“Okay… but let me reimburse you for the framing. I’ll send you a check.”
“Pay to the order of Shove It Up Your Ass,” she said brightly. “Who are you now, Richie Rich?”
“‘Cause I have cankles? Just say it!” I mock-sobbed.
“That reminds me. How’s Trevor… with all this?” I told her. “That son of a bitch. Like there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind that he’s gay as a debutante. Or do straight guys in L.A. keep Kylie Minogue in permanent rotation on the stereo of their Miatas? Don’t know, don’t live there.” I emitted a frenzied meow, loving her. “If I were you, I’d cut him loose. If he's not mature enough to deal with it, then fuck him and his waxed centerfold anus. His butthole was in a national magazine, Alex. Clearly visible in at least two photos. I saw it, right under his matching hairless ball-sac.”
“And…?” I managed to spit out through my mirth.
“And — you’re too good for him. The end. Before I go, we have to discuss what the hell is going on on that soap!”
This was what: Simon was becoming quite chummy with Ollie Tarlton, former husband and current boyfriend of Gwen Tarlton, big-titted society columnist for the Crossing Herald, still suffering from a severe intimacy disorder brought on by her subconsciously repressed rape by Chip Blake, Cyrinda’s drug-addict adopted stepbrother. Very chummy indeed. Chummy enough for even the most half-witted viewers to deduce that a certain temperamental Emmy-nominated Christ-loving stud would soon find himself Simon’s new playmate. Naturally it took the Mercedes-owning performer in question a bit longer to figure things out, but whether co-stars clued him in, or he read it in Soap Opera Digest’s “What Will Happen” corner, the screaming fight that took place in Linda Rabiner’s office between Brent, Linda, Reese and Jerry (just skinny enough to almost be able to hide behind Linda’s potted ficus tree) was the buzz of the set for days.
Phalita explained the situation to me during our Thighmaster session in her dressing room. (She had an extra one and I was hooked on the burn.) “Brent hates this job like it’s a damn book with no pictures, but his contract isn't up for eight months. I don’t know where the hell he and that fine tight ass think they’re going to go, Emmy or no fuckin’ Emmy.” She hadn’t been nominated in a while.
I forced my legs together yet again, with a fraction of Phalita’s grace and focus. “Why don’t they just buy him out of the contract, if he’s such a nightmare?” I asked.
She grimaced, partly from muscular exertion. “Too goddamn cheap. He’s getting $4250 a pop, with a two-show guarantee every week. Those year-long option cycles are a pisser, baby. But if he walks out of his contract, they don’t owe him a dime. It’s my private theory that Linda’s using that wacky gay shit with Simon to ride Brent’s beefy behind. Pun intended.”
Could that be true?! She indicated we had one more set left. As I attempted to comply: “You’re actually claiming, off the record mind you, that the show is threatening him with forced onscreen gaiety to get him to quit?!”
“Oh, yes, honey… I do believe, in a metaphorical sense, Linda’s bending Brother Brent over that big fancy desk of hers for a royal reaming that won’t stop till he shrieks ‘uncle’… or ‘auntie’.”
“Or, ‘yes, mein Kommandant.’”
“Mmm-hmmm. Whatever that scary bitch is into. And if I’m right… that makes you Linda’s strap-on.”
“Phalita!”
“Watch your form. Shit’s about to get real strange — you might need those muscles to hang on with.”
✽✽✽
“Hello?”
“Uh, hi. Alex?”
“Who’s this?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s Brent. Bingham.”
Why, Brent, I was just thinking of you. How could I not be since we’re supposed to kiss live on videotape tomorrow morning? I was lying on my stomach, thighs aching, as I re-read that very scene. Again. Trevor and I had had an entirely mindless argument about returning a bag of movies to Video West almost three days ago and hadn’t spoken since. I decided to wait and see how long it would take for him to call me. Considering his stubborn streak, this was akin to lighting our relationship on fire and watching it slowly crinkle and blacken, leaving only a fine grey ash. Still, I couldn’t wholly quell my inherent perky optimism, and honestly expected it to be Trevor every time the phone rang… which was a lot less than you’d imagine for someone as cute and successful as I was.
“What’s up, Brent?” He’d been very civil to me since we started working together, in the same scenes, but as a rule we had nothing to talk about. Christ only knew what would prompt a phone call now.
“We’ve got a lot to cover tomorrow, and I was wondering if you’d mind rehearsing a little… tonight.”
“Okay,” I said, shocked.
“You want to just come by?”
“Malibu, right?”
“Yeah, the address is on that home list thing. You have one of those?”
“Yes. It’s around here somewhere. Okay, got it. I’m in Hollywood — should I leave now?”
“Cool. Park in the space next to my car. You know, the Mercedes. It says Reserved for R. Drake, but they’re out of town.”
“I’m on my way then.”
“See ya, bud.”
I put on a sweatshirt and grabbed my script and took off down Sunset Boulevard without giving myself a chance to consider how nuts this might be. What if he’d flipped out after reading tomorrow’s episode and was planning to murder me? They’d find my body in a ditch in Trancas Canyon and a TV movie would follow starring Rick Schroeder and — oh, shit — Kyle Chandler. I’d used my cruise cancellation money to splurge on a better pull-out player and new speakers, but rarely had any discs on hand because I was afraid they’d melt if I left them closed up in the car. I retrieved Shakespears Sister’s second CD, my favorite of last year, from under the seat and popped it in, counting on it to center, inspire, fire me up and relax me — simultaneously. The first track swooped in… “Goodbye Cruel World.” I wondered if the song title was a bad sign.
Malibu was not nearby. By the time I got to Brent’s the album was almost over — and I’d played “I Don’t Care” and “Stay” twice each. How could he drive this every day? It took less time to fly to Vegas. The house was a waterfront duplex on Pacific Coast Highway. I squeezed into my assigned parking space, recognizing the shape of Brent’s low-model Benz under a tan dropcloth.
I passed through an open wooden gate and took a flagstone walk down the length of the house. At the end there was a redwood terrace divided by little fences on either side of the jacuzzi in the center. The entire back wall of the house was glass, affording me a surprise view of shirtless Brent scratching his testicles. I waited until he took his hand out of his sweats, then hit the buzzer. A few seconds later, he came to the door in a Gold’s Gym tank top from which his gorgeously mounded pecs erupted beneath a garden of black chest hair. “How you doin’, Alex?”
He showed me in. Lots of ugly white furniture, a Crate & Barrel dinette with wet, sand-encrusted swim trunks on it, a nonfunctional fireplace sporting his Viewer’s Choice soap award and a couple of baseball trophies on the mantel. A golden Lab with a red bandanna knotted around its neck snoozed in the corner. I took a seat on the sectional sofa.
“Sorry about the mess,” Brent said. “It’s the maid’s day off.” He noticed a dried salsa stain on the hideous oval chrome-and-glass coffee table and covered it with the latest issue of People, which had been at the top of a foot-high stack of literature, including a hefty leatherette Bible with Brent’s name actually embossed in gold on the cover. Brent plunged his scratching hand between the couch cushions and located the remote control for his giant-screen TV. He muted a classic Tears For Fears video on VH-1 then asked me if I wanted a Diet Pepsi “or a wine cooler.”
We got right to work on our scenes, which involved some nonsense about me assuring Ol
lie that Gwen’s job would be protected when I started “restructuring” the newspaper staff in yet another cold-blooded power-play. What mattered was the subtext, which seemed to whiz completely over Brent’s head. I couldn’t play out my half of the sexual tension if he was going to be so dense. Should I be directing him? I asked myself helplessly, annoyed at the futility the evening was amounting to. We ran through everything twice, up to but avoiding the actual kissing scene, which was of course the last scene in the final segment of the show.
“This isn't going anywhere,” Brent huffed. He got up and shuffled to the kitchen.
I followed a bit hesitantly. The Lab was sniffing around an empty food dish. “Maybe you’d rather work on it at the studio in the morning,” I suggested.
He overfilled the bowl with Purina Dog Chow from a 50-pound sack he extracted from the walk-in pantry, ignoring the kibble that skidded across the Saltillo tile floor. “Fuck. Excuse my language, Alex.” He put the dog food away and took out a giant Tupperware canister that must’ve contained three bags of Double-Stuf Oreos. He slumped into a chair at the dinette and started eating. “I’m just so bummed out about the show. Have some. They know I’m walking when my contract’s up the first of next year. So right before the voting, they’re trying to screw me out of my Emmy with this stupid storyline. No offense.” He opened an Oreo and tongued out the creme. I experienced an involuntary erotic shudder.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I think it’s pretty stupid myself.”
“My manager’s telling me not to cause trouble, but he’s not the one who has to put up with assholes like Reese Jacobs, and that bitch Linda Rabiner, pardon my French. I’m one of the big reasons that show’s popular — I’ve been on Soap Opera Digest’s 10 Hottest Hunks list five years in a row. That’s more than Don Diamont. I’m going to beat them at their own game, though. Whatever they write, I’m going to kick butt with. I’m not gonna let anything stop me. I’m winning that Emmy.” Not if the voters looked beyond his submitted work from 1992 and caught any of what I’d just witnessed. He looked at me very seriously and asked, “Is Jerry Reynolds gay?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He easily could be.”
“I thought you guys automatically knew.” He was almost charming in a juicy ox-like manner.
“I wish,” I blurted, immediately wishing I could retract it. I watched him for some untoward reaction, but he seemed to be studying the kibble on floor.
“Let’s run through it again,” he said. He got up and reached over his shoulder, pressing fingers into his middle back. Everything in the vicinity bulged. “Yowch. I strained a muscle or something working out. I’ll have to get a massage tomorrow night.”
“Oh, God. Don’t even think about it, Alex. Not for one second!” insisted Mini-Kyle Chandler, kneeling on my shoulder, his mini-hands pointing to Brent’s recessed overhead lighting, in prayer: “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from Malibu un-bashed.”
“You pussies,” sneered Mini-Jeff Stryker at Mini-Kyle and me, from the other shoulder. I banished both Mini’s from my mind as Brent and I adjourned back to the living room and picked up our scripts. And all of a sudden, he was right-on, subtext and all. We redid the four short scenes we’d previously rehearsed, and then he barreled ahead into virgin territory: Act VI, Scene Three.
“It’s getting late. I don’t want to keep you up,” Brent/Ollie told me/Simon.
“Don’t be silly. It’s been a fascinating evening, Ollie.” Could my lines be a little fruitier? “Gwen isn't expecting you, is she?” I knew damn well she’d moved in with Brittany, who’d ironically been married to Gwen’s rapist at the time of the attack.
“I wasn’t going to mention it, but she’s staying with Britt for a while,” Ollie said.
SIMON
I’m sorry to hear that.
BUT HIS EYES GLOW WITH SECRET ENTHUSIASM.
Oh, yeah. Big secret. Brent got up and paced to the middle of the room, exactly as indicated in the script. “I think it was her shrink’s idea. For some reason, I’m not that upset about it. Our problems were — very complicated.”
“But you tried. I know that.
SIMON RISES AND CROSSES TOWARD OLLIE. And damned if I didn’t do just that. Brent turned to look me in the eye. “You’ve been a great friend through all this, Simon. It means more to me than you know. In fact…” He trailed off, but maintained eye-contact.
“Yes?” I prompted him, as scripted, moving a fraction closer.
“It’s confusing, but lately I’ve had some very strange thoughts about you.”
“Describe them.”
“I’m not sure I can explain them. In words.”
“Then show me,” I stage-whispered through clenched teeth, hoping to lighten the mood with a little harmless camp, since it was the last line of the scene. But before I knew what was happening, Brent’s hands were on my shoulders. As he pressed his mouth against mine, I tasted chocolate from the Oreos and felt the hardness of that Top Ten chest against me. “Holyshitwhat’shedoing?!” Mini-Kyle shrieked.
“Faggin’ out… and you love it!” Mini-Jeff croaked lasciviously. I was paralyzed. His grip on me tightened, and I was afraid that this was it; he’d really lost it… the next thing I knew I’d be flying through the glass wall. But instead the kiss intensified. “Stay in character, Sir Laurence Olivi-Gay!” Mini-Jeff rudely hissed, and I kissed Brent back the same way I would have in a scripted hetero scene, then released him.
“How was that?” he asked drily.
“Fine. Flawless…”
I was rewarded with a conspiratorial grin and his arm around my shoulders. “If it seems like I’m actually into it, that’ll take all the fun out of it. For Linda and Reese, I mean,” he added. As opposed for whom? Me? Brent?! Before I could ponder this: “Thanks for coming out. I think we’ll nail it tomorrow.”
“So do I. Bye!” I gave him an easy smile and got the fuck out of there before he stripped naked and tried to baptize me in the jacuzzi. Or worse. With my nervous system tingling from the bizarre interlude (“Not that being gay is bizarre,” according to Jerry Reynolds), I drove home, chalking it up to artistic license on Brent’s part and nothing more… although I had to wonder if Simon and me wouldn’t cross his mind for a nanosecond the next time he felt his adherence to the Commandments weaken and broke down and beat off.
I walked past my answering machine with 0 flashing on the message readout and hit the rack without further ado. At some point in the night, I dreamed I was on the Simon’s Loft set at Hearts Crossing, trying to remember my lines and waiting for Brent to come back so we could tape the kiss. Then I looked up and Nick was standing on Brent’s mark. We’d taken a break mid-scene but now they were ready to roll and the stage manager was barking, “We have speed! Very quiet please!” I couldn’t understand what Nick was doing there, so I looked around, saw Jerry Reynolds, and went to talk to him.
“Didn’t you know? We let Brent out of his contract. The viewers just didn’t buy him as gay… so he’s been replaced,” he said, gesturing toward Nick.
“But that’s…” I started to argue, and suddenly we were doing the show and I was face to face with Nick.
“It’s confusing, but I think I’m falling in love with you,” he said. I didn’t think that was the line, but I said my next one anyway, thinking it was really awful that we were going to have to play boyfriends on TV when he didn’t want me in real life, but desperate to kiss him anyway just the same. And I did. I kept expecting the director to cut over the intercom because the scene was going on too long and Nick was fondling my crotch, which was definitely not allowed on daytime TV. I realized we were alone and that it wasn’t the set but Simon’s real loft, which made sense for some reason in the context of the dream. Nick and I retreated to the couch and he held me so tight and sweet and kept whispering in my ear, “See? I told you it’d be okay.” He’d finally come for me.
> I awakened in darkness, the image of Nick in my arms dissolving into a dull, cool disappointment that settled over me like a shroud. I heard voices through my window: “You’re wrong, Yip,” my gay downstairs neighbor tittered. I hopped out of bed and crept over to the window. My neighbor was in his kimono and boxer shorts, sitting at his patio table and enjoying a candlelit tete-a-tete with a barely legal Asian in a Keith Haring t-shirt. “Kevin Glover is the porn star with the smallest cock.”
Yip chattered something I couldn’t decipher. I compressed my own turgid penis between my stomach and the wall and moved my head closer to hear the outcome of the debate. “Didn’t you see Get Bi Tonight?” my neighbor asked Yip. “Let’s go in and cue up the threesome with Sharon Mitchell and that nasty Cory Monroe. Video doesn’t lie.”
They got up and I jumped back so they wouldn’t see my shadowy outline hovering at the window. I climbed back into bed and hugged one of my foam-filled pillows, letting my mind wander back into the passionate dreamworld fantasy I’d just left. I could call him. First thing in the morning. Just pick up the phone and dial his office number and tell him what’s been going on. It wasn’t like we couldn’t see each other. All I had to do was fly to Austin. There was that hotel directly across from Nick’s law firm. I didn’t even work this Friday. I imagined phoning Nick and making up some clever reason for him to come up to Room Whatever, and then when he opened the door, I’d be standing in the middle of the room, not saying anything. Just standing there until he put his arms around me and then I’d whisper, so my voice wouldn’t crack, “I love you, Nick. I love you.”
I didn’t call. Trevor surfaced toward the end of the week, the day I was asked to be Grand Marshal of the Long Beach Gay Pride Festival. I was flattered, and intrigued at the possibility of being so civic-minded while meeting loads of cute guys, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ride a pink convertible — or worse, a Lambda-shaped tissue-paper float — down the center of town at high noon. Connie, on my machine, nixed the idea: “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself, Alex. Go to Long Beach, party, frolic, bond with the kids. But none of this Queen of the Homo Hop crap. You’re gonna have enough notoriety on your hands when you start schtupping Mr Sunday School weekday afternoons at two. That friggin’ show. They want sick? They oughta turn my life into a soap opera. Oy! Bye, doll.” Hopefully it wasn’t too late to check RuPaul’s availability. I was hand-writing the Festival organizers an adorable rejection letter when the phone rang and my machine immediately clicked on. I’d forgotten to reset it after playing back the day’s mediocre messages.
Glamourpuss Page 23