Snuff

19. Mr. 137

The last time I saw Oklahoma is the last time I ever want to see Oklahoma. Picture that big circle of blue sky meeting dirt, wrapped all the way around you. Dirt and rocks stretched from you to the horizon. Dirt and rocks, and that sun always up high, the noon whistle blasting at the volunteer fire department. Dirt and rocks, and my dear, simple, good-hearted father waiting to see me off on the Greyhound bus bound for the temptations of the big, wicked city.

Talking to the talent wrangler, I say that if Oklahoma the state was anything like the musical I'd still reside there. Cowboys tap-dancing on train platforms. Gloria Grahame. Gypsy peddlers. Elaborate dream sequences choreographed by Martha Graham.

I lean forward and pinch, with just my fingertips, an especially gruesome flake of dandruff off the shoulder of the wrangler's black sweater. From the feel, a 50-acrylic, 50-cotton blend, raglan sleeves, faux cowl neck.

Ribbed knit. Looped with snags. Awful. And I flick away the waxy flake.

On Mr. Toto, next to Gloria Grahame's fake autograph, it says, "What girl could ever say 'No' to you?!"

Watching the white flake arc and disappear in the fluttering light from the monitors, the talent wrangler says, "I use her shampoo…" and she tosses her head toward the movie on the screen above us, where Cassie Wright's trapped in a dystopian science-fiction future. According to the premise, war and toxic waste have killed off every other hot sex goddess except her. As the last surviving hottie, she has to wear crippling thong underwear, a push-up bra, and high heels, then fuck or suck off every guy in the evil fascist, quasi-religious, theocratic, Old Testament—inspired government. The movie's called The Handmaid's Tail.

A classic of social-commentary porn.

"It's how I got this job," the wrangler says. "During my pitch meeting, Ms. Wright smelled my hair."

Me, too, I say, and touch the hairs combed across my own scalp.

"I kind of guessed," she says, frowning. "Either that or you're having chemotherapy or you have some terrible, fatal disease."

No, I tell her. Just the shampoo.

"You're wrong," she says.

Okay, I tell her, maybe I bottomed for an army of strangers in some forgettable gang-bang flick, but I do not have some terrible disease. Buried somewhere in the papers on her clipboard, she can dig out my STD report.

"No," she says. Reading over the names and inscriptions scribbled on Mr. Toto's white canvas skin, the wrangler says, "It wasn't Martha Graham. It was Agnes de Mille."

On Mr. Toto, I spelled her autograph with only one "L." "Agnes de Mile." A dead giveaway.

That's okay, I tell her. In my life, I've been wrong about almost everything.

You'd better believe I didn't give them the full story about me, my beloved father, and all of that lovely, lovely Oklahoma lying flat, as far as the eye could see. No, you can ask, but I'm saving myself for Charlie Rose. Barbara Walters. Larry King. Or Oprah Winfrey. No one except a certified talk-show god is going to dissect my private parts.

Waiting for that Greyhound bus, my father kept telling me to write. As soon as I got settled in California, I should write them a postcard, telling him and my mother where to send my mail. Of course he told me to phone, to telephone collect if I had to. And right away, once I arrived in Los Angeles, just so my mother wouldn't worry.

Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will fuck you up, every time.

The talent wrangler stands still, her shoulders pinned back so I can pinch the waxy white flakes off her sweater. In her eyes dance tiny screens of Cassie Wright, reflected. As the last hottie in the sci-fi future, for her own protection, Cassie can only venture out in public wearing a billowing cloak and wide hat. Almost a nun's habit, only red.

A voice says, "Make sure he wears a rubber, Sheila." A man's voice. Branch Bacardi's stopped next to us, his stomach sucked back to his spine but skin still slopped out over the elastic waistband of his red satin prizefighter shorts.

Sheila doesn't say a word. She won't even give him a look.

Bacardi hooks his thumb at me, saying, "You're barking up the wrong team, honey."

Bacardi folds his arms over his shaved chest. He smiles, running his tongue over his top teeth, winks, and says, "But if you want babies inside you, I'm your man."

And the black poly-cotton rib-knit awfulness of the talent wrangler's sweater, it shudders. Her shoulders shudder and her eyes close as she says, "Rapist."

In Oklahoma, my high school graduation had been Saturday night, and this was Monday morning. One minute I'm walking the football field, wearing my black cap and gown, accepting my diploma from Superintendent Frank Reynolds. The next minute I'm standing next to my suitcase, a present mail-ordered for graduation. Both my father and I squinting down the road. Looking for that bus, my father says, "You write if you meet any girl, special."

A couple dandruff flakes after Branch Bacardi's walked away, the talent wrangler says, "He pressured her to get an abortion. Said he'd pay for it. Said a baby would ruin her tits, end her career in movies."

The wrangler says she needs to collect the brown paper bags for the three men who are with Cassie Wright, on set. She needs to take them their clothes and shoes.

Across the room, the young actor looks at the pill cupped in the palm of his hand.

Just teasing, I ask why we never see anybody once they're called to the set. Is this some mass black-widow-spider snuff movie? Does somebody on set kill each of the six hundred actors the moment after they ejaculate?

Just joking, I mean.

But the wrangler only looks at me for one, two, three flakes of dandruff, my fingertips pinching them and flicking them away. Four, five, six flakes later, she says,

"Yes. This is actually an elaborate scheme to steal men's used clothing…"

Pinching white flakes, I ask the wrangler why she doesn't just renumber an actor and run him through the set several times. They could shoot just his arm, each time with a different number. That way, the young man, number 72, could leave. The production wouldn't depend on keeping everyone happy and trapped here.

One hand holding her clipboard so the bottom edge is braced against her stomach, her free hand slips the thick black felt-tipped pen from the clip. The wrangler waves the pen next to her face, beside her eyes, and says, "Indelible ink."

That Monday morning in Oklahoma, squinting into the sun and the distance, his eyes watering against the wavy smell of the hot blacktop, my father says, "You do know, don't you? About being with a gal?" He says, "I mean, about protecting yourself?"

I told him I knew. I know.

And he said, "Have you?"

Worn a rubber? I asked. Or been with a girl?

And he laughed, slapping one hand on his thigh, puffing up dust from his jeans, he said, "Why else would you wear a rubber if you ain't been with a gal?"

Oklahoma ringed around us, the world spread out from the spot we're standing, the gravel side of the highway, only him and me, I told my father I was never going to meet the right girl.

And he said, "Don't you say that." Still watching the horizon, he said, "You just got to encourage yourself some."

That black pen, the wrangler says, you can't wash it off. You can't scratch it off. Once she writes a number on you, it's permanent as a tattoo for roughly the lifespan of a full bar of soap in your shower.

Sliding the pen back under the clip of her clipboard, she says, "I hope you have a lot of long-sleeved shirts."

The rocks and sun. The Greyhound bus not here. All my clothes folded and layered in my suitcase. I should've shut up. Changed the subject of conversation to the weather report, maybe the bushel price of winter wheat. We could've run out the clock talking about Mrs. Wellton, who runs the post office, and her spastic colon. Another line of dialogue, about the new Massey tractors versus the John Deere, a little back-and-forth about how wet last summer turned out, and both of us would be a ton happier right now.

That Greyhound bus still somewhere under the horizon.

But wouldn't you know it? I fucked everything up. My last ten minutes before leaving home, I told my father I was an Oklahomo.

Talking to the talent wrangler, I swallow another little pill. Sweat slides down from my hairline to my eyebrows, down my temples to my cheeks. Sweat hangs, swings from my earlobes. Drops fall, splashing dark spots around my feet. The skin of my neck burns, hot.

The talent wrangler says, "Lay off those pills." She says, "You don't look so healthy."

I tell her I'm not sick.

The bus still somewhere else, my father said, "It's a misunderstanding, you being how you figure." He spits in the dust, the gravel and dust of the road's shoulder, and says, "It's on account of somebody doing something evil to you when you was little."

Somebody diddled me.

I ask, Who?

"You don't got to know names," my father says. "Only know you ain't naturally the way you figure."

I asked, Who diddled me?

My father only shook his head.

Then it's a lie, I tell him. He's lying out of hope I'll change. He's making up a story to confuse me. Inventing some reason why I can't just be happy how I am. Nobody around here's a child molester.

But he only shakes his head, saying, "Ain't no lie." Saying, "I wish it was."

The bus still not here.

"Relax, dude," a voice says. Here in the basement, Branch Bacardi says, "You die in there, pitch yourself a stroke or a heart attack, and they'll just roll you on your back and let Cassie ride a reverse cowgirl on your hard, dead dick."

Walking away, he says, "Nothing if not a numbers game, that's what today is."

Pinching white flakes off the wrangler's sweater, I say how one gruesome possibility is that I allowed fifty or more strange men to fuck my ass just to make my father wrong.

My worst fear is that I got fucked by the equivalent of five baseball teams just to prove my father wasn't a pervert.

The same heartbeat when the bus popped up on the horizon, my father said, "You got to trust me."

I say he's lying. My knees bent low enough my hand could grip the handle of my suitcase. My legs stand. My mouth says he's lying to try and keep me straight.

The bus, bigger with every word.

He says, "Would you believe if I told you who done it?"

Who diddled me when I was a baby.

My other hand, holding my bus ticket, shaking.

The bus almost here, that last little while of us talking in Oklahoma, my father says, "It was me."

It was him diddled me.

Talking to the talent wrangler, picking flakes off her sweater, by accident instead of a pill I slip a flake between my lips. Her dead skin, chewy with grease or wax. I spit it out.

Hanging over us on the monitors, Cassie Wright tears her sci-fi nun's habit into long strips she begins to braid with pastel-pink-and-yellow bras and thongs, tying together a rope she can climb to escape from her window.

I ask the wrangler can I pick the flakes out of her hair.

And the wrangler shrugs, saying, "Only the ones that show…"

In Oklahoma, the Greyhound bus pulls up to us, me and my father in the flat center of our state, and he says, "It was a one-time mistake, boy." He says, "But don't you make it last the rest of your life."

The air brakes set. The metal door folds open. One, two, three steps, and my feet stand on board, my hand getting my ticket taken by the driver. My lips saying, "Los Angeles."

My father down below, calling, "Write like you promised." Saying, "Don't you live what's not your fault, boy."

My ears hearing all that.

The talent wrangler watches Branch Bacardi, her eyes attached to him. Only looking away when he looks back at her, she says, "Yeah, parents will always fuck you up.»

My feet walked me down the aisle of the Greyhound bus, all the way to the back. My butt sat me in a seat.

My butt's accomplished a lot since then.

My butt's a movie star.

Only wouldn't you know it? I never did write home.