Hollywood Ass. (21 page)

So what do you do when a Hollywood superstar decides to move in with you and your parents? How do you relax and pretend like everything’s normal? That it’s not some lucky spell, bound to end with the flick of the same wand which brought her there? You can’t. One minute you’re floating on clouds and the next you’re walking on eggshells, afraid the illusion you’re so blissfully in will go
poff! -
up
in smoke. I obviously didn’t know what to do, so I focused on helping her relax and making sure she wouldn’t go back into the destructive mood that created the situation in the first place. We took long walks, watched movies, talked a lot and every night she came into my room to sleep with me and later also by my side. We didn't kiss or anything like that during the daytime, but she didn't hesitate to take my hand or ask me to hold her when we were alone. Although I loved this state of being, I realized we couldn’t stay this way forever, so I needed to pop the question, where were we going with this?

“Where are we going with what?” B of course knew what I meant, she was just buying herself more time for an answer.

“With us? What's next? Or do you want to move into my boyhood room permanently?” I said, trying to make the conversation as light as it could be, but of course my nerves were dangling like telephone wires in a storm.

“I don't know. It’s too early, too confusing. Right now I only know I want you near me. I'm sorry, but that's all I can say right now.”

“But like a relationship or as your assistant or what?” I kept pressing.

“Like I said, I don't know. I understand you don't want to work for me anymore so that's out, especially now that something has already happened between us, but why don't we both go back to New York to figure it out? Stay with me for a while, see what happens.”
B
looked at me with her big blue eyes, knowing I would fold like a deck chair.

My biggest worry at that time was that
B
just wanted me close, not as in a relationship, but as a friend and support, and if I couldn’t work for her she would find another way to make it happen. Was she sleeping with me just for me to get back to her? The thought crossed my mind.

Still I said yes.

***

My folks were sad to see us leave, but clever enough to understand there are limits to how long you can live with your parents, especially when you’re staying there with your “girlfriend”. And by that, I’m not saying
B
was my girlfriend, just that we definitely had something going on outside the friendship zone and I’m pretty sure even my parents picked up on it, no matter how much we tried to stay under the radar.

“You have a funny little smile on your face,”
B
told me in the car. She looked happy to be back in the Big Apple.

“Do I? I guess, I’m feeling pretty good right now, I’m getting more and more into the New York style of things.”

B
smiled, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

Her rented apartment was bigger than I remembered it and it felt amazing how time and memory could change space. We could probably have invited the Lakers for basketball practice in the living room if we wanted to. In front of the wall-to-ceiling windows she had placed her easel and on the floor, leaning on the wall with their backs to it, were the paintings she had worked on. I was instantly curious about what was on them, but if she had been keen on showing me, they wouldn’t have faced the wall.

She put down her bag, walked over to the tall windows and said, “I really love your parents, Darryl. I know I repeat myself, but you have such a beautiful and relaxed family vibe. But still I couldn’t help but miss New York. In fact, I don’t know how I could stay in LA for so long.” I walked over to her and in a completely spontaneous gesture, I put my arms around her. I felt her tense up at first, but then she relaxed, after all, we were sleeping together almost every night, so it was a natural thing to do. At least to me.

After a while she untangled herself and walked over to the easel. This prompted me to ask, “So what’s up with the paintings on the floor? I’m sure they’re nice, but I can’t see them.”

“That's awfully generous of you, because I think they’re all shit. Before I left I thought of burning everything. I'm just not cut out to be painting anything, except for possibly a wall.”

I walked over there to have a look at her work, but
B
shouted
No!
before I had the chance to. I stopped in the middle of my bent motion and said, “Okay, okay. I won’t look. But they're probably ten times better than you think.”

“I'm just not ready to let anyone else see them, that's all. They’re very personal. And bad.” A sad smile surfaced on
B
’s face, she was dead serious about this and she wasn’t going to show them to me.

I picked up my luggage in the hallway and asked her where I should put it.

“You can take the bedroom to the left over there,” she pointed to the corridor.

I stopped in my tracks, because I had of course hoped to share a bed more permanently by then. Was I already expecting too much? I couldn’t shake the thought that maybe the adventure that started so surprisingly in my boyhood room, was ending as abruptly in New York.

But like she was reading my mind,
B
said: “Don't look like a wounded puppy, you'll still get to see me naked - I just don't want to give up any closet space.”

Somewhat relieved, I put my bags into the other, smaller, untouched and impeccably furnished bedroom and sat down on the bed. It was far more comfortable than the one back in Clarendon, but I still felt a bit strange, like I wasn’t really supposed to be there. And I had nothing to fall back on either if things didn’t work out - I was unemployed and pretty much homeless. All I had was
B
. Which was exactly what she wanted.

B
shouted to me from the main room, “I told you I fired Julianne, right? I’m sure you must like that piece of news. I'm actually starting to think it’s time to get back into the game again, get a new agent who could hopefully land me something different than another predictable love story.”

But I kind of like predictable love stories
, I thought to myself.

***

B
was meeting up with an agent prospect on a recommendation from an actress friend, who said he could develop her career into something even bigger and better, while I was taking a jog through Central Park in an effort to clear my head.

I was nearing my breaking point. I had stayed with
B
for three weeks and although it had been nice, things had not progressed beyond random sexual encounters. In fact, I was starting to feel like some kind of male gigolo - her luxury in-house lover and friend - and I didn’t even get paid!

The good thing was, of course, that
B
was both happier and healthier now, seemingly far away from the dark hole she had been in a month before and eager to start working again.

Who was taking care of her scheduling, administration and agent work? Yeah, you guessed it, it was me. I was back in the wheel again, helping her sort her life out during the day and making love to her during the night. And I did this while I was helplessly in love with her and she wasn’t with me and that created a sickening feeling of inferiority which kept eating away at me. I hoped Cesar could make some sense out of it, because I’d booked a date with him for the first time in a long time at an organic café, not too many blocks from the Staten Island ferry. Life had changed dramatically for him, he was now in his first serious relationship and put all his energy into that. This was good for him of course, but I missed us staying in touch more frequently.

The Cesar I met at the café was not the Cesar I knew, his hair had grown out and he'd combed it to the side using a can of gel. He was wearing a suit and had a confident, mature air about him, hailing from a good job, a girlfriend and improved looks.

“Wow, look at you!” I said, as we sat down, “that’s a promotion alright!”

“You’re talking to the head of development,” Cesar grinned and that’s when I first
really
recognized him, the smile and its goofy, slightly tilted nature, was still there.

“Congratulations. I think
you
owe me lunch today. You know this all started when you cut those nasty locks off.”

“I know, I know - they were my bad luck charm. But I've really tried to turn my life around and I think everything changed when I met Rosa. She just makes me want to push myself and find strengths I didn't even know I had before. It's pretty amazing.”

I couldn’t imagine the old Cesar ever uttering a line like this, so it was a lot for me to take in.

“Sounds like you’re really in love.”

Cesar had a dreamy look on his face I’d only seen when he was smoking weed, “Yeah, you could you say that. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I took a bite of my muffin and pondered it, “Cesar Livingstone, a soon-to-be married development manager. Never thought I would say something like that.”

“Me neither,” he said and sipped his cappuccino. “So what’s up with you two? Sparks flying, birds twittering?”

“There’s a lot of Twitter for sure, but I wouldn’t call it sparks. That part is still not happening. We just see things differently, I see a future and to her we’re just fuck-buddies until something better comes along.”

Cesar looked at me like I just said something remarkably stupid, “It sounds like you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Are you sure it can’t be that feeling that when you have something really good you're so afraid to lose it, it’s almost better not to have it in the first place? It’s obvious you’re doubting yourself too much and I’m pretty sure she’s not very attracted to it either.”

I could see Cesar’s point, but part of me felt that
B
very much liked where she had me, in a box, accessible, but without attachments. Problem was, I didn’t much like it myself.

“By the way,” Cesar said, “what is
A
thinking about all this? It must be quite a blow to him that you’re dating his ex. You were quite close.”

“He doesn't know, nobody knows. If you’ve been working as someone’s assistant for a long time you can get away with being seen in public and of course we don’t kiss out in the open. I can't really think too hard about his opinion at the moment, he has moved on and to be honest I'm not sure it's something to have an opinion about.”

“You sound pretty pessimistic to me and I hate it. What are you doing to yourself, Darryl? You’re letting her turn you into someone you’re not.”

Although his comment angered me at first, Cesar had always had a knack for hitting the nail on the head and here he had managed to do so again, it just hurt too much for me to accept it.

“You have to make it clear to her how you feel and be serious about it too, if she’s not interested in anything beyond sex, then I think you should make a stand and move out. It’s not dignified to be someone’s fuckbuddy, man. Even if she’s a superstar.”

It sounds so easy when you’re sitting on that side of the fence, dude
, I thought before I finished my tasteless muffin.

***

I knew I should have listened to Cesar’s advice. It was a no-brainer really. But somehow I didn’t manage to approach
B
in a good way and my unease was growing progressively, which made me more and more insecure around her. It wasn’t what “the relationship” needed, that’s for sure, but I was on a slippery slope, mentally sliding into an abyss of lousy confidence. She didn’t seem to care too much though, her head was elsewhere: in memorizing movie scripts, upcoming business meetings, her re-energized career. I was happy for her but at the same time sad that our so called “romance” was coming to the inevitable end. I knew it all along of course: a middle class kid from Virginia and a Hollywood movie star - doesn’t make much sense does it?

The expense card was back in my hands, but I felt cheap using it, which made sense because it wasn’t a job anymore, it was something else. Did it mean she saw me as her assistant again? Possibly. The amount of sex kept decreasing and her spontaneous gestures of affection had completely stopped. I felt used.

Should I’ve been angry at her for doing this to me? In a way, maybe, but somehow I couldn’t. I felt I had been naive enough to put myself in the situation and therefore I had to be mature enough to get out of it. Like it was, we were risking to lose the friendship we had, but I had such a hard time letting go of the rosy moments we had shared together - they lingered in the back of my head like dreams you never wanted to wake up from.

On a personal level, I was stagnating, still with the increasingly vague hope of opening a wine bar, but with no clear path on getting there. I simply didn’t have enough energy to think about things like that.

But after my usual morning jog one day, I decided to seize the beautiful weather and pick up lunch and a few books to maybe spark some kind of inspiration. Cesar’s girlfriend, the always pleasant Rosa, had recommended a few books which helped her “keep her on her toes”. She was a real go-getter: feisty, hyper, not my type, but apparently Cesar’s.

I probably looked a bit out of place in the Barnes and Noble in my shorts and running shirt, but it didn’t take me long to locate all the books on Rosa’s list. I added a cappuccino and a turkey/cranberry baguette to the shopping list, paid for everything and headed out into Central Park. The sun warmed my face and I felt my spirits lift.

It was exactly what I needed.

I sipped my coffee, ate my under-heated baguette and browsed through the books, read a page here and there and forgot about time completely. I was enjoying myself so much, just letting my sweat dry in the basking sun, that I didn’t notice a man sitting down on the bench next to me. He spoke, “Trying to better yourself, huh?”

I looked over at the guy, who had a movie-star face, blindingly white teeth and a one-day stubble. He wore a white Lacoste polo shirt and was holding a large thermos coffee mug. It seemed like he wanted to let me in on a secret.