Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

Hello, Columbus

TO: SHARKEE@CLS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (STOCKER VIDRA)

FROM: DOLPH@AOL.COM (KATHERINE GROSSECK)

House bare of you now. No, I wasn’t with Pargita while you moved out your things. Would it really have mattered? And who is feeding you information, Vidra, is it Phylliss? Is that why you got her a book deal? To buy yourself a spy?

Not even sure why I’m putting down words…sweet habit, I suppose, downloading my conscience-ness to you, somewhere in the Columbusian gridspace. I still feel the plug, like a phantom limb — I took it out this morning…now all your Tender Buttons are gone, removed for evidence. I’m sequestered and police yellow-taped: Katherine Grosseck Unplugged. Still not sure why I did what I did — the calculus of how it happened (Pargita) — or who I was with you — or who I am now — maybe I’ll go see my “impersonator’s” shrink. Ha! There’s a movie idea for you. Everyone has a double who gets therapized because no one has the time — and the doubles get better! At least somebody does.

TO: SHARKEE@CLS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (STOCKER VIDRA)

FROM: DOLPH@AOL.COM (KATHERINE GROSSECK)

Heard a great country song: Turn around slowly, walk straight back to me, nobody has to get hurt —

The doctor’s bag sits in the middle of the den like a sadistic alligator-skinned aunt — I knew what was in the box the second I saw the R. Crumb girl from UPS. It’s out of the cardboard nest now, and I’m afraid of what’s within. I don’t want to hurt anymore, Sharkee, not today. I bought it for you in Paris, at the flea market, remember? Then Proust’s grave in the rain and all that sad lover’s jazz — funny little flower shops by the Père Lachaise, ridiculous chalk portraits in Montmartre; late afternoon shoeboxes on folding tables by the Seine, each filled with Genet and Colette and Novalis…and Stocker Vidra. I was so proud and so happy. Here I am with my maudlin slideshow, gushy and inane — circling the bag like a predator who’s lost her stomach. Mementos inside, my heartbreak piñata: return-to-sender things, old love letters (mine) and chloroformed smells: you’d send back blood and cum if you could. Oh Vidra…I’ll postpone the inventory just a little while, so until then: more Percocet and wary circling of the Trojan whore’s radioactive goods. If I gathered the courage to march right up and, peering in, found it empty — would that be better or worse?

*** The THIEF of ENERGY

I found Jabba through her mother, who still lives in the same peculiar garish house in Mount Olympus Estates. As I knew that Lavinia does not answer her telephone nor does she return messages, I paid a visit. Mount Olympus is a very strange community, forgotten and anomalous. Lavinia remembered me as she remembers all and everyone she has encountered; that is her curse and her bane, her reckoning. The house is neo-Grecian in motif but is run-down, as are many in that now anachronistic, desultory neighborhood. I hear there are Persian drug dealers living large on the Mount but perhaps that is slander. Lavinia is a heavy drinker (sounds like the start of a limerick) and, like many alcoholics, particularly women, has not aged well. She is fat and looked like a giant (stubbed) toe, with psoriasis to top it off. She rails against her ex but, to the point of bathos, watches tapes of The Chet Stoddard Show . I could hear it from behind the door as I peed (too, grabbing Tylenol #3s which are so old as to probably be ineffective); she lobs obscenities at this handsome Talking Head — so clearly obsessed. Whatever gets you through the night; I am certainly not one to talk. (That is a detail — haunted watching of the old show— The ‘Ex’ Files —I sorely wish could be worked into the filmic version of *** The THIEF of ENERGY ) She said Jabba was there not too long ago and gave me her home #. All this, luckily, without my having to expend much. In fact, upon sight, I deliberately erected (á la the Vorbalids) a discrete Wall of Energy so as not to be tainted by her needy, blowsy, volatile energy demands. Her strands looked like frozen wine-colored urine, rubbery too — ironically suitable for web-weaving. Crappy, weak-looking people like that (often obese) are usually more dangerous then they appear.

Jabba was in jail five months then got clean (she’s dirty again, haha), going to AA, NA, the whole caboodle. She lives in Jew World on Fairfax (near Erewhon) and dances nightly at a club in Century City. We went to the Beverly Hills Hamlet and caught up. It seemed as if she was marshaling her energy, emotive yet otherwise leery around me, not very giving rather into a mode of lambent self-preservation. In short, reticent, and I, respectful of that — having been there. I told her about Jeremy and because she would like the money and possible TV connections (still trying to be the Great Actress), the three of us went to dinner at Sweets. Johnny Depp was there and Andre Agassi, Ellen Barkin and someone from Friends —I have not watched that. In the middle of all this, funnily enough, was James Earl Jones and that was apropos because of Jabba (him being the voice of Darth Vader). I thought I would run into someone I had rubbed, but alas it was not to be the case. Some of Jeremy’s overseers and agent-like colleagues trooped by the table with chagrin, to say hello. (He is represented by ICM — Sweets being a veritable hotbed of aforesaid crowd.) Mr Stein thought he was so hip to be seen with the trashy whores.

Well it seems Jeremy has missed a lot of work, critically so, one colleague brought him to the bar for a heart-to-heart while Jabba and I were otherwise engaged, attended to by the remnant crew of ten-percenters. They are just like pimps! Every once in a while I overheard Jeremy say: ‘Sara has the baby now,’ and ‘She is a wonderful mother,’ ect. And that is to his credit but I know he’s weasling just the same. He is exceedingly grateful the baby is out of his hands responsibility-wise, knowing he isn’t fit to be a dad at this juncture. I went to the ladies’ room and was immediately buttonholed/waylaid by one of the confessors who took me aside (before heavily hitting on me) and said, half with reproach, I should be mindful of Jeremy’s substance intake because he didn’t look so great. Like I am the nurse. I wondered whether this colleague was attempting to posit a legal threat; energetically, I could not read him.

When we got home, of course Jeremy’s dick wouldn’t work so Jabba and I messed around, with him smoking the crack. (Too bad James E. Jones wasn’t in attendance!) He burned a giant hole in the Laura Ashley comforter and the smoke alarm went off and he thought that to be funny. Because I was fairly loaded my guard was down; I could not resist bringing up the theft of 90210 ect. and Jeremy became furious —not helped by the fact Jabba said I was now ‘tripping’ and not to be indulged. She can be a cunt when so desirous. He became so eerily unhinged/mixed-with-defensiveness that it was obvious my theme had merit, and did strike more than one nerve. I quickly skimmed (aloud) the essential curricula vitae: [a] that I myself had attended Beverly Hills High , this Jabba would attest, having seen my yearbook and photo within; [b] that I am an award-winning writer, albeit it on a student level; [c] that I had a long, well-documented interest in and aspirations to the Television Arts & Sciences, not to mention the Literary; and [d] that I had as the coup de grace long ago submitted my ‘Story Bible,’ featuring an ensemble piece skewered toward the young which happened to emanate in locus from the most maddeningly obvious place on this earth (so obvious no one ever thought of it but myself and Wanda) for looming Gen X faddish involvement and piqued global interest (Wanda and I had soared so far ahead of the curve)— Beverly Hills High School and environs. Myself, having lived on South Peck for many years with Wanda and that man who in the end, ect, ect, — 90210 was even our Zip! I had within the purloined proposal speculated adding the five digits as suffix to said locus to create a certain panache, personal-/individualizing. There may be no record of the latter extant. Alas, Wanda is not here to join in corroborative oral history.