Douglas - Long Way Home

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Contents

PART ONE

Caged

I am in a cage

Underwater

Only my neck and head above

I hear panic and bedlam

All around

Then I see

Glistening onyx serpentine shapes

Gliding on the water

Such deadly enticing grace they possess

Leaving thy silver wake

Infinitely kissed by the Sun

Flick of the tongue

Now it is me

That is their intention

So close I can realize the cunning death in their eyes

Calm yourself I say as they

Swirl around me

Whispering into my ears

Serpentine tongue licking at my resolve

Searching for the scent

Then a splash

Warmth surges through my body

I sense acutely the waters caress

Streaming past me peacefully

A moment

And I can see

That most elegant onyx design

Melting into the distance.

Perhaps

The redolence they sought

Was naught

In me

I remain caged

Head

Just above the waters surface

2004: Dont Gaslight Me

E ver since Mom and Dads divorce, theyve shared custody of SEstaca, their cliffside property in Spain, on the northwest coast of the island of Mallorca. Mom has it July 15 to New Years Day. Dad gets it the other half of the year.

On a breezy July day when Im twenty-five, Dad, my friend Erin, and I are eating lunch on the veranda, which is shaded with a vine-covered trellis and overlooks the sea. The woman serving lunch comes over and tells Dad he has a phone call. He leaves to take it in the bar, a good twenty-five yards away. A minute later I hear a high-pitched sound, a keening moan that is human, but I cant tell who it is. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I stand up and run toward the person, realizing finally that it is Dad. My heart drops into my stomach. Ive never heard him make that sound. Something devastating must have happened. He puts down the phone and turns toward me. Hes crying. Weve lost Eric, he says.

Eric is Uncle Eric, Dads half brother. The call was from the New York City Police Department. Someone flagged down a cruiser after finding Eric in his apartment this morning. He had overdosed and, at the age of forty-six, is dead.

As long as I can remember, Eric was battling some pretty serious demons. He was often having conflict with Pappy, my grandfather, whos been amazing to me but is a tough guy and, as I understand it, could be hard on his children. Pappy is known to the world as Kirk Douglas, the international box-office star of the 1950s and 60s, a Hollywood legend nearly as famous for his conquests (Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth) as for his illustrious career acting in movies like Champion, Lust for Life, Paths of Glory, The Bad and the Beautiful, and Spartacus . He scored three Best Actor Academy Award nominations in the process, rebelled against the studio system by starting his own independent production company, and also broke the Hollywood blacklist, hiring Dalton Trumbo to write Spartacus under his own name. In the summer of 2004, Pappy is still vital at eighty-seven, and despite experiencing a stroke eight years ago, he has now outlived one of his sons.

We all knew that Eric was gay, but he wasnt out. Its something he clearly wrestled with, and I believe was tormented by. Although I think the family would have accepted his sexuality unreservedly, he may have feared otherwise, given that Douglas men tend toward a square-jawed breed of masculinity.

Eric tried on many hats, professionally. Beyond a handful of roles (like a made-for-TV movie in which he played the younger, flashback version of Pappys character, and an episode of Tales from the Crypt, in which he played the son of Pappys character), he got little traction as an actor.

In recent years, hed been trying to make it as a comedian, and from what Ive heard, he was pretty good at it. But he was angry, and most of his jokes made fun of Pappy and Dad, known to other people as Michael Douglas. From Erics point of view, Dad, given the success hed found, should have looked out for his brothers more. Dad had tried to be supportive, going to several of Erics comedy shows, but then he had to sit there and listen to a series of jokes ridiculing him and Pappy and, most painfully, Eric himself: Theres Kirk, Michael, and me. Oscar winner, Oscar winner, and Oscar Mayer wiener.

Eric and I had a warm relationship, but he had a hair-trigger temper that could be frightening. I remember once, when I was a toddler, being with him at a convenience store, where he got into a fight and was beaten up in front of me. Dad and Mom would often say things to me like You dont want to turn out like Eric. This disturbed me on several levels. Beyond sharing a famous last name and a drug dependency, a combination that made both of us newsworthy to tabloids, I didnt think I was anything like Eric. It bothered me that they thought I might be like him. Deep down, I suppose I was most upset by the fear that in some essential way I was like him.

I feel enormous pride in our family. Its with a mix of reverence and awe that I look at the careers of both Pappy and Dad. Erics life, ruined by impossible expectations both real and imagined, was the more typical one for a stars son. Dads success, equal to if not greater than his fathers, is something that almost never happens in the second generation of Hollywood families. He has won Oscars as both a producer (Best Picture for One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest ) and an actor (Best Actor for playing Gordon Greed Is Good Gekko in Wall Street ), and has made enormous amounts of money in a career that has also included iconic films like Romancing the Stone, Fatal Attraction, and Basic Instinct . Fifty-nine and silver-haired when Eric dies, Dad remains a force in the industry.

Im sure Eric felt that pride too, but I can also relate to the pressure he felt and his struggle being a Douglas. Its strange growing up seeing your father and grandfather as giants projected on screens and billboards. Its unnerving to walk into rooms full of people who know all kinds of things about you, or think they do, while you know nothing about them. Its diminishing to be perceived mainly as someone elses son or brother, and its hard to develop a sense of yourself as a person intrinsically worthy of others respect. How do you compete with Kirk Douglas? How do you live in Michael Douglass shadow?