Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (36 page)

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Beach Blanket Babylon Goes Bananas!" the announcer called out. For the next ninety minutes we were treated to a spectacle. The cast, dressed as everything from apes to Carmen Miranda, Glinda the Good to French maids, performed skits and wowed us with their singing. One woman in particular, a petite brunette, brought the house down with her bluesy rendition of the torch standard "Am I Blue?" As she sang the final line, "Was I gay, 'til today, now he's gone and we're through, am I blue," the mostly male audience broke out in thunderous applause.

"She's fantastic," I said, whistling loudly along with everyone else. "Not only can she sing, she can do it wearing an eighty-pound hat covered in four-foot-high bananas."

When the show was over, we returned to the Castro, where we hung out at Twin Peaks until it closed. Herded onto the street, Andy, Jack, and I said good-bye to Burt and walked—not entirely steadily—back to our flat. Not ready for bed, the three of us opened a bottle of white wine and sat in the living room. I put Burt's birthday gift on the turntable, and Shirley & Company serenaded us while we talked.

"We should make a pact," Jack said, his words slurred slightly by all the alcohol we'd consumed in the past seven hours.

 

"What kind of pact?" I asked him.

 

"If we don't have lovers when we're thirty," he said, "we'll buy a house somewhere up in Russian River and all grow old together."

 

"Thirty?" I said. "That doesn't give us much time."

Jack knitted up his brow, as if he was trying to figure out a problem. "Five years," he said, sounding pleased to have arrived at an answer. "In five years, if we're not with anyone else, we're moving to Russian River."

"Sure," I told him, feeling expansive. "That sounds good."
"Not me," Andy said, rolling a joint between his fingers. "I don't want a lover." "You don't?" Jack said, frowning.
Andy grinned. "Nope," he said, lighting the joint. "I want lots of lovers."

"You're going to be a big-time porn star," I reminded him. "You'll have more lovers than you know what to do with."

"Yeah, Mr…Mr…. What's your name again?" asked Jack.
"Brad," Andy said. "Brad Majors."

"Well, Brad Majors," said Jack. "You and all of your lovers can come visit Ned and I up in Russian River. Some of them might have to share our beds, though. Right, Ned?" "Absolutely," I concurred.

 

Andy shook his head. "I don't get why anyone would want just one lover," he said. "There are too many good-looking men out there. Why not have them all?"

"Not all of us can get them all," I reminded him.
"This is San Francisco," he said. "If you can't get laid here, you just can't get laid. I bet I could look out the window and find at least half a dozen guys ready to come up here right now."

"Let's see it," I said, motioning toward the window. "I'll bet you ten bucks."

"You're on," Andy said as he got up and went to the big bay window, stripping off his shirt as he did. Leaning out, he surveyed the street below while Jack and I drank our wine and shook our heads at each other. Not a minute passed before Andy called out, "Hey! Where are you going?"

A man's voice answered back, but I couldn't hear what he said. I did hear Andy's response, though, which was, "Want to come up for a while?"

As he walked past us to the door, Andy flashed a triumphant smile. A moment later, we heard footsteps on the stairs, and Andy returned with a man in tow. He was young, probably not more than 20, with dark hair and startlingly blue eyes. He nodded at Jack and me. "Hi," he said, standing with his hands shoved into the back pockets of his jeans. "I'm Dan."

"Well, Dan," Andy said, sitting in an armchair and spreading his legs seductively, "want a hit?" He held out the joint. Dan took it and inhaled, looking at each of us nervously. Andy rubbed his chest idly, letting his hand slide lower until it was resting on his stomach, his fingertips tucked beneath the waistband of his Levi's. Dan's gaze followed, fixing on the bulge between Andy's legs. I could tell by the hungry look on his face that he was ready for anything Andy suggested he do.

"Think you can handle all three of us?" Andy asked. "We're having kind of a birthday party here."

 

Dan nodded, dropping to his knees in front of Andy and reaching for his zipper. Andy looked at Jack and me. "You guys joining in? You're the birthday boys."

 

"Not me," said Jack, standing up quickly and heading for the hallway. "He's all yours." "Yeah," I said, trying not to watch as Dan slid Andy's jeans down and reached for the already-hard dick that stuck up from his crotch. "I think I'm going to call it a night." "Suit yourselves," said Andy, putting his hand on Dan's head and guiding him down. "I'll see you in the morning."

 

Jack was waiting for me in the hall. When I joined him, we both started to laugh. I covered my mouth so I wouldn't make too much noise.

"Can you believe him?" said Jack. "One porno magazine and already he's acting like a superstar." "That's our boy," I told him.

From the living room the wet sucking sound of a mouth moving up and down a length of hard flesh spilled into the hallway. I heard Andy growl something in a low voice.

 

"You sure you don't want to stick around?" asked Jack. "Sounds like Dan knows a thing or two about blowing out a birthday candle."

 

"Do you?" I countered.

 

He rubbed his eyes with his fingers. "Yeah," he said. "But I'm not going to. That dick has caused enough problems for me already."

I knew he was referring not to the penis currently enjoying the hospitality of Dan's mouth, but to its owner. I also knew he was right. We'd managed to get past our mutual entanglements with Andy and form something new from the pieces of our friendship. As tempting as it was, getting involved with him again, even on such a casual sexual level, could break anew the fracture we'd so tenderly knit up over the past two years. Walking away was Jack's present to me, and I knew how much it was costing him, because I was paying the same price.

"Good night," I said, giving him a hug. "And happy birthday."
CHAPTER 36

"‘Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time,'" Brian said as I watched a naked man spring from the diving board at the end of the pool, his impressive penis swinging like a pendulum as he rose into the air, bent, and knifed into the water. "‘She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night she drank three Irish coffees at the Buena Vista, realized that her mood ring was blue, and decided to phone her mother in Cleveland.'"

"What are you reading?" I asked him.

"It's this new thing in the Chronicle ," Brian explained, showing me the paper. "It's called ‘Tales of the City,' by some guy named…" He peered at the page. "Mowpin?" he said doubtfully. "Moppin? I don't know how you say it."

I leaned across the space between our lounge chairs to look. "I think it's pronounced Maw-pin," I said.

"Armistead Maupin."
"Sounds made up," said Brian. "Anyway, it's really funny."
"I'll read it later," I said. "There are too many other things to look at right now."

Brian folded the top of the newspaper down and peered over it at the men in the pool. The diver had swum to the side, where he was talking to an equally handsome man who was sitting with his legs in the water while a third man sucked his dick. The receiver of the blow job paid little attention to what was going on below his waist, laughing and talking with the diver as if he was having his hair trimmed or his nails buffed.

"This is why I hate porn stars," Brian remarked, putting his paper back up. "They can make anything look boring."

"I guess when it's what you do for work, it gets sort of routine," I said. "Like working at an ice cream parlor. The first two weeks you eat everything in sight, and for the rest of your life just looking at a bowl of rocky road makes you sick to your stomach."

"Then that boy's going to have quite the tummy ache," Brian said.
"Who's the guy in the pool?" I asked. "He looks kind of familiar."

"That's Jack Wrangler," Brian answered. "Star of such fine films as New York Construction Company and Navy Blue ."

 

"Can't say that I know his work," I said. "I must have seen him at some party or other." "Did you ever see that Eleanor Powell show The Faith of Our Children on Sunday mornings when you were a kid?" Brian asked me. "You were probably only four or five when it was on, so you might have missed it."

"Was that the one with the kid who always had some problem and solved it by praying?" I asked, reaching far back into my memory bank. "I kind of remember it. I saw it a couple of times when I wasn't in the mood for Winky-Dink and You ."

"Well, that kid is the fellow in the pool," Brian said. "Only then his name was John Stillman. And he was much smaller," he added dryly.

"He's sure grown up," I said as Jack Wrangler put his hands on the pool deck and pushed himself out of the water. He walked toward the house, his muscular backside glistening and his feet leaving wet prints on the concrete.

Andy emerged from the sliding-glass doors, greeting Jack Wrangler as they passed one another and walking over to where Brian and I had positioned ourselves in the shade. He was wearing a small red bathing suit that only barely covered him and showed off nicely the tan he'd gotten during his two weeks in Palm Springs. He didn't even glance at the two men making love as he passed them.

"You boys having a good morning?" he asked as he pulled up a chair and sat next to me. "It's been very educational," I said. "Brian has been filling me in on who everybody is."
"He should know," Andy said. "He's been in the business longer than almost anyone."

Brian lowered his sunglasses and gave Andy a withering glance. "You make it sound like I invented it," he said.

 

"Didn't you?" Andy teased.

 

Brian sighed in mock exasperation. "Keep it up, darling, and I'll make sure to only film you from your bad side."

"I don't have a bad side," said Andy.
Brian looked at me. "The sad thing is, he's right. He looks great on film."

I had yet to see one of Andy's films. He'd made three of them since his debut in Blueboy the year before. His scarred leg, far from being a detriment to his career, had been an asset, as the studio let it be known that he was a former soldier who had been injured in combat, turning him into an instant object of sexual longing. Now he was in Palm Springs to shoot another. He'd invited me and Jack along, but only I had accepted. Jack was too busy studying for finals of his first year of graduate school, where he was getting his master's in psychology. I still couldn't believe he'd found something he was good at besides sports or being popular, but he'd blossomed into quite the student. He was taking his classes very seriously, and had started to talk about becoming a therapist. I, meanwhile, continued to push papers for the VA. Although the work was easy and it paid reasonably well, it was wearing on me. The problems many of the Vietnam vets were experiencing had been linked to the use of Agent Orange as a defoliant in Southeast Asia, but the government was denying that the herbicide had any harmful effects. I was caught in the middle, between seeing for myself the various conditions the soldiers had and having to stand behind the military's official position. This was made even more difficult by the fact that Quan Loi had been among the areas most heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. Already I'd seen on the claims I processed the names of some of the men Andy and I had served with. Although neither myself nor Andy were experiencing any ill health, I'd begun to worry that, sooner or later, we might.

A trip to Palm Springs was exactly what I needed to relax. The mansion we were staying in belonged to the owner of the company Andy was making films for. It was used as a location for many of the films, and was always overrun with well-built and well-hung men. Andy was the newest addition to the stable, and his position as the new stud in the barn made him the subject of both desire and jealousy, both of which served to fuel his confidence.

"What time do we film this afternoon?" Andy asked Brian.
"Two," Brian said. "Which should be when most of your co-stars are waking up."

Brian Sugarman was the principal director for Kestrel Studios, one of the many companies producing gay porn in the 1970s. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Brian had actually gone to film school at UCLA. Since graduating in 1967, he'd made a handful of small pictures which had earned him critical notice but failed to land him larger, more commercial projects. When a friend had suggested porn as a way to make money until something better came along, Brian had reluctantly agreed. Now, at 34, he was financially well ahead of his film school peers. Porn had turned out to be a goldmine, and with his attention to detail and ability to make even the sleaziest scene look like high art, Brian was both rich and respected. The only problem was that he hated doing it.

I'd met Brian at a Christmas party thrown by the owner of Kestrel Studios. Attending with Andy, I was overawed, not to mention intimidated, by the roomful of gorgeous men. As Andy mingled, I stood by the cheese table, nervously eating crackers and watching a line of giddy revelers waiting to be photographed sitting on the lap of hunky Al Parker, who wore only a Santa hat and black leather boots. Brian, coming over for a piece of Gouda, introduced himself to me by saying, "He looks butch, but if he was one of Rudolph's reindeer pals, he'd be Prancer."

We'd spent the rest of the evening together, Brian dishing the dirt on all the porn stars and their assorted hangers-on. It wasn't until he'd asked me to dinner and I'd accepted that I found out he worked for the studio, and only when we were in bed afterward that I'd found out he knew so much about the actors because he directed them. We began dating, and within a month were a couple. Brian was eight years my senior, which I found exciting in the way that only a soon-to-be-26-year-old with a 34-year-old boyfriend can. Although I had been to war, he seemed to me to be much more experienced. I loved to listen to him talk about film, describing the movies he wanted to make. At night, in bed, he sketched them out for me, filling my head with images and weaving stories that held me spellbound with their beauty and daring. When I asked why he didn't try to interest a real studio in them, though, he always said no one in Hollywood would ever let him make films his way.