Brogan: Making Pillow Talk With Doris Day!

My just released and third book, A Sprinkling of Stardust Over the Outhouse, has received some very good comments. In fact, it has even been optioned for a possible dramatic treatment as either a film or television work. Of course, an option is no guarantee of something coming to fruition. However, I appreciate it getting noticed.

Many of my friends have read the book and been enthusiastic in their praise. When people you've known for many years react favorably to something you've labored over, there is much more value than in winning a literary award or topping the best-seller list. Their words are a wonderful balm during those hours in which you cannot quite put the paragraphs together effectively for your next work, The Park. It is, by the way, a fictional thriller set in Concord's White's Park in 1962. I find that when Concord figures in a story, the words can sometimes flow more freely.

A Sprinkling of Stardust Over the Outhouse is autobiographical and includes many stories about growing-up in Concord during the 1950's through the 1980's. Sometimes my fingers could barely keep up with the wonderful memories that were spilling forth as I wrote. Someone who read the book noted, "Your story goes from the streets of Concord, New Hampshire to the bedrooms of Beverly Hills..." In-between, however, there are stops in the U.S. Navy, the New Hampshire State Hospital, being raped at knifepoint in college, and tales of Bishop Brady High School, a place that holds a special spot in my heart because of the four years I spent in those classrooms.

I talk freely about the mammoth missteps I have made in my life, times in which I barely resembled the person I thought I was. However, it is, I hope, ultimately a story of redemption and a refusal to ever just "settle for". We are all far more able than we often give ourselves credit for.

The part of the book that has created the greatest furor is a relatively small part of the more than 400 pages that encompass the book. In fact, some of the vitriol that has been thrown my way, has genuinely made me question the kinds of people I have allowed to be in my orbit.

In November of 1974 I made a trip to Los Angeles to see my friend, Doris Day. I had flown to San Francisco with a friend who was being deployed to Japan as part of his Air Force enlistment. After seeing him off, I decided to spend a couple of days in Los Angeles visiting Doris, before returning to New Hampshire and my job at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Doris, at 52, looked twenty years younger and was at a place in her life where she was rediscovering herself. Widowed for six years, she had recently completed a five-year commitment to CBS for her comedy series. She was working on her autobiography and revisiting parts of her life that she'd forgotten about. The following year she would remarry, in another disastrous pairing but soon after would launch her Pet Foundation, begin plans to relocate to Carmel in the early 80's, and move to the most satisfying chapter of her life - animal welfare.

Those changes would impact the closeness of our relationship, although we remained good friends for the rest of her life. However, something happened during that November visit and that something has gained me the ire of scores of enraged fans or are they fanatics?

Doris and I sipped our drinks (she had Scotch and water and I had a Bacardi and Coke), while talking about life and where we each were. I was now an adult and not the 8-year-old who'd written a fan letter all those years earlier. We talked about Catholicism. Doris had been raised a Catholic but had drifted while I still practiced my faith, intermittently. The passion of our discussion led us to a passionate night, that never happened again. It was what it was, and I write about it honestly in the book. Apparently, it has riled a great many people.

I also slept with Doris Day's frequent on-screen partner, Rock Hudson, but that doesn't seem to have created a ripple. Sorry Rock!

When I wrote my first book in 2010 (it was published in 2011), I wrote Doris and asked for permission to use a photo that a friend had taken of us, on the book's cover. Doris was delighted and confessed that she'd always wanted to be a "cover girl". She did ask that I not tell the story of our night, while she was alive. I promised I would not and kept my word. She joked that after she'd "fallen off the perch" it was fine.

While I don't pretend to understand the rage directed toward me now, I have tried to not let it dissuade me from appreciating the many positive comments directed my way. What it has also done is make me realize that some of the "friends" on Facebook are not really friends in the sense that a friend who brings value to your life is. It's also made me recognize the importance of real friends and the wish to hold them close, especially as the years march onward.

Social Media has great value in many ways, but it can also open all of us to being judged by people who have never even met us in-person. A real friend, prior to hurling aspersions, talks to you about what they're upset about and what can be done, recognizing the years invested in friendship. That's been my greatest lesson from this whole experience.