Sex in the Title (39 page)

And with that, Evan sold Mike on the plan. Mike would forward Evan’s novel to his agency’s top celebrity client, with an IAA note attached that would induce her read it.

Chapter 28
The Posse Takes on a Snobby New York Club

The successful start to Evan’s scheme sent his confidence soaring to new heights, as if he had no scars in strange places and it hadn’t been over seven months since he last had a girlfriend. Suddenly, it seemed as if his creative ingenuity could propel him into a whole other league, which – until that phone call with Mike Yuvalov – had always seemed elusively inaccessible and otherworldly.

The whole posse knew that Evan’s head was in a new place. Happy to have finished his novel, Evan no longer diligently collected story details on paper and was now an active participant in the gang. But his attitude towards meeting new women evolved into the aloof indifference that marked Carlos’s style. Lucky Chucky would flirt with women primarily to persuade them to meet his friends. Only on rare occasions, when a particularly stunning and charming female was involved, would he flirt on his own behalf, just to see if he still “had it.” Just as Carlos believed – as a matter of objective fact – that no woman could compare to Carolina, Evan was utterly convinced that no woman could even approach Delilah Nakova, and so he rarely bothered to take any flirtation too seriously. It was only when a posse member reminded him that he and Delilah weren’t even communicating yet, much less dating, that he sometimes mustered the motivation to get a phone number.

The bulk of Evan’s renewed self-esteem was now spent boosting Heeb and sending women his way. In mid-February 2001, Heeb finally decided to try to seduce a woman with the goal of becoming sexually involved with her, in a real relationship or otherwise. Doctor Clayton had reassured Sammy, over a month earlier, that his penis was totally healed and that he could resume a normal sex life. But Heeb still harbored deep insecurities about his injury and wanted the scars to shrink a little more. He had also grown accustomed to “the power to reject” and the reassuring thought that he wasn’t really interested in taking anyone home with him anyway. So, on the posse’s tenth night out, when Heeb faced the prospect of rejection for the first time since the group’s formation, he was more insecure than usual. And because Evan could so easily empathize with Heeb’s situation, he made even more of an effort to encourage and reassure him.

That night was a brutally cold one. The biting February frost made it particularly hard to motivate Carlos, Evan, and Heeb into leaving their warm apartments, but Trevor and Narc rallied the troops after Narc mentioned a swanky VIP party on Thursday night at a posh Chelsea lounge called Bungalow Eight. By 10:30 p.m., everyone but Carlos was waiting at the door to get in.

Christophe, the doorman at the club, was a homely Parisian waif with thick glasses, a sloppy hairdo, and clashing fashion choices that seemed more contrived than creative. In his right hand, he held a clipboard containing the club guest list, which he wielded like a royal scepter. Christophe took obvious pleasure in his fleeting supremacy over the shivering patrons, many of whom were begging to be admitted more for the warm shelter than for the exclusive party inside. The list was really just a power prop because Christophe rarely consulted it and, in any case, needed no particular justification to reject anyone. He often refused individuals on a whim, just to feel better about himself and the club. He genuinely savored his own rudeness, as if it to highlight the fact that his power – embodied in the large bouncers at his command – rendered his weak physique, ugly appearance, and humorless attitude irrelevant for that precious moment that people needed his approval.

While Trevor, Narc, and Evan were among the most attractive and well-dressed men in the crowd gathered around the velvet ropes, Christophe summarily dismissed them upon discovering that Heeb was in their group and that they were unaccompanied by women. “If you don’t have girlz weet you, don’t waste my time. Pleez. Go home,” he said in his thick French accent, eyeing Heeb with particular condescension.

As others pushed their way in front of the posse to test their odds, Heeb was tempted to throw in the towel.

“Louis the Sixteenth seems to have overlooked my modeling credentials,” Heeb remarked.

“This asshole wouldn’t let himself into the club if he was trying to get in,” Evan affirmed, his breath billowing like dragon puffs in the cold.

“Guys, you’ll never get in with me here. Why don’t you go ahead without me?”

“No way, Sammy. You’re not getting out of this!” Evan protested.

“Sorry I can’t party in Antarctica…I mean, it’s been ten minutes since I last felt my nose.”

“It should be slammin inside, Heeb. Just hang tight,” Narc said.

“Carlos’ll be here any minute,” Evan added. “We can’t just bail on him now…Just think of this as a subway dilemma.”

“What’s that?” Trevor asked, as he rubbed his frozen hands together.

“A subway dilemma occurs when you’ve waited ten minutes past the time you expected the subway to arrive,” Evan explained. “At that point, you already feel painfully invested in the next train, and you’re afraid that if you give up, you’ll not only lose the time you invested, but you’ll just barely miss the train, because the longer you’ve been waiting for it, the more likely it is to arrive right after you give up and leave.”

“Subway dilemma…I like that,” Trevor said.

“But there’s a flaw with your subway dilemma analogy,” Narc objected.

“What’s that?”

“Sometimes the longer you’ve been waiting, the less likely the train is to come, because the longer wait could mean the train just completely broke down and it’s gonna take hours to fix.”

“Narc makes an excellent point,” Heeb added. “This train’s not arriving any time soon,” he said, looking around them, as if to highlight all of the glamorous club-goers standing nearby, vying for entry.

“Hold on a sec. Carlos is calling.” Narc answered his cell phone.

“Whassup Carlos? No, we’re still outside…Where are you? Oh, cool. We’re right in front. See if you can round up some TH.”

“Tell him he has to bring at least five TH or we’re going home,” Heeb said insistently.

“Heeb said you gotta bring five or we’re going home…No…It would definitely help…It looks very good inside…I don’t know…He’s definitely getting impatient…OK…Word. Hey, do you know if…”

Narc suddenly stopped talking into his cell. He looked up at the others.

“Damn. Chucky hung up on my ass.”

“You know he hates talking on the cell,” Heeb reminded him. “He worries about the brain cancer risk.”

“So what did he say?” Trevor asked. “Is he on the way?”

“His cab’s two blocks away,” Narc replied. “I don’t know how he’ll come up with five babes, but I told him to try.”

“That’s all you had to do,” Heeb replied, looking somewhat encouraged. “Now there’s hope…Remember, this is Lucky Chucky we’re talking about.”

And sure enough, on Tenth Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, just as Carlos was getting out of his cab he spotted a bevy of beauties getting out of the taxi right in front of him and heading towards the club, about 150 feet away. The five stunning women had each clearly calculated that they would be better off waiting two minutes in the bitter cold wearing sexy, skimpy outfits, than waiting ten minutes in the same cold wearing warmer but less revealing clothes. Their seductively rhythmic, stiletto-tipped walks were another indication that they knew the norms of New York nightlife.

Carlos approached them from the side, as smoothly as lightly melted butter spread across a warm piece of toast. With a slight smile, a cock of his dark eyebrow, and an aplomb that suggested he was the owner of the club, he approached the apparent leader of the group, a long-legged brunette cover girl and said, “Hey there. My friends and I have a table reserved inside. You want to join us?”

She almost replied with her canned rejection to street overtures but when she looked at the cool, dark, six-foot-one Adonis smiling mysteriously her way, she could say only, “Um…OK.” Her four friends immediately drew closer as he led them all to where Heeb and the others were standing in silent awe.

Heeb threw an amused glance at Narc, as if to say, “What did I tell you?” Narc smiled back an acknowledgement. The posse played it cool, as if they weren’t at all flabbergasted by how easily Carlos had just produced a set of stunners out of thin air, and approached the doorman with them. The crowd by the velvet rope noticed Carlos and his five femme fatales. Even the doorman looked impressed when Carlos went up to him and said, “They’re with me.”

Christophe tried to suppress his smile of amazement and automatically unclasped the velvet rope, as if this were a common occurrence at the snobby club. But Carlos didn’t advance and held the women back as his four buddies approached the area. “So are they,” he added. Christophe shot a glance at the men he had rejected earlier and then looked back at Carlos disapprovingly. Carlos just stared back at him nonchalantly, as if there were ten other elite parties on his list of options for the night.

Christophe backed down and proposed a compromise. “You can go in weet everybuddee but zee short guy,” he said, clearly referring to Heeb.

“Either we all come in, or are we all go to Pangaea,” Carlos replied, with debonair equanimity.

Carlos’s challenge surprised Christophe, who was unaccustomed to being declined in the one situation where he normally did the declining. Christophe stood silently, unsure how to respond.

“It’s no problem. Have a good night,” Carlos said, graciously, as he began to turn away with his crowd. Carlos and his gorgeous gang of girls were prepared to prove – in front of the large queue watching the showdown – that they considered Heeb cooler and more important than Christophe, and the doorman preferred to avoid such a humiliation.

Christophe stopped him: “OK. Come on.”

A vindicated joy lifted the posse, as they walked into the warm and festive club with five hotties alongside them and Carlos leading the pack. The many attractive people at the glitzy soiree suddenly seemed like mere background scenery for the charming story of five men meeting five women, thanks to Lucky Chucky. They checked their coats and then Narc, who knew the club well, brought them to a more secluded seating area upstairs where the two groups of men and women could mingle. As they followed Narc, the men and women began to pair off. A few minutes later, they were all seated upstairs.

Narc had already begun talking to Jade, a twenty-one-year-old model of Thai-Swedish extraction. They chitchatted for a while, and, after a few drinks, Narc confessed that he had dated only a few Asians in his life, much to his parents’ disappointment. “I think it’s the rebel in me…So my parents would probably view a Eurasian as major progress,” he noted with amusement.

“I never cared about race,” she said. “And if my parents did, I wouldn’t even exist. But they’re very liberal. They were pot-smoking hippies in the sixties. Speaking of which, do you have any weed?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Narc replied with a playful grin. As he pulled out some marijuana from his blazer pocket.

“You know you still haven’t told me what you do for a living,” Jade remarked lightly, as if she’d been cheated out of some vital information. Narc had been subtly and effectively evading the question.

“I’ll tell you about my early mid-life crisis after we finish this,” Narc replied with a mischievous smile.

Next to Narc, Trevor was getting acquainted with Dawn, a redheaded artist who was, at five feet eleven inches, the tallest of the five women. “Do you come here often?” Trevor asked, despite his aversion to such safe and boring conversation starters.

“Let’s make a deal,” she began, with an ironic smile. “Why don’t we avoid all topics that don’t have something to do with politics or religion?”

“Why is that?” Trevor asked, grinning with surprised relief.

“Because when I’m not painting I work as a cocktail waitress at expensive banker parties, and I’m supposed to just look pretty and make small talk the whole time. They actually tell you to avoid religion and politics in any conversations that come up. So that’s exactly the sort of thing that you and I need to talk about right now.”

This was divine music to Trevor’s ears, as was the revelation that she – like Trevor – had studied history in college and was now exploring different eastern philosophies. Within minutes, they were discussing Zen Buddhism, yoga, and meditation. After about ten minutes, Trevor also mentioned his newly discovered homosexual identity, in order to avoid misleading Dawn.

“Just my luck!” she said, rolling her eyes ironically. “Oh well…Hey, I actually have the perfect guy for you!” she added, taking Trevor by the arm and leading him away from the group and towards the bar. “He’s a total hottie, almost as tall as you, built like a Michaelangelo sculpture, and an amazing painter…We met at my yoga studio…He’s bartending here tonight.”

When they reached the bar, Dawn introduced Trevor to Luigi, an Italian male-model type who was every bit as handsome as Trevor had imagined him to be. Luigi was a few years older than Trevor but had all of the boyish flamboyance of an adolescent youth – a flare that came out in everything he did, whether it was pouring a drink, flirting playfully with everyone around him, or moving energetically to the rhythm of the music playing in the background. The gracefully muscular Luigi wore black, tight-fitting clothes with an earring in each lobe. He had his black hair closely cropped to his skull, except for an ice cream swirl of hair that was gelled to peak at the left corner of his head. Dawn could tell that the two men were drawn to each other physically and conversationally, and she slipped away soon after her matchmaking services were complete.

Back upstairs, Carlos was seated next to Raquel, the Brazilian model he had approached outside of the club. Her eyes were fixed on Carlos, who was speaking to her in Portuguese about his perfectly magical year in Brazil. In keeping with his strictly healthy diet, Carlos never had more than one glass of wine when he went out. Raquel sipped her second caipirinha.