was making from them came in handy. There I was, an unsophisticated farm boy from Illinois, suddenly immersed in the highest circles of Hollywood’s creative society. It was amazing. This is all right, I thought. I could get used to this lifestyle. Daunted though I may have been, I nevertheless seemed to fit right in. I went with the flow and saw a different guy every time I went up to L.A. Each was more influential, more famous, and richer than the last. The degree of sexual frankness was a real eye-opener. Anything and everything were regarded as the norm. Nothing was too outrageous. I attended innumerable expensive, classy orgies where the participants were all wealthy, famous, and sophisticated. And every one paid me very well for my services.
This was my first glimpse into a whole other world. I was also learning a completely new language, one that embraced the terminologies and slang words in vogue in the gay world at that time. A gay man was playfully referred to as a “jelly bean.” A man who had a preference for oral sex, especially if he had the inclination to suck on another man’s dick until he ejaculated in his mouth, was referred to as being “on the stem.” A guy who had a smaller than average penis was often amusingly dismissed as a “PTM,” which stood for “princess tiny meat.”
“Oh, don’t bother with her,” someone would say. “She’s PTM.”
Men who were obviously effeminate and who worked in department stores, especially in the ladies’ departments, were called “ribbon queens.”
“Queen” was a particularly popular word. It was most often used to describe an openly homosexual and more mature man, rather than a youngster in his teens. Although originally intended as a derogatory term for someone who was gay, no one really seemed to mind it. In fact, mature gay men were quite content to refer to one another as queens. Younger gay men, especially teenagers or those in their early twenties, were simply called “twinkies.” An older man who preferred a twinkie as a sexual partner was called a “twinkie queen.”
One of the queens that I was introduced to by Jack, or Orry-Kelly if you prefer, was William Haines. We all called him Bill. He was a dark, sensuous, good-looking forty-two-year-old guy from Virginia who had enjoyed a very successful career as a movie actor, at one point having been the country’s number-one male box office draw. Surprisingly, he had given up acting in the thirties to become an interior designer and decorator. Rumor had it that when he was still acting he had stormed out of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer mogul Louis B. Mayer’s office when he insisted that Bill give up his relationship with his male lover, Jimmie Shields, because if the public heard about his homosexuality it would have generated bad publicity for the studio.
“My happiness with Jimmie is more important than my career in your lousy motion pictures, Mr. Mayer,” Bill is reputed to have said. Well, that put a swift end to his acting career. His new life as a designer blossomed and soon Bill was at the top of the heap of interior designers in Hollywood.
One weekend Bill and Jimmie were invited to go up the coast to spend a weekend at Hearst Castle, the legendary retreat of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. They accepted the invitation provided, they told Hearst, they could bring me along with them. Hearst agreed, so, armed with another weekend pass, I rushed up to L.A. and off we went to Hearst’s splendid home in Bill’s brand new Lincoln.
Everyone who was anyone in Hollywood at the time got an invitation to Hearst Castle. If you were asked over for a weekend it meant that you had made it. It was the dream of every star, every producer, every writer, and every wannabe to be invited there. You would arrive at about midmorning on Saturday, spend the night, and then leave after tea on Sunday afternoon. Hearst himself welcomed us in the library an hour or two after we arrived and then got
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