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The House That Bisexuality Built
I’m sitting here looking out my home office into the famed Hollywood Hills of Southern California with flowering trees and grand estates on all three sides — Bette Davis’ old house across the street, Madonna’s place just over the hill under the Hollywood sign, Errol Flynn’s mansion at the top of the hill — I hear the symphony across the street from the Hollywood Bowl and think how fortunate I am.
See, I own this five-level Mediterranean San Francisco-style 1922 house that snakes high above the 39 geranium-lined steps to my front door, passing both a male and female nude statue. And sure, that seems lucky for a guy in his early 40s who merely writes for a living.
But the way I paid for this house is a painful story. I got this house because I came out as bisexual. Those in-the-know call it “The House that Bisexuality Built.”
It was on my birthday, September 1, that my Dad told me he didn’t think I was his son. Dad declared, “You don’t look like me, you don’t act like me. I want you to take a blood test to prove that you’re not my son.”
Being gay, he says, is bad enough. But bisexual? That’s absurd, that’s confusing, that’s freak show material. Anyway, it got me on talk shows.
Years after I was on the talk show circuit, my Dad wouldn’t even watch a tape of my best appearances. In one of…