Dead Stars Page 6

  oh oh oh -

  & still:

  he can remember

  (like it was yesterday) when his dear dear Emma, when dear Emma got out of the back of the Maybach

  oooooo

  slither-leathersliding

  Slip-Sliding-Away (Harry loved to sing that song) over the expensively slaughteredskin seats, but that maneuver (just getting out of the fucking car!) has never been an elegant thing for homo s’apes, you may as well still be getting out of a horse & buggy, but who gives a shit if it’s elegant ’cause it was never hyperscrutinized . . . . . . until NOW———no easy solution not unless handlers hang up sheets to shield the celeb til they’re out of the papsmear-free zone, same as it ever was, at least until some engineer thinks to make a seat that pneumatically telescopes out the back onto the sidewalk then slowly tilts like those geriatric TV Guide La-Z-Boys, it ain’t like GM’s gunna get right on it, but until somebody did, Harry’s Heroes would keep stirrin’ the honeypot & smoking the cracks, exercising their rights in this great Uptonian upskirt democracy.

  Harry had no patience for the truculent managers and hypocrite PR flaks who tried to put him down when the truth was he respected those kids more than their handlers. They were shown from an early age how to be ladylike when leaving a car but now, in the ticking weeks before each one’s 18th, all the single ladies had to have that embarrassing parental/management office conversation about the birds and the papsmearazzi bees, you know, one by one, all the Hailees and the Bailees and the Chloës, Mackenzies, Abigails & Olivias were told to be mindful to cover the goods with whatever was handy—Missoni scarf or Prada/Hermès/Chanel clutch held discreetly just so to make sure the unmentionables wouldn’t be mentioned in the global conversation. What was so great about Emma’s virgin frontgryffindoor honeyshot, unmentionably so, wasn’t merely the hosiery (which Harry internet I.D.’d as a seamless silicone-beaded cat-girlish Wolford bodysuit. Emma was a Wolford/Smythson/Burberry Prorsum lass), the unmentionably perfect thing was, Harry got her by fluke, it was a new-hire schlep in the right place at the right time tho not yet fully trained, one of those sophomore in high school kids Harry liked to break in because the s let their guards down when they saw them, “He was a newbie just like you, Jerzy Shores”—his nickname for him & Jerzy took it because it could have been so much worse—“the newbie didn’t actually think he got the honeyshot! The newbie thought it was a FAIL but I knew better, I had this feeling . . .” So he took the kid’s camera for a little late-night alone-time in the privacy of his bedroom & gorged on the the iMage, gorged, enlarged it & engorged————and and and and an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O O oooooooooooo—there—there—perfect English rose, wilding of heathery soap-scrubbed slit hair, peach of an unimpeachable patch sequestered behind Santa Maria Novella-powdered briefs, dampish twittering #tagged coming-out panties, evocative (to Harry, such were his passions) of mulch-dank Lake District moors, “or shall I say s’mores,” a perfectly manicured mons that never saw nor ever thought it would the light of online-day———————————————but no no no! what was unmentionably mentionably awesome about Hermione’s honeyshot! was that once in a blue moon, an unsuspecting, very fortunate papsmearazzo captures the honeyshot! holy Grail: that epiphany of smushed candlewick, the sanitary napkin—a rara avis indeed! Early bird caught the worm—tail of the kite—by my word, Lord Middleton almost had a attack when he saw it, for never in his wildest dreams—his Hermione!

  Misty-eyed, he related this exuberantly memorable anecdote to young Jerzy—he’d waited so long for that moment—Emma’s moment—and how much it meant to him that he’d been there to see it first, before it entered eternal history, “and that, my new friend, they can never take away. We will always be connected in a way she will never know, & I shall love & cherish it, & carry it to my grave.” He went on to speak of that difficult moment before posting, when he knew she’d no longer be his: in the bedroom, Harry’s features illumined by dandelion (milky latex) pussywillow (furry catkins), alone with the image, before Send would rob him of the sacral intimacy of fumbling promnight ecstasy, before he shared her with the world—if you love them let them go—to Send was, afterall, his bold and righteous duty—but still—for a few shining hours she was his. He, Harry, his Highness of lowness, he, Harry, high priest of yeast, sat in bed woefully staring at the rectangular cloud of the Mac that lapdanced him in those tenebrous hours, he, Harry, could practically taste the bloodwort copperiness of Emma’s new moon menses—for it was a new moon: a tender, slender crescent—and oh! that infernal cotton string! His God and his Devil had given him that. He was deserving, & forever grateful.

  He was certain he’d live to be very old. The single ladies gave him life, each and every one of them, but he had always loved Emma the most, nothing untoward, nothing that was a problem, he took his sons to see all the Potter movies, and the 1st time he saw her he was struck by her beauty, he saw what she would look like as a single lady & full-blown adult woman yet he never objectified her, promised himself he never would, not until her 18th, in thought nor in action, instead he would wait for her on the sidewalks (Harry sang: If it takes forever I will wait for you, for a thousand summers I will wait for you), not with the SmArmy but with the fans—her fairytale crocodile prince at river’s bottom, patiently biding his time . . . . . . . . . before devouring & disseminating that toothsome, magian honeyshot!—a Julian Assange of cunt, acting on behalf of the millions of boys, men, & boys-to-men who adored her, grew up with her, and would forever keep her in their hearts.

  . . .

  He was a late-starter, Jerzy was, he’d frittered away so many years in the shadow of his mother.

  Jacquie Crelle-Vomes was famous, one of the phonies of her gen who achieved notoriety for taking snaps of pre-stacked progeny. Pre-Jerry’s Deli Jerzy hated that she’d taken nudies of his little sis, saw straight thru all her bullshit. He knew that his mother’s one-time obsession was to have a show at MoMA—she thought her daughter’s underage body could catapault her over the museum’s walls—that’s when he started calling her MoMA instead of Momma, which irritated her to no end. O how he loved to tweak her shit. Still, MoMA went further than her firstborn thought she would. Had to hand it to her, the woman was a real hustler. She really knew how to work the wealthy adolescephiles, & acquired (marginal) fame in the process. She was famous enough to have a Wikipedia page anyway (not even Harry around the Mersey had one) even if it was stubby, with a giant This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. It didn’t even have her picture.

  MoMA used to have him assist on some of the shoots, which felt weird toward the end when his sister was getting tits. He would at least have respected her if she’d taken skinnygirl pornshots but apparently MoMA never had the heart; her shit turned out like “subversive” David Hamilton. How fucking pathetic. The bitch who thought she was so incendiary couldn’t even light the fuse. Total rampant pussification.

  It was far out, tho, to watch her work, a real education that maybe he could learn from. From his teens, he scoped haughty MoMA’s cynical traveling circus with its floating galleries & carefully orchestrated, county-by-county 1st Amendment uproars; the ensuing staged-for-maximum-PR-effect local library bans of her books; the rote howls of the conservative media; the rote, smug rebuttals of the liberal media; the pious ACLU voices advocating in her behalf, shoved between sports and weather—and there was MoMA, ever MoMA, with her recondite emotions, quietly nobly preening, stealthily thrilled with herself, all her bullshit-fancy monographs frontloaded with fancy bullshitting essays by bullshit-fancy fake geniuses, fake poets and incomprehensible tenured pervs—skunkhaired Sontag lites + other sundry putative superstars, meaning anyone MoMA deemed worthy to co-opt/seduce/fuck into sponsoring her barfy, exploitative, flat-chested body of work—well, Jerzy thought his new boss was so much cleaner in the pursuit and publication of his quarry, so much more the accidental artiste than MoMA because he didn’t try to hide b
ehind Art or his upskirts, didn’t dress it up to be anything but what it was: xxxxxtreme pervation. Pervomatical pervatoriness. His nocturnal prey signifying what MoMA was too chickenshit to nail to the wall. MoMA hung out in the shadows. MoMA cockteased her collectors with a silver gelatin tween’s sexless come-on. MoMA pimped out her oblivious daughter’s cobalt palladian thighs.

  There was a space in time when Jerzy aspired to be the new Weegee—or Son of Johnny Pigozzi, anyway—but it never worked out. He was a vulturazzo in Manhattan for a while, staking out hospitals & clinics & the offices of Park Ave docs with a camera, waiting for skulking celebs. Facelifts, freakouts & O.D.s. He shot Michael Douglas in the subway, scrawny & disoriented from chemo, poor schmuck, leaning on one of his kids. (Jerzy used to buy coke from his son Cameron.) Stalked Michael J. Fox when the actor was in town, waiting for that elusive Parkinsonian pantspiss, which sadly never came. Would’ve paid the rent for a year.

  But it was cold in NY and Jerzy was burned out. The streets didn’t make him feel brand new, no dreams to be made, nothing he could do—not the Jay-Z experience. The move to LA felt right, but nothing had clicked. Nothing until he met Harry.

  On the way home from the apartment office of THE HONEYSHOT! he got the idea of his life. He’d become Harry’s secret weapon, his sniper, his 5- honeyshot General, Commander-in-chief of the Smarmy Army. He would enlist for 18 months, then hopefully, with his patron’s blessing, gather up his edited work—nip slips, honied moneyshots & everything in-between—and show them at Gagosian.

  He’d take another new name.

  Some kinda cross between Weegee & Banksy: Squeegee, maybe.

  MoMA won’t even know what hit her.

  . . .

  “For me,” said Harry, “after Emma, I got a bit depressed. It was like, Where can you go from here? But I’m moving on. You know what honeyshot! I’d like to get? I’ll tell you. And it ain’t Kate or Pippa, let somebody else get em, it’ll be soon enough. Cause Emma was the real royalty. And it ain’t Amanda Knox, either. You know who I’d like? Gabrielle Giffords. That’s right—my belongs to Gabby. Jesus, did you see the picture of her in People? Post-headwound svelte. Wearing denim, with that little trake scar . . . thumb hooked in her jeans, like one of those hot bored MILFs you see at Anthropologie or Trader Joe’s . . . I’d like to hook my thumb in her jeans! Cause I ain’t all about the juvies. Like to get that perimenopausal kite string—a clear shot. Ain’ never gunna happen. A guy can dream, can’t he?”

  “Sure, Harry. Got to.”

  “You can make 200,000 a year, minimum.”

  Jerzy pulled out a joint and lit up. He had the very strong notion it was OK & it was.

  “Minimum. Guaranteed. But you gotta be serious. You gotta be diligent. You gotta eat, sleep & drink THE HONEYSHOT! It’s all about longevity, Jerzy Shores, & persistence of vision. You want to do right by all the beauties. All the babes in toyland soon to be appearing in a chauffeured Escalade near you: I’m talking Hailee Steinfeld. I’m talking Elle. I’m talking Madonna’s kid—Jesus H! Between the two of em, Hailee and Lourdes could support the depilatory industry without any help! I am guessing there are rumored bales of hair down there. And Elle ain’t ethnic, as you know, Elle’s fair, but sometimes the fair ones can surprise you in the southern regions . . . Elle’s fair in love and war—

  mirror mirror on the wall

  who’s the hairest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  ——————there is a serious bumper crop a-comin! New muffs & mufflers, major single lady bidness up ahead! Kylie Jenner is seriously on the tote—she’s five-ten, did you know that? Of course, my Christmas wish would be to have something beforehand, a sextape, or a topless—I can dream, right? O Jesus, I want that one almost as much as I wanted Emma. Maybe just as much, who knows, the ’s a funny thing.

  “I’m gunna give you a special assignment, Jerzy Shores, think you’re ready for a special assignment? I don’t want to wait anymore. As long as I don’t put em out there, don’t got to wait for the single ladies to be legal. Understand? I’ll pay 5,000 for any you bring in, no one’s gunna have a clue what you’re up to, how could they. It ain’t even against the law unless you upload. That’s what got Perez in trouble, he should have kept Miley to himself. This is between you and me—little keepsakes. Because the world is going to hell & I don’t want to wait anymore, it’s fuckin too hard on me. I want to see what I can now. I want to see the world. I don’t want to wait for the Willows. I want Judy Moody’s too . . . . . . . . . that’s right, go out and get me Chloë, get me Hailee, get me Elle! Get me little Sally Draper, get me fuckin Ariel Winter . . . don’t be shy! I’ll take Rebecca Black, she’s got a forest growing down there. Kendall too. Kylie I’m more interested in but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at Kendall. I’d do something with my nose, but I wouldn’t turn it up! Get me Janet Devlin . . . the devlin made me do it! Get me Drew Ryniewicz . . . get me Sophia Grace and Rosie the Hype Girl! Rosie the Riveter! I wanna see axe wounds, I wanna see movie SCARS . . . get me to the geek. Marc Anthony’s kid—Ariana’s 18 soon. Michael Fox’s twins. Get palsy with em—should be a walk in the parkinsons! I want to see the Depp kid. A little depp’l do me. And the Baldwin girl, Ireland. Go ahead, get your 30 rocks off & pig out on that thoughtless pig!

  “But I’m thinking ahead, son, way ahead. About all the little ones who become part of the family, the national quilt, over the years, cause it takes a village. I’m thinking of all the little ones, the Suris and the Shilohs! (The Suri with the fringe on bottom.) The Obama girls—they are not ungettable nor are they sacrosanct. THE HONEYSHOT! is out there, THE HONEYSHOT! is its own rite of passage, THE HONEYSHOT! is a visionquest, out there like a tidal wave of baby beaver bounty: Here come the Gosselins! Here comes Honor Alba! Here comes Nahla Berry! Here comes Naleigh Heigl! Here comes Violet & Seraphina Affleck! Here comes Ava Witherspoon! (We just got her mother’s cunt sliding out of the car to do a Kimmel.) Here comes Ella Bleu Preston-Travolta! Here comes Sadie & Sunny Sandler! Here comes Cleo Schwimmer! Here comes Satyana Hannigan & Billie Beatrice/Georgia Geraldine Gayheart-Dane & Savannah & Eden Cross! Here comes Indiana & Clementine Hawke! ‘Ever’ Jovovich! Harper Renn Thiessen! Here comes Vida McConaughey, and Charlotte Gellar-Prinze Jr.—here comes Britney’s sister’s fucking kid—a girl, right? And Haven cashwarren Alba—thank Haven for little girls—& Harlow & Apple . . . . . . . yeah yeah yeah, the HONEYSHOT! needs an Apple a day——oops! Here comes Maddie Duchovny! Amaya Hargitay! Vivienne Jolie-Pitt! Stella Luna Pompeo! Jessica Springsteen! Vida McConaughey! Destry Spielberg! Evie Bono Hewson! Krishna Lakshmi! Archie Poehler & Alice Fey! Coco “Coochie” Arquette-Cox! The little bitch from Modern Family, what’s her name? Aubrey. Aubrey Anderson-Emmons. Coming down the pike and legal in just 12 short years! Rebecca Romijn’s got twins—of course she does, she’s 65 years-old—Charlie & Dolly! Sarah Jessica’s got twins—of course she does, she’s 82—Tabitha & Loretta! Don’t you see what we’re sitting on? THE HONEYSHOT!s gotta keep the faith . . . . . . which brings me to Faith Kidman-Urban——and let us not forget Sunday Rose Urban-Kidman, it’s a month of Sundays, kid! Tobey Maguire’s got Ruby, Salma Hayek’s got Valentina, Tori Spelling’s got Stella, Diddy’s got D’Lila & Jessie—both girlchilds—J-Lo’s got an Emme, Heidi & Seal got Leni & Lou—Lou’s a girlchild. Bethenny Frankel’s got a Bryn . . . . . . . if I live long enough, I’ll see Blue Ivy’s black velvet . . . cause you see we get to know them from the time they’re babes, we watch em laugh, we watch em cry, we see em dragged thru Barneys, see em squirm in rich and famous arms leaving Starbucks & Whole Foods & the fucking Malibu Lumber Yard, see em tousle-haired & toddler-jogging beside their toned-up yoga moms in the Colony, see em in Sandra Bullock’s arms, Jesus, Bullock’s arms must be more ripped than Cameron Diaz cause all I ever see is her hoisting that blackie like a kettlebell. We feel their joy & we feel their pain (and I am telling you, Jerzy Shores, the day you hand over a shot of Paris, Michael Jackson’s kid, that will be a day of celebrati
on, a day of healing, of giving thanks to the Divine!)—————we watch em grow up & grow tits, watch their teeth come in, buy our kids whatever style crap they’re wearing . . . . . . . . . . . . then before you know it, they’re staring out at us with their dead, hungry eyes from Vogue and W, in their Rodarte & Manolos, their Margielas & Louboutins, & they’re leaving Starbucks or Whole Foods or the fucking Malibu Lumber Yard under their own power. Suddenly, our babies are going to premieres & museum costume ball fundraisers, I am telling you my new friend that it takes a village, & the village, We the People of the United Village of Honeyshot!s hold our breaths watching each little career begin, & we wish the best for our sisters, that’s what they are, our little soul sisters—our daughters too & our future Moms—and we cushion the falls—the rehabs, DUIs, botched surgeries, 4-month marriages—just as we tally their triumphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . until one day it’s time, time for me to show their cunts to the world.

  “And when that time comes, we are there to help. We are there to help them from our heads & our s.”

  CLEAN

  [Bud]

  The Art of Fiction, Part One

  Steve

  Martin had a new book out; a bad bug forced Joyce Carol Oates to cancel her interview with him at the Central Library in LA. Oates had recently compared him to Edith Wharton, and Steve was looking forward to the Q&A.

  JCO was one of those writers Bud was certain he would never read yet perversely enjoyed reading about. Everyone knew she had written a thousand books; a slow reader to begin with, Bud just couldn’t see the point. Besides, he hadn’t even read all of Dickens, and Dickens was in his Top Five. (It took a full 40 years for Bud to admit to himself that he would never—never, ever—read Proust. Capote supposedly never did either.) Still, he drew ironic comfort from the Believe-it-or-Not! aspect of Ms Oates’s tsunami œuvre, & the trademark shtick pathology behind its creation. Which was somewhat of a shame (Bud thought charitably) because it wasn’t so much the books that were being reviewed anymore, as it was the Brobdingnagian output. Every writer deserved a fair shake, yet he supposed the mother of so many oaters only had herself to blame. JCO often wrote under pseudonyms; you couldn’t keep up with her nom de spew’ems either. Maybe that was sort of the whole point—staying ahead of your readers and critics. It was better than staying behind them, which is what Bud Wiggins had done.