Going Down in La-La Land

by Andy Zeffer

  While in the house I heard a splash behind me. Now people were jumping in the pool. This party was getting wild. But tonight I wasn’t into any of that. I had come here with Dale. I could get sex any other time, on a porn set, turning a trick. If anything, I was having more than my fair share. I was somewhat relieved that I wasn’t getting sucked into any debauchery tonight. Lately I had been feeling I was losing all control with temptation. Besides, I was on cloud nine about being approached to be featured in legitimate film, in a speaking role no less. Perry had also told me that he had secured a rock legend I had long admired into being in their film. Perhaps I would share a scene with her.

  By now much of the crowd had trickled out and what was left over were hardcore partiers, most of them two sheets to the wind. Couples were making out on the couches. In the corner of the room a number of people were dancing to music, their eyes closed and in another world. Screams and laughter exploded from all around me. But Dale was nowhere to be found.

  For a moment I thought maybe he had left me, as payback for backing out of the concert. I began to get a little frantic and freaked out. If Candy wasn’t around to pick me up, I didn’t even have cash for a cab.

  I spotted Robert Gleisman near the front door saying good-bye to some people. I interrupted and asked if he had seen Dale.

  “Nope. Sorry,” Gleisman said dismissively, going back to his conversation. Apparently I had really insulted him by refusing his offer to be a living Oscar.

  Fuck him, I thought, moving on.

  I made my way down the hall, where I saw people moving up and down a staircase. Many of them were holding hands and smiling lustily at one another. I passed a few more guys like that on the way up the steps. The hallway turned to the left. In the first open room there were a number of guys standing around, and few lying on the bed making out. Some of them were taking bumps of some drug or the other, most likely crystal. I peered in looking for Dale, trying not to be too obvious. They stopped their conversation to look at me. I said hello and then walked farther down the hall. I could hear them burst into laughter from behind me.

  Two doors were at the end of the hallway. The one on the left was open a crack. I peeked inside to see a couple on the bed. One was sitting on the edge with his head back moaning, and the other giving him a blow job, slurping loudly and jerking his head back and forth spastically. Neither of them were Dale. I stepped away immediately. Neither of them had noticed me. I supposed they wouldn’t have given any indication even if they had; they were so into it, moaning up a storm.

  I turned to walk away, then suddenly stopped, listening carefully. What I was hearing was more than just the laughter of the group in the first room and the moaning of the couple I just peeked in on. I heard grunting, a distinct grunting that was known to me.

  I turned around, grabbed the knob of the door on the right, and opened it a crack.

  Inside I was disgusted with what I saw. Hunched over naked on his hands and elbows was Brian. In one hand he had a vial with white powder and was reaching in to take a snort. Ramming him from behind was Dale, his face flushed and his body dripping with sweat. Both of them were gasping and groaning, and looked totally out of it. Dale’s head was thrown back and Brian’s mouth was hanging open like a fish.

  “Here you go, dude,” Brian said passing up the vial to Dale as he pumped away.

  “Thanks, man,” Drew mumbled incoherently as he grabbed the vial, paused for a minute, then dumped a pile of white powder on his hand and sniffed away with vigor.

  The two of them looked so gross together. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The pit of my stomach began to churn. Just seeing them there spinning out of control with their drug-crazed sexual antics was enough to make me vomit. At the moment, I realized what kind of element I had fallen in with, and just how far I had gone into left field in terms of life choices. God only knows if they were even using a condom.

  I had seen enough, quietly closing the door; I thought I saw Dale’s eyes meet mine. If so, he was probably too buzzed on his drugs to care. Either way, I wasn’t waiting to find out. I was getting the hell out of this madhouse.

  I turned and walked swiftly down the hall. When I reached the top of the staircase, one of the guys in the first room called out, “Hey, where you going?” nearly giving me a heart attack as all his friends laughed. There had to be a quick way out of this place.

  Downstairs inebriated guests were hanging all over the furniture. The music was blaring. Naked people were jumping in and out of the pool. There seemed to be a massive orgy in the Jacuzzi, heads bobbing up and down, lips locked as guys made out with one another, frequently switching partners.

  Salvation came in the form of Perry Bristol, in his East Village bohemian thrift rags and curly blond hair. He was walking out the door with a dark-haired guy also dressed in downtown New York fashion, complete with black horn-rimmed glasses. I guess this must have been his boyfriend Mitch.

  “Perry,” I yelled frantically.

  “Hey, Adam,” Perry said. “You’re still here? Unless you want to get ravaged by the pool I suggest you take off now.”

  “Listen, can you guys give me a ride?” I asked, sounding clearly upset.

  Perry must have sensed something was wrong, because his expression became serious and his tone of voice changed from that of a British dandy to aristocratic concern.

  “Sure. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to regain composure. “I’ll be okay. I just lost my ride and I really want to get out of here.”

  “No kidding,” Mitch said. “We were just saying the same thing. This party is starting to get really ugly. They were drinking God knows what kind of liquid drug out by the pool. I can see this shindig turning into something out of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls or Helter Skelter. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  The three of us walked briskly toward their car, a bottle green antique Benz straight out of the 1970s. Leave it up to Perry to drive an eclectic car with an inordinate amount of style, I thought upon seeing it, taking my mind off the ugly scene I had just witnessed for a brief moment.

  In the car I told Perry and Mitch the whole story. I felt so badly they were driving me to the edge of Beverly Hills, given that they lived all the way in Silver Lake. I thanked them over again and again.

  “I would really watch out, Adam,” Perry said in his soft voice with genuine concern. “I feel badly, because Dale is a really good guy. Unfortunately, he’s hooked on that crystal shit. It’s becoming a real mess. The guy overextended himself with jobs and started doing speed to work faster and keep longer hours. But now it’s taken over his life. This is just between you and me and goes no further, but Ron told me he is infuriated with him. Lately he has been making a lot of mistakes, and Ron is sick of having to pay for them. It’s going to be an ugly scene there. He has begged me to step in, but we are just so busy with our film, and I’m over HUNG Video to tell you the truth. The problem is that Dale parties as much as he works, which makes matters worse.”

  “Perry keeps his work and social life separate,” Mitch cut in. “Not that we don’t have a few friends in porn, but most of our friends are outside the industry. He does his work and then leaves it behind.”

  “Exactly,” Perry said. “Whereas with Dale, it has become his whole existence. It’s so sad, because I’ve really seen him deteriorate.”

  “It’s really messed up,” I said. “I mean I knew he did drugs. I saw them at his place. But I just thought it was on occasion. I didn’t know he was in so deep.”

  “Unfortunately that’s the case,” Perry said. “Tonight was really a blessing in disguise, Adam; it’s going to save you grief in the long run. You are smart enough to know you don’t need that element in your life. If you had wanted to stay at that party, it wouldn’t have been a good sign.”

  Minutes later we were at Candy’s.

  “So we’ll have the casting director give you a call in a few weeks,” Mitch said. “Perry thinks you’re reall
y perfect for this part, and after meeting you so am I.”

  “Thanks, guys. You don’t know how glad I am we ran into each other,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Perry said, reaching through the front window and squeezing my hand. “Go get some sleep.” He smiled, and then drove off into the night.

  I entered the apartment quietly. I could hear Candy’s television going in her bedroom. She probably dozed off in her bed watching it, as she often did. I was glad she wasn’t up. I didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to go over the lurid events of the evening with her. Instead I brushed my teeth faster than a speeding bullet, pulled off my clothes, and threw myself into bed.

  A minute later I was startled by a noise. I had left my cell phone on and it was in my jeans pocket. Pulling it out I looked at the screen. It said DALE in blocky letters. I clicked it off and tossed it on the floor.

  I was done with these people. What bothered me the most about seeing Dale and Brian in their drug-frenzied fuck session is that it could easily be me months away. So far I was only doing porn and escorting, which was bad enough. But if I kept going in the direction I was heading, the temptation to become tweaked out of my mind 24-7 for $120 a gram might become impossible to avoid or resist.

  My extended vacation into the realm of gay porn was over. Exhausted, I fell asleep.

  Game for a New Gig

  That following Monday I called in sick to my warehouse job at HUNG. I had no desire to see or run into anybody. Dale had left a handful of rambling messages on my cell phone. Some of the messages were frantic and manic, whereas others sounded completely spaced out.

  “Adam, I’m so, so sorry I lost you at the party. There were so many people there and I got caught up with some people I haven’t seen in a while, you know, catching up on business. Give me a call, okay?”

  After I didn’t call he must have figured I knew what kind of business he was doing.

  “Adam, anything that went on at the party meant nothing. I was just fooling around. Look, I let you off the hook when you sold me out the night of the concert. Can’t you just cut me some slack? Come on, babe, call me,” he pleaded on one of the more recent messages.

  After a while I just erased them altogether. I was disgusted with Dale, but most of all disgusted with myself for not getting smart about him sooner.

  When I told Candy she was really put off but not surprised.

  “You know, Adam,” she told me in the kitchen, “I feel like I’ve seen and heard it all in this town. I’m glad you’ve finally come to your senses. In the beginning I didn’t want to give you too much grief because I know how stressful hunting for a decent job is and how miserable you were answering phones at Acclaimed Talent. But your involvement in that scene really went too far. I just hope you’re not planning on ever running for public office.”

  “Or any high-profile public job for that matter,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Candy pondered. “Look at Pamela Lee or Paris Hilton. Shit, it seems nowadays having sex on camera is a prerequisite to becoming famous, so maybe things aren’t so hopeless. The point is you’re getting out before things get out of control, like with Anna Lynn.”

  Anna Lynn was Candy’s favorite illustration of the classic Hollywood tragedy. A cute blue-eyed blonde from Missouri, she came to LA through a modeling agent back home. Candy had met her in a Groundlings improv class, a class that Anna Lynn eventually stopped coming to altogether. Before long she was turning tricks with wealthy men, and out partying and drinking every night. The last she heard of Anna Lynn was that she had gotten pregnant by one of her johns, suffered a miscarriage, and incorporated the fetus into one of her oil paintings. When I heard that one I was grossed out beyond words.

  “Anyway, I’ve seen some ugly times myself involving drugs,” Candy went on. “Like the time in New York when I did too much blow and shit in my pink leather pants.”

  “You what?” I blurted, almost choking on my coffee.

  “Oh, I never told you that one,” Candy said with a guilty smirk. “One time back in New York I was on a call at this guy’s apartment in Trump Tower and did way too much blow. There was another girl there as well. The guy was a total coke fiend and kept pushing more at us. I mean it was blow, blow, blow—all night long. So the whole evening I smelled this awful stench. I figured maybe one of them had gas or something.”

  Candy paused to take a sip of coffee.

  “Actually, it really smelled like baby diapers,” she reflected.

  “I thought maybe it was the other girl’s cheap perfume. Who knows? So I ignored it for a while, but then after being sent off with my own cocaine kit, I was in the limo with the driver and still smelled it. Gross, this driver reeks too, I’m thinking. But when I got home and took off my pink leather pants, I couldn’t believe it. I had thought I was just farting once and a while, but GEEEZZZZZ . . . diarrhea of the worst kind! It was so sick! Cocaine really loosens the stool, you know. I called the madam at the escort service and told her never to send me to that guy again because he got me so coked up I shit my pants. I had her in hysterics. She always got a kick out of me.”

  Candy laughed the whole time telling me this, hardly able to finish. I couldn’t believe what she just told me and was laughing hysterically as well, tears running down my cheeks.

  “My point is, Adam, live and learn, right?”

  Leave it to Candy to put a humorous twist on even the most grisly subjects.

  The next day I skipped work and went to audition for The Hollywood Windows. I was glad Candy had signed me up because at least for a few hours I wouldn’t have to mull over Dale, HUNG Video, John Vastelli, or getting my life back in order from the mess I’d made of it.

  The Hollywood Windows, along with The Price Is Right, is the mother lode of game shows, and countless people dream of being a contestant. And on Hollywood Windows you don’t have to be a genius to win, unlike Jeopardy. Soon I was to find out that maybe I should have tried Wheel of Fortune, where you could be dumber than a stick and still win great shit.

  These people meant business. Arrive dressed nicely, no jeans or sneakers. I wore my best black dress pants, nice Gucci knock-off loafers, and a blue button-down dress shirt. The audition took place in an office building not far from the Hollywood Bowl.

  Upon getting there I was directed into a cramped room filled with rows of folding chairs. A variety of people were sitting in them, from nondescript housewives to pretty young girls, everyday-looking guys, office workers, and old ladies. After everyone had crammed in next to one another, a middle-aged woman dressed in black with an expensive dye job came in and announced herself.

  “Hello everybody! I’m Susan!” she said in an overbearing voice filled with gusto. Everyone gave her back what I thought was a very friendly hello.

  “Oh, come on!” she said in an obnoxious teasing voice. “I know you guys can do better than that! Let’s try again! Hello everyone!”

  “Helllooooooooooo!!!!” the room shouted back like a bunch of trained parrots. I felt like an adolescent child sitting in the peanut gallery of The Howdy Doody Show.

  “Okay folks. I’m going to give you some forms to fill out.” Susan went on to explain the forms and then spoke further about other logistics. She had a voice that would be perfect for an infomercial or a hosting job on the Home Shopping Network.

  “If you are an actor, put down something else, whatever your day job is. We do not want any actors as contestants; we already have our nine celebrities on the show!” she said in a sarcastic singsong Snow White tone that assumed many of the applicants were starving actors.

  It was no surprise half the people who came to audition were starving actors desperate for money to fund their pursuit of stardom. I wondered if anybody put down professional extra, as I’m sure they got a lot of those in here too.

  We were then informed that someone named “Fran” would be coming into the room when we were done filling out our forms.

  “Fran is our head
contestant coordinator, so you want to be nice to her! And just a hint, she loves friendly, energetic faces!” When saying this Susan made the most grotesque phony expression of excitement I think I’d ever seen in my life. I wanted to vomit. People in the room were laughing at her shtick in a forced way, and I could tell the competition to grab attention and become a favorite in this joint was really going to heat up.

  Susan left the room and gave us five minutes to fill out our forms. People began making small talk and some asked to borrow pens or pencils, as I’m sure they were terrified to ask Susan for them for fear of looking like an unprepared contestant. Susan came back into the room with Fran.

  “Hello there everyone! I’m Fran!” Fran announced.

  This time the response was enough to shatter glass. “HELLOOO FRAN!!!”

  “Wow! What a great group you are!” Fran said in a mock surprise voice with eyes wide open, as if we amazed her. It was so condescending and rehearsed that now I really, really wanted to puke.

  We proceeded to hand in our forms and then Fran had us say our names aloud so she could check us off on her list. As soon as she started out, it was obvious she was feeling out the contestant potential in the room, hamming it up with each person so she could see how they would interact on the show.

  A person who sat a few chairs ahead of me had a last name that began with a w, and Fran joked about it, telling him he was all the way at the end of the list. The guy replied he was used to it and again, and everyone in the room burst out in their now familiar forced laughter.

  I was really beginning to feel that I was in some form of a lunatic asylum, or better yet, a living laugh track.

  By the time she got to me I knew I’d have to think of something clever to make an impression and get on this fucking show to have a shot at winning some cash. She pointed the end of her pencil at me, signaling to say my name. This was my moment to make Fran think I was perfect Hollywood Windows material.