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Plane crash. They got bumped off their flight to Paris for Dad’s endocrinology conference but managed to snag a first-class upgrade on another airline. I imagine they rushed across JFK to make it, giggling like kids and toasting when they buckled in, thrilled with their good fortune. Then boom, splash, sunk to the bottom of the sea. And everything after that was just . . . bad dreams.
I left. I loved Misha, but I left. Canceled The Daisy Show, my Xanax prescription, and my broadband and lit the fuck out. Didn’t have the cash to get back to California. Didn’t have the cash for much of anything but a suitcase and a bus ticket south. Guignol City has a pretty hopping theater scene, but most importantly, it wasn’t New York, it wasn’t Brooklyn, and it wasn’t Denmark.
Here we go. This is the story I know you want to hear. The one you’ve all been nice enough to never ask me about. My origin story.
When you’re as lucky as Misha, when the monster under your bed never gets you once, when the girl you loved from afar loves you back, loves you enough to become set dressing in your big, splashy, high-budget drama, it has to come from somewhere. And Misha’s luck came from everyone around him. He was a vampire of luck. His parents back in Ukraine, my parents toasting with airline champagne, his clients, his college roommate Jimmy Keeler who lost his scholarship, his girlfriend, his sobriety—and me.
I landed on my feet in California, working, hustling, doors opening, footlights shining. It was easy, like high school. But Guignol City laughs at the Juliet Army and puts out cigarettes on their tits. I couldn’t get hired to twirl a sign outside a cell phone store, let alone legit acting work. I crashed on my friend Alexandra’s couch—she played Nurse to my Juliet then and now. We went to clubs together at night, my Nurse and I, dressed up in our best neon and rain, the clubs where casting scouts were rumored to gather, hunting them like birdwatchers chasing reports of a rare emerald-crested plover, and with about as much luck. Men bought me drinks but no one wanted to buy me, except in the most obvious way.
But hey, Occam’s razor, right? Sometimes, the most obvious solution is the best.
I remember my first time. He wasn’t too bad-looking and he didn’t pretend he was producing a gritty new police procedural or anything. Just lonely and frumpy and awkward and shy, which, in Guignol City, makes you a lamb already half-slaughtered. Said his name was Charlie. Told him mine was Delilah. Couldn?
??t resist a little literary flair. He had a loft on Polichinelle Street with this huge skylight. I could see the moon and all the pink and purple and green lights of the seedy street signs rippling below like the aurora borealis. Charlie kissed me and kissed me and what do you know? I was on stage again. I was the prettiest girl this guy was ever gonna fuck. I’d star in his fantasies forever. By the lights of Guignol City, I gave the performance of a lifetime. All the great whores of the stage animated my body: Cleopatra, Salome, Sally Bowles, Mary Magdalene, Fantine, Helen of motherfucking Troy. I gave them all to Charlie, my audience of one, my biggest fan, at least for a few minutes. No sunflowers flared yellow or red in my brain, but Charlie’s eyes became the cameras I’d been chasing all my life.
When he finished, I stretched up, kissed his eyelids, and whispered, I love you. My curtain call. My bow, before a red curtain, roses flying, applause shaking the chandeliers.
For a moment, it was even true. I loved all of them for a moment or two. Every man I ever fucked. I am a professional. I felt Ophelia’s obsession and Laura’s need and I felt the love I gave.
He whispered back, My real name is Joe.
It’s a ridiculous superpower. The smallest of the small. But they always told me their real names.
That was the first and last time I let a customer fall asleep in my arms. He paid me a hundred bucks and boiled me a very sentimental egg for breakfast. I think if I’d wanted to, I could have stayed and Joe would have married me by Thursday. I never saw him again. I took my money down to the Malfi Diner on Pigalle Avenue and ordered myself a disgustingly huge, greasy Salisbury steak, waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, a tower of potato latkes and applesauce, a bucket of lamb vindaloo, and a peanut butter milkshake. I ate every bite. It tasted like a future. It tasted like life. I didn’t feel ashamed. I didn’t feel the urge to run to the nearest confessional and barf up my soul onto some poor unsuspecting padre. The Daisy Show was back on, in a new time slot, with an all-new cast. And after each and every Very Special Episode, I said, I love you. Even if he hit me or choked me a little too hard or called me his wife’s name or called me a fucking cunt whore or broke three of my fingers for no fucking reason what the hell. I love you. I love you. A real actress never falters. She gives the audience what they came for. And love is all anyone comes for.
I stayed on with Alexandra, but now I paid half the rent and graduated from couch-crashing to bedroom-burrowing. We had an Alex and Daisy movie night every Tuesday, shine or rain. That was one of her phrases. Alex hated clichés, but she knew her whole life was one, really, so she settled for a little word-shuffling and dayed it a call. Misha phoned every week. I said I was fine. Audition after audition, darling, you wouldn’t believe it. No, no visits from You Know Who. I think he’s lost interest in little old me.
One night, I caught me an honest-to-god emerald-crested plover. A casting director. Arlecchino Films. Real name: Frank. He liked being scolded. He liked my hair. He liked the fading bruise on my ribs. When I finished punishing him, he told me to come down to the studio in the Medici Quarter and he’d pay me two grand to do my act on camera. Well, why not? Maybe my luck was coming back. Peeking out at me from behind this balding, freckled man who liked being called a disappointment while he jerked himself off. Who liked to watch. It’s not like my parents could get mad.
And thus, Delilah Daredevil was born.
There you have it, Deadtown. The definitive answer. Where have I seen that girl before? Where have I heard that dulcet voice? You’ve seen me on my knees; you’ve heard me moan. You know me from movies. Just not the kind that wins Oscars.
Becoming a porn star is pretty much exactly like becoming a superhero. One day, an intrepid, fresh-faced young woman discovers that she has a talent. She chooses a new name—something over the top, flamboyant, a little arrogant, with a tinge of the epic. Somebody makes her a costume—skintight, revealing, a flattering color, nothing much left to the imagination. She explores her power, learns a specialty move or two, sweats her way through a training montage, throwing out punny quips here, there, and everywhere. She inhabits an archetype. She takes every blow that comes her way like she doesn’t even feel it. Then she goes out into the big bad night and saves people from loneliness. From the assorted villainies that plague the common man. From despair and bad dreams. From tedium. Oh, sure, her victories are short-lived. She finishes off her foes in one glorious masterstroke, but the minute she’s gone, all the wickedness and darkness of the scheming, teeming world comes rushing back in. But when you need her, here she comes to save the day, doing it for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
At least, that’s how it felt at first.
I felt like I understood Misha, finally, in a way I never could before. I liked to think I could have called him up and exchanged stories with him. Tips, techniques. Finally, we both had a secret identity. A By Day and a By Night. Sometimes, I even dialed a digit or two of his phone number before deciding that a good Russian Orthodox boy probably wouldn’t see the wonderful symmetry in our story. I even wore a mask! It was my signature. A little dark red domino mask with red rhinestones at the corners of my eyes and long ribbons that rippled over my breasts or down my back like blood. Very commedia dell’arte! Everything old is new again and everything new is a fetish. I was finally where I wanted to be—at the center of attention, watched by thousands of adoring eyes, the camera firmly on me. My costars were cheerful, uncomplaining, and interchangeable. Boy Fridays waiting for me to come. Repeatable Romeos, too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ’ere one can say it lightens. And in the beginning, everyone treated me like Elizabeth goddamned Taylor.
I “lost” my “virginity” in The Opening of Delilah Daredevil, seduced the President in Delilah Deep, wore a toga for at least the first five minutes of Delilah Daredevil vs. Nero’s Fiddle, brought Satan to his knees in The Devil in Miss Dare, went up against the spirit world in Ghostlusters, got to find out what it’s like to kiss (a lot of) girls in Delilah Daredevil vs. the Amazon Women of Planet XXX, even got to wear wings and a corset in A Midsummer Night’s Delilah and say one full line of actual Shakespeare. Okay, it was: Masters, spread yourselves. But still. It was a world of yes. All my movies got sequels; all my lights were green. Delilah Daredevil Does Detroit, Delilah Daredevil Does Damascus, Delilah Daredevil Does the Danube, and, eventually, inevitably, Delilah Daredevil Does Denmark.
But becoming a porn star is pretty much exactly like becoming a superhero. You start strong, bursting out of nowhere, a bird, a plane, your name on a million needy lips, your name in the papers, your name up in lights, your greatest hits on constant repeat. You’re the fantasy—someone so strong and beautiful nothing can hurt them, not even the worst shit anyone can imagine. In the first flush of it all, you’re so convinced of the rightness of your mission statement that you practically glow when the bad guy’s final spasm stains your mask. The camera loves you. It just feels good to throw down. You do it for fun, just to feel your own strength. When you’re new, everyone’s so fucking impressed with your skill and style. All these roaring, power-drunk men line up just to go one round with you. You blow them all down like paper dolls to rave reviews and the key to the red-light district. But time passes and it hurts more than you let on. You bandage yourself after hours, alone, in a phone booth with filthy windows, wrapping your wounds tight so you can keep fighting the good fight day after day. You get tired now. You get jaded. You get older. And after a while, they begin to despise you. It’s not interesting for you to come out on top every time. To watch your Saturday night marquee smile pop-flash at the end of every climactic scene. You need to keep up your numbers. You need to keep those eyeballs transfixed, Miss Thing. It’s not enough to just work on your craft. You gotta keep up with the times, appeal to modern sensibilities. You have to do something more extreme. Darker. Grittier. More real. You need to be cut down a little. Let ’em see you vulnerable. Let ’em see you bleed.
So, no more cheerful SuperWhore, Guigno
l City’s Girl with a Heart of Gold and a twinkle in her eye. That’s last year’s hotness and it’s this year’s time to burn. The Delilah Daredevil name doesn’t move copies anymore. But Daisy Green still needs to pay her landlord, and once the world’s seen what you can do, you can’t squeeze your way back into the normal world. People recognize you. They avert their eyes. They whisper, Didn’t our barista save Manhattan? Didn’t she battle the Amazon Women of Planet XXX? Didn’t she take three guys at once with a riding bit in her mouth? Yes, she did, cats and kittens. And she wasn’t ashamed of any tiny bit of it until they decided it would be hot to make her ashamed.
Misha stopped calling every week. Every fortnight, then every month. I told myself it wasn’t because he’d seen my recent work. Though I’d certainly seen his. He’d joined some superpower frat called the Union. They destroyed an underwater lair and got to speak at the UN. Misha gave the commencement address at Harvard. My whole life was just a little rummaging backstage while sets changed for his. So much wonder in his world, siphoned from the gas tanks of we bitter few, dying by inches so he can do the impossible, over and over again. Luck is a zero-sum game. There’s only so much to go around. Sometimes, I read his victorious headlines and thought, Was that a part I didn’t get? My parents having a wonderful time in Paris and bringing me back a crappy miniature Eiffel Tower? Delilah Daredevil Does Legitimate Theatre? What dribbled out of me that blossomed into glory for him? Or did I just fuck it up myself?
I turned on the Xanax fire hose again. That worked for a while. I could laugh. Flash my prescription smile. But come on, you know how this story goes. It’s the same word. It’s always been the same word. One hiding inside the other. I am a heroine, after all.
The first time was with Alexandra. Alex and Daisy’s Tuesday movie night. We’d rented the action-packed black-and-white Wuthering Heights because we are who we are and Alex and me were never anything but high school girls blacked out on daydreams, misreading psychosis for love. As the child of many earnest federal drug education programs, I thought the first time I shot up would be dramatic. Ominous music, swooning, air thick with tension, will she or won’t she? Surely, the world closes in on a girl making this momentous decision, the spotlight comes on for a real Hamlet-esque soliloquy on the nature of oblivion and the self-destructive impulses of man.
I popped a Xanax. Alex asked if I wanted something stronger. Cathy Earnshaw perished beautifully on our rabbit-eared TV. She tied me off and whispered, Prince sweet, night good. She slid the needle in like Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, and for the first time in a year, sunflowers opened up in my mind, yellow and red as summer.
The rest is silence. Silence, and then a cough I couldn’t shake, and then red marks on my skin like angry kisses, like spotlights, like the actual, terrible, unfor-fucking-givable cliché that I was. The Daisy Show was such a hack-fest. A product of its times. Heavy-handed, preachy, full of bullshit moralizing, and fucking Christ what a predictable finale! What is this after-school-special horseshit? It’s the kind of thing some asshole in Ohio gets a National Book Award for writing while he screws his grad students and cries his way to tenure. My boyfriend took all the magic and left me with nothing but the dregs of realism. The Misha Malinov Show was always the prime-time attraction. I’m just . . . some public-access embarrassment. I died in a free clinic in the left armpit of Guignol City and you know exactly what killed me so just nod piously and spare me the humiliation of stitching on my scarlet A. Someone who didn’t know me at all grabbed a dress at Goodwill and put me in the ground at the public’s expense. Finally, government funding for the arts!
The worst part of dying is that you never get to find out the end of the story. Did the Insomniac finally defeat Miasma? Fucked if I know. I didn’t get that script. I was just a deep dark past, the battery of sadness hidden in the hero’s heart. I was Rosaline, for fuck’s sake. Juliet will show up in scene two and teach the torches to burn bright or whatever and I’d hate her, but let’s be real, ladies and gentlemen, he’ll suck her dry too, and we’ll all meet her for tea down here at the Lethe Café. The play is still going. It’s booked every night until the sun goes out. I’m just the local theater ghost.
