Death to Innocence

My dad had a party for me-but it wasn't an eighteenth-birthday party. He jumped the gun on that. And although I was partying on my eighteenth birthday, it wasn't at the ranch, and my dad wasn't there. But, in hindsight, I think he would have wanted to be.

Dad started the party early because my mother took off in early June for her photo shoot on an art film in Norway and my dad too was scheduled to start filming in the timber area of northern California soon thereafter.

As chance would have it, I also was gone from the ranch-not back East much to Robert's chagrin-by early July. That left two weeks for my dad to host a rolling pool party at the ranch. And, with my mother gone-although I'd come to realize that her presence probably didn't dampen anything my dad wanted to do-we partied my dad's way.

He used me as bait. I didn't realize that for some years later. I did, however, fully appreciate already that he was setting out bait. The day my mother left, my dad went "shopping" down in L.A. What he came home with was a Hispanic youth barely older than I was named Emilio Munoz.

"Meet Emilio," my dad told me when they pulled up in front of the ranch house in my dad's silver Bentley convertible. "He's the new pool boy."

We already had a pool boy-actually a pool man, but it didn't take much for me to catch on what a pool boy did rather than a pool man-and it wasn't clean pools. Emilio was quite young looking, but he was strongly built and had a face that some would call beautiful rather than handsome. Big brown cow eyes and eye lashes that looked like he had to comb them. His black curly hair was a plus, especially the one unruly lock that kept curling down across an eyebrow. I'm sure he wanted to be a movie star-and thought my father could make him one. He wasn't stupid. It was a well-worn path to stardom in Hollywood.

"Had lunch yet?" my dad asked me as the two of them exited the Bentley. Emilio wasn't wearing a shirt, although there was one on the backseat of the car, and he had a dreamy-eyed look on his face and my dad had an agitated look on his that indicated there'd been a stop along the route somewhere on the way up the canyon road from L.A. into the Moreno Valley. "Why don't you go in and have Efenia fix you a sandwich while I show Emilio the ropes with the pool equipment?"

I must have finished my lunch sooner than my dad thought I would, because I was out at the pool in time to see that "showing" Emilio the ropes entailed Emilio being on his back on a lounge in the pool house, his wrists tied together, and with my dad's pelvis between his legs.

The sight of my dad fucking Emilio brought back what Robert had been trying to tell me back in the motel. I'd seen my dad being fucked by Gordon Fields in the house, but now he was the one poking the Hispanic youth. So, my dad was one of those versatile men Robert had talked about-and had suggested that neither he nor I was. While I watched them fuck, which I did find arousing, I tried to imagine myself in my dad's position. But I just couldn't do it. My eyes kept going back to the contracting and releasing of my dad's buttocks muscles, and I couldn't get past having my arousal centered on what a man could do inside my body rather than me doing it to anyone else.

Score one for Robert-another one for Robert; I found he rarely was wrong about anything. That undoubtedly was why he'd been hired to tutor me. He had read me right. I only wanted to be made love to, apparently. And the interesting thing was that I felt no reason not to want it from my dad, just as Emilio was getting it. It struck me that this was another thing Robert had been right about. My understanding was that I should have some internal barrier against an incestuous act. I didn't. I didn't even know what incest meant until months later-when it did me no good anymore. My instincts were that I wanted a man. And maybe not just one; and I wasn't too choosy about who it was. That was another tendency Robert had said he was afraid I had.

Two days later the rolling pool party started. And for the first time in my life, my dad made no effort to put me in the background. Indeed, he fronted and centered me-and I saw that Emilio was ever there as well, decked out in a skimpy Speedo and, more frequently than not, walking away toward the parkland around our pool with one of my dad's guests, the guest's hand either on Emilio's back or his buttocks.

And all of my dad's guests those two weeks were men.

Most of the men were from the film industry, and they tended to separate into two groups: the rich and powerful-and pretty old-in one group and the young hunks in the other. I was told that some of the hunks came from a gym down near the movie studio. It was where hunks went who wanted to break into film, because sometimes it happened at that gym. I'm sure all the guys who had come to this party thought they were auditioning. And maybe they were.

During that two weeks I saw my dad walking away with a hunk almost as much as I saw Emilio walking away with a rich and powerful man-and mostly I sat by the pool with the rich and powerful-and pretty old-men buzzing around me as well.

Most of the time I tried to be somewhere close to Theo Kline, the big-name producer, who had been a close family friend for as long as I could remember. I had always thought of Theo as family, and I sometimes stayed with him when my parents were on location. Theo had an apartment overlooking a yacht basin near Venice Beach, and during the periods I was foisted off on him, I often went out on the ocean with him in his old fan-tail yacht, the Final Curtain. He produced many of the films my parents were in, and he spent about as much time at our ranch as anywhere else. He was a mountain of a man-more big boned muscle-meaty than fat. He wasn't much more than in his mid forties at that time, but already was balding on top. He had a voice that boomed out over the landscape and immediately caught everyone's attention and respect.

I looked to Theo as something stable, someone familiar to cling to as my world revolved and moved in directions that were both apprehensive and tantalizing.

In those two weeks I had no difficulty sensing both that the men my dad was inviting to this rolling party were attracted to me and that as long as I stayed close to Theo Kline and Robert, who also bravely glued himself to my side, I was on safe ground-although safe from predators or from my own inclinations, I could not have said.

Principal among the guests who buzzed around me were Charles Tilton, the relatively young movie director, many of whose films no one seemed to fully understand but-possibly for that very reason-enjoyed critical acclaim. Tilton sometimes slums and directed films that moviegoers actually wanted to see to keep his bank account flush. These were the Tilton films my parents appeared in. One of the hunks from the gym, named Gene, also spent time in our little circle under umbrellas between the house and the pool. He, more often than not, sat off to the side by Robert, Robert looking on silently with a wary look on his face, and Gene being equally silent but with a look more of lust in his eyes.

I would have liked Gene to be my first-and I spent those two weeks shopping for my preferred "first," anxious to move on to that level. He had a great body and an "oh my gosh" helpful-neighbor manner about him. He was blond and smooth skinned and had a square-cut jaw that made me think he had a shot at taking up the reins of Number One Heartthrob when Gordon Fields passed on the baton.

But Charles Tilton was always there too. He'd stand behind me and put his hands on my shoulder and give me a soothing rub-losing interest only when some fine piece of male tail walked by and gave him the eye, begging for an audition.

"Watch out for him," Robert had whispered in my ear the first day my dad put me on display-and putting me on display I now have to acknowledge was his ploy to get the right men to the party-"He's running along the edge of indictment for his interest in underage boys."

"But I'll only be underage for two more weeks," I whispered back.

To this, Robert winced and looked up to heaven and muttered, "God, give me the strength to get this one on a plane east unscathed."

This Charles Tilton looked pretty good to me-and was high on my "first" shopping list. He wasn't young or old-and I already was developing an eye for the older, more experienced men. And he was in good shape. And by this time, I craved experience. I wonder whether my dad would have set me out as a honey pot to attract men for himself this summer if he had known how ripe and wanting it I was. Probably yes, I must admit.

"My, my, my. Where has Scott been keeping you?" Tilton had asked when we were first introduced. He had my hand in his and he wasn't going to give it back. One of his fingers was stroking my wrist where the vein went down into the hand, and it was having an arousing effect on me. Naïve as I was, all I could think about was wondering if he realized that what he was doing with that one finger was arousing me.

"He's not legal," Theo said in a low but cutting voice from beside me, "And that's exactly what you can't afford right now."

But when Tilton spoke next, it was directly to me, as if he hadn't heard Theo at all-didn't even know he was there. "I knew you were up here, my lad," he spoke to me in a silken-smooth voice. "I could smell the honey from down at Hollywood and Vine."

Theo had interceded more forcefully then, and turned me to meet the other man who followed me around like a puppy dog for two weeks-the television game show host Andrew Dix. He was always there in the background in our little group too except for the times he was off in the pool house with a hopeful hunk having his cock polished. He seemed to be satisfied with the blow jobs.

So, for two weeks I was courted closely by a famous movie director, a wholesome blond hunk, and a well-known television game show host-all under the watchful eyes of a major movie producer, and, from just outside the golden aura created by these men by my nervous tutor, Robert Sinclair.

The attention went right to my head. I had been closely sheltered up to just two weeks previously. And now I was sought and pursued and wanted.

If I had any thought that my dad was worried about what was unfolding, that was dispelled one night after all of the rest had left or been bedded down in the various guesthouses on the ranch, invariably in pairs or greater number combinations, and I was preparing to go up to my room as well. Robert had already gone ahead-to set out some school work he wanted me to do in the morning before the party started rolling again.

I was passing through the lounge when I encountered my dad and Gordon Fields, sitting in oversized, leather-covered wing chairs in the lounge and smoking cigars and drinking Scotch.

"Come sit with us for a few minutes, son," my dad said as I was passing, and almost in shock at the unexpected invitation, I sat on the edge of a coffee table and eyed the Scotch bottle-with absolutely no success.

"He's a fine boy, wouldn't you say, Gordon?" my dad said. I glowed at the pride I could hear in his voice. "He'll be a real heartbreaker, don't you think?"

"Yes, he's a fine boy; and I'm sure you know he's already a real heartbreaker," I heard the young actor say-himself the major heartbreaker of the screen of the moment.

And the low, throaty-voiced way Fields said it made me look into his eyes, where, even at my age and in my naiveté I could read raw lust. The image of him fucking my dad in my dad's study upstairs came immediately to mind, and I lowered my eyes and blushed.

"Have you thought of what you want to do when you've finished college?" my dad suddenly asked.

This sent me in a tailspin. I couldn't remember when my dad had ever asked such a question of me-indeed had shown he was giving any thought to my future at all-let alone my present. Even all of the college application process had been goaded and managed by Robert, not by either of my parents.

"Uh, yes. Maybe a lawyer or a doctor. Or maybe a vet. I like working with the horses." What I really wanted to be was a police detective. But I couldn't say that. I'd told my dad that once and he had laughed derisively at the notion.

"You know you could be a movie star, don't you, Clint?" My dad cut in. "He could be a guaranteed hit in the movies, don't you think, Gordon?"

"Yes, guaranteed. His parentage and looks. He'd knock them dead. the auditions will be a 'gimme.'"

"It's a good profession, son. Lots of money and most anything you want."

"Ummm. Sounds possible," I stammered out. "Something to think about."

"You know you have a golden opportunity here, Clint," my dad continued. "The men I see you with at the pool-Tilton and Klein, even Dix-these are men who could grease the wheels for you, could make it easy for you to get established. You understand that, don't you, Clint?"

"Umm, yes, I understand," I almost whispered. But did I understand, or was I reading something wrong in this? Was my dad actually green-lighting my pent up emotions and frustrations? Was he telling me it was OK to let these men manhandle me-all for what they could do for me? Was that how he got to where he was? I knew the answer to those questions would be a "yes," though, so I didn't dwell on the thought.

And before I could think further on that, Robert was standing at the top of the stairs and calling out softly, "If I'm going to show you what you need to go over in the math book in the morning before we both have to go off to bed, you'd best come up, Clint."

As I stood, I looked into Fields's face. The lust there hadn't changed, and it made me tremble and gulp at the possibilities I saw there. And then I looked over at my dad, and I couldn't swear that his expression was any different from Fields's.

When I went upstairs, I asked Robert again for the umpteenth time since we'd been together in the motel if we couldn't try to fuck-that I was all keyed up and about to explode.

He didn't laugh. He said he could see that and that he was sorry it was this way-that no one seemed to want to try to head it off. And he assured me once again that, no we wouldn't get the complete satisfaction I deserved if we tried, that I needed to realize that until I was eighteen I would be endangering not just myself but anyone who touched me, and that I needed to be strong-preferably strong enough to make that plane east before anything happened.

"I know it's going to happen, Clint. You're just too . . . too . . ." he couldn't find the words he wanted, which I found amazing for my tutor to fail at. "But Hollywood will eat you up and spit you out before you've learned to protect yourself. Better that it happen back East."

But Robert didn't leave me in frustration. With a sigh, he told me that he'd massage me until I'd gone to sleep. And I stripped and lay on my belly, while he poured oil on my back and legs and buttocks. He massaged me then, working my muscles well-and carefully not crossing any line on where he put his hands. But at the same time, he made no move, voiced no admonishment or objection, when my sighs turned to moans and I lifted my pelvis off the mattress and stroked my cock rhythmically into the bunched-up sheets as he massaged my back and thighs and buttocks. He got up and left me before I came, but I couldn't stop stroking, seeking some form of release. After I came, I collapsed onto the bed with a grunt and a groan and the sigh of half-satisfaction, looking around for someone to talk to of the pleasure that release gave me-but Robert was gone.