Take that, all you women who didn’t return my phone calls, who dated me briefly and then ceased all contact quickly and callously, who loved me once and then didn’t love me anymore — because, though I can’t be certain, I suspect that this Hollywood actress I’m interviewing may be entertaining thoughts of having sex with me.
I admit that I scheduled the interview through her publicist, and since I got this gig at a high-profile men’s magazine, I have cachet. But my handsomeness, my winning ways and devilish smile, my wit and sullen complexity would have — sooner or later — propelled me to be sitting here, at this Hollywood actress’s dining room table, lights dimmed, wine chilling, the Hollywood actress making a general mess of things while trying to heat up some Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks.
To say she’s hot is like saying the lava in an active volcano is warm. You first knew her from her recurring role on a popular hour-long drama on a non NBC, ABC, or CBS network. Then you saw her again in a popular movie, in which her breasts — large, bulbous, heaving — featured prominently. She turned up here and again on that one cable channel, was introduced as “hot” as she presented an award for something or other; and then that weekly entertainment magazine featured her on its cover; soon, that monthly entertainment magazine did the same.
But you dont know her the way I know her, because — as she looks at me, coyly, furtively, dare I say longingly — I suspect that this Hollywood actress I’m interviewing might be entertaining thoughts of having sex with me.
She met me at the door of the bungalow, where she’s currently bunking until she picks a neighborhood in which to settle. “None of them remind me of back home,” she says, alluding to back home, to a state whose name I believe begins with a vowel. “Back home was HOME, you know?” she says, her non-brown eyes open wide, her lips pursed and moist, her bosom heaving. She says she wishes she could move in with her best friend, that other actress, the one who burst on the scene about 10 months before she did — but it’s grown-up time, now. Roommates aren’t where it’s at. Not anymore, anyway.
She did have a roommate, a few months ago, that bad-boy actor who burst on the scene about five years ago. But that’s since fizzled, she says. “Were just good friends,” she says. “Isn’t that great when you can go from being so…intimate …into friendship? It’s like a better layer of friendship. You know the person so much better as a person. Your friendship is that much deeper.” Is she trying to tell me something? She looks at me. I think she might be trying to tell me something.
She could afford Beluga caviar, but tonight were going with Mrs. Paul’s. “I miss the simple things,” she says, stunning in her Donna Karan dress and Armani shoes, her bosom heaving. She looks at me and I think she may be entertaining thoughts of having sex with me.
After all: Me. I’m tall. Handsome. Smart — real smart. Sure, I could work out a little more, but I’m okay. The build is there, I just need to run a little more. And maybe — just maybe — I can provide for her some shelter, an anchor, a refuge from her life of chaos and millions of dollars and many, many handsome — but essentially untrustworthy — young actors.
She doesn’t have tartar sauce. Just ketchup. She apologizes. That’s okay, I say. She asks me about writing profiles like this one. Is it fun? Is it interesting? Who else have I written about? Anyone famous? She isn’t like the self-absorbed actresses of other days, other interviews…she’s interested. In me.
Her career is going well, she says. “But I don’t want to jinx it.” She’s working right now with a big-time director. Its a “great movie,” she says, a project that allows her to work with an older actress of note. This older actress was once extremely attractive, just like the actress before me who dips her fishsticks into a dainty pond of tomato sauce before me, but now she’s older, mature, respectable, accomplished, wrinkled. “She’s teaching me so much,” the Hollywood actress says.
Another movie starring the actress is about to hit the theaters. “I try not to pay any attention to that stuff,” she says, “box office and numbers and points. I try to stay grounded.”
“On the ground?” I say, broodingly, sexily, sounding not just a little but like Barry White ever since I started smoking. I lick my lips—unconsciously, just to remove a fleck of ketchup and a crumb of fried fishstick dough from the right corner of my lustrous lips — but she misses the performance entirely. She keeps eating.
“Iced tea? Or water?” she asks. “I have a Brita,” she quickly adds, referring to the trendy water pitcher so fashionable among the beautiful people, into whose ranks she has clearly burst, heaving.
“I don’t mean to be a bitch” — she says, and nothing could be further from what she is, since she is heaven-sent, melodic, an angel, fresh and pink and baby-soft, I imagine — “but I really have to go.”
“To…?” I ask, curious. Have I offended her in some way? Is the tangible chemistry filling the room making her uncomfortable.
“I, um, I gotta see somebody about some stuff and stuff,” she says.
She smiles, wrinkling her nose like a bunny rabbit.
I collect my stuff, and walk out the door, dreaming of the next time I see her, trusting that there will be a next time but at the same time wondering if perhaps the train of fame will take her far from me, that we will be torn apart by our different lifestyles, friends, our different worlds, circumstances, dreams — just like that last Hollywood Actress I interviewed who, I’m pretty sure, had a notion of giving me oral pleasure.