by Kim Cayer
Eat my dust, Paul.
* * *
New York, New York. What a contradiction.
This is what my days consisted of: I’d leave my ritzy sky-high apartment, dressed in the finest clothes my salary could buy, which means that I was finally buying clothes first-hand. I’d jump into a cab summoned by my solicitous doorman. I’d be let off at Sebrings Productions, my palatial place of employment, where I’d be heartily greeted by Chester, keeper of the gate for Sebrings. I’d walk past my receptionist, Lilli, who’d breathily gush a wonderful, super, meaningful good morning to me. I’d put my belongings in my swank private office then head to the huge meeting room marked ‘Writers – Alice Kumplunken, Executive Consultant’. I’d stop to marvel once more at my name in lights then, hoping that today might be different from the others, I’d open the door, stride in and take my place at the head of the table. That is where the glamour ended and the grind began.
“Were you raped? Or at least something close to that?”
“What indecent things have you done in your career climb?”
“How many men have left you?”
“What makes you such a loser?”
And on and on and on. Every day, nine to twelve and then two to six, I’d sit there having to honestly answer the most demeaning questions thrown at me. It hurt. The grosser, disgusting, saddening and sickening items I shared seemed to please them the most. Just before my breaking point, the writing staff would gleefully scrabble to their notepads and shout out ideas.
The two head writers, Mary and Bill, were going at it head to head. “Let’s have Gino and Dina get robbed as soon as Gino presents Dina with the engagement ring,” Bill shouted at Mary.
“Oh, Gino!” Mary enacted. “Save me!”
“No!” Bill yelled. “Let’s have Gino put the ring in her champagne glass and Dina accidentally swallows it!”
“Oh, Gino!” Mary began choking. “Save me!”
There definitely was a high energy in the room. I was left, forgotten about, alone to recall the buried, ugly lowlights of my life that I’d been forced to reminisce about. It was all too obvious why I’d been selected for this position. It was because I had LIVED. I had suffered grief and agony and humiliation. These people merely had spouses and children and a mortgage. They were BORING. I was ALIVE. God, I wanted to be like them.
Suddenly, I could tell a scene had been written. They’d gather in their seats, stare at me like I was a bug under a microscope, and then one would usually start.
“Are your parents alive?” Bill asked. He was so tense, you would have thought he was back in Vietnam.
I hesitated a bit with my answer. At first I was tempted to say my mother was dead and my father was alive. Nothing against Ma, but…uh…well…well, she might watch the show and see herself in it. Lordy, she may cut me out of her will, which will solely consist of money that I gave her. As soon as she found out what my salary was, she made me feel so guilty that I promised to send her home $500 a week. All that notwithstanding, I liked my father’s memory.
“My mother’s alive, my father’s dead,” I answered. Oh, did I notice a twitch of interest?
“How’d he die?” Mary asked sans compassion. “How old were you?”
“Let’s see,” I tried to remember that painful era. “I guess I was eight years old. Dad…oh, my silly Dad…He was always trying to help people. Anyways…uh…one day this neighbor of ours was plowing his field. His cattle got loose and Dad saw them. He went to tell the farmer and of course the guy was mad. So I guess Dad, figuring he had to help, offered to plow while the guy went to get his cows. ‘Cuz see, Dad was scared of cows. He’d never have made a farmer. Dad drove the local school bus. I remember him driving it.
“Anyways, the farmer says thanks and Dad gets up on the tractor. Now, he could drive a bus but he’d never been on a tractor. Somehow he managed to jam it into high gear, the tractor took off with a jump…Dad…fell off…he fell to the ground…I wanted to help him…” It was hard to continue. The memory came rushing back.
“How could you help him? Were you there?” Mary asked. Everyone poised on the edges of their chairs, awaiting my answer. I could only nod.
“Did you see him DIE?” they asked en masse.
“I was going to tell him Mom said not to go doin’ anybody no favors. I was just passing the farmer and told him his cows were loose and he said I know and then we heard the tractor roar. We both looked and it was like I saw it in slow motion. Dad fell backwards and at first he just hit the ground and was a bit stunned, I guess. He was about to get up and I swear I could see that sheepish grin coming over his face. But…for some reason…the tractor did a circle and ran him down. Then it did it again. At first the farmer and I…we were just paralyzed…but then we ran to try and help Dad. Except that fucking tractor was keeping us away. It was like a fucking dog protecting his bone. Dad…finally…didn’t need our help anymore. He was plowed six feet under.”
BOOM! My writers went into action. It was good timing because I couldn’t continue. I sat in my chair bawling while the writers began their usual routine.
“Let’s have Peter Clifton die,” Bill suggested. “His fan mail’s been way down.”
“No, we don’t have the OK from the producers yet,” Mary replied. “Besides, Peter doesn’t have any children.”
“Wait!” Bill said. “I’m on to a good thing. Let’s have Peter discover he has a little girl, and he’s on his way to meet her, and he gets in a tractor crash…no, it’s not coming…” Bill banged his skull.
“Yes! Yes! But he’ll get in a plane crash, and the daughter can see it on the news…,” Mary continued Bill’s train of thought.
“No! The plane will crash into the lake where she just happens to be swimming, and they won’t be able to find Peter’s body…”
“And maybe he’s alive and maybe he isn’t!” Mary gleefully finished the scene. There’d be a mad flurry of keystroking. Mary finally glanced at her watch. “It’s almost lunch. This afternoon, we have to figure out the cliffhanger scene for Friday. I think Beluga should attempt suicide.”
Everyone nodded their agreement. Beluga was the character who had the most of my miseries assigned to her. At first, I thought there’d be only one character based on me but I was told it was too unbelievable that so much hardship could befall one person. My unfortunate life was to be spread out over a few characters but poor Beluga took the brunt of it. And get this – they wanted to come up with a name similar to mine, so what sounds like Alice Kumplunkem? Beluga Gotyerdinski? They seemed to think.
I gave one of my very rare executive commands. “OK. Lunch.”
“See ya later,” Bill said to me…“Think about suicide.”
This type of thing happened every day. They’d file out for lunch and I’d be left trying to sweep up my dignity. I could have quit, couldn’t I? They weren’t holding a gun to my head. No, they were holding a paycheck.
I’d pull out my low-cal yogurt, an apple and an ounce of cheese and eat in a pensive silence. Then, feeling quite down in the dumps and oh-so-sorry for myself, I’d leave the building and walk two streets over where there was a junk-food heaven haven. One day I’d have 31 flavors, the next day I’d have a whopper of a sandwich, the next day a bucket. I was drowning my sorrows in root beers and frosty shakes.
Then I’d head back to the office, undo the top button of my skirt, and talk to my writers cum psychiatrists. Once 6 p.m. rolled around, what I privately called ‘your hour’s up’ time, I was a broken women. All the writers would jovially leave, still talking about ideas for the show. No one ever said good-bye to me; I was treated like the mats under their rolling office chairs. And every evening, moments after they’d leave, I’d get a burst of ferocious pride.
“Alright, Al,” I’d say aloud, “you’re not that bad off. You’re rich. You’re in New York. You could have lots of friends.”
I’d gather my things, leave my hell on earth, and that’s when, every night, a whole
different lifestyle would begin.
* * *
Depending on how lonely I was, I’d either head for Piles o’ Pies, Little Shop of Donuts or Mascots. Piles o’ Pies sold a lot of pies, piles of them as a matter of fact. Quite delicious too. At first that was the main attraction for me, but I was aware of this black girl who was the cashier. She always seemed to be studying me.
At first Raunda didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I couldn’t get her to say more than three words back to me. I persisted in hanging out at the cafe though, buying a slice of pie and a coffee for anyone who’d care to sit and talk to me. Finally, one night, after a man had negotiated with me for two slices of Boston Cream and an herbal tea, Raunda actually spoke to me as she handed me my change.
“You must have lots of money to buy so many pies,” she said.
“I do,” I replied. “I could buy piles of them if I wanted.”
“Meet me after work,” Raunda decreed. “I get off at nine.”
It turned out that Raunda would be my friend. She intuitively seemed to know my situation. She said she was Rastafarian but I could find no such country in the atlas at work. I suspected she was African but she probably clued into the fiasco with my ex, Joe the Jerk, and didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
The deal, Raunda announced, was that I could hang out with her, but see, she liked to smoke a lot of pot, but it was expensive and she wasn’t making that much coin at the pie stand, so if I’d buy it, she’d smoke it in my presence.
Eventually we became good enough buddies that I’d get to smoke some too. As a matter of fact, we’d smoke non-stop from the moment we entered her flat. Speaking of her flat, it was nothing compared to my fully furnished suite. Raunda’s consisted of two rooms with a communal bathroom down the hall. At first I was terrified of the place, not to speak of the area she lived in. Raunda used six keys to let herself in and as soon as we’d entered, I heard what sounded like a murder in progress.
“Call the cops, Raunda!” I whispered, ready to pelt out of the place at any second. Raunda didn’t seem fazed though.
“Let’s go in my room,” Raunda suggested. We were standing in a kitchen that was smaller than my bathtub, where a month’s worth of dishes were collecting mold. Two doorways faced us. One was a red door, firmly closed, and the other merely had a beaded curtain. Raunda parted the beads. “Come on,” she said.
“Raunda!” I stage-whispered. The room had gotten strangely silent. “I don’t hear anything now. Something happened!”
“Yeah, the guy came,” Raunda replied mysteriously.
I suffered a momentary heart attack when the red door suddenly opened. A black girl, who I assumed was Raunda’s room-mate, walked out. She was followed by a well-dressed white guy. “Hi,” I introduced myself. “I’m Alice, Raunda’s friend.”
The white guy just rudely pushed past me and left the apartment. Then the room-mate did something that turned my stomach. She opened an overflowing garbage can and calmly dropped in a used condom. She looked at me, catching my disgusted face. I looked into her eyes and what with their bloodshot appearance, along with her orange lipstick and unkempt hair, I thought she was the most evil-looking person I’d ever seen. “Safe sex, huh?” I feebly joked.
“I pay most of the rent here and I don’t want you hanging out in the kitchen,” she declared.
I really feared for my life. “May I go into Raunda’s room, please? Ma’am?”
Raunda’s voice rang out. “You comin’ or not, Alice? Hi, Sugar.”
“See you in a bit, Raunda. I’ll be home early. It’s pretty fuckin’ slow out there tonight,” Sugar (give me a break!) replied and left.
Raunda came out to lock the six locks. “Was that her boyfriend?” I politely asked.
“Don’t be so naive. You really are from Toronto, aren’t you?”
So, as I soon discovered, Sugar was a real, live prostitute. At first I have to admit that I was quite affronted. I didn’t realize I was so pure. As an extra, I’ve played a hooker more times than anything else, but now I realized how off the mark I was. Nowadays, you can ask me the going rate for anything – round the world, BJ, anything – and I could give you a pretty good price. Hey! Not that I was into it! You just couldn’t help overhearing when Sugar would bring in one of her dates. First it was the haggling over the price, then it was the oohs and aahhhss and then it was the squeak of the garbage can opening. They never spent much time in the red-doored room.
I felt fairly safe in Raunda’s room. I don’t think it was originally meant to be a room. I think it was supposed to be just a storage space. All that fit in there was a mattress on the floor with a TV at the foot of it and her clothes piled at the other end. No windows or other such luxuries. Not even a lightbulb. We got some light from the kitchen and she used a lot of candles.
Raunda and I would turn on the TV set as soon as we got there, light up the scented candles and ignite a few sticks of incense. Raunda would roll a joint the size of a $10 stogie. Then she’d roll one for herself. Now, I’m not old-fashioned; I’ve been around, I’ve smoked joints before. But these were usually pencil-thin and smoked amongst five other people, and I would get a nice, silly buzz. NOW, Raunda and I would smoke our spliffs and as soon as we were done, my eyes bleeding, my balance gone, unable to breathe properly from my scorched throat, as soon as we were done, Raunda would roll another couple. We’d smoke them too.
I’d talk quite a bit throughout the evening. Raunda apparently didn’t have any stories of her own so she never interrupted. Midway through the 1 a.m. late-night movie, I’d usually pass out from one too many brain cells dying too fast. Raunda would never wake me up in the morning. I’d get up late and have no time to make it to my apartment before work. I’d enter the workplace wearing the same clothes I’d worn the day before, which delighted my writers no end.
After a night at Raunda’s, I’d spend the next day with a smoke hangover, coughing a huge hack that had people across the street looking at me. It sounded like I’d contracted a good case of tuberculosis. All day long I’d drink sodas or juice or milk shakes, anything to soothe my throat. That evening, I’d head for Little Shop of Donuts.
* * *
One night, on my way home after work, I walked past a donut shop and thought I’d have a coffee and a bag of day-olds. I suffered a pang of guilt when I thought about eating a whole bag of donuts but justified it by thinking I was saving money by buying day-old. Then I remembered that I was rich; I could eat chocolate éclairs if I wanted. Coffee and donuts were sort of my sign though; it reminded me of what I really stood for – Extra Work. It seemed life was somehow better back then. At least I was suffering humiliating experiences for the first time, not the second time for millions of TV viewers to see.
As usual, I sat at a table seating for four. I set out napkins and donuts for four people then expectantly sat down for my pre-dinner appetizer. I was only half-listening to a couple guys sitting on stools at the counter.
“So he’s sellin’ newspapers on the corner every day for twenty years, never says boo to anyone, and at night, get this, he’s the Shoe Kisser the cops have been lookin’ for the last two years.”
“Ya don’t mean that weirdo on 5th and Exeter?”
“That’s the guy! I heard he’s made out with sixty or more pairs of shoes on broads,” said the older man of the two. The crack of his ass was showing about a yard over his belt.
“They should shoot those fuckin’ perverts. Or let me at him,” said a mild-looking skinny guy. Judging by his macho line, he was probably Clark Kent. He glanced over at the waitress to see if she’d caught his threat.
My ears had perked up during their conversation. Every morning, I’d buy my newspaper from the very same man they were discussing. He’d never raise his head; just keep his eyes pointed downward. I thought he was shy and probably needed a friend as badly as I did. I’d often toyed with the idea of inviting him up for a home-cooked TV dinner one night. Matter of fact, I had next Tuesd
ay at eight in mind.
I decided to speak up. “Did you guys know him too? Want a donut?”
In time I came to know Andre and Petie quite well. Andre was the dominant force in that relationship, although I couldn’t quite figure out why. To hear him talk, he was making it with every third woman in New York, and that was because the other two-thirds were gay. That’s what he claimed. His beer gut was of award-winning proportions and none of his jeans fit. Even if he was standing up, you could still insert a quarter into his back end. His hairstyle was stuck in the ‘50s. Andre was slicking on Brylcreem as often as he lit up a cigarette.
Petie was his best buddy – a tall, anorexic, acne-plagued dude. I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘dude’ more than a couple times in my life, but that word jumps into my head when I think of Petie. He was quite nice, almost vulnerable in a way. He hated his Afro hairstyle so much, was almost ashamed of it, so he always hid it by wearing filthy white caps with stupid slogans. You could see he revered Andre. His favorite cap said ‘Kiss me! I’m with him!’ and he truly believed the cap would work in Andre’s presence. Petie often complained along with Andre about how hateful shaving was. I think it was rather a religious experience with Petie though, as it took him three weeks just to grow some peach fuzz. One day I thought I’d make him feel special by calling him Peter, but I was told it was a sissy name.
Besides Petie and Andre, our foursome consisted of Muriel, the counter-girl at Little Shop of Donuts. She was sort of seeing Andre whenever he wasn’t busy with any other available woman, but I could tell Petie had a huge crush on her. Muriel was what you could call a ‘hard’ woman. She wore make-up and nail polish and nice clothes, but on Muriel it was all blue eyeshadow and chipped brown polish and size 7 clothes on a size 14 body. She wore lipliner but someone forgot to tell her she was supposed to fill it in with lipstick. The moment we were introduced, she took me under her wing. She wasn’t in the same league as Velda but she did serve a useful purpose.