Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (136 page)

Unless he was incapacitated or ill, a series of young men, hired for their youth and looks, entered his life, some of them for no longer than a month or two. For the most part, he paid them between $200 and $300 a week.

“They were attracted to my fame and money,” he later said, “and I’m sure in most cases it was a grin-and-bear it situation when I made love to them.”

He never lacked companions. Once, at the Dorchester Hotel in London, he told Noël Coward, “It seems that wherever I go, when I check into a hotel, the entire male staff, from bartenders to room service waiters, make themselves available to me, for a price, of course.”

“Welcome to the club, dear heart,” Coward responded. “That’s the fate of bloody old rich sods like us.”

Tall, handsome, articulate William (Bill) Glavin entered Tennessee’s life in 1964. Mike Steen, the director and a friend of Tennessee’s, introduced this young man from Arlington, New Jersey, to Tennessee. Glavin reminded Tennessee that he’d met him very casually after a party several months before. “You complimented me on what a nice ass I have,” Glavin told the playwright.

“I don’t remember the occasion,” Tennessee said, “but it sounds like me.”

Glavin found Tennessee “very lonely, like something was wrong.” He was not employed at the time, and Tennessee asked him to fly with him to California. The invitation was accepted. Glavin is today widely recognized as Tennessee longest live-in companion since Frank Merlo.

Tennessee later told Maureen Stapleton that “Bill is my Chance Wayne,” a reference, of course, to the gigolo character in
Sweet Bird of Youth
, who rents out his services to the aging actress, Alexandra del Lago.

Tennessee later said that Glavin was the best looking of all his companions and had the best ability to organize his life.

From the beginning, Glavin became aware of Tennessee’s drug addiction. He noted that Tennessee moved on unsteady feet, his speech often slurred.

He became more and more reluctant to attend public gatherings or private parties. He still loved getting awards, however, and usually tried to pull himself together to fly somewhere to accept an honor.

Sometimes, when Tennessee and Glavin would enter a restaurant together, the playwright would collapse and fall down en route to a table.

Maureen Stapleton remained one of his loyal friends, although others had deserted him. “Most people who saw Tenn on wobbly legs assumed he was drunk,” she said. “But it was more than pills, especially the injections of speed he was receiving from the notorious Dr. Max Jacobson
[“Dr. Feelgood”]
. I urged him to go into rehab and cut off this quack. Tenn listened politely, but showed up at Feelgood’s creepy office the next day for shots.”

Outside Manhattan, Tennessee had set up a network of doctors in such cities as Key West, Miami, San Francisco, Rome, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Madrid.

Glavin defined Jacobson as “a witch doctor, a frightening man.”

Nonetheless, Dr. Feelgood remained Tennessee’s physician of choice. “I have incredible vitality when I get one of his injections,” Tennessee told Glavin. “I get way ahead of myself as a playwright, you know. I move into another dimension. Never in my life have I enjoyed writing so much.”

Glavin noted that even in his drugged state, Tennessee rose from bed each morning to write on his portable typewriter for three to four hours. “Sometimes, he would toss his writing of the morning into the wastepaper basket, claiming, ‘I’m just no good anymore.’” Often, he focused his attention on scripts that had not only already been performed on the stage, but had been made into films.” One morning, Glavin discovered that he was “revisiting”
Summer and Smoke
.

Glavin was quickly drawn into what Tennessee called “my gypsy life.” He seemed never to want to stay anywhere for more than two weeks. He paced the floor like a caged lion, eager to run away—perhaps to Taormina in Sicily, where he’d gone with Frank Merlo, perhaps to London, but most often back to his modest home in Key West.

Shortly after meeting him, Glavin moved in with Tennessee, first occupying the thirty-third floor of an apartment on West 73
^rd
Street in Manhattan.

When an old woman friend of Tennessee’s came to visit—Glavin defined her as “a human wreck”—she warned Tennessee (after Glavin had left the room) about his companion: “How do you have the nerve to live on the thirty-third floor with a small concrete balcony, with somebody who has eyes like those of Glavin?’”

The following day, Tennessee moved out of the apartment, eventually occupying a suite at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South.

[Glavin had to be a very understanding and tolerant soul to live with Tennessee. The playwright grew increasingly paranoid, frequently asserting that “people are plotting my death.” He also began to tell friends, “I’m dying from an inoperable brain tumor.” There were fears that he would commit suicide, because he talked about it often
.

For no apparent reason, and without justification, he accused Glavin of being disloyal. He even accused him of being a thief, although he could not itemize or name any items stolen
.

Once, he wrote his brother, Dakin Williams. “I am surrounded by con men. If I am found dead, do not assume suicide. Consider it murder.”]

By the late 1960s, Tennessee was out of control, even calling the Los Angeles police to report that he’d been kidnapped. He ordered Glavin in and out of his life, and seemed to thrive on the turmoil he created. He came to believe that his frantic lifestyle was an important catalyst for his writing. He once told Glavin, “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels,” which was his way of saying that his demons were his muse.

As his condition grew worse, Tennessee often wandered into the living room of wherever he was staying and asked, “What town is this? New York or Key West?” When his entire body started to shake, he’d stagger about, looking for more pills. His hands shook so badly, he was unable to type. He’d often babble incoherently.

Sometimes, he’d shout and order people around him, including Key West friends Danny Stirrup
[an interior designer who was creating a modern kitchen for Tennessee]
and Margaret Foresman
[managing editor of the local newspaper, The Key West Citizen]
, even Glavin, out of his house. Then he’d burst into tears and call each of them, begging them to come back. He’d tell Foresman, “Go and find Glavin. He’s probably at Captain Tony’s Saloon, cruising.”

Tennessee told friends that his relationship with Glavin was not sexual, consisting of sex only four or five times in five years. He also said that Glavin was bisexual. Later he accused Glavin of having sex with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of
Boom!
in Sardinia.

As the 1960s dragged on, his consumption of controlled or illegal substances increased. After having taken so many drugs, he seemed to build up a resistance, which required stronger and stronger doses.

In September of 1969, when he returned to Key West, he told Glavin that his house was surrounded by enemies with machine guns. “They are going to break in and kill me,” he claimed.

He sent Glavin away for a week or so, asking his friend and drinking buddy, Foresman, to occasionally check on him during Glavin’s absence.

During that period, Tennessee rose early, with the intention of writing. According to Foresman, he fainted while making coffee for himself, and fell onto the hot coils of the stovetop, severely burning himself. Rushed to the hospital, he was treated for burns, but later released into Foresman’s custody.

In the immediate aftermath of that incident, she realized what a dangerous condition he was in. She felt inadequate to care for him because of the responsibilities of her own newspaper duties.

Consequently, she telephoned Dakin Wiliams in St. Louis, and he flew to Key West. He found that Tennessee’s vision was blurred, his walk unsteady, and that at times, he would retreat, sleeping, as in a coma, for twenty-four hours at a time.

“My brother was popping pills like they were jellybeans,” Dakin said. He prevailed on Tennessee to fly back with him to St. Louis, where he would receive first-class treatment at the Barnes Hospital.

There, three doctors separately examined Tennessee, ultimately declaring, “He has a violent, destructive personality and exhibits suicidal tendencies.” He was confined to the Renard Psychiatric Division of the hospital, where he was denied both visitors and access to a telephone. Dakin was told that his brother was going “cold turkey” into rehab and would, no doubt, experience horrible withdrawal symptoms.

“The withdrawal almost killed Tennessee,” Dakin claimed. “He had seizures and suffered two heart attacks. He almost died.”

“I refused to ascribe to paranoia my conviction that the resident physician intended to commit legalized murder upon my person, and very nearly succeeded,” Tennessee later claimed. “I crouched like a defenseless animal in a corner while the awful pageantry of those days and the nights went on, a continual performance of horror shows, inside and outside my skull. I intended to survive.”

When Tennessee was allowed phone calls and visitors, including his aging, increasingly senile mother (Edwina Williams) and Dakin, he created a scenario of horror. He told Foresman that not since Olivia de Havilland descended into
The Snake Pit [a reference to her Oscar-winning performance in the 1948 movie]
had anyone suffered as much. “The conditions eerily evoked the way mental patients were treated in medieval times.” Of course, these were gross exaggerations, as he’d received expert care.

Upon his release, he said, “Now I know how Marilyn Monroe felt when she was locked away in a mental ward.”

Back in Key West, he told friends, “I feel like Blanche DuBois when she was hauled off to the insane asylum. Unlike poor Blanche, I escaped. I also have greater sympathy than ever for my sister Rose and her confinement.”

Darwin Porter, then a young bureau chief for
The Miami Herald
in Key West and a journalistic colleague of Foresman, was one of the first to entertain Tennessee and welcome him back to Key West after his confinement in the mental ward. Foresman drove him to Porter’s house for dinner.

“Tennessee looked better than he had in years, in spite of the horrendous ordeal he’d been through,” Porter claimed. “After dinner, he wanted to be driven with Margaret to Captain Tony’s Saloon, where people he knew welcomed him. Margaret consumed five drinks, but Tennessee had only one glass of bourbon. He told us he was taking only two pills a day. Unfortunately, this was only a lull before the storm. Many of his habits with drugs and alcohol would return, but he never reached that point of desperation that he did in 1969.”

For Dakin’s contribution in saving Tennessee’s life, he met with his attorney and had his brother removed from his will. He also refused to speak to his brother for the rest of his life.

By 1970, Tennessee was spending his final months with Glavin. He told Porter that he suspected his companion had had an affair with Margaret Foresman during the time he had been confined to the mental ward. Porter knew that this was not true, but Tennessee was not convinced.

“Then, for no reason at all, he accused Glavin of sabotaging his work,” Porter said.

“Bill knows I live for my work,” Tennessee said.

“If anything, Glavin encouraged him to work and tried to make conditions possible for him to do so,” Porter said. “Tennessee was unfair and unreasonable to someone who had stood by him through some of the worst years of his life. But he wouldn’t listen to reason. His relationship with Glavin crashed to a bitter end.”

“Tennessee also turned on Foresman, who had been his drunken friend,” Porter said. “He accused her of being a woman of ‘profligate ways,’ which was more or less true. Her sex partners had included Richard Nixon’s friend, Bebe Rebozo; Burl Ives; and the baseball player, Ted Williams, but there was no evidence that she and Bill Glavin ever had an affair. Tennessee remained convinced, however, that they did.”

“He told me never to show up on his doorstep with Margaret in tow ever again,” Porter said. “His exact words were, ‘Margaret Foresman and Bill Glavin are
persona non grata.’”

“I drove him to the airport to catch a flight to New York, with connections through Miami,” Porter said. “From then on, I was introduced to a series of paid companions who changed as rapidly as the sunsets over Key West’s Mallory Docks. Victor. Another Bill. Jeff. Ramon. Dean. Johnny. Mel. The young men became a blur, even to Tennessee himself.”