Most people think of me as a bratty little wuss. A hanger on they sometimes call me, at least the people who don’t like me. But I don’t really care, because I’m loving every minute of it. I didn’t have shit growing up outside of Yakima, Washington, surrounded by used farm machinery shops and Indian souvenir stands. How I grew up gay I have no idea, but I was hounded mercilessly by both the Good Ole’ Boys and the Indians, because of the way I walked and talked from the time I was eight years old. Calling me queer was the one thing they could agree on. It was like they knew I was gay even before I knew what my dick was even for.
Truth be told, they were right. Gay as a picnic basket, that was me.
But shocking as it seems (not), I wasn’t the only queer around. Among the Farmboys and Indians both, it turned out there were a lot of them enjoyed stemming the rose after a few bottles or snorts of this and that. Sometimes it felt like they were kind of handing me around, but it was all good. It got me out of the house. In high school there was one older guy, Dennis, who befriended me (if that’s the right word) and showed me pretty much everything there was to know inside somebody’s underpants. We had good times, drunk and sober, and one day he says, why don’t we go to LA? I was seventeen, I hated school almost as much as I hated Yakima, so I said sure, and I piled into his pickup.
Just like everyone said, there was a lot of wood in Hollywood. And somehow Dennis knew how to open a couple of doors and we got invited to some “fabulous” parties and met all kinds of “fabulous” people. One night I was at a huge house in the Hollywood Hills and was looking for the bathroom. I opened the wrong door and there right in front of me was Sean Henry Albright doing a line of coke on the desk in the bedroom. Well, hello there he said, looking me up and down, want a taste? Well one thing led to another, and we started getting together every few days. Yes, yes, everyone, including me, knew Sean was married, and to Priscilla Tissot of all people, like from Tissot watches, and everyone knew he was going to costar in his next movie with Jennifer Lawrence, and the paparazzi followed him everywhere he went, but that didn’t stop me. Why should it? Sean liked me and treated me well.
When the photographs of me and him kissing came out all over social media, they called me a homewrecker, career destroyer, boytoy, fuckboy, Hollywood twink, gold digger, parasite and a lot worse. I didn’t like what they called me, but I loved seeing my picture everywhere I turned. My twitter following went through the roof: 80,000 followers, and only a few dozen threatening to castrate me or whatever. Sean and I had to cool it for a while, but there were lots of offers from magazines and gossip sites who wanted to hear all about him and what we did. And some wanted to hear about me too. But I wasn’t stupid. I never said anything embarrassing about Sean, I even said how much I cared about him, which wasn’t totally true, but I knew if I trashed him or made fun of him or anything even close to that, no one would ever trust me ever. Besides I didn’t do anything wrong, I just fucked around with a married man. It’s not like I’m the first person who ever did that. And if I’d just stayed in Yakima would I have any of this? No way. People notice me when I walk down Sunset Boulevard. I’m not ashamed at all.
Everyone told me I should get an agent or a manager, someone to work with me on fertilizing those 80,000 so they would grow like a you know what at a pool party. That’s when Rick Braverman came into my life. Straight as a mowed lawn, with a pot-roast-cooking-wife out in the Valley, he helped me with my tweets. We played up the farm boy angle, ran pictures of me with horses and picking out pumpkins at Halloween. For some ready cash he suggested gay movies. Not porn, but not exactly Shakespeare either. Somewhere in the middle. There was an industry in LA that catered to a select clientele. My first part was a bartender in a gay bar. My character gets into a discussion with a customer about how to make a Sloe Gin Fizz and they end up in bed together. Most of my part is silent, but I get to say to the customer, “they call it Simple Syrup, but we both know there is nothing simple about the right kind of syrup.” Stupid line, but I pulled it off, if I say so myself. And my name was featured in the credits.
Rick kept getting shots of me posted everywhere to keep me in the public eye, which was great, but I wasn’t getting paid for any of it, and without Sean helping me out I could barely keep up with rent and my gym bills. Plus I wanted to take acting lessons. Dennis was still in my life, but he was hooked up with a make-up artist from Disneyland, and we didn’t see much of each other.
But lots of other guys were into me. They figured if Sean Henry Albright was willing to risk his marriage to be with me, I must be some hot stuff. Some of them offered me a lot of money, but I didn’t want to be in the trade. I had 80,000 followers. I wanted to stay above ground. I wanted to see my picture everywhere.
Then one day I was walking by the Universal Studios in Burbank when a limo with tinted windows pulled up alongside me. A rear window rolled down and it was Sean. He invited me into the car. We drove around for an hour.
It looked like things were looking up.
Hurray for Hollywood.