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) (95 page)

Ever since the late 1940s, Gore Vidal had been a balletomane, seeking out dancers such as John Kriza and Harold Lang and seducing them. He’d also studied ballet himself, though he was not particularly good at it.

In 1961, Gore was mildly intrigued when he read in the newspapers that the premier Russian ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, had defected to the West, turning himself over to police officers in Paris and asking for asylum.

Gore read that Nureyev had been born in 1938 on a Trans-Siberian train racing across the Soviet Union to meet his father, a Red army political commissar.

The papers claimed that Nureyev was known for “his rebellious character and non-conformist attitude.” Suspecting he might defect, KGB agents in France, using a ruse, tried to lure him back to Moscow. But quick-witted Nureyev knew he was being lied to and suspected that if he returned to Russia, he’s be imprisoned.

As Gore remembered it, he was in Paris when he read an article by Oliver Merlin in
Le Monde
, describing Nureyev, who was being increasingly referred to as “Rudi” in the press:

“I will never forget his arriving running across the back of the stage, and his catlike way of holding him self opposite the ramp. He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was already Nijinsky in
Fire-bird.”

As Gore proclaimed to Howard Austen, “I’ve got to possess this ballet god.”

Rudi, within a week of his defection, signed up with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, and Gore attended a performance of Rudi’s
The Sleeping Beauty
with Nina Vyroubova.

Gore went backstage and was introduced to Rudi by the theater manager, who told him that Gore was a famous American writer and “the brother of Jackie Kennedy.”

It was suggested that Gore’s connection to the recently elected American president, John F. Kennedy, might lead to Rudi becoming an American citizen.

Rudi desperately wanted to meet this author with such close ties to Kennedy’s White House. He accepted Gore’s invitation, and the ballet dancer and Gore returned to the author’s hotel suite in Paris. Austen was no problem, as he’d been booked into a separate room on another floor.

Over champagne, Rudi told Gore that, “My creativity as a ballet dancer is very much akin to my sex drive.”

Gore found this stimulating. He was even more aroused when Rudi pulled off all his clothes and performed a scene from
Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring)
that Vaslav Nijinski had performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in 1913.

Rudi re-created the role of a nymph and, like Nijinski in the original, he danced an act of masturbation. But whereas Nijinski (on stage, at least) had only mimed masturbation, in front of Gore, Rudi actually masturbated.

“Before his dance had ended, I had already planned its
climax,”
Gore later told Howard Austen and others.

That evening marked the beginning of other nights that would be played out around the world, mainly in New York, London, and the Amalfi Coast of Italy.

“We were on-again, off-again lovers,” Gore said. “I knew better to want more from him, and I also knew that I would never possess him, as he’d known many lovers, perhaps even some female ones, in his future.”

The designer, Stanley Mills Haggart, was in Paris at the time, writing a guidebook to that city for the Frommer Guides. When Haggart visited with Gore, his friend revealed that he and Rudi were having an affair.

“On our second night together, Rudi went into the bathroom and came out naked,” Gore said. “He lay down on his stomach on the thick carpet. ‘Take me,’ he commanded.”

After it was over, Gore claimed that Rudi had wanted to have sex with him like that “just to show off my back
[his words]
. It is very beautiful,
non
?”

“Yes, you have an incredibly beautiful back,” Gore told him. “But with an ass like that, who in hell looks at your back?”

Gore also told Haggart that “Rudi considers taking of his ballet tights as the beginning of foreplay. He likes to be taken when he’s all hot and sweaty. He also thinks the aroma of smegma from his uncut penis stimulates lust in his partner—that, of course, is a matter of
taste.”

Within weeks, Rudi had fallen in love—not with Gore, but with Erik Bruhn, the Danish soloist ballet dancer at the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen. Gore soon learned that Bruhn and Rudi had become lovers.

Even though he was in Verbier, Switzerland, at the time, Truman was among the first to learn of the Vidal/Nureyev affair. “Gore had the hots for Rudi,” Truman claimed. “Word spread through the ballet world. Even though Rudi had taken Bruhn as his permanent lover, Gore showed up at his performances with his tongue hanging out.”

Truman wrote Cecil Beaton. “I don’t understand Nureyev. What sort of sex life does he have? Is he in love with Erik Bruhn? Myself, I think Nureyev is repulsive. But then Gore and I have never agreed on this subject of what constitutes attractiveness.”

Truman later said, “As for Rudi, Gore can have him. Besides, I understand he fucks like a jack rabbit.”

Truman may not have been completely honest in dismissing Rudi to Beaton. Later, he claimed, “Everybody, man or woman, wanted to fuck with Rudi, and most of them did, even the Kennedys. Whether he was dancing
Swan Lake
or
Romeo and Juliet
, all eyes were glued to Rudi’s ample crotch. I sampled it myself. All nine and a half inches of thick Slavic meat.”

Back in New York, Haggart also entertained Gore and Rudi at his large townhouse on Leroy Street in Greenwich Village. For a party in honor of Rudi, Haggart invited dancer/choreographer friends of his who wanted to meet Rudi. The guest list included Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Joyce Trisler, and James Mitchell, who brought his lover, Farley Granger.

The former actress and ballerina, Tamara Geva, was also invited. She had been married to George Balanchine and also to Tallulah Bankhead’s only husband, actor John Emery. She was Russian herself and could help Rudi convey his thoughts to the other guests, since his English was very poor.

“After dinner and over drinks in the parlor, Rudi at one point disappeared into the bathroom,” Haggart said. “He came out completely naked and took his seat on the sofa between Martha and Joyce. These were all very sophisticated people, and so everybody just continued talking as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, dancers are used to backstage nudity.”

“After midnight, all the guests departed,” Haggart said. “Gore asked if he and Rudi could stay over in one of my guest bedrooms. I told them, ‘Move in if you like.’”

On a very different occasion, Gore called Haggart and invited him to the apartment of actress Monique van Vooren. She was out of town, and she had given Rudi the use of her apartment while she was away.

“I’m an interior designer myself,” Stanley said. “and I was highly amused when I walked into the apartment. The décor was something that Liberace and Mae West combined might have created. A huge candelabra rested on a white grand piano, a touch of Liberace.”

When I investigated more thoroughly, I found that liquor bottles had been placed inside the piano. It was a bar, not a piano. Everything was in white—the carpet, the furnishings. Affixed to the ceiling, directly over the bed, there was a very large mirror, just like the one in Mae West’s apartment in Los Angeles.”

“Even though the day was bright and sunny, Rudi had pulled the draperies. He told me he was terrified.”

Across the street from the apartment was the Russian Consulate, under heavy guard by KGB agents.

“They have orders to kidnap me and bring me back to Moscow,” Rudi told Haggart and Gore.

This was not paranoia on Rudi’s part. His life was in far more jeopardy than he feared at the time. In the 1990s, it was revealed that Nikita Khrushchev had signed an order demanding that Soviet agents assassinate Rudi.

***

Monique van Vooren wrote in her 1981 book,
Night Sanctuary
, “Rudi was tortured and tormented by his sexuality. He was ashamed of being a homosexual.”

In Diane Solway’s
Nureyev: His Life
, published in 1998, she wrote that he preferred “rough trade, pickups, sailors, lorry drivers, and the like.”

“Rudi went in for rent boys and hustlers, but he seduced an amazing number of celebrities, and I include myself on that list,” Gore said. “Some of his choices surprised me—take Tab Hunter, for instance.”

The strikingly handsome, blonde-haired matinee idol of the 1950s even admitted in his autobiography to having an affair with Rudi, writing about his “bone-white body with blue veins clad only in a silver
lamé
swimsuit.”

What especially intrigued Gore were Rudi’s rumored Kennedy seductions, including both Jackie and her sister, Lee Radziwill. Even more astounding was an affair with Bobby Kennedy, whom Gore had long suspected of being a deeply closeted homosexual. He later speculated about this in his memoirs.

In
Palimpsest
, Gore claimed that Rudi confessed that he and Bobby “did share a young soldier, American soldier,” in Rudi’s words.

Julie Kavanagh, who wrote the definitive biography of Rudi, added another RFK/Nureyev link.

Alexander Grant of the Royal Ballet claimed that he and Rudi were having an intimate talk at Arthurs
[the leading nightclub in Manhattan in the 60s]
when Bobby Kennedy approached them.

Abruptly, Bobby asked, “Hey, what’s going on between you two? Break this up!”

It seemed that RFK wanted to take possession of Rudi, and he pulled him away and disappeared with him into the night.

In Paris, Rudi invited Gore to see his 1977 film,
Valentino
, in which he impersonated that great lover of the Silent Screen, “The Sheik.” British director Ken Russell guided Rudi through a difficult role with many costume changes. His wardroom ranged from gangster-style pin stripes, flowing Moorish
djellabas
, and Argentinian-style gaucho pants, as well as scenes where he appeared without clothes at all.

Long after the last dying embers of passion’s fire had turned to ashes, Rudi and Gore still remained friends, especially when Rudi purchased a little rocky island off the coast of Positano, along the Amalfi Coast, south of Naples. The islet had previously been owned by Léonide Massine, the great Russian choreographer, who had built a villa there. Gore, of course, lived in the nearby hilltop town of Ravello.

In his memoirs, Gore relates, “I would come down from Ravello to visit him. Then, with seigneurial courtesy, he would come to see me by the sea, where he would let his AIDS-wasted body collapse beside the pool.”

“I spent the night with Rudi and was awakened the next morning at nine o’clock,” Gore said. “A boat filled with tourists was circling the island, and a woman’s voice on a loudspeaker was extolling the glories of Rudi’s achievements in ballet.”

“After breakfast, we went into a room below, which was covered with ceramic tiles from floor to ceiling,” Gore said. “It was crowned with a dome. Rudi told me he wanted to be buried in the center of the room under that dome—this was, in fact, his mausoleum.”

“For lunch and dinner, the cook served only potatoes cooked in myriad ways—no meat or vegetables,” Gore said. “The cook was fat, Rudi, of course was not.”

“I knew Rudi practiced unsafe sex, but he seemed to think he was immune from AIDS,” Gore said. “In 1984, he told me that he’d tested positive for HIV, but he didn’t change his sexual habits. He kept insisting that, ‘There is nothing wrong with me. My Tatar blood is pure as a mountain stream in Siberia.’ But by the summer of 1991, I noticed a remarkable decline in his health. When I saw him in Paris in the spring of 1992, I knew he was dying.”

Gore attended Rudi’s final ballet performance in
La Bayadère
at the Palais Garnier in Paris. During the ten-minute ovation that followed, Rudi needed help to walk across the stage.