Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  However it was Seltzer’s lone foray into cinema, directing and writing the cult masterpiece Dead Flowers that briefly made him a household name. The film, made on a shoestring budget, was condemned and praised in equal measure. The New York Times declared it, “A masterpiece – brave, harrowing and repulsive, but at its core a truly groundbreaking piece of Art.” In one of her final reviews, Pauline Kael – writing in the New Yorker – described Dead Flowers as, “Vile, scabrous, an assault on the senses that leaves the viewer feeling utterly violated.” Soon after its release, Dead Flowers sat proudly alongside The Birth Of A Nation and Pink Flamingos as one of the highest grossing independent movies of all time.

  Although it earned him millions, Jacques Seltzer never made another movie. Some blamed this on the car crash in St Tropez a few weeks after the release of Dead Flowers. His passenger was killed and Jacques spent a small fortune dodging drunk-driving charges. The resulting scandal forever tainted his reputation in Europe. The proposed follow up, which Jacques had talked of occasionally in the press, was known only by the title Black Neon. Apart from the title, little else seemed to exist of the movie outside of Jacques’ mind. Obscenely wealthy, and disgusted by the notion that he should have to be productive, Seltzer was content to instead spend his days travelling, taking photographs, and consuming vast quantities of exotic drugs. As the months turned into years, and the years into over a decade, his agent’s pleas for Jacques to come out of his “retirement” and start work on Black Neon grew more desperate. The answer was always the same: “The time is not right yet.” With no actual need to make money, Jacques was content to pursue his photography and enjoy the lifestyle his wealth afforded him. He had no hunger for the kind of commitments and deadlines that another film would entail. As time went on his legend as a filmmaker – and the legend of Black Neon – continued to grow among hardcore movie aficionados. The title was bandied about endlessly on message boards and Internet forums, a subject of seemingly endless speculation. Black Neon often made the top ten “Most Legendary” lists of movie magazines and websites despite the fact that nobody – with the possible exception of Jacques – knew anything about it. All anybody had to go on was that vague, ambiguous title.

  Unable to survive on fifteen per cent of the earnings of a legendary director who no longer made movies but preferred to occasionally produce photography books for three thousand dollar advances for obscure European publishing houses, Jacques’ agent – Gibby Getnor – was pushed to the brink of penury. Today he was in Paris to make one final, desperate attempt to get his wayward client back into the directing chair.

  Jacques was wearing a powder blue three-piece vintage suit by Dior, and custom-made snakeskin Chelsea boots. He was devouring a plate of Sevruga caviar, toast and sour cream, and was already on his second bottle of a fine vintage red at his usual table at Les Deux Magots, in Paris’ Saint-Germain-des- Prés. Across from him, in a wrinkled Banana Republic suit, was Gibby Getnor. Getnor was hung over, pale and unshaven. He was bald and his once sparkling eyes now hid behind drooping lids. They had heavy, dark bags underneath them. He had once been considered a handsome man, but life had taken a heavy toll on his face. He was often mistaken for being a decade or more older than his forty-nine years. Neither the warm April sun that bathed Paris today, nor the sight of the countless beautiful French women strolling around the streets in their summer dresses, sleek and unobtainable as gold-plated Cadillacs, could improve Getnor’s mood. He had drunk with his client until three this morning, ostensibly celebrating Seltzer’s latest masterpiece, a dark collection of images showing the squalid lives of working class youths in stagnant Northern English mill towns. Now Getnor’s bleary eyes hid painfully behind dark sunglasses. He waited patiently for Jacques to finish jabbering about his new book, so he could hit him with his latest proposal. He avoided looking directly at the man who had once been his highest earning client, as Seltzer hungrily heaped piles of slimy black fish eggs on his toast and talked incessantly through a mouthful of food.

  “The kids in those little towns… they were fucked, Gibby. Nineteen, twenty years old and they looked like… the walking dead. Already two, three babies crawling around their council houses with runny noses and shitty asses. Pale, wrinkled, bloated, all the life sucked out of them!”

  “I know the feeling,” Gibby said, weakly.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Gibby. You rotten Americans cannot handle your drink. Now those kids in England – they know how to drink. Up there, in those little mill towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire, they stay solidly drunk from the age of twelve until the time comes that they inevitably die in a pool of their own urine. They smoke revolting low-grade hash, sniff glue and guzzle cheap lager from morning to night. On weekends, the girls stagger around these nowhere towns in miniskirts and high heels despite the fact that it is zero degrees outside, raining and snowing… and they puke, and piss, and fuck right there in the streets. They were doomed Gibby. Apathetic, bored, addled by alcohol, and totally inspiring. Imagine! I was with them for six weeks, drinking with them, observing them, and photographing them.” Jacques lit an unfiltered Gitanes Brunes, took a long drag, and blew the smoke up into the cloudless blue sky. “What a trip!” he grinned.

  Gibby’s nose wrinkled at the smell of the strong French tobacco. One thing he could not get used to in this country was the smell of cigarette smoke wafting out from every fucking direction. Since smoking had been practically outlawed in public back in California, the sight of someone openly sucking on a cigarette at the lunch table was as disconcerting to Gibby as seeing someone injecting heroin while waiting for their croque-monsieur. Plus, ever since he’d quit smoking a decade ago the smell of tobacco revolted him. “It’s an incredible set of images, Jacques.” Gibby spluttered, “Undoubtedly your best work yet.”

  Jacques nodded, smiling broadly. He filled his glass again, topping off his agent’s glass as well, and then took a thirsty gulp. He wiped his moist red lips with the back of his hand. Gibby took another sip from his own glass, hoping that by pouring more wine onto his hangover he might feel somewhat human in time for his flight back to LAX in a few hours. At this particular moment the very idea of getting onto an airplane was terrifying. He couldn’t decide whether his most pressing urge was to vomit, shit, or pass out. Instead of doing any of those, he said: “Jacques, I have something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Ah-hah!” Jacques exclaimed, blowing a great cloud of grey smoke in Gibby’s face, “Here it comes! Your ulterior motive, Gibby… as plain as the broken blood vessels on your nose!”

  “Please Jacques, this is serious.”

  Gibby took a hard slug of his wine to steady himself.

  “Are you going to ask me about this fucking movie merde again?” Jacques demanded, deflating Gibby expertly.

  “Hear me out!” Gibby whined.

  “Oh JESUS!”

  “Wait! Just listen. An offer came through, I just wanna relate it to you, and that’s it. No pressure from me, okay?”

  Jacques rolled his eyes. Sullenly he shrugged and waved a dismissive hand toward Gibby as if to say Go ahead. Gibby cleared his throat.

  “Have you heard of Kenny Azura?”

  “Non.”

  “He’s the new head of Chainsaw Pictures, a brand new subdivision of Dreamscape Studios. This guy is the hottest shit in Hollywood right now. He’s only twenty-eight fucking years old, but he’s already got a résumé to die for. Everything this bastard touches turns to gold. Did you ever see Endless Black?”

  “No.”

  “The Piano Tuner?”

  “No.”

  “The Seventeen Wives of Zachary Turner?”

  “No.”

  Gibby sighed and rubbed his throbbing temples dejectedly.

  “Well Jacques, all of them are critically successful and high grossing movies with one thing in common. They were all produced by Kenny Azura. Hollywood Reporter calls hi
m “The Boy King of Hollywood”. Now he has his own production company the first thing he wants to do – the VERY first thing, Jacques – is to bankroll Black Neon, which he envisions as your triumphant return to cinema. Dead Flowers is his all-time, number one, favourite movie. He’s offering deep pockets, the support of one of the biggest studios in the business, and complete artistic control. He’s exact words to me were, “Whatever Jacques wants to do with Black Neon, I want to make it possible.” Jacques – nobody gets offered this kind of deal in Hollywood anymore. It’s totally unheard of. And all you have to do… is say YES.”

  There was a frozen moment at the table, as Jacques seemed to actually consider Gibby’s pitch. Then Seltzer sighed, reached under the table, and produced a manila envelope.

  “Gibby,” he said emphatically, “How can I do this movie when the time is still not right yet? Tell them thanks… but no thanks. Now, back to the book. Take a look at this. I have an idea for the title. Tell me what you think, okay? Imagine the cover.”

  Gibby choked back his disappointment as Jacques opened the envelope and slid out a glossy, black and white A4 image. He held it up to Gibby. Gibby had of course seen the image before. It was one of the standouts of the new collection. At first glance it looked like a simple enough nighttime shot of one of those typical featureless, suburban English chain pubs. However, soon the eye was drawn to the alleyway, next to the pub itself. A row of overflowing rubbish bins. A ‘dead end’ sign at the mouth of the alley. Illuminated by the harsh street light was a couple, fucking. The man had his back to the camera, pants around his ankles and a long white dress shirt covering his bare ass. He was thrusting into a girl, who was sitting on one of the bins. Her legs were wrapped around him. Her panties hung from one of her ankles like a flag of surrender. She had her hand on his ass, pushing him deeper into her. The other was holding a bottle of booze, which she sucked on as they screwed. The heart of the image – when you peered close enough – was the girl’s face. She was bleached blonde, overweight, some indeterminate age between sixteen and forty, and heavily made-up. Her painted lips were wrapped round the neck of the bottle. Her eyes looked at the viewer – through the viewer, really – with a haunting expression that floated somewhere in between despair and utter boredom.

  “Teenage Hole:” Jacques announced in a voice trembling with pride, “Snapshots from the Void.”

  Gibby sat in silence, regarding the picture intently. Then he removed his glasses, and rubbed his red eyes. He smiled and muttered weakly, “Yeah, I like it Jacques...” He replaced the sunglasses and muttered, “Sounds great.”

  THREE

  Jeffrey was snoring softly, oblivious to the rat-at-tat of air hammers and the whine of road drills outside of his room at the Gilbert Hotel in Hollywood. Agents of Progress were busy trying to raze this section of the city and replace it with something more palatable. Surrounding this seedy quadrant of flophouses, peepshows, grimy fast food restaurants and seedy bars were million-dollar condominiums, Zagat-rated eating establishments, boutique hotels and other signs of the steady encroachment of the young, the beautiful and the stupefyingly dull. With each passing day they displaced the population of this temporal, transient city-within-a-city inch by inch, a street corner at a time. But for now they hung on, like a stubborn rodent infestation.

  Sitting up in the bed next to him was Rachel, Jeffrey’s lover. Rachel was a concentration-camp-thin transvestite whose ebony-black skin was pressed tight against her bones, her face all angles and shadows. She silently smoked her first cigarette of the day, with unsteady hands. Thick, black stubble was pushing through last night’s foundation, and her shaved skull was hidden underneath a black wig cap. Around the room were several Styrofoam heads with wigs of varying colours and lengths. Exhaling grey smoke, Rachel burped ominously and then leapt from the bed. She hustled naked across the floor and vomited violently into the toilet bowl, holding the cigarette aloft to keep it safe from splashing puke. When she was done she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, pulled long and hard on the butt, then tossed it into the crapper with a hiss. Shuddering, she flushed the whole damn mess away.

  She rinsed her mouth, crept back into the bedroom, and expertly pulled on a fire-engine-red bob wig. She crawled back into bed with Jeffrey. The thin mattress was damp and cool with sweat. She shook him gently, and he moaned. His pale skin felt rubbery, slick to the touch. She could tell from his shallow, fitful sleep that the sickness would be upon him soon.

  “Jeffrey honey,” she whispered in her husky, two-packs-a-day growl, “We’d better get moving. The clinic closes in an hour.”

  Jeffrey groaned, turned over, and buried his hollow face further into the stained, lumpy pillow. It was eight in the morning, and already the room felt like a furnace. The Gilbert did not boast air conditioners, although for $180 per week you got free HBO and all the adult movies you could consume. Outside of their third floor room sirens wailed, helicopters throbbed, and people honked their horns in futile anger. She ruffled Jeffrey’s lank, greasy black hair.

  “Come on. Rise and shine, handsome.”

  Later, Rachel was applying her lipstick and it was Jeffrey’s turn to vomit in the bathroom. When he emerged she clicked her compact closed, and watched him admiringly as he slid his bare ass into a pair of black Levi’s. He then pulled on a faded Iggy and the Stooges t-shirt. His hair was swept back from his face, hanging down around his shoulders. He was her beautiful, skinny, strung-out white boy. She lifted her arms and gave herself a curious sniff. Screwing her face up, she doused herself with a few generous squirts of Charlie. Her clothes and makeup fixed, Rachel stood and placed her hands on her hips, presenting herself to her man. She was wearing a red lumberjack shirt tied in a knot at the front exposing her tight, flat belly, and a pair of tiny denim shorts.

  “How do I look?”

  “Beautiful,” Jeffrey deadpanned, “Like a black, cross-dressing Daisy Mae Duke. Now can we get the fuck outta here?”

  Rachel pouted. “Mr. Grumpy today, huh?”

  Jeffrey ran a trembling hand through his hair. “Honey, I’m sick as a fucking dog. Let’s get dosed and I promise I’ll be full of sunshine and flowers, okay?”

  Rachel kissed Jeffrey lightly on the cheek.

  “I’m gonna hold your white ass to that,” she said.

  Even in an area as low rent as Wilcox and Selma, Jeffrey and Rachel were a duo that attracted stares. The rail-thin six-foot-two black transvestite in size twelve platform boots walking arm-in-arm with the translucent Irish junkie with a greasy mop of black hair and weeping, inflamed needle marks festooning his extremities. They walked toward the Hollywood methadone clinic, where they had met a few months ago, hanging onto each other slowly and unsteadily all the while. Outside of the Check Cash joint on the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga, already a smattering of junkies was congregating, shouting out for spit back methadone or sleepers. Inside the clinic you had to drink your dose on the spot, a practice that was intended to stamp out junkies reselling their government dope to other more desperate, bottom-feeding junkies. Some of the more entrepreneurial dope-fiends had perfected a method for regurgitating their methadone as soon as they walked outside of the clinic, to rebottle and sell. The process involved not eating the night before, and inducing vomiting to clean out the stomach immediately prior to showing up at the clinic. This puked-up methadone went for seven dollars a pop, the same price as a bag of shitty-quality heroin downtown. As they walked past this ramshackle bazaar, the assembled dope-fiends like The Doctor, Pop Gun Eddie, and Suzie Wong greeted them with the easy familiarity of old friends. Jeffrey and Rachel smiled pained smiles, and nodded without stopping. Then up the stairway and into the clinic, signing in at the front desk. They took their place at the back of the line.

  The queue of dope-fiends crept painfully toward their dose. A few of the more chipper junkies bantered among themselves, cracking jokes and talking shop, but mostly the room was si
lent, full of sick, pensive addicts. The clinic had the grey, joyless air of a DMV or Social Security office. The staff hid behind thick Plexiglas windows, and smiles were rarely exchanged. No junkie is ever happy to be in a methadone clinic, and tempers often flared. Most street junkies considered the methadone clinics – “the old liquid handcuffs” as the expression went – to be just about as low as a dope-fiend could sink. But for those too old, too tired, or too beat up for the relentless hustle and grind of the streets, a stable dose of any opiate – even one as shitty as methadone – was a necessary evil.

  In front of her Rachel recognized Nicky Forest, a skinny, longhaired hipster junkie who had once been the lead singer of a cult rock band called Popism, until his heroin habit had totally sidelined the band’s career. Both of his arms were tied up in filthy looking slings. The word was that he’d muscled some dope infected with an aggressive flesh-eating bacteria. By the time he made it to the hospital it was all-but too late: the doctors had to cut away so much infected muscle from his arms and shoulders that it left him a virtual cripple. When the cup was passed to him, he bent over, gripped it with his teeth, and in one expert motion brought his head back and tipped the methadone down his throat without spilling a drop. Then he shuffled away, heading back to the Hollywood streets and whatever fresh horrors awaited him today.

  When it was her turn Rachel slugged back her dose, swallowing it, topping up the paper cup with water to swish around and collect every last drop of the precious red liquid. She did this quickly, so as not to attract catcalls and threats from the other sick dope-fiends in line. If there was one thing guaranteed to antagonize a room full of sick junkies it was dragging your feet at the dosing window. Then it was Jeffrey’s turn. He glared at the old Chinese woman behind the glass counter radiating icy-cold hostility. After he took his dose he pressed his middle finger against the glass, and left with a dramatic flourish.