A Funny Thing Happened...

"National Geographics?"

"If the old guy ever bought a Playboy, I never found it."

"So, what, you'd look for pictures of...?

"And I'm like twice your age. It's...impolite."

Now it was my turn to laugh. "I suppose. Although Miss Manners might have had the decency not to call you on it. How old are you anyway?"

"Hm? Oh, 48."

He'd said it casually; not coy, not defensive, no bullshit. He didn't make me promise not to tell anybody. And in our world, asking age was considered a hell of a lot more impolite than checking out somebody's cleavage.

"Ok, so you're not twice my age. I'm 26. Look, don't run off." I dropped his arm, "Please? I haven't really had much of a chance to talk to you."

He gave me that wry little smile again; shrugged. "Alright, alright," sounding a little like Tevye, "I'm sorry, though."

"Would you stop apologizing, for fuck's sake? What is there to be sorry for?"

He flared a little. "I don't know: sneaking a peek? Over-reacting?"

"Fine, forgiven. Not like there's much of anything to forgive. Now will you calm down? And maybe give me a little more of that weed?"

"There's a thought." He relit the pipe, took another hit himself and passed it over. I drew in a lungful, and then...maybe it was the pot, but I decided not to drop the subject.

"Sim, I've got to say I don't get it. You spend half the show with your hands or your face on my chest. What's the problem? Does your girlfriend not like it when you have to get...um...physical with other actors?"

"You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"Well, I will if you want me to, but...look, I'm comfortable around you. I like you. I'd like you to be comfortable with me too, you know?"

"Wow. Tell you the truth, being comfortable around you is...um...challenging for me." That hurt, and it must have shown on my face, because he hurried on: "Ah shit, Gin, that came out wrong. I'm sorry. And I like you too. Really. You're a terrific lady, a dream to work with and...but...look, you do know that you're absolutely beautiful, right?

It was the strangest compliment I had ever been given. Most guys who say something like that have an agenda, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's on it. And that's cool. It's nice to tell a woman you're interested in sleeping with that she's attractive. Part of the process, right? Guys like saying it, and we like hearing it. But there was something in Sim's tone. It was like he had none of the standard expectations; like it was a fact he needed to discuss with me. Anyway, he asked the question, so I answered it.

"Ok, so I'm beautiful, I guess. I mean, you're not the first person who's said it to me. I'm sorry if that sounds stuck up or conceited, but I mean...it's not like its any great accomplishment, you know? I didn't do anything for it, and even if I am...beautiful"—it sounded really weird saying it out loud—"I mean I won't be forever, right? So does it matter, I mean as far as being my friend or being comfortable with me goes? Cause I have to say I'm gonna be pissed if we can't be friends because how I look, right? I mean if I were...I don't know, ugly, would you not want to be friends with me?"

He looked at me quizzically for a second then he laughed out loud: a short sharp bark, which made Buzz, the spot-op, turn away from whatever the basketball discussion had become and say: "Dude..."

"Gin, you are an excellent woman, and your price is above rubies, and you are absolutely right, and I never thought about it that way before. What kind of contemptible asshole won't be friends with a person because of how he or she looks? Well, me, apparently."

That sounded like progress. "So turn over a new leaf, lean against the nice cold wooden railing and answer my question."

"What question?"

"The one about the...oh shit, I forgot what...um...this stuff sneaks up on a girl...girl, um...girlfriend! Right, that's it. Does your girlfriend or wife or whatever have a problem when you have to get cozy with the co-stars?"

"Oh, that question; um...no: no wife, no girlfriend, no boyfriend either for that matter."

"I didn't...are you gay?

"No, but we're doing a musical; thought I'd cover all the bases. How about you? Do you have a guy in your life?"

"Not just now, but look: how do you...I mean, I don't want to be personal, but do you...like...not do relationships or something."

He looked directly into my eyes for a moment: "Have you been talking to Jack?"

"Umm..." Busted.

He smiled a little sadly: "He told you about the whole Holly Parsegian thing, didn't he?" When I just stood there looking guilty, he continued. "It's ok; it's not a big deal, although I've always suspected our resident Brooks Brother of concocting grand psychological theories about it."

I'd seen Jack arrive earlier: grey Harris Tweed sports jacket, black slacks, black shirt, pink-on-pink paisley tie. "He does look good in clothes, doesn't he?"

"Yes he does, damn him." Then: "Look, the Holly thing was complicated, and yes I do relationships, although, truth be told, I haven't done that many of them. I'd actually just sort of ended, or was ended by, a lady I'd been seeing on a kind of off-again, on-again basis for a few years. It didn't end particularly well, and...look, Holly is one of the neatest, sweetest ladies I've ever met; she deserves...like the best of everything."

"According to Jack, she wanted you pretty badly."

"I don't know. Maybe. I had just...okay, if I tell you something funny, can you please not tell fuckin' Jack Lindley? I'll never hear the end of it."

I sketched a cross over my chest. I noticed Sim's eyes dipping to follow my fingers, but this time I had the good sense not to call him on it. "Cross my heart."

"Ok. When this thing with Jeanette blew up—she was the lady I'd been seeing—I was back in the City, and I didn't have much going on, so I started going to some of these casting director workshops. Do you know what those are?"

"Not really. I mean I've heard about them, but I've never been."

"I think the idea started in LA; it's mostly an on-camera thing. For forty or fifty bucks, you sit down with a bunch of other actors in front of the casting director on some show—I think this one was for one of the Law and Order people. Anyway, depending on the format, you get a five minute interview one-on-one, and then you're assigned scenes and paired with another actor. You do the scene in front of the group, and the casting guy, or lady, critiques you, and they take everybody's picture. In the end you've done a kind of unofficial audition."

"Yeah, but you've paid for it. Isn't that supposed to be a huge no-no?"

"Clever courtesan!" I took that as a good sign. Either Sim was getting a little more comfortable around me, or the weed was kicking in. Either way worked for me. "That's why they call them workshops. It's supposed to be like a cold-reading class, and at the end the CD just sort of "happens to" leave with all the pictures. Now, some of these people don't even go through the motions. It's like scene, "next", scene, "next," and they're out of there as soon as the last scene is done. But some really try to make a class out of it. They give feedback, talk about how good or bad the pictures are, what should and shouldn't be on the res. This Law and Order guy was one of the good ones. He pairs me up with this other guy—most of the scenes were guy/girl. Anyway, I'm this asshole assistant district attorney, and my partner is some low-level mob guy I'm trying to sweat for information. It's a pretty good scene, and I'm doing my best, looking for beats and maybe laughs or something. I don't know. Anyway the other actor, my partner—who looks like some low-level mobster, by the way; he's got this head of obviously dyed hair, lots of product, receding hairline, wearing a cheap suit with the flashy tie, kind of rough skin, like acne scars on the face—I thought he was sort of dressing to type, you know? "Hey, here I am; I play cheap hoods." Seemed like a good idea; I mean Law and Order, they need cheap hoods. Anyway, he is not happy. He's also not very good. We read the scene, and the casting guy adjusts him a couple of times. He can't take the notes; in the end, I'm kind of pissed, because the scene didn't go that well, and I'm thinking, this asshole just fucked my chances to go in for Law and Order, right?

"Sounds like it."

"Anyway, I'm sitting there wondering what's his problem, and we get to the Q & A at the end. Asshole's hand shoots up: why didn't he get to read a scene with a girl; why is he always getting guy-guy scenes in these workshops? It's totally inappropriate question: personal, argumentative, taking time away from the group, all that. But the casting guy is a pro, and he starts to explain what I've known for years. He points to us (me and asshole) and says that we're character actors: we're going to play bad guys and authority figures and dads and, you know, basically everybody except the pretty sexy people. He spins it like it's a great thing; with the exception of a show like Friends or, I don't know, Vampire Diaries or something, most shows need like five character regulars or recurrings for every one or two leads. Character actors work forever; pretty much everybody is character over 35, the usual stuff. Asshole isn't happy, but he's listening. Then the guy tells this story how in the old days casting directors used to talk about an actor's "fuckability." Just a television thing: to what extent would a male or female viewer respond sexually to a given performer? Guys like us—me and Asshole—were generally considered to have "negative fuckability."

Well, shit; "funny?" That's the word Sim had used to describe this story, but I was one long-ass way from laughing. I said nothing, and Sim was quiet for a few moments. Then:

"It just so happened that a lot of the actors at that particular workshop were young, pretty people: wanna-be leads. A lot of them started laughing. Asshole was furious; he looked like he wanted to deck somebody. I...understood what the guy was saying. I knew most of it. Hell, I'd been living it for the past, what, twenty-five years? Virtually all of my on-camera work has been small shit: janitors, hotel managers, the occasional cop, middle management buffoons. I took the jobs, cashed the checks, and had my real fun in the theatre. The guy wasn't being personal, and he wasn't referring to anything other than casting tendencies on television. I mean Dennis Franz on NYPD Blue was...never mind; before your time. But the phrase..." he gave a small smile, but he didn't look happy. "Negative fuckability...it, uh...kind of stuck with me. I mean it was really stupid. I'd had sex; I'd had girlfriends. It wasn't personal. It wasn't even real; it was television for fuck sake. But I'm ashamed to say it took me a little while to...I don't know...get out from under it. I booked George something like a week later, and I guess I hadn't quite...whatever, when Holly asked Jack to ask me...anyway...Holy shit, I have been talking for a long old time. I think I'm higher than I thought I was..."

He was covering, closing off whatever had allowed him to tell me the story. All of a sudden, and for no reason at all, I was scared. I didn't want him to regret having told me; I didn't want to lose what felt like...I don't know: his trust, this new—sort of—intimacy? I needed to say something; I needed to short-circuit this...retreat, or whatever it was. But of course I had no idea what to say. I interrupted him anyway.

"Hey Sim?"

"Yeah, Ginny?"

"Thanks."

That stopped him, for a minute anyway. "Thanks for what?"

"For telling me. For being...I don't know...comfortable enough with me to trust me with it. I won't tell anybody, by the way."

He did smile then, like he meant it. "I know. I just...I know. Wow, look at me! Comfortable around beautiful women." Then, in some strange accent I didn't recognize: "What'll the neighbors say? What'll the neighbors..."

"What the hell was that?"

"Bad Welsh dialect. It's a line from a play I did a few years ago. It just sort of came to mind. Anyway, about...what I told you: it really was no big thing. Just the timing was bad; you know? With Jeanette and everything. It got on top of me for a while, but I'm over it, I think. I hope."

Bullshit. "Sure." I said. "This is one fucked up job we do, sometimes." Sim leaned in, put his hands on my shoulders, stood on his toes, and gave me a chaste little peck on the forehead. He smiled, made a kind of soft humming sound for a second, then said goodnight and walked back towards the house, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. I stood for a while feeling the warmth of his lips fading from my skin in the cold desert air. I wouldn't tell a soul that somebody had once told a man I liked, respected, admired that he had "negative fuckability." But I began seriously to consider a way to...dispute that casting director's assessment of my friend and colleague, Simeon Brownstone.

4.

So now I had a new problem. I'd wanted to—what: sleep with, have sex with, make love to, fuck?—Sim Brownstone for some time now. Everybody knew it: Jack, Liz, Carolyn, Leko, the lighting designer's labradoodle. I knew it. I might not have admitted it, but I knew it. Sim didn't know it; "negative fuckability." It took me less than an hour to come up with this half-assed sort of psycho-sexual profile of the man; probably horseshit, but it made sense to me, and it helped me to focus my energies.

The way I figured it, Sim Brownstone had spent the better part of his adult life in the entertainment industry, which meant he had lived, worked, and socialized with a disproportionate number of young, attractive, and physically fit people. By non-industry standards, Sim was a reasonably attractive man. But how often did he think in terms of non-industry standards? His job was, as often as not, to pretend to be a buffoonish, unattractive, disappointed, weak, inept and/or angry person for an extended period of time. That all had to take some kind of toll, right? And Sim had to have an ego. Nobody survives, much less thrives, as an actor without one. So there were probably any number of things he liked about himself: probably thought well of himself professionally, seemed to like getting along with people; liked being popular, enjoyed being smart, enjoyed being funny, but attractive, sexy? Those last weren't in the toolkit, right? "Negative fuckability." Damn, damn, damn! So how did I, an attractive and sexy woman who found him—despite what he thought of himself—sexy and attractive, get him into bed without him thinking that I was tossing him a pity-fuck? I went looking for my roomie.

Elizabeth Primrose Charboneaux (now you see why I just call her Liz) is The Best. We've done like four shows together, and she's closer to me than either of my actual sisters. She's a tallish, rangy lady with a runner's body and the complexion of a supermodel. Her dad is Puerto Rican, her mom is Creole, and their daughter is a show stopper: light tan skin, long, kinky, black hair, huge brown eyes, a full "fuck you" mouth, small high breasts, trim through the middle (just a hint of a six pack, the bitch!), and the legs: holy shit! I don't know how she manages it: not an ounce of fat on her; no jiggle anywhere, but not all muscular and stringy either. She's fuckin' Supergirl or something. And her nose is the cherry on the sundae. It's slightly off-kilter, like it was broken but didn't set properly. She hates it, but the guys go abso-fucking-lutely nuts for it. She's smart as a whip, just a little slutty, and probably an alcoholic. Holy Moses does that girl like to drink! But she's all of 27, and thus far it hasn't gotten in the way of anything. She's a killer dancer; decent singing voice, decent ear, and if you need somebody to play slutty chorus girl, she's Meryl fucking Streep.

She's also got this really original way of looking at things: confident, like: "What's the worst that could happen?" I had told Sim I wouldn't pass on his casting director story, and I didn't, at least not specifically. A couple of days later, we were lounging around the apartment we shared—1:00 PM, and we'd just woken up.

Me: Lizzy, I've decided something.

Liz: Please God tell me you're going to fuck poor Simeon.

Me: Okay, how the fuck do you do that?

Liz: Really? Hallelujah! Best thing for both of you.

Me: Yeah, but...I've got this problem...

Liz: No you don't. It's really simple, Ginny: get naked, spread your legs, and let nature take its course.

Me: No, seriously...look. I hung out with him some at the party at Wyatt's.

I paused while she ran the blender for a smoothie. When she'd turned it off, she said: "Yeah, I saw you two, and I got to hoping."

"Well, he told me some stuff."

"Really? C'mon, give: inquiring minds want to know."

"I can't. Seriously. It was personal, and I promised, and it's not important anyway. Well, it is important in one way...it's just that now, if I come onto him..."

Liz held up a hand: "He told you something...intimate or...it made him vulnerable or something, and now he might think you were sleeping with him because you felt sorry for him?" I nodded. "Ginny, I don't want to sound like a bitch, and I have to say this doesn't sound like our guy, but could he have been playing you a little. I mean, he's got to be every bit as hot for you as you are for him."

It hadn't occurred to me, and I thought about it for a second. Then I remembered the little skirmish when I calling him out for looking at my tits. It'd played like a bad Harlequin romance. He'd actually started to leave the presence of the maiden he had outraged or something. I laughed out loud. "He's a good actor, but he's not that good. And anyway, who cares? I like him, and...I don't think it was an act. If it was I wouldn't worry. I'd just fuck him, and we'd both have a great time, right?"

"Really doesn't sound like Sim, does it?" mused Liz.

"So what should I do? What would you do, Miss Brazen Cajun?"

Liz was silent for a good long time. I busied myself putting together my breakfast/lunch. Finally: "I don't think I've told you this, unless maybe when I was drunk. But you know my first solo, when I wind up licking his face?"

"Hell, yes. Hottest thing in the show."

"Yeah, sure, Miss Titty Maid! Anyway, I really get into that. I like Sim too, right? And it's fun to tease a guy you like. And when I do it really right...like sit down on him with enough grind, I can actually feel him...um...responding."

"Wow...ok...I've got like three different things going on right now. First of all: you lucky bitch. Second of all: I can't believe I'm acting like some 14-year-old because my best friend touched a boy's penis, but it's a boy I like and...fuck, and third of all: is he...I mean did you get a sense of...?"

"No. Jeez, Ginny, it doesn't happen every time, and it's not like I reach down and grab him or anything. Besides, you've seem my costume: where the fuck am I gonna put a tape measure? It's just...nice, is all. And the reason I mention it...look: I really do like the guy. I'm not all crazy like you are with him. I don't really even find him particularly attractive, but...part of me was thinking, after "The Night Jack Lindley Cried", you know, that I might...I don't know...like knock on his door one morning, get down on my knees and suck his cock. You know? Just to be neighborly."

"Well fuck me, Liz!"

"I've asked, but you won't."

"C'mon, seriously? I mean why would that even..."

"Ginny, don't get your panties in a bunch, ok. I said I thought about it. I didn't do it, because, well, you seem to have this thing for the guy, and I'm definitely not losing a BFF over a guy I'm not really into. It's just...I know it sounds kind of funny and out there when I say it that way, but I'll tell you God's honest truth: I've done a whole lot more for guys I liked a whole lot less."