My Worst Date

by David Leddick

  I reached behind myself and turned on a tap. With my wet hand I took the Roger et Gallet soap and slimed Glenn up.

  “Let me get out of these shorts,” I said, dropping them and stepping out of them. I wasn’t wearing underpants.

  Sitting on the edge of the sink I braced a sneakered foot on either side of Glenn against the wall, framing a Redouté rose print.

  “Okay, get at it, big boy,” I said.

  Glenn came and groaned loudly. My mother, coming down the hall, rapped on the door and said, “Darling, are you all right?”

  In a very normal tone of voice, Glenn said, “Yes. I just realized I forgot to pay the light bill.”

  He pulled up his jockey shorts and his pants and left the powder room buckling his belt. I heard him say to my mother, “Come on, let’s see what you have in the kitchen that will make me forget I won’t have any lights when I get home.”

  iris at the gym

  Here I am on this damn rowing machine. Fifteen minutes and have to keep the rate under 4,000, whatever the hell that means. However, my legs look good. Just tan enough. Funny how these Reeboks and sweat socks make thinnish legs look good. Who would ever think something like gym shoes would be a fashion enhancement? Hugo sort of has my legs.

  I wonder if anyone has ever written anything for one of the fashion magazines about the gym slut phenomenon? That poor creature over there on the bicycle machine, all flowing locks, blusher, and slipping and sliding torn sweater. I’m sure her mental picture of herself is that she is driving all these husky weight lifters mad with passion. Dream on, sister. She’s not so young anymore and there’s something about those leg warmers that makes me think she’s a dancer … was a dancer … has had dance training. What do they call those in Hollywood? MAW’s. Model/Actress/Whatever. A poor-grade one that must read too much Cosmopolitan. You wouldn’t have to be around gyms very long to know that most of these guys aren’t interested in anyone with a bosom. At least that kind of bosom. How could a woman like that have a relationship with anyone anyhow? She’s so stuck in those Cosmo Girl fantasies she’d just be acting out the fantasies of wonderful her. Now she’s talking to a friend but with her face turned toward the room so we can all see her adorable expressions of surprise, horror, laughter. Poor thing, I’m being awfully hard on her. Who knows? She might in fact be a wonderful person. Unlikely when you know so little about how to apply blusher correctly. I wouldn’t be so bad-tempered if I didn’t hate this damn machine so much.

  And that kid next to her doesn’t know she’s alive. Not a bad-looking boy. Not as handsome as my little Hugo, but he’s got something. Nice skull. Nice profile. So young he’s probably dreaming about being a model and hoping someone will see him here. And then what awaits him. To be one of that second-rate gang that hangs around Versace. For someone who’s able to afford anybody he wants, he doesn’t seem to have great taste. So different from when I was modeling. I suppose there must have been teenage boys who did catalog or something, but who ever saw them? Male models then were guys who looked great in evening clothes, smoking. I suppose somebody’s idea of what a successful New York businessman looked like. Slender, good hair, chiseled features. You really worked with them rarely. They did menswear. We did womenswear and never the twain did meet. Sometimes in a television commercial. They held you in their arms, laughing at the end. Three-second scene. Bill Loock is the only one I really remember. Still very handsome.

  When I look around this room there are probably half a dozen guys here I could have an affair with. How many really? Maybe many more in fact who are available and if I went after them could land them. But how to know? Maybe I should stand up and in a loud voice say, “Will all the straight guys who might want to have an affair with a still attractive older woman please line up against the far wall?” Then I could go take names and addresses and take it from there.

  Maybe that’s how God or Destiny or whatever protects us from ourselves. Think of the long and exhausting process of finding out each one of these guys is not bright, not faithful, hung up about making bamboola with the lights on … When you think what goes into a relationship of any depth even for a few years it’s overwhelming. Fortunately they come, pass by, not sure what they’re looking for or why they’re working to stay attractive, and go their way. Otherwise we’d be up to our necks in starting affairs, in the throes of affairs, getting over affairs. Five more minutes to go.

  There’s the Handsomest Man in the World. I always count it a good day when he shows up here. I think he’s French, even if he does look like Guy Madison with dark hair. He’s got his look down cold. Very tan. Always wears green and turquoise. Turquoise eyes. I wish I could see him better but I’d have to be close and he never does the rowing machines and I’m not going to wear my glasses at the gym.

  Big muscles. Large thighs. Not too tall, and not really all that great proportions. But he definitely has allure. A star waiting. He’s the sort of guy you can fall head over heels in love with, knowing nothing about them and not having to know anything. It’s just “come over here and let me slot you right into my fantasies.” His skin looks like it would be very smooth. He doesn’t seem to have any body hair. Probably a male stripper. Can a male stripper make it to Hollywood? I’m sure some have. Probably poorly equipped. Probably stupid. Isn’t that what they always say about beautiful women? At least beautiful women can get those tits right up front so there’s no question about equipment. And now with the implants nobody needs to run around being sneered at anymore. Men are lucky. They just tuck it away in their little jockey shorts and it all has to be left to the imagination. When you get these gigantic hulks lumbering around here, no matter what they’ve got it would look ridiculous. Someone should tell them that. Finally. Zero Zero. Now for the inner thigh machine. Thirty times. In four sequences.

  Should I feel guilty finding these kids attractive who are only a little older than Hugo? I think there’s some kind of taboo thing that kicks in so you don’t find your own kid sexy. Well, I guess not for everybody. But Larry at the office was saying that when he was married, before he finally clambered out of the closet, he was glad he only had daughters, because it would have been terrible to have feelings for a son. I told him heterosexuals have exactly the same setup. In all honesty, I can see how cute Hugo is but I truly don’t feel anything as I might for an equally cute kid who was no relation. Like that guy the Handsomest Man in the World is talking to right now. The Second Handsomest Man in the World. Short legs and not a perfect profile, but he’s definitely got something. Funny how shortish men have that “cock of the walk” strut when they walk. Tall men in this country often have that slightly bowlegged walk like their feet hurt a little. Anyway, I think when you’ve seen someone as a tiny baby and at every stage of their body changing and coming into being grown up it’s pretty hard to see them as some kind of studly sex object. In fact, I can’t help but think that all these guys were little twerps having to have their diapers changed and being a pain in the ass about eating their cereal. Kind of makes all the stardust disappear.

  hugo’s pilot

  Mike Merkin calls me. I can tell he’s really excited. He has a casting for me for a TV pilot. Somebody’s planning a teen show, like the Beverly Hills one, set in Miami Beach. And they’re casting. He has some scripts. I have to come over right away and start rehearsing.

  Mike likes me and I kind of like him. Under those falling-apart Ray Milland looks there’s somebody who’s really not all that ambitious. I think his looks kind of dragged him into this and he’s smart enough to have learned the ropes, but he knows that even if you make it big in Hollywood you still might not have a life. There’s something kind of fatherly about him, unlikely as it may seem. And ever since Miami Vice bit the dust around here, everybody’s been kind of waiting for something major league to happen. Miami Teenage Vice may be on its way.

  I rehearse my part in an episode of South Beach. Macha rehearses with me, and of course, she’s ten times better than I would ever
dream of being. She’s the hot one, not me. I don’t know why everybody else doesn’t see it. We even improve on the dialogue. I know they hate that, but I figure, I don’t really like this a whole lot better than working at the Bomber Club, I have no plans for going to Hollywood, and Macha and I are having a lot of fun with this thing.

  And that’s sort of how I got a role in the pilot for South Beach. I play Hugo. The writers liked my name so they called my character by my name. What’s great is that I got a letter of rejection from Talent High School the same day I got the part on the show. I can put that in my memoirs.

  I read those stories in Details or Interview about how somebody graduates from high school and waits tables for a few months and then goes for a reading and voilà! They’re a big star. Sleeping with somebody isn’t really the story, but look. Christian Slater’s mother was a casting director. You don’t miss many auditions that way. And Julia Roberts’s brother was already a star and her parents were actors and her fiance (the one she didn’t marry) was the son of a BIG star. Entrenched is the word, I think. Sleeping with somebody is just a start. Marrying someone is more like it. So I was lucky. I didn’t marry the casting director. I think they liked the fact that I looked like exactly what they were looking for. Tan, blond, not too tall, full of fun. I mean, I wasn’t exactly playing Macbeth when I took that audition.

  But they didn’t take Macha. They were interested, but she doesn’t look enough like a starlet for them.

  Macha pulled herself together right away as soon as it became clear she wasn’t going to make it. I think the fact she is so involved with Mr. Ken Yellow Trunks helped. I think she is letting herself play the role of pretty high school girl who’s got a boyfriend. She’s never done it before. She was always too major league for the guys in our school so she’d never really had a full-time boyfriend before. Her folks are not keen on it. Particularly her mother.

  She’s really seen it all, Matilda, and I think she got the picture right away that Macha is kind of on automatic pilot and her heart isn’t in it. And where is there to go with it, really? She obviously isn’t going to marry this guy, who is working as a waiter. I think Macha has been kind of jealous of me and Glenn Elliott. The fact that I was so blown away by him. I don’t know. I can’t be sure of that.

  So here I am, working my ass off on South Beach. First, most of the other teenagers on the show are in their twenties. Ferdinand Bach, who plays the main lead, is twenty-six. And he can act. When Ferdy and I have a scene together, I really want to throw up. Every take he does something a little different. He knows where the camera is. He knows which side he wants to be on. He’s like Pavlov’s dog. The minute he hears “Action” it is a different Ferdy Bach at work. He actually doesn’t even look like a teenager until he hears those bells. Imagine me. I couldn’t really be anyone else than myself. I feel really dumb.

  But they are all really nice to me. Missy Maloney, who is my girlfriend on the show, is extremely swell. She is only a year older than me but has been making TV commercials and stuff like that since she was four. But she has taught me a lot, always rehearses with me, and even coached me for my scenes with other people.

  And of course I’m seeing a lot of Glenn, too. I started putting it to him from the front and he is digging it. I dig it myself. Don’t you wonder what the positions we take when we’re having sex have to do with the relationship we have with each other?

  I mean, he liked me to kneel so he can see me while I was working him over and he pulled himself off at the same time. We’ve got very good at it so we’re coming together all the time. I fall on him. He kisses me very passionately and gratefully. It’s great. But we never stay overnight together. Sometimes I’ll stop by on my bicycle on my way to rehearsal and he’s still in bed. Or sometimes he picks me up after shooting and we get it on before he comes home with me for dinner. Sleeping with your mother’s boyfriend has its points, not many people get suspicious.

  I think Alan Axthelm, who is also on the show, gets the picture. He’s gay and doesn’t make any bones about it, even though he plays a football hunk. I saw him sizing up Glenn Elliott when he came around to pick me up one day. And you know how it is with gay guys. Once you sleep with other guys you sort of spot the ones who are capable of it. And I don’t mean the screamers. There’s nothing in the gesture or look or anything, it’s just there. Like some kind of radio signal. The only kind of clue sometimes is that they act a little more butch than is absolutely necessary. You know, that kind of rolling footballer walk. Not even footballers walk that way.

  The next day Alan said, “That was a great-looking guy that picked you up last night.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “my mother’s boyfriend.”

  “Lucky mother,” he said. “She’s got you and she’s got him.”

  “Not exactly in the same way,” I told him.

  “I should hope not,” he said. And snorted and walked away laughing and shaking his head back and forth. Alan is an all right guy and I think being involved in a little sophisticated repartee tickled him and made him feel better about playing the football dolt. Actually, Macha would get along great with him. Too bad he’s gay. Oh. How many times those words must have been spoken in this world.

  Despite our fooling-around conversation I think Alan has figured out something could be going on. But what interests me more is what is going on when Glenn Elliott wants me to be the “plugger” instead of the “pluggee.” Maybe he wants me to be more masculine and doesn’t want me to get used to being the “girl.” Or maybe he’s always liked being the under partner. Maybe he gets tired of having to hand it out in a masculine way all the time and occasionally likes to relax and have it handed to him. I’ll never know. It’s the kind of thing even if you discussed it, he wouldn’t want to talk about it. Or couldn’t talk about it. Or it would ruin everything.

  It probably had nothing to do with it, but Glenn Elliott was all of a sudden doing great in Miami Beach. I don’t know where the money came from but he bought a small hotel on Drexel and redid it for models. Then the agency Les Girls came in from Paris to open an office and he rented them space on the mezzanine of the hotel. The hotel is called the Lurline. I thought it had probably been named for somebody’s mother but it turns out it was a ship that used to run between San Francisco and Hawaii. Then he rented space on the ground floor to some people who opened the Faune there, very trendy with furniture designed by Philippe Starck. Glenn Elliott has a very good sense about things as far as decoration and style goes. How he learned that in the Marines I don’t know but he had Barbara Hulanicki design the paint job for the Lurline and for once it doesn’t look like an explosion in a confetti factory. It really looks good. Turquoise, white, and navy blue. Nautical. But nice. And the combination of the club and the model agency keep the place filled up with models all the time. The Faune isn’t a disco so if you stayed in the hotel you could get some sleep at night. And Glenn Elliott had the windows double glazed and added central air-conditioning so the models could sleep. No matter how thick or how crazy they may be, there’s one thing all models are very strict about. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

  So Glenn is hitting it. Big time. All those little papers like Stretch and Dynamite and Peer always have pictures of all the parties at the Faune, and Time took a picture of him in front of the Lurline and maybe are going to use it in their big article on the beach.

  And Mom has been doing pretty well, too. In addition to selling the Lurline to Glenn Elliott she has been doing some somewhat more major deals. The Germans are evidently handing her name around, so when new ones hit town they call her looking for apartments and even some buildings. So we were all rushing around doing our thing.

  So what can I tell you about the pilot? Finally, it was never terribly exciting. You get your script. You go to your room and memorize the lines. Maybe you do some private rehearsal with whoever’s playing opposite you. You go to rehearsal and you shoot it. It gets a little complicated when you’re busy learning your lines for tomo
rrow’s shoot and you’re shooting the scene you memorized yesterday, but everybody’s pretty cool about it. And if you get stuck on your lines they put up the idiot cards behind the camera so you can read it if you just can’t get it into your head.

  We were doing a lot of the shooting at my high school, which was a little weird. Acting a role in the same hallways and rooms where you are really going to school.

  I was the only Miami Beach person in the cast, but a lot of the extras are from school. That was the hardest part, acting in front of those people I saw around all the time at school. They cast some of the teachers, too, as extras and my favorite, Mr. Korman, who taught my English class last year, was there. They should have given him a part. He’s great in his own bizarre way. He looks like Jacques Tati. You know, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday? Like some great looming bird about to sweep down upon you, always kind of leaning forward.

  We always had lunch served by caterers and we all ate together and I always went over and hung around with the kids from school if they were working that day. And I talked to Mr. Korman often, too. He said to me one day, “Hugo, are you keeping a journal of all this?”

  “What do you mean, journal?”

  “A kind of diary. You write very well, Hugo. You should be writing this all down. It’s a unique experience and when you go to college this could make for some very interesting papers.”

  “Maybe I won’t go to college,” I told him. “Maybe I’ll go to Hollywood to pursue my acting career.” A lot of kids from school were impressed with the fact I had this part and talked about when I started making movies and how I could become a big star. I wasn’t taking it seriously but I kind of wanted to bait the trap for Mr. Korman and see what he’d say. “Why don’t I think you’re going to do that, Hugo?” he said. Looking at me like a big parakeet with a sense of humor. “Why do I think you have other plans for yourself, Hugo?” He ended most of his sentences with the name of the person he was talking to. I guess it sort of keeps you alert. More likely from talking to so many different kids in class. “You’re quite good, you know. You’re quick. I watch your scenes and the director doesn’t have to tell you twice to do something. But I think that’s your brains at work. Acting is very easy for you, Hugo. This kind of acting. But I don’t think you’re very excited about it. We had a governor of Connecticut like that once. Lodge. He had been out in Hollywood in the 1930s and had done some leading man parts in movies. And then became a lawyer and went into politics. Acting wasn’t enough to hold his attention. Even though he was good-looking, he wasn’t vain. The idolatry part didn’t interest him. Quite an interesting guy. Had a beautiful wife, too. That’s how you can tell if a good-looking man is vain. The self-centered ones don’t want the competition of a beautiful wife. They’re always paired up with some plain lady who can’t believe her luck.”