Going Down in La-La Land (7 page)

That is, until the music suddenly stopped and an announcement was made that the fire department was shutting the place down. With too many people above maximum capacity, the party was in violation of local fire codes. Looking around I could understand the concern. If a fire ever did break out you’d have a bunch of messed up queens killing each other to get out of the place.

I could just see the news headlines the next day: “Hundreds of Gay Men Trampled to Death at All-Night Drug Fest.”

A loud, instantaneous groan sounded from the crowd of dazed party dwellers. The crowd looked considerably less attractive as the indoor lights were suddenly turned on. My eyes squinted in discomfort as I half expected everyone to scurry under the woodwork like a bunch of roaches startled by the flick of a light switch.

“
Figures a good party gets shut down in Lame Angeles,” one guy next to me muttered as we shuffled our way toward the door with the rest of the masses.

Outside the scene was even worse. The night was unseasonably chilly and everyone was a sticky and sweaty mess. The poor, overwhelmed valets were trying desperately to keep up with the mob of screaming gay men trying to retrieve their SUVs and sports cars all at once. It felt as if a riot were coming on.

“
They put the keys underneath the seats!” someone hollered out.

By now people were scrambling to find their cars and drive off themselves. If your car was blocked on all sides you were screwed and had to wait for the mess to clear up. I spotted my red Honda and made a run for it, seeing there was no car in front. Sarah decided to drive off with another friend to a bar.

“
Are you okay to drive?” she managed to ask amid all the madness.

“
Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I said, already making my way to the car.

With the stress of all the chaos around me, my buzz had worn off long ago.

“
Call me on my cell phone!” Sarah yelled over her shoulder as one of her gaggle of gay men grabbed her hand with a muscular arm and dragged her away into the night.

After much screeching of brakes, I finally broke out of the pandemonium and drove back to Candy’s. I was in no mood to go anywhere else. All I could think about was bed, and washing off what was left of the sticky Jerome Russell body glitter.

Two days later I joined the group again, this time at Will Rogers beach in Santa Monica, or “Ginger Rogers beach” as the guys liked to call it. Stephen drove, swiping a parking spot from some poor oblivious lady, who unrolled her window to tell him she’d been waiting for a spot for ten minutes.

“
Sistah, relax,” Sarah muttered out loud.

It didn’t seem to concern him one bit, instead saying to her from his window, “Whatever, bee-ah-itchh!”

If this behavior was typical of Stephen, I was surprised his car hadn’t been keyed up ten times over. I had been hanging out with these people because they were generous in showing me around. They probably thought I felt privileged, instead of embarrassed.

The day was sunny and hot, with streams of people blading and biking on the pavement, and teams of volleyball players across the walk at the nets. We set up our spot and stripped down to our suits.

Because I swam in high school, I always wore a Speedo. Not exactly popular out here, with long, California trunks being the standard. But I felt a Speedo looked good on me, whereas trunks made me look like a beanpole.

Within seconds guys were coming by our blanket to talk crap and flirt. After a while some of the boys decided to be brave and go into the water.

“
I’ll come with you!” I wasted no time in tagging along, finding just laying on the sand an immensely boring thing to do after a while.

My enthusiasm left when I put my foot into the freezing, dark water. Miami Beach this was not. Outside it was hot as an oven, but the water was completely frigid. I even remembered the water off Fire Island being warmer than this. The rest of the guys worked their way in like it was no big deal, so I followed suit.

“
Be sure to keep your mouth shut under the water!” Fred hollered over at me. He had recuperated enough from the other night to spend the day with us.

“
Why?” I shouted back, jumping up against the waves.

“
People get intestinal infections all the time from the sewage and pollution. Especially after it rains,” he explained.

“
Sounds great!” I shot back. So much for California dreaming. Vomiting and diarrhea didn’t exactly sound like a peppy version of a Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach flick to me.

After bobbing around with the boys for a while I stumbled out of the water, pretty far from where we went in. Apparently there was a strong current to go along with whatever else was in that water.

“
It looked like a movie, the way you just emerged out of the water,” some guy said to me as I jogged back onto the sand.

“
I should be so lucky,” I smiled back, thinking about my favorite Bond film,
Dr. No.
Maybe next time I came to the beach I’d wear a dagger around my thigh like Ursula Andress. I wonder how that would go over with the A-list.

The day ended when we all went to a Mexican restaurant across the beach for a late lunch. There Ryan, the Ecstasy supplier who always behaved as if he’d met me for the first time, asked me where I was from for what must have been the fifth time.

I just looked at him point-blank and replied, “Has anyone ever told you that you have the brain retention of a two-year-old?”

The whole table went quiet.

“
Ohmigod. That was so rude,” one of Ryan’s pals finally said.

“
You’re a tough crowd, you can handle it,” I replied.

“
You know some charming people, Sarah,” Ryan said.

For the rest of the meal the crowd ignored me. Stephen and Sarah barely said a word to me on the way home.

“
Thanks guys,” I said as they dropped me off.

Not one for confrontation, Sarah told me to take care and she’d give me a call. Stephen didn’t say a word, and as soon as I got out of the car the SUV whizzed around the corner.

It was for the best. I needed to concentrate on getting job, not familiarizing myself with the city by hanging around a bunch of people who for the most part I found loathsome.

That evening I sat with my highlighter in hand and shut myself in my room. No ABBA music tonight or baking cookies. Candy had copies of both
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
to scan through the help wanted sections of. She poked her head in for a bit to show me what Frank had bought for her at the Pasadena Flea Market. He had come in town for the weekend and she spent all day with him.

“
And check out these earrings. Bling bling!” she laughed, flicking at them with her lacquered nail.

“
If you keep it up you’re going to have to go to Spenders Anonymous, or Debtors Anonymous, or whatever the fuck support group is right for you.” I rolled my eyes.

Candy laughed out loud when I shared the events of the day at the beach and restaurant with her.

“
Good for you! At the gym they seem so obnoxious. I don’t know how you stood being around them as much as you did.”

“
I don’t know either,” I replied. Putting on a pretentious voice, I stuck my nose in the air, snapped my fingers, and announced “Sistah, I’m just glad they didn’t leave me stranded at that Mexican restaurant, or you would have had to haul ass to Santa Monica to come and get me, okay?”

“
You would have found yourself on the bus,” she laughed. “I’m going to have a cigarette on the balcony. You want to join me?” she asked, picking her latest luxury goods off my bed. One of her white Persian cats, Frosty, flopped on top of the
Variety
that was opened to the help wanted section, looked up at me, and purred, waiting for me

to rub his belly.

“
Maybe later. I need to finish faxing out my resumé.”

Turning my focus back to the want ads, I circled away with the dried out highlighter. I was determined to find a job in the next few days and get to work as soon as possible. Then I could start building and really get my shit together. I went to bed that night thinking about good things to come in the near future, and a more mellow, laid-back life than I had back in New York.

I landed a job answering phones at Acclaimed Talent Agency, one of the biggest agencies in town. They counted such big-name stars as Jim Carey and Jennifer Lopez as some of their clients, among others. I went to the interview all dressed up, having borrowed a tie from Candy’s husband, Frank. The agency was located on the edge of Beverly Hills, right near the intersection of Doheny and Wilshire.

“
Go ahead and valet your car,” Whitman, the operations manager instructed me when scheduling the interview.

Whitman informed me there were four receptionists altogether. Since I was the last one hired, my shift started last and I was the last to leave at night. All the parking was filled by the time my shift started, so if I took the job I’d have no choice but to valet.

I spotted the want ad in a local magazine called
Frontiers,
a gay rag that one picked up in bars, coffee shops, gyms, etc. The fact that I came across the want ad in such a publication clued me off that there was some major gayness going on at Acclaimed Talent Agency.

Whitman turned out to be a hunk of a gay man who I would have loved to be supervised by in bed. My interview turned out to be very amusing.

“
Basically our past receptionists were more interested in dating and marrying an agent than doing their job,” Whitman said with a wry manner, cutting to the chase.

“
Every week the necklines got lower and the skirts shorter, while the phones were increasingly put on hold. It got to the point where it became a competition, and things got a wee bit catty. The agency can’t become an episode of
The Bachelor.
We’ve had a better track record with gay men, and most of the administration staff is gay themselves.”

Whitman also stressed that he was not looking for an actor to fill the job.

“
If you want to be an actor you can go sell star maps on Hollywood Boulevard,” he said.

“
The only thing that has brought me to LA is the warm weather,” I answered in a boldface lie, proceeding to tell him I was just looking to get settled and had no interest in acting whatsoever.

Good thing I was smart enough not to mention “Screen Actors Guild member” on my application where it asked for professional organizations.

There were two floors in the agency and two receptionists to each floor. The other receptionists consisted of an unusual-looking woman named Kim, a sweet gay guy named Toby who had been hired a few weeks earlier, and an ex-alcoholic gay man in his forties named Matthew who was head receptionist and took his duties way too seriously. I knew this Matthew guy was trouble from day one. He had the most irritating Texas drawl. There is no worse accent in my mind than a Texas drawl.

“
Well, we’ll make sure you have everything down and right in no time at all,” he told me the first day on the job, asserting his authority and coming off like a complete prick.

Kim, the lone female receptionist, appeared to be thirty but was actually thirty-nine. She was odd looking, resembling a younger version of Endora from
Bewitched,
and ironically enough had jade green feline eyes, one that was noticeably smaller than the other. Apparently she was not one of the receptionists vying for the affections of an agent. She was too involved in a torrid romance with a guy in the copier room.

Right away she had begun to fill me in on the office gossip.

“
Matthew, the head receptionist, had his alcohol rehab paid for by the company. That is why he is loyal to the point of ridiculousness,” she confided to me in a sly whisper, her feline eyes gleaming with mischievousness.

Within a few days I found out who was dating whom, which agents were gay or in the closet, and which ones were on antidepressants.

“
See that one over there,” she discreetly pointed out some guy waiting at the elevator. “He sent his assistant out to pick up his herpes medication, so the whole office knew he had VD the next day. Can you believe anybody would be that stupid?”

Such a large talent agency was a huge microcosm. What was most fascinating was that Ivy League graduates, some with law degrees, started out working for $8.50 an hour in the mail room. From there they moved up to being an assistant, and then with luck and years of hard work and putting up with all sorts of bullshit they became agents. That’s where they hit pay dirt and started making the big bucks. Of course, the guys above you had to like you as well. Otherwise, you were screwed. Every white-collar job in America comes along with ass kissing and backstabbing, and in entertainment the amount is ten times so.

Now, anybody who could take a job paying $8.50 an hour in Los Angeles either came from money or already had connections from within. So of course nepotism played a huge part in the whole thing.

“
Yeah, that one and so and so are cousins,” Kim commented on a few agents who shared the same surname. “And there are a number of married couples too.”