I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner Page B

empty. I drifted to coach at around thirty-two-thousand feet and we worked our way back to Business, tiny bottle by tiny bottle: high-larious! I did my whole “Let Me Entertain You” number and Vidra was laughing non-stop (she’s really “Stocker Vidra” but everyone calls her Veed; can’t quite bring myself to yet). I think I was a little nervous that maybe she was going to slip a finger in my twat so I kept the patter going. Just kidding—we had a great time. Turns out that not only does she write award-winning experimental “fictions”…
is
there such a thing anymore? I think prose is so endangered, any kind of fiction writing should
automatically
be called an experiment! Not only does she write but she’s doing a three-month teaching stint in Ohio
and
she’s a consulting editor at Grove. How she manages to eat pussy with a schedule like that::::::::::where was I? I have the bladder from hell. Bladder transplants are gonna be the new hip thing, just wait. Leaking to the press, ha ha. The long and shortof it is, Vidra says I should keep a journal or a whatever—wants to peddle my memoirs! I mean, she’s
serious
, says Grove would buy it in a heartbeat. We futzed around with titles. I liked
Cry Wolfe!—Slouching Toward Sundance
but I’m a silly cunt, aren’t I? You
know
you’ve got the fucking best job in the whole world, Eric. And if you show this to
anyone
, I’ll hang you by your pierced tits (probably like that, huh). But I really do love you, E. You and the eighty-one T cells you rode in on. (Buh
dum
bum.) But I wanna tell ya…
    Then Vidra came up with the Julia Phillips variation and we
died
. I mean, I
have
to do it now, just so I can use the title. (Though maybe the whole reference is already passé?) I’m still not quite sure what Vidra wants from me. She said, “Just start,” so here I am. Guess it’s my own insecurities…am I supposed to be Jackie Mason or Oscar Wilde? Carrie Fisher? (She’s kinda both)::::::::::I talk into a long silvery Sony microcassette recorder with a brown suede sack—very
President’s Analyst
, very Jay Sebring. Starting from about fifth grade, I promised myself I’d keep a diary, but never did (call me Anaïs the Ninny)—guess I needed Vidra for a jump-start. Went to Book Soup to get Keats’s letters (on Katherine G’s recommend) but wound up flipping through Dawn Steel’s book instead (for research, okay?)—
They Can Kill You…But They Can’t Eat You
. It’s like she won the Worst Title lotto. (Maybe I should call my book
They Can Kill You…But They’ll Never Eat Me During Lunch
—!) There’s a bizarre chapter where Dawn befuddledly wonders why various famous, powerful men would want to befriend her—deeply absurd low-self-esteem weirdness. Like looking at a stiff cock and saying, “I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how shit got on there.” She
does
answer her own perturbation in the next paragraph, with a power-Zen retort: “By the time I knew, I didn’t care. I already had moved on to Touchstone.”
    Oh, E, am I trying too hard? Maybe I shouldn’t even be doing this::::::::::
Hate
the sound of my voice, I sound like a
man
—worse! An
angry
man::::::::::Calliope thinks it’s a good way to examine my so-called life. Still can’t believe I see a shrink named Calliope…wasn’t there, like, at least
one
friend everyone had when they were growing up who had an out-of-control alcoholic mom named Calliope? Reminds me of a toga’d Carol Lynley-haired bimbo from one of those ancient
Star Treks
—no! Yvette Mimieux in
The Time Machine
—no! Anne Francis in
Forbidden Planet
. Lyre-toters! Deep-spaceairheads! You know, where the action always takes place on some drugged-out, asexual trans-stellar Pompeii. Uh…was I trashing my shrink? A sure sign I’ve run