Glamorama Page 8

  The Details reporter arrives late. “Sorry, I got lost,” she says vacantly, wearing a black cashmere sweater, white cotton shirt, white silk pants and, in true girl-reporter-from-Details fashion, tube-sock elbow pads and a bicycle-reflector armband. “I had to interview President Omar Bongo of Gabon and his cute nephew, um …” She checks her notepad. “Spencer.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” Reed spreads his hands out, introducing me. “Victor Ward, the It Boy of the moment.”

  Mumbled “hey”s and a few “yeah”s come from the crew, who remain darkened behind the steaming lights set up in front of the StairMaster, and finally someone tiredly says, “We’re rolling.”

  “Take those sunglasses off,” Reed whispers to me.

  “Not with those lights on, uh-uhn, spare me.”

  “I smell Marlboros,” Reed says, pushing me toward the StairMaster. “You shouldn’t smoke, baby, it takes years off your life.”

  “Yeah, my sixties, great. Don’t wanna miss those.”

  “Ooh, you’re tough. Come on—hop up here,” Reed says, patting the side of the machine.

  “I want calves and thighs and definitely abs today,” I stress. “But no biceps,” I warn. “They’re getting too big.”

  “What? They’re thirteen inches, baby.” Reed sets the StairMaster to Blind Random, level 10.

  “Isn’t your T-shirt, uh, a little tight?” I ask, taunting.

  “Arms are the new breasts,” Reed intones.

  “Oh, and look,” I say, noticing a tiny blackhead. “You have a nipple.”

  “Cut,” the segment director sighs.

  “Victor,” Reed warns. “Pretty soon I’m gonna bring up that bounced check of yours—”

  “Hey, Chloe took care of the bill.”

  “This is a business, baby,” Reed says, trying to smile. “Not a charity.”

  “Listen, if you need more work, I need bouncers.”

  “This is work, man.”

  “What? Being familiar with fitness equipment? Spare me.”

  “I already supplement my income, Victor.”

  “Listen, as long as the sex is safe I personally think being a male whore is cool—if it pays the bills.”

  Reed smacks me upside the head and growls, “We’re doing squats today.”

  “And abs,” I stress. “I have a photo shoot, baby.”

  “Okay,” the director calls out. “We’re running.”

  Automatically, without trying, Reed starts clapping his hands and shouts, “I want some strain, some pressure, some sweat, Victor. You’re too tense, buddy. Out with that tension. In with some love.”

  “I’ve sworn off caffeine, Reed. I’m teaching myself how to relax by deep-sea visualization. I’m avoiding the urge to check my voice mail on a half-hourly basis. I’m hugging people left and right. And look.” I reach under my CK T-shirt. “My new tranquillity beads.”

  “Far out, baby,” Reed wails, clapping his hands together.

  Looking into the camera, I say, “I’ve been to Radu and Pasquale Manocchia—that’s Madonna’s personal trainer, by the way, baby—and Reed is definitely the first name in celebrity training.”

  “I have an obsession with biceps, with triceps, with forearm flexors,” Reed admits sheepishly. “I have a major sinewy-arm fetish.”

  “I have the endurance of a horse but my blood sugar’s low and I need a Jolly Rancher badly.”

  “After the next song,” Reed says, clapping endlessly. “PowerBar time, I promise.”

  Suddenly Primal Scream’s “Come Together” blares out over the sound system. “Oh god,” I moan. “This song is eight minutes and four seconds long.”

  “How do you know things like that?” the Details girl asks.

  “The better you look, baby, the more you see,” I pant. “Dat’s my motto, homegirl.” My beeper goes off and I check it: JD at the club.

  “Reed, baby, hand me your cellular.” I let go of the rails and dial, smiling into the camera. “Hey Leeza! Look, no hands!”

  This causes Reed to push up the speed, which I thought was impossible because I didn’t know StairMasters could go past level 10.

  “Hey, am I invited to the dinner tonight?” Reed asks. “I didn’t see my name mentioned in any of the columns.”

  “Yeah, you’re at table 78 with the Lorax and Pauly Shore,” I snap. “JD—talk to me.”

  “Now don’t get too excited, Victor,” JD says breathlessly. “But we’ve—myself, Beau and Peyton—set up an interview with DJ X.”

  “With who?”

  “DJ X. You have a meeting with him at Fashion Café at five today,” JD says. “He’s willing to do the party tonight.”

  “I’m on a StairMaster now, baby.” I’m trying not to pant. “What? Fashion Café?”

  “Victor, DJ X is the hottest DJ in town,” JD says. “Imagine the publicity and then come all over yourself. Go ahead—shoot that load.”

  “I know, I know. Just hire him,” I say. “Tell him we’ll pay anything he wants.”

  “He wants to meet with you first.”

  “Oh dear god.”

  “He needs some kind of reassurance.”

  “Send him a bag of candy corn. Send him some cute, extrasuckable pacifiers. Tell him you give excellent head … do you?”

  “Victor,” JD says, exasperated. “He won’t do it without meeting you first. We need him here tonight. Do it.”

  “I’m taking commands from someone who uses the word ‘dish’ as a verb?” I yell. “Shut up.”

  “Fashion Café,” JD says. “Five o’clock. I’ve checked your schedule. You can make it.”

  “JD, I’m in the middle of becoming some kind of brooding god,” I groan. “I mean, is it too fucking much to ask—”

  “Fashion Café at five. Bye, Victor.” JD clicks off.

  “JD—don’t click off on me, don’t you dare click off on me.” I click off myself and blindly announce, “I’m suddenly seized by the need to climb.”

  “I think you’ve been doing that your whole life, buddy,” Reed says sadly.

  “You turned down a Reebok ad and that makes you tough?”

  After “ET” films me doing a thousand crunches and I’ve moved over to the Treadwall, an indoor rock-climbing simulator where you stay in one place while climbing, I notice Details girl slouching against a wall, holding her pad under the debut issue of a new magazine called Bubble. It’s so cold in the gym that it feels like I’m climbing a glacier.

  “Jesus,” I moan, noticing the magazine’s cover. “Yeah, that’s just great. Luke Perry’s opinion of Kurt fucking Russell. We need more of that.”

  “So what’s the story?” she asks vacantly. “Excited about tonight?”

  “Remember what the dormouse said,” I say cryptically, watching Dillon walk by slurping a powershake. “Hey Matt, rock on.”

  “You’re really into this,” Details girl says.

  “What’s wrong with looking good?”

  She ponders this semi-thoughtfully. “Well, what if it’s at the expense of something else? I’m not implying anything. It’s just a hypothetical. Don’t be insulted.”

  “I forgot the question.”

  “What if it’s at the expense of something else?”

  “What’s … something else?”

  “I see.” She attempts to complete a facial expression I’d hoped she wouldn’t.

  “Hey baby, we’re all in this together,” I grunt, my hands dusted with chalk. “Yeah, I wanna give this all up and feed the homeless. I wanna give this all up and teach orangutans sign language. I’m gonna bike around the countryside with my sketchbook. I’m gonna—what? Help improve race relations in this country? Run for fucking President? Read my lips: Spare me.”

  24

  By the time I arrive at Industria for today’s photo shoot I’m getting that certain feeling of being followed, but whenever I look behind me it’s only bicycle messengers carrying models’ portfolios for Click, Next, Elite, so to stamp out the paranoia I d
uck into Braque to grab a not-too-foamy decaf latte with skim milk and Alison keeps beeping me as I move through an enormous series of white empty spaces. The guys—nine of us, some already in bathing suits—are just hanging: Nikitas, David Boals, Rick Dean, newcomer Scooter, a couple of guys I’m not really sure about, including a waiter from Jour et Nuit, hunky with dreadlocks, who’s being followed around by a camera crew from “Fashion File,” a pair of twins who work at Twins on the Upper East Side, plus some European guy who has arguably the best body here but a face like a donkey. All the guys basically look the same: cute head (one exception), great body, high hair, chiseled lips, cutting edge, naughty or however you want us.

  While waiting my turn for eyebrow tweezing I browse through the CD library and make time with this girl eating rice and broccoli while getting a pedicure and the only word she knows is “Blimey!” and all over the place I’m sensing a distinct laissez-faire attitude, no more so than when I’m handed a stick of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum by Stanford Blatch. The Caesar haircut has made another comeback and cowlicks are in which infuriates Bingo and Velveteen and the photographer Didier, so a lot of PhytoPlage gel is brought out while opera plays and to endure all this some of the guys drink champagne, check their horoscopes in the Post, play cat’s cradle with dental floss. Madonna’s ex-party planner Ronnie Davis, someone from Dolce & Gabbana, Garren (who did the hair at Marc Jacobs’ and Anna Sui’s last shows) and Sandy Gallin are hanging out, staring at us impassively, like we’re for sale or something, and let’s just face it—as if.

  Three setups: Bermudas, Madras shorts and Speedos. The guys will be positioned in front of a huge blue drape and later a beach will be superimposed by Japanese technicians to make it look like we were actually on a beach, “maybe even one in Miami,” Didier promises. Fake tattoos are applied on biceps, pectorals, on three thighs. It’s freezing.

  Bingo slaps gel on my scalp, wetting my hair, runs it through to the ends as Didier paces nearby, inspecting my abs, twenty-two and sucking on a pacifier. Dazed-looking Scooter—studying for his SATs—sits next to me on a high stool, both of us facing giant oval mirrors.

  “I want sideburns,” Bingo moans. “I need elongation.”

  “Forget about natural, Bingo,” Didier says. “Just go for the edge.”

  “Doesn’t anyone shampoo anymore?” Velveteen shudders. “My god.”

  “I want a rough style, Bingo. I want a bit of meanness. A hidden anger. There has to be a hidden anger. I want the aggressive side to this boy.”

  “Aggressive?” Bingo asks. “He’s a pastry chef at Dean & Deluca.”

  “I want the aggressive-pastry-chef look.”

  “Didier, this boy is about as aggressive as a baby manatee.”

  “Oh god, Bingo—you’re such a fussbudget,” Velveteen sighs.

  “Am I being challenged?” Didier asks, pacing. “I think not, because I’m getting bored very quickly.”

  “Velveteen,” Bingo shouts. “You’re mushing Scooter’s do.”

  “Bingo, you’re being a wee bit off.”

  “I want extreme,” Didier says. “I want Red Hot Chili Peppers. I want energy.”

  “I want a big fat spleef,” Scooter mutters.

  “I want garish and sexy,” Didier says.

  “Let’s usher that combo in, baby.”

  “I’m fizzy with excitement,” Didier murmurs thoughtfully. “But where are these boys’ sideburns? I requested sideburns. Bingo? Bingo, where are you?”

  “I have sideburns?” I offer, raising my hand. “Uh, dude, that’s facial moisturizer,” I have to point out to Bingo.

  “Not too in-your-face. Right, Didier?” Velveteen asks sourly. “Not too much of that hot Mambo King look.”

  We’re all in front of the big blue drape, some of us doing bicep curls with free weights, a couple of us on the floor crunching, and Didier wants cigars and passes them out and Didier wants glycerin because the guys in Bermuda shorts should be crying while smoking cigars because we are sad and smoking cigars in front of the big blue drape which will be the beach.

  “Sad because we are smoking cigars?” I ask. “Or sad because this is just too ‘Baywatch’?”

  “Sad because you are all idiots and just now on this beach you have realized it,” Didier says vaguely, ready to Polaroid.

  Scooter looks at his cigar wonderingly.

  “Do to that what you did to get this job,” I tell him. “Suck on it.”

  Scooter goes pale. “How … did you know?”

  “David—remove the nicotine patch,” Didier calls out from behind the camera.

  “My girlfriend sees this,” Scooter moans, “and she’s gonna think I’m gay.”

  “You still with Felicia?” Rick asks him.

  “No, this is some girl I met in the bathroom in the lobby of the Principe di Savoia,” Scooter says blankly. “I was lost and she looked like Sandra Bullock. Or so they say.”

  “What’s her name?” David asks.

  “Shoo Shoo.”

  “Shoo Shoo what?”

  “No apparent last name.”

  “How did you lose the CK job, man?” Nikitas asks him.

  “Calvin got pissed,” Scooter says. “I cut my hair, but it’s considerably more, er, complex than that.”

  Silence, a considerable pause, heavy nodding, the camera crew from “Fashion File” still circling.

  “Believe me,” I say, holding up my hands, “Calvin and I have tussled many a time.” I do a few more bicep curls. “Many a time.”

  “He gave you pretty good seats for the show, though,” David says, stretching his calf muscles.

  “That’s because Chloe was in it,” Rick says.

  “I wasn’t at the Calvin Klein show,” I say calmly, then shout, “I wasn’t at the fucking Calvin Klein show.”

  “There’s a picture of you at the show in WWD, baby,” Rick says. “You’re with David and Stephen. In the second row.”

  “Someone find me that photo and you shall be proven wrong,” I intone, rubbing my biceps, freezing. “Second row my ass.”

  One of the twins is reading today’s WWD and cautiously hands it to me. I grab it and find the photos taken at yesterday’s shows. It’s not a clear photograph: Stephen Dorff, David Salle and myself, all wearing ’50s knit shirts and sunglasses, slouching in our seats, stone-faced. Our names are in bold type beneath the photo, and after mine, as if an explanation was necessary, the words “It Boy.” A bottle of champagne topples from a table, someone calls out for a shawalla.

  “So what’s the story, Victor?” David asks. “Let me get this straight. You weren’t at the show? You’re not in that photo? Let me guess—that’s Jason Gedrick.”

  “Isn’t anybody going to ask how the club’s going?” I finally ask, thrusting the paper back at the twin, suddenly indignant over this fact.

  “Um, how’s the club going, Victor?” the other twin asks.

  “I want to rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day.”

  “Why wasn’t I invited to the opening?” Rick asks.

  “I—want—to—rock-’n’-roll—all—night—and—party—every—day.” I grab the WWD back from the twin and study the photo again. “This must be a mistake. This must be from another show. In fact, that must be Jason Gedrick.”

  “What other shows have you been to this week?” someone asks.

  “None,” I finally murmur.

  “When you stop orbiting around Jupiter, let us know, okay?” David says, patting me on the back. “And Jason Gedrick’s in Rome shooting Summer Lovers II, baby.”

  “I’m in the here and the now, baby.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” Nikitas says, crunching.

  “I’m not really interested in what information you’re able to process,” I tell him.

  “Everything cool with you and Baxter and Chloe?” David asks this casually and Nikitas and Rick manage sly grins, which of course I notice.

  “It’s so cool it’s icy, baby.” I pause. “Er
… what do you mean, O Wise One?”

  The three of them seem confused and their expressions lead me to believe that they expected an admission of some kind.

  “Um, well … ,” Rick stammers. “It’s, well, y’know …”

  “Please,” I groan. “If you’re going to hand out shitty gossip about me, at least make it fast.”

  “Did you ever see the movie Threesome?” David ventures.

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.”

  “Story is that Chloe, Baxter and Victor are intrigued by that premise.”

  “We are not speaking of Baxter Priestly, are we, gentlemen?” I ask. “Surely we are not speaking of that little mo waif.”

  “He’s the mo?”

  “I mean, I know you’re a hip guy, Victor,” David says. “I think it’s like cool, really cool.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” I hold my hands up in front of me. “If you think for one second I’d share Chloe—Chloe Byrnes—with that pipsqueak … oh baby, spare me.”

  “Who said you’re sharing anybody, Victor?” someone asks.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Who said it was your idea?” David asks. “Who said you were happy about it?”

  “How can I not be happy about something that’s not happening?” I glare.

  “We’re just telling you what’s out on the street.”

  “What street? What street do you live on, David?”

  “Uh … Ludlow.”

  “Uh … Ludlow,” I mimic without trying.

  “Victor, how can we believe you about anything?” Rick asks. “You say you weren’t at the CK show, but there you were. Now you say you’re not involved in a heavy ménage with Baxter and Chloe, yet word around town—”

  “What else have you fucking heard?” I snap, waving a light meter out of my face. “I dare you, come on, I dare you.”

  “That you’re fucking Alison Poole?” David shrugs.

  I just stare for a couple seconds. “Enough, enough. I’m not seeing Alison Poole.”

  “The straight face is impressive, dude.”

  “I’m gonna ignore that because I don’t fight with girls,” I tell David. “Besides, that’s a dangerous rumor for you to spread. Dangerous for her. Dangerous for me. Dangerous for—”