Tory even gave us a little award, a small trophy, for our work writing about Scientology. We can still remember Cheevers telling us how the Enquirer, after Barresi recanted, tried to destroy every copy of that 1990 issue, and it became very difficult to locate a copy.Īnyway, it was fun to meet Barresi and talk with him and Ebner at Christman’s house.
And they explained that “Several months later Barresi retracted his story, saying in a letter to Travolta’s attorney that he’d never engaged in homosexual activity with Travolta.” The star, he said, often showed up at his apartment for bedroom calisthenics, implored Barresi to tell him dirty stories over the phone, and told the porn actor he was sexier and more macho than Burt Reynolds and Clark Gable combined,” Ebner and New Times managing editor Jack Cheevers wrote in a stunning 2001 story about Barresi’s work as a shady “bag man” for celebrity attorney Marty Singer. “They later had sex dozens of times, Barresi said. He told the Enquirer that one day Travolta had followed him into the shower at a health club, and it had turned into a two year relationship. He’d acted in numerous blue films - straight and gay - and directed them, as well. Barresi was a good-looking Italian-American resident of the San Fernando Valley who did what that place is so well known for - porn. In 1990, he’d been featured on the cover of the National Enquirer claiming to have had a two-year sexual affair with actor John Travolta from about 1983 to 1985. Paul Barresi! Sure, if you were a Scientology researcher, you knew the name. He in turn introduced us to Barresi, who Ebner had brought to the party, knowing that the crowd there would be pretty intrigued to meet him. So anyway, early in 2002 or thereabouts, with the demise of our newspaper still several months off, Christman invited some of her friends in the Scientology watching community to her backyard for a swell soirée, and we were happy to see that Ebner was there. New Times LA went out of business in 2002, but you can still find our Tory Christman story at Operation Clambake, Ron Russell’s story is posted at Scribd, and Ebner’s story on Philip Gale was reprinted by Gawker in 2008.
Two other writers at that paper were also contributing pieces about Scientology: Ron Russell, who did an amazing piece in 2001 about Raul Lopez, a brain-damaged young man who was being bled dry by the church (with investments in ostrich eggs, of all things), and Mark Ebner, who in 1999 had written a brilliant examination of the life and death of Philip Gale, a young Scientologist who had jumped out of a building at MIT to his death on L. The year before, we had told Tory’s story for New Times Los Angeles, a feisty weekly paper where we’d been working since 1999. So, it’s the year 2002 and your proprietor is venturing into Tory Christman’s Burbank backyard. There is a Scientology angle to our meeting with Barresi, and so we thought we’d tell that tale here on the regular blog, as well as bring back into print a piece we wrote with Barresi’s help. And we were reminded of that project yesterday when a particular photo was posted in the comments section, making us think of our old acquaintance Paul Barresi. Lately, your proprietor has been putting some of his older, non-Scientology stories on pages here at the website after readers expressed an interest in seeing them.