Chapter 3
Find out who Austin won’t date!
I’m in a place where every sound is muffled. I can see the dirt under my fingernails, feel the scratchy blankets around my legs, and smell the burnt rubber smell coming from the kitchen. I feel like someone is watching me, although I don’t know who or from where.
A shrill sound comes from outside of that place, loud and jarring. It repeats, over and over, until my eyes open to the bedside phone ringing.
I cover my head with a pillow, sending a ripple through my California king waterbed that doesn’t feel pleasant. I want to ignore the phone, but it might be Bonnie or Floyd, and I don’t want them worrying enough to drive all the way here.
As I feel around for the phone on the nightstand, my foot brushes against skin. I remove the pillow to see Margie lying on her stomach next to me, snoring loudly, completely clothed, undisturbed from the ringing.
I reach for the receiver and knock over a cup onto the carpet in the process. I swear, then I answer.
“Hello?”
“Austin?” a male voice asks.
I roll over, rubbing my eyes. “Yeah?”
“That you?”
I have no idea what time it is, or even what day. My mind is a fog. I look around for the clock and see it’s eleven thirty in the morning. I yawn. “Who is this?”
“It’s me. Phil.”
For a second, I don’t know who he’s talking about, but then the fog lifts. I sit up on my elbow. “Oh. Hi.”
Phil Baxter was one of the producers for Love Thy Neighbor. He saw my audition and wanted to cast me as Reggie. He’s a bit older than Floyd, so he was like a grandpa to me. Out of all the kids on the show, I think I was his favorite. Margie said so a few times.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Phil says.
“Yeah. It has.” I rub my head, feeling nauseated. I hear water running. The shower is on in the bathroom.
“Listen, I won’t keep you too long. I just wanted to let you know me and Arnold Lenny are cooking up a new series. Police drama. We’re going to begin taping the pilot in a couple of months.”
“Sounds exciting.” I look over at Margie and wonder if I should wake her up.
He clears his throat. “We might have a part for you.”
The nausea subsides for a second. “Really?”
“It’s a big role. An adult role. It’s not going to be like before. It’s going to require quite a bit of dedication and good acting. Now, that last part I know you can do. I’ve seen it.”
I rub my aching head. “That sounds good. I’m definitely interested, if that’s why you’re calling.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then his tone changes. “Can I be candid with you?”
I glance over at Margie. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“Arnold and I agree that you’re our first choice for the role,” Phil says, his tone somber. “But we both read the papers.”
The pit of my stomach begins to feel cold.
Phil sighs. “I remember a fun-loving kid. Certainly not someone who’d get into a street brawl with Pete Laden’s worthless son.”
I’m surprised Phil even knows who Pete Laden is. Phil is an old man, old-fashioned, and stuck in his ways. I distinctly remember him giving Stan a look of disdain when he showed up on set wearing a tie-dyed Steppenwolf T-shirt. Phil told him not to wear stuff like that on set ever again.
I let out a breath. “It was a bad night, Phil. It won’t ever happen again.”
“I’m sure of that.” He clears his throat. “We’d like you to come in for a reading. I can send you over a copy.”
My stomach starts to feel a little better, and the fog begins to lift. “Sure. Yeah. I can do that.”
He’s quiet for so long that I ask if he’s still there.
“Austin,” he says. “We would really like to work with you again. But there’s just one problem.”
My stomach sinks. “What’s that?”
“We can’t have one of our stars getting photographed in bar fights with some rock star’s trashy kid.”
“I told you. It was a bad night.”
“From what I’ve heard, you’ve been having lots of bad nights.”
I look at Margie again, just snoring away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
His tone is firm. “Yes, you do.”
I wrap the phone cord tightly around my finger.
“Whatever his name is—Harvey? He’s the talentless, spoiled son of an even more talentless man.
Why would you waste a second of your time on someone like him?
You’ve always had a bright future, and I believe in you.
I really do.” I hear him sigh on the other end.
“I always thought, out of anybody, you’d turn out just fine.
I got to know you kids. I can’t help but feel it’s like one of my own, out there getting into trouble, getting mixed up with those trashy types.
Young men like him always end up OD’ing in a whore house before they’re thirty. That’s not you, Austin.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to talk to him about the abrupt end of my teen idol status, the failures, everything I’ve gone through, or that what they say is true—you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. And I really, really don’t want to talk to him about Harvey Laden.
“There’s this place,” Phil says. “I got some information I can send over. It’s about an hour or so outside of Washington, D.C. They can help you. And they’re very discreet.”
I hear the shower cut off in the bathroom. I have no idea who’s in there. “I don’t need to go to a place like that, Phil. And if I did, it wouldn’t need to be clear across the country.”
“Like I said, they’re very discreet. And I saw you on Kenny Kincaid. Most people wouldn’t know the difference, but I know you well enough to know when there’s something wrong.”
“I was just nervous.”
“And I was just born yesterday.”
“Is this really why you called me?”
“I’m giving you a chance here. You think I don’t know how hard it’s been for you? I’ll send you the pamphlet. Think about it.”
I rub my head again as the fog returns. “And if I don’t go, you’ll give the role to someone else. Is that it?”
“I called you first before anyone else, Austin. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
I don’t believe it does, but I don’t say that.
“I gotta go, Phil. Talk to you later.” I hang up the phone, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Don, the stagehand from The Kenny Kincaid Show, come out of the master bath with a towel wrapped around his waist.
Don grins at me and drops the towel, his dick and balls hanging in a brown bush. He picks his pants up off the floor.
I stare at him, completely baffled. “What are you doing here?”
“You and your chick invited me over.” He nods at Margie.
“What?”
“Most fellas I’ve seen at the club don’t bring their girl with them, but I don’t judge.”
My mind is still foggy, but I manage to conjure a few images from last night—Margie coming over, going out to the clubs, booze pouring from a bottle, dancing in blue and purple lights, and two firm hands grabbing my ass.
“Did… did we, uh…?”
He finishes dressing and comes over to my side of the bed. “You were pretty gone, and I don’t take advantage.” He leans over and kisses my cheek. “See you around sometime.” Then he walks out of the bedroom door and leaves.
The nausea hits again, along with a pounding headache. I want to crawl under the covers. This isn’t the first night of my life where I’ve blacked out and forgotten what happened, but it’s definitely the first time Phil Baxter has called me the morning after.
My head is throbbing, and I need some water.
I turn to Margie and shake her shoulder. “Hey. Get up.”
“Mmph…” She grumbles, turning her head away from me. Mascara and eyeliner are smudged all over my sheets.
“Come on, Margie.” I shake her again, then slowly get out of bed to look for some aspirin.
I feel terrible, hungover, and ready to either collapse on the floor and sleep all day or just vomit.
I shake Margie again a little harder. “Wake up.”
She raises her head, and her eyes slit open. “What the hell?”
“It’s almost noon.” I go into the bathroom to get some painkillers and take a shower.
As the hot water runs down my skin, my head clears a little. I think I may have gone down on Don. I think Margie may have made out with him. And I think Phil was way out of line.
Back then, he and Arnold Lenny wanted a clean show with little controversy, and it worked for a while.
But other shows soon started including risky storylines and portraying real-life issues.
People lost interest in a wholesome bubble world where the characters seemed unaware of Vietnam, kids tripping on acid, or broken families.
Love Thy Neighbor became irrelevant and out-of-touch.
I’d think a police drama wouldn’t be so wholesome, so maybe they’re getting with the times.
But Phil wanting his cast members to behave themselves isn’t new.
It wasn’t such a problem for me as a kid, but it was for the adults, or for Shelley and Stan who were teenagers when the show started.
I remember Bob Porter played Fred Marshall for the first three seasons before Phil and Arnold fired him.
He had a drinking problem and a womanizing problem.
They replaced him in season four with Dick Holloway, who everyone called the Other Fred or the Fake Fred.
Dick didn’t drink much, but he chain smoked in his trailer in between tapings.
Margie and I were seventeen when the show ended. We behaved ourselves, for the most part, with a few exceptions.
I think about what Phil said about Harvey, and he’s right. Harvey is spoiled. A spoiled, arrogant asshole. Why waste my time fighting with him? Why have I ever ? The truth is fuzzy, or more accurately, complex.
When I get out of the shower to towel off, I look at myself in the mirror. Maybe this is what I look like under all the masks, the real me—hungover, debauched, and depraved. I search for the character Phil wants. What sort of a mask will I wear this time? I wonder if it will be one I can take off.
An insistent knock rattles the door, and Margie shouts, “I gotta pee.”