Glamourpuss

by Christian McLaughlin

  ​“Oh, my goodness, don’t get me started on movies,” Pat said. “The pornography they’re passing off as ‘art.’ It’s disgraceful.” I wondered if Pat was talking about Teenage Brides of Christ. No way he’d seen it as many times as Juliana (“zillions” she’d admitted in one of her early fan letters).

  ​“We’re very concerned about the state of today’s movies, Pat,” Eunice said. “But we feel it’s a losing battle. I mean, when they nominate a transvestite for the Academy Award, Christian values are obviously not a Hollywood priority.” The Crying Game… really? Still? Zzzzzz. “We’re concentrating on TV because we think the viewers have a much better chance of controlling it.”

  ​“It’s so important to stay focused,” Pat concurred. “And it was one daytime soap that started all this for you?”

  “Yes. Hearts Crossing.” Eunice attempted to smile and simultaneously purse her lips in a dainty display of disgust.

  ​“It has homosexuality, voyeurism, rape, promiscuous sex, bondage. Practically every perversion you can think of,” Juliana added. Speak for yourself, girlfriend. But I was a little in awe of the vocabulary she’d mustered for this national TV debut I was 100 percent directly responsible for. I thought I’d hallucinated what Pat said next:

  ​“We’ve got a clip from this soap opera, and I think you all at home who don’t watch daytime TV will be unpleasantly surprised how graphic this is.” They cut to a scene of me cuddling my ex-lover Frederic into a false sense of security before whacking him in the head with a candlestick and locking him in a cage in a secret corner of my loft. How the hell had this hate-fest gotten permission to use that? Network PR really had their heads up their asses. Or maybe they were so press-hungry no request was refused — their “Courtesy Of” chyron-credit ran over the entire scene.

  ​“Don’t be so gloomy, Freddy,” I snipped at the unconscious, undies-clad prettyman. “You used to love this sort of thing.”

  ​Cut back to Juliana, Eunice and Pat shaking heads in three-part harmony. “To think any child home sick from school could see this,” Eunice lamented.

  ​“Ladies, what can we do to get this garbage off our airwaves?”

  ​“It’s very simple, Pat,” insisted Eunice.

  ​“But everyone needs to do their part,” Juliana said.

  ​“Exercise your right and your voice,” Eunice continued, “and send letters to the network saying you don’t approve of this type of program. And write the sponsors and tell them you won’t be consuming their products so long as they pump money into ads on these trashy shows.” Her jowls rippled as she became more adamant.

  ​“In a second we’re going to put our toll-free number on the screen,” Pat said, “and we’d like you to all call in if you’re interested in joining Clean Airwaves in their fight for decent family television. We’ll take your name and address and send you an information kit, won’t we, Julie Ann?”

  ​“Yes, sir,” Juliana chirped. I watched her for some sign of annoyance at Pat’s continued mangling of her name. “What’s in the kit is a list of the worst shows and their sponsors, and all the network addresses, and some tips on how to start your own Clean Airwaves chapter from your home or church.”

  ​“While we flash that phone number on the screen, you ladies please join me in a prayer, won’t you?” They bowed their heads. I clutched mine, biting back a scream. “Oh, Lord, please be with us and help these good Christian women in their mission to make…”

  ​My phone rang. “Hello?”

  ​“Oh. My. Christ.” It was Sara. “I hope you’re taping this.” I wasn’t. I’d been too gobsmacked to hit Record. Damn it.

  ​“I’m not.”

  ​“Okay, I’ll copy mine and send one to you to treasure always. Those lying twats. You don’t know how bad I want to expose them,” she seethed.

  ​“What’s to expose? Ignorant bitchiness? They’re not exactly keeping that a secret.”

  ​“There’s gotta be something,” Sara said. “Parking violations, incest, dancing on Sunday. I bet Eunice has a giant vibrating dildo with Julio Iglesias’s picture taped to the shaft. If I could just get twenty minutes alone in their house…”

  ​“Don’t break in. It’s not worth it.”

  ​She growled. “Okay. But I’m going to call that toll-free number and let them have it. Nate, hand me a pen. Nate says hi. When are you coming back here?”

  ​“Probably after I get fired.”

  ​“Stop it. You’re the only interesting thing on daytime TV and everybody knows it.”

  ​“Soaps weren't meant to be this controversial. I feel like I’m on a toboggan ride that’s gonna end in this icy chasm of death.”

  ​“Just hang on. Love you.”

  ​Not everyone hated Simon’s shenanigans. Some even admitted it publicly. Barry Walters wrote a terrific piece called “Simon Sez Chill the Hell Out: Hearts Crossing Is Fucking Fagnificent!” describing me as “angelically handsome” and “wonderfully expressive” and declaring my every episode unmissable — “campy nonsense, to be sure” that nonetheless brought an unapologetic homosexual into millions of households daily and thus paved the way for an openness previously impossible on soaps. The Advocate ran it opposite a statement from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force condemning the show. I always liked that Barry.

  ​Tommie the makeup man brought in an issue of Spunk to show me an ad for Revolver, a video bar in deep West Hollywood. Wednesdays were Hearts Crossing Night — “your favorite soap from Ten to Two — with Simon Specials (dollar well drinks) all evening!” I wondered if this was happening in other cities across the country, and if a grad student would investigate and write a thesis. This was about the same time the first bootleg t-shirts started appearing on Melrose and Santa Monica Boulevards featuring a crudely screened but cute photo of me, the words “Simon Says,” then one of a variety of queer slogans. I wasn’t able to get my hands on one for the longest time, then two different fans mailed a couple to me right after I stopped a guy wearing one outside Marix Tex-Mex and offered him fifty bucks for his shirt. He was ecstatic to meet me and stripped it off immediately, refusing payment, then dragged me into the restaurant topless and made me drink margaritas with his friends until I shoved two twenties and a ten into his shorts pockets and escaped.

  ​As Dino & Muffin’s debut drew closer, I was only too happy to let the flood of media attention for it overshadow my own infamy. Trevor almost wrecked his car upon first sighting a billboard on Sunset Boulevard featuring his pecs and other cast members in a splashy saccharine ad for the show. Then it was off to New York for Live With Regis & Kathie Lee, where the whole gang trotted out precious clips and hawked the big premiere party at the UCLA Sigma Chi house, to be hosted by Duff on MTV after the sitcom aired.

  ​I picked up Trevor from the airport when he got back from New York. We were discussing the MTV shindig and how funny it’d be if “Muffin” somehow got blitzed on trashcan punch and ended up in a three-way with the Olsen Twins from Full House, when Trevor said out of the clear blue, “I don’t think I can bring anybody with me to the frat party. You don’t mind, do you?”

  ​Yes, I did, actually. Had I been presumptuous in assuming that my boyfriend (who “loved” me) would want me around to celebrate the series-launch that could very well make him a star? Did he think I would embarrass him with some tacky display of public affection in front of MTV? Moreover: No guests at a premiere party? Did he think I just fell off a turnip truck? And if the producers were cheaping out and somehow had made this rule, I was hardly just anybody. I was Alexander Young, dammit! the diva in me screeched. In all seriousness, I was hurt, but didn’t argue. I just shrugged, said “That’s fine” fairly convincingly, then turned up the Utah Saints on CD maxi-single to subtly discourage further conversation ‘til we got home.

  ​It was past midnight and Trevor had an 8:00 a.m. photo shoot for Sassy the next morning so went directly to bed. He was asleep in minutes. This wasn’t the way things
were supposed to work out for me — dicked around by my show, a joke in the national press and now lying awake in my bed miserable because Trevor Renado was treating me like shit. It was time to regain control of my life. Frequent hot sex with a witty, great-smelling hunk wasn’t worth feeling like this. I studied him in the darkness for a few minutes, just to be sure. He’d brought me back a present from New York — gargoyle candle-holders from a curio shop in the East Village. He said their names were Hecate and Jecate. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt about the launch party — for now.

  ✽✽✽

  He was dead meat. I’d sequestered myself in my dressing room after hair and makeup and called the Dino & Muffin production office. Pretending to be Trevor carried minimal risk. He was at Griffith Park, charming some Sassy photojournalist who’d most likely graduated from Sarah Lawrence about a week ago.

  ​Me: “Uh, hi. This is Trevor Renado.”

  ​Bubbly P.A. Gal: “Hey, Trevor!”

  ​Me: “Who’s this?”

  ​BPAG: “Siobhan, silly! What’s up, dude? You’ll be there tomorrow night, won’t you?”

  ​Me: “Yeah, actually that’s what I’m calling about. Am I allowed to bring anybody?”

  ​BPAG: “God, yes! Didn’t you get Andy’s memo? They want to rock the roof off that place. Just let me know by tomorrow morning so I can put them on the list.”

  ​Me: “Okay. Great. Bye.”

  ​Okay. Great. Bye.

  ​The live MTV broadcast was scheduled from five-thirty to ten Pacific time to encompass Dino & Muffin’s premieres across the nation’s time zones. (It was of course an eight o’clock show.) Trevor would be leaving for Westwood around 4:00 p.m. I guessed, but I waited until rush hour was over to drive to his apartment with a flight bag and a brief handwritten note.

  ​As I went through the bedroom gathering my clothes, I tried to feel angry. He’s a selfish, arrogant creep, I reminded myself, scooping up A Confederacy of Dunces, Boys On the Rock, Myra Breckinridge and Requiem For A Dream — favorite books I’d loaned him that he’d never cracked — shoving them in my bag along with a dozen CD’s I’d anally kept on a separate shelf from his collection. Goddamn him, I paid for that Absolut Citron, I sneered, adding the vodka bottle, purchased in honor of some little career victory of his, to my personal effects. I didn’t start to cry ‘til I hit the bathroom and plucked my toothbrush from the silver holder next to the sink. I sat on the edge of the tub, with one hand gripping my tangerine-grapefruit shower gel, the other roughly flinging away tears wept for the torrid embraces we’d shared and never would again under the hot pounding Adjustable Rotating Waterpik spray. I salvaged a few more items then went down to get the parking pass from my rearview mirror, placing it and the key atop the letter I’d agonized over for hours the previous evening, eventually boiling down two pages of psychodrama to this:

  ​Trevor, I’m sorry this is in note form, but we’ve never been able to talk about how my situation affects you and our relationship. In a word, fatally. And I can see no short- or long-term future with someone so uncomfortable with major aspects of my life. I do care for you, but with things as they are, I’m better off alone. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll know you agree with me. Alex

  ​Leaving him the option of contacting me weakened the whole self-actualizing vibe, but I was too much of a romantic to utterly banish the notion of an enlightened Trevor crawling to me for forgiveness, big dark-hazel eyes wet with tears of repentance. From there I went to the gym and did my Tuesday and Wednesday workouts combined. With every major muscle group pumped and aching, I trudged to the third floor to Stairmaster those endorphins to record-breaking heights. Twin TV monitors displayed a crowd of kids shakin’ it to “Deeper and Deeper.” The song ended and Duff popped into frame. “Someone just spilled something all over me!” she squealed. “Was it you, Trevor?!”

  ​Angle on Trevor Renado, unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, two-count-’em-two bimbettes hanging off him. “I’m not the one who made you all wet!” Trevor naughtily retorted. All three girls shrieked with laughter.

  ​“Mind if I change the channel?” I asked my sole co-aerobiciser, a bottom-heavy blonde on a stationary bike. Being over 14, she didn’t. I switched over to Sex Symbols on VH-1 playing “Addicted To Love” for the 12,000th time. I slipped on my Discman headphones and fired up Bananarama’s Greatest Hits (import version featuring “Help!”). This was one of Trevor’s faves, but he’d never gotten around to copying it for himself. Tough shit. I cardio’d until I could barely walk downstairs.

  ​I thought about the last time I’d talked to Nick. How could I have hung up on him? He’d been right here and wanted to see me. What if he hadn’t had any choice about Barney coming with him? Dogface was obviously hellbent on hooking up again with Trevor, aka Randy Northcutt — that must’ve been an enormous motivational factor. (It was weird, but my bitterness toward Barney had mutated into something disturbingly akin to sympathy. How could I feel anything but sorry for someone who had what he had — brains, a practical degree, Nick — and still was unable to put a life together? That was profoundly sadder than a dozen failed romances. Well, two, anyway.) Whatever the circumstances, it’d probably been my final chance to hold Nick.

  ✽✽✽

  I was scurrying down the studio corridor wearing a suit, which I hated doing almost as much as 40 pages of trial scenes, the most boring soap opera component (with the possible exception of weddings and baptisms) and the most hellish to tape, wherein talented contract players like myself sit around a courtroom set like goddamn extras all day, intently focusing on some vital, snail-paced legal proceeding, in this case Sean Nortonsen’s trial for Cyrinda’s attempted murder, and in my case, getting paid around $465 per tiresome reaction close-up.

  ​I postponed my between-scenes trip to the commissary long enough to stop and read a pink poster tacked up on the glassed-in bulletin board next to the men’s room. “Annual Fan Club Gala,” a headline in calligraphy trumpeted. I’d forgotten all about this, but there was my name at the bottom of the list of actors who’d agreed to attend the banquet two Saturdays from now. I couldn’t believe the club was too cheap to spring for the Mondrian or Hollywood Roosevelt, and was throwing the star-studded luncheon at a Woodland Hills Holiday Inn.

  ​I’d wanted to carpool with Allison, but she and Ivan were spending the Thursday and Friday before the Gala in Santa Barbara and would be driving back down Saturday morning. So I met her in the makeshift green room along with 19 other series regulars and recurring actors, including such obvious filler as Rutherford Blake’s nosy secretary who appeared about once per month, and a lifeguard from last summer who wasn’t especially hot or memorable but was, more importantly, exec producer Linda Rabiner’s nephew. Imagine the chagrin of the fans assigned to those tables. Imagine the chagrin of the cast when we discovered there was assigned seating. Twelve fans and two actors at each table — I was at Number Five with Nori Ann Marshall, who I liked but would probably be unable to speak to because we’d be separated on either side by six soap addicts.

  ​Linda Rabiner, looking severe in a Satan-red tailored number, popped out to formally introduce the fan club president, Naylene, a frosted-tipped Tustin control-freak who’d already made Allison’s shitlist with her reaction to Ivan’s unscheduled presence. “We can squeeze another chair in, can’t we?” Allie had asked pleasantly.

  ​“Well, I — I wish I’d known he was coming,” Naylene replied.

  ​“We’re on our way back from a little second honeymoon in Santa Barbara, aren’t we, honey?” Allison asked Ivan, struggling, I could see, to keep her Irish-American temper in check. Her husband, a quiet but mischief-prone illustrator of fantasy and sci-fi comics and graphic novels, nodded, giving Naylene a quick, lascivious and aptly cartoonish “You better believe it” look of glee which accomplished its twin missions of amusing us and unnerving the shit out of President Nay-Nay.

  ​“It’s probably too late to put in an extra lunch order,” she
fretted.

  ​“He can share mine,” Allie said.

  ​“I guess that’ll be fine… I just wish people would let me know what’s going on before it’s all organized,” semi-huffed Naylene, already walking away to alert the kitchen.

  ​Allison, in a voice slightly louder than normal, said, “Thanks! I appreciate your consideration. It’s not like the fans are here to see me or anything.” Naylene spun around on one wedged heel, a delightful expression on her surgically tightened tan face… half-blank, one-quarter appalled, one-quarter mortified. Allison had since moved over to a cluster of cast members including me and refused to pay Naylene further attention, but rolled her eyes for our benefit, mouthing the words “fucking bitch” and eliciting a sexy laugh from her tablemate Cary Rietta. A week before, Allie had confided to me she’d had an erotic dream about the scrumptious, dewy-eyed 20-year-old dish. Considering how he looked now — open black jacket over scoop tank top, tight-jeaned bubble butt — it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  ​Our collective entrance into the dining area had been choreographed, by Naylene presumably, for maximum tackiness. After a fatuous Linda Rabiner opening address, the Hearts Crossing announcer called us out two-by-two. Nori and I joined hands and proceeded to our table amid wild applause. Fan club ushers retracted our chairs for us. On our plates were name tags identifying us and our characters. Mine had been printed in fluorescent pink marker. I smiled, said hi to the fans seated next to me, and slowly affixed the name tag, scanning the others to see if I was the only one with pink. Looked like it. I was momentarily distracted by the table’s centerpiece… the show’s logo, hideously sculpted in ice.