The Plutoid Effect

Chapter 4 – The Plutoid Effect

Carson valued Giambone’s choice. It didn’t cost him anything to do so. But it took him years to get to the point where Giambone’s affliction didn’t disturb him. He wasn’t a thorough sop head when they first met. They were both in their early twenties and single. Giambone even held down a job as a location scout for an independent film company, tooling around L.A. in his beat up station wagon and taking pictures of Bel Air mansions, Valley strip malls, and abandoned factories in Downey. Carson was in grad school working on his MBA. He’d begun the sales program with the phone company. A classmate of Carson’s at USC, Danny Tedesco, introduced him to Giambone. Tedesco and Giambone had been childhood friends in the Midwest. Tedesco was a big time boozer who inherited a lot of money and died behind the wheel of his Suburu on an icy road outside Duluth a few years later.

On a hot summer night in the early Eighties, Tedesco invited Carson to join him and Giambone at the Roxie to see a one-hit wonder hair band. Before the show they met for drinks at the Rainbow, a drab mausoleum of an eatery on Sunset that slung bad linguine marinara and well drinks at the heavy metal set and their hangers on. They sat on the patio outside the restaurant. It must have been 85 or 90 degrees. Drops of sweat were sprinkled across Giambone’s forehead. His round wire rimmed glasses made his eyes seem furtive and embarrassed, as if he were being pursued by an unseen nemesis. He shook Carson’s hand firmly, as though it were an inherent test of manhood. Giambone overcompensated for his sensitive nature by presenting the figure of someone securely male – heterosexually male, to pre-empt any misunderstanding. 

It seemed he wished to boast of this fact by dressing in a manner that was stylish but not foppish, certainly as a man about town, a film producer perhaps, but one who prefers the darker colors of the urban East Coast, or Milan, and regards New York as the superior arbiter of authentic cool. He wore black Doc Martens, cuffed black wool pants, a short-sleeved shirt open at the neck and a blazer. His shirt was a light chocolate brown with subtle specks of forest green tossed throughout the fabric like confetti. The jacket was dark brown with a twilled wool stitch and herringbone pattern. His hair was of uniform length, parted in the middle, cut below the ears and tucked neatly behind them – a trendy cut, just like the outfit. He looked like an habitué of a Tribeca café, out of his milieu surrounded by the harsh and garish colors of the electric rococo Sunset Strip. Only later did Carson learn that Giambone’s eccentric clothes were purchased second hand at Silver Lake thrift stores, accounting for their regressive and ironic cool. It was all he could afford.

The rock show was a lamentable waste of time. The music was tired, the crowd uncouth, the drinks watered down and overpriced. Giambone spent his time looking everywhere around him but the stage, as if any minute detectives would walk in the joint and serve him with a warrant. He was distracted and oblivious to the music while his drinks were nursed to the point of melting his ice. He looked uncomfortable in his clothes and his own skin. Danny bought a round, Carson bought two, and Giambone none. When each new whiskey arrived, Giambone gulped down the one he was cradling and sipped the next as though it might be his last. Carson just figured Giambone was tight with his money. Years later Carson looked back to that night he met Giambone and saw it as prophetic.

After the show the three of them piled into Tedesco’s Suburu and headed west on Sunset to PCH, then north almost to Topanga. They turned around and parked in the lot adjacent to the Chart House. Under a slight moon they sat in the car drinking beers, watching the surf roll in and spill its milky foam on the black and deserted beach. Danny and Giambone talked about where they’d grown up and the friends they had known. It was small talk, slightly interesting to Carson because he’d never been east of Denver. Carson wasn’t impressed with Giambone. He seemed arrogant and combative and extremely defensive. Danny seemed unfazed by his friend’s blustery pronouncements about religion and politics. But to Carson they seemed molded for a reaction, self-righteous and not deeply held. Even then, when Carson was green and underexposed to the world, Giambone’s opinions struck him as the thoughts of a disaffected person, a man already disillusioned by life, but one more angry than resigned. Carson quickly grew bored. He wanted to go home, to his apartment in Sherman Oaks and to sleep. The evening was typical, the kind that were plentiful in his twenties, where a number of unlikely associations are briefly made and quickly undone.

They drove back to Hollywood, finishing the last of their beers while cruising east on Sunset Boulevard. They turned south on San Vicente before making a right onto Santa Monica Boulevard. Giambone was renting a room along one of the side streets. While stopped for a red light at the intersection of Robertson, they witnessed a ubiquitous sight, a young white man selling roses in the grassy median. He was lean and broadcasted a beatific smile. Giambone grew alarmed when he saw the vendor and his 5-gallon bucket of red roses. He quickly leaned forward in the front seat. He put the bottle containing the last swigs of Henry Weinhard’s Extra Pale Ale between his feet on the floor.

“Shit,” he said, sounding angry and scared. “I know that guy. Hide those beers, man.”

He said this as though the three of them were in high school again and the assistant principal was combing the parking lot for teenage insurgents.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” laughed Danny, looking at Giambone. “What guy?”

“The guy with the flowers. He lives with me. Shit. He’s walking this way. Don’t let him see the beers.”

Carson was in the back seat behind Danny. He saw the flower vendor pick up his bucket of roses and walk toward them, along the median where the drivers lined up waiting for the light. Tedesco’s car was in the lane closest to the median. Giambone was now slouching in his seat and scratching his head with his left hand, trying to hide his face from his florist roommate.

“Hide those fuckin’ beers, will you? This guy will nail me. Jesus.”

Giambone slid deeper down in his seat with his head turned away.

Carson didn’t quite understand what was happening but he found it amusing.

“Can someone tell me why we are hiding our beers from a fuckin’ Plutoid,” he asked.

Everyone knew the Plutoids sold flowers at intersections in Hollywood and West L.A. They had propositioned Carson a number of times, usually when he was at the Santa Monica pier or Venice Beach, two other favorite proselytizing venues. He used to play a game with them. He let them approach and launch into their spiel.

“Hi. Are you new to L.A.?”

Carson always said yes, just to get them going. It was a kind of sport with him. They never identified themselves as Plutoids, just as helpful, benevolent souls interested in meeting other young people. Their eyes sparkled with the new-found love they had been indoctrinated to uncover. They came on to him not like they were strangers, but as long-lost friends. They were the advance scouts. Their mission, to bombard young and lost souls with love, people who were new to L.A., miles from family and friends, kids who were all alone and out in the world for the first time, lonely and naïve types happy to encounter a pair of kind and friendly faces, faces that reminded them of people they had known in college before they dropped out to seek a more meaningful, more profound milieu for the potential greatness sitting latent inside them.

Carson must have looked lost, a fact that troubled him. They always singled him out. So he let the shining and kooky avatars of love get to the point in their stealthy sales pitch where, predictably, they invited him for a vegetarian meal at their communal home in Venice. Unfailingly, they assured him that he would be joined there by poets, musicians, painters, and other freethinkers like himself. And because the Plutoids did their recruiting in pairs, one man, one woman, their open and guileless smiles, especially the female’s, gave a slight hint of potential sexual favors that might await Carson, should he accept their proposition for a hearty meal of bulgur and soy.

After feigning innocent interest, after listening to their story that they, too, were new to the city, and that they had met some “amazing” people at a commune just a few blocks away, Carson asked them his favorite question.

“Are you followers of Reverend Pluto?”

 Their white faces were stricken scarlet. They registered discomfort, not unlike cats immodestly caught in the act of defecation. Carson thrilled to that moment each and every time. The Plutoids smiled nervously. Yes, it was deception they practiced, but wasn’t it for altruistic ends? The wattage in their eyes dimmed significantly, like eclipsed moons. Carson could almost see a trace of their former vindictive natures, their authentic non-Plutoidonous selves. The press had never been kind, which was why they dissembled in the first place. But because they were good Christians, they couldn’t deny it. But they never said, “Yeah, we’re Plutoids. We’re a cult and we need more bodies.” They never referred to themselves using that word. That was the mock pejorative the media had hung on them. Instead, after they’d recovered from the momentary shock of having their cover blown, they always replied, sheepishly:

“Well, we are members of the Rectification Church, yes, if that’s what you mean.”

Then Carson told them to go fuck themselves, and to stop preying on young and vulnerable minds. That always left them speechless. Their coarse urban tongues, if ever they had them, had been deprogrammed by Reverend Pluto or his scheming lieutenants, working overtime for a new Jerusalem, an Eden that was decidedly capitalist and Republican. Carson wondered why the recruitment team had never been taught to have a ready reply for smart asses like himself. He walked away while the messengers of love and subjugated egos stood there looking deflated, like someone had openly advertised they were perpetrators of a vast public swindle, or worse, that they were like dirty, no good Christians skulking around in fearful anonymity in pre-Constantine Rome with an unpardonable secret.

“Tony’s one of ‘em,” said Danny Tedesco with a big grin.

The way Danny blurted out this information, the delight he obviously experienced in letting it be known, was enough to tell Carson that he also believed the whole Plutoid business was a crock of shit. Tedesco had been protecting Giambone’s identity. He was happy now that he no longer had to keep it a secret. 

“Don’t worry,” Danny went on, ribbing and consoling Giambone at the same time, “we won’t let that scary Plutoid find out one of the flock has been out chuggin’ beers with a couple of reprobates. Right, Carson?” Danny winked.

The Plutoid stopped at the car in front of them and handed a couple of roses through the window.

“Trojans aren’t reprobates,” said Carson. We’re the sons and daughters of privilege.”

Then, as if to verify Danny’s claim, he leaned over the front seat.

“Giambone, you’re really a Plutoid?”

Carson tried not to laugh. Now he understood the reason behind the Republican platitudes Giambone spouted earlier in the evening, things like abolishing food stamps, the evils of divorce, and nuking the godless Russians. But the sudden disclosure that it was an abstemious and obedient Plutoid who had drunk whiskey with them in a rock ‘n’ roll night club that night, and that he was now shamefully crouching on the floor of an automobile trying to conceal an open beer from a fellow congregant, this all seemed merrily absurd. It was a surreal opportunity that Carson couldn’t resist.

 “I’m on my way out,” answered Giambone.

“Technically you’re still one of them, though,” said Danny. “You live in their group house.”

“I won’t be for long if that guy sees me.”

“Aw, Jesus, Giambone,” said Carson, “I’d hate to see you out on the street on account o’ us low lifes. But you’re right – we ain’t fit to be seen with. Tell me, though; I’m curious; what is it you do with them? What’s your job? You sell roses, too?”

“I can’t talk right now.” Giambone sank deeper in the seat. His head was practically tucked under the dashboard.

“That’s a damn shame you gotta live like that, Giambone, hidin’ your bad habits from the guy in the street who sells roses to passing motorists. Must be tough having to live two lives. Which one’ll win in the end, you figure? It’s all so very Manichean.”

Danny laughed. “Giambone wouldn’t be Giambone unless he was conflicted. That’s what gives him his special edge.”

“Fuck you both,” said Giambone from the inside of his sport coat lapel. He’d sunk so low that Carson could no longer see him.

“The language. Shocking,” said Carson. “And from a fine young Republican like yourself. Where is the unconditional love we’ve all come to expect from a finely programmed Plutoid? Have they asked you to leave the church or is this your own decision? Are you capable of making decisions?”

“Piss off,” whispered Giambone, plainly irritated by the situation.

“I can see how your foul mouth might be cause for dismissal,” Carson prodded. “It’s probably a good thing, this separation. Take some time, think it over, then talk with ‘em in a few months. You can work out your differences. Probably rough on both of you. They’ll have to do with one less rose boy, and all that cash, and you’ll be left to your own devices, left to drift aimlessly, open to the fatal temptations of beer and pussy. Ah, pussy. Remember that, Giambone? Remember how that works?”

Carson felt richly vindicated for his earlier impressions of Giambone. He was a blustery hypocrite.

“Asshole.” Giambone’s voice sounded as though it were lodged in the seat’s upholstery. “Is that guy gone yet?”

“He’s comin’ this way now,” said Danny.

Carson rolled down his window.

“Yoo hoo. O rose boy. May I have a rose? A rose for my love?”

“What are you doing? Don’t do that.”

Giambone’s exhortation came across more like a wounded plea; genuine fear mixed with anger and disbelief. Carson paid no attention to it. The country was in the grip of the Reaganites, and he was sick of the hypocrisy.

“Dude,” said Danny to Carson. “Better not, man.” He let out a nervous laugh.

“What,” said Carson. “I wanna rose. I wanna help the cause, help build that city on a hill.”

The rose vendor approached Carson’s window.

“Good evening,” he said cheerfully.

“And good evening to you, kind sir. How much for a flower for my love?”

The vendor smiled strangely. He couldn’t tell whether Carson was sincere.

“One for a dollar, a dozen for ten.”

“One please.” Carson reached in his pocket for a dollar. The vendor looked inside the car toward the front seat.

“C’mon,” said Danny, “the light’s changed.

Carson saw that the light was green.

“Okay,” said Carson, pulling the dollar bill from his pocket. He addressed the vendor. “Would you like to meet my love, Mr. Rose Boy?”

The vendor continued smiling but Carson could see that he was on his guard.

“Uh, that’s okay. Here’s your rose, sir.”

“Really,” said Carson. “I’d like to introduce you to my love, or, rather our love. He’s slouched down there in the front seat. Darling,” Carson called to Giambone. “Darling, say hello to the nice rose boy.”

“Let’s go, Carson,” said Danny. “We’re holdin’ up traffic. Get your fuckin’ rose and let’s get outta here.”

“Sorry,” said Carson to the Plutoid. “He’s shy. We’re all very much in love. Does that scare you? Homo love? Does the Rev. Pluto mind you selling flowers to faggots? Probably not, huh? Seein’ as you’re standing right here in the middle of Queerville? Your master will take money from anyone, right? It’s okay to take their money but don’t ever get caught with their dicks up your ass or you’ll be out of a religion, right?”

The vendor’s smile was gone now. “Thank you,” was all he said.

He started to back away from the car. The motorists behind them were laying on their horns.

“Wait, you asshole. I want my fuckin’ rose,” said Carson. He threw the money at the vendor. The Plutoid handed Carson the rose and bent down to pick up the dollar bill lying on the pavement.

“Fucking hypocrite,” shouted Carson.

Danny pressed his foot on the accelerator and sped through the intersection.

No one spoke. The exchange with the Plutoid left Carson feeling uneasy. He’d been impulsive, even mean. He felt bad for Giambone now. Carson realized it was Giambone he’d been punishing, not the feckless rose vendor, or even the duplicitous Plutoids. What did he care about them, really? It was Giambone who had irritated him. He hated his opinions and the swaggering way he had about making them heard. There was something immodest about it, thought Carson, something about Giambone that was provocative. It was East Coast and grating, the way he popped off angrily about any number of political or moral questions. He seemed to lack sensitivity or consideration for the views and feelings of others, unlike any of the Plutoids he’d ever encountered, meek and obeisant. Carson knew he was being irrational. He had conflated two facts – Giambone’s combativeness and the Plutoid’s predatory capitalism masquerading as a religion.

They were quiet until Giambone sat up laughing in the front seat.

“Oh man,” he said, “I wish I could’ve seen the look on that jerk’s face when you asked him if Rev. Pluto minded if he sold flowers to faggots. That was goddamn hilarious…even if you were trying to fuckin’ out me, you asshole!”

Still chuckling, he turned around and looked at Carson. His eyes were watery and projected a devilish charm.

“Fuckin’ ballbuster,” he said playfully, as if he were pleased that a joke had been made at his expense, as if it were a gesture of love and appreciation.

“Sorry, man,” said Carson. “I guess I just had too many experiences with those freaks tryin’ to enlist me.”

“It’s okay, dude,” said Giambone. “they need to hear that shit. Maybe it’ll wake ‘em up. That guy in particular, the guy sellin’ the roses there – an absolute moron. You picked the right guy. Can’t take a fuckin’ dump without askin’ permission. If they were all like him, they’d be dangerous.”

Carson softened up on Giambone, seeing that he was a good sport about the whole thing. It made Carson curious. He felt as he did as a child, when, after having a fistfight with a great enemy, befriended his adversary and the two became inseparable comrades.

“So, Giambone, it’s true what Tedesco says? You’re in with them? What’s up with that anyway?”

“What I wanna know,” asked Danny, “is when did you become such a great champion of faggots, Carson?”

“Since driving along Santa Monica Boulevard. Can’t you see we’re outnumbered? These guys spend half their lives lifting weights. When was the last time you did a single pushup, Tedesco?”

“Sophomore year high school, I believe.”

“I rest my case. By the looks of that tire in your gut, I’d say you’re an honest man.”

Arguing on behalf of homosexuals was just a convenient opportunity for Carson to make a point. He didn’t believe people should be locked up for having anal sex, but he didn’t care to hang out with them. Either by choice, necessity, or security, they’d carved out their little ghetto in America, more affluent than most, and that’s exactly where Carson wished them to spend their time. They were as oppressive as any minority, acting out to be let in. The theatrics of the downtrodden wearied his high church Protestant sensibility. The cross he had to bear was to be forever on the receiving end of so much guilt tripping exercised by the multitude of groups that saw him as the oppressor. The sorry thing was that he’d begun to buy into their arguments without wanting to. It was like a parent telling a child all his life that he’s no good; the child believes it, even when he knows he shouldn’t.

 “So, go head, Giambone,” Carson continued, “what are you doin’ with the Plutoids if you’re down on ‘em so much? And why the hell do they have a house in West Hollywood? Isn’t Rev. Pluto an archconservative? Death to the fags, commies and pacifists and all that rot. What’s he doing setting up shop in gay boy Playland? His idea of missionary work?”

“Yes,” answered Danny, “but the missionary position is not allowed. Too straight. In WeHo it’s strictly doggy style. It’s a town ordinance. Looking at your partner in the face during sex is seen as counter-revolutionary, flirting with the philistine practices of the ancien regime. Start looking at your sex buddy’s face one day and next you’ll be asking for a marriage license. Nothing will take the steam bath out of gay rights faster than acceptance into mainstream culture. That’s so boring, darling. ‘We wanna fuck, fuck, fuck until the broad day light!’”

“Tedesco, you ain’t been laid in so long…are you sure you even know what the missionary position is?”

Carson never said so, but he was sure Tedesco was a closet case.

“I read, you know,” said Danny.

“Yeah,” said Carson, “with one hand holding turning the page and the other shinin’ yer spunk chute.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” said Danny. “The good Lord gave me two hands to work with in any combination I see fit. Why, I betcha the Plutoids don’t even outlaw that, do they Ton’? That would be cruel. How would you get by before they assigned you a wife?”

Giambone became solemn. “I never heard anyone say anything against it. But it’s not that difficult. I didn’t masturbate until I was 21.”

“What,” Tedesco and Carson shouted in unison.

“Say what,” Carson repeated. “I don’t believe that shit. How can you say that with a straight face, Giambone?”

Carson looked at Giambone as though he were in the presence of Kasper Hauser, a man kept apart from people all his life. Because of his isolation he hadn’t learned the most basic skills, like bathing, eating with silverware, using language, or wanking off.

“That’s right,” said Giambone. “I never had the desire until then. It just didn’t occur to me.” This was not so much a lie as historical revisionism.

“I bet when you finally came, it was gallons,” said Danny, who never feared giving the most sophomoric spin on anything. “Think of it, all that jism stored up for almost, what, like ten years? A blast like that must’ve knocked you off your feet. Fuckin’ deluge motherfucker.”

“I don’t remember,” said Giambone, practicing selective amnesia.

“I still don’t believe it,” said Carson. “Unless you had you’re goddamned hands tied behind your back all those years, I just don’t see how it was possible. Even if your hands were tied, you still would’ve found a way – rubbin’ yourself against a bed knob, a mattress, or a fuckin’ oak tree. Something! How can a boy, a teenager, a young man go through the most horny years of his life and not touch himself, not once? I don’t buy it. It’s fuckin’ impossible. You’re puttin’ us on, dude. Danny, how long you say you know this guy?”

“Shit, I don’t know, thirteen, fourteen years, ever since 9^th grade.”

“And you didn’t see to it in all that time that your friend, your good friend, afforded himself one, not one, fuckin’ ejaculation? What kind of friend are you, anyway?”

“What you think,” said Danny, “I went around askin’ people how good it felt the last time they jerked off? Who the hell does that? Like ‘Hey, so whaddya say? What ya think about last night while you pounded your pud? Let’s compare notes.’”

“Hell yeah,” said Carson. “That’s all we talked about in junior high. We used to beat off together. It’s a fucking American tradition. You guys from the Midwest are strange. Giambone, no wonder you ended up in the Plutoids. How old were you when you joined them?”

“I was 21.”

“Well, there you go,” said Carson. “What does the guy do? He experiences the biggest event of his life, his first orgasm, at age 21, and what does he do? Fuckin’ repents like a sinner and joins the Plutoids. Son, you need therapy.”

Carson regretted never asking Giambone what he fantasized about when he did finally molest himself. Or when he lost his virginity. Was it before, during or after his seven-year stint with the Plutoids? Giambone would have answered those questions if they were put to him. He might hedge a bit, but he usually gave some kind of answer. He was someone who, having committed himself to the path of Truth in life, felt an obligation to brook all personal inquiries. Plus, he enjoyed talking about himself every opportunity he had. The only two things on which Carson felt he never got a straight answer from Giambone were why he couldn’t hold a job, and why he drank; the two things that Giambone wasn’t prepared to face. Everything else was open for discussion, although the truth was a shifting field of reference.

On the question of sex, once he discovered that sex was not a sin, that he could obtain substantial enjoyment, even peace of mind from its practice, and that there were women out there who actually wanted to fuck him, regardless of their motives, Giambone appeared to favor a mildly sadistic sensibility in his overall approach toward his partners. This didn’t much surprise Carson. He theorized that all Roman Catholics preferred either one of two sexual identities; one that allowed them to inflict pain, the other to suffer it. Because Giambone already tortured himself, he needed to relieve his internalized assaults through the sensual gratification of tormenting others, if only just a little. This was also related to the shame he felt for wanting to be mothered by his women. His male ego resisted the need for a maternal love at the adult stage of his life. By having a partner who let him spank or cane her bottom and tie her up on occasion, he could assure himself that he had the dominant role in the relationship. Some women indulged him but they didn’t like it. They tolerated it because they knew that ultimately they were in the more powerful position. They had plenty of opportunities to exercise their own wills in ways more devastating and permanent. Giambone’s efforts to be loved were bound to fail. He wanted to be petted and babied, like an adoring mother patronizes a beautiful first-born son. He wanted all the benefits of that infantalized role. It carried with it no expectation of obligation or responsibility, no more than to accept the love that is bestowed upon him. The worshipful mother does everything for him, including obviating any need for him to work for all the sustenance she provides. All she requires in return is his magnificent presence in her life.

Giambone never learned to understand that this approach to forming a mature adult relationship with a woman was never going to fly. Over and over again, relationship after relationship, he found himself bewildered when a woman left him, just because he was too busy thinking to do any real work; and because he occasionally liked to sip Jack Daniels all day long as an aid to his strenuous acts of cerebration. He never understood that his charming habits of conversation and deep philosophical discussions were not enough to keep her attention. His penance for the shame of his childhood, for his mother’s death, for his sex, was to attract a woman only capable of rejecting him. That’s what he was used to. He had developed exactly those skills of survival and no other – playing over and over again the drama of his mother’s abandonment.