This Location of Unknown Possibilities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

  Jake had viewed the ensuing fluke job offer from a buddy of a buddy to guard the crew lot for a Daryl Hannah TV movie shoot as icing on the cake. Naturally, years of climbing industry rungs revealed that despite expectations icing and a felt cubicle look dishearteningly similar. Calls, meetings—being the delegating boss in one room, toadying yes-man in the next—reports, long hours, desk slouch, chains of command, soul-snatching superiors: like death and taxes, corporate sand traps lay in wait, inescapable.

  He’d quickly learned to make time to smell around for perks. Finding them? Instinct, a matter of catching the scent.

  Last winter at a wrap party for a TV series cancelled halfway into its first season, Jake had spoken with a producer’s date, an abrasive grad student in some WTF subject called Critical Studies in Sexuality. “You have no idea,” she’d exclaimed, backing him into a corner with a full glass of merlot while spouting about German sex researchers she mistakenly thought as household names. “It’s a psychological phantasmagoria.” As Jake imagined a ball-gag in the prof’s mouth—the Gatling gun laughter from her throat unfortunately close to strangled goose honks—she explained scenes, ancient and modern, and described bizarre fetishes that might keep shrinks in business for centuries.

  He’d mouthed appreciation. Based on his own experiences and ingrained, occasionally compulsive wanderings through the Internet, Jake couldn’t help but agree. Jeremy’s missives? Further assurance that reality and appearance rarely hung out at the same location.

  3.

  Jake read the first email from the kitchen laptop. Jeremy, in Hawaii now on a yoga retreat, had still managed to dig up material. After the subject line—“Dept. of Public Transit,” an idea Jeremy claimed to have lifted from The New Yorker—he’d pasted a story, one regrettably void of attached photos. Jake would bet a month’s pay that male affinity for the visual resided deep within, a vestige from prehistory’s hunt-to-survive era.

  Now he’d have to fill in the blanks—

  My girlfriend and I met a sissified husband at the bus stop begging for change. I’m a guy, but I think it’s great for women to make men pay for their infidelity. This wife takes the prize for vengeance.

  He was wearing a pinstripe short-sleeved cuffed blouse over a spaghetti strap cami, earrings, ponytail with pink elastics, I am guessing panty hose, women’s slacks and pink lip gloss and the most gorgeous set of acrylic French nails. The tips were at least an inch long. His nails are so much nicer than my gf’s. He said he got caught cheating again on his wife of 11 years. I told him if he told me what was going on I would give him bus fare, but I lied.

  Anyways. This sissy’s wife took him and got his ears pierced, waxed his entire body, got electrolysis on his face and eyebrows. Got a full set of acrylic nails. She took him clothes shopping and bought him this outfit and made him wear it from the store. She then dumped him miles from home penniless and told him to walk home. He/she showed me his blackberry with the emails from his wife. She actually called when I was talking to him. And he called a couple of friends to help bail him out. No takers today. I actually heard him say that if the wife didn’t have all the money, he would be long gone.

  Fishy. Jake, elbows on the black marble counter, wondered about the writer’s fawning attention to clothing and unmanly nail envy. Definitely suspicious and a bit girly. He pictured the sissified vow-breaker on the phone: “Uh, listen Joe, I’m in a bit of a jam. Marge caught me cheating—again, I know, I know, me bad—and so this time for punishment made me wax and cross dress and then she dumped me at a bus stop begging for coin. It’s way humiliating. Would you mind picking me up?” What friend—what brother—would say, “No, sorry man, I really have to side with Marge this time. You gotta be taught a lesson. Becoming a transvestite beggar for the afternoon is a punishment that fits the crime. Good luck, buddy, catch you later.”

  True situation or fever dream, the pathetic scene made Jake relieved to be free of marital shackles.

  Jeremy’s second message came with generic paired photos, ass and erection to camera; Jeremy’s subject-line summary looked apt—FW: Subject: Very Very Makulit.

  Well I look very snobbish at first but I do get along with people easily. I also am very talkative when I get warmed up. Hmm what else? I find it hard to describe myself, I think it would be better if you would just talk to me and get to know me . . . Since it is true that words are the biggest liars of all . . . I’m very very makulit! that was always my asset! I’m true to myself, and i like being the first version of myself, not a second version of someone else! I’m not looking for just a hookup so if your just looking for that move on. Love to swim, modern jazz music, watch porn (cmon guy, be real, hahaha!!!) if you wanna be my friend, mack me.

  Jake loaded the dishwasher and tossed back the sweet, scalding demitasse of coffee in two gulps. He deleted Rambo’s email and glanced at Jeremy’s final selection, a mail-order groom looking for a ticket out of Russia. That one he’d seen before.

  Amongst a galaxy of come-and-go contacts and IATSE comrades, Jake saw Jeremy as a fellow-traveler. Meeting a decade ago at Serpentine, a WASPy Toronto fetish night “for Discerning Adults,” they’d circled restlessly—both of them novice experimenters in SM and deciding in tandem that the dabbling would be a one-off—and shared a brief and ultimately lame engagement with a kneeling blindfolded submissive named Raven whose clasped prayer position hands held a stubby braided whip. They soon settled on bottled beer and bar stools in stiff, freshly-purchased leather gear, and cast unimpressed glances at the black-clad proceedings—the men as gruff and humourless as Mad Max villains, and the women’s overwrought fantasy costumes transforming them, in Jeremy’s view, into background figures in censored outtakes from Heart and Stevie Nicks videos. Jake had been taken from the moment they’d watched each other listlessly prod Raven’s lipsticked mouth with semi-hards; Jeremy’s smirk and rolled eyes emerged as that forgettable evening’s high mark.

  Learning they were practically neighbours on the country’s west coast, Jake welcomed the chance to hang out with another with a closely matched taste for adventuring. Jeremy zeroed in on an age demographic considerably younger than Jake’s eye-on-his-own-generation preference, a convenient fact that suspended the ritual tussle over alpha and sidekick roles. They’d kept in touch, occasional nights on the town gradually becoming regular calls supplemented by forwarded boasting pictures or videos of successful conquests; and once familiarity allowed for it, admissions of limp performances, outright rejections, and embarrassing, thudding steps into human cow pats cropped up. The look-at-this and it-would-never-happen emails of today? Comic relief.

  Jake deleted messages from other respondents—timid, unappealing, dodgy, or inexplicable—and typed, “Life is threatening me well, thx. U up for a role in the hey?” to the torso that couldn’t spell. He had no intention of continuing with that. Readings completed, he turned for the bathroom; the stubble could stand a trim. For dieting Gleek he left a modest portion of food and fresh water.

  Word from Lora: a “sardine tin city” work day. Same old, same old, he sighed. At this stage of pre-production back-to-back meetings barely sunk in.

  PREP

  1.

  A punctual finish to the weekly kickboxing session under the joy-free and fat-banishing regime of tattoo-sleeved thug-warrior Franco—the man a shoo-in should a Russian gangster require a personal trainer—left Jake with half an hour to spare. Figuring he’d squeeze in a few sets of arm reps, he strode toward the free weights.

  For a weekday morning the gym seemed crowded. Jake swapped nods with regulars and roving employees in bulging black nylon vestments, flashed a smile of encouragement to a husky newbie giving fitness another go—who wouldn’t applaud The Biggest Loser’s hard-won transformations?—and didn’t hesitate to foist his impatience on dawdlers, or work in with top-heavy XXL knuckle draggers who wanted nothing more than to monopolize equipment and suck back muscle-growth d
rinks like penned livestock, even though they’d piss out the unabsorbed protein hours later.

  Polite deference had its place, but not at this grab bag of shark-grin realtors, pretzel-stiff nightclub security hued the tanning bed mahogany of Predator-era Schwarzenegger, gum-chewing junior execs, and stringently maintained spouses of white collar breadwinners: with everyone posturing in alpha mode, Push or Be Pushed hovered overhead as the one and only commandment. At peak times, the circuit machine line of heaving guys with corkscrewing neck ink re-cast the place as a middleclass mirror of San Quentin’s exercise yard. In a lifeboat scenario, Jake would trust none of them.

  Though committing to a block of ninety minutes every second day, Jake possessed no special interest in fitness and health. Now that he’d attained the target specs he relaxed, focussing on maintenance; showing up was a perennial item on a chore list to strike a line through, and not an accomplishment to brag about. He steered clear of running groups, core strength evaluations, boot camps, half-marathon training programs, staff offers of body fat assessment, and any back-slapping locker room gab about protein drinks (soy versus whey), powdered supplements (ditto), and “absolutely kick-ass, dude” lat/delt/pec/ab routines.

  Musculature was simply a goal, not the must-have lifestyle promoted by magazines he scanned, nor even a topic to discuss at length. He couldn’t see it as anything except mindless repetition, although a necessary means to an end like a driver’s license or a passport. If he could purchase a prefab physique with as little effort as he’d made for the condo’s décor or the shirt currently hanging in his locker, he would. But he judged a shortcut like steroids as risky, a medically unsound gamble. And, besides, no guy dreams of shriveled balls. Otherwise, he’d write a cheque and be in like Flynn. Loyalty to routine, the next best option, stood next to an oil change as duty, good in the long run if tedious. Catching his reflection in a mirror, Jake confirmed dedication produced worthy results.

  For work and leisure the semblance of being fit and healthy was crucial. Jake had noticed that since following a strict gym schedule people—men and women both, though in their own ways—checked him out. That truth applied even in shadowy places where his silhouette alone remained visible. Whatever the facts might be—his insides might be riddled with disease for all anyone knew—taut bulkiness conveyed the universal shorthand for health and capable well-being.

  Jake recalled scanning a piece online about scientists who’d found that at some microcellular level humans intuit a cut physique as standing for reproductive durability; in sniffing out good genes, then, survival instincts fix on muscles. Health—or its body double anyway: wide shoulders, narrow hips, an erect posture, scant fat bulges—meant vitality, and that in turn gave the bearer presence and an advantage, not to mention a tasty dollop of social capital. And added visibility—of the right kind—meant legal tender. Any child could grasp that. He’d done the math.

  Factory-built muscles obviously weren’t a well-kept secret anywhere except the suburban obesity belt since on any given minute he could spot guys, younger ones typically, quickly lifting their shirts between sets to flex abs perishable as hothouse flowers, faces satisfied despite being set as masks of cool evaluation.

  Jake didn’t crave attention, not really, or at least not to the extent of the so-called talent he’d had the displeasure of working under in recent shows. Still, a fraction of limelight struck him as good for business, deserved too. Success should be the reward for putting in the hours, Harvey Weinstein and history told him so. Why not generate some buzz—“Looking good, Jake” or, better yet, “Who’s that guy?” Sure, capturing the spotlight didn’t equal commanding respect, but it stood nearby. The level of recognition struck him as proper, hard-earned. Jake felt certain that if he could enter the same party twice, one time in today’s incarnation and in the other carrying his frame from a decade ago, his former self would wander the room freely and capture a sad fraction of the eye contact.

  Being memorable, forgettable, or run-of-the-mill: as if there was anything to agonize over.

  2.

  In the white tile change room he toweled off, tuning out geezers in flaccid white Stanfield’s who nattered about the hardships of telephone party lines back in 1962. Small talk commenced when Tim, another morning regular, sought Jake’s gaze. The guy’s name might be Tom, Dan, John, or Don—one of those meat-and-potato names Jake tended to forget. “Hey . . . ,” Jake said when they chatted, never bothering with the follow-up.

  Soon after they’d met, Tim had let Jake know he’d purchased a first time trial gym membership that very week, worked in a nearby supermarket as a short-term gig, and had plans to break into the movie business. Gamma-male, Jake had pigeonholed him, a born kiss-ass and pushover.

  Tim lifted the black T-shirt’s right sleeve immediately. “Hey, man, check it out.” Jake read the shiny scrolling phrase, newly inscribed to judge from the puffy edges: “Pain is Just Weakness Leaving the Body.”

  “Nice.” Soft and pale the surrounding flesh brought to mind raw breakfast links. Jake felt impatience mounting; the guy was all script and no action.

  Jake wondered if Tim fantasized about getting discovered, as in the ancient Hollywood legend. By the weights or lockers, Tim would zero in on Jake and steer conversations to big budget productions currently in planning or being shot around the city and ask questions about rumoured upcoming TV series. He evidently followed fan chatter and inadvertently kept Jake in the loop. Tim hadn’t passed a resume Jake’s way or asked for an interview; he obviously wanted Jake to throw him a bone. As far as Jake was concerned, a bone of any sort was out of the question. Lumpen, Tim still wore baby pudge even though closer to thirty than twenty.

  Despite the keener attitude Tim had never mentioned a target job in the industry. Accustomed to meeting people foaming at the mouth to charge into show business, Jake didn’t offer to open any doors. Tim needed to grow a pair if he had plans for more than a locker room swap about industry goings on. Undiluted ambition and staking territory were part and parcel in Hollywood North. Wallflowers and apologetic dreamers wouldn’t get far; Schwab’s on Sunset had been a myth for seventy years, one with no local equivalent.

  The men’s year-old acquaintanceship of five-minute conversations fell into a set pattern, Jake responding to Tim by answering his queries. Left to Jake, their interaction would have plateaued at quick mutual greetings long ago. If Jake rubbed Tim the wrong way by asking no questions about his job or personal life—and refusing two early attempts at deal-sealing knuckle bumps—he didn’t let on. Jake didn’t give the situation much thought; he viewed Tim as easy game and used to playing the wingman regularly.

  “So, what’s new, man? Great day out there, eh?” Naked, Jake crouched to run a towel between his toes, hoping to fend off another growth of fungus. Tim sat on a wooden bench. Jake had never seen him strip, not even to underwear; dollars for donuts, the short and rotund newbie changed inside one of the private alcoves built to cramped toilet stall specifications. He had something to hide, probably.

  “Yeah, not bad. Same old, same old with me.” The agreeable words revealed nothing. Tim could connect the dots as he wished.

  “So, you on hiatus now, buddy?” Tim pulled off the first of two T-shirts. Jake had noticed he chose off the rack macho—labels like Under Armor or shirts that advertised big-boy cojones via branding for muscle-building supplements. Today’s, for Muscle FX, came emblazoned with a boasting motto about wolves. A pack mentality at best, Jake ceded.

  “Just finished with that. Needed some away time from it all, you know?” Toes completely dry, Jake applied deodorant, gave his dick a tug, and slipped on clothing. He didn’t understand modesty about change room nudity.

  “For sure, man, I hear where you’re coming from. So what’s on now that hiatus has dried up?” Tim rustled through a gym bag as he spoke.

  “We’re in pre-production right now for a new feature, a MOW, locki
ng down funds, locations, talent, crew, that kind of thing.”

  The men paused as the concrete floor reverberated, the thud of heavy weights dropped from a height a standard declaration of prowess repeated every five minutes.

  “Storm before the hurricane kind of situation.”

  “Cool. Who’s in it?”

  “I gotta fill you in later. Time to head to studio. No rest for the wicked.” Jake smiled and gestured with his palms up: What can you do?

  “Good to talk, man. Have a good one.”

  “Take care.” Jake grabbed keys from the locker and headed for the stairs that led to underground parking.

  THE VAGUE LAND

  1.

  What clothing is appropriate for the interview? The question crept up on Marta before bed as she shuffled hangers and cobbled together an outfit for the next day’s classes. A tried and true sweater and skirt combination, or something unexpected? She’d begun to favour a new purchase to clothe the hired-gun role—Marta Spëk, Film Consultant—but could not match the acquisition and sketchy persona to specific wardrobe pieces. Artful layers of black, an imposing suit, sporty casual wear? Impeccable credentials are what matter, Marta told herself, and nevertheless fretted each time she laid out a uniform for the workday. She concluded style was beside the point: only executives and actors weighed that; behind-the-scenes personnel fell off the radar so far as public curiosity mattered.

  Still, the compulsion rooted itself: create a pitch-perfect first impression. Logic warred with impulse and lost, and between home and campus she window-shopped in earnest and grew watchful for fashionable pedestrians. As for what to avoid, she needed to look no further than faculty meetings populated with dust-hued woolens, practical fleece vests, and faded cotton trousers; based on available evidence, a life of the mind left little room for the frivolous evanescence of seasonal trends.