I Shudder

by Paul Rudnick

  “Because I wanted to be Mitzi Gaynor more than anyone else. Because I knew it was nuts and I didn’t care. Because I said, I could give a shit if people laugh at me. But you know what? They didn’t. Because I had an eye. Because I knew how to get things done. Because thanks to me, my high school had the hottest marching band with the most incredible uniforms, the biggest prom with the most silver and white balloons and an indoor waterfall, and a senior musical that got an offer to play in New York at the Winter Garden. And, no, I wasn’t the star quarterback or the homecoming queen. But they were my best friends. I represented the star quarterback and the homecoming queen. So when I throw a bash, in Kim Novak’s house, do you know who shows up?”

  “Mitzi Gaynor?”

  “And Streisand. Sean Connery. Nicholson. Every fucking star in the world. Because everyone wants to work. And, believe me, I was a manager for way too long, and I know how crazy these people are. How needy. The phone calls. ‘Why did they cast her?’ ‘Should I get my eyes done?’ ‘Why didn’t I see that script first?’ But I love them. They’re not Mitzi, nobody’s Mitzi, but I love them.”

  I was feeling both excited and nervous, which is just how powerful people want everyone in their orbit to feel at all times, off-balance and therefore vulnerable. I still wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing there. I wasn’t attractive enough to serve as window dressing, and I knew that my play had been, at best, a nice try.

  “Here’s what I’m gonna do,” said Allan, sizing me up. “I’m gonna make your wildest, filthiest dreams come true. Because I know who you are. I know who everyone is. So for the next sixty seconds, you can ask me anything, no matter how personal, about any star in Hollywood. Because I know all of them and I know everything. And you can ask about whatever you want, sex, money, murder, you name it. And I swear that, after you ask your questions, after the sixty seconds are up, I will tell you everything I know, in detail, and all of it. The God’s honest truth. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and you know it.” He raised his forearm and stared at the massive diamond-and-ruby-encrusted platinum Cartier watch on his wrist. “Sixty seconds. Go.”

  I knew what I’d been offered. Allan had just worked with Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, he knew all the young hotshots and all the legendary names. And of course, Allan did know who I was: if I couldn’t be Mitzi Gaynor, I sure as hell wanted to know whom she was fucking or who she’d had killed or whether she’d had anything lifted or tucked or sandblasted. As I groped for my first question, as my tabloid memory lurched from its starting blocks, I felt as if I were having a stroke and a heart attack and a divine vision, all at the same time. It wasn’t that my mind went blank, it went convulsively white. Every little-boy-from-New-Jersey brain cell blasted into hyperdrive, and the harder I tried, the more I couldn’t think of a single boldface name, replaceable body part, or mouth-watering scandal.

  “Time’s up!” Allan crowed, looking up from his wristwatch.

  “But…but…” I blathered, begging the teacher for a few extra seconds on the pop quiz, pleading with the Reaper for an instant’s reprieve.

  “Sorry!”

  I was so flabbergasted, so shakingly desperate that I didn’t even think to ask if Allan played this insidious game all the time and if other, less amateur, contestants had come up with the goods.

  “So,” said Allan, “how about my movie? Have you thought about it? Whattya say?”

  “I…well, I…” I was still spinning, from the whole experience, from the day and the sun and the boat and Allan. He laughed.

  “I know,” he said, “you’re gonna tell me that you need to think about it just a little more, which means no. That always means no. And it’s okay. Go write another little play. And when my movie’s a smash, I’ll call you every morning and laugh and hang up.”

  I was relieved that the decision had been made. I’d been wavering: I’d never written a movie before, the money would’ve been great, but while I liked Allan, and I found him fascinating, I didn’t want to owe him anything. Because Allan wasn’t just Mitzi Gaynor. He was Mitzi Gaynor with a coke habit and a bottomless hunger for constant movement, the brightest colors, and purchasable pleasure, and, when such things weren’t available, blistering revenge. And I didn’t want to be under contract when the coke ran out.

  I didn’t see Allan again until sixteen years later. His Where the Boys Are remake hadn’t been a success, and his fortunes had nose-dived. He’d been especially reviled for producing the 1989 Academy Awards telecast, where he’d aimed to juice things up by having Rob Lowe duet on “Proud Mary” with an actress dressed as Snow White. Disney had sued for damage to Snow White’s reputation.

  It was July, and Allan was staying out at the Long Island beach house of a mutual friend. Allan had asked to see me, and I couldn’t resist. He emerged from the house, in the heat, wearing the saddle shoes, the Kelly green corduroys, and the patchwork, crewneck shetland sweater of a freshman, or a chorus boy in a 1920s musical playing a freshman. He was using two canes, and he was also being supported by a much younger companion, someone in his twenties with questionably blond hair. Allan was in fragile health and would die, a few months later, of liver disease. But that afternoon he seemed as bouncy as ever, and even innocent.

  “How are you?” he asked. “It’s so wonderful to see you! But you should be tan!”

  Allan sat, and I noticed that all of the outdoor chaises, and there were at least five, had been smoothly draped with beach towels printed with the La Cage Aux Folles logo. The towels looked brand-new, as if they’d been preserved in their original packaging since the show had closed, twelve years earlier. Allan was curious about my work, and he said that he was developing a new stage musical based on Huckleberry Finn. Raising his arms, he said, “Because I am Huckleberry Finn!”

  “I thought you were Mitzi Gaynor,” I recalled.

  He grinned. “If Huckleberry Finn and Mitzi Gaynor had given birth to a very strange child, that would be me,” he decided. That sounded about right: Allan was definitely the offspring of a movie star and a fictional character.

  “Everyone thinks I’m dead,” he continued, without rancor, “and sometimes even I think I’m dead, but not just yet.”

  “You’re not dead!” worried his young friend. “I would know!”

  “Kids,” Allan murmured, gesturing to the boy and rolling his eyes. “But, you know,” he remarked, turning his face to the sun, “for the first time in my life, at least I’m thin.” At this last meeting, I was tempted to think of Allan as Norma Desmond, as a faded, demented diva, a relic of so many earlier Hollywoods and so much sequined excess. But unlike Norma Desmond, I bet Allan would’ve gotten the joke.

  I Shudder:

  An Excerpt from the Most Deeply Intimate and Personal Diary of One Elyot Vionnet

  Yumbies

  I don’t know what possessed me. Oh, yes I do.

  I was sitting up in bed on Tuesday morning, wearing my appealingly coarse white Irish linen nightshirt and nibbling on a slice of lightly browned and buttered whole-wheat toast, which had been presented to me on a tray by my imaginary manservant, Shabar. To avoid any issues of workplace discrimination, Shabar is of no particular race or creed, although I do change his skin tone to match my mood; this morning his face was an enigmatic cobalt blue, to accent the five brilliant yellow tulips sprouting from the miniature botanical garden atop his head, which also included a tiny koi pond and an almost invisible Shinto shrine. I used my remote to switch on the small television located inches from my feet.

  I was expecting to watch the very latest incarnation of one of my true folk heroes, Martha Stewart. Since she was released from prison, Martha has been determined to reclaim her title as America’s Headmistress. I worship Martha, because she actually stands for something, for doing it right, for taking the time, for doing your time, and for power-sanding vintage steel medical cabinets and then having them professionally spray painted with high-gloss auto enamel to exactly match your jadeite green forties mix
ing bowls and countertop appliances. Martha sets an example, and she doesn’t care about being liked; she in fact discourages such easy chumminess. I model myself after Martha, as I’m tough yet fair.

  And so I was looking forward to enjoying my toast and Martha, but she’d been bumped, for an entirely new program, some fresh lifestyle hour. The setting was not Martha’s arctic Connecticut domain, but something more homey: a Great Room, that hideous American hybrid of sunny Tuscan kitchen, butcher-block tabled dining zone, and shapeless, over-wired, sectional sofa-ridden entertainment area. The Great Room neatly encapsulates all that is wrong with this country: it’s a place for people wearing shin-length, untucked T-shirts and elasticized-waist sweatpants to gorge themselves while mesmerized by the largest possible, most wall-disfiguring flat-screen advance. I am convinced that morbidly obese people crave the most cavernous rooms and refrigerators in order to feel smaller, as a form of architectural dieting. This aimless sprawl was accessorized with grinning ceramic sunbursts, a roaring gas fireplace, and bookshelves “merchandised” with decorative obelisks, dried topiaries, and wooden bowls piled with useless spheres crafted from bark—anything but books. And then, exploding into all of this overlit, sumptuously banal, earth-toned hell came, as her announcer boomed, “someone just like you—hey, America, it’s Abby McAdams!”

  Abby, Google later informed me, had first been discovered as a college junior, when she’d participated in a reality show, rooming with several other kids in a loft in Denver. Abby had been extremely popular, applying her naturally exuberant outlook to extended chats with everyone, particularly a suicidal roommate given to cutting herself with a penknife. “Come on,” Abby had counseled this morose young lady, “do you really want to spend the rest of your life wearing turtlenecks and long sleeves?” After graduation, Abby had founded a party-planning and catering service, specializing in bachelorette wingdings where the bride-to-be was served cupcakes iced with phrases listing her finest assets, such as “Your great big ol’ heart!” and “Your rockin’ boo-tay!” Abby’s appearances on local morning shows had led to network attention, and now here she was, all but bursting from my television.

  Everything about Abby seemed barely containable: her smile was a mile wide, flashing enough dental bonding to retile a subway stop, her jostling breasts threatened to leap from her skimpy tank top, vanquish her shrunken corduroy blazer, and wet-nurse the nation, and there was a boisterous band of pink flesh winking above the waistband of her shrink-to-fit, low-rise white jeans. When did this exposed sliver become an acceptable erogenous zone? Even on slimmer mortals it feels like a mistake, a swollen gall bladder marauding for its freedom.

  “Hi there, hey there, what’s up, you guys!” Abby exclaimed, acknowledging her studio audience’s instantaneous standing ovation. Abby accepted this prolonged and lusty acclaim as her due, as if the obstetrician and nurses in attendance at her birth had been equally ecstatic: “Yay, it’s Abby! Let’s hear it! What a wonderful baby!” On the show, Abby eventually and reluctantly quieted her fans, and began her opening remarks: “Oh, man, are we gonna have fun today or what? First I’m gonna tell you all about my morning, and getting Max and Arabella off to school, and somehow making hubby Glen feel like I still love him best and the magic is still there—sometimes all it takes is a hug and a tiny little shopping bag from Victoria’s Secret, am I right, ladies? And then we’re gonna make some five-minute, I am not kidding you, five-minute angel hair pasta and peaches, yum-a-lum, and then we’re gonna talk to Doctor Mike about seasonal depression, and why the heck February makes us all so gosh-darn ornery, I’m telling you, sometimes I just wanna tell Glen, hey, I know that it’s Valentine’s Day, but get off me, and then we’re gonna have a very special visit from Cassandra Callahan, who plays Kelly on Impossible Choices, and who’s here to tell us all about her skin-care collection for women who just don’t have the time! Like you and like me, heck, look at my freakin’ T-zone, I need spackle, I need sandpaper, I need Cassandra’s totally miraculous Totally Miraculous Under-Eye Savior Gel! And I’m not sayin’ that everyone in our audience is getting the entire Totally Miraculous Facesaver Plus Regimen Starter Kit, but yes, you are! Yay! Double yay! Let’s get this party started!”

  Something had to be done.

  To make certain that I was responding rationally, I watched Abby’s program again the next morning. She introduced her first guests: “Guys, I’d like you to meet two very special ladies, Candy Amberella and her daughter Kaitlyn, who both lost their husbands, who were firefighters, on 9/11. Can you imagine? I mean, I wasn’t even in the city on that day, I was still busy plannin’ parties out in freakin’ San Diego, but I felt it. I knew it was bad. My heart was aching, I’m sure all of our hearts were aching, and maybe you were like me and you thought about the families and you thought, What could I make for them that would be both quick and easy, but also really yum-tastic? And that’s when I came up with my idea for what I call Emergency Desserts, great-tasting, one-step, no-cooking treats that you can whip up when your neighbor’s space heater explodes, or your sister’s kids get into a highway pile-up after the prom, or when, God forbid, there’s some sort of terrorist attack and we’re all thrown together and we’re crying and we’re hugging and we’re hungry. And I’ve asked Candy and Kaitlyn to sample my Lend-A-Hand Lemon Squares and to share their stories, about what they’ve been through, whether they’ve started dating again, and what they’re cookin’ for their families and maybe those hot new guys in their lives. Right after the break!”

  I tried to determine exactly what appalled me the most, to the point where even seeing Abby’s name in a newspaper listing caused an involuntary facial twitch. Was it her howitzer-level confidence, her use of the word “freakin’” as an expletive substitute, or the fact that when the focus wasn’t entirely on her, I could literally see her mind wander, as her eyes glazed over and her head veered to one side. No, while all of these habits were certainly irritating, what truly disturbed me was her pride in her own lack of skills. She was a professional amateur; she had trademarked her own blundering. While Martha represented the rewards of research and practice, Abby embodied the triumph of the microwave attention span. “Shabar,” I declared, “fetch my glen-plaid double-breasted suit, my Inverness cape, my homburg, and my walking stick. I’m going out.”

  Suitably attired, I began my trek across town, to a Barnes & Noble where Abby was holding a book signing, for the latest in a series which included Abby McAdams’ Sixty Second Entrees, Abby McAdams’ Plan Your Wedding in a Weekend, and Abby McAdams’ Have Your Baby Today! As I strode along, Abby’s face beamed at me from buses, billboards, and newsstands, which featured her signature magazine, Abby Does It!, with the cover lines “Six Great Vacations Without Leaving Home,” “Twenty-Five Surefire Stressbusting No-Sew Slipcovers,” and “From Zero to Orgasm Without Even Looking at Him.” The city had become utterly ruled by Abby, from promos on JumboTron screens to window displays of Abbissima Almost Organic hair-care products, to sidewalk vendors offering bootlegs of Abby’s Sit-Snack-and-Lose CD-ROMs. I felt Abby urging me on, toward our summit, our destiny, our Abby-tastic showdown.

  I took my place at the end of a line over two blocks long, snaking out of the bookstore and into the street. The woman ahead of me was clutching the entire McAdams library. “Why do you love her so much?” I asked. “Because I watch her and I think, that really could be me!” the woman replied. “I never make any of her recipes or follow any of her advice, but I just think she’s so cute and…and…she’s a role model. She says, if you can’t really do something, who cares?”

  “And do you ever watch Martha Stewart?”

  “Sometimes,” the woman confessed, lowering her voice, “but she scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know that if I didn’t do everything just the way she says, she’d come to my apartment and slap me, really hard.”

  Hours passed, and I was finally in range. Abby was seated beside an enormous photo blow-up of her
self holding a glistening version of what she had titled her Meatless-Mindless-Don’t-Tell-Your-Mother Casserole. She was flanked by personal assistants, bodyguards, publicists, and giddy store representatives. In person, Abby was every bit as moistly nuclear as on television. As she signed the many McAdams volumes being offered by the woman in front of me, she squealed, “Thank you for coming! I love you!” “I love you!” the woman squealed in response, with that desperate yearning which is indistinguishable from an immediate need to urinate. As the handlers guided the woman away, I stepped forward. “Look at you!” Abby exclaimed, “It’s Sherlock Holmes! It’s Harry Potter!” Abby, like most Americans, was both astounded and perplexed at the sight of a man wearing a well-cut suit, a perfectly knotted tie, and a scrupulously tufted pocket square. “Do you have a book?” she asked me. “Would you like to buy one?”

  As one of the store reps offered me a copy of Abby McAdams’ Clean Enough, one of Abby’s assistants handed her a cell phone. Abby held up an index finger, telling me, “Just a sec, hon.” I waited patiently for her to finish her call, and then she told me, near tears, that, “Oh, my freakin’ God, that was really amazing news. I just signed a deal to endorse an entire line of Abby-Approved Easy Meals. Pretty soon when you go to the supermarket, you’ll see a whole bunch of stuff marked with my Double-A, Abby-Approved Seal. There’s gonna be Stuffing-In-A-Jiff, Chicken-In-A-Tube, and Lo-Carb-Gag-On-The-Gallon-Mega-Yum-Ice-Cream-Alternative.”

  As always, I tried to be fair. I gazed deeply into the twin shiny black marbles that were Abby’s eyes, and I said, “Abby, I’m begging you. Please offer me a single valid reason for your existence.”

  “Hon,” she replied, with her warmest smile, as she took my hand, “dontcha get it? There is no reason. That’s the whole deal. That’s why everyone loves me. I’m just a person. And all I want to do is to let people know, that it’s okay to just be you, and to never get any better at it. I just want to hug everyone in this whole dang world and tell ’em, ‘Hey there, whatever it is, whether it’s a lumpy salad dressing or a relationship-gone-wrong or your sister’s degenerative heart disease, don’t worry about it. Just give up, and you’re gonna feel great.’ Now, did you buy a book? Who should I sign it to?”