Full Service (2 page)

I started the car and drove off. I realized that wherever I look, the suburbs, the boulevards, the side streets, the studios, the nightclubs, the fancy homes in the hills, there is a sliver of my past in all of it. There is so much to recall. There are apparitions and memories of myself everywhere. My mind lazily ambled through endless mental files containing images of glamorous parties, of wild poolside orgies, of weekends in fancy hotels, of studio dressing rooms, of crowded sound stages, of dark places where bodies collided with electrifying vigor, of ghostly gatherings of gorgeous women and virile young men, of a magnificent variety of passionate sex of every kind.

Frankly, I knew Hollywood like no one else knew it.

I
n 1946 I was twenty-three years old and the city of Los Angeles was witnessing a major spurt of postwar development. Even though the metropolitan district boasted a comprehensive bus and streetcar system, the era of the freeway was about to begin. To supply the war effort no new cars had been made since 1942. Now production was ramping up again. The automobile was about to become king, setting a trend that would make the City of Angels grow up around the car and its vast network of freeways. Gas stations were soon to become an iconic emblem on the landscape and were already springing up everywhere. Many became meeting places for young servicemen recently discharged from the armed forces. With their bustling late-night, brightly lit driveways and soda pop dispensing machines, they were ideal places for unemployed guys to hang around with their girlfriends, kill time, and meet up with friends.

Russ Swanson, an ex–Marine Corps buddy of mine, worked at a Union Oil gas station on Wilshire Boulevard. He occasionally asked me to help out at the pumps from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., just before I went to work at my own evening gas station job on Hollywood Boulevard. One morning I got a call from him saying that he needed me to fill in for him for a couple of hours so I headed down to his station and manned my post at the pumps. It was a lovely, clear sunny day and I wasn’t expecting much traffic. In that kind of weather folks usually headed for the beach; they weren’t going to spend much time riding around in hot, stifling automobiles. I resigned myself to a potential day of boredom.

When Russ returned at about noon I spent a while chatting with him. Then, just as I was about to leave, a shiny Lincoln two-door coupe drove up. It was a big, swanky, expensive car. Only someone rich and famous drove something like that. Russ was busy in the office so I said I’d take care of the customer. When I approached the car the driver’s side window slid down revealing a very handsome middle-aged male face that I was certain I had seen before.

“Can I help you, sir?” I asked.

The man behind the wheel smiled, looked me up and down, and said, “Yes, I’m quite sure you can.”

It was the voice that instantly gave him away. My God, I realized, this guy’s none other than Walter Pidgeon, the renowned movie star. I remembered him from films like
How Green Was My Valley, Mrs. Miniver,
and
Madame Curie.
That distinctive deep, smooth, very intelligent-sounding voice was instantly recognizable. I thought it best to pretend that I didn’t know who he was, so I bumbled a response.

I pumped the amount of gas that he requested and when I came back to the driver’s window Pidgeon had his hand on the sill. He was holding a few dollars for the gas between his thumb and fore finger and squeezed between his middle and index fingers was another crisp bill. I couldn’t make out how much it was but I stopped when I saw it. His gaze remained locked on me.

“What are you doing for the rest of the day?” he asked in a very friendly tone, his face remaining expressionless.

Well, it wasn’t too hard to guess what he wanted. I got the message immediately.

I took the money, thanked him, then went to tell Russ that I was leaving. A couple of minutes later I found myself on the passenger’s side of the comfortable leather bench seat of Walter Pidgeon’s vehicle. With neither of us saying anything he pulled out of the station and headed west on Wilshire Boulevard. After a couple of awkward, silent minutes he offered me his right hand and said, “Name’s Walter.”

“Scotty,” I said, and shook his hand.

And that was that, the sum total of our introductions. The rest of it was all pleasantries and idle chitchat. We talked about the war that had ended the previous year and we discussed my role in it as a U.S. Marine. He wanted to know how old I was, where I was from, whether I knew many people in town.

About twenty minutes later we were driving up Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. He swung the car onto a paved drive that led to a large house. As he turned the wheel he pointed out the imposing gates on the other side of the street.

“You like movie stars?” he asked.

“Sure, why?” I replied.

He gestured toward the opposite driveway and told me that it was the home of Harold Lloyd, the famous silent movie actor.

I cooed in mock wonder. I wanted him to feel that celebrities impressed me but I had to keep my act up about not recognizing Pidgeon himself. As the car crunched up the gravel and pulled up outside a large expensive-looking house he glanced at me and told me that the guy who lived here was his friend.
Yeah, right,
I thought. Whoever he was he would certainly be more than a “friend.” Nevertheless, I kept my thoughts to myself. The extra bill he had given me—all twenty dollars of it—meant a lot to me. I could certainly use the cash. Whatever Walt and his friend were into I decided to play along.

I swung my legs out of the car, shut the door, and joined Pidgeon on the porch as he rung the bell. When Jacques Potts opened the front door he was surprised to see me standing there.

He greeted Pidgeon, then looked me up and down as though he were studying a piece of merchandise. I got the feeling that he liked what he saw. Potts led us through his palatial home to the pool in the backyard before he turned around and disappeared inside the house. Pidgeon walked over to me and said, “It’s hot, Scotty. Hop in for a swim. I’ll join you in a minute.”

He turned to go inside but not before throwing me a quick remark. “No need for a suit. There’s no one else here.”

What the hell?
I thought.
Who cares?
So I got undressed, threw my clothes over a deck chair, and dove stark naked into the sparkling water. It felt great. I swam a lap or two before Potts reappeared, followed by Pidgeon, who was naked except for a towel tucked around his waist. They each chose a chaise lounge, lay back, and watched me.

“So, tell me about your new friend here, Pidge,” Potts said.

Apparently all of Pidgeon’s friends called him Pidge. I was being assessed, studied, sized up. I was a plaything being carefully examined before being brought into the playpen. And, to be honest, I was enjoying every moment of it.

After an hour of some really hot sex, preceded by both of them taking turns performing fellatio on me, we all unwound, and relaxed around the pool. By then, of course, Walter Pidgeon had revealed his true identity to me. I had feigned complete surprise. I hemmed and hawed and made a great fuss, doing my best to appear both humbled and excited by his mere presence which, to be honest, I really was. As for Jacques Potts, I soon learned that his real name was Jack, and that Jacques was a fancy French name conjured up to match his profession as a well-known milliner to the stars.

It turned out that both men were married. Pidgeon’s wife was Ruth Walker, whom he had wed back in 1931. Before I left that day, he swore me to secrecy, begging me not to mention anything to anyone about what had transpired between us. I told him I was quite capable of being as discreet as necessary and I instinctively knew he believed me. Potts’s wife was out of town. And because he and Pidge had agreed to see one another that day the servants and the gardener had been given the day off. It was a perfect opportunity to play under a blazing Southern Californian sun.

Pidge and Potts were two very nice, sweet, highly likeable guys. They were both smart, well groomed, and very rich. Their manners were impeccable. Neither of them exhibited even a hint of effeminate behavior. They were both in remarkably good shape, too, especially when you consider their ages. Walter Pidgeon must have been at least fifty at the time. Potts could have been a bit older. They were totally masculine in all their mannerisms and in the way they moved, talked, and behaved. The only thing that made them a little different than straight men is the fact that they enjoyed having sex with other men as well as with women. And, quite frankly, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with that.

As a result of that encounter, Pidge and I would see each other off and on over the ensuing years, always for sex followed by a handsome tip. His preference was to suck me off while masturbating. He would reach his orgasm just as I reached mine. On the rare occasion in later years when we got together with Jacques Potts the three of us would engage in some inventive ménage à trois antics. Sometimes I would just be a voyeur while the two of them did their thing, with Jacques acting as a “bottom” to Pidge’s “top.” Do you get what I mean? I’m sure I don’t have to explain. The fact is that whatever we did and whenever we did it, we always had a lot of fun together.

T
here was no such thing as self-service at gas stations in 1946. My job at the Hollywood Richfield gas station was to welcome each customer with a big smile and a friendly greeting, pump as much fuel as they ordered into the gas tank, wash the windscreen, empty the ash trays, check the oil and water, ensure that tire pressures were correct, and generally see to it that every car and every customer got the red carpet treatment. I enjoyed the interaction with people and I did my best to make everyone feel special. And I didn’t mind the late hours. In fact, it gave me an excuse to chase some tail and get up to a little mischief after I locked up around midnight. It seemed like the older I got the greater my sex drive became. I
had
to have it. Every night. Or day. And sometimes multiple times at that.

My live-in girlfriend Betty never questioned me, even when I got home after dawn. With a regular paycheck coming in we were able to move to a nice little apartment not too far from the station. Although we never took the plunge by getting married, within a couple of months Betty was pregnant. We were both thrilled about it and moved into a slightly bigger place, one that had an extra bedroom for the new baby.

One afternoon before going over to the station I decided to pay a call to a little office that had been set up in the fashionable Crossroads of the World shopping center on Sunset Boulevard. The government-funded facility, run by a woman whose name I no longer recall, had become a popular and vital contact point for ex-military personnel who were trying to obtain information about buddies, friends, and family members in the months that had elapsed since the war ended. It functioned as a kind of clearing house, a meeting place and a database where ex-servicemen could leave their names, telephone numbers, and addresses for people to find them or, conversely, where they could look up the names and whereabouts of others who had served in the military with them. It was a very important service that helped a lot of people reconnect after the war. As an ex-Marine who saw service in the Pacific I was curious to find out if they knew where any of my old fellow Marines were. I went in there, filled out a small card, left the lady my name and work address, and thought no more about it.

At the time I could never in my wildest imagination have foreseen the ramifications of filling out that little card.

O
NE LATE AFTERNOON
, not too long after I had first been picked up by Walter Pidgeon, I arrived at the gas station to start my five o’clock shift. As I drove up and parked my car I was delighted to see two Marine Corps buddies of mine sitting waiting on the curb for me. We hadn’t met up since we had been discharged from service in Seattle. We shook hands warmly, then hugged, and kibitzed around for a couple of minutes. It was a lot of small talk, but I was glad to see them. Once a Marine, always a Marine. It was great to make the connection again. I offered them each a soda from the refrigerator outside the office and then I asked them how they had found me. I hadn’t given my work address to anyone.

“C’mon, Scotty. ’Course you did.”

“Where? When?” I asked.

And then they reminded me about the ex-servicemen’s contact office down at the Crossroads of the World in Hollywood.

“You filled out a card, dumb head,” they chided.

Of course! It had been a couple of weeks since I’d filled out the card. Amazingly, another Marine compatriot showed up a couple of days later. And then another. And another. Within a fortnight I’d been contacted by at least a dozen of my old buddies from the Corps. Over the next few weeks one or two of them would show up at the station every day or so. And it wasn’t long before it became a daily ritual. Small groups of them began congregating just as I arrived for work at five o’clock. Many of them had found girlfriends and they would bring them along, too. The guys just wanted to shoot the breeze with one another for an hour or two, talk about ball game scores and catch up on news and events before they all went their separate ways as the evening wore on. A couple of them had bought cars—old jalopies mainly—that they brought in and filled up with gas. Others rode motorcycles. All of them bought gas and oil from me and occasionally they would bring their vehicles in for a service and an oil change. A guy by the name of Wilbur McGee—or “Mac” as he was better known—manned the service bay during the day but in the evenings I took care of all the jobs for my friends. I did lubes, changed oil, put in new spark plugs, charged batteries, rotated tires, changed brake linings, fixed radiator leaks.