I tried to remember where we’d been. Mason had given me Brent’s application, which I had in my pocket… We’d talked about whether someone who’d seen his videos might have gone after him… Oh yeah. I knew what to ask.
“You said Brent never complained to you about an overzealous fan,” I said. “But you implied there was someone who might have been stalking him. Who was it?”
“That’s such an ugly word,” Mason said. He crossed his arms again. “I don’t know it went so far that I’d call it stalking.”
“How far did it go?” I asked. “And who was it?”
“One of the other models here. Lucas Fisher,” Mason answered the second question.
Lucas Fisher. The boy Freddy and I had seen in that dorm room video with Brent. We both thought Lucas’s hunger for his co-star went beyond mere acting.
Brent’s boyfriend, Charlie, also talked about Lucas. He said Lucas had asked Brent out several times, and seemed to have trouble taking no for an answer.
Now, his name was coming up for a third time.
I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time, either.
I was going to have to talk to Lucas Fisher.
“What did Lucas do?” I asked.
“Some background first. If you’re going to be working with us, you deserve to hear the kinds of things that sometime come up-and how we handle them.”
I decided not to point out that I hadn’t agreed to work with him at all. It was clear Mason assumed that even though I expressed some ambivalence, there was no way I’d pass up the opportunity to make the kind of money he’d offered. As far as he was concerned, I was already part of his stable. I resented his arrogance, but if it made him more open to being truthful, I could live with it.
Of course, I knew that if I led him on like this, and then backed out, he’d be even more bitter than if I’d simply rejected him to begin with. But that wasn’t my plan.
If things worked out the way I hoped, it’d be him rejecting me. But that was yet to come.
I scooted back on the bed so that my back was against the headboard, grateful for the opportunity. This was a position I was counting on being able to get into to pull off the rest of my plan.
But to Mason, I must have seemed like an eager eight-year-old ready to hear his favorite story. Good. The more he relaxed his guard, the better for me. “You’re right,” I said. I gave him my best fake-sincere smile. “I appreciate your understanding my… mixed feelings.”
“Naturally, I do,” Mason said. “It’s not like I haven’t had them myself at times.”
The only feelings I imagined he ever had were pride and greed. I suppose you could mix them, but the result would be bitter.
“You need to understand what it’s like to work on the set of an adult film. Especially for the models. But first, you have to understand the audience.
“It’s strange-when someone watches a Die Hard movie, they don’t think Bruce Willis is really getting thrown from buildings and running from explosions. When Julie Andrews sings ‘My Favorite Things’ to comfort her charges in The Sound of Music, the audience doesn’t believe she really wants to marry that old man and adopt those adorable little Nazis-in-waiting. Yes, we all swoon when Richard Gere sweeps Julia Roberts off her feet in Pretty Woman, but as convincing as those two actors are, we understand they’re just pretending. When the director yells cut, we know they go to their separate trailers to complain to their agents or abuse their personal assistants.
“But with all-male porn, everyone wonders ‘Is it real? Are the actors really enjoying themselves? Are they even gay?’
“When most people ask me that, I ask, ‘Does it matter?’ We know Willis isn’t really a New York City cop with the most amazing recuperative powers this side of Wolverine, that Andrews isn’t really a virginal nun, and that Roberts isn’t that dullest of cliches: the whore with a heart of gold.”
Hey, what’s so unbelievable about that last one?
“Who cares if the actors are having a good time or not?” Mason asked, then answered himself.
“The only question that matters is: Is the viewer having a good time?
“That being said, it’s a lot easier to pretend that you’re suddenly inspired to sing some dumb song about whiskers on kittens or that you find Richard Gere attractive than it is to maintain an erection and ejaculate. I mean, let’s face it, there are some things we just can’t fake.
“When you see a guy get hard and come, you know, on some level, he’s having a pleasurable experience. But Roberts and Gere probably enjoyed kissing each other, too. It’s just a physical act.
“And while we haven’t yet gotten to the point where digital effects can reliably and believably be used to simulate male sexual performance, there’s still a lot of ‘movie magic’ and editing that goes on behind the scenes. So, while you may see an actor shoot his load across his co-star’s back, it’s not that ass, no matter how spectacular it may be, that’s getting him off. What we don’t show you is the ten minutes the top had to spend stroking off to a girlie magazine to get to that stage.
“My point is, what goes on between the actors on an adult movie set isn’t love. It isn’t really even sex. It’s a performance. Sure, sometimes it becomes something more. ‘Real’ movie stars sometimes fall in love, too. Look at Elizabeth Taylor’s history. But that’s the exception, not the rule.”
“Lucas,” I said, “was an exception, wasn’t he?”
“He came to me after the first scene he ever shot with Brent. It was in a movie called…” He glanced over at Pierce. “Do you remember?”
“ School Gayz,” Pierce grumbled, resenting the instruction to be helpful to me in any way.
“ School Gayz, yes,” Mason said slowly. “We filmed that at a real college-between semesters, of course. The dean was a fan of ours.
“I was on set for that shoot. I’d set up a small office in one of the empty dorm rooms there. I hadn’t seen the shooting of the scene between Lucas and Brent. I didn’t even know it’d been finished. So, when Lucas came in to chat, I wasn’t on my guard.
“Lucas was a beautiful boy. The golden-haired surfer type. He’d never be a top-level star, but he was a steady performer with a loyal following. I don’t think he was a hundred-percent gay, but he certainly came to enjoy sex with men. There’s a lot of gossip on a movie set, mainstream or otherwise, and I’d heard he’d partied with some of his co-stars on the side. He also was hustling.
“In any case, it wasn’t unusual for Lucas to hang out with me. He was a huge flirt. Even though he knew I wasn’t going to do anything with him (as I told you, I never touch a model), it was in his nature to play up to a man he saw as being in a position to help his career. Maybe he even enjoyed talking with me, who knows? He wasn’t the brightest bulb on the set, but he was charming and adorable. I was always happy to see him.
“So, on that day, it took a while before I noticed something was up. He was doing his usual shtick of entertaining me with stories and gossip from the set, mixed in with references to surfing and skateboards I never understood, when I realized he was asking more and more questions about one of his co-stars.”
“Brent Havens,” I supplied.
“Exactly. It began with the kind of conversation he might make about any of the models on the set. ‘So, is this his first movie?’ ‘Where did you find him?’ ‘What’s his deal in real life-is he into guys or girls?’ The usual gossip.
“Then, it got more personal. ‘Does he have a boyfriend?’ ‘Do you know what kind of guy he likes?’ ‘Where does he live?’
“It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Lucas had fallen for Brent. Like I said, it’s not that it never happens. But it’s not usually that fast. Or that obvious.
“It was actually,” Mason observed, sounding wistful, “kind of sweet. Lucas was like a thirteen-year-old girl meeting Justin Bieber. I answered what questions I could, and dodged the ones I couldn’t. Overall, though, I encouraged Lucas. I told him he should tell Brent he was interested.
“Lucas blushed red as a fire truck. He tried to tell me he was ‘just curious.’ I let him get away with it, but I knew he was lying. I wasn’t sure how deep it went, though-whether he was lying to me, or to himself, too. I didn’t know much about Lucas. Was he emotionally developed enough to understand how an on-set infatuation burns hot but soon burns out? They’re like summer camp romances-you’re sure they’ll last forever, but once you’re back home, you never think of him again.
