HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS

On one of my first forays into Los Angeles, with a producer wanting my screenplay, a situation arose.

My first Hollywood pitch meeting took place in Hollywood at a loud, trendy restaurant called Bo Kaos. It was 1997. The fancy joint had a bald-headed transvestite at the door, which was supposed to intimidate those who weren’t “cool” enough to just walk inside. It was fucking pretentious, but, looking back, the place was way ahead of its time.

Back then, people were nibbling on Caesar salad and tuna tartare because their cocaine addictions killed their appetites. It was a sin watching waiters clear tables of white truffle pasta, lobster frittata, matsutake mushrooms – while clearly coked-up producers and talent agents – hardly picked at those delicacies.

My second pitch was at a celebrity hot spot called Drai’s. Same thing there – movie stars picking at their expensive meals while rubbernecking to see who was seated nearby. And whose ass they needed to kiss.

The third meeting, for the same screenplay, was inside the large, beautiful Hollywood Hills’ home of the producer who had wine and dined me for quite some time. He first read my work while I was living in New York City. And through a few friends on the West Coast, I was able to get the script to him and there it sat. For weeks. But, one day he called and said he loved the script. And he promised, whenever I landed in Los Angeles, he’d take me out and we’d make a deal.

“I gotta have this property,” he told me. “I’m telling you, I can get a director attached and financing rather quickly. So…come out here, and we can all get rich!”

Yeah, sure. He was flying in a Gulfstream and I traveled coach on Spirit Airlines. But these Hollywood types have a way of keeping you high on the fumes of possible impending fame.

After some excited phone calls and a few meetings, he became increasingly interested in my work and eventually invited me to his home with a select group of top-tier people to discuss collaborating on a film.

It was all heady stuff. I had dreamed of being in a situation like this. But until you’re there, and rubbing shoulders with the “beautiful” people, you’d have a hard time explaining it to any of your friends back home. The guys I grew up with on Long Island were always wary of my career choice and very distrustful of the people out in California. But they also knew me as a dreamer, a guy who could never sit in a cubicle and work for someone else. Once I left the newspaper business, and jumped into hosting TV shows, I could smell success as if it were a rose shoved under my nose.

But ten minutes into dinner it became clear to me that I could possibly be in bed with the producer I was hoping to make the film with. And that’s because I knew I could literally be in bed with the wife of the producer I was hoping to make the film with. What could be bad about that? I’ll explain.

I went to the dinner stag that night. But the bigwig I was meeting thought it would be a great idea to dress up his wife in very revealing clothes and show off her assets – which, from the looks of her, didn’t come cheap. I’d seen her in bit parts of movies before and remembered her ample rack, six-pack abs and the ten pounds of beautiful hair that poured down to her slender ribs. It was the color of heartbreak.

Back when I was a young buck, that was always a bad idea, because I had yet to find a man who possessed enough intrigue, humor and intelligence to keep my mind – and my wandering eye – off his pretty better half. It was always a lost cause for most men. Especially an older man, who twirled around his trophy spouse like the Ferrari emblem on his keychain.

Anyhow, they came to greet me. And like I said, he was old, she was beautiful, and I was stag. Several minutes after the brief introductions were made and – get this – youth elixirs were handed out, The Man and The Wife wandered over to say hello to Geena Davis, who’d just walked in the front door, with a two-pound designer dog. Jeff Goldblum arrived a few moments later. All I could think of was “Oh my God, I’m gonna have dinner with Thelma and The Fly. This is all for me?”

After a few minutes of air-kisses and ass-kissing, The Man and The Wife sauntered over. “Would you excuse us for a moment, while you chat up Geena and Jeff?”

“Of course not,” I said. I turned to the two Hollywood stars and had no idea what to say. I stupidly managed to bring up archery because I’d heard Geena was great with a bow and arrow. I don’t know why I did it. My knowledge of archery was non-existent.

Eventually, I politely moved on and made light conversation with The Man’s gay male assistant and his female friend.

“We’ve heard so much about you,” he said. “Your writing is really, really, good. Like, oh my God, good!”

“Thank you!”

I wanted to ask him what specifically he liked, but I knew that would put him in fits because huge compliments are passed around Hollywood as freely as Herpes.

At one point, he and his female friend both looked at me, then looked at The Wife, and then back at me and whispered, “She’s so into you.”

“What?”
“His wife. She wants you.”

“Wait, what?”

“She wants to sleep with you. Are you blind?”

“Don’t tell me this. Please, I don’t wanna know. But… how do you know?”

They went on to say, in hushed tones, that The Man’s wife makes a habit of seducing young Hollywood up-and-comers. That she sets her sights on who she wants, convinces The Man that the guy shows promise, and then pushes him to offer her quarry a deal – thus keeping him nearby – and the chase begins. They said her batting average was very high. And seeing how sexy she looked, I could see why.

I had to admit, I admired her for the ingenuity of her scam, but the risk involved could bounce me back to New York City for good, with no movie deal to brag about. And, on top of that, I’d be marked with a bad name in Hollywood. But, then, that wasn’t such a bad thing, actually. I hated L.A. – I was only out there for the work, and what I wouldn’t have given to throw that youth elixir against the wall and fly back home and have my sister Rosalie bring me espresso from her old, tiny pot. Or to just grab a bottle of red Sancerre and lie in Kali’s bed back home, watching a bad movie, before falling into some wonderful sex.

But before I could even think about the prospect of the producer’s wife “wanting” me, they returned.

“Sorry, gang. We love Geena and Jeff. What did we miss?”

“Ah, nothing,” I said. “Just some small talk.”

That was met with a huge laugh and a hard pat on my back from The Man.

“Listen to this guy. Small talk. There’s nothing small about you, Benza!”

I made a half-hearted attempt at discussing the script, while tripping over the knowing stares of The Assistant as well as the bold physical advances of The Wife.

“Can I try some of your kobe beef,” she asked, before sliding her lips off the toothpick slower than honey in wintertime. Her eyes stayed glued to mine. The Assistant wasn’t lying. This was a laydown, an easy put-back. But it wasn’t a home game. I was playing on the visitor’s court.

When we were all gathered into the dining room to eat, The Man told his guests where to sit. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, he put his wife and I next to each other, while he sat opposite us. It didn’t take long for her bare foot to find my calf. And then her left hand rested, touching mine, on the padded bench beneath us. She did all this while she remained silent and hung on every word her husband had to say about the project. She was a pro.

As much as I love to flirt – and back then, even a married woman was fair game so long as she initiated things. But this was a young married woman, with a 60-year old husband who was either oblivious to her actions or, more likely, turned on by them.

Either way, it wasn’t easy to negotiate this new terrain. I was 3,000 miles from home, meeting strangers for the first time, in a big old house in the Hollywood Hills. I felt like Bob Seger, whenever she’d look at me with those soft eyes, so innocent and blue.

I began to sweat profusely under my sweater and black leather pants. I felt like every sip I took of my gin and tonic was leaking out of every pore of my skin.

Feeling nauseous at the sight of the gourmet meal, I went outside for some air and the excuse of needing to make a call. As I breathed in the intoxicating scent of the eucalyptus trees, lilac and gardenia plants that lined the property, my eyes stopped at the sight of several scary gargoyles that topped off his iron security gate. I imagined what they might tell me if they came to life. What their evil eyes have seen. Just then I heard a voice that broke the silence.

“That you, Benzaman?”

There was only one ex-girlfriend who used to refer to me that way. She and I had a short, but passionate affair, back in the early 1990’s that included a lot of creeping around. She was a very visible New Yorker, and her boyfriend was a popular businessman who owned two hip restaurants downtown. I had lost touch with her for a few years after her music career heated up and her dreams landed her in L.A.

To be honest, when we were sneaking around, I wasn’t exactly single either. But sometimes, when passion and desire cut so close to the bone, you make exceptions and break promises to people who are true. I don’t know what it was between us – beyond lust and sex - but the danger of it all made us inseparable. It’s always easy to blame it all on destiny. But the funny thing about destiny is, it either gently guides you by the arm or drags you by the neck. But, either way, it gets you there.

“Mimi? That you?”

She ran to the gate, where we did our best to kiss between the cold, iron posts. It was awkward, but her lips still felt as soft as they used to. And she still smelled of Dentyne.

“Oh my God, Benzaman! What are you doing here?”

‘Business, girl. Business. I got a script that might get made.”

“That’s amazing,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. “You live here? In this neighborhood? Someone’s doing well!”

“Well, my man works with a hedge fund. That helps,” she laughed. “We live two houses away.”

“Of course,” I said. “A hedge fund guy. why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Mimi’s dark hair and blue eyes, and the pretty lilt of her English accent shocked me back to innocent memories of New York City. I was finally feeling grounded again.

“Step back a little, baby. Lemme see how you look. Lemme see that body. They got you on sushi and hot yoga all day out here?”

Mimi stepped back into the dark, found some light from a street lantern across the street and did a few turns for me.

“My God,” I said. “Why did I ever let you go?”

“Umm, if I remember correctly, your girlfriend said she’d cut your dick off in your sleep if you ever saw me again.”

“Oh yeah, there was that!”

“And that Puerto Rican would’ve done it,” she said.

Mimi stepped back closer to the gate and mushed her face between the posts. “We had so much fun, didn’t we?”

“Oh my God…it was the best, kid. It should have been illegal,” I said, as I poked her pretty, little nose.

And then Mimi got a bit serious. “So…have you met the wife yet?”

“Matter of fact, I have. I have.”

“And…”

I stepped within a foot from her face and said in a whispered tone, “What do you know? Mimi, what the fuck is it with these two? I don’t know how to play it.”

She doubled over with laughter. “Oh wow, I’m sure you’re not the first one to feel that way.”

And I began to pepper her with questions that needed answers. But I couldn’t stay outside too long with dinner getting cold on the table.

“Okay, so tell me,” I said. “What’s the deal? This woman has been all over me from the moment I got here!”

She reached out to hold my hand through the gate. “This is what they do. I wouldn’t get too worked up over it. People in this town know what goes on here. Just play it as it lays.”

“I don’t know, baby. That sounds easier than it is.”

She kissed her fingers and reached through the gate and touched my lips. “I love you, Benzaman. You’ll be alright. Just follow your gut. And if you stay longer, you better call me so we can get together.

Such a familiar refrain from Los Angelenos. A promise that is seldom fulfilled.

“Why, so I can hang with you and Mr. Hedge Fund? No thanks. But I love and miss you, doll.”

Mimi stepped away and disappeared in the dark.

As I headed back to the house, The Man popped open the front door. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just had to make this call,” I said.

As I sat back down to the table, I kept my eyes focused on The Man’s wife when he grabbed my shoulder and said, “Listen…in addition to the corrections and minor fixes we spoke about, I need you to write something that I can show my people next week. Nothing too long.”

I said, “But you have the script. Isn’t that enough to show people?”

He laughed. “You know what, it really should be. But this fucking town, I’ll tell ya. There are people in this town who wouldn’t know a great script if it was hanging out of their ass. So, make the changes we discussed and maybe write up who you’d like to see starring in it, who you’d like to direct it. That kind of shit. Like two pages. Nothing long and too intricate otherwise they lose focus.”

At this point, The Wife’s eyes were burning a hole into the side of my face. And almost immediately, the calm I felt in Mimi’s presence, disappeared.

“Listen,” he said. “I know there are distractions everywhere. So, if you need peace and quiet, you can stay at our place in Palm Springs. I’m headed to Toronto tomorrow for a few days. My wife will drive you out there and she’ll stay in case you need anything.”

And then this: “Don’t disappoint me.”

Jesus, what a loaded sentence. Talk about ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. Did that mean (A) Don’t sleep with my wife; (B) Please sleep with my wife, or (C) Write a great treatment and sleep with my wife?

Almost immediately, The Wife grabbed my hand and said “It’ll be great. You’ll get so much done. And I won’t be a bother.”

She smiled. “I promise.”

I managed to hob knob with the guests for about another hour, while The Wife openly flirted and stole glances the entire time. At around 11 PM, things had quieted down and the house was nearly empty. The Man sent his housekeeper home and announced to us that he was going upstairs to his bedroom to pack for his trip.

“You stay,” he said. “My wife’s cheesecake is phenomenal. Have you ever had Junior’s in the Bronx?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Her cake puts theirs to shame, okay? Let her tell you how she does it.” He kissed her goodnight on the cheek and trudged upstairs somewhere in their quaint 20,000 square-foot home.

“Don’t listen to him,” she said, as she held onto my arm and mushed against me. “It’s good, but I don’t know about better than Junior’s! You be the judge!”

She took me by the hand and led me into their huge kitchen. For the first time all night, it was just her and I. And even though hearing people’s cheesecake recipes isn’t riveting to me, I found myself enjoying her every word. Her eyes sucked me in.

She pulled out the cake and it looked impressive. I’m not a big desert guy, but I respected the graham cracker crust, the sweet, drippy raspberries on top.

“It’s all about the water bath,” she said. “People think the water bath can be skipped, but it’s a bad idea. It means so much.”

“A water bath, huh?”

“That’s not all,” she said. “I always add a little sour cream with some sugar and spread it over the cheesecake while it sits in the oven for that hour. It makes a real difference. And sour cream is sexy, don’t you think?”

She sliced off a piece on a fork and raised it to my mouth.

“Sour cream, huh,” I said. “Where’d you pick that up? Family recipe or something?”

“No,” she giggled. “I got it from a Philadelphia Cream Cheese package in the ‘80s!”

The cake tasted great. It was soft and creamy and not intrusive as really sweet deserts tend to be. She cut me a piece, plopped it on a plate and moved us into the living room. I was no longer sweating or as nervous as when I arrived, so I sat back and let her do whatever she was expecting to do.

Just then I heard the strains of a guitar trickling downstairs. It was The Man softly singing Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville.”

“Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I think it could be my fault.”

“Is he okay,” I said.

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “He always does this. He says it makes him sleepy. But I just think he’s thinks he’s a really good singer! I don’t have the heart to tell him he sucks!”

She began to fiddle with the stereo equipment, while I took small bites of cheesecake. She grabbed a remote to play some music and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” filled the room. She then hit another button and the disco ball above us began to spin. She pressed another button and beautiful, moody lights lit up the ceiling and danced along the walls. Red, blue, green. Jesus…where am I?

“Perfect,” she said. She then crawled toward the couch and asked me to feed her some cake. And I did. She then fed me some cake. And when some of the raspberries wound up on the side of my mouth, she sat up and licked it off me.

“Oh…okay,” I said. “That was nice of you.”

“I can be nicer,” she said, as she stuck her tongue in my mouth.

I placed the cake down on the table and looked into her eyes. “Hey, what are we doing? What’s going on here? I don’t wanna cause any problems. I mean…what…”

She pressed her lips to mine and just whispered “Shhhh.”

We fell back on the couch. She hiked up her short angora sweater to expose her flat tummy and a beautiful ice blue bra that struggled to hold back her big breasts. “Unhook me,” she said.

I did so rather quickly with my right hand, while she unbuttoned my leather pants which were getting more restrictive by the second. Then she dropped her red leather mini skirt like it was on fire.

“What’s the deal,” I asked between long, passionate kisses. “He could come down at any second.”

She unzipped me and dug her hand inside my pants and exposed me. “He wouldn’t dare,” she said. “He knows. Relax.”

In between deep, appreciative breaths I said “He knows? He’s okay with this?”

Once again, she poked up her head, pulled her long hair back behind her neck and whispered “Shut up, silly. Let me do my thing.”

Listen…I’m a man. What can I tell you? It felt amazing to be in that house, on that couch, beneath the disco ball, with a beautiful woman, so very drunk on lust, going to town on me. I was drunk on the possibilities, and loaded on the fact that this was the sort of sexy danger that lived high up those curvy roads, amongst those beautiful hills.

I watched her go down on me, while the silver ball turned that living room into a disco dungeon. Meanwhile, her man kept singing about a lost salt shaker.

Was this good fortune or a nightmare turned inside out? As good as it all felt, I wasn’t comfortable being there. I didn’t know how to act while a woman linked to a powerful man took control of my body. And, honestly, I didn’t want this dalliance to fuck up his interest in my script. Women come and go. Green-lit screenplays don’t.

But at some point, while the stereo played “Train In Vain,” I gently lifted her head from my lap.

“Hey…I’m sorry. I’m sorry, honey.”

“What’s wrong,” she said while fixing her hair and pulling a pube from her tongue.

“Nothing,” I said. “God, you’re so fuckin’ beautiful. You’re amazing and God knows this is a dream come true…but I don’t think I should stay any longer. I might hate this one day, but I gotta say what I feel.”

As quickly as she lowered her head into my lap, she stood herself up even quicker. She calmly pulled her sweater down, fixed her hair and said that one word that every man knows is a problem.

“Fine.”

“No, don’t say ‘fine.’ Listen to me,” I said, as I went to hold her hand.

She pulled away.

“Oh, come on! Please don’t be like this. Put yourself in my shoes. I don’t know how this all came about. I came here to get a screenplay made. And now, I’m with the wife of the guy who can get it done for me.”

As she collected the plate with remnants of cheesecake, she annoyingly said, “He’ll never get your movie made. He does this all the time. He just loves to act like he’s in on the action.”

I zipped up my pants, straightened out my sweater and stood up. “What are you telling me? You saying he isn’t interested in getting my screenplay made? Then why am I out here?”

Once again, with a slight pause in our talk, his singing drifted downstairs.

“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
There always is and I know
It’s my own damn fault.”

“God, I hate that fucking song!” she said.

And then, just as sexy as she was all night, her demeanor turned ice cold. “Well, all I’m saying is, he’s not gonna want to get it made now.”

“Why,” I said. “Because I didn’t fuck you? Is that what this is all about? He only gets off on guys fucking his wife underneath an old disco ball?”

“Something like that,” she said. “I wouldn’t keep your hopes up if you don’t come to Palm Springs.”

“I’m not going,” I said. “Are you kidding me? This is insane.”

“No,” she said. “This is Hollywood.”

As I drove back to my hotel, I phoned the girlfriend back in New York City. Suddenly, her idiosyncrasies didn’t seem so bad and I missed her like crazy.

It was 3 AM when she picked up in a deep sleep.

“Honey? What’s wrong,” she said.

“I don’t know, baby. Tell me you miss me, Kali. Tell me you miss us, and you can’t wait till I come back home again in your bed. Please honey. I just wanna be home.”

“Of course I miss you, honey,” she said in that sexy sleep voice. “Are you okay? Is anything wrong?”

“Aw, kid, this is L.A.,” I said. “Everything is wrong. And I love you.”

I never did get that screenplay made.