It was a typical day for me. I got up at noon, cooked oatmeal, toast and coffee, took my pills and tended to my cowlick. While deeply into my meal, I answered the phone. It was my good pal, Chaz Bono, with bad news.
“I’m telling you before you hear it from Entertainment Tonight,” Chaz said.
“What?”
“Jennifer and I broke up.”
I spit a mouthful of oatmeal onto the still-needs-to-be-cleaned-anyway bay window. I was shocked. I thought Chaz and Jennifer Elias were the perfect couple.
It was me who suggested Chaz propose to Jen on the top of the Seattle Space Needle. It was one of three places I suggested. The other two were Madame Tassauds’ in Las Vegas (standing next to the Lady Gaga figure) and the appropriately named Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, where Chaz’s dad Sonny had his ill-fated ski accident. Chaz choose the “Needle” for what he said was a “symbolic reason.”
“I’m so sorry, Chaz,” I said while still choking. “Let’s you and I have a bender, a real guy’s night out, to drown our woes.”
“You have woes, too?”
“Sure. We all have woes, no matter our gender or what gender we choose to become,” I said in a fatherly voice. “So the mature thing to do is go out, get drunk and have a great time with women or women who were men or men who were women or whatever.”
Chaz chuckled and then said, “Okay, I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“No,” I fired back, “let me pick you up.”
I never directly told Chaz that his driving scared me, even when he was still Chastity, Sonny and Cher’s eldest child. In fact, that is when he began a relationship with Jennifer, a writer and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender activist. I went out with them a lot back then.
I guess I should have realized two things. First that Chaz changing sexes might affect the then-lesbian relationship and secondly, Chaz changing sexes would not improve his abominable driving.
We drowned our woes that night at a dozen different saloons and wound up taking two lovely ladies to introductory classes at a local Arthur Murray Dance Studio, where the instructor insisted Chaz drop a few pounds before returning.Labels: bono, chaz, cher, comedy, Cotolo, Frank, sonny
Frank Cotolo 1:21 PM
