by John Rechy
The greatest of great dramatic scenes! Neely, sinking lower and lower, finds herself in a dump in San Francisco, picks up a grubby drifter, who robs her—and then she staggers out into an alley—an alley!—drunk, pilled-up—
“Dolled up?” Tarah tested that word again. It still sounded wrong.
Seized by the power of the role of Neely O’Hara, she pretended her puffy white carpet was a grimy alley, and she screamed out the immortal lines:
“The whole world loves me! I am Neeeeleeeee O’HARRRR-ah!”
Please God, get me the role of Neely O’Hara—
She jumped. The phone had rung. She grabbed the television remote control, punching it randomly to change the TV channel to something that would sound classy over the telephone, but she kept landing on noisy morning cartoons; so she turned the sound off and let the answering machine pick up—not good to convey she was edgy about a call from her manager.
“This is Tarah Worth,” her recorded voice said, “Please leave a message. A kind one.”
“Tarah, pick up the goddamn phone! I know you’re waiting to hear from me, and I got news—”
Tarah picked up. “Sorry. I was in the shower, I heard a voice. Who is it please?”
“Stop that bullshit, you were pretending to be unconcerned. It’s official, you’re in the running for the role of—”
Tarah Worth held her breath to receive one of the magic names. Anne Wells. Jennifer North. Neely O’Hara! Please God, please, please … “What?”
“You heard me. Helen Lawson.”
Helen Lawson! The gargoyle actress, gobbling up young talent, hardly able to pull it off any more, clawing her way to stay at the top, and balding—yes, balding! Tarah closed her eyes to prepare for her death in a moment. “Helen … Lawson?” Even the name staggered.
“The old bitch, yeah, her,” said the coarse, crass voice of her manager, extending the years of battering Tarah had already endured. “Tarah? Tarah? Are you there?”
“I’m here. I don’t want that role, I’m too young for it.”
“You’re forty, and you look it, and it’s a meaty role, sweets—kosher meaty, of course, or I won’t bite! Ha, ha! You got a good chance because they decided to go with someone not well known.”
How had she coped with this creature for all these years? Because it was difficult to get another manager, her reason ambushed her before she could block it.
“You wanna comeback or not?”
“Comeback!” Norma Desmond had said it for all time in Sunset Boulevard. It’s not a comeback, it’s a return. But hers wasn’t even a return. She was remembered. Her fan club—
“Now we gotta plan to get you some wild publicity. Gotta show ’em your boobs are still way out there.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use that word, boo—”
“What’s wrong with boobs, babe?—especially big ones, the kind I like to bounce—bob, bob, yum, yum.”
Those sounds!
“I heard they’ve dyked up the part.”
“Dyked up?”
“Yeah, butched it up,” the horrifying voice turned the words into a bark.
“I am not a dyke.”
“Oh, honeybunch, I know that, but so what? Might help you if you were. I heard that Alexandra Easton over at Fox said you’re still cute—”
“Cute! I am not cute. I am gorgeous. And, please, please, please—” She held her breath for moments, to sustain the courage that would allow her to speak words she had longed to speak, had shouted in her mind throughout the years. “Lenora! Stop trying to sound like a man, you’re not. Stop trying to sound like a lesbian, you’re not. Stop trying to sound Jewish, you’re not.” There! She’d spoken it all at last out of the recesses of her tortured artist’s heart.
“Whatever, sweet stuff … Hey, did you hear that out in the San Fernando Valley there’s a drag queen who does a real good imitation of you—but nobody knows whom she’s doing? Ha-ha, just a joke!”
Tarah clutched her heart, to keep it from breaking.
“Babe,” Lenora said, “I gotta go. Decide what you know you’re gonna decide, and then come see me, we’ll plot. Ciao, babe.”
What a frightening woman, her manager was—and she smoked cigars, and it was true she wasn’t Jewish or a lesbian—she was known to screw all those pretty young actors eager for representation, and how they managed to perform would deserve at least a Golden Globe nomination. Her last name probably wasn’t even Stern, just wanted one that might be Jewish. It all had to do with power, although Tarah had not yet deciphered how she thought her pretenses would help her. Probably born under the sign of Taurus, the bull, although she’d never asked her, fearing that if she guessed Taurus, the creature would take off with suggestions about being a bull dyke.
“The role of Helen Lawson! Never!” Tarah gasped aloud as she returned to the mirror. That would reassure her. Should she have a facelift, at such an early age? Younger actresses—and actors—did. “I’m gorgeous!” she said, whipping her head about so that her red hair—almost its natural color—swirled, giving her that Rita Hayworth look.
“I’ll wait for the remake of Gilda,” she swore, “before I play that old bag, Helen Lawson.”
2
Another impossible connection develops in Encino, California.
“Fluffer! Fluffer!” the director called.
“Oh, shit, not again,” said a frumpy middle-aged woman who looked like a trailer wife. She rose from her chair, where she had been enjoying a quiet cigarette.
“You’re all coked out, dude,” Cecil B., the director, explained the obvious to a man lying naked and unaroused on an opulent bed next to a naked woman almost as opulent; she leaned, bored, on one elbow.
“Huh?” the naked man rousted himself.
“Why don’t ya take another snort and maybe that’ll get your cock up again?” Cecil B. said. “This is costing me money, you know.” The bedroom set, in the director’s house in Encino, California, would be passed off as a “mansion” in the porn movie in progress.
The naked woman lay back, and closed her eyes as if readying for sleep.
“Huh?”
“Jesuschrist, Hunk! Is that all you can say?” Cecil B. aimed harshly at the naked man. His booming voice called out again, “Fluffer! Where the hell are you? What the hell d’ya think I pay you for?”
Sandra May O’Connell, the housewifey woman, blowing smoke from the cigarette she had pasted to her lips, made her way past assistants, some camera cables—and, ignoring them, a heavy middle-aged man in a gaudy expensive suit and a smartly dressed woman—both seated comfortably on a plush sofa. Both drank—the woman sipped—champagne from flute glasses. The woman, Mrs. Renquist, occasionally held out the crystal glass so that it captured a splinter of light, which she inspected for a moment or two before returning her full attention to the set. Beside her, Mr. Renquist leaned over to peer into the sparkle in her glass. Mrs. Renquist pulled it away from his inspection.
“Okay, Hunk, stand up—” the frumpy Sandra May ordered the naked man.
“Huh?”
“That’s it, that’s a good boy.” Sandra May spat out the cigarette, snuffing it out with her foot and, kneeling, replaced it with the naked man’s soft cock, swallowing it expertly.
Hunk Williams, king of porn—though his throne was wavering as he approached—passed—the threshold of forty—stood dutifully before the squatting fluffer blowing him to give him an erection, the famous erection that had been molded in plaster; autographed replicas of his fabled foot-long cock were sold to fans and collectors all over the world.
Blaze, the naked woman, yawned sleepily. “You might as well give up, Sandra May,” she said to the squatting woman. “I tried it myself. It’s dead.”
“No, it isn’t,” Cecil B. said. “Don’t even think it, I’ve got money invested on this.”
“Indeed so have we,” Mrs. Renquist reminded. She wore only Chanel designs, and perfumed herself with No. 5.
“That’s right, we�
��ve invested good money in this fucking film,” Mr. Renquist echoed, laughing at his own reference.
“Must you!” the woman said irritably to him. “Must you use that word? Must you always be vulgar?” She did not look at him.
“Film?” That word, echoing for seconds before he was able to perceive it, brought Hunk Williams out of his haze for a moment only. “Huh?”
“He woke up!” Blaze said. “Quick,” she said to the fluffer, “quick, try to put it in me so we can end this shoot.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, shit, he’s not worth all this,” Cecil B. despaired.
“Even unprepared,” Mrs. Renquist reminded, “his property is more prominent than anyone else’s in the erotic industry; it mustn’t be disdained so easily.”
“Yeah, his hard-on’s the biggest in the fuck biz,” Mr. Renquist said.
“Why must you always echo what I say, and turn it crude?” Mrs. Renquist confronted him, one hand sheltering her cheek from his words.
Blaze yawned, “It may be big, but I don’t suppose anyone’s ever seen it really hard, maybe half-mast.”
“What do you mean?” the flustered director said to her. “When he was younger, he couldn’t keep it soft.”
“I’ve never seen it hard,” Blaze said, pushing up her breasts, holding them in that position as if to assure they would stay like that. “His dick’s so fuckin’ long it just plops down.”
“We’ve seen it hard,” Investor/Producer Mr. Renquist attested. He nudged the woman.
Mrs. Renquist’s look stabbed him. “Don’t ever do that to me, and don’t speak about ‘we.’ Don’t you have a voice of your own? I’ll speak for myself.” She crossed her hands over her Chanel bag, for added strength.
Sandra May O’Connell was intrepidly performing her duty, to little effect. She’d stop now and then to take a puff from a new cigarette she removed from a package lodged in her bosom, and then she would resume on Hunk.
“Try his testicles,” Mrs. Renquist said. “They are known to be organs of extreme sensitivity.”
“That’s right, he likes his balls licked,” Mr. Renquist said.
“I explicitly asked you to refrain—” Mrs. Renquist abandoned the rest of her frosty words. “Mrs. O’Connell,” she called out, “I believe your dentures may be chafing too much. Might you—?”
Sandra May stood up, straight, very straight. “I want you to know that I don’t have dentures. Capped teeth, yes. Dentures, no! Hey! Why don’t you two fuckers get on your knees and blow ’im?”
“We have,” the man said. He answered his wife’s glare, “She’ll speak for herself.” He slapped his thighs gleefully.
Mrs. Renquist eyed him with distaste, the lid of one of her eyes trembling. She pronounced her words with care, as if to obviate mispronouncing or misusing any: “You distress me when you insist on being unpleasant.” She sipped from the glass of champagne.
“Oh, Christ, it’s not working,” Cecil B. announced, as Sandra May O’Connell replaced Hunk’s limp cock with a cigarette.
Mr. Renquist drank from his champagne. “Good stuff, eh?”
The chic woman snapped at her husband, “Why must you always be interested in what I’m interested in—?” She corrected herself, “—in that which interests me?—and must you use that obnoxious interjection?”
“Eh?—that one?” The man shrugged. “Maybe I follow your interests cause you got such fuckin’ good taste, ya think?”
“Mr. Cecil B.,” Mrs. Renquist called out, “is it possible that Mr. Williams is simply not responding to Ms. Blaze’s assets?”
Dressed, Blaze accosted Mrs. Renquist. “Babe, why don’t you fuck yourself?”
“I don’t respond to such remarks,” the chic woman said to the performer, and sheltered her from her sight by holding a hand, lightly, to her own forehead.
“Right, bitch,” Blaze said. She called out to Director Cecil B.: “I want my full pay, I sure worked for it. With this guy, a girl deserves an Academy Award.”
“Good job that doctor did on her titties, huh?” Mr. Renquist stopped himself from jabbing Mrs. Renquist.
She winced as if he had.
“I want full pay, too,” Sandra May called out. “I got a damn hard job,” she directed at Mr. and Mrs. Renquist.
“A fucking hard job!” Mr. Renquist let out a guffaw that made Mrs. Renquist touch both her temples as if to soothe a sudden blistering headache.
“It’s a difficult job.” Sandra May O’Connell rubbed her jaw.
Mrs. Renquist looked away from her with clear dislike.
“Listen, sweetie,” Sandra May O’Connell said, “I earn every buck I make. So don’t you turn away from me.”
Mrs. Renquist closed her eyes, smoothing her forehead. “Mr. Cecil B.,” Mrs. Renquist called the director over. “Perhaps we should begin exploring a more current form of the art, branching out. The Internet? With something spectacular, something fresh.”
“Huh?” Hunk Williams said.
3
A decisive meeting with Lenora Stern, Rusty Blake, and Tarah Worth. The great Liz Smith invoked.
“Know what I’m smoking, babe? A Cuban cigar. Fifty bucks! Smuggled. The guy coulda got killed getting it into the country, and it would’ve been worth it.”
In a two-room office—all solid brown tones—in a two-story building off Sunset Boulevard along the glamorous Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, Tarah Worth sat before her manager, turning her head away to avoid the vile fumes from the creature’s cigar.
“So?” Lenora’s square brown suit emphasized her blocky appearance. Her hair was pushed back severely. She wore giant glasses that, Tarah suspected, she might not even need. She resembled a giant owl.
“I’ll take the part. But they’ll have a difficult time making me up to look older. Of course, they do wonders with makeup these days, they—”
“Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart, of course you’ll take the part, and you look it.”
Tarah froze. That was the creature’s tactic, making her clients vulnerable so she could get them to do whatever the hell she pleased.
“Remember, babe, you haven’t got the role yet. I hear they’re sounding out Liz Taylor. She can play a grand old dame with the best of them. Tough cookie. We gotta come up with a terrific publicity gimmick for you.”
“A gimmick?”
“You know. Like Babette. What a gimmick she’s got.”
Tarah knew who Babette was. She appeared on posters and billboards all over town, parted glossy lips, eyes seductive under mascara-coated lashes, her long, wavy black hair cascading onto soft shoulders, hips agog under a slinky black bikini that revealed breasts like water-melons. Assumed to be a performer of sorts—no one knew what she had ever appeared in—now and then she might be spotted driving a silver Cadillac. She had gained added notoriety recently when a rivalry had developed between her and an equally busty blonde, who drove a pink Corvette, as to who had used posters first to project her sexy image. “She did,” Babette had surrendered in one of several statements she issued periodically by mail to the press, “because she’s been around so many years more than I have. Besides, she uses drawings, I use photographs.”
“You’re not suggesting I jump into their rivalry with posters of my own?” Tarah asked tentatively. The creature was not beyond any suggestion.
“Naw, something new. That’s her gimmick. I got an idea for you, though. Hey! You know who’ll be here in a few minutes? Soon-to-be-heartthrob Rusty Blake, who says he’s a great fan of yours.”
God, she had a raspy voice, and the way she kept plastering her dark hair over her ears! Rusty Blake? She knew about him vaguely, had seen pictures of him, maybe even in a television appearance; hadn’t he been on Melrose Place?
“Tarah Worth!” Rusty Blake was there, with aviator sunglasses, an open shirt, baggy khakis—and good looks spilling over his face that remained surly even when he smiled, like now. He was five-foot-seven, officially six feet tall. “Tarah Worth!”
He slapped his forehead, slumped into a chair under the weight of the recognition. “My God, is it the Tarah Worth?”
“It is,” Tarah smiled, pleased that this “up-and-coming” young actor had responded so enthusiastically to her. She must determine his sign.
“Hey, I’ve seen all your movies, I think they’re underrated, you know? But I’ll bet they’ll all be, like, rediscovered. Hey, wow, it’s Tarah Worth!” He shook his head in awe, his ashy brown hair tousled as if he had just gotten out of bed and plastered it that way.
“Blake!” Lenora shouted. “Stop bullshitting. I called you in to tell you I’ve got something real hot brewin’ for ya, and it involves Tarah.”
“Yeah?” He sprawled on the chair, his hand courting his groin, his blue eyes gleaming with expectation.
“You’ve heard about the remake of—”
“Valley of the Dolls,” Tarah supplied, so that Lenora wouldn’t pronounce the title of the great novel in her ugly voice.
“Yeah, man, read about it in the trades. The remake. Hey, hot ticket. You think, like, there’s a role for me?”
“Yeah—and Tarah’s up for the role of Helen Lawson—”
“The hag, right?”
“Right, and you’re up for the role of the fag.”
“What!” Rusty Blake reared, almost off the chair. “Hey, listen, Lenora.” He deepened his voice. “I’m not, like, a fag, and you know it, man. No one would believe I was a fag, no matter how good an actor I am.” He glared at Tarah as if she had been responsible for this situation. His hand came down on his lap with an assuring grope.
“Of course everyone knows you’re not a fag, sweets,” Lenora’s voice turned as sweet as she was able to make it. “You inform everyone often enough. Besides, they’re going to macho up the role.”
Blake frowned, quickly wiping the crease he had momentarily allowed on his forehead.
“Ted Casablanca,” Tarah interjected, asserting her loyalty and knowledgeability about the great novel and film, “wasn’t, really, a … homosexual. Just accused of that. When Neely O’Hara catches him with the other woman in the swimming pool, he says the woman made him feel nine feet tall—”