Pamela Anderson - Star Struck

“No, he said it was for my own good,” Theresa wailed.

“For your own good?”

“Well, I was planning to go to school at Manatee Community this fall,” Theresa explained, sniffling but getting the better of her tears for a moment. “They have that accelerated dental assistant’s program that I’ve been thinking about.”

“Right,” Star said, leaning against the railing to avoid being trampled by a workman who was carrying painting equipment and scaffolding up the stairs, which concerned her, as she hadn’t arranged for anything on the second floor to be painted.

“So anyway, Vanda ran off and got married,” Theresa said.

“No!” Star gasped. “Not that stripper? Isn’t he gay now?”

“That was last month. He switched back after the sugar daddy dumped him, and she wanted to stake a claim before he changed back again,” Theresa clarified sadly. “So we’re not only shorthanded, but since Vanda took off to follow his dance troupe, I’m senior girl.”

“And she was your roommate,” Star added, realizing the gravity of the situation.

“Well, that’s another problem,” Theresa agreed. “So, I decided I’d put off Manatee for the foreseeable future. But you know how Mother is. He said, ‘Not this time, young lady. You’re fired. Get out of this dump and go to school before you’re too old and stupid to learn anything.’” Theresa began crying again. “And then he said, ‘You know, Theri, those tits won’t last forever.’”

“That’s not true,” Star said, coming to her defense. “Those implants I got you are top-of-the-line. They’ll outlast all of us.”

“I know it,” Theresa wailed. “He meant I was getting too old.”

“No, he didn’t, sweetie,” Star soothed, knowing that irony was not the only reason that their former employer was called Mother. “He wants you to get out of there and make something of yourself, and he’s right.”

“But school doesn’t start till this fall, and even if I do go, I was counting on the summer tourist season at Mother’s to help me afford it.”

“Well, Theresa, today may just be your lucky day,” Star said, leaping up to avoid a section of scaffolding that came crashing down the stairs after escaping from some unseen source that she searched the upper hall to discover.

It was the perfect plan.

Theresa would come out and work as Star’s assistant on the movie. And Star would be able to hang on to her sanity with her fingernails as she shot her first major motion picture, dealt with being a newlywed, and was dissected on the daily news.

Even better, it worked out that Theresa could bring her current boyfriend, JC, along. Jimi was in the market for a trainer, and Juan Carlo was one of Miami’s hottest fitness consultants, working with Miami’s elite as well as plenty of Hollywood’s A-list while they visited their Miami places. Jimi had always thought himself too skinny and was determined to start bulking up that summer, a goal JC assured Jimi was within his grasp in just a few quick sessions.

Star thought Jimi looked fine. The only part of his body that she might conceivably have wanted larger was plenty big enough, and no amount of exercising was ever going to change that.

Jimi and Star were devoted to one another. They were inseparable: eating every meal together, working out together, taking on each and every task as a team. They were enthusiastically wading into redoing the house, shopping together for each plant that was going into making over the grounds of the Malibu house from sand and rocks into a garden worthy of their personal Eden—Jimiville, as Star had taken to calling it. To Star’s surprise, Jimi was very knowledgeable about horticulture, knowing the names, often even the Latin ones, of every plant they saw and considered.

He seemed possessed of some magical properties where plants were concerned.

But as Star’s career and the work on the film took more and more of her time, Jimi switched his focus, and husband and wife were inseparable, either on the set or in meetings or in preparation for her role as the first female action adventure hero. Since Cannes, their visibility was up and they stuck more closely together than ever.

Because of her own athletic prowess, not to mention her complete moviemaking naïveté, Star decided to do most of her stunt work herself. She began frequenting the firing ranges and became competent with all manner of guns; she found the power arousing. She took martial arts training and boned up on her old gymnastics skills. It was fun and exhilarating to discover that she still had it in her.

One afternoon, after a costume fitting at the soundstages where most of the interiors were to be shot, she ran into the executive producer, Steph, and some of the other more minor executives on the project. “How’s it going?” Steph asked in greeting as they passed. In answer, Star did a standing backflip, shook his hand, and went on her way. Their applause accompanied her exit, which she made with a bow.

Jimi helped out where he could.

One of the many stunts that Star had elected to do, at least in part, was to ride a motorcycle. Star felt that since her character rode, learning was a part of understanding her role, and it sounded like fun. The stunt coordinator arranged for her to go to a Westside Harley dealership to take out the kind of bike she would be riding in the film for a test-drive to “get the feel of it.” Jimi insisted on accompanying her, but when the time for her lesson arrived, he was delayed by negotiations over a possible new Fools Brigade project.

Figuring it was no big deal, and actually quite delighted by the opportunity, Star kept the appointment. Arriving at the dealership dressed in a pair of cutoffs, a tube top, heels, and a rhinestone-studded necklace that said FOXY in bold block letters, she felt she had mastered the most important part of successful motorcycling: costuming. “What else would a biker chick wear, right?” she said in response to the appreciative whistles she got from her “instructors” at the dealership.

As with most things in her life, it simply never occurred to Star that she couldn’t ride a motorcycle. So she did. The instructor explained the basics. Star kicked the bike into life and took the Sportster for a spin.

Jimi roared up to the dealership riding his own bike complete with illegal ape hangers about a half hour after Star’s departure, demanding to know where she was. “What the hell do you mean, she already left?” his voice echoed through the tile-and-glass enclosure that housed the brightly colored, chrome-encrusted crotch rockets.

“Well, she seemed to know what she was doing,” the salesman shrugged. “She said she just wanted to get the feel of the bike and so we let her go.”

“How long ago?” Jimi said, panic beginning to creep into his voice.

“Half an hour? Forty-five minutes?”

“If anything’s happened to her, I’ll come back here and take you and this whole place apart,” Jimi said with such frightening quiet that the salesman stepped back even though Jimi had not advanced on him.

“Look, man…” he began, holding his hands up in surrender.

“Which way did she go?”

“Toward the beach.” The man paled as he began to realize the possible consequences, with or without Jimi’s threats, if anything happened to Star.

Jimi took his bike and zigzagged up and down the streets that radiated from the dealership. Eventually he caught up to Star and fell in beside her. She felt happy and free as they made their way back to the dealership. As they pulled back in, Star popped the clutch and the bike fell on her painfully, burning her leg on the hot engine exhaust pipe.

“Fuck, you made me nervous,” Star said to Jimi. “I was doing fine. Fuck!”