For the Love of Money (63 page)

Jonathan nodded back to him and said, “It sounds like a plan to me. And it saves us more time.”

Poncho said, “Okay. LET'S GET READY FOR THE SECOND SEX SCENE! THERE'S BEEN A CHANGE OF PLANS! WE'RE SHOOTING IT AT CYNTHIA'S PLACE NOW!” he informed everyone.

The production assistants flew into action.

“AND GET HER SOME NEW SHEETS!” I added. “BLACK SATIN!” I looked at Jonathan and Poncho and smiled. “We can even shoot a scene where she's ironing the wrinkles out of the sheets and throwing the plastic wrappings and price tags away. After all, William Hicks”—the chosen name for Player #2—“is worth much more money than David Bassenger. She has to respect him that way. So let's jazz up her apartment a little bit. She's gaining more confidence in her plot now.”

They both smiled and agreed with me again.

“Are you
sure
this is your
first
feature film?” Poncho joked with me. “You seem like a veteran actor to me.”

Jonathan said, “She wants
my
job, that's what she wants.”

I shook my head and grinned. “I just like things getting done, and I'm not the type to sit around and complain without coming up with any solutions.”

“You got that right,” Poncho said.

“Tell me about it,” Jonathan added. I could just imagine both of them wondering which one of them would get to sleep with me before the shooting of the film was all over. Jonathan made his move first, while we began to set up for the second sex scene.

“When will we get to go out for that lunch date?” He was smiling when he asked me, as if it were all fun and games, but I knew that he was serious. White guys didn't fuck around with the head games. They came straight at you. Or maybe it was just the Hollywood types, because I didn't really know too many white guys. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was not exactly a cross-racial town. We usually stayed with our own tribes in Philly. So blame it on my inner-city culture for having such a hard time with crossing over.

I grinned at Jonathan and told him, “We have a movie to make, sweetheart. Don't get it twisted.”

“Well, don't call me sweetheart then,” he joked back. I could tell that he was getting irritated with me. Poor Jonathan. He just didn't know who the hell he was dealing with. He had no idea how many guys I had turned down in the past fifteen years of my sex life. I could have fucked every man involved with the production of my movie, whether they were happily married or not. That was the pure power of the booty, in particular,
my
booty. However, I wasn't that kind of a sex fiend anymore, and even in my youth, I was very selective about
who
I chose to sleep with.
Always!

We shot the second sex scene in less than a couple of hours, and moved
right along ahead of schedule, mainly because of the well-prepared execution on Poncho's part as the director. He was proving that he was worth every bit of his five hundred thousand,
and
some. I was quite sure that he would get his next big deal too, and so would I.

When we prepared the dailies for the sex scenes, I couldn't watch them. That was some
other
woman up on the screen, not me. Everyone else couldn't take their eyes away from it. That's when I knew that I would have hell to pay when
Led Astray
hit the theaters. However, just like with my book,
Flyy Girl,
I would have to live with it. I even wrote a short poem about it called “Human Hypocrisy”: How can I write / what I write / how I write it / and then do / what I do / how I do it?

We all do things that are contradictory to what we think, write, or say in some form or another. That's just a part of living life as imperfect humans.

$   $   $

We wrapped the shooting of
Led Astray
in five weeks, before the six weeks that we had planned, and we were well within our eight-million-dollar budget before the editing process began. It was easy to edit Poncho's work because he shot everything in long natural scenes. It was like fading out a song that had a long fade versus one with a short fade. Longer fades gave you much more material to work with.

For our opening credit scene, we came up with several glamour shots of Hollywood star nights, with fancy outfits, limousines, and photos flashing everywhere, to give the dizzying illusion that sucks us
all
into moviemaking in the first place; this is where the stars are made. It reminded me of my poems “Led Astray” and “Recognition.”

When we had our wrap party, executive producer Danny Greene showed up with his wife. She could tell that everyone had the hots for me, and they were mostly white men. My
few
friends from Black Hollywood showed up to lend their support as well. After all, I was still black. Poncho invited some of his Latin friends to the mix, so it turned out to be a pretty colorful and cultural crowd there, all dressed to impress.

Richard Mack showed up with his girlfriend, Kendra was there with her man Louis, Yolanda came by herself (working the crowds as usual), and Tim Waterman showed up with a tall blonde and began to tell everyone how he had given me my start as a writer three years ago. However, my girl Susan shocked me by showing up with a confident, good-looking, dark-haired man on
her
arm. He was perfect for her, standing around five foot nine, right below me and my two-inch heels.

“Tracy, this is Michael; and, Michael, this is my good friend, and one of the most talented new stars in Hollywood, Tracy Ellison Grant.”

I smiled and shook his hand.

He said, “I heard a lot about you.”

“Good things?”

Susan playfully nudged him in the ribs. “Why of course,” he answered. I grinned and let them fade into the crowd to mingle. I figured I'd pull Susan's strings about it later.

I was spinning like a ballerina for the majority of the night, talking to everyone who wanted to have words with me concerning the film. It was pretty obvious where the marketing emphasis would be. Tracy Ellison Grant: a new star is born!

After a while, Rich finally got a minute alone with me. He asked, “So, how does it feel? I can't believe that you actually pulled this off. It seems like yesterday when we had that first date.”

I smiled and answered, “To tell you the truth, you know that saying, ‘It's lonely at the top'?”

He nodded.

“Well, I seem to be the only one in the crowd with no date tonight.” Even Jonathan Abner showed up with a tall blonde. When they say blondes have more fun, they were not
playing,
or at least not in Hollywood.

Rich looked at me and said, “This whole damn audience is your date. You're the star of the show. Are you kidding me?”

He didn't understand what I meant because he had a girlfriend. I was alone in a crowd, and I couldn't help but think about being with someone special to share the moment with.

At the end of the night, I ended up right back with my girls, Kendra and Susan and their dates.

“Well, what do you want to do now? You all want to go out for a late bite to eat?” I asked them. “We can do Kate Mantilini's.”

“Sure,” they told me. The night was still pretty young and it was a nice Saturday evening. Before we all left, I noticed Poncho on a pay phone without his entourage of Latin friends, and I got curious.

“Hold on a minute,” I told my friends as I approached Poncho at the phone booth. When he hung up I asked him, “Hey, super director, what are you doing for the rest of the evening?”

He looked at me and read me fast, with his sexy, macho self.

He tossed his hands up and said, “I'm game. Let's go.”

I smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed by it.

“Aren't you going to at least say bye to your friends?”

He looked in their direction and immediately shook his head. “They know their way back to my place.”

“What about your limo driver?”

He said, “I'll tell him to show my friends all a good time while we jump in
your
limo.” Wide Vision Films had given us the full star treatment for the night.

I nodded to Poncho and said, “All right,” before taking him over to introduce to Kendra and her date, because Susan already knew him. She had agreed to take him on full time as a client. I felt leery about inviting him along with us, but so what? I wasn't going to be the only one without a date, whether I was doing the star-fucking-the-director thing or not. Poncho and I hadn't gone there anyway.

I must admit, however, that as soon as the evening got under way at West Hollywood's Kate Mantilini's for a bite to eat and drinks, I couldn't take my mind off of getting naked with Eduardo “Poncho” Morales. He was talking everyone up about Puerto Rican culture and growing up in Spanish Harlem, and I was impressed with his easygoing personality. Some directors had reputations of being uptight. Nevertheless, I think that the drinks had gotten to Poncho a little bit too, especially when he started bragging about the legend of Latin sexuality. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to try him out, but I had no way of leaving with him smoothly.

Susan finally looked at her watch at close to one in the morning and said, “Well, it's getting late, you guys.”

Kendra responded, “Yes, it is.”

I thought,
Hallelujah! I need my damn privacy anyway!

We all said our good-byes and went our separate ways, and Poncho's ass fell asleep in the limo on the way back to my townhouse. It was just my luck to have to carry his ass out of the car and into the house, but the limo driver did it for me.

He laid Poncho out on my sofa, and I went to get my macho man some orange juice with plenty of ice in it before I showed the limo driver out. I gave him an extra fifty dollars for his help. I had money to throw away by then, but that didn't mean that I would. Fifty dollars was enough.

I sat Poncho up and got him to sip the orange juice. I guess he had more drinks that night than I had noticed.

He finally came around and looked at me. He said, “Tracy, you are beautiful, my sister.
Muy bonita!
”

I just broke out laughing. I said, “Poncho, and
you're
drunk.”

He didn't laugh at all. He said, “That doesn't affect my good vision.” He
shook his head and smiled. “When you shot those sex scenes, man, I had to go back to my place and jerk off.”

I couldn't even look at him it was so embarrassing. It made me horny too, and Poncho was not going anywhere.

I asked him, “Would you like to kiss me?”

He chuckled. “Does a man have any balls?”

I laughed again. I had no idea Poncho could be so much fun. I was so concerned with doing the film that I hadn't paid much attention to anything else.

I took a sip of the orange juice myself and wet Poncho's lips with mine before his tongue found its way into my mouth. Puerto Ricans were not white, you know, and I was definitely going to fuck Poncho. He was my lucky pick, and he made it worth my while when he slipped down on me right there on my sofa and opened me up.

Poncho had me grabbing at the air and pulling at my own hair.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I told him, feeling myself rising too early to where I
definitely
wanted to go. Poncho wouldn't stop. He was a man possessed by his tongue, and then the walls came down, and fresh tears rolled freely from my eyes.

DAMN!
I thought to myself.
Can he
top
that?
He did.
We
did, all night long, and in the morning time, I thought of another poem, “Puerto Rican Freakin',” and laughed.

Poncho asked me, “What's so funny?”

I answered, “You don't even wanna know,” and I kept it to myself.

A few days after that, Kendra called me up and told me that she and her man Louis were engaged to be married on Saturday, December 18, 1999, a week before Christmas, back home in Maryland.

I hung up with her and said, “Damn! I hope she doesn't ask me to be
her
maid of honor at the wedding too, because I'm gonna have to turn her behind down. I can't take
two
of 'em.” Nevertheless, I was happy for her, just like she was happy for me. I just wish that I had a man to get married to.

$   $   $

When we began to travel during the summer and fall of '99, and enter into the different film festivals with
Led Astray,
we didn't win any awards, but everyone sure learned
my
name. The strikes against us were many. We were apparently up against too many independent, raw-energy films that made our natural shooting seem too smoothly done. With no guns, killings, blood,
extra plot twists, drama, or other major stars in the film, I was the only thing that the judges, journalists, and viewers bothered to focus on. So naturally, despite not being able to score with me, Jonathan Abner decided to have Wide Vision market the entire film as Tracy Ellison Grant's breakout vehicle.

I was pretty tight with Poncho up until then, and his possessive ways made it much easier for me to be able to turn down so many advances. However, when he seemed to be out-directed by the same camera tricks that I didn't necessarily care for, and with everyone paying so much attention to me, it was more than Poncho could take. We didn't have any painful breakup, it was more of a mutual business and artistic thing. He figured that he would have to move on and try something new, and I agreed with him. That was simply Hollywood for you; everyone had to be concerned about their own career or be drowned out in the waves.

The next thing that happened was the interviews that poured my way. Plenty of them!

“Your rise to Hollywood stardom has been rocket-ship fast. How does it all feel?”

I smiled and answered, “I'm not a star yet. We don't even release the film to the public until February of next year. And hopefully then, my rise to stardom will really happen.”