The Sex Was Great But... (20 page)

I
n Real Life, heroes are people who do stuff like risk their own lives to rescue puppies or kids from burning buildings. But in a film Real Life heroics aren't enough. Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe and Ice-Cube want something more from a script. To be a hero in a film you have to be a celebrity hero.

Celebrity heroes pull puppies and very cute kids from burning buildings too, but only
after
they've taken a bullet in the stomach themselves. Celebrity heroes go into the burning building drenched in their own blood (but still looking cool), while someone fires missiles at them from a helicopter above.

Once inside the burning building they discover it's not only on fire but also booby-trapped and swarming with enemy agents equipped to the eyeballs with the latest in high-tech weaponry. And all the time they're aware that by taking time out to save the puppy or the very cute kid from the burning building they're shaving precious minutes off the ten minutes they have left to save the planet.

In Hollywood everyone thinks that they're a celebrity hero. That's why so many celebrities burn out. You have to have celebrity hero helpings of arrogance and narcissism just to work at a Starbucks in this town.

Celebrity hero fears and insecurities are a whole lot bigger and scarier than anyone else's. Because if celebrity heroes fail in their battles the whole planet will explode. Basically, the pressure's huge.

So next time you read about our weird, dysfunctional, Hollywood lives, remember this—while we are fighting these celebrity hero battles for the sake of our own celebrity, we are also struggling with the same real life stuff as everyone else. That's our problem—celebrities aren't that good at being Real Life heroes. Our excessive personalities tend to make us weird out, and a lot of the time we end up letting real people down.

That was what I'd done.

It was eleven a.m., the night after the charity fundraiser. I'd hardly slept at all, and the guy standing in a pool of strong sunshine on my doorstep was smiling. Two of his front molars were capped in gold and glinted. He was wearing reflective sunglasses and I could see my own face reflected back at me. I didn't look happy.

Did I know this guy?

Did I want to know him?

Was he of vital importance to my world?

No! Nothing was as important as how horrible and tired and hungover and gross I felt. I'd been up all night fighting celebrity hero battles. So what was Conchita thinking of, getting me out of bed to come talk to this goon? He put out his hand. Between his thumb and forefinger there was a tattoo of a spider's web.

I'm not the sort of person who enjoys meeting new people after I've been up all night saving the planet. Especially when I haven't had time to put on my sunglasses.

“Mike Monroe? Leo's dad!” he said. The hand remained suspended between us like a gauntlet. It was an old scaly hand, and there was a large sterling silver skull and cross-bones on his index finger.

I pressed my fingers against my temples. Last night at the Sky Bar. It all started coming back to me. This man on my doorstep was Leo's father.

I put on a more pleasant morning mask. “Oh, yeah—hi. What can I do for you, Mike?”

“I'm here for Leo.”

“Leo?”

“We have a lunch.”

“You have a lunch?” I repeated moronically.

“Yeah, we agreed to do lunch today.”

I suppose I was just getting my head around someone “doing” lunch with Leo. “He's not here. I don't know where he is,” I explained.

I'd checked the poolhouse at nine this morning, after we'd managed to get Jack settled, but Leo hadn't come home. That meant he'd been with Nancy
all
night. Leo and
me, we'd never spent an entire night together. I was always gone by dawn. Were they making love now? I wondered, only half aware that Mike was saying something to me.

“Leo told me you'd been looking after him. I was sorry I didn't get a chance to meet you last night.” He was smiling like we were sharing a private joke together.

Only I didn't know what the joke was. I couldn't tell whether he was being critical, sarcastic, or just really British. One thing was certain—it hadn't been a good night, and without Ted's help I wouldn't have survived it. Strange how things turn out. Ted was inside now sleeping—snoring away as if he belonged here.

“Is your mother all right?” he inquired.

“Who?”

“Catherine Klein—she's your mother, isn't she? They took her off to hospital after her collapse. The papers are full of it today. It's the Big Story!”

Mike started to tell me what the papers were saying about my mother's collapse, but I wasn't listening. I was in my own private hell as the events of last night rolled themselves out across the examination table of my consciousness.

It had started with Jack. After consuming the entire contents of the bottle of champagne he'd ordered, he had joined the other guys diving in the pool. He had a great gift for diving, but once submerged it turned out he wasn't so great at getting out again. Ted had to help me rescue him, and then he'd been sweet enough to sit with Jack while I went to find Nancy and Leo.

Thing was, Nancy and Leo had been nowhere to be found. Nor had my limo. They must have left, together, in
my limo. Ted had offered to take the wet Jack home and drop me off at my place, but all I'd been able to think about was what Nancy and Leo were up to. Where had they gone? What were they doing? Although, let's face it, it wasn't as if I needed to hire a private detective to answer that one.

“I hear they might pull her show.”

“Are you some kind of friend of my mother's?” I asked defensively.

“No, I don't know her at all. I just thought you might be worried—she being your mother and all.”

I've been drilled to the point of brainwashing by PR people never to discuss my mother with anyone. If the issue of Catherine is ever pushed in an interview, I have this speech that my PR people got some writer to create for me. It's always worked pretty well and, wanting to halt further discussion of Catherine, I rambled off my line for Mike.

“My mother is her own person. Naturally it saddens me that she does these things, but I can't account for her motivations.” I think I may have even heard Meg Ryan use this sentence herself once.

He laughed. “Fair enough—I get it! I get it! Your mother's a psycho demon. Don't sweat it. Believe me, one thing you learn in this town is don't fuck with other people's demons.”

I took another look at Mike then. He grinned as if he knew all about psycho demons from personal experience and didn't begrudge me mine. His smile reminded me of Leo's, and I couldn't help but smile back. I suddenly wanted to ask him a thousand things about his son, and why I'd
never heard Leo mention him before, but now that he'd been so sweet about not discussing my mother I figured I should return the favor. Was Mike Leo's demon? I wondered. Was Leo Mike's?

At that moment I was distracted by Joseph, who was standing by the jacaranda tree having one of his coughing fits. He saw me wave to him, but he scuttled away as if he hadn't seen me.

We'd woken Joseph coming home last night because we'd needed his help to help pull Jack out of the limo. I'd been forced to bring Jack back to my place because his wife had wisely refused him when we'd attempted to drop him off. She'd told us to bring him back when—and only when—he was sober. Wise lady. He hadn't made himself popular with his neighbors either, running around their front gardens in Brentwood activating all the sprinkler systems.

Somehow Ted and I had managed to round him up and wrestle him back into the limo, where he'd slept like a baby—a very wet baby—until we got to my place. As soon as we pulled up he got his second wind and started singing “I'm in the Mood for Love” at the top of his voice.

I suddenly remembered then how Jack had tried to kiss me—failed—but then succeeded in tongue-kissing Joseph, who had been helping us get him inside at the time. Poor Joseph. Gay love clearly wasn't a direction Joseph planned on taking, and he'd stormed off, cursing to make his point.

Mike waved a hand in front of my eyes to break my trance. “Are you okay?”

I gathered myself together. “Yeah, I'm fine.” I smiled. “Tired, you know.”

“Yeah, it was a long night,” he agreed.

I looked down at his sandaled feet. His toes were long and thin, like Leo's, and he had the same over-sized big toe. I suddenly felt like I was about to burst into tears.

“Like I said, Leo and me were planning on doing lunch, but I was also hoping to have a word with you as well.”

“With me?” I pointed to myself, in case he had me confused with someone else.

“But, hey, listen, if this is a bad time…?” He took off his glasses and looked me in the eye. And I took a step back, because he had Leo's greener than green eyes. “It won't take a moment,” he assured me, just as I felt two hands cupping my buttocks.

I spun around to find Jack, grinning. “My, my, haven't you got a nice taut tooshie?” He was wearing a pair of silver silk boxers and my lemon kimono, which stopped short at his knees and didn't quite join up at his waist. “Anything I can do?” he asked, checking Mike out.

“I'm Leo's father. Mike Monroe.”

The two guys shook hands. “JJJ—coming to get you!” Jack laughed, pointing at Mike with two fingers.

“You got it,” Mike agreed, only a lot less enthusiastically. “And you are?”

“Jack, man—good to meet you.” For some reason he was speaking in an L.A. surfer dude voice.

Mike ignored him, winking at me as if we were sharing a private joke together—I'm pretty sure the private joke was Jack in my kimono. “Do you want to come in and wait for Leo?” I asked.

“No, that's all right. Maybe he's forgotten.”

“Yeah, that might be it,” I lied.

“I don't know if Leo's told you the story, but I haven't seen the lad for a long time—too long.”

“Which lad?” Jack asked, not appreciating the sense that he was being left out of the loop.

Mike ignored him. “I know he's a grown man with his own life,” he admitted, “and this probably sounds soft, but to me he's still the little tyke I used to carry on my shoulders round the market.”

Jack nodded with empathy. “I'm hearing you, Mike. I'm hearing you. I'm a father myself, and to me my boy will always be a boy.” I felt like reminding him that his son was still only a six-month-old baby.

I looked at him standing there in my kimono. Owing to his enormous belly, you could see his navel. That was when I saw that his penis was dangling out the front of his boxers, and before I could stop myself I told him to put it away.

Mike laughed, which Jack didn't appreciate either. Nor did he look pleased when Mike passed me his business card. “Tell him to give me a call will you, Holly? And tell him I'm sorry I missed him. I'd really dig to see him before he leaves for Blighty.”

“I'll tell him,” I promised.

“Thanks, love. Could I ask you one more favor?”

“Sure,” I said, wondering what I'd done for him so far, apart from disappoint him.

“I've brought the lad a set of my old records and some decks. Thought he might get a kick out of them.”

I didn't know what he was talking about, but I felt like I'd somehow failed Mike Monroe and I wanted to do something nice to make up. I watched him walk up the pathway to a sharp-looking Mercedes convertible at the
end of the drive. He opened the trunk and struggled back down the drive with a black metal box.

Why hadn't Leo told me he had a father who drove a convertible Mercedes? Why was he scrounging for money in Los Feliz when his father clearly wasn't short of a buck?

“Howd'you know Mike Monroe?” Jack asked, once Mike had left.

“Like he said, he's Leo's father.”

“And who the hell is Leo, when he's at home?”

“You met him last night at my table,” I reminded him.

“You mean that punk from England with attitude? Mike ‘Bad Ass' Monroe is
his
father?”

“Is he a DJ, too?”

“Is he a DJ? He only owns JJJ. The hottest station in L.A. He started that station up from scratch after his band broke up. I had all their albums once.”

“Band?”

“You must have heard of Mike ‘Bad Ass' Monroe and The Evil-Doers?”

I shook my head.

“They had their fifteen minutes of fame in the eighties, but burned out on drugs. Same old, same old. Mike fell on hard times there for a while, but the last couple of years have seen him get his fingers in a lot of lucrative pies. He's got his own production company now—Bad Ass Pictures.”

“Really? I've never heard of them.”

“Churn out a load of free love, anti-drug hippie documentaries for the most part. But he's got powerful backers.”

I looked at the black metal box and felt eerily transcendental. Or, as Leo would say—fucked.

I
n
Casablanca,
when Claude Rains asks Rick (Bogey) what brought him to Morocco, Rick tells him that he came for “the waters.”

I love that bit.

Rains points out to Rick rather obviously that Casablanca is in the desert—there are no “waters.” That's when Rick says his line—the three words that sum up Rick and every other flawed hero there ever was. “I was misinformed.”

You get the feeling from that line that not only will you never know anything about Rick, you will also never find out why he came to Casablanca. But, most important of
all, you'll never stop wanting to know either. That's what being a flawed hero is all about see—having no back story.

Before I met Holly, not only didn't I know what my back story was, I wasn't even aware that I had one. But Holly has made me look at and think about a lot of things that I didn't know about myself. Like believing that my dreams can become reality. It's like my mum says, I just let things happen. Take my career, for instance. Career? What career!

Sure, I've managed to get a few sets here, a few sets there. But I never really hustled for them, or made the most of them when they came my way. Holly has shown me what shooting for something really means and now I want to shoot for things myself.

I want to be the sort of guy that
makes
things happen.

When I signed up for this
MakeMeOver
malarkey I didn't think I had anything to lose. As far as I was concerned it was just a way to get close to Holly. I was right to think that, as it turned out. I did get close and, sure, we shagged like idiots for a couple of weeks. But suddenly shagging Holly didn't seem like a life plan.

As I was driven away from the party at the Mondrian in the limo I realized that it wasn't what I'd lost that had cost me. It was all the things that I'd gained. My own back story, for starters, and now my father.

I was no longer misinformed. I was in the proverbial picture.

Standing at the Sky Bar with Mike, after we'd stuffed up Catherine's plans for a scene with Holly, I could see that Auntie Lucy was right. Mike was a good guy. Crap dad, but a good enough guy. And, while it was kind of cool to fi
nally meet him, it was disappointing as well. Mike “Bad Ass” Monroe no longer held any mystery for me.

After they'd carted Holly's mother off I told him I was going to go back and join my friends. Jilly looked relieved to have Mike to herself again, so we said goodbye and agreed to “do” lunch the next day. I'd told him about my dream to be a DJ, but I'd held back asking him for his old records. But, then again, he'd held back on offering.

Walking down the steps of the Sky Bar, I asked myself when I'd become the sort of guy who “did” lunch?

I didn't want to face Holly, who as far as I knew was still snogging Ted somewhere. It seemed like I didn't know her or what made her tick anymore—if I ever had. Whatever, it was over now. We were finished.

I went back into the restaurant to check on Nancy, and at first I thought she'd disappeared, but then some old bird strung out on diamonds and attitude pulled a face and pointed under the table.

Sure enough, Nancy was lying on top of our drinks waiter, totally wasted. “I juss wan him to stick some of his sperm in this Evian bottle for me,” she explained, waving the empty bottle at me. “For later.”

The waiter, spread-eagled on the floor underneath, was looking clinically depressed.

“Let's get you home girl,” I said, pulling her off the waiter. I wished I had a few notes to slip him, but all I had was Nancy's charlie, so I gave him that and he cheered up a bit.

I threw her over my shoulder in a fireman's lift and had the valet call up Holly's limo. She'd probably be going home with Ted, I figured, and besides, I reminded myself,
it wasn't my business what she got up to anymore. Then again, it never had been my business. I'd only ever had a walk-on part in Holly's life, and now even that was officially over.

Nancy's place was close by, nestled in a neatly hedged street in West Hollywood. She was already asleep when we pulled up, so I carried her inside and dumped her on her bed. She rallied for a bit and tried to wrestle my dick out of my trousers again. The woman was rampant even when unconscious.

She fell asleep while I was telling her off for being an incorrigible old slapper, so I covered her up with the quilt and left her there without undressing her. I didn't want to risk her waking up and thinking her lucky day had come.

After I left her place I didn't know where to go or what to do next. With the makeover over, my life had turned into a cul-de-sac. I looked at my mum's Rolex but it was as accurate as ever—i.e. not.

Still, I thought to myself as I walked out onto the street, I've still got the limo and a driver, and the evening is probably still young. Climbing in the back, I spread out on the white leather upholstery and thought about what I was going to do next—how I was going to make things happen. The driver asked me where I wanted to go, so I gave him directions to Holly's.

“Good night?” he asked.

“No,” I said, not really in the mood for conversation.

“If you don't mind me saying, guv'nor, you look fucked.”

“Royally,” I replied.

He laughed, and introduced himself. Dave was an ex
cabbie from London, and pretty soon we were talking about life in L.A. (me), and life driving a limo in L.A. (Dave).

“You wouldn't credit the things I've seen in the back of this car.”

Maybe it was because he was from London, but I found myself telling him all about what had happened to me since I crash-landed in L.A. I told him all about my weeks of sofa-surfing at Tifanie's, and taking a punch for Holly, and how she'd taken me back and done a makeover on me.

Dave laughed. “Yeah, that makes sense now. I have to say I was wondering about your shiny straight teeth, innit.”

When we got to Holly's place there was someone else's limo parked outside.

I didn't totally fall apart or anything—hey, I'm not that pathetic. Instead asked myself what Kev would do in this situation?

“You're not going in, are you?” Dave asked.

I didn't respond as it occurred to me that a guy like Kev wouldn't ever get into a situation like this, period. And he's supposed to be the nutter.

“Feel like going for a drive.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Do you mind?”

“Nah, not at all. Since the wife left me for her trainer I've not been able to sleep. Besides, you look like you need some company, and I'm already paid for.”

“Okay, what the fuck?” I agreed. “I'm in your hands.” It's not every day you get a limo complete with driver and
a full bar fridge at your disposal. I also had some serious drinking to catch up on—all those vodkas Nancy had nicked, for starters.

I asked Dave if he fancied joining me for a drink at the Bourgeois Pig in East Hollywood. Sometimes Kev hung out there. Not as a punter, you understand, but to beg change. But when we got there he was nowhere to be seen and the Bourgeois Pig was closing up, so we drove all over L.A. in a futile search for Kev at some of his other haunts.

Eventually tiredness overcame me and I had Dave drop me off at Tifanie's apartment. It had been a long night.

Tifanie was still up, learning some lines for a new part in a miniseries, so I sat with her and helped her out by reading the other characters' lines. There was no one else home.

We smoked a bit of gear we found in the tea caddy, and Tif told me all about how she'd finally won her big career break, and we had a bit of a laugh about Nile. Well, actually, I had a bit of a laugh about Nile. Tifanie thought he was a guru. When the sun came up we took a taxi to Swingers Diner and she stood me breakfast.

I arrived back at Holly's around midday, desperate for sleep. I was about to throw myself onto the futon to catch up when Conchita started banging on the door.

“You must come, Mr. Leo,” she said, bustling me up the grass slope and into the kitchen.

“She bring home two men. One of them kiss Joseph on the mouth, Mr. Leo. He very upset. The other one—him in kitchen. Come, come! Very bad men, Mr. Leo. Very bad men.”

My biggest fear was making himself a coffee when I walked in.

“You must be Leo,” he said, extending a hand. “I'm Ted. Great to meet you. Holly's told me all about you.”

I'm not all that great at violence. Like I told you, at school they called me Fetal Man because that's what I was if I ended up outnumbered in a fight. So it took me by surprise when my fist just reacted of its own accord.