File under: Twigs, Trauma, Tranny, Nanny

I’ve been in Atlanta for the past two days, helping a film director in distress. I had treated him successfully a year ago in L.A. for sciatica and now he was experiencing cramps, vomiting, nausea and “the runs.” He was also in the middle of a big-budget shoot. The director refused to take medication, so the studio flew me in and put me up at the Four Seasons overnight (How will the accountants code that?).

At first I thought the director’s ailment might be stress-related. He complained that the star of his film--a gentleman with a well-publicized history of "eccentric behavior" (code for major drug habit)--had just gotten out of rehab. The star was medicated beyond the ability to give the necessary high-powered, comic performance. Worse yet, whenever the director took the star aside to give him notes, the star’s posse came along, vetoing all his suggestions.

Anyway, I figured out that his nausea, vomiting, etc. started when he commenced an affair with a Puerto Rican tranny named Jezebel, whom he was keeping in a hotel room adjacent to his own and who was dressing the director up in diapers and feeding him milk from a bottle. I suspected the director’s ailments were due to lactose intolerance, so I told Jezebel to give him soy milk instead. Problem solved!

When I got home, Nanny was standing inside the door wearing a yellow sari and a frown. “Why gone so long, Master Charles?” she said sternly. “Do you know that you missed your daughter’s Show & Tell yesterday? I went in your place and made up a lie about your absence. I told them you had jury duty. But the teacher, Miss Feather, didn't believe me. I don’t think she likes you very much! She wants to have another meeting with you.”

“I had no choice," I said. "Working is the way I keep this household together (code for lay off). How did Meryl's presentation go?  Has Myron come by? He doesn’t answer my texts. His producers’ meeting is this afternoon.”

“Haven't heard from him,” said Nanny, wringing a hand towel like it was my neck. “And Meryl’s Show & Tell went very well for her, but even better for you.”

“What do you mean by that?” I said.

“She recited a poem in French that I taught her. It was by Verlaine.  I was so proud of her!  While all the other children had brought their parents' Golden Globes and AA medallions, Meryl brought a poem.”

“And so, why did this go better for me?” I asked.

“Well, I’ll translate for you from the French. The poem goes: ‘Here are some fruits, some flowers and some leaves…’ As she mentioned each object she took it out of her Madame Chocolat box. She took out a tangerine, a daisy and then a twig.”

“Yeah, so?” I said.

“The next line was: 'and here is my heart, that beats only for you.' When she said the word, heart, she took from her box a diamond as big as a pine cone and--”

“She’s got the diamonds?!” I said. “But you put them out by the curb!”

“She had found them and was keeping them under her bed.”

“She found them? And nobody looked under her bed for a whole week? Aren't you supposed to search your kid's room regularly for dope?”

“She’s only five years old,” said Nanny. “And she’s your child, not mine.”

I texted Myron: “Found diamonds.”

He texted me: “Thank God!” (code for Thank God!)
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                                                                                                  Photo: Craig Russell

File Under: Bendable Buddies, Blanche Du Bois

I was hoping to start this blog with an uplifting portrayal of my life and work, one that would inspire you--the reader--to go out and make the world a better place. But it ain't turning out that way! Especially not after Myron smuggled three uncut diamonds the size of pinecones across the Canadian border in my daughter’s lunch box. Now that those rocks have disappeared, he’s having a nervous fit. “Fifteen million dollars worth of diamonds, fifteen million,” Myron chants, pacing the floor on shaky legs, tearing his hair out. “I’m dead, I’m dead! When they find out I’ve lost them, I’m dead!”

Myron insists on calling himself an Investment Specialist to the Film Trade which, when you think of it, really does sound more appealing than Smuggler. Myron will also inform you--within two minutes of making your acquaintance--that he suffers from bunions, vertigo, anxiety, paranoia and obsessive compulsion, all of which is true. Most people bring their various medications in a bag when they visit their doctor; Myron uses a burro and a cart. In fact, were you to take all the pills in his medicine cabinet and string them end-to-end, they’d reach all the way to Betty Ford and back. And so, if it seems like Myron is a stubborn, strangely determined little weed sprouting from the crevice between symptoms and remedies, it’s only because he is.

As an Investment Specialist to the Film Trade, Myron connects major film projects to equity investors. The current economy has caused studios, in large part, to shy away from risky new endeavors in favor of remakes and rehashes. If a film project has no hope of reaching its apotheosis as a Bendable Buddy at MacDonald‘s, it’s considered an unacceptable risk. This is good news to Myron, who funnels funds to projects. Sometimes this requires transferring assets in unconventional ways such as the secreting of diamonds in my daughter’s lunch box as we drive over the border from Canada to the U.S. I didn’t even know Myron had taken possession of any diamonds, so when he insisted that driving across the border would be picturesque and quicker than dealing with airport customs, I agreed to rent a car.

And now the diamonds are missing. Apparently Nanny found them in little Merle’s lunch box when we got home, and set the dirty things out by the curb, where they disappeared.

As I sit here typing, poor Myron paces the floor, shaking pills out of a bottle into his sweaty palm. “What will I do?” he cries. “I’m meeting with those producers in two weeks. The sellers are waiting, the buyers are waiting! What’ll I do What‘ll I do?”

“It‘ll work out for the best,” I tell him, opening the drapes to the vista of the vast ocean. A sparrow dives into the window, bouncing off the glass with a thud. "You'll do fine, Myron. I have complete confidence in you.”

Merle, my five year-old foundling, is tugging at my pants leg. “Daddy,” she squeaks, “I memorized the whole monologue! Can I have my fifty dollars?” I named Merle after the most versatile actress in the Industry and I’m making her rehearse her audition monologues for Yale Drama School starting right now.

Little Merle clears her throat, tilts her head and clasps her hands to her tiny breast. Her big, dark eyes get even darker as she gazes nostalgically into the second balcony. “We danced the Varsouviana,” she moons, “but then, suddenly, in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino…”*

I smell Oscar!

* Blanche Du Bois, Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams