Today's Blind Items - Truth or Dare: A Dancing Boy Blind Item

This story takes place later in high school - after the movie, after (I hoped) the worst of the abuse, after I was released from my contract with the Agency (or rather "released:" you're not out of danger, just no longer getting work from them) - when I was dating the daughter of this one studio exec (the one honored at a recent but not this or last year's Oscars memoriam).

As it happens, she was also dating the youngest son of the legendary franchise creator (by now I was living in Less Than Zero world - I always was, but just not... knowingly). He was still alive at the time, but would be dead before too long. (You'll note a similar appearance between the Canadian actor referenced in this story and an American one recently referenced - the latter's character was named after the creator in the series then currently airing.)

The setting? It was a Friday night, or maybe it was a Saturday. It was, in any event...a party (at the son's house). (I had come with not just my/his girlfriend but another girl from our school, who I know I've mentioned in the past. She was on a series at the time - the one with the girl whose father appears in voice only.)

Practically the first thing I see is this one female actor - a teen, obviously, more known then for being a good girl (because of all the family time stuff), but soon to be known for being a bad girl (because of her role on this one series) - extremely wasted and randomly bearing her top half to boys in attendance, including me. She soon disappeared into one of the rooms with the scion of an extremely large American fortune, who himself had recently performed with few clothes on in this one movie (or at least that was most of the young cast, anyhow).

Also present - on the sofa, I mean, and making out with...another boy - was the girl's former screen kid brother.  The other boy was someone you would all know, but I'm not going to identify him because I don't think he ever came out as bisexual.

There were other kids from my school there, and some of the others - rich brats, mostly, from the two that would soon become one, the more hippie one in Santa Monica, and literal Less Than Zero High - but I didn't know most of the people.

But it was a reunion of sorts for the probably two biggest young actors of the previous decade - one of whom I had known since grade school, and had dated my sister in jr high (he was in the kitchen making salad for some reason); the other I would soon get to know (he's the one from the movie) - who you'll recognize in part for a basic physical difference: this one color. (I would find out later that my mentor - this one Hollywood conservative, who had introduced us when I was 7 - had asked the first one to look out for me that night, and while he was completely sober was also completely oblivious to the events that follow, because he was busy...watching the game.)

This person (the mentor, I mean) had recently helped me get a role in a pilot for this afternoon series - the kind the one network didn't at the time have. My co-star and I - I'll get to him in a second (this is the Canadian) - were playing young actors recruited into this secret global elite: teen superheroes, basically. (It was the whole alienation at the top thing - superherodom, like Hollywood, is a lonely place.) It was ultimately passed on by the very famous exec for being "unrealistic" but you'll see some footage from it in the forthcoming one hour episode. 

I will tell you who this other actor is, but I first should confess that I was already aware of him because of this one movie - made for tv in 1987, a joint production between the one cable network and the CBC. In it he plays this kid who has gotten in with the wrong crowd, and is framed for a crime, ending up in juvie. I sat and watched the whole thing before school, clutching my backpack in my lap in rapt attention. I thought: wow, this is really good and he's really good too. Also: he's pretty cute.

So, who is he? (Oops. I think I just said so, basically.)

I'm sure I had seemed stand-offish at rehearsals - I was, you know...interested - but with a few cocktails and a few lines of coke in me (the doctor would find out about this from my mentor and was not...happy) that was less of a problem. So we sat down in this one room (a lounge or study or something) and we kind of hit it off: that his family was from eastern Europe, and all the stuff they'd been through, how he got into acting (the parents), and all that. (I could also tell though that he didn't like that I was drinking and using.)

But who should show up? Gatecrashers of a certain kind - a couple of kids from...the Agency.

They barge in through the French doors - one of them has a camcorder - and one says: long time no see dancing boy. The other whispers in my ear: we know you like him.

They tell me I owe them a game of truth or dare - this would've been from Junior High times, when I chickened out of playing that with these people at one of the Agency parties - and the one whispers in my ear again: we'll tell him if you don't play.

So...I agree to play.

Truth or dare, which is it? the one says. I by this point know full well what the truth would be - that I'd have to admit my interest in this other boy - and despite the booze and coke it still seemed sufficiently mortifying that I blurted out...dare.

This is when the one with the camcorder starts filming me, and says: do the dance you did on set - that's the dare. 

Come on you guys, I said - that isn't nice. You know what happened.

Your choice, one of them said.

I'm sure I was shaking by now, but I undressed to my underwear and started to dance, making eye contact with this other boy just long enough to see the look of confusion and concern in his eyes. 

But it wasn't like the first time, because this time I was...rescued. 

My female actor friend and her former co-star - this is the second of the two kid superstars, and the one I didn't know then - storm into the room, and seize the camera, removing the tape. The superstar, I'm told, hurled the camera into the pool. And in comes the host and our girlfriend, who is looking at me and shaking her head. "Get the f*ck out of here," he says to the two. Mercifully, they do.

This story has a happy ending - at least for then.

A little while later the other boy and I picked up our conversation, and I told him what had happened to me, and of course he was wondering why I was willing to do...that...again. And I told him why I was so afraid to tell the truth. And he said he had feelings for me too. We shared our first consensual same sex kiss, which funnily enough was actually caught on film, or rather tape - the home's security cameras. 

 We still have both tapes. Some of all that may be included in the forthcoming pilot.