Dad's arrogance, I soon came to see, put him at the center of his own universe and demanded his listener's complete attention. Women loved him for that power and presence. Men respected and feared him for it. As for me, I was intimidated but not fearful like the others, whom I watched kowtow to him, no matter how outrageous his demands. My relationship with him was cautious, polite, but not obsequious. In the two years I spent in the Philippines and in my father's presence, I saw how he dismissed most people out of hand with an arrogant "Leave us." But he treated me differently. He and I were strangers, but I was blood, and maybe that made the difference.
I also got to meet the children from Dad's new life, my young half-brothers and sisters who at that time were about five, six, seven, and eight years old. All four of them were very beautiful and at the sight of the tall American sailor whom Dad introduced as their brother they laughed and giggled, murmuring in both Tagalog and English.
I also discovered that Dad and his wife, my stepmother,* were living in separate residences. She and the children lived in a large home in a Beverly Hills-type neighborhood in the suburbs of Manila. Dad was living and had his offices at the Admiral Apartments on Manila Bay in an impressive five-room layout that had been General Douglas McArthur's headquarters after his return to the Philippines. If it was good enough for the general it was good enough for the emperor. The operation ran smoothly and efficiently, with the help of an omnipresent "manager" named Diana, a beautiful Chinese woman who appeared to be in her late twenties and spoke as if she had been educated at one of the Seven Sisters schools.
Throughout my stint at the Navy hospital, Dad remained aloof and private, completely absorbed in his own world. Hortensia, whom I later discovered had originally met my father at a 1948 party at the Franklin House, was ever the gracious hostess, welcoming me into her home as family. During this period, Father spent most of his time building his market research company, traveling throughout Asia and Europe on business, and our brief encounters were perfunctory, emotionally shallow, revealing none of the intimate details about him that I was looking for. Besides having verified through my own personal observation that my father was a successful, wealthy, politically connected, charming, multitalented, charismatic womanizer, who was also an overbearing, arrogant, egotistical control freak, I discovered very little about the inner man. What was truly troubling, however, and most confusing to me, had little to do with his personality, because, whatever his strengths and shortcomings, I could accept them.
It was his internal blindness that troubled me, his obliviousness to the needs and concerns of anyone around him. He was a psychiatrist, trained to probe the needs of his patients. Yet he was emotionally inaccessible to his family, a fortified castle unto himself, with a moat around his heart.
As a young man and his son, I respected his power, his authority, and his accomplishments. I took great pride when I was in his presence, glory by association. But when I wasn't with him, away from his world, I could sense his sadness, his solitude, his emotional pain, and knew it was dark and ran very deep. I also believed that he would never speak or share that secret pain with anyone, personally or professionally, and that was the saddest reality of all for me. When I left him a year and a half after my arrival, I was less certain about the man than when I had first arrived.
As the end of my enlistment was approaching, I was assigned to the Mobile Construction Battalion of Seabees stationed out of Port Hueneme in Ventura, California. I had become my mother's son rather than my father's. Maybe it was the thirsty Irish genes that had played themselves out during her long binges while I was growing up, or maybe I simply learned to drink by example. But drink I did, and lots of it. "Johnnie Walker" became my new best friend.
Through alcohol, I had come to understand my mother better. It was as if I had met the enemy and she was me. So I joined her. With money in my pockets, I stood the two of us our daily ration of booze: "I'll have a fifth of Johnnie Walker, Black Label, Mom, and here, get yourself a bottle of whatever."
This was a new twist to the family relationship. With her son drinking, Mother actually became more relaxed and downright temperate for a short period. Now it was I, not Mother, who was out of control and excessive. Older brother Michael didn't drink, just shook his head at me, and kept on reading his beloved books. Michael Hodel would one day become one of the stalwart radio announcers on L.A.'s KPFK-FM, with his own sci-fi program, Hour-25, as well as a science fiction editor and writer. Michael's Enter the Lion: A Posthumous Memoir of Mycroft Holmes is still considered a detective-fiction cult classic among Conan Doyle fans.
During my thirty-day leave, Mother, in good spirits one afternoon, turned to me and said, "Steven, let's go to a real Hollywood party tonight. I haven't been to one in years. It will be like the old days. I have a friend who called and invited us. It's at her home in the hills. She's an actress and knows a lot of the Hollywood people from the studios. It should be fun."
I was in a good mood myself that afternoon, and up for some fun, so I needed no convincing. What I found at that home that night was far more than I bargained for. In fact, it would change my life.
*Hortensia Laguda Hodel Starke in the early 1960s obtained a divorce from Father through papal dispensation, remarried, and in the 1980s would be elected to the Philippine Congress, representing the people of Negros Occidental (in the southern Philippines), where she owned and operated a 450-acre sugar plantation.
10
Kiyo
I have very few memories of what went on at the party in the Hollywood Hills that afternoon, because whoever I met and whatever I saw was erased by the presence of Amilda Kiyoko Tachibana Mclntyre, known to her friends as Kiyo. Kiyo was a beautiful Eurasian. With her round face, onyx eyes, and straight jet-black hair that flowed like a waterfall to just below her tight buttocks, she was irresistible magic to a sailor newly home on leave.
Kiyo had been a singer and a dancer and had performed in several feature films. She also taught piano and, in the years before the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, was an astrologer to many entertainers and other show-business personalities. She was thirty, sophisticated, smart, eloquent, and she knew from the moment I walked through her front door and our eyes met that I was a goner. We engaged in small talk as she deftly fended off the attentions of other guests. Then, as the afternoon wore on and guests began to leave, we found ourselves touching one another and finding excuses to cross one another's paths in parts of her house where no one else would disturb us. Maybe there were others looking at us, but it seemed as if Kiyo and I had been transported to a world of our own. My mother left the party, but I remained behind, transfixed by Kiyo's beauty and apparent interest in me and determined to find out more about her. She was the most enchanting person I had ever met.