Pageboy, page 6
We arrived at the first building, a new development. We met someone in the lobby who took us in the elevator to the top floor. She asked for the person to let us go in on our own to look around the barely furnished apartment. They waited in the hall as we went in. It was a two-bedroom, which was unnecessary, accentuating my loneliness. The apartment was eerily sparse and echoey as we walked through. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at, making it feel even more pointless.
I was standing in the empty living room, in front of the couch, when I felt her grab me. She pressed her face into mine, some version of kissing. That freezing coming over me again. The next thing I knew I was on the rug, the floor firm on my back. I didn’t say no, I did not resist, I just stiffened. Lying on the carpet, I didn’t make a sound. She began to dry hump me, at first slow, then faster and faster, her body on top of me, the weight grinding my spine into the floor. Her eyes were closed, head turned away from me, face perspiring. She huffed and puffed and began to moan. I didn’t move, just stared up at the ceiling, then closed my eyes, then looked up again as she came. It was only the second time I had kissed a woman and the first time I had ever seen one come in person.
This dynamic continued. She’d pick me up at my apartment, take me to hers, where a version of the same situation would play out. Me in bed, motionless, frozen, she on top of me, touching me, going inside of me. My rigidness would upset her, my numbness taking over, unable to touch her. We’d get back in the Audi and she’d drop me off at the sterile, one-bedroom apartment I ended up renting. She’d fuck me at work in my trailer. I’d sit on her lap and not know why.
I was back in the same city two years later to make another film. Memories of her still lingered, the heavy breathing and the sweating above me. The arching of her back when she came. More than halfway into the shoot I arrived at work at the crack of dawn. As I was walking to my trailer I noticed a black Audi and my heart stopped. It can’t be, I thought. But I knew it was.
“Darren is out for the day so someone else is filling in,” another person on set mentioned.
I ducked into my trailer and tried to calm my breathing. There was a knock on my door. I opened it and there she was. Standing there, looking up and smiling.
“Hi! Can I come in?” she asked.
I let her in.
“It’s nice to see you! We had fun, right?”
What? I thought, nothing actually coming out.
“We had fun, right? We just like, listened to music and had fun, right?”
Her eyes were wide. Her smile almost concealed it, but I could see the fright seeping through.
“Yeah,” I responded.
8
FAMOUS ASSHOLE AT PARTY
I stayed at a friend’s place in the Hills for a few weeks when I was twenty-seven. Someone had been visiting my house in the night, laying roses along the gate. They were leaving notes with quotes from some of my favorite writers and musicians but offered no indication of their own identity. Cryptic messages with unknown intent, something I was familiar with. I decided to leave my house briefly while I had security cameras installed. The home was situated at the very top of the hill, overlooking the city. At night, a sea of lights sprawled below me. I could sit there for hours, transfixed. The glinting and dancing, the red lights a blood current in the veins of LA.
I had not left the house much. My friend was away working, and I was still mending from a heartbreak. I had to force myself to do something. I drove a short distance west to celebrate a good pal’s birthday. I arrived at the house party, taking in the unique layout. The extremely high ceilings felt church-like, with a loft where the kitchen and dining area looked down at the vast living room. It was old, perhaps built in the 1940s, a dollhouse occupied by a very hip person. Off the living room, there was a large wooden terrace with built-in benches that overlooked a family of trees and a neighbor’s home. This particular friend is a social butterfly, adored by many, so the party was popping, surging with energy. People milked it for every last drop before the inevitable arrival of the cops demanding quiet.
It was 2014, and I had come out as gay only two months before at a Human Rights Campaign conference in Vegas called Time to Thrive, the inaugural event focusing on LGBTQ+ youth. I flew the morning of Valentine’s Day to Vegas with my manager. Boarding the flight at Burbank Airport, my anxiety was at a different level. I barely spoke, staring ahead at nothing. On the flight, I obsessively read the speech, as if I could exhaust the emotion, mutating it into that old take-out menu in your kitchen drawer you glance at arbitrarily for no reason. When we arrived at the hotel, all I could do was cradle myself in the hotel bed. No television, no looking at my phone, I just wrapped my arms around my body, time like sludge, barely budging.
As I waited backstage I squeezed my hands together, eyes down, desperate to not have a panic attack. What if I just collapse onstage?
I didn’t collapse. I managed to make it through the speech without being overcome by emotion, by the catharsis. I floated after, a lightness, a shock to the system. I did it. It wasn’t until I got in the car to head to the airport that I completely broke down. Sobs of relief. Letting it out.
A weight lifted from my shoulders that I once believed would live there forever. One of the most important and healing moments in my life, not all the way there yet, but getting closer.
My friend’s birthday party was in full swing, and I tried to channel the same lightness I’d felt only a few weeks back. I sat outside on one of the benches on the patio, nursing a tequila soda. I caught up with friends and acquaintances I had not seen in ages, even met some new people. I was enjoying myself. An acquaintance of mine arrived, already quite inebriated. He walked out onto the terrace. I said hello. We sometimes saw each other at the gym. His energy was different tonight, harsh. He began by insulting my personality, which okay go for it, but then it moved into another territory.
“I see what you are doing. I’m not stupid. I see what you are doing.” He stood too close. Staring down at me where I sat.
“What am I doing?” I answered flatly. More confused than anything. At his aggression, his malevolent smile.
“Oh please. It’s obvious what you’re doing. The attention.”
I was familiar with this tone, this body language—threatening but casual. Flaunting his power. But it took me a moment to process what he might be alluding to.
“Is this about me being gay?”
Spurred, somehow provoked, he sat on the bench next to me and started to lay in.
“That doesn’t exist. You aren’t gay. You are just afraid of men.” He said it ruthlessly, loud but with a smile. Gloating. Responding was useless. It was making it worse. He just kept going. People were telling him to stop, but he didn’t, and they gave up.
I stood up and crossed to the other side of the terrace, trying to remove myself from the situation. He followed, sitting next to me again, his body close.
“You’re just afraid of men. Men are predators and you’re just afraid of them.”
He spoke to me as if no opinion mattered but his own. A stroke of wisdom to bestow upon me. Wasted slurs of words vomited out of his body as my body compacted, elbows on alert.
I told him to stop harassing me, to fuck off, that he was being extremely offensive. I got up again and went inside. He pursued behind. I sat down on a small sofa, and he did, too. People danced to the Spring Breakers soundtrack, breaking it down to “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.”
Look at this
I’m a coward, too
You don’t need to hide, my friend
For I’m just like you
“I’m going to fuck you to make you realize you aren’t gay. I’m going to lick your asshole. It is going to taste like lime. You’re not gay,” he slurred. He kept describing how he was going to fuck me, touch me, lick me. How he liked to pity fuck women.
I don’t know why I didn’t demand he leave, ask for people to do more than “Yo, leave her alone.” Some of my closest friends were there, witnessing it. Power works in funny ways. He was, and still is, one of the most famous actors in the world.
I got up and walked to the bathroom. Nervous he was following me, I closed the door and locked it. I sat down on the toilet and looked out the window at the trees, the light from the terrace just barely reaching them. I wondered if anyone could see in, which reinforced a certain aloneness. I stayed on the toilet longer than I needed to, washed my hands, and then left the party.
The incident went on for so long and so many people saw and heard that the following day a friend of mine who wasn’t at the party got a text from another friend who wasn’t at the party saying, “I heard [he] was horrible to Ellen last night.”
A few days later, I was upstairs at the gym, on the treadmill. I was watching the news as I ran by myself when I heard his voice. I’m not sure how he knew I was upstairs but he came bounding up.
“People are saying I need to apologize to you, but I don’t remember anything. I’m not like that at all, I’m not prejudiced. I don’t know why that happened. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t remember anything.”
I didn’t stop running. Or slow down.
“You clearly have a problem with gay people, you were saying horrific things to me. And not that I care about the consequences you would face, but you’re just lucky no one filmed that,” I responded.
“I really don’t have a problem with gay people, I swear.”
My feet pounded.
“I think you might.”
He stood there, stunned. He said sorry again and again. I’ve seen him a couple times since. He barely says hi and neither do I.
I sensed spite from some people in the industry, a hostility even. That flash of aggression, hidden in “jokes,” blamed on alcohol, the sexual harassment dismissed.
I remember sitting in a former agent’s office, thrilled that VICE wanted to make Gaycation. We’d be in Japan in just a couple months to film the first episode. When one of the major players of the agency walked in, I shared the news.
“We get it, you’re gay!” he responded instantly.
It’s as if there is a need to trivialize such endeavors, unwilling to acknowledge experiences that are not their own, unwilling to listen. Throwing around power but refusing to admit they have any. I wasn’t able to stand up for myself then. I’d fold in, taking it, letting it rest inside.
I was persuaded to reject a character not long before I came out as gay because it “wouldn’t be helpful.” Subtext: people think you’re a homo and this will make them think you are definitely a homo and you can’t exist as who you are if you want to have a career. The same ongoing conversation, just a new situation for it. I got off that phone call with my agent and started to cry. The bucket full, on the verge of rushing out. I called my manager. I told her I couldn’t do it anymore, that I couldn’t hide, lie, it was eating me from the inside out.
I said onstage in Vegas:
Beyond putting yourself in one box or another, you worry about the future. About college or work or even your physical safety. Trying to create that mental picture of your life—of what on earth is going to happen to you—can crush you a little bit every day. It is toxic and painful and deeply unfair.
If we took just five minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives. Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves.
Coming out in 2014 was more a necessity than a decision, but yes, it was one of the most crucial things I have ever done for myself. No matter what came after, a different kind of exposure, vulnerability, it was all worth it. All a step. I’d rather feel pain while living than hiding. My shoulders opened, my heart was bare, I could be in the world in ways that felt impossible before—holding hands. But deep down an emptiness lurked. That undertone. Its whisper still ripe and in my ear.
9
PINK DOT
It’s 2022, springtime. I had just had dinner with a friend and was headed back to my hotel in West Hollywood. Walking back, heading east along Sunset Boulevard, I texted Madisyn. A mutual friend had set us up about a month before. She was, is, smart, compassionate, fun, and our sex was unbridled yet safe. Perhaps the most uninhibited sex I’ve had, this new body offering a grounding, a presence. Enjoying things I never thought I would. Feeling queerer than ever. How deeply freeing to have someone love fucking my dick and my pussy and permitting myself to enjoy it. No longer frozen, that undercurrent, the wanting to flee.
When Madisyn arrived we immediately started to kiss, a physical chemistry that takes control, magnets sucking. I moved down her body to my knees, her hand resting on my head, ever so slightly pulling my hair. We had sex for hours and then slept deeply. I almost always wake up around six, and I snuck out of the room, trying not to wake her. I drank coffee and sat at my computer to write. I love the early morning, the quiet, a certain kind of healthy loneliness. A reminder?
The hotel was on Sunset Boulevard. I planned to stay for six days to see friends I’d missed dearly during the height of the pandemic. Every hello and goodbye hit in a new way now. I’d flown in from New York City, having moved three years ago from LA, where I’d been for the previous ten years. I lived various places, Hancock Park, Beachwood Canyon, Studio City, and lastly in Nichols Canyon, not far from where I was staying. West Hollywood is known as an LGBTQ+ area of Los Angeles. Rows of queer bars run along Santa Monica Boulevard, mostly catering to cis white gay men. Rainbows line the streets.
I wrote all morning. Madisyn joined me at the table at nine thirty, her sweatpants and vintage T-shirt made me hard, I have a thing for sweatpants. We both sat and did work. We spent time together well. There was a natural flow, lucid, not forced, and fine with silence.
We wrote then fucked then ate then napped and then I left the hotel for the first time at around four to go to Pink Dot, a convenience store directly across the street on Sunset. Known for its colorful pink and light blue exterior, and the vintage blue VW Bug with pink dots and a propeller hat parked out front.
While walking the short distance from the hotel exit to the southeast corner of Sunset and La Cienega, I passed a tall man who I briefly caught eyes with. He carried a slushy in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. As I neared the corner, the light red, cars hurtling down Sunset, he turned and started to move toward me.
“Don’t look at me, you fucking faggot! Faggot!” He screamed this at me, over and over. Every faggot getting louder. No one near us on the sidewalk.
He was about three feet away, standing over me. I froze. There was no room for me to tell him I was, in fact, not looking at him. He just kept yelling. I worried that if I turned to run it could trigger a reaction, and the same if I said something. So I just stood solid, looking forward, doing my best to seem unaffected. And in the moment I was, because I was in shock. This seemed to work, he started to walk east a bit. I took out my phone and called Madisyn. Better not to text, you can keep your head up if you’re on the phone. Shaken, I explained and asked if she could come over to Pink Dot. The call triggered him. As the light finally changed and I stepped off the curb, he turned back around.
“Don’t you fucking talk about me, faggot. I know you’re talking about me. I’m going to beat you up, fag!”
He charged toward me from behind, yelling at me, Madisyn hearing all this through the phone.
“I’m going to fucking gay bash you, faggot.”
He started coming faster. This time I ran, trying to reach Pink Dot before he reached me. That jolt of panic, a flashback to being with Justin on the hill or when another man in West Hollywood, years before, screamed, “I’m going to beat you into the ground, you ugly fucking dyke. I’ll kill you before the police get here.” My friend Angela and I sped away in her car. Or when I ran from a group of teenage girls who surrounded me at eighteen. “It isn’t Halloween. Why are you dressed up as a lesbian?” one of them asked as they approached, threatening me. Or when Paula and I dodged a friend of a friend who came at us around a bonfire, wasted and enraged by our snuggling. “You don’t have to shove it in our faces!” he barked. Others had to intervene, fighting him off until he stumbled away.
“This is why I need a gun!” the man yelled right behind me as I frantically swung open the door to Pink Dot.
“Please help! This guy is screaming at me, calling me a faggot and saying he is going to bash me.” The words flew out of my mouth. As I swung my head over my shoulder and back.
I was out of breath, my voice trembled, but I tried to suppress it. The man stood right outside the entrance. Two people were working behind the desk. One of them jetted toward the door, yelling at the man to get away, locking it as the pursuer lingered, but then walked off. The woman at the counter asked if I needed water, she encouraged me to breathe.
“We don’t put up with that here,” she said. “Are you okay? You sure I can’t get you anything?”
I said I was fine but thanked them, taking her advice to breathe, to calm my nerves.
I have learned to compartmentalize these moments for the most part. Shut down. Shrug my shoulders. Let it run off my back like the beer I had thrown on me while walking down Queen West in Toronto less than six months before while filming the third season of The Umbrella Academy. Another queer-friendly neighborhood. My friend Genesis and I passed a man who proceeded to turn around and throw his beer at the backs of our heads.
“Faggots! Faggots!” he said as he walked away. The s slithered, ssss, like poison down the throat. That time, I pivoted, a reflex, boiling rage from all the times I hadn’t turned around.
“Did you just call me a fucking faggot? Fuck you!” I yelled, repeatedly, as a few people standing on the sidewalk watched. Genesis pleaded for me to calm down. He walked off.
