I’d stick my fingers down my throat, longing for the relief of puking, but get nothing except a hacking, impotent gag. Maybe that belongs under the category of “God works in mysterious ways.” I’d never heard of an eating disorder—no one talked about such things in the late sixties. But if I’d found the ability to regurgitate all the self-loathing I’d shoveled into myself, perhaps I would have continued down that destructive highway. Luckily, I didn’t.
Instead, I suffered for days after each binge, the following morning being the worst. After sleeping ten or eleven hours, I would wake in agony, my entire body swollen and inflamed, actually sore to the touch. On Mondays, I’d go on a starvation diet of grapefruit and eggs or would eat nothing but cucumbers for a week. And when that wasn’t enough, I started visiting the famous Louise Long as well. I’m not sure what Ms. Long’s technique was called, but massage it wasn’t. In the wee hours, before my 6:30 or 7 a.m. call, I’d drive to her place in the Valley, which was always overflowing with actresses (some famous, most not) all looking to get the crap pulverized out of them before heading off to work. In the overly heated little house, Louise or one of her trained associates would move from one sheet-covered table to another and violently pound on the naked bodies of all the women who had come looking for instant slenderizing or atonement—or both. For months, my black-and-blue anatomy looked like it had been in an automobile accident, so I guess it was a good thing I wasn’t wearing Gidget’s bathing suits anymore. But it didn’t matter how much I got smacked around, or how many days I lived on hard-boiled eggs. My weekend benders were winning, and soon the press started reporting on my “baby fat,” visible to every columnist I plopped down next to during lunch. My face was so round that my bangs looked shorter.
Finally, I called the one doctor I knew, Dr. Duke, who gave me a prescription for the only solution he had to offer—diet pills. Straight Dexedrine. Now, that was a horse of a different color. I was told to take one every morning, accompanied by a maximum-strength diuretic, wait thirty minutes, and lo and behold—a jubilant, cotton-mouthed, babbling idiot who had to pee every two seconds. Hot damn… summer in the city! Nirvana. I’d found true happiness. It didn’t matter that by the end of the day I was so exhausted I could barely drive home, or that the happiness was by then nowhere in sight. Every morning I’d jump out of bed, still fuzzy from a night when my eyes never closed, and dutifully take the mud-green capsule waiting on my night table. Then I’d wait to feel the rockets fire. Five minutes and counting, four, three, two, one, and liftoff. On to the set, ready to film the day’s work.
One day, when I was doing a scene with all the other nuns, my hands were shaking so badly that I could barely think. All my focus was on the fact that I couldn’t lift the teacup from its saucer, take a sip, then put the cup back down without noticeably fumbling around. I found myself having to use both hands to lift the saucer and cup together as a unit, which made everyone look at me as though I’d lost my mind (and at that moment I had lost my mind). I couldn’t concentrate on the work, on anything except my hands. I had most definitely lost weight, because with the chemical jet fuel coursing through me all day I ate nothing, not even cucumbers. Nevertheless, I knew I had to stop. Acting wouldn’t let me travel down that road. It reached in and grabbed me, steering me away from cliffs I couldn’t see. I was an actor and that had always given me more than these chemicals ever could. It had given me a language with myself, which unfortunately at this time I was not speaking.
The Monkees television show was being shot on the same lot as The Flying Nun—on Gidget’s old stage, actually. I didn’t watch the show, but I knew who they were and the enormous appetite the country seemed to have for them. Many times, I’d spot a couple of them wandering onto my set, or I’d look up to see two of their faces grinning down as they sat on the wooden catwalk high above, legs swinging off the edge. They never seemed to be befriending me or even flirting. They treated me like I was a private joke between them, as if they knew something I didn’t, like perhaps I had a Kick Me sign pinned to my back. But I wanted them to like me, wanted to be comrades, maybe more. I wanted to feel as I did when Elizabeth Montgomery would visit, stepping through the padded vault-like door that separated our two stages, pulling up a chair and watching for a while. Or the way I did the few times I ventured into her Bewitched world, her beautiful face lighting up when she saw me coming.
One day, three of the Monkees suddenly crammed into my tiny, round-domed camper of a dressing room, located on the stage only steps from the set. Their unexpected visit must have made the two-wheeler look like a clown car, loaded to the brim with a bunch of colorfully dressed guys and a nun. They sat there staring at me, making jokes among themselves, egging each other on. Then, with his British twang, Davy said, “I’ll bet you give good head.” Uproarious laughter shook the tin room, while I sat on my hands, a stupid grin glued to my face.
Somewhere inside I had an inkling that these guys were trying to fit into the cocky suit of clothes handed to them when The Monkees went on the air, but I couldn’t see who they might be underneath. Instead I felt red in the face and began to sweat, not because of what Davy had said, but because I had no idea what it meant. I knew what a blowjob was, but I’d never heard it called “giving head.” I simply didn’t know what they were talking about. I did know I was being humiliated—or that seemed to be the desired effect, and that vocabulary I understood.
This very moment, I believe, is why I began to talk like the proverbial truck driver, slowly learning how to out-potty-mouth anyone who tried to embarrass me with sexual words or innuendos. Eventually I was able to take vulgar to a whole new level, thus winning the game of “let’s corner the girl.” But at twenty, sitting with these guys, I went blank. Couldn’t have found a witty reply if my life depended on it. So, I laughingly tried to fake it by saying, “Yes, sir. You bet,” sounding like my version of Marjorie Main. Where was the easy, funny, capable part of me? The girl I was on the set all day. I despised this stuttering, anxious person now sinking into the shabby love seat, loathed her sadness and fumbling inability, which made me sick to my stomach. It never occurred to me then that it might be their behavior that made me want to retch, not my own.
Luckily, there was a sharp bang on the door, followed by a muffled voice saying, “Hey, guys, we need you,” and off they went, asking me to visit their set, conspiratorially adding that they wanted to show me something. “You bet,” I repeated, the only two words I could get out.
During a break the following day, I boldly told the assistant director that I was going visiting, ignoring the immediate rise of his eyebrows. I wanted to take my cornette off, to let my hair down and just be the girl I was, but I knew that if I did, the hairdresser would have to twist it up again while the company waited to continue the day’s work, so I walked across the lot looking very much like the Flying Nun.