#tod the birthday flamingo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ninzied · 4 years

Photo

i’ll be the light and lead you home when there’s nowhere left to go

hireath (n); a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past

for @heartonfirewrites. [ao3]

Being with Karen – it’s one of the easiest things that Frank has ever done.

Even before he put down the vest and showed up at her place for good – because there was no turning back for either of them after that – he had known. It was part of what kept him away for so long.

Being with Karen was everything right, and good, and Frank hadn’t believed in a long, long time that those things should even be possible for him. That they could be what he deserved.

He only half-believes it even now. But if he’s going to hell for letting himself have this, then he might as well make the most of this one small corner of light and good things until then.

Still, they have their not-so-good days. The days that try to drag them back into those dark, buried places of their past, before they had this. Before they found something else that they could not afford to lose.

There’s the date of every funeral they’ve ever been to, every loved one they’ve had to bury. There are other kinds of anniversaries, too. Birthdays. Christmas. The day Frank got married. But they all carry with them the same kind of heaviness. They all came to an end the same way.

There are more of these kinds of days than either of them would like to count – days that feel like they belong to some other life, but will never stop haunting them in the one they’re living now.

Each one comes with a static kind of silence around it.

They have their own ways of dealing. Frank rises even earlier than usual and goes for a run down the Hudson. He runs until his whole body might be on fire, and then he just keeps on going. Karen throws herself into her work; if she’s not out chasing leads, she’s hunkered down at her computer, fingers flying over the keys.

It takes some navigating, but they’ve learned how to be there for each other without overstepping – how to be gentle with all that silence, how to cradle it close without it breaking. How to let the silence know that it is not alone.

Karen has coffee waiting for him after his long morning runs – black, and scalding, just the way he likes it. She doesn’t tease him for it like she would on any other day, and every kiss that he gives her tastes just a touch bittersweet.

Frank, on his part, cleans their apartment, cooks her dinner. She’s not great at remembering to feed herself on a regular day, so on the hard ones in particular he makes sure the table she’s working at is well-stocked with actual food.

They come back to each other in the twilight hours. Before they had this, their tomorrows had always been more of the same, but now, at least – now, their tomorrows actually mean something again.

…

Their own birthdays are on the quieter side too, but it’s nice. It’s soft. It’s them.

Nothing to fuss about, just the two of them curled up on the couch and, for once, not letting the rest of the world have any say in the matter. Frank takes the day off of work, and per Karen’s request stows her phone and computer some place she won’t think to find.

They’ve always promised each other no parties – and truly, a party is not what Karen has in mind when she first approaches Curtis for something small, something quiet, this year. She’d gotten the okay from Frank to include him, and there’s a bottle of whiskey she’s stashed in the cabinet just for the occasion.

But then Curt had asked if he could bring a mutual friend, which is how Dinah winds up greeting a slightly startled Frank at the door with wine and a meat-and-cheese platter. And then the postcard to Florida that Karen had mailed months ago gets returned to the sender – hand-delivered by a tanned and beaming Amy, who also brought a pink plastic flamingo as a “housewarming” gift, and a genuinely awful Hawaiian print shirt for Frank.

“I’m never going to wear that,” says Frank before enveloping her in a tight hug.

Karen wants to ask him if this is okay – really, she couldn’t have accounted for all of this happening – but then Frank looks over at her with shining eyes, and her chest could crack open from all the love she sees in them.

“Any more surprises I should know about?” he asks her, voice gruff as he steals her into their room for a kiss.

Karen puts a hand on his chest, and says in a half-apologetic tone, “I might have texted the Liebermans last week.”

“Did you, now.” He chuckles under his breath.

“I didn’t mention your birthday, but they seem like the type to put two and two together.”

“Unbelievable,” says Frank with a shake of his head. “How’d you even – never mind.” He kisses her again, lacing their fingers together before rejoining the others.

David and Sarah show up with their kids half an hour later.

It should feel like a squeeze – it was a small apartment even before Frank moved in with her – but instead, the only thing it feels is right, having the space filled with the warmth of everyone’s laughter, and the look on Frank’s face, every time their eyes meet and he breaks out into another smile.

…

So when Karen’s birthday comes around, Frank finds himself anxious about getting it right, in a way that he hasn’t before. In spite of what he’d told her he wanted for his own birthday, she’d done him one even better, and it was, hands down, one of the best birthdays he’d had in a long, long while.

He wants that for her, too. After all the shit that she’s gone through, after being the one there for him, the least he could do is make this day a really damn good one for her.

“This is exactly why we made those rules,” Karen has to remind him, when he ends up ruining the French toast in his agitation. He scowls at the remains before tipping them into the trash.

“Yeah? Rules say something about not being able to make my girl some goddamn toast?” Frank groans, reaching his hand out to hers and tugging her up against his side.

“No,” says Karen, tilting her head at him with a smile. “Rules say not to worry too much if you burn it.”

“I’ll try to remember that for next time.” He wraps his other arm around her, nudging their foreheads together. “Happy birthday, Karen.” He kisses her soft and slow, and she makes a small humming sound when they part.

Her hand comes up to touch his cheek. “Hey,” she says. “This is all I want, Frank.”

He sighs, head dropping down to his chest for a moment. She cups his face in both her hands, until he’s finally looking back up at her.

“Okay?” she says.

“Okay,” he says, and means it.

He ends up taking her to a little corner café for breakfast instead. Afterward, they stroll hand-in-hand down by the river before checking out one of the animal shelters nearby. They almost walk out with a dog, and make a pact to come back after they’ve found a bigger place to live next year.

They meet Nelson and Murdock for a late lunch on one of the piers, and by then Frank’s feeling fully at ease. He even has a good time with them. He finds Nelson amusing, not that he’d ever admit it, and even Murdock’s grown on him a little over the years.

Karen looks happy. And that’s all that really matters to him.

Frank’s at the bar getting them another round of beers when he hears the phone ring. Karen’s. He recognizes the ring tone. But he doesn’t think anything of it until he’s turning around with their drinks, and he sees the look on her face as she stares down at the screen.

Shit.

Karen excuses herself from the table, and makes her way down toward the water until she’s just out of earshot. Frank sets the tray down, watching her back tense as she talks, and nods with a pained kind of smile that breaks his fucking heart.

He should’ve seen this coming.

There’s a reason why Frank stashes her phone out of sight every year. It’s a reminder of the people who don’t call on their birthdays – the people who can’t, and the people who won’t. Or the people who send one lousy text a week late, and can’t be bothered to answer when she tries calling back.

Murdock’s face is expressionless, but Frank knows he’s listening in on the other line.

“That her piece of shit dad, isn’t it.” His hands are fisted so tight that it feels like the only way he can loosen them up is to just fucking hit something.

Murdock remains silent, which Frank takes as confirmation enough.

He stalks over to Karen in time to hear the tail end of her conversation.

“Sure, Dad,” she’s saying, with that same strained smile that makes it look like she’s halfway to bursting in tears. “I can make a few phone calls, see what I can do.”

Frank stops abruptly in front of her, his whole body seething. Is he seriously calling to ask for a favor? The shitbag even remember it’s her goddamn birthday today?

“Give me the phone.”

Karen holds out a placating hand, eyes steady on his. They’re watering slightly, but she musters up a small, genuine smile for him. He steps closer, swaying forward a little. His vision’s gone a little blurry too.

“C’mon, Karen. Let me talk to him.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” she says into the phone, and he hates how small that man makes her sound, how young and just – so fucking delicate, like the wrong word from him might break her. Like the right one could make some part of her whole again.

“Karen…” If he could just give him a piece of his mind—

“Bye.” She hangs up, and stares at the phone until the screen blanks out. She heaves a deep, shaky breath, looks over the railing, and then, almost in slow motion, lets go of the phone in her hand. They watch it tumble down to the water, where it slips out of sight with a splash that probably only Murdock could hear.

“Guess you won’t be able to make those calls after all,” says Frank after a moment, and it startles a watery laugh out of her, eyes bright as she looks at him with more gratitude than he’ll ever deserve.

“Not today,” she says, pressing the heel of her hand to one cheek and swiping away the moisture there.

“Not today,” Frank agrees, voice low and firm and final. But then she’s looking back out at the water, something distant clouding up her expression, and he feels a fresh, hot guilt churning around inside his stomach. “I’m sorry, Karen. I—”

She turns and slips her arms around him, burying her face into his shoulder.

He wraps her up tight, cradling the back of her neck and making soft shushing sounds to her as she starts to cry.

…

They’re curled up on the couch later that night. Frank’s not much of a baker, but he’d tried his hand at a cake, which hadn’t turned out nearly so bad as the French toast from that morning. What’s left of the cake now is on the coffee table in front of them, plus a stray crumb or two that he thumbs away from Karen’s bottom lip before planting a couple of kisses there.

“Thank you,” she tells him, and he knows she’s not just talking about cake.

Frank shakes his head. “I didn’t…”

“Stop.” She puts a hand on his mouth. He noses a kiss to the pad of her finger. Her eyes are still red-rimmed from earlier, but she hasn’t shed a tear since. He thinks she’s one of the strongest people he’s ever known. “You did,” she tells him. “You do.”

“Not enough.”

“It’s everything.” She snuggles up close. “And what I say goes. Don’t forget, it is still my birthday for another twenty-three minutes.”

He breathes out a laugh in her hair. “And after?”

“After,” she says simply, “is another tomorrow with you.”

His throat closes up, and it’s all he can do to just kiss her again for a moment.

He holds her gaze when they part, finger stroking over her cheekbone. “You’re everything, to me. You got that?”

Karen bites back a smile. “I think I have some idea.”

And for the next twenty-three minutes and counting, he proceeds to make doubly sure that she does.

#kastle #kastle ff #kastlenetwork #kastledaily

106 notes · View notes

mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

Text

Goodbye to the Sigh Guy: A Tribute to Tab Hunter, 1931-2018

When Tab Hunter was at the apex of his stardom in the Fifties, virtually every aspect of his career and life was under the control of a Hollywood studio system that determined everything from the roles that he would play to his very name. As a result of this, he had a few years of fame before he was inevitably pushed to the side for a new wave of hot young things ready to take his place. And yet, it was the very things about him that the system sought to repress—such as a sly, self-effacing sense of humor and his homosexuality—that helped breathe new life into his career a couple of decades down the line. Now that he has left us, three days before his 87th birthday, Hunter will be remembered not just as a pretty face with an admittedly memorable name. He'll also be celebrated as a trailblazer whose accounts of his experiences as a gay matinee idol in Hollywood at a time when such things were unheard of helped pave the way for acceptance.

He was born Arthur Andrew Kelm in New York City on July 11, 1931 and, following his parents divorce a few years later, moved to California with his mother and older brother. After taking his mother’s surname of Gellen, he competed as a figure skater and even joined the Coast Guard at the age of 15, though he was soon discharged once his real age was discovered. The turning point in his life came when he made the acquaintance of actor Dick Clayton, who suggested that he take up acting as well and who later introduced him to agent Henry Wilson. Wilson, who specialized in guiding the careers of actors whose talents were, more often than not, secondary to their looks—his clients included the likes of Robert Wagner, Guy Madison and, most famously, Rock Hudson—signed him on despite his lack of acting experience and even gave him his soon-to-be-famous stage name. He made his screen debut with a tiny role in the film noir “The Lawless” (1950) and had his first lead role two years later with “Island of Desire” (1952), a soapy romance in which he played a Marine stranded on an abandoned South Pacific island with an older nurse (Linda Darnell). The film wasn’t much but it was a minor hit back in the day for reasons attributed almost entirely to the fact that he spent much of the running time bare-chested. Over the next couple of years, he appeared in such programmers as “Gun Belt” (1953), “The Steel Lady” (1953) and “Return to Treasure Island” (1954) and also made his first stage appearance in a production of “Our Town.”

Hunter’s first truly notable film performance came in 1954 when he was hired to play the key supporting role of Robert Mitchum’s younger brother in William Wellman’s frontier-based psychodrama (and future cult favorite) "Track of the Cat" (pictured above). Yes, I am aware of the potential absurdity of casting Mitchum and Hunter as brothers, but it actually works surprisingly well. Hunter more than holds his own in it acting against the likes of such veterans as Mitchum and Theresa Wright. At this point, Hunter was sufficiently hot enough to earn him a contract with Warner Brothers that first saw him playing a small part in the John Wayne war drama “The Sea Chase” (1955) and then wooing another older woman, Dorothy Malone this time, in “Battle Cry” (1955). Both films were among the top-grossers of the year and the studio decided to promote him to leading man status by co-starring him with Natalie Wood in a pair of films, “The Burning Hills” and “The Girl He Left Behind.” He even transferred his screen stardom to the music world with the hit song “Young Love,” which was #1 for nine weeks in 1957, and the #11 charting follow-up “Ninety-Nine Ways.” His singing success was so great that Warner Brothers studio head Jack L. Warner forbade Dot Records, who Hunter had been recording for, from releasing an album he had cut because of his contract and established Warner Brothers Records specifically as an outlet for his music.

During all of this, Hunter’s personal life was beginning to become a source of some controversy within the industry. In 1955, the scandal sheet Confidential ran an article about a 1950 disorderly conduct arrest that also included numerous innuendos regarding the actor’s sexuality. (Ironically, the article ran because Wilson arranged with the magazine to print that in exchange for keeping a story about the more-popular Rock Hudson buried.) This revelation did not have any discernible effect on Hunter’s rise but it did open up gossip about whether he was gay or not—if he was, that would have effectively killed his career right in its tracks. To combat this, the studio publicity department went into overdrive to convince the public that he was as manly as can be, hyping up non-existent relationships with such women as Wood, Debbie Reynolds, future co-star Etchika Choureau and Joan Perry, the widow of Harry Cohn. There were even rumors of impending marriage with the latter two but while all of this was supposedly happening, he was in the middle of relationships with the likes of Anthony Perkins and figure skater Ronnie Robertson.

1958 would prove to be the apex of his career. He reunited with William Wellman to star in “Lafayette Escadrille,” in which he played an American pilot who goes to France to fly for the country during World War I—when preview audiences objected to his character’s death, the ending was reshot so that he lived. He followed that up with a role as Van Heflin’s hot-headed son in the Western “Gunman’s Walk,” a part that he would cite as his personal favorite. His next film would prove to be one of his most notable, the big-screen version of the Broadway musical hit “Damn Yankees” (pictured above) that saw him playing Joe Hardy, the magical incarnation of a middle-aged man who has sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his beloved Washington Senators, with his help, to beat the New York Yankees for the pennant. Hunter was the only major member of the cast who was not part of the original stage incarnation and indeed, he would later complain that director George Abbott (who made the film along with Stanley Donen) was more interested in replicating what he did on stage than in making it a movie. Perhaps as a result of this, Hunter gets a little bit of the short shrift (especially with the removal of a couple of his songs) in the end product. Still, Hunter more than holds his own in a film that is a reasonably solid film version of a stage classic.

After a couple more films, including the war movie “They Came to Cordura” (1959) and the romantic drama “That Kind of Woman,” in which he co-starred opposite Sophia Loren for up-and-coming director Sidney Lumet, Hunter elected to end his contract with Warner Brothers in order to get better offers on his own. This proved to be a mistake as he now had no studio with an interest in promoting him and newer stars like Troy Donahue were being groomed for the same heartthrob roles over which he once held sway. After failing to win the lead in the film version of “West Side Story,” he moved to television with “The Tab Hunter Show” (1960), a sitcom featuring him as a hip and swinging bachelor that had middling ratings and was cancelled after a single season. For the next couple of decades, he found himself making guest appearances on such shows as “Combat!,” “The Virginian,” “Cannon,” “McMillan & Wife,” “Forever Fernwood” and “The Love Boat.” He also found himself appearing in such second-tier films as “Operation Bikini” (1963), “Ride the Wild Surf” (1964), “Birds Do It” (1966), “Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood” (1976) and the immortal “Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold” (1979). He tried changing things up a couple of times but these efforts led to nothing—he appeared on Broadway in the Tennessee Williams play “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” in 1964 but it lasted only five performances and his attempt at shattering his image by playing a sexually dysfunctional psycho killer in “Sweet Kill” (1972) was a dud that is notable today only for marking the directorial debut of Curtis Hanson. He had a funny bit in the dark comedy “The Loved One” (1965) and was good in the Western “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” (1972) but at this point, it seemed as if his career was destined to be stuck in a rut of crummy TV movies, forgettable features and the dinner theater circuit.

And then, true redemption and reinvention finally came Hunter’s way in the unexpected form of John Waters, best known then for the cheerfully demented underground cult films as “Pink Flamingos” (1972) and “Female Trouble” (1974) that he made in collaboration with the force of nature known as Divine. His next project, “Polyester,” was going to be an overt spoof of the Fifties-era soap operas made by the likes of Douglas Sirk. For the role of Tod Tomorrow, the handsome hunk who sweeps unloved and ignored housewife Francine Fishpaw (Divine) off her feet, Waters hit upon the idea of casting an actual star from that era in the part. Considering the notorious nature of Waters’s previous efforts—this was his first project aimed at a broader audience—signing on for such a thing would have been regarded as a huge risk, especially since this would be the first time that Waters had ever worked with a “real” actor. Nevertheless, Hunter took on the part and was pretty brilliant in it, demonstrating a flair for comedy and self-parody that he rarely was allowed to show in his movie star heyday. Not only that, he and Divine actually managed to generate a kind of chemistry between that helped to further sell the story. The idea of hiring Hunter may have seemed like a gimmick at first but it proved to be a genuinely winning and effective one and the end result is arguably Waters’s best film to date.

Although not a smash hit, “Polyester” got a lot of attention for Hunter and this was parlayed into a string of roles, many of which also goofed on his former image. In “Grease 2” (1982), he plays substitute teacher Mr. Stuart and leads the now-infamous “Reproduction” musical number—the film is bottomlessly horrible (though still preferable to the even-worse original) but that sequence is one of the few moments when it actually comes to life. That same year, Hunter then turned up in the silly mad slasher spoof “Pandemonium” and then reunited with Divine for “Lust in the Dust” (1985), a Western comedy that he produced and which was directed by Paul Bartel (and not Waters, as many have assumed). The movie is pretty silly and nowhere nearly as good as “Polyester” but he gets to goof of the Man with No Name image of Clint Eastwood (his former “Lafayette Escadrille” co-star) and he and Divine are still fun to watch, especially with the addition of Lainie Kazan to the mix. He and Divine would turn up again in the thriller “Out of the Dark” (1988) and he would also appear in the horror film’s “Cameron’s Closet” (1988) and “Grotesque.” His last feature film was “Dark Horse” (1992), a gentle family drama about a girl and her horse that he also wrote the story for.

Then came the unexpected third act of his career. In 2005, he, along with co-author Eddie Muller, wrote his autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential, in which he acknowledged that he was gay and described the lengths to which he and the studio went in order to keep his true sexuality completely under wraps. At the time, such revelations were still considered to be shocking, especially coming from someone who was still alive, and the book became an instant best-seller. The book also became the basis for the acclaimed 2015 documentary of the same name that was produced by Hunter’s longtime partner, Allan Glaser, and which featured interviews with the likes of Waters, Eastwood and Reynolds, among others. The end result, like the book, was a fascinating portrait not just of Hunter but of the studio system that spawned him and then spat him out when it was done with him. And yet, Hunter seemed to bear no particular grudge against the industry and would turn up as a talking head in a number of documentaries on the history of Hollywood in his later years.

Was Hunter a great actor in the conventional sense of the word? Probably not, though to be fair, he was rarely given a chance to do much more than look handsome. However, he did have a flair for comedy that he was unfortunately not really given a chance to demonstrate until long after his heyday. His name will always instantly invoke a style of filmmaking that has long since passed, and it will also be remembered among members of the LGBTQ community for his struggles within the industry. It may be a cliche to say but in this case, it is true—the passing of Hunter really is the end of an era.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2NCRvZR

0 notes