Maybe the Moon

their delight over finally having kicked some foreign butt. The shame of Vietnam is behind them at last, magically erased by that nifty little Super Bowl of a war they all just watched on television. Never mind that we flattened a country, polluted an ocean, and incinerated two hundred thousand people—the Bob Stoates are once again proud to be Americans.
    When I reached the front door, I turned to see Mrs. Bob Stoate watching me in murderous silence, her darkest suspicions confirmed. I gave her a cheery wave and slammed the door. By now, no doubt, she’s called her husband at his place of business—a Toyota dealership, if I remember correctly—to inform him of my traitorous behavior. By tonight the whole family will know the score, which is fine with me, since their open hostility is preferable to the sugary Christian condescension they’ve heaped on me for years.
    If I had any sense at all, I’d sell this dump and move toHollywood or Santa Monica, where some of the neighbors might still think of Tony Orlando as a bad joke. I couldn’t afford to buy a house, but I could rent something nice and still have a little mad money in the bank. I’ve always envisioned myself in a twenties hacienda with tiles on the roof and a fountain splashing in the courtyard. It wouldn’t work for Renee, of course, since The Fabric Barn would be too much of a commute for her, and she’d probably be intimidated by the scary prospect of moving to that side of Mulholland Drive.
    Not that we’re a set that can’t be broken. One of these days, I promise you, Renee will meet some slow-footed mesomorph who reminds her of Ham and be history in no time. And why not? She owes me nothing and vice versa. It’s comforting, really, to know that she and I can live together and be this close and still maintain the sanctity of our personal agendas. Since she’s out for True Love and I’m out for Stardom, we almost never stumble over each other on the Road to Success.
    In case you’re wondering, the beer-making Scientologist is no more. Renee ran afoul of him on the second date when she discovered a portrait of L. Ron Hubbard over his dresser and found out what a Scientologist is. Until then, she said, she’d thought it was “some sort of complicated scientist,” which explains why she sounded so impressed earlier. Turns out the guy was only recruiting, since he spent the whole night telling Renee how L. Ron had made a new woman out of Kirstie Alley. Renee was pretty rattled by it, and seems to have sworn off men for a while. I say this because she’s sleeping with her Mr. Woods doll again, a telltale sign if ever there was one.

    I called Leonard the morning after my last entry and asked him if he’d had any nibbles from the radio people.
    “Not really, doll.”
    “Where did you call?”
    He waited a tad too long before saying: “Around.”
    He hadn’t called shit, of course, having totally forgotten about me since my last call, but I decided not to force the issue. As neglectful as Leonard can be, he’s a name agent, with fingers in lots of important pies. I signed on with him a decade ago, when he was still in his twenties and hanging out on the lot with Mr. Woods . He was representing Callum Duff, the cute ten-year-old who played the elf’s human friend. We just started gabbing outside the honey wagon one day. I was half in rubber at the time, sweat pouring down my face, hardly at my cutest, and the next thing I knew I was part of Leonard’s stable.
    In the beginning, I think he was swept along by the novelty of knowing me. He’d call me once or twice a month to collect my latest anecdotes and to gossip about his tight little circle of friends, which, if you believed him, consisted exclusively of a handful of other gay men, Dolly Parton, and Cher. The jobs didn’t exactly roll in, but I worked steadily, mostly in horror films, mugging my little heart out in this refrigerator or that.
    Once, a year or so after we’d met, Leonard invited me to sing at a party he and his lover were throwing at their fancy new house in the Hollywood Hills. On the engraved invitation, the event was billed as An Evening with Mr. Woods . I stood on a red-lacquered baby grand in a postmodern atrium full of white plaster sculpture and did my funkiest rendition of “Stand by Your Man.” The guys loved it, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly, though I’d come there largely in the hope of meeting Dolly and/or Cher. Leonard, the little slimeball, had