High Life

by Matthew Stokoe

  The pimps in their cars. The junkies sitting hunched over untouched black coffees in tired diners whose toilet walls were smeared with carbon from the bottoms of spoons and laced with the red feather-trails of flushed syringes. The odd old guys who always hang near pussy or drugs, feeding off a nerved voracity they mistake for excitement and youth. The liquor store owners with their shotguns—pilot fish around the shark—who prayed at the start of each night to just make it through one more alive. The Mexicans who slopped out and swept up in the porn shows and the fuck rooms, smoking roll-ups or small dark cigars in a snatched five minutes on the steps of a side entrance, leaning on their brooms, so tired they might never move again. The cops, few and far between, mirror shades even at night, thick forearms pale from long-term night duty, chewing gum. And cruising like all the rest.

  I parked at the western end of the street, in the lot of an abandoned dress factory. Around here the drag false-started with a handful of fast-food vendors and fuck-mag shops, hauling itself out of a shadowed nothingness of low-rise office blocks and failed businesses like some beast from a swamp—the start of a curve that peaked about a quarter-mile east, then tailed off again into other unlit and forsaken nighttime areas of the city. There were fewer people here, the trawling cars cut in from cross-streets further up. It took about five minutes walking to get to where the action started.

  The drag wasn’t new to me. On really bad nights when my imagination ran wild and the hours gorged themselves on my loneliness, I’d sometimes come looking for Karen here, full of doomed persuasions to bring her home. But this was the first time I’d come to willfully immerse myself in its two-way tug of avarice and desire. I wanted reassurance, some sort of affirmation that the city existed as more than a work-ethic—ed middle-class construction. And the drag was the place to get it. The rabid, hungering impulses that shaped people’s behavior ran closer to the surface here. They made it a big fuck you to the mainstream.

  The whores stood like bored hitchhikers at the curb or lounged against the walls of sex shops and nude-encounter parlors in clothes designed to attract attention and give quick access. Around them light and sound moved like the weather—sequential waves of glare from bars and theaters, the bellowings of strip-show callers who stood like small tugs in greasy dinner jackets and went on about snatch and ass and complementary drinks. Some of the girls were dogs and some of them were beautiful, they all looked like they’d rather be someplace else.

  Sex was graded on the drag—straightish hetero action where all the light was. And then in the small streets that ran away from this light, stuff that was a whole lot heavier—specialist basement theaters that ran S&M, animal, shit, and piss. And lurking in the shadows near these places, people who could make the images real. Further east, the pedestrian traffic all but died out and the drag foundered in a stretch of vacant lots and occasional bars. But it wasn’t dead. The boys kept it alive.

  Jeans and T-shirts, the occasional gleam of leather. Most of them young. On corners or against chain-link fences, one knee bent, foot flat against a wall, thumbs in belt loops, fingers straying to brush crotches if a car slowed, purposely stereotypical. Here there were no theaters, no shows, no specialty rubber goods stores, no pimps, no criers. Just men, smoking and waiting.

  I’d never been this far along—it was hardly a place where Karen would have had much success—and it felt weird knowing men in cars might be looking at me and contemplating sex.

  About ten yards ahead a Merc SEC 560 pulled up opposite a guy with a blond crew cut and slid its window down. I stopped to watch. It seemed things went pretty much the same as with the female whores, only it was quicker and there was less jive. I couldn’t hear what they said, but it must have been cool with both of them because the guy in the car opened the door and the crew cut climbed in. As the Merc pulled away I could see the silhouette of the driver’s arm through the rear window, reaching across the seats.

  I watched the car disappear wondering what, exactly, they were going to do and how much money was going to change hands. I’d never fucked a man, but I was down to my last twenty, facing possible eviction. And it seemed simple enough. You stood around, the business came to you. And once you got in the car? Mostly sucking and yanking, I guessed—actions with about as much significance as shaking hands. Easy money.

  I found myself an empty stretch of wall and leaned against it. I had no real plan, I just wanted to see what would happen. A few of the closest bum-boys looked sideways at me, but it didn’t mean much. If looks could kill the whole world would be dead.

  Cars rolled by like counters in a game. Guys on either side of me got lucky. I was better looking, but they were younger. I didn’t care, the night was warm and it was better out here with the freaks than guzzling beer I couldn’t afford in a sweaty apartment.

  Nothing happened for a while. And then it did.

  “Hey.”

  A black Lexus had pulled up and a heavy-set guy in his forties was leaning across the passenger seat, pointing his face at me.

  “Yeah you. You want business, or what?”

  Now that it was happening it didn’t seem quite so simple. I thought about walking off, but that would have meant kissing goodbye to the money, and it would have been embarrassing in front of the other guys.

  “Come closer for fucksake, I’m not going to shout across the fucking street all fucking night. You don’t like money, or what?”

  I walked over and bent to window level. He was bigger than me, too big to beat the shit out of if things went wrong. And things could go wrong, I realized suddenly. There might be plenty of things I wouldn’t want to do with a guy like this, and saying no when his dick got hard wouldn’t cut much ice.

  “How much you got?”

  “Huh?”

  “How big’s your fucking dick?”

  “About average, I suppose.”

  “In inches.”

  “Seven.”

  He looked a little dubious.

  “That ain’t so big. But maybe we can still do business. You spunked up already tonight? If I’m paying for it I like a good solid wad. You driving with a full tank, or what?”

  I was close enough to smell him and he didn’t smell good. In fact, he smelled of shit. I was becoming less enthusiastic about the whole thing by the second.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Get in the fucking car. You’re going to get us busted. How old are you, anyway?”

  “I want to know before I get in.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. I could find someone else.”

  I just stood there and looked at him and hoped he would. After a moment he shrugged.

  “Felching. I pay good money and that’s what I want.”

  I decided right then to walk. Sticking my head between the sweaty, hairy, shit-stinking cheeks of this guy’s ass and sucking my come out of his hole wasn’t what I’d planned as my introduction to male prostitution.

  He must have read my face.

  “What’s the matter? You think there’s something wrong with that? It’s a normal impulse! What the fuck are you out here for anyway? You think it’s funny jerking people around?”

  He had his head almost out the passenger window. Some of his spit hit my cheek. I backed away and headed up the street, opposite the flow of traffic so he couldn’t follow me. I heard his engine roar. He was still yelling as he took off. The bum-boys loved it.

  I circled the block, came out back on the drag a hundred yards further east of where I’d been standing, and found a bar. It didn’t feel particularly welcoming, but I was tired of walking and there wasn’t anything else close. I bought a drink and took it to a stool near the front window.

  I was pissed off about the Lexus episode. If the guy had wanted a simple blow job I’d have been sitting there with extra dollars in my pocket and maybe the start of a new career under my belt. Instead, I was burning up what little money I had left just to have somewhere to rest.

  Around the borders of the w
indow neon beer signs ticked on and off. I stared blindly out at the street, drinking my beer, wishing I had enough money to get drunk. Until someone did a double-take outside and tapped on the glass.

  Rex.

  He came into the bar, Rodeo dressed and looking polished enough to pass for healthy. Same as every time I saw him, I wondered why he wasn’t on TV.

  “Dude. Maintaining?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Strange place to find you.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  He looked knowing, then leaned over the bar and ordered doubles and chasers for both of us. When he handed mine over he looked concerned.

  “Do we talk about Karen?”

  “We don’t have to avoid it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Cool. I wasn’t sure … I keep thinking about her.”

  “Hey, from the start? We both know you weren’t super-friends.”

  “Well, jeez, man, I know that. But it doesn’t stop you caring.”

  “I know. I’m just saying.”

  “That’s okay. The proprietary thing’s normal early on.”

  “Proprietary thing?”

  “Wanting to own the dead person. Not let anyone else feel she was as important to them as she was to you.”

  “I don’t want to own her. Fuck … I’m glad she’s gone.”

  “Okay, okay …” He held his hands up, backing off. “Maybe when I said I’d been thinking about her I meant not about her, but about, you know, actually dying. About the reality of it. You know what I see when I think about it? I don’t see her. I see the edge of a cliff. You know? A precipice. And it’s like there’s this huge gravitational pull on me to jump off.”

  “That’s normal early on, the open door thing.”

  “Well, I’m trying not to, man. But, I don’t know … Every day’s the same. You know what I mean? It’s just the same every day. Even if something really different happens, even if it’s something really good, it’s still the same.”

  “I saw her body. I went to the morgue.”

  “Fuck … That must have been a trip.”

  “Yeah, she looked pretty bad.”

  “Wow …”

  Rex drank silently for a moment, then:

  “You have to talk to the cops or anything like that?”

  “I talked to one guy.”

  “They okay with you? I mean, they don’t like suspect you, do they?”

  “I don’t know … It was so left field, so unofficial. I mean, this guy was fucking weird.”

  “Maybe it’s better that way. Less shit for you to deal with. Wasn’t her father one?”

  “Fuck, who knows. She said something once, but you know what she was like.”

  “Well, not really, man. I wasn’t like her superfriend, after all.”

  He smirked and punched me lightly on the arm. And I laughed and felt good that there was someone close enough to me to make that kind of joke. Rex tapped his shot glass on the bar.

  “Your round, dude.”

  “Can’t, sorry. I quit work.”

  “Ah …”

  Rex ordered the drinks himself, then turned back looking satisfied.

  “Time to fess up, dude. What are you doing down here?”

  “Hanging out.”

  “No one comes here to hang out. I was scoring, but you don’t have the money for that. So if I had to take a guess, I’d say you were looking for an alternative source of income.”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “Hah.” Rex clapped his hands. “It’s about time, I never could understand why you stayed poor so long. You’re great looking, you’ve got a nice body.”

  “It’s taking that final step, I guess.”

  “What step? It doesn’t mean anything, Jack. You don’t get struck dead for it. And you might as well be able to buy drugs and nice clothes as not. You’re wasting your time on the drag, though.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a place for junkies and losers. You trick here if you’ve got nothing else going or you don’t know any better. Those guys out there’ll be lucky to have five bucks left tomorrow morning. I know, man, it’s where I started. You can survive, but you won’t make any real money. Agency work is where the bread is.”

  Rex looked at me for a moment, then swallowed the last of his drink.

  “You got a car here, right?”

  “Er, yeah.”

  “Okay. I got a gig off Mulholland. The Porsche is in the shop and I was going to take a cab, but I’m going to do you a favor instead. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I was a little drunk by this time and things seemed to be accelerating.

  “To take some money off someone who can afford to give it to us.”

  “You want me to fuck someone with you?”

  “If you want to get into it, this is your chance. Don’t worry, I know these people, they won’t mind an extra bod, believe me.”

  “They?”

  “A couple.”

  “Shit, I don’t know …”

  “What are you going to do if you don’t? Go home broke and have a wank? Come with me and you get to fuck a woman, take drugs, and make some money. I’ll split it fifty-fifty. Where’s the choice? Come on, dude. Time to shit or cut bait.”

  Put that way it seemed stupid to refuse.

  “Got any coke?”

  “But of course.”

  We walked out into the tawdry drag night.

  Chapter Seven

  West on Hollywood, then north up Laurel Canyon and into the hills. A cool drive through some of the best of L.A.

  The road twisted as it climbed. Tight one-lane streets veined off it into gullies or up rises where box-sided sixties and seventies architecture leaned against the slopes on death-wish stilts. Flatland Beverly Hills had more ostentation and the money in Bel Air was older, but you couldn’t beat the Hollywood Hills for atmosphere.

  From the street the houses didn’t give much away. They were built with their backs to the world, screened by eucalyptus and pepper trees. If they showed any windows at all, they were narrow and the light coming through them was gentle and masked. Driving through the area was an exercise in imagination. Whoever they were, whatever they did, it was a sure bet the people here lived lives worth filming, that they had strings of lovers and unlimited earning potential.

  The booze from the bar and the night air blowing through the open windows made me feel young. I was alive and excited, it seemed absurd to me now that I had spent the last two weeks lying in bed when I could have been doing something like this—rubbing up against the outsides of perfect lives.

  “I’m a little over the limit.”

  Rex smiled dreamily. “Who cares? I always feel kind of hopeful driving fucked up. Increases your chances of winning that lottery.”

  “You might hit someone who doesn’t want to die.”

  “True, but if you drink enough you don’t worry about that.”

  Rex got his coke out. I closed the windows and he stuck some on the corner of a credit card under my nose. The road was straight for a little way so I held the wheel with my knees and did it. Call me irresponsible.

  A few minutes later we hit the Hollywood Bowl overlook and the city lay spread out below us like a carpet of jewels, an infinite sprawl of light that rose gigantically at its center in the towers of downtown. I pulled over. The gates to the overlook were locked but there was space at the side of the road. We got out, hooked our fingers through the mesh of the fence, and gazed.

  At any time the city was awesome, but at night, when darkness removed the comparison of the horizon, it became a construct of light that simply overpowered vision—a glittering prize for all the owners of the houses in the hills.

  “Incredible.”

  Rex grunted. “Gives me the creeps. All those people spinning around as fast as they can go. I mean, you figure when you think about yourself there’s some importance to being human. But when you see it like this and there’s
so many people … We can’t all be worth something. We’re ants, man.”

  “Not if you’re Bruce or Arnold.”

  “I reckon it’s all hell on earth, no matter who you are.”

  We did some more blow at the fence, then got back in the car.

  The house was at the end of a quietly lit lane off the downhill side of Mulholland. It was large and white—replica Spanish surrounded by subtropical foliage. Two wings angled back from a central block, away from the road, spread open toward the city.

  We left the car in the drive and headed for a black oak door that had iron studs in the wood.

  “Isn’t it a bit late?”

  “This kind of thing happens when it’s late.”

  “Looks like bread.”

  “They’re industry.”

  “Cool. How do you know them?”

  “They ring the agency and order what they want. If they like you, you get to come back. For fucksake, don’t start asking them what they do. How do you feel?”

  “Pretty fast.”

  “Just go with it. They’ll love it that you’re new.”

  The door was opened by a small-boned man of medium height who looked extremely wired. He wore a carefully faded cotton shirt open halfway down his chest, his hair was sandy and thin. I didn’t recognize him. If he worked in film it had to be on the other side of the camera. He waved us in and closed the door. He moved in an abrupt, exaggerated fashion, like he found it difficult to control his limbs.