Selling Nostalgia

by Mathew Klickstein

  “Yeah, well, you’re not the ones making the decisions. Those fucking snot-nosed kids at NBC or CBS or Netflix or wherever Gil goes blowing all his retirement money on flights and hotels to have meetings to make himself feel like a big man are just meeting with him to tell their friends that night, ‘Hey, you remember Gil Gladly? That fucking guy from KidTalk? The one who stutters? Back in nineteen-eighty-who-gives-a-shit? I met him today! He was awesome!’ Who cares. They’re not gonna give him a show. They couldn’t even if they wanted to. Gil is ob-SOH-leet. We all are, honey.”

  Jayne looked down at the table. She seemed as though she was about to pass out from the exhaustion. “We all are.”

  She leaned back in her chair and seemed completely deflated, as though denigrating her old boyfriend had taken it out of her.

  Milt felt as though she had been wanting to say all of this for far too long and instead of saying it to a mutual friend of hers and Gil’s, or to a therapist, or a priest or something, she had said it to him, to Milt Siegel, some schmuck who was stupid enough to blow two years of his life and all of his career karma and friends’ favors around the country on some goddamn documentary about the guy who had apparently broken Jayne’s heart so many years ago despite still being friends with the guy, more or less.

  Why was Jayne Manning saying all of this about Gil? Didn’t she worry about Milt going off and tweeting about all of this or going to TMZ or something? She wasn’t a recognized name, but the work she’d put out had been zeitgeist-ish. Milt could make two- or four-thousand bucks selling all this shit somewhere. But somehow, Jayne knew that he wouldn’t do that. It wasn’t part of his makeup. Like Jerry Maguire, he wasn’t built that way.

  What a terrible movie.

  Heck, wasn’t she at all worried Milt would go straight to Gil himself with this information? The fact his ex-girlfriend was going around talking about him like this?

  But no. She knew Milt wouldn’t do it. He’d be too scared. Scared she’d deny. Scared she’d somehow turn it around on Milt. She had power here. He had none. The same way she clutched his hand and could likely get away with a lot more than that if she wanted. She knew Milt was weak and had nothing on her. This was how Hollywood really worked. This was not the kind of “privilege” twenty-something Brooklynites whined about on Instagram. This was the real thing.

  Milt crinkled his face. He was uncomfortable. He wanted to scratch his buttcrack for some reason, but knew, as intimate and strange as things had gotten between Jayne and he, he’d better not.

  Jayne sprang up. Whatever cocktail of meds she was very clearly operating under had waned, and she went on with her eruptive, circa 1980 Mount St. Helens rant. “Gil’s also very good at burning bridges. One of the best. And that, my friend, my sweetheart, is why he will continue to be, pardon my French, fucked. We all love him as much as you and your entire hopeless, moneygrubbing, gimmegimme generation. Yes, he can be at times unbelievably funny, smart as a whip, incredibly generous to those he deems his friends, and used to be devastatingly handsome, especially with that copper-red shock of hair. Why wouldn’t we all love Gil Gladly? But, my dear, sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes…sometimes it’s not worth the trouble.”

  Milt thought of all those rants and raves in interviews about Balloon and other people Gil had worked with. That old Vice video that had gone viral; the Twitter fights with no-name idiot trolls; Gil’s temper; his ego; his lack of decorum; his tendency to twist facts, whether intentionally or not.

  Milt also thought briefly of his father, then let that one go.

  These kinds of things were part of an element of Gil’s personality that Milt always worked the hardest at ignoring. He didn’t want to think he was doing all of this for a guy who might not have been as good a guy as he seemed, imperfect as that “good guy” might be.

  Selfishly, he also worried that if it was so easy for Gil to throw so-called friends and colleagues under the bus as Milt had watched him do either verbally or directly more than once, it would be just as easy for him to one day do the same to Milt.

  No. There was no way Gil Gladly would ever do that. Milt was sure of it.

  Gil certainly could be intimidating. In fact, most recently, Milt had more than once told himself, “If I can just get through this tour, we can sell the film and move on, and I can move on from Gil too.”

  It was a strange feeling to have about a former kids show TV star that Milt had grown up having on the TV throughout so much of his youth. It would have been like finding out that Mr. Rogers had been engaged in a series of bloody underground brutal fight clubs the entire time he was welcoming three different generations of kids to his haimish neighborhood.

  Jayne Manning mercifully let go of Milt’s hand and stood, preparing to leave. “You’re wondering why I told you all of this,” she said, while rifling around in her bag for her car keys.

  “I think I know,” Milt said, getting up. “I gotta get back.”

  “One of these days you’re going to have to stop being scared of LA and move back here if you want to really make it, Milt. You’re going to need to look inside.”

  “Mmm, thanks,” Milt said, shaking her hand before turning to leave. “See ya.”

  Jayne Manning snickered as he walked away.

  This was how people in LA, people in “the industry” talked about one another. Jayne Manning was Gil Gladly’s friend. Someone who had and likely still loved him dearly, and this was how she talked about Gil. This was why Milt was glad he had left LA when he did, had traveled the country, spent a good chunk of time in New York where at least people stab you in the front and let you know quite directly if they think you’re a scumbag, and why he was especially glad he had spent the last few years traveling outside those hallowed realms of LA and NYC, and had eventually made it to Boston to write for the paper there.

  Shitsmelled was a son of a bitch of a boss, and a son of a bitch of a person, but he was nothing compared to the vileness Milt had experienced while he had tried to make his career go in LA. Experiences like the one he was having right now with Jayne Manning.

  Milt turned to walk away from Jayne Manning, wanting to wander the beachside, listen to the waves, and feel the warm spritz for a bit before Lyfting his fifty-dollar way back to Gabe’s before getting ready to leave for the airport in the morning.

  “Good luck on the rest of the tour!” Jayne Manning called out after him. “Send my love to your wife! And tell Gil I said hi!”

  CHAPTER 17

  Milt had gotten himself to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

  Actually, that wasn’t necessarily true.

  First, there was his not having Frankly to do his bidding any longer. Frankly had already gone home to get back to his actual life as a dutiful son, older brother, and manager of a Barnes & Noble.

  Gabe had suggested he could give Milt a ride to LAX, but when it was time to go, he was still passed out in his room with the door locked, the alarm blaring, with no sign of his getting up any time soon.

  As the minutes ticked by, Milt had done the only thing he could do at this point, which was to take Philip and Annie’s offer for them to drive him, since they had an errand to run not too far from the airport anyway.

  Granted, Philip still appeared deathly ill. Pale and sweaty and a mess. But Annie seemed fine, and she hadn’t been apart from Philip, including in the bedroom where Philip stayed almost Milt’s entire visit except when he came out to smoke pot and watch bathetic TV shows in the living room/Milt and Frankly’s temporary boudoir.

  Thus, Milt assumed he’d be fine too, even though his forehead still felt a bit warm from the day before when he’d met up with Jayne Manning. His throat continued feeling slightly tingly too, but he decided to ignore it. His mother had always taught him not to put negative energy out into the world, and that’s what he was going to keep thinking about right now. Even though his throat did itch a little, and his forehead was a little warm. Oh well. He could laugh (inside) at the notion that LA had made
him physically ill this time. Annie Hall syndrome.

  He needed a ride to the airport so he could get home, see Laney, have “the talk” he’d been dreading ever since he’d left Boston, then jet out a few days later for the next stop on this hayride. This time with his wife Laney.

  The cheerful hippie Muppets Philip and Annie had dropped him off, telling Milt as he got out of their late eighties beige SUV of some indiscernible kind that he was welcome to stay over any time. Actually, Philip had said it. (Well, had coughed it out.)

  But the sentiment was certainly there, and again both Annie and he waved and smiled as Milt watched, wondering how the hell Philip could drive at LAX without watching where he was going.

  The brusque, burly lady at the luggage scan had asked if Milt wanted to take his laptop out of its carrying case, and he’d answered, “Well, I don’t want to, but I will.”

  He thought he was being cute.

  She thought…. Well, he didn’t know what she thought, but he thought it better to leave well enough alone.

  Milt grabbed all his stuff from the other side of the scanner, got his shoes that he’d also obediently taken off, and made his way to the terminal with a half-hour to spare.

  This was another reason he was proud of his heritage. Jews are just like Boy Scouts! he mused. We’re always prepared!

  He sat down and overheard an older couple arguing. Really, it was more the wife yelling at the uxorious nebbish of her husband.

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to travel with that person!” the harridan shrieked at him, expecting the threat to alter his grumbly personality at the moment. “That person” being he, the old man who was clearly in a mood she didn’t find acceptable. He hoped Laney would never yell at him in public like this, and in third person, no less.

  It reminded Milt of the kind of treatment he'd received from all those angry, middle-aged women who performed in the role of “teacher” in his elementary school days. And junior high. And high school. And most of college.

  Although, in all fairness, in college, they weren’t middle-aged. A few seemed only slightly older than he, but, boy, had they all been angry.

  He was glad he hadn’t become a teacher.

  He was definitely glad he wasn’t still a student, either. How could people, aside from doctors, lawyers, and maybe engineers, put themselves through four or eight more years of college to get a PhD? He was glad he hadn’t had the money, time, agoraphobia, or monomaniacal desire required for grad school. He’d been too busy working.

  Where would he have been if he hadn’t jumped right into the media and entertainment industries straight out of school? If he had become one of those miserable, socially awkward people hiding in a classroom for four to six more tedious years?

  But wait…was he miserable?

  Then he became depressed thinking of what a mess his life seemed at that moment. But was it really a mess? Or was it all relative, like everything else? Was everything really relative? Relative to whom? To what?

  Shut up shut shut upppppp!!

  Milt watched the older couple bickering as they faded off and away into the deluge of the airport crowd, and thought once again of the funny juxtaposition of his life right here at this time. Having just come from the childish, innocent, fancy-free epicenter of youthful nostalgia to being here now, alone in an airport, watching an old couple fighting in an embarrassing, public display.

  From there to here and here to there.

  Sitting there with his beige canvas backpack and his black laptop carrying case, he also wondered if he should text Laney. He hadn’t heard from her for a day or two and hadn’t reached out to her. He had been worrying he’d been too clingy before and that maybe he needed to keep giving her her space. Or something. Oy, wives needed to come with an instruction manual. Like the ones his dad had always used before getting started on a video game.

  There was something ironic about this thought, Milt knew, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what exactly. He felt feverish and disoriented, somewhat dizzy.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket, saw that he had an email from Jessica Chen, who apologized that they hadn’t had a chance to meet at the screening—Ah, so she had been there! Thank goodness he hadn’t met up with her in his bibulous state. Or what if they had met up, but she felt so weird about however he might have acted that she pretended like they hadn’t? She was an actress, after all. Or had been. Nah, not possible. Why would she lie like that?

  She once again included a series of headshots he didn’t download onto his phone and a link to her EPK that he didn’t click on. He swiped left with his thumb to archive the message and was just about to text Laney when the phone vibrated and he saw it was Melody calling him.

  He picked up.

  “Yo,” Milt said into the phone, widening his legs, leaning back, and relaxing as much as one could relax into his airport terminal chair. There were no other passengers around, so he felt comfortable talking at a normal volume, which for him was rather resonant.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Melody said in her sing-songy voice that was slightly low for someone as petite as she and, as always, connoted a certain indifference, as though she was calling out of obligation.

  He could also tell that Melody was multitasking. Meaning she was on the phone with him and looking at YouTube videos on her laptop on her bed. She was also more than likely playing with her fat gray kitty Minnie Mouse.

  Since Melody was about five years younger than he, she had that ADD’d millennial quality about her he always teased her over.

  “Oh, just getting it done,” Milt answered, exhaling hard.

  “You sound stressed.”

  “When am I not stressed, Melody?”

  “Yeahhhhhh.…”

  He sneezed, pulling the phone away from the spritz, then put the phone back to his ear and mouth. “I’m at LAX. My flight leaves in about a half-hour. They’ll be boarding in ten minutes, I think. It’s weird. There’s really no one else here.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Although she didn’t sound like she really cared, Milt always appreciated that she called him regularly and that she always picked up whenever he called her. It was nice being buddies with Melody, even if she tended to be in her own world most of the time when they talked. Cheaper than therapy. For them both.

  “Heading back home,” he said.

  “Yeah? You excited to see Laney?”

  “She’s coming with me to the next few screenings, actually,” Milt said, subtly shifting the conversation.

  “Oh, that’s great, Milt! I’m so happy for you and all this stuff going on with your documentary, and your new book you’re working on. I can’t believe how much you’re able to do all the time. I feel like so many things are happening in your life right now.”

  “Maybe,” Milt said, exhaling again and leaning back further in his chair, sliding down lower. “Sometimes it feels like I’m in a hamster wheel.”

  “Yeahhhh.…”

  “Even in physics, Work equals Force times Distance. If I don’t move what I’m putting Force against, then Distance is zero. Thus, no matter how much Force I apply, I end up generating zero units of Work. Hence why pushing a wall with all your might does not mean you’ve done any Work if the wall doesn’t move.”

  “That’s a damn good analogy.”

  “I know. I use it a lot. It’s just…with the kind of stuff I do for ‘work,’ it’s not like I get an A for effort, you know? I can’t exactly tell my landlord or, heaven forbid, the doctor or car payment company or whatever that I’m quote-unquote ‘working on a lot of great projects!’ exclamation-mark. They just want the check at the end of the month. Until the IRS knows I made this Gil Gladly doc, it doesn’t matter.”

  “True.”

  “It’s not Calvin and Hobbes. It’s not about building character.”

  “But you’re doing all right,” Melody said. “Right?”

  “I have some money in the bank, yeah,” Milt answered, not exa
ctly lying. “And it’s not like we’re not gonna sell the doc at some point. Just when is the thing. I don’t know. I get like this a lot, even when I am doing a lot all at once. I think a lot of this comes from my dad. If I’m not immediately getting a big check or some kind of prestigious award, he doesn’t really care. If I wanna be a writer, I have to be Stephen King. If I wanna be a filmmaker, I have to be Steven Spielberg. Otherwise, he doesn’t understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

  “That’s not true,” Melody said. “Come on. I know your dad doesn’t really feel that way. It always sounds like he’s really proud of you when you talk about him.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But…not always.”

  “Well, I never met him.”

  “Look, some of this is also a Jewish thing.”

  “No, it’s not!”

  “Yeah, it is. You wouldn’t understand because you’re goy.”

  “What’s a goy?”

  “It means you’re not Jewish, and so you wouldn’t get this whole extra thing that Jewish people—especially Jewish sons and fathers—have. Especially in the creative fields. We all talk about it all the time. Why do you think The Jazz Singer has been remade so many times?”

  “Because of the whole blackface thing?”

  Milt laughed, shifted in his seat, and stretched his neck, which popped when he cracked it hard to the right. “Never mind. So, you still up to come and see me when I’m in Portland?”

  There was a brief pause. “I don’t know, Milt. I don’t really have any extra money right now, and it’s like a four-hour drive. That’s a lot of gas money there and back. Plus, I’d have to take off the next day, which would mean I’d lose more money because I don’t get sick days yet, since I just started.”

  “Well, I could pay for your gas money or something…if you want,” Milt said, feeling a needling pang of guilt on at least two different levels.

  “Nah. That would make me feel weird, and besides, I just started, so it’s not like I can be missing days already, whether they’re paying me or not.”