Going Down in La-La Land (3 page)

Luckily I only had fifteen uncomfortable minutes of trying to make conversation with the moron before Candy came back.

“
Hi, Adam!” she called as she bounced in through the front door, dressed in designer workout gear from head to toe.

“
Hey you!” I jumped up in relief at the sight of her and ran to give her a hug.

“
Are you hungry?” she asked.

“
Starving.”

“
Damn it, Dean! I thought I asked you to put the dishes away!” she yelled toward the bedroom before telling me “We’ll go to the Abbey. It’s really nice. We can sit outside, and there’s plenty of hot gay guys there.”

For some reason Candy always felt compelled to integrate a gay destination when we went out together. After my tiring day I wasn’t really thinking about meeting somebody. We could have gone to a taco stand and I would have been just as happy.

Waiting for her to shower and get dressed, I looked forward to my first night out on the town and going somewhere where the two of us could catch up, minus the on-again, off-again, temporary lunkhead boyfriend of hers.

As we walked out of the apartment toward the elevator the door to the adjoining apartment opened and a petite dark-haired woman appeared. Her face had obviously been lifted and was heavily made-up. Her dark hair shined with vibrant copper streaks. Gold and diamonds glittered from her neck, wrists, and hands. She was wearing expensive low-slung jeans and a tank top that had
BEBE
written across in little rhinestones.

“
Cahn-dee!” she pronounced in a shrill accent. “Did you know the ex-ter-mee-na-teer did not come deese month for thee bugs to spray zem with?”

“
Really Orly? That’s terrible,” Candy answered, trying to appear concerned.

“
Yes!” the woman’s eyes grew big. “But I call zee manager already, so he tell me the man come tomorrow!” She finished with satisfaction, apparently very proud at having taken control of the missing exterminator. I could now place her accent as Middle Eastern. It had that heavy wail to it.

“
Orly, this is my friend Adam. He will be staying with me for a while, so I wanted you to meet him. He just moved from New York,” Candy said.

“
Ooohhh! Heellooo!” Orly practically screeched. “I love New York See-teee. So bee-eww-tee-ful!” she gushed and went on with an enormous smile.

We stood and listened to her babble for what seemed like forever until Candy was finally able to break us away.

“
Just so you know,” Candy warned on the way to her car, “she is the eyes and ears of the building and complains about everything, so just be real nice and butter up to her. At first she hated me, especially when Frank and I would fight. The woman can’t stand noise. But I’ve managed to warm up to her, and have even had her over for coffee a few times, so now she’s cool with me. Otherwise she is kind of a trip. She’ll keep talking to you for hours about when she was Miss Israel 1967, or some shit like that.”

The Abbey was a classy place, with a coffee bar where one could order a nice meal and an outside bar where one could get drinks. A courtyard surrounded the outside bar and was filled with tables and statues behind a wrought iron fence. When you stepped inside you really did feel as though you had entered a real abbey, that is, an abbey filled with cruising gay men instead of nuns. Surrounding the preening and posing queers were tall outdoor heat lamps placed around the outside bar, meant to keep people warm during the winter months. A lot of outdoor places in LA had them, and I would soon find I had to be careful whenever I was around them to keep my head from getting singed, a hazard tall people in LA deal with on a seasonal basis.

In the middle of her dinner Candy spotted an actor she was friendly with named Kyle, who was one of the stars of a network sitcom called
She’s On Her Own.
He was walking around with another guy, looking about the crowd as if expecting something to happen.

Candy grabbed his arm and shouted up, “Hey! Kyle!”

Hey looked down, surprised for a moment like he had no clue who she was.

“
It’s me. Candy. Gary’s friend,” she said sweetly.

His eyes got really big behind designer horn-rimmed glasses, and he said in an overly enthusiastic and affected voice “Hey! How are
you
?”

It turned out they knew each other from New York, where they had a mutual friend named Gary, a gorgeous gay guy and sex addict who after realizing that jerking off in front of his apartment window for various neighbors every night wasn’t acceptable behavior, began attending Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings.

As Kyle sat down I wondered if he had ever fucked Gary. From what I knew of Gary’s track record I decided the answer was probably yes.

Kyle’s friend Collin worked for one of the studios in town. Both guys seemed friendly when introduced to me. Tinges of excitement and delight came upon me when they pulled up their chairs. My first night in LA, and here I was dining outside under the stars in a trendy hangout and already mingling with the stars down here on Earth. It was a very cool start to my new life in sensational southern California. If meeting people was going to be this easy, I shouldn’t have any trouble building a career and finding my niche in the world of entertainment.

“
It’s Adam’s first night in town; he just got here!” Candy announced.

“
Really?” Collin said. “What brings you here?”

“
Well, I just felt it was time that”—but before I could finish Kyle suddenly cut me off and said, “What is with that guy’s shirt? Is he working a landing strip? That color would stand out on the stage of the
Moulin Rouge
!”

The two were full of more stinging comments. Their body language, such as the way they splayed their legs out and the disinterested expressions on their faces, gave a clear message of cocky arrogance. To make matters worse, they thought it was funny that they had this little game going which involved flipping people off under the table.

“
Oh, I don’t like that one’s pants,” one would point out. “He gets a finger.” Or, “Check that queen out. She needs to lay off the steroids big time. You know what that means—finger.”

Listening to these guys one would think that everyone else was dog shit in comparison. I focused on my fusili pasta and vegetables as they went on directing insulting quips toward every other person in the Abbey.

I went from happy to be sitting with a minor sitcom star to wondering why Kyle thought he was such hot shit. As he sat on his invisible throne, it was imperative for him to avoid contact with anyone. God forbid someone noticed him.

Never mind we were in an environment completely designed for interaction. In actuality none of the guys around, many of whom were quite attractive, seemed to notice him and if they did, didn’t give a rat’s ass.

When not looking like he was afraid to be approached, he wore an expression of perpetual boredom.

I kept thinking about how whenever I caught his show on the tube I never bought for a minute the fact his character was interested in the female lead. I wonder if the other people watching at home felt the same? I mean, he was so obviously gay. But then I thought about it some more and decided that there were people out there in places like Kansas where the idea never crossed their minds. Candy tried to keep a conversation going, but it was useless.

“
Okay, let’s find someone else. Next victim,” Kyle said while darting his head around. His eyes were like scanners, darting back and forth and back and forth.

Finally Candy couldn’t take it any more and after being interrupted for the hundredth time, said sweetly, “You know, Kyle, if you want someone you find interesting to flip off you can always go home, look in the mirror, and give yourself the finger.”

A sly smile came across Kyle’s face and he laughed, “Touché!”

After getting the hint that everyone, including Collin, thought his game was tired and lame, he grew bored and asked Collin if he was ready to leave.

“
So give me a call sometime, we’ll hang out or something. If you talk to Gary tell him I said hi,” Kyle said before disappearing into the crowd.

“
Nice meeting you both.” Collin smiled, then turned to me, winked, and said, “Good luck!”

“
Whatever. I’ll never hear from them again,” Candy said through sips of her apple martini, apparently the trendy drink of the moment. Every other person in the place also had a bright green martini in hand with a sliver of apple hanging off the side.

“
Could you believe how stuck on himself he was? Everyone else is fly shit ’cause they’re not on some sitcom. Give me a fucking break,” she said disinterestedly.

“
Do most people out here behave like that?” I asked.

“
Some of them,” Candy shrugged. Then stopping to reconsider admitted, “Well, a lot of them. But you’ll get used to it.”

We sat gazing at the meticulously groomed and manicured crowd, some of which stood in clusters while others weaved their way among them, checking out the bodies as they went.

“
Well,” she sighed, breaking me out of my trance, “do you want dessert?”

“
That’s all I’ve thought about the whole time Mr. Finger was sitting here,” I replied.

The Abbey boasted a really great dessert case at their coffee bar, a plethora of cakes, pies, brownies, and more sinful treats to taunt the body-obsessed patrons. I could just visualize scores of gym queens feeling guilt ridden when they sprang up the next morning and raced to spin class. Candy got up to get a piece of the Oreo cookie cheesecake confection we had spotted earlier.

Staying seated to save our table, I took a moment to observe the crowd. It seemed to me that there was a lot more posing and less interaction going on. I didn’t remember it being quite so bad in New York.

My first evening didn’t shed a favorable light on the prospects of meeting a great guy at a place like this. But this was only my first night in town, so I wouldn’t be too quick to judge.

As we ate our dessert, we both agreed it looked better in the case than it tasted in our mouths. It most definitely looked better in the case than it would look on our asses. Nevertheless, we finished the overly sweet dish and got up to leave.

“
Are you leaving?” asked a prissy voice from behind. I looked over to find a massively overbuilt and overly tanned dude with craggy skin and an attitude looking at our table.

“
Be my guest,” I replied, always finding it amusing when these steroid-pumped guys opened their mouths and still sounded as gay as a May Day Parade. All that effort for a tough, masculine appearance was blown away by the slightest movement of the vocal chords.

We made our way back to the Benz. I was eager to get some sleep and call it a night. An unsure feeling gripped me. Looking around at the unfamiliar landscape, perhaps I made a rash decision in coming here. Maybe I let the shit in the foyer get the best of me. If I needed some space for a while and an escape from New York, perhaps I should have taken a summer job in Provincetown, basically something less permanent than picking up and moving straight across the country.

So far LA didn’t seem that much more relaxed than New York. The people just appeared less responsive and outgoing, not as energetic, and if tonight was any example, more judgmental. But I would hardly describe that as “laid back.”

The crowd at the Abbey struck me as having a feeling of being impenetrable. If tonight was any example of how it was going to be meeting people and trying to get my foot in the door in terms of a career, maybe I should have bought a round-trip ticket. Something told me I’d better gear up and prepare myself for more than a few superficial experiences in La-La Land.

“
Adam, hellooo? Are you listening to me?” Candy’s annoyed voice called out to me, breaking me out of the manic thoughts swimming in my head.

“
Sorry,” I smiled. “I completely zoned out for a minute. It’s been such a long day.”

I turned my churning brain off, listened to her list of the things I should do to get settled, and felt the cool air blowing against my face as I stared at the taillights of the car ahead.

“
Adam, what side of the street did you park your car on?” Candy bellowed into my room early one morning a week later, almost giving me a heart attack.

“
Same side as your building. Why?” I mumbled groggily.

“
Remember, Tuesdays and Thursdays are street cleaning. Thursdays are my side of the street. You don’t want to get another ticket,” she scolded.

Shit. It wasn’t even eight a.m. But I had no choice but to drag my ass out of bed to search high and low for a new spot.

“
Want me to pour you a bowl of Kashi?” she asked as I walked groggily to the front door.

“
Okay,” I croaked.

After one week in town, I had already collected two parking tickets. It seemed as if the parking-enforcement Nazis were everywhere you went. They drove around in these hideous, generic white cars that resembled giant marshmallows with orange lights on top. This wasn’t exactly the Welcome Wagon I had wished for.

The second ticket really pissed me off. It happened when I looked up a high school friend and we decided to get coffee together in West Hollywood.