Babylon Confidential: A Memoir of Love, Sex, and Addiction by Claudia Christian, Morgan Grant Buchanan Read Free Book Online Page B

my room in the S&M den and moved into a beautiful, spacious apartment on Hayworth Avenue where the Golden Age gossip columnist Sheilah Graham had once lived with her lover, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The great novelist had been in poor health, in part due to alcoholism. After he suffered a heart attack, his doctor advised him to avoid exertion, so he moved in with Graham to avoid climbing the two flights of stairs at his Laurel Avenue apartment. Fitzgerald died in Graham’s apartment soon after.
    Jeff Conaway, who I’d later star with in Babylon 5 , played my lover on Berrenger’s , and Anita Morris, who was a big-name Broadway star, played my southern mother. She was a very sexy redhead with an incredible body, and in the show we were both having a relationship with Jeff’s character. For the first time in my life, if someone asked me what I did for work, I could honestly proclaim, “I’m an actress. I’m on NBC every Wednesday night at nine . ”I started buying beautiful things to furnish my apartment. No more leather straps and masks! I was living alone, I had a career, I was making money. It was heaven. Now I felt that I’d arrived in Hollywood. I was living the life I’d always dreamed of.
    I’d hang out at Spago and Nipper’s in Beverly Hills and Helena’s in Silver Lake. One night I went out to a club called Tramp at the Beverly Center and found myself at a table drinking with Rod Stewart and nightclub entrepreneur Victor Drai, who would come in and out of my life. I met his wife when I was coming out of the bathroom that night. I recognized her immediately as Kelly LeBrock, one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was on the cover of Vogue , had starred in The Woman in Red with Gene Wilder, and was about to start shooting Weird Science . She pushed me back into the bathroom stall as I was exiting, locked the door, pinned me up against the wall, and kissed me on the mouth. It was the first time I’d been kissed by a woman, and it was one of the sexiest moments of my life. We went back and sat with Victor and Rod and carried on as if nothing had happened. It was our little secret. My heart was pounding as Kelly smiled seductively at me across the table.
    Kelly and I are still friends to this day. I made pot brownies for her brother when he was dying of lung cancer and went to his memorial service at her home. Kelly is a strong, beautiful woman and a survivor.
    We’ve both had the misfortune to star in a movie with her ex-husband, Steven Seagal. I played the part of a federal agent in Half Past Dead and discovered firsthand why Kelly had filed for divorce.
    It turned out that my teenage fears of an industry filled with misogynistic bastards were unfounded. I’ve worked with only a few assholes over the course of my career, and Steven Seagal was one of them. He was convinced I was a lesbian, because I wouldn’t sleep with him. Instead of reading his line, “Let’s get in the helicopter and kick some ass!” he’d say to me, “Do you like it up the ass?” His other inspired reinterpretations of the script involved wanting to know if I liked pussy, if I fucked my brother, and if I was into threesomes. The definitive action star, Seagal would sit in his trailer, chowing down on pizza and fried chicken. He refused to jog or do stunts or even be around a running fan for the helicopter scenes. His close-ups had to be tightly framed to crop out his double chin and the “hairline” of his obvious toupée.

    It was 1984 and I was nearing my nineteenth birthday when Berrenger’s came to an end, and I had the idea that I would do some classical theater in between television jobs. I won the role of Lady Percy in Henry IV at the adorable little Globe Playhouse in West Hollywood, but the instant I went into rehearsals my agent called to tell me I’d been cast as the ingénue in a Bob Hope movie that also starred Don Ameche, Frank Gorshin, and Yvonne De Carlo. I was conflicted. I wanted to do the movie, but