Chapter 7: Animal Circus

February, 1973

Dear Diary: It seems like a million years have gone by since I last picked you up... but it's only been six months. The most marvelous six months of my life.

First of all, the Gourmet Pooch commercials got a fantastic reception. After some trial runs in Baltimore and Portland, Philo Phoods decided to give them to all the networks for prime time viewing. And then the magic started happening. Variety raved over Chef Fido and me, saying: 'Beauty and the Beast... Boffo!' Advertising Weekly called the commercials 'masterpieces of advertising art... mouth-watering on all levels... ' And the plaudits weren't just from the trade papers, either. Mr. and Mrs. America had taken us into their dog food gobbling hearts. Philo Phoods had to hire five clerks just to sort the fan mail. My face and body were suddenly plastered over the glossy front pages of the movie magazines and the decidedly un-glossy front pages of the cheap, exploitation tabloids. I had offers up the ass... offers of marriage, of co-habitation, of one-nighters, of movie contracts, of other commercials. The S.P.C.A. wanted me to host a show on dog abuse. The New York Times asked me to do a nationally syndicated pet advice column. I found myself, at age 19, standing at the end of the rainbow... I was a hot property.

I moved out of Langousta in September and bought a little fifteen room, split level house in the Valley. Unfortunately. Harold decided to pull up stakes and come along too. God, what an insect he is! He rationalised his tagging along on my bikini strings by saying he thought he stood a better chance of closing the Ram deal if he lived down here. I told him he was full of crap. That if the bozos wanted him, they'd sign him. What the hell difference did it make where he lived off season? I told him I thought they were just stringing him along, waiting to see what the next crop of college prospects looked like. Maybe I shouldn't have said it. He took it real hard... mostly because he knew it was the truth. Jesus! He was in no shape to play any kind of football... all he did was lay around the house and mope. He was fifty pounds overweight and looked like hell. It made me want to puke to look at him.

I already had an attorney draw up plans for a divorce, but I was waiting until the right time, career-wise, to spring them. According to Wally, an ill-timed divorce has been the downfall of many an aspiring star.

Mom, too, was a real pain in the ass. She was living with us at the Valley house, spending her days on the telephone, bothering agents and producers, fucking with the minds of writers and costume designers. Her nights were the time when she really "took care of business," cornering executives in posh restaurants, directors in hotel lobbies, always "for her baby," always push, push, push. I guess Hollywood is full of cruddy hangers-on like Mom. The people Wally and I do business with just laugh her off, so, so far, she hasn't hurt me. So far.

I just have to write down something about the bash Major Scampi threw last weekend to celebrate the completion of another series of one minute spots for Philo. Even by Babylon standards, it was a humdinger. I swear Scampi must've gone down Sunset Strip with a dust pan to get his guests. Transvestites, hookers, speed- freaks, transvestite-hookers, speed-freak-transvestite-hookers, not to mention the business riff-raff... the swish execs, dominant dactylos, paedophile producers, the gamut of Tinseltown dementia. And to top it all off, he invited Harold and Mom.

I nearly haemorrhaged when I heard they were coming, but Scampi gave me that phony grin of his and said, "Heh-heh-heh, ree- lax, honey-buns. I got something for everybody."

That's what bothered me.

Scampi's pad was up in the Hollywood Hills, in a very exclusive, very secluded section. It was perched on the top of a super-steep hill, and the ascent was made via private elevator. As Chef Fido and I rode up in the glass box, the wonderful, twinkling carpet of lights that is Tinseltown spread out before us, lights only slightly dulled by the encroaching ocean fog.

"That's all ours, darling," I said to the big dog. He gave my bare knee a sloppy, hot lick. Scampi's butler, a six-foot-six-inch black Jamaican, answered the gigantic double front doors in sequined, day-glo orange leotards and a black, gum rubber tu-tu. I could see it was going to be Mom's kind of party.

The Chef and I waded into the melee in progress in Scampi's living room. Two Western Avenue hookers were having a fight to the death with La Cross enema bottles, while the mob thronged and circled, placing bets, shouting encouragement.

More rushed up to me towing an Emmy award winning writer along by his spiked choke collar. Chef Fido growled at the canine impersonator. "God! Isn't this just bizarre?" she gushed at me, yanking the writer's chain, causing the chrome spikes to gouge deeply into his throat and his face from the neck up to turn a purplish grey.

"I mean, have you ever seen anything so... so bizarre?" she repeated, gesturing about with super-exaggerated shock.

Obviously, the word "bizarre" was going to be her word for the entire evening. She probably picked it up from some of the servants. I wondered how many times I was going to have to hear it? At one party a few weeks back, she picked up the word "outstanding" from an Air Force first lieutenant, a fighter pilot loaded on fresh plasma. She repeated the moronic word over 1,300 times in a four hour period.

"No, Mother," I said, trying to get her nails out of my shoulders.

"This is the famous Mr. Weakwill, dear. You know, last year's Emmy for writing 'Thunder in My Guts'?"

"... uh, that's Wheatfield," the nude, runtish and bespeckled man corrected meekly.

Mom jerked his chain so hard that her puka shell necklace broke. Mr. Wheatfield dropped to his knees and made a gargling sound, his tongue swelling alarmingly.

"That's a good boy. Do find every one of them, won't you?" Mom said to the groveling man. "And don't drool on them so..."

Then she smiled at me and batted her oversized false eye lashes. "Mr. Weakwill says he might be able to cook something real special up for you, sweetheart. Emmy material..."

I excused myself quickly, before she could work the magic word into the conversation. I had to say hello to my host.

"Hey, sugar tits," Scampi shouted. "Glad you could make it!" He was dressed in a satyr costume that would not quit. I couldn't figure out what they did with his feet to make them end in the dainty cloven hooves. Or with his legs either, for that matter. From the waist down, including dick and balls, Major Scampi was a he-goat. And he was naked except for the shaggy coat of wool on his thighs and impossibly slender legs. "You like it! I can tell." he said, pirouetting, making lewd pelvic thrusts at his guests.

"Hey, everybody!" he shouted over the din. "Beauty and the Beast are here!!" Then to the blindfolded servant standing by the projection booth: "Asshole!! Get in there and kill the lights! It's show time, kiddies! For the first time anywhere! You low life scum are going to see Beauty and the Beast in their latest effort for good old Philo Phoods."

The far wall, made of oak panels, hexagons within hexagons, split right down the middle: the two sections rolling back on teflon bearings to reveal a glittering white movie screen.

About this time, Weird Harold made his presence known.

"Hey, Pol!" he said, waddling over to me. He was wearing a huge, tent-like Hawaiian shirt--fuchsia palm trees against turquoise sky--and bermuda shorts. He seemed very excited.

"Do I ever have some great news!" he cried, manifesting his latest form of nervous tick... the rubbing of the side of his index finger back and forth over the ball of his thumb... with both hands.

"Really?" I said, giving the tub of guts ninety-eight cents worth of my million dollar smile.

"Yeah. I talked to my dad," he said, "and he thinks the bowling alley idea is great..."

The bowling alley idea was Harold's alternative No. 57 to professional football.

"... He said he'd front me the capital I need to get things started. "We're in business, baby!" he said, opening his bloated arms, actually expecting me to rush to him, to congratulate him.

I just stood there and stared. I couldn't believe the asshole. "We're in business..." What kind of crap was that? The swollen turd thought he was going to take me away from all this? That my career was some female whim, some interim income while he got his bowling alley together? Male chauvinist insect! He said that to me... a woman making almost a million dollars a year.

I looked at his fatness and his puffy arms and remembered what a holy terror he'd been... the delight he'd taken in mayhem and physical violence... somewhere under all that flab 'Monster Man' still lurked. The idea seemed very funny to me and I began laughing at him. He was shocked at first, stood there frozen with arms still outstretched, then, very slowly he let them drop to his sides. Something hard and metallic glinted in his pig eyes and then the lights went out.

A square of light cut through the gloom, illuminating the screen, and then the show began.

All the street trash, the trade folk, the hangers-on groaned in unison as the first few feet of film rolled by. Even I had to admit it, the opening was a real barn burner. Somewhere in the dark Scampi was grinning like a friend... probably already had his cock up somebody's... anybody's something.

The opening shot was an overhead view of me in a sunken tile bath tub. It was one of those vaseline on the lens, romantic shots. The colour of the tiles was chosen to match the colour of my nipples, rosy pink. I was laying on my back in the tub, my head tilted up into the camera, eyes closed rapturously. The water effect was really dynamite. It looked like steamy hot water and bubble bath but actually it'd been some kind of special glycerine solution. It made my legs and arms and hips and tits look so slick, so fantastically firm yet malleable. And the little icebergs of bubble suds drifted about my slippery contours, now hiding, now revealing the faintest hint of rose pink at my tits, rose pink under white froth, a suggestion enhanced by the hue of the surrounding tile. A long, tanned thigh slid in and out of the water, bubble continents shift. Oh, something dark there between glistening forks. Something tangled and mysterious; something slicker and hotter than the steamy fluid engulfing it.

"Ooooh," the audience sighed as one person, all barriers of social class, degrees of dementia, perversion, inversion forgotten as my co-star entered from screen right.

He was stunning in his dense black fur against the pink tiles. He wasn't wearing the chef's hat.

I still had my eyes closed. The heat of the fluid had brought the rose to my cheeks as well. My right hand dipped into the water, disappearing under bubble bergs, to where? The studs refused to tell, but suddenly my right breast, slick and shining, flattened, pushed up so lazily, so sexily. My mouth parted ever so slightly. Did a sigh escape? Suddenly I was aware of the lush, romantic background music, violins and violas. My bubbly, slippery hand crept from the water to the tub rim, to rest palm down fingers splayed.

As Chef Fido's muzzle moved towards my hand, the overhead camera, in a series of mind-rattling jump cuts, closed in on us, framing the glistening fingers and the wet dog nose.

Again the audience groaned en masse. Music crescendoed. Extreme close up shot from the front floor camera giving almost clinical detail ol' Fido's tongue, huge slab of juicy pink meat studded with ropy blue veins and taste bud gooseflesh, surging from drooling black dog-lips, bright whiskers, curly furred muzzle, sliding between my index and middle fingers to lick the bubbly miniature crotch.

My exclamation of surprise, and uninhibited delight, my husky "Ohhhhh!" was underscored by two dozen violins playing the same staccato note an octave lower. The sound leapt from the screen, my open, moist mouth, and sent shivers up every spine in the room.

Again, Chef Fido caressed my fingers. The overhead camera had panned back to give a view of the delirious dog's face as he lapped. Black eyes glimmered, shimmered beneath long black lashes and a mop of silky curls. God! It looked like there were tears welling up in them, tears of joy!!

Then I spoke my first lines... breathy and tender: "Ooooh, is my big strong boy hungry?" I turned my palm face up. Jump cut zoom to juicy pink fan lashing over the soft hollow.

"Ummmm, yes you are," I said, rising to sit up in the tub.

The front camera moving in for a discreet medium close up, showing all of my tits but the nipples, showing black dog face, huge in my small hands, showing dog tongue flipping out to lick up the front of my long, slender throat.

"Oooh," I moaned. "Just a second, boy."

The camera framed Chef Fido's face as I rose from the water, droplets tinkling. Did his shining eyes move up and down? Were they travelling over my slick and naked flesh? What kind of hunger did they really reveal? The implication of the single, almost subliminal sequence was heart-stopping.

Then the camera cut to dog's eye level following his curly head and my bare legs into the kitchen. The only sound was the noise of wet feet and doggy toenails on linoleum.

Cut to shot from behind of me reaching for a cupboard door above the counter. Again discreet, showing bare, supple back down to the crack in my ass, a back whose only adornment was a tuft of frothy studs nestled on one slim shoulder.

Cut to my rosy checked face. "Only the very best for my strong boy," I said, beaming down into the lens.

Extreme close up of can label: 'Chef Fido's Gourmet Pooch Coquilles St. Jacques meridionale'.

Cut to Fido's mouth, black lips dewy with drool, long tongue lolling, while the sound of an electric can opener is heard.