A demon had slipped into my life, a man I would only just survive.
SIX
NOSTRADAMUS
IN MY LATE TEENS,me and my mother and a friend of hers took a trip to Paris. When Mom and I headed back to the States, her friend stayed in France for another week and went to Père Lachaise to visit Jim Morrison’s grave. She arrived to find a man lying across it while his friend took photographs. I suppose Morrison does that to people (though in my case, when I visited the grave, I knitted a scarf and drank an entire bottle of red wine. No cups). They all got to talking, and she called me a few days later to say that the guy on the grave was “the most amazing guy in the whole world. He’s beautiful.” When she came back to the States, she showed me pictures of him from magazines.
A year or so later, I was heading to Hawaii while on break fromMarried…, and the same woman urged me to reach out to this guy. He was well-traveled, and she thought maybe he’d have some ideas about where I could go and what I could do. I called him, not thinking much of it. We stayed on the phone for hours. She had been right.He was engaging, even to my mind a bit eccentric. I continued to talk to him throughout my stay in Hawaii, and those conversations only deepened when I came back. My mom even told me that when I was away, he had been over to her house to see her. She urged me to meet him, too.
“Christina,” she said, “he’s the coolest guy. He’s totally your type.”
I asked him what his plans were for Mother’s Day, and he bemoaned the fact that his mother was away. I didn’t hesitate before inviting him to join us at our Mother’s Day lunch.
That’s where it all started. How I wish I’d never extended that invitation.
Years ago, there was a Moroccan restaurant on the corner of Sunset and Stanley called Dar Maghreb. Run by Pierre Dupar, a French chef of rotund proportions straight out of central casting orRatatouille,Dar Maghreb was then the go-to place in Hollywood for special occasions, like a birthday or anniversary, or just when you felt like doing something different. The restaurant would proudly serve seven courses in its faux Middle Eastern setting, replete with colorful tiles, a fountain, and Arabic lettering on the walls. The waiters would bring mint tea to the table, which they’d pour from shoulder height to ensure that the correct amount of bubbles fizzed on the meniscus. All the while, belly dancers shimmied about, rattling their finger bells and wobbling their midriffs.
A perfect setting for Mother’s Day lunch.
We drove to pick him up—it would be the first time I ever saw him in person. He slipped into the back seat, leaning forward to kissme on both cheeks in the European fashion. I was immediately fascinated with him.
He held himself with confidence, something I found totally sexy. During the meal I kept waiting for my mother to go to the bathroom so we could be alone. He and I weren’t even talking to each other very much, but there was an undeniable energy between us. When my mom finally stepped away, he moved to sit next to me and, without a word, picked up a strawberry from the table and held it to my mouth. Yes, he really did that—he fed me strawberries, and I thought it was sexy, intriguing, and a little bit creepy.
What can I say? I was still just a teenager.
He was intoxicating. No one had ever treated me like this. At that point in my life things were starting to finally feel like they were turning around. I was maturing out of childhood and into a place where I could make decisions for myself, and the deepest traumas, though stored away in my body, were nevertheless now a decade removed.Married… with Childrenwas at its height. I was about to land my first “#1 on the call sheet” movie,Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. I’d just moved out of my mother’s house. Everything was new and exhilarating.
In the back of my mind, though, I knew I’d too often found myself in bad situations with men, situations that had caused pain and insecurity. These early loves hadn’t been abusive, but they didn’t seem to want the same level of commitment I needed. I wanted the ones who didn’t want me. I was a romantic; I felt things very deeply. My diaries are filled with longing and hope and, I’m sorry to say, disappointment. I’d fall for someone, only to realize he didn’t feel the same. My journals are littered with moments when men treated me less than kindly. Given that I already struggled with self-esteem, these “Does he love me?” relationships often made me feel evenworse. Now, though, a handsome and confident man was feeding me strawberries in a Moroccan restaurant.
That was all it took.
Within a couple of days, we started hanging out, and from there it very quickly became a Thing. The relationship had the unstoppable momentum of a steam engine, our very own steamroller.
Only a few months later, I was referring to him as “wonderful” and “my boyfriend” in my diaries, yet even then—even then!—a small, too small voice in my head was trying to get a message to my better judgment. That very same month, when I was calling him my wonderful boyfriend, warning signs were already evident.
[He] and I are still together. We have problems sometimes, but not too major… I’ve been feeling pretty fucked lately. Just about my appearance, my life. What else is new? I find myself looking at old pictures, seeing my weight then, remembering my old beaus. I miss Billy and Sebastian sometimes. It’s weird; I can’t really explain it. I mean, I love [my boyfriend] very much. But I miss the others. Of course, Billy—I love him more than I could love any other man. I don’t know why. He just means a great deal to me. And he and I will always know that one day we will marry each other. Of course, when no one wants us. But for now I’ll be young and try to enjoy my life. Before my whole perfectness manifests.
It seems so significant now, looking back, that not one month into the relationship I was a) feeling bad again about how I looked and b) fondly thinking of previous boyfriends.
Still, he was alluring in the way scumbags often are. He was talland handsome, and then of course there were the strawberries. I’ve already said that I was tragically drawn to men about whom I should have known better, but I was all too comfortable thinking I could save or rehabilitate, or more often than not just pay the way of, the guys that I dated.
Within three months we were living together. By this time he was living in LA, and his lease was up. He either had to leave his apartment or move back to Paris, so he moved in. He was away working in France for a little while, and then when he got back, he asked me to marry him, as quickly as a red flag can be waved. I felt his talons sink into me a couple of weeks after he moved in.
I was madly in love with him, but something was always off. When I was filmingDon’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,I noticed he seemed unhappy about it, jealous that my time was being taken away from him. He would call up my mom and tell her, “I don’t understand why she’s not paying attention to me.”
“Jesus!” my mom would say. “She’s making amovie. She’s thestar. The whole ten-million-dollar film is on her shoulders. Let her do her thing.”
Some days he’d come to set and pretend to be supportive, but I felt it was an act, almost like he was spying on me. Ladies, if a man starts to control your every move, get the fuck out. I didn’t. One time he even said to me, “No one is ever going to love you the way I love you.” Still, I steamrolled ahead.
At one point, I had to do a kissing scene, and I could feel his diabolical jealousy. I had seen this behavior before, when my mom was being controlled by men who didn’t deserve her. But it was still early in the relationship, and I thought he was so beautiful, so I buried my fears.
Just like withMarried…,I hadn’t wanted to makeDon’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Deadat first because it was a studio film. I wanted to do independent movies. I didn’t want to “sell out.” I thought the movie was cheesy, but then I thought everything was.
When it came out it was a huge flop, a flop that prevented me from getting jobs because right above the title was my name. It would eventually become one of the most quotable movies. I watched it recently and thought,What a great and weird little movie.All these years later, people are still saying, “I’m right on top of that.” My character was an anti–teen idol, smoking cigarettes and cussing. I still remember insisting on wearing my green Doc Martens.
But she was just not what the world wanted at that time, I think, and as a young woman in the public eye with painfully low self-esteem, I took it hard. He was the kind of boyfriend who could taste that on my skin, and he acted accordingly. Men like that don’t tend to prey on strong women, and though I’d had a tough life already, I was sensitive and open and lacking in the kind of steel it would take me years to cultivate. I was a poet, for God’s sake.
There were so many little things I felt he did to chip away at me, adding up to a relationship that left me in tatters. He didn’t like my clothes, for a start, and would tell me what to wear instead. I could feel him get angry when I was eating too much, or even just when I was eating, which was hell for someone who already had a fucked-up relationship with food and her body. I was always terrified he’d turn up on set, too. To this day there is still a set of tire skid marks on the Highland exit of the 101 in Hollywood, left when I felt like he wastrying to kill us as we got off the freeway one day. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.
