Justify My Sins

by Felice Picano

  “Laddie,” whom Ed clasped upper arms with, looked similar to some old time movie star and in fact turned out to be the son of one, and was himself a film producer. As was his dinner companion, the son of a legendary producer. Later on, hearing this line up, Gilbert would sigh, “My God, they’re like major major major!”

  At the third table in the gardenia-drenched little dining enclosure sat Red Buttons and Carol Bruce schmoozing, she having to step outside periodically beyond the red rubber siding and wave in at Red through see-through plastic while smoking brown cigarillos. Victor was astonished they didn’t let you smoke at your table. These Angelenos were strict!

  Ed ordered them appetizers Vic had never heard of, and dry Rob Roys which he explained were Scotch Martinis.

  “Yum! So! You’re satisfied with the table?” Victor felt compelled to ask.

  Panic on Ed’s kindly face. “Why? Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know any better, Ed. I would have just sat anywhere. . . . Is it okay if I order off the menu?”

  “Sure anything.”

  After they had ordered, with Ed dictating various additions to the waiter—Eric not Joel—Trefethern turned and looked Victor over. “You’re thirty-three? Nah, I don’t believe it. You look much younger. At most twenty-five.”

  “I still get carded in some places,” Vic confessed. “Of course that’s usually because they’re so depraved no one’s willing to take chances with the law.”

  Ed momentarily looked as though Vic were joking. “Not Plato’s Retreat?”

  “Well, that’s the one place I can publicly admit going to.”

  Ed narrowed one eye, still not sure if he was being toyed with. Then he laughed. “Believe me, looking younger isn’t terrible out here. You’re going to fit right in.”

  Vic wanted to disabuse Ed instantly, to tell Ed that he felt totally out of his element. Elements, rather: Grime. Filth. Noise. Rudeness. He couldn’t find any here. His own kitchen had never been as clean as any public men’s room he’d seen so far this trip, and on top of it, they were citrus-scented: every ten seconds puffs of orange came through a vent. The sidewalks looked bleached, what, every week? twice a month? Where were they anyway? Was this still Beverly Hills?

  “We’re in West Hollywood,” Ed explained. “About a mile from your hotel. The truth is,” Ed said, “everyone lives in Beverly Hills, in Bel Air, Brentwood, Encino Hills, Pacific Palisades, Toluca Lake, but everyone eats, talks, drinks, does business, and definitely everyone screws around in West Hollywood. It’s been this way since I got to this town during the war, 1942, to make movies about the Pacific Theater for the War Department. And from what I heard back then, it was true even before the Forties.”

  This was a lot more interesting than the doomed precis or scenario or whatever they were calling it based on his novel. So Vic asked Ed more questions.

  “Maybe I don’t look like much at sixty-three,” Ed told him, “but back then I was taller and slimmer. In uniform I looked the part.” He winked. “When Capra brought me around this place back then, they all came humming around. Gals—a few guys too. Howard Hughes tried to get me to come live in one of his West Hollywood apartment houses. He used one building to keep starlets who he used to get regularly blown. And another building for the guys he used to regularly blow.”

  As he spoke, Vic could see Ed at twenty-eight. Slender, twinkly blue eyes, strawberry blond hair: blowable.

  Vic had to ask. “Well, did you take up his offer?”

  “Nah! I was stuck over at the barracks, where the Veterans Hospital is now, off Wilshire and the Four Oh Five. That wasn’t there either, back then. Nor the One Oh One. And to answer your other, politely unasked, question, sure I would have let him. Coupla’ guys from his building he made into movie stars.” He named three actors and Vic had to whistle in recognition. “Seemed like a fair trade to me at the time.”

  He laughed and looked at his lap, then up again. “You’re a talented kid. And it’s rarer than we all pretend. By the way, I saw what you were up to with the fellows at the office.” He wagged a finger at Vic, who now sat perfectly still. “Naughty, naughty, Victor! Just because you’ve got as much I.Q. as any two of them added together doesn’t mean you can let them know it. They’re good kids anyway. Came to El Lay to make movies. Stars in their eyes, and they’re all slowly working their way up.”

  “Up to what? Your job?”

  “If they’re smart and lucky. Maybe one will make it.”

  “Stan,” Vic guessed.

  “That’s my bet too. The others will end up in some agency, or doing something in an office at a studio. Or maybe end up running some crafts alliance to the industry. Truth is, Vic, only money and talent really shoots straight up out here.”

  “I promise in future I’ll be much, much kinder,” Vic said.

  “Good. Except,” Ed gulped his drink down, “Tim had that coming to him anyway. The others will probably thank you. They’re so sick of hearing about it.”

  People kept drifting by and saying hello. Once Ed got up to say hello to someone else leaving. In a half hour everyone in the place knew who Victor was.

  Ed told him, “Even if this doesn’t work out, this project? You ought to come out here and live. I’ll find you work in an instant. Smart guy like you? Maybe script polishing or stuff like that at first. Higher pay than you can imagine. Then some script partnerships. Coupla’ years you’re on your way. Find you a nice little place, maybe up in Coldwater Canyon. Get you some kind of cute new jalopy: those new Corvettes are cute . . .“

  How could Ed have such nutso great expectations? And why did Vic feel that everybody in the restaurant was watching him?

  “You just met me,” he told Ed. “How do you know I’m any good?”

  “I got your agent, what’s her name? Marcie? She’s a piece of work, huh? Got her to send me the proposal and chapters you did for the third book that you’re publishing. It’s terrific. You’re the real thing, kid. The real thing doesn’t grow on trees.”

  The rest of the lunch went like that and lasted two hours, with entrée, salad, and a dessert, a meal which could have fed a small Michoacan neighborhood. Vic ended up taking half of his back to the hotel.

  Outside the restaurant afterwards, they bumped into Richard Chamberlain and Irving Wallace, waiting amid the gravel near the street for their cars. The actor wore the thinnest leather slip-on loafers Vic had ever laid eyes on: but then they were for walking nine feet, from the car to the door. They’d never actually touch sidewalk, not to mention the dreaded tarmac! Dark haired car valets in uniforms sprinted into action whenever they sighted anyone even vaguely customer-like. Ed introduced Vic to the actor and author. Both, gratifingly, had heard of Vic. Chamberlain looked better on screen, a little too angular this close up. And each one of them ended up having a valet drive up a Corniche convertible. The actor’s was maroon. The writer’s was silver.

  Joel, the helpful waiter, rushed out for Vic’s autograph. For a minute Vic thought he’d slipped a phone number in, then saw it was only the restaurant’s matchbox.

  “Hundred thousand dollar cars!” Ed commented, after the others had driven off. Getting into his own car, he concluded, “They’re like anuses out here!” gesturing at the banana trees. “Everyone’s got one!”

  Victor sank into the back of his limo and easily located the phone just where Ed had said it would be. It even had a number, which he copied down.

  Back at the hotel, there was a message from Paul Gibbons, the black-haired Angeleno guy he’d met last summer at Fire Island Pines. They had exchanged phone numbers and Vic called him when he got into town. Paul said that he was free tomorrow night and definitely wanted to see Vic.

  All right!

  Gilbert called from New York, whining about the unceasingly icy weather and D’Agostino continually raising its prices on baby lamb chops which Gil snacked on like an ogre on four-year-olds.

  He listened to Vic’s “Tales from Lunch,” providing more oohs an
d aahs than a third grade class at Ringling Brothers. But once he was done, he put on his serious voice.

  “Listen, Victor, when you get around to opening your travel gift—and don’t say you did already open it because I would have heard about it if you had—you will find alongside it a printed invitation.”

  “What kind of invitation?”

  “Smart of you not to prevaricate and pretend you opened it. There’s a new leather bar opening there in L.A. this weekend. The hottest man I ever did it with—B. J. natch” (his term for “Before Jeff,” his boyfriend) “—sent that invite to me. He will be there. His tricks will be there. His buddies will be there. Guys in chaps without underwear will be there. People with large, uncircumcised penises will be there. You must go.”

  Vic gave Gilbert five excuses why he couldn’t possibly go.

  “All overridden!” Gilbert commanded, “You shall go because I cannot go and dearly wish to go and furthermore I want to hear all about it. No excuses.”

  And Gilbert hung up.

  Proving that in the end, he was just another Pushy Bottom.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Don’t look now, but I think that’s the guy I have a date with tomorrow.”

  His friend turned and looked. “Perfect Paul?” Andy asked, astonished. “You have a date with Perfect Paul!?”

  “I told you not to turn and look, and yes, Paul Gibbons.” Vic had to laugh. The nick name fit Paul so . . . well, so perfectly. “Why’s he called that?”

  “Dar-linnngggg!” Andy pushed him between two stacks of wooden beer cases where they could have some privacy. “Isn’t it obvious. He’s the most perfectly beautiful human male in the universe! Is your movie company paying for him, too?”

  “Is my what?”

  “Perfect Paul has been on the cover of Data Boy every three months. No one else has ever come close.”

  Paul was with some other guys, but he was looking around while he held his Miller Hi-Life all but untasted. He was six-two with wide shoulders, slim torso, even slimmer hips, and long, sturdy legs. On the beach at Fire Island last year he’d revealed perfectly shaped feet and admitted he’d made extra dough being a foot model (who knew such a distinction existed?) over the years. He could have easily been a fashion model, period, except that Paul had this problem: he couldn’t for the life of him believe he photographed differently than the way he saw himself: as some geeky, gawky fifteen-year-old. How he actually turned out in photos constantly freaked him out as “some other guy.” So, for example, in group shots, he tended to hide behind people, always explaining that he was too tall and would block them, and then he’d make a goofy face at the camera, thus proving his point about looking odd.

  Despite this, he had an Apollonian stature and figure. Add to that his nearly blue black hair, usually found only in comic book heroes: “Hollywood Hair,” Gilbert had called it for its thickness, heft, length, and luster, and he’d only seen Paul twenty-five feet away from the deck of Halston’s house on the ocean.

  Since then, Paul had added an inky black closely-trimmed mustache and beard that perfectly outlined his solid lower face, highlighting his utterly kissable lips. Check out his long straight nose and small ears, his slightly high cheekbones, his perfectly sized, utterly symmetrical ice-water blue eyes nestled in a luxuriant valley of eyelashes and thick jet eyebrows. The left brow was divided three quarters down its length by a tiny scar—from a swing hitting him face-on as a child, Paul reported—providing that minuscule flaw that Confucians and Taoists believe anything natural must possess to be truly beautiful. Paul’s face culminated in a perfectly rectangular, unlined forehead and almost equally flat flanking temples. He sported three sets of dimples, two on either side of his lower lips, and another cleaving his chin, making for an especially ebony detail that drew eyes to his beard.

  What was intriguing was how Paul managed to dress so ordinarily. That t-shirt looked like one Vic had owned at age nine and probably came from an irregulars bin at Penney’s. His jeans were white, costing perhaps ten dollars down the street; the cowboy boots, doubtless some unexceptional brand or, better yet, used. Yet he always looked amazing! To Vic, Paul seemed even more handsome with the beard than when they’d met at The Pines. He also seemed fairly bored tonight, although the guys he was with were quite busily trying to entertain him or involve him in their conversation—if they weren’t actually coming on to him, separately or together. Vic’s instinct told him should take advantage of the situation soon and go say hello.

  “He’s on the cover of what?” he asked Andy.

  Andy squelched over to the bar, rummaged rapidly, and came back with a five-by-four inch stapled pamphlet.

  “See!” He held it out, and there on the cover was a black and white photo of Paul Gibbons, beardless, looking gorgeous, and, Vic couldn’t help but notice, obviously taken when he’d been looking away then suddenly turned back to the camera.

  “Three hundred an hour,” Andy said, pointing to the small print.

  “For a massage?”

  That’s what the cover read. “Paul Gee. Masseur.”

  “Massage? Mass-age? Dar-linngggggg. It’s the kind of massage in which the fin-al-ee is ev-ery-thing!”

  I am so naïve, Vic thought. Such a child. It’s embarrassing. No wonder Paul had called back so quickly. It was business. He couldn’t possibly go over to Paul now. In fact, he now had to talk Andy into covering for him as he tried sneaking out of the bar and into the back alley where they had parked. Vaseline Alley, Andy had called it, because guys who met each other in the bars along Santa Monica Boulevard stepped into the oleander bushes here to check each other out—and sometimes didn’t emerge until they were done. This, Vic thought, was one of the best inventions of West Hollywood and had it all over Chelsea, where the best you could do was go into a doorway where everyone could see you making out.

  “Block me,” Vic said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t make a move,” Andy said, then reported. “He’s looking over here. Looking . . . looking . . . looking. Looking away.”

  “Now!?” Paul asked.

  “No sudden movements of any kind or you’ll draw his attention. I’ll tell you when.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you have any reason not to trust me?” Andy asked.

  Well, yeah, kinda, Vic thought. I sure do.

  Andy Grant, like Gilbert, was another of Vic’s childhood friends and in fact he predated any other. At six years old, Andy had been utterly obsessed by dogs. He had two himself: his parents’ stately Italian boxer and a dim-witted, over-friendly, German Shepherd. Even so, he went after virtually any dog anywhere near his path, despite the fact that some leaped on him to play while others leapt on him to tear his throat out. Andy subdued them all, eventually, with sloppy kisses and unceasing affection. Andy had been a cute lad then, with his huge mop of unruly dark blond hair and his elfin little face with its soft, caramel-colored rather houndlike eyes.

  His passion for dogs slowly subsided, to all their relief, but it was suddenly replaced at age ten by his weird new bent—for girls. Well, not girls so much as more specifically whatever breasts any girl might possess. One time, Gilbert and Vic counted the words in a ten minute Andy Grant monologue, ranging in variety from the scientific-sounding “mammaries” to the expected “titties” to the vulgar “bazongas” at two hundred and fifty four hits. For the next three years, he and Gilbert kept their distance from him as Andy tended to hang out only with girls of all colors, stripes, attitude, and even age, and he’d apparently gained enough confidence with some local females to be constantly touching, fondling, exposing, or discussing the multifarious aspects of what he called their “frontal beauties.” During that era, Andy had changed his look from an all-purpose Munchkin into a Rock-God Wannabe, who dressed like one of Journey’s more stoned out amp-roadies and whose sanitary habits equaled that of a street person.

  By the beginning of high school, another metamorphosis had taken place, and suddenly Andy G
rant was not only cleaner, but obviously cleaner, since he exposed as much skin as possible via his new passion: swimming and diving. This he did alone, in duos, and on teams. Constantly. He was taller and more slender now, virtually hairless, his page boy light brown locks mown to a buzz cut. If Vic and Gilbert had seen little of him before, they now saw a lot more, whether they planned to or not, since Andy was everywhere: at least everywhere even vaguely maritime and competition-oriented that a townlet on the upper mid-Long Island Sound might offer.

  It was only after a year or so had passed that Andy again approached Vic and revealed the true nature of his new obsession. One stormy day when his parents were out of town, Andy brought Vic into a carefully multi-locked inner room, where he displayed for his old pal how his “hobby” had metamorphized from breasts to—penises. Naturally Andy’s explorations proved to be as probing and thorough with teenage boys as those with preteen girls had been. Down had come the dozens of cut-out photos of various breasts in his huge bedroom closet, replaced by scores of male members in as many shapes, sizes, and colors as Vic assumed possible. And when Andy took up a secondary, if related, avocation of photography, they became predominantly pix of lads he knew, taken with or without their permission, before or after he’d had his way with them, and of course invariably erect.

  It was around this time that Andy’s father had decided to leave Big Blue where he’d reached his own glass ceiling and go to work as a partner for another computer start-up on the West Coast. In his junior year in high school, his family had moved to the Bay Area, and now, as the Grant fortune slowly amassed, Andy had moved to his own spread in Topanga Canyon with a pied a terre in West Hollywood, of course, far closer to the action. He was no longer daily photo-diarying dicks, but he continued to catalogue guys’ schlongs with his usual thoroughness—and in his own inimitably passionate manner. His hair longer, his face still young, his body still quite acceptable, Andy had transformed himself into the youngest and most attractive “dirty old man” Vic had ever met. Every action, every gesture, every word, and even his tone of voice said, “I’m getting you whether you want me to or not.”