by Ben Tyler
Cruising down to Fairfax Avenue, Bart pretty much knew where he was going. At least he was familiar with the neighborhood. It was close to the Sports Connection (also known as the Sports Erection), the gym on Santa Monica Boulevard where he lifted weights after work.
Heather View Drive turned out to be a side street just a couple of blocks behind the health club. Finding a parking spot in this part of town was murder. The city of West Hollywood had strict parking policies, and if you were lucky enough to find an empty space, you had to read the confusing and often conflicting street signs two or three times to understand if and how the parking was restricted.
It was after seven when Bart finally found the house where Rotoroot4U said he’d be waiting. Popping a handful of Breath Assure capsules into his mouth and swallowing them without water, he rolled along looking for an open spot into which he could slide his ’99 Mustang convertible. But it was impossible. Frustrated and impatient, Bart decided to drive down to Melrose, find a metered space, and jog back.
Twenty minutes later, he was standing, as instructed, outside the back of the house under a bright porch light, opposite the mirrored sliding-glass door: checking his hair, his teeth, his clothes, opening another button on his white dress shirt, perspiring from the jogging and the anticipation of forthcoming sex.
He rapped his knuckles on the glass. No answer. He saw his own look of panic reflected back to him under the bright overhead globe. Tense about what he might be getting himself into with a stranger, Bart found himself looking up at the light fixture. It was grimy from an accumulation of dust. There were shadows from dead and decaying insects inside.
“Dead,” Bart said to himself as he flashed on the potential dire consequences of meeting a stranger for sex. “Christ! Am I so desperate that I’m willing to risk God knows what to get off with a guy I just met on-line?”
“Yes!” he said aloud, although he couldn’t believe he was actually on the brink of following through with a sex fantasy.
Then, as if there were a devil-angel advocate colliding in his head, Bart thought: This isn’t my MO at all. I play the virginal ingenue. I’m becoming a freaking whore! I’m turning into Mitch!
Bart winced at that thought. However, his apprehension was quickly overruled by the hard-on he had been sustaining ever since Rotoroot4U’s picture flashed on his monitor screen. He decided that for once he wouldn’t be a sissy about the propriety of sex. His stupid, puritanical sense of morals was to blame for his being chaste for so long in the first place. Now was the time to take a chance. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Even if the guy was only half as hot as his cyber image, Bart decided it was worth the remote danger just to feel another man’s skin. It had been way too long. He was practically insane with lust. “Gotta be a first time for everything,” Bart whispered to himself, now ready for the previously unthinkable act of actually paying for whatever was about to take place behind the mirrored glass door.
Returning to his reflection, he knocked on the glass again. The muted sound of a television came from the front of the house, and he wondered if perhaps Rotoroot4U was up there. However, just as he stepped back and was about to try the front entrance, the outside light went off. A long moment later, like the interminable time between when a theater’s house lights are extinguished and a concert diva appears, the glass door slid open.
Backlit by the illumination of a single large candle on the floor, the male figure standing before Bart was practically invisible. The man didn’t bother to introduce himself. He simply stepped aside, indicating for Bart to enter.
Although Bart had never paid for sex before, he had read that such transactions were always made up front, though money was never actually handed to the hustler. Apparently the etiquette was to place the cash on a dresser or table. Bart reached into his pants pocket and pulled out two twenties and a ten. “Is this okay?” he mumbled.
“Whatever, man.” The voice held a distinct Latin accent.
“I thought your photo was awesome, man.” Bart felt himself self-consciously slipping into an unfamiliar character and began using what was to him a foreign vocabulary. He didn’t often speak in sentences that required him to use “man” as a noun of address or say things like “awesome” unless he was describing the Grand Canyon. It was as though his entire personality had shifted to match the environment, the reverse of the way it did when he was at the opposite end of the social spectrum, wearing a tuxedo, holding a flute of effervescing champagne, and being overly courtly toward some of the world’s most recognizable bitches and bastards at an awards banquet or charity ball.
His eyesight adjusted to the duskiness of the room. The space appeared to have been an addition to the original house. It was a chilly night, and there was no central heating. A small floor heater, plugged into a wall socket, emitted only a slight amount of warmth. The furnishings were utilitarian. The desk, which was just an old door laid across two sawhorses, supported a computer monitor, hard drive, and keyboard. Papers, pens, yellow Post-its, and unopened mail were scattered everywhere. A television and VCR on one side and a four-drawer filing cabinet on the other flanked the “desk.” A queen-size mattress lay on the floor. A fitted sheet covered the mattress, but otherwise it was unmade. Two corners of a top sheet were tucked in between the bottom of the mattress and the hardwood floor.
Obviously, Bart decided, there had not been time to make the place presentable to guests. Or, he thought, perhaps this was all part of the mystique of paying for sex. In any case, the mess actually added to Bart’s excitement. Images of other men’s bodies having sex on the very same sheets flashed through his mind.
Then he turned around and suddenly got a full view of the real Rotoroot4U: naked, semihard, and holding a bottle of tequila.
“Want some?” Rotoroot4U said, holding out the half-filled bottle.
Bart accepted.
He coughed as the fluid burned the lining of his throat. He handed the bottle back to Rotoroot4U, who poured a good amount of the liquid into his own mouth and swallowed. He took another swig, moved closer, and pushed his lips against Bart’s, forcing the tequila to surge from his mouth into his visitor’s.
Bart’s cock filled his Brooks Brothers slacks like a water balloon.
“I don’t waste time,” Rotoroot4U said. “Am I going to have to force you to strip, man?”
The mild-mannered Clark Kent that served as Bart’s secret identity suddenly fell away. What emerged from deep within his soul was like the creature that inhabited Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3. Within moments, Bart and the man were bareassed on the sheets, both aggressively pawing each other. At some point during their bestial passion, Rotoroot4U donned a condom and plunged himself deep into Bart, who cried out in agony and ecstasy, competing against the disembodied voice of Regis Philbin in the living room, demanding, “Is that your final answer?”
Later, after both men climaxed, they lay close together, sweating and breathing heavily. The room was still dark except for the candle and dull lights shining in from outdoors through the two-way mirrored window. By now Bart had noticed the setup of the glass door and its obvious purpose, but he didn’t say a word.
Although he had had a few sexual partners in the past, he had never been with a man who was so completely out of a wet-dream fantasy. He knew he could go on being the screwee as well as the screwer with this stud for days—nonstop, which was so totally not Bart, who could go a month without jacking off and a year without sex.
Until this night, sex had never been a major motivating force in Bart’s life. Although Bart knew he could probably sleep with any of a dozen guys he knew, with his demanding career schedule of fourteen-hour workdays at the studio and the intense stress he was under from the demonic Shari, sex was relegated to the back burner. He seldom even noticed an erection, because he was constantly worried about deadlines and making marketing presentations to senior studio executives, producers, and stars. Sure, he checked out attractive men as he dashed
from one screening or interview to another, but he seldom had time to exchange even a flash of eye contact.
“Thumbelina and her four sisters” were useless, too, because he was too exhausted to beat off when he got home. And when he woke up in the morning, he was too filled with trepidation about dozens of potential crises that would inevitably crop up at the office.
On the rare occasions when he actually had a date, unless the other guy initiated sex, Bart was too timid to make the first move. He’d been emotionally incinerated by his first lover, who, one night toward the end of their yearlong affair, called him a “grab-ass” and rejected him.
Now, as he felt the warm flesh of this solid man beside him, Bart had to stop and think when was the last time he had made love. All he could remember was that the guy was a self-absorbed actor whom he had to interview for a feature article. The guy wasn’t all that attractive, but he made the first move, and Bart went along for the ride—a tedious and tiring one, as it turned out, because the actor merely lay on his back and expected Bart to do all the work. And it was definitely work, because the guy couldn’t climax. Bart finally gave up sucking the guy’s dick, put on his clothes, and left the man, who had simply fallen asleep on the bed. That monotonous experience alone was enough to put Bart off sex.
After a few moments of silence except for their controlled breathing, Rotoroot4U finally said, “I’m Rod.”
Bart panted, “I’m Bart, and Christ, you’re the most amazing…”
“‘Fuck.’ Say it. I’m a pretty amazing fuck. You do know the word, you little Ivy League fuck.”
“You’re…amazing.”
Immediately, the two men began caressing each other again, both becoming simultaneously aroused. Soon they were launching into another marathon of unconstrained sex that was every bit as powerful and fulfilling as the first time.
After they had both had their second orgasms in less than an hour, Rod told Bart his time was up.
“I don’t have another fifty dollars on me,” Bart said.
“One price for the whole ride, man,” Rod assured him. “Better get dressed. Bathroom’s down the hall, if you need it.”
“Thanks.”
As Bart opened the bedroom door and stepped barefoot out onto the hardwood floor of the hallway, Mrs. Carter was coming out of the bathroom with her cat. She disinterestedly sized up the naked young man whose tumescent member preceded him by eight inches and walked back toward the living room and the cacophony of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire coming from the tube.
Returning to Rod’s room, the men made small talk as Bart dressed. He put on his clothes as slowly as possible. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he was stalling to remain in Rod’s presence.
“What do you do?” Bart finally asked.
“Bartend. Work out. But mostly I write.”
“Work out? That’s obvious,” Bart said. “By the way, I write, too. What do you write?”
“Screenplays.”
“Really? I work at Sterling.”
Even if Rod had been strapped to a lie-detector machine, there wouldn’t have been the slightest response on the polygraph to indicate his sudden piqued interest in Bart. He had become a master of inscrutability. “What do you write?” Rod asked nonchalantly.
“For Sterling? Publicity stuff, for movies. For myself? I’ve got a novel—unpublished, of course—making the rounds.” Then he asked, “Got an agent? Have you sold anything?”
“Can’t seem to get in the door.”
Bart intuitively felt there was something unique about Rod. There was something of substance here. He took a big leap. “Maybe I know some people who could at least look at your stuff,” he said as he slipped into his Kenneth Cole loafers.
“A lot of guys have said that to me before,” Rod said. “Nobody in this town keeps a promise. Half the time the dicks I meet on-line don’t even show up.”
Bart said, “I can at least get a friend in the story department at the studio to do coverage on one of your scripts. If you want.”
“That’d be cool,” Rod said, still reserved and distant. “It’d at least give us a chance to see each other again, too. Getting the coverage back, I mean.”
“Hey,” Bart said, still not having completely decompressed from the sex, “can I take you out for a drink? Like now? To talk about your script and stuff?”
“Nah, man. I got this other dude coming at eleven. But thanks.”
Registering Bart’s obvious disappointment and afraid the opportunity to get one of his scripts read by a legitimate story analyst at the most prestigious studio in Hollywood could hinge on stringing Bart along, Rod added, “I don’t have anyone tomorrow night. Why don’t we see each other again? Gratis?”
Gratis, Bart repeated to himself, thinking it was not the kind of word an idiot street hustler would use. “Great, man. I’m off at six. I can be back here by sevenish.”
Rod picked up a script from the top pile on his desk and handed it to Bart.
“Blind as a Bat,” Bart read aloud.
“Yeah. Gave it to a guy who came here once, some cocksucker from Actors and Others. The guy is a freak-o suit who comes into the Trap every Friday night. You know the place, down the street on Santa Monica? It’s where I tend bar. He likes me to pee my beer down his throat. See him every week, right on schedule, but he’s never mentioned the script. Probably never read it. Like I said, nobody in this town keeps a promise. But I have a feeling you will. Won’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
Rod smiled. “Hey, man. By the way, if you thought I was great—you were better. No kidding.”
Bart felt himself getting hard again. Down, boy, he told himself.
Rod was more than just a hustler for sex and a first-class manipulator, but he was telling Bart the truth. It was surprising he hadn’t gotten further by now in his writing career by sheer dint of will and aggressiveness. Even a marginally talented hack can be a success in Hollywood. And Rod was better and brighter than most.
“So. Tomorrow. Seven…ish.” Rod smiled again. Then he came forward and planted his mouth onto Bart’s and slipped his tongue between Bart’s lips and teeth.
They inhaled deeply, like two Baywatch studs rehearsing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with each other, without a script. Not only was Bart anxious for another tryst with the sexiest man he’d ever met; Rod was possibly getting the career opportunity for which he had been waiting years.
At last they pulled away from each other. Rod unlocked the door and slid it back for Bart.
“Tomorrow, dude,” Rod said.
“Tomorrow, dude,” Bart parroted back.
Chapter Five
“Tell me how you feel about that,” said Dr. Ecle, responding in his best neurotic Dr. Bob Hartley impersonation to Bart’s latest career crisis.
Bart was lying on his therapist’s black leather couch, detailing the latest scenario of Shari’s publicly castigating him during a staff meeting. Bart’s supposed transgression this time was that he had insulted superstar Zarita Wetmore by altering her previously approved bio in the press kit for the homoerotic musical comedy Nuns Are Sisters Too. The film costarred Nathan Lane as a monk desperately trying to remain celibate, with Kay Ballard in a cameo as the Mother Abbess.
“How do you think I feel?”
“I won’t know until you tell me.”
Bart rolled his eyes. This Jungian or Freudian or Gestalt passiveness wasn’t why he was paying a hundred fifty bucks an hour. “I was humiliated, of course. The entire New York office was on speakerphone, too. Shari embellished the magnitude of the entire situation. She claimed she received an outraged call from Zarita. It’s too bad the world outside of Hollywood doesn’t know what a twat Zarita is. She makes Lauren Bacall look like a smudgy orphan in Annie. But I’m certain that Shari was lying. Zarita would never have made any such call herself. She’d have her lackey manager, Liz, complain on her behalf. That woman is constantly afraid she’ll lose her cash cow. She’d make a stink out of H
oly water if it kept Zarita from firing her. Trust me, I know. I’ve worked with Zarita and her type too many times. The Zaritas and Mary Tyler Moores of the world can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Mary Richards, indeed! It’s amazing how many people can’t see through that phony ‘Who can turn the world on with her smile’ crap.”
“And you feel Shari was out of line and exaggerated the details of the call?” Dr. Ecle asked.
“Big-time!”
“What seemed to be the root of the problem?”
“Root? Shari bellowed at me, claiming Zarita had bellowed at her and threatened to pull out from doing all publicity to support Nuns. Specifically because I, Bart Cain, made appropriate changes in her self-aggrandizing bio. The changes made her look less like she has the distorted ego of Rebecca De Mornay…or Jerry Bruckheimer.”
“Rebecca…?”
“Forget it.”
“So you see yourself as a scapegoat?”
“Exactly. Everybody in town knows how Zarita likes to hold studios hostage. Early on in negotiations for her to star in a film, she always agrees to do all the print, radio, and television publicity we flacks drum up. Then, at the eleventh hour, after the press junket has been set and the hotels reserved, the party planned and the media invited, she backs out. She says she’s too exhausted or the film sucks. Which in this case it does. But then she comes around saying she could possibly be persuaded to work on behalf of the movie if the studio buys her that multimillion-dollar Monet, Chagal, or Mapplethorpe she’s had an eye on. After working with her, we’d all like to give her an Andres Serrano original, all right. Like his Piss Christ, I’d like to immerse Miss Dreadlocks herself upside down in a vat of urine!”
“So she blackmails you? Could get you an NEA grant.” Dr. Ecle tried to interject a bit of levity based on the Mapplethorpe and Serrano comment—and failed.
