Gabriel--even Jay Jones insisted that Gabe call himself Gabriel now--didn't know why Jay insisted that he come to this concert. He wasn't a concert sort of person--or at least wasn't until Jay took on the crusade of refining him. Even then Jay didn't usually want them to be seen at the same concert. Gabriel was the actor's hidden boy toy, although not jealously so; Jay wasn't shy about sharing Gabe with other men who could advantage Jay. Gabriel particularly didn't like Latin music. But then, as the studio executive, Julio Martinez, came down the aisle, necessitating that Gabriel stand at his seat to let him pass in the row, and then sat down in the seat beside Gabriel and gave him a knowing little smile, Gabriel reminded himself that he did know why he was here. Jay must need something from Martinez, Gabriel thought.
"Here" was the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater on a warm and star-encrusted--both in the heavens and in the theater--August 18th, 1955, night. The venue was the third day of the Festival of the Americas, organized by the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein as musical director. It was Latin night, and the Los Angeles Orchestra was playing Latin music under the baton of Mexican conductor and composer, Carlos Chavez. It had been four months since Gabriel had flown away from Lubbock, Texas, not realizing he was being spirited away permanently by Jay Jones, four months during which he had lived in secret in a cottage at the back of Jones's Beverly Hills estate, coming and going through the rear alley. And it had been four months in which Jay Jones had trained him to serve Jay Jones--both underneath Jay Jones and with other men to the benefit of Jones's career.
Gabriel was in the section that could be called the "better" seats in the amphitheater. That was because of the man who had just entered and sat down beside him--Julio Martinez, the movie studio's connection with Mexico, who handled everything needed in the way of support south of the border. Martinez was in the "better" seating section because he was one of the sponsors of this particular concert. Jay Jones was here tonight, but he made sure he was never seen in public with Gabriel. He was in the "best" seating section, escorting for the evening the stage and movie star, Mary Martin, who had just completed a two-week run in
Skin of Our Teeth
at L.A.'s Blackstone Theater. Gabriel was here, in this seat, because of Martinez. That he was at the concert at all was because Martinez had told Jay Jones about a movie to be filmed in Mexico that Jones wanted to star in, and Martinez had told Jones what he wanted to ensure Jones got the part. One of the things he wanted was to fuck Jones's boy toy of the moment. That was Gabriel. Hollywood men like Martinez got a thrill out of knowing they were sharing a young man with a heartthrob box office actor like Jones.
Gabriel had been given to Martinez for the evening and night. Jay Jones had told him bluntly that he was Martinez's for the night to do whatever the man wanted to do with him--and Gabriel was to leave the man happy. Jay had come to the cottage behind his house, on the other side of the swimming pool and tennis courts, and had picked out what Gabriel was to wear--silky white jock strap and long-sleeved shirt, a tuxedo-cut ivory-white suit, and a red bow tie. Then Gabriel had been sent off to the Hollywood Bowl in a taxi and been told that Martinez would see that he was returned by noon the next day.
"Tell whoever he has drive you to approach through the alley and return by the back gate," Jones said. "Call me from the cottage when you're back. I'll want a full report."
Gabriel had retorted, "And photographs and semen samples?"
"Don't be smart," Jones had said. "You knew you would have to lay down for me and my friends in exchange for your board and keep and movie opportunities."
Gabriel knew that when Jay told him to call on the phone, he meant he wasn't to come to the main house. He only came to the main house late on a night that Jones wasn't entertaining and then the only room Gabriel saw was Jones's bedroom, which opened via a French door onto the back terrace. When Jones wanted to fuck him in the afternoon, he came to the cottage.
When the lights went down in the Hollywood Bowl, and the applause had died from Carlos Chavez's entrance and bow at the podium, and the music started, Martinez turned to Gabriel, acknowledging his presence for the first time since he sat down, put a hand on Gabriel's knee, and whispered in his ear, "You look smashing this evening, young man. We have a reception dinner to go to for Chavez afterward, during which you can mingle, and then I'll take you to bed for the night. I've looked forward to this."
None of this was a surprise to Gabriel. Jay Jones had made clear that he hadn't brought Gabriel to Los Angeles to keep him to himself. In the four months they'd been here, Gabriel had been given eye-candy extra roles in a couple of beach movies but Jones had made clear that, in exchange for being kept well, Gabriel would be what Jones called, with a laugh, his "Hollywood Ho," to be used as a party favor to further Jones's interests.
"We both knew you came to me as a prostitute," he'd said, and Gabriel couldn't gainsay that.
* * * *
The after-concert dinner party was more of a cocktails and assorted lumps of food standup mingle, in a ballroom of a Mexican-owned hotel near the movie studio lot in the southern quarter of Los Angeles. The party, which Julio Martinez was paying a big chunk of, and which meant he schmoozed and mingled in large gaggles of Spanish speakers far away from Gabriel, was to honor the conductor, Carlos Chavez, and assorted other Mexican personages in town. There was a smattering of movie folk from the studio, brought in by Martinez, and Gabriel knew some of these and had worked for a few who just knew him as an extra actor, used for young beefcake scenes and somehow hooked up with someone big at the studio who they weren't supposed to know about. A few of the men associated with movies who were at the party knew Gabriel biblically. It was a town bathed in sexuality, a large measure of which was homosexual, or bisexual at least, and hedonist. Narcissism ruled here. The attention getter of the evening was Delores del Rio in person and twittering all across the room of the death earlier that month of Carmen Miranda who otherwise surely would have been here.
Initially, Gabriel became trapped speaking with these people, as his Spanish was nearly nonexistent, but they invariably wanted to pump him to reveal how he had gotten invited to the party, and their guesses were coming too close, albeit falsely, to Martinez being his sugar daddy. There didn't seem to be any surprise that Martinez would be
some
young man's sugar daddy, so they seemed to have him pegged. Unfortunately, as they were quizzing Gabriel about relationships, they pretty much had him pegged as well. And speaking of pumping, more than one man followed him around with hopes of pumping him sexually and there were women tracing him with their eyes as well, dreaming of being pumped by him.
As he knew neither Martinez nor Jones would be thrilled for it to be known that he was here to hook up with Martinez, Gabriel found himself filtering into the clutches of people who were chattering in Spanish. They didn't seem to mind that he stood at the fringe of their groups and smiled and nodded his head occasionally. He was nice eye candy for the women and for more than a few of the men, Hollywood being largely a gay or bisexual, even if not acknowledged, town in the mid-1950s.
Since he couldn't talk and needed a crutch to make it seem like he was too busy with something else to chat, he spent a good deal of time picking cocktail glasses and cubes of food off passing plates. It was while he was doing this that he caught the first glimpse of someone who reminded him of Adrian Ames--the young man he'd fooled around with on the sports teams in Lafayette--the young man who had gone to Lubbock and tempted Gabriel to join him there but who hadn't been there when Gabriel had final found his way to Lubbock.
The super of the apartment building in Lubbock had said that Adrian had gone to Los Angeles to break into movies. He'd made it clear, with a smirk, though, that it had been male porn movies he was breaking into.
Gabriel turned from the group he had been huddled with and pretending he was part of and walked the room, taking close looks at the waiters, in black tuxes, with serving trays. He was still looking when he felt the tug on his arm.
"So, it
is
you." Gabriel recognized the voice and found himself trembling a bit as he turned and looked at Adrian. "I'd had indications you had come out to L.A. Did you hear I was out here and follow me?" The voice sounded hopeful. This wasn't the Adrian Gabriel remembered. That Adrian had been too cocky to let his voice reveal even a hint of hope like this. Nevertheless it, indeed, was Adrian Ames,
