“Old” Men
During spring break, Cece went home to Los Angeles and I went tropical, spending a week and a half in the Bahamas with Rolli Miller, another roommate from Finch. She and I flew to Nassau to scan the beaches for boys, get blitzed on four-rum fruit drinks, shit-dance to the steel drum music, and tan our New York–white bodies. We flirted, albeit unsuccessfully, with two great-looking, bronzed, thirty-five-year-old bartenders who were both wearing gold studs in their ears. The ear jewelry, which was way ahead of the future eighties fashion requirement, made them seem romantic and exciting, like a couple of Caribbean pirates.
Neither of us got laid, but the experience was impressive enough for me to decide to spend my sophomore college year at the University of Miami in Florida—the closest I could get to the Bahamas. Obviously, none of my academic choices were designed to actually further my education. The most important attraction in selecting a school was how much fun might be involved. But sandwiched between Finch and the University of Miami was summertime in
HOLLYWOOD
When Cece asked me to spend a couple of months with her at her family's estate in Beverly Hills, I agreed. Since I'd spent most of my teenage years in the predictable monotony of Palo Alto, I'd never gone out with any “older” men on fast-lane dates, so Cece had to keep me on an invisible leash so I wouldn't wander off and land in somebody's bedroom. After all, this was the L.A. movie crowd; I was no longer dealing with inexperienced college boys.
The Luau, now a Mexican restaurant called The Acapulco, on La Cienega Boulevard, was one of Cece's favorite hangouts. She and I went there one night, and when I indicated an immediate interest in seeing the classic cars belonging to the older man (thirty years old to be exact) sitting next to me, Cece gave me a kind of wild-eyed warning smile. She was trying to indicate something she couldn't say out loud, and when I stood up and announced that he and I were going up to his house in the Hollywood hills, she gave me an even screwier grimace. I interpreted it as a congratulatory grin. Cece didn't stop me, but she wanted me to know that I might be out of my league with this guy. I dismissed all her facial expressions and went out into the night, actually thinking I was on my way to appreciate some antique cars.
College boys didn't try to jump your bones in five minutes, but this was a grown-up predator looking at the new young meat in town. And I was naive enough to be sucked in by the “Wanna see my Bugatti?” routine. Not three minutes after we got to his house, though, Cece showed up, all smiles and apologies. “I'm so sorry,” she said to Mr. Older Man Car Collector, “but Grace forgot that we have a private party to go to in Bel Air and we're two hours late already.” Another wild-eyed smile in my direction and this time I understood it was the “Hello, Red Riding Hood, that's not your grandmother” look. As Cece and I drove off, she explained that, yes, my new friend probably would have shown me his private car collection—as well as his privates.
Cece's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Shane, had been married a long time and kept a well-mannered relationship. Like my own parents. But unlike my household, in the middle of theirs on any given day, you might find a pet monkey in diapers swinging from the chandeliers over some drunken actress sprawled on one of the beds, crying about a fight with her ex-husband. Cece's mother, calmly wearing nothing but black eye patches, might be found lying facedown, getting the house-call treatment in the massage room. Cece always seemed to take a rakish delight in whatever was happening. I never saw her get angry, but at eighteen years old, with a pleasant and well-heeled family to rely on, what's to get mad at? Like a teenager winning an MTV trip to a backstage band party, I felt like the lucky kid who'd won a trip to Hollywood.
Jill St. John, one of Cece's friends, often joined us to make a threesome. She was extremely intelligent and remarkably beautiful, and when we went shopping at Bullock's, she demonstrated the rich-and-famous ability to seek, find, spend, and acquire. When she spotted a throw pillow she liked, she bought twelve of them, one in every color. That kind of full-sweep spending was not a Palo Alto pastime. Her house included an indoor/outdoor swimming pool, a vast array of tropical fish, and a basement filled with miniature trains. Although she was the same age as Cece and I, she was already living on her own, and unlike most young people, she managed to refrain from any debilitating excesses. She had a mind like a steel trap and could give you details on subjects most people couldn't even pronounce. Lately she's become a gourmet cook. Mr. Robert Wagner is a lucky man.
Richard Anderson, another actor friend of Cece's, was a bit older (twenty-nine?) than we were, so I considered him ancient. Cece liked them well seasoned—she later married director John Huston, who was at least thirty years her senior—but as I've sprinted through the decades, I notice that I don't even feel comfortable with people my own age, let alone those who're older. The post-fifty-five set seems deadened by something or soured by the constant intrusion of reality. I probably project that same ennui to my daughter's friends; they must be thinking, Poor Grace, the old party animal—she's sitting home again.
Another missed opportunity occurred when Cece introduced me to a very funny and not yet famous Richard Donner, future director of the Lethal Weapon movies, Ladyhawke, The Omen, Maverick, Radio Flyer, and Conspiracy Theory, and the producer of Free Willy. He lived in a small, comfortable house in one of the canyons, and I spent an afternoon with him at home, chatting. If I hadn't had that stupid he's-five-minutes-older-than-I-am-so-he-must-be-dead attitude, I probably would have jumped his bones. Happily married now, he's a great director as well as a humane human being, and in his movies he's able to both entertain and inform without compromising either goal.
Hi, Dick! You reading this shit? You wanna make a movie based on the life of an animal-loving, shotgun-toting, eccentric, upper-middle-class rock goddess? No? Okay. Just a thought.
I accompanied Cece to lots of fancy gatherings, where I loved being the only “outsider” in a room full of Robin Leach subjects. We went to a party once where I saw Julie Newmar, an outstanding example of the kind of beauty that drops your jaw. She stood talking to some people in the middle of the living room, and her bright red dress and shoes added to the Nordic Amazon shock value. Standing over six feet, she was taller than most of the men and towered over all of the women. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to be inside such a spectacular body and have a completely stunning effect on everybody within fifty feet of you at all times. There was no costume I could put together to imitate that.
But I did get to put on a showy outfit of sorts. Cece got a call for us to be “Kennedy Girls” at a Democratic party fund-raiser for JFK. We wore red-white-and-blue dresses with white straw hats and spike heels, and our function was to mingle, smile, and make the men with the bucks feel like they not only had it, but that if they gave enough of it away … maybe—?
We weren't expected to screw any of them, but we weren't told not to, either. Cece certainly didn't have to do anything she didn't want to do to get wealthy boyfriends, and with my aversion to “old” men, we both managed to go home without putting out anything more than conversation. But for Yours Truly, meeting John Kennedy, even if it was only in a long, fast-moving line of starlet types, was the high point of the evening. This was my favorite summer vacation, and to top it all off, Darlene's ex-boyfriend, Johnny Schwartz, asked me out on a date when I stopped by Palo Alto to prepare for my trip to the University of Miami.
Insignificant events can take on monumental proportions when your head is full of practically nothing.