Tricks Of The Trade

by Ben Tyler

  “Somebody like Demi Moore?” Owen quipped.

  “Oh! Oh!” Mitch exclaimed as though he had solved a mathematical equation in class. “Eleanor Roosevelt. Just like that WACS in the White House song!”

  Everybody groaned.

  Bart and Rod, the only two other than Fitterman who, from reading Jim’s book, knew the answer, exchanged smiles.

  Fitterman cleared his throat. “First name rhymes with Larry. Second name with Raper.”

  Mitch, having a ball playing twenty questions, said, “Larry. Barry. Carrie. Shari. Fairy. Scary.”

  The answer hit everyone simultaneously—except Mitch, who continued with “Wary. Larry. Gary. Shari. Hairy…”

  “For Christ sake,” Jim snapped. “You already said it—twice! Shari, for god’s sake!”

  The room could have exploded and burst into flames and Rusty, Owen, and Mitch would not have been more surprised by the revelation. They were speechless. Bart had wrestled with the idea of keeping this knowledge from his lover but decided to follow Fitterman’s request to not tell a soul.

  Fitterman continued, this time extemporaneously. “However, the testosterone and estrogen levels in Shari’s body apparently couldn’t be balanced.”

  “That explains the hairy mole on her breast and the mustache,” Bart said.

  “Instead of becoming the soft and radiant Jaclyn Smith, the Breck shampoo girl who turned up as Kelly Garrett on Charlie’s Angels, became a ball-buster of a woman who could easily take down Mike Tyson and reduce that throwback to Homo erectus weeping at a De Beers ‘A diamond is forever’ commercial.”

  Jim piped in to take center stage with what he thought was his story. “Unlike the original Miss Crossover, Christine Jorgensen, about whom the newspaper headlines had roared: ‘G.I. Goes Abroad, And Comes Back A Broad,’ Shari was not a lovely buttercup of a lady.”

  “I knew Christine,” Fitterman added wistfully. “A real lady.”

  “But Shari was just a hard-boiled bitch,” Jim continued. “It’s not that she wasn’t aware of how crass she was. In fact, early on she enrolled at the ultraexclusive Miss Peabody’s Finishing School for the Socially Inept. She lasted three days of etiquette class and never learned to properly slice a cake to serve with tea.

  “Try though her instructors did, they couldn’t get Shari to stop saying, ‘Fuckin A’ when she found something amusing. Finally, Miss Peabody and the school’s psychologist-counselor, Miss Allen, called her in for a meeting.

  “Miss Draper,” Ms. Peabody began, “Dr. Allen has studied your personality examinations and career-placement assessments. According to the standard evaluations prepared by Stanford University, it appears that you could do quite well as an executive in Hollywood.”

  For the first time since arriving at Miss Peabody’s Finishing School for the Socially Inept, Shari’s eyes sparkled.

  “It is our consensus, and that of the board of directors, that you should be dismissed from this school. Your tuition will be reimbursed if you leave immediately,” Ms. Peabody added.

  “Fuckin’ A!” Shari exploded with pleasure as she jumped up from the burgundy leather chair in which she had been seated and headed for the door. She made a quick stop at her dormitory to pack her belongings and to call Don Simpson, to whom she owed a great debt—but wanted more in exchange for keeping her lips sealed about his being an escaped con. He said she’d have a job the next day. She was to report to the mailroom at Millennium Studios on the West Side of L.A.

  From skateboarding mail girl sucking off a succession of producers and creative executives, she moved up the ladder. She began as an assistant to the head of feature-film publicity, wrangled her way into her boss’s job, and ended up director of the entire marketing staff.

  “Finally, one afternoon she got the call she’d been waiting breathlessly to receive,” Jim said. “One of her old cocks, Cy Lupiano, had just signed a contract at Sterling. He missed Shari and wanted her to take over as the new executive vice president of publicity.”

  “The Gayest Place in the Universe,” Mitch sighed.

  “And it was,” Bart said. “Sort of. At least until Shari came aboard.”

  Fitterman continued reading Jim’s words. “‘When I got out of the pen, I went to Hollywood, too. Years passed. Don became a big shot in entertainment. Shari practically ran a studio. I became a household name. Shari eventually deigned to acknowledge me after we reconnected at a party. And, as a Christmas present last year, she sent me a beautiful hustler—already unwrapped and ready to play—batteries and all. The present and I took some videos, and he stole the tape. He was Helen of Troy’s pretty brother! Shari got the cassette and had it aired on Totally Hollywood. To keep her past a secret, she was making sure I disappeared and never worked again.’”

  At last, the evening ended. Bart and Rusty said good-bye to their guests. Rusty thanked Gus Fitterman for his hard work and good nature.

  “And then there were none,” Rusty said, embracing Bart and telling him not to worry about the outcome of the trial.

  Bart began unbuttoning Rusty’s shirt and nestled his face into his lover’s chest and inhaled the warmth emanating from his skin. “Let’s clean this stuff up in the morning,” he suggested, looking around the room. “I just want to be in bed with you right now.”

  Rusty grinned.

  “Get yourself ready. I’ll lock up and put the kids to bed,” Bart said.

  Rusty quickly completed his ablutions and took off his clothes. By the time he turned off the bathroom light, Bart was already in bed, covered only to his waist in a sheet.

  Rusty, who’d had an erection ever since Bart began unbuttoning his shirt, stood in the doorway looking over at his lover. “I never get tired of seeing you in my bed.”

  Bart’s member did an involuntary jump under the sheet. “And look at you, Mr. Stiffy. Trust me, I never tire of seeing that! Bring it over so I can have my dessert.”

  Rusty moved onto the bed and snuggled next to Bart. After all these months together, neither tired of the same sort of foreplay that had existed from their first time. They began kissing and feeling the contours of each other’s chests and reaching over to hold the other’s cock.

  Rusty straddled Bart, reaching for a bottle of massage oil on the bedstand. He poured oil on Bart’s chest, replaced the bottle, and began rubbing the fluid all over Bart’s body, which glistened in the dim light that emanated from a halogen desk lamp on the bedstand. Then Rusty lay on top of Bart and rubbed his own body firmly against his lover’s, coating his own skin with oil.

  Without having to say it, Bart and Rusty both knew they were enough for each other. Neither could conceive of a time when they would want to be physical with anyone else. They felt it almost a miracle that they were together.

  After Rusty rubbed more oil on his cock, he slowly humped Bart’s ass and then gently slipped into his lover’s body.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sterling’s chief counsel, Richard Ward, and his innocuous horde of deputy counsels, Tweedledees and Tweedledums, flanked Shari and Cy as they entered courtroom number 340 on the third floor of the Flower Street Courthouse in Burbank. The trio were the picture of self-confident composure and intimidation. Shari’s arrogance wafted around her as palpably as the Samsara she spritzed herself with in the car on the way over from the studio. In a beige suit, accented with a silk Donna Karan scarf and a ladybug lapel pin from Cartier, she looked over at the defendant’s table and gave Owen Lucas and Fitterman a slight smirk, as if she were Alex Trebek holding the correct question on Double Jeopardy. Owen stared at Shari with dead eyes and did not return the smile. Soon she looked away, unable to maintain eye contact.

  Feeling completely at ease in what to anyone else would have been an intimidating environment, Shari looked over at the jury box and summed up the eight men and four women who were the first to be impaneled as possible jurors. They reeked of the lower classes. “Not a jury of my peers,” she sneered to herself, having forgotten there was
a time in the not too distant past when these people would have been socially superior to her. There was not one whom she could remotely conceive of knowing personally. “NOCD,” she said to herself, looking down her nose at each of them.

  Shari’s composure was still unruffled when she examined the others in the room. She wasn’t surprised to see Bart Cain seated in the back of the courtroom. When their eyes met, he blew her a kiss—a reminder of the day she fired him. Then he smiled. Shari also spied Mitch—who was supposed to be minding the office—Jim Fallon, and that stud she met once, what’s his name, Rod, all of whom were seated together. They gave her a collective glare, which did not achieve the desired effect of eroding her confidence. In fact, their solidarity seemed to backfire, as Shari became as icy as Judge Judy.

  Shari glared at them. She never felt for an instant any sense of dislocation or thought that she was being cornered by a pack of ravenous hyenas. She turned to face the bench when the bailiff announced, “All rise. The Honorable Judge Jonathan Carter is presiding, and court is now in session.”

  The entire room became silent, though not just because of the solemnity of the proceedings and the mandatory respect that was due the judicial system. No, they were more than a little surprised by the man entering the court and taking his place behind the bench. In any other venue there would have been an appreciative gasp of surprise throughout the vast room, because the man who entered, Judge Carter, was not only extremely young—whatever the minimum age was for a judge—but inordinately handsome. He could easily pass as a Richard Gere clone. Even his perfectly combed hair was of an elegant, prematurely grayish black color.

  As the judge took his seat behind the bench, Mitch elbowed Bart, who looked at Rusty, who smiled at Rod, who winked at Jim. In the silence of the courtroom their combined gaydar could almost be heard crackling like static, like blips on an air-traffic controller’s monitoring screen. But there was interference jamming the signals. Although Judge Carter was a stud, none of the men could say for certain what his sexual orientation was. He was inscrutable.

  Judge Carter was also a formidable-looking man who exuded authority. Rod imagined Judge Carter in black leather chaps and vest showing off his endowments; Mitch flashed on his wearing Western drag and doing line dancing at the Rawhide; Bart envisioned himself cuddled in bed on a Saturday morning reciting poetry; Jim got a hard-on thinking of the judge coming to his wine cellar wearing his robe as he sentenced Jim to a lashing by Hispanic prison guards; Rusty’s fantasy matched Bart’s, right down to the Brownings and e. e. cummings.

  Shari was attracted to him, too. Even the court reporter, a cute skinny kid with a diamond stud in his left earlobe and a goatee, could hardly keep his eyes on the keys of his stenographer’s machine. Each man and woman in the room imagined what would be revealed if this hunk of judge were to remove his robe. His stature and posture made it a certainty that the guy was an irresistible specimen of perfect masculinity. “I’ll wager he’s got a gym in his chambers,” Rod said to Bart. “Check out those shoulders!”

  Aside from the god who sat above the rest of those in the room, the stage setting was just like every episode of Perry Mason, Law & Order, Matlock, and Judging Amy; indeed, all television courtroom dramas.

  Having taken his seat, Judge Carter addressed the plaintiff and defendant and their respective counsel. He looked to each table and glared at Owen and Fitterman, Shari and her Sterling team. Bart and Rusty looked at each other, both registering the judge’s look at Owen. They nonverbally agreed there was something ominous in the way the judge observed Owen that was different from the way he looked at everybody else. Perhaps he was homophobic.

  “Was it my imagination,” Mitch said to Bart, “but did you notice that flesh-and-blood incarnation of David on the bench give Owen a nasty look?”

  “No different than the others,” Bart said, trying to convince himself that justice was indeed blind. “But I can tell he’s a total professional. He won’t let the fact that he may think Owen’s a total perv interfere with the trial. I think we’ll all definitely be witnesses to a well-run courtroom.”

  “Can you picture him naked?” Mitch asked as an aside, to which Bart laughed just loudly enough for the judge to look up threateningly as he searched the room for the contemptuous transgressor. “Any person who feels this is a court where levity is permitted may leave the room immediately,” he barked.

  Bart slumped down in his seat.

  In what otherwise would have been the most boring part of the trial, the act of the judge reading the case and giving instructions to the potential jurors, all eyes and ears were attentive to His Honor: handsome heartthrob Judge Carter.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Judge Carter began, “this case has been randomly assigned to this court.”

  “See? No bias,” Bart said, this time sotto voce.

  “The case that will be tried in this court is exceptional.” Carter looked over at Owen. This time he held his gaze. “Would the defendant and plaintiffs please rise and face the jury box.”

  Owen, the defendant, dressed in an impeccable gray Armani suit, white Perry Ellis shirt, and a necktie bearing the image of Carmen Miranda under her signature tutti-frutti headdress, followed the court’s instructions. Owen stood before his accusers at the next table and the men and women in the jury box, who would either side with the immaculate reputation of Sterling or believe his defense and exonerate him of the charges of sexual harassment. His life would soon be in the hands of Fitterman and twelve jurors.

  Judge Carter announced, “This is a case of same-sex sexual harassment. In some jurisdictions same-sex sexual harassment is not actionable. However, in California, both on the federal and state levels, it is, most certainly. California is also one of the few states that has sexual-orientation laws. Therefore, this is an extremely important case. I implore those of you who will be selected to serve on this jury to pay close attention to all the evidence presented by both sides.

  “You will hear often graphic evidence presented by counsel for Sterling Studios, who have the burden to prove that the defendant was removed from his position as president of motion-picture marketing when it was alleged that he was engaged in sexual misconduct—harassment—of several male employees.”

  A murmur went through the courtroom, as if the gallery had never seen Ellen, Will & Grace, or The Birdcage. Judge Carter cracked his gavel and continued.

  “On the other hand, the defendant, who is an openly gay man, alleges that he was unlawfully terminated from employment on the basis of false accusations of said illegal conduct.

  “It is also alleged that soon after commencing his assignment at Sterling, the defendant began asking Bart Cain, a senior publicist at Sterling, if he would like to have a sexual relationship with him. Mr. Cain allegedly said no, explaining he was not attracted to Mr. Lucas. However, it is alleged that Mr. Lucas persisted in asking for a sexual relationship, including requests to perform oral sex on Mr. Cain.

  “You may be seated, Mr. Lucas. Ms. Draper.”

  Judge Carter folded his hands and peered first at those in the jury box, then out into the gallery and to fifty or so other prospective jurors. He had one more comment to make before the selection of those who would sit in judgment of Owen Lucas and Sterling began.

  “Living in the Los Angeles area, as all of you do, perhaps you’re familiar with the case of Shermansky v. Bronze Productions. I would ask that if any of you are familiar with the case, you advise the court of this knowledge when the voir dire process begins.

  “Shermansky v. Bronze is a relatively recent case in which one of the employees of management level at Bronze Productions allegedly required as a condition of employment that male assistants stay with him in his hotel room when he traveled and made them watch X-rated films with him. An employee brought a claim of sexual harassment, and the court agreed there was a viable theory of same sex-sexual harassment.

  “The court rejected the defendant’s argument that upholding this theory
would violate the defendant’s First Amendment rights, saying that if same sex-sexual harassment was recognized by law, then every employer would have to inquire into the sexual orientation of all its male employees. The court did not agree with that argument, because employers are not supposed to inquire into whether their employees are heterosexual. Please keep in mind that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the antidiscrimination law, does not include a requirement that the victim and harasser be of opposite genders.”

  After providing the details of the case, the tiresome process of selecting the jury began. Shari was bored. She would much rather have been getting her pedicure than sitting on the hard wooden chair listening to the long list of prospective jurors go through the voir dire process when all of them seemed for one reason or another to want to be excused from service.

  “I’m a Christian woman, I am,” announced the first prospective juror, a fat woman wearing a floral print dress that accentuated the rolls of flesh beneath the flimsy fabric. Her Charles Laughton face was garnished with almond-shaped eyeglasses in a blue plastic frame covered in rhinestones. When asked if she could render an unbiased verdict, she replied, “I ain’t the type to judge another of God’s children, no, sir, Your Honor. But if that there man was fired for being a pervert, then he deserved what he got.”

  Judge Carter quickly interrupted her and without a moment’s hesitation announced, “You may be excused.”

  “I ’spect he’ll be punished more in hell when he gets there, too,” the woman continued, speaking more to herself than to anyone in particular as she waddled out of the jury box.

  “All prospective jurors are cautioned to disregard all comments that are not testimony,” Judge Carter implored, and brought down his gavel with a thundering clap. He was already irritated, and the trial had not yet begun.

  The bailiff called another name from the room. That person filled the vacant seat left by the Charles Laughton woman.