Acting Up Read online

  Damn gorillas. And the world calls me selfish.

  Properly attired in my teeny, sexy running shorts with my cheapass cell phone tucked in the back pocket, my Asics knockoffs on my feet, and my gay pride key ring dangling from my wrist, I headed out the door—bare-chested, fuzzy-legged, and looking fabulous on the outside. On the inside, the Cheetos felt like a solidifying ball of concrete in my stomach. I’m such a hog.

  It was a beautiful San Diego afternoon, warm and clear. The summery breeze blowing in from the bay had the faintest promise of an approaching autumn softening its edges.

  From our North Park apartment, I chose a jogging path through Balboa Park. Studiously ignoring the zoo where I worked, I clomped past the carousel, across Park Boulevard on the other side, dodging the rose garden and galumphing down the canyon past the Naval Medical Center and up the other side to Morley Field and a mishmash of dusty, rocky hiking-and-biking trails that I’ve always found hilly enough and secluded enough to give me a nice private workout.

  Since I had detected a few lingeringly appraising looks from other gay joggers, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was just working up a good sweat—and thought maybe I could feel those Cheetos calories sloughing off like dandruff—when my cell phone chirped.

  I stumbled to a stop by a stand of chaparral, where coincidentally there happened to be a log bench handy, and plopped my ass down to answer the call.

  It was my mother.

  “He left me,” she said.

  My mother has a habit of thinking I can read her mind when most of the time I can’t even read my own.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Gerald.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Yes. He went back to his wife.”

  “He was married?”

  “Oh, don’t be such a prude, darling. When’s the last time you went to bed with someone who was married?”

  I checked my watch. It was two hours precisely since I’d kicked the bird man out of my bed. The married bird man whose wife wouldn’t lick his butt.

  “How did you—”

  “A mother knows, love.”

  Well, that was unnerving. I took a deep breath. “And you called becaaaause…?”

  “I have to cancel dinner. I have a date.”

  I blinked. I do that a lot when I’m speaking to my mother. “Gerald’s barely cold. His tube of Poligrip is probably still in your medicine cabinet. How could you have another date already?”

  “I met the new one at church. He offered to help me take my mind off my breakup. What was I supposed to say? No?”

  “It would be a change for you, to be sure. And since when do you go to church?”

  “I saw him on the street. He was cute. I followed him in.”

  “Nothing desperate about that. Is this one married too?”

  “How should I know, darling? I didn’t want to pry right off the bat.”

  I sighed. Sighing is another thing I do a lot of when I’m talking to my mother. It’s like the blinking thing.

  I gazed down at the bench I was sitting on, and there, not a foot away, sat an alligator lizard staring back at me. He was a foot long if he was an inch.

  By the time I found my phone in the bushes where I had inadvertently flung it in my startled response to the fucking lizard, my mother had already hung up. Hard to believe we shared the same genes. She fell in love every five minutes. I had never fallen in love even once. There must have been a glitch on my DNA strand concerning that one chromosome that controls affairs of the heart. So basically the fact that I was a lonely, unloved putz was the result of a birth defect, which at least took the stigma of blame off me.

  By the way, in case you’re wondering, my father was one of my mother’s passing fancies as well. It’s just that when he passed completely out of my mother’s life (and who the hell could blame him for that?), he left a little splash of himself behind. Ergo… me.

  So yes, I’m a bastard, which may explain more than I care to admit. It also explains why on most days I refuse to think too closely about my lineage. Suffice it to say, my mother had fond memories of my father and told me once he really knew how to laugh. I guess that was all it took to get my mother into his bed. Or him into hers. My mother gave me her last name, since she couldn’t remember the last name of Chuckles the Clown who impregnated her. At least I was left with the knowledge that he really knew how to laugh. And fuck, presumably. What more did I need to know?

  I had resumed my jog and was now sailing past the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park. Full Gallop with Mercedes Ruehl was on the marquee. I wouldn’t be catching her performance. Tickets were over a hundred bucks; I’d already checked. (This might be a good time to mention I hate being poor.)

  From the Globe I headed into Hillcrest, San Diego’s Castro District, where every man you meet can most likely be had, and every woman you meet is more than likely a man in disguise. Or a lesbian.

  My cell phone chirped again just as I had slowed up to better assess the way I looked in my teeny-tiny running shorts in a passing storefront window. I stood there panting, sweating, and ostensibly stretching my hamstrings when what I was really doing was admiring my reflection as I answered the phone.

  All actors are vain. It’s a fact of life.

  The caller was Luigi Von, a man I had run across a few times at previous auditions around town. Luigi was a local actor who had just come down from a six-week run as Lucky in the San Diego Theater Guild’s production of Dames at Sea. It was a part I had tried out for myself, but since Luigi had blown the director in a toilet stall directly after his audition, which in the world of show biz is known as networking, he got the part instead of me. By the way, Luigi is about as Italian as a Spam-and-Velveeta sandwich. His real name is Elmer Cooksey, and he was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Probably in a cornfield.

  All this goes a long way in explaining my cool reception to his call.

  “What do you want?”

  If Luigi Von had been twenty-six years older and not a raging queen, he could have been my father. He never stopped laughing either.

  “Oh, puh-lease, Malcolm. Don’t tell me you’re still upset about that last audition?” He let out a long-winded series of chuckles and clucks and snorts, sort of like a carnival barker who knows he’s reeling off a line of malarkey but has perpetual hope of selling the local yokels a few tickets to the freak show anyway.

  I faked a big loud yawn, just to be a dick. “I’m not mad at all, Elmer. I read your reviews. Heartbreaking, weren’t they? Something about singing like a frog with adenoids.”

  Elmer’s voice turned to ice. “It’s Luigi, as you damn well know, and I had a cold. My voice was off that night. Besides, that reviewer has always had it in for me. I broke his heart once, poor man. He’s been a vindictive twit ever since.”

  “He also said you danced like a yak with two broken legs and a Sherpa up its ass.”

  “The man’s a jerk.”

  “There was something else too. What was it? Oh yes. Now I remember. He said the monotonal delivery of your lines was reminiscent of Kevin Costner in an alcoholic coma. He also said that casting you in a musical comedy was like embellishing a Meat Lover’s pizza with a dead cat.”

  “He did not say that!”

  “Oh. Perhaps I read it wrong,” I sniped. “So anyway, what do you want? Dancing and singing lessons? Tips on elocution? A Z-Pak of antibiotics for a resistant strain of clap you contracted while auditioning on your knees in a public bathroom?”

  “Look, I’m sorry I was cast as Lucky and you weren’t, but your tap dancing wasn’t up to the part and you know it. Besides, I give better head than you do.”

  “You do not!”

  He gave a martyred sigh and apparently decided to forgo any further attempt at an apology for snagging the part of Lucky out from under my nose. (After all, I could have blown the director in that toilet stall with just as much alacrity—and skill—as he had. Anything to play Lucky. But alas it wasn’
t meant to be. Luigi got to the director’s zipper tab before I did. It was as simple as that. Snagging good roles is all about the desperation.)

  “Listen, Malcolm, I’m giving you a heads-up on an audition for a local movie. They need someone to play a UPS driver. Your scene is pivotal. You’d have about fifteen minutes of screen time in the final cut.”

  That got my attention. “Fifteen minutes? Wow. That’s a lot. What kind of movie is it?”

  “Vignettes, mostly. Different scenarios on a common theme. You interested?”

  “Hell yes, I’m interested. Are you auditioning too?”

  “Uh, no. I have other commitments.”

  Good. “Well, gee, Elmer, I mean Luigi. That’s too bad. I still have fond memories of us working together on Paint Your Wagon at the Signet.” Or I would have if you hadn’t tried to steal every scene you were in. “I don’t suppose there’s any singing or dancing in this one. What with it being a movie and all.”

  “Naw. Just straight acting,” he said. Then he guffawed. Yes, you heard me right. He actually guffawed. “Not that any scene is particularly straight when you’re playing it, hey, Malcolm?”

  Nor you, you director-sucking hack, I thought. But rather than voice the words out loud, I held my tongue. Since the guy was doing me a favor, I chuckled a couple of times so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings. Or worse yet, piss him off before he told me where the audition was being held.

  A movie! I couldn’t believe it. A movie!

  “Well, golly, I don’t know how to thank you for letting me know.”

  “Happy to do it,” he said, sounding smug.

  While I still had him on the line, I thought I’d dig a little more information out of him. “Any roles for a woman?” I asked. “You remember my friend, Beth, right?”

  “The tap-dancing hippo? The one you’re living in sin with?”

  “There’s not much sin involved. Not with each other, at any rate. And she’s lost weight.”

  “Oh, good. But, no. Sorry. Only male roles available.”

  “Pity,” I said. Then I forgot about Beth in two seconds flat. A movie! An honest-to-god movie!

  I never said I was a good friend.

  Chapter Two

  WITH MY jog over, I showered, threw on some decent clothes, and used just enough styling mousse to give my hair some pouf without making it look spiky since at auditions it’s always better to appear natural. Don’t ask me why. Nobody knows better than a director how phony and psychotic actors are. You’d think a director with any common sense at all would have figured out by now that the condition of an actor’s hair is the least of his worries.

  I ran into Beth coming in as I was going out.

  “I’ve got news!” she exclaimed. Then she slid to a stop and gave me the old eagle eye up, down, and crosswise. “Where are you off to?” she asked. “And why are you dressed up? And why does your hair look poufy instead of spiky? You’re going to an audition without me, aren’t you?”

  Scooping Beth into my arms even though she was sweaty from tap-dancing class, I did my best “caring friend” impersonation. Not that I was faking it. I wasn’t. I honestly felt bad they weren’t auditioning women for the movie since she wouldn’t have been competing with me for a role anyway. After all, women play women, men play men. Usually. “I’m sorry, darling. They’re only reading for men’s roles today.”

  “Typical sexist claptrap,” she groused. “What is it? A commercial?”

  I tried to hide the glee in my voice, but I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of it. I could tell by the way I did a cheerleader jump and got all giggly. Thank God I didn’t own any pom-poms. “It’s a movie!” I squealed.

  Beth’s eyes narrowed. “How nice for you. Where did you hear about it?”

  “Luigi Von called me.”

  “You mean Elmer? And you believed him?”

  A niggle of worry suddenly gnawed its way into my brain. Why would Luigi Von give me a tip on a movie audition? He hated my guts more than I hated his, if that was even empirically possible.

  Beth threw her head back, flounced past, and said, “It’s probably a porno shoot. You’d better take protection.”

  “I don’t do porno,” I snapped.

  “Yes, well, perhaps you should have explained that to Elmer.”

  I had just watched a couple of British flicks, so I said, “Pishposh,” dismissively in my best cockney accent and pranced out the door.

  Since my car was as dead as Walter Brennan, I hopped a city bus. The auditions, according to dipshit Elmer, were being held in a warehouse on Sixth Avenue, where I’d seen them shoot commercials before. It took me less than fifteen minutes to get there. Public transit rocks.

  On the door of the warehouse hung a handwritten sign. It read Auditions with an arrow pointing to the corner of the building and beyond. I carefully picked my way through a stand of waist-high weeds and approached another door, this one standing open. Just inside the door sat a woman at a card table, passing out forms. The woman had hair bleached to the consistency of shredded wheat and a mesh of wrinkles on her face, no doubt etched there by the smoke wafting off the unfiltered Camel poking out of the side of her mouth. She squinted continuously against the smoke. As I entered, she smiled. Her teeth were the color of overcooked Tater Tots.

  When she spoke, the cigarette bobbed around at the corner of her mouth. A chunk of ash broke away and disappeared into the Great Divide between her massively bulbous breasts, which were obviously pumped full of silicone to the point of exploding. They were also wrinkled with age and barely being contained by the tube top she had squeezed herself into. Since the woman was clearly in her seventies, or beyond, the tube top probably wasn’t such a great idea. There are few things worse than seventy-year-old clavicles. From the tits up, she looked like a picked-over turkey carcass.

  “Hi, honey,” the woman said through a cloud of smoke, handing me a sheaf of forms. “Fill these out and wait over there.” She pointed into the shadowy interior at a line of cheap plastic chairs parked along the wall to the left. Each of the chairs had a young man sitting in it, also filling out forms and waiting their turn to audition. Oddly, I couldn’t remember ever having seen any of them before. Usually at auditions, everybody knew everybody else. After all, there were a finite number of San Diego actors all trying out for the same parts no matter what the auditions were for. Stage shows, commercials, extra work, whatever.

  Seeing a bunch of handsome young strangers checking me out as I joined their group gave me another surge of unease.

  Oh well, anything for a gig, right? I ignored the other auditioners as best I could and settled in to fill out the forms.

  The first page was a fairly standard questionnaire. Name, age, acting history—the usual stuff.

  The second page was a release form in which they asked me to relinquish all rights and to sign over all images of my performance to the producers to be used in any way they saw fit. This wasn’t a standard form by any means, but still it wasn’t enough to scare me off. They were probably simply talking about using performance photos for advertising purposes.

  The third page asked for a medical history. I stared at it for a full thirty seconds, trying to fathom its meaning. Nobody asks for a medical history. I mean nobody.

  I glanced up from the forms and stared at one of the guys sitting across from me. He had scooped his dick out of his pants and was pleasuring himself casually as he worked on his own set of forms. Every once in a while, he would slide his thumb across his slit, gather up the precome there, and pop it in his mouth as if a little extra protein helped him concentrate on the paperwork.

  Jesus. That was a new one. Nobody beats off at auditions either. Well. Not until they’ve got the part, at any rate.

  An overweight woman with dreadlocks tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a brown baseball cap with the letters UPS stenciled across the front.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Your wardrobe for the audition.”
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br />   “Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

  “What rest of it?” she laughed, then stalked off.

  For the first time, I let my gaze trail around the warehouse. Way off at the other end of the building, I saw a swirl of action and light, so I studied it closer. I supposed they were recording the auditions, although I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. There were overhead drum lights, fabric backdrops, a bank of diffuser reflectors, shotgun mikes, the whole nine yards. All this audio and video equipment circled a brightly lit office set, with desks and printers and a water cooler and a bigass Xerox machine parked in one corner.

  Perched atop the Xerox machine, at that particular moment, was a naked guy photocopying his ass. While he did that, a man in nothing but wingtip shoes and a necktie was bent over giving the photocopying guy a blow job. The photocopying guy had his head flung back, his mouth hanging open, and his toes curled up in ecstasy. It must have been a really good blow job.

  A cameraman standing behind a tripod-mounted camcorder was recording the images for posterity, and a fat man with a beard like Gandalf, wearing the grungiest blue jeans I’d ever seen in my life, held a studio boom mike over the actors’ heads to catch every grunt and slurp and groan.

  I realized immediately that poufing my hair had been a waste of time. I also realized immediately that the next time I ran into Luigi Von—aka Elmer Scumbucket—I would sic Beth on him. After all, she was stronger and meaner than me, and she also knew Tae Kwon Do. I’ve never trained past the bitch-slapping phase, although I have been known to trip people going downstairs, then run like a rabbit while they tumble off into oblivion.

  I never said I was butch. Or fair.

  I also never said I had any desire to be a porn star.

  To the guy playing with his dick while he filled out the forms, I said, “Put that thing away before you go blind,” and to the guy next to him who looked about twelve and was really getting into watching the guy next to him beat off, I said, “I hope your mother never finds out you’re here.”