Chapter 12
JULY 1996:
“I don’t like those queers, but they’ve been good for ya’. Before them you were just sitting in your room like a piece of fungus growing on the wall. You need structure, you need activity. Just like your sister with soccer and violin. Doesn’t mean I like those queers.”
Mother did not hate Jahn and Mark because they were gay.
“They’re arrogant queers. They act like you’re a nobody if you’re not a model.”
But weren’t most non-models nothing but nobodies? (Sorry for the quadruple negative.) I didn’t respect the blue-haired 60-year-old night clerk at WaWa, a duct-tape-wallpaper-person (though for all I knew she worked there to pay for her dying husband’s palliative care.)
Most ordinary people seemed bovine yet cruel, cattle with fangs, or fangless cows like the “girls from Seattle” in J.D. Salinger’s overrated “Catcher in the Rye”; those who don’t even munch the cud of cuntiness but subsist on the sawdust of indifference. Their eyes were not watching God (what’s with this classic American novel motif?) but rather staring at the phallic Empire State Building with dead deer eyes (but blacker and filmier than the orbs of any deceased doe.) In the sequel (hint: the self-important Salinger never wrote a sequel), Marty, Laverne, and Bernice return to their quiet lives in Washington State and never once have a profound or substantial conversation with anyone (such as a late-night discussion on why there is something rather than nothing.)
What a malicious way to think of my fellow human beings, transient creatures born of Adam, delicate mortals like myself, fragile, needy, and as “guilty” as a caffeinated Kierkegaard. As Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew reminded him, we are all travel companions en route to a grave (what harm in compassion and kindness toward others until that time?)
But normal people had hurt me so. They had excluded me from their games, rituals, events, mating dances, planned and impromptu parties. Yet no celebrity – no New York or Hollywood elite – had ever called me a name or made me feel ugly, stupid, or worthless. No sir! Only the average people, the everyday Joes, the six-pack Steves and Wendy WaWa Workers had ever made me feel less (and Anais, despite her chic look, was a “duct-tape-wallpaper-person” – if modeling didn’t work out she would likely go on to jockey a cash register.)
“I’m ordinary,” she added. “Is there something wrong with me?”
“No.”
Yes.
***
Early morning dew sparkled on the concrete-encased mounds of lush grass, insect Edens unspoilt by the asphalt parking areas hither, thither and all around; vast cosmic abysses between habitable micro-worlds. The cicadas (or whatever they were) zizzzzzzzzzedddddddd…
The exhaust from dad’s Corvette blanketed their bug bio-patches like La Tormenta at the end of “The Terminator,” a harbinger of ecological doom.
A single Chevy could only do so much damage (especially compared to the growing hordes in China.) To the north, smoggy haze hung over the Amboys like a wreath of wrath. The smokestacks of Linden and Elizabeth spewed synthetic gases sworn safe by men who lived in, say, Bernardsville, a burg far from the cancer belt; fat cats who never sipped from the bowl – or filled their Olympic-sized swimming pools – with the run-off of Ciba-Geigy groundwater. (Though, to be fair, the same phallic polluters pumped exotic chemicals into our atmosphere before I was born, and I am sure they will spew acrid smoke into the atmosphere long after I am gone.)
A beautiful July day in North New Jersey (does it get any better than that?) Thank goodness I did not grow up in San Francisco. 60degrees and a mix of sun and fog all year – even in the fuckin’ summer! No wonder they’re such pussies – that sort of climate enervates anyone with a red-blooded heart. Our winters are cold, damp, and dismal, but our summers are hot, humid, icky, sticky and cheerful! Buncha’ no-heart motherfuckers in San Fran.
The bugs buzzed in the bushes – alien creatures! They did not seem to care about the carbon from the cars on the packed Garden State Parkway. The birds chirped too (just as they chirp in 2019), a rebuke to Rachel Carlson (though I also care about the environment and have, for most of my life, preferred animals to human beings.)
The arthropods chirp loudest on sweltering mornings. It was only a quarter to 8 (or 7:45 as I called it), but the thermometer indicated a muggy 80 Fahrenheit – and it climbed a degree or two every five minutes. So much better than faggot-ass Frisco.
But the A.C. in my dad’s fiberglass coffin kept it cool at 68.6 (just like a Northern Cali midsummer heatwave.)
Oh, 1996! Back when Jersey July was Jersey July (Jersey Julys now are too often like Seattle Septembers.) The climate has indeed changed since the mid-1990s. The weather is cooler, wetter, less violent, and more predictable. The globalists (not to sound like that dickhead Alex Jones) are probably wrong (and intentionally so.) The planet is cooling – not warming. Our Springs and Summers are now analogous to those of Dublin, London and, yes, San Francisco. The public school alarmists and propagandists were wrong about our ever-changing climate! The planet has been brrrrrrr…!
Chew-chew-huh.
Dad chewed his Spearmint gum and hyperventilated.
Huh-huh-huh.
He was nervous for me.
“Okay. Good luck. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Thanks, dad.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I stepped out of the Vette. Dad took off like a sentimental Knightrider.
A lump of tears in my throat.
Dad…
My dad…
The Robert B. Meyner Reception Center loomed like dizzy doom, a sickeningly sweet sheet cake of “oh shit!” The palace of poignant moments (mostly a banquet hall for weddings) sat adjacent and uphill from the Garden State Performing Arts Center (Ozzy Osbourne’s wife still pimps him there every summer), a secular edifice, a white hawk gazing down at irresistible prey. Today: the Robert B. Meyner Reception Center. Tomorrow: the main stage. And then the world!
Jahn informed us (not to psyche us out, of course) that he expected an audience of 400 people. Many of them would be friends and family of the models. The others would be major and boutique agents from New York, Miami, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Rome, and Milan.
My belly butterflies flipped and flapped as if Willy Wonka had sprayed a mist gun full of sugar water into the humid atmosphere of a lepidopterarium.
Speaking of butterflies, the theme of our showcase was “Metamorphosis.”
Several weeks prior, Jahn had gathered the whole session, males and females alike, sat us in a semi-circle, and laid out the gist of what we would perform:
“The theme is a metaphor for your transformation from miserable grunts to working models. The men will start out as larvae, worms. The music will be low, slow, and deep. As the males shed their skin, their pupa, the tempo will increase. By the time they are in the full throes of metamorphosis the girls will come upon the stage. They are already beings on the road to perfection. The guys aspire to their level of transcendence. As you reach the end of your growth cycle the men merge with the women and all of you participate in the worship of your insect queen.”
The queen was Karen, one of Jahn’s favored ginger girls (redheads were a huge market.) Anais would serve as her attendant, a somewhat Sapphic Ganymede.
“In this piece are mythological themes dating back to Hesiod and Ovid.”
The concept might have seemed trite, corny, perhaps even hackneyed. What Jahn did not tell us was that the process to feminine Godhead would be a long one, a near-Kafkaesque pilgrim’s progress of elaborate choreography and frantic (seconds counted) costume changes.
The lot of us limped through weeks of working out every cue, step, mark, gesture, transition and exit. We each botched Jahn’s vision: singly, in clusters, or as an entire group.
He yelled, screamed, cursed and – the night before the showcase – he shamed us:
“You have less than 24 hours to get it right. In less than 24 hours your family and your friends will be watching you. Every top modeling agent in the country and across the world will be sitting there and judging everything you do. And you’re not taking this seriously (chokes up.) I saw Sylvan doing an air guitar to the music. To the fucking music I selected for all of you! Well, go ahead and mock. You think you’re all that? This is about something bigger than yourself! Jonathan Larson died – died – the night before ‘Rent’ premiered on Broadway. He never got to see his vision! You’ll never have another chance to do this showcase. Get the choreography right! Get it right! Do whatever the fuck you have to do! If you have to meet up at someone’s house after we leave or before the dress rehearsals tomorrow – do it! Get it right!”
Jahn’s face contorted. Tears welled in his eyes. He swallowed back a sob and pushed his way through the double doors of the Team Model studio space.
Now, here I was, the next day, no better rehearsed (no one had been available to host an informal practice) and standing in vestibule of the feared gauntlet to fortune and fame (gotta keep pushin’ for it.)
For the next 10 hours, Jahn ran us through one grueling rehearsal after another (the duct tape wallpaper people who say that acting or modeling is not hard work have never acted like a bug for 10 hours straight – talk about Kafkaesque!)
Jahn moved us with more than words. He pushed, shoved, fixed, altered, poked, pulled, kicked our feet to the mark, and turned our heads to the imaginary audience.
“Look the fuck up! How many fucking times do I have to teach you how to walk? You missed the mark again! How the fuck did you do that?”
In the words of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, we were all “equally worthless.” The boys and gals formed a boot camp camaraderie against the decibels of Jahn’s derogatory diatribes.
Even Anais – for once in her life – bore the brunt of another’s wrath:
“Anais! I make you the center of this piece and you can’t even remember a single fucking cue?”
What had happened with her and Matt Colton, by the way? Darned if I were privy to the ins and outs of their immature dalliance. All I did know was that the Big Bang of June seemed to have fizzled to an icy heat death by the middle of July (much like a T.S. Eliotesque whimper.)
“Listen to me, Anais!” screeched Jahn. “If you don’t get it right, I’ll never give you an opportunity like this again!”
Ha! The fucking bitch! Couldn’t even follow direction. As Jahn was so fond of saying, “a model’s job is to make it work!”
By that criteria, none of us were models. We each took our tongue-lashing in turn. When it was time for Sylvan and I to practice our tandem worm boogaloo at the end of the ego ramp, Jahn cut the music. (Sylvan and I were the exact same height, so Jahn had partnered us to walk to the end of the runway together, split like molecules, perform a solo dance, and then return to the undifferentiated mass of larvae.)
“Will and Sylvan… This was your last chance to rehearse your piece under my direction. I wish I could waste all fucking day on you, but I have a million things to do. I have to take my time with the rest of this piece and the others who might care enough to follow my fucking instructions. Then I have to give lighting notes for the evening wear portion of the night so that you don’t look like fucking fools there either. You two can go. I have to work with everyone else now. I suggest the two of you go out to the lobby or the parking lot and practice. Go.”
And practice we did. The truth was that there was not a lazy soul among us. Even Anais – a girl who, more than presumably, had found the world handed to her upon birth – was a dedicated toiler in the vineyards of vanity.
“We’re gonna get this, bro!” said Sylvan. “We’ll die before we fuck this up.”
Sylvan and I spent the entire rest of the day practicing dance moves that amounted to little more than the most complicated secret handshake this side of the Masonic Hall.
At 7:50pm everyone in the guys’ session squeezed into a huddle (we would take the stage first and the girls would soon join us) piled hand over hand, said a quick prayer (delivered by seminary student Paul, of course), and split with a shout of “Team Model!”
7:55pm: We all wanted to vomit (the weirdo lead singer of Korn – a ghastly band I never liked that much – vomits before shows.)
7:59: The surge of adrenaline.
8:00: The insects took their places and huddled – in a semi-circle - along the edges of a dark stage.
A synthesized note; an ersatz wind chime; a tinkling; aural sparkles of an arthropodal genesis; a Space Age version of Wagner’s “Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla.”
We writhed on the floor, tensed and untensed our backs, pulsated like the stingers of horny wasps, gyrated and spaghettied ourselves up to our feet, flapped our arms like a zombie from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, and sashayed our hips – the back and forth sway of a young Axl Rose.
A faux-pyrotechnic explosion cued us to place our hands on the shoulders of the man in front of us (Sylvan, in my case.) Wes served as the head of our human caterpillar.
And what did we do? Though we were nothing but a caterpillar, an 80s video game worm, we arched our collective back and kicked the ass off of that stage – we “owned it” (as the most banal people of nowadays are so fond of saying.)
The adrenaline stimulated our focus and hyper-awareness and we found ourselves in what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called a state of “flow.”
An explosion! Lightning! The lithe girls – pair by pair – entered Stage Left/Stage Right and walked to the end of the runway and back before melding with the herd, with the still undifferentiated mass of exoskeletal parts; a sticky leg here; an extraterrestrial antenna there.
Last and least (in my biased opinion), the Walking Stick-like wraiths Karen and Anais clopped from backstage, walked to the foot of the catwalk, sassed the audience and returned as Queen Bee and Cunnilingus Cupbearer (though, of course, Anais likely preferred boys.)
We swarmed them like robed Illuminati closing in on high-priced escorts slated for sacrifice, fell back, and merged again. Each of the girls, this time, had the chance to do their own unique walk/dance before the grand finale of the feminine fairy tale.
Once union was achieved between the sublime women and us lowly men the lights went out and we skedaddled backstage, satisfied; a satisfaction – dare I say – almost as great as sexual satisfaction (but of a different species.)
Wham-slam-bam-cram-expand-disband and kazam! We had cracked the code of Jahn’s gauntlet, locked our accomplishment in to the hall of Akashic records (or wherever the trace of such acts is stored) and, upon victory and debrief (and high-fives galore), we went backstage for a breather. Some went outside for a well-deserved solitary cigarette, a puff and a self-affirmation – we had done it!
As Donald Trump says, “the satisfaction of a job well done.”
Fuck the faggot-ass Rolling Stones. “I COULD get some – sat-is-fact-tion…”
I felt like a duct-tape wallpaper person must feel after mowing the lawn, but the euphoria was elevated by the enplugment of my mind/body/soul with that of the crowd, a rapture, a mania followed by innumerable hugs, handshakes, and pats on the back (so much better than the solo, masturbatory act of patting myself on the back.)
Cocaine could never compare to killing on stage!
Oh, the life of a performer! The biunal exchange of breath, electricity, energy between artist and audience. We strut, like Picasso’s actor, but it is all for you, our beloved public. We are non-narcissists, dependent on your dependency. Like a bunch of Tinkerbells, we would cease to exist if you turned your attention toward the wad of gum on the floor. A wave collapse of conceit!
No sooner had the not-so-new nootropic of sweat followed by satisfaction worn off (we could have blown our wads on the metamorphosis number alone and gone home high) than we were called to change into our tuxedoes.
I slid and slipped into my rented tux from the formal store. Was there a Men’s Wearhouse by us back then? (M.W., the stretch Humvee limo of formal stores - the emporium of douchearama!)
I don’t/didn’t know, but I do know who took me for the fitting: mother. She hated niggers, Jews, and neighbors, but did she hate me?
“Okay, line up!” shouted Jahn.
We lined up – single file – behind the curtain. Tana, Jahn’s secretary and familiar, tapped us on the shoulder when it was our turn to “enter stage right.”
“Okay, Will, go…” whispered Tana in her Southern drawl. I climbed the three black, duct-taped steps, turned on to the runway and was – in the words of Bruce Springsteen – blinded by the light. I saw only the outlines of people, maybe a solid shape or face or peach-tone of skin from the corner of my eye, but the rest of the auditorium was a hazy zebra swirl of spotlight and shadow. I stood up there – in the words of Metallica – by myself but not alone. The love of the crowd formed a silky cocoon around me.
There I was.
Ecce Homo!
Little Boy Lost.
The Ugly Duckling.
A shy, quiet, sensitive, introverted, introspective, hyper-imaginative, finally-handsome hunk.
I reached the end of the catwalk and heard a voice: baritone, distinct, elliptical in pitch – mother’s voice:
“All right, Will!”
Did she hate me?
“I don’t like those queers, but they’ve been good for ya’. Before them you were just sitting in your room like a piece of fungus growing on the wall. You need structure, you need activity. Just like your sister with soccer and violin. Doesn’t mean I like those queers.”
Mother did not hate Jahn and Mark because they were gay.
“They’re arrogant queers. They act like you’re a nobody if you’re not a model.”
But weren’t most non-models nothing but nobodies? (Sorry for the quadruple negative.) I didn’t respect the blue-haired 60-year-old night clerk at WaWa, a duct-tape-wallpaper-person (though for all I knew she worked there to pay for her dying husband’s palliative care.)
Most ordinary people seemed bovine yet cruel, cattle with fangs, or fangless cows like the “girls from Seattle” in J.D. Salinger’s overrated “Catcher in the Rye”; those who don’t even munch the cud of cuntiness but subsist on the sawdust of indifference. Their eyes were not watching God (what’s with this classic American novel motif?) but rather staring at the phallic Empire State Building with dead deer eyes (but blacker and filmier than the orbs of any deceased doe.) In the sequel (hint: the self-important Salinger never wrote a sequel), Marty, Laverne, and Bernice return to their quiet lives in Washington State and never once have a profound or substantial conversation with anyone (such as a late-night discussion on why there is something rather than nothing.)
What a malicious way to think of my fellow human beings, transient creatures born of Adam, delicate mortals like myself, fragile, needy, and as “guilty” as a caffeinated Kierkegaard. As Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew reminded him, we are all travel companions en route to a grave (what harm in compassion and kindness toward others until that time?)
But normal people had hurt me so. They had excluded me from their games, rituals, events, mating dances, planned and impromptu parties. Yet no celebrity – no New York or Hollywood elite – had ever called me a name or made me feel ugly, stupid, or worthless. No sir! Only the average people, the everyday Joes, the six-pack Steves and Wendy WaWa Workers had ever made me feel less (and Anais, despite her chic look, was a “duct-tape-wallpaper-person” – if modeling didn’t work out she would likely go on to jockey a cash register.)
Like a misanthropic king,
I despised the peasants and the bourgeoisie (though as a Noble, they were all
peasants to me.) Not because they were common, commonplace, lowborn, base,
villainous, poor, middle-class or that they worked for a living or paid their
daily dues but because they were mean to me. Cruel. Hurtful. Exclusive
and excluding. They were the stars in their little world, but I would be a star
in New York or L.A. (where it would actually matter.) They would sit under me!
Kneel! Crouch under me and kiss my feet! Slaves!
(It took me many years
and much sex before I found the wherewithal to completely renounce this
Satanic, quasi-Nietzschean worldview! Lots of lovemaking with numerous partners
diminished the demonic rage that latched onto my neck, gripped the back of my
skull, writhed in my breast, and simmered in my deepest guts.)
“I don’t know if they
think that,” I said. “I think they just try to teach people how to be
extraordinary.”
Why didn’t I just say
“fabulous,” fag that I was?
“What’s so great about
being extraordinary?”
Well, if you had loved me
properly, bitch, if I had ever had a mother, maybe I wouldn’t need to be
extraordinary and win the love and attention of the masses.
“I’m ordinary,” she added. “Is there something wrong with me?”
“No.”
Yes.
***
Early morning dew sparkled on the concrete-encased mounds of lush grass, insect Edens unspoilt by the asphalt parking areas hither, thither and all around; vast cosmic abysses between habitable micro-worlds. The cicadas (or whatever they were) zizzzzzzzzzedddddddd…
The exhaust from dad’s Corvette blanketed their bug bio-patches like La Tormenta at the end of “The Terminator,” a harbinger of ecological doom.
A single Chevy could only do so much damage (especially compared to the growing hordes in China.) To the north, smoggy haze hung over the Amboys like a wreath of wrath. The smokestacks of Linden and Elizabeth spewed synthetic gases sworn safe by men who lived in, say, Bernardsville, a burg far from the cancer belt; fat cats who never sipped from the bowl – or filled their Olympic-sized swimming pools – with the run-off of Ciba-Geigy groundwater. (Though, to be fair, the same phallic polluters pumped exotic chemicals into our atmosphere before I was born, and I am sure they will spew acrid smoke into the atmosphere long after I am gone.)
A beautiful July day in North New Jersey (does it get any better than that?) Thank goodness I did not grow up in San Francisco. 60degrees and a mix of sun and fog all year – even in the fuckin’ summer! No wonder they’re such pussies – that sort of climate enervates anyone with a red-blooded heart. Our winters are cold, damp, and dismal, but our summers are hot, humid, icky, sticky and cheerful! Buncha’ no-heart motherfuckers in San Fran.
The bugs buzzed in the bushes – alien creatures! They did not seem to care about the carbon from the cars on the packed Garden State Parkway. The birds chirped too (just as they chirp in 2019), a rebuke to Rachel Carlson (though I also care about the environment and have, for most of my life, preferred animals to human beings.)
The arthropods chirp loudest on sweltering mornings. It was only a quarter to 8 (or 7:45 as I called it), but the thermometer indicated a muggy 80 Fahrenheit – and it climbed a degree or two every five minutes. So much better than faggot-ass Frisco.
But the A.C. in my dad’s fiberglass coffin kept it cool at 68.6 (just like a Northern Cali midsummer heatwave.)
Oh, 1996! Back when Jersey July was Jersey July (Jersey Julys now are too often like Seattle Septembers.) The climate has indeed changed since the mid-1990s. The weather is cooler, wetter, less violent, and more predictable. The globalists (not to sound like that dickhead Alex Jones) are probably wrong (and intentionally so.) The planet is cooling – not warming. Our Springs and Summers are now analogous to those of Dublin, London and, yes, San Francisco. The public school alarmists and propagandists were wrong about our ever-changing climate! The planet has been brrrrrrr…!
Chew-chew-huh.
Dad chewed his Spearmint gum and hyperventilated.
Huh-huh-huh.
He was nervous for me.
“Okay. Good luck. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Thanks, dad.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I stepped out of the Vette. Dad took off like a sentimental Knightrider.
A lump of tears in my throat.
Dad…
My dad…
I loved him…
The Robert B. Meyner Reception Center loomed like dizzy doom, a sickeningly sweet sheet cake of “oh shit!” The palace of poignant moments (mostly a banquet hall for weddings) sat adjacent and uphill from the Garden State Performing Arts Center (Ozzy Osbourne’s wife still pimps him there every summer), a secular edifice, a white hawk gazing down at irresistible prey. Today: the Robert B. Meyner Reception Center. Tomorrow: the main stage. And then the world!
Jahn informed us (not to psyche us out, of course) that he expected an audience of 400 people. Many of them would be friends and family of the models. The others would be major and boutique agents from New York, Miami, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Rome, and Milan.
My belly butterflies flipped and flapped as if Willy Wonka had sprayed a mist gun full of sugar water into the humid atmosphere of a lepidopterarium.
Speaking of butterflies, the theme of our showcase was “Metamorphosis.”
Several weeks prior, Jahn had gathered the whole session, males and females alike, sat us in a semi-circle, and laid out the gist of what we would perform:
“The theme is a metaphor for your transformation from miserable grunts to working models. The men will start out as larvae, worms. The music will be low, slow, and deep. As the males shed their skin, their pupa, the tempo will increase. By the time they are in the full throes of metamorphosis the girls will come upon the stage. They are already beings on the road to perfection. The guys aspire to their level of transcendence. As you reach the end of your growth cycle the men merge with the women and all of you participate in the worship of your insect queen.”
The queen was Karen, one of Jahn’s favored ginger girls (redheads were a huge market.) Anais would serve as her attendant, a somewhat Sapphic Ganymede.
“In this piece are mythological themes dating back to Hesiod and Ovid.”
The concept might have seemed trite, corny, perhaps even hackneyed. What Jahn did not tell us was that the process to feminine Godhead would be a long one, a near-Kafkaesque pilgrim’s progress of elaborate choreography and frantic (seconds counted) costume changes.
The lot of us limped through weeks of working out every cue, step, mark, gesture, transition and exit. We each botched Jahn’s vision: singly, in clusters, or as an entire group.
He yelled, screamed, cursed and – the night before the showcase – he shamed us:
“You have less than 24 hours to get it right. In less than 24 hours your family and your friends will be watching you. Every top modeling agent in the country and across the world will be sitting there and judging everything you do. And you’re not taking this seriously (chokes up.) I saw Sylvan doing an air guitar to the music. To the fucking music I selected for all of you! Well, go ahead and mock. You think you’re all that? This is about something bigger than yourself! Jonathan Larson died – died – the night before ‘Rent’ premiered on Broadway. He never got to see his vision! You’ll never have another chance to do this showcase. Get the choreography right! Get it right! Do whatever the fuck you have to do! If you have to meet up at someone’s house after we leave or before the dress rehearsals tomorrow – do it! Get it right!”
Jahn’s face contorted. Tears welled in his eyes. He swallowed back a sob and pushed his way through the double doors of the Team Model studio space.
Now, here I was, the next day, no better rehearsed (no one had been available to host an informal practice) and standing in vestibule of the feared gauntlet to fortune and fame (gotta keep pushin’ for it.)
For the next 10 hours, Jahn ran us through one grueling rehearsal after another (the duct tape wallpaper people who say that acting or modeling is not hard work have never acted like a bug for 10 hours straight – talk about Kafkaesque!)
Jahn moved us with more than words. He pushed, shoved, fixed, altered, poked, pulled, kicked our feet to the mark, and turned our heads to the imaginary audience.
“Look the fuck up! How many fucking times do I have to teach you how to walk? You missed the mark again! How the fuck did you do that?”
In the words of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, we were all “equally worthless.” The boys and gals formed a boot camp camaraderie against the decibels of Jahn’s derogatory diatribes.
Even Anais – for once in her life – bore the brunt of another’s wrath:
“Anais! I make you the center of this piece and you can’t even remember a single fucking cue?”
What had happened with her and Matt Colton, by the way? Darned if I were privy to the ins and outs of their immature dalliance. All I did know was that the Big Bang of June seemed to have fizzled to an icy heat death by the middle of July (much like a T.S. Eliotesque whimper.)
“Listen to me, Anais!” screeched Jahn. “If you don’t get it right, I’ll never give you an opportunity like this again!”
Ha! The fucking bitch! Couldn’t even follow direction. As Jahn was so fond of saying, “a model’s job is to make it work!”
By that criteria, none of us were models. We each took our tongue-lashing in turn. When it was time for Sylvan and I to practice our tandem worm boogaloo at the end of the ego ramp, Jahn cut the music. (Sylvan and I were the exact same height, so Jahn had partnered us to walk to the end of the runway together, split like molecules, perform a solo dance, and then return to the undifferentiated mass of larvae.)
“Will and Sylvan… This was your last chance to rehearse your piece under my direction. I wish I could waste all fucking day on you, but I have a million things to do. I have to take my time with the rest of this piece and the others who might care enough to follow my fucking instructions. Then I have to give lighting notes for the evening wear portion of the night so that you don’t look like fucking fools there either. You two can go. I have to work with everyone else now. I suggest the two of you go out to the lobby or the parking lot and practice. Go.”
And practice we did. The truth was that there was not a lazy soul among us. Even Anais – a girl who, more than presumably, had found the world handed to her upon birth – was a dedicated toiler in the vineyards of vanity.
“We’re gonna get this, bro!” said Sylvan. “We’ll die before we fuck this up.”
Sylvan and I spent the entire rest of the day practicing dance moves that amounted to little more than the most complicated secret handshake this side of the Masonic Hall.
At 7:50pm everyone in the guys’ session squeezed into a huddle (we would take the stage first and the girls would soon join us) piled hand over hand, said a quick prayer (delivered by seminary student Paul, of course), and split with a shout of “Team Model!”
7:55pm: We all wanted to vomit (the weirdo lead singer of Korn – a ghastly band I never liked that much – vomits before shows.)
7:59: The surge of adrenaline.
8:00: The insects took their places and huddled – in a semi-circle - along the edges of a dark stage.
8:02: Jahn cued the lights and music. There we were – exposed. The homos
from Milan were already judging us.
A synthesized note; an ersatz wind chime; a tinkling; aural sparkles of an arthropodal genesis; a Space Age version of Wagner’s “Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla.”
We writhed on the floor, tensed and untensed our backs, pulsated like the stingers of horny wasps, gyrated and spaghettied ourselves up to our feet, flapped our arms like a zombie from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, and sashayed our hips – the back and forth sway of a young Axl Rose.
A faux-pyrotechnic explosion cued us to place our hands on the shoulders of the man in front of us (Sylvan, in my case.) Wes served as the head of our human caterpillar.
And what did we do? Though we were nothing but a caterpillar, an 80s video game worm, we arched our collective back and kicked the ass off of that stage – we “owned it” (as the most banal people of nowadays are so fond of saying.)
The adrenaline stimulated our focus and hyper-awareness and we found ourselves in what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called a state of “flow.”
An explosion! Lightning! The lithe girls – pair by pair – entered Stage Left/Stage Right and walked to the end of the runway and back before melding with the herd, with the still undifferentiated mass of exoskeletal parts; a sticky leg here; an extraterrestrial antenna there.
Last and least (in my biased opinion), the Walking Stick-like wraiths Karen and Anais clopped from backstage, walked to the foot of the catwalk, sassed the audience and returned as Queen Bee and Cunnilingus Cupbearer (though, of course, Anais likely preferred boys.)
We swarmed them like robed Illuminati closing in on high-priced escorts slated for sacrifice, fell back, and merged again. Each of the girls, this time, had the chance to do their own unique walk/dance before the grand finale of the feminine fairy tale.
Once union was achieved between the sublime women and us lowly men the lights went out and we skedaddled backstage, satisfied; a satisfaction – dare I say – almost as great as sexual satisfaction (but of a different species.)
Wham-slam-bam-cram-expand-disband and kazam! We had cracked the code of Jahn’s gauntlet, locked our accomplishment in to the hall of Akashic records (or wherever the trace of such acts is stored) and, upon victory and debrief (and high-fives galore), we went backstage for a breather. Some went outside for a well-deserved solitary cigarette, a puff and a self-affirmation – we had done it!
As Donald Trump says, “the satisfaction of a job well done.”
Fuck the faggot-ass Rolling Stones. “I COULD get some – sat-is-fact-tion…”
I felt like a duct-tape wallpaper person must feel after mowing the lawn, but the euphoria was elevated by the enplugment of my mind/body/soul with that of the crowd, a rapture, a mania followed by innumerable hugs, handshakes, and pats on the back (so much better than the solo, masturbatory act of patting myself on the back.)
Cocaine could never compare to killing on stage!
Oh, the life of a performer! The biunal exchange of breath, electricity, energy between artist and audience. We strut, like Picasso’s actor, but it is all for you, our beloved public. We are non-narcissists, dependent on your dependency. Like a bunch of Tinkerbells, we would cease to exist if you turned your attention toward the wad of gum on the floor. A wave collapse of conceit!
No sooner had the not-so-new nootropic of sweat followed by satisfaction worn off (we could have blown our wads on the metamorphosis number alone and gone home high) than we were called to change into our tuxedoes.
I slid and slipped into my rented tux from the formal store. Was there a Men’s Wearhouse by us back then? (M.W., the stretch Humvee limo of formal stores - the emporium of douchearama!)
I don’t/didn’t know, but I do know who took me for the fitting: mother. She hated niggers, Jews, and neighbors, but did she hate me?
“Okay, line up!” shouted Jahn.
We lined up – single file – behind the curtain. Tana, Jahn’s secretary and familiar, tapped us on the shoulder when it was our turn to “enter stage right.”
“Okay, Will, go…” whispered Tana in her Southern drawl. I climbed the three black, duct-taped steps, turned on to the runway and was – in the words of Bruce Springsteen – blinded by the light. I saw only the outlines of people, maybe a solid shape or face or peach-tone of skin from the corner of my eye, but the rest of the auditorium was a hazy zebra swirl of spotlight and shadow. I stood up there – in the words of Metallica – by myself but not alone. The love of the crowd formed a silky cocoon around me.
There I was.
Ecce Homo!
Little Boy Lost.
The Ugly Duckling.
A shy, quiet, sensitive, introverted, introspective, hyper-imaginative, finally-handsome hunk.
Very few inner-city kids – let alone a greasy wop like Rocky Balboa –
knew what it was to be a true underdog. Privilege is a communal urban
life; block party cookouts; front stoop gossip; roach pets and six kids in a
bed. See the Ghostface Killah song “All That I Got is You.” He (along with the rest of the Wu Tang) had
never endured the punishment that breaks hardened convicts: isolation. What had
I ever done to deserve such a cruel fate? A criminal without a crime.
People like Ghostface learned strength through the streets, the social
fluency that can only be honed through daily contact with a community. All
while I slept in my glass casket. Snow White with a white cock. Emily Dickinson
with a dick. A dry, withered black rose. Sleeping Beauty sequestered – but not
willingly so – from the vulgar violets. A shame that so much cum, viscous vino
– meant for so many pretty ladies – would die on the vas deferens vine.
They all looked at me: the underdog of underdogs.
But – in the words of S.E. Hinton – “That Was Then, This is Now.” The
gelatinous lights roasted my forehead and – for the first time – I felt the
right to assert myself. Not in the sub-subterranean depths of my
uber-ressentiment or in the fantasyland of one of my megalomaniacal daydreams,
but in the everyday flesh and blood world. I had the right to live and love the
same as a privileged child like Ghostface Killah.
I was finally confident enough to maybe “ask out” a girl upon my
return to school (for the rest of the summer, the only girl in my vicinity would be my snot-faced sister.) I’ll bet Ghostface Killah had no trouble talking to girls. He
was probably fucking by the age of 13.
I reached the end of the catwalk and heard a voice: baritone, distinct, elliptical in pitch – mother’s voice:
“All right, Will!”
Did she hate me?
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