Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  You own silk screens by Warhol—Jackie, Liz, Marilyn.

  But these are flat, two-dimensional. The (ugly) Warhol Marilyn is a cartoon figure, no life, no breath, no soft white arms to embrace you until you cry out.

  And so your collection is not complete. Not until you acquire me.

  Thrilling to you, Daddy, who are wealthy and have never been desperate for fifty dollars (with which to reclaim a battered secondhand repossessed car), near penniless since you have no employment other than starlet or model, where men call the shots, pay cash and no tips; you, who might if you wish scatter gold coins on the pavement for beggars to scramble after; you, a gentleman of a certain age, class, stature who will adore Marilyn as long as she resembles her young self and never ages. And in this form, as a PlastiPlutoniumLuxe creation, Marilyn is guaranteed to never age.

  Can’t blame you, Daddy. No!—never blame you.

  For as you age, it’s all the more crucial for you to keep a gorgeous young woman by your side, as a reminder that, though aging, you are (somehow) still young, indeed you are no more than my age, for a woman must be the mirror of a man’s soul, otherwise—who cares for her? Why care for her?

  No! I am not being sarcastic. Certainly I am not being shrill.

  I am breathless, breathy. My voice is a little-girl voice—feathery soft. You must incline your head to hear. Kingly, you lower yourself to me that you might raise me, a beggar maid in disguise, to your own level.

  No one blames you! Of course not—no.

  Marilyn understood. Marilyn forgave. Marilyn never blamed Daddy, never blamed her own mystery Daddy, who’d abandoned her mother (and her) when she was a baby, in 1926. Never bitter, Miss Golden Dreams has made a career of the opposite of bitter, for men do not like bitter, and who can blame them?—not Marilyn!

  Not bitter that I’d earned millions of dollars for strangers, but not for myself. Not bitter, since I’ve become an icon and a collectible—that’s enough glory for me.

  I was the very first Playboy centerfold—in December 1953. Hugh Hefner had seen pictures of me, he had to have me as his first centerfold—guaranteeing success for Playboy—but he never got around to paying me, not a penny.

  (Don’t believe me? That Mr. Hefner didn’t give me a penny? See, he’d bought the right to the photograph from the photographer for $500. Not a thing to do with me.)

  (Which doesn’t mean that Hugh Hefner wasn’t crazy for me. For sure, he was.)

  (Oh, Mr. Hefner was romantic! After I died, he paid $75,000 to purchase the cemetery plot right beside me, and when he died, in 2017, at the age of ninety-one, he was buried there—right beside me. His Marilyn.)

  (I know, it’s strange. It’s hard to believe. That Hugh Hefner could be crazy for me, pay $75,000 to be buried beside me, but never pay me a penny for the use of “Marilyn.” You just shake your head, bemused—men!)

  Not to boast a little, but I wasn’t just the first—and most famous—Playboy centerfold, I was also the first Playboy cover. All over America on newsstands—the newest glossy magazine for men, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover! Though I am wearing a low-cut dress in this photograph, though I am not nude, yet how gorgeous I am, and how young!—my face distended by a wide red lipstick smile that will never, ever go out.

  See, Daddy? Just the way I’m smiling at you right now.

  Bidding will start in a few minutes! Please take your (reserved) seat.

  Please do not stand in the aisle staring at me, Daddy. I told you that I am the actual Marilyn—I mean, Norma Jeane. And yes, I am alive—I am a living thing.

  You’re blocking the way for other customers, Daddy. There will be plenty of time to stare at me once you’re seated and the auction begins.

  You are a special Sotheby’s Platinum Plus client, Daddy. Which is why there is a nameplate on your chair. Which is why I am smiling and winking at you.

  Would you like to love me? Take me home with you? Yes?

  Desperate for love all my life. Not just when I was Norma Jeane, scrambling to be a photographer’s model and starlet. All my life, until the last night of my life (about which we don’t have to speak, nor will you wish to inquire, for of all things Daddy does not wish to know about his Marilyn, her final miserable days and nights), for I’d been taught by my (abandoned, scorned) mother’s example that if a woman isn’t loved, she is nothing.

  If a woman is not beautiful, desirable, glamorous, “sexy,” she isn’t going to be loved, and if she isn’t loved, she is—nothing.

  And if she is nothing, she will be very, very unhappy; like my mother, she will end up in a lunatic asylum, where the predominant desire is to wish to die.

  Daddy, I have a feeling you will like this: a low-down-dirty thrill to learn that I was married while in high school—sixteen—very young for my age despite my shapely body—(but a virgin!)—and very lonely. Though my mother did not love me for more than a few fleeting seconds over the years and could not force herself to embrace me, let alone kiss me, I cried and cried for her in the orphanage, where I was placed when she could not care for me, and in the (nineteen) foster homes where I was sometimes—not always, only just sometimes—sexually molested.

  Well, we didn’t call it by such a nasty term, then. Not sexually molested. So vulgar! You might say interfered with. You might say drew unwanted male attention. You might say the way that girl looked, already at age twelve, you could see she was trouble.

  In the final foster home in L.A., my foster mother took pity on me, or maybe she was exasperated with me for my continual surprise when boys and men “interfered” with me. She’d had enough of my crying and didn’t like the way my foster dad was eyeing me, so she introduced me to a neighborhood boy a few years older than me, who proposed to me right away—and we were married right away—except—(I never understood why, I don’t understand even now)—my young husband, Jim, abandoned me after just a few months to join the Merchant Marines and get as far away from Los Angeles as he could.

  Why was the question I asked Jim, begged him, he’d said he loved me, so why then did he leave me? Why do you say you love me but then leave me, do I need more love than you can give? More love than you are capable of? Continuous love, like a radio that is never turned off? Unflagging love, relentless love, ravenous love? All I wanted was to prepare Jim’s meals and cuddle with him, make love with him, bury my face in his neck and hide in his arms and—I guess—he became frightened of me—I started calling him Daddy when he was just twenty years old …

  Thrilling to you, Daddy, I guess—to know that I was “suicidal.” Just in my teens I’d threatened to slash my wrists when my husband shipped out (by his request) to Australia, begged him to make me pregnant before he left, but he refused—abandoned me and left me and broke my heart.

  You wouldn’t break my heart, would you? Promise?

  It’s a sign of how naïve I am, and how innocent I am, that men have broken my heart—you have broken my heart—so many times.

  Yes, I am shy. Everyone said so, how shy I was. (And am.) Except when my clothes were removed, my shyness seemed to melt away, too.

  Why is this?—I do not know.

  In this, I am unlike you. For you would be mortified to appear naked in the eyes of strangers. You could not bear to be stared at, assessed and judged.

  I’ve never been ashamed of my body. I did not actually think of it as “my” body—I called it my “Magic Friend”—where I got this from, I do not know.

  Of course, robo-technology has replicated Norma Jeane’s skin of 1946—(perhaps it is even more dazzling-smooth than the original!—that’s an extra bonus for you). Creamy-white Plastaepidermis covering PlastiPlutoniumLuxe Miss Golden Dreams, as snug as a glove.

  My Magic Friend never let me down. She had the power to make strangers love me. I always knew—I still believe this—that if my father had seen my Magic Friend, he’d have loved her, too. I mean—me.

  Look how you’re all staring at her—gosh! I guess I’d stare at her, too.

/>   What was wonderful was, when you looked at my Magic Friend naked, you didn’t see me. Poor, sad Norma Jeane could hide inside her.

  That’s why deformity and ugliness scare me!—I never want to get old, wrinkled, shriveled, ugly. Always I want to be Miss Golden Dreams—just as I am right now.

  (And it is a fact, this is me. Re-created from the “organic residue”—DNA—of my actual, authentic, certified corpse through the miracle of medical technology, reconstituted as the gorgeous nude girl lying before you in a suggestive yet innocent pose on red velvet.)

  (Yes, it’s hard to grasp. “Marilyn Monroe” officially died in 1962, age thirty-six; born in 1926, she’d be ninety-five now. But that’s just the old Marilyn, of yesteryear; we are living in a very different world now, where, if you can afford it, you can be “de-aged” while living and “reconstituted” following your death.)

  Almost, I seemed to know that I would live forever—somehow! Even as a girl, Norma Jeane had faith.

  In my interviews I would say (in my little, breathy Marilyn voice, with widened blue-gray eyes)—“No sex is wrong if there’s love in it.”

  And I would say—“If I could have a baby, I would never be sad again.”

  You would have given me a baby, wouldn’t you, Daddy? I guess it’s kind of too late now, even the miracle of PlastiPlutoniumLuxe doesn’t enable you to have children, but you can do (almost) anything else with state-of-the art PlastaGenitalia, as you will see.

  Anyway, I know that I would have been a good mother! All the mistakes my own mother made, I would not make. Not Marilyn!

  Would’ve adored a beautiful little angel-baby, little girl-baby I’d have dressed like a doll. Cuddle and kiss and wrap in swaddling clothes and bury in the cradle so we wouldn’t hear her wailing in our bed.

  If her hair turned out brunette, not blond, not white-blond like my hair, that would’ve presented a problem, I guess—the public would look from baby girl to me and figure out that my hair wasn’t “natural blond,” so there’d be sniggering pieces in the media. (Easiest solution would’ve been to bleach the baby’s hair to match my shade of blond, I guess!)

  But the main purpose was to have a perfect little baby to be the momma of—Norma Jeane like she was supposed to be, not as she was.

  Well, it didn’t happen, Daddy. No need to look worried—it won’t.

  No need for you to be jealous of a kid, Daddy. Never happened.

  I love you looking at me, Daddy—don’t stop! Guess you understand, most of what I say is just kidding?

  Marilyn is a ray of sunshine, so funny. Not nasty-funny, sarcastic-funny, but little-girl funny, to make you feel good about the world.

  Such fun we’ll have together, Daddy!

  Don’t listen to the rumors, Daddy. Some people are saying—jealous people, nasty, ignorant people—that I have been auctioned here at Sotheby’s many times, that this is not the first time. Some people are claiming that fatal “accidents” happen to the wealthy collectors who have acquired me, sometimes within a few days—falls down flights of stairs that result in broken necks and severed vertebrae, cardiac arrest midway in vigorous intercourse, aneurysms, glioblastomas, untraceable “organic” poisons that cause the liver to disintegrate—but these are false rumors, and very silly rumors, pay not the slightest heed to them, Daddy.

  I vow I will adore you—only you. I swear, there have been no men before you, Daddy. You are unique.

  As I am lying in this inviting pose on the red velvet drapery with my perfect glowing Plastaepidermis and perfectly coiffed blond Plastahair, so I will lie at your feet. I will prostrate myself before you. I will be your beautiful bride. I will not—ever—murmur a word of sarcasm. I will not be impatient with you, though you are a foolish, doddering old man; I will be respectful of you, I will fawn over you as only a “fawn” can fawn—(we have learned our tricks young, fawns and girls, for we have learned to survive).

  I vow, Daddy: I will never accuse you of not loving me. I will never accuse you of abandoning me. I will never accuse you of exploiting or betraying me. I will never accuse you of taking my money, hiding it in secret accounts. I will never collapse in hysterical tears crying and screaming at you that I loathe you—the very sight, the very touch, the smell of you.

  I am not a madwoman. I do not cry “ugly” tears—when I cry, I am very fetching.

  I am not a nasty woman. I do not want to be your equal. I will adore you.

  I am not bitter. Bitter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.

  Nobody wants a broody, teary Playboy centerfold. Can’t blame them! I wouldn’t, myself.

  Could you guess, seeing me here so young, posing in the nude on sensuous folds of red velvet, so sweetly smiling, so unperturbed and unaccusing, that within a decade I would be the Sex Symbol of the Century, and a few years after that I would be dead …

  You could guess? Yes?

  But no, don’t think of that. Not yet—(you haven’t even brought me home. Our honeymoon has not even begun).

  Though it is thrilling, isn’t it?—to think of that.

  Thrilling revenge of the male, that the female is so easily destroyed. The way you can break a crystal glass under your feet. The way you can smudge a watercolor—it will never be the same again. Crumple a butterfly’s wings in your fist.

  Miss Golden Dream’s beauty makes you sick, really. Your weakness thrown in your face—resentment, humiliation, shame that this afternoon you will be in a frenzy to bid millions of dollars for an animated PlastiPlutoniumLuxe doll in fierce bidding with other males in which your dread is that you will be impotent and fail—for only one of you is the most wealthy, the Alpha Male—and he will “collect” me.

  For Marilyn will be auctioned—sold—to the highest bidder. Never any doubt, that is the promise—Marilyn will come into the possession of the highest bidder.

  Money will go to strangers, not to Marilyn. But Marilyn is not bitter. Look at that fresh young face glowing with happiness, which is a kind of innocence! Nothing to do with money, nor with questioning the motives of others.

  Love me, Daddy! I will love you.

  Every man who’d ever loved me abused me. Not bitter! Just a fact.

  Sometimes it was push, shove, pummel, punch. Sometimes it was cold, vicious-shouted verbal abuse. Tramp! Whore!

  Oh, yes! Piteous. But you will be the exception.

  But you will not abuse me, will you? Not you.

  As you will not topple drunkenly down a flight of stairs fleeing in terror from your PlastiPlutoniumLuxe bride with the hard-clamping arms and legs, fall screaming, thumping against steps and break your neck. You will not suffer a heart attack in our marital bed as the hard-clamping arms and legs grip you like a python, you will not die of an untraceable organic toxin from the dazzling red lipstick smile—you are special.

  And so, you deserve me. Blond bombshell who’s also girl-next-door. Ever alive, exactly as she was in 1949—precisely replicated chromosomes, identical cells down to the teeny-weeniest organelle. See! I am breathing, my eyelids are fluttering, my gaze is fixed upon you.

  We’d be happy together! Have fun together! Just you and me.

  Tell me what you like best, and I will do it. And do it, and do it.

  I will keep every secret of yours. I will suck you dry, the loose, flabby sac of you eviscerated and your brittle bones turned to soup. And you will scream in ecstasy, I promise.

  Remember, Daddy, all you’ve got to do is make a bid for Miss Golden Dreams. And keep bidding. Don’t ever stop bidding. Up—up—up, until your rivals fall behind, defeated. The lowest estimate for Miss Golden Dreams at today’s auction is only twenty-two million.

  Highest?—Daddy, there is no highest.

  WANTING

  1.

  Badly she wants a man.

  Or, she wants a man badly.

  Or, she wants a man. Badly.

  2.

  Wanting must be glaring in her face. As obsidian glares in even the faintest light.

  Casuall
y he approaches her. Stands beside her, leaning his elbows on the railing above the embankment, where seed-flecked waves slap against the concrete in harsh arrhythmic surges.

  Friendly murmur—“Hello!”

  No threat or intimidation in the greeting, but she doesn’t reply, for it is her prerogative not to acknowledge a stranger approaching her in this public place.

  Though noting to her amusement that the man’s (bulky) shadow precedes him, bent like a Cubist artwork against the vertical bars of the railing above the river.

  “Hey. Are you—alone?”

  L.K. has not looked at him. She is a mature woman, practiced in composure, who will not betray the surprise, alarm, intrigue she feels at this intrusion.

  Telling the intruder lightly, though with an air of finality, “No. Not really.”

  This is meant as a rebuke. Cool, definitive. But the intruder laughs as if she has said something witty, and in these circumstances (public place, attractive woman) witty means girly, flirty.

  “‘Not really’—what’s that mean?”

  A smile baring damp, chunky, stained teeth. A smile inviting complicity.

  Faint odor of clay, paint from his clothes. Turpentine?

  Exactly what the words say—she considers telling him. But no, better not.

  At least he isn’t standing too close. There’s a comfortable distance between them. And there are others on the embankment and on the grass close by, adults who would come to her rescue if necessary.

  He persists. “Well, you look alone. In the present moment.”

  Laughs again, a sort of belly laugh, and in fact he is carrying a belly like a kangaroo pouch, above a sagging belt, khaki work trousers splattered with paint stains.

  Adding, in a rueful tone, “And me, too.”

  Meaning—he, too, is alone?

  Something poignant in the admission by so self-assured an individual. And in the formality of his speech, even as he is trying to be casual, relaxed—In the present moment.