Now it can be told

There is an astonishing story in today's Salon. An 88 year old former Hollywood bartender claims that he had an affair with Spencer Tracy -- who, we learn, was gay. The bartender insists that Hollywood image-polishers concocted the story that the very married (and very Catholic) Tracy lived "in sin" (as they used to say) with Katharine Hepburn.

I was startled to discover that the studios, in the uptight world of 1940s America, fabricated and promoted the tale of Tracy's adulterous affair with Hepburn. Previously, I had been under the impression that the studios did everything they could to conceal their romance. Now we learn that the PR flacks concocted the entire story, and then falsely told the press that the concocted story was false.

Talk about devious...! Emperor Palpatine himself not have concocted so convoluted a ploy.

Feminists may not want to hear that Hepburn, a woman noted for her independence, spent 26 years acting as a beard. Not only that: She maintained the pretense even after Tracy passed away in 1967. In fact, she kept it up until her own death in 2003.

Strangely enough, she gave a detailed account of her fake love affair with Tracy in her autobiography, which was published in 1991. She maintained the lie even though her own acting career was over by that point. She maintained the lie even though she no longer had any reason to give a damn about the studios. She maintained the lie even though the studio publicists had stopped giving a damn about either Katharine Hepburn or Spencer Tracy. She maintained the lie even though telling the full, gay truth about Tracy probably would have transformed her book into one of the top bestsellers of all time.

Some of you may feel tempted to question the bartender's account. To do so is unthinkable. Anyone who doubts his word must be a homophobe.

In light of the bartender's brave revelation, the time has come for another shocker. I have decided to reveal that I once had a tempestuous 13-month affair with Whitney Huston.

It all happened a very long time ago -- and it ended well before she first achieved fame. At the time I knew her, she was a backup singer for Jermaine Jackson. How many times did I try to convince her of the obvious...? "You're far too good for him, Whitney. He should be singing backup for you."

I encouraged her to sing opera. Alas, our divergent views on this issue became a major cause of friction between us. I still think that she might have been a remarkable Isolde.

Our intimate lives together contained many moments of high drama, especially after we performed the Tantric maithuna ritual on Halloween night in the seance room of the Winchester Mystery House. The experience affected her so profoundly that she stayed curled up in a fetal position and wept uncontrollably for two full days.

I cannot say more.

Maybe one day, but not now. I'm simply too distraught.

She called me just a week ago, begging me to come back to her. She told me that I was the only man who ever made her feel like a real woman. "No, Whitney," I told her. "It's over. It ended decades ago. I've moved on. So should you. I'm glad that you've ended your pattern of destructive relationships, but what we had together is in the past."

She didn't take it well. The tragic results are known to all.

If you don't believe my claim, then you obviously must be a bigot who cannot stomach the thought of interracial romance.