I’m Losing You (17 page)

After Hassan left, I told Holly I was writing these letters and showed her some, and we cried some more. Don't mind me; Mama's a big wuss. Hol was telling me about a school for the blind she read about in
The New Yorker
—some famous Indian writer went there. She thought maybe it was in Alabama. Her assistant's going to get us all the info. I dunno; it
does
seem a little TV-movie-ish. Hey, not a bad idea—could be Mama's premier production! Who could play me? How about Amy Madigan? (I can just see the article in
People
.) I
do
like the idea of moving, though. No riots or earthquakes in Alabama, huh. Least not till
we
get there. Did you know Grandma Willy's coming out to see you any minute? That's right. She would've come sooner but she was so sick and now she's all better. Cheese Whizikkers, you're a popular guy. Holly even wants to show my letters to her friend, a big editor at Grove Press. Everybody wants a piece of my buddhaboy. Have to quit now. Jeremy's home.

Goodbye, Columbus

T
O:
SHARKEE
@
CLS.OHIO-STATE.EDU
(S
TOCKER
V
IDRA
)

F
ROM:
DOLPH
@
AOL.COM
(K
ATHERINE
G
ROSSECK
)

Looking for production offices. Can't get it straight whether Cat's for-real on board but Phylliss is milking it for all it's worth. More power to her, I say. I'm changing the name of my corporation. What do you think of Method to Her Sadness Productions—too pretentious? Pargita's a hoot: you have to see
Janie Wong
when you get back (you are coming back, aren't you?). I'd send you a cassette but I want to see it together. You'll like Parg—she's kind of a cross between Nora Ephron and Wim Wenders. Just kidding. Her favorite phrase of the week is “zero-wannasee”…as in “Do you want to go to the
Batman
screening?” “Nah. I have zero-wannasee.” She's lobbying PJ Harvey for the Stranger, isn't that too fantastic? When you're back we'll have Boys' Night Out. With Harvey (no relation to PJ) and Holly practically set, we're just about green—could start early as June.

How's Phylliss's book coming? Does she actually have a deal? Is she sending tons of pages? She's coy with me about it.

Maps to the Stars

Jabba's working nights at Planet Hollywood and is determined to marry ANYONE who is involved with it, financially! I've heard there are many, many investors, not merely Arnold, Sly and Bruce. I'm concerned she's drugging again—she always seems to have an “allergy” when we go out SNIFF SNIFF. Life at Sweets is sweet; making MUCHO DINERO {I'd rather be “making DE NIRO”!!}. Flirted tonight with PETER WELLER and HARRY DEAN STANTON {he's so old! but charming. And he sings at the VIPER ROOM with his own band!!!}. More importantly PAUL SCHRADER has come in. For the uninformed {namely YOU, Dearest D.!!}, PAUL is the famous screenwriter of TAXI DRIVER {CIRCA 1976}, CAT PEOPLE {CIRCA 1982}, RAGING BULL {CIRCA 1980}, etalia. He's casting an ELMORE LEONARD movie and gave me his card! Interestingly, PAUL is married to the
warpy, wonderful actress MARY BETH HURT, who shined in THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP {CIRCA 1982} and recently limned JEAN SEBERG.

My life is very full!

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE AND INTENT

To change my professional name from KIM GIRARD to KIV GIRAUX {pronounced Juh-ROE}.

Goodbye, Columbus

T
O:
SHARKEE
@
CLS.OHIO-STATE.EDU
(S
TOCKER
V
IDRA
)

F
ROM:
DOLPH
@
AOL.COM
(K
ATHERINE
G
ROSSECK
)

…consolation calls all week for not getting Oscar-nodded. Thank God for the WGA and Spirit awards, they're the ones that count (so I keep telling myself). Somehow it's embarrassing to care but less so than pretending I don't. One day (hopefully), I'll be in the who-gives-a-shit group, smack-dab where
you
are—when you get the MacArthur at age twenty-nine, what other group is there? You
are
the big genius: genus
Sharkay
.

Those rumors I heard about Donny were true: he's fucking (and getting fucked by) boys, Phylliss Wolfe's assistant, for one. You heard it here. Zowie yikes & jeepers. Gonna wind up with a rollicking case of AIDS, that kid is. So sad—not the gay thing, always had intimations of that, I
liked
that fearless, adventuresome thing about him—but how
lost
he is. Like this sad day player out of Sade (or Bret Ellis): the walking dead, just like his dad's old movies. Fuck. Now there's a frightening legacy.

Trying to read Proust again—still can't get beyond the hundred-page mark and that's
so
frustrating, Veed, because I really do love it. There's definitely some weird glass ceiling thing going on (or is it the floor?). Now, listen up, says Jayne Wayne (I'm sure you know it—reminds me of the way you write)…

***
The THIEF of ENERGY

Saw Calliope K-M (the incredible shrinking starfucker) for the first (and last) time and actually bespoke of disappointment over not being nominated for an Academy Award! I should win one myself. My plan was to discreetly absorb the energy she takes from her pet-celebrities, a la Robin Hood. While in the waiting room, I put several magazines into my Prada bag—a
Vogue
and
Marie-Claire
; I know these periodicals had been scanned by Laura, Julianne, Demi, Juliette and countless others (I can absorb minimal amounts from their exudate); once inside, I bespoke the murder of my beloved sister, Wanda, and my subsequent kidnapping by the distraught man barely recognizable toward the end as our Father. Calliope seemed to listen with great concern. Then! Mrs SangFreud of a sudden smiled, rather prim yet cantankerous too—nervously, it seemed—I saw her energy spasm then irradiate, like small animals do (i.e., the old Ribkin woman's raccoons) as she suddenly asked, ‘
Who are you?
' Just like that. I feigned surprise but she was insistent, challenging, alleged I was
not
Katherine Grosseck and began calling 911! I hit her cashmere chest with a paperweight and bolted. Her breath was knocked out. I still have the purloined curio: a beautiful Lalique turtle with multi-faceted shell. Oddly enough, I believe all the energy I was after may well have been harnessed in the paperweight itself, because it had obvious talismanic power, hypnagogic, having sat on her desk for God knows how long, each patient (famous or not) obsessing over and gazing at, greedy of her possessions,
focusing
upon. The energy released and absorbed by the blow to the aging, fashionable chest has, in a fell swoop, accomplished a goal I'd intuitively thought of achieving not for three to five months from this day, at least. Triumphant!

After long wrangling of logistics, I have accomplished but another goal—a rub with the consummate thief Jeremy Stein. Here is how I achieved: I positioned myself near his home when he left for work. I
engineered it so to be gliding by in the Mustang as he pulled from the driveway. I made sure the massage table was highly visible—top down, in backseat, much as a boogieboard might be placed. I was clean and fresh-scrubbed and said I was late for a rub, giving a classical pre-ordained ‘wrong address' which he said must be
south
while I, mistakenly, was on the more expensive
north
side. Banal and alluring conversation ensued. He said I was up early for a rub. I told him I had many clients who demanded I be available on the twenty-four/seven. This, purposefully yet without innuendo. He said that was unusual and I said, not really, that is how we do it in New York where most of my clients hail from. Such as who, he asked, and I said, these things I do not discuss—with a smile, so that it was friendly and benign and alluring. He asked for my card and I knew he was in my web. Jeremy Stein is, of course, creator of
Palos Verdes
, a position he achieved by his skyward rung-by-rung climb on a ladder positioned in my groin. (Chris Carter and
X-Files
, you are on my back burner: 2good 2be 4gotten.) I am hard at work determining how close the inimitable Mr Stein was to the original
90210/Melrose
core group—i.e. Mr Darren Star & cabal—who ran roughshod over innovative concepts stolen from the diary I kept with my beloved sister, Wanda. Perhaps Stein & Co. were in cahoots with the beleaguered man who was ostensibly, but did not resemble toward the end our Father. Must sift fact from fiction. All the energy I've worked so hard to buttress/harness has helped me come this close. Keeping our appointment, I came to Mr Stein's sprawling ranch-style home only days later and masturbated his cock, his wife was in the other room—an unexpected occurrence, happening without effort or constraints, baby crying all the while, Mother shushing and cooing, so Jeremy and I knew she would not disturb us, even if she did, the way I managed it, stroking under sheets, all actions would not have translated to the eye as vulgar or illicit. Hope I didn't come off too much the ‘pro'; I wanted him to believe this was a somewhat blushing rarity. He, like so many husbands of women with newborns, was needy that way. A calculated risk from my end, considering the high stakes, but time is running out and Jeremy Stein is a player in my own tragic opera bouffe. His penis is long and pretty, unmarred by the marbleized years-old accumulation of herpes scarring that characterize ‘the Donny Ribkin shaft.' As in my first session with the agent, Mr Stein mirrored thus and was hard mere
moments into rub and stayed that way, it jumping like a flag on a dog at a dogtrack! I let him go like that nearly an hour until touching and he came a subsequent gallon, the irony being, milk fed to baby not far from where where JS's own curdled ‘low-fat' dribbled onto paunch! He made another appointment of which I know he will keep.

Sight Unseen

Holly Dearest,

Wonderful having you here—Samson loved it so. Ain't he somethin'? Hope this gets to you before you leave Wales. I think that's where Jan Morris lives; she's the glorious travel writer who used to be a man. Did you know I was there for my honeymoon? Wimbledon, then Wales…all that sand and Victoriana. Jeremy and I saw
The Naked Gun
at a theater there, can you imagine? Leslie Nielsen's big with the Welsh.

I was
so
thrilled your friend enjoyed my letters. Ashamed to say I hadn't heard of Stocker Vidra until you mentioned her but promptly ventured to Borders and picked up
Bleek Haus
. (They didn't have
The Brontë Reader and Other Novellas
, the one you recommended.) I sat with my latte and read. Your friend has a beautiful style that is difficult to penetrate; I'm not the reader I once was. Which one of her novellas did you option? I loved the picture of her on the back. She reminds me of a young Germaine Greer, but more delicate-boned. Whatever happened to Ms. Greer? Maybe she lives in Wales with Jan Morris.

It's fascinating she's also an
editor
at the place that publishes her work—that has to be high on the list of writers' fantasies! I'm flattered someone of her intellect and reputation could find late-night scrawlings to my dream-guy of any interest
at all
. Are you sure she isn't indulging you, Holly, just a little? Because of the friendship you share? Her work seems so experimental and I'm wondering why she'd be drawn to something so…You said Vidra thought the letters were a potential “publishing phenomenon.” In the wee small hours, the ego starts primping and preening, trying on clothes for Charlie Rose; wondering if someone might please slip the galleys to Julia or Jodie or—yech! See how little encouragement it takes?
Funny having the letters “out there” too—makes one feel a little
nekkid
…not the panic-public nakedness of a dream, though, at least I don't
think
so. Sorry I'm being such a wet blanket, I really
am
thrilled, Holly, you've got to know that. It's just that I hope the whole enterprise won't be construed as, I dunno,
morbid
. What I'm really saying is, I don't want to get self-conscious and start editing myself with an eye toward a Book. (See how nutty I am? The Sara Radisson you've never known!) Maybe I'll keep writing on this parallel track and the book can be our correspondence intercut with “Letters to Samson.” Do you like that idea, Hol? You'll help keep me sane. It'd make a neat little safety valve, if you're game—'cause there's so much I
can't
put in Samson's little missives…things only for you, godmom and galfriend true-blue.