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Candy Everybody Wants
Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Armistead Maupin meets Beautiful People in Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s hilarious and yet poignant coming-of-age taleJayson Blocher is fifteen years old with a wayward mother, a disabled brother and a neighbour who thinks he’s the spawn of the devil.For so long he has worshipped at the feet of popular culture, but now he wants to be part of it, and let’s face it, what’s to keep him in Wisconsin? Even his own mother wants him to go.So Jayson heads off to find fame and fortune, accompanied by an ever-changing cast of quirky extended family members.From a New York escort agency to the glamour of a Hollywood situation comedy, Jayson searches for his destiny. Only to find that being America’s sweetheart can leave a very sour aftertaste.
JOSH KILMER-PURCELL
Candy Everybody Wants
For my family.
I grant you this brief respite from memoir.
The media have created a new ‘electronic reality,’ suffused with images and symbols, which has obliterated any sense of an objective reality behind the symbols…In hyperreality it is no longer possible to distinguish the imaginary from the real.
—Kumar
Thanks. I already turned down the part you’re playing.
—Helen Lawson
Table of Contents
Epigraph (#ude337cb1-3a9e-5225-a3f9-b5102069ce76)
August 1981 (#u6d68bd85-a72f-52e0-b41e-3e0281c796fd)
Chapter One (#uc9fd5c0b-833e-5b60-86f0-b2a9f437256a)
Chapter Two (#u6a2080b9-9aca-502f-891b-0896b9a6fa97)
Chapter Three (#u8645a58b-460f-5923-bc8b-786c72b40360)
Chapter Four (#ufc097b5b-d364-562b-a703-d037be000599)
Chapter Five (#ub6e51b9f-d464-5d5e-84d0-e6d5c16b776b)
Chapter Six (#ua318a1f8-dc58-54b7-ae57-ebeafdb22b38)
Chapter Seven (#u37182555-f0d3-50e1-a25a-e9f2446b9775)
Chapter Eight (#uf9b75e27-7ab5-572b-92cb-7cd7035b6c9a)
Chapter Nine (#u3af9437c-64c0-52b3-8aa1-c37a715c8573)
Chapter Ten (#u0efb5e7d-70f4-52b8-acbd-e166784f1c09)
Chapter Eleven (#u0aacc2c1-fabf-51a7-b607-db8d60d43864)
Chapter Twelve (#u209833a2-2e20-51eb-89fe-54f14add8878)
Chapter Thirteen (#uebacc1b5-6e27-5905-8a3d-75d78ebca3b4)
Chapter Fourteen (#u5b6670b2-fcd6-5a4e-b2b9-93ffd6d96694)
Chapter Fifteen (#ue8f6020b-08ac-5ead-94a6-5ba0f59d9c48)
Chapter Sixteen (#u7e08130d-b116-56d4-9009-5f787e97da7c)
Chapter Seventeen (#u7be14606-be6f-5869-a854-2d963debe21a)
Chapter Eighteen (#u03ae3d21-5af8-57d2-b9d6-e9ac4b117525)
Chapter Nineteen (#u22548f11-655f-53ea-a794-d187b23afa27)
Chapter Twenty (#u4c3d6c54-0018-5ec2-b7c4-4263c4540699)
Chapter Twenty-one (#u35acbe18-ae1b-52f8-a125-f6ce47c3fce4)
Chapter Twenty-two (#u5578d304-c0dd-5bc8-bcde-1548611100e2)
Chapter Twenty-three (#uc1a4fd34-096b-5ef0-88fa-9bdb52747a0f)
Chapter Twenty-four (#u643ba529-bb9f-5d0c-994b-b5e1713ddbb9)
Chapter Twenty-five (#u37660a45-8a25-5350-9b93-dd49278efa22)
Chapter Twenty-six (#u868b78d5-4511-55c4-bdcd-a0555cc5e947)
Chapter Twenty-seven (#u14245447-0007-5961-8475-241a165317b1)
Chapter Twenty-eight (#u07e03ed8-14c6-5c90-9256-28868dd1202f)
Chapter Twenty-nine (#u59b9f35c-c32e-5592-996b-1c84b3082f00)
Chapter Thirty (#u89952481-bbee-561d-88ca-305d018d1e91)
Chapter Thirty-one (#uca9836b0-95fc-5127-992a-cf3d44f8ee57)
Acknowledgments (#u624adbff-9d08-534c-b479-c6a35bd5910a)
About the Author (#uc07f1542-af24-57ce-babd-8301f99ba3de)
Praise for Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s I Am Not Myself These Days (#u0db68518-45b5-5721-93a5-5c3b7a56f045)
Also by Josh Kilmer-Purcell (#u2895a0b0-cd65-50a6-ae9d-8dc50691f6be)
Copyright (#uf7259ff6-b989-57e3-b774-8234ea1f280e)
About the Publisher (#u199d1537-26ed-5495-b76d-8fd20bd990b0)
August 1981 (#uca1649bd-2268-5ed1-925b-7befead0610f)
One (#uca1649bd-2268-5ed1-925b-7befead0610f)
DALLASTY! OCONOMOWOC LANDING.
A JAYSON BLOCHER PRODUCTION
DIRECTED BY JAYSON BLOCHER
WRITTEN BY JAYSON BLOCHER
CASTING BY JAYSON BLOCHER
COSTUMES AND MAKEUP BY JAYSON BLOCHER
EPISODE III: CORNFIELDS ABLAZE!!!
SCENE 18
Open on PATRICIA EWING, and AMETHYST CARRINGTON
sunbathing on floating diving platform in skimpy
string bikinis. Patricia Ewing looks totally
sexy wearing a swirly Pucci suit, and Amethyst
Carrington also looks hot in a Lily Pulitzer
extravaganza. J. B. EWING paddles up in the
convertible Ewing-Carrington pedal boat.
PATRICIA EWING: (sarcastic) Well hello there J.B., you jerkface. Welcome home from work.
AMETHYST CARRINGTON: He is not a Jerkface AT ALL, Patrica! He is the father of our child! Who will one day inherit control of all of the Ewing-Carrington farmland!
J.B.: (setting drink on dock and climbing out of pedal boat) For your information, ALL OF THE EWING-CARRINGTON CORNFIELDS HAVE BEEN SET ABLAZE!
AMETHYST CARRINGTON: NO! J.B.: YES!
AMETHYST CARRINGTON: NO! J.B.: YES THEY HAVE!
PATRICIA: I hope my husband Robbie is out there saving the day.
J.B.: Why would he be? Your loser husband, who is my loser brother, was the one that set them on fire!
PATRICIA: (standing up and poking her finger into J.B.’s tan chest) I have had quite enough of your LIES, J. B. Ewing!
J.B. Well then maybe you should take a break…IN THE LAKE! (J.B. pushes Tara PATRICIA off the dock into the lake.)
AMETHYST CARRINGTON: Sayonara, bitch!
J.B. WRAPS HIS STRONG ARMS AROUND AMETHYST
CARRINGTON AND PULLS HIM HER AGAINST
HIS HAIRY CHEST.
J.B.: I have wanted to do this ever since we got our last divorce.
J.B. KISSES AMETHYST CARRINGTON.
* Scene *
‘Do we have to kissall the way?’ Trey asked Jayson, dangling his legs in the unseasonably cool lake while reading over Jayson’s script. The float diving dock bobbed lazily with each kick of Trey’s legs.
Jayson pulled at the top half of his mother’s Pucci knock-off bathing suit. Up until an hour ago it’d been a one-piece, but he’d had to cut it into two pieces in order to transform it into the ‘revealing string bikini’ called for in the script that he wrote earlier that afternoon.
His left water balloon tit had sprung a slow leak.
There was no time to waste on script revisions. They needed to begin shooting the scene now. The sun was going down and his boob was deflating at an alarming pace.
Jayson didn’t feel up to an extended debate with Trey on the mechanics of the scene. It had been a long shoot day, and he was getting tired. And mosquito-bitten. But he also didn’t want to risk pissing Trey off. With only himself and his neighbors–the twins Trey and Tara–playing all the roles, cast morale was of utmost importance.
Trey was always, historically, exceedingly patient with Jayson’s summer vacation ‘projects,’ but Dallasty!, was by far Jayson’s biggest and most complicated effort to date. A spinoff series that combined the families of the two most highly rated nighttime television dramas ever–Dallas and Dynasty. The networks loved spin-offs. And this was a spin-off squared. He and the twins had already filmed twelve of the thirteen episodes Jayson planned on sending ‘on spec’ to Lorimar Pictures c/o CBS Entertainment Networks. The scene they were about to film was the opening of the cliffhanger final episode of the season. If they could wrap up filming the entire episode this week, he could mail them all off to Lorimar, sign whatever contracts they came back with, and have Dallasty! on air as a mid-season replacement. If all went as planned, Jayson would begin his first year of high school as a celebrity–thus breaking the inexplicable curse of unpopularity he’d endured throughout middle school.
‘Let’s discuss this important scene,’ Jayson began calmly, putting his hand on Trey’s shoulder. The most important job of a director (according to what he’d read in a People Magazine profile of Steven Spielberg) was to keep the ‘talent’ relaxed and focused on their performance. ‘We’ve established that it’s a very dramatic moment with the cornfield a-blazing out at the ranch,’ Jayson explained gesturing across the water toward his fictional Ewing-Carrington Dairy Farm. ‘And all great TV shows mix romance with drama–Rockford Files. As the World Turns. The A-Team.’
Trey was silent.
‘Maybe I could just hug you instead,’ Trey asked.
Jayson set his jaw, stiffening his resolve to keep calm.
‘This isn’t a kids show we’re making,’ Jayson said through clenched teeth. He’d already been forced to rewrite the ending of the previous episode when Tara refused to ignite the gasoline that had been poured all over the pedal boat. It had been a long summer’s work. The cast was getting short tempered.
‘How about if Willie shoots it from behind so it looks like we’re kissing, but you can’t tell?’ Trey asked, grasping at straws.
‘Willie simply doesn’t have the cinematographical expertise to film such a complicated shot,’ Jayson explained. This was true. Willie, Jayson’s younger brother by two years, was retarded. And not ‘retarded’ in the eighth grade name-calling way. He was retarded retarded. Willie had Prader-Willi syndrome. Which meant that he was born with a defect in the hypothalamus part of his brain which resulted in a chronic feeling of being hungry. Starving, actually. Twenty-four hours a day. Willie’s ceaseless grazing, coupled with cognitive retardation and low overall muscle tone, gave Willie an appearance that many people confused with Down syndrome.
Willie’s Prader-Willi diagnosis wasn’t confirmed until a year after his birth. Their mother briefly considered changing William’s name to something slightly less similar to the name of his affliction, but in the end decided that it was charming in an odd way. ‘MY NAME IS WILLIE PRADER AND I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN MY HEAD!!!’ Willie had a habit of shouting this at complete strangers in the supermarket. ‘Don’t we all?’ Jayson’s mom would shrug before taking advantage of the resulting confusion to cut to the front of the checkout line.
‘It just seems really gay,’ Trey finally concluded.
Tara began giggling behind them. ‘Gay,’ she muttered under her breath. She was sitting on the opposite side of the floating dock with Willie, biting the toenails on her left foot.
‘Gay?’ Jayson repeated.
