sex.lies.murder.fame.

by Lolita Files

  “I’m a genius,” he said, clutching the paper with his score. “A fucking genius.” He stared at the wall ahead of him, reveling in this newfound truth. “I’m a god.”

  He logged it in his journal that night.

  Today I discovered that I have an IQ of 210. It is the best news I’ve ever had, even though it’s outlandish. Two hundred and ten makes me a universal genius, with superior talent in almost everything I do. Da Vinci was a universal genius. I might even be the best-looking genius in history. All the ones I’ve ever seen look shot to hell. My thanks to whoever or whatever made that plane go down. I renounce my mother. She was a selfish bitch. I will never forgive my father for being so passive and letting her do this to me. I vow from this day on to never be like him. No woman will ever control me, especially not a beautiful one.

  Penn’s attitude changed drastically. Almost overnight, he developed the sense of arrogant entitlement his parents had worked so hard to keep at bay.

  He aborted his plans to attend Harvard, opting instead to stay in the city and go to NYU. His mother had been against him attending school in the city, but he was determined to do everything in defiance of her. He lived on campus so that his housing would be covered as a part of his educational expenses. He prolonged his education even further by attending Columbia postgraduate. By that time he had already decided how his universal genius would make its public debut.

  Many geniuses throughout time had been known to embody something called radical humility. It meant they were aware that their genius was not their own; that it came from a powerful source, something greater than them, and they were therefore instruments through which that higher power was manifested. Because they weren’t responsible for this greatness, they didn’t aspire to promote themselves or their gift. They were tools of God, and realized they would be used as such. Radical humility was a trait that had been present in some of the greatest spiritual and intellectual leaders in history.

  Penn, apparently, was missing this gene.

  He had big plans for his genius —his genius—which he attributed not to God, but to the excellent manner in which his parents’ DNA had blended. There would be no radical humility for him. No way. There’d be lots of self-promotion, plenty of it. What was the purpose of having such a gift if one didn’t plan on wielding it with flash and fanfare?

  He would become a famous writer first. Not a theorist, like his father. Not a filmmaker, like so many attendees at NYU. He didn’t want to be behind a lens. He wanted to be in front of it. The center of attention. He would mark his path from a place of intellectual and commercial respect.

  But that wouldn’t be the end of it.

  Being a bestselling author was just the beginning, the first step in a master strategy, one which would effect the implementation of the theory of Richard Wagner, whose work he had come to idolize over the years, since that moment all those people at Tanglewood had lavished him with praise for playing the Tannhäuser Overture when he was four. Since then, Penn had become an expert on Wagner, well studied in the man’s music and life.

  In 1849, Wagner had introduced a concept called Gesamtkunstwerk. The translated meaning of the word was “total artwork,” or, as Penn liked to think of it, “a total work of art.” Gesamtkunstwerk proposed a comprehensive integration of music, song, dance, poetry, stagecraft, and the visual arts to create the ultimate synergy of expression. Penn planned to alter the components a bit, integrating literature, music, fashion, and film. It would still be Wagner’s theory, with slight variation.

  He would become a living example of Gesamtkunstwerk. The unification of many talents within a single interface: himself.

  It would be a portrait of the artist as the perfect brand.

  He had never discussed this grand scheme with anyone, not even Mercury. His best friend would give him the crazy look for sure.

  But he knew it would work, and he would be adored by the world. He would be bigger than the biggest brand-whores. He would eclipse Martha Stewart and Donald Trump. He had studied what they’d done, but he was going to take it to an even higher level. The world would gaze upon him in wonder.

  It had never seen the likes of someone like him.

  He had

  …a hard time keeping his resentment in check after discovering he had the genius factor.

  It tortured him to see lesser souls like Adam Carville flourishing, getting National Book Award nominations (!!), when he was having to struggle. It defied natural order.

  Penn believed in no gods. His father had been a man of science, not faith. Religion wasn’t a part of their lives. Penn was taught to either create his own opportunities or maximize existing ones, within the boundaries of humanity and goodwill, natch. The goodwill part was dead to him now. His parents hadn’t shown him goodwill when they chose to leave him practically penniless. So their teachings meant nothing now. To wait for intervention from a higher power was folly. Faith and higher powers were empty cloaks of comfort for the ignorant and weak. How could he have faith in a higher power? His parents had been higher powers of sorts, and as it turned out, they sucked.

  He purposely chose not to write any short stories for submission to literary magazines over the course of his college career and after. He didn’t want to build a career through appearances in The New Yorker or by writing for the school paper. He put all his effort into his novel, his most excellent untitled novel. He was convinced it would be a success.

  He had written the book while still at Columbia and had received a great deal of praise from one of his favorite professors, the very distinguished Ben Marcus, who had read portions to the class, lauding it as an exemplary form of progressive literature. Penn’s classmates had responded with mixed reactions, but he knew much of it was jealousy. The professor’s encouragement had bolstered him substantially, enough to map out the rest of his plan. He would graduate with strong credentials in literature, get an agent right away, watch the ensuing feeding frenzy with the publishers, and then explode onto the literary scene to stellar acclaim. This was how he figured it would happen. He was prepared for some difficulty, not much. He had a backup strategy, a Plan B, if his first attempts to get the book published failed.

  He didn’t believe it would come to that. His work was strong, clever, and socially relevant. Editors would be clawing each other for the right to his masterpiece.

  They weren’t clawing. No one had even bothered with an idle scratch.

  They were idiots, these people. That’s what he decided. It was the only reasonable explanation. His book was inventive, provocative, downright smart.

  And it was funny. Funny-hmmm, not funny-haha.

  So far the so-called experts had refused to see this.

  In the in-box next to his computer were letters from the rejecting agents who had even bothered to respond to his queries. There were thirty-five letters. He was running out of agents to be rejected by.

  The responses spanned the gamut of commentary:

  “I found the distortion of such a classic work both offensive and disturbing.”

  And…

  “While the style is impressive and you apparently have talent, the story is all over the place. Perhaps a class on structure would help. It would also be advisable to give it a name.”

  And this…

  “Your main character is one-dimensional and wholly unredeemable. I couldn’t connect on any level with him or his plight. Why is there no title?”

  And this…

  “The concept is clever, although what you’ve written is too vulgar for what we represent. If you adjusted your greater metaphor, changed the locale, eliminated the extreme sexual element, made your main character more of an Everyman, and gave it a title, we’d be interested in taking another look.”

  Translation: write another book.

  This was his favorite…

  “This is shit.”

  Priceless. The agent had actually called his manuscript, his chef d’oeuvre, shit. What kind of person di
d that? Even on an agent’s worst day, he didn’t think they sent out letters like this. It would have been better not to respond than to write something so harsh.

  That letter wasn’t in the in-box. It was encased behind glass in an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven black-rimmed frame on the wall facing him, just above his computer. It was his fuel. Those three heartless words—“this is shit”—accompanied by just a signature on letterhead from a hugely successful agent—überrepresentative Spanky Katz—were the three hard, daily slaps in the face that urged him forward. She probably thought she was doing him a favor by writing it. Maybe she was one of those blunt Simon Cowell types who believed in quashing what they thought were false hopes.

  Penn greeted that letter every day, saluted it and its audacious style, even as it kept him in angry knots. One day, he and the terse Ms. Katz would meet. She’d be clamoring for a heaping, scrumptious plate of his shit. And he’d hand it to her, happily, with a side order of unplucked crow.

  Spanky would have her groveling moment under his sun.

  It had been eighteen months since he first began sending it out. Eighteen long months of agent rejections and unreturned calls, wasted reams of paper, expensive toner cartridges, carefully crafted cover letters, postage, postage, and still more postage. He used NYU’s computers and paper whenever he could in order to save money. Time kept passing and nothing happened. There had been brooding. Lots of brooding. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  He was twenty-five now, and had been out of school for almost two years. He lived in a small apartment at Amsterdam and 108th. The rent was fourteen hundred on a one-bedroom, one-bath space less than six hundred square feet. It was in a decent building with a part-time doorman, elevators, and laundry, but was nothing like the luxury and comfort he’d grown up with. He worked odd jobs to keep himself in money. He temped. He found the odd Texas Hold’em game and would hustle enough money to get him through for a few months. He used women. For money. For sex.

  He refused to get a serious job, even though he was constantly approached by modeling agencies and probably could have walked into any business in the city and gotten an entry-level position based on his looks alone, even better if they knew his academic credentials. Mercury offered to get him work in building contracting, but Penn turned it down. He was too arrogant to settle for less than his original objective. He didn’t want to start something he knew he wouldn’t finish.

  Sometimes Merc loaned him money. He understood his best friend. He was the one other person who believed in Penn almost as much as Penn believed in himself.

  He had attended publishing events on his own limited dime. Book Expo America, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Miami Book Fair. His desperation hit its stride when he skipped paying rent for two months and sprung for a trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair to peddle his manuscript. These were all places agents and editors were known to haunt, on the possible prowl for the Next Big Thing.

  Going to these events involved juggling and sacrifice. He was barely able to scrounge up much money beyond food, shelter, utilities, a MetroCard, and gym membership. He unloaded the ancient Taurus as soon as he graduated from Columbia. Gas, parking meters, and garages were too expensive. It would have been pointless to repair the car if it broke down, as it had done many times during his college years. He used the money from the sale of the car to buy two expensive suits. The rest of his clothing was casual and attractive, but cheap.

  None of the book fairs, festivals, and conventions yielded anything significant, either. There were a few fake conversations and offers of cards from editors and agents, but in most instances, it was a ploy for sex. He saw Spanky Katz several times, but never said anything to her. He was willing to wait.

  It proved futile to attempt to talk to the high-profile authors at these events. The ones who weren’t buffered by publishing flacks and media escorts usually proffered a card as well, accompanied by a fake smile under empty eyes and a hollowly spoken “e-mail me,” which he always did and none ever responded to. The ones that did tried to negotiate sex.

  These were people on road trips, away from their mates, eager for a getaway fuck. He wasn’t biting. That was not a part of the original plan. He would not fuck his way into publication. Not just yet.

  It wasn’t out of the question. It was the last resort.

  That was Plan B.

  During the eighteen months of trying to sell his book, he had had no need to go to Plan B. But the original plan was proving an uphill task and the dream of publication was becoming more distant than ever.

  The Adam Carville incident in the New York Times had been a backbreaker. Penn stopped going to book signings in the city. Watching talentless bestselling dolts and the fans who loved them was killing him by infinitesimal degrees.

  Times were lean. Sometimes they were leaner.

  It was during these leaner periods that he used women. Not excessively. Just enough to get by. He was always being stopped, hit on, flirted with, goosed. It happened every day. On the street. In the store. On the subway. While doing laundry.

  “Oh, my God,” said one woman who was walking toward him on Broadway. She stopped cold, right in front of him. “You are so fucking hot!”

  “Yum-my,” said another standing next to him at the newsstand.

  “Slurrrrrrp!”

  It came from a round man at the gym who’d been eyeing his crotch.

  A woman in a business suit cupped his balls as he stood in a huddle on the train.

  There wasn’t a place he turned where women and men weren’t giving him some sort of sexual cue. He had no interest in the men and, most of the time, didn’t want the distraction of the females. His focus was on selling his book.

  But he was undeniably beautiful, in a confident, masculine way, and he was exceptional in bed. Gifted even. And when money was short because he had spent it for an airline ticket to a book conference, or for copies at Kinko’s and postage to send an unsolicited packet to an agent or an editor, well, it was then that women came in handy. Why shouldn’t they, he reasoned. They threw themselves at him. He led no one on. New York women were aggressive, outspoken, sexually confident, and, more often, well heeled. If they offered to cook, take him to dinner, even pay his rent for the month, and times were lean, he didn’t object. The women got what they wanted—sex, his brief attention—which was more than they deserved. His conscience didn’t bother him when he discarded them.

  Women were the great betrayers. His mother had been proof of that.

  By Month Twenty of Plan A, his resentment had peaked.

  He was fucking regularly, but not for the usual reasons. Not because he liked to, even though he did (like to). Not because times were leaner, even though they were. Sex had become a primal necessity to keep him sane.

  He had a lot of angst, enough to disable a lesser man, and he needed a place to bury it. Sinking into a soft, wet hole with a woman wrapped around it allowed him the chance to unload some of his dark energy. The poor women on the receiving end never knew how karmically toxic the shot-wads of negativity were that flew out of him. One time, after a particularly fervent blow job, he came on a girl’s chest and the semen was so hot, she blistered.

  “Oh God!” she cried, scrambling away from him for the comfort of a cold shower.

  Penn had given her time to soothe herself in the bathroom, but as soon as she was finished, he asked her to leave.

  “Are you kidding?” she cried, three Band-Aids strategically placed across her torso. “Look what you did to me.”

  “It’s your fault,” he said. “You shouldn’t have gotten me so heated.”

  He felt no remorse over using women as his rage receptacles. They seemed to like it. He even had moments of what could pass for tenderness. These usually set in right after he came, during that window of emotional and intellectual generosity, but they were fleeting. Once the nut was busted, crusted, and an appropriate amount of languor had passed (no more than ten minutes), he turned cold again.
Kind-cold. Kind enough to not ruin the possibility of a future tryst, but cold enough to make the woman realize she needed to go. He couldn’t offer more.

  And while he could get women of every feature, size, and hue, he tended to go for those who were the least pretty. Not butt-ugly girls, although he was prone to mercy fucks upon occasion as a sort of sexual community service. Pro bono work.

  Average girls and the subattractive tended to come to the table, literally, with a combination shock-reverence that always translated into a willingness to do just about anything. Most couldn’t believe a man like him would shine his light their way and want to take it further. That introduced the shock element.

  The reverence part entered once he got them into bed and headed south.

  Then, then, then, their legs and the heavens would open and those women would see God. A man who ate their pussy, they reasoned, must surely be a man who was falling in love. They were usually wide open after that, literally, tunnels of opportunity offering the full palette of enthusiasm and exploration. Oral. Anal. He could stick it anywhere.

  A pretty man’s dick could go many places.

  It amazed him that so many women weren’t wise to the cunnilingus bit, no matter how many times it played itself out. A man who loved pussy loved pussy. That was that. It had nothing to do with the woman. It was an agenda unto itself, like using a public restroom. Just because a person took a shit in it didn’t mean he wanted to buy the building. It was just a bathroom, a place to unload.

  Pussies were life’s bathrooms.

  Warm, wet bathrooms with softer seats.

  He finally buckled during Month Twenty-three of Plan A, twenty-seven days shy of two years. There was no getting around it.

  It was time for Plan B.

  He got a subscription to Publishers Weekly. It was expensive, as magazine subscriptions went, and he couldn’t afford it, but he took the bold step. As soon as he made the decision to go with Plan B, the shadowy cloud began to lift.