Dead Stars (11 page)

– Is she in
True Blood
?

–
No. That's Anna Paquin.

– I
love True Blood
.

– Anna Paquin?

– Oh my God, you are
so stoned
, just shut the fuck
up.
Thora Birch was in
American Beauty
.

–
I didn't see that. I know of it but I haven't seen it.

– Get your Netflix game on, biatch. We watched it on Raymundo's iPad. Anyway, her parents are total pornstars.

– Her parents? Really?

– Yeah, I think her mom was in
Deep Throat
.

–
I'm looking her up on
Wickedpedia
—

– They should adopt Chocolate Chippy D!

– Totally! She's probably their real kid . . .

– It should have been Thora
Fishburne—

–
Switched at birth!

–
ahahahahahahahahahaah—

–
O my God, you won't believe this—

– She's too white to be his daughter.

–
What?

–
It says she went to
New Roads
.

–
Are you kidding?!?!

– Who did.

– Thora.

– I think it's so trippy when you can have a black father and still look totally white if your mom's white. I saw a picture of Drake's mom—

–
Thora Birch's parents
totally
need to adopt Chippy D!

– —look. See? He's a Jew.

– That's Drake's mom? She's so totally a blond!

– President Obama's mom is
totally white
like that.

– Are they still seriously porned out? Thora's mom & dad?

– I don't think they like
perform
anymore, they just manage her. Her dad does. Her career.

– If she has one.

– See if she's on twitter.

– Are you
sure
she is not in
True Blood
?

–
O my God, you're
serious!
You are so stoned!

– No one can be managed by their
parents
. Well maybe when you're really young but then it gets fucked up. They like snap to the fact that their parents are totally trying to control them or steal their money. They wind up having to sue.

– I would
love
to sue my parents.

– ReeRee, when are you going to tell your mom you're pregnant?

– When I start to show. I have like this whole
plan
.

–
Like how you're going to tell her?

– I'm supposed to get all this money when I'm 18? From when I was a model in all of her photographs? She's been like setting aside money for me, and putting it in a trust? She said I deserved to have some of the money.

– That is so cool of her.

– Your mom is so kewl.

– I mean, do you know, did she say how much? How much you're going to have?

– I think around like $200,000—

–
whoa whoa whoa—

– but that was like 4 years ago. So there's probably interest . . .

– Reeyonna, that is
so much money
.

–
I'm not supposed to get it til I turn 18, but I'm going to ask her to give it to me earlier.

– What are you going to do with it?

– Buy a house. Like a little cottage in Silverlake or the Hollywood hills.

– Like a bungalow?

– O my God, I
love
that.

– I just think you need a house if you're going to start a family. Rikki and I need to
live
together, he needs to feel like the man of the house. You know, not a
boy
who doesn't have any responsibilities.

– Do you think she'll give it to you? Early? Your mom?

– It's
my money
. I'll fucking sue her if she doesn't!

– Hahahahahahahahaha!

– Sue the bitch.

–
Beeyotch
.

– She's a MILS—
Mom I'd Like to Sue
.

– ahahahahahahahahahahahahah—

– TMZ said Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart made like
$30 million
last year each—

–
Yeah but Taylor Swift—no, Taylor Lautner made, like,
50 million.

– Who said?

– Dlisted.
And TMZ too.

– Johnny Depp made 125.

– Thousand?

–
Million
, you spaz.

– O. My. God.

– You are
spastic
.
In Touch
said that works out to like 40,000 an hour for a whole
year
, 24-hours around the clock!

– O my God.

–
That is
so crazy
. Then Jennifer Lawrence is probably a billionaire!

– No, the internet said she got totally fucked, she's only making like a million dollars for like the first three.

–
Eminem probably made more than a billion.

– Would you fuck Eminem?

– Are you kidding? Of course!

– No, I mean if you could
marry
him, and you found out he
really likes
it when girls don't, just, like,
fuck
him right away—

– Do you mean could I
not
fuck him?

– Like do you think you could
not
fuck Em if you thought there was a chance he would marry you?

– What if you didn't fuck him and he
didn't
marry you?!?!

– If it was between fucking him or
not
fucking him but the marriage wasn't, like, guaranteed?

– I'd fuck Drake.

– I would
so
fuck Drake. He got
so
hurt by Rihanna.

– Slut.

– Drake's a Jew.

– Nuh
uh
.

–
He is, he's a Jew.

– How could he be.

– But why is Eminem so pissed off all the time? Eminem is
so angry.
He has so much money!

–
He's probably a pussycat. It's just that he's been hurt in love. You know, love is, like, heavy on his heart.

– I used to think he was gay.

– You thought Em was
gay?!?!

–
When “I Need A Doctor” came out, they said “doctor” was like code for “dick”—

–
Who
said?!?!

– It was on the internet . . .

– That is
so lame
. “Doctor” is Dr. Dre.

–
I'm just sayin—

– The song is
totally gay
, tho. You know, Dre says “All I need is
him
” and Eminem's all like “Come back, Dre, you're the only one who believed in me, why should we care what other people think, let's just like, you know, fuck—”

– You are
so crazy
!!!

– I think it's
sweet
, they're really good
friends
, Em's just saying to Dre that he needs him. It's so like
vulnerable
. I mean, rap
never
talks about man love—

– & Royce sayin he loves Em like Em loves Dre & how he would kill for him
it is so gay!

– Eminem gave Elton John a
cock ring
made of
diamonds—

–
O that is such BULLSHIT—

– No, he did, it was in the
Rolling Stone . . .

– Eminem is like
so stuck up
. I mean like every song he's on that has other people, it's like so funny, he's always talking about how he's the
best
, like the others'll just be talking about weed or cars or bitches or
whatever
, and all Marshall Mathers talks about is how he's like the most amazing rapper who ever lived!

– Whoa! What is your
issue
.

– Cause you're talking—she's talking like she's been—what do they say—“a woman spurned”!

– A woman
spermed—

–
Squirted!

– A woman spurted!

–
She
wishes!

– If I had $100 million trust me I would
not
be angry.

– Maybe you would be! Maybe you'd be Charlotte Sheen!

– Who?

–
Charlotte Sheen.
Sister of Charlie!

–
Oh! Charlotte! Hahahahahaha!

–
Charlene.
That would be
Charlene
.

–
Charlene! Charlene! Charlene Sheen!

– Fuck
yeah!—

–
I'd fuck Hov and Ye before I did Eminem.

– Look at
choo.
Look @ dis biatch! “Hov” & “-ye”! Lissen to
choo
. Girl think she a nigga.

– Nicki Mee-naj. Nicki
Ménage à twaht.

– What about Johnny Depp.

– What about him.

– Would you let him d.p.?

–
I'll tell you my dream d.p. . . . I'm on top of Robert Pattinson & the guy on
In Treatment
is in my butt. Up to the nuts!!!!

–
Tea baggggggggg!

– What is
In Treatment?!?!

–
Gabriel Byrne is
so sexy.

– I'm kinda over Johnny Depp.

–
He's
over
you. And
his wife.

–
I'm over that swashbuckling shit. I need uh
ass-buckling . . .

– Have you seen his wife? She's
hot
. She's a singer.

– Voolay-voo coushay ahveck m'wah, çe swa.

– I wonder if she's been d.p.'d.

– Totally. She's been totally Johnny D'p.'d! That's why they're breaking up. She's over it.

–
French people
invented
the d.p.

– “The” d.p.————————ha!

– And Americans perfected it.

– This smoke is
amazing—

–
It's from Rikki's stash.

–
That purp, that bomb, that kush . . .

– Gimme that blunt. Gimme gimme gimme.

– Ree, do you have any Adderall?

– No!

– O please O please O pretty pretty please?

– Do you think Laurence Fishburne ever saw any of Chippy D's
feature films
?

– O, gross!

– I mean don't you think he would've had to see something, like even by
mistake
?
—

– Please ReeRee please?
Ollie Ollie Addie, oxen free . . .

– Wouldn't a father be
curious
about his
daughter
—I mean, he's already
seen
her nude, he's
washed her
in a tub when she was little, he's already
seen
that nasty vadge . . .

– ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

–
ReeRee,
pleeeeeeeeeeease
?

–
What?!

– Please can I
please
have some Adderall?

– Wouldn't a father be curious to see his baby take it in both holes & SQUIRT?

– You are so sick!

– Thar she blows!

–
Thar she blows——

– [all together now] THARRRRRRR SHEEEEEEEEE BLOWWWWWWWWWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CLEAN

[Jacquie]

The Family of Mann

Jacquie

lied when she told Steve Martin she was almost finished with a suite of new photographs she'd been working on the last few years—the culmination of everything she was as an artist. When Steve said he'd be
very
interested in seeing them, she knew he was lying too. They exchanged energized hellos while he was in the middle of signing books after the Library event. Jacquie waited half-an-hour longer for him to finish, standing a discreet distance apart, watching him autograph, with an old courtesan's half-smile. When he was done, a dozen giggling fans lingered, taking cellphone pics with the author for their Facebook pages. With the help of a library staffer, Steve finally disengaged, and Jacquie approached. He was warm and polite. They spent a few minutes catching up, then he said he had to rush to a business dinner.
Another lie,
she thought. He gave her a contact number.

What happened?

For a while, she'd had such a good run . . .

. . .

Jacquie grew up poor, in Ocala.

DOB: 1960.

Dad was a short order cook. Migratory. Worked up and down those beaches in the summers—

Pompano, Vero, Cocoa, Daytona, Satellite, Neptune, Boynton. She had no ambition. All roads led to Ocala.

Dropped out of (the evocatively named)
Junior College of Central Florida
& became a Wal-Mart worker. At least it gave her the ability to live away from them.

Perfect timing because right about then her father got disabled & became a stay-at-home dad. Seemed like everybody's dad had a fucked up spine.

The irony was, she met that married professor not at (the lyrically christened)
Junior College of Central Florida
, but at Wal-Mart. He was handsome, angry, boyishly hurt, sophisticated. 63, with a full head of hair gone professorially grey-white. Even looking back, Jacquie believes it to be true: that the outsized, sensuous quality of her remembrance of his outsized, sensual (boozy) cynicism wasn't some trick that youth played on her mind. The man actually smoked a pipe, wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches. Now, she smiles to herself & says, Can you believe it? It really worked on him though (the look); and he really worked on
her
. Everything worked & was working. His pipe-stem breath smelled like sex & mouthwash. The professor was her 1st big physical love affair, she didn't really have too many more after that, not on that scale, with that resonance. To this day, the Professor essentially was
it,
for a multifariousity of reasons. Jacquie got hooked emotionally too, oh did she did.

His wife found out but didn't leave him.

The not so nutty professor gave Jacquie a camera.

And a boy—Jerry (Jr.) AKA Jerzy. DOB: 1984.

And child support; his wife found out about that too.

What are you gunna do.

She fooled around in her backyard with the Rolleiflex 2¼. Took lots of pics of cats and spiders in their webs. The film wasn't cheap, she had to find a fancy camera store that stocked it. She lugged the thing to work. During lunchbreaks, she took arty parking lot (Wal-Mart) pics: shopping carts, crap cars, asphalt detritus. Everything but people, she never liked people in the shot, not if she could help it. (She wasn't ready for people pics.) Her co-workers thought she was an agreeable dufus. Which she was. Got along with everybody and never made waves. The emptier the lots, the better. Jacquie
loved
her an empty parking lot, the slanty dividing lines, & empty curbside metered spaces too.

Oh and she went through a dumpster-pic phase.

Then she started getting her kicks on weekends (only when the professor wasn't able to see her). Took pics of all the beach places where her daddy short-ordered, up and down. Obsessive. She was like someone who assiduously studied guitar; one day, mysterious moment, they just can
play
, suddenly they're
guitar players
. Without knowing what she was doing, she'd given herself a carefully calibrated apprenticeship, & there came that moment of mystery when she effortlessly knew more or less what she was doing with the shutterspeed, the light, the artfulness of it. Self-consciousness lifted away. No agenda anymore. She went driving for hours, taking pics of anything, even people. Even the professor, but never the professor's wife.

Her father died. Became a stay-underground dad.

Then, exactly 2 weeks after renting a bungalow (a belated gesture, but still) for Jacquie and their son, her beloved had an aneurysm. She went to the hospital & sat in the car in the lot, not knowing what to do. Most definitely
not
up for encountering the wife. Beleaguered. Weeping & listening to wrong songs on the radio. Taking pictures of parking places to soothe herself.

When a tall woman of officious mien strode toward her, she thought,
She's going to tell me to stop. It's probably that you're not allowed to take pics on hospital grounds
.

Instead:

“I'm Jerome's wife.”

(She'd never heard
Jerome
. He/she always used
Jerry
.)

The widow invited Jacquie to visit her comatose husband's room. She never asked about Jacquie's son. Only saying, “You know, we have no children,” which broke Jacquie's heart.

(She wished she had brought her camera up.)

(The widow even left her alone with the body, because that's what it was, just a body.)

When she got back to her car, the glass was broken, the camera gone. Even as she sobbed, she realized how textbook symbolic was the theft. She sat behind the wheel, collecting herself. Cheap glass diamonds littered the vinyl seat. She focused on the (less than half-empty) parking lot. That familiar, reflexive, self-medicating urge to get out and take pics, which was not to be. She kept thinking about the widow's kindness. To come get her, to leave her with her professor, alone. A simple act of grace that still glows deep inside her to this day, providing warmth.

She bought a new camera, but her heart wasn't in it. Hardly used it . . .

1990. Now 30 years-old—
oh!
Waitressing (again).

So unhappy, such unhappiness.

Single mom with a 6-year-old.

She decides to drive to NY and stay at the Chelsea Hotel. Has approx $3,458.52 in savings. (Left nothing by the Professor, for whom she held no resentments, he'd just leased her & Jerry Jr. the bungalow, Jacquie was certain he had plans to further provide, how could he have known he had a bleedy brain?)

She sets off, leaves Jerry Jr. with her mom.

On the way up (on the 95), she takes pics of kitschy outdoor volcanoes/miniature golf courses & all the tourist traps lining beach town main drags. More pics of where Dad worked, and the sunny desolate apartment houses they used to live in. Lonely moonshots, camp & lovely: the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater—the exquisite nearby homes of Jupiter Island, hidden behind privets & parterres. Forgotten Kennedy Space Center parking lot outback, forgotten custodians who worked at the Astronaut Hall of Fame. St Augustine Fountain of Youth giftshop pics. Swamps, plantations, & cemeteries, & pics of folks who spoke Gullah and could tell a good Gullah ghost story. (They were all good.) She goes to Jekyll Island & Cape Fear, she always wanted to because of their names—Cape Fear was a wash, nothing frightening about Cape Fear at all, there didn't need to be, the name was perfect enough, gothy frightening name, frightful beacon in the imagination.

The Ava Gardner Museum. Yes. The old woman who works there—an Ava lookalike. The lonely parking lot. Yes. Of a castle in what they call the low country. A crazy-baroque synagogue in Savannah. On the beaches, she succumbs, like a teenager, to taking pics of shells: harps, pagodas & turbans, sundials, nutmegs, periwinkles.

There: a newish prison in the middle of a city, and the bailed-out blacks who pour forth. There was actually some kind of museum of slavery next door, & the just-released prisoners would bump right into it.

She drives & drives under gusty civil war skies.

Where am I going, where have I been.

She doesn't bother with Atlantic City. Atlantic City will do very well without her. Besides, she's running out of film.

She settles into her room at the Chelsea. (The Professor told her he stayed there a whole month once, that's how Jacquie got the idea.) She hates it.

She's lost, exhausted. Wants/needs to be touched. She puts on her sexiest dress and goes to a bar, fancy one, sleeps with the first man who tries to pick her up—a DP. Movie cameraman. Two weeks later, she's living in his apartment. All the while, she's watching herself, watching the insane speed at which things are happening, the whole crazy city, a million miles an hour, & now Jacquie a part of it. She loves it.

Ronny hires her for his camera crew, commercials & indies. (The beginning of indie golden years/Parker Poseydom.) She loses the ambition to document her world, hangs up her lenses, still in that world though by default. (Her job. Her man.) (Which she eventually takes for a “sign.”) Getting her bearings . . . missing her son. Wants/needs to forget about the Professor, which is tough, especially when Ronny's fucking her—he's the only one she'd been with since her beloved—Ronny fucks her well but not with the freight/impact/import of Jerome. Needs/wants to make a life for herself, a real life, a city life, still not feeling that's what she has or even getting close.
It looks like I do but I don't.
And it's late, late,
I'm getting old
,
how could I have stayed in Florida so long, oh how
how
—————————
all this time shuttling to Ocala every six weeks, that's about as long as she can stand being away from him, Jerry Jr., wanting of course her son to be with her in the big city, maybe it's out of respect for his father, allegiance maybe, loyalty, fear, before she puts a man in his life, before she gives him another dad, Jacquie just wants to make sure (as sure as she can) this thing with Ronny is real. She finally brings him to NYC for better for worse, to have & to hold. Ronny of course saying all along how cool he was with it, bringing the boy up, he'd been very sweet, & Jacquie believed him but still needed to know, to see, if it's real, needed Ronny to
demonstrate
it was real. But Ronny was fine, & so was Jerry Jr., they were good together, it was Jacquie's own skittishness, reluctance to change/go forward, the
definitive change
, really nothing to do with Ronny
at all
.

He starts working on bigger movies, studio ones. (Going to ball games with Jerry Jr.) Now she can get in the union. She needs that security for her son, that's real. Starts taking pics again, Ronny's encouraging. When they move into a big loft—shit, Tribeca, frickin
huge
space
,
today there would be no way!—they move in & Ronny builds her a darkroom. She gets busy. Dusts herself off and takes cityscapes. The usual. Pigeons & vagrants on Central Park benches. Gap-toothed smiling cabbies. Penn Station porters/couples. Children at the zoo, eyes filled with wonder.
Ugh when she thinks back.
But really
enjoying
herself. When she shows him her pics, Ronny settles into an armchair with a joint and says
I really like that.
That's what he always says. Which is annoyingly gratifying. Because she hates the idea of being the asst cameragirl girlfriend with the kid from another whatever who takes dumbass black&white pics on the weekends, she knows where
that
will end, and it does: Ronny renting a whitewashed gallery space & hanging her pix, inviting friends, colleagues, people from the neighborhood, the cheap plastic glasses with screw-in stems, cheap wine, cheap cheese, cheap crackers, cheap smell in the air, cheap art. Ronny was so sweet, he even put those little red dots beside half the pics so it looked like they were already sold, it's very loud inside that whitewashed makeshift gallery space, a DJ, people spilling into the sidewalk, after a while nobody looks at the walls & Jacquie runs into friends there who don't even know that's
why
they're there, because it's her show, of her pics . . . as it turned out, most of what she chose to hang were from that first trip, on the road from Ocala, the Myrtle Beach pics, the sad-faced astronaut janitors & gullahville folk, & the shells (she couldn't believe all the pics of shells!) & even a heartbreakingly empty parking lot or two, for old time's sake. She sells seven of them, though as far as she knows her old man snatched them up himself, as far as she knows he lied when he told her a guy came off the street & bought em—some were bought by a few of her friends, & as far as she knows maybe Ronny's
reimbursing them
, that's how she was thinking, a low self-esteem thing.

On Monday, she's back at Ronny's gig (McDonald's commercial) loading film, checking exposure, all that, effin' with the ƒ-stop, there she is again, the girlfriend with the kid from another planet (though girlfriend was probably better than “wife”)
whose real passion is photography
, yuck, & someone on the set, some prop person that's always on his crew that she never particularly liked says,
Oh, how was the show? I heard—I knew it was Saturday, but couldn't—I tried to go, but——did you sell any—oh that's so exciting! Ronny
told
me you did————
all of it so, so, so
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

—————depressorama.

She befriends the director of a gallery that sells Mapplethorpes & various others, your Nan Goldins & Sally Manns, your Arbus & your Eggleston, premium photogs if not dead then living in the city, the South, the etc. But the gal likes Jacquie more as friend than artist. She says viz Jacquie's stuff that everything's there but the
point of view
.

The dreaded POV . . . .

So——