I'm the One That I Want (21 page)

I worked on another draft of the screenplay and got all my friends together to do a reading of it at Largo. Glenn and I renewed our vows as we worked on it together in bed late into the night. I felt like Dorothy Parker lying next to him, pen and pad in one hand, whiskey glass in the other.

For a brief time, I was able to convince myself that I had it all— this new project everyone was fawning over and Glenn back in my bed. The reading was a smashing success, except for one small thing: Glenn’s girlfriend came. He introduced us.

The next day, I waltzed into the offices of Traitor Pictures and sold the film to a man named Roman. The way he looked at me over the conference table scared me, but he had real film money, and a real contract. He might have wanted me as well as the film, and I tried to act like I felt empowered by it.

At some point during the meeting, it actually took hold. Roman wanted to talk about bringing in another writer to rework the script. I exclaimed, “I am an artist—I am not a collaborator!” He was impressed enough to let me do the rewrites alone.

After the meeting, I was due on the set of
Keenan
. My frenzied energy and my newfound sexual “empowerment” fueled my performance, and I got a standing ovation for talking about dicks.

I started working with Lane, the film development executive at Roman’s company. She tried to teach me about story and structure, but it bored me. Her advice was not helpful, and she tried to make the story more and more conventional.

I still saw Glenn late at night, but I was losing interest in him and gaining interest in my new career as writer/director/star/ho. I went to lunches with Roman, growing increasingly alarmed by his advances toward me which were not physical, yet extremely intimate.

He called me up late in the business day, around 7, and wanted to come over and watch 9
¹
⁄2 Weeks. He bought me sushi and then tried to follow me home in his Range Rover. I kept telling myself that I had him under my control. I kept telling myself that I would do anything to make my movie.

My management scheduled a meeting for Roman and me at the Bel Air Hotel. We sat at a table, and he dragged my chair bumpily next to his. He picked lamb out of his teeth and worked a thread of the flesh between his lip and gum.

Lane briefly dropped in talk about our progress. She was pretty disappointed that I hadn’t taken any of her suggestions with the rewrite, but she felt it was all turning out well anyway. Roman said he was making this film no matter what. His eyes never once left my cleavage.

Lane left us alone at the table to return to her Christmas shopping. Roman and I walked up to the valet. The attendants who had flirted so willingly with me before would not look at me. I felt like one of Heidi’s girls.

Roman wanted to take a walk under the hotel, by the creek that ran alongside it. I sensed danger, but I tried to be as calm as I could. It happened so suddenly. It was kind of like a bear attack. I was just walking in the woods. . . . He grabbed my breast and put his mouth on it and muffledly said, “I want to be your baby.”

I panicked. I didn’t want this, but had I asked for it? I searched my mind for answers. He was coming at me and I had to make up my mind fast. I wanted to make my movie, but at what cost? I fucked people for a lot less, but . . . I looked at Roman’s huge belly and his tiny hands, his dick that had grown huge in his baggy jeans. He had short legs, so his dick seemed almost longer than them, and it stuck out like a kickstand. I couldn’t do it. Not for the movie. Not for anything. I started yelling. “No. No! NONONONONO!!!”

He wouldn’t stop. He was backing me into a woodshed. I wanted to say something to make him stop. I wasn’t afraid that he would overpower me. I was so much bigger than he was. I just wanted him to stop on his own. Stop the tidal wave of hands and wet mouth with lamb-in-teeth and hard dick flopping this way and that but most of all toward me—and I said, “Don’t push me in there. There’re axes in there!!!!”

I think that was the right incantation, because he stopped.

I went home, after he paid for my valet parking. I felt like a whore who could be bought for the price of a conveniently parked car. Nothing really happened, but it was still disgusting, and I was glad to be safe and away from him.

I didn’t know what to do really. I thought I could just go on as if nothing happened, but it kept bothering me. Roman made me so mad. His interest in my project was all a ruse, just so he could get me into his fat little hands. But wasn’t I encouraging it just a little? Did I have so little confidence in my writing that I thought I had to add sex to sell it?

I kept thinking about his mouth on my breast, his kickstand. I got angrier and angrier. I was going to make him pay. I turned in the next draft of the screenplay, but now with an added scene in the beginning where the lead character goes on a blind date with a short, fat monster of a man and is sexually assaulted by him. She gets away, but not until he grabs her breast and says, “I want to be your baby.”

I wish I could have seen Roman’s face when he read it. He was fucking pissed, but he didn’t know exactly how to handle it. Lane knew nothing about us, or of his intentions to have sex with me. Roman was married with kids and didn’t need anybody knowing anything.

He called an emergency meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel with me and Lane and Greer’s assistant Ched (Greer had long since abandoned me to Ched). Roman’s fat little hands gesticulated wildly in the air as he went off on some lie about how he had showed the script to a “French distributor” who hated it. The “French distributor” especially hated the newly added pages about the blind date, and the unrealistic and unfair portrayal of a short man. The “French distributor” also pointed out that it was clear from the script that I hated men, and that if I were to continue in this business, I would need to rectify that.

Lane was mad because she didn’t understand. Everything seemed to be going so well and now Roman was suddenly going ballistic about some fictional “French distributor.” She had suspected there might be something going on between us, but she wasn’t about to say anything to him or me about it. She just wanted to make the film. She wasn’t too concerned with the drama that wasn’t on the page. Roman was yelling at her, “If you knew how to do your job, this script would be ready now!!!!”

Lane got defensive and said, “I’ve been working with Margaret all this time, and she hasn’t listened to me at all! Why are you blaming me?”

Roman laid it on the line that we were going to have to do another draft—“and it had better be fucking astounding, because we need it like fucking yesterday!”

We went back and forth, and I kept asking Roman, “Who is this ‘French distributor’ anyway? What is a ‘French distributor’? Does he hand out fries or something?” Then Roman would explode again. The meeting seemed to last hours, and Ched did not say one word the entire time.

Suddenly Roman made everybody leave, except me. When the table had cleared, he turned to me and said, “How about it?”

I said, “What?”

Roman looked at me hard and said, “Let’s get a room.”

I said no so loud, people from other tables looked at us. I walked out of the hotel. Roman followed me. He was suddenly trying to be nice.

He said, “Look, don’t worry about it. If the rewrites are satisfactory, I’ll make your film.”

I looked at him. I didn’t know what to do. Roman took the valet ticket out of my hand. He paid the driver. I got in my car and went home feeling sick.

Lane Called me that night and said, “What was that?”

I broke down and told her everything. She sighed and said, “Oh, so that’s why. I can’t believe he did that. I can’t believe
you
did that. I mean, that whole thing between you guys happening, and then turning it in as a rewrite. It’s kind of funny, but you really pissed him off. I knew he was lying about the ‘French distributor.’ He’s not a very good liar. It’s okay. I am sure we can work around it.”

We tried to get it to work. I wrote that movie over a hundred times until it was completely unrecognizable to me. I took out the offending scene and added story points that felt stupid and inauthentic. I still wanted to make my film. I still needed the money to make it. I had to show Roman I was sorry somehow. I had to write my ass off in lieu of giving it to him to fuck.

The notes Roman had made were incredibly obscure and conflicting, so the rewrite became a confusing and complicated mess. I know he just wanted me to fuck it up so that when he did get around to finally saying no, he would have real reasons for it.

On Monday, Lane went into Roman’s office and told him to leave me alone. She said that I had told her what had happened and that if he didn’t stop hassling me, she would tell everyone in the office.

He fired her. At least that was what she said. I don’t know whether to believe her now, because when I talked to her months after this whole thing, she was still working for him. I don’t know what the point was of telling me that he had fired her, except to emotionally blackmail me further, to convince me that chaos followed me wherever I went.

Whatever the real story, I was told Lane was being fired because we couldn’t deliver the movie he wanted. He wasn’t ever going to make it anyway—he was just playing for time to see if I was going to fuck him or not.

When Lane told me the deal was off—curiously, even though she had been fired, she still made calls for him—I told her that I had expected it.

I went straight to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Absolut Citron. I drank the entire thing, standing in front of the open freezer door. I didn’t want to feel anything. I was afraid of what I would feel, that the pain would be so great, I would die from it. It was like when you bang your foot against the door, and you have a grace period of a few seconds, knowing the pain is coming and anticipating how bad it is going to be. I tried to get as fucked up as I could in that interim.

I felt like a failure. I couldn’t even fuck my way to the top! Maybe it was that I felt worthless and betrayed and that I wrote my heart out and now I had no heart. I had done it all for Glenn, and now where was he? I guess I hadn’t done it for Glenn at all, because when I started really working on the script with Lane and Roman, I forgot all about him.

I’ll never really know what I felt then because I wasn’t about to allow myself to feel anything but the sledgehammer of vodka and the slow death that it brings.

Roman still wanted to act like we were friends. I think he was afraid I would talk about it onstage. He left messages on my machine, trying to find out where I’d be performing. I did get around to telling the story onstage, after I had recovered somewhat. The audience was horrified and excited; they could tell I wasn’t making this up. They cheered wildly for my minor victories against Roman, and mourned the loss of the deal along with me. I am sure someone told him about it, because a little while later he called to find out about the movie and if I was making it. He said that he was still in love with it and wanted to see if he could get involved in it again and why don’t I give him a call when I have a chance.

I didn’t talk to him for years after that. The next time I saw him, it was after this entire horrid epoch of my life. Roman came to the Westbeth Theatre Center one night when I was performing in my show,
I’m the One That I Want,
in which I talk about my experience with him so candidly.

It was Friday night and so very hot as Fridays were that entire summer of ’99 in New York. It was close to the end of the run, and the place was packed. It was one of those great crowds, I burned up the stage like it was my birthright. I looked down at one point, and I saw him. I stopped dead in my tracks. Roman was sitting right there in the front row. The air was hot and humid, but I was chilled to the bone. I didn’t know what to do. I was performing on so many levels, holding the audience of 250 in the palm of my hand, and still trying to stay calm even though one of them was the one I talk about as being “unfuckable.”

I tried not to look down at him, but I could feel his rage rise up at me like a noxious smell. It is unbelievable, but I just carried on. Nobody could tell that there was anything different about my performance. I just avoided that part of the stage, as if I could avoid him and his anger and what he did to me. I was not going to give him the satisfaction. I was not gonna let him see me falter or fail. I would win, as I deserved to.

He moved finally. I think he went to the back of the theater. At least I couldn’t see him and I could pretend to myself that he had left. I felt a little more comfortable. I thought I had made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t him after all. Maybe he still had no idea I was talking about him onstage. Maybe everything would be okay . . . I’m sure I was just paranoid. It is funny how the mind plays tricks on you and you can’t figure out what is and what isn’t.

Deep down, I knew it was him. Underneath it all, I felt like the entire time I was up there I was going to be shot. That Roman would just stand himself up on that kickstand and start firing away. For some reason, I pictured him with a musket.

I braced myself for the hot burning lead, all the while still captivating this audience of screaming fans. I cannot believe that I pulled it off. The show ended, and it was okay. Nothing happened. He didn’t hang around after the performance, he didn’t stand by the stage door, he didn’t try to kill me. After all, it was okay.

Just to be sure, I hid upstairs in my dressing room long after everyone had left. I saw Roman’s expression when I was up there. It was just murderous. There was blood in his eyes. He must have been mad, because when things happen to women, we are supposed to remain silent. Our shame should make us want to act like nothing happened, maintain the decorum. I refuse to be silent, therefore I become some sort of criminal.