I’m Losing You (13 page)

Then Vidra came up with the Julia Phillips variation and we
died
. I mean, I
have
to do it now, just so I can use the title. (Though maybe the whole reference is already passé?) I'm still not quite sure what Vidra wants from me. She said, “Just start,” so here I am. Guess it's my own insecurities…am I supposed to be Jackie Mason or Oscar Wilde? Carrie Fisher? (She's kinda both)::::::::::I talk into a long silvery Sony microcassette recorder with a brown suede sack—very
President's Analyst
, very Jay Sebring. Starting from about fifth grade, I promised myself I'd keep a diary, but never did (call me Anaïs the Ninny)—guess I needed Vidra for a jump-start. Went to Book Soup to get Keats's letters (on Katherine G's recommend) but wound up flipping through Dawn Steel's book instead (for research, okay?)—
They Can Kill You…But They Can't Eat You
. It's like she won the Worst Title lotto. (Maybe I should call my book
They Can Kill You…But They'll Never Eat Me During Lunch
—!) There's a bizarre chapter where Dawn befuddledly wonders why various famous, powerful men would want to befriend her—deeply absurd low-self-esteem weirdness. Like looking at a stiff cock and saying, “I couldn't figure out for the life of me how shit got on there.” She
does
answer her own perturbation in the next paragraph, with a power-Zen retort: “By the time I knew, I didn't care. I already had moved on to Touchstone.”

Oh, E, am I trying too hard? Maybe I shouldn't even be doing this::::::::::
Hate
the sound of my voice, I sound like a
man
—worse! An
angry
man::::::::::Calliope thinks it's a good way to examine my so-called life. Still can't believe I see a shrink named Calliope…wasn't there, like, at least
one
friend everyone had when they were growing up who had an out-of-control alcoholic mom named Calliope? Reminds me of a toga'd Carol Lynley-haired bimbo from one of those ancient
Star Treks
—no! Yvette Mimieux in
The Time Machine
—no! Anne Francis in
Forbidden Planet
. Lyre-toters! Deep-space
airheads! You know, where the action always takes place on some drugged-out, asexual trans-stellar Pompeii. Uh…was I trashing my shrink? A sure sign I've run out of things to say. (Stop me before I shrill again—ugh. Call the pun police.) Calliope's husband's a shrink too, you knew that, didn't you, E? Only he doesn't have a funny name. They work out of this perfect little Laura Ashley Cape Cod guest house in Brentwood. It's like that old movie with Robert Young,
Enchanted Cottage
…or maybe it isn't but who gives a fuck. Gotta get those film references in there, sez Vidra. I'm always afraid Calliope's gonna dump me on the husband—Mitch's psychiatric specialty being the “below-the-line” personality. Am I not heartless? Funny if I met a guy that way (if I met a guy
any
way)—I mean, while we were waiting to see our shrinks. Good premise for a bad one-act::::::::::Tell you one thing: Dawn Steel would
not
do a remake of Pasolini's
Teorema
. She's too smart for that…. But fuck all if it doesn't seem my ten-year dream is
finally
on a fast track in this grand New Year. Would still kill for Jane Campion (
I BRAKE FOR BERTOLUCCI
), but Saul says she's booked for like six years. (He actually suggested Amy Heckerling.) I remain
adamantine
about having a woman at the helm (that's Chayevskyspeak—remember Bill Holden saying that in
Network
? Can't remember what he was adamantine about; maybe falling onto the edges of coffee tables). Oh! and Saul said he saw Jodie Foster at the Medavoys' and mentioned
Teorema
—we're using that as a temp title because we actually had legal with
The Stranger
and
The Visitor
, neither of which I was crazed about; I promised Grosseck dinner at Ginza Sushiko if she came up with something groovy—the Jode Girl wasn't familiar but seemed intrigued when Saul synopsized (Saul synopsizing is a scary thought). Worth a follow-up, so I'll call. Jodeth and I go way back, as in Way Back Machine. Saul pitched her as dir
actress
: not sure she has the helming chops but could wow as the Stranger—if she'd just stop being
Jodie
…. Meanwhile (back at the L.A. Farm), Shelby's sneaking the script to M, though I'm not sure she's right; our girl's
got
to have Terry Stamp's slick menace. Jennifer Jason is, as always, a judgment call…somehow I'm bored—though Katherine's
obsessed
. JJ seems wan,
non
? Art-house outré? E, I think we need to have a casting bull session with some of your mean faggot friends, OK? Saul is pushing L but L's not
stately
enough, she's sexy but it's dizzy, off-kilter sexy—and
so
young. Sigh, shiver, yawn. Woe is
me::::::::::Out of all the dentists in the world, why oh why did Oberon Mall have to go see
that
one. So horrible! Donny told me he thought it was weird that I went to the hospital but
fuck him
::::::::::Think I'm going on a three-week fast—Vidra's gonna walk me through it. She said it's
amazing
, after a week you're like
high
the whole::::::::::Lunch at the Ivy with Shelby, who's casting
Teorema
. One of the women she works with had a little boy over the holidays, born blind. The mom's my age—forty-three. Oh God! It almost extinguishes any hope I have. Every day I have to face the possibility, the growing
reality
, that I will go to my grave childless. In that very real sense, my films have become my children. If I sound pretentious or maudlin, then just kill me—but don't eat me…
at least never during lunch in this town again!
My only wish for the New Year is that
Teorema
has big blue eyes, a fat pink butt and an ear-splitting yelp when it slides out the chute. By the way, E—where the hell am I staying in Park City? Do you know?

My darling Samson…

I wanted to put down in words how much I love you. I'm so glad we gave you that name—you'll need all your strength in this terrible, wonderful life. I'm sitting beside you as I write; the faintest of light falls on your marzipan cheeks. You're the sweetest plum, and sleep so soundly; still, I'm afraid the scratching of my pen will wake you. Perfect boy! I stare into your eyes any chance I get—to become familiar with them, to make friends so there's no fear, no estrangement. You won't need them, to know me—you feel me within as I felt you all these months. One of those monsters said I was “in denial.” People should go to prison for using that phrase. This Adult Child Monster—she's infertile, that's all she ever shares at the meetings—wondered how I could say you were a perfect baby. She wants me to hang my head and weep so we can all be losers together and guzzle Prozac with our Starbucks Frappuccino. But you're perfect as could be, perfect as you wanted. If you had no ears, would you be
“less” than normal, “more” normal than a blind boy? Who makes the rules, Samson? We do, that's who.

Shelby came to see you today and cried ‘cause you're so beauteous. I told her I wanted to work,
needed
to work on something wondrous. I'll blow a fuse if I have to go back to Warner Bros.—I've had it with
Blue Matrix
and “Vorbalid” cattle calls, the well-oiled casting machine that chews up sad English actors, and others who had no right leaving the New York stage. (Well, Hassan was an exception, but Hassan would be a star even if the DeBeers commercial was the only thing he'd ever done.)
Teorema
is
such
an interesting project! It's my time now, time to get off the TV treadmill—it's been a grand office party but I stayed too long and began to hate myself a little the last few years (till there was you.
There were bells
…). But don't let Daddy hear that, Mama's just having a kvetch. You won't tell him, will you, little Boy Blue? One day, I'll be a producer. That's why I want to pick Phylliss Wolfe's brain—
what
an interesting lady. The real deal. She's got style to burn and rots of crass (as our Chinese friends might say). Well look at you, you're smiling! Did you like that? Was that a funny joke Mama made? Are you the smilin' Chinaman? Or is it something you ate?

…warm winds dancing leaves around the pool and Jeremy's worried I'm not sleeping enough. I always awaken just after four, long hangover from the earthquake; guess that makes you one heck of an aftershock. There: I've changed you and kissed you and turned off the lamp…
do
wish you could see the moon throw its pastel spotlight on your dad like he was the dead-drunk ringmaster of Beddy-Bye Circus. Hurry, hurry, step right up, see the silvery chest hairs where you nestle your buddhahead. You know, if I put my ear to your (Buddhist) temple, methinks I can hear the bones grow.

You're asleep now. You know, you look like something God threw together for a booth at eternity's science fair. I'll risk kissing your dark lids…they tremble like abandoned nests. You stir and suckle (that's okay—I shake and bake). O Samson, my Samson, of
what do you dream? Surely it's not that you had eyes, that much I know.

Then I won't dream it either.

…after rubbing Donny Ribkin, I took a stroll on the Via Rodeo and made purchase of several cigars at Davidoff's of Geneva; Helen Hunt was there and I told her how much I enjoyed her work. Afterward, the woman showed me a humidor at a cost of thousands—I demurred. I will give the stogies to the agent on my next appointment. Donny Ribkin's hard-on is full-blown now before I even begin; he is in my web. The first time I rubbed him it was the night before his mother was entombed. I could feel the residue of her on him like blue smokey tentacles, pulling him into the Earth. The raccoons saw her energy and came close. Donny said they were her friends—they were loaded with her energetic droppings, which they gleaned from foodstuffs she left for them on the patio. I like his energy; it's orange in hue and looks like kelp—or sleepy eels—floating on the surface of a pinkish coral reef. (Agents have good energy that they generally misuse.)

Bought a red leather daybook from Francis Orr and have started to write again. Mustn't forget I have
always
written and consider myself a Writer by definition above all else. Perhaps (I don't think I am deluded, at least not in this case) my story may eventually be deemed fit enough to film by the likes of a Gus Van Sant, a Jane Campion or a Tim Robbins. My saga
does
resemble a latter-day
Shampoo
, with elements perhaps shying toward Polanski, or so I am told. (I'm compelled to note I am writing with a stunning, rather bulbous Cartier silver pen ‘appropriated' from a client with a vast collection. There is a blue jewel of some sort on its non-writing end, I believe called a Cabachon. They don't make this particular one anymore, or so I am told, and I noticed coincidentally that in Francis Orr's glass display case, one was there among the paperweights at the price of twelve hundred and seventy-five dollars. I would say I definitely got a deal!)