The show kept me occupied. Unlike some of my more jaded co-stars, I read every single script in full, not just the ones I was in, which had been averaging four per week since I went under contract. That meant I had anywhere from 12 to 40 scene-pages to memorize for each day I worked, resulting in a swollen bank account (to me, anyway), and not much time to indulge my loneliness. I’d broken down and called Trevor two weeks after I returned from San Antonio, but he was leaving the next day to shoot a horror movie in Romania, the sound of which made Teenage Brides of Christ seem like Sister Act. I did end up seeing him frequently… in a national beer commercial where he danced a Texas two-step with a li’l filly almost as purty as he was — his true aversion to beer, Western-wear and li’l fillies handily masked with two days’ stubble and a total lack of dialogue. So during an exclusive interview with Soap Opera Weekly, I was able to truthfully chirp “Nobody but Simon,” when asked if there was “anyone special” in my life. I was simply too busy learning lines to date, and my character was one chatty motherfucker. (They changed that to “butthole.”)
My new best friend was my TV agent Connie, a chain-smoking tough gal somewhere between 35 and 70 who represented six other daytime regulars. Agents love it when you’re on a soap. Those checks arrive like clockwork, week in and week out, and they never have to submit you for anything else. Plus, compared to prime-time and movie stars, we were low-maintenance. Connie visited all her “talent” on the set once every three weeks, because “a month is too long, but any more often… please. I get home at night and I’m a dead woman.” Ditto, doll. When my second 13-week option cycle began, she sent me a bottle of Cristal with a card: “Warmest regards! And mazel tov on officially not shitting the bed.”
A few weeks ago Connie and I turned down $5000 “plus 25 cents a minute per call” for an infomercial — with a prominent female recording artist hoping to pull a Dionne Warwick with her own competing psychic hotline: a 1-900 number that anyone 18 and up could dial, 24 hours a day to receive a “reading” from a “clairvoyant connection” for “only” $3.99 per minute. You could hire a smokin’-hot hooker, male, female or otherwise, for a lot less — check the sex ads in the alternative newsweekly of your choice — and I bet they’d even improvise some fortune-telling while servicing you, if it was arranged up-front. Two other “stars” (from cheesy New York soaps) had already sold their asses to the project, but I just couldn’t stomach sitting in some godawful simulation of a talk show set in front of a “studio audience” (aka non-union paid extras) while I faked a casual but fully scripted interview with Missy Diva Songbird (my mom owned several of her albums and I might possibly have paid retail for a couple of her cassingles circa 1988) about my uncanniest paranormal experiences, and why I personally considered psychic hotlines the most practical, convenient and exciting spiritual development since Parker Brothers slapped their name on Ouija boards. I was an artist with a magna cum laude degree from one of the finest B.F.A. programs in the Southwest — I had to draw the line somewhere.
Fortunately that line lay to the right of Dramatica Cruises — a remarkable, highly reputable company with a magical trademarked formula: one ship, 25 daytime actors and 200 disposably incomed soap opera junkies on a floating fan-fest from San Diego to tropical Mexican ports. A three-day weekend voyage celebrating all things serial that it would be my honor to set sail on — for the rate of $3900 plus all expenses, minus Connie’s well-earned commish, of course.
I told Phalita about it during the party, in the two-acre kitchen of her new Beverly Hills love-nest on Calle Vista Drive at the top of Beverly Hills. “I did a few of those,” she said, donning a Laura Ashley oven-mitt and shooing away a caterer before removing a piping-hot tray of her own mini-quiches from one of the broilers. “They are fantastic. I mean, those tiny rooms suck, but the buffets are straight out of Oprah’s wet dreams, baby. Of course, I’m too big for a cruise like that now.”
“You’re a toothpick,” I grinned.
“And those fans’d be trying to get a taste of me for three days straight,” she laughed. “I’d get clobbered. But you just started doing this… you’re going to have a blast, Alex. Women’ll be serving themselves up to you on a silver platter.” I smiled politely. Phalita’s boyfriend wandered in and said hi. When he put his full champagne flute down to rummage through the refrigerator, she picked it up and finished it off. “And there’s some cute-ass cabin boys on those ships, too, honey.” She winked, then sashayed out to circulate, beckoning me to follow. The sitcom star emerged from the fridge with half an apple pie and a wedge of cheddar cheese. Imagine, $175K an episode and he liked the same dessert as my grandpa.
“Great party,” I told him. It was. Phalita had given a few of us a tour of the house, pointing out the room in which she hoped a Barbara Walters interview would soon take place, as well as the heart-shaped bathtub and Jacuzzi the previous owner, a sentimental sheik, had installed. The food was rich, the music fabulous, obscure singles of the Sixties, and how ‘bout that crowd? The Bob Sagets, Martha Quinn, Christina Applegate, Rutanya Alda, James L Brooks, Sammi Davis-Voss, Vanilla Ice, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, soap giants Eileen Davidson, Barbara Crampton, Jon Lindstrom, Michael and Hunter Tylo, Karen Moncrieff and Tracey Bregman, Corey Parker, the Roseanne Arnolds, Jerry Van Dyke, Sheryl Lee, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Dana Ashbrook, Susanna Hoffs, Lee Grant, Trevor Renado.
I encountered the last over a tureen of spinach dip as we simultaneously inserted cucumber spears. “Alex! Hi!” he exclaimed. His hair was quite a bit longer than the last time I’d seen him. As usual he sported perfectly burnished skin, and lots of it, under a brightly colored paisley vest (sans shirt) and black pants that were baggy everywhere but the ass. Somehow he’d become even more muscular.
I quickly chomped my cucumber. “How’s it going?” I asked casually.
“Just the best.”
“Excuse me, boys,” Charlotte Rae trilled, en route to the grilled swordfish skewers.
“Omigod!” Trevor gasped. “Mrs Garrett!” He launched into a Facts of Life theme song rendition as we stepped over to the fireplace. “Wow. I feel so stupid. Of course you’d be here. You and Phalita are the total stars of that show.”
“Thanks. Who are you with?”
“Just myself. I used to know Phalita’s trainer.” Ah.
“You used to know him… or blow him?” I smiled sweetly.
“Actually, I used to fuck him,” Trevor said. His huge brown eyes danced merrily. “But that was ages ago. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Good Christmas?”
“Delightful. We all went to my grandparents’ in Florida.” He was sitting very close to me. “I keep seeing your Bud Dry ad.”
“I thank my plastic Joseph and Mary nativity figurines every night for that job. It was so wild. At two I’m doing hanging sit-ups in my apartment and get the call. At three I’m meeting the casting director, at six I’m on a plane and the next morning I’m shooting.”
A minor chain of microbytes clicked together in my brain. “In Austin, Texas?” I asked.
“Yes…” Trevor said, the teeniest bit on-guard.
“And did you go out dancing, by any chance? At a club called Oilcan Harry’s?”
“Yeah. Why?” He smiled mischievously, as if he were famous enough to have engendered some gossip that had somehow made its way back to L.A.
“Because I saw you there! I went to Texas, remember? You dropped me off at the airport.”
He made a retarded face. “No duh, Alex.” Then: “How come you didn’t talk to me?”
“I was being dragged out the door, and really, really drunk at the time.”
“You?”
“It happens. Rarely. Anyway, nothing personal, of course.”
“Of course.” One flap of his vest was askew, revealing, if memory served, a notoriously sensitive nipple. “I make it a point to never drink when I’m out alone in a strang
e town. Ever since that time in Benidorm when I woke up in skivvies in the garden of that Catholic boys’ school.”
Before I could quiz him about this, Nori Ann Marshall, with Bardot hair and matching Eurotrash boyfriend, was there, kissing my cheek and asking who my pal was. I introduced them and we got to meet Silvio, who was “getting into music managements.”
Nori handed me an uneaten quesadilla. “Finish this, Alex. I’m bloated. God, this is like being at work. Only with celebrities. I mean, everybody from the show’s here. Except Megan.” Megan DuBois was taking advantage of her character’s grave coma to star in a TV movie that told the true story of a housewife involved in a murderous love-trapezoid with her twin daughters and a sadomasochistic gymnastics coach.
“Did Brent show you his new Mercedes?” I asked her.
“God — he made us drive around the block in it. He actually has one of those cardboard Jesus air-fresheners hanging off the rearview mirror,” she moaned. Silvio shook his head sardonically: those tacky Americans. “Were you there when he spazzed out Thursday?”
“No, but I heard,” I said.
“What happened?” Trevor wanted to know.
“He had a tantrum on the set over some stupid line of dialogue,” she said, “and wouldn’t finish the scene! And I’m waiting on the other side of the door to come in and so finally I just entered and said my first line and they’d taken an engineering-five and I felt so damn dumb!” she giggled. “Brent has just been super difficult since Lulu left the show. You know they were… ” She suddenly stopped dishing.
“Hi, kids!” said Jerry Reynolds, our co-executive producer. He was in his early thirties, obviously closeted (and painfully, unlike myself), a terribly nice not-quite-ex-geek. Hearts Crossing was his entire life. He usually sat up in the production office writing furiously, but every so often he'd observe onstage and excitedly offer the kind of creative input our exec producer was too rushed and disinterested to provide from his perennial seat in the booth. “We beat All My Children again last week, you guys!” He sat down next to me, putting a skinny arm around my shoulders.
“That’s awesome, Jerry!” gushed Nori, reverting to her sugary ingenue character from the show.
“What’s awesome is having a cast like all of you. I meant to tell you how much I loved that scene of yours, Alex, from a couple days ago. Where you stood up to Rutherford at the newspaper office? The subtext about your father and the secret formula was really strong.”
“Thanks, Jerry. It was well-written,” I replied modestly, ignoring Trevor’s finger impudently poking my waist.
“Aw, thanks. It was a late revision, so I did sort of whip that one up myself.” He noticed Trevor sitting on my other side and self-consciously withdrew the skinny arm.
I sat back so they could get a better look at each other. “Jerry, this is my friend, Trevor Renado. Trevor, Jerry Reynolds, a top-ranking writer-producer on our wonderful show.”
“You look so familiar, Trevor,” Jerry said, rather googly-eyed.
Trevor rattled off an abbreviated resume. “And he does a lot of modeling for International Male and Undergear,” I added, figuring those catalogs were prime beat-off material when Jerry was out of porn. Bingo! Jerry became flustered and excused himself to chat with Phalita.
“He’s nice,” Trevor remarked, flashing me a naughty intimate grin. I felt, then visually confirmed, his big hand on my knee. One second later it was gone.
“I’m gonna find the dessert table. And say hi to Carol Ann from Mommie Dearest!” Trevor said. “See you in a bit.”
I grabbed a champagne flute and wandered around, trying to mingle, wondering if I’d ever have my own mansion and who the hell would live in it besides me and my cats and iguana. Sound-bites from conversations blew back and forth like cumulus cotton speech-bubbles:
“…I’d call it more of a support group than therapy. She’s helping me relax into my power…”
“…they’re so fuckin’ cheap it has to be a pilot presentation…”
“…Deb Aquila loves me…”
“…looking so hot I hardly recognized you! Can I just say something, and don’t…”
“…I’m in bed with Lorimar and Amblin and Kiefer’s attached…”
“…MTV Music Video Awards she had the silicone pumped back out…”
I spotted my co-star Anna Ford — she played the chemist unwittingly being used by Simon to recreate his father’s dangerous sexual potency drug — making out with a member of an all-boy bubblegum pop group. I had to kiss her onscreen next week, so observed a moment to know what to expect. Obviously lots o’tongue, and her hand between my buttocks, which reflexively clenched just as:
“There you are!” Apparently Trevor had been looking for me. “There’s a gross of Sweet Lady Jane chocolate-chip cookies behind the layer cake. I wish I had pockets.” He handed me a warmish cookie. “Wanna go do something?”
“Like what?” Way more interested than I was afraid to let on, I bit into the cookie. Trevor shrugged. “Okay. Let me find the bathroom first. How was Rutanya?”
“So fucking nice. We’re like this now.” He crossed his index and middle fingers and then pointed them at my mouth for a moment, like he wanted me to suck on them. “So while you’re gone, I’m going to introduce myself to Roseanne!”
“You do that. Maybe she’ll have a sex-dream on her show and you can be in it.”
“I’m so suggesting that. Right now!” He slithered toward her, a compliment already poised on his diligently moisturized lips.
I ducked into a handy powder-room, displacing a joint-smoking series regular from Phalita’s boyfriend’s show. I closed the door and marveled at how the teal Liquid Vanish offset the pale pink commode. The medicine cabinet contained Lady Schicks, dental floss and Extra-Strength Tylenol. I opted for Numbers Two, then Three — two caplets washed down with the rest of my champagne, in anticipation of the tension about the rest of my evening I could already feel massing at the back of my head. I steadied myself against the pale pink sink. Trevor wasn’t worth this much worry… he simply was not. The problem was I still considered him the only semi-significant non-Nick romantic relationship of my secretly pathetic life, which was stupid.
Thinking of Nick and Trevor in the same terms was pointless. It was like comparing a Greenpeace anti-whaling ship to a jet-ski. Still, I couldn’t help hungering for a long thrilling run over the waves. I rubbed my temples, wondering what he’d look like emerging from the clear heated waters of the now-empty pale pink bathtub I was sitting on the edge of. There was a rap on the door.
“Come in,” I said, standing.
It was Trevor. “Ready?”
“Absolutely. Let’s say goodbye to Phalita.” We found her at the piano singing a duet of “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home” with Richard Mulligan. After the applause died down, we said our goodnights.
Trevor played with the zippers on his biker jacket as we waited for the valets to finish their game of Canyon Chicken — or however they amused themselves —somewhere down the hill. I noticed a shiny black car with the license plate BING parked in a corner of the driveway and elbowed Trevor. “There’s Brent’s Mercedes.”
“It’s only an E!” he snipped.
We were just about to try to steal the air-freshener when our cars pulled up. “How do you want to do this?” I asked Trevor.
“Follow me home, and we’ll take it from there.” He reached into his car and pulled out a parking permit for me. “I’ll wait outside.”
Trevor lived in West Hollywood, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard, conveniently midway between disco-dinosaur Rage and Pavilions, the cruisiest upscale grocery store south of The Castro. I had to assume he was only teasing with phrases like “follow me home”; he lived at the nexus of Boystown and could’ve had any number of hangout activities in mind— dancing, after hours cafes, live sex clubs. The pos
sibilities were endless. But they most definitely did include going up to his apartment. (To watch a video, perhaps.) Under any circumstances, I had to maintain my dignity and willpower. If I was going to use Trevor like the mouth-watering hardbodied Palm Springs guesthouse-toy that he was, he’d damn well be the one to insist on it.
We turned left on Santa Monica from Doheny into bumper-to-bumper midnight traffic. Ten minutes later we’d traversed the block-and-a-half to his house, and I had to suffer the shame of trying to parallel park under pressure. Wheel all the way to the left, then reverse, then all the way to the right. Wasn’t that it?! Shit. I squinted through the steamy windows to see if anyone was making fun of me. Two cars ahead I noticed glowing red taillights. Someone was pulling out in front of Trevor’s building. Thank Christ, I thought, backing out of my aborted parking attempt and casually sliding into the vacant spot, nicely adjacent to, but not impinging upon a hydrant. I slipped the permit around the rearview mirror as Trevor opened my door for me. “Get out of the car, Alex. I’m freezing. Let’s go warm up.” I looked involuntarily toward his apartment. “Come on,” Trevor urged, tugging me in the opposite direction. Damn him. I made certain to keep pokerfaced as I followed him down to the Boulevard. That tart.
“Hey, Simon!” a tipsy reveler leered, swiping at me as we paraded up the street with the rest of the Saturday night party-boy squad. I waved. As always, I marveled at the sheer volume of great-looking, bright-eyed men making the same old rounds — from Micky’s to Rage to Studio One and back again, with optional pit stops at Revolver, Motherlode or A Different Light bookstore, like gerbils running through a neon Habitrail. Okay, urban legend fans — hamsters. In one block I counted nine faces handsome enough to kiss with little or no personality/intelligence provided. Couldn’t one of them be Mr. Right… lonely, bored, sick of smoky clubs and their empty-hearted poseurs, not to mention terrible house music? How could you ever know?
“What’ve you been up to?” I asked Trevor, after I’d been recognized a third time and he’d pretended not to notice.
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