Excerpt: Beauty and the Beast
From “Damn Shame: A Memoir of Desire, Defiance, and Show Tunes”
Every once in a while, I get contacted out of the blue by people who knew my late uncle, Kalani. Once upon a time, I got a call from a number I didn’t know from someone I’d never heard of, an actor named David Pevsner. David said he remembered gasping when he met my uncle. I understood. Kalani was blindingly good-looking, and I can picture the kind smile he probably laid on David.
Kalani had a way of sticking in people’s memories. We’ve written about him often here. And to that body of work we’re adding an excerpt of David’s new memoir, Damn Shame: A Memoir of Desire, Defiance, and Show Tunes. It turns out there was a lot more to his story about my uncle than just the gasp. I am so grateful that he is letting us excerpt it here, but I’m more grateful that he remembered this wonderful story about my uncle.
by David Pevsner
Columbia University used to hold gay dances in the early 1980s on the Upper West Side in their gymnasium. They were open to anyone, and at twenty-four I wasn’t that far from the age of most of the gay college kids who showed up. It was the high school dance I never had, everyone joyously out and dancing and sweating and laughing. This was before dance music’s only purpose was to enhance whatever drug you were on. It was all very clean-cut and sexy without being raunchy, and Andy and I went whenever we could. Though I was not one to take over a dance floor, it choked me up sometimes to see my people, my tribe, living out loud and having a gay ol’ time.
I was standing on the sidelines one night, bouncing to the beat, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and had to lift my head up to meet the eyes of the most beautiful man I’d ever seen face-to-face, with a genuine, warm smile that not only immediately captured my heart but made me instantly erect. Dark hair, tall, masculine—a GQ model had just summoned me into his world. I stuttered a hello and moved back so we could chat and watch the dancing together.
He was older than I was and seemed to be the most mature guy in the room, handsome, put together, and sure of himself—a real Man. Though we had to talk over the music, his soft-spoken quality came through and his relaxed allure brought out the nervous little Jewish boy in me who felt unworthy. But he laughed at my jokes and never did that glancing around thing, searching for something better. When he talked to me, he talked to me. We decided to take a walk around campus. I said goodbye to Andy, who looked at me as if I had just won the Big Deal of the Day, and my Dream Man and I left.
I remember how good it felt to be outside in the cool of the evening after the sweat and body odor of the youthful dancing gays. It turned out he was indeed older, thirty-five, and indeed a GQ model, a fairly well- known one—not as famous as Jeff Aquilon, Ed Fry, and Rick Edwards (yes, I knew all their names), but he had a great career, traveling, work- ing, living the dream life I imagined whenever I saw the pretty people in magazines or walking down the street so self-assured. I wished I could be like that.
I turned around and had to lift my head up to meet the eyes of the most beautiful man I’d ever seen face-to-face.
He was so charming and so interested in what I was doing as a young actor in NYC, and it shocked me that someone so good-looking would be concerned with my world, let alone even talk to me. We chatted and wandered for a half hour or so until he had to get home for an early call next morning. His name was Kalani Durdan, but when he gave me his business card, it said nothing but Kalani. It seemed odd that it had no phone number on it, and just his first name, but professionally he went by one name, like Madonna or Cher. I thought that was so continental and cool. I gave him both my home and service numbers and we hugged goodbye.
I was hoping for a magical kiss as we parted on 116th Street, but I felt he was being a gentleman, so I didn’t push it. However, he held the hug longer than someone would have if they were not interested, so I took that and ran. He grabbed a cab, and after he got in and it pulled away, he did that final turn to wave that I love, the thing that cements the possibility that you’ll hear from him again. There was no Internet at that time, so I couldn’t go home and google the crap out of him. I got on the subway at 116th Street, the number 1 train downtown, starstruck and delirious with the way my heart felt. The possibilities. I fell in love up there at the Columbia Dance, the way I could fall so easily back then for a pretty face, and when I did—bang. Boom. Suddenly my world, no matter how dreary, became heaven-adjacent, and that night my pillow was Kalani. We cuddled and spooned, and I fell asleep about as happy as I could be.
He grabbed a cab, and after he got in and it pulled away, he did that final turn to wave.
I didn’t stray from the phone all weekend and checked in with the service incessantly, and sure enough, he called me on Monday morning to have lunch. I met him at the Westside Diner in Midtown. In the light of day he was just as handsome and appealing, but I noted a heaviness to his demeanor, though he was just as engaging and laid-back sexy as the night we met.
I don’t remember much about the conversation because he was so good-looking it was blinding, and I spent so much of the lunch trying to sound witty and important—to make him feel that dating me wouldn’t be a step down. It was kind of pathetic and I think he knew what I was unwittingly doing. Kalani just sat, lanky and slightly hunched, smiling at every desperate absurdity that came out of my mouth, making jokes that never landed, roundabout stories about auditions and classes that wandered and simply led nowhere.
Though I blushed my way through lunch, I think Kalani thought it was sweet. He gave me his number on a piece of paper. I only had that card with his name on it, so I felt more secure when I actually had his phone number in my sweaty, shaking hand.
I blushed my way through lunch.
As overwhelming as my attraction to Kalani was, I was struck by what I believed was his own attraction to me. I felt in my heart that he wanted to sleep with me, and lord knows that’s what I desired. But a couple of nights later I saw him for dinner, and as we said our good- byes, he held me close and we kissed good night, but I felt a wall had gone up and that the evening wouldn’t end with romance and sex, which I so wanted, maybe too much. I’m sure Kalani sensed my need, my insecurity, my deep desire to feel love, to give love, gigantic full-throttle love that I had stored up for just this kind of man. It could have just been a fantasy, but there was something in his kiss that told me he wanted it too, and though I was not like the perfect men he was probably used to, just a regular guy with a big nose and a ’fro, maybe he was ready to slum it a little and go with someone who was vulnerable and loving and smitten.
In a way, I felt I’d be his charity case, but he seemed to really be touched by my naïveté and my unjaded new-to-New-York aura. He was leaving the country again for work and said we’d talk before he went.
I was still hoping we were going to sleep together, and that possibility teetered on the brink until he pulled it back, got in the cab, and did that wave again. I believed that Kalani wanted me, I knew it, I felt it in my weak, mushy bones, but there was something—something off. I didn’t know what it was.
I felt I’d be his charity case.
I was in my Kalani dreamworld for the entire week. I thought about nothing else, and though it was glorious, it was also distressing, not knowing where it was going, what could break through that wall to the next level of touching that beautiful body, of feeling as close to another human being as one could. I wanted him so badly. In the baddest way possible. More bad, baddy, baddest, badaboo than I have ever wanted anyone in my life.
Kalani never returned my phone calls. I knew he was leaving for Europe at some point, so I tried to call and say goodbye. I may have been overzealous in the number of calls I made, which multiplied as time went by, because my insecurity would not let me hold back, and if there was something stupid I could do or say, I would. But I knew he felt something. He did. I’m not making this up. No matter. I got left high and dry with my heart tatted on my sleeve, exposed to the elements, and it crushed me.
I gave up the phone calls after a month or so, and I never saw him again. I tried to chalk it up to experience and a wonderful memory. I never thought Kalani was an asshole or anything for not getting back to me. As I was to learn many, many times, you can’t force love. And the person I’m going to be with is the one who loves me equally. I know that now. A relationship with Kalani was never meant to be, but I did love him, in my way. And, strangely, I still think he was falling for me a little bit.
I gave up the phone calls after a month or so.
Scott Kalani Durdan died on January 11, 1987, of AIDS. But here’s where my memory gets murky. Did he tell me he had AIDS in one of our few moments together? I don’t know if I dreamed that. And why did I feel he was protecting me from it by not sleeping with me? I sincerely believe that’s the case, that he could not open himself to loving me because he was afraid of passing it on. Back then, we didn’t know much about risk and exposure to the virus. But I don’t remember if he told me that or if I found out when I tripped on his obituary. I saw his name in some magazine with a date of death, and then lost the use of my legs for a second.
Kalani was my embodiment of the perfect man: perfectly beautiful and a perfectly lovely person. I wanted him mostly in a superficial way, but I didn’t know that back then. All I felt was love and hope and possibility—an innocence to it.
And as I write this, I’m getting a flash that maybe he did tell me, that he even said that was the reason we couldn’t sleep together. Suddenly there was a pall over us, but I wanted to tell him I still loved him, that I appreciated how he was saving me, and frankly, I was so scared of the virus back then that I knew it was for the best. If all we did was kiss each other and hold each other naked and warm all night, that would have been enough for me, but that never happened. I don’t remember it sounding like an excuse to not have sex. I really think he was trying to look out for me.
The memory of whether Kalani told me that or I dreamed it is being worked out as I write this. Andy (whose memory is better than mine) seems to remember that he did. And though I should go back and correct it if I figure it out, I won’t. I’m shaking at the thought of what’s come to me, and how sweet and noble he was, beyond his good looks. I have to stop now. I’m writing this at a Starbucks and I’ve started to cry.
David Pevsner is an LA-based actor and writer, with a little modeling on the side. His film appearances include Scrooge and Marley (as Ebenezer Scrooge), Spa Night, Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, Role/Play, and Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption. His guest starring roles on television include Silicon Valley, NCIS, I’m Dying Up Here, Modern Family, Grey’s Anatomy, Liz and Dick, Law and Order LA, and he starred in the popular web series Old Dogs and New Tricks. You can buy his book here.
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