Dead Stars (42 page)

Evening is the time of the merging of Man and Woman:
the Unknowable

A l'alta fantasia qui moncò possa,

ma già volgeva il mio disio e
l velle

sì come rota ch'igualmente è mossa.

l'amor che move il sole e l'altre
stelle
.

—P A R A D I S O, XXXIII. 142–5

EXPLICIT

[Tom-Tom]

What's Your Favorite
Got In The Bank?*

*
www.celebritynetworth.com

Tom-Tom

had a
feeling
about it in her gut, a feeling she'd grown to trust, an extrasensory
feeling
about Rikki &
The Treasure of Sierra Leone
from the beginning. How could she not?

There was no way to ignore the
facts—
that Rikki shared that battered fosterchild thing with Antwone Fisher, and had even read his
memoir
(over & over!); that the inspiration for the character Rikki was auditioning to portray was none other than Ishmael Beah, who had visited his middleschool; & that Rikki had thoroughly read/iPod'd Mr.
Beah's
book as well. It all amounted to a heavy dose of what Tom-Tom called the propinquity of providence. She was especially convinced of the importance of her seductive ministrations during the making of the video that one day would have hundreds of millions of hits because people would watch the audition tape as an historical document/debut, like they did Bieber's first youtube or Susan Boyle's
I dreamed a dream
. She was certain their juices & commingled
ch'i
had set the stage for Rikki's brilliance, even
moreso
that their coupling was, with direct obliqueness, the actual cause of three outlandish pieces of recent good fortune: 1) Rikki's “accidental” read-through with Michael Douglas
and
Laurence Fishburne; 2) the bizarre, unexpected call from an old friend asking her to take up free residence in an empty, Greek-columned minimanse high atop Mt Olympus; 3) the unheralded arrival of a reality show convention in downtown LA, whose convenient appearance, as if custom-made, presented itself not merely as a gathering of like minds, workshops, hook-ups and industry connects, but as a one-stop casting shop for the washouts & almost-were's who would form the cornerstone and fountainhead of Tom-Tom's Big Idea.

. . .

What happened with the whole Mt Olympus thing is that Tom-Tom's friend Cherokee was a hair & makeup gal who Tom-Tom used to run with and Cherokee called out of the blue just like everything lately seemed out of the cosmicorgasmic blue, saying
Double T you gotta help me, I'm fucked.
For the last 5 yrs Cherokee pretty much exclusively worked for Betty White, Betty wouldn't let anyone touch her face & hair cept her. Sometimes when her boss was in New York or wherever but not working, Cherokee housesat Ms White's rundown still very groovy house on Mt Olympus, which was far groovier than Cherokee's shack in Studio City.

From what Tom-Tom heard, Mt Olympus used to be chichi but was kinda frayed now, counting dope dealers, pimps & MMA/cagefight promoters among its denizens. Its entrance was right at the mouth of Laurel Canyon, you turned up the hill on Mt Olympus Drive, took Mt Olympus to Electra, Electra looped into Hercules, then hung a right on Jupiter, a left on Hermès, & you're there. Betty was on hiatus from that show she did with Valerie Bertinelli, she was in NYC getting ready to come home and suddenly got cast in an Adam Sandler movie shooting in Paris, Spain & Poland. (Boo-yuh!) It kinda sucked not being Betty White. Anyway, for ten fucking
weeks
Betty'd be flying back and forth to the States, but only to New York, LA was just too far. She bought her pad 40 years ago when the Mount was the spanking new playground of Southland gods, more Trousdale at the time than Trousdale lite (which it quickly became), gone much further to seed in the interim. Betty told Cherokee she probably should have sold it before the bubble, now that would almost be impossible, the truth is she didn't mean a word of it because she adored that house, it reminded her of a certain lovely time in her life, it was a living museum of nostalgia and gave her a kick plus it wasn't like she needed the money from a sale. She was frickin rich. According to Cherokee, she didn't want to do a big makeover on it either, a decision Ms White was positive added 20 years to her life. Plus she liked that whenever her makeup & hair doll housesat, Cherokee made helpful, practical, incremental improvements such as putting in a new water heater or recaulking/resealing bathroom tiles or even just (as Cherokee reported back) walking around with a can of WD40 unsqueaking the squeaks. The thing of it was, Cherokee was now going to have to go with Betty to Europe, the doll was wonderful at making her look wonderful but
aside
from that, Betty out and out enjoyed her, she raised her spirits and (mysteriously) made her laugh. Kinda like the daughter or granddaughter or great granddaughter she never had.
The doll was a hoot.
Betty had it written into her contract that Cherokee was her doll, they had to pay for her travel, per diem, hotel, all that good stuff. It kinda sucked not being Cherokee.

Cherokee did h&m on Season 3 of
Idol
and was the only one who even called Tom-Tom when she got kicked off. (Fantasia and Jennifer were such cunts about Tom-Tom's failed subterfuge, which might even have been looked at in a humorous, forgiving light if they so chose. Clearly TT was coming from a desperate place, and one should
always
demonstrate compassion for desperate people, but
no
, they were in full-scheming skeevydiva mode. Tom-Tom never really told anyone except Cherokee but she was
happy
when Jennifer's family got killed and she was
happy
when TMZ said that Fantasia was getting random death threats & hoped she
suffered
when there was a rumor she made a sextape with a married man, that's what happens when you think you're above empathy and treat your peers with ill-respect.) So Cherokee called Tom-Tom after they threw her off A.I. and
pursued
her because she liked bad girls. They became lovers and running partners, they were all about smack and candyflipping. After 2 years of untold drama (long preceding the arrival of the angel Betty White in her life), Cherokee checked herself into Serenity House, upscale Laurel Canyon rehab, where she commenced to take inventory of her life and compose a long list of those whom she owed amends, Tom-Tom being foremost among them. The h&m doll grew rife with fantasies of red roses and white picket fences, audaciously reaching out & asking Tom-Tom to join her in trudging the road of happy recovery, which amazingly, Tom-Tom audaciously did. Sadly, T
²
was asked to leave (before Cherokee even had the chance to make formal amends, and before Tom-Tom began her own 4th Step) for failing a urine test
and
sleeping with two of the former-patients-turned-counselors, a 27 year-old male & a 62 year-old female, separately but within a 2-hour period. More amazingly and audaciously, Cherokee had remained sober in the 84-odd months since, all of her drug cravings/energy handily refocused on a wild animalistic sexual obsession with TT, which always clouded Cherokee's already unimpeccable vision, forcing her into a cyclical destructive dance of fight and flight, merging and separation, and who, by bestowing money and favors, manipulated Tom-Tom, at least
thought
she did, into agreeing/pretending/promising they might really have a future together. And now the gal was going away to be with her Angel, she'd been doing pretty well lately in protecting herself from the madness of her obsession but when the housesitter she arranged for (a friend of Amy Smart) bailed, & there was Cherokee leaving in 36 hours, & knowing Betty would be
very
unhappy if the house were left empty—it was an emotional thing, as long as she knew someone was staying there Betty was chill—knowing that however gracefully her angel reacted, anything short of a house sit would be a disaster.

So inadvertently she tapped into her god-sized obsession and everything old was new again. All was quickly arranged.

Tom-Tom GPS'd the greek salad of streets. The doll intro'd her to the house & its mild old-house eccentricities. Gave her the keys and told her which opened what. Showed her the ancient alarm system thingie, still in perfect working order. Showed her the museumpiece home intercom system, still in perfect working order. A little pool cover retraction demo. Then Tom-Tom devoured her in bed god she'd do anything Tom-Tom asked, she'd suck a napping dog's dick like in the Czech
Animal Gangbang
vid they watched before/during their fuck. She'd put a snake up her cunt like that other video, head in the cunt tail in the ass
how the fuck did they even get the snake to do that
she'd get reamed by a pig or a horse & do it
unloaded
. Tom-Tom always told her what riches lay ahead when they fucked, she'd whisper shit in her ear while she licked her clit and worked her dark * with a dildo, Tom-Tom's deliberate funny retail sextalk which actually
would
have been
hahaha
if she wasn't always on the verge of coming, like how she would buy her a $3,000 Katie Holmes–designed pantsuit or these $500 Opening Ceremony shoes by Chloë Sevigny or an Olsen twins $34,000 backpack or how some day she would lavish her with custom jewelry like the $25,000 diamond-encrusted pendant of Stewie from
Family Guy
that Justin Bieber had made. The Double T drove her to LAX & passionkissed her in Cherokee's SUV (she gave TT the keys), Tom-Tom put all kinds of subtle notes, flavors and colors in that kiss, going-away bonus tracks, freebies Tom-Tom threw in as acknowledgement and compensation for the seriousness of the scarily timed Mt Olympus aerie temp gifting, in that she knew
in her gut
just how large and important a part it was to play in her immediate plans & fortunes, notes, colors & flavors that implied
I think I might really love you, Cherokee, this time I'm not so blind I can't see, to
know
we can have a life together, so hurry home my love, hurry home from yr white angel to yr angel of meth . . .

On the way back from the airport Tom-Tom thought about that whole period of her life: Season 3. Season of the witch, no doubt. She got suicidal when Fantasia leaked her
Idol
artifice to Perez H (she was
sure
it was
fatass-
ia) and in like 3 seconds it viral'd the web and national/international tabloids too . . . then backfired on the h8trs & she started getting calls like from Jimmy Kimmel, and Amy Poehler played her on
SNL
(Maya Rudolph did Fantasia & Ben Affleck played Simon). She got hundreds of emails from
Idol
h8trs—death threats too—she was having her quintessentially American-ironic Tonya Harding folk hero
Anti-Idol
t-shirt moment. Letterman even wanted her to read the Top 10 and she went to an office in Hollywood to be put on tape so they could see if she could do it. There weren't any Top 10 jokes written for her yet so she read a
Ten Questions You're Afraid to Ask Condoleezza Rice.
She read well so that they flew her to NYC & put her up in a hotel not far from the apt she used to deal out of. Tom-Tom was so nervous in the car that took her to the studio that she puked. Had to do a little unplanned smack. The studio was freezing, Letterman never talked to her backstage and introduced her by saying “We're happy to have Tom-Tom on the show with us tonight. She flew out from California in Ryan Seacrest's private jet . . . and if you believe that, I've got a bridge with multiple schlerosis to sell you.” The crowd roared & something sour shifted in her. She could smell the stink waft up from her panic mouth.

 

Top Ten Reasons Tom-Tom Should Have beaten Fantasia To Become the “American Idol”

10. In porn, “Tom-Tom”'s a top; “Fantasia”'s a bottom . . .

 

In a month, all the attention faded away. She became a self-h8tr whose dreams died stillborn.

Until now.

. . .

Her Big Showrunner Idea:

She was part of a loose network of
loosers
angling for their own reality show . . . well
Tom-Tom
was angling anyway. A sorority/fraternity house all composed (in her conception) of one-time
Idol
contestants—though lately she'd considered broadening her sights to be more inclusive of
The Voice
,
The Sing-Off
,
The Singing Bee
,
X-Factor
,
Going Platinum
, &tc—who were sent home late or even way early in the game. Naturally no one could necessarily compete with Tom-Tom's famous winnowing as a consequence of out-&-out larceny. No, the others would be more than content to make encore appearances, standard bearers of the usual sometimes-ludicrous sometimes-laughable always-lamentable hard-/softluck stories. Tom-Tom hadn't yet begun her official reach-out, she took the reality show convention as a sign, that's where she was intent on doing a major scout of minor talent. She believed in the
s and their signs, that one needed only to cultivate the innate ability to interpret their meanings; she recognized the convergence of the convention
and
the Betty White godsend in which she would house and film her loser brethren a la
Real Life/Big Brother
to be a karmic omen in itself.