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‘GAY!!!’ Willie added, eager to take part in whatever this repetition game was.
‘I would hope,’ Jayson began, trying to hold back his anger, ‘that you are not making a derogatory judgment on my sexual preference.’
Jayson had decided that he was homosexual while watching a Phil Donahue episode on the topic eight years earlier. He’d come home early from kindergarten that day because he’d gotten a stomach ache from worrying about whether his Hee Haw overalls were too outré for his peers. Jayson had been sent home from school fairly often over the years, including the first day of kindergarten when he’d become inconsolably agitated that the school wouldn’t change their spelling of his name from ‘Jason’ to ‘Jayson.’ He felt very strongly that he needed the extra flair to set himself apart from the other, obviously less special Jasons in the class.
The mustachioed men on the stage of the Donahue program fascinated Jayson. He wasn’t sure exactly why he felt such a kinship with them. Maybe it was how they deflected the barbs of angry audience members with jokes. Or maybe it was their outfits–no piece of which could be found in the Sears catalogs that Jayson was forced to shop from. Or maybe it was just that they were celebrities–put on stage in front of an audience–for no reason other than the fact that they existed. In the deepest corners of his soul, Jayson also knew that he deserved an audience. And it would be his lifetime mission to find one.
When the credits began rolling on that defining Donahue episode, the five-year-old Jayson had breathlessly shouted his revelation to his mother, Toni, who was out smoking on the back deck.
Ma! I’m a homosexual!
And precocious! Toni shouted back, smiling at him through the sliding glass door. I’m a precocious homosexual!!! Yes, you are, Butter Bean. Yes you are.
The many men who had played the role of Jayson’s stepfather during the last decade generally hadn’t been as accommodating about Jayson’s self-discovery. So Jayson agreed to a pact with Toni to keep this news on a need-to-know basis. She’d patiently explained to Jayson how others’ jealousy of his uniqueness might sometimes, perhaps, manifest itself as anger. And/or punching, spitting, and murder.
As a result of this conspiracy, Jayson could count on his fingers how many people had been informed of what Donahue called his ‘sexual preference.’ There was his mother, the twins’ parents, Willie, Phil Donahue himself (via an eloquent eight-page thank-you note), his elementary school principal, his middle school principal, a trucker he talked to once on a CB radio, the woman behind the pie counter at Pick N’ Save, and, of course, Trey and Tara. Jayson and the twins knew almost everything about each other, being born within a few months of each other, and having spent their entire lives divided only by a fifteen-foot-wide strip of driveway. At the urging of both sets of parents, the twins and Jayson had been keeping Jayon’s ‘special difference’ a secret from his classmates. Though now, as Jayson and his peers began suffering the afflictions of puberty, the secret was becoming harder to keep hidden.
Jayson stood up on the dock defiantly, and indignantly puffed forward his leaking water balloon chest.
‘For your information,’ Jayson continued, ‘early Shakespearean plays were cast entirely with men and boys playing all the female roles. And I’m sure that Shakespeare, were he alive today, would completely concur with me that action plus passion equals huge goddamn ratings.’ He took a calming breath, before continuing. ‘Which, I think we can all agree, is precisely what we’re after here.’
Trey sighed.
‘Besides. Who else is going to play Amethyst Carrington? Tara’s busy playing Patricia in this scene. I mean, I’m sorry that I’m not Lola Falana, but you’ll just have to make do.’
Trey spit into the water and watched the gob sink.
‘Alright. Whatever. I’ll do it,’ Trey finally said, breaking the impasse. He stood up and resignedly climbed back into the pedal boat to make his entrance. Jayson exhaled his relief.
‘Who the fuck is Lola Falana?’ Tara muttered to no one in particular, moving to her scene starting mark.
‘Okay then! Willie, we’re ready. Aim the camera over here,’ Jayson instructed. ‘Willie?’
Willie was preoccupied on the far edge of the diving dock inspecting the insides of a 100 Grand candybar wrapper he’d found floating in the water. Always unbearably hungry, he was scouring the inside of the wrapper for stray smears of chocolate. He licked at a piece of brownish algae.
‘Willie. Buddy. Put that down. We gotta roll,’ Jayson said again, tapping his husky younger brother on the head.
Willie lumbered his doughy frame into a standing position, tilting the dock at a precipitously unsafe angle.
Jayson pressed the record button on the Radio Shack cassette tape recorder which captured their dialogue.
‘…And…ACTION!’ Jayson called, taking his mark next to Tara.
Lorimar Productions was going to love this scene. It was probably the most intricately choreographed shot thus far. Episode One was good, no doubt, but it takes time to really get into the characters’ development. Even Three’s Company didn’t find its ratings legs until after the first season.
Jayson worried that synching up the accompanying cassette tape soundtrack to the 16mm home movie film footage might be a bit tricky for the producers. So to help them, Jayson held up a card to the camera at the beginning of each film reel that instructed them to: ‘Press Play On Tape Recorder…NOW.’
‘I have had quite enough of your lies, J. B. Ewing!’ Tara said, opening the scene. She didn’t deliver the line with quite the level of haughty anger Jayson had envisioned. But as lukewarm as Tara’s performances generally were, there was no stopping once a scene was in progress. Jayson had no editing capabilities, so each scene was filmed in one take, sequentially, picking up wherever the last scene left off.
‘Well then maybe you should take a break…IN THE LAKE!’ Trey shouted.
After Trey shoved her, Tara executed an impressive wind-milling plunge into the lake and convincingly thrashed about in the water, improvising some sputtering heartfelt expletives. As he stood on the dock watching her ‘drown,’ Trey theatrically ‘wiped his hands clean’ of her. It was a little over the top, but Jayson was pleased that Trey was exploring the boundaries of his thespianism.
‘Sayonara, BITCH!’ Jayson shouted in his best Amethyst Carrington falsetto.
All that remained was the kiss.
Suddenly, from the shore behind them, came a barrage of shouting. Adult shouting. The group on the dock turned en masse–even Willie with the camera.
‘Sayonara, BITCH!’
It was Jayson’s latest stepfather, Garth, whom Toni’d met earlier in the summer in the audience of a waterskiing show in Waukesha. He was standing in the driveway of their split-level ranch, which was painted lilac with eggplant trim and shutters. He had a suitcase in one hand and the middle finger of the other hand raised defiantly back toward the house.
‘Congratulations, motherfucker. You finally got SOMETHING up!’ Toni’s voice shouted back from inside the kitchen window.
All four children stared at the domestic explosion occurring onshore. There was another brief volley of expletives before Garth climbed into his Chevy Citation and roared down the driveway in reverse, severing the sideview mirror from Toni’s chartreuse Ford Maverick.
Jayson had been convinced this marriage would last at least through the summer. It had seemed more promising than the other eleven. Twelve? Jayson couldn’t remember the exact number. His mother, Toni–for all her free-spirited ways–had one deep-seated remnant of her strict Catholic upbringing. She would never fool around with a man until she was married. Since Toni also had a deep-seated devotion to fooling around, she found herself in front of a lot of altars. Generally not Catholic, obviously.
After Garth’s car sped noisily out of sight down Lake Labelle Drive, Toni emerged from the house. Jayson always thought she looked her most beautiful when she was angry. Her heavy black hair would be tousled from being pulled, and her squinting green eyes flickered with brilliant rage against her pale skin. She wasn’t rail thin like most of the women on television–Mrs. Kotter, Laverne and Shirley, Vera the waitress on Alice. But she wasn’t fat either. She had the full curves that most men truly wanted–more than the waifs they were fed on TV. She was, she always said, ‘half Italian, half Russian, half black Irish, and all business.’
From their spot in the middle of the lake, Jayson, Willie, and the twins watched her march down the driveway, pick up the amputated mirror from her Maverick, and hurl it into the lake while letting loose with a primal scream. The chartreuse glinting mirror arced overhead and landed in the water with a phloomp only ten feet away from Jayson and his cast.
Only when it landed did Toni notice Jayson, Willie, and the twins watching from their floating island. Her mood changed instantly, as was her style. ‘Fleeting’ was the only constant trait of Toni’s personality.
‘You kids ready for hot dogs?’ Toni called out to them cheerily. ‘I got the kind with the cheese inside.’ She planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head with incredulity. ‘The cheese is on the inside! Can you motherfuckinbelieveit?!?’
Willie was still filming. He’d learned the hard way not to stop until Jayson yelled ‘cut.’ Jayson wasn’t sure how he was going to work Toni’s domestic explosion into the plot of this episode. But he’d find a way. It was good material. Very natural.
His most immediate directorial concern was finding an ending for the unexpectedly prolonged scene.
Jayson turned back toward Trey, rose on his tiptoes, pulled Trey’s head toward his own, and kissed him as the original script had called for.
The water breezes kicked up as the sun set behind the houses on the far shore of the lake and Jayson lost himself in his first ever kiss.
Never confuse yourself with your character, Jayson reprimanded himself silently, repeating acting advice he’d heard Bette Davis offer on Johnny Carson.
‘Annnnnd, CUT!!!’ he shouted at Willie, reluctantly separating from Trey. The twilight sky was streaked with purple, and clouds of mosquitos began swarming around them.
Tara coughed and sputtered as she pulled herself out of the water and onto the dock.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she hissed at Jayson, ‘if you’d made out with Trey any longer, I would’ve fucking drowned for real.’
Trey didn’t say anything. He pretended to be concentrating on gathering his belongings for the pedal boat ride back to shore. Jayson ignored Trey’s discomfort. The only thing that mattered now was finishing the Dallasty! episodes and mailing them off to CBS.
Soon enough Jayson would be on his way to Hollywood. He would escape all of this small town nothingness. The petty domestic dramas. His insufferable unpopularity. The strangers who would stare at his strange clothes and strange brother and strange mother in the A&P.
Don’t touch that dial, he thought to himself. The newest, greatest season of Jayson Blocher will premier right after these messages.
Two (#uca1649bd-2268-5ed1-925b-7befead0610f)
‘Jaaaaayson, I’m outtta here! Come kiss me goodbye.’
‘Jesus Jm J Bullock Christ,’ Jayson muttered to himself, putting down his pencil in the rust shag carpet of his bedroom. After one of the hottest and most humid summers on record, the carpet smelled as fetid as the slime that grew between the rocks on the shore of the lake. And it had been vacuumed about as often.
Jayson was only halfway through writing the final scene of Dallasty’s cliffhanger. He was farther behind schedule than he’d anticipated. The week’s shooting had been frantic and stressful, with the twins’ schedule being interrupted repeatedly by back-to-school shopping excursions. Jayson himself had had no such diversions. Toni had pinned a $20 bill to his bedroom door on Tuesday and told him to bicycle into town to buy what he needed. Which Jayson promptly did: four cartons of Starbursts, a box of Whatchamacallit candy bars, and thirty-six pouches of BlueBerry Blast Capri Suns.
If he could get the final scene finished today and shot sometime over the weekend, he would have the entire season of episodes ready to be dropped into the post office box by the corner of Oconomowoc High School on the first morning of classes.
‘JAYSON! I’M LEAVING!’
Jayson slid down the front foyer steps on his ass and walked into the kitchen. In the week since Garth had left, the house had become even dirtier, which, had you asked Jayson last week, he would have sworn was impossible.
Toni was leaning against the burnt orange counter that was, poetically, pockmarked with cigarette burns.
‘I didn’t even know you were going somewhere,’ Jayson said.
‘I told you on Monday that I was going to spend the weekend at an artists’ collective in Chicago,’ she replied, holding her arms out for a hug.
‘No you didn’t. Monday you spent the entire day in the sarcophagus.’
Toni dropped her arms.
‘I did?’
‘You did. And I have the police citation to prove it.’
Toni had recently declared herself a ‘modern artist’ working out of her garage ‘studio.’ She announced her new vocation last spring in a press release sent to the Oconomowoc Enterprise that, much to her indignant disappointment, was never published. She kept a copy of it hanging on the refrigerator. By a nail. Toni had several mementos nailed to the refrigerator, since she was wary of the health effects of magnets.
5/21/81. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Toni Blocher, née VanSchlessor, is proud to announce a showing of her avant-garde sculptures detailing the rise and descent of woman’s struggle with the modern institution of matrimony. Neither an advocate for the patriarchy, nor a traditional feminist, Blocher will exhibit her latest works in the driveway of her home at N6855 W. Lakota Dr. from April 7 to April 14. (Parking on street is strictly prohibited by the fascist Lac Labelle Homeowners Association. The artist recommends slowing to a crawl while driving by. Ms. Blocher will walk next to your vehicle and answer any questions regarding pricing of specific works. Photography is prohibited.)
To create the work for her first showing, she’d spent four days and nights in the garage attacking bolts of bridal toile with a blowtorch and cans of spray shellac. The molten plastic toile was molded into giant blobs faintly resembling historical torture devices.
The ‘Pee-yes de la Raisin-stance,’ as she called it, was a working spiked sarcophagus coffin propped up against the basketball pole in the driveway in which, during certain afternoons throughout the summer she could be found writhing in imaginary pain. Completely nude. This finally did result in a write-up in the Enterprise this past Thursday—in the police blotter column.
‘I could’ve sworn I’d told you about the weekend,’ Toni said. ‘Maybe with that motherfucking back-hair-matted limp dick pig deserting us, I got distracted.’
‘Garth didn’t leave, Ma. You kicked him out. Because he didn’t support your vision.’
Toni had a way of attracting all sorts of men before ultimately eviscerating them. In Wisconsin, being ‘big boned’ didn’t have the same pejorative meaning it had elsewhere in the country. Here, men had been trained since childhood to lust after voluptuous State Fair Dairy Queens, with their curves and–as Helen Lawson said on MatchGame–‘big bazooms.’ The eleven (twelve?) men she’d gone so far as to marry were only the tip of the iceberg of the Titanic Toni. She’d dated hundreds of men since high school–when she had given birth to Jayson. But when looking at photos of all the different weddings, some of which he remembered and most of which he didn’t, Jayson always thought that she looked less blissly marital than simply caught off guard.
Whenever Jayson asked who his father was, or Willie’s father, Toni would simply point to whoever she was dating at the time and say: ‘For today, he’s your man.’
Of all the things in his life, Jayson was most grateful that his mother had inherited the fully paid off, split-level lake house from his grandparents, who died when Jayson was a baby. Toni was finishing her last year of high school as a teen mother when her parents got broadsided by a milk tanker as they were exiting the Catholic Church parking lot. It was the same church in which his grandparents were too embarrassed to have Jayson baptized.
‘Fuck Garth,’ Toni said. ‘I don’t need nobody’s support.’ Toni puffed on a newly lit Newport. ‘Except yours and Willie’s.’ She held out her arms again. This time Jayson assented to her hug.
‘Well, until I’m of legal age, you have my undivided, custodially obligated fealty,’ Jayson said.
‘Thank you, Butter Bean.’ She leaned over and picked up the brown paper Piggly Wiggly shopping bag she was using as a suitcase. ‘And don’t forget to drive the car around the block at night so the neighbors don’t think I’ve abandoned you.’
‘But you are abandoning us,’ Jayson countered playfully.
‘You know I’m only a phone call away.’
‘So I should just call the operator and ask for the number of an artist collective in Chicago, then?’
‘Don’t be a smart ass. I was being metaphorical.’
‘Then I’ll be sure to only have metaphorical emergencies.’
‘Perfect. Just make it look busy around here. I don’t need the ASPCA dropping by again.’ ‘You mean Protective Services.’
‘Yes. Those do-goodie-two-shoes.’ Toni balanced the overstuffed bag on her hip and pushed open the screen door to the garage. ‘I swear I’ll burn this goddamn house down with all of us in it the next time they decide you need protection from me.’
As he watched her back the Maverick out the driveway, Jayson picked up the lit cigarette she’d left smoldering next to a pile of three years’ worth of Penny Saver newspapers and tossed it in the sink with the other butts.
Watching over Willie wasn’t as easy as his mother thought it was. Jayson had been taking care of his younger brother ever since he realized he had one. It was Jayson who took notes about Willie’s care at the doctor’s office. It was Jayson who put locks on the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator to keep Willie from raiding them. It was Jayson who locked Willie in his room each night in order to be sure that Willie didn’t escape and forage for food in the neighbors’ garbage cans alongside the raccoons.
To escape the constant stress of keeping his household running, Jayson often lay in bed at night and imagined that he was the son of one of his favorite television mothers. His most soothing fantasy was to pretend that he was the seventh member of the Brady Bunch–the only biological child of Carol and Mike.
Willie came around the corner into the kitchen chewing on what looked like a dog toy.
‘Where’d you get that, pal?’ Jayson asked him.
Willie froze. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to be eating food that wasn’t portioned out to him. The problem was that he only remembered this rule when he got caught.
‘Hand it over, Silly Willie,’ Jayson said. He held out his hand. ‘And spit out whatever’s in your mouth. That isn’t food.’
Willie paused for a moment, his slow synapses debating whether there was a way to continue chewing on the marrow-flavored rawhide dog bone that he had found in the field out back. Concluding the inevitable, he spit out the one chunk he’d managed to soften and bite free.
‘That’s my boy,’ Jayson said, realizing the sad parallel of addressing his brother like a pet while simultaneously holding a hunk of chewed up rawhide in his hand. ‘We can have a snack later.’
Willie shuffled off into the mud room, already refocused on finding another morsel of something edible in the yard.
Jayson looked out the kitchen window at the twins’ house next door. A movement caught his eye from the upstairs left window. Trey’s window. A second later he saw Trey walk by the window again. He was shirtless in the late August heat.
Jayson tried not to think what he was already thinking. Trey was like a brother to him. But he’d found himself falling further and further into a crush throughout the summer. To clear his head, he went back up to his room to work on finishing the Dallasty! cliffhanger script.
That it contained J.B. and Amethyst Carrington’s steamiest kiss yet was pure coincidence.
As Jayson breezed through the twins’ kitchen later that afternoon, he called out to their mother, who was sewing daisy-patterned curtains in their dining room.
‘Hiya, Terri!’
‘Please call me Mrs. Wernermeier, Jayson,’ she called back sternly, ‘I’ve asked you a hundred times.’
