The Trouble Boy, page 8
“They’re going to do lines,” Donovan whispered to me. “I heard they were both cokeheads.”
“Shut up,” I hissed back. “He’s a major producer.”
“Oh, please,” Jamie said. “He’s not major. He wouldn’t be anywhere if his mom hadn’t given him his own company.”
Jordan came back first from the ladies room, noticeably wired. Jamie, Donovan, and I smiled awkwardly at her as she sat down. We had seen her movie several weeks ago, and though the film had been entertaining, her performance consisted of little more than pouting in bed, slinking around in skin-tight dresses, and showing off her surgically enhanced breasts.
“Let me get a shot of all of you together,” said the photographer, getting out of the booth and motioning to the four of us.
“Oh,” I said, “we’re not really—I mean—oh, what the hell!” Why not? The picture could be used when Vanity Fair did a story on my screenwriting career, demonstrating that I had been running with a fast crowd from the beginning. We all got closer together as his camera flashed at us several times. Other people in the VIP room gave us envious stares.
Ariana appeared behind the photographer and reprimanded him for wasting film. We were worth a few free drinks, but she drew the line at the use of her photographer.
Ariana and Cameron sat down again.
“Toby’s mother is Isabella Griffin,” Ariana said, in the general direction of Jordan.
Everyone nodded in appreciation. A lot of good it does me, I thought.
“I love her work,” Jordan said, brushing aside a strand of hair. “I wanted to wear something of hers to the Oscars last year, but my stylist said we couldn’t get anything.”
Though it hadn’t been apparent in the film we had seen, Jordan had a slight Cockney lilt to her speech, the kind my mother often derided as vulgar.
“My mother doesn’t believe in dressing celebrities,” I said, realizing after the words came out of my mouth that I was in entirely the wrong company to be making such a statement. “I mean, she loves celebrities, but she just feels like her work is a little more understated, like it wouldn’t look right on a celebrity.”
“Well, your mother is wrong,” Ariana said. “You should put her in touch with me. Her sales could go through the roof with the right endorsements. I know celebs who would kill to be associated with a brand like your mother’s. These days, a brand can help a celebrity just as much as a celebrity can build a brand.”
She made the proclamation as if she had come up with the philosophy on the spot. But the truth was that other publicists had been using these tactics for years. They had turned Manhattan into a giant celebrity-infested playground, where nothing held any meaning without a bold-faced name attached.
Ariana paused to take a drag on her cigarette. “Oh, my God!” she suddenly shrieked, jumping up to greet a slew of friends and nearly knocking over the ice bucket. Cameron and Jordan joined her, the photographer followed with his camera, and we were left sitting alone.
I realized that for Ariana, her entire career had been an extension of high school, an endless parade of parties and friends. The only difference was that instead of sneaking out of her parents’ apartment and going dancing downtown, she was now running the show.
We decided to kill the second bottle of champagne. As the Publicist, the Movie Star, and the Producer—it was like a Manhattan version of Gilligan’s Island—carried on with their Upper East Side prep school reunion, it became clear that Ariana didn’t care about getting to know us, if I enjoyed myself at the club and wrote a good review, or even if my mother gave her clients free dresses. She was just paying attention to us until something better came along.
I had always hated half-assed attempts at VIP treatment. I would rather be left on the sidewalk than be treated well one moment and ignored the next. She had made us feel like what we were: interlopers, posers, no better than the people outside the velvet rope who were so desperate to get in.
“Let’s go,” Donovan said once we had drained our champagne flutes. “This place blows.”
As we got ready to leave, Cameron pulled me aside. “You guys taking off so soon? Look, give me a call sometime. Here’s my card.”
“What do you think he wants?” I asked Jamie and Donovan once we were safely in a cab. “It was so ambiguous: ‘Give me a call sometime.’ Sex? Friendship? A business meeting?”
Donovan piped up. “Toby, he doesn’t know you write screenplays, and the guy’s got enough friends. He has one thing on his mind.”
“He wants you for sex,” Jamie said grimly. “But I don’t think you should call him.”
Cameron’s proposition—I wasn’t sure what else to call it—thrilled me, mainly because it was unclear. Even if he just wanted to sleep with me, getting to know Cameron would undoubtedly be a boon to my career. The exchange made me wonder if I had been overly judgmental of Ariana. Maybe we should have stayed behind and hung out with her friends. There was nothing worse, though, than trying to have a good time at a party when you clearly didn’t belong.
The next day, a brilliant Saturday, I received a copy of my high school’s alumni magazine in the mail. I flipped to the class notes. An item caught my eye among the usual slew of grad school acceptances and job offer announcements: “Frederick Brandt, who graduated last spring from USC’s Film School, reports that he just sold his feature screenplay My So-Called Sex Life to Paramount for an undisclosed sum.” Freddy and I had been friends when he was the treasurer and I was the president of our film society in high school; we had stopped talking after I discovered he was using the society’s funds to finance his video collection. Now Freddy had sold a screenplay about his sex life?
I hated him for it, but I knew it was a sign. I had to write the piece about Real World Guy, because people were looking for that kind of candor. I would write the definitive article on the Naked Halloween Party, even if it meant sleeping with every hustler in the joint. And I would get back to Breeders, pitching it to Cameron Cole when I was done.
I gave Sonia a call at home to find out what she was looking for in the piece about Real World Guy. The angle she wanted was that I was a brazen starfucker, a ruthless slut just out to cut another notch on my bedpost. “The whole relationship thing,” she said, “no one will believe that anyway. This is about fame and celebrity and the lengths to which people will go to have a taste of it.”
Though I wasn’t sure I agreed with her angle, I knew I could manipulate the facts in order to suit it. I started making notes on my experience, and by the end of the afternoon, I had a pretty decent first draft.
What I hadn’t mentioned in the piece was that while I would have enjoyed a relationship with Real World Guy, I had gone on the date to make Donovan jealous, or at least to attract his attention. On the second count, I had succeeded; I just wasn’t sure it was the kind of attention I wanted. Now that he regarded me as a player, I was privy to his every sexual exploit, the details of which often made my stomach turn.
“Did you know the Cock’s back room is open again?” he asked me, referring to a divey gay bar in the East Village that famously advertised itself with a red neon rooster.
It was Monday, and the two of us were at lunch.
“I went there last night, just for kicks. The whole room is dark, just lines of guys standing up. This guy asks me if I want a blow job, so I’m like, ‘Sure, why not?’ ”
“Please,” I said, “I’m eating.”
“Come on, you like giving head.”
“Very funny,” I said, annoyed. “It’s just so public and exposed. And you don’t know what kind of trash is floating around there—I mean, anyone who hangs out in a back room is bound to be doing it on a regular basis. You’re just increasing the odds, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. But don’t you think that kind of public sex is really hot?”
“No,” I said defiantly, and we finished our meal in silence. As much as I was attracted to him, this side of Donovan’s personality made me sick.
When we got back to the office, I keyed in my review of Flash: “The latest entry to Manhattan’s lounge scene is Flash, a young Hollywood hangout on the edge of Soho that epitomizes style over substance with its slick decor. In two months, when it becomes strictly B-list, the door policy may not be so forbidding; for now, wear your best Prada and claim nascent celebrity if you want to be let in.”
I made a few clicks, and the review went up on the site.
By mid-afternoon, Cameron Cole’s card was burning a hole in my wallet, so I decided to give him a call. I knew the Monday after a Friday seemed soon, but I didn’t want him to forget who I was.
I left a message with his assistant, a fey-sounding boy who asked me to spell “Griffin.”
As I hung up the phone, Ariana stormed into our office, holding a printout from the site. “Toby, what the fuck is this? I give you VIP treatment and you write this shit? I can’t show my client a clip that says they’re going to be B-list in two months! That’s why they fucking hired me—so that doesn’t happen!”
Sonia appeared in the doorway. “Ariana, I’m sure we can do something about this,” she said coolly. “I’ll talk to Toby and we’ll come up with an equitable solution.”
What the hell was Sonia talking about, “an equitable solution?” To what? To a club that sucked to begin with? I couldn’t believe Ariana was asking us to be part of her spin machine, and Sonia was agreeing with her.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m going to go have a cigarette.”
Ariana’s outburst reminded me of the time in high school when our newspaper’s advisor had told us we couldn’t print a cartoon that was critical of the school’s administration. I argued our case, but it had no effect. Ultimately, we triumphed by photocopying the cartoon and surreptitiously inserting it in 550 copies of the paper.
After I had calmed down, I went back into Sonia’s office. “This is bullshit,” I said. “I can’t change a review that I’ve already put up on the site.”
“Toby, the review has been up for all of thirty minutes,” Sonia said. “No one will notice. Just tweak it a little bit to make her happy.”
“But that’s not journalism,” I said. “We might as well be writing her press releases for her.”
“Toby, the reality of running something like this is that we’re dependent on people like Ariana to give us access to venues. And she’s our landlord.”
“We pay our rent. That doesn’t mean we have to write nice things about her clients.”
Sonia took a deep breath. “Actually, we’re several months behind in our rent. And Ariana has offered to help us look for additional investors. You might say we have a mutually parasitic relationship.”
“Well, that’s fucked,” I said.
Sonia raised her perfectly tweezed eyebrows at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you’re doing your best to keep this thing going. It’s just that—I mean, everything I’ve ever been taught—”
“Toby, I know. Just change the review, okay?”
I went back to my desk.
Donovan was watching me with an amused look on his face.
“I don’t know what she was so upset about,” I said. “I thought she would love the ‘style over substance’ comment!”
“I know,” Donovan said. “Some people work their entire lives to achieve that kind of notoriety.”
While I was composing the article about Real World Guy, all I could think about was what my parents would say. I prayed they wouldn’t scrutinize the site too closely that week; I could only imagine how my mother would feel about my writing for a column called “StarFucker.”
After the article went up, though, the only person I was worried would see it was Real World Guy himself. I was terrified he would contact me or, even worse, I would run into him somewhere and have a confrontation. I felt like a sell-out, exploiting a date as fodder for an article. I thought about using a pseudonym on my byline, but that wouldn’t change what I had done. I had disguised him so he wouldn’t be recognizable, moving him from Queens to Brooklyn, changing his hair color, stuff like that. But he would know I was writing about him. I had committed a cardinal offense: I had kissed and told.
That evening, a Thursday, I met up with Donovan and Jamie and we went to the Naked Halloween Party in the meatpacking district. David and Alejandro were supposed to join us, but they were, in Jamie’s words, “too busy fucking.”
We should all be so lucky, I thought.
Donovan wore a denim vest with nothing under it as his nod to the “naked” part of the invitation; I wasn’t about to go naked in any form, but I did wear a tight leopard print T-shirt by the designer who was hosting the party, while Jamie wore his usual gay-preppy-by-way-of-Diesel garb. When we got to the door, I pulled the panties out of my bag, held them up like court evidence, and we were whisked into the VIP area, no questions asked.
Once inside, the three of us commandeered a plush settee. The club’s dance floor and lounge were decorated like nineteenth century drawing rooms, with Oriental rugs, lush curtain swags, enormous gilt mirrors, and bad copies of paintings chronicling the lovemaking of nubile water nymphs. Though there wasn’t much actual nudity among the attendees—we figured that would come later—both rooms were filled with club kids, drag queens, leather daddies, fashion fags, and an assortment of personalities who didn’t fit into any category at all. It was a Halloween party, but that was a moot point for most in attendance; it was a crowd that dressed in costume every night of the year. Gorgeous college kids who belonged in Bruce Weber photographs danced with Lola (who was, indeed, the only one completely naked, save for a pair of Lucite stilettos) and her transsexual posse, all of them wed together in a society of mutual admiration.
Amidst the crowd on the dance floor, I spotted the boy I had seen a week earlier on the train. As Subway Boy danced with his friends, he tossed around his long hair like a runway model. I couldn’t tell if he was gay or not; he seemed masculine, though I was sure he could go either way.
I pointed him out to Jamie.
“Brett may know him,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s that good-looking.”
I would have to remember to ask Brett about Subway Boy.
While Jamie went to the restroom, I told Donovan my worries about the column.
“Don’t stress about it,” he said. “The piece was fabulous. Besides, he sounded like a jerk.”
“I don’t want to get a reputation for selling my dates down the river.”
“It was one piece, and it had to do with who he was, not the date itself. There’s a price to pay for fame; he should know that as well as anyone.”
“What do you think?” I asked Jamie when he returned.
“I didn’t read it,” he said.
“Bullshit. Of course you read it,” said Donovan.
“I skimmed it; I really can’t make a judgment.” He went to find a cocktail waitress.
“Jamie can’t make a judgment? He’s the most judgmental person in Manhattan. What the fuck is that about?” I said, though I knew exactly what the fuck it was about. “I’m not married to him! We’ve never even dated.”
“That,” Donovan said, “is exactly the problem.”
Jamie returned. “God, the guys here are so fucking hot!”
“They’re probably all messes,” Donovan said. “You know, alcoholic, drug-addicted, growth-hormone-popping, dysfunctional faggots.”
“Don’t be bitter or anything,” I said.
Donovan continued. “Or they have ‘the voice.’ You know, you see a guy who’s cute and you go talk to him, only to discover he has a voice about three octaves higher than the average guy.”
Jamie agreed. “See Tarzan, hear Jane.”
Donovan tugged at Jamie and me, asking us to dance. The three of us went out to the dance floor and formed a circle. As I danced with Donovan and Jamie, I kept looking for signals—the way Donovan moved his eyes, the swiveling of his hips. I had to do something, anything, to get his attention.
I wanted to save him from his profligate lifestyle, from back rooms and online hookups and dates with waiters and busboys and guys he met at the gym. I imagined that we would live together in our large rent-controlled one-bedroom in the West Village, eating out on the dime of the publications we were writing for. Donovan would publish his first cookbook and negotiate a development deal for his own food show. Under his nurturing, I would finish my screenplay, and it would be produced by Cameron Cole and become the first gay blockbuster in history. We would be interviewed by the E! channel. “I’d like to thank my partner Donovan,” I would say. “I kept him from turning into a complete sleazeball, and he kicked my ass into finally finishing something.” I would accept the Oscar that year for best screenplay and would dedicate the award to him....
Donovan was poking me. “What’s up with you? You’ve been staring into space for the last five minutes. Do you want another drink? I’ll buy.”
I was on my third cocktail of the evening, so I was feeling pretty loose. As Donovan went to get more drinks, I wondered if I should make a move.
By now, the parade of rentboys had started. They were perched on go-go boxes around the dance floor and lounge, tight, muscular boys wearing little more than g-strings or Calvin Klein briefs. I pulled out my notebook and started taking notes.
I was nervous about interviewing the guys; I didn’t think I had ever even seen a hustler before, let alone spoken to one. I thought about getting another drink first, but I remembered Donovan was already at the bar.
Jamie rolled his eyes at me as I scribbled in my notebook.
“I have to go talk to some rentboys,” I told him.
“Are you crazy? Those guys’ll tear you to shreds!”
“Good,” I said, grinning with false bravado. “I can’t wait.”
I approached one of the go-go boxes and waited until there was a break in the music. The boy on the box had dark floppy hair and was wearing a pair of white boxer briefs. Even though he was dancing in a smoky nightclub, he still looked sweet and clean-cut, like a buff version of Elijah Wood.
