Chapter 9

Dull Debi, Harold Griffin's story

Harold Griffin had been on his last legs in LA. He'd tried everything he could to break into the movie production business but he had either been let go or outright fired on every low paying production assistant job he found through a string of temp agencies, each of which gave up on him because he 'soured their credibility' as each of his placement agents told him in one way or the other. If they told him at all.

He made enough to pay the rent from his gig as a cook, on the breakfast/lunch, shift at the Sunset Diner and the rest of his income he spent out of a dwindling trust fund his mother had set up before she died.

Finally, though, he'd hit on a way to gain entry into the wonderful world of show biz, as his dear departed Mom had called it; 'Personal Services'.

And the way for him was going to be as a massage therapist. He figured that out when he got rave reviews from Mona, the middle aged first shift waitress, after offering to massage her feet after their shift.

He'd always had good hands, he had massaged his mother's shoulders but that was 'family' and he'd never thought much of it. Mona, of course, wasn't family and she said he was really good at it. Harold had put in a good effort, though it was distracting when Mona kept shifting around and he couldn't help but see her panties up her skirt.

Harold was no fool and he knew that there were many 'schools' which only took the money and ran, so he asked around, mainly people who worked or knew someone who worked at studios. And now, he was a freshly minted graduate of Ventura School of Massage. He even had his own portable table bought from a pawn shop a few blocks down Sunset. They even threw in the case of almost full massage oils when he didn't try to bargain them down.

Now all he had to do was get clientele and he was on his way. He knew that his best bet was to find other movie 'hopefuls' who could afford a few bucks for a half hour of his services. He had studied the business and knew at least one beauty parlour hairdresser had become a big studio executive. Surely, his ability even at a young age, to judge which actor or actress was going to be a star would keep him on the right track.

Harold was undaunted when the first responses to his small ad in the LA Weekly Dirt turned out to be aging widows and housewives, with a few tired hookers thrown in for variety. He handed out flyers in the low rent studio apartment areas and got some young things straight from Kansas who knew from fan mags that the third thing a young actress needed, after an agent and a hairdresser, was a massage at least once a week in order to keep the proper equilibrium.

Now the discerning reader who knows how things work in La-La Land is thinking Harold has a 'really SWEET gig' ... nothing turns on chicks like a massage. Harold knew that too and, much to Mona's benefit and amusement, he was determined to keep his private and work life separated because trust was vital in the masseur/client relationship. So it was hard for him, but he managed to avoid responding to obvious come-ons when some of the young and restless girls were turned on by his magic hands; which weren't really all that magic, he knew, but they had nothing to compare them to.

He did, though, finally succumb to Mona's wiles, mainly because she had even stopped wearing panties, and he justified their twice weekly fuck trysts as 'helping her through her difficult marriage' as she had been complaining lately. Not to mention he'd had a tougher and tougher time resisting temptation; some of these young, never to be, starlets were pretty hot with great bodies. And somehow Rosie Palm wasn't satisfying him so much lately.