Forward to Glory

by Brian Paul Bach

  Butterbugs waited in the queue.

  A boy-doll lowered the crank window and gave a clown-faced smile.

  ‘How about a three-way, with options for more variations, at our expense?’

  Even from the much-vaunted passenger side, shadowy figures were all that were apparent from within the long vehicle. Some of them had big hair. Could they be transvestites, or just BBW-type gals?

  ‘Cool.’

  Then he gestured to Butterbugs.

  ‘Want him?’

  The boy-doll grimaced when regarding the dubious and obviously amateur Mark Fondell.

  ‘Nayland, I –’

  Nayland gave a look of most horrid annoyance toward Butterbugs. His glare spelled ‘Jonny’.

  Butterbugs knew he was a turbo-nerd in all of these proceedings.

  Nayland, charitable fellow that he was, looked at Butterbugs and shrugged.

  ‘Well, to work!’ he quipped, and climbed into the eight-door Checker airport limousine, bound for the Airwinds Motel, right under the LAX flight path.

  ‘You’re on your own, son.’

  Nayland was possibly younger than Butterbugs in chronological years, but not in street years.

  Now it was Butterbugs’ turn to face the breezy warmth of the halogen-cum-xenon-headlit river of risk that ran in front of him on old Sta. Monica. An intoxicating wave of sureness now took a hold of him. An assured end of mystery, like a death sentence, or a medical verdict, or stepping onto a stage at showtime.

  It was mesmerizing, even comforting. Indeed, almost like a trod on the boards, or a tailgate. The possibilities therein were dizzying, even dazzling. He could step off into the waters of oblivion – like Sadak of ancient legend, who desired to go up into the unknown heights, to disappear utterly and without trace, from the annals of humanity. But what seductive pools of splendor those waters might be, with azure and porphyry-lined channels, and penstocks leading through unknown stone, where bright minerals and a certain sense of private glory awaited, free from want, free from the burden of performance, sure to provide peace in its final form.

  Oh, say, can you see, a hallucination again? A release from the mortal spring, this one that’s come up, not emitting from the ground, but another sort, wound too tight, as of now?

  He reached both arms out into the ionosphere in front of him, and when a posh Porsche Cayenne S!U!V! with black-on-black tailoring pulled up and the passenger side window glass hummed down, hushed spheres of unimagined sophistry splashed out and over him.

  ‘Git in the car, cracker-ass!’

  4.

  The Festival Of Suffering

  She was young, all business, African-American, and undoubtedly ‘hot’, to use the colloquial term. There was no reason not to climb into this climate-controlled luxury cabin.

  But wait a minute –

  Hadn’t his Old Dad warned him against such moments? Like most everything else in his past right now, the powers of persuasion therein were sorely deflated. Any faintly-recalled notion originating from Old Dad, let alone such dimestore wisdom, especially within a racial context, could just as well be relegated to that boulevard gutter now so dryly illuminated by the mud lights of this supersonic rig.

  Vonda woke up in a sweat. Butterbugs’ gentlemanly behavior had apparently given her bad dreams. She dreamt that Oliver Stone was beating her with a whip made of glass, and it was shattering all over her nude back. Being the only black actress on the set, her exposure to cast and crew was especially humiliating. Being the only black lesbian actress on the set was also a problem, given that the rest of the cast and crew were all male (even the script girl), and some were obviously homosexuals too, but they offered no solidarity.

  Well, there was a lot of truth in this dream. She had worked with Stone several times after her first Oscar nomination, but he had never brandished a whip on her. Whip-like words, though. So she guessed that explained this particular aspect of the dream.

  Being the screen’s foremost ‘alternative’ actress had its perks, such as Oscars, working with top directors (her next pictures were with Marty the Scorer and John the Singleton), as well as picking up handsome but troubled street kids like Butterbugs. If Hugh Grant of olden times could play that game, so could she. With her much-publicized affair with Vonnie dead and buried, the rebel in her wanted revenge.

  She glanced over at the sleeping giant, still clothed, despite all her efforts to rip his garments off last night. He was sleeping like a baby, and her panther-like gaze was one of mixed emotional composition.

  Should she toy with this one? So pure, so upright. Hey, such a cracker! She glanced over at the dully-glowing mega-flatscreen. No messages from Dr. Dre. None from Snoop Dogg either. No Don Flip, no Globster, nor from one of her mentors, the legendary Peg Leg Sam. Most significant: nothing at all new from her soulest of mates, The Angry Black Priest.

  The coast was clear. Her Bodygardz had no idea what she was getting into. Did she herself know?

  Hey, a boy toy could come in handy. She kind of liked the ‘white boy as toy’ concept. Nothing new, but she’d never done it before. Da GardzADaBody would be pissed off, but the thrill factor tempted her sorely.

  Sorely.

  Her cameo role in Goff Briggsy’s ‘The Death-Scream of the Late Chinese Empire’ (Metropolitan Pictures) was tomorrow. Two hours of work over at Selznick International. After that, free for two weeks. In another town?

  Hell with it. She pounced.

  Butterbugs was helpless prey. Cannon fodder. Toast. The auto-perform mechanism, already bursting from its austere sperm-retention programme, stomped over every decent vestige of self-control and raged into action. Like a virgin. For the very first tip-top time.

  Their sexual congress! How was it, anyway? Dimitri Tiomkin could have scored it! Sven Nykvist could have lensed it! And the dialogue? Pure Joe Eszterhas.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Oh, baby!’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Omigod! I think I’m…’

  ‘Do it! Do it!’

  ‘Don’t stop!’

  ‘Ohhhhawwwwwhhhhh!!’

  ‘Ooooo, nice, nice… I like that, like that, like that!’

  There was only one problem: Butterbugs was devastated. When all the agitated hormones settled back down onto the stained satin sheets, the reality hit him: his sacred cherry had been stolen, and, despite the fame and standing of the thief, it was a robbery that he hadn’t counted on.

  ‘I, I, had so wanted,’ he was almost bawling now. ‘To, to, you know, save it for, you know…’

  ‘For some dippity-do white chick?’

  Butterbugs was genuinely stunned.

  ‘No… Why no, I…’

  She decided she believed him.

  ‘Yeah, baby, I know.’

  He looked at her plaintively.

  She paused.

  ‘That’s what everybody who grabbed me and drilled me said: ‘I had so wanted…’ Or equivalent.’

  He felt a common land between them start to materialize.

  ‘But that’s not how you got to do it,’ she thought, addressing herself. One strike against the memory of her Vonnie! This kid had been an effective weapon. Maybe she would return to men after all. But not this one. Yet, she suddenly felt sorry for her act of ‘aggression’. Some remorse would have to be displayed. Some restitution. For his time, if nothing else.

  They both lapsed into silence. Vonda’s email arrival alert burbled. From one of Da GardzADaBody.

  She glanced at it for a moment. Then, mind elsewhere, she burst out, ‘Hey Butterbugs. You wanna be in pictures, right?’

  He nodded mournfully. Despite the new magic-land he found himself in, the tears of a child welled up in his eyes.

  ‘OK. You got talent, man. And not just… Here’s the phone number of a friend of mine. Tell him I sent you. Tell him – well, that’s it.’

  Butterbugs could not even look her in the face; his shame was in front of the footlights. But he took the scrap of paper, think
ing that if Vonda Van Den Dell gave it to him, it must be something of value. It was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to pass by, especially now that he was a genuine Hollywood casualty. That is how intensely his virtue was tied to his very being.

  And yet! Suddenly he felt a sense of community, based on common land law. Oddballs of a feather must stick – with sexual gravy, if necessary – together.

  Perhaps, just maybe, he was becoming one of ‘them’. After all, this is what he wanted to do, wasn’t it? You know, to be a – star. He’d always said ‘actor’ before. And to be a star… in Hollywood. Anything, anything was better than the weird and out-of-control path he was blazing of late.

  The alternative? Back to Sta. Monica Blvd. Pronto. A short time ago, he was Promising Young Derelict of the Month. Now he was shacked up with a hot, stunning, really quite spectacular movie star. In one dynamic leap.

  She helped him. Like he actually meant something to her.

  He’d showered ’n’ shaved. The soul food Rueben had (two slabs of corny beef, fried up in pork-crackled fat, mortared together with horseradish) aided and abetted his harrowing passage back to citizenship from the crevice of insane starvation. And now, he’d splurted his way to acceptance in this here cool Coldwater Canyon modern-type residence. His privates were still in wonder-shock from lavish contact with other privates.

  Not bad. So pay attention, boy! Any further suffering just might be elective now, rather than mandatory.

  OK, time to shelve the goofball introspection and bathe in the present.

  He watched her buffed ebony bootie as she sashayed over to the bar-ie-poo to get a giant gin, and smiled. A fucking temple to womanhood, and he had worshipped there. This was more like it. And this wasn’t on live TV, this was live, baby.

  Dragged, almost kicking and screaming maybe, but once there, satisfaction occurred. Get with it, sport.

  His eyes then traveled up from her super-tiny waist to the supple lines of her (non-whipped) back, and his breath was taken away.

  ‘Ohhhh – myyyy – lordieeeee…’

  ‘You fuckin’ eyeing me, white-seeming boy?’

  ‘Miss Vonda!’

  ‘OK, hunk-nuts, what parta me you like best?’

  He blushed.

  ‘Come on. Fess up. My kneecaps? My… elbow tips? These?’

  She shook her shaggy locks, still studio-regulated from her role in ‘Sta-Myna-Partz’ (Columbia). She knelt over his face, the coiffed thatch of her bush close enough to his nose for him to think about revving up again. Oh, this was so glorious!

  She thought of the proven tool in wresting truth from her given lover, and wondered whether he could pass the piss-test or not. She was ready to let loose.

  She was pretty skilled at projectile whizzing in the right direction. She was ready to belt him if he didn’t much care for that sort of thing. But as she regarded his face and its glowing, recently virginal passion, her playtime façade melted, and its remains trickled down her rippled, muscular tummy like the traveling drops of love-sweat she so competently earned.

  Then her voice became much sweeter.

  ‘Come on honey, tell me. Really. It’s a whole lot sexy, and makes me feel as good as you just did.’

  Before he had a chance to speak the attractive truth, her mobile rang.

  ‘Hang on baby, gotta take it.’

  Classified phone call. Semi-privacy demanded that she swivel to the side, and in the process, Butterbugs was rewarded with a profile view that was denied the ace cameramen of Hollywood: La Vonda’s curves, from her whispering lip, down to collarbone bumps, to effortlessly-supported real-time breasts, and down to abutments of the shapeliest kind, power-thighs, etc., down to slim ankles and shapely-shapely footie-tinahs. That was his vantage point, and for some strange reason, he was granted rights to the view, unworthy though he was.

  Notwithstanding the seal on his tiresome introspection, that interior dialogue that had mucked up his path of late, there was still the almost irreal factoid: that here he was (pinch), in bed, with this (not much) older actress, who had made a great noise in the world. What gave him the right to lurch into this unexpected junket?

  Hey, why question it? Especially in midstream. It was luck. It had turned. Hadn’t it? The question was, if he was man enough to be her lover (blow-away thought!), was he up to ‘handling’ this thing, this situation? To his advantage?

  Modesty or no, stunner sex partner or no, Butterbugs nevertheless retained his ambitions intact. Jerked to life by the animal passion from a boulevard pick-up, his ejaculation had placed him back onto terra firma.

  Right?

  Right now, at this instant, it was OK to lie in suspension. With all his senses on heightened absorption levels, waiting for more stimuli, he was perfectly aware of the scrap of paper between his moist fingers. If all else failed tonight, he had that – that paper – and the number on its surface. He was coming around.

  ‘OK dream-kid, put yourself on hold.’

  She smacked his hand onto his sleepy penis.

  ‘You just wait till I come back after my errand. Then,’ she smiled with genuine warmth, her voice was hot and sticky: ‘We ken talk about Maybe-Love. You know what that is? That’s what I call it. It’s something I always, you know, think about. It’s ’cause I don’t want to be disappointed, ya dig? But if we talk Maybe-Love, the chance is good that –’

  She cut herself off, returning to business.

  ‘Gotta go. As I say, wait and we’ll resume.’

  She couldn’t help herself. Black leather panties on, then pants of the selfsame piece goods, but still topless, she crawled over the bed with sinewy grace, her onyx skin softly kissed by the colors of the fluorescent fish in the tank nearby. Then she planted her wide, wide welcoming lips on his, engulfing them with her sloppy, sexy saliva that spoke more of For Sure-Love than Maybe-Love.

  Then she bounded up, squeezed on a The Gambia-blue shortie top, grabbed her accessories, and was out the door.

  5.

  Pornokrates

  Sonny Projector, the noted and noteworthy agent, had been at 20th for most of the morning.

  Sydney Desh was a tough negotiator. The two were hammering out contracts for several new players, two of whom were most promising.

  Ms. Desh, Head of Casting, was probably destined for a fast track to VP in Charge of Production-dom. Musical ladders. Power in action. Knowing of these circus-like acts, Sonny was glad he was on the creative side of things.

  His eyes dropped down to the contracts, and, scanning one, initialed his approval. ‘Syddie, you have a hard ass.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Why Sonny, thank you. This is the first contract we’ve banged through where I come out ahead. And my studio, of course.’

  ‘The studio! Always the loyalist, never an independent!’

  ‘I like the security. They’re good to me hereabouts.’

  ‘Hard, but smooth.’

  ‘Now Sonny, that was last year.’

  ‘Not interested?’

  ‘Listen, Latin Lover, a leg-over with you is always a bon-bon, but I’m into single girlhood right now. I’m healing. I’m climbing.’

  ‘Healing? From what?’

  ‘Private stuff. I got a goal now.’

  ‘I know. You’ll get it, don’t worry.’

  He paused, skillfully.

  ‘Orgasms are good for self-esteem. Didn’t they teach you that at school?’

  ‘No, but all those schoolgirls who had crushes on me were good for my ego. Got me where I am today.’

  ‘Always the corporate one!’

  She laughed.

  ‘I look out for me, myself and I. Finally.’

  ‘Syddie, Syddie… Say, I see DFZ finally rebuilt his ego – er – logo, on your sweet little contract forms. Screen version?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you hear, it’s finished. Go down to the Sol M. Wurtzel Memorial Preview Room. They’ve got it on loop and they’re making everyone sick by running it non-stop for you civilia
n types. We’re finished today, Projector. Later.’

  Well, he did have forty-five minutes to demolish before lunch with Bob Wise at Spy’s. He swung down to Skouras Lane, high-five-ing, high-signing, thumbs-upping, peace-signing and giving the finger, respectively, to all he encountered who merited each decoration along the way. This happened to include all levels of humanity, from painters and grips, to contract stars and directors. But mostly producers.

  ‘They’re predominantly klucks. And often bastards, or bitches, if you care to discriminate,’ was one of his famous interview quips.

  Sonny was that rarity in Hollywood: a Bolivian country boy who’d hopped on a trolley going up the Pan American Highway, learned the ropes of getting ahead in life, tackled El Norte, changed his name, dumped his accent, drove truck for Charlie Feldman, started to take lunch with him, became his protégé, made a few connections, and soon became the Industry’s most powerful free agent. Sole owner, sole operator, sole soul of his agency: Projector+Players. Powerful. Free. Agent. Period. Live with it.

  He had power, real power, all right.

  He was also rather a decent fellow, and despite the mustard-gassy opinions of his intentions and the sign language he tended to flip off, his enemies were virtually non-existent. Unheard-of, but true. To be insulted or fingered by Sonny was essentially an honor. It showed he noticed you. The mere fact that you existed on this planet. Truly, an uncommon thing in this here cinematic capital. That’s why he walked along, unmolested.

  By the same token, if you were praised or in partnership with Sonny in any way, you not only existed, but there were ten-to-one odds that your endeavor would have blockbuster potential, whether it was a ten-minute short or a Bronston spectacle, in question.

  Sonny had a pair of vintage Old Fitzgerald Bourbon sunglasses – a cheap promotional product – that he carried with him whenever he set foot on any studio ground. For some bizarre reason, whenever he slipped them on, he went totally incognito. No one ever recognized him in such a state, even face-to-face. They had a faint South American dictator air to them (completely coincidental; Sonny was an avowed socialist, bosom amigos with Gabo Garcia Marquez, et al.), so all folk kept well away from this apparent cartel-ish figure. He became the invisible man. Even Claude Rains walked by him once, totally unaware.