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How Stella Lost Her Groove

Terry McMillan is divorcing her much younger husband, Jonathan Plummer -- a relationship that was the inspiration for her best-selling novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back -- because it turns out he doesn't really dig older chicks after all.

In fact, he doesn't dig chicks period.

Once McMillan's husband came out of the closet, things quickly got ugly between to the two:

In a Jan. 14 letter written by McMillan and filed with the court, the author told Plummer, "The reason you're going to make a great fag is that most of you guys are just like dogs anyway. ... You do whatever with whomever pleases you and don't seem to care about the consequences."
Plummer also says McMillan came into the dog-grooming shop and left him a bottle of Jamaican hot pepper sauce on which she wrote, "Fag Juice Burn Baby Burn,'' and that she also scrawled "Jonathan's Fag boyfriend Fag'' on a photo of a friend.

Ron Hogan over at Beatrice.com (my favorite literary website) isn't buying McMillan's protests that she really isn't a homophobe.

I'm not so sure I agree with him. Yes, her remarks weren't pleasant, but then again . . . if I'd been married to someone for six years, and our romance was held up as a triumphant anthem for divorcees everywhere, I'd be pretty hacked off to discover that my paramour was just using me for a green card and access to my bank accounts. I'd probably wing a few ceramic objects at his head, too, and I definitely wouldn't want anything I said while I was throwing said ceramic objects to be printed up in the San Francisco Chronicle.

So maybe we should cut McMillan some slack. I don't know if there's really proof that she hates gay men everywhere . . . more likely it's just the one that she's now stuck doling out $2000 a month in spousal support to.

This reminds me of what David Letterman said after seeing the movie adaptation of Stella: "So Stella got her groove back . . . now give me my ten dollars back."

Lame joke, but it makes me laugh whenever I think of it.

Posted 29 June 2005 at 05:22 PM