McCallen Bio # 1;The Porn Star

From the Matthew McCallen Memoirs

1.

The Porn Star

   
    June 21st 1989;
 
    I love this town.  I come from San Francisco where loving Los Angeles is a capitol crime.  When I told my friends I was moving to Hollywood they snorted, making sarcastic and deriding remarks, being mean about. They said; I'm so sorry that's happening to you darling, do you really want to move to LA LA Land?  and  They'll chew you up and spit you out down there and You'll be back, everyone tries to go there and they all come back, I give you six months - that's what they all said but I wasn't so sure about that.  Only John Marcot thought it was a good idea.  He told me Los Angeles was a glamour city and he was sure I'd love it.  There are only a few glamours cities in the world and as pretty as it is here San Francisco is not one of them.  He told me this!.  He told me New York was glamours, Paris was too, Rome was, Tokyo was and LA was, despite what bitter San Franciscans say.
    The glamour hit me on the 405 creeping over Sepuveda pass; late afternoon sun was a blood orange behind a coastal fog bank and with the smog the sky glowed in travel poster shades of that great west coast dream and the palm trees silhouetted against it with fragrance of sagebrush, ocean and car exhaust.  Distant mountain home windows many miles away were reflecting the summer western sun, real futuristic!.  This is the shit!  It is so cool to live here.  Four million living souls residing on hills and flat lands, the worlds most expensive neighborhoods and the poorest all spread out, ribboned with freeways, earth tones, green and white with trashy neon lights.  Glamour is hamburger stands, burrito joints and doughnut shops, offices and used car lots intermingled with Rodeo Drive and Bel-Air It's the best.
   Around Santa Monica Boulevard an old song came on the radio and made me think of my good friend's description as the whole Los Angeles basin glowed in sun washed glamour. There needs to be some funk to make glamour.    
  I moved to LA to be an actor.  It's a hard row to hoe but I keep an eye on the prize.  I was up late last night at the Beverly watching a Robert Mitchum double feature.  Then at five thirty AM Mary calls and says the guy who got the part in that TV show was in a car accident and for me to be in Simi Valley by ten.  Now I have the part.  It was a long hot day on location but the food was great!
   I had a late dinner with Manny at the Blade Runner Cafe.  It's not really called 'The Blade Runner Cafe'.  I have no idea what the place is really called.  Everybody calls it that and I don't think they know the real name either.  It's up on Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz and reminds everybody of the opening scene in the movie Blade Runner where Harrison Ford is ordering Sushi.  It serves seven different kinds of maki, hand rolls too, rice and miso soup and Tea.  If you want beer with your sushi... or even Saki....you got to go to the liquor store on Franklin and bring it with you.  You pay an extra two bucks for a byob.
   I thought it was a clever idea meeting Manny at the Blade Runner Cafe because I was not in the mood for a crowd and The Blade Runner Cafe does not have AC and it was a hot sultry night.  Plus there is no patio at the Blade Runner Cafe either.  Just a big cavernous storefront with a greasy window looking out on Vermont Ave, dull lights with sticky benches and tables and the air of raw fish and nori permeating.  I thought it would be empty but there was actually a small crowd having supper there.
   A couple of doors down the street from the Blade Runner Cafe is a bookstore where I saw Manny in there rummaging through stacks piled on the floor.  He spotted me outside, I stuck my head in the door and he told me to get us a table.  Manny and I are in the same acting class.   He lived in San Francisco before he moved here and we recognized each other from the bars in South of Market, another refugee from the AIDS plagued dying scene up north.  He originally comes from Pittsburgh though and he believes in all that nonsense about the theater and how training for the theater makes you a great actor.  I like Shakespeare and Chekhov but that doesn't get you a Screen Actor Guild card in Hollywood.  I was called at the last minute this morning because they needed a rough looking shirtless white boy in a biker scene out in the desert after a nuclear bomb.  Kind of a 'Mad Max' rip off. I only had three lines which is all that is required without a SAG card but that's the look I'm selling, shirtless white boy on a motorcycle.  A diamond in the rough and all the Chekhov and Arthur Miller doesn't get you noticed in Hollywood.  Shirtless, rough looking white boy who knows how to act, that's marketable.  I keep my eye on the prize. But I take a scene study class so the right people see I'm serious about 'the theater'.  And it will just be a matter of time before I get a four word line and my SAG card too.
   I bought two large Asahi's and a couple of Sambuca airplane bottles for later at the liquor store on the corner and took a table at the Blade Runner by a fan blowing hot fishy air in the dining room.  Manny showed up with an old book he bought but I didn't ask to see what it was, He's a bookish guy all dressed in dark gray slacks and an expensive linen button down cotton shirt, pastel blue, always elegant.  Very different from the halls of The Slot where we met some years ago.  He was glad to see me and in a bright mood.
   I hope that beer is cold, what a day!  Nice outfit, Banana Republic?
   Thrift store. I told him
   See?  You make salvation army look like Saks fifth avenue.  I just don't have it.  He said.
   What do you mean?  You're gorgeous sweetie!  I told him and he is.
   
   We ordered hand rolls, Manny ordered a Yellowtail spicy and I ordered spicy tuna with watercress and rice.  The beer was ice cold and tasted good after a hot dry smoggy day sitting around in Simi Valley waiting for my scene.  We ate in silence for a little while until Manny started up;
   How do you feel about porno?
   What?  I was spotted at Circus of Books or something?  I said.
   No!  I mean making porn.  Doing porn.
   Big mistake!
   Pays good and you know I got the equipment.
   Manny you get good pay with the job you got.
   I'm getting sick of it Matt.  I met Brick Collins the other night.
   Who?
   Brick Collins!  You know 'Ball Busters'  'It's in The Jeans'?  He's a porn star!
   Where did you meet him?
   Met him at the Bunkhouse.
   Porn stars at the Bunk House!  I muttered
   He's a nice guy. Really hot, really muscled!
   If it's who I think it is he's about five foot three.  Muscle Munchkin more likely.  I take it you didn't have to pay for his service?  
   I don't know why I asked that.  Obviously he was out on his own if he was at the Bunkhouse and I doubt he needs the money to have to resort to Prostitution, the porn star Brick Collins that is.
   Hell no!  I don't have to pay to have sex.  We went to his place and partied.
   I ordered him to spare me the sordid details.
   But he said I'd be good in movies cause of my all American look. He said I looked ivy league.  You should have seen his place Matt.  Really beautiful, up in the hills, mirrors on the ceiling.  
   Wait, wait. I interrupted Your ivy league look?  
   He can get me in the door Matt!  I'm sick of living on the edge.  I go to these calls and I get nowhere.  Every asshole in town has the 'ivy league look'.  
   I told him that it was a bad idea.  I told him that it was a dangerous move.
   They test everybody every month and they have to wear condoms, it's actually safer than being drunk at the Bunkhouse.
   That's not the danger I'm talking about old darling but you might consider that too.  After all there he was and the there was you at the Bunkhouse, a little drunk, right?  But no.  Word gets around you're doing any kind of pornography let alone gay pornography and you can kiss your acting career goodbye.  You'll never do lunch in this town again, straight up!
   I don't give a fuck about lunch.  I want to make some money.  
   Manny told me this wolfing down his yellow tail hand roll and swigging his Asahi beer.  He was a brother from the city up north and I felt a camaraderie, he was  'a transistor sister' from South of Market.  He really did look ivy league though and dressed in leather the dichotomy could be a turn on.  And he was really handsome at the bars up north where he used to dress in leather but this wasn't Folsom Street, this was Hollywood and that kind of extra curricular activity was OK as long as it does not come anywhere near earshot of the wrong kind of ear somewhere around Studio City or Burbank.  And the AIDS epidemic was not helping. So I told him;
   My darling, darling, darling Manny; if you want to make some fast money then do a little escort work but don't get blackballed or risk early retirement hustling drinks and selling what's left of your youth to the junk man in ten years time.  You'll screw your life up because you thought making fuck films would bring you fame....  you have a great job making drinks for execs and asshole lawyers downtown and from what you always tell me you make out pretty good.  You're a decent actor too.  I might not seem like I'm paying attention to your scenes but I thought you're getting someplace with Mamet.  You're totally starting to get that lowlife persona in your character portrayals and that's no easy accomplishment with your prissy upbringing it's hard... 
   ....My prissy upbringing? You bitch!  And I guess you're the next James Dean Huh?  
   I laughed and then I told him I didn't speculate about what or who I'd turn out to be.  I just keep my eye on the prize.  I'm superstitious too, James Dean died a hot looking stud but it was an early, sudden, and violent checkout after only three films.  As Morrison said 'The future's uncertain and the end is always near.'  and I just show up, I'll show up for any audition.  Any audition except porno that is.  I won't degrade myself to such a level.
   I'd do better as a leather daddy in a film and make some bucks whipping twinks asses.  I'm serious Matt!  Buck Collins says I'd get a lot of work, he gave me his number and said for me to call him.  I could pull this off.
  Well if you feel you must.  I hope you know what you're doing.  I thought you were going to save the American theater.  Instead you're going to save the gay porno industry with AIDS  all over the place.  Polish off your beer and lets go next store.  
   I had those couple of airplane bottles of Sambuca Romano in my pocket so we went to the Onyx for coffee and ordered americana's so we could sneak some Sambuca in it for dessert.  They were playing  music in there I thought was exceptional so I asked the coffee bartender what it was.  He told me it was some band from Seattle.  Then I asked Manny a question;
   Everybody's going to Seattle I mention when I got back to our table, pouring Sambuca in my strong black coffee; You really going to try porno?  
   I'm giving it sincere consideration.
   Are you going to fuck that muscle midget for a job?
   He's not a midget.     
   He's five foot three and I seen him all over the place.  
   You don't see him...
   Yes I do my darling, I saw him the other night at Okie Dog hanging with the tweekers.
   Fuck you, you did not!  
   Did too. Well it looked like him....Really? You're going to do porn?  Once you do that, that's it, your out!  Why don't you try modeling?  You're tall, you're good looking with that all American look.
   I'm half Mexican.  
   I knew this.  He was adopted by white American parents but he was half Mexican.  A bit of a touchy subject but I think that is what was so extraordinary about him with his drop dead handsome looks, thick black hair he spent good money to keep groomed and a very conservative aura.  He'd give Kevin Bacon a run for his money.  Now he wants to ruin it all by dressing in leather and making porn.  Disgusting!  I tried to talk him out of it.
   It's a trap Manny! Listen up!  About six months ago I'm having a beer at one of those places up in Malibu along the PCH.  And I see William Fredkin sitting there having a cocktail.
   Fuck that!
   Seriously!  William Fredkin!  I  seen him by himself having a cocktail. I usually don't go up to celebrities but hey!  It's William Fredkin having a cocktail by himself.  So I get some courage and I go up to him.  I says; Look man, I want to make it in this biz, I'm not much good for anything else. If I don't make it I'll wind up being a bum.   I'm a huge admirer of your work.  The French Connection is one of the greatest flix ever made.  And he just sits there and listens, nursing a cocktail.  I'm thinking....fuck!  I should of just minded my own business, he's gonna dis me.  So I says....I'm sorry sir, it's just that I have nothing to lose and I'm up against incredible odds and I'm not good for anything else.  He just sits there holding his drink. "Three things!"  He finally says to me.  "First; endurance.  An overnight sensation takes ten years.  Second; Don't take anything anyone says or does to you personally.  Third; When you get a call back audition and they tell you to do it the way you did it last time...don't believe them."
   You liar!  You would have told me this a long time ago.
   I'm not lying Sweetie.  I'm just superstitious, something like this is divine intervention. I don't go around blabbing about divine intervention.  
   You blab about everything else!  So what happened after that?  
   Bitch! I'm trying to give you advice.  How many times do you go into a bar and have a half drunk ace movie director gives you pointers.
   You think he gave the same advice to William Defoe?  Manny glibly asked.
   How the fuck should I know?
   So maybe Buck Collins was divine intervention.  Maybe god wants me to be a porn star, he was in a bar too. 
   Oh christ almighty! I moaned.

   It was ten when I got home.  I called my message service and Mary lined me up for Thursday and Friday for tryouts and auditions  I have to be back in Simi Valley in the morning too  That's a good sign.  Mary puts me out there.  It's good to have good an agent.  I'll probably not get any parts from all this but she puts me out there anyway because everybody see's my face.  See my face and remember.  And yes, I am packaged like a tube of toothpaste or a box of cereal. I don't care. But I own my own product.
   I hope Manny changes his mind.  He'd probably be great in porn but porn can chew you all up if you're not careful. And there is always that stigma.  He swims and even surfs, has the body, has the hardware and that upper snuff arrogance that old queens covet.  But unless he's smart.  Smart enough to control it and not have it consume his very soul.... he might pull it off.   It's a Faustian bargain!  He's got real breeding. He has a noble and honest soul too and not that hard of an exterior like me.  I would never do it, I've been down there and I know what it's like to get chewed up and spit out.
  It's hot and I don't use AC so I have my window open.  I can hear somebodies sound system in a car over on La Brea.  The traffic lulls me to sleep.  I love this town.

J.W.G.

07/05/2020