Emma Who Saved My Life (42 page)

Next message: BEEP!
That ends the abasement-and-humbling portion of our evening's entertainment, but before we bring on Guido Fozzuli and his Dancing Poodles with the Dancing Lasers and Dancing Waters, let us have a word from Miss Emma Gennaro!
[Emma made this kssssh noise into the receiver to sound like the applause of millions.]
Thank you, thank you, oh please—that's too kind. Yes, I'm back and I'm here to speak to you tonight about a serious subject: Gil Freeman. He has been struck with that crippler of young adults, Life Without Emma. Only you can help. Send all your money to me. And when you've done that, I urge you, I beg of you, to make Gil pick up that phone—go ahead, you know you ought to—pick up that phone and call Emma. You know in your heart that it's the right thing to do. And now back to Guido Fozzuli and lasers shooting the dancing poodles, or the poodles making dancing water, or
—CLICK.

That voice. Some voices speak to you from outside your body and some speak to you from inside, and my imaginary Emma Voice, the one I heard in my head, the one that said all the intolerant, insensitive, hilarious and 100% honest things, the voice I heard in my head when something happened she should have been there for, THAT voice had gone off the mark a bit, wasn't quite what she really sounded like, and hearing the real Emma I realized that time—just eleven months—had deprived me of so much. I played the tape over and over again, saying to myself yes, yes, that's what I missed. That's what I can't do without any longer.

1980

IN September I made my TV debut, in a commercial for the Garden State Assurance Trust, a local insurance company. At Emma's and Janet's new East Village apartment, we gathered to watch this command performance.

Emma turned on the TV:

It was Ronald Reagan:
It's time to look back for that which made America great, its integrity, its goodness
—

AAAAIIII! Janet, Emma, myself and my theater friend Kevin screamed in unison: TURN IT OFF!

“Damn election year,” muttered Emma. “You can't get either Ron or Jimmy off the TV—there've been ads for one or the other every five minutes.”

“Ronnie Ray-gun, the Black Man's Friend,” said Janet scowling. “And he's probably gonna get in too.”

“What kind of choice is this election? It's gotta be the worst ever,” mused Emma.

Nixon or pro-Vietnam Humphrey?

“Yeah, that was bad.”

Pro-Vietnam Johnson or pro-Vietnam Goldwater?

“Forget I said anything,” Emma shrugged. “It's always bad, isn't it?”

Janet brought everyone a beer. “The world's being run by old men, Gil. Brezhnev is a hundred 'n eighty and may or may not be dead, the Ayatollah is in his hundred 'n eighties too, and Reagan is in his hundred 'n seventies. Those old men who keep hangin' on, the kind who never die.”

Try the TV again, Emma.

Emma turned back to the channel my commercial would be on.

Americans will never cower before a foreign government, will never negotiate with terrorists … America will not be held hostage …

“Of course true to my doctrine,” said Emma, “of voting for entertainment value, I'll vote for Uncle Ronnie.”

“You may get your way on World War Three,” said Janet.

Emma's buzzer sounded. We figured it was Jasmine.

Janet and I kept watching Reagan:
The Great Society has failed. No one believes anymore that the welfare system of the United States is healthy. Fraud, welfare, swindling is now accepted in the cities of America. In Newark, New Jersey, a welfare queen there took the government for $270,000, masquerading under fifteen different names …

Janet dipped into black-stereotype-speak: “Now Ronnie chile, you talkin' bout my Aunt Sadie now! We gots us some Ripple on that money and played the horses and got us a Cadillac with a fuzzy pink interyuh…”

“Well,” said Kevin, camping it up. “He's got a good-looking son, that ballet dancer. Although Ford still had the best-looking presidential kids of all time—Steven Ford, you remember?”

Dream on, Kevin.

“Gil,” he said, hopping out of the chair, “can we talk a moment in the kitchen?”

Sure. Kevin and I went to the kitchen. Kevin worked with me at the Soho Center for Experimental Theater. He was the gay lover of Nicholas who owned the place. Emma always described Kevin as a Muppet. He was twenty-four or so, big bushy blond punked-out hair, he sort of bounced about with floppy gestures, and the expressions on his bright, blond face were exactly what he felt: Kevin ecstatic, Kevin moping, Kevin cross—not an ounce of deviousness or guile in him, apparently.

“Will
you
ask Slut Doll to do the theater project?” he asked, once we were in the kitchen. “I mean, I'm no good with things like that…”

Yeah okay. But will Nicholas mind
my
asking her?

“He won't care, as long as she does the music and the sound effects for the show. Lately I screw up everything I touch at the theater—”

Kevin, you worry too much.

“Nicholas is going to dump me
any
day.”

Is that so bad? You fight all the time.

“Where'm I gonna live?”

Emma from the living room: “HEY GILLLL … you got one minute to get in here.”

Kevin and I went back into the living room and Slut Doll,
ń
ee Jasmine Dahl, had arrived and was talking to Janet and Emma. “Hi Gil,” she moaned in her monotone.

Jasmine, actually, was the incarnation of monotone. She dressed one way—in black—she looked one way (always frizzed-out jet-black hair, horror-movie white face makeup with her eyes darkly outlined) and she talked in this steady monotonous drawl that allowed no emotions or highs or lows, with lots of West Coast Southern Cal you-know-like-man-kind-of interjections. She was capable—and mind you, she was intelligent—of going on for years about the blandest thing—

“You know it's like I need eight hours of sleep but I only get about five, you know? I'm like missing three hours of sleep. Because I need about eight hours or I'm not really, you know, I'm not really awake?”

And other times she was quite striking with her ideas:

“My next album is going to be called
Pre-Impact Terror,
Gil. Remember that plane crash a few weeks ago at O'Hare? Everyone like dies? Well, one of the relatives sued whatever-it-was airlines for $50 million; $25 million for death and damages and another $25 million on their loved one's behalf for the pre-impact terror they experienced. I mean like you know, that's
art. Pre-Impact Terror.
Life is a series of pre-impact terrors, right? You get it? There's also the sexual connotations…”

Yeah, I'd worked that out, Jasmine. Anyway, Jasmine had arrived and brought one big bag of potato chips which she began to consume all by herself.

Emma had turned the sound down, and switched the channel to escape the visage of Reagan. “How's it going, Slut?”

“You know, not so good today. Can't stand it when it's like hot in my apartment it's really nasty. I got a new mouse down there.”

Get out of the basement, I suggest.

“Can't afford anything else,” she whined, between crunches of potato chips. You had to see that basement of a Soho warehouse, walls and floors painted black, doors and windowframes painted blood red, photos of war criminals, engravings of medieval tortures, a library full of torture books, Kraft-Ebing, de Sade, Genet, Burroughs—I only went down there once. Which was enough. I remember our conversation was a variation upon this dialogue:

Jasmine: Want to hear some from my book of Nazi atrocities?

Gil: No Jasmine, not in the least.

Jasmine: Okay, maybe some other time …

Her tables were crates and boards balanced on crates. She had this sofa she'd found thrown out in the street. She'd restuffed it with newspapers. “It's still a bit wet, you know? I had to drag it home in the rain.” Being with Jasmine always put this question in my mind: How could Emma have ever lived with Lisa and me (happy, fun, positive people generally) and been so miserable, and then lived with Jasmine for a year and been so happy?

“Every day is like scraping bottom,” Jasmine was saying. “The record hasn't made any money at all. Scrapings, it's always scrapings.”

Your next one will do better, I bet.

“Dregs,” she said, putting a chip in her mouth, “I'm so tired of dregs, you know?”

Want something to drink, Jaz?

“You gotta start calling me Slut, Gil.”

Okay: Slut.

“I mean, I gotta get used to it, you know? Ever think about changing your name as an actor?” She didn't wait for an answer. “You know it's like I walk down the street? Someone yells, hey Slut, you know and I think, fuck off buddy, but he's like one of my fans.”

You'll get used to it.

The phone rang and Janet answered it. Kevin in pantomime and whispers hissed “I'm
not
here, I'm not here…”

Janet cleared her throat. “No, he's not here … No, I don't even know a Kevin. Thank you, bye.” She hung up. “Kevin, why did you give out the number if you didn't want people to call you here?”

“I wanted to be called, I just didn't want to talk to him. I wanted to see if he'd call me. That was Nicholas…” Apparently tonight was another ongoing fight between Nicholas and Kevin. “Now I'm going to go home and ask if he called me and if he says no, trying to act like he doesn't care what I'm up to, I'm going to confront him. I am.”

Jasmine—Slut, I mean—was halfway through her bag putting handful after handful of potato chips in her mouth robotlike. “Gil, how much did you get for the commercial?”

Three hundred and fifty dollars. For a day's work.

Emma ran to the TV. “Look, the show's over…” She turned up the volume again. First up was a carpet outlet ad:…
thousands of carpets, thousands and thousands of carpets!

Kevin: “Geez that guy is
such
a moron—where'd they find those cheap suits he wears? And he also does those TV-appliance store ads.”

Janet flopped down in the beanbag chair. “That's where Gil's gonna end up, sugar. He'll can the theater and do TV ads.”

I'll have you know that guy makes $1000 a shot, I said. Pay me a thousand bucks an ad and I'll sell carpets too, thousands and thousands of carpets—

Emma: “Quiet! The next ad's up…”

It was mine. It starts with Dad walking out his door into his front yard—we hear lawnmowers, birds, children playing. It's America, all right.
You know, it took me fifteen years to purchase my family's home …

Kevin: “He's cute, Gil. That's your daddy? How about Sugar Daddy?”

Everyone sssssshed.

…
I think insurance is the wise decision, not just for me and my money …

“No black person,” said Janet, “has
ever
stepped foot in that neighborhood.”

“The garbagemen?” suggested Emma. A pillow was launched by Janet in Emma's direction. Jasmine shovelled potato chips into her mouth, staring intently at the screen.

I'm with Garden State Assurance Trust for her sake.
His “wife” walks out the door, wiping her hands with an oven cloth and her apron on:
Come to dinner darling!
she sings.

“Don't do it,” said Kevin, “she's no good for you!”

“Where are you, Gil?” asked Janet.

And I do it for my little girl
 … Here comes the Little Girl, about nine years old, a real pro, her fifteenth commercial, according to her stage mother who was with her on the set. Little Girl rushes in:
Daaaaddy!

I'm about to come on, I warn.

And I do it for my boy
 … (This is me. In a football jersey, ambling up the front walk. I pitch that football to Dads, a nice spiral:
Catch, Dad!
)

Everyone is in hysterics watching this. Emma is doubled over and Janet is shrieking with laughter. It gets better, I yell.

…
and one day it'll help my son go to college.
Father is mussing up my hair, heh heh heh, father and son, football. It's time for my next great line:
Don't worry Dad, I'm going on a football scholarship!
Mom, Dad, and the Little Sister all laugh:
hah hah hah hah hah
 … And now the announcer breaks in:
Garden State Assurance Trust … For the whole family.

End of ad. Scorekeepers at home will realize this is football role number three.

Applause all around the room.

Emma laughs, “Brilliant! A masterpiece! We've got to get it on videotape. Ask the station for a copy.”

My voice was so high, I said. I don't have that high a voice—

Everyone: YES YOU DO!

It was like a Mickey Mouse imitation …

Jasmine put down the potato chip bag, shaking her head. “Anyone recognize that family? Is that
your
mom and dad?”

“A little too white for me,” sang Janet.

“My father would have hit my mother by now,” said Kevin.

We delighted ourselves by recasting the commercial with Emma as the Little Girl:
Daddy daddy, does it cover my psychiatrist's bills?

Later on:

“Gil,” said Emma, pulling me aside from the conversation and into the kitchen. “Can I ask a question? Why didn't you invite Betsy to this? I did ask you to invite her.”

She couldn't make it.

“She's in publishing. They lead boring lives there; I'm sure she had nothing better to do than be here.”

Okay okay. I didn't ask her, actually. She wouldn't fit in and Kevin is an acquired taste, so is Jasmine, Janet can be sharp sometimes and hard-line dykeish and you are much smarter than Betsy and I had this vision of it being socially awkward and weird, that's all.