I knew it was imperative that I hide, and yet I did not believe I should have to. But accepting that something is true isn’t the same as thinking that it is just. Celia won her second Oscar in 1970, for her role as a woman who cross-dresses to serve as a World War I soldier in the film Our Men. I could not be in Los Angeles with her that night, because I was shooting Jade Diamond in Miami. I was playing a prostitute living in the same apartment as a drunk. But Celia and I both knew that even if I had been free as a bird, I could not go to the Academy Awards on her arm. That evening, Celia called me after she was home from the ceremony and all the parties. I screamed into the phone. I was so happy for her. “You’ve done it,” I said. “Twice now you've done it!” “Can you believe it?” she said. “Iwo of them.” “You deserve them. The whole world should be giving you an Oscar every day, as far as I’m concerned.” “I wish you were here,” she said petulantly. I could tell she’d been drinking. I would have been drinking, too, if ’d been in her position. But I was irritated that she had to make things so difficult. I wanted to be there. Didn’t she know that? Didn’t she know that I couldn’t be there? And that it killed me? Why did it always have to be about what all of this felt like for her? “I wish I was, too,” I told her. “But it’s better this way. You know that.” “Ah, yes. So that people won’t know you're a lesbian.” I hated being called a lesbian. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with loving a woman, mind you. No, I’d come to terms with that a long time ago. But Celia only saw things in black and white. She liked women and only women. And I liked her. And so she often denied the rest of me. She liked to ignore the fact that I had truly loved Don Adler once. She liked to ignore the fact that I had made love to men and enjoyed it. She liked to ignore it until the very moment she decided to be threatened by it. That seemed to be her pattern. I was a lesbian when she loved me and a straight woman when she hated me.