Not So Model Home

CHAPTER 2


An Indecent Proposal

The next day, I met Ian at his sprawling home in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs. Ian’s Spanish house is over 11,000 square feet, with eight bedrooms in three buildings on an acre of land. While that may not seem like a lot to those of you in Beverly Hills, or Bedford, New York, it’s a lot for Palm Springs. Old Las Palmas is one of the oldest neighborhoods of Palm Springs, filled mostly with Spanish-style homes, some mid-century designs, and a scattering of modern styles. It’s been home to Hollywood stars, captains of industry, and the women who married them. Now, it’s mostly home to the dying descendants of those families or those who want to live in what is hands down the best area in town.

As I pulled through the gates (with Ian’s initials, IF, boldly attached in fancy scripted, gold letters) and drove up the driveway to the house, my car was chased by a pack of wolves who surrounded my car when I stopped, barking endlessly as I made the decision against getting out of the car.

“Zeus! Hercules! Cut it out!. You . . . The rest of you . . . Get in the backyard!” a man shouted as the dogs cowered and started making their way back to hell, or wherever they came from. He was definitely leader of the pack.

He was an extraordinarily handsome man of about forty who looked as if he just stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. He approached my window and rapped on it with his knuckle. I powered the window down just enough to talk, but not enough for a dog to jump through.

“I’m Drake Whittemore, the property manager,” the man said, squeezing his hand through the narrow slot for me to shake. I reached over with my right hand but slipped and ended up putting the window up, crushing his hand in the process. I quickly pressed the window button down, releasing his hand from the jaws of death.

“Damn!” he yelled, setting the dogs off in another frenzy of barking and unbridled excitement.

“Oh, my God, are you all right, Drake? I am sooooo sorry. Please forgive me,” I added, getting out of the car and examining his hand, as if I knew what to do about a crushed hand.

“It’s not too bad,” he replied. “Come inside, Ian’s been expecting you.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I replied. “I know I can sell this house.”

“Sell it?” Drake replied, giving me one of those boy-you-have-no-idea-what’s-going-on looks. “Is that what Ian told you?” he said, shaking his head and chuckling.

I decided that this was one of those Linda Evangelista moments: just smile, look beautiful, and keep your mouth shut to keep from saying something stupid, a credo that supermodels should adhere to.

It was a perfect October day, very warm, but not hot. And topped by a cloudless sky so blue it could just make you cry. The doors to the house stood open to the summer breeze that had just about disappeared everywhere else in the United States, but hung on here like the last guest to leave a party. As soon as I entered the house, I was accosted by a giant penis. I looked to the right: another penis, this time hanging from a sculpture on the wall. To the left, more penises. On the hall table, more penises. And around the living room, more penises, in paintings, more sculptures, water pitchers—you name it. And the one thing they all had in common was that they were large. Very large and pendulous. I wanted to pull a giant condom over my head. Ian had changed his décor again.

I’m not an expert in male homosexuality, having missed my ex-husband’s desires even after he told me he was bi, but if you have to have penises all over your house in every form possible, you’re not getting any. The other sign that you’re sex-starved is that you’re overweight. If you’re not putting a cock in your mouth, you’re shoveling food in it instead.

The house had changed since I was last here, at a party with me as the official fag hag. But then, if you had money like Ian had, you could afford to change it to suit your whims. It still had overtones of Spanish here and there, but it had taken a turn toward the dark side. Ian now had it decorated in Early Spanish Inquisition with a touch of monastic modernism. It was plain, simple, and with furniture that looked like it had been hewn out of old railroad ties, and on closer inspection, proved that my guess was probably right. I sniffed discreetly for the scent of creosote. The place dripped in forced masculinity, which was often the case with big ol’ queens. It’s not all taffeta, darlings.

“Ian, Amanda is here,” Drake called up the stairway, reminding me how few homes had a second story in Palm Springs because of height restrictions. But this house had been built long before that. In fact, it had been lived in by many a silent film star—none of which I could prove because of a large fire in the town records building decades ago. I guess it didn’t matter now to the Gen-X kids who were taking over the town. “Theda Bara who?” they’d ask. “Charlie Farrell? Who the hell is that!” they’d answer, taking a moment from their iPhones to text someone interconnected to the human race only by the safe skin of electronic transmissions. No human contact necessary. (Charlie Farrell, for whom Farrell Road is named, was part creator of the famous—infamous—Palm Springs Racquet Club, the lodging, swimming, and tennis club in north Palm Springs that helped put this town on the map. It attracted the biggest and brightest stars in the world at the time to Palm Springs, from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn, from Joan Crawford to heiress Christina Onassis.)

A moment later, the biggest star in the world appeared: Ian. At the top of the stairs, he floated down in a cloud of not-so-subtly-perfumed hair, too long for the year 2012.

If you live in a cave and have never seen Ian on countless television programs burning the hair of annoying Hollywood celebrities, then let me describe him to you and let me tell you a little about his past.

Ian is the head of a ginormous hair-care products and salon empire. Some estimate that the entire net worth of his holdings tops $400 million. He wasn’t always this wealthy or this well-known, however. Rising from very humble (dirt-poor) roots in Glasgow, Scotland, he had a salon there for a while and then immigrated to the United States a bazillion years ago. Well, while you can take the boy out of Scotland, you can’t take the itchy wool out of the boy. To capitalize on his Scottish heritage, to this very day he wears a kilt, works on his legs in the gym religiously (but sadly, not his stomach or his diet), and for some unknown reason, also wears a sort of headband to hold back his Braveheart mane. He rounds out the whole chic-and-trendy oddball appearance with large Jackie O sunglasses. Ian is the opposite of the masculinity he tries to project. Jewelry-wise, he’s a cubic zirconium stone in a platinum setting.

“Darling,” Ian gushed and planted an air kiss on both sides of my face. “Let me look at you!” He began fake crying. “Oh, Amanda, are you still letting that gobshite Micky Hamilton do your hair?” he added, forever in battle with his nearest rival, a local he could squash with one wave of his hand.

“Ian, you keep forgetting that Micky killed himself after you trashed his hair-coloring abilities on national television,” I replied.

“And he couldn’t even do that right. If I were to jump off a cliff, I would make sure it was high enough.

“Ian, it was over two hundred feet high.”

“If you’re going to kill yourself, you have to be thinking at least four to five hundred feet high. What you don’t want to do is hit a bunch of rocks on the way down, bruising your face in case there are television cameras. You want to leap and make a huge splat and lie there on the ground, arms akimbo in a perfect swastika pattern for the photographers at the top of the cliff to capture. The aftermath is just as important as the act itself. Now, where were we? Would you like something to drink, Drake?” he asked into the air, but Drake had withdrawn from the room like an obsequious servant.

“No, thank you, Ian, it’s a little early.”

“It’s ten o’clock! Perfect time for a hairball.”

“A hairball?”

“That’s what I call a highball around here.”

“No thanks, Ian. So you want Alex and I to list your house?” I ventured, relishing the idea of listing one of the largest homes in Palm Springs.

Ian put an arm over my shoulder as he steered me toward his dining room. “Yes, but not right away.”

“Rent it? We can handle that.”

He stopped. “No, Amanda. As you know, a television producer wants to make a reality program here in my house.”

“And I suppose it’s a real-estate show?”

“Yes and no,” he said, smiling like a crocodile waiting for an unsuspecting stork.

“It’s going to be a reality show about finding an heir and boyfriend for me.”

“A boyfriend, Ian? But you’ve had plenty over the years!”

“That’s the problem, Amanda. Too many. I’m going to have my therapist, Aurora Cleft, as the judge on the program. We’re going to bring back a handful of my present and former boyfriends onto the show and they’re going to compete with each other, and Aurora is going to help me pick a suitable heir.”

“Heir?” I snorted with a chuckle. “What, are you dying?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

I was horrified at what I had just said. Of course, not as horrified as the time I mistakenly uploaded a picture of myself making love with my ex-husband, Alex, to my real-estate Web site. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but my Web site gets thousands of hits every month, so you can imagine my shock. And my continued shock when I found the very picture on several online sex galleries, including nymphouniverse.com.

“Oh, Ian, what’s going on?” I asked with real concern in my voice—the first time such concern was probably ever uttered in his house.

“I have pancreatic cancer. Inoperable. So I might as well go out with a bloody great bang, huh?”

“So where do I come in?”

He looked around to make sure no one was listening, then walked me into the dining room where two men plainly from Los Angeles were sitting—you could tell from the heavy black Elvis Costello eyeglass frames they both wore.

Ian finished, “That’s why I’ve invited these two gentlemen here—to discuss your role.” He approached the dining room table and introduced the two men. “Amanda Thorne, this is Jeremy Collins and Tony Marcello. They’re from the Q Channel.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” I uttered, extending my hand for them to shake as though it were a fragile lily. I threw in a curtsy.

“Perfect!” the man named Jeremy blurted out. “Ian, she’s just what the show needs! A comic persona . . . some comic relief! And you were right about her offbeat looks! The nose too! Great! She does look like someone punched Kathleen Turner in the face!” he said. Then sideways out of his mouth, “Something I’d like to do myself to that haughty bitch!”

Jeremy was a tired, but prevalent stereotype from Hollywood. He seemed to speak mostly with exclamation points at the end of everything he said—like everything he said was brilliant. For Jeremy, excitement equaled believability. Tony motioned for me to sit down.

Jeremy continued, “I assume Ian’s brought you up to date on the show! What we want to do with you is bring you in as a good friend. . . .”

“But I’m not Ian’s good friend,” I protested. “I guess that didn’t come out right. He invites me to parties, he’s a great client, but we don’t see each other that often.”

Jeremy laughed an ironic laugh. “Amanda, I know that. Ian’s so toxic, he doesn’t have any friends. You’re like a . . . a stunt friend!”

“I don’t have to do cartwheels while I’m on fire, do I?”

Jeremy mouthed to Ian: I love this woman! “No, what I meant is that you’re a stand-in . . . since no one really likes Ian. Plus, you’re a fag hag. . . . Gay viewers love fag hags.”

Ian dabbed his eye with an imaginary handkerchief. “Now, Jeremy, let’s not start with the testimonials right now. I’m not dead yet.”

“You can bet you’re not, Ian! You’re going to be big! This series is going to be right up there with American Idol!”

Since I could remember, I have seen countless films, television clips, and read hundreds of novels that had characters like Jeremy in them, and I always felt that the characters were over-the-top, but necessary foils for the protagonists. But here in the flesh was the actual thing. If you could peel back the facade, you would find, well, nothing.

“So what do you want me to do, guys?”

Jeremy produced a thick document from seemingly nowhere and slid it across the table like a loaded gun in a game of Russian roulette. “Here’s your contract, Amanda! Read it, sign it, and get it back to us! Your primary role is that you’re a good friend of Ian, and at some point, you get into your secondary role: to put Ian’s house on the market! But you can’t tell anyone else, including the others in the show, about putting the house up for sale! We’re going to use it as a bombshell on the show, you know, to add the element of surprise! We’ve got to keep the drama up! It’s Survivor crossed with Project Runway crossed with The Real Housewives of Orange County!” he said.

“Okay, Jeremy, I will go look over the contract and get back to you,” I said, picking up the 100-page document.

Ian ushered me out of the room while Jeremy called from the background, “You’re gonna be a star, Amanda! This opportunity is going to open doors for you everywhere. Doors you never dreamed existed.”

Doors that I might get my fingers slammed in, I thought.