Archive for March, 2010

I’m surrounded by the Beautiful People passing my stool telling each other how fierce they are. My agent is nowhere to be seen, aside from a few other male models from the agency I know noone. Coming here was a mistake, I need a crutch so I order a dirty martini and clutch my glass so tight, stress fractures go crackle-n’-pop. Across the bar is girl in a dress tight enough to show what she had for lunch. She’s coordinating talking to other models and throwing drinks in non-beautiful losers’s faces delusional enough to approach her.

My hands are hot plates as I double fist my drink, I watch an olive swirling in the heat-current in my glass. I look up and see the girl leaving. Fuck it. Back to zapping my olive with lasers from my eyes.

At my nape, a woman’s voice says, “What if?”

I look up to see the girl standing next to me in that dress, white, back lit from disco-lights turning her into a human x-ray with meat. She is blonde, on the right side of thirty and a swell looking kid. I look like I slept in a field.

I take a swig of Dutch courage. “Second chance?”

“Your only chance just walked out that door,” she says.

“Unfortunately for me, I still have nothing clever to say.”

She lowers hers ass on the stool next to me. Her hips challenge the commitment of dress’s seams. Legs cross, and I follow them all the way down to the Misfits Skull tattoo on her instep. Is it leering at me?

She says, “You’ve said plenty. You choked, I left, you let me. No pressure now, I’m already gone. This conversation is so you don’t beat yourself up on the drive home when invariably, you do come up with your esprit d’escalier. Need time to think?”

My hands. I see them shredding the cocktail napkin.

“You’ve heard it all before,” I say.

“Indulge me.”

I get up from my stool to leave. “OK.” I walk away and come back to her. Before I can say a word, she says, “Fuck off!”

A half-dozen nearby mono-versations stop and I feel twenty eyes scorching my nape. She laughs. At me. I imitate her laughing at me. It’s not helping.

“I’m Maggie.”

I down the last of the martini and pop an olive in my mouth. “Hi, Maggie, I’m Eric.”

Her lips part; teeth gleam and I want to turn away while I still can. I don’t. I stare at the sparklie, saliva slicked chew-sticks in her face.

“So, are you with Alias Models?” I ask the teeth.

“Nope, I’m recruiting.”

Things never work out this easy. She’s poaching models for another agency. Fuck it, just play along, maybe she’ll toss a mercy fuck my way.

I’m going to do you a huge favor,” she says.

She slides a piece of paper across the bar toward me. It sits there, crisp and neat like my Martini. I take it. The paper has an address handwritten on it.

“9844 Desoto Ave. Chatsworth, CA. 91311. Thursday, 11:00 a.m.”

“A casting call?” I say.

This time she does some staring of her own. Eyes roving my chest. I remember the missing button, three holes down, on the placket. I cross my arms over my chest.

She says, “It’s an address, silly,”

Obviously. How bad do I want a piece of ass?

“To?” I ask.

Maggie swivels on her stool to square up with my profile, her bare knee brushing against my thigh. “You ask a lot of questions don’t you? Why don’t we go to my beach condo for a moonlight dip. I may have a pair of size 32 shorts around. That is, If you don’t mind getting wet.”

Now I’m thinking when I move my arms I’ll have a sweaty “X” on my shirt. I place my palms on the bar, but that doesn’t seem right either. Fuck it. I clutch my glass. Again.

“You know my sizes already, don’t you? I’m gonna pass, I never go in the ocean.”

This girls is clearly not used to being turned down because behind her eyes is a struggle on whether she should take my martini glass, break it on the counter and plunge the stem into my carotid. She reaches out to my hands which are still clutching the glass–I flinch–and she places her hand on top of mine.

She says, “Why is that?”

“Um. What?”

“Why don’t you go in the ocean?

“I think I forgot how to swim,” I say.

She says, “How can a stud like you live in LA and never go in the ocean? What a waste.”

“Been here ten years and I never even stuck a toe in. Out here the waves are pretty strong.”

He pupils shrink to specks. “Nonsense! The water’s only waist deep, if you get knocked down just stand up”

My leg falls asleep. The urge to walk it off right out the club’s door and back to my room is overwhelming. “Yeah, but then there’s the tide and if I’m already up to my waist in it, I can be pulled out to deep water.”

She parts her thighs. No underwear. I stay put. “Well, perhaps it’s time you learned how to swim. Let me teach you.”

Her hands are really fucking heavy on top of mine but I feel safer with her hands where I can see them. Even that’s not a real comfort, but hey, I take what I can get.

I say. “I tried that once back home at the local pool. Some girl said the same thing. I jumped in, sank straight to the bottom and she was nowhere to be seen.”

“Oh, you poor baby! Luckily I have a pair of floaties you can hold on while you kick and paddle.”

Telling this kid to fuck off would be the smart play but my dick twinges and my balls don’t see it that way. Outnumbered. Visions of me doing the breast stroke dance in my little head.

“So, you gonna tell me what this paper you slipped me is?” I ask.

With one hand, she takes the toothpick out of my glass and runs an olive over her lips. Pauses. Bites the olive with a dull *thok*. “Oh,” she says, chewing, “a life preserver.”

My hands are sweating. Her one hand, still on top of mine is cold.

I say, “You got it ass-backwards babe. Shouldn’t I put the life vest on before I go into the water?”

“I said ‘preserver’, it’s too late for a vest, you’re already going under.”

“That obvious?”

She places her free hand on my knee, sliding it up my thigh. She stops 3/4 of the way up, finger nails into my flesh. It sucks, yet not.

“Oh relax,” she says “were gonna make a great team. Where would Sonny be if he never met Cher?”

“Alive.”