Back in the eighties, my son went to school at Birch Wathen with Michael Douglas's son Cameron.  Cameron would often play at our apartment, and his dad would sometimes come over to pick him up. He was a friendly kid, and we had no idea that he'd end up dealing heroin and copping a ten-year jail bid.

A couple of times, Michael, Diandra, Lauren, and I, along with our sons, would go to Aspen to ski.  It was kind of fun to hang with the stars.  The girls would come up to Michael in the lift line to flirt with him.  Even though I had been a ranked ski racer, I didn't exist to his fans.  I was accomplished, but I vanished next to his stardom.

Michael had a reputation as a ladies' man, but I wasn't close enough to him to get any of the insider dirt.  He just seemed to me like a laid-back, cowboy-type guy in Hawaiian shirts and loose jeans.  No pretenses, just friendly.  A nice guy.  He wore his stardom like an undershirt rather than a hat.

With his heterosexual reputation, I was a little surprised when Douglas agreed to play the role of Liberace.  He seemed to be selling out to everything that was contrary to his strong heterosexual instincts just to get an acting role.  Gayness was politically correct, so he took the role.

But now Michael seems to have decided that enough is enough and returned to his pride in heterosexuality by saying that "his cancer is caused by HPV, which actually comes about from cunnilingus."  Now, as embarrassing as this might be to his wife, Catherine Zeta Jones, perhaps Michael feels that it is better than prancing around like Liberace.

Acceptance of gays as human beings should not involve heterosexuals giving up their obsessive love for the other sex.  It is not necessary for straight people to pretend that they like same-sex marriage when it is uncomfortable for them.  The self-hatred of Michael Douglas and Matt Damon could be seen in their kisses.  There was no way they enjoyed them.  That is not a matter of homophobia or bias, but of visceral disgust.

Maybe Michael is ashamed of acting gay.  If so, boasting about cunnilingus might do something to distract from it.

Check out The King of White Collar Boxing, David Lawrence's riches-to-rags memoir, on Amazon.com.