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Director

Posted on September 28, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

She was slender. Like super, in a way that made him wonder how far she bent in any direction. It was really weird, he took one look at her and started thinking sex type thoughts. Her hair looked super soft and really shiny, like individual strands of black silk had been laid together so that they could fall off her head in every direction in straight waves. And her fringe was so straight, like someone had dropped all those strands on a Hattori Hanzo blade or something…he wanted to bite into her right where she stood. He wondered if he stared at her long enough whether she would raise her pretty downcast Asian eyes and say to him, “Me love you long time.” He knew it was wrong but he wanted her to conform to the cliché like he wanted little else right then.

But she didn’t look up. She was intently following the glowing lyrics on the karaoke screen and all she cared about was singing “All By Myself” like her life and everybody’s eardrums depended upon it. And he sat there and wondered if her tongue would be as nimble as that of a Thai hooker in the positions that it really mattered. This is Hong Kong asshole, not Bangkok or Singapore or the fucking Shibuya district. That’s not Miss Saigon or fucking Gogo Yubari. She’s probably an investment banker with DBS or some shit and you are shit out of luck. SO drink your fucking shot and put your dick back in your pants because come tomorrow morning it’s going to be all over every trade paper that matters that your fucking film was shut down twelve hours before cameras were supposed to roll.

He rolled out of the bar at four in the morning and realized that he had missed his plane. He didn’t know how he could have missed his plane since he was in the airport. He had been in the airport since noon the previous day. How the fuck did this happen?

It wasn’t just the plane. Or the fact that he had worked his ass off between coke binges and the threat of paternity suits and men of all shapes and ethnicities threatening to take his nuts because he had fucked their daughter or girlfriend or common-law wife or whatever.

What the fuck was wrong with people?

Couldn’t an A-list director get laid without everyone needing to be paid? And what the fuck was it with studios and the butt plugs that ran those places? They loved his ideas one minute, hated them the next and wanted to fund him at twice his price the following morning! All that changed was the shit in the suit. Nobody gave a fuck about art, least of all himself. He cared about the wheeling, the dealing and the reeling in of the ho who would suck him off between shots.

He didn’t dig actresses that much, that was not his power trip. Mostly because he wasn’t a limp dick sitting on a pile of cash as a way to make himself feel better about needing a wheelbarrow of Viagra to squeeze one out in whatever Beverly Hills silicone mound he was taking to premieres that week.

He liked the college hottie sipping a mocha latte while waiting to get noticed by Joe Producer. He liked the suburban mama who had the good sense to not let her ass sag while her husband fucked Betty Secretary in the name of working late. He dug the Latinas who wanted to be singers and the Indian girls who wanted to be business owners. He wanted the Koreans who avoided being saddled with the responsibility of knowing enough of their mother tongues so that they could pass it on to whatever offspring they had by wearing too much makeup and out trannying the trannies who came out after dark. In short he sucked a little life out of the real people before they were swallowed up by the plastic under the battered sign.

He wondered how he found himself in this position after having made two near Oscar nominees and enough money to keep the studio sharks and bean counters happy. What the fuck? Shut down after the storyboards and the sets and the crew and the cast were all in this fucking crowded city where one person’s fart was likely to goose another person before it had properly cleared cheeks? It didn’t fucking make sense. Not to him with his common sense style of thinking. Of course he was well aware of the studio logic of letting twenty million go to save two hundred million and on the face of it, who could argue with the logic. But fuck the face of it man. What about the ass of it? All that shit is going somewhere right? Why the fuck do these people have to go get him to waste two years of his life so that they can give him and the stars the big old fuck you in a foreign land?

He shook his head as he walked to the counter to find another plane. He shook his head and thought to himself, You know what that guy should have said to old Jack Nicholson at the end of that movie? The fucker should have said, ‘Forget it Jake. It’s Hollywood.’

The smiling woman at the counter made his teeth hurt, “Good morning sir, how can I help you?”

With a grimace that resembled a grin he said, “Ever hear the phrase ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’?”

“Sorry sir?”

“Never mind. When’s your next flight to India?”

“Six-thirty.”

“In the evening?”

“Yes sir.”

“Fine. I’ll take one. Give me a chance to get a head start on my meditation.”

She looked quizzically at him but he simply waved his last comment away like he was clearing the air after exhaling cigar smoke and asked, “How much?”

“Eleven hundred.”

“Dollars?”

She smiled and he slipped her his credit card. The one the studio had given him before he left. She swiped it and the charge went through. He smiled at her and thought to himself, I guess I’m going to India…

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