Lost In Hollywood

I’m in the Mercedes, gliding effortlessly along Venice Boulevard, when my cell phone begins to vibrate urgently. I glance down at the LCD. It’s Patrice, my new once would be best friend from Random House who handle my stuff out here, although I’m already four months behind on the book and the advance is pretty much blown, so I ignore it as I don’t feel like talking right now. Everything’s in perfect tense, although I’m slightly fazed out as to which one because I’m speeding on the edge of a giant curve, still hot wired from the line I shared with some girl called Cindy, or Candy, or Crystal - I’m not sure which. Just another Party Doll all flaked out in Tinseltown. I vaguely recall her telling me that she was up for a part in the new Robert Downey Jnr project that’s just been green lighted by Trent Maxwell at Fox, although I know she’s lying because Troy David over at Creative Artists knows Suzi Epstein at Fortune Casting and she’s currently got a casual weekend sex thing going with this executive at New Line who says the director is holding out for that Latvian model whose name I can’t pronounce but who fronted those shampoo commercials for L’Oreal and used to have a bit of a thing going with the auburn haired one out of that boy band who had a hit last fall with a cover of an old Roxy Music song I should remember but don’t, but whose star seems to be on the wane since the pretty one with the blonde crew cut and the come to bed eyes was outed by this supermarket sleaze ‘n slander rag.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours at Bar M, a trendy Planet Hollywood style hang out over in Marina Del Ray, attending a fund raiser for some animal charity whose name I don’t catch, which is fronted by one of the guys who used to introduce a show on Channel Nine, the one where viewers send in tapes of their pets performing…well I don’t know what exactly, but I remember people used to enjoy it. Then again, people used to enjoy baiting bears and throwing Christians to lions, so maybe that’s not such a good thing after all. The guy looks an even ten years older than he does on tv and I spend so much time staring at his jawline looking for signs of a lift job he thinks I’m trying to hit on him and comes over and offers me a weekend away down at some Mexican style ranch house he keeps over in Playa Vista for the express purpose of nailing new girls in town like me. I somewhat sarcastically remind him that it’s been a year since Tri-Star released the movie version of my bunch of loosely connected short stories, some of which dated as far back as my final school days, although I don’t think he’s listening as he keeps glancing over at some hot shot script doctor called Karma, or Krista, or Kaczia or something – I’m not really sure except she’s one of those ice blondes with the most intense eyes I’ve ever seen and hair to die for, and suddenly I feel so very ordinary.

Anyway, he tells me all this without a shred of irony while sipping a generous Canadian Club over ice and shifting his glance from the writer in order to size up a pneumatic blonde former Playmate Of The Month who now pitches weather forecasts on some local station out Inglewood way but who is apparently up for a forty second three line part in the next Coen Brothers movie, which doesn’t sound much but just may be enough to enhance her credibility and save her the trouble of spending the next year on some producer’s couch staring at the ceiling and wishing she were back home in Pasadena pulling milkshakes and dating High School jocks. She’s dressed in a coal black strapless Versace number with what appears to be a Kenneth Lane choker gripping her neck like a stranglers hands, although the gold looks plated and she’s got the makings of a double chin. Still, she’s got an ex-pro footballer locked on to her arm – a lamp tanned lump of prime sirloin with botoxed eyes and a collagen enhanced smile who used to date Trudy something or other out of ‘As The World Turns’ and peddles that foot powder with the name that sounds like Sandex but isn’t, so maybe things aren’t as bad as they first appear. After all, out here it’s all about illusion. Create it, mistreat it, but don’t ever try and beat it.

The party is a drag as I don’t feel any affinity with disenfranchised polar bears, so I split around eleven because I’m feeling drowsy from the wine and the Seconal I dropped earlier in an effort to take the edge off the migraine which I’m convinced is aggravated by the smog that seems to cover the Downtown district like a burnt silver shroud and leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the Listerine fails to shift.

I drive east, skirting the edges of Culver City, drifting out towards Baldwin Hills. I head down West Jefferson Boulevard before making a right on Rodeo. I hit a red at the junction and as I idle at the stop sign I notice a billboard across the street advertising Tom Ford knitwear and featuring a young guy of about sixteen who looks like a million other young guys but I swear is the same young guy who got my number at an after show party at The Roosevelt for the new spring Stella McCartney collection and now keeps messaging me wanting to know if I’d like spend some time with him over in Frisco while he does a photo shoot for some German snapper who made a name for himself back East in the late ‘90’s doing hard core porn flicks but who has now gone legit working on the West Coast for a number of European fashion houses, specialising in heroin chic and that beat up look so loved by the Japanese. I’ve got the in car entertainment system locked into WKLX who are playing non stop oldies, and I find myself drifting in and out of focus while a Cars tune plays in the background. I think it’s called ‘Double Life’ but I’m not entirely certain as I’m too young to remember it first time around, and although I haven’t a clue what the singer is going on about I like the references to freeways and the chorus where the rest of the band join in and sing “it’s all gonna happen to you” over and over again until the words float around my brain like goldfish in a tank and I gradually become immersed in the eclectic eccentricity of it all. Once upon a lifetime ago, it did all happen to me, although I’m a little hazy as to how, when or even why - just that I recollect swimming pools, parties, photo shoots, hangers on and white powder. Lots and lots of snow white powder, blowing like a blizzard through my brain, and voices in my head whispering incessantly that the good life is just a dream away. For some reason I’m transported back ten years to a classroom and I’m sitting there while this teacher is reading my stuff and telling me how good I am and I remember thinking that he probably imagined I wanted him to take me under his wing when all I really craved was confirmation of what I already knew, and as soon as I got it I was out of there. The last thing I needed were his lame suggestions and textbook techniques, although I sometimes feel a slight tinge of regret for him, most likely still sitting there wearing a chain store suit in his dusty classroom, telling his students how he once mentored a best selling author and most likely pulling the odd desperate housewife on the strength of my name. I think about the baby faced boy on the billboard and wonder how he thinks screwing me is going to further our respective career prospects unless, that is, he’s heard I had an on off thing with Vance Kenning at Leading Light and it’s no secret that Vance has this big thing about young boys, so maybe this model child swings both ways or maybe he likes to walk on the wild side or maybe he’s just bored and fancies a change.

As I meander slowly through West Adams on Exposition The Cars give way to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. They’re singing about an American Girl and I fall in love with the line about being out on four forty one like waves crashing on a beach and make a mental note to use it in a screenplay I’m supposed to be writing based on this Charles Bukowski short story that I’ve only read in treatment form but which Clay Astor over at Artificial Eye thinks would be good for me because he met Helen McInnes from Working Title at a wrap party on a Johnny Depp flick over in London about six months ago and she told him I’d be ideal for the job, but I’m thinking that’s less to do with her love of my work and more to do with the fact that she’s been itching to get her own back on me after I had a brief fling with her husband who runs a brokerage business and thought I was in love with him. I was, but only for about a week, and as soon as the novel was optioned and the cheque and airline tickets arrived I dropped him, even though he embarrassed himself by crying and me by promising to leave his wife. He was middle aged and balding so I wondered what he though he could bring to my party, even though I have to concede he was a decent enough lover, although his warm nature still left me totally cold.

At Figureo my phone lights up again. It’s Lance, this slime ball dealer who has some heavy contacts in the music industry and sells me stuff on a strictly as and when basis. I don’t want to answer because I know what he wants, but most of the advance has evaporated and I’ve told him he’ll have to wait until the book comes out, but he rings me again to call my bluff and this time I answer and he tells me I’ve got twenty four hours to come through or he’ll have some of his friends visit and mark me up so bad I’ll never go out in the daylight again. I offer him options in return – a dozen points on the sub-Twilight knock off I’m pencilled in to script for Universal and the keys to my car, even though I suspect he knows it’s one more missed payment away from the repo man. Somewhat inevitably, I offer to sleep with him – say he can do what wants, I don’t care, and for a brief minute I think he’ll go for it, especially when he says he’d like to bind me up with electrical flex and attach battery leads to parts of my anatomy I don’t even want to think about, and even though I’m desperate I tell him that I can’t go through with it and he laughs and says he’s heard on the grapevine from some concert promoter out at Firestone Park that the teen vampire film is stuck in development hell and the studio are thinking of dropping me as the allure of my English Rose persona begins to fade. I tell him that’s just front office jive talk but he mentions some names I know who are high up’s, and I wonder what I’m doing out here pulled over on Alameda as the coke wears off, leaving me shaking like a leaf and sobbing uncontrollably as the rain beats down on the windshield and the wipers struggle to clear the torrents of water pouring down the screen as Bobbie Gentry sings about never falling in love again and I suddenly wish to God I was back in that classroom.