Both of Us by Ryan O'Neal Read Free Book Online Page B

it would be made into a box office smash with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. And yes, Diana and I did have a brief fling during preproduction for the film. But she killed whatever spark there was between us when she put on her diva act. I remember taking her to the airport one day. I had a Rolls-Royce at the time, and we ran out of gas. I made her help me push the car to a gas station. I thought that was funny, this big star pushing a Rolls-Royce down Century Boulevard, cars whizzing past us. She didn’t. I read her autobiography. I wasn’t in it.
    Farrah and I would travel back and forth to New York often in those early days. There are stirrings of trouble to come in our relationship, but like any couple in the grasp of romance, we ignore the clues. We make a special trip for Andy Warhol. I had met him several years earlier at a barrestaurant popular with the downtown New York avant-garde crowd, Max’s Kansas City, and to my surprise, we hit it off even though Andy was a man of few words, to say the least. I introduce Farrah to him at his legendary studio, the Factory. ABC’s
20/20
is doing a story on him and they want to film him manufacturing a portrait of a pop star. Andy asks if I’d do him a favor and persuade Farrah to pose. I tell him I will if in turn, as a kind of payment, he gives me two copies of the portrait. He’s happy to agree. One of those copies Farrah wills to the University of Texas, her alma mater. The other still hangs over my bed in Malibu. I’m currently in a dispute with the University of Texas over its ownership. We bring Tatum with us to Andy’s studio, one of our many attempts to win her over. So we’re at the Factory and Farrah’s in this little dressing room area getting ready. All Andy needs from her is a series of Polaroids. She’s taking forever so I open the door and she’s upset at being interrupted. Righteous anger. Still, her response rubs me the wrong way. We’re staying at the Pierre, and on the cab ride back I’m silent. I don’t even go into the hotel with her and Tatum. I take a walk around the block to calm down. I didn’t like being talked to as if I were a minion, especially when I’d organized the whole thing.
    When I get to the hotel room, Farrah’s drinking a bottle of soda, and suddenly I become convinced that she’s going to hurl it right at my face. I knock it out of her hand. She’s stunned. Her eyes well with tears. I storm out. Immediately afterward I feel terrible. Joanna used to do things like that, dangerous things. I had seen those weapons before. I was gun-shy. And so I overreacted, dramatically. Adding to my mortification, I ask Tatum to fix it for me, which surprisingly she does, smoothing things over with Farrah. I now realize just how severely being married to Joanna had affected me. Farrah also carried a lot of emotional baggage from her years with Lee Majors. We would both continue to be haunted by our marital histories.
    Farrah’s divorce is finalized in 1982, and as the weeks turn into months, we ease into the rhythms and routines of living together as a couple. She is living in the Antelo house. I sell my Beverly Hills home on the old John Barrymore estate to George Harrison’s manager. And Farrah and I split our time between her house on Antelo and mine on Malibu Beach, with occasional romantic sojourns to my place in Big Sur, which I’ll also sell several years later. Ted Turner will buy it. Whenever I see Jane Fonda, she always talks about how much she liked the Jacuzzi there. Farrah and I spent many wonderful nights in that Jacuzzi.
    At this point, Tatum is living in her own apartment. I recognize now that at seventeen she was too young to have that degree of independence. It’s one of my life’s greatest regretsthat I didn’t establish stricter boundaries with my children. I was one of those fathers who placed too much value on being a friend to his kids and not enough on being a parent. How I wish someone had sat me down and