Chuck Palahniuk - Survivor

Most of what's on the Teleprompter is from my autobiography I didn't write. The terrible childhood I didn't have. According to the Teleprompter, the Creedish are all burning in Hell.

The Teleprompter tells me: I'll NEVER GET OVER THE PAINFUL HUMILIATING PAIN NO MATTER HOW RICH I GET WHEN I INHERIT THE CREEDISH CHURCH DISTRICT LAND.

According to the Teleprompter: MY NEWEST BOOK, THE BOOK OF VERY COMMON PRAYER, IS AN IMPORTANT TOOL FOR COPING WITH STRESSES WE ALL EXPERIENCE. IT*S CALLED THE BOOK OF VERYCOMMON PRAYER AND IT'S IN BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE.

According to the journalist watching the director watch the agent watch me watch the Teleprompter, according to her I'm very happy and fulfilled now that I'm free of the Creedish Death Cult. When we come back, she tells the cameras, we'll take calls from viewers at home.

The journalist breaks to commercial.

During the commercial, she asks me if my growing up was really all that terrible. The agent steps up and says, yes. It was. It was terrifying. A technician trailing wires from his belt and from around his head steps up and asks, do I need some water? The agent says, no. The director asks if I need to use the bathroom, and the agent says I'm fine. He says I don't like dealing with a crowd of strangers asking me questions. I've evolved beyond physical needs. Then the camera techs roll their eyes, and the director and journalist look at each other and shrug as if I'm the one who sends them away.

Then the director says we're taping, and the journalist says that caller number one is on the air.

"If I'm in a crowded restaurant," the caller is a woman's voice coming over the studio speakers, "this is a very expensive restaurant, and someone eating next to me passes gas, not just once but over and over, and it's horrible, what should I do?"

The journalist cups one hand over her face. The director turns his back. The agent looks at the writers writing my response for the Teleprompter.

To stall for time, the journalist asks what the caller was eating.

"Something with pork," the caller says. "It doesn't matter. The smell was so bad I couldn't taste anything else."

The Teleprompter says: THE LORD GOD HAS GIVEN US MANY SENSES.

The Teleprompter is stalling for time, too.

AMONG THESE IS THE SENSE OF SMELL AND THE SENSE OF TASTE.

As the lines of copy appear on the Teleprompter, I just read them aloud.

BUT ONLY MAN JUDGES WHICH GIFTS ARE GOOD AND BAD. TO GOD THE SMELL OF OFFAL IS EQUAL TO THE SMELL OF FINE PORK OR WINE.

I have no idea where they're going with this.

DO NOT SUFFER AND DO NOT REJOICE. BE NOT COMPLIMENTED OR OFFENDED BY SUCH GIFTS. JUDGE NOT, LEST YE BE JUDGED.

The director mouths the words Burma Shave. The journalist says caller number two, you're on the air.

Caller number two asks what I think of thong swimwear.

The Teleprompter says: ABOMINATION.

I say, After years of presoaking for rich people, I think the people who make thong swimwear and underwear should just make the thong part black to begin with.

The journalist says caller number three, you're on the air.

"There's a guy I like, but he's avoiding me."

It's Fertility, it's her voice, on loudspeakers, talking to me, talking about me all over North America. Is she going to force a spat here on television? My thoughts branch into a flow chart of the lies I've told and my possible responses to what she might start.

Is she going to expose me and my disaster predictions?

Has she put two and two together and guessed that I coached her brother to commit suicide? Or has she known that all along? And if she knows I killed her brother, then what?

"This guy who won't call me, I told him about what I do," she says. "My job. And he disapproves, but he pretends he's okay with it."

The journalist asks, what exactly is Fertility's job?

The Teleprompter is blank.

Then all of America is about to know a big secret about either Fertility or me. Her evil job. My murderous suicide hotline. Her disaster dreams. My borrowed predictions.

"I have an agent named Dr. Ambrose," Fertility says, "except he's not a real doctor."

Fertility told me one time that everyone in the world, even garbage haulers and dishwashers, will be signed by an agent someday. Her Dr. Ambrose would find couples with money looking for someone to have their baby. A surrogate mother. Dr. Ambrose calls it the procedure. It's conducted in utero with the birth father in bed with Fertility and his wife waiting outside the door.

"The wife will be in the hallway, knitting or listing baby names," Fertility says, "and the husband will be carefully emptying the teeny-weeny contents of his testicles into me."

The first time she told me about her job, back when I was a nobody doing crisis intervention at home, she told me Fertility Hollis is a stage name. She said her real name was Gwen, but she hated that.

"My being with the birth father is more naturopathic, says Dr. Ambrose. That's his pitch to desperate couples. It isn't adultery. It's holistic."

It wasn't fraud or prostitution, she told me.

"It's in the Bible," Fertility says.

It costs five thousand dollars.

"You know, Genesis Chapter Thirty, Rachel and Bilhah, Leah and Zilpah."

Bilhah didn't use birth control, I want to tell her. Zilpah didn't make five grand, tax-free. They were real slaves. They didn't travel all over the nation getting plugged by would-be fathers hungry for an heir.

Fertility will live with a couple for up to one full week, but every time they conduct the procedure it's another five grand. With some men, this can mean fifteen grand in one night. Plus the couple has to pay her airfare.

"Dr. Ambrose is just a voice on the telephone that arranges the arrangement," Fertility says. "It's not as if he's a real person. The couple pays him and he sends me half the money in cash. There's never a return address. He's such a coward."

I know that feeling.

The Teleprompter says: SLUT.

"All I have to do is not conceive, and I'm a big success."

It's her vocation, she told me, being barren.

The Teleprompter says: HARLOT.

Over the speakers she says it, "I'm sterile."

The Teleprompter says: WHORE.

It's her one marketable job skill. It's her calling.

Here's the job she was born to do.

She pays no taxes. She loves to travel. She lives on the road in rich places, and the hours are flexible. She told me, some nights, she falls asleep during the procedure. With some birth fathers, she dreams of arson, of falling bridges and landslides.

"I don't think I'm doing anything wrong," she says. "I think I'm making lemons into lemonade."

The Teleprompter says: BURN IN THE HOT ETERNAL FIRES OF HELL YOU HEATHEN DEVIL SLATTERN.

Fertility says, "So what do you think?"

The journalist is staring at me so hard she hasn't noticed some hair that's slipped down over her forehead. The director is staring at me. The agent is staring. The journalist gulps. The writers are feeding copy into the Teleprompter.

PRAY TO DIE ADULTEROUS DEVIL WHORE.

All of America is tuned in.

YOU ARE BEYOND FORGIVENESS EVIL DEVIL GIRL.

The agent shakes his head, no.

The Teleprompter screen goes blank for a moment. The writers write. The copy reappears.

YOU ARE BEYOND FORGIVENESS EVIL DEVIL WOMAN.

Says Fertility's voice, "So what do you think?"

HARLOT

The agent points at me, points at the Teleprompter screen, points at me, over and over, fast.

TROLLOP

"You're not going to pass some big judgment on me, are you?"

JEZEBEL

There's just dead air going out to the satellite. Somebody has to say something.

With my numb mouth I read the words on the Teleprompter. With no feeling in my lips, I just say what they tell me to say.