So we went last night to the Blazer game. It wasn't a great game -- I think the Timberwolves would have a hard time throwing the ball in the Atlantic Ocean, though they were scrappy under the basket on defense, swarming around the Blazers like a bunch of gnats. Anyway, the Blazers won, after which we and the other 20,000 attendees made for the exits, down some stairwells and, last night, back through the lower concourse on the way out.
Which is when I saw her, only from the back, but knew there would be much more to see up front. At fiirst, I thought, despite her honey-colored waist-length hair, that she was Asian. Though she was tall in her heels, perhaps 5' 9", she was slender and proprotional in a way that white girls rarely are, unless you are seeing their bones poking through the fabric of their thin t-shirts, which this girl's were not. She was just ahead of me and to the left, trying it seemed to catch up with someone. She seemed to have a destination, and as I added a half-step to see her from the front, it made me curious as to what that destination might be.
She was not Asian, but white. Her face did not bely an age, but I'd say mid-20s, maybe younger. Her boobs were very large and, according to Din, whom I had of course directed to "Look, look," seemed rather new. I saw what he meant. She carried them as though they were a new puppy she'd just gotten; she led with them, the deep V in her t-shirt allowing people to see the disproportionality of them to the rest of her build, though she worked that build well. Her designer jeans were professionally faded and had the requisite swirly appliques on the butt cheeks. She cocked that waist hard with each step. She walked as though she were on display, perhaps the only problem being that the entire crowd was walking in the same direction, and so if they'd wanted to see her in her full glory, they'd have had to turn, which was tough to do in the flow, and I saw only one man try to do so, and he looked embarrassed about it. Perhaps because we are in Portland and not Los Angeles. Perhaps because it was 40 degrees out last night and raining, and every other person at the Rose Garden was covered in Gortex and fleece, and here is this young woman in what in total might be 12 ounces of clothing, and she, too, is walking outside. Like when I was 16 and did not want to cover up my cute New Years Eve dress and so would go out in New York City for the night without a jacket, despite it being 8 degrees.
The woman was not alone. She had caught up with, though I did not see exactly when, a man, perhaps 40. He had odd hair. It was curly like a cocker spaniel's. It looked like a pancake of hair molded to his head. His build was simply wrong. Just like you would be able to look at the woman and even if you had no idea such a thing as a boob job existed, something in your DNA would tell you, something's off, well, the man had this going on. His shoulders were both too broad and flabby. His pants were bad. He looked blockish, and while he and the young woman walked together, one could detect nothing going on between them. They each were living in their own heads, he seemed to glower slightly, she was smiling through a great deal of make-up. I can't say whether she was pretty.
And then Din and I were out in the street, walking toward the car, and I don't remember what, but we cracked a few jokes about the woman and her enormous tits, and the man and his surly weirdness, and then we were in the car and driving to the store and I felt bad. I felt, as I often do when I see people who've had extensive cosmetic surgery, that it was sort of tragic. That -- let's stick with the woman -- in the maze that was this woman's life, she'd made choices, and each choice had let her to where she is now, a choice where she's invested in these boobs in order to be more valuable, to get more love, to feel more attractive, to be worthy. But to most people, she is not. But what can she do now? Din said, well, honey, she's probably not the smartest gal, if these are the choices she made, and I said, sure, but now her insecurity or whatever it was that led her to this choice, greets her each time she looks in the mirror, every time she gets dressed. She will carry around her armor. But for whose army does she get to fight (besides for intellectual pervs like me)? Who will be doing the love and valuing? The guy she was with reminded me of no one so much as the man who told me he had the biggest dick in the world. Is he who would take care of her? Is he who she did it for? Would he now work her? Would she work him? This last is possible, but not in this case. I did not foresee good things for her. I foresaw a lot of work on her back.
I wrote a whole memoir about this, about Los Angeles, where these sorts of casualities compose half the scenery, and where you understand these folks have their own legitimate power. I'm never going to publish that memoir, but because I realize mentioning I know the man who told me, he had the world's biggest dick is provocative, I offer a chapter. Happy Sunday.
The Biggest Dick in the World
In 1988, I still believed my ticket to stardom would arrive in a big car soon after I arrived in Los Angeles. It did not. Nor was it in the Porsche 911 I found myself stepping into one evening, a car that belonged to a man I was told had the biggest dick in the world. Though he told me this himself, I’d first heard it from my sister-in-law. Sandra was a northern Italian girl with Gina Lollobrigida curls and a gap between her front teeth. She and my brother married for love, but she also needed a green card and, well, she often strayed. She was more attentive to my wanting to be an actress, and told me she’d met a man—let’s call him Hal—who was casting a film. He’d liked her look and asked her to audition, which she had, though not because she an actress and or had any ambitions to act. Then why did she audition? Because she was a pretty twenty-five-year-old to whom someone said, “I want you in my movie.” While this might cause someone to scratch her head in Schenectady, in Hollywood, it’s axiomatic that you go.
“I told him about you,” Sandra said. “He wants to meet you.”
I was, at this point, reading screenplays for a living. I was twenty-eight years old, had no agent, no acting prospects, and was nursing an infant. I will not paint myself as more gullible than I was; I knew Hal’s movie was probably a scam, but what did I have to lose by meeting the guy?
“He’s a Vietnam War hero,” Sandra added, as she kissed me goodbye on each cheek. “Oh, and he’s supposed to have the biggest dick in the world.”
Uh, well, okay.
When I told my boyfriend Tim I was going to meet a film director about a part and, oh, heh heh, Sandra said he’s supposed to have the biggest dick in the world, he gave me the look that said, you know what you’re walking into, don’t you? I told him, I’d be fine.
I showed up to meet Hal as scheduled. His West Hollywood office was a legit-looking series of rooms decorated with brightly illustrated Rambo-esque posters, different shots of a he-man running through a flaming napalmed jungle, a bandoleer across his shirtless chest, a small Vietnamese child under each arm. An elderly man whose head trembled in what looked to be a painful way sat at the reception desk. He told me Hal would be with me a minute, then shuffled off to another room, never to be seen again.
Hal appeared shortly. Though he was probably in his forties, it was hard to tell, as his head had the quality of a big blob of pizza dough, topped with a few strands of colorless hair. He skin was extremely pale, and his body was pure flab, with petals of soft fat overhanging his groin, and thick legs encased in shapeless blue slacks with a cheap sheen. He was friendly, though, as he gave me a tour of the office.
“These posters,” he said, pointing to bandoleer man, “are of a docudrama about my heroics in Vietnam.” His exhalation was heavy on the humility. “I single-handedly saved my entire platoon, plus a bunch of villagers.”
The tour continued. He showed me wall-mounted photos of the actor Rod Steiger, spot-lit on a dark stage.
“He’s reading from my life story,” Hal said.
Hal’s face, which slumped on the right side, was too close to mine as I leaned in to get a read on the Steiger photos. They looked doctored, as did the shots of Hal with Steiger. Meanwhile, Hal told me how attractive I was, and we should continue talking about the project over dinner.
Dinner?
The traffic was whizzing down La Cienega Boulevard when Hal suggested we take his car, the above-mentioned Porsche. I had no illusions as we drove south; I was certain the project was complete nonsense, but I was not scared and so settled in for the ride.
Hal pulled into the circular parking lot of a tacky, expensive Italian restaurant called something like Casa Romano. The valet parkers knew Hal by name, as did the maitre d’, who ushered us to a circular booth, where I was made a big fuss over, and where it was obvious to me I was girl #178 to have been wined and dined at this very table; to be disingenuously slavered over by an unctuous waiter with a fake Italian accent, who for dessert brought me a complimentary slice of spumoni that he -- whoops! -- accidentally dropped in my lap. I didn’t flinch when the plastic ice cream hit me, which I saw put the spook to the waiter, who looked at Hal for direction.
“Heh, she’s sharp,” Hal said, his right cheek drooping now nearly to his collar.
We rode back to the office in silence. He said he wanted to give me a screenplay; why didn’t I come up for a second? As he handed me the script, three Polaroids fell out. They were blurry, but appeared to be of Hal sitting on a bed bending over a vacuum cleaner hose.
“Maybe your sister-in-law told you that I have a twenty-six-inch cock,” he said, and nudged me down on the vinyl sofa. I pushed him off and said I had to go.
Once home, I was as nauseated as if I’d spent twelve hours on a Tilt-a-Whirl.
“You knew what you were in for, Nanny,” Tim said, and went to bed.
I could not sleep. I felt as though I had pure poison in me, and the only way to get it out was to write, a dense three-page letter to Hal telling him in gothic detail just how revolting he was. It was a great letter, very purgative. I read it to Tim at five in the morning, while nursing our daughter.
“You know,” Tim said. “You don’t have to actually send it.”
He was right. I wrote, “Thanks for dinner, here’s your script back,” and had it on Hal’s doorstep by six.
I called Sandra. “The guy is a pig and fraud,” I told her.
“Ma-donna,” she said, sounding chagrined. “And I don’t think his dick is even real.”
No… she hadn’t…
“Si, I did,” she said, when she’d “auditioned.” She said Hal had gone into the bathroom, and come out with some sort of floppy thing she couldn’t make out in the dark. But, I asked her, was it a dick? She didn’t know, only that it lay on the bed like a dead thing before he could get it inside her.
