A Not So Model Home (8 page)

Authors: David James

BOOK: A Not So Model Home

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Gilles, who was sitting out in front of me, didn't turn around. But I could see him slowly, almost imperceptibly shake his head from side to side as if he couldn't believe what he had just heard. And to tell the truth, neither could I. It was like another person had said what I had just blurted out. While the rest of the footage flashed by, no one seemed to care from that point on. After all, the fart had been let into the room and it wasn't clearing anytime soon.

After probably looking up the words gold digging on Wikipedia, Gilles was out for blood on the afternoon shoots. Aurora and the cameramen, sensing that this was going to be an explosive issue, followed me like a cat on the trail of an overturned fish truck.

As usual, I clung to Aurora for sustenance. We sat on the expensive chaise lounges around the pool, nibbling on outrageously expensive Japanese sushi finger foods, waiting for the cameramen to arrive, presumably to capture Gilles plunging an escargot fork into my heart. It was weird not knowing what was occurring elsewhere in the show. Occasionally, we overlapped and saw what was happening in other parts of the filming, but it never added up to a whole. It was like a magic show, where you were shown the ace of spades and expected to construct the rest of the magic trick, backward. At any one time, you had only part of the equation. The editors, bless their union-bound hearts, would take the twos, fives, and queens and kings and make it into a straight flush, a coherent program.

So, as I felt safe and secure with Aurora, my protectorate, Gilles stormed up to me and confronted me like an ancestral harpy. I stood up to meet him.

“Zo, you zink I ham a gold-digging U-O-trash? Let us zee how much of you izz real,” he said, pulling my swimsuit top down in front of the rolling cameras.

What I did next was true reality. No scripting. I slapped him so hard across the face, his diamond stud earring flew off and into the pool, a good fifteen feet away. I'm not kidding. I actually watched it fly through the air in a perfect arc and land in the pool with a tiny plink. Even better, as I looked back at Gilles, I could still see my handprint clearly on his face, the fingers clearly and painfully outlined across his perfect skin.

You could have heard an ant sneeze.

I have never been a violent person, but it was so weird. It was like I had no other choice than to do what welled up in me like a volcanic explosion. And it felt good. Someone had done me wrong. No, violated me. And I struck back with total justification. Okay, I only did what everyone who probably ever came in contact with Gilles wanted to do within seconds of meeting him, but the point was, I did it. And it made me feel powerful. Really powerful.

As I stood there pulsing with adrenaline, Gilles seemed to freeze. I do believe it was the first time anyone had ever stood up to him, especially a woman. He held his Gallic nose high in the air in defiance, both of us unwilling to back down. While there was still noise from all the other groups at the pool party, everyone in our little circle stood motionless, breathless. Then, Gilles blinked and turned haughtily away, dismissing me with a downward wave of his hand, the cameras trailing him like a pack of hyenas following a lion with fresh kill still in his mouth. I had won.

Aurora, waiting for the drama to passâand to let the cameras get a reaction shot of herâraised her wineglass silently in a toast to me with a silent nod of acceptance. No, admiration. One tough bitch to another . . . in a gay man's world. When word spread throughout the pool party that I had “bitch-slapped the bitch,” other members of the cast came to either shake my hand or just stare at me.

It was the start of my short, meteoric climb in notoriety. One that I barely began to perceive. But one that was going to produce changes in my life that I could not see at the moment. Yet, I did feel at one with myself for the time being. It was refreshing.

Of course, The Slap, as it came to be known, was just what Jeremy and his cameramen were looking for. I think it was at this point that I realized what a pivotal role the cameramen played. Despite my reservations that any portion of this show was going to have a plethora of reality, it was the cameramen who knew what would look good on TV, and they knew how to get it. Since the segment television producer wasn't always around to narrate off camera, the cameramen often prompted the contestants to make a statement or offer an opinion on what just happened. And since I had effectively stolen the first show single-handedly with my slap, the cameramen were corralling the men into making response segments to sprinkle in after the actual event had occurred. I overheard the responses for the most part, since the guys weren't sitting that far away. Strangely, the men were all pretty much supportive, but their dramatic reactions consisting of popped eyes and a few whistles intended to upstage me failed miserably. Aleksei commented that seeing a woman's naked bodyâor any part of itâmade him want to puke. The first show belonged to me, hands down. But the genie was out of the bottle. In one single day, the men went from consummate models to being consummate actors.

And that was pretty much all for the taping of the first show of
Things Are a Bit Iffy.
The cast was jazzed up, Gilles was pissed off, Jeremy was beside himselfâeveryone was happy. Except me.

C
HAPTER 10

The Slap Heard 'Round the World

T
hat night, I went over to Alex's place. As he was pouring a cucumber martini for the both of us, Alex asked me how the filming went. I told him that there had been a kerfuffle.

“A kerfuffle? Did you just become a Tudor?”

“Well, I kinda slapped Gilles.”

“Kinda slapped?”

“Okay, I bitch-slapped him.”

“Whyyyyy?”

“Because he pulled down the top of my swimsuit and exposed my breasts.”

“I thought this was a gay show, not an episode of
Girls Gone Wild
.”

“It
is
a gay show. I'm the token fag hag.”

Alex was trying to figure out things. “So why would an obnoxious, gay French male model pull down the top of your swimsuit?”

“Ah, well, that's just the way he is,” I said, lying through my newly whitened teeth. (So what if I wanted my teeth to look good for TV. I recently had them bleached . . . so sue me.)

“Amanda . . .” Alex started. “I can tell when you're lying.”

“How so?”

“You don't look me in the eye and you start fiddling with something with your hands . . . like you're fiddling with my salt shaker. So spill it.”

“I called him money-grubbing Eurotrash or something like that.”

“No argument there from what you've told me about him, but I suppose you did this in front of a camera?”

“Pretty much. Yup.”

“You had too much champagne, didn't you?”

“Now, why would you jump to that conclusion, Alex?”

“Amanda, we may have been married for only five years, but I know you very well. Your mouth runs free when you've had too much champagne.”

“I blame it on the bubbles.”

“So, are they going to put that segment on the show?”

“Oh, I don't think so, Alex,” I said, lying through my pearly whites again, but mostly lying to myself.

“I'd check YouTube as soon as you can. I'll bet they've uploaded that scene already.”

“Alex, they just filmed us this afternoon. It's eight o'clock right now. They wouldn't have had enough time to get it on there already. You're just getting way out ahead of yourself.”

“Oh yeah, let's see,” Alex said, clapping his hands in anticipation as he flipped the lid open on his MacBook Air and the computer screen leapt to life. He typed in some search topics, scrolled through a list of videos, then spun the laptop around for me to see. And there it was. The title? “Things Are a Bit Iffy: The Bitch Slap.” I had to admit it, the title wasn't especially catchy, but it was optimized for search engine results. Meaning? It was probably going to go viral. Unfortunately.

I looked at the still frame from the video, afraid to click on the movie and watch myself broadcast to the entire world. My hand trembled as I clicked on the mouse and the movie began to play. Alex pulled in closer to get a good look.

After the intro that set up the premise of the show, what I saw was me saying that Gilles seemed “like gold-digging Eurotrash.” This was followed by several reaction shots that were clearly taken long after the slap but edited in as if they had occurred immediately after it to make everything seem like it had all taken place in real time. I watched in horror as the clip led up to Gilles confronting me. I realized what would happen next and, unfortunately, I was not disappointed. The video showed Gilles pulling down my swimsuit top to expose my breasts, which were pixilated, only to the point of passing the censors. It was clear to every man, woman, child, and pervert that I had nothing to be embarrassed about in the endowment department.

It was the second loudest laughter I had ever heard out of Alex in all the years I had known him. The first, in case you're interested, was when we were alpine hiking and we stopped for a rest and Alex went to pee. I took the occasion to let out a fart just as Alex returned and I turned around to see a party of eight hikers resting silently above me on an overhanging rock. So now you know.

I was mortified. I would never be able to go out again, work again, even shop for groceries again. And it had all happened in less than five seconds. I couldn't believe that it was me I was looking at. I had gone from a successful Realtor to a piece of white trash showing her tits. It was surreal . . . just surreal.

I scrolled down a few more videos only to find that a dozen or so YouTube contributors had already downloaded the scene and re-edited it to create comical versions. One was entitled “Great Bitch Slaps of History,” where the editor had pieced together some of the most renowned slaps in film history. My fifteen seconds of fame was rated higher than
Vivacious Lady,
with seven, count 'em, seven slaps,
Airplane, In the Heat of the Night,
and
The Godfather
. But no matter how good my slap was, probably chocking up points because mine was not a scripted one, the viewer who posted the film felt I just couldn't compete with Faye Dunaway's famous camp slap in
Mommie Dearest
. I had to concede defeat: How could you compete with Joan?

This video post was followed by another compilation of famous movie slapsâand mineâscored to the tune of Pat Benatar's “Hit Me with Your Best Shot.” Clever. This was followed by a motley assortment of not-funny re-edits that usually had characters wearing bad wigs and trying pathetically to re-enact my glorious moment on the screen in basement rec rooms in New Jersey. I mean, we're talking hours since I pulled my slap. Hours! Alex got a great laugh out of all of them, especially the really unfunny videos, but what really struck me was how quickly this stuff got spread all across the Internet. It was like Facebook and Twitter photos of Congressmen in skimpy, tight athletic shorts showing obvious cock lines; they spread faster than pictures of Paris Hilton's beaver. The number of views said it all: In the short time my slap had been posted by the public relations people at Q Channel, some of the videos had had over 5,000 views. And climbing. What I forgot was how much time some people spend on the Internet, endlessly cruising for the funny, the weird, and the downright embarrassing.

During dinner, Alex told me to forget the whole thing, but I kept running over and over the same thought in my head: I will never get over this, never. Even after I went home that night to my perennially unfinished house in a state of perpetual remodeling and was greeted by Knucklehead, my rescued Labradoodle who erupted in a chorus of gleeful barking, the same words kept repeating in my head:
You're a Kardashian now.

C
HAPTER 11

Being World Famous For Fifteen Minutes Is Far Too Long

I
got up early the next morning, and like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, I started up my iMac and poured some coffee. I came back to my computer as it loaded my home page on Yahoo. I sped through the day's headlines, and at the bottom, what I saw almost made me fall off my chair. The last headline: S
LAPPING
V
IDEO
G
OES
V
IRAL
. I clicked on the link to see that “Great Bitch Slaps of History” had climbed from about 7,000 views last night to over 420,000. The other videos had jumped as well, but “Great Bitch Slaps” was chewing up the bandwidth. I knew that Jeremy and his cadre of computer nerds had dropped the video on YouTube, and they knew what they were doing. And what they were planning: They were trying to drive viewers to the show through the Internet. As I did some searching around the Internet, there were stories plastered all over the gossip Web sites, Hollywood Web sites, and celebrity scandal sites. All in one freaking night! The episode wasn't even on the air and already hundreds of thousands of people had already seen it. I was used to the days of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, when people like Zsa Zsa Gabor became sensations seemingly overnight, but the reality was that in those days, it actually took a long time. Even better, once you became famous, you stayed there a long time, whether you deserved it or not. Now, everything happened overnight. You went from a mild-mannered real-estate agent to a tit-flashing whore by the time you got up. Then you faded into obscurity just as quickly. One could hope.

I was getting ready to go into the office to list a few more homes that wouldn't sell for a long, long time when I heard a knock on the door, sending Knucklehead into a fit of barking. That was Knucklehead; he barked at planes, helicopters, geckos, roadrunners, birds, cloudsâeverything except strange men. I took a peek through the door sidelight and saw a mass of flowers sporting a woman behind it. Or was it a woman sporting a mass of flowers? I opened the door.

“Jesus Christ, Amanda. What did Ken do?” Regina barked.

“What do you mean?”

“You only get flowers like this when he's been cheating. What strumpet did you catch him with?”

“Nobody. Here . . .” I said, grabbing at the base of the flowers, trying to find something resembling stems. “Let me get those for you. Jesus, these are a lot of flowers. You mean you didn't bring them?”

“Just picked them up. What's the occasion? Someone shoot a member of The Beatles on your doorstep?”

I took the mass of flowers and laid them down on my mid-century Saarinen dining table. “They're from different people,” I said, thumbing through the attached cards. “And I don't know any of them.”

“Let me repeat my question: What's the occasion?”

“My Internet debut.”

“Oh, the slapping thing,” Regina commented.

“How do you know about that?”

“Amanda, wake up and smell the espresso. It's all over the Internet.”

“Regina, since when are you all over the Internet? You hardly touched that computer I got you a month ago. I had to teach you how to use it, and when I showed you how to cruise the Net, you respondedâand I quoteâthat you'll âjust stick to meeting men the old-fashioned way: pleasantly tight and in a dark bar.' ”

“Yeah, and I stuck to that statement. You just didn't tell me there was so much porn on the Internet. And hot dating sites for older, er, mature men. I belong to so many sites with the word
silver
in the name, you'd think I was looking at a Web site for Jewish surnames.”

“So even you saw me on the Internet? Holy shit.”

“That's what I said when I saw your slapfest.”

“Regina, it was one slap. One.”

“Yeah, but what a slap it was.”

“So what site did you see it on? YouTube?”

“No, on Perez Hilton's Web site. Wait a minute. I think it was on crazedbitches.com. Or bitchslap.com. Something like that.”

“Regina, I don't know any of the people who sent these flowers.”

“Secret admirers!” Regina gushed. “I used to have several when I worked for Paramount Studios back in '55. Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, James Dean.”

“They were all gay. Or at least two of them were, Regina.” I didn't ask her how she knew who her flowers were from if they were secret admirers. I let it ride. After all, most of Regina's stories didn't quite check out factually. I just accepted it all as the color Regina added to my life.

“They weren't always gay, Amanda. I think it was all due to those early television sets. X-rays, I tell you. Fried their balls off watching
I Love Lucy
.”

“Regina, what I don't get is how all these people knew where I live. I guess I should be grateful for the adulation and attention, but at the same time, there's a creepy side to it that I'm not sure I like.”

“You're not used to fame, honey,” Regina said, laying her liver-spotted and bejeweled hand on mine for comfort and to assert her broad Hollywood experience. “You haven't hit the big time until someone's stalking you.”

“Maybe someone is. Regina, would you check behind that yucca over there near the wall?”

Regina turned her head for a second to look, then caught herself. Great big smile. I invited her in for coffee, but she declined.

“I just came over to congratulate you.”

“For the slap?”

“Yep, you're on your way, honey. You're gonna be a star.”

“That's what I'm afraid of, Regina.”