When you die you pay the biggest price for fame. —Wayne Newton
Wayne Newton, who considered himself pleasantly and robustly handsome in a way that reflected his relative virtuousness, considered the possibility that his impulsive decision to cut a $13,000 check for a fellow former child star, as well as his willingness to let her pour out her life story and tears on his shoulder, was not entirely scrupulous, but he was beyond the point where he could ask her to stop and would have to, as they say, play it as it lays.
“My mother… she wouldn’t let me be in The Exorcist. She told me that it would ruin me. She said that once you vomit split-pea soup everywhere and your head spins around and you float around the room, you’re never going to be anything but a freak. And I guess she was right, you know? Because Linda, she played a bunch of crazy girls: we were in The Exorcist II together—isn’t that funny?—I mean, she was in Chained Heat. People always ask, ‘Can you imagine how things would be different if you’d been Regan?’ but when you think about it, we both dated rock stars—she dated Rick James, can you believe it? Isn’t that messed up?—and we both got arrested for drugs. I don’t know—I don’t think it would have been different, actually. But now she’s the girl puking pea soup everywhere, and she always will be, and people will always think of me as the girl from Diff’rent Strokes. I think I’d rather be the girl from Diff’rent Strokes, right?”
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He looked back and realized that he would not be just be touching a freckled, sunny Valium addict and adult-video store robber, but also the totality of the Dana Platos he had in his head, which included a brace-faced 14-year-old embracing Gary Coleman, and that it would be impossible not to view this young woman as anything except a psychosexual montage of Hollywood starlets, a thought that made him frankly sick to his stomach and quelled any interest he had in actually trying to make time with her. It didn’t, however, solve the problem of her presence and her immediate future with regard to Wayne Newton.
Wayne thought about the time he retired to his suite in the Aladdin after a particularly grueling show—three costume changes and a 14-minute patriotic medley during which he played five instruments, to close a personal performance for a group of D-Day veterans—and had turned on the TV to see his nemesis, Johnny Carson. Most people would turn on The Tonight Show to wind down; Wayne turned it on to get his ire up. Johnny had been making insinuations about Wayne’s sexuality throughout the years and tonight, a drunk, tired Wayne Newton was in the mood to be pissed off.
“No,” Wayne said. “I’m here to beat Johnny Carson’s ass.”
