Once Upon a Star - Celebrity kiss and tell stories

by Peggy Trentini

  “Everyone looks so small down there,” I said.

  “And so silly,” he laughed to himself.

  The party moved quickly, everyone switching conversations and cocktails made it impossible to watch without getting dizzy, like the blades on a ceiling fan. I let my legs lay flat in front of me and he ran his hand up, down, and between my thighs. I was comfortable with him and I thought it was a wonder we had never met before. I felt like the winds had blown me into the perfect moment, like this was exactly where I was supposed to be right then. It’s a calming and successful feeling I have only known a few times in my life. Sitting there on that roof in Holmby Hills, while the Santa Ana ' s blew and tangled my long blonde hair, I felt very much at peace.

  Lost in my own thoughts, I glanced back at him and caught the most adorable, impish grin on his face; much like the cat that swallowed the canary.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

  “Love one, thank you.”

  He got up and climbed back through the window, leaving me out on the roof with the view and the winds and my thoughts. I had a super geek moment right about then, where I shook my head and hands from side to side and smiled so big it hurt my face because a part of me could hardly believe this was really happening. Then I collected myself, took a deep breath, and fixed my hair to wait patiently for his return. It crossed my mind after a bit that maybe he wasn’t coming back. I worried about how I would get myself up and back through the window. Without his reassuring touch, the height suddenly made itself aware to me. Just as I was about to take off my boots and climb inside, he appeared at the window with a blanket, two glasses, a bottle of wine, and the most charming smile I have ever seen.

  He laid the blanket down and poured us both a full glass of a deep red wine.

  “To new friends,” he toasted. The clinking of our glasses rang out on the rooftop, and, as I sipped my wine, I tried hard to make sure I would remember this moment. I wanted to etch it into the synapses of my mind: his touch, his smile, and his breathy, sexy voice.

  We sat on the roof sipping Pinot Noir, and watched the pretty party people . I liked to imagine I already knew how every one of the conversations went, because they were tried and tired, and I’d been there before. Our conversation, however, flowed effortlessly through the glasses of wine as he asked me a series of questions in which he was more than captivated by my every answer. I think now of how clever he was to avoid talking about himself, and, at the same time, make me feel like the most fascinating creature on the planet. He was yet to drop the whole Marco bit, and I had been playing along. A friend had told me before that he was method actor, and often kept character for weeks, even months, at a time. I found it intriguing and attractive that someone would be so dedicated to their craft. Although I started to wonder how much of this was him, and how much of this was Marco.

  He became particularly enthralled when I told him of a piece of land I owned in Costa Rica that had been gifted to me by my grandfather.

  “It’s a one acre beach front and twenty acres rainforest. Really amazing,” I said, and tried to sound as if I had travelled the world, and that my opinion on this piece of property was one of authority. The truth was, aside from the land in Costa Rica, I had hardly been out of California in my quick twenty-three years.

  With the mention of this land, I saw something light up in him that made him even sexier, although I had not previously believed that to be humanly possible.

  “Keep the acre of beachfront and donate the rest; it’s an amazing difference you have the chance to make,” he urged me. By the end of the conversation, I was assuring him I would do just that, and I felt great about it, like I was going to be some big philanthropist. Maybe I would move down there for a while and make a difference.

  I couldn’t tell if it was the wine, the night, or his incredible charm, but life seemed to be brimming with possibilities and they all started right here. While making these grand plans, he gestured with a wide swooping arm motion, knocking the bottle of wine over. We went silent as it bounced down the rooftop and disappeared out of view, only to make a quiet crash in the courtyard below. Luckily no one was directly below, so we fell back in hysterics.

  “I tend to get carried away with things like that,” he said and smiled.

  I laid on my back, catching my breath. “It’s fine - I find it refreshing to meet someone that cares about anything other than work and dieting. I think you’re fascinating,” I was saying, as I felt him run his hands down my legs. I was wearing my favorite pair of boots which I’d saved up for weeks to buy. They were real leather and laced up the front past my knee. Every time I wore them, I felt so sexy that I thought I could take over the world, or, at the very least, L.A. He started unlacing the boots very slowly, peeling them away to reveal my legs, which he kissed slowly and thoughtfully, up and down my thighs. His lips were soft and warm, and a part of me wished he would just keep going all the way up my legs, but I intended on being a lady about all of this.

  “I know your name isn’t Marco,” I said between heavy breaths. I couldn’t stop him, but I didn’t want to continue under false notions.

  “And...” he said, kissing higher and higher up my leg.

  “And... don’t you think it’s unfair to be intimate with such deceit?” I asked, moving away slightly.

  “I don’t see why it matters.”

  “Well, it does,” I said. As I began to gather myself to leave, because I was determined to be a lady, he grabbed my hand and looked me so deeply in the eyes that I was sure he saw straight through into who I used to be.

  “Okay... I just... people think they know me, because they know who I am,” he said.

  “People don’t know who I am, and they still think they know me just by looking at me. I get you, but there’s no need. I am far more interested in authenticity,” I said.

  “Me too. Me too,” he touched my chin, and, lifting my face, laid his lips on mine. It was a kiss I had been waiting a lifetime for and had never even known it. We were so perfectly in sync with each other that I was sure time had stopped all around us, and even the cosmos were in wonder of our moment.

  He then offered up that he was filming with Marlon Brando. He went on to tell me he was a method actor and liked to stay in character throughout the filming process. The name of the film was "Don Juan DeMarco."

  I forgave him. After all, who was I to question his genius?

  He led me by the hand through the grand hallways of this house. He knew the way too well, better than just having been here before. I was giggling and bubbling through heaving archways, and when we came to a large oak door, he smiled at me over his shoulder before pushing it open.

  “Are you sure Ted won't mind?” I asked.

  “He won't mind,” he laughed.

  “This is your house, isn’t it?”

  He kissed my collarbone, my shoulder, and the back of my neck, while unlacing the royal blue corset I wore. I could feel his breath on my shoulders. He tried to keep himself steady, but I could feel a tremble in his fingertips, I could hear a quiver in his voice. Even when we weren’t touching, there was a kind of magnetism between us that made my knees shake.

  “It is.” He whispered in my ear. His hot breath sent chills down my body as my clothes fell to the floor. The evening poured through an open window, soaking us in moonlight, and the warm winds carried electricity that ran through us.

  I made myself comfortable on the massive bed. The room was Victorian-styled with heavy, dramatic curtains and expensive paintings on the walls of women and their lovers or keepers. The oak sleigh bed took center stage in the room and was draped with a sheer cream canopy that left me feeling that this was, undoubtedly, a dream.

  He stood for a few moments, watching me on the bed, unbuttoning his shirt with that wonderful smile I hope I never forget.

  “Care for another drink?”

  “Love one.”

  I sat on the bed drinking my wine and watching him light a fire in
the fireplace that sat grand and lonely on the other side of the room. Once it caught, the room lit up with a dancing light that cast long deep shadows across the walls and banished the moonlight back outdoors.

  “And he can light a fire,” he said, puffing his chest out like proud men have been doing for centuries. He made me laugh, and he made me feel good. Although it may have mattered when he entered the room downstairs at the start of the night, I didn’t care who he was now. I was happy and young and thin with a beautiful man walking toward me while I lay with expensive red wine in a lavish sleigh bed. I thought to myself, “life is such a lovely treat,” before setting my wine down and welcoming him into my arms.

  Things didn’t go instantly hot and heavy; he took his time and paid great attention to the details of a woman. He started with my eyes and kissed my lips like I was the last woman on Earth. He moved slowly down my neck, biting a bit at my collarbone and sending chills down my body and between my legs. He held my breasts, and licked in circles. He trailed his tongue down my stomach and disappeared between my legs.

  While he went down on me, he ran his fingers all along the insides of my thighs and I thought right away that I wouldn’t last more than a few moments. I was right. I tried to grab him by the hair to bring him back up to me, but he insisted, and within moments, I came. It was unreal how I felt it from my head to my toes, and I immediately wanted to repay the favor. He lied down next to me and I kissed him for a few moments, tasting myself on his lips. I then went down on him, kissing and teasing the insides of his thighs, licking him everywhere. Just when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he wrapped his strong hands around my ribcage and lifted me on top of him. I slowly came down on him and felt the pressure inside of me. He was an incredible lover and asked me sweetly if everything was alright. He kissed me constantly while moving into different positions, but he loved to have me on top of him.

  One of the wonders of making good love is that time takes on a new quality. Time can play tricks on you and the night can become its own life entirely. Hours can fly by in seconds, and a single moment can last an eternity. One must learn to ride these time waves and roll with them like the tide, or else the evening will slip through your fingers like water, and, before you know it, the sun will have caught up with you and the magic will have been gone fifteen minutes before that.

  John was undoubtedly a time controller. I knew because I’d been with one other man like that before. I have no idea where we went that evening, but I’ll say to my grave that the sun had no idea where we were. I felt like we were outrunning time when we made love over and over again. I was sure that, at any moment, the first rays of sun were going to come through the windows, but for hours on end they stayed away. I felt at times I would never catch my breath again, like someone had stolen the very air from my lungs. He kept one strong arm wrapped completely around my small waist like a life preserver, and, at times, it felt the only thing tethering me to reality.

  “You are so unbelievably beautiful,” he told me, wiping a bead of sweat from my chest and my tangled blonde hair from my eyes. He kept the most intense gaze that I tried to hold, but sometimes had to shy away from. I wondered what he saw, though I knew he must’ve liked it, because he kept on looking. I could feel his eyes even when I didn’t meet them, and I don’t know if I have ever felt as perfect as I did under that stare.

  Between making love, he would tell me of places he had travelled to, and which were his favorites. It wasn’t in an “I’ve been here, I’ve been there” sort of way, but more of an earnest effort to share some beauty with me. It was as if I had shown him something lovely, and he was trying only to do the same.

  I fell asleep in his arms and the sun still hadn’t found us. I thought of how lucky I was and how lovely the fire looked, with its dancing shadows on the walls. I looked up at him and he pulled me closer, kissing my head and smelling my hair.

  When I opened my eyes again, the sun had found us, a faint trace of its arrival crawling across the room through the windows. Our fire was like an old idea, just glowing ash in the corner. I woke him with my stirring, and, without a single word, he kissed me, and we made love again. Instead of staying there in his arms afterward, where I would have stayed for a lifetime had the universe permitted me to do so, I gathered the few things I had with me.

  “Won’t you wait for daylight?”

  “I have an early audition,” I said and smiled, but the truth was I had seen Cinderella, and I knew better that to outstay the magic.

  “And I have a 6 a.m. call time,” he said, opening his arms and inviting me back in. Had there been a clock in the room, it would have read four fifty a.m.

  “I have a feeling you need far less preparation than I do. I really need this part,” I said, and finished lacing up my boots that would forever carry with them the memory of him unlacing them.

  “Interesting, beautiful, and ambitious,” he said. I jumped back in bed for one more kiss. I kissed him like I might never have gotten to kiss him again, because you never know what would happen.

  He walked me out to my car through what was left of the party; people sleeping on sofas, couples cuddled away under thin blankets, and others still outside, smoking cigarettes and talking big dreams.

  “I had a wonderful time.” My cheeks still flushed, my hair and clothes still dishevelled, the winds seemed to have gone out to sea with the evening, and the early morning was calm and silent.

  “I will call you soon,” he said, kissed me, and I left.

  I drove down Sunset with all my windows down, blasting Mariah Carey’s “Dream Lover.” It didn’t matter that I had hardly slept, or even what time it was: I felt life at its very finest coursing through my veins. The morning was clear and crisp, but I could feel the heat sneaking in from the valley. For such an early hour, the city already looked alive. My white Mercedes 190 took me safely to my nest of an apartment in Sherman Oaks off Beverley Glen and Ventura Boulevard. I had chosen this place because the canyon spit you out right onto Sunset in the thick of things, and because Sly lived in Benedict Canyon off Beverly Glen. At the time, though, I would have never admitted to the latter, not even to myself. I had my dear friend Katy staying with me while she was between places. Although I loved having my own apartment, it was nice to have someone to come home to. We shared a love for fashion, cocktails, and, most of all, for men. I knew coming in at such a particular hour would spark an interest in Katy. I brewed coffee while I got ready for my audition, and waited for her to get up. It took a good twenty minutes and serious arm strength to comb through the knots in my long hair from rolling around in the sheets all night.

  I heard Katy rustling around in the kitchen.

  “I made coffee,” I chimed from the other room.

  “Clearly.” Katy had never been much of a morning person.

  “Where may I ask were you last night?” She asked.

  I came out of the bathroom, grinning from ear to ear

  .

  “Oh my god. Tell me. Tell me now, god dammit.”

  Katy jumped onto the couch, sitting cross-legged like a kindergartener at story time, and shook off all resentment toward me for having waked her. I teased her, pretending to walk back into the bathroom.

  “Like hell. Get the fuck out here and tell me!”

  So I poured myself a cup of coffee, and, over the sips and the steam and my laughter, I told her. I told her every last bit of it in incredible detail, because that’s how we always told our stories.

  “Johnny Depp.” She said.

  “Yes.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Swear.”

  “Holy shit, Peggy! Holy fuckin’ shit.” She kicked her legs up in the air.

  Katy was a leggy blonde just like the rest of us on the team, but she had this fire in her eyes that I’ve never seen anywhere else. She was a sweet girl from a small town in South Dakota, but had picked up, somewhere along the line, the vernacular of a truck driver. Katy was the kind of girl that walked in
to a club, and, without knowing anyone, found herself in bottle service, rubbing elbows with celebrities in a matter of moments. The fact that she was impressed by my evening made me proud.

  I bombed the audition that day. It was a commercial for new hair products that were supposed to keep your “blonde blonder longer.” I couldn’t say the words; they all got tangled in my throat and twisted on my tongue. Not to mention, my mind was somewhere else entirely. My face hurt from smiling, because every time I thought about John, I completely checked out of the building and found myself on that rooftop again. I had never been less disappointed after a bad audition. “Chalk it up to a lesson learned” I told myself, and then headed home for a nap.

  The Viper Room

  It was a few days later when he called. I was cleaning the apartment, listening to Duran Duran so loudly that I almost didn’t hear the phone ring.