HEIGH-HO, WeHo!

Helsinki can wait. So can Dublin, Lisbon, Sydney, The Great Wall, Machu Picchu and the Serengeti. Even Minneapolis is on hold. (There’s a “Mary Tyler Moore Show” museum there, right?)

I recently wrote about the growing appeal of a gaycation due to my being so isolated where I live. Now I’ve gone and done what I thought I’d never do. I’ve booked a summer vacation in West Hollywood.

San Francisco would be nicer, but I have another reason for choosing a destination with “Hollywood” in its name. I have completed screenplays and television spec scripts that need to get in the hands of Steven Spielberg, Ryan Murphy and Chuck Lorre. I need agents to aggressively woo me. How wonderful to have Emma Thompson and Ben Affleck negotiating for me to collaborate with them on their next writing projects!

Dream big, right?

You see, I’m not just delusional about finding love, I’m dreaming like a sixteen-year-old of overnight success in the entertainment industry. (I just happen to be 3 sixteen-year-olds rolled into one. Sometimes you have to spin that silly age number.)

While awaiting that momentous day when I find the love of my life AND I’m signed to CAA, I can continue to write, work out and reconnect with a few L.A. friends I am still in touch with after moving nineteen years ago. I’m also attending the 3-day summer conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), an event I attended three years ago and found to be massively inspiring. (I also have several picture book, middle grade and young adult manuscripts at various stages of completion.)

Regardless of what happens (or doesn’t happen) during my month just off Melrose, the change of venue should provide creative renewal and a bigger picture point of reference for the coming year when I am back in my scenic, oh so quiet regular environment.

Just booking the trip has triggered a sense of renewal, a twinge of hope and something to look forward to beyond a way of living that has become a comfortable rut.

Perhaps I will have a more updated view of what it means to be gay and I may discover cultural references more current than “Will & Grace” and Andy Gibb. Or maybe I’ll just find a kindred spirit who spouts off favorite moments involving Jack & Karen (& Rosario). Maybe he’ll even just want to be my everything.

As my first true gaycation is still in the anticipation phase, anything can happen.

THE SOLID GOLD CRUSH CONNECTION

I have always been a big fan of pop music and I recall watching shows like “American Bandstand” and “The Midnight Special” in the ‘70s. In 1980, “Solid Gold” premiered in syndication and I often watched Dionne Warwick host the show on Saturday nights, a testament to my wild high school days.

Thankfully, I had more of a life when I headed off to university, but I did stumble upon the show a time or two and I sometimes stuck with it until a commercial break. What made me linger?

It wasn’t so much the videos, the occasional “live” lip-synched performance or new host Marilyn McCoo. It wasn’t even the show’s featured distinction, the Solid Gold Dancers, which Wikipedia describes as wearing “revealing costumes” and performing “sometimes borderline risqué dances.” No, I completely missed any purported titillation. Instead, I found myself rekindling my crush with co-host Andy Gibb. By 1981, Gibb had strayed from being a radio and teen magazine darling. We didn’t know of his downward spiral at the time. On the television screen, he still looked fine and I would have pulled out clumps of Victoria Principal’s Jhirmack’d hair in order to be his everything. I’d been smitten since his first hit and those photos of his frosted blond locks.

Sadly, Gibb only lasted for one season with the show. Just when I was ready to shake the show, along came another pop pinup as co-host: Rex Smith. Who were the “Solid Gold” producers and how did they unlock my grade school Crush Chest?

Smith was even hotter than Gibb. How did he NOT become a superstar?! I loved his first single, “You Take My Breath Away” and the photo jacket for the 45 proved to be a purchase bonus. That hair! Those chiseled cheekbones!  I don’t think I ever got so pathetic as to watch the TV movie from which the song came, but that may have been solely due to the times.  You had to either watch something when it aired or you missed it.  No VCR, no TV movie section at a video store.  (A check online shows that the movie never went to video or DVD.  Shocking.  Where is the uproar, America?)

My Rex crush lasted for most of his fifteen minutes of fame.  Yes, I even bought his only other charting single, his remake of “Everlasting Love”, a duet with Rachel Sweet.  (I shouldn’t admit it, but I would sing her part, after imagining booting her out of the recording studio.  Nothing personal, Sweetie. All I can say in my defense is, when you’re a closeted queer, your sexual maturity is stunted at, oh, let’s say the sixth grade level.)  Despite the Rex appeal, my “Solid Gold” drop-bys no longer made it past Phil Collins doing his best Diana Ross impression. I’d gaze at Rex’s hair and his clothes (his body, that is),then turn off the TV to get ready for some crazy college shenanigans, beginning with a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris and a basket of fried zucchini and followed by a 2 a.m. sugar rush at a pancake house packed with octogenarian Shriners. Oh, you think I’m exaggerating, but my college years were more risqué than anything those Solid Gold Dancers could shimmy up. Yep, the Rex fix had waned.  You can only have your breath taken away for so long. 

CRUSH OR CRUSHED?

A month ago, I read a post on This Gay Relationship about first crushes. An entertaining read. I moved on.

But something lingered. When was my last crush? Can't recall. I also don't remember the last time I had a case of the hiccups. Maybe some things disappear when you hit manopause.

The ex-gay movement would jump all over the fact that my first crushes were women. There was perky/cutesy/funny "That Girl" Marlo Thomas (with a deep, raspy voice), sweet-voiced Karen Carpenter and all-out sexy Daphne of Scooby Doo fame. (On second thought, I don't think that gives the ex-gays anything to go on.)

The way I blathered on, Olivia Newton-John and I could have been something. (Oh, Sandy, it was me, not Danny, you were hopelessly devoted to, right?)

But then I started to become a little too fixated on The Hardy Boys. Not the books (okay reads, but no need to read the whole series), but the TV show. And not Shaun "Hey Deanie" Cassidy, but Parker Stevenson. Oh, that hair! (Justin Bieber, this is how you work a brush and a dryer!) Around that time Andy Gibb just wanted to be my everything. Yep, more hair. Later, I later crushed on Billy Campbell, Timothy Daly and that guy from "The Nanny" You can see why I'm so excited that big hair is back.

Celebrity crushes are always amusing...and harmless. Sure, I'd suffered through too many half hours of listening to Fran Drescher's grating voice but it was surface irritation at best. Real life crushes can be more exhilarating and more, well, crushing.

One reason I may be single is that I cannot communicate with someone to whom I'm attracted. That may be chuckle-smile funny in the sitcom world, but it's rather stupid and completely nonproductive in life. Can I flirt? No. Can I make eye contact? Not a chance. To look and be spurned or entirely ignored,...I've rarely allowed myself to risk it. Apparently, a guy must read my telepathic messages.

In the last two weeks, I've glimpsed two crushes I had from when I moved to Vancouver in the mid-'90s. The first was a hairdresser--go figure--who worked at a trendy salon on Granville. I went to him for months, sweating in the swivel chair and pretending it was the cut I was sneaking glimpses of in the mirror. Finally, I called him at work one day, keeping a towel by my side to blot the outpouring of nervousness. I did it. I asked him out. And he sweetly shot me down. I was absolutely crushed. I had to switch hairstylists. The humiliation was too great.

As I passed him on the street on my way to IGA, I could tell he remembered me. Probably not my name, but recognition enough. His mouth dropped oh so slightly. Yes, he hasn't aged well and I still frequently get "you look the same" (big hair and all). It was a satisfying moment.

The second crush was a guy who worked out at Denman Fitness, my old gym. For six months, I dared to try making sneak peeks. While I had nothing to show for all my reps on the bicep curls, I managed to build up my glancing stamina, enough so to catch him smiling that gorgeous smile my way. I think my return smiles hit my shoes most of the time.

On the evening before I was to head off on an extended six-week vacation, a mutual friend, tired of all my drooling and pining, stopped the guy on the street and asked if he'd go out with me. Embarrassing, yes. But it worked! Too bad the date couldn't happen right away. I had more time to dream unrealistically about my potential soulmate.

We did go out upon my return on the Thursday before Labor Day. And the date went well. We agreed to meet up for tennis on Labor Day Monday. Alas, he never called. I checked that phone dozens of times. Yes, it was plugged in. Yes, there was a dial tone. I later learned that my Prince Charming went to a circuit party that weekend and fell in lust with a party boy from Chicago.

All that time. All that hoping. I could only take solace with the aid of an old crush.

I'd long forgotten my circuit-boy-tainted man, but then a guy on this season of "The Bachelorette" held an uncanny resemblance. I knew that smile, that hair, those eyes. And I gasped when a photo of my big gay crush appeared in the business section of The Vancouver Sun. He'd been promoted to vice president of something or other. Alas, he still looked fine. Another slap from a crush from the past.

No more crushes? Maybe that's a good thing. (Maybe I should've stuck with Daphne.)