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Family
He used to think of himself as a cool, dark god, yet it didn't hurt him to take money out of my wallet or my dad's. No one would challenge him. At school they called him the mercenary and I the merciful.Walt had taken up fencing and judo at eleven and his mellifluous voice gave him the part of Abe Lincoln in jr. high, Hamlet in high school, Macbeth and M. Butterfly in college.
Business and travel bored him, but he used others to get him where he wanted to go. He met Suzanne, daughter of a media mogul in acting class and married at nineteen.
Walt's spirituality was meditation and methadone because he slowly became heroin addicted as a result of his high living.
He used to call me every Sunday morning, never talked to my parents whom he felt were beneath him. When he would win a marathon or swimming meet he never gave my parents any claim to honor. I put a picture of Walt with a laurel on his head in my wallet.
"How are you, big guy?"
"I entered a swimming competition last Saturday, but dad said my lips were blue and I was giving him a heart attack."
"Run away."
That seemed Walt's only advice to me. After going to the high school where I was always compared to Walt by the swimming coach, the track coach, the judo master, I visited Hollywood to see Walt who had a part in a gladiator movie.
I got a sense of satisfaction when he won over others in the arena. Why? It was just a movie.
Suzanne wanted to have children, but Walt told her when they eloped that he would never have them. Suzanne's father was angry because he wanted her to have someone to carry on his name. His only son Greg was gay and became a producer for a New York sitcom and offered Walt a role on his weekly show. I think Greg always had a crush on Walt, because he told him he wouldn't take any calls when Walt made a guest appearance on a soap opera at two o'clock. Greg used to call Suzanne and ask for Walt's schedule every day, and wanted to represent him.
Being a young writer, Walt invited me out to the West Coast again with the promise that Greg wanted me to write a pilot script about inner city high school youth and their romantic explorations.
I met Greg, who was stocky and had the face of a moppet, and he just stared at me. I knew it was Walt he was seeing, and I felt uncomfortable.
"I'm Brian. You can call me The Bri; everybody does."
"Oh, wow. Are you Gemini?"
"I guess so."
I realized Greg wanted compliance and his intuitive intelligence took over any small talk.
In the limo he offered me a joint, and put his arm around me. I knew I had another brother.
Two weeks of writing and a new feeling of success. Greg would call me continually at all hours of the night, more than Walt, and when Greg and his wife took us both out to Spago's he was ecstatic. Greg wore an oversized sweater, perhaps to look smaller and younger; and demure brunette Suzanne her usual string of pearls. Walt lent me his cufflinks.
Greg was always somewhat histrionic, theatrical, reminding me of the son of a high priest of Palestine who wanted to become a Ben Hur. I got a flash of it and told him, and the laughed so much he almost choked on his gin and tonic.
"Our Bri has a wonderful sense of humor, don't you think so, Suzanne? After he graduates high school in a few months, he's going to live out here."
"How do you know that?"
"I can wish and tell, Brian."
Maybe I blushed, but I didn't look sheepish. A whole new life was opening up for me. I could almost feel it, when Greg offered a toast to me.
"To the new Orson Welles."
Walt put down his glass slowly. "Why don't you ask the kid what his plans are?" He was drunk. Greg interrupted him.
"He knows his life is in good hands, don't you Brian?"
"I do."
"He sounds like he's making a wedding vow."
Suzanne laughed. "You know what your old man says," she explains in a forced Yiddish accent, "Everything is family."
Greg would interrogate me lightheartedly about every intricate detail of Walt's life, especially about his sex life, which I really knew nothing about. Walt was his obsession, like so many of the public and press. I was even interviewed by People.
Greg decided that I would finish my project and high school out here. "Forget the badlands," he said.
The TV series went off without a hitch; even Suzanne's old man was impressed and offered me a chance to write scripts for Hollywood.
But there was something sad about Walt now. He was always stressed out, his life and marriage activities
arranged for him by publicity agents, and he resumed his drug habit.
We were wading in the water at Venice Beach on a cool, cloudy afternoon. Greg had let his sandy hair grow out quite a bit and he took me by his aesthetically veined arms.
"Kid, I'm losing it."
"But I'm writing a script with you as the superstar."
"What's it about, Bri?"
"You're a fighter."
"That's been done before."
"No, here you play a man in the ring who is unsure of himself."
"Kid, is that what you see in me? Gimme a break."
"I used to see ambition."
"Mm, yeah."
"Out here in Hollywood I've been picturing everyone wearing robes and togas in the Roman Empire. I picture Suzanne's dad as the emperor, his son Greg as the heir apparent, Suzanne as a royal wife."
"And who am I?"
"We are both willing slaves."
"Oh, and is this the rise or fall of the Roman Empire?"
"Oh, it will be a slow decline."
"Kid, you watched too many sword and sandal pictures. So do you really like it out here, Bri?"
"It's a blast, but I'm only seventeen."
"Have I aged much?"
"No, Walt."
"I'm dissipated for twenty-six. When I'm not high I'm very low. Suzanne said I should see a shrink."
"Do you love her?"
"I only love myself. You can quote that, if you and Greg want to collaborate on a biography of me."
That was the last we ever saw of Walt. I stayed on in Hollywood, first with the hangers-on of Walt's memory and then as a researcher, biographer of my brother's life. For his sake, I'm still family.
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