Dead Stars

by Bruce Wagner

  . . .

  She xanaxscrolled through the CHANNEL MENU GUIDE: news, news, infomercial, Cheers in Spanish, sports sports sports, House, Kardashian, Kardashian, Hell’s Kitchen. Some anchorperson was offering tips on how to explain political assassination to your kids. Julian Assange was hosting SNL—no. Can it be? Maybe that’s Bill Maher. But why would Bill Maher be hosting SNL?

  She scrolled down, down, down . . .

  Michael Douglas and Laurence Fishburne were on Jimmy Kimmel. Everyone was in high antic spirits. Everyone was laughing, everyone was rich, everyone was cancer-free. Jimmy Kimmel kept saying let’s talk about your movie, why don’t you want to talk about your movie, & Michael said I don’t want to talk about it, ain’t even a movie yet, we’re still shooting. Jimmy Kimmel said something & Gwen missed it & Michael’s response was Don’t be an asshole, they bleeped out asshole, & Laurence Fishburne was laughing so hard (he hadn’t said anything the whole time, he just laughed) that Gwen thought he looked stoned off his gourd. The audience was having a blast, they already loved Michael because of his cancer victory, his comic humility about it, his elegant courageousness, the model of how everyone dreamed they’d handle their own diagnosis, they loved that he didn’t drop by the show to sell something. Gwen caught herself thinking, Wouldn’t it be funny if Michael didn’t have cancer too? That would be so nice for Telma, to have a friend that went through the same thing then stopped herself. Trafficking again . . .

  Jimmy Kimmel got serious & said he understood that Michael had brought along a very special friend who was backstage. Michael said that’s right, she’s in the wings. He said he was hosting a fundraiser at the end of the week, the Courage Ball, they raise money every year for kids with cancer, & his friend was going to be the guest of honor. She’s got a helluva voice too but she’s not gunna sing tonight, not for the kind of money you people offer. She came all the way from Canada to be here. Jimmy Kimmel said he met her before the show, she’s a very special girl, then he asked Michael if there was something else that made her special. Michael said yes, she’s the youngest breast cancer survivor in the world the audience gasped and applauded then cut short their applause, to save it for her she was diagnosed at 2½ and had a modified radical mastectomy at three the breath of the audience got choppy with that awful detail, a kind of groan and the taking back of the groan all at once, in decency & respect for the little girl because the audience didn’t want her imminent arrival to have any air of spectacle, this child deserved being met at her level, with decency & respect, they didn’t want to subject her ears to carnival sounds, because she was Everychild. Then Michael, with playful irritation said, Jesus, can we bring her out already, Jimmy? The audience laughed & out she came (holdng Mom’s hand) in her dear pink glasses, with her bear called Bear, in her party dress and hair done up atop her head, the audience awwwww’d like they do when animal experts bring out perfect tiny lorises, tiger cubs (& baby bears called Bear), they melted & stood on their feet as she clambered onto the couch and into Michael’s arms.

  EXPLICIT

  [Reeyonna]

  Subterranean Homesick Blues

  Not

  feeling well. Physically depressed, emo-depressed. Shit spiritual. Doesn’t leave her room. Rikki brings melty Yogurtland. Rikki craigslistbought a new used motorcycle, where did he get the bread. ReeRee only eats Rocky Road. Rikki picks up Rocky Road from 7Eleven when he doesn’t feel like riding over to Y-land on La Brea, she likes Ben & Jerry’s but it’s ice cream, I’m like 200 lbs overweight, can you please just go to why can’t you please just go to Yogurtland? When he delivers the ice cream he tries to cheer her up but she hates that he’s so wasted. You’re gunna die on that bike and your baby will never know you. She can thank big brother for that. What an asshole. Loser. Looser.

  . . .

  YouTube tripping. Kat Stacks talking about how she fucked all the brokass niggers in youngmoney. Kreayshawn talking about Kat Stacks being a ratchet ho. A slideshow tour of Beyoncé’s million-dollar Mercedes van. (It has a shower and toilet.) ReeRee still couldn’t believe Brody Jenner was the ½brother of all the Kardashians, everyone in that family was famous. Reeyonna hated that she’d been born this way, Lady Gaga should have written a song not about people who were born different but about people who were born to remain nothing until they died. She used to think she could never get famous because she had no discernible talent, tho look at Kim, Khloé & Kourtney. But even they had talent, major talent, it was just harder to say what it was, & that was part of the mystique.

  She cried herself to sleep after watching 3½ hours of Kendall & Kylie Jenner and Janet Devlin. There were hundreds of videos Kylie and Kendall uploaded, karaoking to Nicki Minaj, they made funny videos in their bikinis with their friends from different exotic places, jumping around & laughing, so beautiful were their bodies, sometimes they did the videos from their room which was bigger than her mother’s house, they were always in front of the cameras, they were growing up on camera, it was a natural thing for them, like a second language, you could tell they were in Paradise, she wanted so much to be a Kardashian. Janet Devlin lived on a beautiful farm in N Ireland like Rapunzel in Tangled/her castle, she had long beautiful straw-red hair too & one day she flew to Liverpool for The X Factor auditions and became immortal. It was exactly like Bella Swan, Reeyonna had that same nightmarish feverpitched painful yearning in every fiber of her being for the elixir of fame, she wanted to be a Kardashian or Janet Devlin, she wanted to suddenly be inside their bodies, it was the same yearning she had for Vampire Life & the elixir of immortality when she saw her 1st Twilight at 12 years-old—OMG she’d watched every single one of the Kendall Kylie Janet Devlin YouTubes, Janet sang all of her songs in a small room of her isolated country home, millions & millions of people watched, you could see cars in the window whizzing by & the reflection of herds of goats in the glass. OMG when she sang that Regina Spektor song Us . . . . . . . . .

  I’ll never be famous I’ll never be thanking stadium fans for not giving up on me never be saying FUCK Y’ALL to my h8trs, I’ll never even HAVE h8trs, I just want to die!

  . . .

  She got an email from a company that stored the blood from your baby’s umbilical cord.

  It’s nature’s own insurance

  The umbilical cord delivers nutrients and oxygen to your unborn child and contains specialized cells with great potential to generate healthy new cells and aid in the treatment of numerous diseases. As a result, more and more parents are opting to collect and store their child’s cord blood.

  What were they even talking about?

  . . .

  Rikki’s fosterdad called. Jim never presses, only suggests. He’s cool & methodical, a retired engineer. Rikki said he used to work on rockets. Jim says, You know there’s a bed waiting for you here, Reeyonna. Your privacy would absolutely be respected, I make you that promise. No unexpected visitors & that means you know who. Dawn & I will make sure of that. Ree just couldn’t say yes, she knew it was only her stubbornness, she knew that staying with Jim & Dawn was the best idea, probably the best place to be at this time, the best place for her new little family. To get the help & support she needed. Cause Rikki sure as shit wasn’t going to provide it, he couldn’t even get her fuckin yogurt. Reeyonna said haltingly, Did she say anything about the cameras? She kind of thought he knew or she probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. Jim said, She wasn’t too thrilled. If you wanted to hurt her, mission accomplished. But I think your mother understood why you did it from your point of view. That doesn’t excuse or minimize it, Reeyonna, but she said she understood. Anyway, none of my business. I just called to say what I said—& I’m glad you picked up! Reeyonna thought it was cool Jim didn’t bring up the cameras until she did. She said, Yeah, and it’s funny I did pick up because I haven’t really been using my phone like at all. Jim said, I just want you to know that my wife & I are offering you sanctuary. For our grandchild . . . ReeRee said, I’ll think about it, Jim, thank you, let me th
ink about it, knowing she wouldn’t. We all said Jim just want that baby to be healthy, that’s priority number 1. Reeyonna said, Absolutely, & thank you Jim, you’ve always been so great. I’ll really think about it, OK? (Knowing she wouldn’t, that the weed of her pride prevented her.) We don’t want him or her growing up to be a gypsy because his mom was wandering around (engineer humor). Jim, I have to get off now. He said, All right, Reeyonna, thank you for hearing me out. We’re here for you, for you & Rikki & the baby. She said, I know that, Jim, & I really appreciate it. You’ve always—you & Dawn—you’ve always been so good to me, so fair. You’re like the parents I wish I could have had. How is Dawn, is she doing OK? (Some awkwardness there for Ree.) Jim said, Dawn’s fine, doing well, thank you for asking. (ReeRee knew about Dawn’s troubles thru Rikki.) And how are you? inquired ReeRee, suddenly Our Miss Manners of selfless telephone etiquette. You doin OK? Jim said, Me? Can’t complain. I woke up this morning & said, Welp I’m still on the right side of the dirt, guess I’ll make a pot of coffee. ReeRee laughed. What a sweet man. She had a pig for a mother and an asshole father who sent her postcards on her bdays, it was so interesting to see there were good parents in the world. Rikki said there was a court date set for the adoption. Jim said, Yup. We’re finally going to make the boy legal.

  A few more lobs & volleys, then:

  – Reeyonna, will you do me a favor?

  – Totally.

  – I’ve got a money order for $500 with your name on it.

  – No no! Jim, that’s OK——

  – It’s from Dawn & she wanted me to give it to Rikki to give to you. So that’s what I’m going to do.

  – No really Jim you’ve given too much al—————

  – Now here’s the favor. You said you’d do me a favor.

  – OK, yes. I will. What is it.

  – The favor is, you have to accept Dawn’s money order & say thank you.

  – That’s the favor? she said with a half-smile.

  – Yup.

  – OK. That’s so sweet.

  – That’s terrific. Dawn will be very glad. Now you take care.

  – I love you. And please say hi to Dawn. And thank her for the money order.

  – You bet I will.

  – I’m going to write her a little note. I’ll give it to Rikki.

  – She’d love to hear from you. It’s not necessary, but I know that she would.

  – I love you, Jim.

  – You take care now Reeyonna. (Hangs up)

  . . .

  Tom-Tom started hounding them (again) about the rent. She wanted like two-thousand-dollars. Fucking outrageous.

  They had a week to pay. To make things worse, Tom-Tom told Reeyonna she had to switch rooms with Bolt so he could have the bigger, nicer room (tho of course Tom-Tom didn’t put it that way). Which pissed ReeRee off because it was just a bullshit powerplay, the dude-ho always slept w/Tom-Tom anyway. When Ree protested now no one else was paying rent, Tom-Tom said that her brother was, & that being her s, Daydream Believers were exempt. Reeyonna said Hey put me in the cast, you can just say I was a Teen Mom reject, Tom-Tom thought about it for about a second before saying no. ReeRee couldn’t understand why not, she thought it was a totally rad idea, maybe the best she’d ever had.

  Tom-Tom said she was getting lots of responses from potential bad news bears & soon the temple on the Mount would be filled with righteous loosers. To date, she had just-a-gigolo Bolt (who Dr Phil joked had a screw loose); Intervention Dr Phil; a baker’s apprentice from Cake Boss (coming next week from Portland); a kid from Season One of Bait Car who just got out of jail on grand theft auto, said he got time off for bad behavior hawhawhaw and would be Greyhounding from FL as soon as he could clear it with his probation officer; & a retired ticketing officer from Parking Wars. T2 was still thinking about letting the Alaskan dyke with a semi-moustache who crashed her rig in Ice Road Truckers join their crew, she had to admit from their phone conversations that the chick was a hoot. She said the truckers called fuel “motion lotion.” Tom-Tom said, Hey, we call it crank. But gimme some.

  Tom-Tom was having a big romance with this creepy gel’d hair guy she met at that lame convention. His claim to fame was getting cut from the final round of auditions of a reality show about mostly menopausal women who hired hardish-bodied, orange-tanned manwhores for sex. Barf. (Reeyonna watched one of the episodes with Rikki, there was a married couple who got off having the husband watch his wife get fucked, only the husband didn’t seem too happy about it, R&R couldn’t even believe seemingly somewhat normalish people were agreeing to put their twisted shit on camera. Showtime probably had to pay them, Rikki thought maybe like $20,000.) Of course being the looser that he is, loose Bolt wasn’t actually in any of the episodes, being featured instead on Gigolos Behind the Scenes Online (onscreen time: 1 minute 48 seconds) throwing a hissy fit when they said pack your sixpack & your ding dong, amigo, cause you’re leaving Las Vegas. How fucking lame was that?

  Apparently Bolt was Tom-Tom’s new exec prod. Supposedly he had all these connects, people who owed him favors and such. Rikki said Tom-Tom told him Bolt arranged for a crew to come next week & shoot footage of house hijinks. Tom-Tom wanted them to film for 3 days—the more footage she got, the better the pilot would be—she was putting together what they called a presentation reel but said she’d be happier if she could complete a 22-minute pilot. Do you think the camera crew’s gunna do it for FREE, Reeyonna? You know what nobody seems to be fucking cognizant of? Nobody is cognizant of the fact that NO ONE BUT ME is even supposed to fucking be STAYING here, which is what I promised Cherokee. I don’t BREAK PROMISES, I keep my WORD, I WILL make it up to her, that’s between ME AND CHEROKEE, that’s PERSONAL BUSINESS. But I need you to be COGNIZANT that if you’re NOT PAYING RENT then TECHNICALLY you are just a SQUATTER here & you can just go SQUAT & leak yr PEE someplace ELSE. Fuckin cloggin up the frickin TOILET with yr freakin NAPKINS. DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE NOT, YOU ARE! YOU ARE! I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAY, I KNOW THAT YOU ARE! YOU’RE FUCKIN CLOGGING THE TOILET & YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR THAT PLUMBER VISIT TOO, $349! . . . you should just MOVE BACK TO RIKKI’S, he told me his parents have been asking you to do that, well that’s EXACTLY what you’re gunna have to frickin do if you don’t come up with no fuckin SKRILL. And don’t start CRYIN and shit, OK? Cause I don’t have any SYMPATHY. As Bolt likes to say, All god’s children don’t get free lunch no more, due to BUDGET CUTS. Hahahahaha.