There’s a rumor floating around the entertainment news websites that the next project for director Steven Soderbergh (“Sex, Lies, and Videotape”, “Oceans 12″) is a bio-pic of Liberace to star Michael Douglas in the title role and Matt Damon as Scott Thorson, Lee Liberace’s boy-toy who filed the first gay palimony suit after Liberace threw him out of their shared Beverly Boulevard penthouse suite in the early 80’s.

Stop the presses. I’ve owned the rights to Scott Thorson’s life story since May 14, 2004, and I have a signed Life Story and Consent document to prove my case. More on this as details emerge — and the WGA and assorted entertainment lawyers are consulted — but in the interim, from September 27, 2005, via the Trace Stories for 8763 Wonderland, here is the story of my professional relationship with Scott Thorson.

“SATORI”

Two months had passed since Trace had a paying gig so when an aging and downtrodden gay hustler asked him to broker a deal with The National Tattler he swallowed his distaste for tabloids and agreed to meet the man.

“Our mutual friend tells me that if anyone can sell a story it’s you,” David Dulce said in greeting when they hooked up at a crappy sushi bar in Studio City. Trace hated sushi and since the joint didn’t serve tempura or teriyaki he would have been shit out of luck if not for the sake to satiate him.

“You know what the Japanese say?” Trace asked when they settled in at a table near the rear parking lot entrance. “You can never have enough sake.”

“Really?” Dulce studied him through cat-like eyes from a face that had been ravaged by too many attempts at reconstructive surgery. “I’ve been to Japan three times and I never heard that one.”

“What do I know?” Trace muttered, pouring his first shot of the hot fermented rice beverage. “Let’s get down to it. What do you have to sell? You seemed kind of vague on the phone.”

“Ten years ago I had an affair with –” He named a pop music superstar that everyone suspected was gay.

Trace didn’t even blink. He poured another shot of sake, knocked it back, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“How much money are you looking for?”

“Well, Trace, that’s the thing.” He had a way of elongating his words that annoyed Trace to no end. When he spoke Trace’s name it came out as a long train named Traaaaaaaaace. “I’m really in a bad place right now. I had to have surgery to remove a bullet that’s been near the base of my spine for a long time.”

“How did that happen?”

“Someone shot me the day after I got out of the Federal witness protection program.”

Again Trace didn’t blanch. Characters like David Dulce floated in and out of Trace’s life with alarming frequency – alarming to those around him.

“What were you doing in the witness protection program?”

“I turned state’s evidence against an Israeli Mafia guy in a murder case.”

Trace was beginning to feel the sake’s warm embrace.

“You have to set a price, David. How much do you want for your story?”

“Five grand?”

Trace laughed. “If your story checks out, David, The Tattler is going to offer more than five thousand dollars. Five grand is the beginning. That’s my finders fee.”

David’s feline eyes lit up like he’d just been cruised by David Hasselhoff.

“If it checks out,” Trace underscored. “Are you willing to take a lie detector test?”

“Of course. I’m not lying, Trace.” Traaaaaaaaaaace. Like a bleating sheep.

“Of course you’re not.”

That evening Trace called anti-porn crusader Duke Sebastian. Duke was remarkably well connected in the Hollywood underground and financed his anti-smut campaign by dropping a dime to the tabloids every now and then. He was even able to verify secondhand that David Dulce’s story about his gay affair with the pop superstar was on the money.

Once Trace contacted the editor at The Tattler that Duke referred him to, events picked up at an astonishing speed. The Tattler flew a reporter to L.A. overnight to meet with Dulce. David passed not one but two polygraph tests with flying colors. He was either incapable of telling a lie or was a pathological liar who believed his own bullshit. Either way, The Tattler was buying the story.

The finders fee of five thousand dollars was the end of a long drought for Trace but it wasn’t the end of his relationship with David Dulce. The Tattler paid Dulce ten grand for his story but the aging hustler was so deep in debt that they may as well have offered him a thin dime.

Dulce began phoning Trace on a regular basis, urging Trace to sell more of his sordid sexual adventures to the tabloids. He offered a laundry list of sexual oddities that stunned even Trace: celebrity bestiality romps, three ways, rape, who’s gay and who is a diesel dyke and who has the largest collection of kiddie porn on the west coast.

“You’re buying yourself a ticket to your own funeral with these stories,” Trace cautioned. “And be careful about the messages you leave on my voice mail. The hotel housekeeper accidentally overheard that message about Siegfried and Roy yesterday.”

In the long run, though, Trace couldn’t interest The Tattler in any further David Dulce stories. For starters, the tabloid was going through an “editorial restructuring” and the editors left standing after the bloodletting looked upon David Dulce as a fringe celebrity at best. His greed was also apparent and nothing chills the blood of a tabloid editor like a gold digger – unless their price is reasonable.

“I’m sorry, David, I can’t sell anything for you,” Trace apologized for the tenth time in a week. Dulce was calling him every day, breathing dirty tales of dirty celebrities into Trace’s voice mail.

“Come on, Traaaaaaaaaace. What about my Loretta Lynn story? Can’t you sell that? It’s hot!”

Trace hung up the phone and then dialed the four digit extension for the hotel switchboard.

“I need you to screen all of my calls for the next month or so, please,” he requested. “If a guy named David Dulce calls do not put him through. Tell him I’m on the other line, tell him I checked out of the hotel, tell him I died. I don’t care what you say, just don’t put his calls through please.”

Trace lit a cigarette and laid down on the bed, staring at the ceiling and pondering the bizarre story David told him about Engelbert Humperdinck.