Written and Illustrated by
MARY ELIZABETH (LEACH) RAINES
Wow! A movie star wanted me. Me!
And yes, I mean “wanted” exactly in the sense that you’re
thinking.
I had never thought anything like that could happen to me,
although I’d certainly dreamt about it. All of us—at least those with normal
hormones and reasonable imaginations—have entertained the fantasy of having a
romantic encounter with a movie star. Even movie stars themselves sometimes get
crushes on other movie stars.
Robert Redford (you’ve heard of him, right?) tells of a time when he was
a starving young artist in Rome, before becoming an actor. He spotted Ava
Gardner and her entourage in a restaurant, and went a bit gaga over seeing the
famous temptress. Gardner noticed, called the smitten young man to her side,
and gave him a little kiss.
In the films he's made since that time, Redford has kissed many of the world’s most desirable actresses, and in his private life he is happily married—yet, what does he talk about with a moony smile and a far-away look? Having a crush decades ago on a movie star who acknowledged him and actually gave him a smooch! We can all fall prey to fantasies about those we see on the silver screen, you see.
And now it was my turn.
In the films he's made since that time, Redford has kissed many of the world’s most desirable actresses, and in his private life he is happily married—yet, what does he talk about with a moony smile and a far-away look? Having a crush decades ago on a movie star who acknowledged him and actually gave him a smooch! We can all fall prey to fantasies about those we see on the silver screen, you see.
And now it was my turn.
I had become the object of desire of my very own bona-fide movie
star, whom I shall call Chad. Chad was a genuine star,
too, not just some minor actor who’d spoken a few lines in a B film.
Maybe you’re thinking Chad was ugly, and thus easy to get. I’m
not superficial in the least, but hey, let’s get real: being attractive
increases a person’s odds. Ava Gardner would probably not have
summoned an unknown Karl Malden and given him a kiss. (For those who don't
know, Karl Malden was a first-rate actor, now deceased, who possessed a bulbous
nose and an unfortunate face.) Not every lead actor is good-looking,
especially if he’s straight.
My movie star, however, was both beautiful and
completely heterosexual. In fact, he was so handsome that there were stories of
women who’d keeled over and fainted when they saw him take off his shirt on the
giant screen. Maybe a few guys, too. I presume that they fainted from lust,
although, to be fair, the theater might have been overheated.
All females know Chad’s type. You usually see him on the covers of
romance novels: that kind of chiseled, masculine man who makes any woman
passing by want to drop both her grocery bags and her pants, fling herself down
on the sidewalk, open her legs and cry, “Take me now!”
When he fell for me (hah!), Chad was definitely not a kid any more, but
still gorgeous enough to cause massive major-league drooling. His thick hair
was perfect, tousled to just the right aw-shucks degree, yet fitting for the
finest black-tie affair. His clothing revealed just a bit of bare chest here,
just a ripple of an arm muscle there. His lips seemed designed to curl around
the rim of a champagne glass, and his charming grin revealed luminous white
teeth befitting a toothpaste commercial. If he chanced to glance at a woman,
his bedroom eyes twinkled as if he knew all her secret fantasies—and liked
them.
In Chad’s most famous film, he’d had numerous love scenes with a
well-known and very beautiful actress, whom I shall call Linda.
“Chad,” I once asked him, “what
was it like kissing Linda in all those romantic scenes you had together?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he
replied slowly, a great big likeable grin spreading over his face. “The very
first scene where we were supposed to be in a clinch was when we were sitting
in a car. The cameras started to roll, so I kissed her. After the director
yelled ‘Cut,’ Linda looked hard at me, looked again, and then turned to the
cameraman and hollered, ‘RETAKE!’”
By this point, you are probably frantic to know all the finer
details of the affair I had with Chad.
The movie star.
Except that I didn’t have one.
You see, by the time I knew him, Chad was nearly 90 years old.
Granted, he was the hottest nearly-90-year-old man I’d ever met, but the age
difference was still daunting. He could have been my grandfather.
He had reached the pinnacle of his stardom during the 1940s. This
explains why women in the cinemas fainted when they saw him shirtless. Women
tended to do that more in the 1940s than they do now. Today a shirtless man
would have to be playing a guitar and screaming into a microphone to get that
kind of attention.
Chad’s Hollywood career had been cut short because he was a member of
the Communist party; he had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and no
one would hire him to star in any more films, or so he claimed.
In addition to being a Communist, Chad tended be a little quirky. He
was, for example, the only self-proclaimed nudist I have ever met. I personally
never saw him strip down, but in his younger years, he apparently frequented
nudist camps. (Which makes me wonder if Communists have nudist camps…hmm.)
Another quirk was that Chad had once been what they called a Muscle Man.
He worked out and lifted barbells long before it became popular to do so, and
it certainly served him well in his senior years. His excellent physique was
one of the reasons the producers wanted him to take off his shirt in the
movies; he was just about the very first actor who ever did that.
I’d met Chad through our mutual
friend, Bob, who happened to be my landlord in a funky little compound in
Hollywood. A group of unusual film people lived in this compound, including a
world-famous porn star, a professional Santa Claus, cameramen, actors, script
supervisors—and me. We were all friends. There was a shared central patio where
we would have picnics and parties. Chad, being Bob’s best friend, was welcome
to any event we held.
Even from inside my house, I
could always tell when Chad had arrived, because I could smell the pot. Among
his quirks, you see, my would-be boyfriend was what they call a stoner. An
inveterate pot-smoker, he proudly grew his own marijuana and he would always
light up a joint the moment he entered our patio. I personally hate illegal
drugs, and am not even all that crazy about the legal ones. Everybody else in
our compound pretty much stuck to booze to get their jollies.
Except for Chad.
Who was almost 90, remember?
He continued to smoke
pot until one eventful Labor Day, when he showed up late for one of our festive
outdoor potlucks. Squeezing into a seat next to me on the bench of the picnic
table, he silenced everyone and then he made a dramatic announcement to the group:
“Guess what, guys?”
said
Chad.
“What?” I shouted. (Chad
didn’t hear too well.)
“I’ve stopped
smoking pot!”
“You’re kidding
me!”
I said.
“Why would I be
hitting you?” he
replied, confused.
I raised my voice,
shouting directly into his ear, “You really quit?”
“Yeah, I did. I
found out smoking pot is bad for my health.”
We applauded
boisterously, and everybody fawned over him for awhile. Meanwhile, he reached
into his pocket and pulled out a big white handkerchief that contained a
strange loaf wrapped in tinfoil. Was it some kind of weird hors d’oeuvre for
the potluck?
While I was still
wondering what this foil-wrapped goody was, Chad stuck it in his mouth and took
a huge bite.
“Yup, I stopped
smoking pot,”
he continued, looking very self-satisfied and chewing voraciously. “Now I
eat it instead.”
As the 13-year-olds
say: Eeew.
Perhaps Chad had
misinterpreted the term POT-luck.
Chad and my landlord, Bob, were about the same age. Like Chad,
Bob was a vehement Communist. The two had been friends for decades and both
were deeply entrenched in the film business. Bob wasn’t a star, though. He had
only done a little acting; his main job was as a script supervisor. He had been
trained to do this by John Ford, and had worked with a long list of the giants
of film, including John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Joan Crawford and Jimmy Stewart.
And Chad, of course.
Years ago, someone had given Bob a huge paper-mache head of the actress
Bette Davis. The piece was worth a great deal of money, but Bob, being a good
Communist, made a deliberate point of not paying attention to the material
value of things.
We had a metal stake in our patio garden and Bob worried that someone
might trip and fall on it, so one day he brought out the huge Bette Davis head
and placed it on top of the stake, kind of like a protective knob.
“Bob,” I cried, “it looks like you’ve impaled Bette Davis’ head on
a pike in the garden!”
Bob had known the actress well. A strange smile crossed his face.
“Good,” he said, and walked away.
Chad and Bob were quite serious about their Communism. They used
to get together with a couple of other Hollywood geezers—a famous photographer
and a well-known set designer—and the four old men would have meetings that
involved a lot of lengthy and intense conversation, head-shaking, wine (pot for
Chad), despair, and occasional yelling.
These aging cronies, all of whom had been blacklisted to some degree or
another by Hollywood, embraced Communism with the idealism of fresh-faced
freckled Cub Scouts. I always suspected that if there were ever to be a
Communist takeover, Chad and Bob would be among the first to be lined up
against the wall and shot. Having a Communist for a landlord was very handy, however,
so I didn’t complain. Communists—at least the naïve ones—feel guilty if they
charge too much for rent, and they readily share things like appliances and
household tools. I wasn’t about to rock the boat.
Let me explain. Chad still hadn’t asked me
out. He had told Bob of his lusty intentions, but I wasn’t supposed to know
anything about his longings yet. I dreaded the day when he would reveal his
passion to me, because then I would have to reject him. For all his quirkiness
and marijuana, he was sweet and I didn’t want to hurt him.
Chad, it turns out, had been taking
prescription pills for high blood pressure. The medicine had an unfortunate
side effect. It made him impotent. He confided in Bob that he was planning to
discontinue his medication so that he could fulfill his manly duties with me.
Unfortunately, doing so would seriously jeopardize his health. What to do? It
was a dilemma.
After Chad shared his secret with Bob,
the latter naturally ran straight away to knock on the door of one of my
friends in the compound and tell her the whole story. She, in turn, came right
over to my house and told me.
This is how I learned that a movie
star wanted my body.
A week passed, and the day I’d been dreading
finally came. Chad stopped by and asked if I would come outside and sit with
him; he said that he wanted to share something with me. I walked to the patio
with a sinking heart. Rejection stinks no matter which side of it you’re on.
Bob was also waiting there. I sat between the two of them.
Chad began to court me in earnest. His way of
doing this was unconventional. As soon as I sat down, he grabbed a long, musty,
yellowing piece of paper and thrust it under my nose.
“Read this,” he demanded. Then he sat
back with an anxious sigh and waited.
The paper he handed
me must have been well over 50 years old. It had been painstakingly
mimeographed, which is the way documents were duplicated in the days before
copy machines, and it was crammed with columns of words, words and more words
that had been typed in tiny crooked print extending nearly to the edges of the
page. There were capital letters and exclamation marks sprinkled excessively
throughout the narrow columns. I’d guess that about 2,000 words had been jammed
onto that one page.
While Chad squirmed
with anticipation, I politely scanned a few of the sentences. Now, I am a good
reader. I will happily read Thackeray or Sir Walter Scott, for example, and
enjoy them. I have a volume of Melville on my night table. Trying to make sense
of this stuff, however, made my head ache. It was incomprehensible. Typewritten
letters formed shrill, ranting sentences that were both illogical and mad. The
experience was as unpleasant for my nose as it was for my brain, because the
paper beneath my gaze reeked of mildew.
When I looked up, I
saw with dismay that Chad had brought along a huge cardboard box full of
similar decaying papers. They had been stored in his garage for years. The poor
man had carried all of these tedious, tiresome manifestos to the patio in the
hope of sharing his beliefs with me. He imagined that after I read them, I
would be inspired to see politics in his way, and become an ardent convert to
Communism.
He was deluded, of
course, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Before I could figure out how
to tell Chad diplomatically that it just wasn’t going to happen, Bob reached
behind me and nudged him. The two began conversing over my head as though I
wasn’t even there.
“What’s the matter
with you? Are you f**king nuts?” yelled Bob, who did not endorse diplomacy in
the same way that I did.
He yelled because of
Chad’s hearing loss, although Bob was somewhat prone to yelling regardless.
“She doesn’t want
to read them,”
he shouted. “You’re never going to get her that way.”
“I’m never going
to get her in the hay?” replied Chad.
Close enough.
“She doesn’t want
to read them,”
repeated Bob in exasperation.
“Need them?” asked Chad.
“READ them. She
isn’t going to READ them,” screamed Bob. “Look at her. She doesn’t like them!”
“No?” Chad seemed
surprised.
“NO!” Bob shrieked.
“Oh,” said Chad
sorrowfully. “That’s too bad.”
He paused to think
for a moment.
“Well,” he finally said,
speaking over my head to Bob as though I weren’t present, “I can’t be with a
woman who doesn’t believe in the Party.”
As easily as I had
been snagged, without even saying a word, I was off the hook. Like I said, I
was saved by Communism.
Although it may have
been absurd to consider having an affair with Chad, I did enjoy him. He was
easy on the eyes, and he told good stories.
Like this one. When
he had been a muscle man, he used to own a gym. His clients had included the
movie stars Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in the days before they became
famous.
Chad fondly recalled
a time when he was giving Kirk Douglas a rubdown and, as a practical joke,
applied kerosene to Douglas’ testicles. Apparently his poor victim had run
naked through the gym, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Chad laughed and
laughed as he told that story. It made me wonder what would have happened to me
had I been naked and at his mercy.
Fortunately, that never happened, although I confess that my heart
always beats a little faster whenever I watch him take off his shirt in his old
movies.
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