Page 30 - The Gluckman Occasional 7

I’ve seen a lot of guys crack up in these countries: the heat, the
isolation, the boredom. You know: you’ve been in places like
that.

Anyway, it seems that this all-American boy was minding his own
business in a sidewalk café down on the beach in Santa Monica.
Yeah, in California! How many Santa Monicas are there? All
right. Sorry, sorry. You want another beer? It’s on me. Hey,
amigo! Otra dos cervezas, okay? This place stinks, but the beer is
ice-cold. Getting back to this guy’s story, he was sitting there
having a hamburger when this chick walked up and sat down
right next to him.

Yeah, yeah, I should be so lucky, too! But this guy was used to
having the women fall all over him, so he played it cool. He let
her do all the talking. She was about his age, sort of dark, and
spoke English with an accent. Now get this: our boy wasn’t just
your average beach bum. Oh, no. He had gotten a few bit parts in
films. That’s what he said, not “movies” but “films.” Don’t ask
me which ones, because they weren’t big Hollywood productions.
In fact, he admitted they were low-budget porno movies he did
just for the kicks and the money. So this girl came on with how
she had seen him in one of those skin-flicks, and how much she
admired his acting ability.

Ha-ha-ha! You said it! Naw, he told me all that with a straight
face. I mean, he was used to this kind of approach and he didn’t
think twice about any of it. Now get this: next she tells him she’s
a foreign student at UCLA in the film department. Her visa has
run out and she’s going back home in a few days, but she intends
to make a movie when she gets there. Her family is extremely
wealthy, she says, and she will be able to hire American actors
and technicians at very high salaries, all expenses paid, to come
over and work on her project for a couple of weeks.

Sounds pretty good, eh? Well, he asks her about the part. She
says it’s about an American guy working on an oil-rig in the
Persian Gulf who falls in love with an Arabian princess he
happens to rescue from some terrorists. The name of the movie
is going to be ‘Oil Boy’. According to him, he thought it was