In our dream, we are having a big, splashy dinner party.
Tom Cruise is there — and so are Keanu Reeves and Jake Gyllenhaal and Orlando Bloom and — in an odd blip of the ole dream logic — Clay Aiken is there too.
Oddly, there are no women at this party. Odder still no one is put out by this.
Oh wait, there’s Jodi Foster, arriving late, and right oh her heels, sweet, heart-faced Desperate Housewife Marcia Cross, looking for all the world like the cat that ate the canary. Perhaps the two are together. We do not know because right now all eyes turn to our guest of honor who has just risen from his chair at the head of the table to make a speech.
A murmur of apprehension circles the room because our guest of honor turns out to be Sir Ian McKellen (above) — the beloved Gandalf of the Lord of the Rings saga — and he could say, well, just about anything to make this crew uncomfortable. Didn’t he once introduce himself from the stage of the Gay Games as "Hi, I’m Sir Ian McKellen, but you can call me Serena"?
Serena was a nickname he wasn’t suppose to know about. It had been circulating among catty fellow-thespians ever since he made history in 1990 by being the first man to be knighted who was — well, not gay certainly — but publicly, vocally, and politically out of the closet.
McKellen had come out two years before on the BBC during a debate over an anti-gay amendment in Parliament, which sought to deligitimize gay households by denying them the status of being identified as families — in intent, strikingly similar to the current "marriage" amendment in this country. Though the amendment passed (to be repealed in 2003), McKellen continued to be a high-profile warrior in the fight against legalized homophobia (as this battle between Gandalf and an ancient fire-and brimstone monster nicely mirrors)
Now Sir Ian is tapping his glass with the stem of his spoon and the guests do their best to settle down:
"By the time I came out, I was in my late 40s," he begins. "And I was fed up with worrying about what other people thought, and confident enough in my career to suspect that it wasn’t going to make any difference at all.
"I was absolutely wrong."
With a start, we realize we are hearing the exact copy we were reading right when we drifted off! But wait, what is he saying? He came out and his career ended!
"I became a better actor, and my film career took off in a way that I couldn’t have expected.
"You can’t lie about something so central to yourself without harming yourself. Acting, in my case, is no longer about disguise. It’s about telling the truth, and my truth is that I’m gay. I’m very happy for people to know that, and then I can get on with telling the truth about the character that I’m playing.
"That’s why I can say to other actors: if you really want to be a good actor and a successful one, and you’re gay, let everybody know about it."
It’s hard to read the reactions of the other guests as a heavy pall descends upon the room. Whitney Houston, who must have come in late, scratches her wig with a long, glittery fingernail as she looks determinedly into her sparking water, while Ricky Martin, who apparently had been out in the jacuzzi because he’s dripping wet in a near-nude Brazilian thong, massages his right shoulder. The silence deepens as a smiling Sir Ian looks from one face to the next, expectantly, happily. Finally Tom Cruise breaks the tension. Brimming with amusement, as if he’s about to tell a joke, he begins" You know just the other day, Katie and I…"
But, damn, we wake up at that point and never do hear the end of "Katie and I…"
Ever.
