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SAL
(chapter 3 of IN THE FLESH - Undressing for Success)


When in doubt, just say yes; the future's anybody's guess.

    One of the givens in coming to Hollywood is to rise to stardom. Or at least a good American try. That meant I'd need "head shots," proper head shots, the type the studios, agents, commercial agents, managers require. Who am I? What do I represent? What is my commercial appeal? I just knew I wanted to look in my teens, fetching, yet unavailable. After I had been banging around the scene for a few months, someone recommended me to someone who recommended me to a gentleman named Oscar, who I was assured would take my photos at cost simply because I was young/male/attractive.

    He lived in a supermarket-sized loft almost all the way downtown, so it took me half a day to get there (I didn't drive, and when Craig wasn't around I took the bus, which in LA can be slower than walking). Oscar was a burly Scottish redhead, in his mid-thirties, must've been six-two, was chubby in a sexy mountaineer sort of way, and, from what I could discern around the edges, extremely hairy, which always gave me a delectable, warm-all-over feeling. One of the more amicable cameraheads I would ever meet, he greeted me with verve and flattery; we did our shoot, there was nothing to it, and he ended up with a few rolls of nudes for his own purposes. I was excited to oblige, even disappointed at his professionalism.

    "Gavin," he said when he phoned me in a couple of days with the proofs, "I hope you won't mind, but I did take the liberty of showing your shots to a good buddy of mine, a movie producer and director - and, well, he'd like to discuss with you about a film he's putting together..." (But of course, isn't this just what we anticipate from Sin City?) "If it's okay, we can both drop by your apartment. His name's Sal." Sal was an elfin-sized talian-American, balding, bearded, roundish but cute. He was a movie director - his big feature to date was the B horror classic, [Frogs]. He was currently assistant-producing what was to become another inadvertant horror classic, Mae West's [Sextette], though he eventually got fed up and quit long before the film wrapped. He was one of the funniest men I have ever encountered, making it very difficult to carry on any kind of reasonable business discussion. He immediately put me at ease.

    It was not, however, the sequel to [Frogs] that Sal had in mind. He was producing/directing a porn film designed to capitalize on the film [The Front Runner], the coming-out novel by Patricia Nell Warren that was supposed to have been made into a movie and yet never has, to this day. His film was tentatively entitled [Track Meet] (possibly [Track] "Meat" - he hadn't decided) and demanded an exciting young new reasonably athletic type. He came over, then, to see, in fact, if I could talk, if I was interested, willing, and how I looked hard.

    I was intriqued by the prospect of doing porn. I had spent the previous summer in Seattle; "gender-fuck" was in. I marched all over the place wearing nothing but my Capezio dance skirt, getting myself arrested with lesbians for removing our shirts in public places. Marching for gay rights, I was a "radical faerie." I had been a hippie since I was fourteen, my brother had been the first drug bust in my hometown, I repeatedly got sent home from junior high for not wearing socks, for wearing the first bell-bottoms; I had gone away to art school and at least tokenly experimented with every drug made available to me. I didn't want to do the flick for the money. I wanted to make a porno movie simply because it was [radical]. This took no deliberation at all.

    Sal even ended up taking the opposite side. "It could ruin you for 'legitimate' films, people will recognize you all over the city. I plan to make your name a household word..."

    "Yes yes yes!" I effused. It's radical. It's conceptual. It's art: [Life as art]. Be art now. I had already had two volumes of sexual verse published by Catalyst in Canada; my name was known (at least in some minute cliques); I had buddied with the Ginsberg crowd in New York; at Cal Arts I was famous for wearing nothing but boxer shorts; I had uncut hair, long  fingernails, and submitted nude self-portraits for design projects. [Yes], porno, [yes!] It was the natural next step. I ripped my clothes off on the spot; I was already hard.

    The filming didn't start for over a month, but Sal and I became Siamese twins. I was fascinated by the whole process (I had majored in film for one quarter at Cal Arts, even made a film or two there, but this was a real film - or, almost a real film). We went to sporting stores to buy my attire, the rest of the cast's attire; we bought props, film supplies. Most fun was going to a porn-star-turned-porn-agent's house and hawking through a book of mugs to select the people that I would most like to "perform" with. I couldn't wait! The costar was already cast - I was assured that I would be pleased. I was, when I finally met him at the shoot. Though Mike was far from my type, he was a charming and attractive well-groomed Frisbee champion from somewhere near Santa Cruz - slim, defined, lightly freckled and green-eyed. He smelled like salt air and could've been anybody's brother. His dick was as smooth and hard as lacquered soapstone. The rest of the cast was my pick. I went for body hair, brawn, and that doleful basset-hound look that always melted my heart straight down into my stomach.

    Craig was even more ecstatic by all of this than I was; he went along with us everywhere, abetting us with his classic tastes and vigilant critiques of men, costumes, and scenarios. And he was assured an assistant's role in the filmmaking process, the choicest positions, holding the fill-light ("Excuse me, sir, could you spread your legs a little bit wider, wouldn't want to singe anything we might need later...") and "fluffer" (he who keeps the actor "aroused" between shots, which was already Craig's specialty). The actual filming took a little less than two weeks. I was unprepared for how excruciating a procedure it was. The never ending fear of not being able to get it up is, alas, never ending, especially since I was more than aware that I was not by industry standards graciously-endowed. In fact, we discovered that under pressure I have an unnerving ability to climax without even being hard. I believe that I never really did get it up completely - at least not in my scenes, though I did wonderfully in the substitute shots, when my own member replaced other members in the cast. When certain of the "talent" had difficulties with that essential cum shot, I moved in for the close up. Never mind the change in hair color - as Sal put it, "If they're looking at [that], then something is wrong!"

    Don was my favorite and I was breathlessly anticipating our time together. We had met on the set the evening before our scene on the ladder, when he would seduce the young track star who was helping him paint. We were, of course, strictly forbidden to leave together, lest any of the magic rub off prematurely.

    "What's up for tonight," I whispered. "Oh baby," he panted back, handing me a simple card for house-painting services with his name and number upon it. We rendezvoused at his house, Gavie quivering like a quail in the hunter's breast pocket. This was the biggest and the hairiest thing I'd ever touched - he had tits, real man tits, a thicket of black mustache, and a smile to rival John Aston as Gomez Addams. And I was the [star], and he
wanted me.

    "Hey there Stud," he urged me into his simple lair, "look at those lips!" We pawed, drooled, and chewed on each other like reunited puppies from the same litter. His clothing simply came apart in my hands as we dissolved into the filthy carpeting of his diningroom floor. This was sex at last, without drugs, disco music, or the cloak of anonymity; the lights were on full and I could discern and fondle every follicle of this man-beast.

    I fucked him, with very little ado, pounded my way onto his back and ground him into the floor with spit and pure chutzpah. He alternately purred and growled beneath me, his arms flayed out on the carpet. A cursory round of Pepsi and potato chips and he was on top of me, my legs framing his panting face and that devilish Gomez grin. We rallied all night, sumo style, and still had a marvelous scene the following day. Sal wasn't terribly pissed. Don and I went on seeing each other for, oh, a good week or two. One hideous scene of the movie took place in the back of the car as the coach drove the team to a competition. I wasn't part of the sex scene, just a shot of my shocked reaction from the front seat. Problem was, the chosen road wasn't deserted, and one of the chums in the back had a time getting it up and out. I eventually filled in for the spill, after three unrelenting hours of seven people trying to be patient and cool on a 95-degree not-deserted desert road.

    The funniest scene, believe it or not, was the rape scene. In it I am bound and gagged with white towels by the black hotel porter. Trouble was, the towels just wouldn't stay put, and the poor actor, "TC," was so nervous and afraid of possibly hurting me that he couldn't even begin to get aroused. When Sal wasn't looking I kept slipping him Valium fragments. It was all I could do to get a decent plunder! And after the filming came the editing, which Craig and I also sat in on, the convivial Sal invariably taking us both out to eat afterward, then on to bizarre Valley bars and bathhouses that we had never even heard of. It was a festive time, and all the admiration was encouraging to me. People did make fun of the way I ran when we did the running footage at UCLA. It was bad enough with all those real college jocks staring us down, but I had to listen to our own crew telling me I jogged like a duck. Then the release. The LA Times at that time still advertised porn. I remember one Sunday edition featuring three gigantic full-page mugs,
Barbra Streisand in [A Star is Born], Laurentis' [King Kong], and Gavin Geoffrey in [Track Meet].

    We premiered in a prime-time theater on La Cienega Boulevard. Sal designed a marquee that had two eight-foot blow-ups of my face and shoulders jutting out over the street on either side. (Craig and I got drunk one night toward the end of the run, dragged out a ladder at four in the morning and cut one down. It was my headboard for years.) Everyone in West Hollywood knew the face. I was chased through supermarkets and down streets in the middle of the night while out doing my shopping. Not that anybody was ever rude. They would simply walk fast behind me, or stand somewhere in my path and continually clear their throats. Bolder men would ask for autographs, or let me know how genuinely touched they had been by the film.

    One evening I was dining with a classy trick at a fairly schmaltzy Sunset Strip restaurant when the waitress asked, "Say, aren't you that guy on La Cienega in that movie?" "Uh-huh," I nodded with a mouthful of rice pilaf. "Oh." She caught herself, remembering that it was a fag sex film. She smiled nervously and left us; we had a different waiter for the rest of the meal.

    The film within weeks became the top grossing gay film ever. Because it had dialogue, believable characters, and a coming out story, it was a movie to people, not just a sex flick. I didn't get that and started pushing it all behind me. But now, years later, friends still "in the business" or connoisseur of this particular genre all assure me that Track Meet is one of the finest fuck films we've got. Someday I must see it.

    I didn't have much interest in making further films. Performing in porno is not the most comfortable of experiences, though working with Sal was by far the easiest that I would encounter in the biz. The joys of having to get it up and keep it up on demand in front of a dizzy and ogling crew, inclement lights, a tempestuous director, and the panting queens who have provided the location - well, pardon the pun, but it sucks. And of course, when you finally are on a roll, hot, hard and ready, your partner invariably has a vehement case of flaccidity, the runs, or suddenly remembers his religion at the last minute.

    Once, it was my turn to be chosen by the lead, Jack Wrangler. I was flattered by the offer, and turned on to Jack. Though I was less interested in his famous lance than his handful of fleshy bum. But as soon as he started doing his schtick, choking his chicken and contorting his face as if a rusty Volkswagen were shifting gears in his colon, it was all I could do not to guffaw. I was so desperate not to crack up laughing that Daddy's little soldier just wouldn't march at all. They paid me anyway, I was a star.

I did have one final pleasant film experience in those years, though. The producers had a brilliant idea: they held a small party of porn stars, and we were all asked to submit the names of the two men that we most wanted to have sex with. Three of us chose each other - Grant, Robbie and me - and we came back the next night to film. Twelve hours of sucking and fucking on a lighted carpet dais - I believe I came six or seven times: it was magic, easy to be hard, and hardly problematic at all. The film was dissolved in a bad batch of developing fluid, but Grant and I went on to enjoy many an evening together, me tucked naked into his grizzly carpenter's arms, eating my cup of yogurt while he sat chewing his plate of raw hamburger meat and onions. The wan face of a sea-wearied sailor, elastic white skin stretched over the most invincible wooden form. I didn't fuck this one, he fucked me; this was a true carnivore! I was crushed when he moved back to San Francisco. But I was busy, thanks to [Track Meet]. I was a star, relishing my fifteen minutes. The offers were coming in daily.

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