Terry's Gaydar's Busted

In a tale rich in lost love, closeted secrets and acrimonious divorce, it turns out that famed local writer Terry McMillan -- whose celebrated romance and subsequent marriage to a man 23 years her junior became the subject of her fictionized best-seller "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" --

actually got her groove back with a man who now says he's gay.

The story is spilling out in made-for-Hollywood detail in Contra Costa County Superior Court, where McMillan has filed for divorce from her Jamaican- born husband of six years, Jonathan Plummer.

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. "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 wants 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 torrid relationship with a Jamaican young enough to be her son that very much parallels the lives of McMillan and Plummer.

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, however, 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 fact, McMillan says Plummer zeroed in on her precisely because of her celebrity status as an author whose earlier books included "Waiting to Exhale, '' which sold some 4 million copies and was made into a movie.

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.

For her part, McMillan, who was then 42, said she worried when she first met Plummer that he was interested only in her money. "But Jonathan was very charming and made me believe that he was crazy about me,'' she told the court.

The two eventually married in Maui on Sept. 8, 1998 -- but not before Plummer signed a prenup that waived his rights to everything should they ever part, including "temporary and permanent spousal support and attorney's fees, '' according to court papers filed by McMillan.

The couple settled in McMillan's $4 million Danville home and, at least according to Plummer, enjoyed a happy life -- until the last few years when the marriage started coming undone.

"He became less attentive, less charming, more distracted and absent from the home,'' McMillan wrote in her declaration.

Plummer said he was spending long hours with a dog-grooming business in Danville that McMillan had set up for him a couple of years ago in apparent anticipation of a split.

It wasn't until just before last Christmas, Plummer says, that the two finally split -- after he revealed he was gay.

"I was kicked out of the house in December right after I told her,'' he said in the interview.

In court records, however, McMillan says Plummer confessed to being gay only after she confronted him about all his hours of phone calls to a male friend living in Jamaica. She also says she later learned that Plummer was participating in online gay chat sites.

In any event, judging from the court filings, the disclosure quickly turned ugly. 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. (He admits in court papers "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.

"She kept calling me, saying nasty things about me being gay, calling me a fag,'' Plummer said in an interview.

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.

"She is an extremely angry woman who is homophobic and is lashing out at me because I have learned I am gay,'' Plummer declared in a court filing last month.

McMillan's attorney, Jill Hersh -- a divorce lawyer who has handled civil rights cases involving gay couples and their children -- says 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.''

Hersh also disputes Plummer's contention that McMillan was seeking an annulment as a way to get him deported, as he alleges. In pressing her claim of fraud, however, McMillan told the court that Plummer waited to tell her he was gay until he knew his application for citizenship was going to be approved.

Plummer says 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 -- until a full trial on the validity of the prenuptial agreement and the annulment request is heard in October.

WASSUP WITH DAVE CHAPELLE?

I saw this article on a hip hop blog...I was touched. Dave got offered MAD MONEY to make people laugh, but he's got other plans.

Dave Chappelle Comeback Tour

By Michael Miraflor
Two Wednesdays ago, at 930 AM, I got an IM from a co-worker with a Ticketmaster.com hyperlink. I clicked on it and couldn’t believe my eyes. Dave Chappelle. Live Stand up. Tonight, 9PM and 11PM. $35.00. Tickets on sale 10AM.

He had done low key shows the two previous evenings at the same club, Punchline in the San Francisco financial district, to small audiences of about 70. Wednesday was an added bonus, unscheduled with no announcements. You almost had to stumble upon the listing on Ticketmaster to find out about it. At 10AM on the dot I copped 2 tickets to the 11PM show for me and the ladyfriend. I wanted to know how he would handle a live audience at an intimate setting, knowing full well the disappointment and confusion over his Comedy Central disappearing act. I wanted to see if dude was still funny, or if he really fell off.


I was typical of the ordinary Chappelle Show fan in my reaction to his mysterious disappearance. At first it was disbelief. After reading all the crack rumors, I thought it was a clever marketing ploy. When the South African mental institution stuff made the wires, I became concerned. But when the DVD for the second season was released without a date for the start of the 3rd, after being pushed back several times, I got angry. And disappointed that Dave would abandon his fans. I mean, he is getting paid a ridiculous amount of money what the In Living Color cast would kill for.

There were reports that Chappelle had been doing impromptu performances in Los Angeles for the past month and a half, starting the night he got back from Africa. He would show up randomly to clubs late in the evening, so late sometimes that there would be less than 20 people left at a given venue. Dave is obviously trying to connect with his core fans to get some of his confidence and swagger back. So how did he do?

Absolutely killed it. Dude is funny as hell the way he effortlessly connected with the audience. He seemed poised and comfortable, like a guy who just came back from an extended vacation. All of his material was new, a lot of it surprisingly falling into the socially conscious tip. He joked and commented about the missing chick in Aruba, about terrorism, his family, and his time in Africa. Seeing him do standup, especially in this turbulent point in his life, cast a new light on the guy who we regularly associate with his crazy ass TV skits. In between taking on-stage cigarette puffs and randomly screaming “mike jones!,” he would transition from joke to social/political commentary, and would of course allude to his time off and the reasons why he did it.
e didn’t come alone either. Chris Tucker showed up and did his bit, although compared to Chappelle he was long winded and forced more than a few jokes. Paul Mooney (Negrodaumus for the uninformed) did a set and destroyed the place and scared the shit out of the nearly 90% white audience (by white I mean blue-blooded private college types) who literally didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. A few people who felt the latter and didn’t have the sense of humor and irony-of-being-made-fun-of-by-a-black-man-when-they-felt-entirely-comfortable-hearing-a-black-man-make-fun-of-other-blacks for the sake of comedy actually got up and rudely left in the middle of his set. Maybe it was by design and maybe it was for the best, however, as the true Chappelle fans stuck around to see him close up and sign off after a 4 hour show.

“I’ll see you when I see you, bitches, maybe on PBS or something. I think a few people are a little pissed at me.” And with that, the $50 million man called it a night. So you heard it from me, he hasn’t lost it and he doesn’t seem insane. Let’s just hope he gets back on TV soon for everyone else who wasn’t lucky enough to see him on his west coast comeback tour.

NOTE: Al Gore was in the audience. I’m not kidding. Al frickin’ Gore.

Don’t sleep on TicketMaster. I have a feeling he’s going to do this around the country before (and if) season 3 resumes taping.