The Virginity of Famous Men

by Christine Sneed

  DISASTERS AVERTED OR OTHERWISE

  –Early August 1991—Motorcycle ride with P.J. Wilczek, sophomore-year college crush. P.J. hit a dead opossum in the road, slammed on the brakes, and sent us both flying into a drainage ditch. I was wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a helmet, and was all right, aside from about five hundred bruises and a chipped tooth; P.J. was wearing a helmet too but had on shorts and a T-shirt. Needless to say, his arms and legs and back looked like someone had gone after him with a cheese grater, but his brains were still intact. So to speak.

  –May 1993—Move to Los Angeles to try to break into the movie business contemplated then decided against.

  –May 1993—Move to New York City to try to break into Broadway musicals contemplated then decided against.

  –May 1993–April 1998—Minor disasters:

  a)an adoption of a feral (?) cat (the shelter worker didn’t mention how numerous and scary this cat’s problems were; the cat was returned and probably, sad to say, sent into the next life in short order)

  b)feather instead of foam pillows at a B&B in Wheeling, West Virginia

  c)a collision with a deer while riding in Rich Dolzer’s Ford Fiesta after a pool party while visiting college friends in Indianapolis

  d)the theft of my purse at a Dublin, OH, strip mall (but overall, these five years were fairly tranquil)

  –April 1998—Engagement to Jesse Cates called off in favor of a relationship with Mitchell Cates (Jesse’s cousin), which resulted in Mitch’s and my abrupt departure for Lincoln, Nebraska, where Mitch had lined up a job at the University of Nebraska’s Bursar’s Office.

  –December 1998—Mitch dumps me for idiot named Courtney Foster, who has big boobs, a fat ass, and a snorting laugh that for several years appeared in my nightmares. Her dad is loaded and she doesn’t have to work, so she doesn’t. When I knew her, she used to go around saying, “The world isn’t as bad a place as some people who write for big-time newspapers would like us to think.” Also, “New York City is the root of all evil.” But instead of saying “root,” she said it “rout,” as in, “That army routed its enemies.”

  * Fast-forward to near-death experience:

  –March 2010—A road trip to Arches National Park and the Grand Canyon with my friend Jane Garcia, who worked with me at Dogs in Suds. We were parked at an overlook at Arches when a carload of teenagers wearing T-shirts with the names of pro-football teams on them showed up and dumped an ashtray of butts out the window next to our car. I was in a rotten mood because my stepbrother had just texted me to say that he needed to borrow three hundred dollars again (for some reeking dive’s video poker machines, probably, or else to give to his lame-ass girlfriend who has cheated on him with at least two different guys). I picked up a handful of the discarded butts, some of them soggy, and threw them at the windshield of the teenagers’ car, yelling, more or less, “Go eff yourselves. This is a national park. Can’t you show some effing decency for once in your worthless lives?”

  This did not go over well. Jane was still in the car, and she rolled up the windows and locked the doors, not realizing, I don’t think, that I couldn’t get back in now. Two of the teenagers, miscreants who looked like they each weighed twice as much as I did, picked me up like a suitcase (their friends drunk and laughing and shouting behind us) and carried me to the edge of the overlook, threatening to pitch me down the billion-year-old rock bed to my probable death. I looked down toward my last moments and said, I’m not sure why, “If you let me live, I promise never to tell another lie.” They laughed like I was insane but stepped back from the ledge. They took me back to my car, dropped me on my knees hard, and said, “Get the f **k out of our faces, you crazy-a** b*tch!”

  Needless to say, my vow not to tell any more lies led me to my idea that a cover letter and résumé shouldn’t contain any lies either. Hence this revolutionary (?) job application that you hold in your hands (or else are reading on your computer screen).

  HOBBIES

  Books—I am not a devoted fan of any books about vampires, wizards, baseball, zombies, or ones that involve people transformed into insects, giant bananas, or VW Beetles upon waking.

  –I greatly admire Lolita because I think V. Nabokov was a genius, if not also a bit of a pervert, but I think we all have a pervert strain in us, whether we like it or not.

  Movies—Leaving Las Vegas (for which Mr. Cage won the Best Actor Oscar!), Wild at Heart, Valley Girl, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

  –The English Patient (for which Mr. Fiennes should have won the Best Actor Oscar!)

  –Monsters, Inc. (This remains the best kids’ movie around, even better than Old Yeller, and of course much different.)

  –Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Paul Newman was originally considered for the role of Sundance. How our history would have been different if he had been cast as the sidekick instead of the man with all the [sometimes wrong] answers!)

  –The Graduate (Every woman, after a certain age, has a bit of Mrs. Robinson in her.)

  Music—Nothing country, please. Instead:

  –Anything by Prince, pre-1993: e.g., Purple Rain, Parade, Around the World in a Day, 1999, Controversy, Dirty Mind, For You, Prince

  –David Bowie (pronounced Bo-ee, not Bow-ee, as in bowwow)—Let’s Dance, Tonight

  –Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits

  –Peter Gabriel’s perfect So

  –Rick Springfield’s Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet (“Jessie’s Girl” is just fine, but who could forget the barely contained jealousy of “Don’t Talk to Strangers”?)

  You probably have noticed a pattern here. The ’80s were a musically rich and diverse period, if not the most morally exemplary time in our country’s history.

  References Generally Available Upon Request

  ADDENDUM

  If offered the opportunity and the great privilege of working for Elite Industries, I would humbly request permission to redraft some of the more humdrum interview questions so many employers rely on—e.g., “Where do you see yourself in five years?” “What would you say your greatest weakness is?” “How well do you work without supervision?”—and instead ask future job applicants some or all of the following questions:

  1.If you found a wallet that contained a few hundred dollars in cash and the driver’s license inside revealed that the wallet belonged to a former mean-spirited neighbor who had ruthlessly clashed with you and/or your family for years, would you return the wallet? Yes or no, please explain your rationale.

  2.If you witnessed a co-worker you like and respect doing something illegal outside of the workplace, such as shoplifting candy bars, or mistreating a small, defenseless animal (e.g., a declawed cat or a hamster), what would you do?

  3.The same scenario as above but the co-worker is one you do not like and respect.

  4.Do you listen to country music? Yes or no, please explain.

  5.If reincarnation were real and you had to choose to return in your next life as one of the following, which would it be and why?

  a) a lion d) a flying squirrel

  b) a Ferrari e) Tennessee Williams

  c) a glacier f) a cockroach

  6.Free-Association Exercise

  What thought first comes to mind after you hear each of the following words?

  a) construction zone c) spendthrift

  b) wig d) prostate

  7.Have you ever wanted to marry one of our presidents, congresspeople, or senators? Yes or no, please explain.

  8.Have you ever wanted to assassinate one of our presidents, congresspeople, or senators? Yes or no, again, please explain.

  9.If you had to watch one of the following movies every Sunday, which would you choose?

  a) Wayne’s World d) A Clockwork Orange

  b) Smokey and the Bandit e) Dirty Dancing

  c) My Dinner with André f) Weekend at Bernie’s

  10.Which life do you believe has more value: a wolf’s or a mosquito’s? Please explain your rationale.


  * * *

  * The Nic Cage Fan Club isn’t, technically, a cult, but I recognize that devotion to a celebrity, especially one who isn’t likely ever to befriend you, more or less does put you in the same realm as cult membership.

  THE VIRGINITY OF FAMOUS MEN

  Rain was falling for the fifth day in a row, the sky layered with baggy, newsprint-gray clouds, the birds silent and chastened in their nests. Water poured or dripped from every awning and overhang onto the heads of sullen passersby.

  The eighth-arrondissement apartment Will and his girlfriend Jorie had moved into the previous month, a three-bedroom on the fourth floor of a Haussmann-era building, overlooked the rose-filled Square Marcel Pagnol. Their place was advertised as a luxury property and the owner charged an exorbitant rent; Will paid for three months up front in order to beat out two other applicants for the same apartment. Jorie had assumed from the beginning that this prepayment was a greedy landlord’s ruse, and Will did now too: as often as not, the elevator was out of order, and their unit had leaky windows, a flaw they discovered two and a half weeks after moving in. When it rained heavily, rivulets streamed down the interior panes and pooled on the ledges. Jorie had called the concierge, Madame Reiss, twice to complain, but a handyman had yet to appear.

  She wondered if Madame Reiss was punishing her because of her dog, a Chihuahua named Coquelicot. No pets except for fish and small caged birds were permitted in the building, but the concierge had made a grudging exception for her and Will. If there were complaints from other tenants about barking, Coquelicot would have to go tout de suite! Madame Reiss sternly informed them, her dark eyebrows arching theatrically. They’d also paid an extra thousand-euro deposit for damages the dog might inflict on the baseboards and varnished hardwood floors.

  Coquelicot had so far been a blameless tenant. She was eleven, with an arthritic hip, and when she wasn’t being fed or walked or ferried about the city in a scuffed brown-leather shoulder bag by her mistress, she spent much of her time sleeping on a plush vermilion bed that in the winter months Jorie kept by the iron feet of a hissing radiator.

  On the fifth and ultimately final day of rain, Will’s father flew in for a long weekend from Toronto during a break in the shooting of Occam’s Razor, a film he was directing and starring in (“If Clint can do it, I don’t see why I can’t too,” said Renn). When he met Jorie and her dog for the first time, he joked that the Chihuahua might be Gloria Swanson reincarnated. “Those eerie eyes,” he said. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”

  “Dad,” said Will. “That’s—” He wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Cruel? He bit back the word.

  “What?” His father laughed and glanced from Will to his girlfriend. “Don’t you think the dog looks a little like Gloria Swanson?”

  Jorie smiled fondly, her gaze on Coquelicot’s tiny head and voluminous ears. The dog was pretending to doze on her mistress’s lap, her protuberant eyes opening a fraction before drifting closed again. “What do you think about that, Poppy?” Jorie asked.

  “Poppy?” asked Renn.

  “Coquelicot is the French word for ‘poppy,’” said Will.

  “The dog answers to both?”

  “She does,” said Jorie. “She’s very smart, Mr. Ivins.”

  “A bilingual dog,” he said, amused. “Of course. Please call me Renn, Jorie. Only the police call me Mr. Ivins.” He laughed again.

  The dog opened her eyes all the way and peered up at him worriedly, her ears fully alert.

  “I’ll try,” said Jorie. With one hand, she lightly stroked the smooth fur of Coquelicot’s back. They were in the brightest room in the apartment, a salon with south-facing windows, sheer curtains tied back. On the coffee table next to the leather sofa where Will sat with Jorie, Renn in an adjacent armchair, their breakfast dishes were scattered with crumbs from the pastries they’d eaten with orange juice and cups of coffee.

  Will watched his father hold Jorie’s gaze until she looked away. Ordinarily, his girlfriend wasn’t shy with strangers, and she already had some familiarity with celebrity. An aunt on her mother’s side was the first-chair violin for the New York Philharmonic, and she had a cousin who acted in a popular police procedural on one of the networks, but Will’s father was many times more well known than the aunt and the cousin put together.

  Will had met Jorie in a French class for foreigners that he’d enrolled in not long after moving from L.A. to Paris, desperate to flee the long shadow his father cast over his and his younger sister Anna’s lives. Jorie had remained amiable but aloof for a while, not pursuing his friendship the way the other students in the class did. She sometimes joined the group of four or five who invited Will to have drinks or dinner with them after class meetings, but he had to ask her out four times before she consented to having dinner with him alone.

  He hadn’t seen his father in more than a year and a half, and it was only in the last month that he’d started returning Renn’s phone calls. Will’s mother had played the peacemaker on her ex-husband’s behalf, even though Lucy had also been offended by Renn’s relationship with Danielle, a woman Will dated before moving to Paris. Danielle was no longer living with Renn, though it wasn’t clear whether they were still seeing each other. Will hadn’t spoken to Danielle in nearly two years, and he hadn’t asked his father if they’d broken up for good.

  When they finally did talk, Renn apologized about Danielle, but he didn’t mention a second woman, Elise Connor, whom both he and Will were in love with when Will moved to France. It was Danielle who broke up with Will when his crush on Elise came to light the previous autumn. Despite their acrimonious breakup, Will didn’t think it absolved Danielle and his father of their own eventual pairing-off.

  In the end, Elise hadn’t chosen Renn or Will. When she broke off her engagement with Renn, Will was hopeful that she would come to Paris to see him, but she didn’t, and soon after, his father took up with Danielle and asked her to move in with him. If this was meant to be his punishment for competing for Elise, Will supposed that on some level he deserved it, but he hadn’t admitted this to his father or anyone else. Instead, he’d quietly passed the time in Paris, fallen in love with Jorie, and occupied himself with screenwriting and seeing films he’d never seen at home in L.A.—Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Apocalypse Now, Two-Lane Blacktop, Five Easy Pieces—despite having met some of their stars through his father.

  By leaving L.A., he soon realized that he had stepped into a beautiful dream. Something that he knew some people assumed he’d always been living, but it was only now in Paris that this became true.

  “Where do you two want to go to dinner?” asked Renn. “Do you have a favorite place? Or should I call a friend who I think could get us a table at Taillevent?”

  Jorie stared at him. “Your friend could get us a table there on such short notice? I know you’re a—” She stopped herself and looked helplessly at Will.

  Renn nodded. “Yes, I think she could. Is that where you’d like to go?”

  “Not tonight, Dad,” said Will. “I’m sure you’re tired from the flight anyway.”

  “Not at all,” said Renn. “I slept the whole way here.”

  “You can do that?” asked Jorie. “That’s amazing.” She laughed.

  “I’ll call my friend at Taillevent then.”

  “Yes, please, that’d be great,” she said.

  “Dad, no. Not tonight,” said Will, not looking at Jorie. “Let’s do something a little more low-key, okay?” He hadn’t known that Jorie wanted to go to Taillevent, France’s most celebrated restaurant. If he had, he would have already taken her there himself. He was supposed to think of this sort of extravagant gesture on his own, he realized, embarrassed. To his father, of course, this kind of thing was second nature.

  “What if instead I flew us all down to Aix-en-Provence?” asked Renn. “I have another friend who keeps inviting me to his cottage.” He gave Will a wry look. “That’s what Bob calls it, but I�
��m sure it’s more like a château. We could stay down there tonight and fly back tomorrow, or else on Monday morning if we decide we’d like to stay an extra day.”

  Jorie again looked at Will, her expression at once bemused and avid. Of course she wanted to do whatever his father wanted to. Will could feel his head starting to throb. Every woman he’d ever met had always abruptly fallen for his father’s charm and enthusiasm for the present moment, for his insistence on wooing every pretty girl he met with his bullying, jaw-dropping generosity.

  “Dad,” said Will, keeping his voice level. “Can we just stay in Paris? You’re here for what, two, three nights? We can go to Septime for dinner and to Le Siffleur de Ballons for a drink afterward. They’re both over by the Bastille, so we’ll need to cab it, but I’m sure you’ll like them.”

  “They’re both very good,” said Jorie. Will thought he heard a note of disappointment in her tone, but he ignored it. His father was supposed to be their guest. It was he who had flown in to see them. Almost a whole year and a half without speaking to each other and Renn was acting as if nothing was awry, as if Elise and Danielle did not lie between them like a dangerous chasm.

  “I’ll have my car service take us to the restaurant. Seven thirty, eight o’clock? No need to mess with cabs.”

  “Eight sounds fine,” said Will, glancing at Jorie. She nodded.

  “But if you change your mind about Aix or Taillevent, we could go for it,” said Renn.

  Will shook his head. “Let’s just go to Septime and Siffleur. You’ll like them.”

  “What are you doing this afternoon, Renn?” asked Jorie. It was almost noon, Renn having arrived at their door at ten thirty, straight from the airport, bearing gifts: a bag of fragrant croissants, two plain, two with marzipan filling, and two dozen yellow and pink roses, which he presented to Jorie, who was both flustered and dazzled, clutching the flowers to her chest, exclaiming, Oh, my, this is—my goodness—. The croissants he’d handed to Will, who had so far eaten only a banana, even though he’d gotten out of bed at six thirty to run seven miles in the rainy gloom. The run had helped to relax him before the storm of his father’s arrival. He hadn’t felt ready to see Renn, but he knew that he couldn’t keep saying no. His father would probably have appeared eventually, invited or not. Will preferred a scheduled visit to an ambush.