Raw: A Love Story

by Mark Haskell Smith

  13

  San Francisco

  Sepp had given his talk—Brenda called it a “spiel”—and now he was sitting at a makeshift table at Green Apple Books signing books. It was way more fun than the drop-in signings because his fans were here. There were a lot of them too. There must’ve been a hundred. At least. They were mostly female, which normally would’ve been totally cool, but now it kind of freaked him out. Not that they were like the women in his panic-attack day terror—these women weren’t outwardly horny or chanting his name or doing anything scary—mostly they were waiting patiently for a turn to have him autograph their copies of Totally Reality.

  Sepp wasn’t what you’d call superstitious, but he sometimes felt like he was psychic. You know, you get a vision or a feeling or a premonition that something’s going to happen and then, like, it totally does, like when you’re swimming in the ocean off Swami’s and you just feel that you’re about to get munched by something so you haul ass out of the water and then the next day some surfer gets his board chomped by a big fish. That kind of thing had happened to him before and so now that the women of San Francisco weren’t screaming for his cock, well, Sepp felt relieved. It was bittersweet, for sure, because normally who wouldn’t want the women of San Francisco screaming for their cock?

  After his coffee with Caitlin, Sepp had done something he hadn’t done in months. He called Dr. Jan in Los Angeles. He told Dr. Jan about the panic attack and his conversation with Caitlin, and how he was worried that he had cancer or some kind of brain tumor that was causing his erectile dysfunction. Dr. Jan told him to stay calm and said that he might be having trouble processing something she called the “cognitive dissonance” that can occur from being on a reality TV show. That’s exactly how Dr. Jan said it. It made Sepp’s head spin to think that there was a danger of going crazy from being on a reality TV show. Seriously, right? You think they’d warn you. Dr. Jan told Sepp to stop by when he got to LA. Just making the appointment made Sepp feel better.

  Sepp signed another book and smiled. The women in San Francisco were a lot different than the women in Seattle. Gone was the snugly wool and cozy flannel. In San Francisco they seemed to be into expensive denim and stylish cotton blouses. Their shoes were different too. There were no waterproof boots in the San Francisco crowd. Sepp remembered the Love Express blind date he’d had in Seattle: a beautiful dark-haired software engineer with cool glasses that made her look like the winner of a Miss Science contest. Sepp had really liked her until he discovered that she didn’t shave her legs or under her arms. That was too European for him. At the time it had grossed him out, but now that he thought about it, maybe she was just trying to stay warm.

  As the line moved forward, Sepp smiled, shook hands, posed for photos, and turned on the charm. He realized that his fans could be divided into three different groups: the hot young women who were attracted by his celebrity and rippling abs, the chubby romantics who wanted to help him find true love, and dudes.

  “You’ve had bad luck with women.”

  Sepp looked up and saw a tall, blond woman smiling at him. Lankily limbed with her hair yanked back in a ponytail, she had the look of a former college volleyball player. Sepp couldn’t help but notice that she’d used some kind of glitter-infused makeup; her cheeks sparkled like a disco ball.

  Sepp shrugged. “It happens to everyone.”

  What could he say that hadn’t been said in every gossip column and magazine, and on Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and all those late-night talk shows? The blonde handed her copy of Totally Reality to Sepp, making sure she brushed her fingers against his hand. “Are you still looking?”

  “For what?”

  “For the one?”

  Sepp thought about it. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  The blonde beamed. “That’s the spirit. You’ll find that special someone.” She leaned over and whispered. “She might even be right under your nose.”

  Sepp smelled her minty-fresh breath and looked up at her. He was struck by the fact that behind her cheerleader-meets-raver exterior she had crazy eyes. Or maybe she was stoned. But whether they were baked or insane, her eyes were definitely giving him psycho signals. There was something about them that made him freeze, like she was putting him in a trance. He wondered if the fish he’d eaten at lunch was fugu. That was the Japanese blowfish. He’d heard a surfer buddy who’d been to Japan talk about it once. It’s like you eat the fish and then you can’t move, but your brain still works, but you can’t talk or anything, and then you die. Which was fucked up. That’s how this glitter cheerleader was making Sepp feel. Fugu.

  The blonde leaned in even closer and Sepp suddenly wished Len was a real bodyguard. “The universe has plans for you.”

  A voice from the line broke the spell. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Sepp felt power return to his body and turned toward the voice. He saw a petite woman with chunky eyeglasses standing there with her arms crossed impatiently, a snarl twisting her lips. She was dressed in black jeans and a black cotton blouse, like a beatnik or, maybe, Johnny Cash.

  The woman in black glared at the blonde. “I haven’t got all fucking day.”

  The blonde smiled at Sepp. “Why don’t you sign my book afterwards.”

  She attempted a wink, just to make sure he understood exactly what she had in mind. But Sepp didn’t want a rerun of his failure in Seattle. Besides, this woman scared him.

  “They’ve got stuff planned for me. I’d better sign it now.”

  The blonde smiled wistfully. “One door closes, another opens. Just make it out to Lisa Starflower.”

  Sepp signed the book and handed it back. She let her fingers touch his again.

  “Good luck on your quest, Sepp. I’ll pray for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The woman in black stepped forward, not so subtly body-checking the blonde out of the way, and slammed her book on the table.

  “Can you inscribe it for me?”

  Sepp was taken aback by her aggressiveness. There was something about this girl that he’d never seen before. He actually felt flustered, and not in a good way.

  “Sure.”

  “Write, ‘I’m ashamed that I wrote this so-called book.’ And then sign it ‘fallaciously yours.’ I’ll help you with the spelling. ‘Fallaciously’ is a big word. But a good one. It’s from fallacia. That’s Latin for ‘deception.’”

  Sepp looked at her. She was definitely a hottie, but she should really try to improve her attitude. Sepp turned on the charm. “What about ‘fellatio’? Do you know where that comes from?”

  She gave him a look that reminded him of his teachers in school when he said something stupid. “From fellatus, also Latin.”

  Sepp went to his default setting with women and apologized.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait so long.”

  “Oh. It’s worth it.”

  Sepp nodded. “I have the best fans in the world!”

  Several women who were listening in the line cheered when he said it. From the back one shouted, “We love you Sepp!” Another voice said, “Show us your abs!” This was followed by a wave of nervous laughter. Sepp stood up and looked down the line of fans. “Are you ready?”

  A cheer rose from the crowd. Sepp lifted his T-shirt. There was a flurry of clicks and whirs and snaps as various digital devices captured the moment.

  The woman in black turned and fumed at Sepp. “Great. How many fucking Facebook pages will this be on?”

  Sepp grinned at her. “A whole lot.”

  “Make them delete the photos.”

  She seemed serious and it caused Sepp to drop his shirt and sit back in the chair. Brenda had warned him about freaky people he might meet on his tour, but this was the first one he’d encountered who was so angry. “Hold on a sec. What did I ever do to you?”

  “You’ve denigrated the culture of words and ideas.”

  “How’d I do that?”

  “With this. Your so-called opus
.” She waved the book in his face. “Did you even write it, or did they have a ghostwriter churn out the pablum?”

  Sepp tried to hide his expression. He wasn’t going to admit that he hadn’t written the book. He couldn’t. In his contract he’d had to say that, if asked, he would say that, for sure, he’d written every single word. But his face betrayed him. He was never a good liar.

  She stopped and looked at him. “You didn’t, did you?”

  Sepp didn’t know what to say to her, not really. What was up with the women of San Francisco? One minute they’re fugu-hypnotizing you and the next they want your nuts on a stick. But he’d looked her in the eye and now he knew that she knew and, really, now that she knew he didn’t really have to say anything.

  There was a long pause and then, finally, she said, “Make it out to Harriet.”

  14

  San Francisco

  Harriet sat on the Muni and flipped through her freshly signed copy of Totally Reality as the trolley wobbled up Folsom Street. She was looking to see if there was any acknowledgment or credit for a ghostwriter, but there was no mention at all. Maybe they got a real ghost to do it. Or maybe they got a real literary writer to do it—some midlist writer who was so ashamed by their greed, so embarrassed by how low they’d fallen, that they made sure their name didn’t appear anywhere on the book.

  A young woman leaned over from the row behind her.

  “That’s the best book I’ve ever read.”

  Harriet turned and narrowed her eyes at the woman. “Then you need to read more books.”

  …

  The first thing Harriet did when she got home was feed her cat. She opened a can of cat food—the organic kind that the vet had recommended from the specialty pet shop—and, as the slightly acrid smell of whatever they put in boutique cat food assaulted her nose, it dawned on her that Sepp Gregory wasn’t the culprit. She hated to admit it, but with his sun-stoned Beach Boy smile and his ripped body, he had a certain innocent charm, a wild and free naïveté that stirred her in ways that made her feel slightly uncomfortable. It was the kind of emotional response you’d have for a slightly retarded puppy, torn between cuddling it and having it put down.

  It was the publisher and their proxy, the ghostwriter, who were committing crimes against humanity. Sepp Gregory was the beard, the patsy, the fall guy.

  Often Harriet would write about her responsibility as a critic; she wasn’t afraid to step forward and take the mediocre to task for their simplemindedness or to banish terrible writers to critical oblivion, but picking on Sepp was too easy; it would be intellectually lazy. If she was going to do her job as a literary critic then she should identify the true writer and hold him or her responsible. After all, if no one agreed to ghostwrite this utterly useless shit, then those books would never see the light of day. If it weren’t for ghostwriters, publishers would have to look for new writers, new voices to discover. Writers like Harriet. It was the avaricious and greedy ghostwriters who were facilitating this endless stream of mind-numbing text-feces. They were the ones she needed to stop.

  She picked up her cell phone. Harriet had friends in publishing, especially some of the smarter publicists and marketing gurus who kept her mailbox filled with advance copies of forthcoming books for her to consider reviewing. Even though it was after eleven in New York, she called the mobile number of the publicist for Totally Reality.

  “This is Brenda.”

  “Hey, it’s Harriet Post from San Francisco. Sorry about the time difference.”

  There was a pause on the line and then Brenda said, “What’s up?”

  “I’m reading Sepp Gregory’s book and I wondered who ghosted it. I mean, the writing is great.”

  This time the pause was so long that Harriet thought she might’ve dropped the call, but then Brenda said, “This is off the record?”

  “No. On the record.”

  This time there was no hesitation.

  “Sepp Gregory wrote the book. And I’m going back to sleep.”

  Harriet heard the line click off. She sat there for a moment staring at her phone, then realized she was grinding her teeth. She put her bite guard in and considered her next move. Why hadn’t she asked him when she had him cornered in the bookstore? Surely he would know the name of the person who wrote his book.

  She opened up her laptop and googled her way over to the Totally Reality website. She wanted to check to see where Sepp was appearing next. She was miffed to see that he didn’t have any more public appearances in the Bay Area and was going to be in Los Angeles. Harriet didn’t really have the money to go flying around after people, but she knew she was on to something. Not just a review or essay or blog post, but an exposé about ghostwriters and celebrities and their fans, the whole culture that encouraged them. It would be an important book, like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, only instead of a slaughterhouse for meat, she’d be in the slaughterhouse of ideas and originality. She’d be there in the first person, on the abattoir floor, watching the publishing-industry spam-spewers making sausage out of the belly buttons and assholes of pop culture. If she couldn’t swing a book deal, maybe it was a piece that would appeal to The New York Times Magazine or Byliner; maybe The Paris Review or The New Yorker. At the very least Gawker would be interested.

  Harriet had wanted to crack open Roberto Bolaño’s new book, the fourteenth posthumous novel of the talented Chilean writer to be published—at only four hundred pages, it was also one of his shortest posthumous books—but decided she should do her research. If she was really going to get to the bottom of this and take down the ghostwriter, she’d better read some of the book. She didn’t want to be accused of not reading it, of making assumptions, of judging a book by its cover. Even though, in this case, the cover was a full-color glossy of Sepp and his amazing torso, which was pretty fucking easy to pass judgment on.

  She curled into her reading chair, her cat immediately jumping up to sit on her legs and clean itself, and cracked open her copy of Totally Reality.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t suck.

  By the second page Harriet involuntarily gasped. She couldn’t believe what she was reading. It wasn’t the story that caused the convulsive spasm in her lungs—she couldn’t care less about the travails of some jughead sweating in a gym—it was the writing. The prose was gorgeous. Every line sang with luminous precision. The language was knowing and direct, and yet also elegant and clever. There were echoes of Nabokov mixed with a touch of the contemporary; a little Michael Chabon and Dana Spiotta ignited with the street argot of Junot Díaz. And yet it was distinctly original.

  Harriet couldn’t keep her critic brain from marveling, from spinning out adjectives of praise for the work. And because the writing was so delicious, she found herself reading compulsively, turning the page to see what would happen next; the story of a buff and burnished beach volleyball player’s crush on a hot Latina becoming epic and deeply moving.

  15

  In Transit

  Curtis looked down at his new shoes. Pete had made them and, though they had some kind of steampunk perforated design along the sides, they were incredibly stylish. Comfortable too. They only real drawback was the soles weren’t scuffed up enough to provide traction and Curtis had almost fallen on his ass in the airport. Still, it was an incredibly nice gift and Curtis found himself thinking that Pete wasn’t such a bad roommate, even if his odd hobbies sometimes stunk up the kitchen.

  Curtis pulled his backpack out from under the seat in front of him, lowered his tray table, and set his new MacBook Air down on it. The plane offered wi-fi so he keyed in his credit card number, glancing to his right to make sure that the heavyset businesswoman sitting next to him was engrossed in the crossword puzzle inside the in-flight magazine. Normally he would’ve read a book, but he wanted to do some research before he met with Roxy Sandoval and felt justified paying for the wi-fi. Besides, now he could put it on his expense account. Curtis knew a bit about Roxy from his chats with Sepp, but he didn’t re
ally know what had happened to her since Sex Crib. He began with a simple Google search.

  There were a surprising number of photos of Roxy, spreads of her pouting and posturing in Maxim, Esquire, and even nude shots from Playboy’s “Girls of Reality TV” special edition. He skimmed articles about her diet—“lean protein, vegetables, and lots of tequila”—her exercise regimen—“squats for a tight ass, and then lots and lots of sex”—and her new-age approach to spirituality—“when the spirit moves you, move your spirit.” She had a Wikipedia page with her basic biographical information—where she was born, what cities she’d lived in, her parents’ names and occupations—and he found a copy of Roxy’s old high school transcript that was put online by a fan. He wasn’t surprised to learn that she’d been a straight-C student with a history of disciplinary problems.

  Curtis googled on. He scoured in-depth interviews covering Roxy’s ambivalent feelings about stiletto heels because they “mangled her feet, but made her ass look awesome,” how silk made her feel more like a woman, how she would never ever dye her hair red, and how she “identified as bisexual.”

  He bookmarked some pages, not the ones about Roxy or her fitness tips, but a list of famous sushi bars he wanted to eat in now that his publisher had given him a corporate credit card to cover his travel expenses while he researched the book. He couldn’t fly first class, but he could stay at a groovy hotel and eat sushi every night. They wouldn’t begrudge him that. The success of Sandy Panties was riding on his happiness.

  He surfed over to his favorite lit blog, a site called The Fatal Influence, to see what was happening in the literary world. He was surprised—and secretly a little thrilled—to see that the blog was discussing Totally Reality. Curtis didn’t think the serious and hyper-intelligent Harriet Post would even bother discussing commercial fiction, but there she was, cutting to the core of the problem with a rapier-slash of insight. He’d always thought of her as a kindred spirit. He’d been inspired by her novel, The Huntress of Ecstatic, Oregon, which really deserved a wider audience.