“It’s been a long time,” Pitt said.
“Yeah, man. Thank you so much for hooking this up for me.”
“My pleasure.”
Laura had brought at least half of the actors and other celebrities to Asia for the film: Winona Ryder, Peter Fonda, Marilyn Manson, Ben Foster. It was endless work. She was calling up all these Hollywood agents, getting permission for this one or that one, having conference calls with the producers of the film. JT didn’t play by Hollywood rules. Laura was doing double time, not sleeping much, negotiating for these actors, and working with Asia to get the script right.
Asia came up to me in a white denim jumper. Her hair was fried blond with black roots growing out, slicked back into a ponytail. Her eyes shone and darted around. She wore dirty white cowboy boots, a pink bandana around her ankle, and no makeup. She hugged me and put her head on my shoulder. “Thank you so much for coming back.” I imagined my shoulders to be like Paul Bunyan’s, massive and immovable. She pulled away and focused on Pitt. I looked at Mike and suddenly he seemed so childish, like a big baby, when just a few minutes before I had been appreciating his soft mannerisms and limp gestures. Suddenly he became just another entitled brat.
“I like your outfit,” I said. She ignored the comment, coyly gesturing with her eyes to Mike. A cloud passed over the sun and I noticed a grey tone to her skin and big bags under her eyes.
Then she came to, registering me after a slight delay.
“Thank you. Panos found and styled it. He left this morning.” I think she tried to be casual about him, knowing I was jealous.
“Where is Potter? I need to find Potter.” I needed an excuse to escape.
“He’s in that trailer.” She pointed. “JT, thank you so much for coming back.”
I shrugged.
If Laura were here she might have said something like, “I only came for the chocolate. That and a piece of Mike Pitt’s sweet ass.” But I couldn’t do that. I was too reserved, and it wasn’t true. I felt like a paper cut-out with moving appendages, wishing for words to pop out of a bubble above my head.
I edged towards the trailer nestled to the back, hedged in by a fence.
There was Dylan, one of the Sprouse twins. Both were cast as Jeremiah in the film. “Welcome back, JT. Cole is in there getting his hair done by Potter. What do you think? What’s it like, watching all this get done?”
I paused. “It’s really trippy. It’s like, I had this feeling at the truck stop while I was walking up,” I drawled a little more, “it was like,” I cleared my throat, “I was walking up to my past but it was in my future, or present. Kind of like déjà-vu.” I kept my voice low.
“Yeah, it must be strange.”
Distracted by Asia and Mike interacting with one another nearby, I didn’t say anything.
She looked at me compassionately, as I if to say, “You’ve been through so much.”
“Is that JT? Come in here, you bitch!” Potter sprayed Cole’s blond hair, while expertly shielding Cole’s face. He bent around to Cole’s front and said, “Bitch can be a term of endearment.”
Cole sat patiently, his arms straightened out in front of him.
“I’m used to it by now, Potter.”
“You’re all set. Jiffy Pop!”
“Jiffy Pop!” He put his hands in exclamation points and climbed off the chair.
“I hear Asia wanted you to come back because you ground her. That girl needs some grounding. She was such a monster to me yesterday. I have never been treated like that.” He flipped his hair off his forehead.
“Maybe she’s getting back at me for frying her hair.” He started to get worked up, miming a look of horror, grabbing at his scalp. “I told her to wash her scalp, but she kept it on longer. We used this really intense stuff because we didn’t want any trace of brass. I imagine Sarah had perfectly white peroxide hair.”
“Mmm.”
“But then she didn’t take it out soon enough, and her hair turned into poodle’s hair. It’s grown out, thank God.”
“Yeah, I like her new look now.”
“I know, she’s got the Kurt Cobain look now, in her cute overalls.”
“Yeah, she said Panos found them for her,” I said in a flat tone.
On my last visit, Geoff, Laura, and I sat at fold-out tables at sunset in the truck stop with Asia and Panos. Panos was lanky, with razored black hair, a pale flat face, and dirty jeans. I think he smoked more cigarettes than he spoke words. I was surprised that Laura hadn’t said anything to him about that. The whole set ate dinner together. Well, Asia kind of ate her dinner. She shoved it around her plate, then went for dessert. Her hair was fuzzy blond, like a teddy bear. She looked ashen and had scratches all over her neck. She wore a million different colors of ratted black. “It is like war here. Everyone is against me,” she kept repeating. I didn’t know what to say.
“What use is it, thinking it’s like war?” Laura asked her. I was grateful she was there because I didn’t know how to handle Asia’s apocalyptic moods.
“It’s not strategic, I know. But I cannot have all these ass-holes challenging me every time we try to do something. It is like they are constantly trying to trip me, because I am a woman directing. And I am Italian. I don’t forget shit like this.” It was like she was playing battleship in her head, like she was in her own fantasy world. Her jaw protruded for a second as if she was locking it and grinding her teeth. She frothed the whipped cream with her plastic spoon, and wolfed down canned peaches. She began to rattle off a list of everyone who was against her, who was a “piece of shit.” They were all in earshot. I saw their backs tense up.
“Yeah, I guess, Mel and she have worked it out,” Potter said forlornly. “I just hope I’m not next, ’cause I won’t stand for that shit. I will walk off.” He made his eyes big at me as if I were going to tell him not to.
“I am sorry, JT. I will walk off.”
Potter reached for his pack of cigarettes and motioned for me to come outside with him.
“Anyway, Marilyn Manson is coming.”
“When?”
“Next week.” I would miss him. He was going to play one of Sarah’s baby daddies, a Jesus freak who molests Jeremiah. Poor JT. I think Marilyn had sent Laura one of his paintings. At the other trailer, Mel was spray painting leather jackets with stencils for Chester’s band; it looked like eagle wings and skeletons. Laura had hooked me up with Mel for a Knoxville thrift shopping date. There would also be a visit from the local chocolatier tomorrow. Fortunately, I was beginning to like chocolate.
They shot all day and on into the night, doing thousands of takes. The cameraman seemed very methodical. You could see why people working on movies were either heavy smokers or fat. I had to admit, Pitt was a good actor. I noticed throughout the day he had picked up my mannerisms and certain intonation. It made me cringe the way he said certain words like “soon,” the same way I said it. I thought I sounded autistic. He wasn’t making fun of me either. He was earnest, the little fucker. He stayed close to me throughout most of the evening.
Asia came up to us as it got later.
“So you both will stay in my apartment. I have a couch that pulls out into a bed.” Well, who was supposed to sleep on that? What was she thinking? A threesome? No, I thought to myself, I don’t want him there. Why can’t he stay in a hotel? He won’t ground her. He’ll distract her. I could feel the blood rushing to my face. Was it time for a JT tantrum?
When we got back to Asia’s apartment she changed into cotton navy pajamas with white anchors embroidered on them and a white v-neck T-shirt. She combed her hair and wiped the powder from her face. I sat on the couch reading Laura’s signed copy of Lewis Nordan’s Music of the Swamp. I couldn’t put it down, and it gave me something to do and talk about.
“It’s really good, Asia. I’ll give it to you when I’m done.” Give away Laura’s signed copy?
“I would like that.”
Smoking cigarettes, Pitt sat against the couch. He d
idn’t need to have anything to do. I could feel us both leaving our books and cigarettes behind to watch her wipe the powder off her face. When she was done Mike picked up his guitar. He held his gaze on her. What a ham. I knew Asia had a thing for musicians, and I wanted to stop him before it began.
Intercept, quickly, I thought. I focused in on his gold chain. “Where’d you get that?”
He stopped playing. “Hugo Boss. I modeled for them and they gave me all this free shit.”
“Huh.” As he began to strum again I said, “I gave my love a chicken that had no bone.”
“What?”
“Was it fun?” What a stupid question, and it wasn’t working as a distraction. “So when are you going to have an album out?”
He ignored me and began to reel off different ballads. I needed voodoo to get him to stop playing. To get him to realize he should get his own room. This was a lost cause.
I decided to take a shower. I sat down in the tub and looked down. I’m a fucking Sasquatch. I bet they both just naturally have no excess body hair. No cellulite. No scars.
I started to shave myself maniacally. The hair got stuck in the razor and I had to keep pulling it out to keep it from getting clogged. It clogged anyway. I had ruined Asia’s razor. I could already feel the sting of razor burn, trickles of blood glistening on my shins.
When I opened the door, Asia and Mike were on her bed locked in an embrace. They parted slightly.
“Well, goodnight,” I mumbled.
They said, “Goodnight” in unison, too fast.
I curled up on the couch and fumed. He wouldn’t even be here without me. Well, without JT. I tried to read a little more, but I couldn’t focus. It was horrible to hear them, to hear Asia’s scratched vocal chords. I wondered if Pitt was a bottom. Asia was kind of a toppy-bottom. Would they ever calm down? I curled back up into my ball. What a mind-fuck for poor JT.
The next morning, I struggled to keep my eyes closed while Asia brushed her teeth and giggled in the bathroom with Mike. She emerged and slammed the door behind her. As I opened my eyes and squinted them back shut, I saw her throw her bag over her shoulders like she was walking down a New York street, her pointy black shoes leaving imprints in the rug.
I opened my eyes and lay there, listening to the hum of the air conditioner. I heard Mike get up and pee, clear his throat, and spit. He came out stretching his arms, and said, “Asia told us to call when we want to be picked up. I’ve got to be on set at ten-thirty.” I lay there, the blankets binding me like a straight jacket. Fucking asshole.
“What time is it now?”
“Almost eight,” he said, sounding like he had a mouth full of bread.
“I think we could sleep a little longer.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll wake you up again in forty minutes.”
“Okay.” I said blankly.
When we arrived on the set Asia pushed a little wooden box into my hand and said, “Will you give this to Mike?”
“Sure.”
Great, so I was there not only to ground her, but to pass love letters and drugs to her new lover. As she left I opened the box and saw a little piece of paper with a lipstick mark and the same heart with an arrow and flames that she had once written on a love letter to JT. I didn’t need to read it. I knew what it said.
After lunch she asked me into her trailer.
“JT, what do you think about this line: ‘Somebody fucked their nigger and you got the nose to prove it.’ Do you think we should take that out and put something else? What would be appropriate? It seems beside the point, you know? We could say ‘someone fucked their slave’? What do you think, would that be a better way to say it?”
“Um, you could say somebody fucked their neighbor, or you could just leave it out.” I didn’t know what to say. I was obsessing about last night. I couldn’t be bothered with script details.
She stayed in her bathroom a long while.
When she came out, her forehead was glistening. What drugs was she doing? I wondered.
“Yeah, maybe we will just leave it out. I try, JT. I try to hold onto as much of your text as possible. Sometimes, over the phone, I don’t recognize you. You sound like someone else. But that someone is still full of amazing guidance.”
Desperate to change the subject, I offered, “Do you want to read this Lewis Nordan book later? I’m done with it.”
“Sure, I’ll read it.”
“I think you’ll like it a lot. There is tons of stuff about the South in there.”
“Okay . . . I’ve got to get back to the set, JT.”
“I know.”
After she left, I began to cry. I felt sorry for myself, and strangely, for JT as well. And the nightmare wasn’t over yet.
TINC
THE AIRPORT SHUTTLE DROPPED ME OFF a few doors down from the Natoma Street loft. As I hoisted my duffel bag on my shoulder, I heard the zipper tear. The bag gaped and buckled at the spine. I sighed dramatically. Everything was literally falling apart.
I fumbled for my keys at the side of my bag. Climbing the stairs, I dumped my bag on the ground in the back room where Jonathan and I slept. I headed straight for the toilet, then I heard Jonathan’s shuffle.
From the main room he called out, “You back?”
“Yeah.”
I waited in the entrance to meet him. As he came up to me, I was angry with myself for going off to Tennessee to be with a fucking lunatic.
“I missed ya! How was it?”
“I don’t know . . . I guess it was kind of fucked up. Asia is . . . having problems that I can’t help with.”
“It’s hard to see a friend go through something like that.”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I can do it anymore.”
“Try to help Asia? Or be JT?”
“Be JT. I mean, it’s all too weird and exhausting. The lines are too blurred. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like it’s taking over my life. And I’m sorry I missed Valentine’s Day . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take you out for sushi tonight.” He grinned, leaning on the door and crossing one leg over another. He wore his tweed paper-boy hat and new glasses.
I said, quickly “No, my treat.”
“So, it’s decided? You’re not going to do it anymore?”
“It’s over.”
His eyes softened. “Proud of you, man. I wasn’t going to say anything but I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion on your own.”
“Yeah. It took a while.”
“It did. And I couldn’t tell you what to do. You knew how I felt about it. But we have to reach decisions on our own.”
Jonathan had always disapproved of my being JT. For most straight men it would have been the threat of his girlfriend pretending she was a boy, but that wasn’t the part that bothered him. He just couldn’t see why I was doing it. I wasn’t being paid very well. He could see that I was conflicted about it. After each time he talked to Laura on the phone, he would say to me, “She’s getting over on you.” He couldn’t understand why I would dye my eyebrows for her, or more importantly, why I would give myself over to her idea. He thought the whole thing brought out my neurosis. Either I really wanted to do it and couldn’t just say so. Or I didn’t want to do it, but couldn’t stand up for myself. Either way, it bothered him, and in the beginning especially, he considered breaking up with me over it.
But a few months after being together, he came with Geoff, Laura, and me to a New York reading. Laura had stayed up for weeks arranging the event, talking on the phone excitedly with everyone involved. The reading was set in a club where girls in mermaid costumes swam around in a huge fish tank with oxygen tubes taped up their backs. Laura had as always personally invited slews of different artists to read for JT. At various times there had been Lou Reed, Tatum O’Neal, Winona Ryder, Marianne Faithful, Harper Simon, Rosario Dawson, Courtney Love, Sharon Olds, and Mary Karr. At this point in JT’s career, he didn’t read aloud at his own events in t
he States yet. He would stand in the back of the room, twitching, while others read his work for him.
That night, Jonathan seemed a little freaked out by my change in identity, my awkward body language and low-voiced thank-yous. But I think he was amazed that hundreds of people came to meet and connect with JT. I got the feeling that he finally understood why it was so hard for me to stop being JT, even when it had spiraled out of control. In the hotel corridor, I watched him sit cross-legged in the hall with Courtney Love, who was sheathed in a sheer pastel dress that hung carelessly from one shoulder. Like a dysfunctional fairy, she examined his palm, telling him many good things about his future. He grinned from ear to ear. As we walked back to our hotel room he looked at me and said, “It’s like walking into Narnia.”
The next day I called each person in my family and told them, “I quit.” Every one of them had the same reaction: “Good. Get on with your life.” I called Laura last. I told her about all the different people I had met on the set of The Heart. I told her about Asia consulting me on the script change. And then I told her about the night in the apartment with Mike Pitt.
“It’s not that I mind that they like each other,” I said, though I did. “It was just rude. Why make me stay with them? Why didn’t she set me up in a different hotel room if she wanted to do that? I didn’t need to be put through that. And what if I really were JT? What a mind fuck! She’s sick!” Part of me thought, look who’s talking.
Laura listened, making sympathetic noises and mewing, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” We talked a little while longer, and I kept trying to find a way to tell her that I was going to quit. But I didn’t. We hung up, and I stared at the phone for a few seconds. Then I picked it up again and called her back. “I think I need to quit.”
“I understand,” she said, as if she had known I was going to say it. I didn’t tell her about the Lewis Nordan book yet.
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