Read Online Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace by Scott Thorson, Alex Thorleifson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Scott Thorson, Alex Thorleifson
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It didn’t matter that my current residence had no place to keep animals; I just had to have them to love and care for—or I’d shrivel up and die.
I was fourteen then and living in a state-run home awaiting permanent placement, while the animals were in a boarding facility. Finding a permanent place for us to be together seemed like a hopeless task, but I decided to try phoning all the ranches and stables listed in the yellow pages, asking if they could take a foster kid with a horse and a dog. Halfway through the listings, I called the Pacheco Ranch, owned by David and Marie Brummet. They amazed me by saying they’d be willing to consider my proposition. The next day I hitched a ride to their two-thousand-acre spread in Marin County. With its green rolling hills and five hundred horses, Pacheco looked like paradise.
For a year and a half the Brummets were my family. I went to school, worked on the ranch, and began to put down roots, thinking I’d stay with the Brummets until I was old enough to be on my own. We shared an almost idyllic life until David Brummet was told he had cancer. His illness forced him to sell the ranch, and I was homeless again. When my welfare worker told me I’d be placed in another group home I offered an alternate plan. My half brother Wayne Johansen, a man fifteen years my senior, lived in the San Francisco area and I’d lived with him before, briefly. Wayne agreed to take care of me again. Our tie was tenuous but I grabbed at the lifeline he extended.
The next few months were difficult. Wayne made his living as a bartender, and had a wide acquaintance with California’s gay community. When I’d stayed with him before, some of his friends who were gay upset me with their propositions. Returning, with the infinite wisdom of my fifteen years, I knew more about myself and felt I could handle the gay environment.
After a couple of fumbling, adolescent sexual encounters with girls while living on the ranch, I admitted feeling equally attracted to men. In my brother’s home, I would have a chance to explore that attraction. Defining my sexual identity in the mid-seventies didn’t traumatize me the way it had Lee in the mid-thirties. San Francisco gays had come out of the closet and built a strong political base. They were in the process of becoming a power to be reckoned with in those gloriously naive pre-AIDS days.
I didn’t think that being bisexual was a fate worse than death. In fact, after I recognized it, my bisexuality didn’t seem like much of an issue. I accepted it the way I accepted being blond and blue-eyed, as part of the package called Scott Thorson. I had my first sexual encounter with a man while living at Wayne’s in San Francisco. That man is still my very good friend and trusted adviser, a part of my support system.
On the ranch, I’d decided to be a veterinarian. But I knew that goal would never become a reality if I permitted myself to become trapped in the gay lifestyle. Wayne and I came to a mutual parting of the ways, and I moved into another foster home and, eventually, to Southern California. As soon as I was settled I went job hunting and found work as a veterinarian’s assistant with a Dr. Tully, who had an office in the San Fernando Valley. He specialized in cropping dogs’ ears. I learned a lot of practical, everyday remedies from him, but cropping ears and taking care of poodles wasn’t very exciting work for an adventurous kid. By then I had decided I wanted to train animals. On the advice of a contact at Walt Disney Studios, I called Shumaker Animal Rentals.
Mr. Shumaker invited me out to Sunland to see how he and his crew did things. He had a big place where he kept forty dogs. One look and I was hooked; I thought I’d found my life’s work. From then on I went to Sunland every weekend, acting as an unpaid gofer. One day Mr. Shumaker phoned to tell me an employee had quit without notice. Shumaker was preparing to go on location with thirty dogs
I was fourteen then and living in a state-run home awaiting permanent placement, while the animals were in a boarding facility. Finding a permanent place for us to be together seemed like a hopeless task, but I decided to try phoning all the ranches and stables listed in the yellow pages, asking if they could take a foster kid with a horse and a dog. Halfway through the listings, I called the Pacheco Ranch, owned by David and Marie Brummet. They amazed me by saying they’d be willing to consider my proposition. The next day I hitched a ride to their two-thousand-acre spread in Marin County. With its green rolling hills and five hundred horses, Pacheco looked like paradise.
For a year and a half the Brummets were my family. I went to school, worked on the ranch, and began to put down roots, thinking I’d stay with the Brummets until I was old enough to be on my own. We shared an almost idyllic life until David Brummet was told he had cancer. His illness forced him to sell the ranch, and I was homeless again. When my welfare worker told me I’d be placed in another group home I offered an alternate plan. My half brother Wayne Johansen, a man fifteen years my senior, lived in the San Francisco area and I’d lived with him before, briefly. Wayne agreed to take care of me again. Our tie was tenuous but I grabbed at the lifeline he extended.
The next few months were difficult. Wayne made his living as a bartender, and had a wide acquaintance with California’s gay community. When I’d stayed with him before, some of his friends who were gay upset me with their propositions. Returning, with the infinite wisdom of my fifteen years, I knew more about myself and felt I could handle the gay environment.
After a couple of fumbling, adolescent sexual encounters with girls while living on the ranch, I admitted feeling equally attracted to men. In my brother’s home, I would have a chance to explore that attraction. Defining my sexual identity in the mid-seventies didn’t traumatize me the way it had Lee in the mid-thirties. San Francisco gays had come out of the closet and built a strong political base. They were in the process of becoming a power to be reckoned with in those gloriously naive pre-AIDS days.
I didn’t think that being bisexual was a fate worse than death. In fact, after I recognized it, my bisexuality didn’t seem like much of an issue. I accepted it the way I accepted being blond and blue-eyed, as part of the package called Scott Thorson. I had my first sexual encounter with a man while living at Wayne’s in San Francisco. That man is still my very good friend and trusted adviser, a part of my support system.
On the ranch, I’d decided to be a veterinarian. But I knew that goal would never become a reality if I permitted myself to become trapped in the gay lifestyle. Wayne and I came to a mutual parting of the ways, and I moved into another foster home and, eventually, to Southern California. As soon as I was settled I went job hunting and found work as a veterinarian’s assistant with a Dr. Tully, who had an office in the San Fernando Valley. He specialized in cropping dogs’ ears. I learned a lot of practical, everyday remedies from him, but cropping ears and taking care of poodles wasn’t very exciting work for an adventurous kid. By then I had decided I wanted to train animals. On the advice of a contact at Walt Disney Studios, I called Shumaker Animal Rentals.
Mr. Shumaker invited me out to Sunland to see how he and his crew did things. He had a big place where he kept forty dogs. One look and I was hooked; I thought I’d found my life’s work. From then on I went to Sunland every weekend, acting as an unpaid gofer. One day Mr. Shumaker phoned to tell me an employee had quit without notice. Shumaker was preparing to go on location with thirty dogs
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