by Lisa Ferrari
At this point, my instincts for propriety hammered into me by my mother take over and I’m able to refuse. Monique smiles and I sense she is relieved that she is not required to fetch any additional beverages today.
It’s almost eight o’clock and it’s dark outside. The street is packed with cars. I hear a lot of horns honking. The sidewalk is active as well.
“What was Michael Jackson like?”
I turn to Monique. Her chin is still resting on her hands, her elbows upon the desk. She has very fair skin.
The question is random. But I don’t want her to feel bad about asking.
I take a deep breath, searching for a word that encapsulates the King of Pop.
“Uh… iconic?”
“Really.” Monique is impressed. “Like… how?”
“Well, I remember when ‘Thriller’ came out, it was pretty much all anyone talked about. M-TV played the video about twenty times a day. At least once an hour. It was unlike anything we’d ever seen. M-TV was still new and the whole idea of rock videos had everyone so excited. And then Michael Jackson stars in this ‘Thriller’ video. You’ve seen it, right?”
“No.”
That’s kind of shocking. But okay. “It was basically a short film directed by John Landis. It starts out in the fifties, and it’s Michael Jackson with his girlfriend, and their car runs out of gas so they start walking. He tells her how much he likes her and he gives her a ring and she’s really happy. But then the full moon appears and he turns into a werewolf, which was insane. Michael Jackson as a werewolf? The special effects were better than anything anyone had ever seen. No C-G back then so they had to put an actual mask and freaky yellow eyes and big, scary teeth on Michael. That was just, like, rad.”
Monique giggles and covers her mouth as though she’s self-conscious, and I wonder if she’s laughing at me for saying ‘rad’.
“But, then, we see Michael with his girlfriend sitting in a movie theater and the werewolf thing is just a movie they’re watching. So it’s this whole really cool metafictional thing. And she wants to leave because she’s scared. So they leave. And you hear the other actors on the screen say, ‘See you next Wednesday’ and that phrase became a part of culture and all these other movies started having that line in their movies and people were wearing tee shirts that said that. So, Michael and his girlfriend are walking home at night, and it’s dark, and no one’s around and the music starts and he starts singing to her. Then they walk past a cemetery and Vincent Price’s voice recites some scary words and corpses start clawing their way out of the ground. Dead bodies climb out of their graves. A whole bunch of zombies start stumbling slowly down the street. And the next thing you know, Michael and his girlfriend are surrounded. And then Michael turns into one. His red leather jacket is all torn up and his eyes are super scary and he looks like a corpse. And then they all start dancing. It sounds kinda ridiculous now, but when we first saw it, we loved it. It was actually really scary. And then he turns back into himself and starts singing again. And dancing. Really dancing. The way only he could dance. Spinning around and standing on his toes. God, he was good.”
“And then what happened?” Monique is rapt.
“Um, I think he turns into a zombie again and they all chase the girl into an old house and she’s on a sofa and they’re reaching for her and all of a sudden she wakes up. She’s in the lobby of the movie theater on a sofa, and Michael is the one reaching for her. But he’s not a zombie, he’s just regular, sweet, soft-spoken Michael Jackson. She was just having a dream. So it’s another layer of metafiction. So, he says he’ll take her home and they go to leave and he looks over his shoulder, and smiles right into the camera, and his eyes are yellow cat eyes with the black slit, just like when he turned into a werewolf. And it freezes, and you hear Vincent Price laughing. It’s totally freaky.”
“Was that his best song?”
“Um… one of them. ‘Billy Jean’ was good. ‘Beat It’ was huge. So huge that Weird Al Yankovic spoofed it with ‘Eat It’, which we loved just as much. But ‘Smooth Criminal’ was also really popular. And ‘Bad’. But those came out about five years later. There’s so many incredible songs… ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’, ‘Leave Me Alone’, ‘Black or White’…. ‘Do You Remember’ was big. Eddie Murphy, Magic Johnson, and Iman were in the video.”
“Who?” Before I can explain, Monique continues, “Was he still black?”
“Excuse me?”
“Michael. Was he still black when ‘Thriller’ came out?”
“Well, yes. He was always black.”
“But his skin turned white. When he had sex with all those boys.”
Oh Jesus. What a day. “That was never proven. They settled out of court and Michael vehemently denied it.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to. He had a troubled life, and his dad was very firm with him and his brothers, trying to make sure The Jackson Five were a success. So Michael was always trying to reconnect to the childhood he never had. At least, not the way he wanted it to be. He got really into Peter Pan. I always thought that was why he named his ranch Neverland Ranch. And he had kids come over so they could have slumber parties the way kids do.”
“It’s too bad.”
“What is?”
“That he was such a weirdo.”
I want to tell her that she has completely, completely, with a big fat capital ‘C’, missed the point.
But she says, “Oh, your cab’s here. Here, here’s twenty dollars. That should get you to your hotel.” She holds out the money.
Not knowing what else to do, or understanding exactly what is going on, I take it, bid Monique a pleasant evening, and go outside. I get in the cab and tell the driver where to take me.
What a day.
THE CAB RIDE takes for friggin’ ever.
But, hey, I am getting to see Manhattan!
I finally get to my hotel and get up to my room. It’s nice. Nothing fancy. It’s not a suite like the ones Kellan is always doing me in. But it’s free!
I’m eager to Skype with Kellan so I can tell him about my meeting with Nathan.
And the Hoodie Guy on the plane.
And my weird conversation with Monique. It’s really quite tragic that her experience of Michael Jackson is that of a pedophilic black man who turned himself white. And that, despite my story, she’ll never know him as I do, as the wonderful, amazing entertainer who, er, thrilled the entire world.
Not that I ever actually met Michael; I wish.
But in a way, I do feel like I know him. He shared himself with us through his music, through his dancing. He shared his sad heart, his troubled soul.
I remember an interview I saw Michael give, in which he was asked where the music comes from. And Michael said, as if it were the most wonderful thing in the world, “From above.” I loved that answer. I’ve always remembered it.
I GET MY laptop fired up and call Kellan on Skype.
When the boop-BEEP-boop begins, I realize I haven’t looked in a mirror in many hours. I hope I look all right.
Kellan answers after many boop-BEEP-boops.
I’m so excited to tell him about my crazy afternoon.
“Hi, Claire.”
Kellan is in the car, driving.
Except that he’s not driving; he’s in the passenger seat, holding his phone at arm’s length. I can see long hair.
“Who’s driving?” I ask. I’m acutely aware that I haven’t so much as said hello to my man. But my whore radar is going crazy. It’s that special sense all women have, a God-given mechanism honed through having to deal with millennia of evolutionary bullshit when you discover another female moving in on your male.
I already know who it is.
Kellan turns the camera so I can see both of them… Kellan and Stacy.
“Stacy’s driving,” says Kellan. “Say hi. Stacy, say hi to Claire.”
“Hi, Claire. How was your meeting? I want to see y
our books in Walmart and Costco, okay? Was your meeting good?”
“Yeah, it was really good.” I’m trying to keep calm and focus on the meeting. It’s not like they’re Skyping with his penis in any of her whoremongering slut-holes. “Nathan loves my work and he read all three books in the trilogy and his deconstruction was perfect and–”
Stacy interrupts me. “Ooh, Kellan, look at that billboard!”
“Whoa!”
And they both laugh.
I, however, am cut off mid-sentence.
I wait for Kellan to ask me what I was going to say, but he doesn’t.
I hate that.
I HATE that. It’s the reason I became a writer in the first place, because no one ever fucking listens to me!
“So, what happened to Scottie?” I ask. Scottie is Kellan’s new assistant and the person who was supposed to be driving the rental car.
“Motorcycle accident,” says Kellan.
“Oh my God, is he okay?”
“Not really,” says Stacy. As if I was speaking to her. Slut.
“Not really,” Kellan agrees, and they chuckle and shake their heads. “He will be. I mean, he’s alive and is expected to make a full recovery but some woman pulled out in front of him and he hit her and did a Superman over her hood. He broke both arms when he hit the street.”
“Stupid bitch,” says Stacy.
“Stupid bitch is right,” Kellan adds.
“Some women have no idea what they’re doing,” Stacy rants.
I want to reach through my laptop and wring her tanned, sexy neck. Slut. Big-mouth slut. I bet she practices oral sex on eggplants.
“So, anyway,” Kellan drones, “he’s not going to be able to feed himself or wipe his own backside for the next two months. His brand new Yamaha R-1 is totaled, and that idiot woman didn’t have insurance, so he’s pretty much screwed. Plus he’s worthless now as an assistant. So, with you being in New York, Stacy was kind enough to volunteer on this trip.”
Stacy grins and waves.
She’s wearing a little black halter top that shows off her perfect cleavage and the sexy little patch of freckles on her chest. She’s also wearing a pearl necklace. An honest-to-goodness, actual pearl necklace. Like her top and perfect boobs aren’t adequate, she has to accentuate them with jewelry with the social connotation of Hey, you! Spray a big fat load on me!
Kellan suddenly says he has to go because his supplements guy is calling.
“I love you–” I try to say, but he hangs up before I can say it.
Great.
I’m here in Manhattan, I’m supposed to be thrilled, but instead I’m forlorn and distressed because the California Super Slut is chauffeuring my man around and I’m not there.
Freakin’ Stacy and her perfect $10,000 tits.
My phone rings.
It’s Nathan Wentworth.
“Hello?”
“Claire Valentine, Nate. Nate Wentworth. How are you? Hope I’m not disturbing you. Listen, how about dinner this evening? I got to thinking about you after you left my office and I thought what a sad thing it would be if I didn’t take you out to dinner and show you a good time during your one and only night here in the Big Apple. So I’m thinking I’ll pick you up in about thirty minutes. You don’t want to eat room service alone in your hotel room. What do you say?”
I’m being positively assaulted by the weird vibes coming through the phone, but Stacy is probably blowing Kellan by now so screw it. “Sure. Sounds fun, Nathan. I’m all yours tonight.”
“That’s what I like to hear. See, I knew you California girls weren’t all a bunch of snobs. See you in a bit.”
And he hangs up.
Crap.
I SEX MYSELF up by teasing my hair and putting on kind of a lot of make-up. I then head down to the hotel bar, where I pound a rum-and-Coke. And then order another. I can see the hotel entrance so I decide to wait for Nathan (Nate?) right here. There’s something about holding a cocktail with one of those tiny swizzle-stick stir-straws that makes me feel adult and adventurous.
I’m on my third rum-and-Coke when J. Crew Wentworth, literary sex symbol, walks through the door.
He sees me leaning up against the bar with my drink in my hand and he heads toward me.
He looks good.
His pecs look phenomenal under his snug sweater. Not as big as Kellan’s, of course, but good. He definitely works out. I wonder what he benches, if he’d be impressed with my 135-pound lift.
“Good evening, m’lady,” Nathan says. He even bows. It’s corny as crap but for some reason I like it.
“Nathan, how much do you bench?” I ask, a propos of absolutely nothing.
“Two-twenty-five. And call me ‘Nate’. I do chest two days a week.”
“It shows.”
“I know. Thank you, though. What are we drinking?”
“Rum and Coke.”
Nate eyes my two empty glasses of ice. “Looks like I have some catching up to do.”
I signal the bartender by raising my glass and holding up two fingers.
Two fresh drinks arrive a moment later. I hand one to Nathan. Nate.
“Cheers,” I say.
“Cheers. To The Love Mush Room, the weirdest trilogy I’ve ever read.”
We clink glasses and drink while I try to figure out what he meant by that.
AFTER OUR DRINKS are finished, Nathan pays our tab, which is almost $100 with tip. $100! For 6 drinks!
I guess I’m just a rube.
Nathan (Nate!) hails us a cab and we proceed to hit three different hot spots: one restaurant and two clubs. All three are packed with people but Nathan seems to be connected and we don’t have to wait.
The restaurant is a weird fusion of sushi and gourmet pizza; it’s called Fishpie.
It’s very dark inside and very ornate and I can’t decide if I like it.
The people seem rather still while they eat.
But the pizza and sushi rolls Nathan orders arrive quickly. The pizza is one of the best I’ve ever had. It also absorbs some of the alcohol. I don’t want to vomit again, like I did at the Glass Turtle the last time I drank. The sushi tastes fishy so I let Nathan eat most of it, which he does using a pair of very long red chopsticks.
He reminds me several times during dinner to please call him ‘Nate’. I get the sense that this attempt at familiarity is leading somewhere: the Agent-slash-Author relationship is morphing into Agent-slash-Author-slash-Sperm-Receptacle.
THE CLUBS ARE interesting.
The first club, Twist, looks like an art gallery with disco balls and dancing. The whole time we’re there, I’m worried someone is going to dance into the art displays and break something. Plus, everyone is doing The Twist. I do it, too. It’s weird.
The second club is pretty standard for a club; it reminds me a bit of Crowbar in West Hollywood where Kellan took me for my first impromptu audition, but there are no bodybuilders or fitness people, no pool, and no volleyball court. The whole place smells like weed and I see a lot of people openly sniffing coke.
There is a huge dance floor that is entirely white lights shining up at the ceiling. It creates a haunting, creepy, but pretty cool effect on the people dancing, making them all look like zombies. The place is called Upskirt. It’s very loud. Nate leans close and shouts in my ear when he talks to me. I feel his breath on my ear. He smells incredible; his cologne is positively yummy. He tells me there are cameras in certain places, namely the dance floor, and a lot of the women wear skirts, and some don’t wear panties, and then their beavers are simulcast on a website, as well as displayed on dozens of massive flat-screens around the club.
We drink more Captain-and-Cokes and look at the black-and-white flashing zombie beavers. I’m intoxicated enough to make the leap from thinking it’s weird to thinking I wish I were wearing a skirt so I could text Kellan the URL for the website, so he and Stacy could see my flashing zombie beaver.
It’s funny that Nate used the word beaver.
&nb
sp; I’m waiting for Nate to offer me cocaine. Denise told me that she did it once in college. Her nose and throat were on fire and her heart began to race and she truly, honestly thought she was going to die. But then things settled down and she felt amazing. So amazing that, 20 minutes later, when it was wearing off, she snorted some more. The next thing she knew, two days had elapsed, she’d been awake for 48 hours, she and the guy she was with had been to the ATM machine a dozen times, and her checking account was empty. She eventually got enough perspective to realize what she’d done and never did it again.
That story was enough to keep me away from it.
And I’ve never done it. But I don’t know what I’ll say if Nate offers it to me.
He eventually drags me out onto the dance floor and I do my best to dance the way everyone else is dancing. But it’s so bright I wish I had sunglasses.
I take a bunch of pics and some video on my phone. Right in the middle of it, lo and behold, Kellan calls me via Skype.
I answer immediately.
I can’t hear a word he says. But he’s sitting in a hotel room, alone, apparently.
I shout into the phone that we’re at Upskirt. I do a selfie of Nate and me dancing. Nate puts one arm around me and dry humps me from behind.
I feel his boner.
Like an animal balloon right in my butt crack.
Whoa.
I spin away from him and put the camera on me. I shout into it that I’ll call Kellan later.
Kellan ends the call.
That felt good.
And totally shitty in every way.
It’s so obvious what I just did.
Nate drags me back to our stools and orders more drinks. He shouts in my ear, telling me all about his writing and editing pedigree. He refers to it as his pedigree six times.
Around one a.m., I tell him I’m tired and want to go back to my room.
I am tired. And I kinda want to barf. It’s a good thing I ate all that pizza, otherwise I’d be face-down in a gutter, or in an E.R. having my stomach pumped. I don’t think I’ve ever had six rum-and-Cokes in one night.
Nathan seems oddly sober. He’s matched me drink for drink, save the first two I had while I was waiting for him in the bar of my hotel. But he also did two sake bombs at the Fishpie place, dropping a shot of sake in a pint of beer and then chugging it.