“What about the movie?”
“Are you asking if it was worth it?”
“I guess so.”
“The movie was a huge hit. Didn’t make it worth it.”
“Don Adler won an Oscar for it, didn’t he?”
Evelyn rolls her eyes. “That bastard won an Oscar, and I wasn’t even nominated.”
“Why not? I’ve seen it,” I say. “Parts of it, at least. You’re great. Really exceptional.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Well, then, why weren’t you nominated?”
“Because!” Evelyn says, frustrated. “Because I wasn’t allowed to be applauded for it. It had an X rating. It was responsible for letters to the editor at nearly every paper in the country. It was too scandalous, too explicit. It got people excited, and when they felt that way, they had to blame someone, and they blamed me. What else were they going to do? Blame the French director? The French are like that. And they weren’t going to blame the newly redeemed Don Adler. They blamed the sexpot they’d created whom they could now call a tramp. They weren’t going to give me an Oscar for that. They were going to watch it alone in a dark theater and then chastise me in public.”
“But it didn’t hurt your career,” I say. “You did two more movies the next year.”
“I made people money. No one turns away money. They were all too happy to get me in their movies and then talk about me behind my back.”
“Within a few years, you delivered what is considered one of the most noble performances of the decade.”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have had to turn it around. I did nothing wrong.”
“Well, we know that now. People were praising you, and the film, as early as the mid-’80s.”
“It’s all fine in hindsight,” Evelyn says. “Except that I spent years with a scarlet A on my chest, while women and men across the country screwed each other’s brains out thinking about what the movie meant. People were shocked by the representation of a woman wanting to get fucked. And while I’m aware of the crassness of my language, it’s really the only way to describe it. Patricia was not a woman who wanted to make love. She wanted to get fucked. And we showed that. And people hated how much they loved it.”
She’s still angry. I can see it in the way her jaw tightens.
“You won an Oscar shortly after that.”
“I lost Celia for that movie,” she says. “My life, which I loved so much, was turned upside down over that movie. Of course, I understand it was my own fault. I’m the one who filmed an explicit sex scene with my ex-husband without talking to her about it first. I’m not trying to blame other people for the mistakes I made in my own relationship. But still.” Evelyn is quiet, lost in her thoughts for a moment.
“I want to ask you something, because I think it’s important
for you to speak directly about it,” I say.
“OK . . .”
“Did being bisexual put a strain on your relationship?” I want to make sure to portray her sexuality with all of its nuance, in all its complexity.
“What do you mean?” she asks. There is a slight edge to her voice.
“You lost the woman you loved because of your sexual relationships with men. I think that’s relevant to your larger identity.”
Evelyn listens to me and considers my words. Then she shakes her head. “No, I lost the woman I loved because I cared about being famous as much as I cared about her. It had nothing to do with my sexuality.”
“But you were using your sexuality to get things from men that Celia couldn’t give you.”
Evelyn shakes her head even more emphatically. “There’s a difference between sexuality and sex. I used sex to get what I wanted. Sex is just an act. Sexuality is a sincere expression of desire and pleasure. That I always kept for Celia.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that before,” I say.
“Being bisexual didn’t make me disloyal,” Evelyn says. “One has nothing to do with the other. Nor did it mean that Celia could only fulfill half my needs.”