Devilcountry (4 page)

 
         
 
I tried to pee in Tom Arnold’s soup.

 
         
 
That was the basis of my dismissal.
 He had it coming.  He made a waitress cry.  I didn’t like that.
 She was nice.  
Blond, truck-drivery, and the only
waitress who was willing to speak to me.

 
         
 
Since most servers anywhere in
Devilcountry are out of work actresses in search of their break, they use the
following sentence as a daily affirmation: “ I am a worthy person and I will
not talk to anyone beneath me, otherwise I can kiss my film career goodbye,
because I’m here to work, and if I waste time chatting up the drivers then I’ll
lose tips and lose the tables where the actors and casting people are, so I
will shut out all subcreatures.   Like in that Meisner exercise from
my acting class with my ex- where I believe in the emotion so deeply but I keep
my face blank and my scene partner will do the rest, that way he won’t initiate
any conversation but he’ll still like me enough because he might have an uncle
who is an agent, and just remember:  I
always
cast myself as the
lead in any
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
revival because I’m my own greatest
casting director, unlike that agent I dated whose cock bent to the side.”
Pause.  “I love me and know who I truly am.”

None of them wanted anything to do with me.
 She was nice to me. Treated me with respect.  
She
who braved a gauntlet of cheap, jerko actors, blond, shapely, older and sexy.
A true waitress in the old style.
 Nurturing my
desire to sip at the endless cup of coffee.  Sit.  Watch the night
fly by.

 
         
 
Al, the manager, walked
into the toilet as I was attempting to soil the famous actor’s Matzah Ball
soup.
 I was having difficulty holding the bowl and trying to pee
at the same time. (It looks so easy in the movies.)  Celluloid heroes had
it so much easier.  The bowl slipped as I whirled around and I almost
burned my wiener.  I told him that I was just trying to cool it off.

He didn’t buy it.

He was actually nice about it.  He handed
me a towel.  His voice
char-broiled
from forty
years of smoking and smoked fish. His keys did the plant manager jingle as he shifted
his weight from foot to foot.  He was a true deli-man who had seen more
stars come through his store than Darryl Zanuck’s pimp.  We delivered a
catering platter to the Universal Amphitheater together one time.  He made
it a point to come personally because it was for Bette Midler, an old friend.
 She wasn’t there.  He was disappointed and sat in the passenger seat
like a broken-hearted dad.  I stayed quiet all the way back home.

 
         
 
So here we were.  My dick in hand,
ready to pour out steaming ladles of penisy-justice, but Al wasn’t having any
of it.  “Look, I know the guy’s an asshole but that’s not the way.
 Waitresses who work around actors know the drill.  Actors are some
of the worst humans on the planet, and the worst tippers. But the waitresses
have to tough it out.  I once had two waitresses fist fight over who would
serve Humphrey Bogart.  I made them Indian wrestle in the parking lot. Man
that was a hoot!  Turn in your apron.  I’m sorry, but you gotta go.”

 
         
 
I can’t blame him. I zipped up, handed
the soup to him,
and  I
tearily exited my way out
the front.

Making exits was never my thing.  But the
TV made a hell of an entrance.

A
VISION OF THE FORMULATION OF A MID-MORNING TALK SHOW PILOT AND HOW IT CHANGED
MY LIFE...

I
was witnessing a vision on my TV.  It was coming to me in the form of a
new mid-morning talk show.  It had been six months since I’d bought the
TV. Nothing.  No signs.  No messages.  I stare at the spoils of
war.  Sitting inside my parents’ house, mostly out of work, with the
occasional shift picked up at a sympathetic yogurt store, overweight, smelly.
 Oh so smelly.  
My parents giving me the stink eye.
 Tolerated more than loved in the house I grew up in.  God bless the
TV. Always
there
for me.  She, all of a sudden
, staring
back at me, an angel! Staring at me!  Me?
 
Little ol’ me.
 Awake early enough to prove
to my parents I was motivated to find work.

 
 
         
Pristine.

Holy.

Divine.

She was a guest on it.  I knew of this
show.  It was attempting to compete with
Crook and Chase
and
Regis
and Kathie Lee
.  The hook was catchy
;
a
sportscaster and a politically correct minority.  I found that so bold.
 I sat on the edge of my bed, an open circuit.  Awake early enough to
convince my parents I was looking for gainful employment.  Open to the
cosmos and all it had to give.

WOW! This vision was a doozy.

I see the development drones inside the hive.
Months ago, before the show is even a thought…

My spirit heads east out of the commissary after
eating a
reasonably-priced
piece of chocolate cake.
 Delicious.  My spirit travels to a production office building,
unmarked, tinted and six floors high.  My spirit rises up through the
floor, through the stairwells, through the catwalk, the wiring and the
electrical.  Up through the crotch and spine and lit joint of a set
dresser on the catwalk above the set. His name is Ken, nice guy.  Ken and
I had met once, briefly, during my tenure at Jerry’s Deli.  We were both
offered the opportunity to smoke a joint with legendary sports idol and
personal hero, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Kareem walked into the men’s room as
I stood at a urinal.  I found myself trying to stand at attention because
royalty had entered.  I tried to pay manly homage to him as I continued to
pee.  I have difficulty halting mid stream even if royalty should enter.
  Ken was there as well.   Kareem lit up.  The rest is
history.

Back to the vision…

More Catwalk, rafters, electrical, drywall,
carpet, tables and finally inside a conference room where executives in suits
with pinstripes and red ties chase their tails like Peter Finch’s decrepit
nephew in an attempt to appear busy.  They are trying to come up with a
pitch for mid-morning that can put a new spin on the dual hosts who know how to
knick-knack.  After three Tanqueray and Tang’s, the bald executive named
Morris Goldberger-Silverberger, (his last wife had made him hyphenate his name
as a condition of their nuptials) is overtaken.  He’s done.  Enough.
Twenty-two years, three marriages, and two gay kids have made him dark, bitter,
removed, and in this one moment, equal parts weak and strong.   He is
frustrated and angry at the notes he received on his pilot pitch he had made a
week earlier for
The Breakfast Club 2 – The Nineties.  
 He
had product tie-ins, music, and advertisers all lined-up, but the higher-ups
had passed for no real reason.  He didn’t get it, he’d played their game
for so long and he still got screwed.  

His underwear chafes and he pops.  He is
overtaken by both madness and inspiration.  And in that moment he decides
to embrace the contrast of emotion.  The rage and elation he feels all in
the same breath confounds him.  He is mesmerized by the contradictory
energy that manifests.  It is madness.  And it is the primordial stew
from which ideas are born.  Morris, for the first time in his life, has a
vision. To him, it felt like a wave of energy that came from the floor.
 For a moment he could swear he was a set dresser smoking a joint on a
catwalk, he feels light-headed, but then the halogen lamp of wisdom comes
on in his ravaged, yet still semi-functional, brain and he pipes-up with the
statement that will reshape humanity, or at least the fall lineup...

“Look, just go get that kike sports guy and some
negro
, and shoot it live downstairs for cheap, okay?  I’m
late for a lunch.”  Morris gets up, waddles his way to the door and walks
out.  We hear the chafing of his cheeks as he profoundly exits.  He
feels a combination of tight-fisted rage and intoxication.  He hasn’t felt
this proud or defined as a man since he got lit at the company Christmas party
and strolled up to a young SAG-eligible Anne Hathaway and demanded a hand job.

“They don’t like my
Breakfast Club 2
idea?  Then FUCK ‘EM!”

Look out world
,
Morris is back
!  

Twelve and a half hours later Morris lay dead
under a two thousand-dollar an hour prostitute who had guaranteed him a
“Girlfriend Experience” with full release.  He had died
  somewhere outside of Reno in a brothel run by a friend of a friend
who, with his help, had just cut a deal with pay-per-view to create an
infomercial in the form of a documentary about the joys of legalized
prostitution.  The smile on Morris’s dead face showed profound
enlightenment not even the first Buddha himself could have topped.  In
fact, it is rumored the Buddha himself is somewhere up in Nirvana, devoid of
all suffering, experiencing total consciousness, and is quietly smacking his
holy forehead and whispering, “Morris--brilliant...just brilliant....”

As Morris began to climax while the
nineteen-year-old college dropout with a headshot was on top of him, the amyl
nitrates he had ingested caused his heart to fall into ventricular tachycardia.
 Morris left this world quickly and peacefully.   His spirit
rose above him toward the ceiling, and looking down on himself, he was able to
bear witness to not only his own coital bliss, but also the orgasmic screams of
the co-ed who herself was enjoying quite the climax, as she slammed her young,
buoyant and ample frame down upon Morris’s soon-to-be deadening midsection in
the reverse cow-girl position.  

She had been taken by Morris
the
moment he somewhat hesitantly entered the facility.  The other girls
smiled falsely, as they sized him up by his gray tufts of hair blown asunder by
the desert, his twenty-five extra pounds of “failure-gut” and his cheap shoes.
 They all prayed he wouldn’t pick them, yet she found herself jockeying
for his attention, smiling politely, and jumping right onto his arm as he made
his way from the front parlor lineup and into the bar area for a much needed,
courage-inducing, Maker’s Mark and Coke.  She was stunning to behold: jet
black, shoulder-length hair, healthy and fresh all the way down to the scalp.
 A slim, slender body and long sharp legs accented by ridiculous six-inch
pumps that gave her ankle pain, yet seemed to be the industry standard.  

Morris reminded her of her daddy’s partner in
the firm back home in Kansas.  Growing up, she had an immense crush on
him.  Her own father was kind of a judgmental, alcoholic,
right-wing
prick who openly cheated on her mother. But his
partner in the firm was the sweet to Daddy’s sour.  He would smile at her
for no reason, he would talk to her; he would ask her questions about life,
about movies, about anything.  He would often say to her “I hope you go to
law school and maybe take over the practice because your pop, God bless him, is
an idiot.”  And they would both laugh and giggle.  

He was handsome, older, a bit overweight, and
balding, but was totally decent, ethical and precise.  She knew he would
never cross the line and put a move on his partner’s daughter, no matter how
much she flirted.  That was part of his charm, and she so desperately
wanted to fuck his brains out for it.  His touch, his gentleness, had
moved her in a way that she didn’t think possible.  So now, here was her
chance…

Morris was every bit the gentleman she had
hoped.  He was back to being the guy he was before he was earning a
seven-figure bonus.  Morris had reclaimed his soul and basked in it.
 She sensed this in him, and would reward him greatly.  

After the local coroner arrived and had booked
and finished his own “half and half” party with a gorgeous Korean immigrant
with double D breasts, Morris’s body was removed from her room.  In the
interim, a wash of sexual satiation, coupled with a slight sense of loss, came
over her in waves as she wandered the halls.  Her arms folded over and
wrapped around her, she became unsure of how to process the energy. She
wandered into the “commons” area of the house where other working girls milled about
and lounged on comfy chairs, as they either waited for new customers to arrive,
gossiped, masturbated openly with each other, or held court with those properly
perched on the fencepost between vice and virtue.  The commons area was a
place where you could contemplate your fall from grace peacefully with other
like-minded individuals, and together you could all work out the details of how
you go about paying for a slice of heaven without leaving a paper trail.
                      

Half-naked, wearing nothing but a thong bikini,
a tight Victoria’s Secret bra with a see-through negligee over it, and her
stupid pain inducing heels, she wandered near the complimentary espresso
machine and stared at an episode of
The Tyra Banks show
on the plasma TV
that had been nailed to the top of the wall.  It was muted, with
subtitles.  Banks, a former supermodel, was chastising a young girl
roughly the same age and body type as Morris’s prostitute only she had gone
into porn.  Hounding her for selling her body, ridiculing her for disrespecting
all God had given her.  The girl on the show appeared confused and
bamboozled.  Morris’s prostitute stared up at the screen while tightening
her grip around her
freshly-poured
coffee shot.
 She identified with the talk-show guest, profoundly.  Felt her
through the TV. She wanted to hold her; caress her, perhaps even make love to
her to heighten the warmth, tenderness and connection.  She wanted to save
her from the corpulent jowels of Tyra Banks and all the Tyra Bankses of this
world who were willing to cash-in on their own false credence in order to sound
“Oprah-esque” in their sermonizing, but ultimately were morally bankrupt, lost,
broken and projecting their own shame for utilizing their sex-appeal, in
exchange for cash and prizes.