“The two palm trees that stand next to the Sinatra house are the reasons for it its name,” I say. “This house epitomizes a style that would become known as desert modernism, but the playboy crooner didn’t want this type of house at first.No, no.Brash Ol’ Blue Eyes, whom MGM had made a millionaire with a brand-new contract, came to Palm Springs looking to escape the snooping eyes of the studio and the press following a series of romantic scandals. Palm Springs became the hot spot for Hollywood royalty in the 1940s and 1950s largely because of new clauses that were built into actors’ contracts.”
I take a breath and continue.
“After surviving the Great Depression, Hollywood studios made sweeping changes. They agreed to avert a showdown with the Roman Catholic Church by adding a morality clause to workers’ agreements, and they sneaked in the so-called ‘two-hour rule’ that mandated that talent—when in production—had to stay within a hundred miles, or a two-hour drive, of Los Angeles in case they needed them for reshoots. Where could celebrities go to avoid snooping studio eyes and paparazzi? Palm Springs! The weather was consistently nicer than Laguna orSanta Barbara, and a celebrity could slide behind a ‘Hollywood hedge’ and into a pool and keep their private lives private. Studios had such control over actors’ personal lives, public image and relationships that many gay actors started flocking to Palm Springs to be themselves. During the AIDS crisis, gay men battling pneumonia flocked here as well for the humidity-free weather and endless days of sunshine.”
Murmurs now. Always murmurs.
“The Sinatra story goes that the singer marched into E. Stewart Williams’s office wearing a white sailor cap and eating an ice cream cone and asked the architect to design a Georgian-style mansion with brick and columns—heresy in the desert. Williams, thankfully, didn’t listen. Instead, he ignored Sinatra and created renderings of a house composed of long, horizontal lines and built from nontraditional materials, a style more ‘desert-appropriate.’ It also included an owner’s suite that occupied a private wing of the house. Sinatra loved it and immediately handed over one hundred fifty thousand dollars to build it. When it was completed, the home and desert setting set the standard for postwar Hollywood glamour and resort living, including cocktail hour. Twin Palms became not only home to Sinatra’s family but also the setting for his off-screen drama: His marriage to Nancy ended in 1948 while the couple lived in Palm Springs. Ava Gardner replaced Nancy as Frank’s second wife, but the drama continued. In fact, one of the original bathroom sinks retains the crack in the basin from a champagne bottle Sinatra hurled at Gardner. He then tossed all of Gardner’s possessions onto the driveway and kicked her and Lana Turner out of the house.”
I stare at the two palms towering over the low-slung linear masterwork like two parents watching over their sleeping child.
My eyes drift to my three best friends listening to me.
How many fights have we been in? How many losses have we endured?
I think of Teddy losing John and finding him face downfloating in the pool—three bottles of champagne and an empty bottle of pills on the edge—me fighting to breathe life and hope back into Teddy again.
I can still see Sid after his family disowned him for many years, his wife remarrying, and how he would sit on the patio and stare at the mountains for weeks at a time as if they were speaking only to him in silence.
And the men that Barry has kicked out and discarded onto our driveway like Frank discarded Ava and Lana.
A house can be filled with historical significance and unparalleled beauty, but it is simply walls and a roof without love, family, struggles and stories to fill it.
My Golden Gays sense that I am staring at them—BFFs have that instinct, don’t we?—and when they look me in the eye and smile, I know that I am seen. Even if just for a moment.
“Hey!”
Someone on the bus yells, and I look up to see a man in Sinatra’s backyard giving us the finger. This house is now, sadly, a VRBO—like too much of Palm Springs—and clearly this renter paid a pretty penny for privacy, likely not realizing his home is on tour every hour of every day.
I weigh how to react, but Teddy beats me to the punch.
“Fuck you, locust!” Teddy yells, flipping him off.
Then Teddy winks at me and says, “I got your back, buddy.”
Sid
“Uncle Sid!”
“Aunt Sophia!”
Esther’s great-grandchildren rush me as I enter the Palm Springs Public Library, calling me by both my given name and my stage name.
I bend down and wrap Jack and June in my arms.
“Did you bring them?” they yell.
“Don’t I always bring some?”
I open my pocketbook and retrieve two pieces of butterscotch candy.
The kids squeal in delight—earning asssssh!from Mrs. Marquez at the circulation desk—and then hug me again before bolting toward the library’s reading room.
“Sorry about the sugar,” I say to Esther.
“Their parents tell me sugar is forbidden when they visit me and then send me pictures of them sucking down Unicorn Frappuccinos when they get home,” Esther says. She stops and eyes me dressed as Sophia. “You really are a grandma. You make me look bad. All I ever give them are reasons to see a therapist in the future.”
She eyes my pocketbook and holds out her hand. I place ahard candy in her open palm. She unwraps the candy and pops it in her mouth.
