Dead Stars

by Bruce Wagner

  Rikki was back at 18:26 on the Jap schoolgirl timeline, he noticed his pants had fallen down around his ankles just like Dr. Patricia, he innerly laughed about that—you know, like, well that’s how everybody winds up one way or the other, all the boys and the girls with their pants ’n panties down around their ankles, but he was too busy rubbing one off to let it brake the flow—bout to jizz then suddenly a tiny RON JEREMY popped up huddling next to an outrageously pink, boomerang-curved penis, looked like a 50-foot parenthesis . . . the skinternet had driven a stake through the of porn, the skeevy muthers were suffering (everyone but Sasha Grey), nothing more pitiful than an O.G. pornstar out of work, even Ron the Hedgehog Jeremy had been forced to diversify, putting silly putty penis elongator pills in his hornporn portfolio. Rikki was still jacking when the words of a satisfied customer crisscrossed the veiny hard-on: “This shit is like steroids for your dick! I’m almost 10" long!” Rikki x’d & ‹’d to get back to the violated schooljap but got one of those skanky live-videos instead, a titjobbed quiff in a cubicle with the ugliest curtains known to man in the known world strung up behind them like they do, hooker Bin Ladens making sure no one can identify their homely shit & locate what cave they’re in, like anyone’d be lookin. He MUTEd to kill the tinny come-ons of the bitch who was trying to rope lonelyass pervs into paying for a private chat—————then right then 10 thumbnails of big-jug skunky skanks popped up, fucking assault on his screen, dialog-box captions informing him they were all in the vicinity, scarily zipcode-close to Rikki’s house, 2 white girls in Beverlywood, 1 in Castle Heights, 3 in Mar Vista, 7 (mixed bag) in Culver City, 4 in Santa Monica, 3 (cute) little niggers in Westchester, all asking if he was horny 2nite & wanted to fuck, he forgot to turn off the location thing but was near the end, too close to webcumming to to System Preferences, but then he got paranoid someone maybe just now hacked into his iCam & was already broadbanding his private home alone self-soothing jackfest to the world——————cock in hand, he refreshed the screen which now featured a banner celebrating the tech proficiency of the tube he had currently engaged, its corporate slogan crawled across the top of the screen: “WE INNOVATE—YOU MASTURBATE”—then it said CLOSE AD and he clicked the x but it was one of those new x’s that were fake, when you ’d all it did was magic carpet you to a new site, you hadn’t closed anything, you’d opened tubeworld & called in the horndog hounds from hell, they knew you were jacking, the whole world was, & all they wanted was to hyperlinkspam you right when you were cumming, they had you by the balls in the palm of their hand————fuck these mutherfuckers————Rikki was forced to esc , he closed the site & all the herds of x’s that had silently sprouted like deathcaps while he was doing his Doc Patricia thing, closed all the open Windows, cleared all his ogling tubular Google history, logged out, shut down & walked away.

  Without coming.

  And felt like whoa, not too happy with himself. Spanking to girl-rape wasn’t exactly a big self-esteem elongator. You better than that nigger, you know you are. The wetness in his underwear at the tip of his cock made him feel pervy, like when he got beat in a group home for nocturnaling on the sheets.

  He jacked and came & rolled some purp. About a ½hour later, he jacked again. Then he watched incest porn and jacked.

  EXPLICIT

  [Michael]

  Deep Throat

  When

  the letter arrived by pouch he was in Bermuda watching Glee with his son.

  A copy came to three separate places: his agency, his publicist, and Sloan-Kettering, where he’d done his radiation and chemo. Written on flower-patterned stationery in the looping penmanship of a child, you could make out the inchoate cursive it would ripen into a few years down the line.

  Mr. Michael Douglas,

  My name is Telma Belle Peony Ballendyne. (Belle is my grandma’s name & Peony is my mom’s favorite flower and mine too! though Peony isn’t really on my birth certificate, but Belle is!!) I am 13 years old and a Kansurvivor. (YES I KAN!) I became a HERO (not victim) of this terrible disease at the age of 9 years old and have been Kancer-free for 4 years now, making me the youngest Kansurvivor in America and maybe the world! The doctors decided that it was medically necessary to perform a double mastectomy, for which I am also Guinness World Record Book-bound. My father succumbed to K (of his colon) when I was just 3-years-old. There is a LOT more of my story which I will not BORE you with (at this time! ) but that you can casually access on my webpage www.TelmaTheKancerSlayer.com, also there is a lot of interesting/fun/educational information on YoungestKansurvivor@TelmasKancerKidsArmy. My twitter is @telmasurvivor and I currently have 48,000 FaceBook friends to date. I also currently blog for HuffPost, and many others, and was a contributer (the youngest) to a book for children called “I Don’t Think We’re in Kancer Anymore.” If you google “Telma Ballendyne HERO Youngest Cancer” (my “K” hasn’t caught on with everyone yet but just you wait, it will!), you’ll find me on YouTube as keynote speaker at the CNBC Heroes Ball and numerous other events in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Boston and New York. My FaceBook page (13,469 friends!!!!! And counting!!!!) has totally rad pics of me and my mom and FLOTUS (Michelle) at the White House, and me with Sasha. Malia is not in the pictures because she was with her grandma who wasn’t feeling well that day

  . . . & by the way, if you’re wondering why I spell this terrible disease with a “K” it is NOT to be kute but rather because I think we HEROES can take some of its power away. By not even respecting it enough to spell it rightly (korrectly?), we thumb our noses in its face !! and also, it’s not as scary with a “K,” the Kancer Kidz use Ks for “kandy kane” and that is why I encourage all Kancer Kidz in Telma’s Heroes to ALWAYS spell it this way.

  Currently, I live alone together with my mom in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, which I am sure you have past through so many times (motoring on Motor Boulevard!) on your way to 20th-Century Fox Studios, the studio you chose to release some of your so many block-busters such as Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (my favorite), Romancing the Stone (my mom’s favorite) and so many others too numerable to mention! Michael, I am SO GLAD AND HAPPY WE ARE KANSURVIVORS TOGETHER!!!! (I am sorry I didn’t write you when this first happened to you. Please forgive me, please)

  There are TWO reasons I would like to now meet you and have lunch or dinner with you or if you don’t have time I could come over for some tea. The more you get to know me you’ll see how PUSHY I can be!!! But pushy people gets things done, don’t they. I’m going to start a Telma’s Pushy People HEROES Army!

  Here are the TWO reasons of which I have spoken:

  1) I believe it to be pearative that ALL KANSURVIVOR-HEROES should meet each other because we need to set the example of COURAGE in the face of Iniquity to those who have gone before us and those who will be ahead. We are FAMILY and there is as my Mom says STRENGTH IN NUMBERS!

  2) My dream is to be a star on the amazing GLEE show (also made by your friends the 20-th Century Fox people. Is Fox different from 20th Century Fox?!! Someone tell me please, I have always wanted to know!!!) Perhaps you might be able to aid me in this endeavor. GLEE I know is in decline but also know it can as my mom said recapture the national conversation. It is such a wonderful example to all kids, whatever be their diversity, & I know it would be such a cool place to spread the Word . . . of HOPE!!!!!!

  I thank you Michael Douglas for your time and have enclosed a paper with all of my contacts & information, and weblinks too. By the way confidentially speaking, my MOM has assured me that you are HER hero for so many reasons (I think she has a crush!!! ) but I would like to state that I am writing this MYSELF with NO OUTSIDE INSENTIVE and when I told her I was my Mom rolled her eyes and said, “Sweetheart, if Mr. Douglas contacts you I promise I will drop everything and take you to him for high tea, be it in Los Angeles or be it in New York or be it the Bermuda Islands.”

  ALL OF MY LOVE to you and your beautiful wife Catherine and your BEAUTIFUL children Dylan and Cary
s as well (I promise not to ever spell it Katherine Karys!!!)

  Love,

  ME aka Telma aka Hervivor (my “coined” word for girl survivors!) aka the Kancer Slayer aka Just Plain GRRRRRRRRL

  Gutsy little gal.

  Helluva story there . . .

  He had his own special needs kid. The letter really touched him.

  Since going public with his illness, Michael had received thousands of beautiful emails & what have you, and made a personal vow to answer them all. The postcards and letters were easy enough (tho there was a mountain of them), but he had to put together a small webteam to triage everything else. Occasionally, a note like Telma’s slipped under the transom and touched him—one person’s karma touching another’s, an interaction somehow meant to be. Nothing New Agey about it, either; after what he’d been through, the actor found himself letting go of a lot of formerly glib, judgey generalizations. Now his days were infused by an alchemy of subtle grace he’d never known. The good days, anyway.

  Girl had some serious heart. A full mastectomy at nine—holy shit. If we can find a way to bottle your courage, he wrote back, the two of us will never have to work again. He said he’d probably be in LA sometime in the next few months and would absolutely take her up on her offer. I’ll supply the crumpets, and my friends Fortnum & Mason will take care of everything else. “Hervivor”—that made him smile. She’d been through the ringer, that one, but still had hella spark, hella gumption.

  He’d call Ryan to arrange a visit to the set, even a sitdown with the casting folks. Made him smile.

  . . .

  Funnily enough, there were just a couple things he could tolerate entertainment-wise during chemo/radiation. One was Glee and the other was the movie All That Jazz. (Who’d a thunk?) Amid all the nausea, weakness & general tsuris, he even managed to drop Ryan Murphy a line to tell him as much, something he probably never would have done if his kids weren’t such fans of the show. He didn’t know Ryan, but got a lovely note back the very next day saying how moved he was that Michael had taken the time. He said he’d love it if he dropped by, that the cast would be “absolutely thrilled.”

  Next month, he would be in LA making a film with Larry Fishburne. He asked Cat, Why don’t we put out a feeler about you doing a guest thing? She said, Naw, they wouldn’t want an old broad. He said, Don’t be so modest, they’d kill to have you on the show. They’re looking for guest stars in your age group: you’re their next choice after Betty White. She laughed. But she was an actor, which meant she was worried about being rejected. That’s just the way we are, no matter how many awards they give us. Professional hazard.

  –You loved what it did for Gwyn. Totally revived her career.

  –Is that what you’re saying, baby? That my career needs reviving?

  –Of course not. Wrong word. [light/fun] Refreshing. Your career needs refreshing. Refresh the page.

  –[sexy, like a horse rearing up] Ho ho!

  –I think it’d be fun. You could have fun with it. Gwyn went in and had fun, it was contagious, & suddenly she’s singing on the Grammies and touring with Cee Lo. Ryan’s writing her a musical for chrissake.

  –[sassy/blood up] Is that what I’m supposed to be doing? Touring? You know, maybe you’re right, maybe I should be touring. Or better yet, why don’t we see if I can do Dancing With the Stars.

  –Come on, Cat, you just won a fucking Tony.

  –[all Welsh & fiery] Or maybe I should just latch on to Beyoncé. Isn’t she Gwyn’s bestie? Chill with Gwyn & Jay-Z and do fuck-all———

  As an actor, he got it, that fear of being shot down thing, or even the living up to Gwyneth thing. Probably dumb to have brought up. But does she really think I wouldn’t protect her? Afterall, he was Michael Douglas, and knew a few things. His wife was still hurting after all the crap people wrote on the Internet (Oh She Bipolar NOT!!! Just spoiled & beautiful can be the Problem sometime she wonts attention What a way to get it!!)(It may very well be that she is in the process of being replaced with a younger woman. Given his history, this would not surprise me in the least)(she is Roman Catholic he is Jew they are lost christ is the only one who brings peace) but he knew she’d have a blast. Maybe he’d approach Ryan—if he didn’t spark to it, that would be that. Catherine would never know.

  Ryan Murphy, Glee’s creator, was some kind of multifarious genius. A few years back he had a show on cable called Nip/Tuck, a superlatively sophisticated “plastic surgeons gone wild” soap that MD thought was inordinately, outrageously great. It was super-sexual, super-smart, super out-there, & for a while (to his mind) there was nothing on HBO or anywhere else that could touch it. The show didn’t just break taboos, it diced, sliced, fucked, & burned them, then fucked them again. (His favorite arc was Famke Janssen as a transexual life coach who was sleeping with her stepson.) It took a moment, but Ryan made the seamless transition to network—Glee—where the zeitgeist (and the money) was. And just when Glee was becoming a cultural phenom, off he went to direct Julia in Eat, Pray, Love. Didn’t seem to be anything the man couldn’t do.

  Glee was fun & frothy & rude, with that kick musicals always gave him. Watching it with his kids was a gas. But where did All That Jazz come from, & why now? Why would he find himself reveling in that chronicle of a death foretold, during chemo no less? Michael had always been riveted by Fosse, he related to the drugs and Ziegfeldian crash&burn grandeur, the eyes-wide-open chronicle of self-destruct, he was held in thrall by the outsized, nakedly romantic, hypersexually sustained self-takedown. Art as intervention . . . he felt deeply the trajectory of Fosse’s career as well: from unknown dancer to unknown actor to wham! genius of American dance blam! Academy Award-winning film director who worked maguslike without a net but never (not really) fell to earth. In the cold heat of Fosse’s shadow, Michael was humbly reminded of his own (supremely successful) professional life: from unknown actor to unknown-then-wham!-known TV actor to blam! Academy Award-winning producer to Academy Award-winning actor—albeit it sans defining genius, at least in his own eyes. If anything, the actor’s genius resided in the shrewd custodianship of his instincts. He had no problem acknowledging that somewhere in there was real talent, but had privately fretted over his creative quotient for years. Since the cancer (all the awards & past acclaim aside), he’d begun believing (with some chagrin) that his entire legacy was in danger of slipsliding away into a sort of mega-televisionistic triumph, a Cuckoo’s Nest producer’s credit & a HERE LIES GORDON GEKKO written on his grave. Hey, Michael, not fair to compare, he’d say, becoming his own life coach. And to Bob Fosse no less! What’s more important? A man’s work or how he lives and loves? You came back from the dead. You’re shits and giggles rich. Your wife is beyond beautiful & you love her like you thought you could never love a woman before. Two beautiful kids whose rollicking wildhearted innocence feeds you and breaks your heart . . . . . . . . so eff being a fuckin genius, it’s too late anyway, you’re old old old, you’re done. Time to rest on the laurels and smell the cancerfree roses——

  ——NOPE.

  Sorry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Still mesmerized:

  still covetous:

  of Fosse’s psycho panache.

  That petite, coiled athleticism; those god-perfect reflexes; that aesthetic of the twitchy, animal-pawed psychosexual dance. Michael never told anyone, but he’d always wanted to move like that—who wouldn’t?—black derby, black bodysuit, black malice/mischief pulsing thru intricate, ladder-hanging routines, the impossible legerdemain that made it look easy. (Hell, Michael Jackson wanted to be Bob Fosse.) The actor ached to dance like him, had that closeted, heavy, sell-your-soul yearning, the way some people would kill to be able to sing. To be a rock star . . . . . . . . . . Michael was almost religiously enamored of that distinctive, distinctively American genius of how Fosse moved, glided, hunched, lurched, swaggered, carom’d, winked, locked, loaded & sprung, the soaring sex of his fight and flight, the rave
nous twinkling gaiety (his passion for dance surprised Catherine when she learned of it, & was the thing that really won her over). More than anything, MD admired the balls-out vulnerability of the man, the fearless transparency, the diamondhard chestpained breathless rockface nobility of shared sheer risk. No one knew it, but his decades-old man-crush was the reason he took on the role of Zach, the director in A Chorus Line; the offer to embody his hero was irresistible. Nicole Fosse was a dancer in the film, and he spent as much time as he could talking to her about her dad.

  All his life he’d prided himself on being a chameleon. Ambition and good fortune had allowed him to do spectacularly well with the middling artistic hand he’d been dealt, and for that he was grateful; his genius lay not in the art of his craft but in the seasonal confounding & upending of expectations, a nearly mischievous, overreaching, against-the-odds grab at the brass ring. Another thing he’d never shared with anyone, not even his wife (especially not her, he had his pride): the vain notion there was the possibility of a discernible, other-than-entrepreneurial genius nestled in some frozenly findable place within, an aspect of MD transcending his populist iMDb filmography. There came days now where he felt tough enough to storm the gates of heaven & snatch his prize from the gods; & (mostly) nights when all he sought was sleep. It was always said to seize the day, but why not seize the night? The cancer war had bestowed upon him strength and validation, & the spoils necessary to affect his new venture—an excavation of long-buried things. He would drag them into the moonshadows. It was time to dig for hidden codices & calendars, forgotten scriptures, scripts & sundials bearing signs & symbols written in a mother tongue he’d never bothered to learn. He would need to draw on that same courage he had summoned in the dark public noon of his disease, and see himself at last for what he was: either artist or quixotic fool—a brutal, delicate, holy enterprise.