Read Online Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace by Scott Thorson, Alex Thorleifson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Scott Thorson, Alex Thorleifson
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soon as Lee was feeling better he asked to see the wonderful nun who had given him so much faith and courage. He could describe the woman in detail, but none of the nuns in the hospital fit his description, none of them wore all-white habits.
Six weeks after he’d been taken to St. Francis, Lee was released, weighing twenty pounds less than he had on the day he’d been rushed there by ambulance. He looked like a new man. More important, he had a new view of himself and his position in the scheme of things. Despite the church’s position on homosexuality, Lee firmly believed he wouldn’t have been spared if being gay was the sin Catholic dogma held it to be. He believed he’d been saved because God, and most particularly St. Anthony, looked on him with special favor. As for the mysterious nun, nothing could convince him she wasn’t God’s messenger.
Knowing God loved him filled Lee with peace and well-being. He’d done things the church regarded as sins—sodomy, homosexual acts with multiple partners—but God had spared him anyway. From 1963 on, Lee, believing there was no sin too great for God’s forgiveness, would stop at nothing in his pursuit of pleasure.
6
When I first met Lee in the summer of 1977 I was an eighteen-year-old kid who thought, like most eighteen-year-olds, that I had all the answers. Living with Lee would eventually teach me I didn’t have any of them. I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a couple of hundred miles from Lee’s birthplace in Milwaukee, a coincidence he often remarked on. Like him, I am also the product of a broken home and, like him, I am gay. My mother suffered from manic-depression, a chemical imbalance that resulted in emotional problems, and, consequently, most of my early memories are unhappy ones. She married three times but her illness prevented her from settling down with any of her husbands for the long haul.
I have two sisters, Annette and Carla, and one brother, Jimmy, plus four half brothers and sisters: Gary, Wayne, LaDon, and Sharon. Wayne and Sharon grew up with their father, Nordel Johansen, while Gary and LaDon lived with my father, Dean Thorson. Those of us who stayed with Mother had a rough life. There were times when she’d disappear for days, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Once, when we’d been left with nothing to eat, I begged our landlady for food. She gave us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and called the authorities.
When the police came, we children were turned over to a welfare agency and Mom was hospitalized. For the next year we lived first in St. Michael’s Orphanage and then in the La Crosse Home for Children. After her release, Mom reclaimed us and headed for California to make a new start. But she was far from cured. She spent a great deal of time in California state hospitals and we spent most of our childhood moving from one foster home to another. One of them, the home of Rose and Joe Carracappa, was memorable for the love and kindness they gave. Unfortunately, my stay with them would be all too brief. My mother soon reclaimed me, and the round of brief stays with her, and then in foster homes, continued. It was a hard, loveless life most of the time. But kids survive. We went to school and did our best to support each other along the way.
Back then the state paid foster parents three hundred dollars a month to care for a child and that didn’t cover any luxuries. Foster kids soon learn to earn their own spending money. I worked at odd jobs from the age of ten. By my thirteenth birthday I’d grown tall enough to lie about my age and hold down part-time jobs.
Somewhere along the way I picked up an intense love for animals, maybe because I trusted them more than people. The happiest memories of my youth began when I bought a dog and a horse with money I’d saved. Leonardo was a two-hundred-pound St. Bernard and, like me, in bad need of a home. Beauty was a half Shetland, half Arab horse that no one seemed to want—except me.
Six weeks after he’d been taken to St. Francis, Lee was released, weighing twenty pounds less than he had on the day he’d been rushed there by ambulance. He looked like a new man. More important, he had a new view of himself and his position in the scheme of things. Despite the church’s position on homosexuality, Lee firmly believed he wouldn’t have been spared if being gay was the sin Catholic dogma held it to be. He believed he’d been saved because God, and most particularly St. Anthony, looked on him with special favor. As for the mysterious nun, nothing could convince him she wasn’t God’s messenger.
Knowing God loved him filled Lee with peace and well-being. He’d done things the church regarded as sins—sodomy, homosexual acts with multiple partners—but God had spared him anyway. From 1963 on, Lee, believing there was no sin too great for God’s forgiveness, would stop at nothing in his pursuit of pleasure.
6
When I first met Lee in the summer of 1977 I was an eighteen-year-old kid who thought, like most eighteen-year-olds, that I had all the answers. Living with Lee would eventually teach me I didn’t have any of them. I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a couple of hundred miles from Lee’s birthplace in Milwaukee, a coincidence he often remarked on. Like him, I am also the product of a broken home and, like him, I am gay. My mother suffered from manic-depression, a chemical imbalance that resulted in emotional problems, and, consequently, most of my early memories are unhappy ones. She married three times but her illness prevented her from settling down with any of her husbands for the long haul.
I have two sisters, Annette and Carla, and one brother, Jimmy, plus four half brothers and sisters: Gary, Wayne, LaDon, and Sharon. Wayne and Sharon grew up with their father, Nordel Johansen, while Gary and LaDon lived with my father, Dean Thorson. Those of us who stayed with Mother had a rough life. There were times when she’d disappear for days, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Once, when we’d been left with nothing to eat, I begged our landlady for food. She gave us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and called the authorities.
When the police came, we children were turned over to a welfare agency and Mom was hospitalized. For the next year we lived first in St. Michael’s Orphanage and then in the La Crosse Home for Children. After her release, Mom reclaimed us and headed for California to make a new start. But she was far from cured. She spent a great deal of time in California state hospitals and we spent most of our childhood moving from one foster home to another. One of them, the home of Rose and Joe Carracappa, was memorable for the love and kindness they gave. Unfortunately, my stay with them would be all too brief. My mother soon reclaimed me, and the round of brief stays with her, and then in foster homes, continued. It was a hard, loveless life most of the time. But kids survive. We went to school and did our best to support each other along the way.
Back then the state paid foster parents three hundred dollars a month to care for a child and that didn’t cover any luxuries. Foster kids soon learn to earn their own spending money. I worked at odd jobs from the age of ten. By my thirteenth birthday I’d grown tall enough to lie about my age and hold down part-time jobs.
Somewhere along the way I picked up an intense love for animals, maybe because I trusted them more than people. The happiest memories of my youth began when I bought a dog and a horse with money I’d saved. Leonardo was a two-hundred-pound St. Bernard and, like me, in bad need of a home. Beauty was a half Shetland, half Arab horse that no one seemed to want—except me.
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