Read Online I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner - Free Book Online Page B

gave the potential indictee a stony hard-on.
    The viewing room had a clarinet-sized Giacometti, a Noguchi landscape table, a Kitaj pastel and a Baselitz “inversion.” The projection screen dropped down over one of those big Ed Ruscha movie paintings that spelled The End. Baccarat bowls brimmed with blue M&Ms and rock candy. The doctor liked Pasolini well enough but wasn’t up for it. He let his thoughts drift back to a year ago, Lancelot face-down on the table, Les numbing and pressing and draining. Time for some dilatation and curettage…When his rubbery attention snapped back to the screen, the father was about to discover Terence Stamp in bed with his sleeping son.
    â€œLike to have been a fly on
that
wall,” said Moe.
    â€œHow ‘bout a fly on those jeans?” said Obie, and everyone laughed.
    Les wandered again, rudderless, this time to a recent meeting with the lawyer. While the attorney general’s formal accusations were imminent, counsel was confident the matter would end in a letter of reprimand from the Medical Board—a slap on the wrist. If that wasn’t forthcoming, an alternative might be probation and community service; at worst, a DEA administrative hearing aimed to revoke or curtail the dermatologist’s prescriptive powers. Les sucked on a saccharine crystal. The baronial law office yanked inside-out like a sock, reborn as a dungeon with a Philippe Starck sink—the free-floating physician now in protective custody at the downtown jail in all its slabby
City of Quartz
splendor, co-starring with Terence Stamp in
Kiss of the Spider Woman
. Stamp sure was gorgeous. Could’ve used a nipple ring, though.
    Cat Basquiat had his tongue in Obie’s mouth. When Les reached for the M&Ms, Moe said, “What are those, Percocets? I got a headache,Les. Gimme.” Lancelot laughed. Obie said, “Don’t tease, Moe, you know how delicate he is.” Les managed a smile as he faced the screen again, then
whoosh
back to the clink for some requisite cyst-popping and rimming of trusties
whoosh
to a DEA meeting, where he stroked out in mid-testimony, crapping his Tommy Nutter trousers as he fell from the witness stand. The rest of his days would be spent in a gold-plated wheelchair, feet drooping down like an unemployed marionette.
    Les shuddered, shrugging off this specialized humoresque, knocking a loafer askew and propping a foot up. He reached into the bowl and licked another sugarcane pebble, dreaming of Rock Candy Mountain mistily shrouded by this boy Basquiat’s anal fumes, all vinegar and tuberoses.
    How thrilling the proximity, and how improbable to share the citadel! He would have accepted the lowliest position—polishing marble there, or candlesticks. For Big Stars were different than you and me, this he knew from an early age. The boy who watched reruns (
The Rifleman, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best
), too ashamed of his looks to go to school, knew. The boy who locked himself in the bathroom, tetracycline vials around the sink like votive candles, his face an angry mask of suppurating knots, knew—fussing with them till they wept clear fluid, as if drawn from spinal waters. All he wanted was to be Kurt Russell. Won’t someone make it so? Jan-Michael Vincent…any old sunbaked smooth-faced boy in hip-hugger jeans would do. He longed for fields of undamaged skin, craving Sal Mineo’s buttery cheeks—when they finally came (still sitting on bathroom floor, eyes clenched shut, mirror forgotten for now), he rode to the dusty ranch and necked with Johnny Crawford while his father was at the General Store. The things they did in that barn…he would have “Lucas” next.
    Les planned to become a psychiatrist—he would listen to Big Star woes, a shoulder for Big Star tears—but changed course in mid-residency. He was moonlighting at a Malibu emergency room when Streisand came in with an allergic