by Ben Tyler
“Rod?” Bart said, coming up behind him. For just a moment Bart stood looking at the man he used to think of as the personification of God’s greatest creation. “You look as good as ever,” he finally said.
“Thanks, man. But I haven’t worked out in two months. I’m getting soft.”
“You were never soft,” Bart said with a knowing grin. “You’re still extremely sexy.”
Rod smiled, the narcissist in him coming through. “I’m really glad you called, Bart. I was afraid you wouldn’t. I’ve missed the hell out of you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“But you moved on fast. That Rusty guy?”
“How about you and Jim Fallon? That’s quite a leap from when we first met. Let’s go to the commissary and play catch-up over lunch.”
As they left the office and walked out of the building toward the studio commissary, Bart was thinking that Rod was still the sexiest man alive. He couldn’t help being aroused by a flood of memories of all the times they’d been flesh to flesh together in bed, screwing each other’s brains out.
Bart had thought he’d have his emotions under control. He was involved with the nicest guy on the planet who was also the most tender and loving sex partner. So, he asked himself, why was he still almost uncontrollably attracted to Rod? He decided he couldn’t help his animal instincts. But he could definitely help how he responded to them. There was no way he was going to let Rod manipulate him into having sex, no matter what.
After ordering vegiburgers from the commissary grill, getting bottles of Evian, and filing through the cashier’s line (Bart paid), they decided to sit outside in the sun on the so-called Garden Veranda. The place was teaming with diners—secretaries, middle-management executives, and a sprinkling of actors—and the noise level would allow them to talk openly without others eavesdropping.
As they made their way to a table by an ivy-covered brick wall, people who were used to keeping an eye on the door at restaurants, to watch the comings and goings of celebrities, couldn’t help but look up as Rod passed by. The gay men as well as the straight ones and all the women clearly thought Rod had to be an actor. Nobody as good-looking as he could get away from at least a momentary flash of stardom in Hollywood.
Those who knew Bart all wondered what the hell he was doing with someone who was so painfully handsome and therefore important. In Hollywood, where perception is reality, beauty counts for 99.9 percent of any individual’s value.
Rod and Bart removed their plates and utensils from their trays and set them on the round table that had an umbrella impaled in the center for shade. Their preliminary small talk included the usual: “Have you seen this or that movie or so-and-so’s concert? Any vacation plans? Did you hear that Erykah Badu would be promoting her new CD with a live performance at Tower Records on Sunset?”
Finally, halfway through his meal, Bart asked the big question. “You mentioned problems with your screenplay. What’s going on?”
Rod stopped in mid-bite and set his burger down on his plate. “It sucks,” he said, his mouth full of whatever goes into a vegiburger.” He swallowed. “Just like my life with Jim.”
“Literally and figuratively, I presume?” Bart refused to chide himself for being excruciatingly direct. He had often been told he would have made a fine therapist because he was good at poking around and asking the right questions, even if he wasn’t always tactful. He always made others feel as though he were interested in them and their problems. “Rod,” he went on, “tons of wanna-be screenwriters would kill to be in your shoes. People who can help you get ahead surround you. So what’s the problem?”
Rod thought for a moment before he finally spoke. “Things just aren’t working out. What used to be my screenplay is now Jim’s and Michael’s.”
“Isn’t your name still on it?”
“I don’t think there’s one original line of dialogue of mine left. Now, instead of being a comedy that would have been super for Hugh Grant and Meg Ryan or even John Lithgow and Chloë Sevigny, it has turned into an edgy drama. Something for Malkovich or Cusack or Penn. Of course, there’s a role for the great Jim Fallon,” he added facetiously. “It’s a big one. He and Michael have written it themselves.”
“All screenwriters have horror stories about the way their work is defiled,” Bart reminded. “How many books have been written on the subject by some of the biggest names in the business? William Goldman? John Gregory Dunne? You know what the game is. You’re not the exception. Your problem is very run-of-the-mill.”
“But neither of those guys had to fuck Jim Fallon’s pimple butt on an on-call basis,” Rod said, and continued eating his vegiburger.
The image made Bart set his lunch aside. “I really hate to say this, Rod, but it’s called paying your dues.”
“You mean paying off my karma. The remuneration is sick. Talk about the wages of sin.”
“The truth is, your own ego is so large that you’ll do anything, and I mean anything, to be successful. Why are you sitting here griping because you have to suck Jim Fallon’s pathetic cock or fuck his fat rash-red ass to get ahead? This kind of behavior has been going on since time immemorial. Sex has been used the way you’re using it by probably millions of people through the ages to achieve their goals.”
Rod stopped eating and placed the remainder of his burger on his plate. “God, I thought I could count on you for help. Why are you giving me so much grief?”
“I’m not. I’m telling you about the truth. You’re no more than a kept boy. Some stars keep their hustlers in red Ferraris. Others buy their boys Rolex watches and fly them all over the world. You see their names during the end crawl credits on movie screens. The credit that reads: so-and-s ‘assistant,’ or thus-and-so’s ‘trainer.’ What you’re getting in the end—hopefully—is a produced screenplay.”
“I’ve come to hate this town,” Rod complained.
“It’s also been pretty good to you, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’ve sucked and fucked enough in my time. I’m getting tired of putting out, thinking it’s going to get me anywhere.”
“It has already, hasn’t it? Look where you’re living? When we first met, you only dreamed about being part of that world. Now your fantasy has come true.”
Rod scowled. “I’ve hustled enough to know when I’m being hustled. I know I’m being used. I just thought it was a reciprocal deal. Day after day, I see how wrong I am. Those two bastards think they’ve got some idiot for a boy-toy. The thing of it is, I’m willing to put out as long as there are long-term benefits. Right now I don’t see any.”
“You’ve never been one to let anybody take advantage of you. Oh, you’ve taken advantage of plenty of people, myself included, but I thought you were pretty good about not being a victim yourself.”
“You weren’t at any disadvantage,” Rod sniped. “The date on the screenplay coverage was a couple of weeks earlier than when you gave it to me. You were stringing me along. Don’t think I don’t know.”
Bart said nothing.
Rod became conciliatory. “I didn’t mean to use you, Bart, honestly. And if I did, it was—just my nature.”
Bart nodded. “I don’t blame you. And you’re right, I got a lot out of our time together, too.”
“At least with us it was reciprocal. And you always kept your word.”
“Is it my imagination, or did we have the greatest time together? At least for me, the sex was primo,” Bart said, flashing back in his mind to a conflation of every night they spent locked together in each other’s arms.
“Bitchin’, man.”
“From start to finish.”
Rod looked deep into Bart’s eyes. “From start to—I don’t think we’re finished, Bart. I think I just got sidetracked and made an ass of myself. But I’m determined for us to get myself together.”
Bart was flabbergasted. “Stop! Hold on! What are you talking about? We’ve both moved on. We’re seeing other people. You can’t just call me
up and say, ‘Hey, man, how’s it hangin’? I’m ready to let you back in my life.’”
“Why not? What if I say, ‘I love you,’ the way you did that last morning when we were lying in bed? I couldn’t say anything then. I was afraid. The only guys who ever said they loved me meant they loved my fucking them. Weren’t you just saying you were in love with me? Am I stupid enough to think you were so in love with me that you’d be available after I got my shit together with the screenwriting thing?”
“I think you’re just tired of living with a creep and life isn’t going the way you expected,” Bart countered.
“And I suppose your life is going exactly as you expected?” Rod lashed out. “You’re still stuck at this goddamned studio in a job you hate. Do you still have that crazy, nympho, bitch boss Scary Shari? She still have it in for you? How much longer do you think you can take it?”
Bart was silent for a moment. Then, with all the poise he could muster, he said, “As a matter of fact, I’ll probably be fired within the month.”
“Dude, that can’t happen. You’re a super writer.”
For the first time, Rod seemed to be genuinely interested in someone else’s problems. The look on his face registered authentic concern for Bart’s happiness and for his future.
Bart explained. “It’s all speculation, but it looks like there’s a plot to get rid of the president of marketing, a really nice guy who happens to be openly gay. I was actually propositioned.”
“By the fag?”
“Please, don’t call him that. His name is Owen Lucas. He’s a brilliant marketing man and a good executive. It was Shari and Cy who propositioned me. I look like a patsy. They wanted me involved in their scheme to oust Owen. And if I don’t play along…”
Bart trailed off, then continued. “They hate Owen because he’s way smarter than they are. Plus, he’s out of the closet. This is the only studio in town where that’s such a big taboo—family values and traditions and all. It’s such a double standard, because over fifty percent of the guys working here are gay. Many are buttoned-down Armani suit guys by day and full-out cowboy leather drag queens by night.”
“What’d you tell me once, ‘At Sterling you’re considered gay until proven otherwise!’”
Bart laughed. He remembered telling that to Rod one morning while they were both lying together after a long night of nonstop sex. The subject of working for a glamorous company like Sterling had come up, and Bart explained what it was really like around the lot, especially in his back-stabbing, high-tension, dog-eat-dog marketing department.
Bart had once said to Rod, that often, during boring marketing meetings, he’d mentally go around the oval conference table of twenty or so colleagues and say, “Gay, gay, straight, gay, straight, gay, gay, gay, straight, who cares, straight, can’t tell, gay, gay, gay…”
For the time being, Rod seemed to have left his own problems behind and wanted to know more about this so-called proposition Bart had received. Bart explained how Shari had made the suggestion that he could be in line for a big promotion if he’d help establish the foundation for a sexual-harassment lawsuit they were dreaming up to scare Owen away. They wanted Bart to claim that Owen had made an unsolicited sexual advance toward him.
“The thing of it is,” Bart said, “I’d have gone to bed with Owen in an instant. He’s sexy and fun and has a great sense of humor and an extremely quick mind. But nothing ever happened. As often as I blatantly made eye contact with him and laughed too loudly at the jokes he made during meetings, he never saw me as anything but the staff writer. And I don’t believe it ever happened to any of the guys here. But there’s one S.O.B.—a supposedly straight guy name Josh, over in promotions—who I hear is willing to make an accusation of sexual harassment just to get a promotion.”
“Any chance you misunderstood Shari when she made the suggestion to you?” Rod asked.
“No. In fact, you can be the judge. I taped the conversation.”
“No way, man! That’s too rad. You could end up owning this whole friggin’ studio!”
“Or dead.” Bart laughed. “They say Cy Lupiano has East Coast crime family connections. I’ll be lucky if I ever get to work at another studio after they blackball me.”
“You don’t get it, man,” Rod said, looking as serious as he did the first night Bart showed up with fifty bucks and made him take shots of tequila from Rod’s own mouth. “We both have very valuable assets. You’ve got a tape that spells out a false sexual-harassment suit…and I have something of great potential value, too.”
Bart looked quizzical as Rod scanned the Garden Veranda for eavesdroppers. “A copy of a manuscript that ol’ Jimbo Fallon’s been writing. It’s a wild exposé. It tells where all the bodies in Hollywood are buried. Or what closet they’re hiding in.”
“What are you talking about?” Bart said, looking like Roz Russell in The Women, just as the chatterbox, rumormonger manicurist is about to dish the dirt about her best friend Norma Shearer’s husband, Steven, stepping out behind her back with Joan Crawford.
“Jim’s writing a book. A tell-all.” Rod winked. “And I, unknown to him or anyone else, have a copy.”
“You stole it?”
“I am not an animal…I’m a human being,” Rod said, doing John Hurt’s line from The Elephant Man. “Substitute animal for thief if it makes you feel any better. The idiot left his computer on one afternoon when he went out for an audition.”
“I’d call taking Jim’s manuscript theft.”
“Pilfering, maybe.” Rod shrugged.
“Semantics.”
“I walked into his office looking for stamps for a letter and happened to see my name on his computer screen. Of course, I had a right to know what he’d written about me. I just printed out a copy to read. He has the original, for Christ sake. How’s that stealing?”
“So what about this manuscript? What’d he say about you?” Bart was intrigued, as Rod had been when he first came across the book.
“It’s not so much what he said about me, although there’s enough. It’s more about all the cocksuckers who run this town, including your nemesis Shari Draper. The people he’s met on the way up—and on the way down. It comes full circle in the life of a nobody turned somebody turned nobody again. It could be a primer for every wanna-be and has-been in the industry.”
“Is it a novel? Roman à clef?”
“If it is, he’s using real names. Like Shari’s, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, David Geffen, and Lew Wasserman.”
“Wasserman? Why would he lump Wasserman in with those other creeps? He doesn’t fit.”
“It’s incongruous.” (There was Rod using his out-of-the-blue ten-dollar words.)
“He actually says nice things about Lew and Edie. I met ’em. They were both real nice to me. But wait’ll you read this thing, if you want to. I mean, I can’t let it out of my hiding place, but if you want to meet me in private, I can bring parts of it with me. As for your tape, you better make a copy and stash it. You might be sitting on a gold mine.”
“More like a ticking bomb,” said Bart.
The Garden Veranda was clearing out now, and it was getting too dangerous to talk openly. If Bart had learned one rule while in Hollywood, it was to never talk about anyone in a restaurant. There was some axiom or universal law that made it for certain someone who knew the person you were talking about was within listening range. It had happened to Bart on numerous occasions. He’d be at a restaurant and overhear conversations about people he knew personally. Everybody knew someone who knew the best friend of the hairstylist who kept William Shatner looking so strange with his gin blossoms and his inordinately phony toupees.
Bart looked at his wristwatch. “I’ve got a screening in ten minutes. We’ll have to pick this up later.”
“I’ve got to go, too,” Rod said. “Jim’ll give me the third degree about where I’ve been.” He rolled his eyes. “Every time I leave the house he thinks I’m running off to fuck some dude.” Rod
paused for a moment. Then, as if taking Bart into his confidence, he whispered, “Frankly, he’s right.”
“I thought you gave up hustling,” Bart said.
“I have. I just fuck for the release. Gotta keep the tubes clear. I don’t want my dick to petrify.”
“Mmm,” Bart said with obvious longing.
“You’re hard for me right now, aren’t you?” Rod said, prodding. “I know you are.”
Bart blushed. It was true. From the moment he laid eyes on Rod again, he had an erection. “Some things are ‘uncontrollable.’” He shrugged, desperate to reach out and just touch Rod’s face.
“If you ever want to…” Rod’s sentence trailed off.
“Wanting is one thing,” Bart said. “I think I’ll probably always want you, Rod. But there’s a saying ‘If you want everybody, you’ll end up with nobody.’ Right now I have someone really special. I wouldn’t jeopardize my relationship with Rusty for anything.” He checked his watch again. “Sorry, man, I’ve got to rush.”
“Wasn’t I special?” Rod asked as they simultaneously stood up from the table.
Bart looked at Rod for a long moment but said nothing.
“Never mind. Will you call me again?” Rod asked plaintively. “Please?”
Bart smiled. “Of course. You can call me, too. You can practically always reach me here at the studio. Sorry we can’t talk longer, but I can’t keep Ben Affleck waiting.”
Bart winked at Rod to let him know Ben Affleck wasn’t really going to be at the screening. Then he made the first move to shake Rod’s hand good-bye rather than wait for Rod to advance for a hug or—more inappropriately, given this environment—a kiss.
As the two departed the dining area, they separated and slowly walked away in opposite directions—Rod toward the parking lot, Bart toward the Ella Raines Memorial Theatre. After so many paces, they turned around at the same time and waved to each other.
For Bart, the memory of holding Rod’s hard body was a painful distraction. Damn it! I’ve made the right decision! I know I have! he insisted to himself, pushing away all thoughts that life with Rod could be remotely better than with Rusty.