Going Down in La-La Land (18 page)

Suddenly I opened my eyes to see a little old lady with a Yorkie. The old lady’s mouth hung open in shock and the Yorkie stared at us with a quizzical expression.

“
Oomph,” I made a noise through our pressed mouth and pulled my face away from Dale’s.

“
Hello,” I said in a barely audible, winded voice.

Dale turned around in disarray and panted, “Oh. ...Hi, Mrs. Kaminski. How are you doing this evening?”

“
Well,” the woman said in a no-nonsense tone, “not as occupied as you and your friend!”

“
I apologize, Mrs. Kaminski,” Dale said while trying to catch his breath and put me down. I made my way out of the elevator as Mrs. Kaminski stepped back.

“
Oh, what a cute dog,” I managed to say, feeling completely embarrassed. I forgot the fact that Dale and I were two grown-ups. Instead I felt like a kid cutting class.

The dog barked furiously at me as I approached it.

“
Come on, Cookie,” Mrs. Kaminski said sharply. “Let’s take you for your walk.”

“
Here, Mrs. Kaminski,” Dale said, putting on the gentleman airs. “Let me hold the door open for you.”

“
Thank you,” she said curtly and stepped in the elevator. Before the doors closed completely she ordered with authority, “And you two boys be careful! Use protection!”

Dale and I stood staring at each other, completely red faced. Then we both started laughing hysterically. Dale had one arm out holding himself up against the wall and the other on his stomach, bent over in convulsions.

“
If she thought I was noisy and wild before with friends coming in and out,” he said between chortles of laughter, “God knows what she thinks now. I’ll never be able to redeem myself from that impression.”

“
Let’s just go inside now before one of your other neighbors sees us acting like idiots in the hall,” I laughed.

With that he shoved his hand in my back pocket again and dragged me down the hallway. Digging for his keys we stopped at his door. After finding them he opened the door and pushed me inside. As he started kissing me he flicked the lights on.

“
No,” I said, flipping them back off. “Just take me to your bed now.”

The next few hours we rocked each other’s world. It was pure sexual abandon. I must have released every bit of tension I had built up sense moving on Dale’s sheets. Every concern was cast aside – no worries, no ambitions, no fears, and no responsibilities. In that moment I was locked in sheer bliss. I so needed to lose myself in the arms of someone else. And Dale was just that person. Our bedroom acrobatics culminated with the best orgasm in recent memory.

“
Thanks for coming over,” he whispered in my ear as my chin rested on his shoulder. I was wiped out.

“
Thanks for having me,” I whispered back, while I made soapy swirls and patterns with his chest hair.

“
Babe, you were made for doing this for the cameras,” he said gently.

“
Thanks,” I mumbled, then added, “I think.”

Dale smiled, kissed me gently, and said, “Let’s get to sleep.”

I turned over on the pillow, relaxed and ready for a good night’s sleep. Before I closed my eyes, an object on Dale’s bedstand glistened in the moonlight, catching my eye. Looking closer I noticed an almost empty glass vial tipped on its side, with white powder residue falling out.

So he likes to party once in a while, I reasoned. It was his business. Exhausted, I fell asleep.

The weeks following I became immersed in a whole new world. I had appeared in two new films and my billing was rising. I posed for spreads in more magazines. My image was popping up all over Web sites. And I spent a lot of time hanging out with Dale, who directed one of my latest videos. We accompanied each other to a lot of parties all over town. Many of them got pretty wild, but I always ended up going home with Dale. Most of the time he was cool, though I began to notice that he was beginning to seem more and more wired.

After having sex, which was always at his place because I felt uncomfortable bringing men back to Candy’s, he had more and more of a hard time going to sleep. He would stay up and play video games for hours straight. Then if he did hit the sack, it was just for a few hours and he would shot out the door to do some editing work in the cutting room.

“
You’re doing way too much of that shit,” I finally said to him.

“
What are you talking about?” he asked.

“
The green tea in the kitchen,” I snapped in frustration. “What do you think I’m talking about? Let me think. Oh yeah, the tina you keep stocked up next to your bed.”

“
I know. I need to lay off it bit. It’s just that I have so many projects piled up on me right now.”

Dale did what he always did when I brought up his increasingly troublesome crystal habit. He changed the subject.

“
So have you called Gary about getting your Web site up?” he asked. Dale had been pushing me to start my own Web site for while now, where I could make some bucks on the side and even promote myself as a high-priced escort.

“
No,” I answered. “And I don’t think I’m going to. I don’t want it to swallow up my whole life, and become my whole identity.”

“
So then why are you doing it to begin with?” Dale snapped in irritation. “I mean you’ve already done it on camera three times, you’re on the cover of magazines, and you’re one of the hottest new faces in the biz. You might as well use it to your advantage and ride it as much as you can. Get the appearances, tour some clubs.”

“
And escort?” I cut in sharply.

“
Yes, and escort. You’ve already done that too. So what’s the big deal?” he asked callously.

I knew Dale was no knight in shining armor. But it still bothered me that he didn’t care that I was with other guys, though it was part of both of our realities before we began sleeping with each other.

“
Look, Adam,” Dale continued to tell it like it was. “You want it both ways. You just want to just dabble, skim the surface, and make some easy money, and then move on. But either you embrace it all the way, or you don’t do it at all. It’s like you’re walking a wall between two worlds. If you have a problem with it, you should never have started to begin with. Get a job at Starbucks for chrissakes.”

I didn’t say anything. He had a point.

“
Have you even started those computer classes?” he pressed.

“
Not yet. I’ve had too many distractions,” I mumbled. “Look, can we just not talk about it right now?”

“
Sure. So then let’s not talk about either of our issues right now, okay?” he said with resentment.

With that our conversation ended.

To my defense, I did have a lot of distractions. With all the parties we were going to and the attention I was getting, I was having some interesting encounters with some more Hollywood big shots. And then I was still going out on calls.

My most recent trick Ron hooked me up with was a legendary Hollywood photographer who loved munching on ass. It was appropriate that he liked to munch, because physically he reminded me of a munchkin. He was short, portly, with a round head and swollen nose. I saw him about four times, and it was the same routine each time.

I’d sit on his face as he greedily munched my hole like there was no tomorrow, chewing away until my ass was drenched with his slobber, which dripped down his face and trickled on the sheets. At the same time he wanted me to twist and tear at his sowlike nipples, which had been worked and pulled to a point where they looked mutilated. I always came first and waited impatiently for him to finish off. I couldn’t wait to get off his nutcracker mouth.

There is nothing worse than waiting for someone you don’t even find physically attractive to have an orgasm. Eventually his little dick would spout out a pathetic few drips of spunk, and when I looked back at him his little round head was bright red like a tomato.

At least he kept me entertained over expensive dinners with stories about celebrities he had worked with, which included Farrah Fawcett, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Travolta, Richard Gere, and countless others, even good old Mae West in her later years. The fact that his long-time lover was a prolific film industry insider, who he met during his younger and more attractive years, didn’t exactly hurt his career. As always, in Hollywood it was all about connections.

But my recent interactions with a successful writer and producer named Owen Burger turned out to be even more interesting than my night with Wayne Hanley or the butt-munching photographer.

At one random party in the hills I met a slim, artsy-looking fellow named Vince. Vince was an assistant to a very successful composer named Owen Burger. Mainly known for scoring some of the biggest box office bonanzas, Burger also dabbled in painting and photography.

You could say the Burger was a modern-Hollywood renaissance man, sort of a gay Mozart meets Helmut Newton. Vince approached me about modeling for Burger and his boyfriend Diego, who was also a photographer.

“
It could lead to something else, a job or the chance to work on a film,” Vince suggested. “In the very least you’ll get some extra bucks out of it.”

I was invited to Burger’s mansion off Beverly Glen, high up in the hills. I left late in the afternoon as planned and drove west on Sunset Boulevard, veering right where the Hamburger Hamlet was, just past Doheny.

The exterior and interior of the house had been built in a Spanish style. A few creepy looking paintings hung in the hallway.

“
Owen painted them,” Vince said while leading me down the tiled hall.

If someone had shown them to me without my knowing who painted them and asked him my opinion, I would have said that I thought the person who created them must be disturbed, maybe someone who tortured and killed small animals or painted while undergoing psychiatric evaluation. They also brought to mind the doodles that a stoner in high school made on his desktop, the kind that listened to Metallica or something to that effect.

In the office I sat down at a table where Vince showed me a book of photos by Owen and Diego. Most of the photos were nudes and as disturbing as the paintings in the hall. The models, both men and women, had various body types and were covered in black paint from head to toe. It looked as if they had just stepped out of tar.

“
These are all for a photo book Diego is looking to publish,” Vince explained.

Such images were the last thing I would ever want to put on my coffee table. The view of the room, which overlooked a lush canyon, was more captivating to me than the garish photos.

Looking at that gorgeous vista only reaffirmed my theory that the only way to live in LA was in the hills or on the beach, and could understand why many Los Angelinos loved it out here.

A few minutes later Diego the boyfriend came in. He was a large, strapping Hispanic man. The kind you’d expect to see at some inner-city boxing gym.

Outside the room other folks were shuffling about. When I inquired who they were I was informed that Burger used this home as his offices and ran his production company, Ceremony Films, out of it. He owned the home next door as well and used that one as his residence.

I briefly met one of the people from the production company, a guy named Stuart. A paunchy blond geek with glasses, Stuart looked like the living definition of a nerd. But I imagined that he made a really good worker.

A disheveled, overweight woman with bad hair hanging in her face was the other full-timer at Ceremony Films, but she just ran around the whole time like a maniac and wasn’t interested in saying hello. She was used to all kinds of colorful types coming in and out, I suppose.

Looking at her made me wonder what was up with all these poor, wretched looking, run-down females who come to LA to work as haggard production people. The hours are horrible, the demands immense, and the rewards few. It was a big mystery to me. But I had seen countless others of her type since being in Hollywood.

Then again, who was I to judge these people? A countless other myself, and one doing porn for a living.
Quit being such a bitch, Adam,
I finally told myself.

Eventually the big man himself came in. Everything up until this point had been “Owen this” or “Owen that.” It was like the cult of Owen.
All that’s needed is some poisoned Kool-Aid to go along with the ugly paintings hanging around this place,
I thought to myself.

Burger was actually an attractive man, pale skinned with puppy-dog-blue eyes. His hair was dark brown and he had a light mustache and goatee. He had a solid build, and the South African accent didn’t hurt either.

I have always been a sucker for accents. I was a big time anglophile.
Mobil Masterpiece Theater
and
Mystery!
were regular viewing for me, and of course
Ab Fab.
There was something I found polished and superior about British accents. Take
The Osbournes
for example. They wouldn’t be nearly as endearing without their British accents, and Sharon Osbourne wouldn’t come off as classy. Take away the British accents and the rock star digs and Ozzy and his family are nothing more than overpaid Jerry Springer material.