by Ben Tyler
Rod gave him a slap across the face that was just a tad more than playful. “You’re a cocksucking asswipe, aren’t you, Jim?” Rod said, mimicking the dialogue he remembered from the videotape. He laid himself on top of Jim’s body and dry-humped his slave, biting the nipples on his flabby chest and licking the perspiration from his sternum. Jim was in ecstasy.
Rod wanted to vomit.
“You want to suck my big, fat piece of meat, don’t you, asshole?” Rod demanded.
“Yes! Oh, please, yes!”
Rod brought his heavy cock up to Jim’s face. Jim’s tongue darted out just as Rod withdrew the treat. Jim grunted. His animal-like sounds were the nonverbal equivalent of begging for Rod to let him have a taste of his beautifully shaped penis. Rod brought his cock back to Jim’s face and slapped him with his tool.
Jim was overcome with anxious anxiety as he smelled Rod’s precum and tried in vain to lift his head up far enough and stick his tongue out quickly enough to catch the prize. Finally, Rod gave in and plowed himself into Jim’s hot, wet mouth. But Jim was hardly prepared to take the whole large package. He gagged and choked and drooled and parted his lips as far as possible to accommodate the whole thing. Jim groaned in ecstasy.
“You’re a good little cocksucker,” Rod said, sounding like a schoolteacher doling out praise for a child who had learned his multiplication tables correctly. “Let’s see how your asshole fares!”
Rod turned Jim over onto his stomach without untying his hands, which meant his arms were crossed over each other. Rod had come prepared with a condom in his pocket that he picked up that morning at the 7-Eleven on Santa Monica Boulevard. He noticed there was a tube of sex gel on Jim’s nightstand. “Jack off this morning with this stuff, Jim?” Rod asked sarcastically. “While you were talking to me? Well, let’s see if how I feel inside of you is anything like what you expected.”
Rod lubed up his condom and carefully rolled it over the head of his cock and down his shaft. With Jim still making nonverbal sounds of pleasure, Rod held the tube of Slime over Jim’s pockmarked ass and let the cold liquid drool onto his hairy crack. Jim squealed with anticipation as Rod began to massage the lube first on the rim of Jim’s hole and then inserted two fingers and coated the inside of his rectum.
“Ready, Jimbo?” Rod asked. He lifted Jim onto his knees and began rubbing the head of his condom-covered cock against Jim’s sensitive hole.
“Please. Take it easy,” Jim groaned.
Rod laughed. “How easy is easy, Jimbo? This easy?” He slowly eased himself into the hot, dark place that, according to Mel Gibson, was not a portal for entry but rather an exit.
“Or this easy?” he said as he forced himself inside.
“No!” Jim cried. “Take it out!”
“Oh, you’re too hot, Jim. You are one hot, fucking sexy dude, man!”
Rod suddenly realized he was playacting, something he never had to do with Bart. In fact, to get through this ritual, he started to fantasize about Bart and how much pleasure they had both given each other.
Rod’s man muscle rammed itself against Jim’s prostate. In only a few minutes, Jim cried out as he automatically shot his load without so much as touching himself. Not that he could with his hands bound. Jim roared with pleasure and pain as Rod continued to hammer away and force Jim to give up his entire load.
Finally, when Jim was spent, Rod withdrew his dick and untied Jim. He rolled him over onto his back and onto the sticky wet sheets, where he’d shot a massive load of jizz. Jim was utterly exhausted, depleted of energy.
But Rod wasn’t through. He ripped off his condom and straddled Jim’s waist while he stroked his own cock. He groaned until he suddenly drew in his breath and unloaded the kind of heavy cream that only a healthy twenty-one-year-old could spill.
Rod said, “Satisfied, asshole?”
“Yeah” was all that Jim could get out as he continued to breathe heavily. Rod untied him, and Jim rubbed Rod’s cum all over his flabby stomach and a chest that was showing signs of becoming breasts.
Rod cast a magical spell over anyone whom he deigned to seduce. From the moment he invited anyone to touch and caress his hard young body they were under his control. Once a man had the privilege of sucking on Rod’s cock or getting fucked by him, there was no escaping the bewitchment.
Tough-as-nails Jim Fallon was no exception. In fact, while he was having his brains screwed out by Rod, his mind was thinking ahead to the next time and the time after that and what he had to go through to keep this Latin stud around. He had already decided he’d go to Michael and plead for him to get a studio to package Blind as a Bat.
If not Michael, then he’d call in a few favors. There was the Warner Bros. executive’s new young wife who, to further her acting career, married a portly upper-management guy who was known for his halitosis. She had made a cameo appearance on The Grass Is Always Greener, which Jim had allowed as a courtesy to the old man.
Then there was the closeted Sterling creative executive who had propositioned Jim in the men’s room at Merv Griffin’s Beverly Hilton Hotel during a break in a salute-to-Angela Lanebury ceremony. Jim wasn’t interested in a blow job in a restroom stall, and the guy pleaded with Jim not to tell anybody, especially his wife.
These were just a few of the chits that Jim had planned to eventually collect when the time was right. If Michael couldn’t come through, Jim decided he’d start making a few calls. Anything to keep Rod around.
When Jim had regained his strength, the men put most of their clothes back on and returned to the library. The fire still roared, and the sound of Puccini filled the room. Their first bottle of wine was empty, so Rod took it upon himself to go to the bar and uncork another. He was starting to feel right at home.
Jim took a seat on the sofa and began staring into the flames in the fireplace.
“So what do you think?” Rod said to Jim as he handed him a glass of wine and interrupted his reverie.
“About what?”
“The swallows at Capistrano being picked off with shotguns by eight-year-olds out on a class field trip this afternoon. What do you think I’m asking you about? The sex, of course. You’re a guy who probably gets laid a lot, and I just want to know if I lived up to your expectations,” Rod said, playing coy.
Jim shuddered. “You were certainly born on the wild side,” he said. Jim was just as masterful at acting out a character and getting what he wanted from people, too. Only his method was different from Rod’s. He wasn’t going to let on to this sexy, talented punk that he had practically died from rapture upstairs. “You’re a very fine boy.”
“A fine boy,” Rod mocked, getting only slightly pissed off. “Thanks for the compliment. Would that be your recommendation to anyone who asked you if I was worth the trouble?”
“Trouble?” Jim sipped his wine. He looked at Rod, who had only dressed in his jeans and boots. Starting to get an erection once again, Jim reached out a hand and dragged his fingertips down Rod’s chest and sternum. He grazed Rod’s nipples and caressed the tattoo on his left arm. Jim’s eyes spoke his thoughts loudly, that Rod was the most perfectly endowed man in a city that boasted the most gorgeous men on the planet.
Rod stared into Jim’s eyes, and even though it was a total lie, he conveyed the thought that Jim was the sexiest man alive—which was the equivalent of telling Jackie Mason he was as hot as Tom Cruise. And clearly Jim bought into it. Rod’s other gift was convincing the people who solicited him that they were an equal in the looks department. That they fucked as well as he did. That they were the perfect size for him—regardless of how incompetent or unsatisfying they may have been. Rod knew exactly how to make people trust him.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, Bart slept past his usual weekday waking hour of five o’clock. For the first time ever, he arrived at the office after nine. Of course, Cheets was nowhere to be found. The mail had been delivered and was still stacked by his office door. Inside his office, on his desk, the
red light on his telephone indicated his messages hadn’t been retrieved. Settling in, he turned on his computer and found twenty-eight E-mails had accumulated since Friday.
“One thing at a time,” he said aloud, thinking of the mail, the phone calls, the E-mail, and the conversation he was going to have to have with Cheets again about what time she was expected in the office. Mostly, he was irritated with himself for being unable to ease into what was certain to be another frantic day.
He punched in the password number on his telephone to retrieve his messages. “You have four new messages,” announced the pleasant, perfectly enunciated voice of the woman who lived inside the phone. “Start of messages,” she said amiably. “Message one. From phone-number 666.”
Shari.
“Cunt,” Bart said to the answering-machine voice, with no more warmth or modulation than “The white zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only.”
“Second message. From phone-number 666.”
“Bitch,” he added in a tone that might as well have been the repeating of an order by a counter girl at Starbucks to make certain she got the request correct: “double latté decaf, venti, to go.”
“Third message. From phone-number 666.”
“Cooze.” By now he was merely reading a roll call.
“Message four. From an unknown number. ‘I never said all the things you wrote.’” The voice was Mare Dickerson’s, with an accusing tone, referring to the quotes attributed to her in the press notes for her new comedy, Woodchuck Chuck? also starring television’s Courteney Howard-Giroux and HBO comic John DeSalles.
“Would Chuck, Chuck? Would Chuck-Chuck? Would Chuck, Chuck Chuck?” Bart had played with the title for months, turning it into a title for a porn or snuff film.
“End of mailbox.” The woman returned to her natural, nonregional voice.
“Oh, fuck both of you.” Bart spoke to the machine, meaning Shari and Mare. He pushed the RELEASE button on the phone to disconnect the voice-mail system.
“By the way, you cocksucking actress, I recorded our interview. Want me to play back the tape and prove my changes were for your own good?”
Of course, Bart couldn’t say that to Dickerson. He’d simply telephone the aging star—and nobody but Margot from Lost Horizon had aged faster—and politely ask what the thrice Oscar-nominated bitch preferred to be quoted as saying about her experiences working on Chuck, as the film title was simplified and reduced for convenience at the office.
Bart had to be diplomatic, which is what he had tried to be when he changed one of Mare’s quotes to read, “I’m an actor who enjoys her craft. I’m constantly striving for perfection. I accepted the role of Claudia because, although the character at first seems one-dimensional, I intuitively realized there was great depth to be found in the script. Her arc is such that audiences will relate to the struggles she must face in order to survive the devastating situations she ultimately finds herself trying to overcome as a prostitute in the Pacific Northwest. Thanks to our fine director and the support from the incredibly talented Ms. Howard-Giroux, and Mr. DeSalles and the superb supporting cast, I’m very pleased with this film.”
It wouldn’t look good in the press kit if the star were quoted verbatim off her tape-recorded interview: “What kind of stupid idiot do you think I am, you little putz. I took the role for one reason, because they offered me a shitload of money. My motivation? It had only to do with the number of zeros they piled behind a number on my check. I don’t give a fuck about the audience. I don’t care whether or not they like this character. They can stick it up their ass!
“Any American asshole who pays nine bucks to see a movie doesn’t deserve quality—he’s being ripped off by the studios. Wait a few months for the video—suckers. Most audiences don’t have the intellectual capacity to appreciate art, anyway. That’s why Jerry Bruckheimer’s films make a shit ton of cash. They’re mindless diversions for the mindless lemmings who line up in the blazing summer heat to see a lot of special effects.
“Speaking of mindless, where on earth did they find this Courteney hyphenate and the director? Neither stands a chance for another feature once the critics get a load of this piece of celluloid crap. I don’t think either of their careers will survive when this mess is released. And they were damned difficult for me to work with. Trying to act with ‘no talents’ generally is impossible for geniuses such as I.”
Yeah, Bart thought. That would go over real well with Shari. The press would have a field day.
For him, there was no alternative. It was a simple task of taking the high road and playing the obsequious nobody. He was used to that. It was Bart’s life as a publicist, the life of most Hollywood publicists. They took orders and made assholes look like they’re the Second Coming of Audrey Hepburn at a famine-relief center in Botswana. However, Bart had a feeling Audrey had been a dream client and perfectly sincere in all her humanitarian efforts.
If Bart loathed Hollywood, this latest fracas with the star of Woodchuck Chuck? was just one more reason to think of gaining his freedom. There was the tempestuous Shari, always accusing him of one contrived infraction or another. Then there were the asshole stars who thought they were so far above the rest of the peons who served their every whim that they could be as rude as they wanted to be. Well, Bart decided he’d had enough of the Sharis and the Mare Dickersons and the Michael Manns and the Don Johnsons and the Julia Bobs and Jerry Lewises of the world. And he’d also had it with the fantasy of being with someone as unearthly sexy as Rod Dominguez.
“I don’t even have time for a nervous breakdown,” Bart lamented. “This is a call for this little wuss to kick some Hollywood ass.” He paused, thinking. “But how?”
The easiest target would be Cheets, who, by 9:45, still hadn’t made an entrance. But not only was confrontation not in Bart’s nature; he didn’t want to emulate the jackasses he had to serve by being a bastard to those who served him.
On the other hand, he thought, perhaps a lack of confrontation might be his problem. Look at what happened at Rod’s yesterday morning. There was no scene, no flying plates or words of anger that could eventually be mollified by an apology and subsequent make-up sex. Perhaps if Bart had fought for what he wanted, he wouldn’t feel as though his life were a case of the tail wagging the dog.
After scrolling through his E-mails for anything that seemed important, Bart came to a conclusion about the course on which he would set his life. From this moment forward, he would buckle down and work extra hard to get out of Sterling. Like Rod, he would concentrate on his personal writing—in particular the diary, which would become a tell-all book. Like Cindy Adams, he’d simply continue to dish whatever dirt he could dig up. And there was plenty of dirt just lying around at publicity staff meetings, stinking up the place like Drew Carey’s underwear after an all-night binge on burritos and refried beans.
But if his proposed book was to become a reality, he realized he’d have to conceal himself behind a nom de plume. He remembered that when the identity of Joe Klein, “Anonymous” author of Primary Colors, eventually leaked out, he was vilified because of his apparent lack of ethics. Bart used to have ethics. But they were slowly eroded by his working in Hollywood.
“Ha!” Bart uttered as he came to an unexpected realization about himself and his profession. “I’m Laura Petry, for crying out loud! I’ve unexpectedly walked in on Alan Brady, and he doesn’t have any hair!”
But when exactly did that MTM moment occur to Bart, he asked himself. When did I first realize that Hollywood was actually Alan Brady—a vain star, self-absorbed to the core, a baldheaded egomaniacal beast? When did the façade of Hollywood flip off like a tacky toupee in a wind chamber?
Unlike the threshold that delineates the moment a puppy becomes a dog, there was no single moment that Bart could remember when he experienced the transformation from wondering child to amoral weasel. He had been an enthusiastic young man when he started in the business. No task at the studio was too sma
ll for him to accept with a smile. Simply walking between soundstages during his lunch hour or seeing a parking space that said “Don Knotts” was almost compensation enough for the privilege of working in Hollywood. Even as a lowly assistant, he had felt he was contributing an important ingredient to what filmgoers would eventually view on-screen.
Now, sitting in his corner office, with his own sofa and minirefrigerator as well as an assistant and an expense account and car allowance and weekly invitations to attend private screenings with the stars and directors of new films, Bart realized he was paying a colossal price for the so-called privilege of being privileged.
But in order to continue his existence and status, he had to lie a hundred different ways a thousand times a day. For example, he’d had to tell Piper Perabo after a screening that she was “Brilliant. Simply brilliant!” If that wasn’t difficult enough to do with a straight face, he had to push the envelope and say, with his own Oscar-caliber performance of sincerity, that her appearance in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was destined to make the film that summer’s biggest box-office hit.
It was a walking-the-razor’s-edge balancing act Bart performed daily. For too long now he had been forced to write obsequious letters to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, hoping to surreptitiously maneuver the members into nominating Farrah Fawcett for a Golden Globe Award for a “small but memorable” cameo role in the harrowing but true story of a woman’s courage when she finds her wealthy new husband has four testicles. And when James Belushi miraculously got a rave in L.A. Weekly for his hard-hitting role as a closeted gay aromatherapist in a Beverly Hills salon who discovers that the scent of client Pauly Shore is the aphrodisiac that changes his life forever, Bart had to find a way to make the HFPA and Motion Picture Academy members believe what the lunatics at L.A. Weekly had to say and disregard every other major film critic across the country.