chapter 2
With overnight stays in
Los Angeles and Singapore, I spent three days en route to Brunei.
The long hours in the air provided me an opportunity for
reflection.
These days, my life has taken on a slower pace
and it seems that the moon can wax and wane and wax again and the
time has marked my life in only subtle ways—the slight deepening of
the marionette lines around my mouth, the easing of a yoga posture,
the straining of a friendship, perhaps, or the birth of a new one.
I embark on endless attempts to break bad habits, to acquire new,
healthier ones. I usually fail at both, but not to any major
detriment. Not anymore. Sometimes I buy a plane ticket. There is a
birth, a death, a celebration, a tragedy. But when I sat on that
plane to Singapore, I had much to reflect on and even more to hope
for. At the time, the barreling truck that was my life hopped the
divider and changed directions every five minutes or so.
I listened to Talking Heads on my CD Walkman.
And you may ask yourself, well . . . how did I
get here?
You may ask the same question. You know—what’s a
nice girl like you doing on her way to a harem like this? Allow me
to back up a few paces.
How I got there started with a headlong sprint
across the beach, well past midnight on an icy November evening in
East Hampton. I broke into a flat run over the spotlit dunes,
terror pasted across my face. The ground gave beneath my Reeboks
and slowed me down as if I was running in a dream. The sand in
front of me was strewn with elongated shadows. The only thing the
director had told me before he called action was to hit three marks
along my trajectory, each indicated with a barely visible sandbag.
I wore a tear-away yellow and blue cheerleading costume that
fastened with Velcro up the sides, and my chestnut hair was pulled
into tight pigtails, each secured with a yellow satin bow. The
salty air seared my windpipe and raised goose bumps along my bare
arms and legs. I had turned eighteen three months before; I could
have been an actual cheerleader.
I hit the first sandbag at an awkward angle and
my ankle twisted. As scripted, a ghostly hand reached out of the
darkness and tore my shirt off. I let loose my best Janet Leigh
scream and ran, topless now, toward my next mark, spears of pain
shooting up my leg.
I was there. I was for real. I was Patti Smith
in pigtails and I was screaming my heart out in front of a
camera—finally, in front of a camera. Who gave a shit if it was
some trashy vampire movie scheduled for video release in Florida?
It was a movie. It was a start. It was a brief stone on the
yellow-brick road to being all I ever wanted to be—a shining star
of stage and screen. My plan was to be so wholly and
incontrovertibly loved that I would never again be left clinging to
the outer orbits of anything.
This movie, this low, low rung on my ladder to
success, was called Valerie. Valerie was
about a high school girl who was so obsessed with vampires that she
magically turned into one and then proceeded to terrorize her
school. Two weeks beforehand, I had responded to an ad in Back Stage that led me to the kind of brick
townhouse in Newark where old Polish ladies live. This was
different from most of my auditions, in which you wound up standing
around a generic Midtown casting studio with a bunch of other girls
who all face the wall and silently read the sides with their lips
moving and their eyebrows going up and down.
I knew Newark a little bit. My family is one of
those old Newark Jewish families whose octogenarians are sought out
for interviews by ethnohistorians. My great-great-grandfather and
his siblings came on a boat from a shtetl in Poland and, washed in
sepia tones, they started with a fruit cart and opened a grocery
store that became a grocery chain. They started by delivering
newspapers in exchange for pens and wound up writing prescriptions.
They were doctors and dentists and business owners and real estate
moguls. They helped to found the oldest synagogue in Newark, the
same one where my brother and I were Bar and Bat Mitzvahed.
Ask my father and he’ll tell you all about it:
Our family helped build Newark. We love Newark. Long after he left
home, his parents were the last white family living on their block
for years. They moved only when my grandfather retired and he and
my grandmother were too old to take care of the house anymore.
Though my father lives in an affluent suburb about twenty minutes
away now, he’s quick to tell you that he’s no fancy guy; he’s just
that same old kid from Newark. My father is a sentimental man and
when I was a little girl he used to take me for rides in his white
Cordoba and point out the old house on Lyons Avenue, Weequahic High
School, the Jewish cemetery. He talked about it so much that the
sidewalks of Newark felt like home, even though we never actually
lived there or even really got out of the car.
So I felt like I almost recognized the townhouse
when I arrived at the address that was written on a sheet of paper
in my purse. I knocked on the door and the unctuous director of the
movie, complete with thinning ponytail and high-waisted jeans,
ushered me into a living room, where every surface was cobwebbed in
lace doilies and every piece of furniture was ziplocked in plastic;
probably his mother’s house. The coffee table had been shoved to
the side of the room and in its place was a tripod that held a
video camera the size of a toaster.
I stood in front of the camera and gave an
audition, the entirety of which consisted of taking my top off and
screaming. The director and his assistant furrowed their brows and
took notes on a clipboard while shifting on the squeaking couch
covers. They called me two days later to tell me I had been cast as
Victim One. The director also told me that Butch Patrick, the guy
who had played Eddie Munster, was his cousin, so there was a lot of
potential for the project.
They say there are no small parts, only small
actors, and since I hadn’t yet figured out that this aphorism isn’t
true, I took the job.
I headed for my second mark, where a hand reached
into the frame and yanked the skirt from my waist. This scream was
less hearty, more winded. I ran the last leg of the gauntlet in
only panties, sneakers, and ankle socks. When I hit the final
sandbag, Maria the actress playing Valerie, stepped in front of me
and blocked my path.
Scream.
Cut.
Maria was a clearly anorexic, haunted-looking
blonde. Bruise-colored circles that even the white cake makeup
couldn’t completely cover shadowed her bruise-colored eyes. Wearing
a tatty nightgown and backlit by the bright lights of the set, she
looked like an alien, with her sylphlike body somehow supporting a
skull that seemed huge in comparison. Why was this girl the star
while I was Victim One?
While we waited for them to set up the next
shot, Maria and I wrapped ourselves in a comforter pilfered from a
nearby beachfront house that belonged to someone’s parents. We
huddled together for warmth and I could feel the sharp edges of her
hip bones pressing into me, no insulation at all between her and
the world. The crew bustled around us, setting lights and preparing
our next scene together. It was my final scene. My Big
Moment.
The director came over to talk to us as his DP
set the camera for the shot.
He addressed Maria first.
“This is your first kill. You’ve finally given
in to the bloodlust you’ve been struggling against all this time.
It’s ecstatic. It’s orgasmic—the power as you overtake her. Savor
it. Take your time. Especially with the bite.”
He turned to me and simply said, “Fight
her.”
A mousy art-department girl wearing a down vest,
a ski hat, and rubber gloves to her elbows mixed a bucketful of
fake blood. In the first shot, Maria was meant to rip off the last
thin barrier between my torso and the night—a pair of my own
panties that were to be sacrificed for the occasion—and then
wrestle me to the ground. The second shot was the homoerotic kill,
in which I would succumb to the vampire and end up doused in fake
blood. The art-department girl stressed to us the necessity of
nailing the scene in one take because there would be no way to
clean me off again.
The fight scene was pitiful. Maria barely had
enough strength in her hands to grip my wrists. I am shaped like a
living replica of the fleshy cartoon girls drawn by R. Crumb, with
their big asses, sturdy, round thighs, small waists, and pert B
cups, which is to say that I could have reduced Marie’s brittle
bones to a pile of twigs with one shove. I wasn’t about to let her
frailty ruin my moment. Instead, I interlaced my fingers with hers
and jerked her around like a Muppet, attempting to make it look
like I was battling for my cheerleader life. Then I pitched myself
backward and pulled her down on top of me. She looked shaken.
Scream.
Cut.
The next shot was the gore shot. The
art-department girl had added a black rubber apron, completing her
authentic butcher couture. The rest of the crew buried some clear
tubing in the sand and arranged it to emerge from behind by neck.
While they bustled around me, I lay back on the sand, closed my
eyes, and tried not to hyperventilate. I drew back into myself and
became strangely sleepy, my twisted ankle pulsing and hot. I
wondered if I might be starting to freeze to death. Voices behind
me discussed there being some concern about the blood flowing
freely through the tubing because it had begun to thicken and form
a Karo syrup ice floe. The script supervisor nudged the director
and pointed to me on the ground.
He mobilized. “Okay. The kill. We gotta go now;
we’re losing our Victim. Places.”
Maria positioned herself over me, her bloodshot
eyes sunk with deep exhaustion and hunger. She checked that her
fangs were secure. The butcher girl came over with a Dixie cup and
filled my mouth with a foul Karo slushie that I was meant to spit
out at the moment I surrendered.
Quiet on the set.
Rolling.
Action.
Maria widened her eyes in her best Bela Lugosi
and moved in for a slow, dramatic chomp. I couldn’t squirm much due
to the precariously placed blood tubing, so I tried to let my face
convey the panic. I considered it to be the kind of challenge that
separated the amateurs from the pros; I had nothing but disdain for
amateurs. I let out one final and absolutely genuine scream when
Maria lowered for the bite and a river of what felt like frozen
snot shot out from the tube like a geyser and drenched us both. I
heaved in death convulsions as she raised her face toward the moon,
her eyes wild with the slaughter. I finally lay still and hung my
head to the side, blood streaming out of the corner of my slack
mouth, my eyes staring straight ahead.
Cut.
“That’s a wrap for Victim One. Maria, go get
cleaned up for the next shot.”
The five or so people there gave an
unenthusiastic round of applause and the butcher girl threw me a
towel. I made a break for it, limping as fast as I could toward the
house. A production assistant guarded the entrance to the
porch.
“Outdoor shower,” he said.
“I’m dying here.”
“I’m serious.”
I took off my now-pink shoes and socks and
grimly headed toward what was sure to be the crowning torture of
the evening. What I discovered was that in East Hampton, unlike at
the Jersey shore, outdoor showers have hot water and showerheads
the size of Frisbees. I stood on a patch of concrete and pulled my
matted hair out of the pigtails while the hot water washed the
slime and the cold away and all that was left of the last few hours
was the star-strewn Long Island sky and the black, churning ocean
in the distance. I shook off the wiggle of misgiving in my gut. It
was all in good, campy fun, right? The next audition would be a
real audition. The next role I got offered would be a real
role.
Four buxom girls perched on towel-draped couches
in the downstairs den of the house. The makeup girl attempted to
apply their body makeup evenly with a sponge, but the white pancake
kept getting away from her, too thick and cakey in some places, too
thin and drippy in others. The girls ran lines with each other,
preparing for their upcoming scenes as the vampire wives who
initiate Valerie into their coven.
I changed into my sweats, pulled back my wet
hair, and settled in, preparing to wait out the remainder of the
long night. The room was all cherry wood, chintz pillows, and wide
navy stripes. A table in the corner offered a liter of Diet Coke, a
package of bottled water, a stack of soggy sub sandwiches, and some
Cheetos. I circumvented that sad scenario and instead found the wet
bar. Then I walked around with the Jameson as if I was the lady of
the house, acting the gracious hostess and spiking everyone’s sodas
with whiskey.
The whiskey livened up the party. We got buzzed
and talked strip clubs and boyfriends, Scientology and colonics,
acting teachers and downtown restaurants. We pondered that great
feminist question: Why are female vampires called “vampire wives”
when male vampires aren’t called “vampire husbands”? In spite of
this injustice to our gender, the vampire wives eventually went to
shoot their scenes and I curled into a chair and fell asleep,
hugging a pillow with a needlepoint pug on it.
I woke when the vampire wives returned, freshly
showered and wrapped in towels, with faint smudges of white still
clinging to their hairlines. The sky had begun to brighten with the
pale predawn and only Maria remained outside, still filming her
final scenes. The assistant director brought in some of the footage
shot earlier in the evening and hooked up a second camera to the
TV. We all gathered around to watch. I was excited to see myself. I
thought I had done a stellar job, considering the obvious
limitations.
We watched what seemed like hundreds of scenes
before mine, and every one of them was unbearable. It shouldn’t
have surprised me that when I finally appeared on the screen, the
lighting was so poor that you could barely see me. I was a flash of
yellow hair ribbon, a pair of bouncing white boobs in the darkness.
The close-up of my death throes was blurry and would clearly be
edited out.
I drifted out to the porch to watch the sun
rise, deciding I didn’t need to see any more. It wasn’t even good
in an ironic way. It was just another night with little sleep and
another “deferred” paycheck that would never come. At least I had
the story. At the end of all of these surreal and pointless nights
there was always the story.
One of the vampire wives, a girl named Taylor
who was a dead ringer for Ellen Barkin, followed me out. She and I
swaddled ourselves in overcoats and comforters and nestled together
on the porch swing. Taylor wore a J.Crew turtleneck and seemed out
of place among the low-budget-porn types who comprised the rest of
Valerie’s cast. She had thick, strawberry
blond hair and a fading sunburn across the bridge of her freckled
nose.
We talked as we watched the sky over the ocean
slide through the palest shades of sherbet—frosty lemon and petal
pink and powder blue.
“So what do you do when you’re not freezing your
blood-splattered titties off for no pay, sugar?”
Taylor spoke with a slight Southern accent,
which allowed her to call people things like “sugar” with
impunity.
I told her I worked as an intern for the Wooster
Group, a legendary downtown theater company. I spent long days at
the Performing Garage, on the corner of Wooster and Grand, where I
filed papers for Spalding Gray and fetched lattes for Willem Dafoe.
I sat in on rehearsals while director Elizabeth LeCompte, like some
kind of postmodern shaman, deconstructed, reconstructed, and
midwifed into being their current iconoclastic masterpiece.
When Kate Valk or one of the other devastatingly
chic Wooster Group veterans would take pity on their pet interns
and treat us to a drink at the Lucky Strike around the corner, the
wine would burn the paper cuts at the corners of my mouth. But my
hours at the Performing Garage were my best hours. My intern
friends there were going to be the main players in the next wave of
New York experimental theater; we were convinced of it.
“They may be the best theater company in the
world and I am right there licking their fund-raising envelopes,” I
told Taylor.
“And what do you do for money when you’re not a
slave to the arts?”
I usually lied when people asked me that
question, but for some reason I told Taylor the truth. I told her
that I split my time between a seedy but hip Canal Street topless
bar called the Baby Doll lounge and a far more seedy and completely
unhip peep show in Times Square called Peepland.
I started dancing after I dropped out of New
York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. I had been accepted at
age sixteen through an early-admissions program and my parents had
packed me off to a dorm room perched twelve floors above Washington
Square Park before I even got my driver’s license. When I quit
school six months later, I cited my preference for the proverbial
school of life, but my father wasn’t buying it. Over shrimp and
mushrooms at Jane Street Seafood, he promptly severed my financial
umbilical cord.
“Six months ago it was, I don’t need high
school, I’m ready for college,” he said, his face blowing up into a
scarlet balloon of rage. “Now it’s, I don’t need college, I’m ready
for life. Life costs money.”
“So does college.”
“Always with the smart mouth. You think it’s
funny, this road you’re on? You get nothing. You see how that works
out for you and then we’ll see if you change your mind about
college.”
He was right. Life did cost money. And life in
New York costs money and a kidney, and that was way more than I was
making as a terrible cocktail waitress at the Red Lion on Bleecker
Street. One of the other interns at the Wooster Group worked at the
Kit Kat Club on Fifty-second and Broadway and she convinced me that
they’d be way more tolerant of my lack of natural waitressing
ability. I followed her to work one day and spent about forty
minutes as a waitress before I shucked my duds and got up on the
stage in a borrowed G-string.
To those who haven’t profited financially from
their sexuality, those of us who have often inspired an extreme
range of emotions: Why would we take our clothes off for money?
What makes us take that initial plunge? What makes one financially
strapped girl into a stripper and another into a Denny’s waitress
and another into a med student? You want to connect the dots. You
all want reassurance that it won’t be your daughter up there on the
pole. Shitty relationship with my father, low self-esteem,
astrologically inevitable craving for adventure, dreams of stardom,
history of depression and anxiety, tendency toward substance
abuse—put it all in the cauldron and cook and the ideal sex worker
emerges, dripping and gleaming and whole.
Just look at that checklist. Don’t worry, that’s
not your little girl. She’ll never turn out to be like me.
Dancing at Peepland and the Baby Doll made me
enough to keep me in vegetarian stir-fries, nights out at Max Fish,
and a shared Lower East Side tenement apartment, but I was hardly
bathing in champagne.
“You work way too hard and you make shit money
and you’re gonna ruin your knees,” Taylor told me. “You eighteen
yet?”
I was, barely.
“Good, because Diane checks up on it. You can’t
hand her some phony ID like she’s a half-drunk bouncer.”
Taylor handed me a card that read “Crown Club”
in gold embossed script, with a little crown over the o and a phone number underneath. She found a pen in
her purse and wrote her own number down, too.
“Diane runs the escort agency I work for. It’s
the best in New York. You’ve been way underselling yourself. You
come work with me and your whole life will change in a
heartbeat.”
An escort agency. It sounded so simple and
classy. I imagined Diane as an elegant woman in a cream-colored
pantsuit, sensible pumps, and diamond stud earrings. She would seem
shrewd and cold but would have a secret maternal side to her, like
Candice Bergen in Mayflower Madam. She
would be someone to admire, someone who could help me out. I would
be less exhausted, have more time to pursue my performing
career.
Taylor put her arm around me. We were new
friends braced against the cold, staring out at the cloudless
expanse of sky. The sun had risen; the crew had wrapped the
equipment and was loading it into vans. The cast members trickled
out onto the porch to wait for their rides back to the city.
The Mayflower Madam
thing was a nice fantasy, but I knew I probably wouldn’t call
Diane. Escort work was one step too far. I pocketed the card
anyway, just in case I changed my mind.