Saturday, May 6, 2017

fiction: My Life On Hollywood Squares

I know this can become tiresome, some person's private reflections, like radar beeping across a web of B-list Hollywood personalities, but I'm in a protracted emotional  choke slam with memories right now.  I need in the worst way for people to listen.  And to care.  I need people to care about this a fuck-load.

I need to tell everyone that it was straight talk only between me and Wally Cox.   This was in the 1960s.  Two men didn't talk about things unless there was a ritual, a code word, you know, guys would keep a cheap ass wedding band in their wallets, and whip it on when some asshole was about to say you were not heterosexual.  Two guys wanted to blow each other, they'd give this hand signal.  It was no problem.  I was straight, and Wally and me didn't do the hand signal.

The four months I was a regular on Hollywood Squares were like four miles of psychic I.E.Ds on a country lane in Libya.  There were innuendos, vicious rumors.  You have to be ready for it when you wear a tawny fright wig and novelty glasses.  They made me hold a little guitar with sequins glued all over it.   So what if Wally wants to talk to some one  about the inside track on what could have been some really outstanding entertainment vehicles!  Wally was a brilliant individual.  And an outstanding conversationalist.  He was the kind of man who doesn't have to agree with you.  I admire that.   Paul Lind was the type you're always agreeing with, because he's picking up the check.

I still wear a fright wig.   The novelty glasses still release two spring loaded hollow plastic eye balls.  Unlike some famous health gurus I could name, my health care products actually work, which is why I'm wiggling close to age 100.  I sold this health potion for decades after that star dust four months I spent as a regular on Hollywood Squares.  I'm a survivor.  I will survive.  97 y/o and I can still pole vault.   And there was nothing between me and Wally besides normal guy talk.  We didn't get queer with each other.  It was innuendo. 

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