by Byron Lane
I’m thinking, Fuck my dad.
But I’m also thinking, Fuck this guy, Jasmine’s dad.
I tuck my long, growing hair behind my ears—making a note to myself that even my hair is a gift from her, something I owe her. “It’s okay if Kathi Kannon is changing me,” I say. “Because I’m changing her.”
* * *
Sitting in my car, alcohol and angst pumping through me, I’m feeling spent and dissected and unable to drive. Just sitting feels good, still and quiet and cool in the California night with the support of the seat of my trusty Nissan Sentra. I run my hand across the dash like it’s a hot guy’s leg. I use my finger to wipe some dust from the radio buttons. I look down at the mats on the floor, covered with dirt.
I’m thinking, I need to vacuum this car. I reach down and try to scoop up some of the mess and leaves, but most of the bits are impossibly tiny.
I scroll through mixed and merged contacts in my phone—there’s the number for Ben Affleck, for Cher, for Toni Collette—and past all those options, all those celebrities I could theoretically call and bullshit with, I land at the most infamous character in my life: Dad.
It’s two A.M. in L.A., so it’s four A.M. in Louisiana.
I’m thinking, DON’T YOU DARE!
I push the call button and close my eyes, imagining the signal bouncing from my phone to some tower to outer space to some satellite, back down and to my father’s phone on his stupid nightstand in his stupid bedroom in Perris.
Ring.
I’m thinking about being naked in that room, forced to wear my dead mother’s panties.
Ring.
I’m thinking of all the creative dreams that died that day, in that room.
Ring.
I’m thinking of all the things that died in my childhood, not the least of which—my mother.
Ring.
“Charlie?” Dad says, answering his phone, groggy and alarmed. “Everything okay?”
“I’m wondering about you,” I say, trying to project an air of adulthood.
“Are you drunk?” Dad asks. “What’s wrong?”
“My therapist says that when you talk to others, you are talking to yourself. So when you said way back, like, when I was a kid and you made me eat Oreos out of the trash and you said, ‘Take responsibility for your life,’ were you really talking to yourself?”
“What Oreos?” Dad asks, growing frustrated. “What are you talking about? Why the fuck are you calling me at four in the morning?”
“Because I think when you said ‘take responsibility for your actions’ to me—you were actually talking about yourself, right? You were saying I should take the blame for wasting those cookies, but that means you believe you should take all the blame for your own flaws in your life, and maybe you think you’re to blame for your bad marriage and your unfinished house and your sad family and your not having money and stuff. I think that you think that it was all your fault, right?”
Dad is quiet on the other end of the line. I wait for his response, watching passersby on the sidewalk, barflies ejected at the two A.M. last call, lonely and horny and still on their hunt for more. Dad never responds.
“I mean, some of it was your fault, but I don’t think it’s all your fault,” I stammer. “I don’t think it’s true that everything was your fault. I think some things happened that were not in your control. Or my control. Your problems were relative? Right? Some things just get dirty. Anyway, this just occurred to me because my car needs to be vacuumed.”
“I’m going back to bed, Charlie.”
“Of course you are,” I say. “It’s four in the morning there? Yeah. You should go back to bed. And sleep soundly, you know. Now that you have this new information.”
“Are you home?”
“Nope.”
I shake my head; I sway to the music of the traffic outside, the booze inside.
Dad asks, “Can you get home safely?”
I say, “Of course, darling.”
I hang up and feel my heart pumping inside me. I open my phone again. I text Jasmine.
ME: Sorry.
15
That old pill bottle Kathi gave me back in Sydney, it’s still on my nightstand in my apartment. A reminder: I can trust her, sometimes, at least. It’s a symbol, though an empty one.
Hey, Siri, I want to trust her.
Also on my nightstand, a brass lamp. It’s the same brand of lamp that was in my room next to Kathi’s at the Greenwich Hotel in New York, its crooked neck and arching shade still looking like a cartoon character, still giving me a little wave: Welcome home. I wanted a piece of NYC, a reminder of this great life, at arm’s reach. I looked under the lamp at the hotel and found the manufacturer website and ordered one—my own treasure, my own bit of luxury, a little out of place in my dumpy dwelling but still proudly lighting my way through the small corners of this apartment, of my life.
They both sit there, the pill bottle and the lamp, both gathering dust, lonely and sad, just like me, my empty bed, my empty calendar.
I turn to my trusty vice: OkCupid.
It’s time to get back in the game. To recharge my relationship batteries. To see what’s out there, who’s out there, who can save me.
Nice to meet you, LA2LA94. He’s too religious.
Nice to meet you, HPOTTERFAN. He’s a Hufflepuff.
Nice to meet you, NYC1980. He hated Nova Quest.
I email CALI-DREAMING, even though I only gave him one star out of five because I didn’t like his clothes in his pictures, including one where he was in a caftan. Not that I have a problem with caftans—I love them—it’s just the pattern was all wrong for his body type. Alas, sitting alone in my apartment I’m thinking, Maybe I shouldn’t be too picky. My email to him was mostly cut-and-pasted from the many others I had sent to potentials. But he wrote back: “Hi, I’m Ben.”
* * *
Ben is tall and so much better-looking than his profile picture, handsome but accessible, quirky but not awkward. This moment with him feels new, and it feels authentic. And I want more, more, more.
We meet at Intelligentsia Coffee in Silver Lake and are having iced coffees together when a film crew walks up to us. They’re doing a survey for a local election and we oblige with our opinions, and the leader gives me her card and they take our picture and they’re gone.
“Was that weird?” I ask him. “That was so random.”
“Nah,” Ben says. “I’ve never been on a date in L.A. that didn’t involve media somehow.”
We laugh and I think how much I liked his answers to the interview questions about school choice and speed humps and clean-air initiatives. We seem to be on similar pages, and we “cheers” our iced coffees. “To clean air,” Ben says.
When I get home, I have a good feeling about our first date, so I email the crew and ask for a copy of the picture. If Ben and I work out, it will be so special to have a photo of our first meeting.
I’m thinking, Blue dots at last.
* * *
Hey, Siri, the show must go on. We’re in Seattle. Kathi agreed to shoot a TV show that we’ve never heard of, never seen. She’s agreed to play a character whose name she can’t remember, from a script she hasn’t read. But money is money, and working occasionally looks good and appeases her agents and her mother.
In our hotel lobby, we spot k.d. lang. Does she know who we are? Does she want to meet Kathi Kannon? Does she think I’m Kathi’s lover or son? Does she want to ask me to hook her up with an autograph, a meet and greet? Does she think I’m important, too? I’m back to feeding my addiction. With k.d. is a young companion, male, stylishly dressed, possibly an assistant. He looks over at me. He smiles and nods—to our being gay, to our being assistants? I’m not sure. I’m thinking, Maybe there are too many assistants in the world, too many gatekeepers for too many gates.
Kathi and I are wearing weird hats she bought at the airport—her in moose antlers and me, reluctantly, in a woolly Russian-lumberjack-style getup. Roy in
tow, we turn from k.d. and her companion and get in the elevator. A drunk guy enters behind us as the doors close. We all stare at one another for a moment. I wonder if he recognizes Kathi, whether I’m going to have to fight with him, or more probable, lose a fight with him. And as we start to ascend, the guy mumbles at us, “Weirdos.”
I’m trying to assess the degree to which we are maybe in danger. Kathi is still. Roy is still. I look over at Kathi, her makeup smeared, glitter in her eyelashes, her wacky hat askew. I look at Roy, tired, hair matted from his nap in the limo. I imagine my face, exhaustion, my eyelids droopy, a nasal drip starting in the back of my throat. We are a mess. Maybe we are weirdos.
The elevator dings and Kathi and I exit, not murdered after all. I safely take her to her room, with a promise I’ll see her in a few moments to say good night. I go to my room and start to unpack and prepare for the next day.
As I’m about to leave my room to go back to Kathi, I hear the drunk guy yelling in the hall. He must have followed us or remembered our floor. Is he looking for us? Is he lost, confused, dangerous? I watch through the peephole. There’s a threat between me and Kathi Kannon—I’m thinking, Not the first time.
A short time later, the man’s friend collects him, tells him to be quiet or they’ll get kicked out of the hotel.
I stand at my hotel door for several minutes, my face squished against the peephole, looking for any signs the threat is still lingering. I hear nothing, see nothing.
Therapista says some threats are silent.
I slip out and go to Kathi’s room.
Kathi is snuggled in bed, Roy snoring beside her. She’s watching TV, clicking channels.
Click, click, click.
I sit next to her, that awkward moment where I wait to be dismissed, wondering if she really wants me to leave or really wants me to stay, to be with her, to share some common thread, some companionship.
Click, click, click.
And on the television, suddenly, it’s her! Her movie. The movie! Nova Quest. The film that truly birthed her celebrity. I gasp. Everything stops. She freezes. I freeze. The AC in the room shuts down, every molecule turns to see what happens. Kathi watches herself as Priestess Talara onscreen for a few moments. Her young face, her young body, her young hand—all while her current hand, her real hand, clutches mine.
It’s a dramatic moment in Nova Quest: One of her co-stars is dying, worrying he failed in his mission to save the planet. Priestess Talara holds him tight and whispers her iconic line, the one that has lived on, survived these decades on T-shirts and posters and coffee mugs. She says the line that defined part of my childhood and brought me comfort in the dark days of my young life. Priestess Talara says, “It’s all the All.”
Awesome! In awe, I look at Kathi. Her lips part. I stop breathing. She’s deciding what to say. The quiet wakes Roy and he perks up like the rest of us.
Hey, Siri, I want her to become my hero, Priestess Talara, to show me she still has it, to show me she gets it, the lore and the magic. I want her to validate my childhood and my jagged journey to being in the room with her. I want her to leap from the film to the screen to this hotel room and make me a part of this iconic moment, even if it’s just by proximity to her talent. I want to stand, I want to lock eyes with her, I want to be a part of this insane scene both in the room and on the television, in this tall order that lies before us. I hold my breath.
Kathi shakes her head and says, “Asinine,” lets go of my hand, and changes the channel.
Click, click, click.
I’m thinking, A million infomercials seem more interesting to her than her history, her life.
“Did you take your meds?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
“Want to write?”
“No.”
“Want to go over your lines for tomorrow?”
“Definitely not,” she says.
I bid her farewell.
Asinine.
* * *
I’m naked and I call Ben.
The usual exchanges about our day only get us so far, and we both turn to what we really want. We start masturbating on the phone together.
My eyes closed, my hand rubbing myself, my mind in a room, in a bed, intimate with Ben, I say, “I wanna feel you inside me.”
“I wanna feel you inside me,” he repeats.
I open my eyes, wondering if he’ll say more, but he doesn’t. “Is that it?” I ask.
“Is what it?”
“I just said, ‘I wanna feel you inside me,’ and then you repeated it.”
“Right,” he says.
“No, no. That’s not dirty talk. You have to say something fresh. Not just repeat me. Or you can repeat it, but you have to, like, add to it, move the scene forward, you know?”
“Oh, right, right, yeah,” he says. “Um, I’m gonna get inside you tonight.”
Perhaps Therapista is right that relationships are an ever-shifting pie chart, with some slices big—like Ben’s everyday good looks and kindness—and some slices smaller—like his ability to talk filthy. But right now a small slice of talking filthy is just fine. I’m more nourished on this night by the slice of Ben’s pie that seems biggest and warmest: He’s here for me, at least on the phone.
We laugh, we talk, we orgasm. As I end the call, I’m thinking, This would have been so much more fun if I wasn’t so many miles away.
* * *
It’s five A.M. and I have no idea where I am.
The digital clock on my nightstand displays the time in a glowing orange oval with black numbers, giving the hotel room the feel of a spaceship.
Time to wake up.
I grab my phone and scroll through my emails. Sweet nothings from Ben. Credit-card payment is due—I’m almost out of debt. Spam offering me hot Asian women.
I roll out of bed.
Time to make the Kathi donuts.
I knock assertively on her door before inserting the key card. I walk inside her room. There’s trash on the floor. The TV is on. The bathroom lights are on. Something feels off. How can she live like this? Is this living? Is she living?
I look at Kathi Kannon, film icon. I’ve seen this before. She looks just like she has in my imagination, just as I’ve seen in my nightmares, the kind where you wake yourself up by the sound of your own gasping for air—because in these dreams, she looks dead.
But this is no dream.
My movie-star boss is looking blue, maybe dying from a drug overdose.
Roy stirs and the movement startles me. He jumps down from the bed and comes to me—begging? For what? For help?
Assistant Bible Verse 139: Always assume the worst.
I rush to Kathi’s side. “Kathi!” I shout. Her famous breasts are flopped to and fro, the nipples pointing in opposite directions under her thin nightgown.
Roy presses against my calves, wiggling nervously, like he knows something I don’t. Or perhaps my fear is now contagious, Roy taking a defensive position behind me, bracing himself, abandoning me on the front line.
“Kathi,” I repeat, my voice pocked with worry, wondering if she’ll stir and her blue skin will flush pink as she takes a deep, dry breath.
“Kathi,” I say a little louder.
“KATHI!” I shout.
Roy looks back and forth, from me to her, me to her, willing me to do something.
I hope we survive Seattle.
I’m blushing. I’m sweating. I’m thinking, Fuck.
Assistant Bible Verse 140: Be prepared for last-minute auditions, paparazzi in the azaleas, mouth-to-mouth resuscitations.
I touch her shoulder. Cold. I put my fingers on her neck. Cold. I put my hand over her heart. Cold. I push, and her body heaves, bounces on the bed. I push again. I put my other hand on top of the first and push down again.
“Kathi? No!” I yell. “I need you! Please don’t leave me!” I push, push, push.
One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.
Pump, pump, pump.
The bed bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.
“HELP!” I yell, turning to the nightstand, to the phone. With one hand I grab the receiver, and I take my other hand off her cold chest to dial.
“Cockring?!” she gasps.
I stop, turn, stare at this miracle.
Assistant Bible Verse 141: The job never ends.
Roy hops back up on the bed, licks her face once, and then circles and circles until he plops down in a perfect little ball of comfort. He’s thinking, Naptime. He’s thinking, This is just another morning.
I hang up the phone.
Kathi says without moving, “What time is it? Were you just screaming?”
I exhale, not just my breath, but I release every cell, every muscle, every thought. My mind goes blank, my body limp, standing, swaying slightly before her. I think of Kathi as my mother for a brief moment—flashing back to Mom’s death, watching her collapse in church and seeing her lifeless body, remembering my deepest prayer that she would just stand up, be reanimated, alive again. I remember wanting to run up to her, to grab her, to shake her awake. I wish she would have snapped to attention all those years ago, just like Kathi Kannon did a few moments ago. I wish I could distribute miracles equally among the women in my life.
“My throat hurts,” Kathi says. “And my back is killing me.”
“Time to go to work,” I say, worried I’m talking to a ghost.
She tries to sit up in bed but struggles. As she moves the comforter away from her, I think I see vomit in the bed, or maybe it’s just some other kind of mess in our lives. She pulls the comforter back again to hide it.
She looks up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say, and in a fever begin to tidy up, walking to a lamp to turn it on.
“Wait. Were you just touching my breast?” she asks, waking, awareness starting to pump through her veins.
“No, I was giving you CPR.”
“That’s not how you do CPR, Cockring,” she says. “It’s okay. You don’t have to deny your sexual feelings for me.”