Our new home (Bill and me)

A wonderful architect has designed and built a vacation home for us on Long Island. We are both high-level, hi-tech executives in Seattle, but need our sunbaths during the summer. Also, it's easier to fly to Europe from Long Island.

The house is shaped like an airplane hanger and is mostly underground. Image an enormous pipe pushed into the earth. Very green, n'est-ce pas? It complies with zoning regulations by not being obviously ostentatious. The only change I asked for after completion was that the concrete staircase down to the hidden underground level be ripped out, redesigned and rebuilt. They were concrete steps held up by steel cables like a suspension bridge. I wasn't walking down that thing. After Joan Crawford's husband Al Steele's accident in their two-level penthouse, I didn't want any chi-leaking stairs.

Being 6'3", a house with a sloping ceiling didn't work too well for me. Bill is short so he never thought of the limitations of such a design. He suggested that we put up beaded curtains where the slope became dangerous to my noggin. This was an excellent idea, especially since I had just published an article in "Film and Cinema Review" about beaded curtains in motion pictures. The first curtain I mention is in Otto Preminger's "Advise and Consent" a film about political blackmail. One character, sort of a male maven, answers the door of his apartment wearing a caftan. The set decorator uses a beaded curtain in the scene to indicate the character is a homosexual. Now, there is nothing wrong with caftans. I ordered mine as soon as one appeared in the "Ah Men" catalog in 1968. The next beaded curtain I explore is in "Color Me Kubrick" where John Malkovitch plays a guy who impersonates Stanley Kubrick to con people out of thousands of dollars. The con artist was gay, though Kubrick was not. Malkovitch, in his beaded curtained apartment, plays the con man with the usual limp wrist gestures he applies to all his gay roles. (Even though it was stereotypical, I enjoyed the movie). During the commentary, the director mentions that he actually met the real con artist. He said the guy didn't seem very "gay acting" at all. Duh. Finally the last film I mention is, of course, Hitchcock's "Beaded Curtain."