25 Years Later: Bette Davis and The 6th of October

Miss Davis with one of her many beloved dogs, Tibby.

As I look back on my life, the profound significance of October 6th is truly awesome. It all began when I was just over a a year old: although unbeknownst to me at the time, October 6th, 1982 was the commercial release date of Madonna’s first single, “Everybody”. I don’t think I need to detail the impact that the first rung on Madonna’s ladder would ultimately lead to in my own life. 

Exactly one year later was the more profound October 6th for me. That was the literally awesome day when I met my newborn sister Jennifer for the first time, just before she came home from the hospital. I've been blessed to share most of my life journey with her, for she truly became my first and most defining friend. 

On October 6th, 1991, our dog Frisky came into the lives of Jen and I, soon to be joined by her equally beloved sister Chloe. And they changed us both forever. 

In the interim between the October 6th milestones that saw Jennifer and Frisky become defining parts of my time here on Earth, there was the October 6th when the whole world lost an artist and a heroine and gained an angel and a Goddess. It is no exaggeration to say that my life would never be the same. 

I refer to the October 6th of 1989, and to the death of Bette Davis.

Looking back as an adult, and verifying my theories via a calendar for 1989, I can surmise that my family was spending Columbus Day weekend on Cape Cod. We took two cars to get there from where we lived at the time, and my Mom and my sister and I left after my Dad, who arrived at the house while we were still en route. I still remember my mother getting the call on the vintage car phone in our station wagon. It was my Dad, telling my Mom to tell me that Bette Davis had died. The news must have just broken, and I can imagine that that night it would have been all over CNN, which I remember him always watching. The next morning, there was a gorgeous photograph of her face on the front page of The Boston Herald when I came downstairs for breakfast. I vividly remember that moment of seeing that newspaper and, internally, making peace with the finality of her passing. And for nearly ten years, the photo that they selected was immaculately recreated in my memories, too. But I can no longer definitively recall which photograph it was, for I went on to become such an enamored fan that that part of my memory was eventually lost among hundreds of beautiful still photos of Miss Davis that I have since laid eyes on. I strongly believe it was either the most iconic photograph used in the promotion of William Wyler's The Letter or a publicity shot of Bette as Margo Channing in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve. I have trace memories of slightly longer hair, like Margo’s, yet with her face sparkling in that indescribable way it always did during the best years at Warner Bros. Either way, she looked utterly beautiful splashed across the whole cover of one of her hometown's two biggest newspapers.

I loved Bette Davis at the time that she died, which was why my father wanted my mother to be the one to break the news to me. But I had a narrowly focused way of showing idol worship at that age, for I was apt to be intensely fixated on only one era in a person’s career. In the case of Diana Ross, my favorite singer at the time, my obsession was all-consuming and yet relegated exclusively to her years with The Supremes. I worshipped Diana, but only as I would have in the 1960s, as if her incredible solo career had not even happened. (Thankfully, I got to enjoy the rest of her magnificent career many years later!) In the case of Bette Davis, I was fascinated and in awe of who she was in the 1980s, as opposed to any decades prior. This was based largely on the impact of being introduced to her via John Hough's infamous/brilliant Disney horror film The Watcher In The Woods. I had not only not been afraid of Bette Davis, as many traumatized members of my generation apparently were, but came away adoring her and apt to rewatch the film, and her performance, repeatedly. 

My adoration of Bette Davis was also based on her priceless talk show appearances. I gather that her ventures into late-night television were always legendary, but they seemed to take on a new air of importance in the 1980s, when she did not let her unbelievably debilitating stroke stop her from electrifying TV audiences with vivid recollections and a razor sharp wit. There was a relevance to the fact that the indomitable Bette Davis should come back from suffering a double mastectomy, a stroke, and a broken hip all within a year to still be the greatest star on the planet. The stroke dramatically affected her ever-copied persona, inhibiting her oft-imitated speech and limiting her defining use of body language. But she soldiered on, proving to the public that nothing could stop Bette Davis. She unconsciously formed a whole new set of mannerisms and speech patterns after the stroke, and it was this grande dame persona that I fell in love with as a child.

The place where I fell in love with Bette was, beautifully enough, Cape Cod, where her theater career blossomed at The Cape Playhouse. It was in Cape Cod where I have the most vivid memories of endlessly rewatching The Watcher In The Woods as well as seeing Bette on TV one afternoon thanks to a late-night TV appearance that my father taped for me the night before. (Like that fateful newspaper cover whose image has dimmed in my memories over the years, I cannot say with any certainty which Bette Davis interview(s) I watched as a child, because I have seen so many since.) And indeed it was en route to Cape Cod that I learned that the incredible life of Bette Davis had come to an end.

The Cape Playhouse, as photographed in 2010 for Cape Cod Today.

About nine months after Bette died, my family and I lost our beloved Grandma Mary, an “adopted grandmother” who had been as integral a part of my and my sister's childhood as both of our biological grandmothers. Grandma Mary’s death was the first loss to hit so close to home. Seven years later, my father lost his mother, and less than two months ago, my mother lost her mother. My sister and I have since found ourselves living in a world without the physical presence of the three matriarchs of our childhood and adulthood. These three losses in many ways are the defining signposts of my personal timeline up to this point. And the loss of Bette Davis preceded all three of them. 

I had already been fascinated with the concepts of life and death and differing perceptions of reality at an extremely young age. But the passing of Bette Davis was the first time my life was consciously affected by death. I was saddened and yet neither afraid of nor confused by the death of Bette Davis. Whether because of upbringing, intuition, or some profound spiritual influence, I put emotions aside and accepted the idea of life ending with death despite, or perhaps because of, a belief in the immortal spirit. My perspective on the sharp distinction between physical and spiritual death has never wavered. I do not feel guided in this by doctrine or delusion or fear, but rather by an internal understanding that has remained with me for as long as I remember being alive. I cannot say that Bette's death fully prepared me for any of the subsequent losses yet to be endured, but I believe that my actively accepting the notion of Bette Davis in spirit has absolutely guided me in the ensuing quarter century.

The back cover of the 1962 first edition of The Lonely Life.

I suppose you could say that I have always considered Bette Davis to be the standard-bearer for all of humanity. But it was not until a decade after her passing that I actually dove into her filmography. In 1999, I read her last book, This ‘n That, saw many of her classic films, and even wrote about Bette Davis (along with Madonna and Dario Argento) for an essay that apparently helped get me accepted into Emerson College. In the mid-2000s, a number of DVD releases reignited my interest in her career and prompted my finally reading her earlier autobiographies, The Lonely Life and Mother Goddam. I ADORED both books, but it was The Lonely Life that offered an unprecedented insight into the mind and heart of an individual who was far more like me than I could ever have realized simply by watching her films or even her dazzling interviews. I feel that I reaffirmed a deep spiritual bond with Bette Davis when I read The Lonely Life at the age of twenty-four. It has since become my favorite book, and based on what I have learned in the ensuing years, I believe it offers a very strong suggestion that Bette Davis was, like myself, an individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Bette's unrelentingly honest insights into her all-consuming drive, obsessive perfectionism, constant desire to work, and lifelong struggles with personal relationships were as relatable to me at twenty-four as they still are at thirty-two. These shared traits are also part of what  lead to my being diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism. There is much discussion online, thanks to communities like Wrong Planet and one of my personal heroes, Rudy Simone, about the nuances of ASD in individuals like myself and many female Aspies who "hide it" underneath a protective veil of feigned charisma. We may never know if Bette Davis was on the autistic spectrum, but based on evidence left behind, I believe she was. And I believe that that makes her an even greater role model to millions of people just like me.

Aside from being the greatest of artists and finest of human beings, Bette Davis epitomized Joseph L. Mankiewicz's notion of "a great star". I must admit that Bette has even eclipsed Madonna as my favorite star--but Madonna is, of course, a very close second! It really is something that Bette's best films, from any given era of her career, still entertain new generations of viewers in the exact same way that they did upon their initial release. And thanks to Bette's impeccable taste and domineering influence, her best films still hold up on artistic merits, too. In her work and in her life, Bette underlined the role that a brilliant mind plays in being "a great star" versus merely "a celebrity". I take stardom very seriously because of Bette Davis. And I would argue that every culture benefits from stars who break barriers and inspire masses, which Bette Davis did in spades both during, and indeed long after, her incredible lifetime.

Thank you for everything, Miss Davis. XO

The FYI File: Honesty, Grace, and "MAD"-ness

Today marks six months since my last post, a new record for lengthy absences since I started blogging three years and three months ago. Resuming this is not “something that has slipped my mind”. It’s been on my mind constantly, and my failure to do so has illustrated the inertia and creative frustration that has dominated my life for most of 2014. Hence, a no-frills entry to bring us up to the present.

My feline son, Toby, looking especially angelic on 08/22/14.

Just Checking In

This past Spring, after I posted the clunkily titled "I Honestly Know Me: An Evaluation of an Evaluation", I found myself freaking out that I had just revealed way too much about the daily failures of my adult life and sunk into the scariest territory of all: humorlessness. At the time, I was writing down a lifetime's worth of experiences that lead to my self-diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, all part of massive preparations, several months in advance, for scheduled neurocognitive testing in July. I was reading John Elder Robison’s Be Different: My Adventures With Asperger's and Rudy Simone’s Asperger’s On The Job at the time, books that were crucial to my self-understanding and self-empowerment. I was inspired by these incredible Aspergian authors to record my own experiences and put them aside for future use in a book. I hoped that fearlessly yet humorously delving deep into my personal experiences, as John Elder Robinson and Rudy Simone had done, might just help fellow undiagnosed Aspies identify and appreciate their uniqueness, as opposed to the more commonly realized experience of suffering in silent confusion. (This is not to suggest that all undiagnosed Aspies endure such struggles: I suspect that most successful people in the entertainment industry, including nearly all of my favorite artists, are fellow Aspies.) Due to a desire to save what I was writing at the time for the potential book-to-be, I found myself without anything to say on the blog. And my drive to find something fresh to write about quickly dissipated when a close loved one was diagnosed with cancer.

In the months since, I have witnessed incredible bravery and strength and sacrifice as my extraordinary aunt has fought valiantly against terminal illness with her sister and children beside her every step of the way. It has been a truly awesome demonstration of humanity at its finest, one that I have been honored to witness. But I would still give anything not to have seen such exemplary integrity, and to instead be in an alternate reality without cancer constantly striking the world's bravest and most inspiring people. My beloved aunt continues her battle, and in the months since it began my family and I have said goodbye to a young friend who died in a matter of days after finding out he had cancer. His loss was felt the world over, for he lived and touched lives on nearly every continent. These past few months also saw the passing of my Mother's Mother. Though just a few months shy of eighty-nine years old, my grandmother's death blindsided all of us who expected her to be with us for another decade, at least. My grandmother was a deeply spiritual person, as am I, and I have felt and continue to feel her near ever since the time of her passing. But this blessed comfort does not change the radically altered landscape for all of us, and particularly my Mother, who have only ever known this world with our beloved Nana in it.

09/20/11: My mother, her parents, and their beloved dog, Blinky, on my happiest of birthdays.

I went into 2014 predicting a year that would be profound and beautiful and a happy end to seven years of bad luck that plagued me since I graduated college in 2007. I cannot say that this year brought with it the euphoria that I hoped for. But it certainly has been profound, and I cannot deny that it has been beautiful, for I have learned more about appreciating life in the present tense than I ever have before. It was not until I was sixteen years old that Madonna’s Ray of Light album/era introduced me to the notion of “living in the moment”. And it would take another sixteen years before I truly understood the vital, urgent importance of taking that approach to my and loved ones’ journey here on Earth. The moments shared with my loved ones in 2014 are among my most cherished moments of all. And each has made me realize how incredibly blessed I am.

"MAD" About Her

Despite the sadness, I would also like to celebrate how many happy times there have been in the six months since my last post. Among the most purely and unoforgettably enjoyable of these experiences was being interviewed for Matteo Maccarinelli’s MAD For Madonna, an upcoming documentary about Madonna’s passionate global fanbase. I was honored beyond words to partake in this film thanks to the fan popularity of my "Vogue Boy" video, because I knew it would give me a chance to speak from the heart about the artist who has had the greatest singular impact on shaping my creative output. 

I spent weeks preparing for my film debut, fearing how I would come across to people who had only ever seen me as the child in the video, worrying I would let them down with how I had turned out. I simultaneously feared that in my state of anxiety I might forget something important I wanted to convey, or just blank out altogether and make myself, and in turn my allegiance to Madonna, a joke. I was so worked up by the day before filming that I couldn't sleep that night. But twelve hours before the interview, I saw a shooting star overhead while outside listening to Madonna’s “Superstar”. And about eight hours prior, a single leaf fell from a tree and glided down near me as I watched the sun rise. I felt the Universe was letting me know that things would play out just fine. And indeed, they did. 

I only got about two hours of sleep before the cameras were to roll, but my adrenaline was pumping and the filming itself was even more enjoyable than I could ever have imagined. The dialogue prompted by the wonderful interviewer/co-filmmaker, Madeline Herec Poirier, yielded a number of unexpected insights that were as beneficial to my understanding of my relationship with Madonna as they were, hopefully, to the film itself. In deciding what I would wear onscreen, I unearthed my favorite Madonna t-shirt, from The Confessions Tour, which I had retired in 2010 after being photographed in it when I met my OTHER favorite living artist, Dario Argento. I opted to resurrect and immortalize this t-shirt on June 6th, 2014, an incredibly well-timed day for filming as it was exactly three years after I uploaded my childhood video to Vimeo. I’m obsessed with dates, and with fate, as anyone who’s read this blog for long enough knows. And filming my interview three years after "Vogue Boy" brought the experience full circle in the most divine way possible.

My sister Jen took this post-filming photo, perfectly capturing the elation of that beautiful June 6th!

There But For A Goddess Named Grace

Speaking of dates and divinity, today marks three months since I began to (also) worship at the altar of Grace Jones. I’d deeply respected her since I discovered her in the '90s and much later became enamored with several of her singles after I fell in love with her in Richard Wenk’s vastly underrated Vamp. But this past June 29th, I decided to finally take a long delayed, well-worth-the-wait dive into her discography. I was inspired by the artwork of one of my favorite blogs, GangsterSaysRelax.com, to start with her 1982 album Living My Life. By the time I reached the closing track, “Unlimited Capacity For Love”, which has since become my favorite, I knew I was about to become a HUGE Grace Jones fan. Ever since that fateful summer evening, Miss Grace Jones has become my most-played musical artist of 2014, dominating my use of Spotify and YouTube for the entire summer before I was fortunate enough to be gifted several of her albums and the DVD of her One Man Show for my birthday on September 20th. I was not surprised to find that the music of Grace Jones is so brilliant, but I was surprised to find that it is so spiritual, and indeed the combination has been key in making her body of work the soundtrack to an unprecedentedly monumental year in my life. This is not to suggest that I’m not still constantly listening to Madonna, Donna Summer, Diana Ross or ABBA. But if Grace has overshadowed these long-time favorites in 2014, it’s because I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for. And making up for it has been an utterly sublime pleasure.

Jump to 3:05 to witness the overpowering energy that obliterates inhibition and arouses empowerment in everyone who comes into contact with Miss Grace Jones!

Just Like Starting Over

And now, I close with a confirmation: I have Asperger’s Syndrome. 

Of course, you probably don't need me to tell you this if you’re a longtime reader of this blog familiar with the passions, obsessions, and/or writing style of "Aspies". But if you’re not, or if you’re someone like me who can’t rest easy without the validation of a medical professional, I’m happy to say that my diagnosis is official. Following up on several hours of neurocognitive testing at a top Boston hospital on July 10th, an incredible neuropsychologist told me on July 22nd that she agreed with my self-assessment and formally diagnosed me with Asperger’s Syndrome and co-morbid anxiety disorder. (Anxiety tends to go part and parcel with ASD, but my anxiety is severe enough to warrant a separate mention.) Out of respect to this incredible doctor who inspired and empowered me, I’ll withhold further details except to say that it was an entirely positive experience. Insurance challenges notwithstanding, I urge anyone who suspects they are an undiagnosed Aspie to pursue neurocognitive testing: my neuropsychologist's report was, without a doubt, the single most accurate assessment of me that has ever been written. 

I never thought that, at thirty three years old, I would be living with my family with a dusty college degree and no money, no job, no experience, no prospects, and no idea of how to change all of that. I struggle with severe impairment in executive functioning and long-hidden learning disabilities that were revealed in my testing, the combination of which, along with my anxiety, has left me reclusive, afraid to drive, and struggling to function in society as a normal adult. I share all of this in solidarity with others like me on the autistic spectrum, (once) undiagnosed adult Aspies who are, in my neuropsychologist’s words, “incredibly bright” yet unable to apply the gifts that they possess the way everyone around us seems able to.

The gift that I possess, which has kept me from being swallowed up by the inevitable depression that comes from such grave realizations, is the ability to write. For months I have felt robbed of this ability, paralyzed by medical and financial crisis and overwhelmed by fear and confusion. But after six months, I am determined to find a means of taking this gift that I have been given and utilizing it. I have to believe that I can still pull myself, my partner, and my family out of the rut I ended up in after years of living my life as an individual with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. With the support of my incredible loved ones and, I hope, a return to regularly writing for this blog, I think I might just have a shot at turning the challenges that haunt me in 2014 into the salvation that defines me in 2015.

My all-time favorite performance of my 2014 theme song:
"NEVER stop the action!"