Sellevision

by Augusten Burroughs

  A kind-hearted man who wore a small, reflective codependency awareness ribbon pinned to his hospital smock said, “You weren’t heavy at all, Peggy Jean— the only weight you carry is on your shoulders. I wish I could carry it for you.”

  Indeed, the progress Peggy Jean had made was remarkable.

  Not only did she raise her hand and speak at each of the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings she attended twice a week, but she had become an active participant in her group-therapy sessions.

  “It’s about protecting myself, and it’s about setting boundaries, and it’s about . . .” she had trailed off, unsure, trying to think of the correct word. “And it’s about being . . . angry?” Pausing long enough to see the therapist smile and nod, she continued. “My stalker violated my self-esteem, and then she violated my home. My security was breached—and I’m very . . . I’m . . . well . . . I’m just not happy about it.”

  “You’re not happy about it? one of the members of the group challenged, a man named Edward who claimed to have three testicles.

  Clenching her fists and owning her anger, Peggy Jean cried, “I’m Goddamn angry!”

  As a good Christian woman, Peggy Jean immediately felt she should have said, darn angry, or very angry, or really, really angry. But she had simply spoken what was in her heart. Yet God created her heart, hadn’t he? And her heart had said Goddamn.

  “But you’re a celebrity. You have to get used to those things,” another patient argued.

  “Tell that to Prince William and Prince Harry,” she snapped. “You tell that to Debby Boone.” Peggy Jean calmed herself by concentrating on her breathing; in for three counts, out for six.

  Somebody else asked, “So what about those ads for milk? You know, where all the stars have milk mustaches? What about them people; they get stalkers and they don’t have to go to the hospital.”

  “The reason I had to be hospitalized was because I used alcohol and pills to stuff my emotions, instead of going through the feelings.” Then she added, “I was asked to do one of those milk ads, as a matter of fact, and I still may.” She placed her hands on her lap, noticing the faint hairs on her arms.

  And I am okay with that.

  Peggy Jean would not lock herself in the garage and turn on the ignition like the namesake of the clinic had done. Oh no. It can’t be wrong when it feels so right. ’Cause you, you light up my life.

  “W

  elcome to Sellevision. I’m your host, Bebe Friedman, and this is Dazzling Diamonelle.” The first item Bebe presented was a pair of teardrop two-karat total weight Diamonelle earrings in fourteen-karat white gold. A quarter of the way through her presentation, they sold out. The next item, a seven-and-a-half-inch Diamonelle tennis bracelet, seven-karat total simulated gemstone weight, set in fourteen-karat yellow gold also sold out quickly.

  By now, Bebe’s fans knew all about Eliot, much to his horror. Bebe received so much E-mail that she had two assistants to help her answer them. And most of the E-mails wished her good luck with Eliot, telling her how wonderful he was. On air, it seemed she barely talked about the item she was presenting and instead talked about her relationship—yet all of her shows continued to be hugely successful.

  On the Teleprompter in front of her, Bebe saw there was a caller with the name Michael. Bebe was presenting a two-karat round Diamonelle solitaire in fourteen-karat yellow gold. “Let’s go to the phones and say hello to Michael from Pennsylvania—hi, Michael, how are you this evening?”

  “I’m very well, thank you, Bebe,” Michael said.

  Bebe recognized Eliot’s voice. He had used his first name, the name he almost never used. I’m going to kill you, she thought. “So, Michael, what made you decide to pick up this ring?” she said, smiling into the camera, pretending not to know him.

  “Well, Bebe, the reason I chose this ring is because it’s such a classic engagement ring, and the woman I’m going to present it to is anything but classic, so I thought it would be a nice juxtaposition. Oh, and I also liked the fact that it’s a pretty big stone. I was hoping this would up the odds of her saying ‘yes’ when I ask her to marry me.”

  For a few seconds, the estimated twenty-four million viewers tuned into Sellevision at that exact moment saw only Bebe Friedman staring blankly out from their television screens, saying absolutely nothing. Then they heard a deafening scream, followed by a laugh, then a gasp, until finally, Bebe broke into tears; tears and laughter colliding.

  Inside the control room, her producer turned to the engineer and said, “What the hell is going on?”

  “So, Bebe, what do you say?” Eliot asked.

  Bebe waved her hands in front of the camera, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh Eliot, I can’t believe you’re doing this, I can’t believe . . .”

  “Is that a yes?” Eliot said, excitedly, his face inches from his television screen.

  Bebe was able to pull herself together enough to say, “You crazy insane lunatic, yes, yes, I will marry you!” Then she sniffled, wiped the tears from her eyes, and explained to her viewers, “I’m sorry everybody, Michael is Eliot’s first name, that’s my Eliot on the phone. I can’t believe this.. . . Eliot, why did you do this to me on live television? . . . I’m going to kill you . . . I love you,” she said, her words all running together.

  Immediately, Bebe was surrounded by cameramen with headphones slung around their necks, assistants dressed in jeans, all the behind-the-scenes people that put Sellevision on the air twenty-four hours a day, 364 days a year. They were smothering Bebe, hugging her, throwing their headphone sets into the air. Somebody bumped against the large prop column and sent it crashing down against the illuminated city skyline at the rear of the set, blowing out some lights.

  And above all the chaos on the screen, above the cheering, the hugging, the kissing and the crying, Eliot could be heard over the airwaves loud and clear as he shouted, “I love you, Bebe Friedman, I love you so much. I’m the stain you’ll never get rid of!”

  one year later

  “Hi, I’m Kyle Thunderwood. And you’re watching the Shop From Home television network,” the host said as he sauntered across the set in black leather jeans and a white buttondown shirt, taking his seat in the center of the set. “I hope all you viewers out there tonight are looking for some very exciting merchandise, because I’ve got a great show in store for you.” Kyle gave a sexy, teasing smile, unbuttoning his shirt down to his waist. “Man, oh man, it sure is hot under these studio lights. I hope you don’t mind if I get a little bit more comfortable.” Kyle let the shirt fall from his shoulders and rubbed a hand across his smooth chest, which glistened from perspiration. He traced a line from the center of his chest slowly down his stomach, stopping just before the button on his black leather jeans. Then he took the finger and stuck it in his mouth, moaning softly.

  The video clip ended and the lights of the Reno Grand Hilton were once again illuminated as the audience applauded.

  The scantily clad hostess of the awards ceremony then opened a sealed envelope and announced, “And the winner is: Kyle Thunderwood in Home Shopping Stud!”

  The audience broke into thunderous applause, cheers, and whistles.

  At one of the tables, Ed smiled broadly, clapped, and leaned over to whisper in Max’s ear. Trixie Thunderpussy kissed Max’s cheek. When Max rose from his table, Rocky slapped his butt and grinned, giving him the thumbs-up.

  Max made his way around all the other tables and up the steps of the stage to accept his Golden Phallus award for Best Newcomer in a Gay Feature.

  Standing at the podium and holding the nine-inch solid brass penis, Max smiled into the audience, squinting against the spotlights. “Hi, um, thanks a lot for the, ah, this award. I really can honestly say I never expected to win anything like this. So, cool. I guess I’d like to thank the people at Eagle, for giving me a chance; especially Ed. And thanks also to Trixie and Rocky for being really good friends. So thanks, everyone.”

  More cheers and applause from the audience, and
Max shrugged, ran his fingers through his hair, and exited the stage. Behind him, a gigantic projection video screen silently played the scene from Home Shopping Stud in which Max made love to a telephone.

  Although Max’s mother knew nothing of her son’s new career—and she most certainly had not seen the awards ceremony, which was televised live on a cable station—she did learn of his success within the adult film industry the next day, hearing the news on an Inside Edition exclusive.

  “It’s been a rocky year for the retail broadcasting network Sellevision. And now, scandal has hit again. Last night former show host Maxwell Andrews accepted an award from the porn industry for his recent role in an explicitly gay male sex video.”

  His mother had been applying decorative lace to the front of a pillow with her hot glue gun when the report came on.

  As Inside Edition anchor Deborah Norville stood outside of the Sellevision headquarters, she asked viewers to “Take a look at this exclusive clip from the shocking video, and keep in mind that even though it’s been edited for television, it is still unsuitable for young or sensitive viewers.”

  Mrs. Andrews watched as her nude son, genitals obscured by a black box, unfastened a cameraman’s pants with his mouth. The glue gun slipped from her grip, burning her hand and sealing the burn with epoxy. At the same moment, her systolic blood pressure soared to over 180 and her diastolic pressure to 105.

  “Andrews was fired from the show last year after exposing his penis to viewers on air while hosting a show intended for children.”

  Then Inside Edition replayed the Slumber Sunday incident before cutting back to Deborah Norville. “This hard-core pornography scandal is just the latest in a string of blows the network has suffered.”

  They showed a brief clip of Leigh during her Oprah appearance, the jacket of her book blown up huge behind her. As the clip played, Deborah could be heard saying, “Earlier in the year, former host Leigh Bushmoore publicly ended her adulterous affair with then-head of production, Howard Toast. The on-air revelation created a whirlwind of publicity and sparked heated debates nationwide.”

  Larry King and Leigh.

  Leigh receiving a standing ovation at Smith.

  Next back to Deborah, who asked, “The future of the network? That’s anyone’s guess. But we’ll keep watching Sellevision, and you keep watching us. I’m two-time Emmy-award winner Deborah Norville, reporting exclusively for Inside Edition.”

  But Max’s mother hadn’t seen this portion of the Inside Edition report, as she had fallen from her seat and landed on the floor, unconscious.

  “I

  ’ve never had lunch with a porn star before,” Adam said in his deep, everyone-assumes-I’m-a-cop voice, stabbing the lime in his seltzer water with the thin straw, sinking it to the bottom.

  “Well, I’ve never had lunch with a hotel maid, so we’re even,” Max said, smiling at the handsome man across the table.

  The two had met the old-fashioned way. Max was coming out of a Safeway grocery store and Adam Rollerbladed into him, causing Max to drop the plastic bag containing the eggs.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry about that,” Adam had said, seeing the yellow, slimy leakage.

  “It’s okay,” Max told him. “They’re bad for you anyway—cholesterol, all that stuff.”

  Adam had smiled at him and Max had smiled back. And then they both just stood there in that awkward silence that happens when two people are attracted to each other but don’t know what to do about it because they are strangers.

  “So . . .” Max said.

  “Yeah, well . . .” said Adam.

  It had been Adam who took the risk. “Hi, I’m Adam,” he said, extending his hand. Max, who was crouching down and scooping the contents back into the plastic bag, stood up and shook his hand. “Max. Nice to, uh, run into you.”

  They exchanged phone numbers. “Maybe we can get together sometime, grab a beer?” Adam had said. Something that, if his hunch was wrong and Max was straight, wouldn’t sound too far off the wall.

  “Sure,” Max had said.

  And now here they were, in the garden of Café Left, having lunch on a Tuesday afternoon.

  “So, what’s it like?” Max asked. “At the hotel, I mean.”

  “Well, the best part is the snooping.”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “The snooping? You snoop?”

  “Well yeah, sure. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t think so, no. Yes, maybe, I don’t know.”

  Adam took a sip of his seltzer water as the waiter delivered their matching salads. “Freshly ground pepper?” he asked, holding the grinder. Max and Adam nodded.

  “Anyway,” Adam continued, “the hotel is really chic, beachfront and all that.” He stabbed a piece of lettuce with his fork. “Mostly business people, Hollywood producers, New York advertising people, some Japanese tourists. An upscale crowd. No breakfast buffet. The ceilings are low.”

  “Low ceilings?” Max said over the lettuce in his mouth.

  “That says a lot, I think. To have low ceilings you have to be pretty sure of yourself, as a hotel. It’s like Julia Roberts always going barefoot at her weddings. You have to be really beautiful to do that.”

  Max thought, Why does this make sense to me? As he attempted to hoist a slice of tomato on his fork, it slid off the prongs and onto his lap. “Shit,” he said, blotting the oily stain with his napkin. “It looks like a pee stain.”

  Adam smiled.

  “I’m sorry, go on. Tell me about the snooping.”

  “Well, first,” Adam said, “you need some background information.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. You need to understand the system.”

  “Okay, understand me.”

  “Well, the first three days is pretty intensive training. You learn how to power-clean a room, which is my name for it. Basically, it’s all choreography. Efficient hand-swipes with the towel. Dusting as you walk. I never really thought there was technique to cleaning a room. I was surprised.” He plucked a crouton off his plate with his fingers and continued. “But it’s a science, really. Granted, it’s a rinse-the-hot-tub-and-coax-the-pubic-hairs-down-the-drain-while-you-dry-the-floor-with-your-knees science, but still. They teach you how to do a room in twenty-three minutes. So you go through a sort of boot-camp, basic-training kind of thing for three days and then you get your uniform. Sea-foam green with scalloped edges on the collar. Everything has to tie in to the ocean there.”

  Adam saw Max looking down at his crotch. “Am I boring you?”

  “No,” Max said, looking back up. “I was just seeing if the stain went away. I’m sorry. I tend to have problems with this area of my body.”

  Adam smirked. “So anyway, they teach you not to make eye contact. This is probably for the benefit of the Japanese tourists. You’re supposed to knock three times before using your key. And if you find change on the floor, they tell you to work around it. And then they set you loose.”

  The waiter popped over, asking if everything was all right. Max asked for another Diet Coke and Adam asked for another seltzer.

  “So when do we get to the snooping part?”

  “I’m getting there,” Adam said, leaning heavily on his words and smiling at Max in such a way that made Max think he was being promised something good.

  “I’m responsible for the seventh floor, west wing. Seventeen rooms. Twenty-three minutes each to clean. Plus a thirty-minute lunch and two ten-minute breaks. And that’s my day. At least on paper.”

  Adam shuffled the leaves on his plate around, moved an onion slice over the edge of the plate, and poked at an endive.

  “But I’ve trained myself to clean a room in sixteen minutes—tops. Usually, I can do a room in twelve. I’m a fucking machine. Except when I open the door to get soap refills or hand towels from my cart. Then I move at a normal swift pace, as opposed to my manic pace, so as not to draw attention to myself from the other maids. I don’t want them to know how fast I can do a room. I need my time f
or investigating.”

  “Okay, good, this is the snooping part. Where do you snoop?”

  “I go through everything. The side pockets in the suitcases. The little secret flap pocket on the top of the Prada bags. I go through pant pockets and desk drawers, I smell the perfumes, I try on the coats and sometimes the dresses. Always the shoes. Oh, but the laptop computer has changed everything. And if there’s one in the room, this is what I go to first.”

  Max liked this guy. He was like a good TV show.

  “Right away, I double-click on the hard drive to get a basic overview. Then I immediately open any file called ‘personal,’ ‘letters,’ or ‘journal.’ I also open anything that sounds suspiciously vague, like ‘reports,’ because I have found that this is often where the good stuff is hidden—cleverly, the owners think.” Adam gave Max a knowing look. “I read very quickly. A book a day on the weekend. So I can cover a lot of ground in eleven minutes.”

  Max grinned.

  “I check people’s E-mail. Sometimes I reply.”

  Max rested his fork on his plate, leaned in. “You reply? You reply to other people’s E-mail?” As much as he thought this was extremely wrong, he also thought it extremely interesting. “Like what? What do you say?”

  “Well,” Adam began, “Last week I placed a personal ad.”

  Max’s eyes sparkled.

  “I was in this guy’s room: Rogain, two baseball caps, Adweek magazine, Doc Martens, Obsession, Abercrombie & Fitch underwear, G4 Powerbook. So obviously, the guy’s in advertising. Which means he’s too insecure to make it in the film industry. And the Rogain, well, that was pretty funny. I loved that. I immediately opened it up and poured it down the drain and refilled the bottle with tap water. Anyway, so I’m looking around and I see this picture of him and his girlfriend, kind of slid inside his notebook. He’s got all kinds of shit in that notebook—doodles, lousy headlines, phone numbers, and this picture of the two of them, sitting at a table, dressed in black. They both looked kinda drunk, and their eyes were red from the flash. They were laughing. And I looked at him, and I thought, ‘This guy is so queer.’ I mean, it was just so obvious to me. He is completely and totally gay. No straight man I have ever known had a face that well moisturized. You could see it in the picture. And his body? Perfect. Only he obviously doesn’t know he’s gay. Hasn’t come to terms with it. Either that, or does know and the girlfriend is just unwittingly along for the ride. I started to feel really sad for his girlfriend, because eventually, he’s going to come face-to-face with the fact that he’s a fruit and it’s just gonna be too damned bad for his girlfriend. She’s a little overweight, I noticed. So there’s obviously some fag-hag stuff going on in this relationship. And it’s always the woman who gets hurt in a situation like this. I looked at this girl’s plump, laughing face and I thought, boy, is she gonna crash. He’s gonna come out and find some hairy-chested, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing guy who saw Showgirls six times for the camp value, and the poor girl is just gonna eat.” He took a long sip of seltzer water.