Scott Sherman: Third You Die

“Your secret’s safe with me,” I promised.

“Oh,” he said playfully, “I don’t have any secrets. But I think you do, Kevin. I truly believe you do.”

He paused, waiting for me to respond. For once, I was lost for words.

He mistook my awkwardness for strategy. “Smart boy. Keep your cards close to your chest. But someday, you clever thing, I’d like to see the hand you’re holding.

“I bet it’s a winner. A flush of hearts.”

He disconnected without saying good-bye.

A good director knows when to cut a scene.

Why, I wondered, did my conversation with Kristen have my stomach turning in knots?

Was it because I was worried about meeting with Charlie, the boy Brent had been seeing? Remembering my conversation with Brent, I recalled that Charlie had been strongly disapproving of Brent’s continued employment in the adult film industry. Maybe he’d convinced Brent to quit the biz. If so, my showing up at Intermission might be misinterpreted as a bid to, excuse the expression, suck Brent back in.

If Charlie took offense at my questions, he’d have no problem getting me out of there. I thought of the bouncers with biceps as wide as my waist and shuddered.

Or was it Kristen’s sly insinuations about my “secrets” that were making me skittish? Was I wearing a tramp stamp on my forehead that I thought I’d washed off?

I wanted to leave hustling in the past, but maybe, like Marley in A Christmas Carol, my previous deeds dragged behind me like chains, rattling and obvious to anyone who cared enough to look.

Another possibility: Could Kristen be playing with me? It didn’t seem out of the question that the sophisticated and worldly filmmaker might have been a client at Intermission. If not as a customer, than as a casting scout? I could think of less fruitful places for someone looking for attractive and sexually open potential models to spend their evenings. The working boys at Intermission had already demonstrated a willingness to walk on the wild side. How much farther down the road would it be for most of them to let their wandering be filmed?

If Kristen had used Intermission as a scouting camp, it wasn’t impossible he might have seen me there. Was he trying to tease out a “confession”? If so, it seemed more playful than mean-spirited.

The last reason I could think of for the butterflies in my stomach was the scariest of all. Maybe I was genuinely hot for Kristen.

During the time I’ve been reunited with Tony, I’ve had a few flirtations. Hell, I’ve had out-and-out sex, but only for business and never with anyone for whom I had feelings.

Kristen, however, was different. I thought he was attractive when I met him, but I hadn’t really dwelled on it. Two conversations later and I was struck by how much I might like him. He seemed smart, funny, and dead sexy.

Like one of the debate assignments from the seventh grade, I found myself comparing and contrasting him with Tony. Yes, I loved Tony, but it was so complicated. I wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get over my career as a prostitute, even if it was a “former” career. Sometimes, in bed, I’d purposely throttle back my performance lest he ask “Where’d you learn that?”

Someday, I feared, he’d call me a whore and I’d never be able to forgive him.

More immediately, there was the problem of trying to build a life in the closet. I may have “secrets,” but they’re not ones I’m ashamed of. They’re just things I’d rather keep private.

But I was Tony’s secret. The source of his shame. How horrible was that? How could we possibly be happy together if our entire relationship was hidden in the shadows? The only things that grow without light are mushrooms and fungus, neither of which were attractive analogies.

Compare and contrast.

Kristen not only could accept my past as a sex worker, he’d probably be thrilled. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t be as sex positive in his private life as he was in his work. If so, I bet he’d be scorching in bed.

How different would it be to date a guy who not only wouldn’t be afraid to be seen with me, but who would show me off proudly, like a jewel, not hide me like a disfigurement?

Of course, I was getting ahead of myself. It wasn’t like Kristen had even made an overt move on me.

Except, I didn’t need him to. If there was one thing I knew, it was when a man wanted me.

Kristen LaNue wanted me.

I think I wanted him, too.

The whole thing had me a bit giddy, kind of nervous, and more than a little nauseous. Romance always hit me in the gut and my stomach wouldn’t stop churning.

Kristen’s attention to me, and my attraction to him, were inconvenient distractions, unwanted temptations.

An excess of alternatives.

A flush of hearts.

I decided to stop thinking about Kristen and instead turn my attention back to the boy this was about.

Brent Havens.

When I’d talked to Brent, he’d complained how his audience often mistook his onscreen persona for his real one. People projected on to him whatever they wanted him to be. Given the movies that comprised his, er, body of work, that person tended to be a youthful, energetic, and available hottie with not much on his mind beyond getting laid and showing his partner a good time. The definition of the best kind of boy toy: one who wants to play with you.

Confusing any actor’s performance with how he conducts his life off-camera is obviously absurd. As fun as it would have been to find myself in a Brokeback backbreaking three-way with Jake Gyllenhaal and the late but not forgotten (at least not by me!) Heath Ledger, I wasn’t holding my breath.

But we’re all guilty of some projection. Given the impossibility of ever truly understanding another person, it’s only natural we imbue them with traits based on assumptions and prior associations. If you’re a healthy person, as you get to know someone better, you replace those presumptions with his or her reality. In my experience, it’s at that point when a relationship starts to get into trouble-when the person you’ve been imagining and hoping for turns out to be the person he or she really is. It’s a trap I’ve tried to avoid.

Yet, wasn’t that what I was doing with Brent? I hardly knew the boy. In my mind, though, he was a good kid whose unconventional career choice did nothing to diminish his basic decency. A young man who sold sex not to exploit others but to help them, by making otherwise unattainable fantasies come true. A boy who needed love, understanding, and protection from the Big, Bad World.

Remind you of anyone I am?

Was I projecting myself on to the blank slate of Brent Havens? What did I know about him, really? Who’s to say he wasn’t some big cokehead on a bender? Or running a scam on some elderly aficionado from which he’d walk away relatively untouched and $50,000 richer? Was my assuming the best about a boy I hardly knew really any more reasonable that the less generous assessments of those who’d actually worked alongside him?

Maybe. Mason’s and even Kristen’s judgments were clouded by profit. My motives were clean.

Or at least that was what I told myself.

It was a more flattering motivation than the other likely possibility-that my quest to rescue Brent was a subconscious effort to save myself.

I wish I’d gotten to know Brent better before he’d gone missing. Now, there was no way to assess whether he was more likely the victim or perpetrator of whatever happened to him.

Unless…

I agreed it was ludicrous to assume a performer’s true personality could be assessed in every film role. Still, sometimes the real person showed through. And given the weak plots and emotional nakedness of a sex tape, maybe even more of the star’s authentic nature came through.