Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It hasn’t happened yet? I am still alive.

  Sure, we invented MARILYN MONROE. The platinum-blond hair was The Studio’s idea. The Mmmm! name. The little-girl baby-voice bullshit. I saw the tramp one day on the lot, a “starlet” looking like a high school tart. No style, but Jesus was that little broad built! The face wasn’t perfect so we had the teeth fixed, & the nose. Something was wrong with the nose. Maybe the hairline was uneven & had to be improved by electrolysis, unless that was Hayworth.

  MARILYN MONROE was a robot designed by The Studio. Too fucking bad we couldn’t patent it.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Marilyn, congratulations.”

  “Marilyn baby! Con-grat-u-la-tions!”

  Though she couldn’t remember Some Like It Hot except as an undersea creature with eyes no more than primitive photosensitive protuberances in its head might recall the ocean floor across which, driven by desperate appetite, it scuttled. I’m here, I’m still alive. She laughed so happily, people stared, smiling. Her husband stared, gravely. Many mouthfuls of champagne the blond actress swallowed, some of which leaked out of her nostrils. Oh, so happy! She would be observed late in the evening speaking with Clark Gable handsome & “mature” in his tux & smiling in gentlemanly mystification at her girlish stammer—“Ohhh, Mr. G-gable. I’m so embarrassed. You saw the movie? That fat blond thing up on the screen, that wasn’t me. Next time, I promise I’ll do better.”

  RAT BEAUTY

  What a sleek hot-skinned little rat beauty she was. No one like her in all of Hollywood.

  Ohhhh, God. The Blond Actress got high staring & staring.

  Essence of Brunette. No need to bleach her pubic hair, eh? The Blond Actress’s dark sister.

  Yet in her presence, the Blond Actress was shy. It was the Brunette who approached her smiling & seductive. Both women had come to the party (in a Venetian palace of a house overlooking a Bel Air canyon & in the near distance mists as of Shangri-La) without male escorts. (Yet both women were married. Or were they?) The hot-skinned little rat beauty from rural North Carolina. The L.A.-born Okie meringue beauty. The one talked & smoked & laughed like a man from the gut, the other emitted faint breathy laughing noises as if not knowing what they were & meant. Oh, the Blond Actress was tongue-tied & stammering & too tall; & heavier than the Brunette by twenty pounds. What a sad, fat cow I am.

  They were on a balcony. Night air & mist. The Brunette was saying, “Why take it so seriously?—acting.”

  Had they been discussing this subject? What subject? The Blond Actress was confused.

  Was she drunk? At the long long dinner she’d been toasted, for Some Like It Hot was a hit. Another hit for MM. A masterpiece & MM’s best performance. She wasn’t drunk though she’d had (how many?) glasses of champagne that evening. And before dinner, at somebody’s house? Nor had she had medication, she could recall. Not since whenever it had been, in somebody’s car.

  The Brunette had soared to fame & notoriety years before the ascension of Marilyn Monroe & yet was not much her elder.

  Saying, “Acting, the movies, it’s mostly shit,” & the Blond Actress protested, “Oh, but!—it’s my l-life,” & the Brunette said in derision, “Bullshit, Marilyn. Only your life is your life, Marilyn.” It would not escape the Blond Actress that her dark-mirror sister had been sent to her, an emissary, to deliver a profound truth; yet it was not a truth the Blond Actress could accept. She winced & said, almost pleading, “Please? Don’t call me ‘M-marilyn’? Is that to mock?” & the Brunette stared & contemplated her for a poignant movie moment as if pondering Is she deranged? or only drunk? Such rumors you heard in Hollywood, of MM. She said, “Why do you say ‘Is that to mock’? I don’t understand.” The Blond Actress said eagerly, “You could call me ‘N-norma.’ We could be friends.” How wistful, the Blond Actress’s voice. “Sure, we could be friends. But Norma’s a bad-luck name.” (Meaning Norma Talmadge had died a junkie’s death not long ago.) The Blond Actress said, hurt, “I think it’s a beautiful name. It’s for Norma Shearer who was my godmother. It’s mine.” “Sure, Norma. Anything you say.” “But it is.” “Right. It is.” All evening at the dinner table they’d been eyeing each other, assessing. Their mega-millionaire producer host had seated the Blond Actress & the Brunette at opposite ends of the table, as ornamentation. The Blond Actress in sexy white silk low-cut to her navel & the Brunette swathed in elegant purple. The Blond Actress reticent & the Brunette a raconteur like a man. Except for her size & body & that face, she’s a man. Oh, God. It was said of this Hollywood actress that she fucked like a man. Took sex where & when she wanted, like a man. (But which man?) She’d been married young & divorced & married & divorced; married to famous wealthy men & she’d walked away from marriage like one slipping out a back door unencumbered & without regret & no backward glance. Women don’t behave this way! How many times she’d had abortions it was speculated. She boasted she had no maternal instinct. Was she a secret lesbian, or not-so-secret. She’d become one of the world’s highest paid film actresses yet liked to shock by saying frankly, “Y’know, I don’t know a shit about acting. I’ve brought nothing to this business. I don’t respect it. It’s a living. You don’t have to get down into the actual dirt like in porn or turning tricks.” It was said of the Brunette beauty that she walked through her film roles performing scene after scene in whichever order the director directed, with few retakes. If it was good enough for the director, it was good enough for her. She rarely read a script through & knew & cared little of her co-actors’ roles. She memorized her lines by scanning them swiftly while being made up & costumed. She had a passion for gambling & a gambler’s quick cunning shallow mind. She had a perfect body, not so busty as the Blond Actress, nor with the Blond Actress’s billowy rear. She had a perfect face with defined cheekbones, subtly heart-shaped, a delicately cleft chin, & lustrous dark eyes. You saw that face & thought of Botticelli. You thought of classic Greek sculpture. Certainly you didn’t think of Hollywood CA in 1960 & still less did you think of Grabtown NC in the early 1920s. If I could be this woman! Yet myself, inside.

  The Blond Actress heard herself saying in a raw scratchy adolescent voice, “See, I’m an actress? It is my life! That’s why I want to do my best. It’s my best self that is the actress.” With bemused disdain the Brunette lit a cigarette as a man might light it, one-handed, not with a lighter but with a match expertly struck, & exhaled smoke, making the Blond Actress’s eyes tear & saying, not unkindly, very like an elder sister, “Your best for who, Norma? For the fans? The Studio bosses? Hollywood?” The Blond Actress said, “No! For—” For the world. For time. To outlive me. She faltered, eyes widened in perplexity, alarm. “For—” The Brunette’s beautiful long-lashed eyes were so fixed upon her, so seductive. Hypnotic. She was trembling & could not think. In a rush of recollection with the force of a Benzedrine hit she saw Harriet’s imperturbable dark gaze, & tendrils of smoke rising across that face. My dark seductive sister. My rat sister. The Brunette was saying, “Why get so agitated? You’re MONROE. What you do is MONROE. Every movie you make from now on can be a box-office failure, but you’re MONROE for life. You’ll be MONROE after life. Hey.” Seeing the look on the Blond Actress’s face. But I’m alive! I’m an alive woman. “Nobody can play the blonde like you. Always there’s a blonde. There was Harlow, and there was Lombard, and there was Turner, and there was Grable; now there’s Monroe. Maybe you’ll be the last?” The Blond Actress was confused. What was the subtext here? Or was there no subtext? Some evenings, if she’d been awake too long, now her husband-the-playwright (as Hollywood deferred & condescended to this mystery man) had departed for New York City at her behest, & again she was living alone in Hollywood like one floating on an iceberg in the midst of a turbulent ice sea, not just her spoken words but her thinking became scrambled. She could feel thoughts cracking & breaking apart. Out of the anguish of ceaseless thinking & self-blaming there had arisen the antidote for anguish, which was disintegration & madness & that b
lasted-clean look of Gladys Mortensen’s gaze & this Norma Jeane both knew & refused to know; this was the secret subtext of her life. The Brunette may have guessed some of this. The Brunette was powerfully attracted to the Blond Actress. The way, as a girl living on her family’s rundown farm in North Carolina, she’d been attracted to wounded things: the young chicken, once beautifully feathered, now missing feathers & pecked at & bleeding & doomed, having aroused the mysterious fury of other chickens; the runt of a sow’s litter, unable to nurse & doomed to be trampled, pummeled, even devoured by other pigs. . . . So many of these, the wounded. You wanted to save them all. As a child, you wanted to save them all.

  The Brunette said, “Hollywood pays. That’s why we’re here. We’re higher-class hookers. A hooker doesn’t make a romance of hooking. She retires when she’s saved enough. Movies aren’t brain surgery, honey. Not delivering babies.” Babies? What had this to do with babies? The Blond Actress said, confused, “Oh I’d be—I’d be ashamed, talking like that.” The Brunette laughed. “There’s nothing much that can shame me.” Yet the Blond Actress persisted. “Acting is a l-life. Not just for money. It’s—you know. An art.” She was embarrassed to speak so passionately. The Brunette said sharply, “Bullshit. Acting is only acting.”

  But I want to be a great actress. I will be a great actress!

  Pitying her maybe. Seeing that look in her eyes. The Brunette changed the subject & began to speak of men. Witty & cruel. Men they knew in common. Studio bosses, producers. Actors & directors & screenwriters & agents & the shadowy shifting inhabitants of the fringe culture. Sure, she’d fucked Z “on my way up. Who hasn’t?” She’d fucked, years ago, “that sexy little dwarf-Jew Shinn” & she missed I. E. even now. There was Chaplin. In fact, there was Charlie Sr. and there was Charlie Jr. There was Edward G. Robinson Sr. and there was Edward G. Robinson Jr. “Those two, Cass & Eddy G: your buddies too, Norma, eh?” There was Sinatra, she’d been married to for a rocky few years. Frankie, who’d lost her respect when he’d tried to kill himself with sleeping pills. “For love. For me. Somebody called an ambulance, not me, & they saved him. I told him, ‘You shithead. Women take sleeping pills. Men hang themselves or blow out their brains.’ He’ll never forgive me, but other women, even more he’ll never forgive.” The Blond Actress said hesitantly how much she admired Sinatra’s singing. The Brunette shrugged. “Frankie isn’t bad. If you like that American white-guy crooning crap. Me, I go for down-dirty Negro music, jazz & rock. As a fuck, Frankie was OK. If he wasn’t drunk or doped. He was wired. A quivery skeleton with a hot prick. But nothing like his wop buddy what’s-his-name—you were married to him, Norma, for a while. In all the papers, we read about you two.” Nudging the Blond Actress, winking. “‘Yankee Slugger’ he liked me to call him. Got to hand it to the wops, eh? At least they’re men.”

  The look on the Blond Actress’s face. From some distance, this was being observed & preserved & one day would be replayed in indistinct yet classic black & white. The sexy rat-beauty Brunette in purple silk laughing & taking hold of the Blond Actress’s stricken baby face in both hands & kissing her full on the mouth.

  Essence of Brunette, essence of Blonde.

  Monroe wanted to be an artist. She was one of the few I’d ever met who took all that crap seriously. That’s what killed her, not the other. She wanted to be acknowledged as a great actress and yet she wanted to be loved like a child and obviously you can’t have both.

  You have to choose which you want the most.

  Me, I chose neither.

  THE COLLECTED WORKS OF MARILYN MONROE

  SEX is NATURE & I’m all for NATURE

  I am MARILYN I am MISS GOLDEN DREAMS

  I believe no SEX is wrong if there’s LOVE in it

  no SEX is wrong if there’s RESPECT in it no SEX is wrong if there’s SEX in it you sure can’t get SEX from CANCER I mean you can’t get CANCER from SEX

  The human body, nude, is BEAUTIFUL

  I’ve never been ashamed of posing NUDE

  People have tried to make me ashamed but I do not & I will not

  All my shyness & fears went away when I removed my clothes

  You sure know who MARILYN is when MARILYN removes her clothes

  I wished to run naked in church before God & mankind

  See I wouldn’t be ashamed why would I for God created me as I AM

  God has created us as WE ARE

  I see you looking at my perfect body I see you loving my perfect body like it is your own body & in a vision it came to me in MARILYN you can love your own PERFECT BODY that is why MARILYN came into this world that is why MARILYN exists

  I am Miss Golden Dreams the most famous nude pinup in the History of Mankind I would say that is an honor isn’t it I love you looking at me I hope you will never stop I believe that the human body is BEAUTIFUL & nothing to be ashamed of at least if you are a beautiful desirable woman & YOUNG

  I am Miss Golden Dreams what is your name?

  I am Miss Golden Dreams I’d say that is quite a responsibility isn’t it

  I am Miss Golden Dreams tell me what you like best & I will do it I will keep every secret of yours I will adore you only just love me & think of MARILYN sometime? promise? sad, sick cow piece of meat cunt that’s dead inside

  I’m not bitter for they are telling me I am HISTORY

  You wouldn’t be bitter if you are HISTORY any of you

  A MAN would not be bitter if entering History! nor should a WOMAN

  Break my heart, better than break my nose (you bastards)

  Revenge is SWEET (& I need to acquire that taste)

  Oh hey! let’s be HAPPY TOGETHER please that is why we EXIST

  In a vision it came to me that is why we EXIST

  SEX is NATURE & I’m all for NATURE aren’t you

  Fact is you can’t get sex from cancer I mean

  can’t get death from cancer

  I mean death from sex you CAN’T else in Hell we’d be created like we are NATURE is the only God I was craeted by NATURE as I am I mean I was created as this I was craeted crated kreated craeated as MARILYN & could not be anyone else from the beginning of Time I believe in NATURE I believe I mean I am NATURE We are all NATURE YOU are MARILYN too if you are NATURE That, I believe We may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length & as NATURAL SELECTION works solely by & for the good of each being all corporeal & mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection There is grandeur in this that from so simple a beginning countless forms most beautiful & most wonderful have been & are being evolved

  I’m having such a good time in life, guess I’m gonna be punished!

  THE SHARPSHOOTER

  The secret meaning of the evolution of civilization is no longer obscure to us who have pledged our lives to the struggle between Good and Evil; between the instinct of Life and the instinct of Death as it works itself out in the human species. So we vow!

  —Preface, The Book of the American Patriot

  It was my daddy’s pioneer wisdom. There is always something deserving of being shot by the right man.

  When I was eleven my daddy first took me out onto the range to shoot butcher birds. I date my lifelong respect for firearms & my prowess as a Sharpshooter from that time.

  Butcher bird was Daddy’s name for hawks, falcons, California condors (now almost extinct), & golden eagles (ditto) we would shoot out of the sky. Also, though scavengers (& not predators actively threatening our barnyard fowl & spring lambs), Daddy despised turkey vultures as unclean & disgusting creatures there could be no excuse for their existing & these ungainly birds too we would shoot out of trees & off fence railings where they perched like old umbrellas. Daddy was not a well man, suffering the loss of his left eye & “fifty yards” (as he said) of ulcerated colon as a result of War injuries, & so he was filled with a terrible fury for these predator creatures striking our livestock like flying devils out of the air.

  Also crows. Thousands of crows cawing & shrieking in migration
darkening the sun.

  There are not enough bullets for all the targets deserving, was another of Daddy’s firm beliefs. These I have inherited, & Daddy’s patriot pride.

  Those years, we were living on what remained of our sheep ranch. Fifty acres, mostly scrubland in the San Joaquin Valley midway between Salinas to the west & Bakersfield to the south. My daddy & his older brother who’d been crippled in the War, though not Daddy’s war, & me.

  Others had deserted us. Never did we speak of them.

  In our Ford pickup we’d drive out for hours. Sometimes rode horseback. Daddy made a gift to me of his .22-caliber Remington rifle & taught me to load & fire in safety & never in haste. For a long time as a boy I fired at stationary targets. A living & moving target is another thing, Daddy warned. Aim carefully before you pull any trigger, remember someday there’s a target that, if you miss, will fire back at you & without mercy.

  This wisdom of Daddy’s, I cherish in my heart.

  I am overcautious as a Sharpshooter, some believe. Yet my belief is, where a target is concerned you may not get a second chance.

  Our barnyard fowl, chickens & guineas, & in the fields spring lambs were the butcher birds’ special prey. Other predators were coyotes & feral dogs & less frequently mountain lions but the butcher birds were the worst because of their numbers & the swiftness of their attacks. Yet they were beautiful birds, you had to concede. Red-tailed hawks, goshawks & golden eagles. Soaring & gliding & dipping & suddenly dropping like a shot to seize small creatures in their talons & bear them aloft alive & shrieking & struggling.

  Others were struck & mutilated where they grazed or slept. The ewes bleating. I’d seen the carcasses in the grass. Eyes picked out & entrails dragged along the ground like shiny slippery ribbons. A cloud of flies was the signal.

  Shoot! Shoot the fuckers! Daddy would give the command, & at the exact moment we both shot.