Chapter 2
TWO
“Oh my God, did I wake you?”
“Mmmmm, ggggrrrrrppppp.”
“What time is it there? I thought it was eleven… Oh, dear. It is eleven. And you have that Kapowie! thing tonight, don’t you?
“Hello, Mom.”
She let a moment pass before she asked the question she’d called to ask.
“Are you excited?”
“Why would I be excited?” I couldn’t help teasing her. I knew why she thought I’d be excited.
“Finn Henderson! You’ll have to call me tomorrow and tell me everything. I mean, after you get some sleep—but definitely before Monday.”
“Do you want an autograph?”
“No. Don’t be silly.”
She’d spent enough time with us in LA to know that approaching stars at all, no less for an autograph, was very uncool. I sat up in bed and tried to focus.
“I think Leon is crazy not to go with you guys.”
“I think Leon is crazy.”
She stifled a laugh, then said, “Crazy or not, he’s a good friend and you know it.”
Leon had recently done a deep background check on a Ford salesman named Rick Henley. On the surface at least, he seemed safe for my mother to date. He was just a bit older than she was, divorced but amicably. Or at least without restraining orders or accusations of abuse. His ex remarried almost immediately, so it seemed that if there was infidelity it was on her part. He still lived in the house they’d bought together in 1973. There was a four-year-old mortgage of about sixty percent of the value, so it appeared he’d bought his wife out. There were two adult children living outside of Michigan. According to my mother he was close with them, and Leon could find no reason to doubt that.
“How is Rick?”
“He’s fine. We’re having lunch again this week. He wants me to look at a red Thunderbird they just got in.”
“Are you dating or buying a car?”
“I think we’re dating, but if he tries to sell me a car then the dealership will pay for the lunch. He doesn’t try very hard. Oh, and can you believe that I almost bought you a white Bronco?!”
Honestly, I did not remember that. She might have mentioned wanting to buy me a Bronco at one point. I don’t think we actually got to the point of discussing color.
“Yeah, that’s wild,” I said. Sometimes it was best to just agree.
“Rick says that was the worst possible publicity for Ford. A slow-speed car chase really doesn’t do much for a brand.” Then she sighed and said, “Poor O.J.”
“What about the people he probably killed?”
“Oh, I feel terrible about that, of course. But the worst is over for them. But O.J. … They said he was holding a gun to his head. He was going to kill himself. I think he feels bad about what he did.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I didn’t say it was… Really Noah, I can feel bad for him if I want. He’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
I really need coffee, I thought, right before my brain wandered off to weigh the question of which was better: a life in prison or death? Tough choice. And one I was glad I didn’t have to make.
“Have you been getting out?” My mother asked.
“What do mean have I been getting out? I go to work every day.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I had dinner with Marc and Louis on Thursday.”
“That’s in your front yard. That’s not getting out. Have you been getting out into the world? Going places? Meeting people? Being young !”
“I went to the grocery store.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
In the last few years, I had gotten out into the world. I’d taken a photography class, which eventually led to a dead body in the dumpster behind my store. I joined a support group, which led to a dead body in my bed. And I’d taken a trip to Las Vegas, which led to a dead body on the roof of a car. Fortunately not my car, but you get the idea. Staying home seemed like the rational thing to do.
“You’re going to just ignore me, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
After the briefest pause, she said, “Well… You need to get some rest. You have quite the night in front of you. You can’t spend the morning hanging on the phone.”
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks for calling, Mom.”
I rolled over and slept for another hour and a half.
* * *
I spent the afternoon doing this and that, mostly resisting the urge to call the store and check on things. Around seven, I finally took a shower and found myself staring in the mirror. I’d recently gone to an old-fashioned barber and had him buzz my hair off. I know I looked like a dishonorably discharged Marine, but it solved the issue of what to do with my hair. People said it made my eyes look bigger. I still wasn’t sure if I liked it, but I did like the compliments. They were compliments, right?
Other than that, I was still the same big-eared, smallish, too-old-to-be-called-a-twink average gay guy. There was some bad news: I was getting crow’s-feet. But there was also good news: I was getting old. Or at least older. For a long time, I hadn’t been sure that would happen.
I’d gotten into an experimental trial for some new AIDS drugs, and they were working. My most recent blood test showed that my T-cells were increasing. Something they’d never done before. They’d dipped down to slightly less than three hundred at one point. Now they were almost five hundred. Just below normal. My doctor was really happy. I was really happy. It also felt weird.
Staring in the mirror like that, I began to feel like a movie character having an existential crisis. I brushed my teeth and went to get dressed. Then I spent part of the evening watching Kapowie!
The videos had recently been released due mainly to the deal with the Nostalgia Channel, which almost immediately became OTN—which stands for Old Time Network. Honestly, I didn’t consider that an improvement.
Yes, I should probably have watched the show long before now. It had been in my store for at least three months. What can I say? I’m hardly the demographic. The episode I watched opened with all eight of the teens—four boys and four girls—singing and dancing in front of a multicolored, psychedelic backdrop. The song was something about how we’re all sisters and brothers. Which frankly sounded incestuous.
At first, it was hard to pick out which kid was Marc. It was easy to pick out which teen was Finn Henderson, since photos of him on Kapowie! were often shown. Not to mention he was very nearly in his twenties when the show began. That left three boys as possible—oh, I found Marc.
Wow, he looked nothing like the man I knew. He was the youngest of the group, having barely started puberty. His face was round and cheeks full, as they still are. But his hair was long and thick, and cut into a shag. And he was skinny.
The clothes they wore to dance in were extreme: bell-bottoms with platform shoes. Two of the girls, Kathleen and Grace, wore shirts that exposed their midriff. Keely, the Black girl, had an exaggerated Afro. Even though it was almost twenty-years ago, I had the feeling they were all slightly out of step. They didn’t look the way teenagers looked then; they looked the way adults thought teenagers looked then.
After the song, there was a sort of skit between Finn and Kathleen. It was a little story about a guy asking a girl if she wanted to go to the movies, except they did it three times. First, it was about how boys should not behave: Finn was sullen and monosyllabic. The date did not get made. The second time, it was about how girls should not behave: Kathleen was a flighty chatterbox who couldn’t pay attention. The date did not get made. The third time, they each were articulate and listened to each other. The date got made. This was all accompanied by screen graphics that, rather than increase your understanding of the skit, just repeated what was clearly happening. BOYS ARE DUMB. GIRLS TALK TOO MUCH. LISTEN TO EACH OTHER.
The next section was Wes fixing a flat tire on his bike. I fast forwarded through that. There was another dance number, this time with just the girls. The song was about girls being just as smart as boys. The lyrics were kind of dumb though, so I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a joke or just reinforce stereotypes. Then there was a scene that I assumed they’d be doing a version of every week. All the kids were at desks, as though in a classroom. But instead of having a class they each told jokes. It was sort of a take on the wall on Laugh-In from earlier in the seventies.
Marc stood out in this scene. He told jokes that were rip-offs of famous comedians. “I met my math teacher, Mrs. Josephs, in my pajamas. How she got in my pajamas I’ll never know.” There were ha-ha graphics on the screen to help you understand you were supposed to laugh. That was about all I could take. I rewound the tape and put it back into its plastic box.
Around nine-thirty, I went downstairs to see if I could help Louis. Even before I got to their front door, I could see that he’d been busy. There were two coolers already full of food. I peeked into one, it was filled to the brim with fruit. Next to that cooler was an industrial looking blender.
As I was gaping at the coolers, Louis came out of the house with a bag full of five dozen eggs. As he said hello, he began packing them into one of the coolers.
“What’s the deal with the blender?”
“Oh, you don’t know. The producers own ten juice bars in the valley, Juicy Juice franchises. I just got back from the one in North Hollywood. I had to pick up the blender and the cooler of fruit. The recipe book is in one of those bags.”
He pointed to six Trader Joe’s bags sitting next to his front door.
“Wow, this is a lot of stuff,” I said.
“I know. We’re going to have to figure out how four of us can carry it in one trip.”
“One trip? Why? That doesn’t make any sense. We’re not going to just drive onto the lot?”
I’d been around enough studio people to know that if you worked there you called the guard and left what they call a drive-on, which meant you could park your car on the lot. Why wouldn’t someone leave us a drive-on?
“Yeah, it’s street parking only for some reason. We’ll want to get everything into the studio in one trip.”
“You know, I’ve never even heard of Bennett Day Studios before.”
“They’re pretty small. Five or six stages, I think. They started up after talkies, made a few movies themselves, but mostly they’ve been doing space rentals for decades. Indie productions. Overflow for the studios. Lots of commercial work. I went to their web page.”
Louis was much more computer savvy than I was. Of course, I could have asked Mikey to do it, he’d have been thrilled.
“Should I bring some of these bags down to your car?”
“Thank you, that’d be great. We’re taking Marc’s car. It’s bigger.”
I grabbed three of the TJ bags by the handles, but then put one down as they were heavier than I expected. I brought those two bags down our newly painted red concrete steps and set them behind Marc’s Infiniti. Then I went back upstairs. Louis was rearranging one of the two coolers to fit more stuff in.
“So… how many people are we feeding?”
“I was told fifteen.”
“Which means…”
“I’m prepping for thirty.”
“Oh my God.”
I grabbed some more bags and brought them down to the car. Once we had everything down there, Louis began to load it in. The trunk took one of the coolers and a lot of the bags. The second cooler, the remaining bags, the blender and the thirty-cup coffeemaker went into the backseat. Rather than stacking everything in the middle, Louis put it all behind the driver—meaning that Eldridge and I were going to have to squeeze together very tightly all the way to Culver City.
“You know, I could bring my car,” I said. I wanted to bring my car. That’s why I had a car. To bring me places.
“Parking in Culver City is a nightmare,” Marc said from behind me. He had a garment bag slung over his shoulder. He laid it on top of the things in the backseat. As he climbed into the front seat, I caught a closer glimpse of him.
“Are you wearing makeup?”
“I’m going to be on TV. Get in, we have to go.”
I climbed into the backseat. My heart was beating a little faster than I liked and I was clammy. The last time I was in the backseat of a car I was being kidnapped. This situation was feeling uncomfortably similar. But that was silly. Marc and Louis were not kidnapping me. They weren’t. They really weren’t. Even if it felt like they were.
“Do you think we might finish early?” I asked.
Marc twisted around in his seat and stared at me like I was crazy. “That isn’t even remotely a possibility.”
“Great.”
When we reached Pinx Video, Eldridge was standing out front. He was wearing an ACT-UP T-shirt, jean shorts and a pair of large work boots. He folded himself into the tiny space in the backseat with me, and we were off.
I was feeling anxious. Too anxious. And I couldn’t figure out if my anxiety was coming from being pressed up against a cute boy or if it was the whole ‘I was recently kidnapped’ thing. Of course, it could have been both. A mix of sexual tension and abject terror.
“You’re not wearing your leather jacket,” I said to Eldridge’s ear. A rather attractive ear, actually.
“Do you think I sleep in it or something?”
“No. I mean… No.”
I had wondered if he slept in it. I mean, he wore it a lot.
“We’re working. It’ll get too hot and I’d have to put it somewhere safe. And I don’t know that there will be somewhere safe. It seemed easier to not bring it.”
“There’s going to be a lot of actors,” Marc said. “He’s afraid one of them will steal it.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s okay. One of them probably would.”
We drove for a few blocks. I leaned in close to Eldridge—well, closer. I was already close. And whispered, “I am sorry about this. I did offer to drive.”
“It’s okay. I’ve had worse dates.”
“It’s not a date.”
“Potato, potahto.”
“Stop talking about vegetables. It’s not a date.”
He shrugged. A moment later, we made a turn rather sharply and the two of us were pressed even closer together. I’m sure we looked like something out of the porno section at Pinx.
Except, you know, with clothes.