12.Jackie Cohen had always been in love with Hollywood.
And Hollywood had always been in love with death. Dying young. Dying tragically. Dying publicly. There is nothing more romantic. Nothing sexier. Nothing more profitable. Death has a seductive aura. After you die, they’ll love you even more. Savoring what you gave them. Making every step you took and place you visited a landmark. Death: the real cash-in. The real promise of eternal love.
Jackie Cohen lay next to his pool, going over all the ways he could die. What would be the most splendid? But even more so, what would be the most “him”? Would it be drugs? Jackie liked drugs. Or perhaps a nice old-fashioned murder. No doubt there were plenty of women who had wanted to kill him while they were together. Some of them he even recognized as being justified in their desire. This gave Jackie a chuckle. A chuckle that sent his eyes to his pulsating gut. Say . . . there’s always obesity. Certainly a solid option for Jackie. Not that Jackie was anywhere near being dangerously fat. He was barely overweight. But if he did get fat, it’d be a glamorous way to go. For Jackie was funny, and if you were funny, you could get as fat as you want and still have a sexy edge. Food: the heroin of comedy. Get that blubber growing so America rushed even faster to the theatre not knowing how many more years they had left to laugh with you. He imagined the gobbling of pizzas, cheeseburgers. Pouring melted butter all over his moobs, and shotgunning whipped cream till it shot out his ass. Watching his stomach bloat to gargantuan proportions. His closet filled only with linen. Consistently mistaking his curtains for a T-shirt. Women covering him in oil and trying to climb up him like a greased mountain, never reaching the peak. Sliding, giggling all the way down to his chafed thighs.
Why was Jackie going here? Well, it was the morning, and Jackie’s mornings were always filled with terror. Terror that this would be the day. The day no one remembered him anymore. The day calls would stop. This was the worst kind of death. The death while living. Hollywood death. He also felt old. He couldn’t believe how many women he fucked who didn’t know who John Candy was. Who didn’t know who N.W.A. was until the movie came out. Who didn’t know about Jackie’s early work.
Any way out but that way. Any way out other than just disappearing to everyone but yourself. Better to grow in size. To grow so big that at least you’d get some sort of world record. That your way out would be remembered as something you worked quite hard at. To stuff oneself is no easy feat.
Or maybe it would just be drugs. Maybe he’d decide to never sleep again unless he was nodding off. Maybe he’d start using payphones again, too paranoid to pick up his cell phone. Everyone would be listening in. Everyone would be waiting. Waiting on that last wrong dose or that shotgun in the mouth to end the dark dependence. And skinny. Skinny and pale. A Jewish Edgar Allan Poe in black denim. And the women, how’d they worry about him. How’d they try and fix him. One after the other standing in his doorway, suitcase packed, face wet with tears because they hated themselves so much for abandoning him when he needed them most, but also knowing that there was nothing more that could be done. Then coming back to check in on him after not hearing from him for a week, finding him in his final paparazzi pose underneath his toilet. Or they’d be driving him to rehab. Or picking him up from rehab after he escaped. Forcing themselves to believe him when he told them he was fine now and all of the “recovery bullshit” wasn’t for him. He could do it himself. Especially relapse. Especially overdose. Especially die.
He thought again about the ladies of his past. All of the exquisitely unstable exes. The multitudes of wives, girlfriends, and lovers who everyone knew were the last people he should be with from the get-go. Women with only themselves in their eyes and his end in their hearts. He would die by their hands or, even better, by their persuasion of his own hands. He loved crazy. Crazy kept you young. Crazy didn’t care how much older he got. Crazy would drive to Vegas with Jackie and marry him after only knowing him for three days and divorce him two weeks later. Crazy would refuse to get an abortion. Crazy would raise his kids to hate him. No matter. They’d all forgive him after he was gone. After their mother domed their father with a Glock in their living room. Maybe it would be a knife, though. A stabbing after what was supposed to be make-up sex. Him too blinded by lust to see that this last time was really going to be the last time. Or maybe it’d be a glamorous oceanic disaster. On his yacht. Just like Wagner and Natalie. They’d have drunk everything on board. The booze would have brought a clarity to her. A clarity that she’d never be happy. That they’d never actually be together. That he was just another dark repetition of her abusive father. She’d break a whiskey bottle over his head as the waves crashed. So rainy. They should have never been on the boat in the first place. Not the weather for it. She’d fall back and become one with the Pacific, and he’d have too much blood in his eyes to be able to reach out and save her. Then, in a fit of remorse, he would find the flare gun and shoot it at the engine and give himself his very own Viking funeral.
So many possibilities.
Jackie’s chest hurt. He probably shouldn’t have lain down so soon after eating. Somehow he always made this mistake with his reflux. For some reason he didn’t think lying down would aggravate his reflux as long as he was awake. To him it only registered as a consequence when he went to sleep. I guess that would be another way to go, he thought. Esophageal cancer. Or any kind of cancer. But what was romantic about that? Cancer’s just sad. Sure, death by disease can bring a sort of heroism. People sitting around, praising you for being so strong in the face of your own demise. Praise you for keeping it from everyone so as not to burden them. Praise you in your final days for responding to people asking you how you were by immediately asking them how they were. But this wouldn’t be Jackie. This disease shit wasn’t him at all. No, this was not a way to go for Jackie. Jackie had the amount of self-awareness to acknowledge that there’d be far much more complaining, and crying, and listing off to family and friends endlessly the things he would never get to do or see and everything he’d miss. Begging for forgiveness rather than taking responsibility. Fucking those in his life twice. First for hurting them and second for making them help him erase his guilt. Yeah, disease was not the way to go.
Jackie sat up. Covered in sweat. He was starting to burn in the sun. OH NO, MELANOMA. He dipped in his pool, and as he dunked his head he could hear his heart thump inside his ears. Too much death-tripping. What’s wrong with me? I’ve got everything anyone could ask for. I have so much life left in me. Why not stick around and die an old legend? A pillar of the industry that will leave a void in my departure. Leaving the world to feel like they’ve lost a family member. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. And I’ll never see it coming. I’ll be asleep on the beach. Or even maybe walking on the beach. That’d be fine. A graceful collapse. Everything around me getting so soft. The sand of the beach embracing my body and the whisper of the ocean being the last sounds that glided into my ears. A stranger finding me. Everyone will be sad, but also be grateful that I went peacefully at such an old age. Amazed that till the very last day I could still walk and fuck with ease.
Jackie came up for air. He breathed like it was his first and last. I feel much better, he thought. And he did feel better, but not 100 percent. He poured himself some Prosecco. As the tiny bubbles popped inside his mouth, he pictured them as if they were tiny bubbles of his own panic, bursting into nothing. That still wasn’t enough, though. So Jackie picked up the phone and called his lawyer, Herb Rosenblatt. Herb pretended to be happy to hear from Jackie, even though he wasn’t. Not many people were ever too happy to get a call from Jackie.
“Herb, how you doing, buddy? I hope well. Look, I’m just calling because I’ve had a lot of epiphanies this afternoon. A lot of future thinking. A lot of realization. I’m not as young as I used to be, Herb. Not that I’m old. But I’m not as happy as I could be. Or really I’m not as happy as I should be. And I’m making a vow, Herb. I’m making a vow to live life on my own terms. I’m not talking about being selfish. What I’m talking about is joy, Herb. Finding joy. I’m sailing to Joy Island, Herb. But here’s the thing. I’ve realized there’s deadweight on board my ship. Make no mistake, you can love deadweight. And besides, most deadweight has not always been deadweight. A lot of deadweight once had a place on board. Nevertheless, the past is the past and the present is the present. I guess what I’m trying to say here, Herb, is that . . . you’re fired.”
Jackie hung up the phone before he could hear Herb’s reaction. Best not to burden Herb with the obligation to react, or, even more so, best to spare Herb the humiliating impulse to beg. Jackie sat down. He took another breath, which calmed him even more because the breath felt like most breaths. There was a lack of high stakes. Things had leveled out. Jackie felt better. Jackie felt hopeful. Jackie felt alive. Jackie jacked off. Jackie fell asleep, in full comfort with the full knowledge that he would wake up to many, many more days.