Devilcountry (15 page)

“Does she need help?” I asked softly.

“What, from you?  Uh, sure, I guess, I
don’t know.”  Then I realized I had to work.  Now I was exposed.
 “You like Lisa?”

“Me
?....
No!!!!!...
uh
….(awkward pause), I mean she’s all right…”

“I see the way you clam-up whenever she’s
around.”  He took another swig of beer.  “Forget it man; she’s all
showbizzy an’ shit.  She’s not interested in anyone beneath her, except
maybe Pudgie. Maybe if you had a pilot deal or something.”

“I know, I don’t get it.”

“I don’t either, he has a charm to him I guess.”

“I have to work.” I said.

“Then it’s for the best.  
Me and Ran
’ will probably be out late anyways; Lisa said we
can stay out as long as we want.  She doesn’t mind
,
just wants to be near the kid. And I’m like, ‘no problem!’”

“Maybe you can exchange babysitting for a script
idea or something?” I joked.

“Yeah really!” He turned and pretended to be
talking to Lisa, “I’ll tell you what, bitch, (burp)
we’ll let
you have the kid if you produce our TV show…bitch
…(burp)”.  Rick
liked to drink.  He had anger, frustration, like everyone else; he was in
search of the perfect hustle.

“Baby please
don’t
get
too drunk.  I wanna have a good time tonight.”

“I’ll be fine.” Rick responded.

“You screw bad when you’re drunk. Get all
grabby.”

“Stop worrying, baby.”

Rick was silent.  He swigged his beer.
 The shitty home improvement show with the androgynous host stared back at
him.  He stared over at Randi, she was spraying a fern, and the light hit
her just right causing the mist to accent her frame.

“According to your own philosophy, in a free
market dominated by
laissez-faire
politics, one must take full advantage
of any or all exploitable resources.”

“You might be onto something, young Jedi.”

“I just do what the TV tells me to, Rick,” I
said.

 
         
 
“It’s telling me to wear pleats.” Rick looked
pensive.  Inebriated, but pensive nonetheless.

“I gotta take off, Rick.” We shook hands.

Randi came over and gave me a big hug and said,
“Thank you, Craig.”  I blushed and said it was nothin’.  I’ve never
had a hot playmate hug me before.  I left feeling special.  I hoped
my carpenter’s crack brought them closer together and filled them both with new
ideas.

I liked Rick.  Rick started at The Big
Pizza a few weeks after I did.  He was in search of the Hollywood dream.
 
A show, a script, a boy band, whatever, something,
anything.
 His mind was always turning like that.  He had
bottomed-out of Harvard.  You may be asking yourself how could someone
like Rick get into Harvard?  
Very simple.
 He cheated.  Using money he acquired from selling steroids to most
of the football teams around the city he hired a fleet of ghostwriters to write
every term paper he turned in.  An extremely Korean gentleman who barely
spoke English used a fake I.D. Rick had designed to take his S.A.T.  It
all worked smashingly.  But when he got to Harvard, between the student
loans and total assholes he realized he was in over his head.  He took the
bold step of actually trying to write his papers himself.  It was an
inspired moment.  But it wasn’t to last.  He had a falling-out with his
professor who had failed him when he turned in a term paper titled – “
Laissez-faire
Economic Strategies and Feminist Porn.”  Forty pages detailing how
profit margins could be doubled and GNPs of nations increased if women were
drafted into “Pornographic Armies,” as he stated.  All of it broadcast on
the
internet
, twenty-four hours a day like C-SPAN.
 It would be kind of like
The Nation of Islam
but for hot girls.
 
Fatties Welcome!
was
one of the ad
slogans he had proposed.  

The most physically attractive would be
The
Big Titty Marine Corp
.  
The creme of the crop.
 Gorgeous, tan-soaked D-cupped sex monsters taking the sexual hit in front
of the camera, bringing the level of sexual predation to a shocking new high.
 No one would stand a chance against any of these
women,
in some cases men would be thrown into a pit and humped to death as a means of
boosting morale.  Other women depending on talents and skills, would be
placed in charge of various supporting duties, including camera, sound,
editing, post-production, marketing, distribution, internet, tech support, grip
work, fluffer, etcetera.  As a result, women would create a stronghold on
the adult entertainment front, and would therefore become an economic force on
the worldwide market.  Resulting in billions of dollars in earned revenue,
as well as the basis for a paradigm shift in the sexual politics marketplace.
The entire palette of the world’s sexual tastebuds would be changed.  No
longer would there be gratuitous shots of genitals up close or of cutaways to
guys with mullets as they gave a money shot.  No longer would there be the
proverbial moment when the guy, “Pulls out and blasts a load all over some
bitch’s face.”  There would be taste to it.
A style, a
situation.
 Rick provided a sampling of dialogue on page 22 of his
thesis:  

The movies creeted would hav a slant towards a
woman’s empowererment.  We be able to bring forth a new dimensionless
within the world of females enlightenment through the simple act of creativing
stuff.  For example, here is a sample from a script as I wrote r in order
to bring about not only a pleasurable outcome, but to reinvigorate the viewer
as well.

Int.
The main bedroom inside a southern gothic mansion - Day
present.

As
Harold begins to cum
..
.

                                           
HAROLD

“OH
DEAR GOD, MY DARLING WIFE OF FYVE YEARS, I DO BELEVE I AM ABOUT TO ARrIVE...BUT
BEFORE I DEW I JUST WANT TO THANK GOD THAT YOU ARE MY WIFE, AND I LOVE RASING
OUR THREE CHILDREN AND LOVE THAT YOU MADE PARTNER AT YOUR LAW FIRM BUT STILL
ALLOW YOSELF ENOUGH TIME TO RUN TRIATHALONS AND PURSUE YOUR DREME OF BECuMING
AN AROMATHERAPIST
..!
 I’M...I’M...OH DEAR GOD!!!!
I’M ARRIVING!!! I AM ARRIVING!!!...NORA EPHRON
BE
PRAISED!!!!!

Perhaps including a
one-hundred
and twenty-five page Feminist Porno script along with the thesis was a bit too
much.  Cinemax would later purchase it for five thousand dollars and a coupon
for a one-year subscription to their new “couples friendly” porn channel.
 But the pale, Gertrude Stein-type to whom he had turned the thesis into
balked at his idea.  She openly accused Rick of perverse sexual cowardice,
misogyny and poor casting.  Rick was hurt.  This was his first real
paper he’d ever written and he took the subject matter very seriously.
 This wasn’t a joke to him.  He truly believed in a “by any means
necessary” philosophy.  The way he saw it, Professor Gertrude was standing
in the way of Twenty-First-Century commerce.  He had enough.  He
stood up after his professor had ceased her public chastising of him in the
middle of class.  He felt vulnerable.  He gathered his papers up that
had fallen to the ground after being loosely strewn together with a red
paperclip, and with a gleam in his eye he said his three favorite
words  he
loved to say to all women who deserved his
retribution: “Shut up, bitch!”  Rick made his exit.

Rick felt a solid thud of closure on the issue,
he felt like that dude in
The Paper Chase
who yelled at that other dude
about morals or values or some crap.  Rick wasn’t sure of the reference
but it felt right.  He got back to his dorm room, and in a heightened
state of collegiate frenzy he downloaded a picture of a woman performing
fellatio on a donkey.  He then superimposed the face of his professor on
it.  The caption read, “Suck some ass,
bitch
!”
 He then plastered the entire ivy League campus, including the ivy, with
the image, making over twenty-five thousand copies at the nearby copy center,
which set an all time Harvard record and won him a free alumni mug, from which
I later drank gourmet coffee made by Randi, thus, prompting the telling of this
story.  

The picture went on to become an all-time campus
favorite and won Rick a coveted “Compy” award, as the most downloaded image on
the internet along with Cindy Margolis and a cat named Sparkles that had become
famous for having a Hitler moustache.  Harvard said, “Leave.”

Rick left and came to Hollywood to find his
fortune.  What he didn’t realize was within a year he would fall
ass-backwards in love with Randi, a beautiful, born-again Christian stripper
and
Playboy
model who was in the running to be a Playmate of the year
(until she refused to give Hef’s geriatric college buddy a hand job.)
  Thus making her, to me, as beautiful on the inside as she was on
the outside.  I will burn in Hell for my heathen beliefs but she thinks
I’m great.  She is proud in her embrace of Christ and feels no shame in
displaying her wares to the world.  Jesus made her that way and she wasn’t
shy about it.  When Randi came into The Big Pizza all eyes were on her.
 She always made it a point to say hello to me and to use my name in a
sentence, which thrilled me and made all of the arrogant actresses standing
within ear-shot incredibly uncomfortable.

The pretty girls who came in always said things
like, “Hey, baby!” or “Hey!” or “It’s me!!”  
Always with
that nice sing-songy tone to it, with just the slightest hint of condescension.
 All of them completely amnesiac in their
demeanor,
just like Gino.
Introducing and re-introducing themselves
repeatedly.
 Most of them were there to see Gino or Pudgie.  They
always tried to play it off as if they were past breaking ice with you but
nowhere near closing the deal.  But the truth was all of them had
forgotten my name, never could remember my name, or wouldn’t use my name in a
sentence, just because quite simply they were just rude.

Randi was none of these things.
 
She broke all of the “pretty girl” rules
that Devilcountry laid down.
 
You
could see all the other pretty girls in the joint get bent out of shape when
Randi would walk in.
 
Not only was
she far more attractive then any of them she was far more decent and made it a
point to always show me, the cooks, and anyone else who deserved it the one
coveted thing we all craved more then anything: respect.
 
Randi wasn’t perfect, but to all of us
she had
a magic
to her.  

When Rick moved to L.A. he was single and had
moved across the street from Pudgie.  They “Jack and Coked” up together.
 Smoked pot, acted like idiots.  Eventually Pudgie got Rick a job at
The Big Pizza.  Rick was sent into the hills his first night.  They
sent all new fish into the hills to see if they could handle it.  I let
him borrow my laminated Thomas Brothers page that outlined all of the streets
up there.   It was an intricate and monstrous network that no
cellphone or GPS could conquer. Even my maps could only get you part of the way
there.  In the hills of Devilcountry much like the coyotes that prowl
around grabbing up the teacup dogs of the status-driven, only the strong would
survive.  I wished him Godspeed.  This would be a journey that would
reshape him forever.

Occurring concurrently, Randi had agreed to go
on a date with the owner of the club she was hostessing at.  He had made a
fortune in real estate and was trying his hand at the “Supper Club to the
Elite” market.  Randi was one of the first girls he had hired.  She
was reluctant to accept his invitation but said, “Why not?”  

After upscale take-out, drinks and a Keanu
Reeves movie they sat on his plush, over-stuffed
Ikea
leather sofa in
his posh, oversized duplex overlooking Benedict Canyon.  It was all very
impressive to Randi.   It reminded her of the Jacquelyn Suzanne
novels she would read back home.  She couldn’t believe people really lived
in houses like this, in hills like this. She moved to the patio as her host
said he would open another bottle of Patz and Hall chardonnay.  He’d
scored a case of it when he was up in Napa the week before on a wine tasting
tour with a Ford model.

She was on the balcony with her glass, staring
down at the L.A. skyline.  She thought about the mountainside and all the
displaced wildlife.  She noticed planters on other balconies that were
overgrown and either under or over watered.  She saw lawns that needed
cutting and backyards that needed landscaping and a better sense of design.  She
felt the
Feng Shui
of the entire canyon was off, and as she turned
around she saw something else was off.  Staring back at her, behind the
patio glass door, her host was now completely naked, the TV acting as an
impromptu spotlight on him, with Keanu’s voice acting as M.C. He was erect,
wearing oven mitts, holding onto the newly uncorked Patz and his putz.

Randi had a dilemma on her hands.  She was
a convicted felon.  She had been incarcerated for battery before she had
turned eighteen and five years ago she had been convicted of discharging a
firearm in public.  The firearm in question was actually her fists and her
right foot.  She had come to L.A. seeking fame and fortune as a Playboy
model.  She would not leave it in a prison jumpsuit.