Pat Boone Fan Club (20 page)

Later in the movie, Sally will retrieve a facsimile maroon scarf from a facsimile treasure chest and press it to
her
face—an addict
seeking the scent of a man—a temporary high. In the salmon-colored, one-liner scene notes, it says, “Sue’s treasure chest reveals her sorted past.”

Someone forgets a pair of headphones on the couch in the almost-deserted living room. Even without slipping them over my ears, I hear the disembodied voices of the actors and crew upstairs in the bedroom, planning the sex scene.

Grant’s voice instructs Sally and the male actor how to pose in bed. They whisper to each other. Sheets rustle.

Through the headphones, I eavesdrop on my life.

Is this me? Who was I back then, when I lived these events? Who was I when I wrote the book and interpreted my own life? Who am I now, watching and listening to someone else define me? Who is
that
me?
This
me?

All the scenes during my three-day visit to the set show me struggling with myself, my marriage, my addiction. Grant told me they’d filmed the scenes of Sally in recovery at the beginning of the shoot.

About an hour later, the actor playing the dangerous man slinks down the stairs as if he really had committed adultery. He is sweaty. His hair is messy. He looks done in.

I
feel done in.

Upstairs, the set once again open, I watch Sally calling her (my?) husband, long distance, after her (my?) lover has left. She sits on the floor in a robe, a bottle of wine beside her. As if the sex scene has unnerved her, Sally struggles to remember her lines—for the first time since I arrived on set. She props the script by the nightstand, hidden from the camera. She speaks the typed words that plead with my husband to never stop loving her, pleading her own love, too: lying and not. Sincere and not. From guilt, from fear, she promises an impossibly better marriage. Scripted words
I
once spoke . . . memorized lines I imagined a wife should say
even as, in the quicksand denial of addiction, I didn’t know the definition of love, of husband, of wife.

It’s not true that my only other acting experience was as Little Red Riding Hood.

In real life
, I convinced a cuckolded husband that I loved him. Lost and confused, I convinced dangerous men—as well as myself—that I loved them as well. It was guerrilla theater. It was psychodrama. It was theater of the absurd. Even, at times, black comedy. What it wasn’t, was pretty.

A paperback edition of my book is slated for publication, to coincide with the movie. For the new cover, I send my editor an old photograph of myself taken beside a boardwalk at the New Jersey shore. It represents the way I’ve always envisioned the part of me that’s an addict. I wear a black-leather jacket. My fist clamps a hip. I look cool, detached, seductive. I lean against a wood pillar. Carved into it are the words:

The photo is dark and grainy. My editor explains that the art department can’t sharpen it up. It won’t work for the cover.

Grant had taken a photo of Sally posed against a similar background, with the same slogan. The publisher uses that image on the cover instead.

It’s unnerving at first. Later I grow comfortable with this doppelgänger.

After all, there are—have been—so many other selves, real and imagined. For years, I never even knew to label myself a sex addict. I merely thought of my life as an out-of-control mess, one
failed dress rehearsal after another, as I tried out various identities, hoping to find one that would fit. I was convinced that eventually I’d lose everything: friends, husband, job, house. I envisioned myself as one of those ladies, all my worldly possessions in two paper bags. I would live in a refrigerator carton over a subway grate in New York City.

At the same time (never mind the contradiction), I
also
fantasized that, eventually, one of the illicit men
would
fall in love with me. We’d melodramatically run off together into the happily-ever-after (faux) sunset.

No version—not real life, not the book, not the screenplay, not even the Hollywood movie—manages to bring
that
ending to life. Who I am, now, is a woman thankful for more realistic endings.

The premiere of the movie is scheduled for April 19. I haven’t seen the final cut. I’m a wreck during the weeks leading up to it.

Even though the book I wrote reveals more secrets than the movie, still, only people who really want to know about my experience read it. Plus, a reader imagines scenes as she wishes. For the movie, however, anyone casually channel surfing might suddenly land smack in the middle of my life. You will see
this and this and this
on the television screen. I fear my secrets are more naked, more exposed on a
TV
screen in living color.

Besides, you can’t possibly know when any one person might be reading your book. But now it’s exactly 9:00 p.m., April 19. Here is your life on
TV
!

Another part of me, however, looks forward to the movie, as if it will provide answers, shed light on my life. After all, I haven’t yet seen my recovery.

My first reaction to the movie is to be dumbstruck by the music. A soundtrack!

In real life
, my own background music tracked my moods and phases. As a child—listening to the “Terry Theme” from Charlie Chaplin’s movie
Limelight
—I fantasized being a lost ballerina
saved by a tramp. One Pat Boone song after another enhanced my teenage dreams. Jim Morrison and The Doors pounded my hard-core sex addict years. Frank Sinatra, old enough to be my father and the favorite singer of the married maroon-scarf man, crooned “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Strangers in the Night.” More recently, postrecovery, I endlessly played Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.”

The party scene rolls onto the screen.

A photograph!

I’m not as pretty as Sally Pressman . . . or Elizabeth Taylor. I want to look like a movie star. I want to share their beauty. I share their Jewishness, so why not? But maybe that’s not really me, anyway, snapping the photo. How can it be me when I’m
here
, sitting in a room in my house in Michigan? I feel as if I’m having an out-of-body experience. I’m disguised as a photographer. Sally is disguised as me. Or she is me. She cries when I would have cried. She feels lost when I’m lost.

After the movie is over, I receive an e-mail at my own e-mail address but with the salutation “Dear Sally Pressman.” I reply that I am, in fact,
me
—which is essentially what I myself have been struggling to articulate for years. Or articulate who I’ve been struggling to be.

Sally hands me her copy of my book to autograph, right before I leave the set in Vancouver. She’d scrawled stars and check marks in the margins to note certain passages. Some sentences are underlined, others highlighted. I sign my name on the title page, with a blue pen, along with a little message.

I regret that I never asked Sally for
her
autograph. But what would she have signed for me? A loop of celluloid? My copy of the salmon-colored schedule of scenes? Perhaps she could have signed her name beside the line about Sue’s sorted past.

Of course the word “sorted” was meant to be “sordid.” But I like the mistake. In the movie, in my book, in my flesh-and-blood life, I’ve sorted through selves, as if through old photographs, in order to discover one image that’s the one authentic me. How many costumes and masks did I change to wander through one small life?

A few weeks after the movie airs, toward the end of May, I’m in a local health food store purchasing a package of gingersnaps and a vial of lavender oil. I hand the woman my Visa card. She glances at the name. She asks if I’m the writer, the one in the
TV
movie? I nod. She gets so flustered she has trouble placing my items in the bag. She says she can hardly wait to tell her daughter that she met me. I sign my name on the Visa slip with an extra flourish, hand it back to her, and tell her that my life will be rebroadcast over the upcoming holiday weekend.

An Argument for the Existence of Free Will and/or Pat Boone’s Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Call me Sue.

Byline: Girl Reporter.

Daily Planet
.

Dateline: Metropolis.

In the a.m. (on one day in the past, present, or future) approached by Male Caucasian Editor, Perry White, smoking a stogie.

SECRET
ASSIGNMENT!

COVERT
OPERATION
!!

INTERNAL
and/or
EXTERNAL
INVESTIGATION!!!

SUE
BAD
-
HABITS
GIRL
REPORTER
lights a Chesterfield. Takes a drag. Exhales. Pulls typed copy of current article out of her Underwood typewriter: “Ever-Changing Daily Forecast for Metropolis, U. S. A.: gray, dark, overcast, cloudy, murky, unknown. Or: sunny, smiley faces, happy halos of light.” Likes to give citizenry options. Better than writing obits.

Editor White leans forward to whisper details of Secret Assignment.
SUE
ON
-
THE
-
BALL
GIRL
REPORTER
glances around. Eavesdroppers?

Clark Kent, across room, pounds typewriter keys. Pauses. Leans back in chair. Surreptitiously removes glasses. Wipes them on handkerchief with peacock-blue border. Slides glasses back on. Gazes out window. A bird, maybe a pigeon, flies past. The drone of an airplane rattles glass.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane . . .

Perry White, slipping a Top Secret file folder onto
SUE
TRUSTWORTHY
GIRL
REPORTER
’s desk, cryptically says, “Unknown Forces
at work who, in the future, will prevent Pat Boone from being inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Discover identity of Unknown Forces. Be prepared for possible Obliteration of Enemy.”

Lois Lane strolls into office. Dreamy look on dreamy face. Instead of her usual black pumps, wears bobby socks and white buck shoes. Clutches a copy of Pat Boone’s book
’Twixt Twelve and Twenty
. Clark Kent’s gaze pierces the cover. The laser intensity could bore holes. He scowls.

SUE
OBSERVANT
GIRL
REPORTER
considers changing weather forecast: Lightning, thunder, mayhem, nuclear winter.

Editor White blows smoke rings. Gives Sue meaningful look.

Sue gives him her
SUE
GIRL
-
REPORTER
-
ON
-
THE
-
JOB
look. Stubs out Chesterfield in ashtray. Peeks inside Top Secret file folder.

It’s a . . .

 . . . comic book?!?! . . .
a
DC
National, May 1959 edition, which raises the dark specter of conspiracy!? On the cover:
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
“featuring ‘Pat Boone in Superman’s Mystery Song!’” On the left-hand side, Superman, red cape swirling, swoops into the scene where Lois Lane sings while playing a piano. Pat Boone, beside her, strums a guitar. (Does he play a guitar in real life?
SUE
FACTUAL
GIRL
REPORTER
REQUESTS
A
FACT
CHECKER
.) Superman realizes he must use all of his superpowers to stop the song from becoming popular.

Why?,
SUE
EVER
-
INQUISITIVE
GIRL
REPORTER
asks herself. Is Superman orchestrating the sabotage of Pat Boone’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?! What’s his beef? Jealousy? Under the influence of liberals?
SUE
PARANOID
GIRL
REPORTER
turns comic book over so no one can see the lead story line.

“Why the Pat Boone book?”
SUE
SOUNDING
-
INNOCENT
GIRL
REPORTER
asks Lois Lane.

Lois Lane sits at her desk. Removes plastic cover from typewriter. Places book beside it. Trails her fingers across Pat Boone’s image. “Didn’t you see the billboard downtown? ‘
One Day Only. Pat Boone at the Rialto.
’”

Pat Boone right here in Metropolis!?

Sue sticks a No. 2 yellow Ticonderoga pencil behind ear. Palms sweat. Eyes narrow. Takes a deep breath.
SUE
OLFACTORY
-
SENSES
-
ON
-
HIGH
-
ALERT
GIRL
REPORTER
smells a rat.

What are the odds that
four
items involving Pat Boone converge in Metropolis at the same time?

A coincidence?
SUE
CYNICAL
GIRL
REPORTER
doesn’t think so.

Lois Lane (who in 2014 will be known as LoLa on
Entertainment Tonight
) sighs. She says, “I want Pat Boone’s autograph on the book! I’ve worn out the grooves on all my Pat Boone albums. I have every product endorsed by him. The Pat Boone Toothbrush. The Pat Boone Transistor Radio. The Pat Boone Jewel Box. The Pat Boone Pen and Pencil Set. The Pat Boone Portable Record Player. The Pat Boone White Bucks (of course). The Pat Boone Secret Decoder Ring. The Pat Boone Acne Cream. The Pat Boone Bomb Shelter. The Pat Boone personally autographed New King James version of the Holy Bible. Almost as if he wrote it
himself
!!”

Clark Kent worriedly runs his fingers through his jet-black hair.

“And his new hit is sweeping the country,” Lois Lane exclaims.

“Won’t Superman be jealous?” Clark Kent asks.

“Why should he? I just like Pat Boone’s music. Besides, Superman flies like a bird above jealousy.”

SUE
GIRL
REPORTER
EXTRAORDINAIRE
, in order to get to bottom of conspiracy, lifts receiver on her black rotary phone. Works her sources. Calls the Rialto. Tracks down Gerry Smith, Pat Boone’s road manager. Lands an interview! Yes, Pat Boone is free to meet with
SUE
GO
-
GET
-
’EM
GIRL
REPORTER
at 3:00 p.m. at the
Daily Planet
!

In preparation,
SUE
INVESTIGATIVE
GIRL
REPORTER
dials the to-be-used-only-in-emergency outside telephone line that connects to the future. Calls Sarah Palin. Members of the conservative Tea Party. Right-to-lifers. Mike Huckabee. Glenn Beck. Rick Santorum. For opposing viewpoint calls gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender movement. Editors of
Ms.
magazine. Christian theologians. Rabbis. Future incarnations of Fats Domino, Little Richard, Mick Jagger. Director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not yet built in Cleveland. Anonymous sources. Deep Throat. Foes. Fans.

Discovers that, in the year 2014, when Pat Boone will have been snubbed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the umpteenth time, you either

2:55 p.m.

Lois Lane powders nose. Clark Kent’s scowl deepens. Perry White—still a Caucasian Male Editor—rushes from private office, two stogies in his mouth, waving a third. “Pat Boone’s besieged by fans! Downtown is gridlock! He’ll never make it here!”

“Call 911!”

Clark Kent excuses himself. Rushes to the restroom. Comic book readers everywhere witness transformation. Clark Kent
strips off his shirt. His pants. Beneath is his little peacock-blue-tights number, the insignia “S,” in red, on the chest. Putting aside personal feelings of jealousy toward Lois Lane’s feelings toward Pat Boone, he rises, as it were, to the occasion.

It’s
SUPERMAN!!!

Now, across town,
THE
MAN
OF
STEEL
zooms, faster than a speeding gefilte, above throngs of adoring fans until his laser eyesight pinpoints Pat Boone.

Superman swoops the teen idol up in his arms to deliver him to the
Daily Planet
office. Gently cradles a smiling Pat Boone against his manly chest. Darting around skyscrapers, they careen high above Metropolis. Pat Boone fails to notice future urban decay about to blight cities . . . fails to notice all-American boys and girls thinking about their future alter egos selling crack cocaine in the alley behind the Rialto. Today, Pat Boone’s white buck shoes remain spotless, like always, in Pat Boone’s world, spit-polished to perfection.

2:59 and 55 seconds.

Pat Boone strolls into the
Daily Planet
. Five seconds later Clark Kent “returns” from the men’s room, a thin line of sweat above his lip. He approaches Pat Boone, holds out his hand, and says, “The name is Kent. Clark Kent.”

A thought bubble appears over
SUE
EXPERT
-
AT
-
MOVIE
-
ALLUSIONS
GIRL
REPORTER
’s head: “Well, if that’s not a rip-off, I don’t know what is.” She eyes Clark Kent suspiciously.

SUE
INTREPID
GIRL
REPORTER
clears throat and opens reporter pad. Pat Boone sits beside Sue’s desk.

“Just for the record: Your real name is Charles Eugene Boone, right?”

Pat Boone flashes his pearlies and chuckles. “So true. So true. My parents expected—wanted—a girl, so had picked out the name Patricia before I was born. Boy, did I surprise them, haha. But they called me Pat anyway. And it stuck.”

SUE
ON
-
THE
-
HUNT
-
FOR
-
TRUTH
GIRL
REPORTER
licks the tip of her No. 2 pencil: “But that must’ve seemed, well,
strange
. You ever
feel
like a Pat-ricia? Haha.”

“Not with a wife and four girls.”

Lois Lane swoons. Her dreamy eyes in her dreamy face dreamily gaze at Pat Boone.

Clark Kent dreamily gazes at Lois Lane dreamily gazing at Pat Boone.

SUE
JUST
-
THE
-
FACTS
GIRL
REPORTER
: “Review your accomplishments for our readers who will one day influence the vote on your induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! What’s your biggest hit?”

“‘Love Letters in the Sand.’ Five million copies. It was on the singles chart for over six months. I also set an all-time record, which has never been broken, of 220 consecutive weeks on the
Billboard
hit singles chart!”

“Impressive! And your hit
TV
show?”

“I’m the youngest entertainer to host my own
TV
show. But that almost fell through. Initially, Chesterfield cigarettes wanted to be the sponsor. But I could never be endorsed by something harmful to our young people. Schlitz beer offered next, but I turned them down, too. Thank goodness Chevy came along.”

Sue surreptitiously slides her pack of Chesterfields into her desk drawer.

“Moving on: Would you care to comment on the future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction snub that’s going to piss you off in a couple of decades or so?”

“Well, I would
never
say the word ‘piss’ in front of a girl. But you better believe it.”

SUE
NOT
-
PULLING
-
ANY
-
PUNCHES
GIRL
REPORTER
asks, “How would you respond to this statement: African American musicians feel as if you ripped off their music with your hits such as ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Ain’t That a Shame’?”

“
Yeah
, ain’t
that
a shame?!” Pat Boone sighs, smiles, and shakes his head. “The funny thing about that song? There I was, having graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in
English
. And I had to say the word ‘ain’t.’ I
tried
to fit ‘isn’t’ into the rhythm, but it just didn’t sound right.”

“But to return to the charges . . .”

“Yes, yes. All nonsense. Untrue. Here’s the truth, as I will one day write in my 2006 book,
Pat Boone’s America, 50 Years: A Pop Culture Journey through the Last Five Decades
. Might as well get started early on publicity.”

Pat Boone then quotes himself from his not-yet-written book while
SUE
TOP
-
NOTCH
GIRL
REPORTER
scribbles furiously.

“If there was a master scheme (as it’s been cartooned by agenda-driven ‘researchers’) to create a thoroughly palatable white star, and then get him recording the biggest selling releases from black stars (to exploit them monetarily while obscuring their identities) it sure didn’t track that way in practice. Coming from the early to mid-1950s record business model, more than ever before or since, recording your own ‘covers’ of other people’s charted releases was simply standard operating procedure.”

“So you deny the charges.”
SUE
SPEEDY
GIRL
REPORTER
writes. . .
almost
faster than a speeding bullet.

Pat Boone no longer smiles. Dark forces gather behind his smooth white forehead . . . or it’s as if a line of dust settles in the cracks of his trademark white buck shoes.

“I mean, don’t you think that accusation will hurt you in terms of not being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the future? To say nothing of the, well, Christian proselytizing? And your friendship with
Sarah Palin
. Opposition to gay marriage. No abortion for anyone under any circumstances. . . .”