or quit the game. He casually pulled them off, exposing a
huge
penis, thirteen years old or otherwise (though I have not seen it since and do not know whether to attach the “your childhood house is always smaller when you go back home” theory to this experience). He then proceeded to masturbate in front of me and Daniel. We were agape with jaw-dropping wonder. The backstage speakers were blaring:

Everything's coming up Rose!

Everything's coming up roses!

Everything's coming up roses this time for me!

For me! For me! For me! For me! . . .

On the timpani roll before the last note, Jason worked harder and faster, finally erupting at the same time that Mama Rose hit the final “For meeeeeeee!!!”

On the musical cutoff, Jason lay spent, pearly goop pooling in his belly button and glistening on his chest, as the audience cheered and applauded from downstairs. I nearly joined them. Show business was fabulous. It was joyous and adventurous and accepting. Heaven and Hell were on earth. Right here.

I swiftly dressed in my newsboy costume, replaced the thistly crown with an apple cap, and dashed down the stairs in time for my bow.

Everyone makes mistakes: Leon Lett and the '93 Super Bowl. Richard Nixon and Watergate. The architect who built the Tower of Pisa. Since I wasn't a big sports fan, hadn't met Nixon, and hadn't traveled to Pisa, the closest thing in my life to a mistake of that magnitude was the marriage of my dear friend Liza to the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned. I refer to him in that manner because I promised Liza that I would never again utter his first name unless it were in reference to Beckham, Bowie, the Michelangelo statue, or “The Star of . . .”

Saying his name is not taboo in the same way that mentioning “the Scottish Play” by title is for theater people, who would then have to leave the building, spit, curse, and knock to be let back in. I swore to my friend that if I verbalized his name, I would light myself on fire and commit hari-kari.

She knows it was a mistake. Everybody knows it was a mistake. The wedding itself was well documented by a hundred publications. But beyond the facts and the scuttlebutt, this event should be acknowledged as one of the greatest shows on earth. I was a witness and a player. I even sang. “Bridge over Troubled Water.” A peculiar choice for a wedding, but it was requested. And prophetic. If only they'd chosen “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” things might have turned out differently.

Well, not really.

I was there the day she met him. I was musically supervising her segment on the
Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration
television special at Madison Square Garden, which was being produced by the Man Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned. I don't know what put me off first—the fact that he wore sunglasses indoors and at night or his boastful claims of having “the largest Shirley Temple paraphernalia collection in the world”—a feat for which I suspected there was little competition. Bottom line, the guy creeped me out and I told her so. But as the romance budded, my friend begged me to give him a chance.

On Thanksgiving Day, Liza called to tell me he had proposed the previous evening.

“Schmooli, I really want you to try to get close to him. I know he's kind of quirky, but I need for you to accept him and try to love him.”

Liza had suffered from brain encephalitis earlier in the year and I reminded her as such. “You're still recovering. Is it possible that . . . you're not yet in your right mind? Literally.”

“Oh, who is, Schmool? All I know is he really seems to get me. And he's funny.”

“Funny?” I asked. “Or . . .
funny
?”

“He's our kind of funny.”

I wasn't sure that answered my question.

“Please call him now and congratulate him,” she pleaded. “It means everything to me.”

I did as I was asked and told him that I was “so, so happy” for them, mustering cheer in my voice against the dead eyes he couldn't see.

I had to admit that he did dote on her and had big plans. The kind of plans I knew she loved. So against every instinct in my body, I had no choice but to hope I was wrong about him. She seemed happy and that's all I wanted for her. What any friend wants for a friend.

A mere seven months after their collision, the who's who of New York and old Hollywood showbiz were invited to assemble at the Marble Collegiate Church, at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Ninth Street in Manhattan, for the nuptials. This was, no doubt, the first time the church entrance had been set up with such tight security, and the most eclectic guest list
ever
ambled through airport metal detectors and opened their pocketbooks for inspection. The enormous number of titanium hip replacements set off the detectors, which slowed the line considerably. Janet Leigh, Anthony Hopkins, Joan Collins, Kirk Douglas, Carol Channing, and Robert Goulet were there. In odd juxtaposition, so were Snoop Dogg, Donny Osmond, Martha Stewart, and Gloria Gaynor. In the same room. At the same time. I knew for a fact that Liza didn't know most of these people or had met them only in passing.

But then, she really only knew the groom in passing.

She should have kept walking.

I knew she had personally invited Lauren Bacall, Liz Smith, Mia Farrow, Cynthia McFadden, Mickey Rooney, Billy Stritch, and Gina Lollobrigida, but most of the others were acquaintances of the groom's, PR invitations, or celebrities who had begged to be on the list. Like signing up to witness the launching of the Hindenburg.

I forget sometimes that my friend Liza is, you know—
Liza!
Truth was that she would have been happy getting married in a private house with ten close friends, but the groom's knack and desperate need for the spotlight had turned this into an epic extravaganza.

I ran to a back room and found Liza, who seemed nervous. “Let's sneak out of here and go to the movies,” I said. “No one will notice.”

She laughed and then suddenly said, “What's playing?” An odd doubt crept over her enormous brown eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes . . . I don't know. That thing you said about recovering from brain encephalitis?”

“Yes?”

“I've recovered,” she said, dryly.

“Oh, honey.”

“But I'm here and this is happening and I'm gonna make it be okay.”

I kissed her on the cheek and ran out to join my partner, Danny, nestling into our reserved third-row pew. Jane Russell soon squeezed in beside me. Then we had to squeeze over even more so Donald Trump could fit in. And he has wide hips.

The church was stunning. The entire wall behind the altar was blanketed in white orchids, probably to cover a giant bleeding Jesus, which would have been a downer. We waited. We chatted. Danny and I looked around the room to see whom we'd missed. I stood and waved to much more famous friends who were seated farther back, to show them I was among the chosen.

We continued to wait. For about an hour.

Then the news arrived, whispered from person to person, pew to pew, like the telephone game: Elizabeth Taylor had forgotten her shoes and had arrived at the church in hotel house slippers. No one in her entourage of seventy-two had noticed: terry cloth—
The Plaza,
so we had to wait while some gay lackey schlepped up thirty blocks to retrieve her shoes. Finally Elizabeth was shoed, everyone was ready, and the music began.

Then a familiar voice shouted, “Wait for me!” The music stopped as Diana Ross flitted down the aisle, her hair over three feet in diameter, tickling aisle-seated guests as she flounced her way to the second row to take a seat.

The music resumed. The enormous wedding party entered from the downstage left and right wings, I mean
aisles,
and made their way to the platformed stage, I mean
altar.
Elizabeth Taylor was the co-matron of honor and was helped to her seat by the other co-, Marissa Berenson. The groom was escorted by Michael Jackson and his brother, Tito or Tootie or Toyota, I couldn't know or keep up.

The music abruptly stopped again—and then started up, louder, as everyone turned to the back of the church for the star's, I mean
bride's,
entrance. Traditionally, when a bride walks down the aisle at her wedding, the guests rise in her honor. When Liza entered at the back of the house, I mean
church,
the entire who's who audience, I mean
congregation,
jumped to their feet and yelped and applauded like it was Carnegie Hall. They cheered, “Liza! Liza!” I was certain the orchestra was going to launch into “And the World Goes 'Round.” It was mayhem. Cindy Adams stood on top of Mickey Rooney and still couldn't see.

Liza was escorted by her longtime music director/drummer/father figure Bill “Pappy” Lavorgna, who was perhaps the only real “family” in the wedding party. She'd made a lot of entrances in her career, but as she glided down the aisle in a fitted white Bob Mackie gown, this was Liza at her most dazzling.

Naturally, like at any wedding, all the attention should be paid to the bride and groom, so I tried, I tried, I tried tried tried not to stare at Michael, but I just couldn't not. He was wearing a rigorously tailored black suit, festooned with velvet and sequined piping and a darling Peter Pan collar centered with a diamond brooch. His hair was flat-ironed into a flirty Marlo Thomas flip. His face couldn't have been whiter if he'd been an Irishman locked in a windowless basement his entire life.

I'd met Michael on several previous occasions since the mid-eighties and he'd become less and less human each time—not only in appearance but in manner. His very person. The man was on his own planet: Michael Planet. His eyes, darkly lined in black, remained closed throughout the service and his head bobbed and wobbled from side to side to the rhythm of a music no one else could hear. Occasionally, he would titter to himself at an internal joke, showing his teeth, just a shade less white than his face, and raise his shoulders like a five-year-old girl who'd just said the word “penis” for the first time.