»"The Mermaid Sushi Bar" by sleuthslayer«

I wrote this a couple years ago when I took an undergraduate fiction workshop course just for fun. Nobody understood it; no big suprise there. Thought you all might get a kick out of it. Questions, comments welcome. Sorry the formatting is all screwed up.

"Bad in a Bad Way"
By Keith Ellington

The first thing I wondered when I moved out to L.A. was whether the sunset would look any different, because I always thought, with all the smog out there, the sunset would look kind of dirty, like an X-rated, sleazy kind of sunset. I thought this would go well with the California nights, when the dirty starlight would fall on all those girls who looked like models, and who didn’t realize that their aspirations to be actresses were really aspirations to be porn stars, because models, actresses, and porn stars are really all the same thing. I should know. I married one.
I first met Susan Lloyd in a smoky club in Manhattan. I knew who she was when I saw her because she was a famous model, trying to become an actress after overcoming a well-publicized drug problem. Models always come on strong because, even if they are teenagers, they know their pristine looks are fading into natural patterns of aging, and photographers and eligible bachelors have an eye for the pristine. She sat down next to me at the bar and ordered a glass of wine. Her hair was bleached to the roots, she wore a lot of makeup, and she was extremely slender. But this is the look.
“Are you old enough to be drinking?” I asked her.
“The bartender knows me,” she said.
“I don’t know you.”
“Do you want to?”
At the beginning of time there was only one, single, infinitely dense point of matter. Somewhere in that point of matter were Susan and I. Not only were we touching each other there, but we were one and the same. When I touched her, I saw the universe collapse down to its original size. The darkness inside her was as black as space.
Afterward, we lay in bed and talked. I told her my idea about fashion. All fashion comes from the military, I told her. In the old days, there were only two branches of service: soldier and sailor. Soldiers were on land, so they were well-groomed and well-fed. Their hair was cut short and their limbs were thick. Sailors were at sea, so they were ill-fed and ill-groomed. Their bodies were emaciated and their hair grew long. In the early days of Hollywood, soldier fashion was in. The women kept themselves at a natural weight and wore their hair styled up. Now, in the modelling industry, sailor fashion was in. The girls were thin and long-haired. Some even had tattoos like sailors used to. I encouraged Susan to think of herself as a soldier, not a sailor. She laughed at me.
“I like how I look.”
“Yeah, but you barely eat anything.”
“I don’t like eating.”
“Maybe it’s better that way. After ten years of the single life, I can tell you this:” I raised my finger like a prophet haranguing a crowd, “America is full of fat chicks. Will you marry me?”
Our marriage was a surprise to both our friends and families. I was neither rich nor famous; I was working as a researcher for a pharmaceutical firm upstate. Science frightened Susan, and, to Susan, any information which was not moving, colored pictures on a screen was “science.”
I used to ask her all kinds of “scientific” questions, like, “What if someone videotaped you taking a shit and put it up on one of those voyeur sites on the Internet?”
“I could sue them.”
“Yes, but how would you prove it was you? It might just be someone who looks like you. Or what if they intentionally went out and found someone who looks like you and videotaped them taking a shit and put it up on the Web? Then they could say ‘Supermodel Susan Lloyd Taking a Shit!’ and there would be nothing you could do about it.”
“You may need help.”
She may have been right, because, around that time, I developed a persistent fantasy about being a famous person with AIDS. One of my favorite things to do in bed with Susan was to pretend we both had AIDS. I would get her to say things like, “Mmm, you taste like AIDS!” She did it, but she hated it. Once I asked her, “What if you had AIDS? What if the government found out about it? What if they wanted to prove that people with AIDS could still have fun?”
“You’re horrible!”
“No, but think about it. You know all those fanboys with websites dedicated to you? What if the government infected one of them with AIDS and then made him famous just so you could have a boyfriend? The two of you could have all the sex you wanted and not hurt anybody. And there you would be, out on the town, wasting away, having a blast.”
“That’s sick!”
“No, it’s a movie idea.”
“Yeah, a bad movie idea.”
“Do you mean bad in a good way? Like in ‘bad-ass’?”
“I mean bad in a bad way.”
“That’s good enough for me. I call it AIDS Couple. Let’s move to L.A. I’m going to be famous too.”
It took a while for it to happen, but eventually we were out in L.A. and Susan was getting small roles in nudie films. It wasn’t porn, but it was close to it. She was paying the bills, though: I wasn't working because I hated to go outside in L.A., with all its traffic and crime. At night we would sit in Susan’s spacious apartment, getting drunk with her B-list Hollywood friends and watching movies. Now Susan was into serious movies, which she called “dramas.” To Susan, any movie with no machine guns was a “drama”. I told her about that big “drama” with the oceanliner that hit an iceberg and sank. “The starving artist was the villain of that film. That was why he had to die in the end. He was stealing a rich guy’s girl. God killed him for that!”
“No he didn’t. They were in love. He died because the ship sank.”
“She thought she was in love with him because he convinced her her life was shit, took her on a wild ride through the lower classes , and pissed off her boyfriend so much he almost killed him. That’s why God, in this case, you know who,” I whispered the director’s name in her ear so her Hollywood friends would not hear, “That’s why he killed him. I don’t blame him. He solved the rich-girl problem for me forever. I never treat you like that. You’re living your dream, you washed-up porn star!”
“You’re evil!” she said.
We would go shopping on Rodeo Drive and Susan would look in all the boutiques, but never buy anything. The sidewalk reflected the desert sun up into my face as I waited outside for her to come out. She took forever. Sometimes I would spot a celebrity.
“Too bad you don’t have enough money to buy anything there,” I said once as Susan left a store empty-handed. I had just seen a famous actress and I pointed her out to Susan. “She’s rich enough to buy things there. If you were as successful as her, you could afford to buy things. I bet she’s never even heard of Susan Lloyd.”
“Someday she will.”
“Obviously. When you get killed by a stalker, then she’ll say, ‘Oh that’s that junkie model who came out here to become an actress. What a shame.’ Then she’ll go to work and star in a ‘drama’. You’ll never star in a ‘drama’ because you’re a model.”
“You’re just mad because you can’t get your movies made.”
I had come up with lots of movie ideas like AIDS Couple and I had Susan set up meetings with her directors so I could pitch the ideas. They were never interested, especially in AIDS Couple, which one director called a “despicable” idea. Still, I kept on trying. Susan’s career never really took off. She had developed an interest in the occult from watching those movies about child witches and wizards riding around on broomsticks. I always figured if I could come up with a premise like that, one that Susan would buy, it would sell to just about anyone. Once, in bed, I told Susan about my newest pitch.
“It’s called Hell is Cool. It’s the adventures of a bunch of teenage suicides who become rock stars in hell.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“No, it’s Dantesque”
“What’s that?”
“If you had gone to school, you would know. And I could write the spin-off book, The Spelunker’s Guide to Hell. It would have all kinds of maps to the different cave systems of hell, and all the tortures the damned sinners are put through.”
“I know I’m not going to hell.”
“The Church will tell you that unless you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, that’s where you’re going.”
“That must be the Baptists. I’m Episcopalian.”
“Do you know how the Episcopalian Church got started? Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife and marry Anne Boleyn, so he started his own church. Then he said she cheated on him and had her head chopped off. Are you still an Episcopalian?”
“I like Jesus.”
“The Episcopalian church is the Church of England. The name ‘Lloyd’ isn’t English, it’s Welsh. So, to the Queen, you’re basically a savage, Susan.”
“Why do they hate us?”
“Oh, so now it’s ‘us.’ Wow, you’re amazing! Suddenly you’re like the Malcolm X of the Welsh. ‘By any means necessary,’ right?”
“Yeah. What does that mean?”
“It means you’re a terrorist to them. In that country, the entire Welsh nation is not upper class. That’s like being black in America. Yo, what up, homey?”
“I like hip-hop.”
I still liked her, but some things about Susan were starting to set me off. One time, we were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on the way to the beach. Susan was driving, speeding, as usual. I didn’t notice the CHP officer until after he turned on his siren. When he approached the car, I could see he was struck with Susan’s beauty. She started to flirt with him. I was hoping he would give her a ticket, but he let her off with a warning.
“Gee, I wonder why he let you off?” I said as we pulled out into traffic.
Susan laughed. She was pleased with herself. I had an idea.
“Have I told you about my latest movie pitch? It’s called Cop Holocaust. Criminals take over the world and let everyone out of prison. Then they turn the prisons into death camps for cops.”
“See, this is why you’re not famous. You’re too weird.”
When we got to the beach, I was ready to go after an hour, but we stayed so Susan could show off her figure. Even in So. Cal., she attracted stares. In a bathing suit, she was statuesque and gorgeous. As we sat on the windy beach talking, she heard me call her a “beach valkyrie.”
“What’s a valkyrie? Is it like a witch?”
“It’s a warrior maiden in Norse mythology.”
“Are the Welsh Norse?”
“No, I already told you, the Welsh are black.”
“I’m not black.”
“I don’t mean black-skinned, I mean they’re different from the Norse. To the Norse, they were black.”
“Were the Norse racist?”
“A little. They were kind of violence-loving, like Hollywood people. Hollywood is kind of Norse.”
“I’m Hollywood. Doesn’t that make me Norse?”
“No, you’re definitely black.”
“Maybe I should audition for action roles. I could kick ass.”
“Girls can’t kick ass in Hollywood. It doesn’t make any money. Girls get rescued by ass-kicking guys, just like I rescued you.”
“You didn’t rescue me. I’m still richer than you.”
“Just wait, honey.”
Finally, one day, I saw an opening for myself. I asked Susan to set up a meeting with one of her directors.
“Tell me the idea,” she demanded.
“No. It’s a surprise. It’s going to be ‘huge’.”
In Susan’s language, by this point, any movie which was actually shown in theaters was “huge.” She pouted.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Who do you think you are? Are you studio brass now? Just give me the damn number and I’ll call him myself.”
She gave me the number and I called it. An assistant answered the phone.
“Hi, this is Susan Lloyd,” I said in a woman’s voice, and asked to speak to the director.
The director came on.
“How’s my favorite young thing?”
This guy had wanted to nail Susan since the moment he saw her headshot. That’s how hot Susan was.
“It’s not really Susan,” I admitted. I told him who I was and that we had met before. He sounded miffed.
“Oh yeah, I remember you. AIDS Lovers, wasn’t it?”
“AIDS Couple.”
“How’s that coming?”
“It’s in development. But I have something else for you. This is a sure thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s called Sex Witch. It’s a biopic of Susan: her struggles with drug addiction, her inability to make it big in Hollywood, her interest in witchcraft. It ends with an X-rated scene where the lead actress dresses up like a witch and fucks herself with a broomstick,” I told him.
We talked it over a little. Finally, after a pause, he made his offer. “I’ll take it to the studio if you can get Susan to do it,” he told me.
“What?” I said, “You know she’ll never do the ending!”
“Is that my problem or yours?” the director sniffed.
I went home and sat Susan down in the living room. She thought somebody had died.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I said, “It’s a career opportunity for you.”
I told her about the biopic. She seemed to like it until I got to the ending with the broomstick. Then she really went through the roof. She started crying.
`”Are you trying to ruin me?” she said.
“No, honey, it’s art!” I said “It’s a breakthrough!”
She ran from the room and locked herself in the bedroom. I went after her and knocked on the door.
“Go away!” she screamed.
I had an idea. I called the director’s assistant and tried to schedule another meeting with him, but he wouldn’t see me. On the phone, through the assistant, he asked, “Will she do it or not?”
“She’ll do it if it’s with me. We’ll just have to set up the camera in our bedroom so she can’t see it.”
I was on hold for a while. Then the director came on the line. “Be here at 8 A.M. tomorrow. Don’t bring Susan.”
When I got to the director’s office, I had to wait a while. Finally, the assistant showed me into the office, but the director wasn’t there. Sitting in his chair was a clean-cut young man. He introduced himself.
“I’m a private investigator. I’m here to talk to you about illegal surveillance. We wouldn’t want you to get yourself into trouble or anything.”
“Let me call Susan.”
“Wait a minute. We’re talking to her too.”
By the time I got home, Susan had already moved out and into a hotel room. She never told me where she was staying. Our lawyer called me a week later.
“She’s a wreck. She’s filing for divorce,” he said, “That director records all his calls. Those P.I.’s played her the tape of you on the phone. They advised her that you were putting her in danger.”
I never tried to find her. A few years later I was watching an entertainment news show and saw a bit about Susan. That same director had gone ahead and made Susan’s biopic, starring Susan, without the X-rated finale. It was called Susan’s Movie, and they showed footage of the premier. Susan and the director arrived together, so I knew they were seeing each other. Susan appeared uncomfortable, and when she looked in the camera, I could feel her staring straight at me. She looked like she hadn’t slept much in a long time.

posted by MindSlavery Florida

in-my-opinion.org -> Entertainment & Sports -> My own pic, my own art, my short story -> "The Mermaid Sushi Bar" by sleuthslayer

Wow. This is a really, sort of... 'WTF?' sort of story.

I guess that is the reaction you were hoping for. Well, you got it. I have no idea what to make of it.

posted by nocturnal_anonymous

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