The Trouble Boy, page 13
Brett arrived armed with a clipboard of confirmed guests (“in case things get out of hand,” he explained), and Alejandro showed up with an “emergency decoration repair kit” of tools, tacks, tape, and, alarmingly, a glue gun.
Donovan arrived last, with two binders of CDs. In honor of Alejandro’s decor, he put on The Velvet Underground & Nico:
I’ll be your mirror,
Reflect what you are,
In case you don’t know.
I’ll be the wind, the rain, and the sunset,
The light on your door to show that you’re home.
When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you’re twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands,
’Cause I see you.
“What is this?” Brett yelled from the kitchen. “It’s too mellow!
“Just something to get everyone in the mood,” Donovan said with an impish grin. He shook his head. “I can’t believe he doesn’t know what this is.”
“I know what it is,” I said.
Donovan raised his hands in the air. “Thank you—finally someone who listens to stuff outside of the gay canon!”
“Still never heard of it,” Brett said, as he came into the living room.
“Just relax,” Donovan said. “We’ve got all night to get to Whitney, Deborah, and Britney. I’m not going to deprive you of your pop divas.”
As the party got under way, my two-room apartment started to fill up with nearly a hundred Diesel-clad, heavily primped boys. I could count the number of females on one hand, not including Lola, who was a gay man at heart anyway.
“Hi, Toby,” Lola purred, sidling up to me after having a cocktail brought to her by one of her admirers. “Gorgeous party.”
She was wearing a hot pink satin kimono-style robe, cut just above her thighs. She looked like a female wrestler about to disrobe and take on an opponent.
“You look amazing,” I said, giving her a peck on her waxy cheek. Flattery will get you everywhere, she’d once told me.
I asked her if she was going to take her CityStyle column elsewhere.
“I won’t have time, actually,” she said. “I’ve been talking with several producers about optioning my life story.”
“Really?” I said. “Which ones?” I was sure they would be small indie companies, not even at the level of those Elizabeth and I had recently met with.
“Some people at Miramax,” she said. “But I don’t know if I want to go with them. New Line is also interested.”
I could feel my eyes widening.
“Do you have an agent?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I just signed with CAA.”
I took a large gulp of my cocktail. I couldn’t believe that Lola, who was far more adept with a g-string than she was with a keyboard, was repped by CAA. I hated her for it.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” she continued, delicately sipping her drink. “They feel my writing isn’t . . . well, it isn’t quite strong enough to be produced. But they really like the story. I was wondering if you would take a look at what I’ve written so far, and maybe help me out a bit.”
“Are you looking for a co-writer?” I asked. I hated to be blunt, but I was drunk and unemployed, a lethal combination.
“They did mention something about bringing in a co-writer, actually.” She perked up considerably, as if she had come up with the idea herself. “You could be my co-writer!”
She had been carrying a cassette tape, and now she handed it to me. “This is for my show,” she said.
“Your show?”
“Donovan said I should do a show. You know, for his birthday.”
My living room was packed with boys: boys with drinks, boys with cigarettes, boys with other boys. I had no idea where Lola was planning to perform her show. Then again, until a few months ago, I hadn’t known anyone with a vagina constructed from a penis, either.
After Donovan blew out the birthday candles on his cake, bump and grind burlesque music cascaded out from my speakers. Lola cleared a space in the center of my living room with the help of an assistant who had just arrived, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall midget named Trixie.
“She’s a porno actress,” someone told me.
“A midget porno actress?” I asked.
“That kind of thing is huge in straight porn.”
Trixie handed Lola the equipment for each of her illusions in succession. They were garden-variety, dime-store tricks: coins produced out of the air, scarves that appeared out of Lucite tubes, needles stabbed through balloons that didn’t break. Lola’s exercise in irony was putting me to sleep; I’d seen better magic at children’s birthday parties. Nonetheless, there was something charming about it, as if Lola was trying to prove she could entertain in a traditional manner.
For her last trick, Lola slipped off her robe to reveal a slinky bikini set. She started pulling a multicolored paper chain out of her mouth, handing it to Trixie, who pulled it across the room. After the chain had been thrown to the delighted audience, Lola slid down her bikini bottoms so they were dangling at her ankles and sat on a chair as if she were getting ready to pee. She spread her legs, proudly displaying her surgically engineered orifice, and began pulling dollar bills from it.
The audience went wild, grabbing at the money as Trixie tossed it to them.
“Fuck the dot-com economy!” Lola cried, and the crowd cheered.
When the money had reached its end, as a final “That’s all folks!” Lola stood up, removed her bikini top and, now fully nude, shimmied her sizeable breasts to the beat of the music. The crowd of guys hollered and shrieked. They had never seen such a sight, transsexual or otherwise.
Donovan’s cake sat on my kitchen table, uneaten.
Half the people at the party were friends-of-friends-of-friends, which was fine, since a secondary—if not primary—goal for the party was to get us all laid. Rico was a twenty-four-year-old guy who someone said was a hustler with an ad in one of the bar rags. He was supposedly a friend of a friend of Donovan’s, though the exact connection wasn’t clear. Whatever it was, he had decided that night he wanted Jamie, who, I noticed, was completely blitzed. At 1 A.M., Rico pulled me aside and asked if he and Jamie could use my bedroom. I refused him, partly on principle and partly because the living room crowd had spilled into the bedroom and would be impossible to clear without making a scene.
“It’ll only take us ten minutes,” he said. His hair was slicked down with gel, he reeked of cologne, and he had a faint mustache that he clearly thought was suave. His face was fixed in a permanent snarl.
“Forget it,” I told him. “It’s not that kind of party.” Of course, it was exactly that kind of party, but letting Rico and Jamie use my bedroom would have made me feel like I was running a brothel. If I wasn’t having sex, then no one else would be, either.
It surprised me that Jamie would be interested in someone who wore a gold chain around his neck. In that way, though, that Upper East Side trust fund fags will fantasize about screwing gas station attendants or deliverymen, Jamie saw something in him, because an hour later he rushed into the bedroom with tears streaming down his cheeks. I had procured a few bumps of coke from someone and was in line for the bathroom when I saw him.
I asked him what was wrong.
“Nothing,” he said, wiping his face. “I need to use the bathroom.”
The door opened, and I slid in with Jamie.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “You’re a mess!” His hair was disheveled, his belt was undone, and his face was flushed.
“I let him—Toby, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Fine,” I said.
“I let him fuck me.”
“Where?”
“In my ass, you idiot, where do you think?”
“No, I mean, where in the apartment?”
“In your coat closet. Oh, God, Toby, I’m so embarrassed.” He reached out to hug me as he continued to sob.
“Clean yourself up first,” I said, gently pushing him away. “And tell me you used a condom. Please tell me you used a condom.”
“I don’t know what he used,” he said. “I was so drunk . . . I am so drunk.” He looked like he was about to fall over.
“Dammit, Jamie, why the hell did you do that?”
“I had never before . . . I had never let anyone fuck me before. I wanted to try it.”
“But with that guy? He was so nasty! Come on, you must have had other opportunities!”
“Look, I don’t get all the chances you do,” he said. “It was nice for someone to, you know, want me . . .” He doubled over in pain. “It just hurts so much!”
I felt like this was my fault, for rejecting Jamie for all these months. All he wanted was one night of passion, something he probably hadn’t had since his fling with his boyfriend in college.
“Jamie, I want you . . .” I said, as I tried to steady myself. “I mean, maybe not always in that way, but I care about you. Look, you wash up, and I’m just going to—”
I turned toward the wall and started doing the bumps of coke.
Jamie dropped his pants and started wiping his ass. He groaned in pain.
It was too late and we were too far gone to worry about propriety.
“Are you doing what I think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Because I can’t deal anymore.”
We heard pounding on the bathroom door. “Open the fucking door!” someone yelled from the bedroom.
“It’s him,” Jamie said.
We both finished up and I opened the door. The rush hit me, and I felt like things were going to be okay.
“Damn,” Rico said. “I got shit on my dick, and you guys are in there having a lovefest! Let me use the bathroom.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You’re leaving—right now.”
“Dude, I did him a favor. He was practically begging for it. ‘Fuck me, fuck me.’ ” He imitated Jamie in a shrill voice.
I could feel the blood rushing to my face. “Get out,” I said. “Go clean up somewhere else.”
“Nice way to treat your guests,” he said.
“Tough shit, asshole,” Brett said, standing behind Rico and looking every bit the bouncer. Donovan and David were with him. “You want us to carry you out?”
The three of them escorted Rico to the door, him whining all the way.
I took Jamie over to the couch in the living room and got him a glass of water. “Everyone knows,” he whispered. “Everyone knows what happened.”
“No one knows,” I said. “Everything will be fine.”
By the end of the party, though, everyone did know. As the last remaining party guests straggled out, Jamie curled up on my couch in a fetal position. David, Alejandro, Brett, Donovan, Lola, and a few others were going to split cabs home. No doubt some of them would end up in bed together.
At the beginning of the night, I had thought I wanted a hookup myself. I had thought Subway Boy might show up, though I wasn’t sure if he had ever gotten an invitation.
Now I didn’t want anyone touching me. I wanted the loneliness.
I started cleaning up in the kitchen.
“Toby,” Jamie croaked from his spot on the couch. “Can I sleep here tonight?”
“Sure,” I said. “But wouldn’t you rather be at home, in a clean apartment?”
“I’d feel better not being alone,” he said.
I got him a blanket and turned off the light in the living room. He took off his shoes and Gus started licking his toes. I sat down next to him as he sprawled out on the couch, his skinny frame barely occupying its surface.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said. “Just fine.” I stroked his hair and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
The worst part about it was that after denying him the use of my bedroom, Rico had asked me for a condom.
I had refused him on both counts.
8
Though I had only done a few bumps of coke, I fidgeted for hours before finally falling asleep at 6 A.M. At ten, I woke up in a panic, unable to rest a moment longer. Jamie was still out on the couch. He was lying on his right side, so I knew whatever noise I made wouldn’t wake him up.
I started cleaning the apartment, but was disgusted by the mess. I hoped I would be able to call the boys and get them to help me later.
I went downstairs to sit on my stoop and smoke a cigarette. Up the street, a small church was letting out services. Every time I had passed it since moving in, I had thought about going in, taking a moment to be still, to think about what was going on in my life. But there was always something pulling me along, something that prevented me from being absolved of my sins.
After the CityStyle crash, I wasn’t sure if writing articles was what I wanted to be doing. Reviewing nightclubs had been a boon to my social life, but I didn’t see it as a long-term vocation. I had gone out nearly every night for the past two months, and all the drinking wasn’t helping my health or sanity. If I was going to write, I couldn’t wake up every morning with a brain pickled in vodka.
I got up early on Monday and went to the CityStyle office. I sent out a few pitches to Sonia’s contacts and a few of my own from my days as a freelancer. At one, I checked my voice mail. Along with a message from my parents, there was one from Sherry Merrill, the owner of a boutique literary agency in Beverly Hills. She had read Breeders over the weekend and wanted to discuss the possibility of representing it.
I called Elizabeth immediately.
“Sherry Merrill called you? That’s fabulous!” she said. She gave me the rundown on who else she represented. They were respectable clients, writers with solid credits to their names.
“What should I tell her if she asks if anyone’s seen it?”
“Don’t tell her about all the meetings we had. Just say I’ve shown it around to a few people, just informally, no decision-makers involved. We want her to think she’s the first to see it. I’m so excited! This will be big, Toby, this will be big!”
Buoyed by Elizabeth’s enthusiasm, I called Sherry Merrill back. Her assistant put me through.
“Toby?” She was on speaker phone. “I loved your story. Very original. Quirky.” She said the word as if it were a delicacy. “And funny. I think we can find a home for it somewhere.”
“Really?” I said, trying not to sound too skeptical.
“Yes! The scene at the end when your hero leads the breeder liberation march? Fabulous.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot to me.”
“You managed to show metaphorically how ridiculous homophobia is by turning it on its head. I think it’s an important piece that should be seen, something that has the potential to touch people.” She paused. “Now, has anyone else seen it?”
“Not really,” I said. I gave her the line Elizabeth had instructed me to.
“You just never know where this stuff is going to come from. I mean, I deal with Elizabeth’s office all the time, but you get something over the transom, and you just never know. Everyone always has a friend who’s a screenwriter.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“I’m going to send you some notes, just a few suggestions for ways we can tweak this, and then we can start sending it out. Is this Seventh Street address correct?”
I told her it was.
“You’re in the Village! I grew up on Long Island, and I used to love coming into the city. Then I left for California thirty years ago and never looked back.”
I smiled to myself. I liked her; she was down to earth. We went over a few more details before saying goodbye.
After I hung up, Sonia popped her head in the doorway.
“Was that Sherry Merrill? A friend of mine used to be repped by her.”
“Really? How is she?”
“She’s a doll, really. Not exactly at the top of her game, but she has some strong clients. And she’ll take care of you. I think you’d be smart to work with her.”
I didn’t need any convincing.
Lola and I met the next day at her apartment. She lived above a store on Eighth Street that specialized in large-size high heels for transvestites. Her entire apartment was painted Barbie pink, except for the kitchenette, which was baby blue.
“I never go in there anyway,” she explained.
On a coffee table in her living room she had organized a series of file boxes containing stacks of press clippings and other notes. She had several scrapbooks of photos from her many years on the scene. I was surprised to learn she had been profiled by many major magazines, had written a column for the old Details, and had appeared in the New York Times party pages, an honor usually reserved for uptown socialites, not downtown transsexuals. She even had a copy of an NYU master’s thesis that spent twenty pages analyzing the mother-womb relationship in her work. Her notes and files, while not organized, were certainly extensive.
The two of us sat down on her fluffy sheepskin rug and sorted through everything. She had put together a box of essential materials to start me off on the process, including a rough draft of the first half of her screenplay.
“What do you think this story is about?” I asked her.
“It’s about freedom,” she said. “It’s about discovering one’s true identity.”
I suggested we meet with her agents to discuss my working as a co-writer on the project. I also told her I now had an agent I would have to cut in on the deal.
“Let’s talk about that after you finish a draft,” she said.
The project had fabulous possibilities, and I had already been provided with amazing source material. I was hesitant to mention it to Sherry, as I didn’t want to bombard her with too much information while we were still establishing our relationship. I would wait until I had finished a draft, and then surprise her with what a strong client I was.
