There’s nothing sadder than a group of has-beens, never-weres and never-will-bes in one room together. Add an open bar and you’ve got the formula for first-class entertainment; overwrought tension, whiny commiseration and vicious diatribes. And that was just when we were filming. Backstage, the drama was all the more heightened and feelings were often hurt, but then again, most of us had lost feeling below the eyebrows, have climbed — fallen — all the way down to the daytime game show circuit. Before the camera, the smiles were painted, often plastered, and every insult was softened by the laughter of our dear, dear audience. But without someone there to yell ‘Cut!’, there were no limits, nothing keeping the line between real and imagined discord. I was halfway through my third Dark and Stormy when the familiar clouds of malice began to gather over the green room of my current place d’emploi — Below the Belt, the game show where the best cheater wins, with your host, Chett Riley! It was a rather convoluted and completely uninteresting game in which two souls plucked at random from the bosom of America would cheat and lie their way to victory with the help of a panel of celebrities. Each player started off with $5000 that they would use to buy answers to obscure trivia from any one of six celebrity guests (as in real life, some people could be bought for a lot less than others). The winner would get to keep whatever they were left with, which was certainly not their dignity but usually significantly less than their initial $5000. From my limited — and, quite honestly, inebriated — understanding of it all, players could bribe celebrities to give wrong answers, outbid their opponent for the right answer and steal money from one another, whatever underhanded, despicable trick it took to win, a true American pastime. All of this took place under the blank gaze of Mr. Riley, a former college football hero whose glory days were twenty years and a blown ACL (whatever that is) behind him, though he retained more than a reasonable semblance of his youthful beauty and virility. As a host, however, he was strictly for decoration — a handsome, broad-shouldered all-American type with very thick sideburns and a very thick neck — quietly encouraging the studio audience to settle down, or gently chastising the stars for their disorderly conduct. His beady little blue eyes would search for an answer to more than the capital of the Prussian Empire until 1945 (Königsberg for $300 to Mario the mechanic from Wisconsin), impotent and helpless as the fair land that sired, lauded then abandoned him. Don’t be mistaken, we were encouraged to hurl insults at one another in an attempt to discredit the potential validity of our answers and just to distract from the nebulous premise of the game. Before the show began taping, we lounged about in the green room, reviewing the answers we’d be charged with delivering. I realized I had the same answers as Susie Shewolf, star of the Saturday morning fixture, Susie and the Shewolves about a group of intergalactic Amazons who form a rock and roll band, naturally, and fly around the universe solving mysteries. Strictly highbrow. Susie, herself, was former adult actress Carmen Hidalgo, also known as Coco Corkscrew, star of the cinematic masterwork, A Screw in Time, virtually breathed whiskey. Innumerable were the times the director, the balding, high-strung and impressively hung, from what I’ve heard tell around the water cooler, Kevin Baumholtz, had to have her escorted off Studio D for violently attacking a grip, and/or gambling with the sound crew and/or falling asleep on the set of Maude and/or shedding the lining of her stomach all over the wardrobe department. However, she was sleeping with some low-level executive whose sphere of influence extended to Below the Belt and little else. Everyone hated her, for obvious reasons, and she hated everyone in return. Everyone but me, that is. After all, we’re both girls who like to have a good time. I could see that she had started her good time earlier than usual today, her large, beautiful and intense brown eyes bloodshot at only 10:30 in the morning. She sat down next to me, her Enjoli virtually overpowered by the musky sweetness of Jack Daniels.
“Carl, the bastard, broke up with me. Last night.” The bastard was the aforementioned low-level executive who had, apparently, gone onto greener pastures from this scorched earth who was now anxiously chain-smoking over my shoulder.
“My condolences, Sue, that’s really awful, but do you mind blowing your smoke upwind, dear?”
Oblivious to my request or simply unwilling to grant it, my head was covered in a halo of smoke as she sang out her heartbreak in her raspy tenor. Carl, from hereon referred to as “the bastard” has taken up with a younger, prettier and if I were to venture a guess, a decidedly more sane woman and poor, old (inching ever closer to forty) Susie, from hereon referred to as “the victim,” was distraught. She had little in the way of talent, though fans of AScrew in Time and its sequel, The Spanking of the Screw might disagree, and though the victim admittedly didn’t love the bastard, she had grown rather accustomed to him. Now with her contract with BtB almost up and SatS all but cancelled, the intergalactic Amazon rock and rollers market not being what it once was, Susie would have a dearth of opportunities available to her. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to be flashing my pussy for a living, I’m a mother for Pete’s sake,” the victim clarified. Poor, old Susie was at the end of her rope, and not one to dangle alone, was determined to make the atmosphere as toxic as she could manage, and on her fourth cigarette in under ten minutes, was already doing a splendid job at it.
“These people make me sick,” seemingly out of nowhere, a parade of discord began as Susie slumped down in the chair next to me. She surveyed the room with a mix of utter disgust and ravenous hunger, the hunger for flesh-figuratively-torn-asunder. “They all think they’re better than me. All of ‘em!...Except you, Sanny.” She turned her left eye on me, the right one seemingly unable to keep its act together, “You always treated me like an equal.”
“Well, I hoped I had done better than that, dear. “ I gestured over the waiter, a short, nebbish little thing with glasses covering half of his face and asked for another of the same. “To be my equal is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy.”
Expecting at least a chuckle, I was surprised when, with a start belying her advanced drunkenness, she flew over to sit next to Ginny Garfield, jovial star of her own cooking show, Cooking with Gin and, incidentally, a colossal bitch. It should be noted that the title of her show was less of a pun and more of a modus operandi, as she often had to be propped up during filming, having guzzled down a few bottles of Seagram’s while performing her BtB duties before stumbling over to her Day-Glo kitchen on Lot B. Mrs. Garfield was sitting at what passes for the cool kids table, if you, by any stretch of the imagination, consider a group of middle-aged, out of work actors cool, when Susie plopped down next to her.
“Oh, look what the cat threw up and dragged in,” greeted Phil Dunbar, best known for his commercials for Tide laundry detergent and a brief, wholly forgettable stint on The Patty Duke Show, with his typical, unimaginative cattiness. A pang of sadness rang through my entire body and I felt terribly sad for Susie. She had been such a nice kid when she first showed up on set, but her past indiscretions preceded her and everyone had already made up their minds about who she was. Of course I befriended her. I’ve been the outsider my entire life, because of my sexuality, because of my weight, which a diet of amphetamines and coffee eventually tamed, albeit temporarily, because of my heritage (my original surname being Horowitz) and have been lucky enough to have more than one person stand up for, or at least beside me. She didn’t deserve their ire. Not to say that she couldn’t hold her own.
“Zip it, Dunbar, as usual no one’s talking to or about you. I came over to visit y dear old friend, Ginny. You’re looking particularly bloated today, all of the crème Brule no doubt.” The battle lines were being drawn when my drink came thankfully in time. Ginny had been the most venomous in the assault on Susie, assuming the role of moral center for this immoral group. Not a day went by that she didn’t take the opportunity to degrade, embarrass and insult her, once going so far as to screen A Screw in Time to the entire crew of the show, though for most if not all of them, it was by no means a premiere.
“Shouldn’t you be spinning on a pole or lying face down in a ditch somewhere, Coco.” She also insisted on referring to her by her nom de scène and all the withered old witches cackled.
“You know, Gin, the last three years have been really eye-opening, not only because I have to keep them wide in order to take in your entire body,” I inadvertently attracted attention when I almost shot rum out of my nose at that, “but I know how this business works. The crueler you are, the more heartless, soulless and downright AWFUL you are to people, the further you get. It must kill you inside to know that despite all of that going for you, you’re still a nobody.” I was hoping she would just walk away after that, everything she said being true, after all, but I knew that this was the last time Susie Shewolf, aka, Coco Corkscrew, aka Carmen Hidalgo would terrorize and be terrorized on this set. And she was not one for subtlety. “I just want to thank you.” Susie grabbed Ginny’s ample cheeks and kissed her full on the mouth, leaving the other woman stunned. A collective gasp went into the air, then Susie clasped her hands together and swung them like a bat at Ginny’s temple. Ginny Garfield made a thunderous thud as she landed on the floor, her legs splayed beneath her. Susie then dug her stiletto into Ginny’s side and turned, relishing the bloodcurdling scream that she emitted. I went out on the pretense of grabbing a smoke as three burly security guards rushed passed me, my hand accidentally grazing one of their firm backsides.
