The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (11 page)

So there you have it: the flip side of the “How do you help someone become sane and happy” coin. There are really no similarities to psychiatry whatsoever. The schools truly are 180 degrees apart from one another. I chose Team Scientology.

  •  •  •  

Mr. Hubbard did not profess to be a god or a savior. Scientologists do not worship him or pray to him. He is not a deity. In fact Scientology does not deal with the subject of deep-seated concepts such as God. A person will believe what they believe, and that’s how it’s possible for a person to practice their own religion while practicing Scientology. They usually just don’t conflict.

Many people ask me why Scientology is a religion. My answer is that it deals with you as a spiritual being. Yes, there are real things that attack the body, including cancer, diabetes, polio, viruses, infections, encephalitis, and the bubonic plague. People die from these or get treatment and recover. But Scientology deals with the spirit and its effect on the mind and the body. Mr. Hubbard taught me how to situate myself and view all aspects of life and then act according to what I observe and know. And to participate in life!! It’s not much good to sit on top of a mountain and contemplate life. It’s also not much fun.

He showed me how I can make my dreams realities. How to climb out of the rabbit holes that I’d plummeted into along the way.

Before I started Scientology, my life was myopic. I could barely see in front of my face. I would never have dared to dream of becoming an actress; by age 10 I’d had that thought thoroughly smashed out of existence.

L. Ron Hubbard has had a profound effect on my life, and I consider him one of my best friends, although I never even met him.

All discarded lovers should be given a chance, but with somebody else.

—MAE WEST

The Art of
Making Love to an Unfortunate Man

B
EFORE I was an actress, but after I moved to LA and stopped doing drugs, I began dating. I remember this one particular “date” vividly. I’ve told this story before, but some stories just bear repeating . . . I mean, REALLY bear repeating.

He was on a Harley-Davidson, and I was in a $16,000 stereo system disguised as a convertible Toyota Celica. He and I zigzagged flirtatiously, winding around each other on a well-known canyon road in LA. He motioned for me to follow him—something I was not inclined to do, but it was springtime, my top was down (no pun intended), and after all, he was an actor I’d seen before. So I accepted the invitation and followed.

He spent the afternoon boxing with a friend of his, and I was the audience—very macho stuff, that boxing, and admittedly it was sexy watching two guys beat the hell out of each other. He asked me out for the coveted Saturday nighttime slot—reserved only for important dates.

During the evening it became quite clear that he was somewhat of an idiot and that the boxing had been the high point of our tryst. He drove me home, and to be polite (the downfall of my personality) I agreed it would be fine for him to come inside for a late-night coffee. I don’t drink coffee, didn’t know how to make it, and really wanted to get rid of the actor, but it did sound like the civil, adult thing to do.

After I pretended to drink the coffee, he made a proposal: “I want to make love to you.” All of my friends had recently told me, “God, Kirstie, you don’t have to marry a guy just because you sleep with him.” Now, that sounds like very hip single-girl advice, doesn’t it? Actually I aspired to be the kind of girl who could participate in lovely casual sex and then just move on to the next casual sexer—so in this five-second period of time I made my decision.

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea . . . we’ve only just met and as fun as this date was, I think the timing is not right.” Man, that sounded smooth! I was shocked that this came out as if I were so, well, experienced! But then an odd thing happened—something I’d really never seen before. The actor began to weep. Great big crocodile tears.

“Wow—I just feel so close to you—I just . . . well . . . I know it’s corny, but I’m falling in love with you.”

Corny? Hell, no! Not for me. Love? Love, did he say? Well, even though I thought he was a complete idiot, “love” might be at stake here—love, marriage, children, ding dong! I might be passing up my future as Mrs. Actor!

“All right,” I said, “I didn’t know that’s how you felt.”

He took my hand and walked me up the badly carpeted chocolate-brown steps to my bedroom. He undressed me. I knew my body rocked, so I proudly stood there like the model-slash-goddess-slash-stunner I thought I was.

Then it was my turn. I took off his shirt to a previously choreographed rendition of the song “Ring My Bell.” I unbuckled his very groovy biker belt and let the pants drop dramatically to the floor. I slid ever so stealthily, like an Abyssinian cat, between the TJ Maxx sateen sheets. He equally professionally slid in beside me—nose to nose, eyes to eyes—and my hands (as they say in romance novels) began to read his body.

Then a strange thing occurred. While I was reading his body I realized he had no hair on his chest. Or his arms or his legs, actually. No, he wasn’t a chick—not that that didn’t cross my mind. I began to sweat, and the anxiety began to sweep me away. In my head I thought,
Shut up, shut up Kirstie. So what if he’s hairless, so what? Stop only thinking about the physical. Get into it, for god’s sake!
I slipped my hand ever so gently down his throat, across his barren chest and nonexistent treasure trail onto what could best be described as a small child’s thumb. Or should I say, small child’s erect thumb.

Panic and terror blasted through me in waves. I’d read about something like this, with Jean Harlow and her husband who committed suicide because of his miniature equipment. I didn’t want the boy to kill himself . . . or did I? At one moment it seemed that one of us surely would after this encounter, and I was certainly too young to die. Thoughts I’d never had raced through my head:
Is this for real? Is this guy a chick with a dick? Does this moron not know he has the world’s smallest johnson—by Guinness standards? Would he not think it appropriate to announce beforehand, “Hey, my penis is the size of a cheap eraser, so before we embark I’d like you to have the opportunity to decide whether or not to proceed?”
But the most pressing thought was,
How in the hell am I going to get him off with a baby cock like this?!

I calmed myself before taking control; I knew I’d gotten myself into this mess, and hadn’t I heard on
60 Minutes
that many serial killers had no hair and little wieners? Oh my, back to the responsibility; but wait, he was beginning to speak. Maybe he would explain that perhaps he’d had polio in the penis as a child or maybe talk about his time in ’Nam and how Agent Orange had caused all of his hair to fall out and his watson to shrink from its original size to that of a toddler’s. Instead he said—with bold virility—“What does baby want?”

Did I hear that right?
Yes, I did, because he repeated it with more masculine bravado. “What does baby want? Tell Daddy what baby wants.”

Oh yes, it was all I could do not to scream,
Baby wants a cock! Jesus, it doesn’t have to be a porn cock but come on, asshole, Baby wants a fucking real, at-least-average-sized cock!

Instead I kept thinking of poor Jean Harlow’s husband—the shame and degradation and of course, the suicide. He had his last actual fuck, as I personally believe suicides are, in fact, the committer’s final grandiose “Fuck you!” Nevertheless, I did always worry about penile suicide prospects. It haunted me for years, actually. Poor Jean Harlow’s sad, tiny-tallywackered, suicidal husband.

I said casually, as if I’d experienced this kind of thing hundreds of times in my work as a prostitute, “This is what baby wants” and put my fingers in a peace sign between my legs. I deduced it was the only possible hope to get this guy off and out of my house.

He complimented this ingenious idea. “Oh baby, you’ve been around.”

Of course
, I thought,
in my line of work, you need to know all the tricks of the trade—after all, you never know when your pimp might set you up with something that makes a preschooler’s rod look like John Holmes!

After he finished fucking the peace sign and I finished faking the most pathetic orgasm to date, even by fakers’ standards, he rolled off me in baby dick bliss. “Damn, baby—damn that was good!” Of course it was, buddy boy, but just remember if it hadn’t been for Mr. Sad, Dead, Suicidal Harlow and his tragic farewell, you, your underdeveloped appendage, and your overdeveloped ego would never have come close to heaven’s gate, peace sign or no peace sign. Peace out!!!

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

—FEDERICO FELLINI

The Art of
Champions

I
T SEEMS most people set a timeline on the pursuit of a given task.

In 1980 I was on the verge of giving up on becoming an actress. I’d given myself exactly one year to “make it,” and it was the end of the tenth month—late October, jeez. I’d come so close, so many times to being the female lead of this or that big movie, but it was always between me and one other “famous” girl. But the truth was I’d never been hired for anything, movie or television, not even a guest shot.

Some would encourage me by telling me that getting close was the step right before being the victor. This all sounded swell, and it encouraged me from time to time, but being the runner-up for a huge movie roll was akin to being runner-up at the Preakness. Who gives a damn? No one knows who the runner-up to the Preakness was last year, right? Except the guy who sold the horse after the race.

I was so close to sticking my tail between my legs and running back to Kansas. I had almost no money, even though I was working three or four jobs. None of my friends were actors. I had zero connections in the acting world. I’d gained 14 pounds and had gone from a whopping 116 pounds to a behemoth 130 pounds. I’d just broken up with my well-meaning, hot boyfriend, Doug, who wanted me to stay with him and draw faces on his penis at bath time and support him while he became a manager, a gem dealer, an art dealer, or a minister. Granted, his dick was as talented as a triple-threat actor, but at four-thirty on a Saturday morning, I broke up with superdick. I surmised that I only had two months to make it as an actress and there would be plenty of great cocks in my future. Little had I known that “great” cocks really are an oddity. Good ones are fairly common but great ones are extremely rare. But I digress . . .

His heart was slightly crushed, but honestly our fights consumed a good six hours a day and the other eighteen were spent shagging. You can imagine that this left little time for rehearsals, acting lessons, and auditions.

He couldn’t quite understand that our split was final, so for a while he would break into my house nightly at around 3:00 a.m. He’d make me sit in a chair while he lectured me as to why we needed to stay together. This would go on for two hours as he paced and smoked 87 cigarettes. I’d zone out and nod off, which provoked him to yell really loud. I’d jolt to attention, but I needed sleep! I finally changed the locks and ignored his late-night rants while pounding on the doors, and finally he gave up. I felt sad for him, as I did still love him, but it had come time in my life that work—my craft—had to take precedence over dicks and . . . well . . . dicks.

I had to take off those pesky 14 pounds. I HAD to weigh under 118 pounds! Because when I was 16 I weighed 116 pounds, and it was the number I’d arbitrarily decided was the perfect weight for a five-foot eight-inch woman with medium bone structure. It was also the bottom number on one of those weight charts in the back of
Vogue.
I began the Beverly Hills Diet, which I think consisted of pineapple, papaya, and chocolate cake. Every moment was spent working out, dieting, turning down dates, and staying holed up in my house rehearsing lines for auditions.

I remember feeling extremely disciplined, something that was fairly foreign to me.

I had this agent, Steve Dontanville. He had told me he wouldn’t sign me to the Paul Kohner Agency he worked for, but that he would send me out on things. This was sorta cool of him, since I was a “nobody” who had done “nothing,” including not going to drama school. I knew he didn’t rep me because he was hot for me. He batted for the other team and had no interest in my big boobs.

So Steve called one day and said, “I’ve got a meeting for you tomorrow. It’s a long shot, but it’s the female lead in a forty-million-dollar movie and they like your picture. Oh, and it’s to play a Vulcan.”

Wow! This sounded like a ridiculous opportunity. I’d gotten very close on other big movies. I was never sent out for a small part; Steve only sent me out for female leads. I liked thinking it was because I was too hot for character roles. It spurred me on.

It was one of those rare moments in my life when I felt überconfident. I’d whittled my ripped body down to 116 pounds. Since I’d not been going out, I was well rested and not hung over. I sorta looked bad ass.

Although I was extremely poor, I decided to splurge on an outfit that would dazzle the Paramount casting people: a short turquoise sweater and slim, tight turquoise jeans, size 2 or 4, with four-and-a-half-inch-high gray pointy-toed boots. My ass was the size of a 16-year-old boy’s, but more curvy. In 1980 I had as close to perfect skin as a girl could have. I was 29 years old, although my agent thought I was 23. I didn’t correct him and besides, the DMV had screwed up the date on my driver’s license. Instead of putting my correct birth date 1951, they put 1957.

Steve sent the script over so that I could learn the lines I needed for the audition. I worked hard on them, and I felt awesome. Oh yeah, and although I thought
Star Trek
was lame, I’d seen all the TV episodes because Bob loved them and I liked lying around with him watching TV. By proxy, I knew everything about
Star Trek
, but mostly Spock, who was the only character I paid attention to. I liked his “no emotion” dilemma.