I probably nodded off for a good twenty minutes, before I was kicked to life by my iPhone dancing on the dark wood. The display read “Julianne”.
Julianne was one of those women who had decided to compensate her less fortunate physical appearance by being a ruthless workaholic, determined to put all men down a peg-hole or ten. She had rat-colored hair, a thin mouth and a plank-formed body to go with her sharp, ear-cringing voice that penetrated all sound, and she was the last person I wanted to talk to at that moment. Still, it was my duty to take the call.
“Darryl,” I said, praying she would be in a good mood, but I of course knew this wasn’t the easiest time to be B’s agent, so I expected hell.
“This is one of the biggest fucking PR disasters in Hollywood, Darryl. My phone has been ringing constantly, everybody wants something from her, interviews, statements, appearances, the works but she’s refusing to pick up the goddamn phone.”
“You know she wants all communication to run through me, I’ve told you that before, Julianne.”
“I don’t get it though, why should I have to go through you? I’m her agent.”
She should have known there was no point in arguing about this, B held firm that I was the messenger and her filter to the outside world.
“But why is it so urgent to reach her now? She’s in no mood to talk to anyone and I don’t see how going on Letterman would make anything better at this stage.” I tried to be as firm as I could. You needed to with Julianne.
“This is exactly why I need to talk to her! I’ve actually started to think that we can spin this in our favor and use the attention to something good.”
This is why she was one of the best agents - she saw opportunities everywhere.
“So you’re saying she should come out and talk about her problems and in this way redeem herself?” I said, skeptically.
“For once you hit the nail on the head. She needs to take advantage of the publicity, otherwise there is a risk she’ll have a tainted image forever. She should talk about how she’s battling alcoholism as a result of a tough childhood or whatever the hell she’s drinking for. I think we could go for the Oprah book club too, I have some formidable ghostwriters ready to start typing as soon as I give the green light. This doesn’t have to be a disaster, but instead a great chance to connect with her fans, show her true, vulnerable self and come out on top. How is she feeling by the way?”
This was a rare show of emotion from Julianne. Maybe she had worked on what she needed to say to sound like an empathic and normal human being.
“She’s okay, considering.”
“So can I talk to her? I have loads of calls and e-mails I need to return today. If we get started now we can really flip this shit. I know we can!”
Julianne was frighteningly good at her job, but also frighteningly bad at reading people. The chance of B going on a talk show at this point in her life was pretty much zero and in a way I felt sorry for Julianne for not understanding this. But you can’t blame her for seeing only dollar signs either, it was in her job description.
“I’ll talk to her about her options and I’ll tell her to call you when she’s ready. But right now I think she just wants to rest. I’m pretty sure she’s not keen on going on TV to talk about a drinking problem she has hard time admitting to herself. She’s really fragile right now.”
“Rest is for losers, Darryl. The only thing you should focus on keeping her away from is the bottle, not the spotlight. Hope is not lost if we act fast.”
“I’ll promise to bring that up when I see her. Thanks.”
And Julianne hung up on me without saying goodbye.
***
I want to take a minute to talk about one of the frustrations with living and working in the celebrity world, at least as an assistant. It’s the problem to meet women. You see, I used to work all the time, pretty much every day and there wasn’t a lot of space for dating. And if I did meet a woman out in a bar or at an event or wherever I might have been, I didn’t know where to “conclude” the evening since I was living with the Johnsons and the mansion rule was not to bring any outsiders there.
It’s pretty logical when you think about it, but once during my first year I broke the role and learned a valuable lesson.
The name of my lesson was Loreena, a chocolate dream with colorful clothing and a big butt to go with it. I love big butts (and I cannot lie - as the song goes), always have and always will, so I was of course ecstatic to meet someone like Loreena with a jovial personality, beautiful eyes and two firm watermelon butt cheeks. I was probably too hypnotized by her appearance to realize her ulterior motive for dating me wasn’t because she was interested in me - like most women she thought I was funny, which is good to draw them in, but apparently not a strong enough incentive in the long run - but because she wanted to get close to the Johnsons. She wasn't a stalker or a lunatic fan or anything like that, but I should have realized something was wrong by how big her eyes grew every time I mentioned them. I of course knew I needed to be careful with yapping about my employers, but when you find someone you like it's not always easy to be modest. Working with celebrities surely helps to make you more interesting. For a while.
In the end, my clouded mind decided it was fine to break a rule and to try and sneak her into the house without anyone seeing her. So one night when my employers were out having one of their romantic candlelight dinners, I brought Loreena up to my room, carefully avoiding other staff members. As soon as we entered the house, Loreena's head was going back and forth with the excitement of a fat kid who had just stepped inside the Charlie Chocolate factory, while I was preoccupied with not being seen. She soon followed her deranged look up with questions about the Johnsons - where in the house they stayed, where they were right that minute, what my relationship with them was like, what a typical day would look like for them and so on. I had answered some of them before, but here they came again at an alarming rate of brain-diarrhea. A voice in my head started telling me that these questions had nothing to do with me, but her huge, juicy butt completely obstructed my otherwise logical thought-process.
Loreena ended up spending the night in my bed, but when I woke up at five in the morning by my bladder calling me, she wasn't there. I knew I wasn’t a Casanova, but could the sex have been that bad? It was hard for me to place an objective judgement on it, especially since it was over in a couple of minutes.
I dressed in my shorts and Nuke “Just Done It” t-shirt and went out to look for her. I walked downstairs and I was so tired I almost slipped on the marble stairs, polished into a death trap by an eager Elena. I walked around quietly not to wake the other staff members and was just about to text her when I spotted her and her chubby ass sneaking around by the pool. What the hell? I thought, got myself over there and started wheezing: “Loreena! Loreena!” When her face finally turned my way she looked like a deer caught in the headlights of car. For a second I thought she would try to run away or something equally crazy, but instead she came up to me and said with a slight quiver in her voice, “I was just taking a walk around the house.”
“A walk around the house? I saw you, that wasn't walking, it was sneaking around! I implicitly told you not to be seen! You could land me in a lot of trouble you know.”
“I couldn't sleep and wanted to take a look around. Relax a little will you?” Like an attacked animal, Loreena thought the best defensive was offensive. I didn’t care a whole lot for her tone.
“Relax? This is my job on the line, how can you tell me to relax?”
And then I saw it. The necklace she definitely wasn't wearing the night before. It was a butterfly in gold and blue stone and looked far too expensive to be hanging around Loreena's neck, if you know what I’m saying.
“What's that around your neck?” I glared at Loreena, my adrenaline at a peak. The date was rapidly becoming a very bad idea.
“It's a necklace. I had it in my bag.”
“That's B’s necklace! You're a liar an
d a thief!”
I could see in her face how Loreena was waging an internal war; it was a gated property so making a run for it wasn't an option.
“Ah, fuck you, Darryl! I just wanted some glamour in my life! I wanted to see a celebrity, maybe wear an expensive necklace for a little while! Would she care about one little necklace? They have millions, billions!”
I was impressively calm considering the situation and told her: “Give me the necklace back and I won't call the police. It's time to go home.”
That was the only time I brought a girl to the mansion. This didn't make me a monk, but I would have been lying if I said I was close to a meaningful relationship with any other woman than B.
Slugs got more action.
And B was, like you know by now, not herself. When it came to the many good times we had shared together, I had to rely almost only on older memories.
Speaking of which, I do recall many great moments, often ending in massive fits of laughter since humor was our strongest denominator. While I’m taking a stroll down memory lane, I can’t help but smile and think about the cover shoot in Paris, ridiculously romantic with the sun going down behind a beautiful French 15th century castle, and the hilariously parodic photographer, stereotypically complete with a comical Anglo-French accent, a t-shirt-blazer-scarf-combo, unruly hair and his dark-haired assistant Annelié, silent, but cute and making lots of eye contact with me. I returned the looks from time to time, when I wasn’t watching the French bastard give B, for the shoot dressed in a rather slinky Arabian Nights-inspired outfit, directions to a better pose. Is all that touching really necessary? I remember thinking.
The moment, the setting, the atmosphere, everything is so sharply carved into my memory tree that I can summon it in an instant, close my eyes and travel there like Scotty on the Starship Enterprise.
For a second I thought B was charmed by Pierre, giggling too much, giving him her famous flirtatious smile. I was jealous and worried about her, but then I noticed Annelié again; her dark eye-brows, small head, beautiful chestnut eyes and I lost concentration.
There was a pool not far from where we were standing. A glorious, lit swimming pool, fit for a king.
Fit for a Pierre.
And then, during our break, it happened. Pierre was walking towards the catering section, head leaned backwards, his long, slightly wet-looking hair, bouncing behind him. He held his huge camera casually in one hand and was taking large, relaxed strides towards us, looking like a guy so sure of himself it was ridiculous, while we were standing at a white bar table, drinking a glass of wine and admiring the view. He called something out to Annelié, who was hovering around us again, a bit too shy to talk but eager with the eyes. I think she preferred to look at anything but Pierre, who treated her like she was the Ringer of Notre Dame and not the petite and beautiful woman she was.
On the floor there was a light cable that I had stepped over a couple of times, carefully avoiding a slip and a tumble. But Pierre had his eyes to the sky and managed to put his pointy patent-leather shoe under the wire, got snagged in it and fell backwards, the camera left his hand (all this happened in slow motion) and I saw Annelié somehow managing to catch it, but nobody was catching Pierre, he was tumbling, slipping and with a splash he was in the pool.
There’s no way you could witness this and hold back laughter and we all laughed so hard we cried. Even Annelié. Poor Pierre was in the pool, soaked, miserable and humiliated. I don’t know if I’d been able to see the fun in it, being in the water, but the Frenchman for sure couldn’t. He looked like he had put his face in a bowl of sour cream and cancelled the rest of the shoot.
B and I laughed about the pool incident the whole evening (A was filming in Germany) and we still think back to it at times, and talk about Pierre with the accent, Pierre the stereotyped French artist, Pierre in the swimming pool.
But that was the past and the past was past and no matter how much of a golden shimmer you add to it in your memory bank (using some mental photoshopping), you can’t live there. You need to live in the present and that was what I intended to do.
***
After a piping hot shower, I headed down to the kitchen for lunch and chef Jorge’s famous tuna salad. I sat down by the kitchen island and Jorge, who looked weirdly forlorn, placed the plate in front of me in haste. His tuna salad was the tastiest way to cut the carbs and it was something I needed to do badly. I never had the rock-solid, action hero body with visible abs and I was fine with that, but I was still concerned about how soft and doughy the skin around my midsection had become. I was nearing 30 and part of me was terrified it was all going to be downhill from there. My indulgences were few, the previously mentioned chocolate croissant, the half bottle of wine with dinner and possibly a slice of cheese or three afterwards, but still every digested gram seemed to count.
But eating Jorge’s salad wasn’t a huge concession, he usually put the exact amount of dressing and seasoning and always used the freshest vegetables and the best tuna he could find. It was a treat. Usually.
This time though, something was wrong with it. It was overly vinegary, bordering towards sour and the first mouthful made me cringe. I struggled through a few bites and then pushed the plate aside. I walked out of the kitchen and found Jorge sitting on a chair in the back garden looking like a ton of bricks just had fallen on him.
“What's up?” I asked.
“You didn't like it did you?”
“What?”
“The tuna salad. You didn't like it.” Jorge gave me a look telling me there was no point in lying. Everything about him was big, his body, his face, his heart and his mind and he knew very well that I didn't like it.
“I don't know, there was something a bit different with it today, I guess.” I said, knowing how much his cooking meant to him.
Jorge rose from the chair quickly, removed his chef’s hat, ran his left hand through his curly patch of hair and said: “Darryl, I botched it. The dressing. The cap came off and you know? Too much.” It seemed like to Jorge there was more than a tuna salad at stake here.
“Don't worry, Jorge. It's a salad. I'll survive. What else is wrong?”
Jorge looked at me with his big brown eyes and then let them travel out into the garden as if they were more comfortable there, and said, “It's my son, Luís. He isn't doing well in school anymore, his grades are off, he’s having troubles focusing, his teachers are concerned. When I ask him about it, he says he wants to be an RnB singer and couldn't care less about school. It’s very upsetting.”
A young person in LA struck by the fame-drug, didn't sound too rare to me, but finding a cure was more difficult though. Once the desire for an exuberant existence gets into your brain, it seems to develop much like a virus, soon taking over your whole being. It becomes difficult to focus on anything else than finding a way to the spotlight. I don’t have any research or stats to prove it, but I’ve seen it up close.
I tried to soften the blow, “Well it's good to have a dream and a drive to achieve it. Does he have any actual talent?”
“I know it sounds harsh, but I don’t think so. His interest in music started rather late, too late if you ask me. Or maybe I just don’t get what he’s trying to do. I’m afraid he's throwing his life away trying to be the next MTV sensation.”
“I haven't heard him and I doubt I ever will by the sound of it, but I agree with your thinking. It will be hard to break it to him though, it sounds like his desire is firmly rooted.”
Jorge shook his giant head and reached over and touched the stem of a pink flower very gently, like it was a sacred object, “It worries me, the way he's wasting his time only setting himself up to get hurt. I wish he could put all that energy somewhere else. In education, a serious profession. My family never had the money to study and get a degree and the one who finally gets the chance, is suddenly eager to throw it all away. It breaks a father’s heart.”
“The world puts a lot of pressure on the young, Jorge.” I
said, still counting myself among the world’s young and feeling the pressure. “Besides, you're a celebrity chef, well at least a celebrity-hired chef, so my guess is he would want to do something big, as not to disappoint you.”
“He wouldn't disappoint me even if he decided to work at McDonalds for the rest of his life. The important thing is he's happy, that’s all I care about.”
“But maybe that’s not all he cares about? I think sometimes parents make the mistake to think that whatever their children do or want, they had something to do with it. And besides, trying out a music career might make him really happy, no matter how silly it may sound to you.”
Jorge appeared to consider this odd piece of wisdom, coming from a much younger guy with no experience in parenting whatsoever. But everyone’s free to have opinions and I’m kind of keen to throw mine around sometimes.
“True,” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely sure about my reasoning, “How's B by the way?”
“Better now, but obviously not great. I’d say she’d love some comfort food today, but I’m not sure her body needs it.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I won’t make her a tuna salad, that’s for sure.” Jorge finally gave me a smile, which was nice to see. He was generally a very happy camper and I really disliked seeing him worry like this.
“Just go easy on the dressing and you’ll be fine. I'm going to run back to the office now. I'll think if there's something we can do about your son. Does he have a website or a Myspace page or something where I can check him out?”
“I don't know actually, but I doubt it. What’s Myspace?”
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll google him. Thanks for lunch, Jorge.”
“It was nothing. And I mean it this time.”
***
Hollywood Ass. Page 3