I’VE SWITCHED TO THIS KIND OF NOTEBOOK, WHERE I CAN ADD pages at will, since life is getting weirder by the minute and I’d rather not be restricted by space considerations. Renee lobbied zealously for another journal with a Mr. Woods motif, insisting it would mean something to future historians, but I put my foot down and told her the elf was history. The cover is quite plain this time, clean white vinyl, in the hope that the stuff on the inside will speak to my future, not my past.
Neil and I have been having a thing—for want of a better word—for over three weeks. We aren’t cohabitating, but we talk on the phone almost every night. When we’re together it’s usually early afternoon, when Renee’s at work and Danny’s in school. Neil comes over here (the logistics are simpler), and we squeeze fresh orange juice and make humongous sandwiches and curl up on the rug in front of the afternoon movie. Sometimes we have sex; sometimes we don’t.
My eagle-eyed neighbor, Mrs. Bob Stoate, is absolutely consumed by this latest turn of events, though she hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask me about it. I’m sure she will, sooner or later; several days ago she initiated a completely pointless conversation about the state of our respective drainpipes in an obvious effort to reestablish communications. I guess she’s forgiven me for the Yellow Ribbon Incident, the Gulf War being last year’s ball game in her squalid version of the world. Keeping her in suspense about my gentleman caller is sweet revenge, to say the least.
We’ve had two gigs since I last wrote—an improvement, but not exactly a turnaround. When the take is divided between Neil and me and Tread and Julie and whatever clowns we’re using at the time, it’s hardly worth the effort. Neil thinks we may have to let the others go, if PortaParty is to survive at all. He hasn’t told them that yet, for fear of demoralizing them, and we both felt it best to keep quiet about Us, for roughly the same reason. I’m intrigued by the idea of a duo with Neil, but I can’t help feeling fretful about the others. Where would they work, after all, if they didn’t work for him?
Last week I finally told Jeff about me and Neil, and he was predictably smug about having “known all along.” Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t see it myself, since Neil claims he was sending out signals months ago, waiting for even the slightest response from me. Maybe I was too self-protective to pick up on them, or maybe the signals weren’t as clear as he thinks they were, or maybe it just helps him to believe that something more complicated than unadorned friendship existed between the two of us before we went to bed with each other.
This much I do know: it’s not about charity. Neil is just as flabbergasted about this as I am. And just as insecure about motives. The week after we returned from Catalina was spent convincing him that I’d slept with him out of affection and respect, not out of Jungle Fever. I howled when he suggested this, since weeks before we’d both agreed that the movie was a crock of shit, that it made hay of a so-called controversy, then ran screaming for cover behind a cop-out ending that neither Jesse Helms nor Jesse Jackson would find in the least offensive. But Neil was so obviously sincere in his doubt that I did my best to put his mind at ease, assuring him time and again that I was above such things—or below them, perhaps—that I found him no more or less sexually exotic than any other man with three and a half feet on me.
One morning last week, while I was painting my nails a snappy new shade of rust, I received a phone call that utterly baffled me. Since it continues to do so, it’s worth recording, I suppose:
“Hi, doll. It’s Leonard.”
My long-lost agent. Calling me, if you please, for the first time in years.
“Hi,” I said as colorlessly as possible, waving my wet nails in the air. For better or worse, I have a career of my own now, no thanks to Leonard Lord, and I wanted my tone to convey that. I also haven’t forgotten for a moment how he lied to me about Callum Duff being back in town. The scumbag.
“How’s it goin’?”
“Fine. Great.”
“You working, then?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Mmm.”
“Look…are you around for a while?”
“At the moment, you mean?”
“No,” he said, obviously unsettled by my chilliness. “For the next month or so.”
“Hang on.” I made him wait for over half a minute, while I wagged my nails around some more. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t fooled, but it was worth the effort, I thought. “Looks OK,” I told him finally. “What’s up?”
“Well…maybe nothing. Maybe something kind of big.”
Well, that narrows it down, I thought, but I didn’t say it, because the bastard had me going again, just like that. Was there a property out there with my name on it? I wondered. Had somebody finally written a fully human role for a little person? A long shot, of course, but why else would Leonard be calling me? Especially after he’d dumped me in Arnie Green’s low-rent stable.
Before I could think of anything to say, he’d jumped in again. “So lemme ask you something, doll.”
“Shoot.”
“It’ll piss you off, probably.”
“Go ahead.”
“How’s your weight these days?”
If you remember, the last time Leonard mentioned this, it was just a generic cheap shot, an easy excuse for my unemployment, callously disguised as a friend’s concern. This time it felt different, fraught with significance, completely pertinent to that “something kind of big” percolating out there in the pipeline.
“It’s good,” I lied. “Down a lot.”
“Great.”
“I’ve been on a diet that Cher uses.” This felt like much less of a lie somehow, even though I haven’t touched one of those god-awful shakes for at least three months now. “I’ve got a real waistline now…and a boyfriend.” The second part was way out of line, I know, since Neil likes me the way I am, but I thought it would help convince Leonard of my total dedication to the New Me. Anyway, I can always go on a diet, if something really important is at stake.
“Well, look, doll, I’ll get back to you, OK?”
“I’m singing now, you know. I have an act and everything. In case they can use that, I mean.”
“Hey, good for you,” he said, but I could tell he was only half listening. His secretary, the latest of a long line of male bimbettes, was murmuring to him solicitously in the background. My time was obviously up.
I asked him, a bit too desperately, if he could give me at least a hint.
“’Fraid not, doll. I’ll get back to you soon, though.”
Soon, in Leonard’s lexicon, can mean anywhere from a week to never.
I thanked him and hung up and went back to painting my nails.
Three days ago Renee and I had Jeff and Callum over for dinner. I’d been meaning to do this for weeks, partly out of curiosity about the progress of their relationship and partly because Renee hadn’t stopped badgering me for another session with her second-favorite movie star. When I finally told her that Callum liked boys—and Jeff in particular—I thought she might lose interest in a reunion, but she rallied admirably and threw herself headlong into preparations. She made spaghetti and a nice salad and surprised us all at dessert with rum raisin ice cream—the very thing, if you remember, that Jeremy used to lure Mr. Woods from his hiding place in the oak tree.
“It’s Baskin-Robbins,” she announced shyly as she set a bowl in front of Callum. “I wasn’t sure what brand it was in the movie.”
“It looks great,” said Callum.
“It wasn’t any brand,” I told her.
“How come?”
“Because it was wax, Renee. Or some synthetic shit. Real ice cream would melt under the lights.”
“Oh.” She was openly crestfallen. “I didn’t think of that.”
Callum, being a good sport, told her he preferred the real stuff, anyway, but shot a subtle glance to Jeff after he’d said it that made me think they’d already discussed Renee at length and found her lacking in the smarts department. She didn’t catch it, thankfully.
“What was that you ate, then?”
I thought she was addressing me in my elfin persona, so I told her they’d used the robot in that particular scene, that I hadn’t been on the set at all when it was shot.
“I meant him,” she said, indicating Callum. “You tasted it before you gave it to him, remember? To show him how good it was?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded. “You’re right.”
“That wasn’t wax, was it?”
“No.” He smiled at her without malice and scratched his boyish head, now becomingly short and fuzzy for his new movie. “I can’t remember what it was, actually. Ice cream, I guess. It was a long time ago.”
“Yes,” I said, and gave Renee a pointed look that said to please spare us any further strolls down Memory Lane. I was pissed at her about the ice cream stunt, since she’d promised me repeatedly she’d keep the fawning to a minimum. She widened her eyes in exaggerated innocence, then stared down bleakly into her ice cream.
Callum picked up the slack by turning to me. “Jeff says you stole the show on Catalina.”
“Stole the funeral.”
He chuckled. “Wish I’d seen it.”
I replied with a shrug and a modest smile. I wondered how much Jeff had told Callum about me and Neil and whether he, Callum, found our affair droll or, worse yet, bizarre. He grew up in New England, after all, in a family that would make the Bushes look Jewish. I’d almost asked Neil to join us all that night, until I realized he’d have to bring his little boy along. I haven’t met Danny yet, and a dinner party for five adults didn’t strike me as the ideal setting for our first encounter. It would be tough enough managing the social intrigue among four of us.
“She used to sing on the set,” Callum told Jeff.
“I’ll bet she did,” said Jeff.
“Fuck you.”
Callum chuckled at our phony friction and kept going. “Remember the time you sang ‘Call Me’ for Mary’s thirtieth birthday?”
I nodded.
“Mary Lafferty?” Renee perked up again at the mention of another star from the film.
Callum confirmed it for her and continued. “I’d never heard your mother play before. She was great.”
“She used to teach it,” I told him, recalling how Mom had come into her own that day the moment she sat down at the piano. Up until then, I think, the other cast members had seen her simply as my handler, a soft-spoken, slightly ridiculous lady from the desert with no particular claim to their attention. She got a little drunk on all that unexpected glory, not to mention the champagne brought in for the occasion. Remembering all that, I couldn’t help thinking how much Mom would be tickled to know that there’s a pianist in my life again.
“Whatever happened to her?” asked Jeff. “Mary Lafferty, I mean.”
I shrugged. “Not working, I guess.”
“Yes she is,” said Renee. “I saw her on Matlock a few months ago.”
“Oh, well.” I rolled my eyes just for Jeff. “I stand corrected.”
Renee lunged ahead, oblivious. “She was such a neat mom in Mr. Woods. I wanted my mom to be just like her.”
“She was good in that,” said Callum, being gracious again. “She sort of established the prototype, didn’t she?”
Having no idea what a prototype was, Renee nodded.
“You know,” I told Callum, “she was free-basing in her trailer.”
My co-star nodded soberly.
“How did you know that?”
“I knew,” he said.
“You were ten years old, you little fucker!”
Everybody laughed, even Renee, who usually has a big problem with “dirty” words in mixed company. Jeff gave Callum a jaundiced glance and said: “Why am I not surprised?” There was enough edge to the remark to make me wonder what sort of preexisting tension might have provoked it. It didn’t take long to find out.
“Mary auditioned for Gut Reaction,” Callum told us.
“Oh, really?” I said.
“What’s Gut Reaction?” Renee asked.
I told her it was Callum’s new movie.
She lit up and turned back to Callum. “Did she get the part?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Renee frowned. “Aw. Why not?”
Callum shrugged. “It wasn’t really right for her. She’s at the stage where she’s not young enough to be a mom anymore and not old enough for good character parts. My agent said she looked a little beat up too.”
I could just imagine the relish with which Leonard had proclaimed the poor woman toast.
“Well,” said Renee, “if she’s doing drugs…”
Callum shook his head. “She got clean years ago.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a shame,” said Callum. “Really.”
“Yeah.” Renee mourned Mary’s career demise for a solemn moment or two, then asked brightly: “What’s the movie about?”
I noticed Jeff twitch a little in his chair, but he didn’t say anything, just turned to Callum and waited.
“Well,” said Callum somewhat sheepishly, “it’s your basic action thriller.”
“I love those,” said Renee.
“I’m a rookie cop in L.A. whose fourteen-year-old brother gets kidnapped. The chief doesn’t want me on the case because I’m too young and too emotional to deal with it. So I track the guy down in secret, when I’m off duty. It’s just something I have to do. Hence the title. Marcia Yorke is my girlfriend, who works at the DMV, and she ends up more or less solving the case.” Callum smiled. “There’s a strong feminist slant to it.”
Renee wouldn’t know a strong feminist slant if it walked up and bit her on the ass, but she made a face, anyway, to show how much she approved. “Is that the part Mary Lafferty tried out for?”
Callum shook his head. “A smaller one. Another cop’s wife.”
“Oh.”
I almost reminded Renee that Mary had played Callum’s mother in Mr. Woods, so she would hardly have been a logical candidate for his girlfriend ten years later, but I thought better of it, seeing the nasty little storm cloud that had just gathered over Jeff’s face. “Tell ’em about the kidnapper,” he said.
Callum looked at him blankly.
“Go ahead,” said Jeff.
“I don’t see how it’s of interest.”
“Well, I do.”
“He’s just a psychopath.” Callum shrugged and gave me and Renee an amiable, bemused look that said: What got into him?
“A queer psychopath,” said Jeff.
“That’s your interpretation.”
Jeff wheeled around to argue his case with me. “He wears eye shadow, OK? He has a fucking Judy Garland poster over his bed. How tired is that? And his hair”—he looked around urgently for a moment, then held up a corner of Renee’s electric-yellow tablecloth—“is this color.”
“You’ve read the script, then?”
“What else? You can’t get on the goddamn set. I can’t, anyway.”
I wasn’t about to touch that one, so I turned back to Callum. “And this psychopath…molests your little brother?”
He shook his head, remaining remarkably serene. “It never comes to that. It’s never clear what he’s going to do.”
“It’s clear,” said Jeff. “It’s clear to me.”
“Well, your imagination is highly political.”
“And something’s wrong with that?”
Callum shook his head, smiling dimly. “Unless you’re talking about entertainment.”
“Yeah, you’re right. What could be more entertaining than a good old-fashioned queer-killing?”
“Jeff…”
“Well, that’s what it is.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You push him out of a helicopter, don’t you? We see the guy being nellie all the way to the ground. Jesus, I can hear the cheers already.”
“He’s the villain, for God’s sake.”
“The gay villain. And they never let you forget it. I could handle that if there had ever been a single gay hero, or even a regular person, but there never is. We’re only visible when we’re killers or objects of ridicule.” Jeff looked at me again. “Don’t you think it’s a little twisted that a gay man is playing a straight cop who greases a fag?”
Callum laid his napkin on the table. “I think we’re boring the ladies, Jeff.”
“Oh, really?” Jeff kept his eyes on me. “Am I boring you?”
I waited a beat before replying calmly: “Not quite yet.” For all I knew, he could have a valid point, but he’d picked a crummy time to make it. Renee was looking mortified, and I was getting sick and tired of playing middle woman.
“Fine,” said Jeff. “I’ll shut up.”
Callum tried to placate him. “That was an old script you saw. I should’ve shown you a new one.”
“Yeah, I guess you should have.”
“Other people thought that was a sensitive area too. They made some major changes.”
“What did they do?” asked Jeff. “Lose the Judy Garland poster?”
“Kassabian, chill out!” This was me as I hurled my wadded napkin—lightheartedly, I hoped—in Jeff’s direction. It landed short of the mark in his empty salad bowl. He scowled at it briefly, then at me, but said nothing further, apparently secure in the knowledge that the last word had been his and that all I’d provided was the punctuation.
“There’s lots more ice cream,” Renee offered meekly.
After dinner we retired to the parlor—as Renee insists on calling it when we have company. I stretched out on my tapestry pillow at Callum’s and Jeff’s feet, and Renee took the armchair, where she proceeded to kill four glasses of “cream dement” and hold the guys in thrall with an unconsciously gothic account of her kiddie pageant days. She was so delighted by their response that, as a grand finale, she sprang to her feet and recited a poem about world peace (complete with hand gestures) that she used to perform in the competitions. To me, it felt a little like Whatever Happened to Baby Renee, but the guys didn’t let on if they found it ridiculous.
There was no further tension between Jeff and Callum that night. At least not around here. They even got affectionate at one point, Callum rubbing the back of Jeff’s neck and squeezing his knee when I talked about the day we rented That Movie so Jeff could see if Jeremy and Callum were the same person. The more I’m around them, though, the more hopelessly different they seem. Jeff is open and vulnerable, but also abrasive and hyper, while Callum is affable and coolheaded and unrevealing to a fault. Opposites attract, sure, but there has to be something in common, doesn’t there?
Jeff called later that night, after Renee had gone to bed. I knew he’d do this, so I’d waited up for him. As usual, he just began talking without announcing himself.
“You asleep?”
“No.”
“Is Renee in the room?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Not a bit.”
“Sorry I fucked up your party.”
I told him he hadn’t, so he shouldn’t expect an absolution anytime soon. Then I asked him where Callum was.
“Back at the Chateau. He has to be up at five. There are movies to be made and psychotic queers to be put in their place.”
I sighed at his renewed ranting. “Didn’t you guys make up?”
He made an unreadable grunt.
“What does that mean?”
“That I was gutless,” he said, “and let it drop.”
Touched by this attempt at compromise, I slipped into my Pollyanna mode. “Maybe it won’t be a problem, Jeff. I mean, if they fixed the script like he says…”
“They haven’t fixed shit. He just said that to get off the hook.”
“C’mon now. He sounded concerned enough.”
“Yeah. About his own ass. That’s the only reason he even thinks about this. He’s petrified he’ll be outed if this becomes an issue.”
I digested that for a moment. “You think it will? Become an issue?”
“It could. Very easily. It’s the meanest script I’ve ever read, Cadence. It cost two and a half million dollars, and it’s just one more lousy cheap shot at fags. I’m not the only person who’s gonna be pissed off.”
I asked him what he expected Callum to do.
“He could raise a stink. If he won’t come out, he can at least tell the press the movie’s homophobic. He’s the star, for Christ’s sake. What if Wesley Snipes took a role in a film that turned out to be racist?”
“But didn’t he see the script before he accepted the role?”
“Yeah, well…let’s not get into his ethics.”
I hesitated a moment, then said: “Maybe we should.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t get it, Jeff. Why are you still seeing him if he’s such a scumbag?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just said he didn’t have any ethics.” There was no response to this, so I added: “How pretty can a dick be?”
“You know,” he said quietly, “I’ll always be sorry I told you that.”
I told him maybe so, but the information was nonetheless pertinent to our discussion.
“He has other qualities,” he said.
“Like?”
“He can be very…personal and tender. When we’re by ourselves.”
Personal and tender. I could imagine the sway that would hold over Jeff. Especially now. If Callum had been the first person to make him feel human again after Ned’s death, it would be tough for Jeff to renounce that sensation completely, even for political reasons. It would mean starting all over again from rock bottom.
“Personal and tender is good,” I said. “Maybe that should be enough.”
“I tried that,” he said. “I kept the whole damn thing in a vacuum for at least two months. No demands on his conscience, no expectations, nothing.”
“And?”
He snorted bitterly. “I ended up in a closet at the Chateau Marmont.”
“Pardon me?”
“OK, it wasn’t a closet; it was a fucking kitchenette or something. But it felt like one.”
“Jeff…”
“Leonard showed up unannounced at the suite one night, and Callum asked me to hide in the other room.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wouldn’t joke about something that humiliating.”
“But Leonard is gay.”
“So what? He gave Callum explicit instructions not to get laid until the movie’s over, and Callum promised him he wouldn’t. You know how this crap works. There’s big money riding on that piece of cryptofascist dreck.”
I giggled just a little. “So you hid?”
“Don’t rub my nose in it, Cadence.”
“I think it’s kind of sweet.”
“Well, it wasn’t; it was degrading. All I could think was: Here I am, the fifth or sixth best-known gay writer in L.A., this fucking elder statesman of Queer Nation…and I’m acting out some Feydeau farce, cowering in a goddamn closet—”
“Kitchenette.”
“—from a couple of other fags, for Christ’s sake. One of whom, need I remind you, is an official self-loathing shithead of the Hollywood establishment.”
He meant Leonard, I presumed. “I thought he knew about you and Callum.”
“Not as far as I know, he doesn’t.” He brooded over that in silence for a moment. “You haven’t talked about it, have you?”
I told him I hadn’t dared even mention Callum to Leonard ever since Leonard lied to me about Callum’s being back in town, since it was never prudent to embarrass Leonard in the act of spinning a big one—he was liable to turn poisonous on the spot.
“He might pump you,” said Jeff. “So play dumb. Callum thinks Leonard smells a rat.”
“Why would he pump me?”
“Well…he knows you know Callum.”
“Yeah, but he thinks I think that Callum’s still back in Maine.”
“No he doesn’t. Callum told him he ran into you at Icon.”
“Oh.”
“Leonard even called a few days ago, asking what you were up to.”
You should’ve seen me perk up at that one. “Leonard called Callum about me?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. Or at least Callum didn’t bother to tell me if he did.”
“He called me too,” I told him. “Just about the same time. He said he might have a role for me. Something big, apparently.”
“He didn’t mention Callum, did he?”
I was annoyed, frankly, that Jeff had skated so blithely around the news of my Big Break. He was the one, after all, who’d insisted that birthday parties weren’t my real career, and here he was, in all his self-centered glory, ignoring the first hopeful light to appear on my horizon in months. “I told you,” I said curtly. “We didn’t discuss your snuggle bunny.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“I knew you were mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I told him wearily.
“But you think I’m being a fool, don’t you? Or a hypocrite.”
“No.”
“It’s not like he can’t change. I was closeted once myself. It’s all just a process, really. If I’m there to encourage him and influence him in that direction, just think how it could be, Cadence. This wholesome kid that everybody loves like a little brother, who grows up to be an all-American heartthrob—a homo heartthrob, thank you, who doesn’t care who knows it. It would rock the world if he did it with a little class. He’d change the course of history.”
This altruistic speech reminded me of one Mom used to make about Paul Newman. She loved him above all other actors, worshiping at the shrine of those amazing eyes, even unto death. It was always a guilty pleasure, though, because Mom believed “her” Paul to be a secret Jew, a man who’d concealed his heritage to become a matinee idol. Still, she clung to the hope that one day he would declare himself, stand up somewhere, and proclaim, “I am a Jew” and justify all her years of belief in his potential as a mensch. She was certain that day had arrived when he started pushing popcorn and salad dressing and turning the proceeds over to liberal causes. Any moment now, Mom insisted, Paul would break the news the easiest way—through delicious food—with the introduction of Paul Newman’s Gefilte Fish or Newman’s Own Family-Style Matzo Ball Soup. She waited and waited for that moment of truth, reading labels religiously, but all she ever got for her faith was marinara sauce.
I couldn’t help thinking that was exactly what lay ahead for Jeff, but I tried to be gentle about it. “What you say makes sense,” I said, “in an ideal world.”
“Meaning?”
“Well…Callum can’t change the course of history if they won’t hire him in the first place.”
“Who says they won’t? Who wrote this rule?”
“It’s just there, Jeff.”
“It’s there because creeps like Leonard Lord won’t get off their asses and challenge it.”
“In part, yes.”
“Well, we have to start asking why not. Why can’t there be gay movie stars?”
“Maybe so.” I let him hear me yawn, since I was ready to turn in. Frankly, I wasn’t sure whether this brave new crusade was for real or just his impromptu justification for an affair that seems to be going nowhere fast.
He got the message and let me go, after asking me to thank Renee for dinner and bidding me a civilized good night. I dropped the phone on the floor, snapped off the lamp, and beat a retreat into dreamland, burrowing into sheets that still smelled of Neil and the musky remains of our afternoon delight.