Installment Three

Writer's note. This is the third installment of a portion of a book I'm writing about my attempts to become a movie actor in the 1970s.

Everybody sooner or later has to get lucky.

I did.

I’m in a dance movement class at the acting school, a waste of time and a bunch of nonsense because I intend to be an action hero, not some sissy dancer. I’m thinking about quitting the school anyway because I’m simply not making it, not going anywhere. Madame Openska (the haughty Hungarian born director of the school) can tell me in that gobbledygook foreign accent of hers' that I’m worthy, but I know what results are. Real results. I feel silly in this class, bending and jumping with an odd assortment of boys and girls, many of them younger than me. What am I doing here?

There is one saving grace. A blonde in the class who is gorgeous. I have my eye on her. Boy! She’s the only thing that makes this worth it. I wonder if I dare say anything to her. I don’t want a put-down. I don’t want to risk it. I’m depressed enough as it is. I’ll try the safe coward’s way. I’ll stare at her and get her attention and see how she reacts.

I’m dancing and exercising next to her to the shouted cadence of the teacher. One two three kick! One two three kick! One two three…that’s good.

She becomes aware of my interest. She gives me a glance back that gives my pumping heart a surge of adrenalin. The reaction from her is not unfavorable.

She dances near me. Catch me if I fall, she whispers.

I’d love to, I say suggestively.

This is the critical juncture. She stares at me closely. Looking into my eyes as though trying to get a definitive, do you mean that? Are you joking?

God she’s beautiful. She has golden hair and a blonde is what I want, what I prefer. Like many dark-haired men who are Aquarian, I want a blonde. I’ve been raised on the icons of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield after all. A blonde is the top. A blonde is success. Only the best guys get a sexy blonde.

She has a cute impish nose and blue eyes. She’s flirting with me. I can’t stand it. I’ve got to have her. I look at her with admiration, with longing and desire. We both stare at each other oblivious of our surroundings. The class is over and breaking up, but the point has been made. She jokes and whispers something in my ear and I don’t hear it. I’m so excited and aroused by her. I follow her like an obedient puppy out of the class and down the hall and she’s enjoying this attention I can tell. We move to a new class, the next class, I don’t remember what it is and I don’t care. All I know is her. The way she looks.

There are metal folding chairs for this next class whatever it is. She takes a chair and moves it next to me and beckons me to sit next to her. My heart races. Everything that follows seems a blur, but develops like it was all scripted long before, like it was meant to happen.

We leave the school and she beckons me to follow her to visit some friends of hers’ in the Hollywood Hills. These hills, so barren and scrub-pocked and pathetic and hideous, take on a completely different cast at sunset, when the sun descends like a fiery red ball in the summer heat toward the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly, everything is colored red, the buildings, the trees. Sometimes it seems sinister, like the color of blood. Depending on your mood, at other times it’s romantic and fabulous, like a gush of red hot yearning, accompanied by the whirring of cocktail shakers up and down the canyons, mixing exotic drinks for the elite, the rich and beautiful…the filmed.

It’s sundown and we come to one of those white stucco 1920s imitation little castles with the red Spanish tile roof and curved arched doorjambs. It looks like a scene from all the old movies you’ve ever seen about the glory days of Hollywood.

Something good is happening here and life is suddenly beautiful, full of promise and hot desire, and the feeling that you’re one of the lucky few chosen by God or fate or whatever is up there, to be special. You suddenly feel desirable. You feel like the movie star soon to be, like you always knew you were supposed to feel. But now it’s finally really happening. That’s what I think.

We join a small party. One of those intimate circles of friends gatherings so popular in Hollywood, and she introduces me to her friends, whom all I know about them is that they’re connected with the (film) industry in some way, but not actors like we are. They laugh at her as though aware of her tendency for pranks, and this suits her, for she is what appears a free spirit girl just like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Every man at some point in his life, no matter how dismal, it has been said, will meet a Holly of his own.

She is mine.

She makes me feel important. Like a man. You’re the best actor in the school she tells me, in such a sexy way. I feel like I might explode. We don’t stay long at the party and excuse ourselves and head for our two cars. Nighttime has come and the lights of the City of Angels below twinkle like stars. Down there in what an hour before was the smog and traffic and pan handlers and poor foreigners and trash heaps and decay, is now somehow cleansed and full of glowing prisms, like a scene from The Arabian Nights.

My heart is pounding so. She asks me to come back with her, to follow her to her place. As I drive along a narrow road leading downward, my headlights piercing the dark of a scrub-covered canyon, watching her car ahead in my headlights, I wonder where this will end. Is my luck turning? Does this have greater meaning for me than just an attractive girl? A movie contract next perhaps?

We park in an old section of Hollywood (all of it is old), next to a high rise apartment building that looks like it was built in the 1940s, its pink paint flaking in patches off the sides of the walls. Somehow, it still manages to maintain a sad, faded elegance. We ride up an antiquated elevator that bumps and rumbles convincing me from now on to take the stairs. I have the feeling I might be coming back here.

Her room is a spacious, pleasantly appointed flat with a great window view of the twinkling lights that makes me wonder where she gets the money to stay (I learn later her stage mother supports her acting aspirations).

Here we are, she says seductively.

We talk a little about acting and who she knows, but the talk is smaller than small talk, a ritualized preparation for physical plans that have already been made and of which I can only hope. In other words, we talk the talk to get something to fill in the brief moment when I will jump on her body.

But I don’t know that for sure. Not yet.

She hasn’t even made coffee. The night is sultry and ready.

I wonder. Will I be excused? Was this for nothing? There have been so many dead ends lately.

Suddenly, like magic, she leaves me no doubt about my options. She is in her bra and panties. It’s hot and steamy in the apartment. I make the move. There is no holding back. I pick her up in my arms. This act of bravado has the desired impact.

Throw me on the bed, she requests.

I almost stumble backwards with her on the slick hardwood floor (I previously had had a couple drinks), nearly spoiling the moment of lust, causing her to caution me, don’t drop me. But I recover. I don’t want an accident. I had this doltish acquaintance who once dropped a girl on her head one time, ruining everything. For him. That’s like dropping a baseball and losing the World Series.

You never recover from something like that.

But I make it to her small bed and carefully let her fall. We’re naked and I’m on top of her, entering her, and feeling the warm heady gush of ecstasy and conquest. She looks up at me not with the adoration of someone who had meant and received the favors of an angel, but a kind of staring, almost fearful look, like a helpless creature accosted by a brute. A he-man, so powerful, that all she could do was submit to his lust and obey…and enjoy. It’s magic.

Our bodies bathe in sweat. We squish against each other. We revel in the sweat.

Suddenly, everything I’d gone through, is validated, simply by the in and out motion of an organ. Gee I’m glad I came here. I’m glad I’m an actor. I’m beautiful. Gee this is..Oh I just love it! Isn’t life wonderful. So complete. Just do it! Oh get me! That’s it! Now! Now!

It’s morning. In Hollywood. This is the best part of all. Morning in Hollywood, before the smog has a chance to billow and waft its way up from the bowels of discord and tailpipes. The sun bright shines straight across the landscape, casting everything in its path in a golden glow. I see it shine through the open window, and I look at my golden woman next to me. This is the moment. I’m Errol Flynn. I made it. This is how it was always meant to be. A king. Not a nobody standing in a line of nobodies.

This is how you’re supposed to feel.

I look down at her still sleeping naked form, and every fantasy I’ve ever had is satisfied. A creature of wonder. A creature of light. She opens her eyes and smiles, and in that golden glow, we mount and thrash again for a repeat of the night before. It’s too much to merely describe.

Sated, exhausted, we fall back down. She refers to me in that moment, as…my man! In such a way that leaves no doubt about my successful performance, and my newly won status as a carnal god.

I find that she has a rollicking sense of humor and the absurd in keeping with her free-spirit nature that is immediately endearing, for when a former boyfriend calls, she reaches over and answers the phone, and tells him how wonderful he is. With me laying next to her. I move to speak to interject, but she gently covers my mouth with her hand, and keeps telling someone how he’s the only one for her. I chuckle softly, for this is charming.

She hangs up and we talk and hug the morning away with delightful mindless banter. It passes so quickly. Then it’s time to get something to eat, and return and don swim suits (she has a man’s one that fits me in her drawer). She is physically gifted, an excellent swimmer, her body lean and powerful.

We eat lunch and then it’s off in her car to a movie. I’m joyful. I joke around. I have a beautiful blonde girl friend just like a Hollywood star should have. It somehow makes me feel that since this happened, the rest of the dream could happen too. But inside the darkened theater, as we sit down to watch a movie called Animal House, my idyll begins to unravel. Just a bit at first.

John Belushi, an ugly hog of a man, a comic from the East Coast, is the star of the film. As he jumps around on the projected screen on the wall my blonde girl expresses admiration for him and his funny cleverness. Then she refers to him as a new Errol Flynn. I’m immediately hit with a pang of jealousy. I’m the new Errol Flynn. Why is she looking at him and praising him (never take a date you want to the movies. They watch the screen star and not you).

I’m irritated by this and sink down in my seat a bit and sulk. She’s enthralled by what’s happening on the screen, and doesn’t know my feeling.

Did I say any of the chicks in the movie were sexy? No! I only had eyes for her. Why does she say this? She knows Errol Flynn is my hero. I look more like Error Flynn than that pig Belushi. He’s as ugly as a hog. Really. With his fat face and swarthy Italian looks and short fat body, while I on the other hand, have matinee idol looks of the classic kind of the 1930s.

He’s ugly, he’s the new Hollywood, where ugly is good, where the shittier you look, the bigger you get. Where if you act like an asshole, they promote you. You’re a big star, just not anything like the real Errol Flynn. This freakin’ Italian dwarf (Belushi). What rock did they dig him out from under? He isn’t funny. He isn’t good looking. He’s just a pig that got a break.

Why is she complimenting him? He’s not with her. She can’t get him. I’m the one who’s here.

The answer is, because he’s up there, and I’m down here. That’s why. You’ve got to be up there, on the screen, and I’m not.

Two days later, it comes to an abrupt end. First, I make a joke that she’s so hot I even lick the phone when I talk to her. This joke backfires. She says based on the remark, that she seems to attract kinky guys. I thought it was a funny joke.

This is in reality an excuse that she‘s already tired of me and needs to move on. Then in the acting class, I ask her for another over-nighter. She’s busy that night doing something else. I get mad. I’m possessive, old fashioned, tie-me-down possessive, something she is not. I’m jealous. She slept with me for reasons radically different from what I suddenly want now, loyalty, conformity, something foreign to her nature.

How quickly the joys and freedom of wild licentiousness turn into affronted, offended demands, jealousy and ownership, expressed hypocritically in the guise of love, and straight laced, narrowed parameters. That wasn’t what she was about.

She’s a free spirit, a Holly Golightly you cannot control anymore than you could the wind. One day’s passion is forgotten the next. I wanted to own her for my own status.

She’s breaking my heart.

She’s gone.

Copyright 2007 by SammonSays.com