Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

*** The THIEF of ENERGY

Saw Calliope K-M (the incredible shrinking starfucker) for the first (and last) time and actually bespoke of disappointment over not being nominated for an Academy Award! I should win one myself. My plan was to discreetly absorb the energy she takes from her pet-celebrities, a la Robin Hood. While in the waiting room, I put several magazines into my Prada bag — a Vogue and Marie-Claire ; I know these periodicals had been scanned by Laura, Julianne, Demi, Juliette and countless others (I can absorb minimal amounts from their exudate); once inside, I bespoke the murder of my beloved sister, Wanda, and my subsequent kidnapping by the distraught man barely recognizable toward the end as our Father. Calliope seemed to listen with great concern. Then! Mrs SangFreud of a sudden smiled, rather prim yet cantankerous too — nervously, it seemed — I saw her energy spasm then irradiate, like small animals do (i.e., the old Ribkin woman’s raccoons) as she suddenly asked, ‘ Who are you? ’ Just like that. I feigned surprise but she was insistent, challenging, alleged I was not Katherine Grosseck and began calling 911! I hit her cashmere chest with a paperweight and bolted. Her breath was knocked out. I still have the purloined curio: a beautiful Lalique turtle with multi-faceted shell. Oddly enough, I believe all the energy I was after may well have been harnessed in the paperweight itself, because it had obvious talismanic power, hypnagogic, having sat on her desk for God knows how long, each patient (famous or not) obsessing over and gazing at, greedy of her possessions, focusing upon. The energy released and absorbed by the blow to the aging, fashionable chest has, in a fell swoop, accomplished a goal I’d intuitively thought of achieving not for three to five months from this day, at least. Triumphant!

After long wrangling of logistics, I have accomplished but another goal — a rub with the consummate thief Jeremy Stein. Here is how I achieved: I positioned myself near his home when he left for work. I engineered it so to be gliding by in the Mustang as he pulled from the driveway. I made sure the massage table was highly visible — top down, in backseat, much as a boogieboard might be placed. I was clean and fresh-scrubbed and said I was late for a rub, giving a classical pre-ordained ‘wrong address’ which he said must be south while I, mistakenly, was on the more expensive north side. Banal and alluring conversation ensued. He said I was up early for a rub. I told him I had many clients who demanded I be available on the twenty-four/seven. This, purposefully yet without innuendo. He said that was unusual and I said, not really, that is how we do it in New York where most of my clients hail from. Such as who, he asked, and I said, these things I do not discuss — with a smile, so that it was friendly and benign and alluring. He asked for my card and I knew he was in my web. Jeremy Stein is, of course, creator of Palos Verdes , a position he achieved by his skyward rung-by-rung climb on a ladder positioned in my groin. (Chris Carter and X-Files , you are on my back burner: 2good 2be 4gotten.) I am hard at work determining how close the inimitable Mr Stein was to the original 90210/Melrose core group — i.e. Mr Darren Star & cabal — who ran roughshod over innovative concepts stolen from the diary I kept with my beloved sister, Wanda. Perhaps Stein & Co. were in cahoots with the beleaguered man who was ostensibly, but did not resemble toward the end our Father. Must sift fact from fiction. All the energy I’ve worked so hard to buttress/harness has helped me come this close. Keeping our appointment, I came to Mr Stein’s sprawling ranch-style home only days later and masturbated his cock, his wife was in the other room — an unexpected occurrence, happening without effort or constraints, baby crying all the while, Mother shushing and cooing, so Jeremy and I knew she would not disturb us, even if she did, the way I managed it, stroking under sheets, all actions would not have translated to the eye as vulgar or illicit. Hope I didn’t come off too much the ‘pro’; I wanted him to believe this was a somewhat blushing rarity. He, like so many husbands of women with newborns, was needy that way. A calculated risk from my end, considering the high stakes, but time is running out and Jeremy Stein is a player in my own tragic opera bouffe. His penis is long and pretty, unmarred by the marbleized years-old accumulation of herpes scarring that characterize ‘the Donny Ribkin shaft.’ As in my first session with the agent, Mr Stein mirrored thus and was hard mere moments into rub and stayed that way, it jumping like a flag on a dog at a dogtrack! I let him go like that nearly an hour until touching and he came a subsequent gallon, the irony being, milk fed to baby not far from where where JS’s own curdled ‘low-fat’ dribbled onto paunch! He made another appointment of which I know he will keep.

Sight Unseen

Holly Dearest,

Wonderful having you here — Samson loved it so. Ain’t he somethin’? Hope this gets to you before you leave Wales. I think that’s where Jan Morris lives; she’s the glorious travel writer who used to be a man. Did you know I was there for my honeymoon? Wimbledon, then Wales…all that sand and Victoriana. Jeremy and I saw The Naked Gun at a theater there, can you imagine? Leslie Nielsen’s big with the Welsh.

I was so thrilled your friend enjoyed my letters. Ashamed to say I hadn’t heard of Stocker Vidra until you mentioned her but promptly ventured to Borders and picked up Bleek Haus . (They didn’t have The Brontë Reader and Other Novellas , the one you recommended.) I sat with my latte and read. Your friend has a beautiful style that is difficult to penetrate; I’m not the reader I once was. Which one of her novellas did you option? I loved the picture of her on the back. She reminds me of a young Germaine Greer, but more delicate-boned. Whatever happened to Ms. Greer? Maybe she lives in Wales with Jan Morris.

It’s fascinating she’s also an editor at the place that publishes her work — that has to be high on the list of writers’ fantasies! I’m flattered someone of her intellect and reputation could find late-night scrawlings to my dream-guy of any interest at all . Are you sure she isn’t indulging you, Holly, just a little? Because of the friendship you share? Her work seems so experimental and I’m wondering why she’d be drawn to something so…You said Vidra thought the letters were a potential “publishing phenomenon.” In the wee small hours, the ego starts primping and preening, trying on clothes for Charlie Rose; wondering if someone might please slip the galleys to Julia or Jodie or — yech! See how little encouragement it takes? Funny having the letters “out there” too — makes one feel a little nekkid …not the panic-public nakedness of a dream, though, at least I don’t think so. Sorry I’m being such a wet blanket, I really am thrilled, Holly, you’ve got to know that. It’s just that I hope the whole enterprise won’t be construed as, I dunno, morbid . What I’m really saying is, I don’t want to get self-conscious and start editing myself with an eye toward a Book. (See how nutty I am? The Sara Radisson you’ve never known!) Maybe I’ll keep writing on this parallel track and the book can be our correspondence intercut with “Letters to Samson.” Do you like that idea, Hol? You’ll help keep me sane. It’d make a neat little safety valve, if you’re game—’cause there’s so much I can’t put in Samson’s little missives…things only for you, godmom and galfriend true-blue.