A Holiday treat for you good boys and girls. An original short story in two parts by D. Bones that is simply D. Licious. Though written many lasagnas ago, I offer it in my own spirit of the season, or at the very least, in the spirit of Jon Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire." Have yourselves a merry little Dec. 17.
Tammy!
“This better be good,” he says to himself with a dim wit.
Oh, the waiting is surely the hardest part—can’t quite escape the familiar tug of unadulterated time. And time is all the great Tammy Delecroix has, and he knows this well. Air time. Twenty-two whole minutes, and all the steak knives she can sell in the interim. That’s what she called it, right? Not like they were commercials or anything, just the paycheck producing interspersed segments of this televised inanity. After her tragically euphemistic indulgence, he wondered aloud if he might spend the interim in the anteroom or perhaps in his car speeding its way home down the freeway—certainly a safer environment for the joint he’d rolled before coming to the studio. Most indubitably cozier than this crashcourse of an interview setup.
And that’s what kills him, you know. The setup. Don’t pay me for my knowledge, honey. See the film. Buy the book, but not the man. Don’t expect—
“Ten minutes, Mr. Parker.”
“Um—Yeah. O.K.,” is the reply.
His time is about to end. The world of Tammy! awaits. The real world is on some other channel.
Frank Parker negates his negativity with a series of shallow breaths and an inaudible pep-talk mantra inspired by something Edgar Varese once said and that Zappa was fond of quoting: “The present-day composer refuses to die!” Hmmm… Residual cynicism collects like car fumes in an old garage, and Frank wonders why—right now—he feels like composing his own eulogy.
The wait behind the curtain offers more immediate pain than his stay in the green room. Pay no attention… He can hear her wishing the current guest well on his five-day run at Kutscher’s Catskill Resort from May 5th to the 9th. Better make those reservations. On second thought, he has way too many of those.
“Back in ninety seconds!” Someone yells.
“Ready, Mr. Parker?”
“Got a light, buddy? Left mine in the car. These are done.” He lets the empty book of matches flop over his index finger.
“I’m sorry. No smoking on the set.” This reply—from a female he now realizes (not his buddy)—carries excruciatingly little sympathy.
“Ohhhh…,” Frank moans with deadpan sincerity. “Pretty please. With sugar on top.”
Blank stare. Now, Mr. Parker gets himself a hard look at this animal who would deprive him of the very life force that permits him to greet each day, enjoy the aftermath of meal after meal, witness the stars in the sky, the stars in his head…Sportscenter. She seems pretty enough, this lackey/intern southern-flavored college chickee. She has the type of smile that could stir paint, and Frank probably wouldn’t mind asking her something out of the ordinary if another intern-type fella hadn’t remarked earlier that Janet (this one was Janet) had sometime late in the spring of ’91 acquired a particularly vicious strain of genital wars that won’t be leaving her most private of premises until sometime her last wishes might commission as the best way to dispose of the little buggers for eternity. Perhaps she’ll return to the earth as she came—warts and all. And perhaps she’ll make one lucky, uninfested, unknowing, steel underwear-clad guy happy one day. All Frank knows is that today, he is not that guy.
“Not even a few drags while I’m standing here?” He pleads.
“Sorry. No,” is the politely curt reply.
“You know, I was smoking like the Towering Inferno not five minutes ago, but I need just a few more itsy bitsy baby drags to put me over the—”
“—O.K. Five seconds. And five, four, three…” Aw crap, he thinks. She knows it’s too late. Her voice is sultry. He always wanted one with a sultry voice. This one’s got cooties.
The purple curtain parts to his left in an astonishingly neat little package, and the tugging in his stomach and lungs rises to his throat, pausing him to silently inquire whether speaking might amount to a spot of trouble. He walks into the spotlight.
And there she is. Microphone and cue cards delicately in hand—Tammy! Oh, boy. What could she possibly expect to come out of this? Frank strides over to his seat next to someone who must be a cross between Danny DeVito and Bea Arthur. Or Bea Arthur and the Pentagon or some other flat, polygonal building. Bea shakes Frank’s hand and says hello. Frank nods in return with a practiced smile. Who is this guy?
Tammy starts talking.
And it’s not exactly what she is saying that steers this man on the peculiar path he chooses. It certainly has little to do with her opinions—if that term can fairly be applied to the haphazard collection of knowledge that lies betwixt this young creature’s soft-lobed ears. She has a certain random, lovable ignorance about her that reminds Frank of a character in some novel by Daphne DeMourier. She talks with such conviction. Such beautifully intoned passionate, television-ready, sanitized, bobble-headed conviction. She might be talking about the Yalta Conference, the Lindbergh baby, bestiality, or the Smurfs. Look at her go. What in the hell is this woman yapping about? Oh, Frank realizes. She’s talking about
“—your new book, Mr. Parker.”
“Uh. Right, well, its—wait. Did you say book?”
“Yes. Tell us about your new book.”
“It’s just that…I—the book isn’t new. The film is new. It’s why I was asked to do this show. The ‘book’ is a play and it is not what you might call ‘new.’”
“Oh.”
“It’s what you might call Elizabethan, Tammy. Or Shakespearean even—considering that it was written by William Shakespeare. He’s not a young man.”
“Yes, I’m quite aware of Mr. Shakespeare’s work,” she asserts with that perfectly formed smile that seems to exist in a vacuum. It sucks Frank clean inside and he smiles back in his own imperfect way.
“What I’d really like our audience to hear, though, is the treatment of women in your version of this classic."
“What you’d really like your audience to hear, though, is what a chauvinist you think I am.” Yup. Frank is feeling antsy. “Look,” he says, “I’m not the first person to envision Macbeth as a contemporary story of one man’s impotence leaving him a puddle of misled ambition at the whims of his overbearing better half. I’m just the first to get Maria Probert to play the lead. Honestly, I don’t think that she got it.”
“You mean that she didn’t earn the part?”
“I mean that I don’t think she understood the part she was playing to undermine her own dauntless womanhood. Let’s just say that Ms. Probert won’t be discovering radium any time soon.”
“No. No. I believe Mrs. Curie took care of that some time ago.”
Tammy, Tammy. Frank can’t believe that you let it go this far. He wonders how old she was before the shower of sarcastic pebbles at her feet were kicked apart from the mound they’d become. Most were carefully aimed over her precious coif so as not to disturb her trolley of thought. Oh, what a collection, this Tammy Delecroix.
“Now, Mr. Parker. I don’t suppose you’d have something constructive to offer, hmmm?”
“Look—I apologize for sounding abrupt and superior and pompous and misogynist and—Did I say ‘superior?’”
“Yes. Yes, I believe that you did.”
“Well, you know it’s all just a curse anyway.”
“Your superiority?”
“Not exactly. I mean I wouldn’t say that the particular knowledge I possess makes me any better than anyone else.”
“Just me, right?”
Frank needs a cigarette. Still, he can see every stage of this girl’s maturation: The starring role in Ms. Strumbowski’s second grade production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” Daddy’s open arms at the finish line of that silly little Run For Rorschach or whatever that psychologically troubled child benefit was all about, all of those elephant vitamins laid out every day through the twelfth grade on the kitchen table, taking care of that ‘tiniest imperfection’ on her nose, countless years of gymnastics followed by those years of slower metabolism and a growing chest with the other plump thing close behind, the Frankenstein braces, and that awkwardly adventurous night in the back of a Ford Bronco when she couldn’t fathom the impropriety of what he meant by the word “love.” And even if his guesses are misplaced, Frank figures they’re more right than wrong.
“No. ‘Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music. Music is the best.’ Another Frank named Zappa said that in 1979, and if you don’t understand what he meant, then we can probably talk for days and not once share a meaningful thought. Knowledge on its own is not a curse. It’s knowledge without a soul that scares the bejesus out of me.”
“Interesting…” The wheels turning in her head seemed to shriek in a spasm of burning rubber that smoked through her eyes in a tenderly masochistic way few could enjoy as much as Frank at this very moment.
“You know, it’s not a puzzle, Tammy. This thing called life and art. We’ve all got our tastes. It’s just the soul-less stuff that seems to make the world go ‘round, and leaves me feeling cursed trying to reach a mainstream audience with a message they would rather not receive. Believe me. I don’t take it personally.”
Nods.
And that’s what kills him, you know. The setup. Don’t pay me for my knowledge, honey. See the film. Buy the book, but not the man. Don’t expect—
“Ten minutes, Mr. Parker.”
“Um—Yeah. O.K.,” is the reply.
His time is about to end. The world of Tammy! awaits. The real world is on some other channel.
Frank Parker negates his negativity with a series of shallow breaths and an inaudible pep-talk mantra inspired by something Edgar Varese once said and that Zappa was fond of quoting: “The present-day composer refuses to die!” Hmmm… Residual cynicism collects like car fumes in an old garage, and Frank wonders why—right now—he feels like composing his own eulogy.
The wait behind the curtain offers more immediate pain than his stay in the green room. Pay no attention… He can hear her wishing the current guest well on his five-day run at Kutscher’s Catskill Resort from May 5th to the 9th. Better make those reservations. On second thought, he has way too many of those.
“Back in ninety seconds!” Someone yells.
“Ready, Mr. Parker?”
“Got a light, buddy? Left mine in the car. These are done.” He lets the empty book of matches flop over his index finger.
“I’m sorry. No smoking on the set.” This reply—from a female he now realizes (not his buddy)—carries excruciatingly little sympathy.
“Ohhhh…,” Frank moans with deadpan sincerity. “Pretty please. With sugar on top.”
Blank stare. Now, Mr. Parker gets himself a hard look at this animal who would deprive him of the very life force that permits him to greet each day, enjoy the aftermath of meal after meal, witness the stars in the sky, the stars in his head…Sportscenter. She seems pretty enough, this lackey/intern southern-flavored college chickee. She has the type of smile that could stir paint, and Frank probably wouldn’t mind asking her something out of the ordinary if another intern-type fella hadn’t remarked earlier that Janet (this one was Janet) had sometime late in the spring of ’91 acquired a particularly vicious strain of genital wars that won’t be leaving her most private of premises until sometime her last wishes might commission as the best way to dispose of the little buggers for eternity. Perhaps she’ll return to the earth as she came—warts and all. And perhaps she’ll make one lucky, uninfested, unknowing, steel underwear-clad guy happy one day. All Frank knows is that today, he is not that guy.
“Not even a few drags while I’m standing here?” He pleads.
“Sorry. No,” is the politely curt reply.
“You know, I was smoking like the Towering Inferno not five minutes ago, but I need just a few more itsy bitsy baby drags to put me over the—”
“—O.K. Five seconds. And five, four, three…” Aw crap, he thinks. She knows it’s too late. Her voice is sultry. He always wanted one with a sultry voice. This one’s got cooties.
The purple curtain parts to his left in an astonishingly neat little package, and the tugging in his stomach and lungs rises to his throat, pausing him to silently inquire whether speaking might amount to a spot of trouble. He walks into the spotlight.
And there she is. Microphone and cue cards delicately in hand—Tammy! Oh, boy. What could she possibly expect to come out of this? Frank strides over to his seat next to someone who must be a cross between Danny DeVito and Bea Arthur. Or Bea Arthur and the Pentagon or some other flat, polygonal building. Bea shakes Frank’s hand and says hello. Frank nods in return with a practiced smile. Who is this guy?
Tammy starts talking.
And it’s not exactly what she is saying that steers this man on the peculiar path he chooses. It certainly has little to do with her opinions—if that term can fairly be applied to the haphazard collection of knowledge that lies betwixt this young creature’s soft-lobed ears. She has a certain random, lovable ignorance about her that reminds Frank of a character in some novel by Daphne DeMourier. She talks with such conviction. Such beautifully intoned passionate, television-ready, sanitized, bobble-headed conviction. She might be talking about the Yalta Conference, the Lindbergh baby, bestiality, or the Smurfs. Look at her go. What in the hell is this woman yapping about? Oh, Frank realizes. She’s talking about
“—your new book, Mr. Parker.”
“Uh. Right, well, its—wait. Did you say book?”
“Yes. Tell us about your new book.”
“It’s just that…I—the book isn’t new. The film is new. It’s why I was asked to do this show. The ‘book’ is a play and it is not what you might call ‘new.’”
“Oh.”
“It’s what you might call Elizabethan, Tammy. Or Shakespearean even—considering that it was written by William Shakespeare. He’s not a young man.”
“Yes, I’m quite aware of Mr. Shakespeare’s work,” she asserts with that perfectly formed smile that seems to exist in a vacuum. It sucks Frank clean inside and he smiles back in his own imperfect way.
“What I’d really like our audience to hear, though, is the treatment of women in your version of this classic."
“What you’d really like your audience to hear, though, is what a chauvinist you think I am.” Yup. Frank is feeling antsy. “Look,” he says, “I’m not the first person to envision Macbeth as a contemporary story of one man’s impotence leaving him a puddle of misled ambition at the whims of his overbearing better half. I’m just the first to get Maria Probert to play the lead. Honestly, I don’t think that she got it.”
“You mean that she didn’t earn the part?”
“I mean that I don’t think she understood the part she was playing to undermine her own dauntless womanhood. Let’s just say that Ms. Probert won’t be discovering radium any time soon.”
“No. No. I believe Mrs. Curie took care of that some time ago.”
Tammy, Tammy. Frank can’t believe that you let it go this far. He wonders how old she was before the shower of sarcastic pebbles at her feet were kicked apart from the mound they’d become. Most were carefully aimed over her precious coif so as not to disturb her trolley of thought. Oh, what a collection, this Tammy Delecroix.
“Now, Mr. Parker. I don’t suppose you’d have something constructive to offer, hmmm?”
“Look—I apologize for sounding abrupt and superior and pompous and misogynist and—Did I say ‘superior?’”
“Yes. Yes, I believe that you did.”
“Well, you know it’s all just a curse anyway.”
“Your superiority?”
“Not exactly. I mean I wouldn’t say that the particular knowledge I possess makes me any better than anyone else.”
“Just me, right?”
Frank needs a cigarette. Still, he can see every stage of this girl’s maturation: The starring role in Ms. Strumbowski’s second grade production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” Daddy’s open arms at the finish line of that silly little Run For Rorschach or whatever that psychologically troubled child benefit was all about, all of those elephant vitamins laid out every day through the twelfth grade on the kitchen table, taking care of that ‘tiniest imperfection’ on her nose, countless years of gymnastics followed by those years of slower metabolism and a growing chest with the other plump thing close behind, the Frankenstein braces, and that awkwardly adventurous night in the back of a Ford Bronco when she couldn’t fathom the impropriety of what he meant by the word “love.” And even if his guesses are misplaced, Frank figures they’re more right than wrong.
“No. ‘Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music. Music is the best.’ Another Frank named Zappa said that in 1979, and if you don’t understand what he meant, then we can probably talk for days and not once share a meaningful thought. Knowledge on its own is not a curse. It’s knowledge without a soul that scares the bejesus out of me.”
“Interesting…” The wheels turning in her head seemed to shriek in a spasm of burning rubber that smoked through her eyes in a tenderly masochistic way few could enjoy as much as Frank at this very moment.
“You know, it’s not a puzzle, Tammy. This thing called life and art. We’ve all got our tastes. It’s just the soul-less stuff that seems to make the world go ‘round, and leaves me feeling cursed trying to reach a mainstream audience with a message they would rather not receive. Believe me. I don’t take it personally.”
Nods.
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