Raw: A Love Story

by Mark Haskell Smith

  As he entered the bookstore he couldn’t keep from smiling. The store wasn’t big, only a couple modest rooms, but it was packed with books and laid out like a labyrinth. Books were piled on shelves, on tables, and in a couple of instances they were stacked up on the floor just like Curtis did at his house. The shelves muffled the noise from Sunset Boulevard and blocked out the glare of the sun. It was cozy and cavelike and Curtis felt like an explorer—a “spelunker.” He’d always liked that word.

  …

  “I have something to confess. I was a big fan of Love Express. I didn’t miss an episode. So for me, this is a real treat.”

  Sepp smiled at the bookstore manager, a cool-looking guy named Frazier, and shook his hand. Sepp noticed some gnarly tattoos peeking out from under his shirtsleeve like he was secretly wearing Japanese art under his skin. He was super friendly, giving off a vibe that was part badass, part funster, and Sepp liked him instantly. Frazier wasn’t your typical bookstore employee. He was like a real dude, a bro, even. “Thanks man, thanks for having me in your store.”

  Kathryn had taken Sepp in through the back door of the bookstore and the three of them were now crowded into a tiny office filled with boxes. Frazier stuck his head out the door. “I’d welcome you to look around, but we’ve got a big crowd tonight. You’re quite the draw with the ladies.”

  Sepp smiled. “Awesome.”

  Frazier smiled. “You mind just chillin’ in here for a bit? I’m going to go see how we’re doing.”

  “I’m cool.”

  Frazier nodded and slipped out of the room. Kathryn looked at Sepp. “You want anything? Some water or coffee?”

  Sepp realized that he wasn’t feeling that great. He wasn’t sure if it was another panic attack or stage fright or something he’d eaten.

  “There’s an envelope with some pills in the car. Can you bring me one?”

  “Just one pill?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to carry the envelope around.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Kathryn closed the door behind her. Sepp sat down in a chair, surrounded by books, books, and more books. Books were everywhere. What if an earthquake hit? Would he be buried under books? Is that how he would die? Drowning in book soup?

  Sepp started wondering why he ever got mixed up in this book business in the first place. It wasn’t like he had any books at his house. He couldn’t remember the last time he read a book, although he did look at a guide to growing marijuana once. What if the books were mad at him? Like they wanted revenge because they knew he didn’t write his book. Maybe the books were just waiting until he was alone with them and then they’d just all jump on him at once. Sepp looked up at the books and apologized. He hadn’t meant to anger the book spirit. Was that why he couldn’t get a boner? Had the Book Goddess put a curse on him?

  By the time Kathryn got back with his medicine, his heart was pounding and he’d broken into a cold sweat.

  …

  It cost her ten bucks to park in a little lot tucked behind the Viper Room, but Harriet didn’t let the high cost of parking in West Hollywood—the obvious law of supply and demand in effect—get her down for long. She was energized by her mission. The more she thought about it the more she found herself deeply curious about who the ghostwriter was. She was going to interrogate Sepp and find out. Then she was going to track the writer down and get to the bottom of this mystery. She had to know why. Why did they do it? The writing was so good she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that some down-on-her-luck Pulitzer Prize winner might’ve taken the job. Or worse, maybe they even liked Sepp’s TV shows. Was Michael Chabon a reality TV junkie? It wasn’t inconceivable.

  Her lunch spun and settled in her stomach when she walked into the bookstore. Bad enough to see Sepp’s name on the marquee and be greeted by a giant poster in the window—Sepp’s leering grin making him look like a genuine Kentucky fried half-wit—but now, crowding in the famous bookstore was a huge crowd of people clutching copies of Sepp’s book to their chests like it was the Holy Bible itself.

  She turned away from the crush and headed back into the recesses of the stacks.

  …

  Curtis looked up and noticed that a lot of people were starting to arrive for the signing. A few collectors congregated near the back, an odd group of men with bulging sacks of books; a lanky guy with a mod haircut and carnation-colored shoes chatted with a ruddy-complexioned man in a Hawaiian shirt about first editions; a portly collector in a Harley-Davidson motorcycle T-shirt sat and encased his books in protective plastic sleeves.

  Curtis felt conflicted. Why would someone want to collect a book about a reality star? Was the resale value that high? Or did they want to keep them? He was baffled and somewhat bemused and, at the same time, thrilled that there were people who thought something he wrote could be valuable, even if his name wasn’t on it. This, he understood, was the ghostwriter’s dilemma. He’d solve the problem with his next book. He’d make the Roxy Sandoval story even better than Sepp’s book. He’d write the best celebrity novel ever. If Totally Reality had been his Bartleby the Scrivener, then Sandy Panties was going to be his Moby-Dick. Best of all, this one would have his name on it.

  …

  Harriet saw him out of the corner of her eye. He was her type, she could tell. Not so much because of his fancy leather shoes, or the Dickies pants, or the plain red T-shirt under a rumpled navy blazer; it was the book he was reading. He was standing in the store, his cool glasses slipping down his oddly deformed nose, perusing a copy of Steve Erickson’s Our Ecstatic Days.

  Harriet had often written about Steve Erickson; she loved writers who felt compelled to use language so rich and dense that the words became more important than the story. In a perfect book, the prose would be so resonant with meaning and metaphor that it would be infinitely dense; comprehension would require maximum mental concentration and a PhD in philosophy. The perfect book, in Harriet’s opinion, would contain the universe.

  Despite her ferociousness when it came to criticism, Harriet was somewhat timid when it came to members of the opposite sex. On the rare occasions when her friends set her up with someone or invited her to a dinner party only to sit her next to some single man, the conversation would invariably turn to their favorite books. This usually ended the date. Really, who claims the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as the best book they’ve ever read? She’d learned early on in the dating game that if a man says Catcher in the Rye is his favorite book, that just means he hasn’t read any fiction since high school. And, honestly, she didn’t know what to make of an adult male who claimed to admire The Lord of the Rings.

  But there was something about this guy—he had the look, he had the book—that made Harriet say, “You read Erickson?”

  The guy shoved his glasses back up his nose and turned to face her. “I read his last one.”

  Harriet smiled at him. “What’d you think?”

  “It was challenging. I really enjoyed it.”

  The guy self-consciously smoothed his hair forward, so it fell across his forehead. “Are you here for the signing?”

  Harriet found herself sputtering. “No. God no.” She found that she couldn’t control her left hand as it began to play with her hair. “I mean, yes, I am. But in a professional capacity.”

  “You’re a journalist?”

  Harriet nodded. “Yeah. And I have a blog.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Fatal Influence.”

  The guy’s face changed. It suddenly bloomed in a mix of surprise and reverence. “You’re Harriet Post?”

  Harriet nodded. “That’s me.”

  “I love your blog. I read it all the time.”

  Harriet extended her hand. “What’s your name?”

  The guy wiped his hand on his pants and then shook hers. “Curtis. I’m a fan.”

  His hand was warm.

  …

  Sepp still felt a little weird, but at least he had more energy. He stood of
f to the side, nodding and smiling as a woman from the store explained to the crowd that you had to buy a book if you wanted to get any memorabilia autographed and how the line was going to work. She looked hipster-nerdy in that way bookstore people always looked kinda cool. You know? Groovy eyeglasses, weird color in her hair, vintage clothes. Not sexy or trashy, just smart and proud of it. Like she had nothing to hide. She was the opposite of Roxy and Caitlin.

  Sepp wondered what it would be like to get it on with a nerdy bookstore girl like the one introducing him. What if nerds were better between the sheets than hotties? OMG, dude. Wouldn’t that blow your mind? What if Poindexter could give a girl multiple orgasms? Or like if Betty Bookworm could make your nuts dance in the sack? What if it was like some kind of secret that only the nerds knew and that’s why you always saw nerds with other nerds? Like nerds were the hotties and hotties were really nerds and everything you thought you knew about the world was upside down and backwards?

  Sepp felt his skin tingling, his face flushing. He didn’t know why that was happening. He checked to make sure his zipper was pulled up.

  …

  Harriet couldn’t see anything from the back of the mob. That’s what it looked like to her. A rabble of reality show wannabes queueing to take sacrament from their savior. “Queueing” has five consecutive vowels. That’s unusual.

  @fatalinfluence Queueing at Book Soup to see a slab o’ abs.

  Harriet turned toward Curtis, but he’d drifted off, pushing his way deeper into the crowd until she couldn’t see him. Harriet liked talking to him and wished he’d stayed to keep her company. But it was okay. She’d probably see him after the talk. Besides, she was on a mission.

  …

  “It is my distinct, and somewhat guilty pleasure, to introduce the man, the myth, your favorite hunk of reality, Sepp Gregory.”

  Sepp knew she was paying him a compliment, but he was kind of puzzled too. Why was he a guilty pleasure?

  “So give him a big Book Soup welcome.”

  The audience—Sepp guessed about three hundred people—clapped as he stepped to the podium. He saw Kathryn, his media escort, standing in the back typing something on her smartphone. Marybeth was there too, looking at a big art book with nude ladies in it. Sepp looked out at the crowd. There were a lot of women there. He felt a hot trickle of sweat run down his side.

  “Hey. Thanks. Um . . . I wrote this book to tell my story, but I wanted it to be a novel because novels are more fun to read. At least I hope you all think it’s fun. And it kinda gives everyone a look at what happens behind the scenes and under the covers.”

  A couple of women in the audience whooped at that line. They always did.

  “People always ask what inspired me. Why write this book?” Sepp’s throat was dry, and he’d developed a strange tremor in his voice. He reached for a bottle of water on the podium and took a drink. “Well . . . there are a lot of reasons.”

  Sepp didn’t tell them the truth. No one wanted him to say that it was easy money or admit that he hadn’t really written it. He never mentioned the fact that he’d just bought a condo and wanted to have some money in the bank for a rainy day. They didn’t want to know the truth about being a celebrity, especially not being a broke celebrity because after taxes, it’s not that much and after a year or two, it’s long gone. And he definitely didn’t want to be one of those dudes like MC Hammer who lost everything and ended up being a preacher. That’s so lame. He put his name on the book because they gave him an advance and now he was promoting the book to help make as much money as possible from it. But he didn’t tell them that.

  “I wanted to get my feelings across. You know, the real . . . raw stuff.” Sepp realized his voice sounded shaky. He looked down at his hands and noticed they were trembling. His heart began to pound and he felt sweat roll down his face. “That you can only get into in a fictional novel . . .” He stopped midsentence and reached for the bottle of water. He gulped it down in long, desperate glugs, like he was dying of thirst.

  “Sorry. Being on book tour is hard work. Harder than I thought, anyway.”

  And that’s when he began to feel his penis grow. It was shuddering to life in pulsing spasms, like Frankenstein’s monster rising off the table. He didn’t know why that was happening or why he was suddenly experiencing a panic. It sucked having a panic attack in front of all these people. It made it so that he was panicking on top of a panic attack on top of a crazy boner. Maybe it was all starting to get to him, the morning DJs with their cowbells and their jokes, the TV news shows with the old dudes and the hot chicks who wanted him to strip, and the creeping feeling that he was the butt of some kind of cosmic joke. And now the bookstore woman who was kinda hot and seemed like a totally nice person was calling him a “guilty pleasure.” What did that mean?

  “I suppose you want me to take off my shirt.”

  Sepp whipped his T-shirt over his head. There was a burst of applause from the audience. Sepp flexed and there were a couple of gasps. Sepp grinned. “You know what’s funny, or maybe it’s not, but what I’ve discovered lately, is that the reality that I thought was real, you know the reality I was living, is not that same as the real reality that people really live. Like your reality is different than my reality and TV-show reality isn’t like this reality or mine or yours.”

  He stared at the audience. “I know I’m probably not making any sense with this.”

  A young woman shouted from the back. “Your six-pack looks real!”

  Sepp smiled and patted his washboard abs.

  “Crunches. Lots and lots of crunches. Crunches are real. Even on TV. You crunch and work your abs and you know, eat a pretty lean diet and they’ll look like this. They’ll be real.”

  Sepp began to sweat harder. It was pooling under his hair like he was in the middle of a workout. He gripped the podium tightly to keep his hands from shaking, but he couldn’t grip anything with his voice. He warbled and gasped, growing more panicked with each hitch and falter in his speech.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t normally get nervous like this.”

  He took another sip of water. He didn’t know why he’d departed from his prepared speech, but he had and he wasn’t sure how to get back to it. He was usually so relaxed. So cool. The kind of dude who could sit on his balcony naked and play the bongos on a Sunday afternoon and not have a care in the world. But here he was a guilty pleasure. A guy people made fun of. Why?

  Sepp’s knees buckled and he had to bear-hug the podium to keep from collapsing. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He realized he hadn’t said anything for a long time.

  “But, like, love is different than a sit-up. It’s like you think you’re in love, you have the feelings of being in love. And you see yourself on TV and that’s you and you’re with someone and it really looks like you’re both in love. Like with each other. It’s like looking at love how it’s really supposed to look. Right?”

  Sepp felt a strange gush of emotion, a bittersweet punch to his stomach, take the wind out of him and send liquid squirting out of his eyes.

  “But, dude, the real reality is . . .”

  Sepp choked on his words.

  “The love isn’t real love. It’s something else. It’s definitely not a crunch.”

  Sepp’s voice caught again and, to the surprise of the audience, the bookstore employees, his agent, and the media escort, he stood, shirtless, at the podium and began to sob. “I’m sorry.” He wiped the tears from his eyes and tried to continue. “It’s really hot in here. Isn’t it? I mean, I feel like my clothes are strangling me.”

  And with that, Sepp slid out of his pants and revealed his fully erect penis to the crowd.

  …

  It’s an old saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and Marybeth reminded herself of that as she watched Sepp drop his pants. There was a collective gasp from the crowd, followed by the sound of hundreds of cell phones taking photos. How long before the first Instagram or Flickr hit the intern
et? A second? Ten seconds? They were probably already up on Twitter. Which meant that in the next ten minutes or so they’d be retweeted across the world and millions of people would get a good look at Sepp’s penis. And then people would start photoshopping it. Taking Sepp’s penis and making animated gifs and digital wallpaper. How long before the parodies started? Would she wake up in the morning and be able to find Sepp’s penis singing Lionel Richie’s “Hello” on YouTube?

  The first thought that crossed her mind was that her client had lost it. He was having a nervous breakdown in public, which is, let’s be honest, never a good thing. Her second thought was one of relief. If Sepp had exposed himself and revealed a normal-looking penis, well, then it’s just kind of creepy, but his penis was majestic, a rigid pink shaft in full bloom. This would only enhance his brand appeal. She made a mental note to ask for more money for the underwear ad campaign.

  …

  “Are you okay?”

  Marybeth stood there, taking in the scene. Sepp was sitting behind a counter, a towel draped across his lap, the fabric tented dramatically where his erection stood. Sepp nodded at her.

  “Hey, Marybeth.”

  She turned and scanned the crowd. There was still a long line of fans waiting patiently to get their books signed. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “It’s all good. He’s got my back.”

  Sepp nodded toward the tattooed hipster standing behind the counter. “Frazier’s the best.”

  Frazier smiled at Marybeth. “Hey, Whatever makes him happy, you know? We’re just going with it.”