... onlythreechairs.
If you don’t know anything about television, set design or blocking, here’s a short lesson: Blocking is a collaborative but carefully choreographed plan between a director and actors for the physical movement that occurs during a performance.The Golden Girlswas taped before a live studio audience. This means—as with the live theater I produce with my friends—that an actor cannot be seated with his or her back to the audience. Thus, there can only be three chairs so those seated can be seen by the audience. Bea Arthur—the tallest and the one whose facial reactions to her castmates’ conversations were TV gold—was always seated in the middle. The others rotated, with the fourth member always standing nearby or entering/exiting the kitchen.
All of which meant that a fifth cast member clogged the kitchen.
Coco was cut.
And no one ever knew he was missing.
Except the young actor who portrayed him.
He went on to audition for hundreds of roles, big and small, for TV and film. He auditioned for thousands of commercials. He auditioned for infomercials. He auditioned for walk-on roles and spots as corpses on crime shows, but his career ended before it even started.
As an out gay actor during a time in Hollywood that didn’t embrace such honesty, either he was considered a bad omen for being cast out of a successful sitcom, or he would open hismouth to utter a few words and immediately be typecast in the minds of casting agents as a gay man in an industry where gay roles didn’t yet exist.
His entire life became an endless reel of, “Thank you! NEXT!”
As a result, Coco went loco.
He—quite literally—turned the tables on all those who turned him down.
Professionally, that is.
Hollywood’s rich “straight” men—producers, directors, actors, screenwriters—who always said “No!” to Coco during an audition in the light of day were the ones who always said “Yes!” to Coco at night.
So Coco took names.
And pictures. Along with some grainy video.
He was paid quite nicely, ironically, as an actor to not say a word but rather to keep his mouth shut and disappear.
Then Coco—like so many stars before him—slinked into the desert, where he could live behind a hedge and sunglasses in a cloak of anonymity, warm days and cold cocktails merging into one, a place where young men were looking for older men to take care of them, and where Coco could continue to see himself as he once was—young, unlined, innocent, filled with hope—in the faces of the men he devoured at night like a vampire.
And then one summer day many years later—quite by accident—Coco got a second chance to start over with (ah, the irony!) two new men “of a certain age”: his therapist, Dr. Doolan, and one of Dr. Doolan’s clients.
Hold your horses here: It might have been hot (temperature wise), but it wasn’thot.
On a sweltering Tuesday, Coco arrived on time for his appointment, but the door to Dr. Doolan’s office—a bougainvillea-drenched casita overlooking a pool and a low-slung 1930sSpanish home with a terra-cotta roof—remained closed. Coco took refuge in the shade. While he waited, he heard a deep, dramatic, sarcastic voice booming inside the casita—a voice that sounded so familiar and yet so triggering—and he sneaked to the door and put his ear to it.
Is that, Coco thought, the voice of my former costar, Bea Arthur?
Did the cosmos conspire to bring us together again?
Was the nasty Hollywood gossip true? Was Bea a lesbian who found her way here to the scorching heat of the desert to melt away her facade and find her truth like me? I mean, she had taken up the cause of LGBTQ+ youth homelessness of late and been an outspoken advocate.
The door suddenly opened, and Coco stumbled inside. He had not made such a hammy pratfall entrance since he was cast as a Cylon robot onBattlestar Galacticaand was killed in the show’s opening, falling through the entrance of a spaceship.
A very tall figure simply stepped over his body and—as the shadow exited the casita—turned and said, “You’re one chromosome away from being a potato. Grow up! I’m not that interesting!” The figure stopped. “Actually, I am.”
Coco looked up. It was a man who looked and sounded much like Dorothy Zbornak.
As he walked away, he said, “I’m Teddy, and, yes,Coco, I’ve seen every episode ofThe Golden Girls. And if you were that bad an actor, I can see why they cut you.”
At our meeting that day, after I talked about Teddy’s resemblance to Bea, Dr. Doolan told me I suffered from Peter Pan syndrome.
“You are an adult who—like so many gay men—are trapped in childhood,” he said. “You have difficulty growing up and taking on adult responsibilities because you never got the childhood acceptance or experienced firsts—first date, first kiss, first love—that everyone else did. Now you want it back, and youbecome trapped in a fantasy world—even for a few moments—that is not real.”
Dr. Doolan offered an idea: “What if you staged a performance of the show that ruined your life as a way to deal with your long-term anger and depression over losing a career-defining role? A way to, essentially, grow the hell up once and for all and perhaps meet some nice men your age who could become the friends and role models you desperately need?”
