Innocents Not Quite Abroad

     Understanding that my salvation is in writing, and I woke up not knowing what I was going to write about, the Universe, or Providence, or WhoeverItIsWho is concerned about the new Pope, if One there Is, sent me an e-mail from a Jeffrey Schwartz, a documentary filmmaker who is about to make a film about Tab Hunter.  Tab was one of the heart-throbs of the 50s, along with Rock Hudson and some other great male beauties who nobody knew were gay.  He was a sweet guy, and very tall, Goyishly handsome, blonde and blue-eyed, and was, in background, a stable boy, and in painful fact which it took me eons to process and actually believe, involved with Tony Perkins, my first great movie star love.

     I met Tony(Anthony he was on the marquees) at my first big movie star party in Hollywood, given by Elaine Aiken, who was with the Actor's Studio.  At the time, that had enormous eclat on the West Coast, since few of the stars of the day had actual acting credentials, and Brando, whose home was the Studio, his father figure Lee Strasberg, was on his way to being a God, still thin and full of intellect and principles. 

     Tony was incredibly beautiful, and very mysterious, though not about what was to turn out to be his real mystery, and engaged me immediately because he was so bright, and played games.  Rapt by his then very boyish male beauty, I stood transfixed in the garden, as he told me he would take me to dinner if I could tell him what movie these lines were from-- as I remember still, I think-- "If Miss Perry know more, we find out fast.  Take Miss Perry deeper into ship."  I believe that was Akim Tamiroff in something, I never found out.  But as Tony was so reluctantly adorable, and I was still wearing my teenagerish heart, I fell into his very clever pit. We not only went to dinner but he became the center of my first novel, NAKED IN BABYLON, and from there, my life.

     He would call me at four in the morning and say "What's for breakfast?" and I would get up and make it for him, including home made jams and popovers he said were better than his mother's-- as it turned out she had never cooked, so that, besides being endearing, was a lie.  Then he would go off to the studio, the most sought-after star of his day, having played Gary Cooper's son in FRIENDLY PERSUASION, James Dean having just died, so they were looking not only for the new James Dean, but whoever was lanky and appealing enough to eventually replace Gary Cooper.

     As Tony went out the door after breakfast he would say "I'll call you from the studio."  I would wait all day-- in those days the phone had a twenty-five foot cord for which you paid extra, but it would not stretch to the bathroom, so I wouldn't pee all day for fear my tinkle would cover that of the phone.  

     He never called.  And I would go to sleep, Miltowned, I think, the popular trank of the day, saying "I'll never speak to him again." And then the phone would ring at 4 A.M. and I would get up and make him breakfast.

     This went on for months, and finally, years.  He took me to Disneyland, kind of our version of an orgy, as our romantic life consisted of shooting off model planes in which we put our enemies. Sidney Skolsky, the gossip columnist, who had called us in print, 'The Odd Couple--"  I was fat, and Henry Willson, the agent who represented what was suspected to be but not spoken of in a loud voice, gay movie stars.  Among those was Tab Hunter, Tony's good friend-- and, eventually, a friend of mine.

     Every day I would wait for the call from Tony that never came. And every night the phone would ring-- Hollywood, even then, was never at a loss for vicious people-- and someone would say "He's at the beach with Tab." And I would say, "Shut up, shut up, shut up" slam down the receiver and try to go back to sleep. And then get up and make him breakfast.

     Finally, I made my Hollywood experience into a novel, and he would say, reading it every day before he went to the studio: "You're going to be the most famous writer in America." On the day I gave him the last chapter of the book, wherein the heroine confronts the young hero with his homosexuality, he said he would call me from the studio.  This time he did.  "All the way to the studio I said 'I have this friend, and she writes poems and songs and funny telegrams in French and now she's written a novel, and she's going to be the most famous writer in the country, and I'm so proud that she's my friend.  And then I read the ending.'

 "Tony," I said.  "Let me off the hook.  I'll burn the book.  Is it true?"

And he said to me "I care for you as much as I have ever cared for any woman. We will drink from the same cup."

     I still didn't hear him.   

     So I changed the ending, and devoted myself to him over the next several years, following him to New York where he did "Look Homeward Angel," onstage, to, as I remember, very favorable reviews.  For that opening I gave him a gift, a keyring with a gold playing card, a ten of diamonds.  On our way to see Mary Martin in Peter Pan in San Francisco, which he had taken me to, there was a playing card lying face down on the runway(they still had runways then)  I said "Now you're taking me to San Francisco. Next you'll take me to Disneyland,(it was just opening)  He said "I'll take you to Disneyland if you can tell me what that card is."  And because I loved him so much, and Disneyland seemed to me to represent consummation, I did not guess: I concentrated so hard, I saw through the card.  He turned it over and paled: "You're a witch," he said.  The note that accompanied the gift of the keyring said "If I knew about this, I must know about you," meaning, as I remember, my conviction that he would be the greatest star of his day.

     And he might have been.  But the weirdness of the parts he took, (PSYCHO) and the unsuitability of the ones where they still paraded him as athletic and over the top male, undid him.  He fell out of sight, as did our friendship.

     Then, years later, I ran into him, literally, as I sort of jogged home one afternoon.  I took him home with me, and we saw Don, and Don said "Oh, my God, he's got you again."  And he did.

     By that time he was married to Berry Berenson, truly a lovely woman, and I was happy for them.  We saw what seemed a lot of each other, and he encouraged me to write my musical, as he knew songwriting was my happiest and most satisfying talent, albeit unrealized.

     Meanwhile I had also become better friends with Tab, who had been part of 'Young Hollywood' as it was known, and would come to see me when I was performing my songs at the Purple Onion, along with Venetia Stevenson and the rest of the then Young Hollywood crowd.  The years having made us all Older Hollywood, I saw him in New York with some of his gay friends-- one of whom was a doctor, who gave me a shot of the diuretic I was using-- I was still heavy, --and, happily was wearing a wig which I ripped off, saying "You're all under arrest," so they all were terrified.   Tab and I talked that evening on a new level, and I told him how I had asked Tony to let me go, that I would burn the book, if he would only tell me the truth.  I repeated what he had said, that was, of course, a complete denial.  And Tab said: "He must not believe in God."

     After that, of course, quite a while after, fortunately, as I think and hope he had good years with his family, Tony died of AIDS.  And, on September 11th, his wife, Berry, was on the plane from Boston that crashed into the Twin Towers.  So it was, in all, as dark a story as any I have ever told, much less lived.  

     And it's still very sad.  I saw one of his sons at his memorial, looking more like Brad Pitt than Tony, which is not the worst thing that could happen to a man.

     But I look forward to being part of the 'documentary' that is being made about Tab based on what was his best-selling biography.  I never read it in full, but someone did show me a footnote, I think it was, in which Tab wondered how someone as smart as Gwen Davis could have been that naive.

     Interesting query.

A Day of Redemption

     So today was, after all the difficulties that have, I would venture, captured our attention, from not losing our country, which we didn't, (relieved exhale) to finding out a great general was only a man (what a Surprise!) nonetheless a very positive day.  Certainly for me, at least.

     I had the great pleasure of meeting with the smartest woman to go to Bryn Mawr, which is really saying something, and afterwards seeing the scion of a great restaurant family in his new digs.  The woman, Joanna Semel Rose, frightened me when I knew her towards the end of her college career, as she was so patently smart I felt failed in her company.  This was later enhanced and intensified when I had the great pleasure of meeting and interacting on a pretty deep level with Joe Mankiewicz, the great writer/director of some of the best films of our time, or at least that time, and he reinforced my impression of her, as she had worked with him. Joe had been at a dinner at Bennett Cerf's, where he expressed the opinion that of all the writers who were bestsellers at the time, the only one who was really a good writer was Gwen Davis-- I didn't know him, and was yet to meet Bennett, who did say at that dinner: "That's going to cost me some money," as he was bidding for my next book. (He didn't get it, but Doubleday did, and it was TOUCHING, which ended up in an important publishing scandal/setback/disappointment/borderline obscenity, and was the reason for my friendship with Kurt Vonnegut, which made the whole ordeal worthwhile.) 

     Anyway, I loved Joe, who came to visit me in San Francisco with his wife,  and he loved Joanna.  So in the ensuing years I always felt privileged if a little handicapped to be in her company, as she is truly extraordinary, and a great argument for women, many of whom are incredibly special and making the world a better place.  We spent some good time today and she approved of my new book, which means a great deal to me, though I am not saying what it is because I am publishing it anonymously, as I think befitting, since if I didn't have the consciousness of the great women(and some not so great) who have helped fashion me, it wouldn't exist.  So I feel it is from all of us.  To the benefit of all of us, I distinctly hope.

     After that, I stopped in to the new Sirio's on Fifth Avenue.  Sirio Maccioni was the great restaurateur I wrote about for The Wall Street Journal Europe when I had my strange and curious and unexpected career with them, and I loved him and Egi, his wife, and their sons.  Marco was dashing, handsome and charming, and I worried about him, because I wondered how it would affect someone so open-hearted and caring (he really loved dogs, including mine) to have such an overwhelming dad.  But I am delighted to report he not only grew more handsome and genial, he seems completely on top of his act, not to mention Sirio's.  The new restaurant is flagrantly glamorous, and people seem to be flocking to its dashing interior by Adam Tihany, where they actually look as tastefully glittering as the place.  

     I was genuinely relieved, as I have watched with some regret the downsizing of 'Dashing' during my run on the planet, as people seem to have lost interest in what is genuinely attention-worthy.  Instead we have really silly people capturing what is the truly diminished limelight, like the Kardashians, who have nothing really going for them but a bright dead lawyer  father who I think would be embarrassed.  So it is a joy to see an heir of a darling family standing up to fully meet the task, better-looking than ever, increasingly gracious, married to a lovely woman who has produced yet another winner, Massimo.  I so love Happy Endings, or, even more, Happy Continuings.

And the Academy Awards are Hosted by... Who?

     I must confess to not knowing who Seth MacFarlane was/is/wants to be.  I had to run to my computer to Google him, something that makes me feel unworthy.  As close friends, ever diminishing in number know, I have been out of the country in various exotic and trying-to-become-a-better-person locales for the past several/many years, not really connecting with my Americanhood except in crisis times, which seem to be ever-increasing, or the best movies when it seemed they might actually be happening.
    Still, last night was a signal for what always felt sacred to me, consecrated by the best party I ever attended, hosted by Don, my adorable albeit late husband, and myself, when parties seemed important, as did the Awards. So I tuned in, having prepared for it all day by being stupid, though as low as I managed to get, I could not quite sink to the level of being able to stand Kristin Chenoweth, who I know can sing but do I have to listen to her speak?  Anyway, when the program first began, in a burst of everything, I looked up who Seth, which I feel it is all right to call him as he at once established a level of handsomeness that in America calls for respect.  To my astonishment, I saw that he had actually sung in Carnegie and Royal Albert Halls. So attention must (I thought) be paid.
    But it was too much of a good thing, and not really enough.  He had all the attributes of Danny Kaye-- that is to say, he could sing, dance, and be funny-- but absent completely was the magic that characterizes a great performer.  So I became bored with him very quickly, as he did seem to become with himself... and I missed what makes for a truly great host.
    The awards went on for what seemed days, the two most refreshing surprises-- the exquisite Charlize Theron, who had looked uncomfortable and awkward in a shot the moment before that I realized afterwards was because she was probably nervous-- dancing like an angel, albeit a dark one since we know her history(you can Google it.)  The other, of course, was jennifer Lawrence falling down, which seemed really quite adorable if you go back to it.
    The rest... well, you couldn't exactly say was Silence.  But nothing was particularly wonderful or moving except for Daniel Day Lewis, who was eloquent beyond eloquent, being completely winning, heightened by the memory of a story they tell about him which I don't know anymore if it's true, where he allegedly came onstage and completely forgot his role, which might have been Hamlet-- one can't be sure, these stories grow.
    But I am glad he married who he did after walking out on a famous love partner, as she has obviously nurtured his creativity.  I am happy for him, and his wife, who still has the depth and character to wear glasses.  And we are all, of course, happy for Meryl Streep for continuing to be who she is and always was, the only one to wear sleeves.
    And we all really love, or should, Ben Affleck, who seems genuinely dear and darling, deserving of his success and the wife he has now, not to mention George Clooney for a buddy.  A few years ago I saw Jennifer Lopez sitting on a mink blanket he had bought for her at Ben Kahn where my mother was a customer, and feared for his soul.  Clearly he got it back.
    Now, if only the Academy could.

A Pocketful of Wry

    Yesterday (and Today, why live in the Past?) presented and will present a challenge.  Yesterday Matinee I saw PICNIC, preceded by a soul-rending communique from Roundabout's director, Todd Haimes, about the importance of Inge as a playwright, and his neglect, especially in view of his contemporaries, many of whom are icons who were not held in as high esteem as he.  I went with great enthusiasm to the theater, since that was not only the era that fed my beginning passion for the theater, it was also the play that spawned the romantic(?) couple that were to be together in the first movie I did the title song for, Ralph Meeker and Janice Rule.
    Meeker was a crude actor, and it was his pecs that first exhilarated the theatre ladies, so they were teamed together for a movie.  Herbert J. Yates, the very old head of Republic Pictures, which bought them, called us(me and Les Baxter) into his office.  He wanted the picture, a suspenseful(sort of) thriller about a murderer called "A WOMAN'S DEVOTION."  I was only twenty, but I believe I said "Huh?"
I had been signed by a wonderful agent at MCA named Bobby Helfer, cousin of Elmer Bernstein, who had said to me at first, "Honey, they're not going to let me take you on at $500 when I can get $50,000 for Les Baxter," but ended up saying "The hell with it: I'm going to sign you."  He later committed suicide at 42 by taking forty-two sleeping pills.  But a truly lovely guy.
    After my Huh? I believe Yates, who was married to Vera Hruba Ralston, which I mention because it is such an unlikely feat of memory I like to show it off, said to me, "Don't you see?  He(meaning Meeker) is killing people and everything and she still loves him.  That shows A WOMAN'S DEVOTION." We wrote the song. It was really terrible, as the movie was, too.
    But tonight is about what should and hopefully will be the Best of Movies, and many years ago, when our children were 2 and 4 and both in black tie, we had the first, and famous, black tie Oscar party to watch on TV.  There were three rooms with TV sets, Orthodox(no talking), Conservative(watching AND talking) and Reformed(the talking never stopped.)  All of HAUTE Hollywood came to our house that night, led by Ruth Berle, Milton's very sharp and acerbic wife, whom Time Magazine, which covered our party, called the society doyenne of Beverly Hills.  We had a floodlight by the curb, an usher to lead people into the house, and endless appetizers I had spent many days preparing, a hot dog stand with umbrella in the back yard, and high and low end booze, that Don, my husband, gave out generously while he did his Jackie Gleason impression, the only thing that was less than wonderful about him.
    John Wayne was the expected winner, and Bob Hope the host, so all of those who didn't love either of those guys were at our house.  Lee Marvin, who had won the year before, Shirley MacLaine and Zsa Zsa, who was still a name, Glenn Ford whom I loved, and had met with Rita Hayworth, 'the lovers from Gilda," I'd exclaimed, meeting them at an early Hollywood party, where a little guy had come up to us, held out his hand, and said "Hi, I'm Mickey Rooney," like we wouldn't know. It was a glowing time, and everybody glowed at our house.
    Dusty Fleming was my hairdresser, and Sandy Burton, then a tyro reporter for Time had had her hair done the day before by him and asked what he was doing for the Awards; he told her he was coming to my house.  So she called and introduced herself and asked if she could cover it for Time.  It was right in the middle of The Pretenders and I was publicity mad, so almost choked on my tongue in my eagerness to say 'Yes,' I was so excited.  In spite of my then (understandable?) excitement, Sandy and I were to become lifelong friends, at least as long as her life continued, until she was killed by her boyfriend in Bali which no one investigates, not even Time, because there's no money, and, supposedly, no proof, but that is another story.
    Anyway, it was a great night: everybody came.  Shirley, whom I believe at the time was having an affair with Sandor Vanocur sat stoned, staring at him on the TV.  Then she did a rant against Mike Frankovitch, then the head of Columbia, as I told her this woman standing in front of her was covering the party for Time.  But still she raged on, and called me, infuriated when Sandy printed the least offensive of her outbursts, (I think it was "Oh, shut up, John Wayne.")  "Make it up to me," she was to insist for several years afterward, at one point considering doing my musical which she wanted to own outright.  Anyway, Maggie Smith won, so there was purity and grace to the evening, and it was a really lovely piece that Sandy wrote.
      I will be sad tonight, I think, because I did love Hollywood so when it was that time, and I will miss Don's singing as he did his bad impression, the only thing he did badly, really, darling gentleman that he was.  I will also miss Sandy, and the fact that some places there is no justice, especially when people can be paid off.  But oh, well, it's still America here.  At least until sequestration.

A Walk in Central Park

    I went for a walk today, like a tourist, which, in a way, we really all are-- just passing through.  It was an irresistible winter day, not something you can say very often in New York City.  But this one was, filled with sparkle, and none of the weather from the dire predictions, radiant with sunlight and warmth and the gentleness of melting snow, and a little boy named Spencer stomping on what was left of a hardening heap, crystallizing and lightly sprinkled with soot.

    I passed my friend William Shakespeare-- (I wonder if his legs were really that good,) paid the homage I always do when going by him, stopped by Robbie Burns and Sir Walter Scott, massive, wonderful statues on either side of what i think is Poet's Walk, or maybe Writer's, and wondered, as usual, what FitzGreene Halleck is doing there.  Probably he wonders, too.

    When I was first starting out in life, at that point when we allegedly determine what it is we want to be when we grow up-- in my case, way before-- I wanted to be a poet.  Pelted with poetry by my father, a pharmacist/poet manque, I had started spouting it myself at a scarily early age, and by seven or eight had aligned myself with Longfellow, probably not the best choice, but what do you know when your father's been reading The Highwayman at you.

So The Children's Hour hung heavily in my head.  You remember?

       Between the dusk and the daylight

       When the night is beginning to glower (a word I thought heavyhanded, e'en then) Comes a pause in the day's occupation

       That is known as The Children's Hour.

So sitting in the Boathouse Restaurant, looking out at the frozen lake, sipping on not a bad glass of Pinot Grigio, talking to two racily charming Italian women at the next table-- you can always make friends in New York as long as they are from someplace else-- I took out a little notebook I had brought along that had in it some poems I'd written in this park on earlier occasions, and found this:

Between the day that my life shall end

        And the year that I thought to begin it

        Came the pause in my Solipcism

        That is known as the Children's Minute.

        I hear in the bedroom above me

        The toddler that calls me "Mom,"

        And by the time I climb the stairs

        She's dressing for the prom.

The little boy with the pinchable cheeks

        Huffs and puffs up a hill of stone

        And by the time he reaches the peak

        He has two little boys of his own.

        Why didn't I spray them with some kind of glue?

        So they'd stay at that huggable age

        Oh, they say that time flies, but it literally flew

        Giving not enough time to engage.

        If we could but know at the start of the game

        That Life isn't a fair referee

        For there are no "Time outs" and there's no one to blame

        But yourself, for not stopping to see.

Oh, well.  The ladies from Italy have invited me to visit them in Lucca.       

An Afternoon in Camelot

     So as people who know me know, and even some who don't if they read any of these rantings, my great, as yet unrealized love is the musical theater-- for which I always thought I was headed, except then came the diversions: life, novels, poetry, a family.  Still, in the back of my heart and sometimes the front of my head was the big dream, which, in the past several days seemed for a moment or five that it might not be a fantasy.
     So today I settled comfortably onto my mink pillow-- Mom left a a stole-- and watched Richard Harris play King Arthur in Camelot.  Strummed through this tune is the recollection of my friendship with Nancy Olsen, the first Mrs. Alan Lerner, who wrote the brilliant book (I imagine Shaw was a bit of a help) and lyrics for what is without argument the GREAT musical of our and any other time, My Fair Lady.  Nancy told me of the day Alan came to her and said of the dazzling Micheline, who was to become his next wife: "I have to have her."  It is the kind of line I imagine he would have demanded be cut from any script that bore his name.
     But have her he did, and scuttle his happiness for a while I imagine he did, too.  She, Micheline, and I became friends for a while, and dazzling as she had been, when I knew her she had already become a little hard.  Nancy had her revenge when one sunset in Malibu, as she walked along the shore, she passed a withered woman, half-bent, and it was Micheline.  Time, the Great Avenger.
Anyway, I was excited to see Camelot all these years later, as my heart is at once light and heavy at the prospect of finally getting my dream, which I understand can also mean losing it.  In the meantime, I remembered going to Rome and meeting Franco Nero, who played Lancelot-- badly, but with gorgeous, I mean gorgeous blue eyes, and knowing he and Vanessa Redgrave, who was beautiful, and, I believe pre- political when she made the movie, had had a child together, I realize it must have been especially boring on the set even if they hadn't been so lusty.
     I had been told that Franco never bathed, but I don't remember smelling him.  Just for some reason-- was I married? Was I being faithful? or had I finally grown up, which I doubt, that transition having come much later-- I did not fall into a swoon over him, though I do remember he was funny, and that is always a good thing.  Ah, but I do remember those eyes, and am happy to have seen them up close, and not fallen into them.
     The glorious chords of the music of Camelot sounded in my little studio today, and I immediately began to weep-- my feelings are all dangerously close to the surface these days, as I have been going through crap I don't care to glorify by remembering it while I am writing these things which strangely soothe me.  So I am highly emotional even when the music isn't going all the way into me.  But I wept just to hear it at first.
     And then I saw the movie.  Richard Harris was pained and wonderful, and we've already heard about Vanessa.  But oh, the final hour when we reach the bridal bower. It is really tedious.
     I don't know who wrote the screenplay, but I imagine Lerner was stubborn about changes.  And the truth was they hadn't really worked it out for the stage, either, though I imagine we were all so swept away by the presence of Julie Andrews and Burton and the then(how was it we ever really prized him) irresistible Robert Goulet as Lancelot.  He DID have a most wonderful voice.
     I remember when Billy Rose, later to be the covered-up(not that well, but he was dead) fictional center of THE PRETENDERS, who I actually went out with a couple of times, as did my then best friend Sue Mengers, brought me home to my apartment on 73rd Street and went to my closet and opened it.  My mother had a world of wholesale connections, one of which was feathered lingerie.  So there was a peignoir, a word that sounds sexier than the robe really was, since I never actually put it on, sort of halfway between peach and orange, transparent, with matching ostrich feathers all down the front and at the bottom of the sleeves.  And Billy looked at it and said, "Who you saving this for, Robert Goulette?"  I mean he really hit the final T.  A very sad little man, lonely and scared because he'd made all the money in the world and didn't get joy from it, or spend it. (He took me to a deli, and Sue, too,at a different time, and she never forgave him.)
     He walked into Sardi's once when Sue and I were at a front table, being young.  He was with Monique Van Vooren, who everybody said gave great head.  As Sue was later to say, and I think I cited it in the novel, "With us sitting there like the Dolly Sisters."
     I think I miss her.  We did not have a very good finale, she, who was my best friend and agent when I was first starting to have a visible career, and, even more so, a visible life.  She was sort of my Maid of Honor, (Dishonor, she would have said,) at my wedding to Don at the Plaza, when she said, "We must do this every Sunday."  Then, when my play opened on Broadway, the same week my daughter was born, she said "I feel like the Mother of the Bride-- everybody's calling me."  The play failed, and so did our friendship, particularly since my bestseller, The Pretenders, was about her-- and me, too, really: the character was kind of a mix of the two of us. 
     Then she moved to Hollywood, and started to become a star.  We met again in the driveway of a party she was surprised I had been invited to, where she said, yelled out, really, to Beau Bridges, "Beau, Sue wants to fuck," and it made me sad.  I always thought she was better than that.  But maybe I was wrong.
     Then, I wrote SILK LADY, which was not quite the success THE PRETENDERS had been, but it was hot.  And once again, Louise Felder, the fictional name I gave Sue, was a central character.  She called me to ask me how I had known so much about her when we hadn't been friends for so many years, and also told me how much she liked the book.
     "The only reason I stopped reading was I could not lift my eyes, it caught me so completely," she started the conversation, not even saying 'Hello' or telling me who it was, which is how she started most conversations, assuming people would always remember her, which they did.    When next I saw her, it was at Gladys Begelman's funeral, where she chastized me for having told Liz Smith how happy I had been for her(Sue's) phone call.
      The next time I saw her, she tried to run me down in front of Phil Scully's restaurant.  And that was the last time I saw her.
      But I am happy she is having such a Renaissance, with Bette Midler, yet.  I hope there is an Afterlife, so she sees.  

OSCAR WILDE, HAPPY, and PERE LACHAISE

     Ar what turned out to be almost the last day of his life, Happy, my Yorkshire Terrier, perhaps the cleverest dog in the history of his breed-- (he had been on Oprah and would have lived forever, but she didn't show the book) -- went with me to visit Oscar Wilde. 

We had a sandwich sitting on his gravestone at Pere LaChaise. Everything in Paris was closed that day.  It was some kind of national celebration, I'm not sure which one.  Maybe July 14th, as big as it gets in Paris.  There was nothing open but the cemetery.

      So we had lunch with Oscar Wilde. That night, around the corner from my hotel, a little boy about two + was playing in the street and Happy played with him.  A very pretty, dark woman came and put a glass of champagne on my table, and said: "That is for being so kind to my son, Dorian."

    "Dorian?" said I.

    "Yes," she said. "After Dorian Gray."

     Well, those who know me, who are apparently not a multitude judging from the silence on my phone, know that I do not believe in coincidence.  All these things seem to me orchestrated, little gifts sent by the universe to connect us.  So I invited them to come visit me the next day at my hotel, the Prince de Gaulles.  Happy played with the little boy, chasing him and being chased around the hotel room, up and down the corridors.  And he was young again, a puppy, the lively little boy he'd been when he first came to live with us.  

     And after they were gone,  I went out with him to dinner, and he collapsed, stiff-legged, on the sidewalk.  I called the vet, the one we had in Paris, and he said it was a heart attack, and I should bring him in the next morning and they'd put him to sleep.  

     I called Robert and we wept together on the phone.  Then I lay Happy down on the bed beside me, and petted him, and asked him to help me.   I didn't want to put him to sleep. About four in the morning I turned on the light, and he was gone. 

     The next day I took him in his little travel bag, a purse I carried that I smuggled him in, to museums, the occasional movie, whole countries before they checked and x-rayed.  He was cremated, and I took his ashes and sprinkled a little of him on the great artists that lay in Pere La Chaise, a little but not a lot on Gertrude Stein, some on Heloise and Abelard, and put his collar on Jim Morrison's headstone.

     Strangely, I have received a card today from Dominique, the mother of Dorian, who was, in Robert's words, "the little boy who killed Happy."  Dorian has grown now, and has his own band.  I heard a little of what he played the last time I was in Paris, and it sounded really dreadful, but then I am older, and what they do now is foreign not only to my ears but all my sensibilities. So maybe he is gifted, I can't really say.

     But he has grown up looking really dark, his eyes in the photo on the card, shifting even in a still.  I hope he will be all right.  I hope Happy is.  

     And meanwhile, as I struggle with what I hope will be my return to my greatest love in the Arts, theatre, I found this quote, the same day I got the postcard from Dorian's mom.  A sign? 

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. 

    Oscar Wilde