Selfie (2 page)

Or I had.

“I told you yesterday,” I said, after a heavy silence between us. “I’m throwing my hat back in the ring. Go ahead—sell me. I’m product. Auction me to the highest bidder. I’ll do it—I’m raring to go.”

My voice held all of the excitement of a boiled eel. I was
not
, as I said, “raring to go.” I was, in fact,
not
raring. And not roaring. And not going.

I was pretty sure that yesterday’s conversation with Jillian, in which I pronounced myself so “raring,” had been the beginning of last night’s bender. I remembered, I was standing on the balcony, looking off into the poetic ocean distance, talking to Jillian and taking healthy swallows from a bottle of Pinot Grigio. In my head I could hear Vinnie chiding me for drinking what he called “flat 7 Up,” because I never
had
developed a palate, and in my ear, I could hear Jillian telling me that I’d been grieving for a year, and it was time to jump back into the shark pond again.

“You wouldn’t say that to me if we’d been out and married,” I’d snapped, aching. Because you got more time to grieve a lover than a “bro,” didn’t you? With a bro, you were expected to carry on, but if we’d been married . . . if we’d even been
dating
. . . no.

For ten years Vince Walker had been my shadow, my lover, my best friend, the one person on the planet I could tell my secrets to. I’d chivvied him into rehab and supported him when he came out, and together we’d been the nonparty boys, the most clean-cut actors in Hollywood, hosting clean and sober parties in my place or his. We’d been photographed for three years in a row, having Christmas in his place, with his family, and pretending I only spent the night in his room on Christmas Eve so there could be space for his brother and two sisters and spouses and kids and such to take over his place for the holidays.

We’d bought houses right next to each other in Malibu, but so what? So had Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, right? We were like Alex O’ and Scott Caan, or . . . or . . . oh Jesus, who cared.

Because we weren’t like those guys at all.

We were in love, and we’d started working in this business when you just didn’t fucking come out, not if you wanted to be leading men in big-budget movies, and so we hadn’t. We’d just bought our big fucking houses and took turns sleeping over and quietly building a life together, only it wasn’t together, it was separated by two walls, a hedge, and a big fucking swimming pool.

So, yeah. I may have been bitter when I told Jillian that I was willing to be thrown back into the shark tank.

I
must
have been bitter when I told her that. Because I remember taking a healthy swallow of flat 7 Up, and then another one.

And then another one.

And then sitting on the balcony, staring into the orange sunset, and thinking about Vinnie.

And
then
waking up to the phone.

“You’re right.” Jillian’s voice came from an entire continent of pain away. “You’re right. I wouldn’t throw you back into the pit if you’d been married. But do you think you could have said that yesterday?”

“I thought I did,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, and then you said okay.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?” Oh God. When Vinnie was alive I wouldn’t have gotten this drunk. When Vinnie was alive, I’d very,
very
carefully only had a social drink of wine in company, because Vinnie wasn’t drinking
at all
and I knew how hard that was on him.

“Because it was most obviously not okay!” Jillian burst out, an exhalation of smoke hitting her receiver as hard as her voice.

“I don’t remember saying that,” I said plaintively.
Don’t make waves. Treat your agent with respect. Remember, most people in Hollywood would sell their souls to be you and sell you out in a hot second if they even suspected you and Vinnie were an item.
I remember
thinking
all of that, but I don’t remember
saying
anything at all resembling the truth.

“That’s because you didn’t!” she snapped, setting off a trash-can chorus in my head.

“Then how do you know it wasn’t okay?” I demanded, because God, it was like “Carol of the Bells” was being played in broken glass between my ears.

“Uh, Connor?” For the first time something akin to sensitivity tinged Jilly’s voice.

“What?” I asked suspiciously. “What’s wrong? Why do you sound like that?”

“Connor,” she said slowly, and I remembered the last time she tried speaking slowly to me.

My stomach wasn’t feeling great, and when my bowels contracted in an icy heave I contemplated running for the bathroom. Oh, dear Lord—no. How bad could this be? I’d already survived the worst, right?

“What? What’s wrong? Who’s dead?” I asked, aware that after the last year this wasn’t hyperbole and not the least bit funny. I needed to know how my world was going to be turned upside down as soon as possible, so I could hide all the hurt and pretend it didn’t happen.

“Who’s dead?” she repeated. “Your career, honey. You killed it last night on YouTube.”

I closed my eyes and tried to think. What had been the last thing I’d done as the wine had weakened that brick wall between myself and my grief? I remember seeing the camera Vinnie had kept on the mantel. He’d been so good at social media—had taken short videos almost constantly.

And then edited them.

On
my
computer, I had the video of us kissing on a private beach, the camera held selfie-distance away from our faces, my blond hair riotous in the wind and Vinnie’s shorter, darker hair barely ruffling. We’d both closed our eyes at the end, and the camera had dropped as we’d gotten lost in the kiss and the smell of the ocean and the wind and the sand under our feet. The end of the shot had been a ragged series of frames as Vince had struggled to turn the thing off one-handed so that kiss could be the focus of our lives.

The world had the first part of that picture—“Hey, here’s the sunset in Hawaii! And here’s my buddy, Connor, ready to do some surfing!” I’d waved and winked, and lights out.

Last night, I’d looked at that camera, thought of my computer memory, crammed full of what our life had really been, and thought of what the world knew. Who cared, right? Who cared if the world knew we’d been together since our first audition, both of us nervous and cocky at the same time, neither of us getting the part.

It hadn’t mattered—we’d been in Vince’s shitty one-room apartment about thirty minutes after leaving the studio, Vince filling the condom inside me, both of us screaming loud enough to wake the neighbors.

I’d been sleeping in a burned-out car then, two months into Hollywood after leaving my home in Northern California with the scornful injunction not to come back until I’d stopped being a fag. (Well, you know, get caught deep-throating the starter of your school’s basketball team when you were a drama queer, getting kicked out of the house was bound to happen.)

I’d been desperate—desperate enough to blow a photographer to get my headshots. Desperate enough to have blown businessmen for food.

Vinnie had let me move in that day—a little banter, some hot eyeball action, and one quick fuck, and there we were, sleeping on his twin bed and throwing in for rent together. It might not have been love at first—in fact, at first I think it was mostly necessity—but after a year, and a few successful auditions, and a little bit of fucking around on both our parts, we had enough money to each rent our own apartments.

And we’d . . . decided not to.

Because what had started out as lust and convenience had turned into something more. Something bigger. Something that had us both getting tested and giving up condoms (most of the time)—but keeping the lube.

Then I’d landed a supporting role in a small television show on the CW. And then I’d been courted to be the leading man in another one when the first one folded. That gig had lasted three years, and when I’d left it because . . . reasons . . . I’d landed my first movie role. B-level action flick, yeah—but it paid decent, and I got another one, an A-level after that. Vince’s career had taken off too—he was usually the broody guy who got offed, or sometimes the villain—but he worked consistently and got paid well.

Eventually, Jilly (who had signed us by that time—she’d gotten me the gig at the CW) said we
had
to get houses. If we didn’t, the press would talk, the fan fiction would get out of hand, our careers would be in jeopardy.

I remembered asking, “Can’t we just come out?” Neil Patrick Harris had come out. George Takei had come out. Six years ago there had been enough out celebrities that it shouldn’t have made a difference, right?

Jillian had looked at me, pity in her cobalt-blue-tinted contacts. “Honey, you’re just not that good.” She shook her head. “Those other guys can do it because they’ve got balls-out talent—you and Vinnie, I love you guys, you’re my first big hits and my bread and butter, but you’re . . . you know. Beefcake. You’re decent enough actors to not embarrass yourselves, but mostly, sugar, you’re just a pretty face.”

I’d done a shitty job of concealing my hurt—I’d
loved
drama in school. I hadn’t wanted to be beefcake, I’d wanted to be an actor, damn it! But Vinnie had let it roll off his back.

“Whatever you say, gorgeous,” he’d purred. “As long as we’ve got backdoor access to each other’s pads, I’m good with that.” But he’d looked at me searchingly over her head, with a little bit of pity and fear.
His
family still loved him, and I knew because he’d told me that he dreaded, more than anything, losing that support.

Jilly hadn’t seen that look, though. She’d touched his nose like wasn’t he just the cutest thing? Vinnie got that a lot. “You gay guys—you flirt like gangbusters, but do you ever put out? Done, then—I’ll tell the real estate lady to look for properties next to each other, relatively private. No one will ever know.”

And no one
had
ever known. Ten years of a relationship forged in the crucible of Hollywood, and my only proof was a laptop full of memories that only two people had shared.

And now it was down to one.

I pulled myself back into the present with a sick
thump
. “Jillian . . . did I post a
video
last night?”

Her laugh was weak and stringy and hysterical. “Oh, honey.” I heard a shaky draw on the cigarette. “That’s like asking if the Washington Monument is a little bit of an erection.”

I didn’t look. I
couldn’t
look at my Washington Monument of YouTube selfies. Just getting out of bed and into the shower took everything I had. After that, it was a fight against vomiting, and I needed all my strength for that.

Forty-five minutes after Jilly hung up, she was at my house—had arrived, in fact, while I was still in the shower. When I emerged, a towel wrapped around my waist, I was surprised and touched to see she’d pulled up my comforter and cleaned up the bottles for me.

Jillian was a four-time combat veteran of the marital wars, and the mother of two. She hardly twitched a sculpted eyebrow as I started rustling around in my drawers for some yoga pants and a T-shirt. She’d once walked into the tiny bathroom of a guest-star trailer to have me sign my next contract. I’d been taking a stellar dump at the time, but she hadn’t even wrinkled her rhinoplasty. I loved her like a mother, but there was no doubting the fact that she had iron-clad tits in a stainless-steel bra.

Or so I thought.

She was sitting at my personal desk, sifting through my laptop browser when she cast a look over her shoulder and recoiled.

“Jesus, kid, you’re scrawny as hell.”

“I work out,” I mumbled, taking a hungover look at my wardrobe. I had a maid service that came in and did laundry, which was awesome—but all of my clean, pressed yoga pants and T-shirts had holes in them, and I let out a sigh. Yeah, it had been a while since I’d gone shopping.

“Who gives a shit if you work out? Do you
eat
?”

I tried to remember the last meal I’d had, and drew a blank. “I must eat,” I muttered. “Otherwise, I couldn’t work out.”

“Right.” She shook her head and continued to browse. After a moment, she sighed. “You let your porn subscription lapse.”

I made a hurt sound, and she looked back at my computer like it held the secrets of the universe.

“And you’ve been looking at this file with Vinnie every fucking day.”

I stopped searching for clothes without holes and grabbed some boxer briefs, yoga pants, and a T-shirt and threw them on haphazardly. The T-shirt was a basic cotton tourist T—we’d gotten it on a trip to the Grand Canyon two years ago. For a while, we’d fought over it, playfully, because we never let ourselves get photographed in the personal shit, and if one of us woke up and put on that shirt, it meant he was staying inside all day and hopefully not alone.

“What do you want me to say?” I was working so hard on leeching the tears out of my voice that it came out flat, no affect, dead.

“I want you to say you want to live!” she half laughed. But she was looking at me soberly, and real concern showed, even through the trowel-thick mascara and the psychotropic contacts.