And thus, Anne Brown and her roommate, Tatiana Schneider were dispatched to a TV star’s mountain top domicile. They felt charged with responsibility and a certain kind of contempt for their elders’ unmanageable peccadilloes, “God, how gross,” was a phrase they bandied about between them. The star’s property was gated. Anne drove her tiny blue Civic up winding, endless, Mulholland to the gate and keyed the intercom as I had instructed her. It was two in the afternoon. The hot sun was dappled and filtered through a canopy of trees. A dozy male voice responded to the call, “Yep, give me a minute.” It was more like ten. The girls were out of the car and staring through the gate, down a ravine, at a one-story house surrounded by huge dusty California oaks when a tall lean handsome man sauntered out of the house barefoot and wearing a not too well secured white terry cloth robe. Anne and Tatiana unconsciously drew together.
The star beamed at them via a wide white smile and sparkling eyes and drew his hand through his pillow sculpted hair and drawled, “Hi-there, girls.” He strode up to the gate and said, “Come on in.” As he stepped back and the gate rolled open his robe gapped even more revealing his well-muscled chest and as Anne’s eyes dropped she noticed the star wasn’t wearing any underwear. He was in that elevated state some men achieve on waking. He was nearly naked and didn’t seem to care; actually he seemed to be enjoying, really enjoying, the sun on his bare skin.