Inside Out(25)
NEXT, I WENT to do my one and only play in New York, The Early Girl, off-Broadway. The part required me to run onstage completely naked, night after night, in front of a live audience. (The play centered on prostitutes at a Nevada brothel.) Clearly something in me was attracting these kinds of roles. I easily could have said no, but on a deeper level I knew that I needed to be pushed out of my comfort zone—that if I was ever going to overcome my body issues, I had to confront them head-on.
The Early Girl was playing at the Circle Rep downtown, and my agents found me an apartment at one of the first Trump apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue. I threw myself a twenty-third birthday party there, and I dared to invite Andy Warhol, whom I’d met one night at Indochine. I was amazed to read years later in The Andy Warhol Diaries that not only had Andy been to see the play, but felt that he had “got Demi Moore to invite me to her wedding.”
Emilio and I had in fact just mailed out the invitations for our wedding when a friend told me she had seen him out with someone else in L.A. He denied it, of course, but I was having a hard time trusting him: during a two-week breakup a few months before, he’d slept with an “ex” girlfriend, lied about it, and then been forced to tell me the truth when he found out she was pregnant. On my one day a week off from the play, I started going up to Boston to see a therapist who’d been recommended to me by my sponsor Patsy.
I remember the therapist saying to me after a few sessions, “Ordinarily I prefer for a patient to come to an understanding on her own. But I don’t have time to let that happen, so I just have to tell you: if you marry him the way things are right now, you’re going to ruin your life.” She suggested Emilio come in for a session. She wanted him to communicate his priorities to me directly, in person. He was resistant, but he finally did make the trip, and when he revealed his priorities in that session—you’ll be shocked to hear—I was pretty low on the list. I postponed the wedding indefinitely.
When the play had finished its run, I went back to California, but soon after I returned, Emilio went to Canada to do a film—Stakeout, with Richard Dreyfuss. I remember trying to reach him and him not answering the phone, and just knowing it meant more than that he was busy working. He didn’t want me to come up there to talk in person, either, and that’s when I thought, You know what? I’m going to stop trying to call him and call a realtor instead.
I found an adorable fifties beach house on the end of a cul-de-sac in Malibu. And then I told Emilio I was moving out. He showed up in no time with a tattoo of a broken heart, trying to get me back. I think he was one of those men, at least in his youth, who found you much more interesting once he’d lost you. But it was too late: once I’m done, I’m done.
We stayed friends, though, and I went with Emilio to the premiere of Stakeout a few months after we broke up. It turned out to be a highly consequential night in my life, because at that premiere, I met an actor who was very hot at the time, on a hit series called Moonlighting. His name was Bruce Willis.
Chapter 11
He’s all over you, like a cheap suit in the rain,” Emilio said, of the cocky, dark, and handsome guy who’d been introduced to me as Bruce Willis. Actually, I’d thought Bruce was dismissive at first. He happened to walk into the premiere at the same time I did, and he was with a friend of mine, the comedian Rick Ducommun, who introduced us. Bruce had already been nominated for an Emmy for Moonlighting twice by then (he would win the award the next month), but I didn’t watch much television and had never seen the show—my only familiarity with his work was from one of those Seagram’s Golden Wine Cooler commercials he used to do. (Remember those? He’d blow a few bluesy chords on the harmonica and wail, “It’s wet and it’s dry! My, my, my.”) We both had deals with TriStar Pictures, so I said, “I hear you have the good office at TriStar.” He replied with something short, like, “I’m never there.” My impression was, he’s kind of a jerk.
But when I saw him at the after-party at El Coyote, Bruce was suddenly much more solicitous. “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” he asked, as soon as I walked in. I told him I didn’t drink. “Well let me buy you a Perrier,” he countered. Bruce—who’d been a bartender in New York City before he became a television star—was showing off behind the bar that night, tossing the cocktail shaker in the air, the kind of thing that seemed cool in 1987 but sounds cringeworthy now, and Emilio had a point: Bruce was looking at me a lot as he went through his bar moves. He was so attentive as the evening progressed, I was stunned to find out later that he’d actually been on a date that night with another woman!
When it got late, people were going to see Rick Ducommun do a stand-up set at the Improv. “You should come! You should come!” Bruce and Rick implored me. I could see Emilio wasn’t thrilled by all the attention they were paying to me—I wish I’d been a little less thrilled myself. But the club was on my way home anyway, so I figured I’d stop by. When I got there, I could see all of Bruce’s buddies sitting at a big table. Next to them, Bruce had set a table for two, with a Perrier waiting for me. He jumped up and pulled out my chair.
I’d never encountered treatment like this before. Bruce was so gallant—in his own boisterous way, a real gentleman. When I said it was time for me to go home, he offered to walk me to my car. He was so eager about it—like a little boy who didn’t want to miss the ice-cream truck. When he asked for my number, I felt a wave of schoolgirl flutters. “Do you have a pen?” He checked his pockets and came up empty. “Don’t leave!” he said, and went skittering off to get one. Then he wrote it on his arm—a sight I’d see a million times over the years; Bruce was always writing things on his arm. But that first time, I noticed that his hands were shaking. He was so vulnerable in that moment: all of the bravado was gone.