Snuff, Page 9

  A fluffer, he says, is somebody whose job is to blow guys or give hand jobs to make sure they’re ready to act on cue.

  I don’t know.

  “The biggest irony is that most of the men,” the Dan Banyan guy says, “in the movie with me, most of them were straight. Doing it just for the cash.”

  When he found that out, he says, he didn’t feel half as flattered by the attention.

  On the TVs, my mom is putting big fake diamonds inside her mouth. Licking them. Her lips and her snatch she has in this movie, they look nothing like what I have at home. The stuff I sent for over the Internet.

  Mr. Bacardi looks at the floor, shaking his head and saying, “Who am I fooling?” Looking at his feet, only with his eyes closed, he says, “I wasted the precious gift of my life.” Cupping his closed eyes with the palm of one hand, he says, “I threw away my whole precious life, trashed my life like it was nothing but a money shot.”

  And the Dan Banyan guy turns his head, fast, only long enough to look at Mr. Bacardi and says, “Christ! Snap out of it. Would you quit Elisabeth Kübler-Ross–ing on us!”

  When he was my age, the Dan Banyan guy says, he watched Cassie Wright in World Whore One, he maybe even saw me get conceived, but as she took on French soldier after German soldier after doughboy, he said to himself, “Damn, I’d like to be that popular…” But, every casting call, he was just another young guy in a sea of young guys. TV commercials. Feature films. He never got any callbacks. Before he turned twenty-one years old, casting agents were already going on how he was too old. The only last thing left for him to do was buy a bus ticket back to Oklahoma.

  The Dan Banyan guy tips his bottle of pills until one rolls into the palm of his other hand. Just looking at it, he says, “My agent thinks that if I’m seen in this project it will ‘out’ me as being secretly straight. He’s banking on at least bisexual.” The Dan Banyan guy just looks at the blue pill sitting in his palm. His skin on his face, the blood veins swell across his dark-red forehead. His face turning the purple color of pounded meat, those blood veins twitch and squirm just inside his skin.

  His agent’s already got a press release printed, ready to issue. The headline across the top says ‘Dan Banyan Comes Out on Top!’ Under that, the press release talks about the recent tragic death of one of America’s topmost adult-movie stars. Most of the rest is him officially denying rumors how his massive rock-hard wiener and relentless animal ram-job is responsible for my mom being dead.

  The Dan Banyan guy holds out his hand, shoving the pill at me. He says, if I want it, take it. Free of charge. I don’t have to blow him or anything.

  Mr. Bacardi’s fingering the necklace around his neck, popping the pendant deal open and looking inside.

  The pendant deal, it’s a locket I’ve seen before. Hanging from around my mom’s neck in Blow Jobs of Madison County. It’s Cassie Wright’s necklace he’s wearing.

  “It only takes one mistake,” the Dan Banyan guy says, “and nothing else you ever do will matter.” With his empty hand, he takes one of my hands. His fingers feel hot, fever-hot, and pounding with his heartbeats.

  He turns my hand palm-up, saying, “No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you’ll always be known for that one poor choice.” He sets the blue pill on my palm, saying, “Do that one wrong thing – and you’ll be dead for the rest of your life.”

  Mr. Bacardi’s looking at a pill inside my mom’s locket.

  “Someone had better die today,” the Dan Banyan guy says, “or I’ll be headed back to Oklahoma.”

  And he folds my fingers shut with the little blue pill inside.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  19

  Mr. 137

  The last time I saw Oklahoma is the last time I ever want to see Oklahoma. Picture that big circle of blue sky meeting dirt, wrapped all the way around you. Dirt and rocks stretched from you to the horizon. Dirt and rocks, and that sun always up high, the noon whistle blasting at the volunteer fire department. Dirt and rocks, and my dear, simple, good-hearted father waiting to see me off on the Greyhound bus bound for the temptations of the big, wicked city.

  Talking to the talent wrangler, I say that if Oklahoma the state was anything like the musical I’d still reside there. Cowboys tap-dancing on train platforms. Gloria Grahame. Gypsy peddlers. Elaborate dream sequences choreographed by Martha Graham.

  I lean forward and pinch, with just my fingertips, an especially gruesome flake of dandruff off the shoulder of the wrangler’s black sweater. From the feel, a 50-acrylic, 50-cotton blend, raglan sleeves, faux cowl neck.

  Ribbed knit. Looped with snags. Awful. And I flick away the waxy flake.

  On Mr. Toto, next to Gloria Grahame’s fake autograph, it says, “What girl could ever say ‘No’ to you?!”

  Watching the white flake arc and disappear in the fluttering light from the monitors, the talent wrangler says, “I use her shampoo…” and she tosses her head toward the movie on the screen above us, where Cassie Wright’s trapped in a dystopian science-fiction future. According to the premise, war and toxic waste have killed off every other hot sex goddess except her. As the last surviving hottie, she has to wear crippling thong underwear, a push-up bra, and high heels, then fuck or suck off every guy in the evil fascist, quasi-religious, theocratic, Old Testament – inspired government. The movie’s called The Handmaid’s Tail.

  A classic of social-commentary porn.

  “It’s how I got this job,” the wrangler says. “During my pitch meeting, Ms. Wright smelled my hair.”

  Me, too, I say, and touch the hairs combed across my own scalp.

  “I kind of guessed,” she says, frowning. “Either that or you’re having chemotherapy or you have some terrible, fatal disease.”

  No, I tell her. Just the shampoo.

  “You’re wrong,” she says.

  Okay, I tell her, maybe I bottomed for an army of strangers in some forgettable gang-bang flick, but I do not have some terrible disease. Buried somewhere in the papers on her clipboard, she can dig out my STD report.

  “No,” she says. Reading over the names and inscriptions scribbled on Mr. Toto’s white canvas skin, the wrangler says, “It wasn’t Martha Graham. It was Agnes de Mille.”

  On Mr. Toto, I spelled her autograph with only one ‘L’.

  “Agnes de Mile.” A dead giveaway.

  That’s okay, I tell her. In my life, I’ve been wrong about almost everything.

  You’d better believe I didn’t give them the full story about me, my beloved father, and all of that lovely, lovely Oklahoma lying flat, as far as the eye could see. No, you can ask, but I’m saving myself for Charlie Rose. Barbara Walters. Larry King. Or Oprah Winfrey. No one except a certified talk-show god is going to dissect my private parts.

  Waiting for that Greyhound bus, my father kept telling me to write. As soon as I got settled in California, I should write them a postcard, telling him and my mother where to send my mail. Of course he told me to phone, to telephone collect if I had to. And right away, once I arrived in Los Angeles, just so my mother wouldn’t worry.

  Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will fuck you up, every time.

  The talent wrangler stands still, her shoulders pinned back so I can pinch the waxy white flakes off her sweater. In her eyes dance tiny screens of Cassie Wright, reflected. As the last hottie in the sci-fi future, for her own protection, Cassie can only venture out in public wearing a billowing cloak and wide hat. Almost a nun’s habit, only red.

  A voice says, “Make sure he wears a rubber, Sheila.” A man’s voice. Branch Bacardi’s stopped next to us, his stomach sucked back to his spine but skin still slopped out over the elastic waistband of his red satin prizefighter shorts.

  Sheila doesn’t say a word. She won’t even give him a look.

  Bacardi hooks his thumb at me, saying, “You’re barking up the wrong team, honey.”

  Bacardi folds his arms over his shaved chest. He smiles, running his
tongue over his top teeth, winks, and says, “But if you want babies inside you, I’m your man.”

  And the black poly-cotton rib-knit awfulness of the talent wrangler’s sweater, it shudders. Her shoulders shudder and her eyes close as she says, “Rapist.”

  In Oklahoma, my high school graduation had been Saturday night, and this was Monday morning. One minute I’m walking the football field, wearing my black cap and gown, accepting my diploma from Superintendent Frank Reynolds. The next minute I’m standing next to my suitcase, a present mail-ordered for graduation. Both my father and I squinting down the road. Looking for that bus, my father says, “You write if you meet any girl, special.”

  A couple dandruff flakes after Branch Bacardi’s walked away, the talent wrangler says, “He pressured her to get an abortion. Said he’d pay for it. Said a baby would ruin her tits, end her career in movies.”

  The wrangler says she needs to collect the brown paper bags for the three men who are with Cassie Wright, on set. She needs to take them their clothes and shoes.

  Across the room, the young actor looks at the pill cupped in the palm of his hand.

  Just teasing, I ask why we never see anybody once they’re called to the set. Is this some mass black-widow-spider snuff movie? Does somebody on set kill each of the six hundred actors the moment after they ejaculate?

  Just joking, I mean.

  But the wrangler only looks at me for one, two, three flakes of dandruff, my fingertips pinching them and flicking them away. Four, five, six flakes later, she says, “Yes. This is actually an elaborate scheme to steal men’s used clothing…”

  Pinching white flakes, I ask the wrangler why she doesn’t just renumber an actor and run him through the set several times. They could shoot just his arm, each time with a different number. That way, the young man, number 72, could leave. The production wouldn’t depend on keeping everyone happy and trapped here.

  One hand holding her clipboard so the bottom edge is braced against her stomach, her free hand slips the thick black felt-tipped pen from the clip. The wrangler waves the pen next to her face, beside her eyes, and says, “Indelible ink.”

  That Monday morning in Oklahoma, squinting into the sun and the distance, his eyes watering against the wavy smell of the hot blacktop, my father says, “You do know, don’t you? About being with a gal?” He says, “I mean, about protecting yourself?”

  I told him I knew. I know.

  And he said, “Have you?”

  Worn a rubber? I asked. Or been with a girl?

  And he laughed, slapping one hand on his thigh, puffing up dust from his jeans, he said, “Why else would you wear a rubber if you ain’t been with a gal?”

  Oklahoma ringed around us, the world spread out from the spot we’re standing, the gravel side of the highway, only him and me, I told my father I was never going to meet the right girl.

  And he said, “Don’t you say that.” Still watching the horizon, he said, “You just got to encourage yourself some.”

  That black pen, the wrangler says, you can’t wash it off. You can’t scratch it off. Once she writes a number on you, it’s permanent as a tattoo for roughly the lifespan of a full bar of soap in your shower.

  Sliding the pen back under the clip of her clipboard, she says, “I hope you have a lot of long-sleeved shirts.”

  The rocks and sun. The Greyhound bus not here. All my clothes folded and layered in my suitcase. I should’ve shut up. Changed the subject of conversation to the weather report, maybe the bushel price of winter wheat. We could’ve run out the clock talking about Mrs. Wellton, who runs the post office, and her spastic colon. Another line of dialogue, about the new Massey tractors versus the John Deere, a little back-and-forth about how wet last summer turned out, and both of us would be a ton happier right now.

  That Greyhound bus still somewhere under the horizon.

  But wouldn’t you know it? I fucked everything up. My last ten minutes before leaving home, I told my father I was an Oklahomo.

  Talking to the talent wrangler, I swallow another little pill. Sweat slides down from my hairline to my eyebrows, down my temples to my cheeks. Sweat hangs, swings from my earlobes. Drops fall, splashing dark spots around my feet. The skin of my neck burns, hot.

  The talent wrangler says, “Lay off those pills.” She says, “You don’t look so healthy.”

  I tell her I’m not sick.

  The bus still somewhere else, my father said, “It’s a misunderstanding, you being how you figure.” He spits in the dust, the gravel and dust of the road’s shoulder, and says, “It’s on account of somebody doing something evil to you when you was little.”

  Somebody diddled me.

  I ask, Who?

  “You don’t got to know names,” my father says. “Only know you ain’t naturally the way you figure.”

  I asked, Who diddled me?

  My father only shook his head.

  Then it’s a lie, I tell him. He’s lying out of hope I’ll change. He’s making up a story to confuse me. Inventing some reason why I can’t just be happy how I am. Nobody around here’s a child molester.

  But he only shakes his head, saying, “Ain’t no lie.” Saying, “I wish it was.”

  The bus still not here.

  “Relax, dude,” a voice says. Here in the basement, Branch Bacardi says, “You die in there, pitch yourself a stroke or a heart attack, and they’ll just roll you on your back and let Cassie ride a reverse cowgirl on your hard, dead dick.”

  Walking away, he says, “Nothing if not a numbers game, that’s what today is.”

  Pinching white flakes off the wrangler’s sweater, I say how one gruesome possibility is that I allowed fifty or more strange men to fuck my ass just to make my father wrong…

  My worst fear is that I got fucked by the equivalent of five baseball teams just to prove my father wasn’t a pervert.

  The same heartbeat when the bus popped up on the horizon, my father said, “You got to trust me.”

  I say he’s lying. My knees bent low enough my hand could grip the handle of my suitcase. My legs stand. My mouth says he’s lying to try and keep me straight.

  The bus, bigger with every word.

  He says, “Would you believe if I told you who done it?”

  Who diddled me when I was a baby.

  My other hand, holding my bus ticket, shaking.

  The bus almost here, that last little while of us talking in Oklahoma, my father says, “It was me.”

  It was him diddled me.

  Talking to the talent wrangler, picking flakes off her sweater, by accident instead of a pill I slip a flake between my lips. Her dead skin, chewy with grease or wax. I spit it out.

  Hanging over us on the monitors, Cassie Wright tears her sci-fi nun’s habit into long strips she begins to braid with pastel-pink-and-yellow bras and thongs, tying together a rope she can climb to escape from her window.

  I ask the wrangler can I pick the flakes out of her hair.

  And the wrangler shrugs, saying, “Only the ones that show…”

  In Oklahoma, the Greyhound bus pulls up to us, me and my father in the flat center of our state, and he says, “It was a one-time mistake, boy.” He says, “But don’t you make it last the rest of your life.”

  The air brakes set. The metal door folds open. One, two, three steps, and my feet stand on board, my hand getting my ticket taken by the driver. My lips saying, “Los Angeles.”

  My father down below, calling, “Write like you promised.” Saying, “Don’t you live what’s not your fault, boy.”

  My ears hearing all that.

  The talent wrangler watches Branch Bacardi, her eyes attached to him. Only looking away when he looks back at her, she says, “Yeah, parents will always fuck you up…”

  My feet walked me down the aisle of the Greyhound bus, all the way to the back. My butt sat me in a seat.

  My butt’s accomplished a lot since then.

  My butt’s a movie star.

  Only
wouldn’t you know it? I never did write home.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  20

  Sheila

  In 1944, while she was filming the movie Kismet, Marlene Dietrich bronzed her legs with copper paint. Lead-based copper-colored paint. The lead leached into her skin. Almost poisoned her to death. Ms. Wright tells me this while I stir the wax melting in a double boiler.

  Ms. Wright, she’s shucking off her long-sleeved top, her jeans and panties. Naked, Ms. Wright bends to spread a bath towel across the top of her kitchen table. Her two-room apartment, the bare walls busy with nail holes. Not a stick of furniture except a soiled white sofa that folds out to make a bed. Two kitchen chairs bent out of chrome, and a table to match. Ms. Wright spreads a second and third towel across the table. Spreads another until the towels add up to a thick pad.

  The cabinets are empty. Inside her fridge, you’d maybe find some takeout, wrapped in tinfoil from the Greek place on the first floor. Balanced on the tank of her toilet, her last roll of tissue.

  Sitting her bare-naked ass on the edge of the kitchen table, Ms. Wright says that the actor Lucille Ball always refused cosmetic surgery. No face-lifts for Lucy. Instead, she grew out the hair at her temples, long thick strands of hair that hung over each ear. Before she made any public appearance, shot any television or movie work, Lucy would wind those long locks of hair around wooden toothpicks. With a wig cap pulled tight over the crown of her head, Lucy would pull each toothpick up and backward, stretching and lifting the sagging skin of each cheek. Snag the toothpicks into the mesh of the wig cap, then pull on a red bouffant wig to hide the whole mess. Past a certain age, anytime you see Lucille Ball on television reruns, mugging and bawling for laughs, smiling and looking wonderful for her age, that woman is in agony.

  True fact, according to Ms. Wright.

  Nodding at the boxes stacked in the living room, boxes marked ‘Charity’ or ‘Trash’, I ask if she’s planning a trip.

  And Ms. Wright scoots her butt back on the towels. Hands clamped around the edge of the table, to keep the towels in place, she slides back until she’s sitting. Centered on the towels, Ms. Wright leans back to rest on her elbows. Draws up both her feet to rest on the edge of the table. All of her naked. Knees spread wide, bent to give her frog legs, she says, “Am I going somewhere?”