Sometimes she has an actual climax. Or something in the pit of her belly. A squirmy squealing sensation rising to a shocked and disbelieving crisis, then out like a switched-off light. Is that an orgasm? Sort of, she’s forgotten. But murmuring, “Oh, darling, I love you. Love love love you.” And this is true! Enraptured thinking how once, as a girl-wife, she’d clutched her husband’s hand in a movie house in Mission Hills watching this man, her lover, as a brash boy pilot in The Young Aces: the way he’d parachuted down, down, down to the earth amid smoke and gunfire and nearly unbearably suspenseful movie music, and could Norma Jeane have ever guessed she’d one day be making love with that very man, what astonishment!
“Of course, it isn’t the same man, I guess. It never is.”
Behind the blinding klieg lights and hidden in the strategic shadows beyond, the Sharpshooter. Nimble as a lizard squatting on a garden wall in zip-up night-colored rubber surfer’s suit. It’s a matter of conjecture even among those in the know: is there a single Sharpshooter in southern California or are there a number of Sharpshooters? It makes sense (common sense!) that there would be a number of Sharpshooters assigned to specific districts of the United States, with a concentration on notorious Jew-saturated regions like New York City, Chicago, and L.A./Hollywood. In the sensitive night scope of his high-powered rifle the Sharpshooter calmly observes the oil mega-millionaire’s guests. It’s an early, innocent era of surveillance, he can’t pick up their words, even their shouted words, amid so much hilarity. Does he hesitate, seeing the quasi-familiar faces of the stars among the others? Always, seeing a “star” face, you feel a slight recoil, a stab of disappointment, as of a wish too readily granted. Yet how many beautiful faces! And powerful men’s faces, blunt craggy pushed-out brows, skulls oversize and rounded as bowling balls, glistening insect eyes. Black tie, tuxedos. Starched frilled shirts. These are elegant glittery folks. Yet the Sharpshooter, a practiced professional, is swayed by neither beauty nor power. The Sharpshooter is in the hire of the United States, and beyond the United States in the hire of Justice, Decency, Morality. You could say in the hire of God.
This is the balmy-breezy eve of Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. At the oil mega-millionaire’s French Normandy estate in the hills of prestigious Bel Air. Norma Jeane is thinking Why am I here among strangers? even as she’s thinking One day I will live in a mansion like this, I promise! She’s uneasy, sensing herself being observed. Eyes drift onto “Marilyn Monroe” as moths are attracted to light. She’s wearing a low-cut lipstick-red dress that reveals a good deal of her breasts and clings to her hips and narrow waist. A sculpted doll, yet she’s moving. She’s animated and smiling and clearly very very happy to be among such exalted company! And that fine-spun cotton-candy platinum hair. And those translucent blue eyes. The Sharpshooter is thinking he has seen this one before, didn’t this juicy blonde sign a petition defending Commies and Commie-symps, defending those traitors Charlie Chaplin and Paul Robeson (who’s a nigger in addition to being a traitor, and an uppity nigger at that); this girl’s name is on file, however many names and aliases she has, the State can track her. The State knows her. The Sharpshooter lingers on “Marilyn Monroe,” fixing her squarely in his rifle scope.
Evil can take any form. Absolutely any form. Even a child form. The force of evil in the twentieth century. Must be identified and eradicated like any source of plague.
And beside the rising starlet “Marilyn Monroe” there’s V, the veteran actor, war-hero patriot of The Young Aces and Victory Over Tokyo, films the Sharpshooter thrilled to in his youth. Are these two an item?
If I was a true tramp like Rose I’d want all these men. Wouldn’t I?
Partly the party was in celebration of the Hollywood Heroes.
Norma Jeane hadn’t known beforehand. She hadn’t known that Mr. Z, Mr. D, Mr. S, and others would be there. Smiling at her with angry hyena teeth.
Hollywood Heroes: The patriots who’d saved the studios from the wrath of America and financial ruin.
These were the “friendly” witnesses who’d testified in Washington before the House Un-American Activities Committee, righteously denouncing Communists and Communist sympathizers and “troublemakers” in the unions. Hollywood was being unionized, it was Commies who were to blame. There was handsome leading man Robert Taylor. There was dapper little Adolphe Menjou. There was suave-talking, perpetually smiling Ronald Reagan. And homely-handsome Humphrey Bogart, who’d initially opposed the investigations and then abruptly recanted.
Why? Because Bogie knows what’s good for him like the rest of us. Ratting on your friends, that’s the test of a true patriot. Ratting on your enemies anybody can do.
Norma Jeane shuddered. She whispered to V, “Maybe we should leave? I’m afraid of some people here.”
“Afraid? Why? Your past catching up with you?”
Norma Jeane laughed, leaning against V. Men were such jokers!
“I t-told you, darling: I don’t have any past. ‘Marilyn’ was born yesterday.”
What a shrieking! Like babies bayoneted.
They were gorgeous iridescent green-and-blue peacocks strutting and shaking their heads in twitchy motions like Morse code. The party guests clucked and cooed at them. Clapped their hands to startle them. Strange to Norma Jeane that the peacocks’ widespread peacock tails weren’t erect but were dragged ingloriously behind the birds on the ground. “It’s like they’re a burden to them, I guess? Such big beautiful heavy tails to carry around.” All evening Norma Jeane had been hearing herself utter flat, banal words for lack of a script. When isolated words came to her like valediction, ecstasy, altar, she could not speak them, for what did they mean in the context of the Texas oil mega-millionaire’s estate? Norma Jeane had no idea. And V would scarcely have heard her above the din.
They were walking along a serpentine path beside an artificial mountain brook. On the other side of the brook were more peacocks, as well as graceful upright birds with lewd neon-pink plumage—“Flamingos?” Norma Jeane had never seen flamingos close up. “Such beautiful birds! They’re all alive, I guess?” The oil mega-millionaire was a famed amateur collector of exotic fowl and beasts. Guarding the front gate of his estate were stuffed elephants, with curving ivory tusks. Their eyes were light reflectors. So lifelike! Atop the roofs of the French Normandy château were stuffed African vultures, rows of them like ominous furled black umbrellas. Here beside the brook was a South American spotted puma in a cage, and inside a large wire enclosure were howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and bright-feathered parrots and cockatoos. Party guests were admiring a giant boa constrictor in a tubular glass cage, looking like a long fat banana. Norma Jeane cried, “Ohhh!—I wouldn’t want that guy to hug me, no thanks.”
It was a cue for V to playfully hug Norma Jeane around the rib cage. But V, staring at the enormous snake, missed his cue.
“Oh, what’s that?—such a big, strange pig!”
V squinted at a plaque embedded in a palm tree. “A tapir.”
“A what?”
“Tapir. ‘Nocturnal ungulate of tropical America.’”
“Nocturnal what?”
“Ungulate.”
“Goodness! What’s a tropical ungulate doing here?”
Blond Norma Jeane spoke in exclamations to hide her growing anxiety. Was she being watched? By hidden eyes? Behind the restless klieg lights scanning the crowd? At times, raked by the lights? V’s handsome face appeared bleached out, a fine-wrinkled parchment mask. His eyes were just sockets. What was the purpose in being here? A sweat droplet, coarsened by talcum powder, inched downward between Norma Jeane’s big beautiful breasts in the snug red dress.
Always there is a script. But not always known to you.
At last they moved upon her.
She’d been waiting, and she knew.
Like hyenas circling. Grinning.
George Raft! A low suggestive voice. “Hel-lo, ‘Marilyn.’”
Bat-faced Mr. Z, head of production at The Studi
o. “‘Marilyn,’ hel-lo.”
Mr. S and Mr. D and Mr. T. And others Norma Jeane could not have identified. And the Texas oil mega-millionaire who was a principal investor in Niagara. Their gargoyle faces shot with shadow as in an old German Expressionist silent film. As V looked on from a short distance the men touched Norma Jeane, drew their sausage fingers over her, bare shoulders, bare arms, breasts, hips, and belly, they leaned close and laughed softly together, with a wink in V’s direction. We’ve had this one. This one, we’ve all had. When Norma Jeane pushed free of them and turned to V, he was gone.
She hurried after him. They’d been about to leave the party; it wasn’t yet midnight. “Wait! Oh, please—” In her panic she’d forgotten her lover’s name. She caught up with him, clutched at his arm; he threw her off, cursing. He might have muttered over his shoulder, “Good night!” or “Goodbye!” Norma Jeane pleaded, “I—wasn’t with any of them. Not really.” Her voice faltered. What a poor actress she was. Tears streaking her mascara again. It was too arduous a task to be beautiful and a woman! Suddenly Norma Jeane felt someone take her hand and turned, startled, to see—Cass Chaplin? She felt someone grip her other hand, strong fingers twining through hers, and turned to see—Cass’s lover Eddy G? The handsome black-clad young men had moved up swiftly and noiselessly as pumas behind Norma Jeane as she stood at the edge of the terrace swaying in her high heels, dazed with hurt and humiliation. In his smooth boy’s voice, Cass murmured in her ear, “You don’t belong with people who don’t love you, Norma. Come with us.”
THAT NIGHT . . .
That night, the first of their nights!
That night, the first night of Norma Jeane’s new life!
That night, in the borrowed black 1950 Rolls-Royce they drove to the ocean above Santa Monica. The wide white wind-ravaged beach, deserted at this hour. A bright pearly moon, wisps of cloud blown across the sky. Shouting, singing! It was too cold to strip and swim, even to wade in the crashing surf, but there they were, running along the beach at the edge of the water laughing and shrieking like deranged children, arms around one another’s waists. How clumsy they were, yet how graceful, three beautiful young people in the prime of their reckless youth, two young men in black and a blond girl in a red cocktail dress—three of them in love? Can three be in love as fatally as two? Norma Jeane kicked off her shoes and ran until her stockings were in tatters, and still she ran, clutching at the men, shoving at them, for they wanted to stop and kiss, and more than kiss, they were excited, aroused as healthy young animals, and Norma Jeane teased them, eluding them, for how fast she could run, in bare feet, what a tomboy this gorgeous blonde, screaming with laughter in a delirium of happiness. She’d forgotten the party in Bel Air. She’d forgotten her lover walking away, out of her life, his stiff adamant back. She’d forgotten a fraction of a second’s devastating judgment You never deserved to live, this is proof.
In her excitement she might have been thinking these young princes had come for her at the Home, they’d freed her from her place of confinement to which wicked stepparents had brought her and abandoned her. Almost, she couldn’t have identified these men. Yet of course she knew: Cass Chaplin and Eddy G. Robinson, Jr., despised sons of famous fathers, outcast princes. They were penniless yet dressed expensively. They had no homes yet lived in style. They were rumored to be excessive drinkers, they took dangerous drugs—yet look at them: perfect specimens of young American manhood. Cass Chaplin, Eddy G—they’d come for her! They loved her! Her whom other men despised, used, and discarded like tissue. As the men would tell and retell the tale, it would come quickly to seem that they’d crashed the Texan’s party exclusively for her.
What I couldn’t know, they would make my life possible. They would make Rose possible, and beyond.
One of them wrestled her to the cold damp sand, hard-packed as dirt. She was fighting, laughing, her red dress torn, her garter belt and black lace panties twisted. The wind in her hair, making her eyes tear so almost she couldn’t see. Full on her startled lips Cass Chaplin began to kiss her, gently, then with increasing pressure, and with his tongue as he hadn’t kissed her in so long. Norma Jeane grabbed at him desperately, arms around his head, Eddy G sank to his knees beside them and fumbled with the panties, finally ripping them off. He stroked her with skillful fingers and then with his skillful tongue he kissed her between the legs, rubbing, nudging, poking, in a rhythm like a giant pulse, Norma Jeane’s legs twined about his head and shoulders desperately, she was beginning to buck her hips, beginning to come, so Eddy quick and deft as if he’d practiced such a maneuver many times shifted his position to crouch over her, as Cass was now crouching over her head, and both men penetrated her, Cass’s slender penis in her mouth, Eddy’s thicker penis in her vagina, pumping into her swiftly and unerringly until Norma Jeane began to scream as she’d never screamed in her life, screaming for her life, clutching her lovers in such a paroxysm of emotion they would laugh ruefully over it later.
Cass would display three-inch scratches on his buttocks, mild bruises, welts. In a parody of a Muscle Beach bodybuilder, strutting naked for them to admire, Eddy would display plum-colored bruises on his buttocks and thighs.
“It must’ve been, Norma, you were waiting for us?”
“It must’ve been, Norma, you were starved for us?”
Yes.
ROSE 1953
1
“I was born to play Rose. I was born Rose.”
2
This season of new beginnings. Now she was Rose Loomis in Niagara, the most talked-of film in production at The Studio; and now she was Norma, Cass Chaplin’s and Eddy G’s girl lover.
What wasn’t possible, now!
And Gladys in a private hospital. Just to know I’ve done the right thing. I don’t love her, I guess. Oh, I love her!
She’d been wakened from her lethargy as by a tremor of the earth. This fragile crust of southern California earth. She’d never felt so alive. Not since her happy days at Van Nuys High when she’d been a star of the girls’ track team and ran to cheers and praise and a silver medal. Just to know I’m wanted. Somebody needs me. When she wasn’t with Cass and Eddy G, she was thinking dreamily of Cass and Eddy G; when she wasn’t making love with Cass and Eddy G, she was recalling the last time they’d made love, which might’ve been only a few hours ago, her body still suffused with the heat and wonder of sexual pleasure. Like a shock treatment to the brain.
Sometimes the beautiful boys Cass Chaplin and Eddy G dropped by The Studio to visit Norma Jeane on the set. Bringing “Rose” a long-stemmed red rose. If Norma Jeane had a break, and if circumstances allowed, the three of them might withdraw to her dressing room to spend some private time together. (And if circumstances weren’t always ideal, what’s the difference?)
She’d have this glazed look like she’d just been fucked. And a smell coming off her you couldn’t mistake. That was Rose!
3
So much energy now that V was out of her life.
Now that a cruel false hope was out of her life.
“All I want is to know what’s real. What’s true. I will never be lied to again, ever.”
It was not good timing but symptomatic of her life as her life was becoming, ever more accelerating and turning back upon itself, appointments and telephone calls and interviews and meetings, and often “Marilyn Monroe” failed to appear or appeared hours late, breathless and apologetic; yet the week before beginning work on Niagara, Norma Jeane allowed herself to be talked into moving into a new apartment, airier than the old, slightly larger, in a handsome Spanish-style building near Beverly Boulevard. A distinct step up from her previous neighborhood. Though Norma Jeane couldn’t really afford a more expensive apartment (where did her salary go? some weeks even her check for the Lakewood Home was delayed), and had to borrow money for the lease and for new furnishings, yet she’d moved at the insistence of her lovers. Eddy G said, “‘Marilyn’ is going to be a star. ‘Marilyn’ deserves better than this.” Cass sn
iffed in contempt. “This place! Know what it smells of? Old dreary love. Stale paste on sheets. Nothing more rancid than old dreary stale-paste love.” When he and Eddy G stayed the night in the old apartment with Norma Jeane, the three of them curled together like puppies in Norma Jeane’s Salvation Army brass bed, the men had insisted on opening all the windows to let in fresh air, and they’d refused to draw the blinds. Let all the world gape at them, what did they care? Both Cass and Eddy G had been child actors, accustomed to being watched and paying little heed to who was watching. Both boasted they’d performed in porn films as teenagers. “Just for the hell of it,” Cass said, “not for the cash.” Eddy G said, with a wink at Norma Jeane, “I didn’t sneer at the cash. I never do.” Norma Jeane didn’t know whether to believe such tales. The young men were shameless liars, yet most of their lies were laced with truth, as a sweet dessert might be laced with cyanide; they dared you to disbelieve and they dared you to believe. (What tales they told of their famous/infamous fathers. Like brother rivals they competed with each other to shock Norma Jeane: which man was the more monstrous, the woebegone Little Tramp or the tough-guy Little Caesar?) But it was so, the beautiful young men drifted about Norma Jeane’s apartment naked, innocent, and oblivious as spoiled children. Cass declared it wasn’t personal slovenliness but principle: “The human body is meant to be seen, admired, and desired, not hidden away like an ugly festering wound.” Eddy G, the vainer of the two, as he was slightly younger and less mature, said, “Well. There’s plenty of bodies that are ugly festering wounds and should be hidden. But not yours, Cassie, and not mine; and for sure not our girl Norma’s.”
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