Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

As he walked down a hall, Troy imagined big-bellied Kiv waddling after, realtor in tow, face flushed by desire of possession — house-haunted. He stepped into a vast neo-classical salle de bain with white-marble lion-pawed bath and tiny Bonnard. He lowered himself onto the bowl, staring up at a recessed fixture. He imagined a Spy Shop camera hidden within; cued by infrared beam, Troy’s naked ape image might at this very moment be supplanting the shopworn Up in Adam players. In a bit of funhouse high-tech horseplay, the partygoers were actually watching him shit and he’d never be the wiser.

He decided to explore, treading softly toward the cavernous master suite: twenty-foot ceilings, majestic savonnerie, Louis XIV armchairs in suede and leather — a Johns and a Clemente, and a Haring painted on a vast tarp. There was a life-size sculpture of a man that soon revealed itself to be the true flesh figure of Moe Trusskopf, head turned upward like a poet translating the clouds. Kneeling crotch-level was the bedeviling Mr. Wiedlin himself. Troy slunk off as the latter’s coughing began, like croup in a clinic of the damned.

When the director returned, most of the audience had dispersed to kitchen and patio. Only three or four diehard cinéastes remained in quiet attendance of the acrobatic enlisted men — Quinn among them, thigh welded to a married attorney’s. The acne-pitted Dr. Trott stood in a corner shoveling down canapés, regaling Zev Turtletaub with radioactive gossip, indifferent eyes only occasionally drifting to television screen. As Moe resurfaced sans ami , the houseman answered the door and a great whoop rose up: there was Richard Dreyfuss. Betsey Blankenberg brought up the rear with a party-hopper’s fatuous grin. The bantam latecomer embraced Moe and Leslie and Zev, then sat up close to watch final maneuvers with boyish impunity. “You know, I’ve never seen one of these,” he said, squeamish fascination turning to horrified glee.

Betsey shook her head indulgently.

“Oh my God!” he gasped. “Is that physically possible ?”

“I thought you knew,” said Moe, deadpan. “This is a CAA training tape.”

Richard laughed like hell and the room started filling up again.

Troy assessed his options from the kitchen. He could make an end run for the Kienholz, but wasn’t sure of an easy alley exit; probably worth investigating. He cursed himself for not having parked on the street. He was certain to be boxed in, probably by Dreyfuss.

The door opened and a server came through, followed by his old chum Betsey. There was nothing for Troy to do but take her by surprise — a pain-free moment suspended in time, like after you catch a finger in a door. She stood back, trying to work the equation of why he was there, unable to factor “gay” as an answer. He leapt in and told the truth, more or less, a blue movie done long ago for money, Moe’s boyfriend, yadda yadda, and was halfway into the Skin Trade rap when Dreyfuss came in, searching for nosh. Betsey reintroduced them, but the actor nodded as if meeting him for the first time.

“Great flick,” said Dreyfuss, incognizant of the director’s presence. The server merrily prepared a Fiestaware bowl of Spanish olives. “Needs a new title, though: how ‘bout Full Metal Jack-off ?” He cackled as someone shouted his name, and then he was gone.

The air was stale from the innocent snubbing, and Betsey’s awkward failure to make an assertion. It would have been so easy to reference the alma mater — her loser-detector must have gone off. Troy asked what brought them to the party. Betsey said they were filming the La Jolla Medea , with Zev’s company producing. People noisily poured in and Troy excused himself, telling her she should have a look at the art in the backyard. It would blow her mind.

He went out front to the circular driveway — blocked in, as he suspected. Just then, Moe appeared and offered a cigar. Troy declined.

“Don’t know why I still smoke — some kinda throwback. I don’t even enjoy it. Freud got cancer of the palate, didn’t he? That’s all I need. ‘Moe, the lower jaw has to go.’ Jesus! Cigars are ‘hot’ again. I know four guys want me to join their ‘smoking clubs,’ I’m supposed to pay twenty-five hundred a year for the privilege. Know what I read in some fashion magazine last week? I think it was Vogue . It said: ‘Black — the new white!’ Black is the new white, isn’t that brilliant ? You know what? Pretty soon, it will be. Black-white, in-out, hot-cold, who dictates? W ? The gangs ? Bill Gates? And I’m the one who’s supposed to know ! I’ll tell you something: I don’t have a fucking clue…”

“It certainly is mysterious.” He felt dull and vocational, like one of the caterers.

“Troy, I have a question for you. Would you make a movie for me? I know you’re busy with other projects—”

“A movie?”

“I’d like you to direct a little film, for Zev’s thirty-fifth. Do you think you could do that for under thirty? With, of course, something for yourself.”

“Thirty thousand?”

“No, thirty million . Of course thirty thousand! I’m not that rich,” he said, laughing. “Who you been talking to?”

“What kind of film?”

“It should be totally hilarious .” Troy asked if that meant X, and the personal manager nodded. “This could be a classic . What I want to do is find actors that look like the people in his life — and someone who looks like Zev ! That’ll be the hard one — but maybe not. Maybe we can use masks or something. You know a lot of these people, don’t you? Are they any good, these actors? I mean, when you give ’em lines? And we need a dog , a dog that looks like Mimsy! I don’t want anything illegal — but I want it crazy . Think you can do it, Troy?”

Zev Turtletaub

Taj sat by the pool with the writer profiling Zev for the “Calendar” cover. The frothy ethnography — part Day of the Locust , part That’s Entertainment! — was a sexy Sunday staple, its recipe tried-and-true: a breezy, somewhat cynical day-in-the-life of a mogul of the moment (one who played by his own rules, of course) that included brutal and/or sybaritic anecdotes, unhappy childhood bits with foreshadowings of the “inveterate dreamer” (quotes from grade school teachers preferred, along with fuzzy photo of the bucktoothed, incipient Barnum surrounded by classmates/future losers); a little false-starts/years of failure/turning-point shtick, with obsequious and/or borderline libelous quotes from even more famous friends and traumatized unnamed sources re: the Subject’s lavish generosity/pathological niggardliness and longtime generally-rumored-to-be-lithium-treated bipolar moodiness; not to forget his onetime political aspirations and current Major Contributor status; slight pause for some What Makes Sammy Run ? pop psychologizing, with REVENGE/FUN/ART/SPIRITUALISM/FOR THE HELL OF IT alternately speculated upon as the Grand Motivation; rounding off with the seems-to-have-slayed-his-demons number, a tip of the hat to Hedonism (“One cannot deny that in this singularly serious world, he is having, well, yes, dare we say it? Fun”) and a quick dip into the Subject’s perennial bachelorhood and sexual ambiguity…topping the whole concoction with a creaky allusion to “Rosebud.” In between, the columns garnished by newfangled City Walk/City of Angels/City of Quartz observations; quotes from Adorno; nonsensical Internet forays.

The assistant-cum-associate-producer, who had toyed with reportage himself, couldn’t believe he once envied the kind of sweaty, Polo-shirted schmuck who sat across from him with a ThinkPad and a glass of Steven Seagal cabernet. He was temporarily at his mercy; the guy was probably livid at Taj’s good fortune and could easily portray him as a kiss-ass wimp. He’d be careful not to mention Harvard — why add fuel to the fire? While they waited for Zev to arrive, the stringer busied himself with deceptively ingenuous interrogations, his stab-in-the-back smile dominating like a rogue fart.