Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

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 behind 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?”