I meet up with Rex at the Locust Street house, borrowed for the evening from one of his friends. Rex’s troupe is sitting around talking theater – who’s working, who’s not, what parts are coming up. They’re all well turned out, the women in evening dresses, the men in dark suits and ties. Soon as I enter they cluster around, eager to hear how the bar scene went.
‘Good first act,’ I tell them. ‘Mike’s OK. Not what I’d call a horndog, but horny enough.’ Everyone laughs. ‘Actually it was fun. I had a good time. There’s a certain pathos in being a call girl.’
‘If you say so, Tess!’ one of the women says. More laughter.
Rex motions me to a pair of chairs. He wants to confer in private.
‘Seriously, did it work for you?’
‘It did. I kept thinking of Jane Fonda in Klute, used her trick, rolling Mike’s name around in my mouth like I was tasting it. I had him going just as your goons showed up.’
The actors playing the goons come over. ‘Arm OK?’ one asks.
I nod. ‘You guys were great. Had me scared.’
They laugh and move away.
I turn back to Rex. ‘Fat Man’s nasty.’ I point him out, glaring at me from across the room. ‘Smacked me hard. Refused to speak in the car. What’s with that guy?’
‘He likes to stay in role, keep the intimidation going.’ I wince when Rex strokes my cheek. ‘Don’t worry, kid. No more hurting. Acts II and III are mind games.’
Yeah, mind-fucks, I think, dreading what’s ahead. I gesture toward a door. ‘Orgy room?’
Rex nods. ‘My horny crew of orgyists are deep into rehearsal.’
‘Uh oh …!’
He smiles. ‘Just simulated sex.’
‘Want to ask you something about Vertigo, Rex. Been years since I saw it. Way I remember, the Kim Novak character becomes obsessed with this dead woman from the past.’
‘Yeah, but, see, she’s not really obsessed with her. She’s been hired to pretend to be obsessed in order to draw the Jimmy Stewart character into the murder plot.’
‘So is Novak playing a professional actress?’
‘Not really. That’s one of the flaws in the story.’ He studies me. ‘Why so interested?’
‘It’s a great San Francisco movie, but for me that’s a really big flaw.’
I excuse myself to use the restroom. Inside I stare at my image in the mirror above the sink.
‘Hello, Chantal,’ I whisper to my reflection.
When I come back, Rex fills me in on what’s been going down: after the limo pulled away, a homeless guy approached Mike, told him the car belongs to a vicious pimp and that I, Chantal, am just one of several girls on his string. He tells Mike that Fat Man abuses his girls, that most of them expect it, and some actually like it. ‘All except Chantal,’ he tells Mike. ‘She resists, tries to set up dates on her own. Tonight she got caught. Now she’s in trouble!”
The homeless guy tells Mike he’s seen me walking around marked up pretty bad after one of Fat Man’s beatings. He also tells him how nice I am, not snobby like the others, how I always ask how he’s doing and give him a few bucks to help him out.
‘Idea is to keep Mike liking you and worrying about you,’ Rex explains.
‘Then what?’
Rex looks at his watch. ‘In a couple minutes Homeless will get rousted by a uniformed security guy. Homeless’ll call out to Mike for help as Security Guy starts to drag him away. When Mike tries to intervene, Security Guy’ll warn him off, tell him Homeless is a pest, that he makes up stories to soften up passersby before he robs them. He’ll tell him Homeless is a fake, lives in a nice apartment, and that now he’s going to take him to an alley behind the hotel and teach him to mind his own business. Just then Homeless’ll break loose, pull a knife, and stab Security Guy. This is taking place about now. Then as Security Guy lies bleeding on the sidewalk, Homeless’ll start shouting at Mike: “You stabbed him. I saw you! You did it, you son of a bitch!” That’s to put a big scare into Mike.’
‘Wow! He’s getting the full treatment.’
‘That’s what his buddies are paying for.’
‘Then?’
‘Our taxi’ll pull up. The cabbie’ll beckon Mike in, ask him where he wants to go. Soon as Mike gives this address, the cab’ll take off.’ Rex checks his watch again. ‘He’ll be here soon. Got to start blocking the party.’
He stands and calls everyone together. ‘OK, people, it’s party time. Grab your drinks and take your places. Tess, I want you to stand against the far wall. Goons, on either side of her. Tess, make nice with the guests, but don’t hide your fear. When Mike comes in we want him to see you’re still afraid. Fat Man’s ordered his goons to teach you a lesson. You know it’s coming. You just don’t know how harsh.’
Things go as planned. I’ve got to hand it to Rex: his cast does a great job giving the party an undercurrent of menace. People move in strange over-attenuated ways and make extravagant stylized gestures as they converse. The women are gothed-up with weird eyeshadow, deeply colored lipstick, and overdrawn eyebrows. The men look feral and leer like rodents. People light up cigarettes and deeply exhale. Others slosh glasses of ice and amber-colored liquid. Faces grow hard, expressions brittle. The room rebounds with whispers broken by inappropriate cascades of laughter. Sinister electronic music pulses in the background.
Mike enters, disoriented. He doesn’t know why the party scene disturbs him. Something off here, he thinks. He peers around, spots me, and starts to approach. I shake my head to warn him off, but he comes up to me anyway. I tell him I can’t talk to him, then glance furtively at Fat Man sitting in a throne-like chair nearby.
Fat Man beckons Mike over. He tells Mike he’s welcome to stick around and enjoy himself, but that I’m out of bounds.
‘You don’t want to play with her,’ Fat Man instructs Mike. ‘She puts on airs but she’s just a cheap junkie whore.’
Mike, taken aback, starts to protest. Fat Man shuts him down with a sneer. ‘Look at her,’ Fat Man tells him. ‘She’s shaking. She needs a fix. My boys’ll give it to her. Then you can watch her give head in the backroom. I got clients in there waiting to be serviced. They paid good money. Time for Chantal to earn her keep.’
The goons frog-march me into the orgy room. Through the open doorway Mike can see a foursome of swingers frolicking naked on a huge bed. He watches as the goons roughly strip me to my underwear. Then they bend me over and hold me down as an older woman with heavy black eyeshadow and a haughty manner approaches with a stage-syringe. I scream, struggle, try to fight loose, but the goons hold me tight as she injects me. Then the goons rip off my bra, shove me toward the bed, and force me onto my knees.
Fat Man appears in the doorway. ‘Get to work!’ he commands. Fat Man turns to Mike, laughs then slams the door shut.
At this point, Rex, playing a new character, Friendly Guest, approaches Mike, beckons him aside, explains that Fat Man doesn’t like it when a girl ‘tries to go into business for herself.’ He tells Mike I’m out of bounds, but there’re other girls available who’ll give him as good a time. All he has to do is point and pay. Meantime, as guests enter and exit the orgy room, each time slamming the door behind them, Mike catches quick glimpses of me being used.
‘Forget her!’ Friendly Guest urges Mike. ‘Fat Man runs a tight ship.’
When, finally, thankfully, the glimpses-of-the-orgy sequence is done, I get up from the bed and retreat again to the restroom to calm myself. Again I regard my face in the mirror.
‘You think you’re a pricey escort,’ I instruct my reflection, ‘but you’re just a cheap whore on Fat Man’s string.’
Having put myself in a mind-set appropriate for the ordeal to come, I mess up my makeup then rejoin the goons in the orgy room. The woman with the needle uses a lipstick to write SLUT in big red letters across my back and PIG across my bare chest. She ties my hands in front of me, buckles a dog collar around my neck, attaches a leash, and hands the leash to one of the goons whi
le the other opens the door and pushes me out into the party room.
I’m poised now to make my drugged-up, stumbling way through the party. This ‘Walk Of Shame,’ Rex has warned me, will be the most difficult portion of my role. I close my eyes and repeat the mantra I always murmur to myself before I go on stage: You’re a warrior-actress. Now go out there and kill it!
I start forward. The guests part to make way for me. All eyes are upon me. There’s catcalling and hooting as they delight in my degradation. I steel myself: Don’t cry! Don’t show them your hurt! And so I force myself to face their hard brittle smiles, my head held high, face expressionless. But even as I do their eyes drill me. They want to unmask me, pierce me, rend my soul. Safe in their cruel communal schadenfreude, they want more than anything to see me break. It takes all my will to deny them.
Halfway through the ordeal one of the goons pushes me hard. I stumble, fall to the floor. The other goon yanks me back up by my leash. The crowd reacts with smirks. I hear someone say: ‘She got outa line. She’s being punished.’ A ghoulish woman brings her head close to mine, blows cigarette smoke into my face. Then I catch a quick glimpse of Mike. He’s watching, unable to resist feasting on the sight of me. Our eyes lock. I see compassion in his. I’m grateful for that. I’m really feeling the humiliation now. I want to blot out the hoots of the crowd by withdrawing into myself. The sounds of mob cruelty blur together, becoming a low-volume hiss. Mike’s eyes and mine are still locked, the moment between us prolonged. Finally my eyes are torn from his when the woman who blew the smoke grasps hold of my collar, yanks my head toward her, stares ferociously at me, then spits into my face.
Isn’t Mike supposed to join the mob, join in the derision? That he does not, that he cares, that he’s appalled by what I’m being put through – that gives me strength.
Perhaps there is some kernel of decency in this cruel world …
Then it’s out the front door and into a waiting limo that transports me to the private strip club, where, in the final act, I will further humiliate myself by pole-dancing topless in front of panicked Mike and leering Fat Man for the delectation of an audience of grinning voyeurs.
On the pole, twirling and lewdly working my mouth, I see tears of compassion forming in Mike’s eyes. Seeing him moved by my agony, I let loose myself. I hadn’t planned on bawling, but the tears come and then I can’t help myself, they stream down my cheeks. But even as they cloud my vision, I continue to work my body robotically against the pole, thrusting my pelvis at it again and again, reveling in the degradation, enjoying it … then twirling and twirling and thrusting and thrusting until finally I collapse in a heap.
As the goons drag me off-stage I think: Thank God it’s over …
There’s a small after-party for the cast at Buena Vista Café. Here, sipping Irish coffees, we watch raw video of our performances. Rex congratulates us, tells us we all did a terrific job. He orders another round, then raises his glass to me: ‘To Tess, our fab femme fatale!’
Everyone applauds.
The goons are warm, solicitous. Fat Man and the woman who wielded the syringe and wrote with lipstick on my body turn out to be husband and wife. They kindly confess to being great fans of my performance work.
At one a.m., as I’m about to step into the rented limo that will take me home, Rex tells me that on their way out of the strip club Mike asked for my real name and number.
‘He got pissed when I refused. I had to remind him you were a professional actress giving a one-time performance. He said he understood that but insisted I give you his card.’ Rex hands it to me. ‘He said to tell you he hopes you’ll call him. Said he liked you a lot and would very much like to ask you out.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s Chantal he wants to date. Not Tess.’
‘He seemed nice. A lot nicer than Jerry Hunsecker.’
We laugh, then set up a time for Rex to meet me at Grace’s house for a first full rehearsal of Recital.
‘Looking forward to getting your take,’ I tell him.
‘Looking forward to giving it to you. I like your script and I got a few ideas.’ Rex hugs me. ‘Listen, I know tonight was rough. It was a tough role to play. You were brave, Tess – damn brave to take it on.’
‘I enjoyed the slovenliness of it,’ I tell him. ‘It was definitely an adventure. At the end there I got carried away. Those tears were real.’
‘I know.’ He strokes my cheek. ‘You did great, babe. Don’t know anyone else could’ve killed it the way you did.’
‘Thanks,’ I tell him. ‘But please, Rex, next time cast me as the dominatrix.’
Riding back to Oakland, I realize that when Mike and I shed tears as I worked the pole, we did so for different reasons. Mike teared up with pity for Chantal. I wept because, emotionally overwrought, I needed to purge my pain.
Traffic is light on the Bay Bridge. As we leave Yerba Buena Island and start across the suspension span, I’m moved by the profile of downtown Oakland, dark city towers limned by the light of the three-quarter moon.
Since moving into the loft I’ve often wondered why people went to Chantal Desforges, what she offered them, what needs she fulfilled. Tonight’s ordeal gives me insight: if they can survive the kind of degradation I just went through, go through it and come out safe on the other side, then perhaps they feel, as I do now, steeled and empowered.
Yes, that could be it: Chantal gave her clients a safe way to enact the humiliations we all endure, then transform those painful feelings into erotic pleasure and release. She provided the pain that can obliterate pain. No wonder they went to her, paid her handsomely, and later were grateful for her artful abuse. She gave them one of the most valuable things one person can give another: strength to carry on.
ELEVEN
Vienna, Austria. Sunday, April 6, 1913. A glorious spring day. The air is balmy, yet there’s a dour mood in the city, an intimation of war.
The young man, sitting on a bench in the park opposite the Votiv Church, waits nervously. Beside him, a small portfolio made of marbled black-and-white cardboard tied shut with a gray ribbon.
Lou, wearing a loose-fitting cloak, arrives looking rushed … as indeed she is for this will be her last day in Vienna. She is due in an hour at Freud’s home on Berggasse for a farewell drink.
As soon as she spots the young man, she strides toward him. He rises, gestures for her to join him on the bench. Noting his new shoes and new green Loden forester’s jacket, she nods and sits.
‘Please understand,’ she tells him, ‘I have only a few minutes. Though I resolved not to meet you again, I was sufficiently moved by your latest letter to change my mind. You begged for this meeting, said you had something important to tell me. Please say what it is, and make it short as I’m soon expected somewhere else.’
The young man nods. He addresses her gallantly. ‘First, thank you for coming. I am grateful for that. I asked to meet with you because I heard you were leaving Vienna and I wanted to see you once more before you left. In fact, I’ll be leaving myself next month. Since I last saw you my situation has changed. My father’s estate was finally settled. I received my share and am now better off than I’ve been in years. I’ll be heading soon to Munich with the intention of seeking entrance to the Art Academy. And if war should come, as most people believe, I prefer to serve in the German rather than the Austrian army.’
Lou nods, wondering where this is leading.
‘Meeting you,’ he continues, ‘has been important to me. Although we only met three times, those occasions were memorable and I shall not forget them. Nor shall I forget your kindness, willingness to listen and advise. I asked to meet with you because I wanted to give you a farewell gift, a small token of my appreciation.’
‘That’s not necessary. Whatever I gave you was given freely without expectation.’
‘I understand. Let me just say that though my gift is small it is also heart-felt.’ He holds up the portfolio. ‘A single drawing which I believe may interest you
. I would prefer that you not open this until after I leave.’
He pauses. Studying him, she sees him harden up his eyes the way people do when they’re trying to conceal strong feelings.
‘That’s really all I have to say,’ he tells her. ‘I understand you’re pressed so I won’t take any more of your time. Please believe me when I tell you that I respect you greatly and apologize for anything I’ve done that may have distressed you.’
He rises, takes her hand. ‘Goodbye, Frau Lou. I wish you a safe journey.’
And with that he clicks his heels, bows formally, then turns and walks away, leaving her sitting alone on the bench.
She watches him as he crosses the park, then heads up Alserstrasse. When he is out of sight, and she is certain he’s not lingering in order to follow her, she stands, then starts walking swiftly toward Berggasse for her farewell meeting with Freud.
A few minutes later, arriving at Freud’s residence, Lou is greeted by Freud, his wife, Martha, and eighteen-year-old daughter Anna, with whom she’s recently struck up a friendship. After a celebratory drink with the family, she joins Freud in his study where they discuss several of his latest ideas as well as her plan to open a psychoanalytic practice in Göttingen.
At one point in the conversation she asks if he remembers counseling her to accede to entreaties for a meeting by a young man who’d been stalking her.
‘Yes, the street artist. You told me you met with him several times.’
‘The meetings were useful to a point, but when he became too familiar I had to cut him off. Just before coming here I met with him briefly in Votivpark. He wanted to say goodbye, thank me for my advice, and present me with a gift.’ She shows Freud the portfolio. ‘He’s off to Munich himself next month. He believes there will be a war, and he prefers to serve in the German army.’
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