Dora: A Headcase (8 page)

“OK. You OK now? OK. Here’s the gig, baby. We’ve been picked up. Biggest production company in television.”

Sound of waiters bringing food.

“What? What in the world does that mean? What does television have to do with me?”

“What’s television got to do with you? Hello? Dr. Phil? Dr. Ruth? Dr. Oz? Intervention? Television is the new paid reality, my friend. And I just bought you your ticket in. Once Oprah gets her ass out there’s going to be a huge vacuum … and we’re gonna fill that air, baby.”

Sound of strained breathing and coughing.

Sound of hand slapping back.

“Sigmund? Sig? You all right buddy? I know! I can’t believe
it either. You gonna make it? Sig. Buddy. Here – for christ’s sake – have a little blow. It will calm you the fuck down.”

Old man snorting sound. Old man coughing sound.

“Sigmund! My man! Drink some water. Lemme lay it out for you. I pitched you! Get it? They want you, Sig. They really, really want you. One year contract in the bag. Second year optioned.”

“But my book… my life’s work … I would never agree to this! It’s the epitome of unethical!”

“Whoa! Sig! This blows your book out of the water! Are you even listening to me? Hello? Those case studies you are so proud of? They’re not going to die some dusty old death. They’re going live. We’re getting ‘em scripted and re-enacted. One a week. We need a new ‘you,’ but I got that covered … and we’ll need to … you know, change some stuff around so we don’t get our asses sued or anything, but…”

“It’s unethical. It’s out of the question. ”

Sound of old man slamming scotch.

“What did you mean by a ‘new me’?”

“It’s big money.”

Coughing.

“Big. Money.”

Coughing.

“The clincher is your teen little monster girl. The other case studies look like zombies compared to her. So the only catch is, you have to bag that one. I mean nail that girl. When I told them what she looks like and the kind of shit she pulls? POW. Without her, we don’t have shit.”

I’m across the kitchen by now. “STOP it,” I yell. Marlene jams her blue lacquered nail on the pause button. The H4n slides across the table like it’s trying to run. I stomp back to the table. I pick the H4n up. I want to punch it or throw it across the room. I slam it back down. I begin to cough. Hack, actually. Whoppers. “Rewind it.” Marlene rewinds. “Play that shit again. Because I can’t believe my fucking ears.”

Before I realize what I’m doing I pick up the bottle of cough
syrup and chuck it across the room. It shatters like kid wishes all over her white wall.

“Lamskotelet!” Marlene says.

I stare at the red stain I’ve made. Fucking Rorschach.

“Fuck. I’m sorry.” I get all down on the floor and start picking up the glass shards. My throat gets tight. My head feels like it has a rubber band around it. My eyes are watering like a girl’s. I’m coughing and coughing. I cut my hand pretty much immediately. Of course. Marlene comes over and takes my hands in hers and walks me to the kitchen sink. She runs cold water over my hand and thumb. Blood rivers down her drain.

“Everybody uses everybody until we’re all just a bunch of used up shit sacks waiting to go to dirt,” I go.

Marlene doesn’t say anything. She dries my hands. She reaches under the sink and gets a first aid kit and wraps my cut up hand with a gauze bandage, slowly. I stare at the little red cleft in my hand.
Don’t cry, pussy
.

Then a numb comes. It’s a numb I know. It’s the numb of a girl checking out. Whatever they say next can’t fucking touch me. I’m long gone. One way or another, I will end this. But on my terms. I turn the volume up. Marlene picks up glass on the floor. The next voice is Sig’s. His voice is all over the map.

“I find that last comment entirely offensive. This is intolerable. You have no right to talk about any client in such a way – ”

For a second I think the Sig is going to rescue me. Like Heidi’s Grandpa. Can you beat that?

“ – but what was it you said earlier – what did you mean a new ‘you?’ You mean me?”

“New you? What I meant was, well we can’t … Sig, I mean, look. You’re one big brain with a whole fucking library of shit stuck up in that noggin, but you’re not exactly a visual magnet, right? But don’t worry about that. I found someone – another client of mine – who is
very
interested. He was
made
for TV. Oh – and he’s in your line of work.”

“You found an actor who is a psychotherapist?”

“ What? Fuck no. I found a dream guy. What’s that shit you ordered? Is that the Chicken Kiev? It looks like paste. All this frou-frou new food looks like crap to me. I should have ordered a fucking steak.”

Sound of old man half choking on food.

“Symbols and brain waves and talkity talk. Like you. Only he’s a looker. No offense. Actually, you already know each other. Hey! Look! Here he comes now. Hope you don’t mind, I invited him to join us. To share the news … I’ll get us all another round.”

Sound of chairs being pushed back.

I steal a glance at Marlene. I remember from the restaurant. It’s the silvery hot guy. I crank the volume.

“Sigisimund! My old friend. So very good to see you!”

“My … I … Jung?”

Sound of body falling to the floor.

The H4n shuts off.

Marlene looks at me.

I look at Marlene.

“That’s where he fucking fainted,” I go.

“Liebchen, are you well?” she asks.

I bend down on the ground. I calmly put my beloved H4n – maybe the only thing in the world besides Marlene that I trust – into my backpack. I stand up. I look out of the kitchen window. I wish it was snowing. I mean I wish it kid hard. But it’s still just stupid raining. Well, there’s more than one place to find white stuff.

Marlene and I lock eyes.

“Marlene?” I go.

“Liebchen?” she answers.

“I’m gonna need to borrow one of your wigs. Can you help me pick one? One that, you know, will make me not look anything like me?”

“Certainly. I happen to be very good at disguises. Who do you want look like?” she asks.

I suck some blood on my thumb. Almond pepper. Kirsch Wasser.

“Dora,” I go. “I want to look like Dora. They want a show, I’ll give them one.”

IF YOU WANT TO STALK SOMEONE PROPER, ONE WORD for you: wigs.

Lucky for me, Marlene’s got lots of’em. She’s got platinum blond Marilyn Monroes and fire engine red beehives and long jet blacks with Bettie Page bangs. She’s got blue hair and pink hair and hair the color of purple Slurpees. She’s got a foot wide’fro and a spiky punk black and blue. She’s got Liz Taylors and Zsa Zsas. She’s got long hair and short hair and tall hair and soft trusses and bobs and shags and even this braid down to your ass that would make a man yell RAPUNZEL half a mile away.

Obviously she uses them for her gigs at the tranny jazz club.

I have other plans. With a wig, you can be anyone.

My mother once lost all of her hairs. It came out in patches at first, then great clumps. So she cut it short – then it began to look refugee. They said it was psychosomatic. They said it was stress. They said she made her own hair fall out of her head. It happened three years ago. When my father made his choice with Mrs. K.

It grew back the next year. Slowly. But her eyes never were the same.

There’s a book my mother read to me as a kid. At least at first. I still have it. It’s under my bed. It’s a little trashed, but still cool.
Are You My Mother
? You know it? It’s about a pathetic baby bird. The kid bird hatches while the mom is gone out of the nest. He’s clueless. He goes looking for her. He asks a kitten, a hen, a
dog, and a cow if they are his mother. They go, “No.” Then he asks a shitty old car, a boat and a plane, and at last, a fucking power shovel. The shovel dumps him back into his nest and the absent mother returns.

It’s a good book. But the kid bird is pretty much a tard.

Marlene’s got an old school man’s silk smoking jacket on and a Marlene Dietrich wig and a cigarette in a long thin cig holder.

Three magnificent wigs sit on her kitchen table, staring up at us, headless.

I look down at the wigs on Marlene’s table. I rub my stubbled head. This is the closest I have ever come to looking like my mother. Er how she did hairless, anyway. Sometimes I think that’s why I did it. Whatever. I study the wig selections.

Wig one: a black as crows chin-length blunt cut. Very smarty looking. Would look great with black-rimmed smarty glasses and a shiny black raincoat. And boots. Kinda Emma Peel from
The Avengers
.

Wig two: shoulder length strawberry with color weave highlights – kinda preppy. Would need cashmere sweater and a thin strand of pearls. Think Molly Ringwald in
The Breakfast Club
.

But it’s wig three that’s dominating the others. Totally badass feathered and frosted. Christ. It’s so … man. It’s so hot … it’s so 80s … it’s so motherfucking Ultimate Farrah. It looks like it might lift off the table, achieve loft, and fly around the room.

“Think I could pull that bad boy off?” I say, pointing to it. “What do they even call that, frosted?” The other wigs look dejected and jealous.

“That depends,” Marlene says, tilting her head to the side, touching her blue Lee nails against her Coca- Cola red lips, “if you wear this you will turn heads. People can’t help themselves. They are nostalgic for the times with big hair.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean … that’s not necessarily a good thing …”

“When trying not to be seen.” She taps her lips. Her eyelashes seem longer than my thumbs.

“Yup.”

“On the other hand,” Marlene walks around the table of wigs inspecting them, kinda picking at the other two, “it looks the least like you, Lamskotelet. Your Herr Doktor would never recognize the you under this hair. No one would. Not even I would.” She strokes the wings of it.

We stare at it there on the table.

I lift the Farrah up off of the table balancing it on my fist and hold it slightly higher than my skull in front of me. It shimmers under the kitchen light. Its wings positively radiant. It asks me its question. Can you, be me?

Somehow it is very solemn, this choice, who to be, who not to be.

“Come, we will try it,” Marlene says, and shoulders me toward the bathroom mirror.

The second it’s on my head we both know it. I don’t care if I have to wear a fucking jumpsuit with platforms and sing Bee Gees. Sometimes you just know things. This is the one.

First of all, it’s heavy. In a good way. Like you are more important than usual. And my whole face looks different. I look like a woman with feathered bangs. A woman who will wear a lot of mascara and eye liner. A woman who is going to need a shitload of lip gloss. But there’s something else going on, too.

I stare at this self in the mirror, Marlene just behind me. You know, in life? Whoever you’re gonna be, I think maybe the trick is to be it over the top. Maybe that’s part of my problem. I’m me, but I’m me like 50%. I’m out there, but I fade. I cough. I look away. I pass out.

Little Teena, he’s on HIGH VOLUME no matter where he goes or what he does. Ave Maria is doped to the nines most of the time so I have no idea who she is, but at least she’s unforgettable. You can hear her high notes in your ears long after she’s gone. Marlene, well Marlene can be a man and then turn woman
like day turns to night. Shabazz. Obsidian is so Obsidian it feels like she could kill you if you even breathed like you didn’t care. Black hair. Black eyes. Black shard of fuck you dangling from her neck.

Me? I’m Ida. Angry messed up Ida with the dumb-sounding voice. I’m Dora the Explorer. I’m the girl who has to go to therapy. The most me thing about me is my technological … gear. Who the fuck am I even?

Almost like she’s in my head with me, Marlene goes, “This,” standing behind me in the mirror reflection with her hands in my new hair, “is the you that will make a film. Daughter of Eve!”

I don’t know why but standing there like that under the breath of her sentence makes me feel like I’m real. I wonder if that’s what love is.

Marlene takes in a great breath of air and claps her hands above our heads and says, “ Bacon! To celebrate!”

When I wheel around to follow, I can feel the hair swing. Like it’s part of me. Big. Heavy. WINGS.

Back in the kitchen, Marlene scoops up the wig heads off of the table and throws them onto a nearby chair. They look like roadkill.

Whoever we are right then, I suddenly wish it wouldn’t end.

I grin so big I feel air all through my teeth. I shake the hair back. In my head there’s a lame ass little bird, chirping its fucking head off, happy.

11
.

IN THE HALLWAY IN FRONT OF THE SIG’S OFFICE I STUDY the wood of his door. It looks like skin. I put my hand on it without making a sound. On the other side of the door, is he waiting? I make my hand into a fist and pound the fuck out of the door.

Frankly, when he opens it? He looks agitated. And what is up with that hair? New wave bird’s nest.

“Siggy!” I yelp, blowing by him into the office. I have a present for him under my arm – all wrapped up like for birthdays. I jam it into his chest. Oh for christ’s sake. I think he’s blushing. “Oh Sig,” I say, “don’t go getting all soft on me. It’s not anything weird. G’head, open it.”

He struggles with the paper exactly like the old man bofus he is. This gives me exactly enough time to loiter over by his trench coat hanging by the door. I slip my hand into my Dora purse and then slip a GoTEK7 GPS into the pocket of his flasher coat.

The GoTEK7 is a very small, personal and powerful live tracking GPS device allowing you to track assets, vehicles or people. It is lightweight and water-resistant. It is also fitted with a discreet panic alarm; once pressed for four seconds the device will inform you of its location via your mobile phone or a PC, giving you peace of mind with loved ones.