Curtis LaJoy was interested in the new red Triumph 1800 sports car sitting above the Malibu beach in the parking area. The occupant of the sports car seemed more interested in him. Curtis's friend, roommate, and sometime bed partner, Aaron Friedman, was standing by the car talking to the good-looking early-thirtyish ginger-complexioned man at the wheel of the Triumph. They were looking down at the volleyball net on the beach, seemingly at Curtis. Curtis was interested in cars and was a pretty good mechanic. He worked at an L.A. filling station and garage to provide what living backup he could to his attempt to break into the movies.
They were on location for a beach romance movie, Hollywood's new trend in 1946 in the wake of the end of World War II and the movie emphasis then on war movies promoting the Allied cause. The movies were moving into a sillier light romance phase and the movie the Universal-International studio was making here was one of a string of romances with the handsome male stars, Tucker Stone and Ken Clark, vying for the attentions of Delores Knight. That Stone and Clark lived and bedded together was not something that the theatergoers would like to know in the mid-1940s, so the studio did everything it could not to let them know that.
Curtis could tell it, though, not only in the way the two actors related to each other on the set between takes but also because of how both of them had been ogling Curtis during breaks and whispering to each other. Were they into threesomes, he wondered.
At one point Stone was on the verge of gesturing Curtis to come up the beach for some sort of interaction, something that rarely happened between the principle actors and the background extras, but Stone had been pulled off by the makeup people. This was a beach movie. All of the men were just in swimming trunks and showing their physiques. Stone's and Clark's were OK for their ages, Clark being younger and beefier than Stone, but blond Curtis's, at twenty-one, was extraordinary. Curtis knew what a look of sexual interest was, and he was getting it from both Stone and Clark.
A threesome? Curtis had never done that before.
Curtis and Aaron had managed to get work as extras on this film, as background. They were two of four magnificently muscled and scantily covered beach bums playing an interminable games of beach volleyball between the real action of Stone and Clark wittingly struggling for Delores Knight's attention under a beach umbrella and the rolling surf. It was taking hours to film what would be a five-minute scene in the movie.
They were all on break and when Aaron came back down to where they would have to resume the volleyball game.
"Who were you talking to in that gorgeous Triumph?" Curtis asked his friend, Aaron, when Aaron reached the net.
"Oh, is that what that car is? Pretty nifty, isn't it?" He added, "That was Scott Alexander. I was checking to see if he had a hookup for me. I'm short of cash."
"So, he's your pimp?"
"Not exactly. He provides a hookup now and again. I'd like to get set up with his filling station?"
"His filling station?"
"Yeah. He owns a gas station with privileges on Hollywood Boulevard, and he pimps for the stars. He's here to pick Tucker Stone up after the filming shuts down here this afternoon."
"A gas station with privileges? What's that?" Curtis asked.
"It's a brothel for the movie stars and other high rollers. There are six small cabins behind the filling station. The gas jockeys work in two shifts of six guys offering extra service to women or men and top or bottom. The stars come in to fill their gas tanks and if they want extra service that's provided in the cabins behind. It's quite the rage at the moment and Scott Alexander has put it altogether. He'll arrange for rent-boys for the movie folks outside of his gas station."
"And you'd like to get a spot on his station crew?" Curtis asked.
"I'd like that, yes. I was interested if he had a one-stand trick for me, but his interest was you, not me?"
"Me?" Curtis asked, with surprise.
"Yeah. His interest is in doing a double when I told him you were an auto mechanic and worked in a filling station. He wants to meet you. He has a fetish for built service-type guys."
"And you told him how he could use me?"
"Something like that. You might think about what you want here in L.A. We're not getting far with the occasional pickup of extra work. If you went with Alexander's filling station, that would pretty much take up your time. But it would be steady income."
"For as long as I could keep it up," Curtis said.
"I've never known you to have trouble keeping it up--and you have a very nice one," Aaron said, with a laugh.
"So, should I go up and talk to him now?" Curtis asked.
But it was too late for that. The filming up the beach had broken off, and with Curtis and Aaron looked up at the parking lot, the "still hot, but for how much longer" star of the movie, Tucker Stone, was standing by the Triumph and he and Alexander were looking down to where Curtis and Aaron were standing and were commenting to each other. Curtis thought Stone might call him up to the car then, but Alexander said something to him and the car's engine came to life. Stone folded himself into the sports car and it glided away from the beach.
He apparently saw Curtis looking at him, though, because he flashed the young twenty-year-old Nordic blond a smile and waved a salute as he drove away.
* * * *
Curtis LaJoy was a young man still undecided. He came from a wealthy family but one in which he perpetually was a black sheep, mostly because he was quick to give in to what gave him pleasure without regard to social norms. He was a beautiful young man, tall, Nordic, smooth bodied, and exceptionally well built. He spent considerable time honing his body, and he had constantly been told through life that he had movie star looks and charisma. That had guided him to enter the Savannah College of Arts and Design in their dramatic arts program. If people told him he should be a movie star, he'd give that a try, although what he was most interested in at that point in life was cars--sports cars and their engines--partying, and getting it on with other guys. He was a well-hung power top. Bottoms sought him out because he topped with exuberance.