by Ty Jacob
In 1991 Sasha had been nominated for Best Director for her work on Beach Boy Bingo and again in 1992 for When the Cock Crows, but Mike knew that My Swim Coach Loves Me was particularly important to her, that she’d dreamed of doing this film about a university swim team for years. It was a Cougar film, and although Steve hadn’t allowed her to film the synchronized swimming scene she’d wanted – naked guys with erections rising up out of the water – she’d been able to do most everything else: the swim coach with the whistle, the spunky young men playing in the pool, the shots of athletic swimmers doing the butterfly naked. Mike was in three scenes himself, as he played the star swimmer and the coach’s favorite. They had been long, difficult shoots, but the results were spectacular.
On stage Larry rustled the envelope. “And the winner is…” Larry looked twice at the name, and actually looked offstage as though there had been some mistake. He stared back at the audience and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this wouldn’t happen in my day. Drag queens didn’t direct porn back then, but here it is. The winner of the Best Director award is Sasha Zahore, for My Swim Coach Loves Me.”
In that moment, Mike found that he felt even more pleased than when he himself had won. Sasha had wanted this for so long. He wished that she was sitting at his side right now, wished he’d been able to talk her into being there.
Over the audience applause, Larry announced, “Sasha Zahore couldn’t be with us tonight. Accepting the award on her behalf is Billy Knight.”
Mike stood up and began his second trip to the stage that evening. People cheered. Everyone in the industry knew that Sasha and Billy went together, like bookends. There were rumors. Some people said they were lovers. Others assumed that it was a professional arrangement, that Billy was being kept. Once Mike had caught wind of gossip that Sasha was actually Billy’s real-life uncle. It made him smile. He didn’t care. People were always making up theories to explain things they didn’t understand.
On stage he pulled out the small piece of paper Sasha had given him just in case, and he read the one sentence she’d written. “Miss Zahore wanted me to tell everyone that she’s terribly sorry she couldn’t be with us tonight, because she’s home ill.” The rest he made up on his own. “Three years ago, when Sasha had the vision to start these Silver Dick awards, she did it because we weren’t getting enough recognition at the straight Erotic Entertainment Awards. Everyone knows that she discovered me, but not everyone knows that every single person in this room owes her. We wouldn’t even be sitting here tonight if it weren’t for her. We wouldn’t have the Silver Dick awards. She’s been fantastic at raising the profile of gay porn and bringing in some much-needed fun.”
“People who have worked with her on shoots know how tough she can be, and we all know she’s got a reputation for being a major bitch.” Mike heard a ripple of laughter from the audience. “That’s why we love her. She’s tough because she wants the best. She’s worked really hard throughout the years to bring us some of the hottest, best quality porn around, and she deserves this Silver Dick.” The audience gave an enormous round of applause, and the only thing wrong was that Sasha wasn’t there to hear it.
The moment he got backstage, Mike handed over the stand-in award and began looking along the narrow back hallway for a red ‘Exit’ sign. The door he found was heavy and green, with a large metal handle that went down with a thunk as he pushed. Outside it was dark, and the air was warm with the leftover daytime heat of mid-July. He was standing in an alley, and the broken glass on the pavement looked like stars. As he walked out toward the sidewalk, he didn’t even care about what was happening inside the theatre, didn’t mind missing the awards for Best Sex Scene and Best Video. His movies weren’t nominated. Neither were Sasha’s. It didn’t matter who won. He’d find out later. Right now he just wanted to talk to her, to tell her. Rafael would figure out where he was.
He felt buoyant and happy as he walked down the street, and he realized it was happiness mixed with gratitude. In the past four years Mike had begun caring for Sasha almost more than he cared for himself. She’d made him less selfish.
There was no phone booth on the sidewalk, so he kept walking, trying to think back to when it all started, to when his feelings for Sasha began to take on their current shape. It could have been the day he sat alone with Steve at Cougar that very first time, looking at all the pictures of porn stars with exclusive Cougar contracts.
That was the day he told Steve he wouldn’t sign the contract unless Sasha got one too. It had been terrifying, having what he wanted on a platter in front of him, and pushing it away. But it made sense. Sasha had wanted it for even longer than he had. She was the one who dreamed up Banging Billy and got him the part in the Muscle Party shoot. If he hadn’t said no to Steve he would have felt like he was taking something from her. He even lied, saying that he’d been in New York with a client to corroborate Sasha’s story. Until that day, turning down that contract in that office, he had never placed anybody else before himself, never made that kind of sacrifice. It felt like working out a specific muscle for the first time: it wasn’t easy, you had to concentrate, you had to connect to that spot in your body that you’d never consciously made work before, and afterward it ached, but in a good way, a way that let you know you’d got it right.
Mike remembered the conversation as he walked down the street now, and he remembered what else he did for her.
* * *
“Look,” Steve said, “I don’t need Sasha. I need you. I need you in my movies.”
“Sorry, Steve. It’s both of us or neither of us.” Mike hoped he wouldn’t have to get up and walk out just to prove his point, because he wasn’t entirely sure he had the strength to do so.
Then Steve changed. He smiled and said, “Jesus Christ, you two are as thick as thieves. You’d really put your neck on the line for that fat queen?”
“Yeah, I would. I am.” Mike was a little amazed that he was actually saying it.
Steve paused. “Look, I can give her a little contract, but it’s only for one movie. That’s it.”
It didn’t seem like much. “Three,” Mike said. “Make it three and we have a deal.”
“I’m not giving her three goddamned movies.”
“I can go talk to somebody else,” Mike said. “Magnum Man or Stallion. They’ll hire me.” He leaned forward, but he couldn’t make himself stand up, couldn’t make himself leave the room. Still, he was leaning forward as though about to go. He’d managed that.
Steve shook his head in disbelief. “If you weren’t so fucking hot on screen there’s no way I’d let you take me by the balls like this.” Then Steve pulled out a calendar and flipped through some pages. “Okay, three it is. Now sign your contract, would you?” He pushed forward a contract across his desk, held out a pen.
“No. When you have Sasha’s contract, we’ll sign them together.” Mike was taken aback when Steve actually started laughing.
“You’re like fuckin’ Bonnie and Clyde.” He paused and nodded. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll have both contracts ready for you then.”
“And she gets billed as Sasha Zahore.”
Suddenly Steve changed again. His laughter stopped. His eyes suddenly narrowed. “So I offer a contract and you think you can tell me how to run my business? No way. That’s a deal breaker.”
“She just wants you to call her by her name.”
“Did she put you up to this?”
“No.”
“Cougar does not have directors with drag queen names. End of story. She knows that. Non-fucking-negotiable.”
“Come on, Steve. Please?” Mike leaned forward as far as he could and smiled. He gave Steve all his attention, concentrated everything on him.
Steve stared back, and his eyes wandered down toward Mike’s chest, his arms. “What are you gonna ask for next? A fucking limo?”
Mike smiled as flirtatiously as he possibly could. He mustered up all sex he had. “Only if you’re driving.”
S
teve paused and leaned back in his chair. He put his hand near his crotch. “Oh yeah?”
It took only five minutes to suck him off. It wasn’t so bad. Although Mike hadn’t planned to do it, Sasha meant a lot to him. Just before he put his lips on Steve’s short, stubby dick, Mike said, “She gets billed as Sasha?” and Steve moaned, “Yesss.”
Even while it was happening, Mike felt a kind of surprise – not so much at the fact that he was giving head to a porn producer, but more at the fact that he was doing it for somebody else. He always assumed that if he had to suck somebody off in the industry, it would be to advance his own career. Yet it was clear to Mike that he was sucking Steve’s cock for Sasha, and Sasha alone. He’d never believed himself capable of anything so magnanimous.
That was the moment he realized – while on his knees in that office, with the door shut and Steve’s dick in his mouth – that he was starting to feel something like love for Sasha, and for Dale. For both of them, in different ways.
* * *
Mike finally found the phone booth he was looking for. He stepped inside, dropped some coins in the slot, and dialed home. Dale answered on the first ring, and Mike blurted out the news without even saying hello.
“Sasha Zahore is fabulous,” he announced. “She won. She is the Best Director.”
There was a stunned silence on the other end, and he thought he heard Dale crying.
33. Glamorous Life
SASHA HURRIED PAST Billy’s bedroom door as she headed toward the bathroom, carrying her eyelashes in her hand. On her right, the wall of the long central hallway was hung with three framed, black-and-white photographs of Billy, semi-nude, which she’d taken herself. It was good to pass by them every day, to always have his beauty in front of her, even when he wasn’t home.
In front of the bathroom mirror, she applied fresh eyelash glue and stuck the eyelashes back on. Earlier she’d put them on too hastily, and they hadn’t been sticking very well. She held them now and tried to concentrate. She’d already had three glasses of scotch. Finally she let go, stepped back, shook her head, and batted her eyes vigorously. They stayed.
She jumped and hopped, testing them out. Then she started singing “The Glamorous Life” and drumming just like Sheila E. always did. Sasha watched herself in the mirror as her sizable stomach jiggled back and forth. She spun and twirled. They didn’t make music like they made back in the 80s.
Since Billy called from the Silver Dicks just an hour ago, Sasha had been happy. This was the thing she’d always wanted, and now that she’d won she couldn’t possibly miss the after party.
The last two annual Silver Dick ceremonies had been horrible – all those people coming up to her afterward, offering awkward consolations as though they’d just learned she was dying. The very first year of the awards, back in 1990, had been especially hard. She hadn’t even been nominated. That was the thanks she got after spending so much of her own time putting together that first ceremony – from finding a Hollywood workshop that could make the awards, to organizing the presenters, the entertainment, the MCs. And even before that, getting all the studios behind the idea, convincing them to fund a gay-only awards ceremony. Nobody had ever thanked her, and at the time many of the studio dimwits simply hadn’t understood what she was trying to do, didn’t see that she was attempting to raise the bar, and do things right, to give the people in this industry something to feel proud of. Of course now every producer in town was trying to take the credit.
She paused, pointed at the mirror and spoke out loud to herself. “Stop ruminating, girl. Nobody likes a bitter old queen.” She had to remain positive, to concentrate on gratitude. She jiggled her shoulders as if shaking off dust. The Best Director award was finally hers. Nobody could ever take it back. No matter what happened, she had this. Storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, loneliness, financial ruin – come what may. She would always be the Best Director of Gay Porn in America in the year 1993. Thanks be to the goddess.
A key clicked in the front door, followed by Billy’s sexy voice. “Hello?!” he shouted. “Special delivery for the Best Director! Is she here?”
Sasha stood up tall at the bathroom mirror, held her shoulders back, and hiked up her dress. She moved over to the bathroom doorway and stuck one leg out into the hall for Billy to see. She was in her stocking feet, and wiggled her toes under her nylons. When Billy’s laughter came back down the hallway, she spun around and leaned up against the doorframe, displaying herself fully: the black charmeuse dress with its slutty satin finish and long slits up either side, the immaculate cocktail hour makeup that she’d done in record time. Billy was walking toward her with something in his hands as she tilted her head back and batted her now well-glued eyelashes toward the ceiling. Speaking in a raspy voice, she said, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Knight.”
She smelled the flowers before she realized he was holding them.
“For you,” he said. “For the Best Director ever.”
It was a bouquet of small, perfectly formed yellow roses, incredibly fragrant. They hung in the air in front of her, such a soft, soothing yellow that they almost seemed illuminated from within. He had never given her flowers before.
“Oh, they’re lovely. What a sweetheart you are.” She reached out for them and put one hand behind his head, pulling him forward in the hopes of placing one gentle kiss on his lips. At the last possible moment, he turned and the kiss landed on his cheek. She was incredibly happy for the flowers, but suddenly very sad for this kiss, for that subtle turning of his head. You would think this young man was the most timid wallflower. If she hadn’t spent years learning how to hide her true feelings from him, she could have easily ruined her makeup with tears. “Thank you, Billy. These flowers mean even more to me than that silly Silver Dick.”
He stood in front of her smiling, looking fabulous in his tux, but then in one fast and painful moment she saw that his smile was entirely wrong. This was the smile of a boy who’d just given his mother a hand-picked bunch of yellow dandelions, when what she wanted was the smile of a man who’d just given his lover a dozen long-stemmed, red roses. This smile carried more juvenile affection than adult romance. There was no longing in it, no desire. For years she’d been hoping for his feelings to change.
“I’ll put these in water right away,” she said, and she quickly walked past him down the hallway, toward the kitchen, so that he wouldn’t see the disappointment she felt flashing across her face.
“Sasha! Who cares about water?! You won! Congratulations!”
She looked back at him in time to see that he was running toward her, laughing. He thumped into her and gave her an enormous hug. She returned it happily, holding the flowers out in the air so as to not crush them. Then all of a sudden he began shaking her back and forth and growling like a puppy.
Her laughter bounced off the walls as she yelled, “Billy! Stop! You’ll ruin my dress! The flowers!” But she didn’t mind, not really. She loved it. When he pulled away, the sadness had already begun to fade. He hadn’t been in the apartment even five minutes and already she’d been pushed down and picked back up. This was the hidden emotional roller coaster she rode with him every day. She sighed and said, “You won too, Billy. Congratulations to you, too.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s you that’s been waiting. It’s you that’s been overlooked for years.”
“But you won Best Sexual Performer. That’s huge!”
He smiled and his eyes became wide. “I know. It’s great. Aren’t we both fantastic?”
They looked at each other and began laughing hard, at nothing in particular, just out of the joy of having both won.
She knew that in previous years Billy had held back when expressing his enthusiasm upon winning at the Silver Dicks, no doubt because he was concerned about her own feelings. He was always careful not to make her loss more painful by rubbing her nose in his own happiness. But now here they were, both winners.
“Billy,” she said. “This wouldn’t
have happened for me if it weren’t for you.”
“Yes, it would have.”
“No. I don’t think so. Thank you for what you did.”
“Well, thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
After Billy had used his considerable talents to secure Sasha’s first three full-length films with Cougar, she’d taken the chance and run with it. She’d worked unbelievably hard on those films, and then promoted each one with such gusto – and in such a novel way – that all three became successful sellers, proving to Steve Logan once and for all that Cougar’s clientele didn’t care if a drag queen directed their porn. In fact, they liked it.
She put her hand on his shoulder now. She wanted to say something to him, something more than just thank you, something that would make him understand how much he meant to her, but she paused too long. There was a knock on the door.
Billy said, “That’s probably Rafael.”
She opened the door to see Billy was right. “Oh, hi,” she mumbled.
“Hey! Congratulations!” Rafael shouted, and he gave her a hug. She leaned forward only slightly, holding out the flowers again, but keeping her other hand on the door to block Rafael’s way. She couldn’t help thinking that Rafael’s congratulations were more for himself than for her, because he now knew the Best Director personally.
“Thank you, Ronaldo,” she said.
“Maybe I can be in one of your movies?”
“Mmm. We’ll see.”
Rafael looked over her shoulder toward Billy and said, “I’m double parked. I’ll wait in the car. Will you two be long? I really want to get there soon.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. He was so stupid. “Don’t you know how important it is to make an entrance?” As the words came out she heard the sharpness in her voice, and she reminded herself to soften her tone. She must try to be nice to this one, for Billy’s sake. No matter what an idiot Rafael was, he was no threat. He was really nothing more than a sex toy for Billy, some kind of dildo that could talk. “We’ll be down in just a minute, doll,” she said, as gently as possible, and Rafael turned and walked away.