Glamourpuss

by Christian McLaughlin

  ​“We needed to be alone,” he said, moving between me and the door. “So I followed you. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Alex?”

  ​“No. It’s not what I wanted. I want you to leave… okay? Right now.” My entire upper body felt clenched in a vise, and I had to struggle to keep my voice from squeaking into a higher register.

  ​He shook his head and began unbuttoning his shirt. He tossed it over his shoulder and started toward me. He was slender but corded with muscle, hairless except for one dark triangle at the center of his chest. A large silver ornament dangled from one of his nipples, which were almost black and the size of heavy-duty pencil-erasers. I debated lunging across the room for the phone, but what if he had a knife? Instead I bolted deeper into the apartment and locked myself in the bathroom.

  ​And immediately felt like an idiot. He was alone in my house. If he touches one goddamn thing, I’ll kill him, I growled to myself, enraged. I shoved the window up all the way — too small to escape through. “Alex, come out here.” He rapped on the door. Eat shit. “I need you,” he said. That didn't sound too menacing.

  ​I heard operetta from downstairs. The Mikado. Which meant my neighbor was home. I yelled out for help and got no response. I did it again. Did the music just get louder?! All right, I’d had it. I pulled my head back in then scoured the room for some type of improvisational weapon. The best I could come up with was a large glass mouthwash bottle. I pressed my ear up to the door. Nothing but goddamn Gilbert & Sullivan. I felt surprisingly calm, considering my actions in the next few minutes could determine whether I lived to deny this story to Janet Charlton.

  ​“Raymond?” I called through the door. “Raymond, are you there?” As noiselessly as possible, I unlocked the door, then stood back against the tub, ice-blue Listerine sloshing around inside my sole defense against the rampaging Astaroth. When nothing ghastly occurred, I leaned forward and twisted the knob then simultaneously threw the door open and splayed myself back against the bathtub, bottle held high. No slavering death charge. Maybe he’d become embarrassed and left. I sure as fuck would have. I crept to the open door and put my hand back on the knob, ready to slam it behind me if Ray was lying in wait. I looked to my right — the hall was clear. Gripping the Listerine tighter, I stepped out of the bathroom and peeked left. Clear access from there to my open bedroom door. But I decided the wisest plan was to get the hell out of Dodge and strode rapidly in the direction of my front door.

  ​Ray Lanville scared the shit out of me for the third time that day by being in the living room, stark naked except for his Docs, anointing his reptilian body with patchouli oil with one hand and whacking off with the other. He hadn’t been kidding about that endowment. It was at least 11 inches long, and even more shockingly had a major silver gypsy hoop through the pierced glans. What the cross-dressing Christ did he expect me to do with THAT?! I wondered crazily, pausing for only a second to behold the tableau before continuing to the door. “Get on the couch, Alex,” he commanded. My hand shook as I turned the knob. Locked. Becoming a tad more frantic, I undid all three locks and opened the door. Home free! my mind gasped prematurely, seconds before Ray tackled me from behind.

  ​“Goddammit!” I screamed. He seized me by the arms and pitched me back into the living room then slammed the door shut. The mouthwash bottle had rolled into the corner next to my baker’s rack, and I crawled like a toddler, trying to retrieve it. Ray leaped on top of me and we wrestled on the floor.

  ​“Submit! Submit!” he kept hissing.

  ​“Fuck off, you sick son of a bitch!” I replied, yelling and pounding on the floor with my hands and feet, trying to alert my neighbor. It was practically impossible for my fingers to gain purchase of Ray’s greasy flesh and he quickly had me on my stomach, my right arm twisted painfully behind my back.

  ​“Don’t move,” he said, his tone unnervingly bland. He reached under me to try to open my pants but decided ripping the buttons off my new Geoffrey Beene shirt would be more rewarding. His hand was like a slippery bald tarantula scampering across my chest. He tweaked my nipple and thrust all that against my ass. Oh, hell, no… I brought my foot up as violently as possible and kicked him in his lower back. He screamed and catapulted forward, over my head, releasing my arm. I put both hands around his neck and rose to my feet while choking him.

  ​“Asshole!” I growled, then commenced screaming for help. Raymond’s lithe appearance belied a formidable strength, though, and he regained his feet despite my strangulation attempt, which he probably considered foreplay since he was more erect than ever. The point is — I was completely unprepared for the severe pinch he administered to the side of my neck, dropping me to my knees, a vital conjunction of nerves in agony.

  ​“It doesn’t have to be like this, Alex,” Ray said. My head was level with his crotch and sure enough his lust was as inflamed as ever — monster prick standing at an ultra-tumescent acute angle. He splayed his left hand on my scalp and proceeded to wallop me in the face with his dick. And it hurt! Especially when his penis-ring flicked into my eye. “You will swallow the staff,” he barked, no Trevor when it came to pillow talk. I considered swallowing then biting the staff right off, but instead assumed the most glazed expression possible, then sucker-socked Ray in his flat olive-hued stomach. He doubled over, then hit the deck with the aid of a good shove, and it was WWF time again. Having just gotten up close and personal with his phallus gave me an idea, however, and I reached down, inserted my index finger in the silver hoop… and yanked. Ray shrieked, slapping at me.

  ​I was peripherally aware of my door being thrown open. “Omigod! Alex, are you alright?!” Before I could assure my neighbor that no, clearly I was not — he and a new, very in-shape Asian were pulling Ray and me apart.

  ​“Don’t let that skinny shit get away!” I exclaimed. Ray and I were both on our feet, he in a defensive stance, a caged animal, eyes wildly darting around the room. “The staff” had deflated but still retained considerable girth and length. “He followed me here and attacked me,” I added, suddenly concerned my rescuers might perceive Ray as a trick-gone-bad I’d invited home.

  ​My neighbor, whose silk kimono clashed horrendously with the lime-green/neon-orange workout micro-shorts his boyfriend du jour had managed to pull on before they came up, placed his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to call the cops,” he whispered. I gestured spasmodically in the direction of the phone, my eyes riveted on Ray, who suddenly rushed the Asian. A martial arts mini-battle ensued, with my neighbor’s buddy the only artist, supplementing his quick, no-bullshit moves with foreign-language war cries. THWAK! Ray was buffeted against the sofa, which I would have to have steam-cleaned immediately. CHOP! The Asian sent Astaroth to the floor face-down and pinned him like a rare, horny butterfly. I was stunned at the drama of real life.

  ​My neighbor hung up the phone. “The police are en route. Are you both okay?”

  ​“I’m fine,” I said, scrabbling for dignity.

  ​“And you, Run Run?” The Asian nodded. “Do you have him… under control?”

  ​“He not going anywhere,” Run Run said.

  ​“I’m sure I’ve got a pair of handcuffs — someplace. I’ll be back.” My neighbor ran out.

  ​It was semi-awkward. “Thanks a lot,” I began.

  ​“No problem. TV star, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m on Hearts Crossing. Sometimes it’s dangerous for my health.”

  ​“Oh, Hearts Crossing! Very pretty show.” Under Run Run, Ray stirred. Had he been knocked out? He mumbled something. “Quiet!” Run Run ordered, applying some Oriental pressure technique that made Ray yelp.

  ​Before my neighbor could return, the LAPD was already there. A George Kennedy-type heard my story, told Ray to get dressed, made fun of his piercings and manacled him. Then his partner appeared, after surveying the building for any possible lurking coven member accomplices, and I was instantly bewitched. Officer Carvajal was like the Cabo San Lucas Chippendales
version of a cop. He confiscated Ray’s wallet and called in his stats. We soon discovered Astaroth had a very unmystical assortment of unpaid parking tickets, including the fresh one he’d received during the shenanigans chez moi. This was good because the upshot was the cops dragging Ray’s nutty ass to jail even though I didn’t want to press charges. I wasn’t sure if a stalking law would apply, since the true campaign of terror had been confined to one afternoon. Also, re-testifying the absurd details of my attempted molestation held zero appeal. And since I hadn’t been harmed, Ray would inevitably be released to roam the streets, harboring a richly brewed resentment of me that could only lead to tragedy. And more of his fan-art.

  ​I contented myself with a simple “Stay the hell away from me” in my most threatening Simon voice as George Kennedy marched Raymond out. I stopped Carvajal before he followed. “I don’t have any real idea how these things work,” I said, “but I’d love and appreciate it if this whole incident could be kept out of the press.”

  ​He smiled adorably and put his arm around me. “I’ll do what I can. But you shouldn’t have to worry.”

  ​“Thank you… really.” I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be alone tonight. What time are you off-duty and how do you like your eggs?

  ​“Great meeting you, Alexander,” he said. “I’m kind of a fan, too.”

  ​WhatWHATWHAT?!?

  ​“I need more fans like you, Officer,” I actually replied before he split. I barely had 15 seconds to bask in his glow when my neighbor was back at my door, insisting I join him and Run Run for dinner. I accepted, not wanting to seem ungrateful. Although it would’ve been much easier if I could’ve just called the escort service with my credit card and paid my neighbor’s bill for the night myself, making certain of course to include a large tip for Run Run.

  ​Luckily I still had the Hard Copy segment on Clean Airwaves to look forward to. And it was quite a keeper. A swirling montage of titillating and/or “perverted” soap opera clips, Eunice Butts getting out of her Chevy Celebrity and waddling into her French provincial tract home in San Antonio’s Royal Ridge subdivision, where Juliana was overseeing a staff of volunteer knuckleheads stuffing hundreds of envelopes. Then a surprise appearance by our exec producer Linda Rabiner, tersely defending the show’s content and offering, when the perceptive reporter brought up (and the graphics department helpfully superimposed) my tabloid kiss: “We don’t write our characters and storylines to reflect actors’ personal lives. Period.” Quick cut to me faux-Frenching Brent. Perceptive Reporter: “Alexander Young, the openly gay actor who plays the seductively diabolical Simon Arable declined to comment.” This was insane. The next day I got my agent on the phone.

  ​“It’s time to break the conspiracy of silence, Connie. I seem like a pissy little hemorrhoid.”

  ​“So what do you wanna do?”

  ​“Talk to somebody while anyone’s still interested. Who’s asked to interview me lately?”

  ​“Interview.”

  ​“Yeah, you know… talk to a magazine? Get a little photo action going?”

  ​“Smartass. Interview magazine, honey. It’s big in New York. Here, too. Actually, it’s huge. I can’t fit the damn things under my coffee table. Drives me batshit. Anyway, they called last week and I gave them the standard spiel. But I’ll call tomorrow and say you’re game. That’s game, with an M.”

  ​“Cool… you think it’s a mistake?”

  ​A few seconds later: “Nah. What the fuck. At this point, it can’t hurt. Be nice, though.”

  ​“I always am…”

  ​“I know, doll.”

  ​A few Trevorless days later I had lunch with a hyperactive boy-writer who Interview-ed me at Butterfield’s restaurant then accompanied me up to Fatty Arbuckle’s nearby ex-mansion for an outdoor photo shoot. (Because Arbuckle was an innocent, fun-loving, popular actor whose career had been unjustly rocked by trumped-up scandal — not because I looked fat.)

  ​I was nice. I was funny, clever, snappy about Simon and Hearts Crossing while not trashing it, remaining benevolent, warm and approachable. And by the time the issue hit the stands, I was also off the show.

  ✽✽✽

  ​I knew something was very wrong when Jerry Reynolds called me the following Sunday night and asked me to meet him in an hour in Marina del Rey. He would give me no details, and his light, friendly tone showed signs of disintegrating into quavering kvetchiness when I didn’t commit right away, so I had no choice but to jump into freshly pressed jeans and valet park at The Red Onion, a sub-yup dockside disco/nightmare straight out of a Sandra Bernhard performance piece. The ex-frat boy at the door looked me over and said, “You do know it’s Grateful Dead night,” as if I might’ve mistaken the raucous cover of “Bertha” emanating from some unseen live band in the depths of the club for a Bronski Beat megamix.

  ​“That’s fine,” I replied. “Is there a cover?” There better not be.

  ​“Five bucks. But you get five drink tickets,” he added brightly.

  ​I forked over the cash and went in. The place was full of tie-dye, Day-Glo bears, macrame vests, granny glasses, and flabby ex-hippies’ asses swinging on the dance floor or clustered around a buffet layout. I wandered through the crowd and found Jerry hunched over a table in the corner, slurping down the last of some slushy red concoction. I took a seat.

  ​“Hi, Alex,” he said, myopically fumbling for his glasses.

  ​“Hi. So… what’s going on? Are you a Deadhead?” I was leaning in close but still had to yell. He smelled like rum.

  ​“Oh, no! I just wanted to meet somewhere no one would recognize us.” I would’ve preferred Chuck E Cheese. “Would you like a drink?”

  ​I displayed my chain of school-carnival paper tickets just as our waitress appeared. I ordered a margarita. “Another strawberry daiquiri, please,” Jerry requested. “And five more tickets.”

  ​He’d already had four drinks? How much did a 120-pound man (six feet tall or not) need to get plastered? My eyes fell onto his doll-size buffet plate with an assortment of congealing attempts at Mexican. “Have a flauta,” Jerry suggested, pushing the plate toward me with a bony finger. To make him feel more at ease, I did, then felt it burn through my digestive tract for the remainder of the evening.

  ​“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to meet me,” he began. I nodded mildly. “I’ve been sick the whole weekend trying to decide if I should do this, but I think you’ve got a right to know.”

  ​“Know what?” Anyone could tell this was going to be really bad.

  ​“They’re killing you off, Alex. In three weeks you’ll be dead. And the worst part is they weren’t even going to tell you before you saw the script.”

  Our drinks came and Jerry downed his in two gulps. I felt as if I’d been told I had to have something amputated. The show had been the skeleton supporting my entire life. Money, confidence, legitimacy — whatever crap I’d had to wade through, onscreen or off, the soap had given me these things without fail for almost a year. “TV Regular” was a vital component of my self-conception. Without it, what was I but another scared, helpless actor whose most recent credit would probably do him a lot more harm than good, resume-wise? How am I going to get another job? I moaned to myself, while Mini-Kyle Chandler’s voice kept repeating from within like a novena: “You have enough saved to last over a year. Thank goodness you didn’t buy that $30,000 car.”

  ​All I could get out was, “Why?”

  ​“It’s gone too far,” Jerry said miserably. “We lost two sponsors on Thursday. The network daytime people panicked and Linda and Reese agreed with them. Of course…”

  ​“Because of Clean Airwaves? And those boycott threats?”

  ​“They didn’t say that specifically, but I have a feeling…” Jerry was eyeing my drink from which I’d only taken one sip — it tasted like lime Za-Rex. In a word, noxious. “They’ve been getting a lot of pressure from GLAAD and the gay rights people, too.�
� At least those poison-pen letters were probably grammatically correct, I thought. “It’s not a bad storyline, is it, Alex? It’s not hateful?!” He was crying. And signaling for another drink.

  ​“Jerry, it’s a wild plotline. On a soap opera. But I don’t think…” Why was I reassuring him?

  ​“Alex, they’re firing me! Not renewing my contract. The network’s blaming me for this whole mess. Linda had final approval over the Simon story — I just wrote most of it. They think I ruined the show…” Now he was sobbing. He wrenched his glasses off and dabbed his tears with one-ply cocktail napkins.

  ​“Is everything okay?” the waitress asked, plunking down another surely-as-noxious daiquiri.

  ​“Death in the family,” I explained. She scampered off, mortified. Seventies concert extras silently swayed on a projection television playing The Grateful Dead Film. Jerry tried to drink the daiquiri, but I put my hand on his shoulder and he set the glass down. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. He had minor difficulty standing, but we managed to make it through the door. I spoke Spanish to the parking guys, tipping them, and they said it was okay for Jerry’s Volvo to spend the night. We got in my car and he drunkenly mumbled directions to his nearby condo.

  ​We went in and he tottered over to his office area and fell into the director’s chair in front of his computer, a knobby heap. I suppressed a gasp, realizing the horrible significance of what had happened to him. The entire room was a shrine to Hearts Crossing. A framed poster-size current cast photo was surrounded by dozens of smaller mementos — magazine clippings, pictures of Jerry with a galaxy of daytime stars (me included), plaques, a framed Search For Tomorrow script cover that bore his name at the bottom of the Written By list (was that his first soap credit?). I wondered if those shits at the network had ever seen this room. I wondered if anybody had.