A Room with a View (of the Brooklyn Navy Yard) - 3. iii. Making History at a book launch

.

iii.

Making History

at a book launch

Much hard work having gone into building up Patrick’s new ‘authentic’ self, an appreciative Kingston approved favorably of the outward change in the young man’s appearance.

Although far too late, gentles all, to include any author pictures with the press announcement package, Random, Reed and Sales had scheduled a HUGE – their word – book launch.

So, three weeks after Patrick Forsa’s swagger tutorials began, event day arrives to find an auditorium packed with those most likely to buy and rave about the fledgling writer’s adult-only efforts.

Kingston and Gerhard have pulled out all the stops and arranged for “just the right kind” of hardliners headliners to open the premiere party.

Paula Deen’s come out of forced retirement to do canapés – deep-fried butter pats on non-Vegan pork rind cracklins. M&M’s slated to rap out his oldies-but-goodies about murdering every Gay man in sight, replete with his sniggering, meaningless disclaimer: “Just playin’, ya’ll.”

Norm MacDonald had been scheduled to do his stand-up routine where he calls Chris Kattan a f*gg*t again – his classic laugh-getter – but he did the world a favor instead and croaked.

The powers that be at Random, Reed and Sales scrambled to see if Chevy Chase wouldn’t stop by and do the same to Terry Sweeney – just like the old days – but he bailed last minute. Seems he’d been advised by Matt Damon that the quote-un-quote “F-slur” was so 2020, and the Ill-Will Hunting actor had just himself stopped using it.

So now, as the drone of hate-rap filters back to them, Ted Rector watches Patrick soundlessly wringing his hands. He’d spent enough time with the young Brazilian American to know the kid’s silences were uncharacteristic. Ted can also suspect he knows part of it relates to tensions being high, what with the “There’s a lot of money at stake!” men in the greenroom with them, waiting to go on.

Unknowingly to Ted, his own brooding-hen instructions to Forsa have not made things easier today: “Remember to hold your head erect, like this”; “Nod with a tongue-click to show your disinterest”; “Smirk like this, not like you want to smirk, but like you can’t be bothered feeling one way or the other about anything”; “And no hand to your nose – you don’t wear glasses anymore!”

None of this had relaxed the novelist, and now Ted feels it. Angry, he snaps at the suits, “Why’d you schedule all these homophobic racists to do ‘the entertainment’?”

Marshall quickly coughs up, “Paula Deen just hates the Blacks, not the Browns—”

The lawyer clears his throat. “Allow me.”

Marshall slinks off moodily. He’s still sore he lost the battle to rename Forsa’s book. For, in the end, Patrick got to keep his self-chosen title, although Kingston would still switch it in a heartbeat to his best alternative: “All About Steve.”

Bray J. Gerhard goes over and peers down on Ted and Patrick sitting in lounge chairs side by side.

He addresses them as if infants. “Publicity, my fine— Well, lesson one in the publishing world: accentuate the negative. You want to launch a book on old fashioned gardening, get the Social ragers riled up by featuring pro-Big-Agra people, the weed-poison people, the build-more-golf-courses elites – right there, at the very first reading. Conflict sells, man; conflict outsells harmony ten to one in this country nowadays. Ten to one!”

Patrick lets slip a soft but exquisitely well-heard, “Yeah, the Gops have taught us that.”

Ted laughs, delighted. He slaps the young author’s back. “Good one, buddy!”

When Patrick does not respond favorably, and the necktie men only look pissed, Ted tells them, “Hey, guys, our young Salacious Sylvester here is about to do something scary as shit. So why don’t you two give us a min, okay?”

Suddenly, Bray and Marshall – glancing at their ‘investment’ sitting there mangling his digits – get it. Chatting about business, the pair move off to loiter by the greenroom’s refreshment table. They continue to talk as Ted places a reassuring arm across Patrick’s Armani-clad shoulders.

Finally, the author holds the other man’s gaze.

Gentle as a psych nurse, the actor inquires, “What’s going on in there, Patricio? You all right?”

“I can’t”—Patrick croaks, starting again—“I cant. I just can’t.”

“Can’t what, Puma?”

Forsa’s eyes become round. “Go out there. Do this.” He flicks his lapels. “Pretend to be—”

“Hey, now, whoa. It’s just nerves got ya. Everybody gets ‘em before public speaking engagements. It’s okay; natural, and all. But you can’t let it stop ya, ya know.”

Over the underbelly whine of em&em’s hateful ‘music,’ the corporate types’ words drift in to fill the void of silence left by Patrick staring at his fingers. Terms like “too big for their britches,” and “I know; I know” intrude.

“Look, Patrick.” Ted places his right hand on the kid’s thigh. “You can do this. In fact, you got this! I know it. Spending time together like we have, believe me – in a fight, I want you on my side.”

Suddenly, Bray J. Gerhard’s words become painfully clear and offensive from the other side of the room.

“How I pine for the 1990s,” the lawyer opines. “A time when these queers weren’t so over-represented in the media, in cartoons, in romcoms, in the news, speared all over the Interwebs – in libraries.”

“And on beer cans—” interjects Kingston.

“Exactly. What we need – as a nation – is to dial it back down again; rescind a few rights and privileges; burn a few million books; head backwards to a time when TV’s Murphy Brown could never come out. Back to the golden age when Congress’ sacred right to discriminate against any minority group they choose, and do it with a simple 50% plus one vote, could not be impinged upon. To the days of the Defenseless Marriage Act. To our proud heritage of Don’t Ask While We Do Tell disrespectful discharges for our troops . . . . ”

The suave actor suddenly changes tactics to loosen Patrick up. “Don’t look now,” he says grinning, “but Gerhard is outing himself as a closet Donald J. Dump voter.”

Patrick smiles. “Living in New York, he’d have to keep his dark secret in a dirty little walk-in.”

“Yup.” Ted loves seeing Puma being more himself. When he’s like this, his eyes sparkle to match the citrine-set pink gold bands in his ears. He goads the author on in good humor. “Bray and his nasty electoral ‘preference’.”

“At this point, I’m sick of them shoving their disgusting lifestyle votes down our throats. Down the throats of us decent, hard-working, tax-paying folks in the majority.”

Patrick’s sitting more upright now, and Ted feels relief – this thing might go off without a hitch after all. “Too true, little Cougar. Too true.”

Wild cheering erupts from out in the auditorium as the ‘musician’ finishes up his “kill all the [f-words]” crap rap.

A knock on the door precedes a headset-wearing head poking itself in. “Five minutes. Five minutes, Mr. Kingston. You’re up next to introduce our speaker.”

The head disappears again as the door closes.

Patrick rises to his feet like a somnambulist zombie about to take his first step towards a brain sandwich. He’s pasty as Paula’s canapés.

“I can’t,” he says.

The suits rush up to him, chorusing: “WHAT!”

“Naaa – no! I’m not. Noooo—”

“Rector,” Kingston growls, “what are you getting paid for—”

“Patrick,” reassures Ted, “remember, you got this.”

“No, I don’t. And I’m not going out there like this.” Again he flicks his clothes. “I’m not fake, goddammit.”

“Rector!” Gerhard shouts.

“You do it.”

The three men do a triple take on the words Patrick Forsa had just uttered so matter-of-factly.

“You do it,” he repeats, looking at Ted.

“Do what?”

“Be me. Go out there as me. You’re camera-ready just as you are. You’ve got confidence for days. You can pull this off.”

“But—”

Ted’s slow-motion protest gets cut short.

“He’s right,” the publisher exclaims, already pulling the guy towards the door.

“But – I can’t pretend to be an author,” he says as if very distasteful to him.

“Why not?” Gerhard adds his two cents. “You’re an actor and a stud, so who better?”

The shyster had a point there . . . .

In a flurry of motion and blurry sights, Ted’s led out of the room, across the backstage area as a faceless lackey brushes the Armani jacket Patrick had given him off his back to wear.

More blurry sights and sensations follow as Marshall leads Ted out into the bright lights of the stage. He’s vaguely aware of Bray and Patrick following and standing by his side, but behind him.

Kingston goes up to the podium, intros himself, tells a lame joke with a homophobic punchline, and then announces, “So here he is, our next mammoth discovery at Random, Reed and Sales – Patrick Forsa.”

In the exchange of applause and Ted’s position up to the lectern, Marshall says, “The author will now read an excerpt from his salacious premiere novel, Where Rascals Fear to Tread.”

Left alone, Ted finds the book already open on the stand like a bible. The section to read from Patrick’s work is marked with an arrow post-it, so, clearing his throat, silencing his own nerves, Ted launches into it.

Needing to stop and adjust his crotch collar after about the third line, the actor remembers to ‘fuck the blush’ and put some vavavavoom in his reading. This is helped by the fact that Rector sees a fair portion of Queer “Book Club Hotties” in the audience and takes heart. They’re instantly recognizable by their skin-tight polo shirts and camouflage capri cargo pants.

Once the stunned silence of the assembled gets replaced with open mouths and gasps for air, Ted knows he’s on the right track.

Word after word flows in the force of Forsa’s utter brilliance as a master erotitician, and a small part of Ted realizes he’s becoming part of history; the genius of Patrick’s smut will be admired – and made use of – for centuries to come.

As the scene he’s reading builds to its climax, he can feel the audience as a body lean in towards him, so he scoops up the book and starts pacing the front of the stage.

His words dare the collected assemblage of horned-up folks to think about anything other than the glories of sex between men – and even Paula Deen and Em&Em – two bastions of straight is mighty right mindsets – emerge back on stage to clasp arms in total shocked arousal, as if two Amish sisters in Times Square.

And then . . . . Patrick’s gloriously connected orgasm washes over the crowd with the crest of a cosmic tide.

It’s over.

Patrick – that is, Ted pretending to be Patrick – closes Where Rascals Fear to Tread and walks back to the lectern.

As if released from a log jam, a collective roar suddenly bursts forth.

It hits Ted like a shockwave.

The audience surges forward, and again, as if one body, wants to get their hands on the mastermind who seemingly conjured such celestial porn from the thin air of stardust.

A few women begin scrambling up the black scrim of the stage front. Their lips are red and swollen with words like “Do me next,” and “Shit, I love the GAYS!”

An instant later, all hell breaks loose, and even Paula and eM&eM can be seen throwing themselves at Rector’s feet, latching onto one of his lower legs for dear life. They refuse to slacken their grip even after security arrives to drag the Random, Reed and Sales party off to a safe-room vault in the basement.

So, Patrick’s book is launched. And, yes, history, gentle audience, has been made.

_