by Byron Lane
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Want some company?” I ask.
“Nope,” she says, leaving the room. Leaving the porch. Leaving me.
Darling.
“Am I still a B-plus?” I shout as she walks away, but she doesn’t hear, doesn’t respond.
I watch her walking to her car, moving her driver’s seat forward because I’m the last person who drove it, exiting that gate, nearly getting T-boned by another driver in the busy crook of Beverly Canyon Drive.
Is she safe out there? Can she be alone? Do I want her to be alone? I think of Jasmine and the other assistants, about being there for Kathi. I should be with her? I want to be with her. I want to be a helper—the best she’s ever had—a protector, apart from the other secretaries who failed and fled and couldn’t cut it. But what about moments like this, where she expressly doesn’t want me along? Am I being if she’s not around? Do I exist without her?
I feel the expensive fabric of the shirt she bought me, the soft pants that she said fit me too perfectly for her to pass up, the designer shoes snuggling my feet, which she said would look just right with my growing hair.
I’m wrapped comfortably in the bribe of my gray cashmere sweater.
I’m thinking, Was the last manic episode really my fault?
I’m thinking, Where is Vegas?
You know Kathi is a drug addict, don’t you? I hear Miss Gracie in my head, telling me the not-secret secret the world knows too well.
Standing in Kathi’s living room, surrounded by art and wealth, it doesn’t feel like the drug den Miss Gracie seems to think lurks under the surface. Sure, Kathi is a mess, she’s a project, she’s part of a tribe of misfits I’ve been drawn to my entire life, one of those types who make me feel alive, amused, seen. I can help her. I’m a good influence: I didn’t have sex until I was twenty-two. I never even saw cocaine until I was twenty-seven and I refused to partake because I was convinced I’d have a heart attack. Surely I can be a good example for Kathi Kannon.
Assistant Bible Verse 11: You know best. But they can never know that. Since childhood, I’ve gravitated to those who are different. Marco was the absolute most effeminate kid at St. Peter’s Elementary School, and he and I became fast friends. Lonnie was hands-down the most obese kid in all of St. Zachary Parish, and we had sleepovers and joined Cub Scouts together. In junior high, I befriended Luis, who barely spoke English and was the first and last exchange student to ever attend my small, conservative, rural school. There was Clark, with his perfect hair and big gay secret, which we never—to this day—have discussed. Paul and I rode bikes and spent afternoons in capes, running around as superheroes in front of his parents, later revealed to be white-collar felons.
These years later, little has changed. I like wild outliers. My mom used to say I was always drawn to people who need love. My father used to scream, “LEAVE THE FREAKS ALONE! UNLESS YOU ARE ONE?!” I’m thinking, Maybe. But mostly I think I’m drawn to differences because I’m bored with everyone else, everyone else with their ordinary, sad, normal lives. Maybe I’m hungry for people who are real and honest, perhaps because for so long, as a gay kid in a strict and rigid household in backwoods Louisiana, I was not. Perhaps I’m drawn to people who are different because I feel different, too. It’s not so much that I want to help them as they help me feel less alone. My therapist says helping others is helping yourself.
Bring me your tired, your sick, your mentally ill.
I can feel my hair growing longer by the second, stretching and waiting with me for Kathi to come home, her with my mom’s locket in tow, snugly wound onto her key chain, my thumbnail still bruised from the effort, my heart still swollen from our moment up and down the halls of this home, our dance with mania and madness and Mom—with me then, and now with Kathi, my newly knighted Hollywood mother. The locket is well placed: Kathi could use a mom like mine, loving, present, protecting. Thanks, Mom, please keep her safe.
I can’t wait to see what new item Kathi buys me for my rapidly expanding wardrobe. I look forward to becoming this new person, forged not just by Kathi’s purchases and proclamations but by my own will and openness to this experience.
I’m keenly aware of a shift inside me, all around me, as I let go of a past life, past feelings, a voiding of the once always-present aftertaste of hating my existence so much that I considered ending it.
Drugs, lies, warnings, whatever. I can do this. I must.
I read somewhere that travel is a wonderful alternative to suicide. That travel can sometimes siphon you from your stressors, making the world feel bigger and your perceived problems smaller. I rub my palms together like I’m a contestant on Survivor trying to start a fire with a twig, like my time lost in a jungle of darkness and disillusionment is over, like a spark of life has set my old self gloriously ablaze, and I’m standing anew in the ashes with great things ahead for me, old troubles abated, my lucky break finally breaking. I’m thinking, tearfully and weightlessly relieved, Finally, finally.
Travel is a wonderful alternative to suicide.
Lucky me, because Kathi Kannon is a real trip.
Part Two
BRUSH FIRE IN THE SPIRIT WORLD
9
SPRING
Hey, Siri, Kathi Kannon and I are late and I’m in trouble. We’re standing in an office-building parking lot, looking at the three-story structure with wraparound balconies on each level, making it appear more like a motel than a professional complex. A meeting with her friend Rick was supposed to start ten minutes ago and she asks me which suite we’re supposed to visit.
“I don’t know. One second,” I say, checking my emails to find the answer, but she doesn’t want to wait, so from the parking lot, to my horror, she starts screaming, “RICK! RICK! RICK!”
Slowly, faces start to peek from behind curtains, behind vertical blinds, looking down at us in the parking lot.
“RICK!” she screams.
Doors open and secretaries poke their heads out to get a glimpse of what’s happening, to see who’s yelling, to see who’s screeching like a car alarm.
“RICK! RICK! RIIIIIIIIIIIICK!”
Finally, a body emerges from the door of Suite 307. Rick, of course, smiling, waving. “Up here,” he says.
“Hi!” she yells, and starts walking to the stairwell.
I follow behind and whisper, “Here it is,” holding up my phone with the email and the suite number. “You couldn’t wait five seconds?”
“Nope. Thanks anyway, Cockring,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing, a sort of innocent sign of aggressive affection, her fingers rubbing, rubbing, rubbing my forearm.
“Are your hands clean?” I ask.
With a devilish grin she shakes her head no.
SUMMER
Hey, Siri, we’re coming in for a landing, a little midweek jaunt home from seeing Kathi’s friend Dave Matthews at a charity concert in San Francisco. The seatbelt sign is fully illuminated, flight attendants are buckled in after just making the announcement to stay in our seats, and Kathi says to me, “I have to pee.”
Before I can protest, she unclips her seatbelt, stands, marches right past the shocked flight attendants, and goes into the lavatory. The entire plane is watching, people behind us craning their necks in the aisle, popping their heads over the seats in front of them. I’m blushing, unsure how I can help ease the confused fury on the flight attendants’ faces. One of them reaches for his seatbelt but stops as we hear a clang in the bathroom. Then a clank. The lock jiggles, going from LOCK to UNLOCK to LOCK to UNLOCK. The red X and the green LAVATORY AVAILABLE lights keep flicking on and off, on and off, further capturing the attention of the jetliner’s jetsetters.
The bathroom door opens a crack and then slams shut again. Opens and slams.
We all wait with crushing anticipation.
We hear a flush.
The lock flicks open again.
The door swings ajar.
Kathi Kannon slowly walks back to her seat
, flicking her bangs back, oblivious to the theatrical production she just provided free of charge. She nestles in her seat as the plane touches down.
“What?” she says, staring at me staring at her.
“How are you able to break the rules like that with such abandon?”
She says with a shrug, “To the manor born.”
FALL
I’m sitting with film icon Kathi Kannon in an otherwise-empty movie theater, eating chocolate chip ice cream and watching some fantasy-type movie because Kathi is friends with Meg Ryan and her son has a small part in it and the two ladies are supposed to see each other soon.
Through the thunderous music, the busy action scenes, the fast and loud dialogue, I hear next to me: thwp!
I look over at Kathi, her spoon bobbing in and out of the ice cream container, her eyes glazed and droopy but fixed firmly on the film.
I look back to the screen and then again hear: thwp!
I turn back to her. “What are you doing?”
“What?” she asks, seeming annoyed that I’m interrupting the film.
“What’s that noise?”
“I know, right? This whole fucking film is noise,” she says, shaking her head, bobbing her spoon, slowly loading a blob of ice cream into her mouth, and then—thwp!—spitting out a chunk of chocolate.
I look around in a panic, confirming that we are the only ones there, that no one else is seeing what’s happening. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“When?”
“Right now? Are you spitting out the chocolate chips?”
“They’re too big,” she says, her words slightly slurred.
“Too big?!”
“I’m an expert,” she says, and turns back to the film.
The spoon.
The bobbing.
The mouth.
Thwp!
Thwp!
Kathi looks over at me looking at her.
“You can’t do that,” I say.
“What else am I going to do with them? Do you have a tissue?”
“No.”
She turns away from me. Thwp! “Anyway,” she says, “I’m bored.”
“Shall we jet?”
“Yup. All this screaming is giving me a headache.” She stands and looks down at the darkened floor, trying to navigate her way out. “Try not to step in all this fucking chocolate.”
WINTER
Hey, Siri, take note: We’re at LAX and paid six hundred dollars for VIP treatment so a handler will escort us to our gate in a golf cart on our way to Utah to a mental-health charity dinner where Kathi is a speaker.
Beep beep beep, make way!
Throngs of people, including the elderly and children carrying their heavy luggage, have to step aside.
Beep beep beep, pardon us!
I turn to her and ask, “Do you think it’s weird that we’re making all these people move so we can ride to our gate in this cart? Shouldn’t we walk? Don’t you feel bad?”
She looks up from her phone, turns to me with a wry smile cracking the sides of her mouth. “Not that bad.”
SPRING
Hey, Siri, we’re in Joshua Tree, on an ill-advised adventure shopping for antiques—which don’t exist here, not to Kathi’s liking anyway. We’re both hot and exhausted, and Kathi wants to check into a motel to have a nap to let traffic die down before we drive back to Los Angeles. We stop at a place called Pioneertown and get a room, plus a heaping amount of side-eye from the motel clerk, sizing up Kathi, then me, then her, then me. “You think he’s my prostitute?” Kathi asks the sassy teenage attendant.
“That’s your business, ma’am,” the clerk spits.
Kathi puffs her chest. “Well, he’s my…” Kathi begins, pausing, considering which phrase will play out the best with a young woman who may be simply a minimum-wage local trying to get by—a sheltered citizen of Pioneertown who doesn’t exactly recognize or care she’s in the presence of the Kathi Kannon. “He’s my…” Kathi starts again. “He’s my … stepson,” she says, snatching the keys from the clerk. “But if you must know, yes, we are having sex!”
I knew I was family.
“Acting,” Kathi whispers to me as she marches us out, off the office’s front porch, past the “saloon,” past the “bank,” and to our bungalow.
“That escalated,” I say.
“I couldn’t tell that poor woman you’re my assistant. How pretentious.”
“It hasn’t stopped you before.”
Kathi smiles. “What are you complaining about? You’ve now received a promotion to the coveted position of my stepson. And whore.”
“I’m honored. Is there a pay raise?” I ask, tugging on my shirt—a bright-orange button-down Kathi bought me at Maxwell’s—a smirk on my face, knowing full well that with all the gifts she gives me, I’m wearing my pay raise.
“I pay you in Shine,” Kathi says, entering our desert hideaway, dropping her glasses on the floor, tossing her purse on the bed, artfully removing her bra through her shirt sleeve.
“Shine? You mean your cheery disposition?” I ask, picking up behind her—the glasses, the bra, the existentialism.
“No. I mean my famous disposition. That’s fame. It’s a shine, a glow. And the people around me get addicted to it.”
I stand there facing her, still and stoic. “You think I’m addicted to this?” I ask, waving her bra in the air a little.
“You, Cockring? You don’t seem addicted to the Shine. Yet. But I’ve been at this a long time. The glow always rubs off a little. I used to have an entourage, you know. You could tell the ones who loved it, who loved the Shine. You could almost see it smeared on them, like people arrested on Cops who deny huffing spray paint but they have a huge circle of silver smeared around their mouths.”
Kathi claims the bed closest to the bathroom, and per usual whenever we reach our destination (women’s clothing section of Barneys, corner table at La Scala, American Airlines VIP lounge), Kathi immediately empties the contents of her purse, searching for whatever tool she needs in the moment—a hairbrush, a piece of candy, her pill case. Today she’s looking for a ring she took off in an antique shop so the owners wouldn’t think she had too much money. As her hand shifts and scatters the contents, she finds her ring, slides it onto her finger, and smiles adoringly at it as she puffs on an e-cigarette. She grabs her daily pale-blue pill case and stands to go to the bathroom. The pills rattle inside and stir me like they’re an alarm.
“You didn’t take your meds today?” I ask.
“Oops. Will remedy that right now.”
“Please be on top of that, Stepmom.”
“I am on top of it, mostly, Stepson. You haven’t seen a manic episode in a while, have you?”
They’re very rare.
They’re very fun.
I give her a cool thumbs-up as she closes the bathroom door, my cue to put everything back into her purse, including her keys, my mom’s locket still suffering on Kathi’s key chain, having been tossed and tattered and scratched and stained the last year with her but still here. It’s my reminder that I’m committed to Kathi, that we’re intertwined in a strange way, and if Mom’s spirit could be anywhere, certainly she’d prefer being tossed around in Priestess Talara’s purse—beside me—a guardian angel to my Hollywood mother, or I guess now, stepmother.
* * *
I’m worrying about Kathi while I’m meeting Superman, or Superman adjacent. He’s the latest in new assistants who’ve entered the fold in the last year. They’re all piled in the Village Scribe again, rehydrating with drinks like Power, Superiority, Privilege.
Superman’s boss is an actor who’s a failed superhero, though his chiseled face still gets him work. I’m watching this new assistant, who’s wearing what looks like an outfit from Target—don’t worry, he’ll get the hang of it—mix and mingle with the other assistants: Jasmine, West, Titanic, Crooner. There are also some new bloodsuckers here to see what they can squeeze from our ranks. Catwoman and Catwoman’s sec
ond showed up. Speed is here. Sparrow just arrived. Bruce is here on a date with, of course, a guy who has the exact same high-fade haircut and perfect cheekbones as Bruce. Bruce, ugh, is dating himself.
We’re at the bar when Bruce acknowledges me, only for the express purpose of me acknowledging his date.
“Hey, baby. Isn’t my date handsome?” Bruce asks me, his arm around his twin.
I look to Bruce’s date. “Do you really need me to validate you?” I ask coldly.
“Yes, please,” the date says, scoring snickers from Bruce.
“You’re both gorgeous.”
“Thank you,” they say in horrific unison.
“Now, do you have any compliments for me?” I ask.
The two of them are gut-punched silent. I roll my eyes and turn back to Jasmine and West.
West is nursing a second voraciously bubbling champagne and going on about how her boss stacked new responsibilities upon her, forcing her recently to go to the grocery store at nine P.M. “How nice it must be,” West says, “to see someone eating sautéed mushroom soufflé in a movie and then call your assistant to call the studio to call the director to call the writer to get the exact recipe from the screenplay and then have me go to the grocery and buy the supplies and then cook it!”
“Wait,” Crooner says, flipping his hot-pink hair behind his shoulder. “You cook for your boss?”
“She’s a singing icon! What am I supposed to do? She wants soufflé and the chef is off, so guess who’s fucking mixing large brown eggs and chopping shiitake mushrooms at ten at night. It’s so stressful!” West takes a gulp of champagne from her flute. “Ah, this helps.”
“This is our life,” Jasmine says, sipping her martini, looking out at the crowd—the assistants we like, those we don’t, the ones who are executive and the ones who are personal, the lifers who will be here for years and the new ones, like Superman, fresh and innocent, like I used to be. “Isn’t it amazing?”
I look out, unsure if I’m seeing exactly what she’s seeing.
“Look at all these people we know,” she says. “If we could harness the full power of all assistants, we could own this town.”