Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility (36 page)

THE NEXT TIME GRANT ASKS YOU TO SNIFF HIS HAND, I'd advise against
it. We were at the Beverly Laurel Motor Hotel in West Hollywood
(because you can get four rooms there in exchange for the one that
was booked for me at the Beverly Hilton), and Grant was sitting on
my bed, going on about how he plans on moving to Tijuana because
so many Mexicans live there-"and I do love me some Mexican man
meat," he laughed his big-smile laugh-and up went his hand to his
face again. He just kept sniffing his hand.

"Why the hell are you sniffing your hand?" I asked.

"He's been doing that since he left the gay bar in Tijuana," Lary
said. Lary, by the way, regrettably opted out of the impromptu vasectomy offered by a perfectly passable south-of-the-border clinic with
hardly any E. coli encrusted on the surgical instruments or anything
(probably), a move that confounded me, because it's just unlike Lary
not to take advantage of an opportunity.

Anyway, now Grant refuses to wash his right hand because that
was the one he used to grope all the cute little Latin "love monkeys"
the whole time he was in Tijuana. In the other hand he held his margarita, because, of course, one must have priorities. Eventually Lary lassoed
Grant's roving hand and forced him to leave the bar. I can't see Lary ever
being the voice of reason, but since he isn't gay I'm sure he got tired of
being aggressively groped by those who were while he waited for Grant
to finish soaking in a sea of hedonism. "They were jumping all over me,"
Lary complained of the other patrons. "I almost spilled my margarita."

"Smell my hand!" Grant demanded as he lay sprawled on my
bedspread.

"Get the hell off my bed," I said, and I tried to kick him out of
my room, but he kept spreading his arms out like a caught lobster so
he couldn't fit through the doorway. "Smell my hand! Smell my hand!"

"Get out!" I wailed, but horribly, he refused. So I turned around,
balled up the bedspread, and threw it on the balcony. Does he not
know I once lived with my mother in a trailer two miles north of the
Tijuana border? I've heard the stories! True, real-life actual stories, like
the time my friend once caught crabs just by sitting in a booth at a
Tijuana brothel drinking beer while waiting for his friend to finish
hosing a hooker upstairs. I remember he said he didn't think it was fair
that he caught crabs just for sitting in a booth and behaving, but back
home he was having an affair with his next-door neighbor's girlfriend,
which I wouldn't exactly call behaving, and in the end he passed the
crabs to her and it busted them both.

Also, there was the story, actually true, I swear, of the Texas college kid who went to a rough border town to party with his friends
and ended up as human chum in a satanic ritual.

Anyway, that is not the point, as it seemed that Lary and Grant,
along with Daniel, made it back safely from Tijuana, thank God. So I
guess the point is this: Of the three meetings I had scheduled with the
production studio, one of these guys was supposed to attend two with
me, starting the next morning. That's right, it had been requested by
the execs that I pick one representative from this band of blowfish
to come in with me so they could "see the chemistry," so I've been thinking about how Daniel cuts his hair himself with toenail clippers
(which might actually be a plus) and Lary is such an evil, fermented
alley cat I'm certain he'd take hostages right after the introductions
were made (another possible plus).

But of the four of us, Grant is the salesman. He can sell bloody
Band-Aids to a germaphobe, I swear. "Jesus God," I gasped as I realized that, of all the people I can choose to go in there with me to present my life's work-just years of me opening an artery every week is
all, just my latest hope of having any semblance of security now that
my blue-collar day job got flushed by corporate pork, and my house
has been under contract four times and still sits there unsold is allof all the people I could pick to go in there with me, my best option
is Grant. Grant! Mr. Salesman. Mr. Big Smile. Mr. Smell-My-Hand
man. I put my head in my palms and tried to monitor my breathing.

Daniel, Grant, and Lary had dissipated to the balcony, and I could
hear them discussing the possibility of stealing the motel's big neon
sign. As the sun set behind the Hollywood Hills, they pointed out
their favorite homes in the distance along Laurel Canyon as though
these mansions were waiting there to be plucked like truffles from a
giant chocolate box. Grant, of course, was sniffing his hand again.

"Please wash your hand before tomorrow!" I begged.

Grant just held his hand aloft and laughed his big-smile laugh. "I
ain't never washing it again!" he shouted.

LARY'S IN MEXICO AGAIN, PROBABLY DEAD IN THE GUTTER from some
bionic skanky-hooker syphilis for all I know, which would really piss
me off because I have this contract in my hand he needs to sign. We
just sold the film rights to my book to a major studio for a major
television series. We also somehow got a major producer attached, as
well as a major show runner to head the writing team, not to mention
a major movie star to agree to play the lead character-everything was
so major!

"Has Lary called you or e-mailed you or anything?" I ask Grant,
who himself is in goddamn New York City pounding on doors to
put together his own book deal, never mind that he hasn't written
any actual pages or anything ("But I've got a concept," he keeps saying). They act as if they have no idea they're supposed to be my
peeps. They just keep flitting about in their own worlds, pretending
like they have a life without me. At least Grant, though, signed the
contract for his life rights before he disappeared, signed it that day
and overnighted it back to the studio. He also whored himself in as
a consultant on the future series. (The first thing he plans to do is
audition to play himself, and I cannot wait for the day he's turned
down for that role.)

Daniel, now, is a total free radical. You just never know how he's
gonna flow. He and his boyfriend, Mitch, just bought a house off
Chamblee-Tucker. The biggest perk is that Daniel now has uber-cable
television. When a producer from Paramount came to visit us last May to wine and dine us, Daniel made some excuse to get out of it,
like he needed to pack or something, when he must have known none
of us would buy that because we know Daniel doesn't pack. He just
leaves everything behind.

Take when Daniel changed studio space. The property manager there e-mailed me to politely inquire as to why Daniel left every
bit of everything still sitting there, all his artwork and everything,
left behind. The only thing Daniel removed at the end of his lease
was himself, and maybe the hair dryer he used to seal the cement he
sometimes employed in his pieces. So of course it couldn't be because
Daniel had to pack that he was avoiding us, and we were starting to
wonder if he was mad at us until we realized that here it was the day
of the QVC Suzanne Somers marathon.

After that, Grant pretty much dragged Daniel out of his place.
"You fag," he laughed, "just tape the thing."

"I don't know how to use my DVD recorder. I don't know anyone who knows how to use theirs," Daniel protested, and I totally
understand that.

When I was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, not a single one
of my techno-retard friends taped it and neither did I. It fell to my
old friend Bob Steed, who is a partner at a huge law firm and really
should have better ways to waste his time, to track down a DVD for
me. Today, I keep it in a drawer all by itself. It's a hallowed thing, the
DVD of me on Jay Leno. I'm wearing a vintage early '60s turquoiseblue cocktail suit Grant bought at a thrift store for $25 that afternoon.
Back at the hotel, I had tried it on but I didn't think I'd wear it because I'd already maxed out my credit card with the new outfit I bought the
week before.

"Bitch, you are wearing the blue suit," he growled at me, and I
did, more because I didn't have time to take it off before I ended up
onstage. Because, I swear to God, things go fast. It's still hard to believe
that we were just that morning trolling all the thrift stores on La Brea
after having flown in from Atlanta. Then came our third trip to L.A.

Regarding our flight there, most everyone knows that I am, of
course, a master packer. I brag about it so much
that Daniel, Grant, and Lary only travel
with me on the condition I won't lecture
them on the correct technique, which
mystifies me because why would you resent
the good-intended advice of a friend when it
comes to a well-packed suitcase?

"Jesus God! What is that?" I shrieked at Grant when I picked
him up on the way to our plane. He had stuffed his orange '70s Samsonite with probably a gajillion different outfits to choose from for
our meetings the next day, including his DayGlo prison jumper the
color of traffic cones.

"Shut up, bitch," he shrieked back.

"Seriously, I'm embarrassed to be seen with you," I said, and
that's saying something, because I have proudly walked into hoity-
toity art-gallery openings on Grant's arm while he wore his slinky
black side-split "man skirt" with his big head decked out in two 'fropuff pigtails. But this now, this is what he calls packing?

"I said, shut up, bitch," Grant repeated, "and help me lift this
into the car."

I rolled my eyes and nearly broke my spine doing as he asked.
Standing beside him at the airport, I simply wanted to curdle into a
crawling pool of pure mortification, as just my proximity to Grant's
suitcase cast a pall over all the proud years I spent as an airline scullery
plebe. This exalted past is how I learned to pack with the efficiency of an
orphanage warden. Seriously, I can fit the contents of your grandmother's attic into a standard carry-on, and I am not exaggerating much.

The secret to a well-packed suitcase lies in understanding the line
that separates the essential from the nonessential-very important,
because it is an undeniable fact that people think they need more than
they really need. So with this in mind, before a trip I usually assess
everything I'm certain I can't live without-such as my electric percolator and my collection of propane-powered curling irons-then I cut
that pile in half, then I pack half of that, and even then I always have
twice as much as I need, especially if I am traveling with a baggage
sherpa like Grant, who brings his own specialty lavender-and-mint
shampoo even though the small bottle of dish-soap grade battery acid
the motel leaves for you in the shower works fine.

"Lemme borrow some of that super-wuss, $100-shit shampoo,"
I yelled at Grant from our bathroom at the Beverly Laurel Motor
Hotel. We shared a room this time, after I made Grant promise not
to drag back any Mexican busboys to spend the night. Grant goes a
little crazy in L.A., due to its closeness to Mexico coupled with Grant's
famous hankering for Latin men.

"Bitch, get your grubby-ass hands out of my suitcase," Grant
said.