DIRTY / MOVIES
“Well, I don’t see what the problem is with me.”
“I didn’t say there was a problem—”
“Tom,” Chris interrupted Fenn. “Fenn says there’s a problem with me. He says he doesn’t like my acting style.”
They were sitting on the old stage of the Lighthouse Theatre, doing a read through of Twelve Angry Men, and Fenn Houghton really needed a cigarette break.
Tom Mesda smiled and playing with his pencil said, “I’m sure that’s not what Fenn said. Our Fenn comes on a little strong sometime.”
“You know what, Tom?” Chris went on, the back of his head turned to Fenn, “Since I’ve come here Fenn has had problems with me and really now, I think I just ought to take the whole situation to you.”
“Firstly,” Fenn began, that change coming in his voice that made Tom’s eyebrows rise, “you don’t turn the back of your head to me when I’m in the room. Secondly, and you should know this, you don’t get to appeal to Tom. He might direct. He might produce. Hell, he might hire, but I own. Which means,” he continued, as Chris Campbell turned to him slowly, like someone picking up very late on rage, “I can critique you all I want to. If I want to, which I really haven’t Chris. All right?”
It was all in such a gentle, steady, unrelenting voice. It took a moment before Chris could nod his head. He didn’t feel capable of speaking.
“And besides,” Fenn added, picking up the playbook, “I didn’t criticize your acting style. Because you don’t really have one.”
“Oh, God—” Tom began, and then Chris, who was a full head taller than Fenn with white blond hair stood up and stomped his foot.
“That’s enough! I’m not going to have my power snatched away. I don’t have to take this.”
“Did he just say,” Fenn turned to Tara, who was sitting beside him, “that he was taking back his power?”
“I am taking back my power!” Chris shouted.
“Well, you go, girl.”
“Fenn—” Tom said in a low voice.
“I worked very hard for this role,” Chris continued. “And there are going to be great things from me. A lot of great things. This is a stepping stone. And maybe that’s what you’re jealous of.”
So Fenn replied: “And maybe if you hadn’t fellated Tom you wouldn’t be heading the cast.”
Tom stared baldly at Fenn, and Chris threw down the playbook.
“I don’t have to take this!”
“Where are you going?” Tom stood up.
Actor to the end, Chris leapt off of the stage and began stomping up the aisle of the theatre. He was midway up before he shouted:
“I’m leaving!”
Then he kept stomping. Tom opened his mouth, but Fenn put up a hand and murmured, “Just wait for it.”
Tom looked at Fenn. They all looked at Fenn.
“He’s going to do it,” said Fenn. “Right…. About….”
And then Chris turned around and shouted:
“I’m gonna make you love me!”
“Now,” Fenn concluded as he left.
“What a homo” Diego declared
“Hey! None of that,” Fenn said. “When you saw me screw half the football team back in college you could say, what a homo! That—” he pointed in the direction of the vanished Chris, “does not get to be ‘what a homo!’”
Tom, arms folded over his chest, frowned and said, “Now whaddo we do, Fenn?”
“Don’t worry,” Fenn shrugged. “He’ll be back.”
“He’s not back.”
“He—”
“And he’s not coming back,” Tom said. “He told me himself.”
“When? While you were screwing him this afternoon? You know,” Fenn said, “the problem with you is you’re always fucking the help. If you could learn to separate business from… well, business, maybe we wouldn’t have had Chris Campbell’s most untalented ass in the first place.”
“Fenn,” Tom told him, leaning in, “we’re in the red. They’re going to take this theatre from us. We’re going to lose our dream.”
“Tom, you don’t ever have to tell me the financial state of this theatre. I can read a bank statement as well as you. And the one thing you don’t have to tell me about is dreams. We, as a team, had a lot of collective dreams. Most of them are shot to hell, and I’m reconciled to it. The theatre, however, is not our dream. It’s my livelihood. So don’t you worry your pretty, curly little head about it. I’m not going to let Chris or anyone else be responsible for closing it down.”
“Okay, how do I look?”
“You look fine,” Brendan told him.
“Are you just saying that because you want to shut me up?”
“No.”
“Or are you just saying that because we’re friends?”
“I’m saying it,” Brendan told Will, “because it’s true.”
“Oh, God, look at my hair. Look at that.” Will turned to look in the mirror. “Who wears a part? My father wore a part. This is ridiculous. Give me the comb.”
Brendan turned around in a circle. This was the first time he’d been to Will’s house. And then he found the comb and handed it to Will.
He watched Will wreck his hair with the comb, becoming increasingly displeased with the result, his face turning more and more alarmed until finally Brendan decided he should step in.
“Look, Will, why don’t you tell me what you’re trying to do.”
“I want hair like yours.”
“Oh. Well, then…. Uh,” Brendan looked around Will’s room. “Does your mom have hairspray?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, get some of hers and come right back.”
In a panic, Will ran out of the room and came back a few minutes later.
“All right,” Brendan said taking the bottle, “this’ll have to do. This is how I do mine. For the most part.”
Brendan sprayed down Will’s hair while Will demanded: “Are you sure about this? It feels really damp.”
“Well you don’t have Bed Head.”
“No, I try not to.”
“No,” Brendan said. “What I have is the bed head look.”
“Get out. They call it that?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do they call it that? I’d call it spiked. You don’t really look like you just got out of bed. I mean, I know what I look like when I get out of bed. And you don’t look like that, Brendan.”
“Well, thanks,” said Brendan. “Ahh. That should do it. Too bad you don’t have mousse. Now give me the comb.”
While Will stood in front of Brendan, he let the other boy comb out his hair for a few minutes until Brendan declared he was satisfied.
“Now you look like a rockstar.”
Will turned around and yelped.
“No. I look like Will Klasko trying to be a rockstar. I look like a loser.”
“You look the same way I do,” Brendan said.
“But it’s different, Brendan. You know how to be cool.”
“What?” Brendan said.
“You’re cool, Brendan. You’re cool and good looking with the good looking girlfriend and… everything.”
“No, I’m not. You… you really don’t know what you’re talking about, Will.”
“It took me three months to finally get Layla to go out with me, and now I don’t know what I’m going to say, or even what I’m going to wear. I mean, you had to find my outfit. You had to do my hair. I’m clueless about all of those things, Bren. You know it all. Heck, you were able to stalk Layla’s dad. You’re her hero, now. Why couldn’t I have done that?”
Brendan sighed. “Will, I don’t know what to say. Really.”
“I just… I don’t have to be cool,” Will said. “Really, I don’t have to be. But… I’d like to know what it was like. Just once. To be like you.”
“This person you’re talking about,” Brendan said. “You say he’s me, Will. But I don’t know who he is.”
I WOULD DIE FOR YOU!
I've been dying just to feel you by my side
To know that you're mine
I will cry for you
I will cry for you
I will wash away your pain with all my tears
And drown your fear
The music pumped all through him as he made his way through the hot bodies dancing slowly, slowly now under the red and blue light, pulsing into him like a drug in the blood, or like the pills he had taken an hour ago, at Barry’s advice, not paying much attention to what they were. He’d been in the mood. He was still in the mood. For just a little bit he was totally and completely there. In the tiny little sports briefs with JUST US BOYS embosseDon the waistband that showed off his tight light ass, his nice package. He moved through the crowd in sunshades and the little cowboy hat, moving against Noah or Barry or Rod, some folks he’d never seen, some guys who he knew were New York models here for the weekend. And then, now and again, he was startled out of his high by someone so fat, or so old, or so out of it that he could not have possibly been anything but that other business Guy dealt in, the business that Johnny Mellow had already put under his large nose, and over his gums.
But his nose didn’t feel large here. He felt here the way he did whenever he’d done a movie.
…You will believe in me
And I will never be ignored
I will burn for you
Feel pain for you
I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart
I'll tear it apart
He sang with the background music:
“Da da da da da… Ah ahhh ah ahhhh!”
As he laughed he heard Derek laughing beside him.
Derek all black hair and sharp angles, but tonight his black eyes were covered in shades and they laughed and embraced and then made out and, ooh, he felt himself getting so hard.
“Johnny Mellow! Johnny Mellow pornstar!”
“Derek Everett! Derek Everett supermodel.”
“I fucking wish. Semi super model.”
There was the little end of a joint in Derek’s hand, and a beer in the other. He pulled on the joint, handed it to Johnny. Johnny took a puff and it went all through his nose, filled his lungs. It burnt through him and then settled down gentle. Derek poured beer into his mouth, fed him like a baby, and then Derek was shotgunning him, breathing marijuana into him, and they were exchanging it. Derek was trickling the last of the beer over both of their heads. He kissed him again, sloppily wet with the taste of beer and weed, and they were making out hard. Then Derek whispered something, and they were close in the hot packed room and Johnny was getting down on his knees, feeling Derek’s package, pulling his jockey’s down, swallowing his cock. Licking the head, going up and down the shaft and then taking it in and out of his mouth for dear life while Derek fucked his mouth and the music went through Derek and shoved itself in and out of Johnny’s mouth, or maybe the blowjob went through the house. He didn’t know. This shit he was on kept him horny even after he’d been doing it all day. But he wanted the real stuff without three cameras and having to fuck or be fucked in strange angles where the film could get everything. He got up off of his knees, some of the salt of Derek’ pre-come in his mouth and said, “Would you fuck upstairs?”
Breathlessly, Derek said, “Yeah!”
And they threaded their way through the crowds.
What Johnny meant was in a bedroom upstairs. Maybe the bedrooms were small. Maybe Derek was impatient. Certainly the house was so crowded it was hard to move through. Everyone was in various stages of nudity. He saw lots of cocks already, so when Derek put him against the wall, pulled down his briefs and started eating out his ass, he told himself not to care. Everyone was here and no one was watching.
Violate all my love that I'm missing
Throw away all the pain that I'm living
You will believe in me
And I can never be ignored
Noise and bodies were swirling around him and nobody cared, and people saw him fuck and get fucked all day long. So here, face half smashed against the wall, mouth open in sloppy ecstasy Derek fucked him while cokeheads passed by.
… I'd sail ships for you
To be close to you
To be a part of you
'Cause I believe in you
I believe in you
I would die for you.
THE DOORBELL RANG, and Layla stood before it.
It rang again.
Layla did not move.
Once again the doorbell rang.
“Layla!” her mother shouted.
Layla Lawden waited for her mother to arrive at the door, and then when Adele said, “Why didn’t you answer the door!” Layla hissed: “Why didn’t you? I have to make an entrance.”
Adele moved to the door, but Layla waved her hand down and whispered, “Wait till I’m upstairs,” before running up to her room.
Adele counted to five, opened the door and said to Will Klasko, with the artificial brightness she always used for white people, “Hello! Come in!”
“Thank you Mrs. Lawden,” he said, coming into the house and looking around the foyer.
“Hold on,” said Adele. “Layla’s upstairs getting finished. Layla!” she called up the stairs with a sweetness that made Layla wrinkle her brow and hold her tongue from saying something smart.
Down the stairs came Layla, looking surprised. At first she had affected surprise, but on seeing Will Klasko she actually was surprised. She’d never really noticed him before. Why hadn’t she paid attention? Why hadn’t she realized how handsome he could be?
“Will… you…”
“You look really, really beautiful, Layla.”
“I was going to say the same thing,” she said. And then amended. “I mean… I was going to say you look really nice.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“No,” Layla discovered. “I mean it.”
“Well, I think you both look very nice,” Adele told them, wanting to throw her daughter out of the house so she could have some alone time.
“We don’t want to be late for the movie,” Will said, and Adele thought she could have kissed him.
“No. No. Let me get my jacket.”
Will took his off and brandished it for her.
“Take mine, my lady?”
Layla stopped in her tracks, looking at him strangely.
“Was that too much?” he said.
“Almost,” said Layla. “Yes.”
