Electroboy (6 page)

I take the subway four stops and surface at Times Square. It’s like a fucking desert. Just with a few thousand more people, and without cactus and sand. The digital thermometer flashes 94 in bright red, but it feels like someone has turned the heat up to 118 degrees. The streets are swarming with pastel-clad tourists from Warrendale, Pennsylvania, and Mansfield, Ohio, wearing baseball caps, eating hot dogs, drinking canned Nestea Iced Tea, and smiling up at all of the neon. Everyone is soaking wet. Flashbulbs bounce off the sweaty, pale faces of fat couples and their chubby progeny, pretzels shoved in their mouths like pacifiers. I could be at a county fair in Kentucky. The number of people on the sidewalks overwhelms me; I feel terribly turned-on and lonely. No messages on the machine, not even a call from Allison. And where were my parents tonight?

In Times Square, beneath the veneer of neon lights, billboards, and theater marquees, is an entire supermarket of sex—porno theaters, live-sex shows, massage parlors, adult video and magazine stores, any kind of sex that money can buy. I’ve spent my share of time here, and it always feels like I’m on another planet. Planet Fuck. My model apartment is light-years away. I check out the row of porno shops on 42nd Street. I thumb through some magazines—old issues of
Penthouse
and
Oui
, shrink-wrapped packages with three or four hard-core fuck magazines in them for $7.99. Frustrating when they’re wrapped up. You never know what you’re going to get. It’s usually raunchy and kinky stuff. Women putting their triple-D tits in their mouths. Scrawny men spanking fat women wearing leather. Not a turn-on to me, but apparently to someone jerking off out there. The soft-core magazines are more my speed. Guys fucking gorgeous models from behind. All kinds of videos. Straight. Gay. Bi. Gang bang. Oriental. Amateur. Maybe I should raise money to make
adult films, forget the avant-garde. I browse glass showcases of dildos, vibrators, vacuum pumps, blow-up dolls, lotions and creams. Maybe what I need tonight is a blow-up doll. I could bring her to my aunt and uncle’s house in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. I shuffle around the video section and am overcome by the logical thought that everyone in this store is horny like everyone in a restaurant is hungry. I walk out with my discreet brown paper bag, which screams “porn,” and go into Howard Johnson’s at 46th and Broadway. I sit at a booth and order a clam roll and a chocolate shake. I spot two guys in their early twenties, definitely male strippers, sitting down in the booth behind me. Obviously waiting for their next show at the Gaiety. I’m trying to listen to their conversation, but I can’t hear them too well. It sounds like some weird language. It’s like being in a hotel room and knowing the people next door are fucking and not being able to see and just hearing some muffled sounds. Except now I can see but can’t hear. What’s better? To be able to see or to hear? They are laughing hysterically about something. I think they’re speaking Portuguese. I follow them out after they pay their bill, and they walk up the stairs into the Gaiety. Perfect butts. I was right. Strippers. Hustlers. I walk down the block to McHale’s, sit down at the bar, and order an Amstel Light. I bum a cigarette from a blond girl who, if she isn’t a hooker, is badly trying to look like one. She tells me that her name is Tina and that she is from Ohio. I decide that at any given time there are more people from Ohio in New York than there are in Ohio. Tina tells me that her brother is the bartender and that she is waiting for him to get off work. The beer is on her. I thank her. She asks me what I do. I tell her I’m starting at Columbia in the fall. The school, not the country. Little giggle. Her skirt and heels, the beer and the smoke make me nervous. I am anxious for what might happen next. Tina stands up, picks up her purse, and walks into the bathroom. The bartender nicely tells me that he is, in fact, not Tina’s brother. I promptly pay for my beer and leave.

I’m not looking for a whore tonight. But I also feel scared about sleeping alone in my apartment. And maybe I’ll die from the paint fumes. I’ll be the first to die in my graduating class. But
I really just want to get off. I think that’ll make things better. At about midnight I walk over to Show World on Eighth Avenue to see what’s going on. I’m surprised that there are still lots of semi-clad women hanging out in booths waiting to take dollars from horny guys like me looking to jerk off at this hour. Just walking around topless in heels. Big boobs. Small boobs. Pert ones. Firm ones. Real ones. Fake ones. The place smells like disinfectant, and there is an old Pakistani man mopping cum off the floor. There are some pretty young women with nice bodies and some older, less attractive ones who look like they’ve been working there for years making money for cigarettes, groceries, and lottery tickets. People’s mothers, sisters, and girlfriends. I follow a petite redhead inside a booth, and for $20 she lets me play with her tits for a few minutes. They feel nice. She tells me they’re real and smiles. I jerk off and for some reason kiss her forehead gently after I come on the floor. I walk up to Columbus Circle and hail a cab. I make it home in time to see the sun rise over the East River. There are still no messages on the machine.

Summer in Manhattan. It feels like I am waiting for the next semester at Wesleyan to start again. I explore Columbus Avenue, Amsterdam Avenue, and Broadway and make it my business to get to know my bank manager and all of the tellers, the dry cleaner, the owner of the liquor store, the owner of the hardware store (he actually knows me well from my spree—all of the loot still unused), the owner of the stationery store, and the guy at the newsstand. I want to be the mayor of my little five-block neighborhood as I had been at the campus of Wesleyan. But this is going to be a tough feat, just from a numbers point of view. I waste hours wandering the streets, talking to neighbors, and walking in the park. I often forget that I have come to New York with the intention of starting an independent film company, which I have decided to call Smash, suggesting not only a huge hit but also a sense of being “out of control.” It also has a kind of hip British
sound to it, which I like. The type for the stationery and announcements, which I work on for weeks with a graphic designer at his studio in Chelsea, is bold—copperplate—and printed in bright red ink—it really leaps off the page. I’m obsessed with packaging this project and haven’t given much thought to exactly what it is I’m about to plunge into. My plan is to raise $250,000 for my first project, a zany comedy in which a family moves to a New Jersey suburb and meets a bunch of wild neighbors. With Jill, a good friend from college who is a film fanatic and an editor at a cable-television magazine, I sit down and start working on a full-length script. We put it together in less than four months. I intend to raise the money from family members, friends, and colleagues of my parents, mostly a group of dentists, doctors, and businessmen. With the help of an attorney who is an alumnus of Wesleyan, I set up a corporation and a limited partnership by the middle of the summer. Then I start lining up people who will talk to me and read the script and listen to my fifteen-minute pitch, stressing the huge teenage audience for the film and the fact that we can shoot it for less than $250,000 and probably make back a few million dollars.

I arrive at the Park Avenue apartment at exactly 7:30
P.M.
, dressed in pleated khakis and a navy blue polo shirt, carrying a handsome black Porsche briefcase my parents bought me in Italy. I am here to meet the parents of a college friend to discuss the possibility of their investing in my film project. The doorman announces that I have arrived, and the elevator man brings me up to their apartment. I am greeted warmly with hugs and kisses by Mr. and Mrs. Lehman, whom I haven’t seen since graduation day at Wesleyan. “You both look healthy and tan,” I tell them. They’ve just returned from Spain. Their son, my friend Todd, is off in Europe on vacation. Their apartment is exquisitely decorated with lots of floral patterns: floral everything. In fact, since I walked in, the Lehmans are becoming floral themselves. I take a seat on the floral couch and pull out a video of my thesis film, an investor’s packet, and a press kit, with the name Smash Films emblazoned on it. Mr. and Mrs. Lehman are sitting opposite me on the other
couch. “So, what exactly are you up to, Andy?” Mr. Lehman asks me. “I’m making a low-budget film for $250,000, which I expect to return several million dollars,” I tell him. “Damn, you’ve gone out on your own,” he says. He seems impressed. “I looked over the limited-partnership agreement you sent me, and everything in it seems fine. I’m just not sure if I’m sold on the idea.” “Comedies targeted at teenagers are the newest trend, and teenagers represent the greatest part of the filmgoing audience,” I tell him. “Why not?” says Mrs. Lehman. I explain to Mr. Lehman that the producer is a Wesleyan alum and that once he assembles our crew and we’ve cast the film, we can probably start shooting in three months. “Will there be any well-known actors in the film?” he asks. “No, but there will after it’s released,” I respond. They both laugh. There’s a pause. “Maybe you need more time to think about it,” I tell them. “No, no,” Mr. Lehman says. “I’ve always had a good feeling about you. I’m good for $5,000.” Mrs. Lehman walks into another room and returns with a checkbook. She hands it to her husband, who writes the check and signs the forms. “Don’t let us down,” Mr. Lehman says. “We want an Oscar.” I am selling the deal based solely on the success of my college film project—but that simply isn’t enough. In time I realize that my expectations are slightly delusional. My investors are only willing to part with small amounts of money, and it seems highly improbable that I’ll be able to come up with all of the budget in time. After four months my inheritance is gone and I’m dipping into the investors’ money to finance my lifestyle. I’m spending it faster than I can raise it. As time passes, I am losing control and feeling more and more paralyzed.

But I go through the motions of working on the project every day—doing related chores and errands, making telephone calls, following up with prospective investors. Somehow I think the money will magically materialize, so I pretend that I’m working twelve- to fourteen-hour days circulating dupes of my college video and the synopsis and prospectus, working with my lawyer and a prospective producer, and hoping to find my angel. Though I’m on the verge of financial disaster, with almost no money in my
bank account, I keep courting prospective investors, going to the movies—
Repo Man
and
Star 80
—and out to dinner with friends at the Odeon and Ruelles. In the morning I work out at the Vertical Club, trying to forget about my fear and focusing on creating the perfect body—I become addicted to a neurotic routine of cardiovascular training and lifting that is purely narcissistic. My weekends are taken up with brunches at Barney Greengrass or Ernie’s, or hanging out at places like the Dublin House on 79th Street and Broadway, a scruffy, dimly lit Irish pub with a long dark wooden bar, paneling, and a jukebox. But I’m starting to panic. My mother had always told me that I took all the shortcuts. Maybe I should have gone straight to film school. Or business school. Or law school. Like most of my Wesleyan friends.

My lucky way out comes in September 1984, when I think about going back to work at Giorgio Armani, where I had a temporary job recently over school break. They are rushing to open their first United States boutique and they desperately need help. They hire me to start the day after I call them. Good timing. I need the money, and I can work on my film project at the same time. In the back of my mind I’m just putting the film on the back burner, confident that eventually I will make it and pay back my investors. But I’m curious as to where my next experience might take me. The next day I begin working in the public relations and marketing department, on a staff of only six or seven. My experience at Armani proves to be a crash course in ridding myself of any leftover naïveté.

The film
American Gigolo
has provided Armani with tremendous exposure in the United States, since Richard Gere wore exclusively Armani in his starring role. Suddenly, Armani is synonymous with “minimalist chic,” and everybody wants to wear him. The large specialty and department stores are buying up his clothing, plans for freestanding boutiques are in the works, and
the Armani image is being carefully groomed and disseminated through magazines and billboards.

With the flagship store on Madison Avenue still under construction, the opening has been delayed several months, so there is plenty of pressure to speed things up and open in time for Christmas. There is a tremendous amount of tension between the boss and her underlings. The Armani empire is run out of Milan, but the United States fiefdom is directed by a dynamic woman named Martina Bartolini, who comes just about up to my waist and barks orders in Italian (to those who speak it and those who don’t) or in her bastardized English. Intent on creating a huge splash for Armani in the United States, she supervises an army of construction workers, lighting experts, display and visual artists, and floral designers working around the clock to ensure that her austere boutique at 815 Madison will be the jewel in the crown. She runs Armani like a mini-Mussolini, and many around her find her laughable.

I serve as her gofer, secretary, assistant, and jester, trying to lighten the mood of an extremely tense group of people who take fashion a bit too seriously, as if it is a science and we are an emergency medical unit, rescuing the world from bad taste. I work ridiculously long hours, sometimes up to sixteen a day. Whatever Martina demands, I do, from writing press releases about the next season’s line, working with media people consigning clothing for fashion shoots, and assisting in publicity to picking up meals from hot spots like Mezzaluna or espresso from Gardenia. For the first time, I get an up-close look at a slick world I had only seen in the movies and magazines. I remember one shoot we do for
Amica
, an Italian magazine, featuring Matt Dillon in a bathtub surrounded by beautiful underage female models.