Posted on 11/24/2001 4:28:05 PM PST by Pokey78
HE gives two grown men a peck on the cheek before he leaves home in the morning and gets down to the serious business of running New York. Rudolph Giuliani, who has been fêted for his heroic handling of the terrorist attacks, has been sharing his life with a hospitable gay couple after troubles with his wife. “We always get a little kiss, it’s cute,” said Howard Koeppel, the wealthy car dealer who has provided him with a home in his swish Manhattan apartment since June. “We make him laugh. If I tell him to finish his juice or get home early tonight, he calls me ‘mother’.” When Giuliani was given a knighthood, Koeppel told “Sir Rudy” to call him “Queen Howard” and ribbed him about kissing his ring. “That’s the Pope,” the mayor retorted. Koeppel, 64, says that he and his companion, Mark Hsiao, 41, an arts administrator and classical pianist, have provided Giuliani with comfort in his time of need. On the door to Giuliani’s bedroom his hosts have stuck a sign saying “Reserved: VIP”. He has his own en-suite Jacuzzi, mirrored cupboards and dazzling 32nd-floor views of the city he loves. Every morning he makes his bed tidily, plumps up two pillows — one embroidered with “It ain’t easy being king”, the other with “I’d rather be playing golf” — and places a Ralph Lauren teddy bear between them. There is a room where the mayor’s bodyguards can watch television overnight — Giuliani is never alone these days. His hosts know what time he gets home as Bonnie, their beloved shih tzu, always greets him with a bark. “He pets her now and calls her ‘goo girrl’, like us,” said Koeppel. The day the terrorists struck New York, Giuliani slipped in at 2.30am, still grey with ash from the World Trade Center towers that had nearly collapsed on him. Koeppel gave him a big hug. “He stood dazed in the hallway and then sat on the couch staring at the television because he hadn’t seen the pictures of the buildings falling.” From close up it had been impossible to see beyond the dust clouds. “The next morning he got up at 5.30, still in a state of shock, and said, ‘We’ve got to find survivors’.” Giuliani’s days have since been filled with memorial services for the city’s lost firemen and police officers. “He’d say at breakfast, ‘Now I have to go to eight funerals and seven wakes’. He’d never complain though,” Koeppel added; he would only express sorrow that it was sometimes impossible to get to all of them. Life has cheered up recently. Giuliani and Koeppel went to see the Yankees play in the baseball World Series and were guests at a party thrown by the magazine Cigar Aficionado last week. The mayor is a connoisseur and is trying to persuade Koeppel to attend a three-day cigar convention with him in Las Vegas next year. He has managed to squeeze in some dates with his girlfriend, Judith Nathan, but does not live with her. “He can’t, he’s not divorced yet, he has children and he is the mayor,” explained Koeppel. Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence, after a bitter split with Donna Hanover, his wife. Living there with prostate cancer was becoming too stressful, warned his doctor. He intended to find his own apartment to rent, but a suitable pad would have eaten up every cent of his official salary. Koeppel stepped into the breach. When Giuliani leaves office on December 31, he will make enough money to buy his own stylish home. “Howard, all I want is one-tenth of the new mayor’s net worth,” he has joked with Koeppel. The fortune of his successor, Michael Bloomberg, is put at $4 billion, so that would work out at $400m. “In fact I’d be happy with $4m,” he laughed. According to his friend, one of Giuliani’s priorities is to “rebuild his private life”. He may well go on to marry Nathan. He also has a $3m contract to produce his memoirs and a manual on leadership for Talk Miramax. He is more likely to set up his own management consultancy firm than to work exclusively for one company, and is in talks with the accountants Ernst & Young. Koeppel discounts the rumour that Giuliani may chair a redevelopment commission for lower Manhattan, the area once dominated by the World Trade Center. Nor would Giuliani want to head the FBI, another much-touted job. “He would be working for somebody. He’d like to run his own company, his own life, his own future,” observed Koeppel. There is one tempting post out there, should health problems rule out a second term for Dick Cheney. “If he was offered the job of vice-president, he’d take it in a minute. I think that’s a definite possibility and I’d really like to see it.” Ironically, it is Giuliani’s liberal values, exemplified by his lack of prejudice towards gays, that may ultimately count against him with Republican hardliners. Giuliani has attended every Gay Pride march in New York during his eight-year term in office, facing down the boos that greeted him at first, and has agreed to appear in Queer as Folk, the American version of the British comedy series, in return for a $100,000 donation for the victims of terrorism. “If he feels he wants to do something, and it’s not felonious, it’s not a misdemeanour, then he doesn’t care what people think,” said Koeppel.
It wouldn't be proper to move in with his girlfriend, so he's going to room with two gay guys lol...
Yes, I can see how that would be so unseemly, compared to kissing two men good bye each morning and sleeping with a teddy bear.
tee hee ;0)
Or not enough? I mean, we weren't treated to his @$$-shaving schedule. You can't tell anything about a man's character until you know how many times a year he shaves his @$$.
NYC is in for it big time with Livia Rodham and now Bloomberg!
Added Mark, "I told him I met Vladimir Horowitz in a gay bar."
When Howard complained to Rudy about Mark's fetish for pillows, showing him the twenty pillows on their bed, the mayor advised him to cool it: "You can't get upset about things like that. You have trouble with pillows - just imagine what I'm going through each day. You're so lucky to have someone like Mark," he added. In a touching gesture, he walked arm-in-arm with Howard in June during part of the gay parade.
More than you wanted to know, no matter how "touching" you may have found it!
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