The Groove, Stella, & all that Jazz

I recently had an interesting exchange in response to the story below......read on & feel free to comment.

ampula

Stella Looses Her Groove as She Divorces Gay Husband

by Ross von Metzke

Los Angeles, CA - It was the book and the movie that taught 40-something women age ain't nothing but a number. But it seems the last chapter of the popular tale How Stella Got Her Groove Back may have a twist ending.
San Francisco based author Terry McMillan, whose celebrated romance and subsequent marriage to a man 23 years her junior became the subject of her fictionized best-seller, may have actually found her groove with a man who now says he's gay.
The story has Hollywood written all over it with McMillan filing for divorce from her Jamaican-born husband of six years in Contra Costa County Superior Court.
McMillan, 53, said in court documents that the marriage was based on a "fraud' because Plummer lied about his sexual orientation and married her only to gain U.S. citizenship.
"It was devastating to discover that a relationship I had publicized to the world as life-affirming and built on mutual love was actually based on deceit," she wrote in her declaration, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "I was humiliated."
Plummer, 30, countered in court papers of his own that McMillan has turned on him with a "homophobic'" vengeance and is trying to force his return to an uncertain future in Jamaica. He is seeking to void the couple's prenuptial agreement that would keep from him most of the millions she's earned as a writer.
He also claims he was denied his full share of royalties, as spelled out in the prenup, from How Stella Got Her Groove Back, the fictionalized account of a single mother's whirlwind relationship with a Jamaican young enough to be her son. The book went on to sell movies and was turned into a smash hit film starring Angela Bassett and Taye Diggs.
Plummer's attorney, Dolores Sargent, said her client has no interest in embarrassing McMillan or extorting money from her.
"All I want to do is settle the case in a way that's fair to both parties... and that allows Jonathan sufficient funds to re-establish himself," Sargent said. "And we have been blocked"
In court papers, McMillan leaves little doubt that she believes Plummer was always motivated by money.
"Jonathan has manipulated me from the very beginning in his scheme to come to the United States, become a citizen and get rich through someone else's effort,' McMillan wrote in one of her filings.
In an interview, Plummer insisted that he didn't know he was gay when he met McMillan in June 1995 at a Jamaican resort. Nor, he says, did he seize on the author's fame.
"I was a 20-year-old kid when I met her and had no idea that she was anybody other than an attractive, older woman," he said in court papers.
In court records, McMillan said Plummer only confessed to being gay after she confronted him about all his hours of phone calls to a male friend living in Jamaica. She also said she later learned that Plummer was participating in online gay chat sites.
McMillan obtained a restraining order to keep Plummer from their house, and she claimed she recently discovered that Plummer had embezzled at least $200,000 from her bank accounts before and during their marriage.
Plummer admitted "a gross error of judgment" in taking $62,000 without her knowledge, but said that he was financially dependent on her during the marriage and that he intends to pay it back.
Plummer obtained his own restraining order against the author, alleging that McMillan constantly harassed him for coming out of the closet, and at one point walked into his dog-grooming business and tossed a ceramic object across the room.
McMillan's attorney, Jill Hersh - a divorce lawyer who has handled civil rights cases involving gay couples and their children - said her client "is anything but homophobic.'
"However, she feels betrayed and disappointed... that her husband is gay, ' Hersh said. "And anything you have seen in the pleadings emanates from how she is experiencing the end of her marriage, and it doesn't have to do with anything else.'
Plummer said he understands that McMillan felt betrayed by his coming out.
"But I was being truthful to myself, and didn't want to hurt her anymore,' he said.
On June 17, a Superior Court judge handed Plummer a minor victory, ordering McMillan to pay him $2,000 a month in spousal support, plus $25,000 in attorney's fees. A full trial on the validity of the prenuptial agreement and the annulment request is scheduled to be heard in October
Jonathan Chang

The exchange begins:


...yes, it's quite sad. a lot of people knew he was a mo. i believe he's a grifter who is quite raggedy for trying to void their prenup.

me:
hmmm, but did he kno he was a mo befo he gave McMillan her groove? Was she so desperate to 'get her groove' she blinded herself? More importantly, wIll there be a sequel to the novel!?!?

He may be a grifter, but it ain't surprising he's trying to cash in on their years together........

..........this'll stoke those DL flames again.............

;)

well, to be DL, your homosexuality should be a secret. lol. everyone who met him was saying he was a mo. she probably blinded herself. but i've come through personal experience to empathize with the almost spiritual notion that loving and the best kind of love require certain leaps of faith despite considerable contrary evidence. sometimes we get burned; sometimes we are consumed deliciously. pick your poison, accept your outcome - you may get the best kind of lucky.

being lonely or alone can be hard. i hope she finds the strength to love next time without keeping her hand cynically on her hip; i hope he finds the strength to move on with his life. i believe that the only reason he tried to void the prenup is as leverage, assuming terry would be too embarrassed to take it to court. now he's stuck arguing that he didn't perform husbandly duties (primary of which are fidelity and sexual consort), but that the prenup is unfair.

for me the legal argument is interesting: if a marriage between heteros dissolves, it's clearly because one or both parties were no longer willing to perform marital duties. if sexuality is the basis of a divorce, i'd strongly advise her lawyer to look at an impossibility of performance defense that voids the marriage contract.

finally, you can "know" your spouse used to do threesomes, marry him trusting that his promise not to do it any longer was reliable, then be entitled to outrage when you find him in the hot tub with two other folks. If people aren't entitled to trust the word of their partners, if permanent cynicism is the only protection against people with questionable pasts, none of us (your truly included) would be in relationships. lol.

having a slowish day,


me:

'DL' is such a somewhat amorphous term that has few discreet boundaries except that its a man who enjoys some form of sexual contact with another man who may or may not identify as gay, bi, straight, who may or may not be involved w/a woman & who's proclivities range from secretive/denial to 'I don't put my business out ther, but I'm cool with being who I am' , to someone who self-perceives as DL but is really on the 'Up High' (naming names.....ahem, Ms. Star Jones hubby!).

There is a line between blinding onself to what's really going on & 'Leaps of faith' (usually its cricked & blurred tho'); a woman at 43 vacationing on the Carribean should know better!.......Being a independent, smart, strong sista with her shit together, Terry prolly did know better but she chose to fall for this 'Romeo'. Who among us wouldn't like being charmed off our piggies, by a yummy Jamacian man, no less! You got a point, lonliness, vacationing, middle-age and that heavy carribean air prolly allowed her to open up to things she would have thought twice about if it had happened on the bay area.

& who knows whether or not he didn't perform 'husbandly duties'; being gay/bi/attracted to men don't mean you can't fuck a female, just that you like being with men & p-ssy don't necessarily get priority. If that were the case, she would have filed earlier if she wasn't gettin' none & that was a problem; maybe she's using that as a hinge for the 'marital duties' argument. But trust, that wouldn't make it 'impossible' to perform; it would come down to her word against his.

I don't know if 'entitled to trust the word' or 'entitled to outrage' quite captures what i'd call it. Trust comes with establishing & maintaining a relationship; but i would argue that one does not have 'entitlement' to that, its a 'leap of faith' (as you mentioned earlier) kind of thing that should never be taken for granted...........