Snuff

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Her fingernails pick around in her bush, pluck out a curly gray hair, and Ms. Wright drops the hair to the floor, saying, “Don’t let’s be coy, okay?”

  She says the actor Barbara Stanwyck used to spread Elmer’s white glue on her own face. The same way we’d spread that glue on our hands in grade school. The lactic acid loosened any dull, dead skin cells, and picking, pulling, peeling off the mask of dried glue would vacuum out her pores and yank stray hairs.

  Ms. Wright says the movie star Tallulah Bankhead used to collect eggshells and grind them into a coarse powder, then mix this with a glass of water and drink it. The crushed eggshells rubbed, roughed, ruined her throat just enough to give her a deep, sultry speaking voice. Rumor is, Lauren Bacall did the same trick.

  Ms. Wright eyes my hair. She tosses her chin and says to grind an aspirin and mix that in a little shampoo. Wash my hair with the mix, and it will fix any dandruff.

  Me? I just keep stirring the wax.

  And Ms. Wright says, her legs spread in the middle of the kitchen table, “Didn’t your momma teach you anything?”

  Marilyn Monroe, she says, used to cut the heel of one shoe, to make her one leg shorter, to make her ass grind together as she walked.

  The best way to fade a hickey is with regular toothpaste. To shrink swollen eyes, lie down with a slice of raw potato over each. The potato’s alpha-lipoic acid stops inflammation. Exfoliate your face with a baking-soda scrub, and never use soap.

  The wax, I tell her, is ready. Not too hot or too thick.

  On the stove, one pot of the soft wax, the yellow kind, that you boil in its own little can. Another pot holds a bag of those pellets from France, identical to a bag of split peas, only dark blue. Hard wax, melted to make a dark-blue paste.

  Ms. Wright asks, “You cut the muslin?”

  The roll of muslin tape, wide and white as a roll of cash-register or adding-machine tape, I’ve already cut a batch of it into small squares.

  Watching me dip a wooden stick, what doctors used to call a tongue depressor, watching me dip and swirl the stick in the pot of yellow wax, Ms. Wright says to start with the dark-blue wax. The hard wax is easier to control. The dark-blue French wax gives you a better outline. Better control around the sensitive edge of things.

  Watching me loop a glob of hot dark-blue wax and turn to lean in between her knees, Ms. Wright says how Dolores del Rio used to daub on the powder of grape Jell-O mix to stain her nipples dark. The better to show through clothes. Rita Hay worth used strawberry Jell-O mix to dye hers bright pink.

  The pinup girl, Betty Grable, sprayed her bare butt and breasts with hairspray until they were wet. That way the top and bottom of her swimsuit stayed glued where she wanted. Hairspray inside your high heels works the same way.

  Spread on the table, Ms. Wright’s gray muff. Bushy blond with gray roots. The pink line of her episiotomy scar trailing a tiny ways out the bottom. Wiping the wooden stick, I smear the blue wax, dragging the hot wax with the growth pattern of the hair.

  Her leg muscles jump, spasm, cramp into patterns under her skin. Eyes squeezed shut. Ms. Wright says how the pud-pounder Lon Chaney used to boil eggs. Playing the Phantom of the Opera, Chaney used to bring hard-boiled eggs to the film set. Before shooting, he’d peel an egg and carefully pull the rubbery white membrane off the egg white. To look blind, Chaney would spread this egg membrane over his iris. A fake cataract. Bacteria collected under the membrane, and Chaney lost sight in that eye.

  True fact.

  With the tongue depressor, I loop up another gob of hot wax. Smear it to cover a little more of Ms. Wright’s bush.

  To kill the pain, the tearing, searing, scalding pain when you yank off the hair, Ms. Wright says, most technicians press the spot. Press hard and it deadens the nerve endings. But the better way, she says, is to slap. Real experts pull off the wax, yank it hard, and slap the bare spot. Hard.

  She says you should always shave your legs in the morning. At night they’re a teeny bit swollen, so you’ll never get the whole hair. By morning, you’ll have stubble.

  Looping up another hot gob of wax, I ask why she had the baby she gave away. Why didn’t she just, you know, terminate? Why go through all the hassle of giving birth if she wasn’t going to keep it? And, leaning over that chrome kitchen table, I paint another steaming dark-blue stripe between her legs.

  To exfoliate, Ms. Wright says to scrub with cold, used coffee grounds. The tannic acid gently peels off dead skin. To hide cellulite, press the skin with a layer of warm coffee grounds for ten minutes. Your dimpled thighs will look better instantly, but only for the next twelve hours.

  She says the way her baby was conceived was so awful, such a betrayal, that she wanted just one good thing to come of it.

  Ms. Wright nods her head at the next steaming glob of molten wax and says, “If you puts a knife under the kitchen table, I hears it cuts the pain in two…”

  In adult features, she says, the close-up of the erection inserted in the orifice is called the ‘meat shot’. Her eyes still closed, teeth clenched, her fingers balled into fists as the wax dries and sweat soaks into the folded towel, Ms. Wright says, “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my meat shot…”

  Says to rip off the wax, pulling in the direction opposite the hair’s growth pattern. Says to pull fast and slap the bare spot.

  The church smell of burning candles. A birthday-cake smell, before you make your wish and blow. From her pussy, the bakery smell of warm bread.

  Through her gritted teeth, she says, “I didn’t set out to be a porn star…”

  Ms. Wright says a classic French trick is to soak a washcloth with cold milk and hold it on your face for several minutes. Next, soak a washcloth in hot tea and cover your face. The cold protein of the milk and the hot antioxidants of the tea will increase the blood circulation in your skin, and you’ll glow.

  Trails of sweat braid down her bare thighs. Soak darker spots into the pad of layered towels. Ms. Wright says, “Did you love your momma?”

  And I pick at the edge of the blue wax. Peel a little up from the skin. Yank away a long stretch of the stiff dark-blue. Rip off a strip of blond carpet with gray tips. Slap the skin, hard.

  This must hurt, because Ms. Wright’s eyes brim with tears.

  From the waist down, reduced to a little girl. Smooth as a baby’s bottom.

  Spots of blood well up from everywhere. Every hair follicle a pin-spot of red.

  I slap again, to kill the pain, and a tear mixed with mascara tips out one eye and rolls a black stripe down Ms. Wright’s face. So I slap harder, leaving both of us spattered in her blood.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  21

  Mr. 600

  Teddy-bear dude and Sheila look thick together. Cozy. Dude’s touching her tits and hair. Sheila talking shit to him about me. Both of them looking at me. Pointing fingers at me. Talking their shit.

  Television dude keeps touching his own head, shedding hairs. The blood veins ballooning on his face, all branchy, red and shit. His eyeballs all pug-dogged, bulging and ready to roll down his cheeks. His eyes looking red with blood veins, blinking with water. Sweat washing his hairline, flat against his neck and forehead.

  Teddy-bear dude’s not doing so well.

  Symptoms not even his glazed, dark Palm Springs tan can cover.

  Those tests that Sheila had dudes take, the clinic reports most dudes had to bring, none of that’s foolproof.

  Rubbers break. Rumor is, even rubbers aren’t thick enough to block a virus.

  Walking, I’m pacing same as those tigers at the zoo, weaving between dudes. Making big circles going around the room, I’m navigating through clouds of baby-oil stink and Stetson cologne, careful to keep from skidding on the oily footprints left by dudes trying to shine.

  Teddy-bear dude’s not getting porked by a million diseased, sex-hound dudes, then passing his problems on to me. Sure, I may be anchor dude 600, but I’m not riding sloppy seconds after him. It’s okay he kills a babe
who wants to die, but he’s not killing me. Not just so he’s got work for the next couple years.

  Dudes tell a joke. They say, “How many queer fuck films end as snuff films?” The answer being, “You wait long enough – all of them!”

  That joke…that’s not a joke.

  Sheila and the teddy-bear dude still looking at me. Talking their shit.

  A ways off, the kid 72 keeps looking in his hand, rolling around the wood pill.

  On the TVs, Cassie is naked and sliding down some kind of tangled-up bras and shit, falling out a window, and landing on some grass, outside, at night. Wearing nothing but spike heels and dangle earrings, she takes off running with a bunch of those Doberman pointy-eared dogs chasing her and loud sirens wailing. Searchlights sweep over the grass and night and stuff.

  Teddy-bear dude laughs. Sheila laughs. Both of them looking at me.

  No, I ain’t as young as I’ve been, but I don’t have to take this amount of disrespect. My name’s attached some of the financing for this project. My hard years helped bankroll the taco chips and shit they’re chowing down. The rental on this place. Paid for that bed dudes are up there busting. All that seems to indicate I got some measure of respect coming to me.

  Kid 72, the little dummy stands there looking at the pill in his hand, looking at Cassie running ahead of those barking dogs.

  I stop next to the kid. I go, “Hey, you come here today planning to die?”

  I go, “Of course you didn’t. Me, neither.”

  I go, “Teddy-bear Dan Banyan dude’s going to snuff us both.”

  I go how I got a plan, and for him to follow me. The two of us walk, innocentlike, over by where the dude and Sheila stand, them talking. Her holding her clipboard. Him holding that bear with Britney Spears’ name on it.

  My bronzer, I tell Sheila how it’s started to cover up the number on my arm, and I ask can I borrow her pen, to do a quick touch-up on my ‘600’.

  Sheila looks at me, her mouth jerking at one corner to show her teeth on that side. The holes of her nose dialed so big the air tunnels into her head look pink as seashells all the ways back to her brain. Sheila tugs the pen out from the top of her clipboard and holds it across to me.

  I take it and go, “Thanks, honey.”

  Sheila says nothing. Her and the teddy-bear dude not saying a word. Not laughing. Their eyes and trash talk waiting for me to walk off.

  To fool them, I take a couple steps, the kid in tow. Both of us, we swing around behind Sheila. Casuallike. I pop the cap off the pen, write a new ‘600’ on my arm, over the old number. Switch hands and write on my other arm.

  The kid’s looking at his mom trying to climb a big tree, naked in high heels, the scene shot from a really low angle, with dogs barking around the tree and security guards catching up. Cassie’s thong tan-line, ghosted at the edges with a hint of Acapulco sun, a couple weeks of beige Monterey tanning bordered with the hard red leftover from some lost weekend in Tijuana.

  With just one step, I’m against the back of the teddy-bear dude, looping my free hand under his arm from behind. That hand of mine snakes around to the back of his neck, cupping my fingers over the thin hair in back of his head. Pulling back, I hold him in a half nelson, his loose hand slapping. Dude’s feet slip on the smeared baby-oil floor, kicking without traction, as I reach the felt-tip pen into his face and write what I planned. Three big letters across his TV-star forehead. My muscles relax, and he slips out of the hold, spinning to face me.

  The whole deal faster than the words to describe it.

  My whole entire front, my chest and arms and abs, slimy with the dude’s sweat.

  The teddy-bear dude, beet red, looking at the pen in my hand, he goes, “What did you write?”

  Both his hands jump to his forehead, rubbing and looking for black on his fingertips. Scrubbing with both hands, he goes, “You wrote ‘FAG’, didn’t you?” Looking at kid 72, he goes, “Did he write ‘FAG’?”

  The kid just shakes his head.

  The teddy-bear dude looks at Sheila.

  And Sheila goes, “Worse.”

  Me tossing the pen back to Sheila, I go, “He wants publicity? That should get him some publicity.” Sheila lets the pen land on the concrete next to her shoes. Next to the pen, the dude’s dropped his teddy bear he’s always holding, the ink writing smudged and blurred, dissolved with the baby oil on the floor.

  Teddy-bear dude’s spitting on his fingers, rubbing his forehead. “You,” he goes, “you raped this kid’s mother. You drugged her and ruined her life.”

  Kid 72 goes, “How’s that?”

  Sheila lifts one hand to look at her wristwatch, and she goes, “Gentlemen, may I have your attention…”

  No duh, every dude looks up. Dudes look to hear better. Arms reach up to kill the sound on some of the televisions. The barking dogs and sirens, gone.

  The teddy-bear dude huffs off to the bathroom, elbowing dudes out of his way. His bare feet slapping the floor.

  “I need the following performers,” Sheila goes, looking down at her list.

  To me, kid 72 goes, “Who’d you drug?”

  Yelling back at us, yelling big in all the quiet, the teddy-bear dude goes, “Wake up, you idiot. That bastard’s your father.”

  “Number 569…” Sheila calls out. “Number 337…”

  In the bathroom doorway, the teddy-bear dude shoulders his way past the dudes there, slippery with baby oil, froze as statues to hear better.

  Sheila stoops to grab the pen at her feet. Standing, she goes, “And number 137…”

  To the kid, I go, “I’m not dying ‘cause of today.”

  Kid 72 leans over to grab the teddy bear where it’s landed on the greasy floor.

  And in the bathroom, looking in the mirror over the little sink, the teddy-bear dude starts to scream.

  ∨ Snuff ∧

  22

  Mr. 72

  The girl with the stopwatch keeps calling the Dan Banyan guy until he comes out the bathroom door with water running down his face, soap foaming along his hairline, with what’s left of his hair pasted down flat to the sides of his head. The clipboard girl’s standing at the top of the stairs, outlined against the open door. Those lights on the set too bright to look straight at. From behind her, the light’s dancing around her dark shape. The girl keeps calling for Dan Banyan by his number, 137, until he starts up the stairs, still scrubbing wads of wet paper towel against his forehead.

  Every guy’s looking someplace else, from the brightness and the sight of Detective Dan Banyan sniffing, mopping his eyes with both hands, his shoulders rolled to the front and shaking, his mouth saying, “…it’s not true…” between big breaths that jerk and catch in his throat.

  To look someplace else, I stoop down, reach down with one hand, and grab his autograph dog where it’s landed on the floor. Only it’s too late, oil off some guy’s feet or spilled soda or cold piss tracked out of the bathroom, something’s soaked into the stuffed dog and blurred the names that used to be Liza Minnelli and Olivia Newton-John. The dog’s skin all blotched and bruised with dark shapes and spots.

  With nobody looking, the 137 Dan Banyan guy disappears into the light, his forehead still wrecked from Mr. Bacardi drawing the word ‘HIV’ there.

  On his dog, you can’t tell anymore how much Julia Roberts loves him. The canvas body feels wet, cold, and sticky, and where I touch its skin my fingers turn black.

  Talking to Mr. Bacardi, I say, Dan Banyan’s going to want his dog. I say, So my mom can autograph it.

  Mr. Bacardi only just watches the door after it’s shut, the top of the stairs, where Dan Banyan’s gone. Still looking at that door, Mr. Bacardi says, “Kid, your old man, did he ever have that classic sex talk with you?”

  I tell him he’s not my dad. My holding the dog out to him, he won’t take it.

  Still watching that door, Mr. Bacardi says, “Best advice my old man ever gave me was” – and he smiles, his eyes still on that door – “if you shave the h
air back from around the base of your dick, hard or soft, you’ll look two inches longer.” Mr. Bacardi shuts his eyes, shakes his head. He opens his eyes, looking at me now. Looking at the dog in my hand, he says, “You want to be a hero?”

  On the dog, the wet parts keep dissolving words, turning Meryl Streep into more mixed red and blue ink, purple bruises the color of blood blisters, the track marks and cancer my adopted dad would paint on an itty-bitty train-model needle freak.

  Spreading the fingers of one hand, waving his hand to show me the whole underground basement, Mr. Bacardi says, “You want to save every dude down here?”

  I only want to save my mom.

  “Then,” Mr. Bacardi says, “give your mom this.” And he taps one finger against the gold heart hanging from the chain around his neck. The chain stretches tight, stiff as wire, to fit around his big neck, and the heart sits up against his throat, so tight that when he talks, every word makes the gold heart rattle and jump. “Give her this,” Mr. Bacardi says, making the heart dance, “and you’ll walk out of here rich.”

  Fat chance.

  By mistake, I told my adopted folks about the movie shooting here today, and right away their boots were on my throat, saying how if I even left the house today they’d disown me. They’d change the locks and call the Goodwill to send a truck for my clothes and bed and stuff. My bank account I have, it needs their signature for me to take out any money, since it’s supposed to pay for college. After my adopted mom told about catching me with that secondhand Cassie Wright inflatable sex surrogate, that was their condition for letting me have a savings account. Any money I got paid mowing lawns or walking dogs, I had to put into that account, where I can’t spend it without their say-so.

  Telling this to Mr. Bacardi, I’m working my way toward the food they got laid out. The dips and candy. After buying these roses for my mom, I don’t have the price of a large pizza. Filling up on taco chips and cheese popcorn, I say how my plan was to show up today and rescue her, save and support my mom so she’s not forced to do porno, only now I can’t even buy my dinner.