Starf*cker: a Meme-oir (19 page)

She signed dozens of items for the first guy in line, then it was my turn.

My journal records:

“I introduced myself as
E.T.
listened in, their phallic microphone extended on a stick at my mid-thigh. She had thrown her gloved hands in the air at the sight of my approach, smiling and beckoning me with the warmth usually reserved for grandmothers, and now clutched by hands willingly, speaking a very forced version of English, seeming to come more and more alive with each second.”

As she signed my album, she murmured, “Two thousand years ago…” I wish I had a recording of it; it would make a great sample.

Then she asked about whether I was seeing her show at a cabaret in town, her child-like eyes beseeching. “Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight,” I lied. It felt like this legendary Sun Virgin needed to hear that some random kid was going to pay to see her. I didn’t go that night, but she did get me to go.

I was so fascinated by her and felt so guilty about having lied that I later traipsed—again, solo—over to a fagalicious club called Ruggles Cabaret Bar on North Halsted, quite a trek from the South Side in more ways than one. A single college kid surrounded by middle-aged gay couples who were taking a break from the AIDS wars, I was spoken to by no one and sat by and with myself. As we all awaited her return to the stage, I wrote about what I was seeing on a napkin:

“A tiny roomful of faint peacock lights and mellow, jazzy music. My God, how terribly adult—I can tell because the voices are older and sound just unaffected enough to actually be unaffected, whether by practice over the years or because they actually are. I am alone, against the wall, a step above the sunken area where Yma will sing.

“I used my VISA card for the first time ever today to get Dusty’s Christmas present, a coloring book of naked ladies.”

I also noted a May-December couple next to me, and a “black homosexual” who reminded me of the guy from
Myra Breckinridge
, a movie and book that were already settling into my DNA and would be drawn upon when I got busy writing my first novel.

Sumac emerged and sang, with effort, as beautifully as on her old albums, looking like an antique bolt of lace with sequins sewn on. Even though I was a newly minted fan, I always did have a tendency to embrace newly discovered things with great history to them and make them into overnight, lifelong obsessions.

“It was one of the most incredible times of my life. Yma was afire with glamour—with more stardust than any of the stars I’ve seen combined. She used her hands as tools to further the powers of her voice. Somehow, she was like an ancient witch necromancing to summon up all the spirits’ voices at once.
God
, I was so used.”

Afterward, it became clear to me that Miss Sumac would be signing autographs. I again was first in line, this time holding a poster from the event. Cheekily, they had actually put on the poster the mythology that Yma Sumac was Brooklyn-born Amy Camus, something I don’t think she loved seeing while signing. I thanked her and asked if I could kiss her hand. She made a grand gesture, resting her chin on her shoulder, and presented her outstretched fingers to me for a quick kiss. Her hand was slippery from and reeked of floral-scented lotion, a smell that followed me home on the el; I was the only 19-year-old with two Yma Sumac autographs in his possession.

I was also the high-concept autograph hound who showed up with a light bulb for Warhol superstar Ultra Violet to inscribe (Get it? An ultra-violet light…) at her signing of her book
Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol
, taking the liberty of also presenting her with an American flag to sign, since there was a famous shot of her sleeping in flag sheets. She adored me for caring about her despite being so young, then nonsensically asked, “Did you know Andy?” I would’ve had to have met him in high school, which I suppose was really not so crazy after all. I loved her for making that mistake, and hated that it planted in my head deeper regret for not high-tailing it to NYC like I’d wanted to, in time to meet Warhol.

I snagged Jimmy Stewart, who’d been signing his book of atrocious poetry at the Water Tower Mall, and Anne Rice, who signed copies of her vampire books near Boystown. She told me she wanted Rutger Hauer to play “Lestat” and would sign whatever you wanted on your book. One chick asked her to sign, “I couldn’t have written this without you,” and she did.

Brooke Shields was doing some kind of beauty demo in a department store, so I showed up and had to her sign a book of matches, in honor of her memorable PSA that ended with, “I think people who smoke are real losers.” She signed it against her better judgment.

I loved Roseanne Barr and hated Bill Cosby, so I was really pissed that he was considered a bigger hit than she was even though his show was so milquetoast while hers was edgy and fresh. Because I was in a phase of having people sign items that commented on themselves in some way (my Sally Field-signed Bible was a
Flying Nun
tribute), I went to a bookstore appearance Roseanne made with her squeeze Tom Arnold and had her sign a Bill & Camille Cosby cover of
Jet
. The cover line asked if there was a rising tide of racism, to which Roseanne answered, in writing, “Yes.”

One of my most memorable encounters from my starfucking salad days was on October 13, 1989, with Roddy McDowall, in Chicago to sign his photography book
Double Exposure: Take Two
at the Kroch’s and Brentano’s on Wabash. I was in awe of him; after all, in spite of his credentials as a professional actor and amateur photographer (with a killer Rolodex), he was really sort of a starfucker himself. Maybe the ultimate one. Not only was he friends with every leading lady (the consummate hag fag) and intimately familiar with quite a few leading men, he was also such an unabashed cinema fan that he’d been caught red-handed illegally owning rare prints of films and videocassettes of TV series.

All fans are thieves
. All.

As I approached his table, I could see Roddy peering at me over his bulbous, purple nose. It didn’t dawn on me at the time that Roddy may well have been examining a 20-year-old fanboy whose virtue he’d correctly guessed was malleable, but he did make me nervous, like I might be snapped at for no reason, and without Julie Andrews or someone fabulous like that around to say, “Oh, Roddy!” and help keep the little guy in line.

I first told him he had been brilliant in
Fright Night
, the 1985 horror film. He laughed his thanks, which made me believe he didn’t think the word “brilliant” belonged in the same sentence with that film, but he’d had Oscar buzz for it so it’s not like I was name-checking something he did to pay the rent.

I then stammered, “I also just wanted to say I think you have taken the most marvelous photos of Elizabeth Taylor.” A good starfucker always has a line (all the better if sincere) ready for just such an emergency.

Roddy melted for a moment and cocked his head and said, “Thank you,” quite softly, before inscribing the book. I (completely) imagined it as a passing of the torch, as a sign that I could become the next famous gay (and unlike all the others would be out) that all the famous women would adore. Roddy probably
imagined it as selling a single copy of his book to a person for some money.

I still didn’t know enough to get a photo or to chat longer, but I was already getting the hang of this drill, and I was beginning to understand that I was slowly coming out of the closet for a second time, this time as a starfucker, and was coming to terms with the
love-your-work!
that dare not speak its name.

My encounters cost money—for tickets, for books—that I didn’t have, so I raised it from other fans. As a major Madonna buff, I was establishing friendships in the mail with other material girls and boys. Because I lived in a major city, I had access to foreign magazines with Madonna on the cover, so I would buy multiples and then sell them at a huge mark-up. I would spend hours combing the city’s magazine sellers for Madonna’s latest covers—which in 1989 and 1990 numbered in the hundreds—and then would hand-write lists of what I had to sell and illustrate them with Madonna caricatures.

Pop will eat itself, but fandom will feed itself.

All my fascination with meeting the famous face-to-face emboldened me. I was also really turned on by the new concept of outing and being political. I thought David K. Nelson’s “Mirth & Girth”—showing recently departed Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in a bra and panties—was some kind of queer statement (come to find out, it wasn’t) and was only too happy to go to the Art Institute to tread on the U.S. flag as part of Dread Scott Tyler’s incendiary “What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?” installation. Never mind that Nelson and Tyler were both bush-league pranksters in the shadow of Andres Serrano, the point was that they were young people who were unafraid…so what was stopping
me
from doing whatever I wanted to do? Why couldn’t I be a famous artist or novelist or…actor?

My admittedly less confrontational way of expressing myself was to try out for the U of C production of the gay play
Torch Song Trilogy
by Harvey Fierstein. I’d killed as Sam Fox in drag in high school, but it was time to try my hand at acting. I showed up to Ida Noyes Hall and met with Matt Denckla, one of Omar’s friends. He seemed taken with me right away, and had me read for all three male parts. The one he liked best was the one I never dreamed I’d get, that of “Alan,” described as “a shamelessly beautiful ex-hustler turned model…a twinkie with a heart of gold.”

I got called back, sweating through that reading as 11 other guys read for various roles. One of the other guys I was reading with pronounced the word “puss” as “pus”…and never even heard how wrong it sounded once he did it. He also visibly recoiled when hugged by the actor reading for “Arnold”. I mean, it’s a gay play, dude. You need to Roddy McDowall it up a bit.

It was down to me and a gorgeous blond named Damon who had tons of theater experience, so I figured I was sunk. Somehow, I got the part, and Damon wound up as the bisexual “Ed,” who I would get to seduce in a scene where I lowered my head into his lap. I became very good at bad touch with the back of my skull.

The play was exhilarating—
I
was one of the stars, for a change, instead of one of the admirers. I was panicked about forgetting my lines but never did, we became the hottest ticket the U of C had ever had…and then I never acted again.

The major downside of being a fan is that it takes up a lot of valuable time that could be spent acquiring your own fans.

Living with Omar, strictly as friends, was as good an education as anything I learned at the U of C, which was mostly about things like what made Samuel Pepys tick. (Strokes chin thoughtfully.) And Mick was equally tutorial, helpfully encouraging me to become addicted to porn. Or rather, re-addicted, since I’d already spent my childhood perusing every straight skin mag in existence before getting bored with them.

I guess I was ex-straight: As much affection as I had for “Beaver Hunt” and “Little Annie Fanny,” they had nothing on the delights gay porn, of which I had a steady supply via Mick and his older buddies.

A couple of times, I even skulked into gay bookstores, although I had no idea guys were having sex on the premises. I was more interested in furtively examining the glossy magazines. Over 21 Books had a $1 surcharge for browsing, which I paid so I could find out what Bill Henson was up to, as if he were an old friend with whom I’d lost contact instead of a West Coast hustler who was dressing up like a forest ranger or football jock and letting much less physically intimidating men plow him with no condom for a few hundred dollars. I finally caved and bought my first porn magazine, too, which ran me $6.50, minus that dollar. I spent $6.50 on a porn magazine when I was making $45 a week as a literary agency intern and $15 on an Italian fashion magazine with Madonna on the cover—how did I afford books?

Along with our porno seminars with Mick, which led me to believe that buying gay porn was a totally valid substitute for romance, with Omar I learned that it was perfectly okay to go into a gay bar. Until I set foot in one, my only experience with a gay bar had been watching Judd “Alex Reiger” Hirsch dance on a tabletop inside one on an episode of
Taxi
that had reduced my dad to uncontrollable hysterics. The fact that Hirsch bumping and grinding for a bunch of gays made my dad laugh instead of shift uncomfortably, as Eddie Murphy’s anti-gay, anatomically direct
Delirious
rants had, was somewhat of a relief.