Not So Model Home - By David James Page 0,27

the shots for the show and managed to create a show just from their roving cameras. With just a little push, the show seemed to roll along on its own.

Then, up came the part where I called Gilles gold-digging Eurotrash. I heard gasps from a few of the guys, but when I shot a glance over toward Jeremy, he was smiling from ear to ear, Medea smiling over the deaths of her children.

Gilles, who was sitting out in front of me, didn’t turn around. But I could see him slowly, almost imperceptibly shake his head from side to side as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. And to tell the truth, neither could I. It was like another person had said what I had just blurted out. While the rest of the footage flashed by, no one seemed to care from that point on. After all, the fart had been let into the room and it wasn’t clearing anytime soon.

After probably looking up the words gold digging on Wikipedia, Gilles was out for blood on the afternoon shoots. Aurora and the cameramen, sensing that this was going to be an explosive issue, followed me like a cat on the trail of an overturned fish truck.

As usual, I clung to Aurora for sustenance. We sat on the expensive chaise lounges around the pool, nibbling on outrageously expensive Japanese sushi finger foods, waiting for the cameramen to arrive, presumably to capture Gilles plunging an escargot fork into my heart. It was weird not knowing what was occurring elsewhere in the show. Occasionally, we overlapped and saw what was happening in other parts of the filming, but it never added up to a whole. It was like a magic show, where you were shown the ace of spades and expected to construct the rest of the magic trick, backward. At any one time, you had only part of the equation. The editors, bless their union-bound hearts, would take the twos, fives, and queens and kings and make it into a straight flush, a coherent program.

So, as I felt safe and secure with Aurora, my protectorate, Gilles stormed up to me and confronted me like an ancestral harpy. I stood up to meet him.

“Zo, you zink I ham a gold-digging U-O-trash? Let us zee how much of you izz real,” he said, pulling my swimsuit top down in front of the rolling cameras.

What I did next was true reality. No scripting. I slapped him so hard across the face, his diamond stud earring flew off and into the pool, a good fifteen feet away. I’m not kidding. I actually watched it fly through the air in a perfect arc and land in the pool with a tiny plink. Even better, as I looked back at Gilles, I could still see my handprint clearly on his face, the fingers clearly and painfully outlined across his perfect skin.

You could have heard an ant sneeze.

I have never been a violent person, but it was so weird. It was like I had no other choice than to do what welled up in me like a volcanic explosion. And it felt good. Someone had done me wrong. No, violated me. And I struck back with total justification. Okay, I only did what everyone who probably ever came in contact with Gilles wanted to do within seconds of meeting him, but the point was, I did it. And it made me feel powerful. Really powerful.

As I stood there pulsing with adrenaline, Gilles seemed to freeze. I do believe it was the first time anyone had ever stood up to him, especially a woman. He held his Gallic nose high in the air in defiance, both of us unwilling to back down. While there was still noise from all the other groups at the pool party, everyone in our little circle stood motionless, breathless. Then, Gilles blinked and turned haughtily away, dismissing me with a downward wave of his hand, the cameras trailing him like a pack of hyenas following a lion with fresh kill still in his mouth. I had won.

Aurora, waiting for the drama to pass—and to let the cameras get a reaction shot of her—raised her wineglass silently in a toast to me with a silent nod of acceptance. No, admiration. One tough bitch to another . . . in a gay man’s world. When word spread throughout the pool party that I had “bitch-slapped the bitch,” other members of the cast came to either