Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [63]
Alone in her home once more, Peggy Jean shuffled over to a cupboard in the kitchen and pulled out a box of Saltines. She opened it and removed the emergency bottle of potato vodka. Then she reached in her bathrobe pocket for the Valium. “Hold my hand, Jesus,” she mumbled as she downed the pills.
E
ating a cold, leftover drumstick for breakfast while watching the Today show and hoping that some of Katie Couric’s enthusiasm passed through the television into him, Max told himself not to panic, at least not until Donny and Marie came on.
Max’s fantasy of perhaps becoming the next Greg Kinnear evaporated the night before last while he was reading the classified ads in Backstage and working his way through a sixteen-piece bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Without membership in either SAG or AFTRA, and with no TV commercial credits, no summer-stock theater experience, and no knowledge of show tunes, it seemed to Max that his future was uncertain at best. His future was bordering on iffy.
As a very desperate last resort, Max decided that he could probably secure a retail sales position with Macy’s—though that would mean stepping foot, on a daily basis, inside the Woodlands Mall. He felt fairly confident that given his retail broadcasting experience, he could probably start out immediately in the lucrative audio/visual department or perhaps men’s furnishings, as opposed to working his way up from, say, cashier. But until eviction and starvation forced him, he would not entertain this scenario.
Tossing the drumstick bone in the trash, Max grabbed a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and settled into the couch, gripping the remote control. Certainly he could spend his days of unemployed limbo more productively: paint the bathroom, do squats at the gym, maybe even build a terrarium. But why? His depression was now his pet, a pet that required constant feeding, daytime television being the food of choice.
The instant Marie’s maniacally perky face popped onto the screen, Max switched to MTV. Road Rules IV was on. But the adventurous twentysomethings with their whole lives and careers ahead of them, parasailing off the coast of Bali, were simply too grim to watch, so he flipped over to the Food Channel. One Fat Lady was making a cake out of bacon and ground pork. He went to CNN and for a few minutes watched live footage of children fleeing a high school, as usual. Switching to Sellevision he saw Trish Mission hosting Jewelry of Faith, a show that normally belonged to Peggy Jean.
The Jewelry of Faith set was pale blue. Behind Trish a giant cross was projected onto the wall, a cross made of light. Phil, the lead set designer and the most sarcastic queen Max had ever known, probably dreamed up the whole cross made of light thing while he was sitting in a bar watching beefy go-go boys with shaved chests and scars from their laser tattoo removals.
Max hit the remote again. The History Channel was doing something on Nazi Germany, the Discovery Channel had a winking zebra vulva, Comedy Central featured a fire-eating dog, and HBO was playing Titanic II, yet again. It’s all a wasteland, he thought, but I belong in that wasteland. He switched back to the Discovery Channel and the zebra vulva was still winking.
Max got up off the sofa and went into the kitchen to stare at the phone. After spending five minutes psychically directing his agent to unditch him and call with a job offer from 20/20, Max tossed the empty Diet Coke can into the trash, ignoring the city’s recycling ordinance. Outcasts make their own rules.
He made his way back to the couch and the remote control. Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap—until he saw Leeza Gibbons. On stage was a handsome blond guy wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, sleeves pushed up. Underneath him was a title that read “Porn Star and Proud of it.”
“. . . So your mother knows what