la la land

cry
Look in the mirror, baby, you are the dream.
You smash that fucker now and you get so clean.
- “Silver Future” (Wyndorf)


I’m sitting in the bar of the Union Grand, on the 15th floor, looking across Universal City at the edifice known as The Black Mariah. When Lew Wasserman had it built, although rumors abounded that the commission of a building resembling a black obelisk meant he was part of some secret conspiratorial manipulative cabal, my hairdresser at the time had a much better theory.

Girl please, Lew just wanted to work in a building that looks the way he dresses. Typical control freak.

I like the bar at the Union Grand, which doesn’t even have a name, because it’s all beige and brass, ultimately soothing. I blend right in, wearing a jersey-knit taupe sheath, because I’m stylish, darling, not obvious. The bartenders all know and like me because I tip them well and refuse to order trendy drinks which require more than two or three ingredients. To wit, I sip a screwdriver and zone out by the windowed walls over the urban sprawl crammed into about a five-mile radius.

I’m waiting for Ashur. That’s not the name he goes by when working, but as he has been largely assigned to the has-beens of late, it doesn’t really matter. He gets a lot of work on British TV, though, so I suppose that’s something. It means he goes largely unrecognized around here, which peeves him. He’s got marquee good looks, but more villainous. He tells me that impression is a result of the national prejudice against Middle Eastern men, but the dark squirmings of my emotions in response to his dusky stare were engendered long before 9/11. I pointed him out to my mom one night as we watched some obscure movie he had appeared in a few years ago, and she said he reminded her of Ramon Novarro. I’ve never told him that because I’m afraid he’ll give me a blank look and when people who work in the industry possess little to no knowledge of film history it just makes me sad.

Some bland anonymous jazz noodling plays over the soundsystem and I tap my perfectly manicured nails on the table, waiting for the vodka to take the edge off my free-floating anxiety. I woke up this morning thinking we were due for another earthquake. And I don’t mean some piddly-ass 5.0 rumbling that does nothing but stir up the dust from the Santa Anas, I mean an 8.5 where you can see the ground undulate beneath you. An event that is apt to cause a psychotic break, evidence of concrete reality taking a turn for the truly bizarre. So I get why people freak out and start making plans to move to the Midwest. Sure, you could die in a hurricane or a tornado, but at least it makes sense. It’s a storm, a big wind, and those things are supposed to happen. But solid ground acting like rubber, like water? What the fuck, man.

“Breakfast?” I hear a cold patrician voice ask. Ashur looks more plebeian than usual, wearing faded jeans and a black long-sleeved button-down silk shirt. He always does dress in direct contrast to the weather. Especially this current earthquake weather. The thermometer on the bank across the street reads 92 degrees and it’s not even noon.

“No, I had a bellini for breakfast,” I answer, smiling.

The bartender brings him a mineral water and he toasts me: a gracious little gesture. He was raised in England and is always impeccably well-mannered in public.

“And what have you been up to?” I ask.

“Other than lunches with my lawyer, non-billable? Not much. I finished a movie in Poland last month. I imagine it will go straight to video; if we’re all lucky, that is.”

“When’s the next custody hearing?” Mind you, I don’t really care about the endless battle he’s been fighting with his ex-wife to regain visitation rights for his son, but part of what he pays me for is polite conversation.

“Two months. If I can get Miles to give a positive deposition this time regarding my anger management issues it should go well.”

I originally met Ashur through a mutual friend, Jack Perris. He and Jack attend the same anger management group.

“Have you talked to Jack recently?” I ask, mildly curious. I’ve heard of late he’s taken a turn for the worse.

“He hasn’t been to group in a few weeks. I expect to see news of his incarceration on Access Hollywood any day now.”

“Sad.”

I used to be one of Jack’s fuckbuddies when his wife first left him. He threw open his house to anyone and everyone and spent about a year in the throes of a seemingly endless delirium, like he was experiencing an adolescence he never had. Back when I dealt blow he and his entourage were some of my best customers. I actually lived at the house for a while, in lieu of payment, in a little room he never bothered to redecorate after Sandy moved out. She had a thing for unicorns. I had flashbacks to being ten. I spent my days lying by the pool, staring at the Hollywood sign and trying to spy on the movie stars across the canyon and my nights going around to the clubs, making a fair profit. A third of it had to go to Leon, an ex-bodybuilder who although was cursed with the occasional fit of ‘roid rage, was large enough to inspire fear in anyone who thought they could take advantage of a slight bottle blonde. I had to pursue an alternate line of work when my supplier got bagged by the DEA and the cartel was spooked enough to cut the entire supply line for the next three years. My mom was nice enough to send me to Miami until everything was normal again. I hated it there, too much humidity. When I returned, I found that Jack had considered me far more attractive as a drug dealer than as an escort. Everyone’s a whore in Hollywood, after all.

“And you? How’s tricks?” His BBC-perfect diction and low tone give me goosebumps.

“And here I always thought you were polite enough to avoid asking me about my work.”

“Sorry, I’m in a strange frame of mind these days.”

Very loud klaxons should have been sounding in my head at that moment, but all I did was purse my lips in a moue of ridicule and finish the rest of my drink. I was a little worried that I wasn’t scared. Part of what makes me a true professional is my ability to fear people. Girls who honestly believe that a celebrity couldn’t possibly hurt them end up dead, or requiring reconstructive surgery. I always assume that everyone desiring to inflict pain is only one or two steps away from complete mayhem, it’s safer that way.

Ashur, for example, although he looks elegant and even genteel, is a very dangerous man indeed. I often despair at the justice system, because although I probably deserved to be punished for contributing to bad decisions and worse behavior due to my past employment, Ashur had received only ten months in Chino for nearly beating his ex-wife to death with a belt. A fairly ordinary leather belt with a metal buckle. He confessed once after beating me with a similar belt that the only reason he stopped short was because it broke. Assault normally carries at least a three-year sentence. His ex-wife, an actress, took their son and moved out of the country. I hear she employs three full-time bodyguards and has a security system rivaling that of most banks. And yet he seems to think he’s entitled to participate in his child’s life and has pursued that philosophy most rigorously. I suppose I can admire his determination, the complete overhaul of his image: living a sedate, almost acetic life; taking whatever role is offered to him so as not to show too much pride; swearing off any and all vices, save one; attending an anger management support group and at the very least offering lip service to the tenants of normalcy.

Because that’s all it is: empty, hollow promises that ring with the same echo as a slap across the face.

The reality is that Ashur has been able to achieve all this because he still possesses an outlet for his extreme misogyny.

Me.

And I knew, before he even asked me if he could avail himself of my services, and I agreed. Because fear is my pleasure, dread is my desire. It is the only thing that flicks the switch, the only thing I feel. Feelings are also dangerous, more dangerous that anyone could possibly know. I require an orderly universe and I strive at all costs to achieve it. I am perfectly poised at all times. Some ask me to cry and I can, on cue. Another actor taught me the trick. But it’s better when I don’t have to make a sound.


As we leave the bar to go two floors up to the room I always use, the bartender looks at Ashur curiously, like he’s seen him on television. This is most likely true, but I’m wishing he remains memorable for other, more pressing reasons that I hope I will not have to utilize in the near future.


We have entered into a pact: he promises not to go too far, and I promise to let him go as far as he will. I imagine my motivations are altruistic: better me than some innocent starstuck stupid girl who might end up dead.

”You should let him go,” my hairdresser tells me. But I ask if perhaps there isn’t something interesting about someone who despises the opposite sex and yet cannot overcome his biological predetermination to find sexual gratification in another way. And after all, I cannot seem to overcome my odd predilection for dread. I can’t stand to be touched in any mutually consensual way.
“Besides,” I tell him, “he already told me if I refused to service him he’d kill me.”
“Hello. . .restraining order?!”
I laugh. “No, you don’t get it. He said it with a straight face. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who actually means what they say in this town?”


I think about all the things I could be doing.

I could be sitting at home with my mom watching the daytime talk shows.

I could be having lunch with my hairdresser, gossiping over sushi and ridiculous alcoholic concoctions about people we know, people we wish we knew.

I could be lying in bed, watching Dumbo. The part where his mom sings “Baby Mine” before she is sent away gets me every fucking time.

I could be sitting in the back yard, listening to the hawks call to each other as they fly above Los Feliz, baking in the sun, pretending that nothing else exists but that moment of stillness.

I could be with a man, any man, who does not inspire such absolute dread.

But am I not.


Ever the gentleman, he helps me to the bathroom before he leaves because I can barely stand, let alone walk. There is no blood in my urine and I am relieved. He hands me the card key and I make sure the door is locked. I wait until I can hear the elevator stop at this floor before slowly making my way to the bed, hugging the wall. Once I am lying beneath the chilly sheets and the curtains are open, I call Leon and instruct him to pick me up in four hours. He grumbles because rush hour will have already started by that time, but I want to get home before dark. I need to be in my own room before it gets dark, or risk a panic attack. In my room I’ll feel safe, in control, and if I do start to unravel there are things I can do to stave off complete disintegration. For now I drift off in the daylight, parts of me still throbbing and stinging, and fantasize about losing control, how good, so very good it would feel if I could. I would masturbate, but it hurts too much.


We talk about control, my current hairdresser and I. One of his favorite sayings is It’s all fun and games until someone is hemorrhaging uncontrollably from the rectum. A little grimace follows that observation and it’s enough to tell me that it’s wisdom gained from experience. I’ve never busted a vessel, thankfully, though I have lost some measure of rectal control over the years. I consider it a small sacrifice to the greater goal of security. Unless of course I lose my sweaty grip on reality and forget when to stop. I can only hope I won’t because I’d hate for my mom to find the police on her doorstep one night, looking at her with pity and disgust. I think she deserves better.


What I deserve, on the other hand, is something I have yet to define.