Chapter 1 #12
Kit sighed. “You know I’m trying not to eat bread, Willem,” he said, although he didn’t know. Kit bit into a sandwich. “Good,” he said, reluctantly. “Okay,” he continued, putting it down, “tell me.”
And so he did, and added that while he wasn’t planning on announcing the relationship, he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise about it, either, and Kit groaned.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck. I thought it might be this. I don’t know why, I just did.
Fuck, Willem.” He put his forehead down on the table.
“I need a minute,” Kit said to the table. “Have you told Emil?”
“Yeah,” he said. Emil was Willem’s manager. Kit and Emil worked with each other best when they were united against Willem. When they agreed, they liked each other. When they didn’t, they didn’t.
“And what did he say?”
“He said, ‘God, Willem, I’m so happy that you’ve finally committed to someone you truly love and feel comfortable around, and I couldn’t be happier for you as your friend and longtime supporter.
’” (What Emil had actually said was, “Christ, Willem. Are you sure ? Did you talk to Kit yet? What did he say?”)
Kit lifted his head and glared at him (he didn’t have much of a sense of humor).
“Willem, I am happy for you,” he said. “I care about you. But have you thought about what’s going to happen to your career?
Have you thought about how you’re going to be typecast?
You don’t know what it’s like being a gay actor in this business. ”
“I don’t really think of myself as gay, though,” he began, and Kit rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so na?ve, Willem,” he said. “Once you’ve touched a dick, you’re gay.”
“Said with subtlety and grace, as always.”
“Whatever, Willem; you can’t afford to be cavalier about this.”
“I’m not, Kit,” he said. “But I’m not a leading man.”
“You keep saying that! But you are, whether you like it or not. You’re just acting like your career is going to keep going on the same trajectory it’s been on—do you not remember what happened to Carl?
” Carl was a client of a colleague of Kit’s, and one of the biggest movie stars of the previous decade.
Then he had been forced out of the closet, and his career had faded.
Ironically, it was Carl’s obsolescence, his sudden unpopularity, that had encouraged the rise of Willem’s own career—at least two roles that Willem had gotten were ones that would once have gone, reflexively, to Carl.
“Now, look: you’re far more talented than Carl, and more diversified as well.
And it’s a different climate now than when Carl came out—domestically, at least. But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you to prepare for a certain chill.
You’re private as it is: Can’t you just keep this under wraps? ”
He didn’t reply, just reached for another sandwich, and Kit studied him. “What does Jude think?”
“He thinks I’m going to end up performing in a Kander and Ebb revue on a cruise ship to Alaska,” he admitted.
Kit snorted. “Somewhere between how Jude thinks and how you think is how you need to think, Willem,” he said. “After everything we’ve built together,” he added, mournfully.
He sighed, too. The first time Jude had met Kit, almost fifteen years ago, he’d turned to Willem afterward and said, smiling, “He’s your Andy.
” And over the years, he had come to realize how true this was.
Not only did Kit and Andy actually, creepily know each other—they were in the same class, and had lived in the same dorm their freshman year—but they both liked to present themselves as, to some extent, Willem’s and Jude’s creators.
They were their defenders and their guardians, but they also tried, at every opportunity, to determine the shape and form of their lives.
“I thought you’d be a little more supportive of this, Kit,” he said, sadly.
“Why? Because I’m gay? Being a gay agent is far different than being a gay actor of your stature, Willem,” said Kit.
He grunted. “Well, at least someone’s going to be happy about this.
Noel”—the director of Duets —“will be fucking thrilled. This is going to be great publicity for his little project. I hope you like doing gay movies, Willem, because that’s what you might end up doing for the rest of your life . ”
“I don’t really think of Duets as a gay movie,” he said, and then, before Kit could roll his eyes and start lecturing him again, “and if that’s how it ends up, that’s fine.” He told Kit what he had told Jude: “I’ll always have work; don’t worry.”
(“But what if your film work dries up?” Jude had asked.
“Then I’ll do plays. Or I’ll work in Europe: I’ve always wanted to do more work in Sweden. Jude, I promise you, I will always, always work.”
Jude had been silent, then. They had been lying in bed; it had been late. “Willem, I really won’t mind—not at all—if you want to keep this quiet,” he said.
“But I don’t want to,” he said. He didn’t.
He didn’t have the energy for it, the sense of planning for it, the endurance for it.
He knew a couple of other actors—older, much more commercial than he—who actually were gay and yet were married to women, and he saw how hollow, how fabricated, their lives were.
He didn’t want that life for himself: he didn’t want to step off the set and still feel he was in character.
When he was home, he wanted to feel he was truly at home.
“I’m just afraid you’re going to resent me,” Jude admitted, his voice low.
“I’ll never resent you,” he promised him.)
Now, he listened to Kit’s gloomy predictions for another hour, and then, finally, when it was clear that Willem wouldn’t change his mind, Kit seemed to change his.
“Willem, it’ll be fine,” he said, determinedly, as if Willem had been the one who was concerned all along.
“If anyone can do this, you can. We’re going to make this work for you.
It’s going to be fine.” Kit tilted his head, looking at him. “Are you guys going to get married?”
“Jesus, Kit,” he said, “you were just trying to break us up.”
“No, I wasn’t, Willem. I wasn’t. I was just trying to get you to keep your mouth shut, that’s all.” He sighed again, but resignedly this time. “I hope Jude appreciates the sacrifice you’re making for him.”
“It’s not a sacrifice,” he protested, and Kit cut his eyes at him. “Not now,” he said, “but it may be.”
Jude came home early that night. “How’d it go?” he asked Willem, looking closely at him.
“Fine,” he said, staunchly. “It went fine.”
“Willem—” Jude began, and he stopped him.
“Jude,” he said, “it’s done. It’s going to be fine, I swear to you.”
Kit’s office managed to keep the story quiet for two weeks, and by the time the first article was published, he and Jude were on a plane to Hong Kong to see Charlie Ma, Jude’s old roommate from Hereford Street, and from there to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
He tried not to check his messages while he was on vacation, but Kit had gotten a call from a writer at New York magazine, and so he knew there would be a story.
He was in Hanoi when the piece was published: Kit forwarded it to him without comment, and he skimmed it, quickly, when Jude was in the bathroom.
“Ragnarsson is on vacation and was unavailable for comment, but his representative confirmed the actor’s relationship with Jude St. Francis, a highly regarded and prominent litigator with the powerhouse firm of Rosen Pritchard and Klein and a close friend since they were roommates their freshman year of college,” he read, and “Ragnarsson is the highest-profile actor by far to ever willingly declare himself in a gay relationship,” followed, obituary-like, with a recapping of his films and various quotes from various agents and publicists congratulating him on his bravery while simultaneously predicting the almost-certain diminishment of his career, and nice quotes from actors and directors he knew promising his revelation wouldn’t change a thing, and a concluding quote from an unnamed studio executive who said that his strength had never been as a romantic lead anyway, and so he’d probably be fine.
At the end of the story, there was a link to a picture of him with Jude at the opening of Richard’s show at the Whitney in September.
When Jude came out, he handed him the phone and watched him read the article as well. “Oh, Willem,” he said, and then, later, looking stricken, “My name’s in here,” and for the first time, it occurred to him that Jude may have wanted him to keep quiet as much for his own privacy as for Willem’s.
“Don’t you think you should ask Jude first if I can confirm his identity?” Kit had asked him when they were deciding what he’d say to the reporter on Willem’s behalf.
“No, it’s fine,” he’d said. “He won’t mind.”
Kit had been quiet. “He might, Willem.”
But he really hadn’t thought he would. Now, though, he wondered if he had been arrogant. What , he asked himself, just because you’re okay with it, you thought he would be, too?
“Willem, I’m sorry,” Jude said, and although he knew that he should reassure Jude, who was probably feeling guilty, and apologize to him as well, he wasn’t in the mood for it, not then.
“I’m going for a run,” he announced, and although he wasn’t looking at him, he could feel Jude nod.