Eric Shaw Quinn

He lifted one of the blades in the mini-blinds to check.

Again.

As soon as he’d let the flake of metal fall back into place, he longed to peer into the darkness of the courtyard once more.  Where was Gianni? Had he stolen the money again? Did he get busted? Had it really been that long?

He checked the clock.

Again.

3:17.  Four minutes later than the last time he checked.  Over an hour since Gianni had taken all the cash in the house and left with the promise of more “product” as he insisted on calling it in case the place was bugged.  When they weren’t high he just called it rock.

Michael swore to himself that this was the last time.

Again.

He wondered how he would ever get rid of Gianni.  He wondered what he’d do if he did.  He checked through the blinds.

Again.

Where was he? Gianni was all about promises, mostly unkept.

Gianni had arrived on a promise, three Valentine’s Days ago.  Michael was working for a Real Estate agent friend of Dolph’s who lived in the absurdly named Mt. Olympus neighborhood, just north of West Hollywood.  The market had just crashed, again.  D’wayne, the real estate guy, was trying to start a business out of his decidedly non-Olympian, Brady-Bunch-Split-Level house.  He was picking the bone of the corpse, brokering foreclosures and short sales to  help people get out of the homes and condos he’d shoehorned them into.

Michael was a writer, so he always needed work.  He did light typing, mail merges and wrote ad copy as needed to market the firm.

In sneering tribute to the a Valentine’s none of them felt like celebrating, D’wayne took the “staff” – i.e. Michael and D’wayne’s roommate Doob – out for a celebratory dinner at Numbers.  At the time, Michael had still been pretty new in town and unfamiliar with Number’s storied history as gay bar, restaurant and a soupcon more.  They had a great French meal, a bottle of champagne and a number of drinks – a large number.

As the night progressed, the tables were cleared, the lights were dimmed and the bar became the center of activity.  Michael could not help but notice the blond kid eyeing him from the bar.  It was Valentine’s Day and Michael was that most unfortunate combination — at gay bars at least — he was gay and really smart.  He had not been given-the-eye often in his life.  Encouraged and hopeful, he remained when the rest of his party said their good-byes.

“I think I’ll just stay for another drink,” Michael said, as he excused himself.

D’wayne and Doob exchanged a look.

“Here?” Doob asked.

“Why not?” Michael said.

“Sure, why not,” D’wayne said with a curious smile.  “Come on Doob.”

“Michael, are you sure you know . . .” Doob began.

“Let’s leave Michael to enjoy himself,” D’wayne cut him off, yanking Doob’s arm.  “See you tomorrow, Michael.”

Awkwardly, Michael made his way over to the bar.  He found a place near the guy who’d been eye-fucking him for a half-hour.  Michael took a bar stool and ordered a martini.  Eye-fucker wasted no time.  He got right up and walked right over to Michael.

“Hey, you on your own?” he asked, shoving in beside Michael.  He captured one of Michael’s legs between his own and took a little ride.

“I was,” Michael grinned.  His heart swelled with hope and optimism.  He began to imagine the story of how they had met on Valentine’s Day.  “I’m Michael.”

“Hi Michael.  I’m Markie.”

For the next hour, as Michael bought them drinks, Markie hung on Michael’s every word.  He took an interest in what Michael did, cared about, dreamed of.  But more than anything, he never once looked over Michael’s shoulder at any of the many hot guys surrounding them.

“It’s a school night for me,” Michael said, noticing the time.  “I don’t live far.  If you’d like a night cap? Or, something.”

“Or something sounds great,” Markie said with his usual enthusiastic nod.  “How much did you want to spend?”

“On what?” Michael asked, confused by the question.

“Me,” Markie said with a laugh.

“Oh,” Michael said, his heart on the sticky bar floor at his feet.  “I didn’t . . . I don’t . . . I’m sorry to have wasted your . . .  I see.”  He understood again that the only way a guy who looked like Markie would talk to him was for profit.  Michael gave Markie a brave smile as he tried not to cry at the hustler bar where he suddenly realized he’d been drinking alone for that past hour.  He began to rise.

“Don’t go, yet,” Markie said, grabbing his hand.  Same smile, but for free.  “I like you.  Maybe we can work something out.”

The grin was irresistible to a man with a broken heart, Markie knew.  He knew when he floated the idea of Michael financing a drug buy, it wouldn’t seem quite the same.  The sex would just be a gift with purchase.  A couple more martinis and it seem like a positively great idea to Michael.

They drove into darkest Hollywood.  Michael was more nervous about driving on so many martinis than he was in the neighborhood.  He waited outside of the frowsy residential hotel after foolishly giving Markie the cash.  Michael lucked out.  Markie needed a place to stay that night and, more important, a place to use.  He came back.

“Listen,” Markie said as soon as he got back in Michael’s car.  “There’s this guy who can party with us, if you want.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Michael said, reaching up and stroking Markie’s deceptively sweet face.  “I kinda think just the two of us . . .”

“He’s got more stuff,” Markie shrugged.  “So, I could stay a lot longer.  All night.”

“Well,” Michael said, considering.  He still thought they were talking about marijuana.

“And he’s got the biggest cock in Hollywood,” Markie said, with a nasty little giggle.  “You can watch him use it on me.”

The blood left Michael’s brain.

“Sounds great,” he said.  It did sound great.  It turned out it was the biggest, but everything else turned out to be a lie.

Gianni arrived at Michael’s apartment that night and never left.  He didn’t live with Michael.  He disappeared for days and weeks at a time.  But there was something about Michael that just kept bringing him back.  Michael thought it was the fact that he was a soft touch, but he was wrong.  Gianni kept coming back because Michael was the only person he’d met in America who treated him like a person.

There had been no sex that night Michael brought Markie and Gianni home from the drug buy.  With the promise of good times yet to come they kept convincing Michael to spend more and more on the little rocks they smoked on bits of steel wool jammed into glass tubes.  Gianni even got Michael to try some.  Michael thought it tasted like dirt and refused to do more.  He experienced none of the euphoria so seductive that the lives of his two guests had been consumed in its pursuit.

When they finally left, Michael felt as much relief as sadness.  He called in sick and chalked it up to experience.

D’wayne waited to laugh after he hung up the phone.

Gianni returned again and again.  He used.  Michael watched and hoped.  Determined that they use together, Gianni gave Michael lessons on how to “smoke up,” as he called it.

“Suck,” Gianni teased.  “You gay boys know how to do that.  Suck that pipe.  Hold the smoke till I tell you.”’

Michael struggled to hold the smoke in his lungs until the cocaine exploded there and blew his brains out.  It was as though he’d been granted super powers.  Every sound was magnified.  He seemed suddenly to appear where he’d been all along and to be present there for the first time.  He wanted sex with complete abandon.  Gianni, twice his size, had to fight him off.

“Be cool,” Gianni said, laughing as he held Michael in his chair.  “You know I’m not into that gay shit.  Just be cool.”

Their romance was born of a love that neither understood and which neither of them could shake.  The getting and the sharing of “product” was how they expressed their feelings.  Gianni used his sexuality to string Michael along.  Michael offered home and hearth without judgment to a man who lived on the streets, when he wasn’t in jail.  They slept together in Michael’s bed, cuddled like puppies, sure of each other.

The scratching on the door woke Michael from his dozing.

Again.

Michael’s heart raced with fear and anticipation as he went to open it.

“Did you know they’re making a TV show across the street?” Gianni said stepping in and holding the door open.  “Look what I brought you.”

Michael recognized them from their sex video.

“Hi, you must be Michael,” the blonde woman said, her words as smeared as her makeup.  “I’m Milan.  Close the door Cody.”

. . . to be continued.

“I was never popular in school, like Brightie,” Milan said, with an earnest sigh.  “I guess that’s why I work so hard to get noticed, now.”  She wiped nervously at an unseen tear and looked at the camera with a fragile smile.

She held the smile until she felt they had enough to cover a voice edit cutaway if needed.

“How was that?” she asked the director, the vulnerable Milan gone.  “Are we good? I’ve got a . . . Where am I supposed to be?”

“You’ve got an appearance at Walmart for the new fragrance . . .” Cat answered from well out of Milan’s eyeline.

“And this is Cody Stetzen,” Milan went on, ignoring Cat.  “Cody this is Robert . . .”

“Richard,” the director corrected her.

“. . .Banner . . .”

“Bonner.”

“Our director and a very dear friend of mine,” Milan said without a note of irony as she took  Cody’s delicate, well-manicured hand in hers.  “Richard, this is Cody.”

“Great admirer of your work,” Richard said, with enough sincerity to bury the nastiness of the remark.  The only work of Cody’s anyone had seen was A Night In Milan, the best selling sex tape they’d made while he was still dating her sister Brighton.

“And I yours, Robert,” Cody said with a mean smile, not missing the insult and happy to offer one in return.  Richard’s only work had been other reality shows.  Most notably, the last two seasons of Reel Life, the show Milan had “starred” in with her now “F” BFF Cissy.  Their FF and the series had endured for three years until Milan slept with Cissy’s soon-to-be-former husband in a sort of season finale.

“Let’s play nice, a least while the cameras are off,” Milan said in a conspiratorial tone.

“Speaking of which,” Richard said.  “Have you told Brighton about Cody being on the show, yet?”

“Are you kidding?” Milan laughed coarsely as the three made their way through the still largely empty condo.  “We wanted her to do the show, right?”

“So, when’s the reveal?”

“Not until it’s too late for her to get out of it,” Milan said.  “Once we start shooting, Cody can hide at my assistant’s place across the street until we need him.  She won’t suspect a thing.”

“This is your sister, right?” Richard asked, a little chilled.

“So, this place is going to be ready by next week?” Milan asked, bored with the topic and looking around at the empty, unfinished condo.

“We’ve got a decorator coming . . .” Richard began.

“It had better be Fab Fads,” Milan said emphatically, wheeling on him and shaking a finger in his face.

“Darling, it will be the latest, the hottest . . .”

“No,” she shouted.  “I mean the designer, Fabio Fads.  I’ll be damned if I’ll take hind tit to that Kardashian bitch again.  I discovered him and now I hear she’s talking about hiring him . . .”

“All right, all right,” Richard said, raising his hands in surrender.  “I’ll get his number from Cat and we’ll get him over here.”

“Chill, babe,” Cody said, looking up from his iPhone.  “You’re harshing my tweets.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m just sick of that woman nipping at my heels, no matter how fast I run,” Milan said with her Cher-iest hair toss of her long bleached locks.  It was true.  Milan had been the first to make a brand out of being “The” Rich-Spoiled-LA-Party-Bitch and the pack had been after her ever since.

Her Manolos echoed as she stalked down the stairs of the empty building.  It was one of many abandoned new condo projects that dotted the West Hollywood landscape, thanks to the real estate bust.  The uber-luxe buildings had been slotted into the places of single family teardowns all over the little town like fat women into size zeros.  At the height of the boom people were making a living trading homes and properties, heedless of the inevitable next crash in the regular California boom-and-bust real estate cycle.  The current collapse was the second in less than 20 years.  Milan was already trying to create a market for location leases on the scores of empties for film and TV shoots.  She’d gotten partial financing for the show from a real estate developer pitching it as advertising for the idea.

Just inside the main door she paused and turned to Cody, who was ignoring her again.  She snapped her fingers, but he didn’t look up from his texting.  “Cat,” she said wheeling on her assistant who was also texting as she caught up to the pair.  Milan made an exasperated noise.

“Yes?” Cat said, looking up with a tight smile.  “Just getting Fab’s contact details to the production office.  He should be here later today.  Do you want a meet?”

“Don’t we have to go sell Hot?”

“Haute.”

“What?”

“Your signature fragrance.  It’s called Haute,” Cat said.

“What’s the difference?”

“One means high.  The other is kind of the opposite.”

“I’m in, who’s holding?” Cody asked, looking up.

“How do I look? Camera ready?” Milan asked spinning before her audience.

“Weren’t you just on camera, babe?”

With a petulant harrumph, Milan hit the crash bar.  She flung the big doors open and quick marched to the black SUV idling by the curb burning premium at three mpg.

A couple of paparazzi stepped up and snapped a few weary shots of her.  At the sound of cameras, Cody sprang instinctively into action, grabbed her under one arm and push through to the car, though in truth no one actually got in their way.

Cat shut their door and hurried around to hop in front with the driver.

“What the hell was that?” Milan shrieked at Cat as they made their getaway unpursued.

“I’m sorry,” Cat said.

“I’ve seen more photographers at a CIA mixer,” Milan ranted.

“I called.  I faxed your itinerary,” Cat explained over her shoulder from the front seat.  “But it’s a big day.  A-Rod and Cameron are hanging out together on Sunset.  Lindsey’s back in court.  And god only knows what Charlie Sheen’s up to.”

“What does a girl have to do to get a little coverage in this town?” Milan demanded, slipping her underwear off and into her purse.  “Maybe this will get us some snaps at the Hot appearance.”

“Haute.”  Cat shrugged and turned around, returning to her Blackberry.

The little party rode in silence for a bit.

“Babe?” Cody said, looking up from his iPhone game of Bird Brains.

“Yeah,” Milan answered, not looking up from her email.

“Were you really unpopular at school,” he asked, concerned.

“What?” she said, looking up, shocked.

“Well, back at the shoot you said . . .”

“Oh, that,” she laughed.  “That’s just for the show.  No, I was the richest so I was the most popular at school.  This is still America . . .”

“What about Brighton?”

“What about her?”

“Was she popular?”

“Of course,” Milan shrugged.  “She was just jealous of the people who weren’t.  She’s always wanted what she didn’t have.”

. . . to be continued.

Cat ignored her Blackberry.  It was the only way she could get anything done.

She knew who it would be.

Her life as a personal assistant meant two things.  First, the pay was pretty good.  Second, she had no life of her own.  Her time with Ric, when she could get it, was the only part of her life that was still her own.

When she’d first started, being an assistant seemed like such a great head start on her own career aspirations.  She got to spend her days and her nights in the company of the rich and famous in the VIP lounges and velvet-roped preserves to which only wealth and/or stardom earned access.  It was a charmed life for a few months and a long way from her life as Catherine Novotny of the Nobody’s-Ever-Heard-of-Them, Pittsburgh Novotnys.  But after a while in the lounge-of-enchantment, she began to long for life on the right ride of the looking glass.

It was a delicious trap.  On the one hand she lived the life of her famous employer, but on the other she no longer had a life of her own.  It had advantages.  Ric’s career as a painter was exploding.  He not only had time on his own to paint, but his paintings were finally selling.  He was paying his share of the rent and more.  Ric wasn’t caught up on back rent yet, but if he kept selling the way he had been, they’d be equal partners for the first time since they had moved in together.

Cat didn’t care all that much.  She loved Ric and believed in his work.  Still, it was some consolation for spending so much time apart.

She hadn’t seen him conscious in days.  Ric had been out at some gallery opening the night before.  She’d gone to bed, following her grueling sober club crawl fetching drinks and fending off bad publicity for her self-indulgent boss.  He came in even after her.  She left without waking him so she could get an early start on her errands before Troll-a-rina emerged from her crypt.

It had been a very productive, boss-free morning.  She was taking Lil’Me-Me to the nail salon, the last errand on her list from the day before.  Technically, it was Lil’Me-Me the second as Lil’Me-Me the former had fallen victim to an unfortunate coyote incident.

The fashionable Hollywood Hills, where both Lil’Me-Me’s had resided with Le Terrible and many of her rich and famous peers, were actually a part of the Santa Monica Mountain range.  The wilderness area stretched right through the heart of much of the city, bounded West Hollywood on the north and offered a home to a surprising amount of wildlife in the midst of such a decidedly urban setting.  Coyote, deer, raccoons, possums and skunks were commonly seen amidst the tony shops and residences along Sunset Boulevard.  Even the odd mountain lion sighting was reported, tough they were greatly outnumbered by the two legged cougars more common to the region.

She exchanged a look with Lil’Me-Me who sat on the seat beside hers.  Dripping with diamonds, the two year old Chihuahua, sighed wearily as she glittered in the sun.  Me-me’s life as fashion accessory offered her little in the way of canine pleasures.

“Sorry, Lil,” Cat said.  “Your nails don’t match the dress your mommy’s wearing tonight.  You have to go to the salon.”

Me-me sighed in answer and looked longing out the window of the lime green bug.

As Cat followed her gaze, she realized where they were.

An evil grin split her face.

“Nooner,” she shouted, punching a triumphant fist through the open sun roof.

The woman in the yellow Corniche convertible beside Cat at the light gave her a shocked look and then a conspiratorial grin.

They exchanged thumbs up as the light changed and Cat sped toward home.

Once Me-Me was left at the Bark/Williams dog spa with a fabric swatch and strict instructions that her nails match Mommie’s outfit, Cat was on her way to surprise Ric with a little afternoon delight.  She slipped on the faux-fur-full-length her boss would be wearing on the red carpet that night and slipped off everything else.  The clothes came off one red light at a time and she was down to skin and satin lining by the time she pulled into the motor courtyard at Sweetzer Court.

She could see Ric’s outline in the turret windows of his studio as she crossed the garden court.  The grin returned as she sneaked up the stairs.  She held a finger to her lips in answer to Dolph who waved when he spotted her through his front windows.  He replied with a knowing wink.  The only sounds were the splashing of the fountain and a door creaking open a crack to allow the resident opposite to spy on her before slamming it shut.  The city noises were somehow so remote.

Turning her key carefully in the lock, she was able to get inside with hardly a sound.  She left the door ajar to avoid the creak and the click but needn’t have bothered.  Ric had on his iPod and was pleasantly oblivious, sitting in the sun in paint spattered t-shirt and boxers.  She stole forward.  He was irresistible, singing off key, unable to hear himself as he painted in big violent strokes.  Two naked men sprawled across the canvas, either in classical wrestling pose or one sodomizing the other – she couldn’t tell which, given Ric’s style.  Whichever, it was also, much to Cat’s surprise, a life study.  So, when she dropped the fur coat and sprang through the archway with a shout to pounce on her lover, she terrified the two nude models, crouched on the platform opposite.

There was a good deal of screaming before everyone wound up rolling around the studio floor, convulsed with laughter.  Cat managed to recover the coat, if not her dignity.

“Well, looks like that’s lunch everyone,” Ric said when he’d regained his breath at last.

“You must be Ric’s girlfriend,” one of the models giggled, remaining behind as he slipped on a robe and offered his hand.  “That is soooo, cute.  Ric is always talking about you.  We wondered if you were real or just for publicity.  I’m Jack.”

“Cat.  Have you modeled for Ric before?” she asked, trying not to look at the substantial manhood peeking through the gap in the robe Jack had only just bothered to drape over his shoulders.

“Modeled? Yes, that’s it,” he said, batting his eyes at Ric.  Jack’s charming, queeny manner was in pointed contrast to his rather obvious masculinity and well sculpted body.  “I’ve modeled the shit out of Ric any number of times.  Why once, a bunch of us modeled him sooo hard . . .”

“Okay then,” Ric cut him off.  “Why don’t you boys take a long lunch.  You’re home for a long lunch, I’m hoping?” he asked taking Cat’s hand and trying to peek under the coat.

“I might eat something later,” she said, the grin back and then fading.  “What happened to your eye?”

“Oh,” Ric scoffed, dropping her hand and waving her away.  “It’s a funny story.”

“It doesn’t look funny,” Cat pressed as she moved in for a closer look.  “It looks like a black eye.”

“With concealer on it,” Jack put in, folding his arms.

Ric avoided her touch and her gaze.

“What happened?” Cat demanded.

“It’s embarrassing,” Ric said, cornered and shrugging her off.  “Aren’t you going to lunch, Jack?”

“And miss this?”

“What happened?” Cat insisted, turning him to face her.

“I got gay bashed,” Ric said rolling his eyes.  “If you must know.”

“You’re not gay,” Cat said.

Jack shot Ric a look over her shoulder.

“No, no,” Ric said, waving them both off.  “Not like that.  I was talking to a this guy at a bar and his boyfriend got the wrong impression and punched me out.”

“I don’t think getting bashed by a gay man counts as gay bashing,” Cat said laughing.

“Okay, Jack,” Ric said, grabbing Cat and turning her to face him.  “You punch her in the face and we’ll see if she thinks it’s gay bashing or not.”

The three struggled, laughing.  Ric made a half-hearted effort to hold Cat in place.  Jack took playful swings at her.  They lost their balance.  In the tussle Cat’s coat fell open and Jack lost his robe, leaving the two of them in a rather compromising position as they fell at Ric’s feel.

“That doesn’t look like gay bashing to me,” Ric said, laughing too hard to fight off Cat.  She managed to get onto her hands and knees.  Jack was still on her back as she yanked down Ric’s flimsy boxer shorts.

“There,” Cat crowed.  “Now who’s the bigger man?”

Ric fell to his knees as the three wrestled a moment longer, each trying harder to keep the other unclothed than to gain the upper hand.

“So this is why you’re not answering your Blackberry.”

“Milan,” Cat said, trying to conceal the borrowed coat and only making matters worse.  “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I could ask why you’re not at work,” Milan said folding her arms.  “But obviously, you’ve got a hotter lunch date than I do.  Is that my coat?”

“Oh, my god,” Jack said leaping to his feet and closing the distance.  “You’re Milan Carlton!”

“And you’re a naked man,” Milan said, shielding herself with the door.

“I didn’t know you knew where I lived,” Cat said, slipping on Jack’s robe and draping Milan’s coat daintily over an upholstered chair.

“Nice to meet you,” Ric said, pulling up his boxers and heading out.  “I’ll make coffee.  Come on Jack.”

“I didn’t,” Milan said, reluctantly shaking Jack’s hand for fear of what else he might offer.  “I mean I don’t.  I saw you come in here from across the street.  Your name was on the mailbox.”

“Jack, come on,” Ric called from the kitchen.

“Across the street?” Cat said, still confused.

“This will work out perfectly,” Milan said, the earlier scene forgotten.  “That empty condo building where we’re going to shoot the reality show? Turns out its across the street. Perfect, right?”

“Perfect,” Cat said, mentally kissing what remained of her life good-bye.

. . . to be continued.

“So, Dolph,” Sans began.  He paused to formulate his question.

Though he’d never said, Sans assumed the building manager was gay.  Sans’ gaydar wasn’t good.  With men from the South or England it’s hard to tell.  Having only recently escaped from the former, Sans had had little opportunity to hone his skills.  The minister at his Mom’s church back home seemed as gay as a holiday tablecloth.  But Sans had met the man’s wife and gone to school with his kids.  Neither was the last word – particularly in the South – but it was the kind of background interference that fuzzed a clear gaydar signal.

Being part of an invisible minority was a big part of the reason Sans moved to Los Angeles in general and West Hollywood in particular.  He’d had enough of guessing and tiptoeing around the question.  He’d developed more than a few crushes on guys who turned out to be straight, despite their product and fashion sense.  Sans wanted to be certain somewhere besides gay bars.  He wanted not to have to be certain.  He wanted the chance to let his heart decide.

So far, the move had made very little difference.  He was still too shy to ask and too southern to assume.

He was all moved in and wanted to avail himself of one of the principle amenities of his new apartment – the highest gay population density in the world.  There were lots more gay residents in New York, say, or even Atlanta, but they’re all mixed in with everyone else.  Nearly half the small town of West Hollywood is gay.  Despite the promising percentages though, Sans still found that, unless you asked or observed someone engaged in a fairly intimate act, there was no way to tell for sure, even in West Hollywood.

This invisibility, combined with the absurd gay notion of being “straight acting,” further clouded the  issue.  The gym-to-population ratio in West Hollywood was as high as the gay population percentage.  Local residents, gay and straight, looked and dressed like He-Man — without his sword.

Sans’ fantasy was that there, like straight people everywhere else, he would be able to meet his great love at large in the world — albeit a very small West-Hollywood-sized world.   What he’d discovered was that he wasn’t bold enough for that and, even with its positive demographics, West Hollywood offered no more assurances than anywhere else, just a higher probability.  Resigned, Sans had decided to go back to the dark, smelly, second class recesses of the still smaller, more limited world he knew – the gay bars.

He ran into his building manager at the mailboxes, screwed his courage to the sticking place and resolved to find out what he needed to know — or at least to ask.  Engaging with Dolph, Sans had discovered, meant listening to him wax rhapsodic about tales of old Hollywood.  It was as though he was giving Sans a crash course in something.  To move things along, Sans pretended to know who Norma Shearer was and laughed at the lines he vaguely recalled from his one viewing of the movie The Women.  The fact that Dolph seemed to know the entire film verbatim offered further assurance as Sans prepared to make his inquiry.

Dolph bid him adieu.  He turned to walk back across the garden court with his copy of Vanity Fair and coupon mailers.  Sans spoke and stopped him.

Dolph turned and looked back at Sans expectantly, but with a gentle smile.

“Dolph, which of the bars on Santa Monica are the gay ones? Do you know?”

Dolph’s eyes grew wide and wet.  There was a moment’s awkward pause.  Sans feared a repeat of the horrible afternoon he’d decided to confide in his mom’s preacher about his sexuality.  Dolph’s lip quivered.  Sans considered running.  There was a clear shot to the street.

Suddenly, Dolph was laughing uncontrollably.  He staggered to a nearby bench.  Sans caught him by the elbow and helped him to sit.

“I’m sorry,” Sans said.  “I didn’t mean to presume.  I just thought, being a local and all, you might know which bars are the gay ones.”

“My dear boy,” Dolph said, putting his hand over Sans’.  “All of them.”

Sans sat on the bench beside him.

It was more than he could take in.  Back home there were usually two gay bars in a town.  The hot one and the one that used to be hot but was going out of business cause everyone had gone to the hot one.  Sometimes there was a small one for the elder tribe members, but that was for more cosmopolitan places like the state capital.  There were tons in places like Atlanta or New York, but there was nowhere Sans knew of where all the bars were gay.

He began to laugh, too.

In the end, he decided to go on a one man bar parade.  Like General Sherman’s march to the sea, Sans planned work his way east down the boulevard, hitting each bar along the way.  He would have one drink at each stop.  There were enough bars that he’d decided to walk, or possibly stagger there and back.  He began at the westernmost bar, Mother Lode.

He made it as far as a place called Mickey’s.

It was Meet the Porn Stars night at Mickey’s and, well, Sans just figured it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and those other bars would always be there.

The “stars” were not only appearing and signing videos and pictures and such, they were dancing in next to nothing on the stages scattered throughout the place.  Sans had seen gay porn, they had internet in South Carolina and flush toilets, too.  He’d never been a huge fan.  He’d seen quite a few films and liked what he saw.  But, aside from one or two guys, he would have been hard pressed to identify any of the actual performers by name.

He had friends who followed porn like sports.  They had their favorites, followed the blogs about industry performance drug scandals, knew who played what position and spoke with authority about the real names, identities and stats of performers past and present.  Sans just felt like the videos were filled with good looking men who were naked and up to something.  Who cared what their names were?

Despite his professed lack of interest, he took root on a bar stool, intent on staying for the whole event.

“Hellooooo,” the drag queen with the enormous head screamed into the microphone.

“Hellooooo,” the crowd screamed back.

Tuna Manhattan – aka Steven Swartz – was literally a local institution.  Tuna was not only a fixture at every local event, fundraiser and street fair, she was the name sake of TMI (Tuna Manhattan, Inc.) Productions.  The small film company had grown from Steven’s documentary film crew for his senior film school project into one of the largest porn production houses in the country.  As a local business owner and tireless self-promoter, Tuna/Steven was as ubiquitous in West Hollywood as rainbow flags.

“Are you ready to meet the stars?” Tuna screamed.

The answer was raucous and affirmative.  The “stars” were herded onto the main stage area to be presented to the crowd.  As each was introduced they danced a bit on stage and then into the crowd, through the room and onto the various bars and boxes around the place.  Eventually there was a steady flow of beautiful, half-naked men parading down the bar where Sans had been wise enough to stake out his seat.

Sans got kisses and hair musses that he wouldn’t soon forget, in exchange for the thrill of the furtive contact that a dollar in the g-string buys.

“You’re beautiful,” one particularly vacuum-packed looking bleach blond giant said.  The bronze god grabbed him and planted a full Rhett and Scarlett on Sans’ shocked lips.

The bar cheered.

“Here’s my number,” the giant said, snitching a pen from behind the bartender’s ear and writing on Sans’ left palm.  He closed Sans’ hand into a fist and kissed his knuckles.  “Hang on to that and call me.”  He tossed the pen to the bartender and sashayed down the bar.

Sans tried not to pass out and fall off his stool.  He watched as the giant danced away blowing kisses.

“Who that hell was that?” Sans said, more to himself, but aloud nonetheless.

“Don’t you know!?” the man on the next barstool demanded over the din.

“No, idea,” Sans said, shaking his head.

“That was Ryan Candler,” his bar mate squealed, like a kid with the game ball.  “Only the hottest and biggest gay star at TMI.”

“Yeah, he looked pretty big,” Sans said, staring.

Ryan turned and winked at him as he proceeded down the bar, leaving a tide of broken hearts in his wake.

“He looks even bigger without the g-string,” the man said, with a cackling laughed. “Hi, I’m Bobbi, by the way.”  The i was implied.

“Golly,” Sans said, laughing nervously.

“Golly?” Bobbi howled louder.  “Are you blushing?”

“Well, I just can’t account for that,” Sans said.  “I don’t usually get that kind of attention.  Or any attention.”

“I can’t believe that,” Bobbi said.  “Where have you been hanging out?”

“Florence,” Sans said with a sigh.

“Benvenuto!”

“Florence, South Carolina.”

“More grits, y’all?”

“Nice,” Sans grinned.

“Oh, don’t look now,” Bobbi said, taking Sans’ hand.  “Here comes my favorite.  Billy Blake.”

Sans shrugged.

“Perhaps you’ve seen him in Gang Bang Paperboy? Or Gang Bang Bike Messenger? Or maybe in his Adult Video nominated Gang Bang Office Boy?”

Sans only laughed and shook his head.  “I’m sensing a theme, though.”

“I guess it’s more of a specialty,” Bobbi said, wiggling his eyebrows.  “Like Meryl Streep and her dental appliances. His record is twenty-two, in Office Boy.  Hence the nom.”

Sans was still laughing when Billy reached their spot at the bar.

Bobbi held up a twenty and, before Sans could turn around, Billy was on his back, his legs aloft and his nether end up in the air.  Bobbi all but stood on his barstool as he flossed the twenty into Billy’s thong.  Billy threw his head back over the edge of the bar.  His unkempt mane of trademark surfer boy hair spilled into Sans’ lap.

Their eyes met.  The shock was mutual.

“Ric?” Sans said, recognizing his neighbor.

“It’s Billy,” Ric hissed.

“But I . . .” Sans managed.  Billy threw his arms around Sans’ neck and sealed Sans’ lips with his own and an upside down Spiderman kiss.

“Unhand him, bitch!” Ryan shrieked bounding back down the bar in their direction.

“What cologne are you wearing?” Bobbi said, dropping back onto his stool.

.  .  . to be continued

Brighton parked her Prius on the far side of the lot at Sunset Plaza.

She stared through the window at the amazing view of the city.  The best views at Sunset Plaza were in the parking lot.  The odd collection of designer shops, restaurants, salons and Eurotrash hangouts was perched on a ridge along the south side of Sunset Boulevard.  The tables and the show windows were all on the streetside so that the patrons could be seen.  The parking lots, at the back, faced a majestic view of the Los Angeles basin over the rooftops of West Hollywood.

Using the mirrors and a ruse of checking her makeup, Brighton surveyed the parking lot to make sure she hadn’t been followed.

No sign.

Warily, she emerged from the little black car.  Shouldering her oversized black bag, she again scanned the lot.  A couple of girls in impossible heels and blackout sunglasses, their hands filled with shopping bags, clattered down the stairs and across the pavement to their Bentley.  A few rows over, a couple emerged from their standard-tourist-issue-looky-loo-rental-red-Mustang-convertible.

Brighton smiled.  The couple, like most tourists to Los Angeles, were dressed as they thought people from Los Angeles dressed.  The girl’s gold-chainmail off-the-shoulder-handkerchief top hung precariously from her breasts.  Her companion’s hyper-embroidered designer jean pockets drooped well below his butt cheeks.  The sight lifted Brighton’s spirit’s.

Lowering her guard, she took a couple of tentative steps.  Persols shielding her eyes, she moved out from under the shade of the tree she was parked beside and into the lot.  The garish out-of-towners and the giggling Bentley girls, lifted her mood.

She smiled.

It was a perfect LA afternoon.  Sunny, cloudless, cool, a breeze rustled the leaves overhead.

Brighton flinched.  A black SUV with darkened windows had somehow managed to steal up behind her.  She saw the reflection of the Darthmobile in the window of a nearby Austin-Martin.  Pretending to search her pocketbook, she stepped into the shadowy alley between a nearby Hummer and a Range Rover.  Risking it, she turned to look.  The Darth was driven by a bleached-blonde-Beverly-Hills-shiksa-housefrau orbiting the parking lot.  She would burn up half a tank of gas waiting for a space ten feet closer to the door and was oblivious to Brighton and anything other than a prime space or someone leaving one.

Though relieved, Brighton’s spider senses still tingled.  She darted between parked cars erratically to avoid becoming an easy target.  She hit the back door of Chin Chin and raced up the tiled stairs to the street level dining room above.  A booth in the back was negotiated with the host in hushed tones.  Brighton settled in, her back to the wall, out of sight but with a view of the nearly empty room.  It was late for lunch, even in LA and early for dinner for those under 80.  She liked the quiet.

Convinced of her safety for the moment, her breath became steady.  She relaxed on the uncomfortable wooden banquette.  She surveyed the tall skinny menu.  Visions of shrimp toast danced in her head.  It was a long ago luxury she had eschewed along with most carbs, but in such proximity of her crispy fantasy she dreamt shrimp toast dreams.

Her crustacean meditation was shattered by lightning flashes and chaotic, frenzied, familiar shouts.

“Over here, Milan.”

“This way, Milan.  One for me.”

“Hey Milan, how much have you earned from the video?”

The video was called A Weekend in Milan.  It was a home movie of Brighton’s sister, Milan, engaging in a Karma Sutra’s worth of sexual antics with Brighton’s ex-boyfriend, Cody, all over the Carlton family vacation home in Aspen.  The commercial release of the video had been a key cause of Brighton’s break-up with Cody.  She hadn’t spoken to Milan until she could no longer stand to read about her not speaking to Milan every time she went to the grocery store or passed a newsstand.  She managed to patch things up with her sister but she never again ate at the breakfast table in their Aspen house.

“Naughty, naughty,” Milan giggled, shaking a finger at the photographer who asked the offending question.  With a photogenic toss of her fake blonde hair, she disappeared through the glass door and stepped behind the wall of plate glass.  Milan waved at Brighton as she runway-walked across the fishbowl of a restaurant.  “Brighton,” she shouted for the benefit of at least the photogs plastered against the windows like flies on a screen door on garbage day.

Milan was the sort of person who did everything as though someone was watching.

Brighton lifted the outsized black leather menu over her face and pretended not to see her sister or the swarm of paparazzi buzzing behind her.  She knew her sister had set her up.  She knew Milan had either tipped off the paps or found them and allowed herself to get “caught” and lead them there.

“I thought we were here to have lunch,” Brighton said, unsuccessfully trying to avoid the showy kisses her sister planted on both Brighton’s cheeks (and the pages of the next week’s tab mags.)

“We’re at Chin Chin,” Milan said, tossing herself into the both, clearly frustrated that her back would be to the windows.  “I thought you liked Chinese.”

“This is a photo op,” Brighton said with a sigh.  Giving up, she put down her menu.  “What do you want?”

“Why do I have to want something?” Milan said, straddling the banquette and turning so she was in profile to the cameras.  “Can’t I just have lunch with my sister?”

“Since when do you eat lunch?” Brighton asked with a laugh, amused at the idea.  “I can’t remember seeing you eat at all.  Not since we were kids.  Are you a vampire? So, trendy.”

“Don’t be like that, Brightie,” Milan said.

“Okay, Millie,” Brighton answered with a look that Milan returned.  Both hated the nicknames and would not use them again at that lunch unless there was a fight.  “Shrimp toast?”

“Just some tea,” Milan said, drumming her thick, fake nails on the menu.

“Tea is not lunch,” Brighton sniped.

“And a Chinois Chicken Salad.  Half.  Or we could split half.  Are you hungry?   I’m really not that…”

“What do you want, Milan?” Brighton enunciated firmly, cutting her sister short.

“What do you want?” Milan huffed.

“Shrimp toast.”

Another look.

“A pot of jasmine tea and two cups,” Brighton called to a member of the staff, most of whom were trying to look busy and get in the shot with Milan at the same time.  The trick was to not to block Milan but to get close enough into the frame that you couldn’t be easily cropped out.

Four of the black-apron-wrapped waiters scurried at the sound of Brighton’s voice.  Two collided.  One jumped a chair to be first to fill the order.

“Well?” Brighton said.  She fixed Milan with her patented And-That-Is-The-End stare and held Milan in it until her sister squirmed and looked away.  Milan may have gotten most of the press and all of Brighton’s boyfriends, but the look-could-kill event went to Brighton every time.

“They want me to do a reality show and I thought it would be great for your clothing line if you were in it.”  Milan blurted it out so abruptly that a nearby waiter, pretending to attend to planter of bamboo, gasped.  Caught he blushed and fled.

“Just thinking of me, eh?” Brighton said.  The look.

“I thought it would more interesting if we were both in it,” Milan winced under the glare.

The waiter arrived with the tea but was frightened by the way Brighton was looking at Milan and left before he could get his picture taken or ask them if they wanted to order.

“You’re smarter than me and it’ll just be . . .” Milan sighed.  “They won’t do it unless we’re both in it.  They want to capitalize on the fight over Co. . .”

“No.”

“Oh, come on,” Milan pleaded getting up and squeezing in on Brighton’s side of the booth.  It not only allowed her to wheedle Brighton more directly, she was once again facing the camera and, best of all, out of Brighton’s creepy-look eye line.  “It’ll be fun.  They’ll get us a place in West Hollywood and decorate it all up . . .”

“We both already live in West Hollywood.”

“Not a real place,” Milan explained petulantly.  “Something fun and hip and authentic.  And then they follow us around for a few days . . .”

“Just like the show you already did with Cissy?”

“Not exactly,” Milan said, putting her head on Brighton’s shoulder.  “We’ll call it Sisters.  Hot, right?”

“Why not just get Cissy to do it with you?”

“She’s mad at me.”

“I understand that make these kinds of things more popular.”

“She won’t speak to me.”

“Oh my God, Milan,” Brighton said turning and trying to catch her sister with the glare.  “Did you sleep with Cissy’s husband.”

“Ex-husband.”

“Since when?”

“Since I slept with him.”

. . . to be continued.