What's Important Is Feeling: Stories (11 page)

“Yeah, yeah,” Simit said. “I already saw that movie. There’s an acoustic guitar. He gets the girl in the end.” He was smiling.

Ava laughed.

“Did I not mention that I have a girlfriend, assholes?” I said.

“And a cat too,” Simit said. “What a guy.” The laughter continued.

Simit said he wanted to hear about Ava. What he really wanted was to hear about the old days. We talked about the old days.

“You look good,” Simit said to Ava. Actually, he looked good. Or better than he had before the joint. He was playing the version of himself I would miss the most—ruthlessly truthful, but without animosity. Simit exuded warmth even when he was giving you a hard time.

“You used to be a big girl. Then you got real skinny. Too skinny. When was that?”

“High school,” Ava said. “And college.”

“You’re perfect now. With hips.” His voice sounded wistful.

“Thanks,” Ava said.

Simit and I went out for air. The balcony overlooked a parking lot, cars glowing, sunset desolidifying. Simit lit a cigarette.

“What could it hurt?” he said.

I thought of Vegas Elvis, his descent into gluttony; the way you never see his eyes in the pictures from that era; those last performances of Sinatra’s “My Way,” all garbled and almost-great, floppy with bathos, but unforgivably loveless.

“You voting for the stamp?” I said.

“What stamp?”

“The Elvis stamp.”

“Fuck Elvis,” Simit said. “He stole it all from my niggas.”

“You can’t say niggas,” I said. “You’re Indian.”

“I have cancer,” he said. “I can say what I want.”

“Okay,” I said.

Through the window we saw Ava get frisky with the dog. She stroked its belly, held a hand around its scruff. The cousin had fallen asleep in his father’s arms. It looked like an advertisement. There was an advertisement on the TV. It was one I’d seen a thousand times. For tires, local, complete with poor production and laughably thick Boston accents. The type of commercial that’s annoying until you live somewhere else, and then you kind of miss it.

“You can fuck her when I’m dead,” Simit said.

I paused too long before laughing.

“Bag that,” Simit said. “She won’t let you fuck her until she’s dead.”

“I’m into that,” I said. “Dead chicks.”

“I’ll send some your way,” Simit said.

Back home, things were happening. Lisa Marie had eaten a condom in my absence, been rushed to the animal ER. The condom was caught in the cat’s small intestine. I went straight there, met Lisa in the waiting room. The waiting room was filled with high-def photos of beautiful dogs. A man sat in the corner cradling an iguana, speaking to it in a baby voice.

Lisa Marie died on the operating table. Lisa couldn’t look, but I held the cat’s limp body, stroked her fur like she could still feel it. Her body was cold. I touched her teeth.

Lisa attributed the condom to Maggie and Sam, but I didn’t buy it. Why would Maggie and Sam be having sex at our apartment? I asked if she’d seen that guy from her office, Mike or whatever his name was. “His name’s Mitch,” Lisa said.

Months later. On the Union Square steps were two Elvis impersonators. One was Latino with a mustache and a pretty gold tooth. Junk scars on his arms. The other was Elvis if he’d lived, fallen further. Guitar painted like an American flag. I put in a buck, watched for a while. They did a pretty good “All Shook Up.” Tourists took pictures. A blond girl came over, danced a loose-limbed shuffle. Her skirt was filthy white, ripped around the knees. She had a pretty smile, the kind that seems so natural that you wonder what she’s hiding. I gave her a look that tried to be love. It came out more like
Love me in a toilet stall?
She told me to fuck off.

Young Elvis won in a landslide, stuck himself squarely to our envelopes. He traversed the country on trucks and trains, like the ones he used to sing about. Attendance at Graceland rose for a while and then dipped back to normal.

America Is Me and Andy

I
’m done being friends with dreadlocked white guys. But try telling Andy, the only person ever to make a homosexual pass at me. In fairness to Andy, it was Halloween, I was dressed as Lara Croft, and I do have slim wrists and a thin waist since I got that Adderall prescription and stopped eating.

“Is it because I tried to make out with you?” Andy says.

We sit on the futon in his parents’ basement watching the audition round of
American Idol
. Knotty hair covers the hurt in his eyes.

“You’ve known me for, what, ten years?” I say to Andy.

“About,” he says.

I say, “And you really think I’m a homophobe? That’s what you really think?”

“I dunno,” Andy says in that nonconfrontational way that warms my soul but also feels like the kind of weakness that doesn’t work in this cruel world.

“Well, let me ask you: if I’m so uncomfortable with gender-role reversal and nontraditional forms of erotic fantasy, then how come I was able to dress up as Lara Croft in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” Andy says. “But I still think it’s because I tried to make out with you.”

“Don’t be narcissistic,” I say. “It’s not just you. I’m getting rid of all my white friends with dreadlocks.”

“What other ones?”

“Well, there aren’t really any others at the present moment, but I think you’re missing the big picture here. It’s more the principle of it, if anything. It’s about growing up, Andy. It’s about reaching my full potential as a red-blooded college-educated suburban male.”

“You never finished college.”

“That’s exactly my point. I never finished college because I was hanging out with white people with dreadlocks.”

“You mean me?”

“I mean whoever.”

Andy is stumped, offended, already over it. He retreats into his cell phone.

The commercial is over. Ryan Seacrest says, “You did it, America. Your votes propelled Lee DeWyze to the top. Soon you’ll have a chance to pick another lucky winner.”

The way he says it makes it sound like America is one guy, some schmuck in a living room in Des Moines.

But maybe America is me and Andy.

Shitty singers sing. It’s unclear if the shittiness is an act or if they’re deluded, drunk on ephemeral fame. Andy is texting.

“Who you texting?”

“None of your business.”

“New gay friend?”

“Yes, new gay friend.”

“When you gonna introduce me?

“He has dreadlocks,” Andy says.

Andy balls his hairy hands into hairy fists. Like the kind of lion cub who’s cute until he kills you. I feel a tenderness toward him. I want to reach over with scissors, trim his smelly head-pubes, show him what it means to be alive. We watch a commercial for Ford trucks.

Now a blonde sings syrupy shit. The kind of blonde who would never fuck the kind of guy I am. From the Midwest, believes in Jesus, saving herself for someone who can share her soul via social media. Her voice: heartbreakingly mediocre. I want to lick every inch with my ugly tongue. Lick her armpits.

Then a muumuu-ed redhead, made up like a circus clown.

Andy turns to me, eyebrows raised in a gesture of our old camaraderie. Let us bond, he seems to say, in this other human’s shame. Let us be brave enough to engage in this ugliness.

The girl’s voice is actually good. She sings Aretha, transcends herself. “Ain’t No Way.”

Moments like these—Apple pie, baseball—are why we fight wars.

Next thing I know Andy’s cock’s in my mouth, and I’m sucking with every atom, salivating. Our girl belts the blues. I think I am crying.

My mother comes down the stairs. I see her. She sees Andy’s acned ass and the silhouette of my soul, mid-cock-suck. The look on her face is called “Baby, I birthed you / Babe, I endorsed you / Watch as we both burn to ash.”

I bite Andy’s cock. Andy’s scream coincides with a cheer from the
Idol
audience. Ryan Seacrest is smiling somewhere. There’s blood on my face. Mom walks back up the stairs. But I won’t forget that look. It’s the look we give for the rest of our lives.

What’s Important Is Feeling

W
e’d been shooting for two weeks already, melting. Most of the crew had chiggers bad. Chiggers, we were told, crawl in and lay eggs beneath your skin. They attack ankles and genitals. The cure is nail polish. A good coating will smother them to death. We wore the clear stuff so it wouldn’t show.

Only the L.A. people got them. The Texans wore sulfur in their socks to keep the chiggers out. They didn’t mention this trick to us. Nathaniel and I sat on our opposing motel beds—A/C on, anchorman singing box scores in soothing Texas twang—examining the bumps around our sock and jock lines. My body was a morgue; chigger corpses floated through my veins, suffocated under my skin.

“Tonight I plan to dream about Monica Bradley,” said Nathaniel. “Her dream self will meet my dream self somewhere in the depths of my unconscious, and we’ll talk until sunrise.”

Monica was the film’s female lead. Older than us, but looked five years younger with non-hips and blond fuzz on her pale arms. Monica’s character was meant to be seventeen. There was something deeply erotic in the way her smoke-seasoned voice slipped into teenybop squawk-talk when the cameras came on.

“She’s sexy,” I said. “Definitely.”

“But her personality, I mean. She’s great, right? That joke she told about her mom and the albino. Was that a joke? It might have been a true story. Man, what an interesting life.”

I was distracted by nail polish; I daintily painted. I liked its bleachy smell and the way it slowly hardened on my blistered skin and shined.

“I just feel so alive when I’m around her. Like I want to stop time and spend seven years in medical school so I can save her life if she happens to get stung and goes into anaphylactic shock.” Monica had a bee-sting allergy.

“Sure,” I said. “Save her life.”

Nathaniel had gotten me the gig. He was savvier than me, pluckier, bigger in the biceps. Had a surfer thing going on. Not bleach blond in a mimbo way, just tan and easy. Same patchy beard all the hip ones had, hints of amber in the chin hairs. Two years below me in film school, but he’d caught up careerwise. His résumé was up on all the job boards. Had a website with built-in Flash and a slick montage. I was shitty at self-promoting. Sent my thesis screenplay around in manila envelopes awaiting return.

“I should probably get an EpiPen and carry it on me. Just in case.”

“I thought Felix would be here by now.”

We knew Felix was coming, but we didn’t know when. He’d written the script and was associate producer. He’d been nominated for an Academy Award. Some people said Felix was a genius. We (the L.A. people) had read the new script. It was good, better than good. Better than the other crap we worked on: thirty-second spots for regional fast-food chains, student shorts, overfunded indie twee. Nathaniel had even done a blockbuster, some sci-fi thing in Death Valley, CGI spaceships crop-dusting the desert. It was a fact Nathaniel never let me forget. He said craft service served Kobe beef and goat-cheese sliders. The food might have been good, but the movie certainly wasn’t.

Felix’s script was different: sexy, savage, utterly bleak. In short: Art. We imagined being thanked in the acceptance speech (“I’d just like to thank the wonderful crew, whose hard work really made this movie come to life”). We imagined our résumés, our next jobs, moving up in the industry, moving out of our tiny apartments, buying new cars, using those cars to convince women to have sex with us.

We wanted a movie that might one day be called a “film,” that we could refer to at a dinner party ten years down the line, light a cigarette and say, “We were naive kids. We thought we were taking the world by storm.”

There were problems. The director and the star hated each other; everyone hated the first AD; the first AD was a cokehead and running out of coke; the star had fucked the costar, then her assistant; the production was out of money; the DP had also fucked her assistant; the dailies looked amateur; the food was shit; the Texans thought the L.A. folks were homosexuals; the L.A. folks were mostly homosexuals and took umbrage.

By the time Felix showed up, hope was lost. The director, Andrew Solstice, had lost interest. He spent most of his time trying on cowboy hats, posing in the hair/makeup mirrors, and blowing residue from his finger gun.

It was the day we had the rain machine. Solstice wanted it for the scene in the car when Francisco tells Monica he killed her boyfriend. A bad idea—too soap opera for a subtle picture like this one. In my imagining of the film, the sun beats like a tanning-bed light, providing alien glow, almost X-ray vision to their emaciated torsos.

I stood twenty yards away doing lockup. In a city like Los Angeles this generally meant blocking off a major street corner, stopping pedestrians from barging into your shot. Here there were no pedestrians, only sand and weedy fields. It was just past dawn. In the distance was the Corpus Christi coast, pink sky interrupted by oil rigs. Fake rain fell heavy on the picture car, a rusted blue Mustang.

I didn’t know what to make of Francisco, the talent. He’d been a child star of the Mexican stage, and later the hunky adulterer on a popular telenovela. His mother was an opera singer, and his father handcrafted violins. Rumor had it his maternal grandfather had made his nut in munitions.

Francisco played seven instruments and was fluent in as many languages. He’d grown up in a fenced-off estate outside Mexico City with verandas, Ferraris, and armed guards—all the gaudy signifiers of cartel superwealth. Still, he played himself off as a man of the people, spoke Spanish with the Mexican grips and electricians, kicked the soccer ball between takes, smiled a humble, punchable smile at everyone he passed. His acting was iffy, but his face was an exemplar of symmetry and composition. My jealousy was undermined by my interest in starfucking. I had hoped to befriend him, swill tequila by the motel pool. I wanted to ask about the queeny Argentine director who’d kicked him off set for being three pounds overweight. But I was rarely close to the cast members. They ate at different hours. Some nights, though, Francisco would sit with his eyes closed on the motel’s shared balcony and pluck a nylon-stringed guitar. The insomniacs among us would come out of our rooms, slowly at first, lingering in our doorways and then gradually getting closer until we’d formed an impromptu audience. Francisco would open his eyes, blush, and apologize for waking us. We’d all say nah and urge him on—as he knew we would—and he’d close his eyes again, allowing just the hint of a smile to cross his lips as he moved into another song.

“What is this cockshit?” someone behind me said.

I turned. Felix wore camo pants and a sleeveless tee. Hair long and greasy, facial features exaggerated: comically oversize mouth and nose. Like late-career Bogart: rheumy-eyed, beyond saving.

“It’s raining,” I said.

“It’s fucking Texas,” he said, stormed past me, headed for the set, where he grabbed Solstice by his mullet tail, pulled him under the rain machine, threatened to remove his genitals if he didn’t remove the rain machine.

I was approached by first AD Mark Tipplehorn.

“You idiot,” he said. “You were supposed to be locking up.”

“He was like a bull,” I said.

“You idiot,” he said again, and wiped his forearm across his face.

Tipplehorn’s uniform was all white every day: sneakers, socks, shorts, shirt, visor. He was going for “asshole from L.A. stranded in small town.” He wore reflective aviators, scratched chigger bumps.

“Towel me,” he said.

I pulled his towel from my pocket and tossed it over.

“I’ve got a new job for you, anyway. I need an ounce of weed as fast as you can get it.”

Tipplehorn had worked with Felix before. Felix thought he had say over what happened on set.

“Weed’s the only way to calm him down,” Tipplehorn explained. “Also someone to give him a haircut; he likes to have his hair cut on location.”

The haircut would be easier to get than the weed, but he wanted the weed first so he could be stoned during the haircut. For the weed I had to approach a Texan. The Texans hated us, but some hated us less than others. Luckily, a kind woman bummed a cigarette off me, called me “sweetheart,” and agreed to help with both my tasks. Her name was Kathleen, and she was the on-set hairdresser.

Kathleen didn’t give a shit about the higher-ups like Tipplehorn. Just did her thing in the hair trailer, smoking bats and talking on speakerphone to her teenage daughter, who was spending the summer at an arts camp outside Denton. When they said good-bye, Kathleen waved her hand as if her daughter could see her from the other end of the line. She said, “Girl,” and her daughter said, “Bye now,” and Kathleen looked in the mirror and saw me behind her, squint-eyed in the barber’s chair, finally sun-shaded, almost asleep.

“Now about that marijuana,” she said.

“You got any nail-polish remover?” I said.

We sat on the edge of Felix’s bed facing the television, which was playing dailies. Francisco drove across the bridge into sunset.

“You can imagine the lush strings,” Felix said, and threw the remote against the wall. Batteries fell to the floor, rolled to opposite corners of the room. I handed him the blunt.

“Straight men smoke blunts,” he said. “Instead of sucking big black cocks.”

“Oh?”

“That’s why you’ll never see a fag smoke a blunt. Their cravings are satisfied. They smoke little joints and prance around thinking about all those beautiful pricks shooting cum like shooting stars across the galaxy of their faces.”

“Poetic,” I said.

“I want to show you something,” Felix said, fast-forwarded the tape.

The scene where the dog runs into the road and Francisco doesn’t stop the car until Monica screams and grabs the wheel. We’d spent four hours on it because the dog kept running the wrong way.

“This fucking dog—too pretty. Of course he wants to run it over. Who doesn’t want to crush that smug bitch? Dog’s not even running right. This is supposed to be suicide. We need an ugly dog, some kind of mutt, runt of the litter, nothing to live for. I want him lingering on the shoulder, contemplating, then dashing out. Francisco sees the trajectory of the dog’s life, refuses to alter its course. It’s an act of mercy. An act of love.”

“I could love a dog,” I said.

“The thing that worries me isn’t the dog,” Felix said. “It’s not the dog at all. What worries me is that if they fucked up the dog, how are they going to deal with the cat?”

Felix took a deep pull, ashed on the carpet.

“The cat is the whole picture; the way he moves through the house at the end. If they get the cat right, then maybe this thing can work.”

He passed me the blunt.

“Promise me something,” he said. “Promise me you won’t let them fuck up the cat.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“I like this guy,” Felix said to the TV.

We sat stoned in the hair trailer after an afternoon of me making and remaking iced coffee for Solstice—“more milk,” “less milk,” “soy milk”—and Felix yelling at Tipplehorn, and Tipplehorn rubbing his nose and saying, “Felix, baby, listen,” and Felix throwing his coffee on the ground and kicking the Styrofoam, and then Tipplehorn making me pick up the kicked Styrofoam. Finally the haircut. I sat next to him, watched Kathleen’s breasts bob as she moved the clippers, feet dancing in tiny increments, eighth steps in time with the half notes, Patsy Cline crooning sweet and solemn, something about three cigarettes in an ashtray.

“The thing about the cat,” Felix said.

Kathleen ran a hand through his hair, said, “Don’t worry your pretty head.”

She shaved it all off. Felix was ready for battle. I was off to battle with him. In a moment of camaraderie, I’d shaved my head too. He appointed me his assistant, carrier of his marijuana, lieutenant in our army of three (Kathleen was also a lieutenant).

Monica was in her trailer, not coming out. The chiggers had gotten to her, and it was too hot to work. Her assistant stood by the camera truck, sobbing into her own cleavage. Mascara, mixed with sweat, dripped black down her chest and neck. Francisco was there, stroked her hair, called her “sweet pea.”

Solstice knocked on Monica’s door, said, “The camera never sees your ankles.”

“That’s not the problem,” Nathaniel whispered. “She doesn’t want to work with Francisco anymore, ever since he fucked her assistant.”

“How do you know?”

“I fucked Monica last night.”

He was grinning big, but must have been joking. If he’d slept with Monica it meant the death of the hierarchy. Not that she gave unattainable vibes. Monica was fairly normal—for an actress, anyway. She had a BA in psych with a minor in French. Bumped Brooklyn indie pop from the speaker dock in her trailer. Liked football, the Food Network, and books by Bret Easton Ellis. Hailed from the Carolinas, still sent handwritten checks to her mom and sister. Seemed shy and overwhelmed by the attention. Chain-smoked Parliaments between takes, flipped glossy mags or checked her cell while Kathleen reset her hair. This was supposed to be Monica’s break. Next year she’d be up on billboards, airbrushed, overlooking highway traffic.

“I’ll talk to her,” Felix said, removed his shirt, tied it around his head like a bandanna.

“Be my guest,” Solstice said.

Felix stepped up, knocked softly.

“Baby girl,” he said. “It’s just me, Felix. Let’s just talk for a minute. I just want to chat.”

The door opened. Felix entered. The rest of us stood waiting outside the trailer. Tipplehorn looked at me, mouthed the word
coffee
.

When I came back, Felix and Monica were walking arm in arm. Monica laughed, smiled, leaned into Felix.

Here’s how I imagine it: Felix sits on the bed. He begins to roll a blunt. “Mind if I smoke?” he says. Monica is crying. Wordless, Felix takes a bottle of clear nail polish from the top of her dresser and applies it to Monica’s ankles. “Men are scum,” he says. He slowly lifts her dress above her waist. He runs the nail brush over the bumps around her bikini line. He hands her the blunt. Monica stops crying. She looks at Felix. He tells her that her role in this film is important, the most important. He tells her to channel her hatred of Francisco into hatred of his character. He tells her this scene, the scene they are about to shoot, it came to him in a dream after his mother died. In his grief he imagined a girl—Monica’s character—sitting in a diner booth, sipping soda, making origami birds with the paper place mats.