Object of Desire

by William J. Mann

  We fucked on his mattress—Randall believed a bed frame was a waste of money for a struggling student—and after I’d shot three head-splitting loads, I paid him two months’ rent. Suddenly not only did I have a place in L.A., but I had a boyfriend as well. Quite the accomplishment—since I’d only stepped off the bus at Union Station that morning. It was far, far easier than I had imagined, far simpler than Dad had warned.

  For a couple of weeks, I was head over heels in love with Randall. But then, one night, walking home, I spotted a tall blond in leather pants approaching me. After the classic double take as we passed each other, we circled back around, grins on our faces. Soon we were humping on his mattress—another West Hollywood boy without an actual bed—and I decided then and there that this was my true love. After all, Lance shared my passion for Doctor Who and Monty Python, while Randall’s tastes were more highfalutin, what with all his classical music cassette tapes. So I broke up with Randall and started dating Lance. I expected Randall would ask me to move out, but he didn’t. “I’ve gotten used to you,” he explained. So I turned the spare room into my bedroom, buying a used waterbed because I’d thought they were sexy ever since Starsky had one on Starsky & Hutch. Randall said he always knew when I was having sex with Lance, because it sounded like the coast of Malibu in the next room.

  “Ow!”

  Some guy had just pinched the shaft of my cock as he stuffed a couple of bills into my thong.

  “No touching allowed,” I scolded him.

  The guy, bald and red, giggled like a girl.

  Up there on the box, you could really smell the crowd. The cigarettes, the beer belches, the body odor, the Calvin Klein Obsession cologne. All the smells braided together, wafting up from below, held in place by the thick blue smoke that encircled me like a wreath. At the moment, I couldn’t breathe, so I waved my hands in front of me as if swimming through the air, clearing a passage for oxygen to flow. Inhaling deeply, eyes closed, I took a long, deep gulp. When I opened my eyes, I looked around.

  Mr. Tight Tee was gone.

  “Damn,” I mumbled.

  But then I spotted him against another far wall, looking bored. He still held his Rolling Rock at his side. He didn’t seem to be watching me. Of course, really hot guys never watched the strippers. Instead, we watched them.

  My eyes swung back over to Randall, who was once again busy with his executive. After I’d broken up with him, Randall had announced he wanted no more boys, only men. “I want a smart, successful guy who is going places,” he’d told me. When I’d replied that I intended to “go places,” that I’d moved to L.A. to become a famous actor, Randall had just given me a withering look. Okay, so it had been six months, and nothing had come of any of my auditions, but after each one, I’d been told that I had a good face and a good voice. I was certain stardom awaited. Randall had just smiled and said nothing.

  I don’t know why Randall’s patronizing attitude annoyed me so much. I certainly didn’t want to go back with him. Not at all. I was busy with my own string of romantic adventures. After I’d broken up with Lance, I’d fallen in love with Rico, who’d introduced me to Bobby, with whom I’d fallen madly in love after he’d got me this go-go boy job. That was how I’d met Benny, for whom I’d left Bobby and whom, for a couple of weeks, I’d really, really liked. But suddenly up there on my box, I was overwhelmed with attention—a heady experience for a kid who’d never gotten a second look during all his years in Connecticut, who had spent most of his time watching Doctor Who reruns and listening to Blondie, except, of course, when he’d had to tag along after his mother through motorcycle bars and strip clubs—like this one, only straight—looking for his sister.

  So, compared to that, being up on my box was really fun. Me, on a pedestal! I decided to stay single for a while, enjoying the lavish attention a single go-go boy attracted. But, like Randall, I was also biding my time, waiting for Mr. Right.

  “Yeah,” Randall had scoffed recently, “more like Mr. Right Away.”

  “Not true.”

  “Danny, all you’re about is one thrill after the other. If you don’t watch out, you’ll end up dead. You’ll get AIDS, or you’ll overdose or wind up hacked up by some stranger in some back alley—”

  He’d stopped.

  He’d crossed a line.

  He’d known he might be describing my sister’s fate. He’d apologized. We’d dropped the subject.

  Across the crowd, I once again laid my eyes on Mr. Tight Tee. And he was looking at me. When our eyes met, he turned away, almost as if embarrassed.

  “You have no idea how beautiful you are,” Edgar had said to me a few weeks ago, his voice thick with lust, both of us wiping our noses after two lines of coke. “Just give me one night with you, Danny. Just one night.”

  Edgar was an old guy. Forty, I think. Maybe forty-one. He was balding, with a puckered face and nostrils that were permanently red and distended from too much blow. Rumor had it that he had AIDS, too. I wouldn’t let him near me.

  “You little bitch,” he’d growled after I’d recoiled from his touch, but he didn’t hold a grudge. “You know, you could make a lot of money if you’d let me sell that sweet ass of yours. Lots of guys ask about you. We’ll split the cash.”

  “Thanks, anyway,” I’d told him. “I make enough in tips.”

  “Soon it won’t be enough,” Edgar had replied.

  I didn’t know what he meant, but it didn’t matter. Soon I’d be out of that place, done with stripping, playing a recurring part on Mr. Belvedere or Perfect Strangers. I was up for parts on both. I was certain one of them would come through.

  I glanced back over at Mr. Tight Tee. He was chugging his Rolling Rock now, and even as I thrusted my crotch in some guy’s face to the beat of “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley, I kept my eyes fixed on him. The object of my desire finished his beer, set down the bottle, and turned with deliberate force, heading for the door.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  Without even thinking about it, I hopped off my box and made a beeline after him. The crowd parted, stunned into silence by my sudden action, allowing me to pass.

  Mr. Tight Tee was already out on Santa Monica Boulevard when I caught up with him.

  “Hey!” I shouted again.

  He turned back, surprise on his face.

  “Where you going?” I asked.

  He seemed flabbergasted that I had followed him. “I’m going home,” he said after finding his voice.

  “But it’s early!” I said. “It’s not even midnight!”

  His mouth was open, but he didn’t speak. No wonder he was flummoxed. There I was, on the sidewalk, standing in front of him, with dollar bills hanging out of my thong.

  “I was hoping,” I told him, “you’d stick around for my break.”

  He smiled shyly. “You noticed me from up there?”

  “Yeah.” I laughed. “Come on back in with me. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Really, I can’t,” he said, but I could see that he was flattered. “I have work in the morning. Lesson plans to make out.”

  “Lesson plans?”

  “I’m a teacher,” he said.

  “Hey, Danny!”

  I turned. Benny was in the doorway, pissy as usual.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he snarled. “You’ve still got ten minutes on the box! Carlos is still not ready!”

  I gave him the eye. “I’ll be right there,” I said, turning back to Mr. Tight Tee—Mr. Tight Tee Teacher, as it turned out. I was impressed. “Not one quick drink?”

  He smiled. Man, was he adorable. Green eyes, freckles, sandy brown hair thinning ever so slightly on top. He might be thirty, but he was still adorable. His well-rounded shoulders and defined pectorals were evidence of many hours in the gym. He was only a couple of inches taller than I was. We’d fit well together in bed.

  “One quick drink,” I repeated.

  He shook his head. “Sorry, but I really have to go. Maybe another time.
”

  “I dance on Saturday, too. Come back then.”

  Suddenly I realized how pathetic I sounded. The absurdity of it all struck me. What was I thinking, running out onto the street, nearly naked, after a man like this? A man so smart and accomplished—a teacher, for God’s sake. A man so far out of my league, he might as well have been another species.

  But he just smiled and extended his hand. “I’ll try to come by on Saturday night,” he said.

  I brightened, grasping his hand. “Excellent. I’m Danny. What’s your name?”

  “Frank,” he said.

  “Frank,” I echoed.

  But Frank didn’t come on Saturday night. I looked and looked, scanning the crowd all night, but he never showed. It would be some time, in fact, before I would see Frank again.

  PALM SPRINGS

  I woke early and spent the morning working. Ollie had slipped out sometime during the night, leaving a note, and I felt bad that I hadn’t been able to say good-bye. I figured I’d call him later and thank him for coming down. Just for the heck of it, I lit the candle he had given me and took a photo of it, just as a little wisp of smoke rose upward from the glass. I brought the image up on my computer and changed the color to a bright pink. Then I changed it to yellow. Then I dragged it to the trash.

  Randall staggered home then and convinced Frank and me to go out for coffee. It was Saturday morning, after all, and the local java hangout would be packed. On the ride over, I got the scoop on the night before. As it turned out, Randall hadn’t slept with the young blondie Jake Jones. Instead, he’d had a three-way—with the sixtyish Thad Urquhart and his lover, fiftyish Jimmy Carlisle.

  “It was far, far better to go with a couple of experienced pros,” Randall told us as we settled into chairs in the courtyard, “who knew what they were doing, who were actually good at it, than go with some eager young tyro who would just lay back and make you do all the work.”

  Both Frank and I laughed out loud. All around us, shirtless men with hairy, distended bellies were sunning themselves, their poodles and Welsh terriers sniffing through the grass. A coterie of boys, probably from WeHo, sat under a tree, sipping lattes and laughing in that high-pitched way coteries of young gay boys always did. The sun was high over our heads, the mountains sparkling gold and copper behind us. In another hour it would be too hot to sit out here, the sun beating down with all its late summer power, sending us scurrying inside like desert rats exposed to the light by overturning a rock.

  “Admit it, Randall,” Frank said, “this Jake kid just wasn’t going to put out. Otherwise, you would’ve been all over him.”

  “I’m tired of kids,” Randall sniffed, aiming the straw of his mocha freeze at his lips. “All week long my practice is full of them. Screaming, bratty kids who don’t want me poking in their mouths. I don’t need that when I date as well.” He paused for emphasis. “I want a man.”

  He’d been saying exactly that for as long as I’d known him, and that was a long time. Boys had never served Randall well, starting with me. Ike was thirty-one, and since Randall was ten years older, I supposed he still counted as a boy.

  “He was cute, though. I’ll give him that,” Randall said, day-dreamy.

  “Jake, you mean,” I clarified.

  Randall nodded. “You saw him, Danny. Didn’t you think so?”

  Randall seemed to have conveniently forgotten his idea that Jake had been cruising me last night, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up now. I just shrugged. “He was all right, I guess. I don’t usually go for blonds.”

  Randall nodded. “That’s because you’re blond. We always want what we aren’t. What we don’t have.”

  We were silent on that, sipping our iced drinks in the sun, seeming to ruminate on the wisdom of his words, or maybe their absurdity. My eyes wandered over to the boys under the tree. They were goofing around, tickling each other. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “I think I know Thad Urquhart,” Frank said after a bit, stroking the bristles on his chin. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and I noticed how very white his whiskers looked in the sunlight. “The name is very familiar.”

  “He’s a big real estate guy,” Randall said. “You should see his house. Gorgeous! Right at the foot of the mountain in Las Palmas. He’s on the city council, too. A real mover and shaker in town.”

  The Palm Springs City Council was almost entirely gay, and the mayor was gay, too. The latest estimate was that 60 percent of the population was homo. Anecdotal evidence suggested it could even be higher than that. You couldn’t go to a restaurant anywhere in town without seeing several tables full of queens, and sometimes a scattering of dykes. I remembered when Randall and I, all those years ago, had celebrated West Hollywood’s independence. A city all our own, we’d declared. Now it was almost commonplace. Palm Springs was even gayer than WeHo now, it seemed.

  “Anyway,” Randall was saying, “Thad and Jimmy are giving a party next weekend, and I want you guys to come with me.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You’re coming back to the desert again next weekend?”

  Randall smiled. “If it’s okay with you guys.”

  “Of course, Randall,” Frank said. “You know you’re always welcome.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, smiling over at my husband. “I might be getting a little tired of all his whoring around.”

  “Listen, Danny, I’m only coming back for you,” said Randall.

  “Me?”

  “When I told Thad who you were, he was dying to meet you. He’s a fan of your work.” Randall smiled. “I told him a couple of your prints would look simply marvelous over his dining-room table. And this guy has the moola to pay you whatever you want.”

  “I suppose he’s in with the whole Donovan and Penelope Sue crowd,” I said.

  Randall nodded. “He mentioned their names a couple of times.”

  “All the big fags here do. If Donovan and Penelope Sue Hunt have accepted you, you’ve arrived,” I noted.

  Palm Springs, for all its charms, was the proverbial little pond with lots of big fish. The elite was made up of people who spent their time raising money for charities and then giving themselves awards for doing so. The desert’s charities were flush with cash, and that was a wonderful thing—except that sometimes all the self-congratulation became a little wearying. Every season there were more than a dozen black-tie award ceremonies, where the elite rose in unison for one long standing ovation after another. Since moving to Palm Springs, I’d discovered just how much rich people liked to cheer for themselves.

  And sometimes they were very rich, like Donovan and Penelope Sue Hunt. Penelope Sue was Texas oil money, and her first husband had been head of Columbia or Sony, or something like that. She’d gotten a lot of money—and I mean a lot—in the settlement. Donovan had his own money, too, mostly family money, but he’d made quite a bit producing some big blockbusters in the late 1980s, lots of whiz-bang action flicks starring Bruce Willis or Chuck Norris, before turning over a new leaf about ten years ago and funding only serious independent pictures.

  Most of the money in Palm Springs came from entertainment-related fields, or else it came from real estate. There was very little old money in Palm Springs. Donovan Hunt, with his connections back East, was a rare exception. Most of the movers and shakers here had come from L.A. or San Francisco, where they’d decided at some point that the big ponds there were too crowded with too many other big fish, and so they’d leapt over to a smaller pond, where they’d have more room to swim. And to raise money. And to receive standing ovations. Except in this case the pond was actually a desert, and the desert was built on the scurrying backs of desert rats, like Frank, who had never received a standing ovation, except for the time he was named Teacher of the Year back in Inglewood about fifteen years earlier.

  Frank was born here—well, not here, not in Palm Springs, but in Beaumont, a working-class town thirty miles to the west on the 10. His father had owned a small apple
orchard in the 1940s, back in the day when Beaumont was called “the land of the big red apple” because of its orchard industry. But then, during the cold war, Lockheed had opened a rocket test site just to the south of the town, spilling toxic chemicals into local streams, which Frank’s father believed eventually destroyed his orchard. One year the trees simply failed to produce fruit; the next year they were all dead. Frank’s father had to declare bankruptcy. There were no charity fund-raisers to help Frank and his family.

  So they moved to Los Angeles, where Frank’s dad got a job at a factory and saved enough money to send Frank to Cal State L.A., where he got his bachelor’s as an English teacher. When I met him, he was teaching at a high school in Inglewood. Ten years later, after getting his master’s, he accepted his current job at the College of the Desert, because he had vowed to himself on the day his family had packed up and left their orchard in Beaumont that someday he’d return to the area. And Frank Wilson was a man who took his vows seriously.

  I looked over at him, his face lit by the sun, the mountains reflected in his sunglasses. How he loved it here. When Frank was a boy, his father used to take him out of the cool orchard valley and drive along the dusty road into Palm Springs (Interstate 10 had yet to be built). They’d cheer on the sports car races along the airport tarmac, gravel flying every which way, and then they’d head over to the Saddle and Sirloin for hamburgers, keeping an eye out for Frank Sinatra or Bob Hope or Gene Autry. As a boy, Frank had thought Palm Springs was the most glamorous spot on the planet. “I’d look up at those mountains,” he told me, “and in my mind’s eye, I’d see Indians hiding behind the rocks, popping up now and then to shoot their arrows, and posses of cowboys riding in across the valley.”

  My eyes followed the uneven crest of the mountain range in front of me, the subtle transition from brown to purple to gold to blue. The ridges and the canyons, the granite outcrops suddenly jutting into the sky, the serpentine trails worn down by generations of men and coyotes and bighorn sheep. In two thousand years these mountains had never changed. They still looked the same as they had when Frank had come here as a boy, omniscient and indestructible. They still offered the same awesome views once marveled over by pioneers in covered wagons and Elizabeth Taylor in a Cadillac convertible. It was the city around them that had become different. The old dusty roads and the arid valleys studded with cacti and red ocotillo had been replaced with three-lane highways and Fatburger drive-ins, marble mansions and golf courses, man-made lakes and rainbow-hued gay bars. Yet those sturdy granite sentinels enclosing the valley seemed to temper the excess, to contain the ostentation, like stone-faced colossi charged with keeping the peace.