I had caught the last flight of the day from Miami to Key West. The plane was a small, two-jet prop thirty-four-seater island hopper with cramped headroom and narrow seats. The airport security guy, now all smiles and service, the embarrassment of having had to detain a New York detective needing to be smoothed over, drove me straight out to the plane, so I was the first one on and had my pick of seats. I took a window seat just forward of the wing, as I'd never flown into to Key West before and wanted to get the layout of the island from the air. It was late afternoon, but there were just a few clouds scuttling across the sky at a higher altitude than we were flying.
As I was settling in, the rest of the passengers bustled onto the plane and scrambled for seats Chinese fire drill style, and I wound up seatmating with the evident "giver" of one of the male couples traveling down to Key West for the freedom of showing their affection in public, forcing the apparently "taker" of the two to settle in the seat across the aisle from us.
My seatmate was a well-scrubbed and well-turned-out outgoing college jock named Steve who assessed me pretty quickly and came on all friendly and interested from the time we were taxiing out for takeoff. He had his hand on my thigh and was giving me "that" look and asking where I was staying in Key West. He was quite a hunk, and I could tell he was packing a good hard, but as I was turned to him, I could also see that the guy he was with, who was more the nervous filly type, was having a fit of jealously across the aisle from us. I didn't want to cause any trouble between them, especially at the start of their vacation together, although I wouldn't have minded a tumble with a robust college football player. So I told him I was a police detective going down to the keys on assignment, and when he instinctively recoiled from me at this news, I turned to the window and became engrossed in following the U.S. 1 intercoastal highway down the spine of the keys.
The thin ribbon of roadway against the azure blue of the Gulf Stream waters was mesmerizing, and I started to drift off. It was something Steve had just said to me, combined with where I was headed, that determined where my mind wandered. Upon first seeing me, he asked me if I was in the movies—but then got a confused look. He started to say, "You remind me of the actor—," and then it occurred to him in midsentence that I couldn't be that movie actor, because I was far too young. It was a litany I heard often, because "that movie actor" was my father—and my mother was a leading lady of the past as well. They were OK for parents considering the demands of their work and the narcissistic tendencies of all actors, but they were heavy baggage for me. I rarely made the connection for people, however, as I had purposely moved as far away from that sheltering life as I could. I'd figured being a New York cop was about as far away from being a vested member of the Hollywood elite as I could get.
I used my legal name, which few would connect to the name the studio had anointed my father with. I couldn't do much about the physical resemblance between my father and me, though—and I didn't regret that it made me familiar and attractive to people I wanted to be attracted to. I wasn't any less narcissistic than my parents were—I just liked having men make love to me more than having a camera do it.
Steve's connection into my past merged with memories of what was bringing me to the keys to begin with. It wasn't business. An old family friend had invited me down—from out of the blue. I hadn't seen the movie producer Theo Kline in years. He was from my past—from my upbringing in Hollywood, when my parents were at the height of their box office draw and Theo was the go-to producer of the sophisticated romantic comedies my parents specialized in. What I mainly remembered Theo for, though, was, first, that he paid attention to me that my parents didn't, and, second—undoubtedly related to the first—that he was the one who had introduced me to male-on-male sex. He had been in my family's life from my earliest memory, and he had always been extra-special attentive to me. My parents had sheltered me as much as possible from the Hollywood life. But they had let Theo through the barriers of privacy they had set up, and they often were just too busy for me. Theo had waited patiently to take advantage of that. And Theo had gotten exactly what he wanted.
I can't help but believe he had planned it all and sketched it out like a movie script. It was the summer between high school and when my parents sent me back to the East Coast for college. My mother was off in Europe filming and my dad was preparing for a movie set in the high timber. Theo Kline was producing the movie, and he had suggested that my father and the movie's young heartthrob supporting actor go up with him to his mountain cabin in the mountains to the east of Los Angeles to toughen their bodies up for the shirtless movie shots and to take instruction in lumberjacking so they would look half way convincing to the male moviegoers while the female ones (and some male ones too) were admiring their washboard stomachs. Lumberjacking was the center of the film they were doing, a drama in which the young hunk supporting actor was toughened up in life and the ways of honor by the solid and wise leading man, played by my father.
Gordon Fields. That had been the name of the young actor who was sending all of the teenage girl movie goers atwitter in those days—and most of their mothers as well. My father could also still melt hearts, so the box office returns of this movie were assured, even though the content itself was forgettable. These were the fairly early days of men baring their chests in movies, not to speak of their butts as well, and much of what was happening that summer was in building the chests of these two men through their instruction in working in the high timber, so that the brief flashes of hard-muscle beefcake would boost ticket sales.
Theo had hired me to be his assistant that summer. He was trying to convince my parents to let me start appearing in movies as well—and in those days I was undecided enough about what I wanted to do that I was willing to give it a try. I, in fact, had a background nonspeaking part in this film, and I was embarrassed in the squad room years later when someone took a still from the film of me, shirtless and all asweat with an ax in my hand, and posted on my work locker.
I also had a crush on Theo. He had been especially nice to me through my teen years. And I wasn't completely stupid. I had some idea—well, as I got educated in the ways of the world, more than "some" idea—what Theo was interested in. But I couldn't think of any reason why I might not be interested in it too. I also wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to bring some better definition to my own muscles. And that summer did wonders for me in that department.
