Ravid’s first trip to LA is not theoretical, nor is it burdened by the speculation so often required of young, emerging artists with worlds to conquer, beginning with LA. Ravid Rockulz will land on solid ground, arriving directly from the exotic reaches of the great wide world with mysteries to share.
The flight itself is surreal, perhaps the greatest of mysteries. It’s like giving up Tahiti as a home in exchange for LA, except there ain’t no like about it.
Los Angeles is a sprawling overlay of horrific excess — cars, billboards, lights, noise, filth, perversion, cement, garbage, chrome, glass, disease and human people in the millions upon millions. The people move most visibly, delivering themselves and their wares everywhere all the time, rendering the place barren of organic innocence and natural order. This is where freeway gunslingers try to soften their rage by shooting commuters in the next lane over and fail. Six more lanes feel crazy, wild and free; it’s a shooting spree on the freeway, and erratic violence does make more sense if seen in context.
With azure blue still warm in the brainpan here comes LAX and the very best in hospitality Inglewood has to offer, as long as you stay inside the airport boundary while on foot, you honky white devil motherfucker. That should be easy; Oybek is sending a car, so never mind the yellow brown cloud covering creation like a dirty blanket or the masonry cap on everything or the teeming ambition or general neurosis or specific psychosis oozing out of the skin of the place with enough sweat, grit and desperation to make a tropical waterman shrink in profile.
Oh, and the chemical shit smell.
But give peace a chance; LA is not an open sore that makes French Polynesia a different reality. It looks yellow-gray over a scabby crust coming in to LAX, but then you’re in, so to speak. LA is actually a vibrant urban center with many major sports teams, millions of fans, a dynamic cast of characters, billions in net worth and of course much, much more. LA gets a bad rap on population density, road rage, homicide and homosexuality, but that’s normal if viewed in proper format. These eccentricities are merely pivotal to an enduring showbiz industry. Hey — any species will behave like rats in a cage if population growth goes unchecked, if its individuals out-need the resources at hand. That’s only growing pains. People always find more of what they desperately need, given time. Don’t they?
There they are, Oybek’s greeters; what a joker, sending these playful party girls with their forty-eight double Ds, dragon tattoos, six-inch heels and gregarious cheer, three women looking as good as medium-budget hookers ever did. Well, Ravid isn’t into that sort of thing, because he doesn’t need it, never has, and these days is pleasantly distracted along those lines. And he’s enjoying the matrimonial scene, realizing the comforts available with one true love. Then again, practicality is primary in this town, and gratitude is a fundamental building block. So he’s willing to be amused, especially in view of his nearly fatal misjudgment of Oybek. So it seems prudent to view a show of indebtedness as the better part of discretion to ensure a gilded future — his benefactor did this and can do much more, or less. So he goes along with the spirit of the thing, though four of these six tits are big as soccer balls and just as firm, and I think Earlette is a guy, or used to be.
But it’s only harmless fun, and it’s easy too; these people are so game, so energetic, so eager to please and appreciate and encourage. How could anybody help but like them?
Besides, Skinny, Little Dog and Minna won’t be along for two weeks.
Besides, the work ahead is not work at all but goes along with the fun program. Ravid’s first few hundred photographic selections have been laid out in three products: the coffee table volume is over-produced in grandiose format, about two feet by three feet for the surround sound feel of the thing — and yes, it comes with its own CD, Sounds of Deep Blue Sea. Richly processed colors practically exude texture and pulse. The heavy-bond, plastic-coated pages are in fact finished lithographic prints suitable for framing. What if you love two fish on the same page, back to back?
Buy two books, you cheap fuck.
We’re talking fucking art here!
Fuck.
Oybek writes the flap copy, where he calls the book, in loose translation, a reef seduction, Hollywood style. He privately predicts that this motherfucker will perform. Executive Producer Solomon Silvergold takes exception to the performance thing — that is, if it’s volume fucking sales you’re talking, because a fucking fish book running two hundred fucking clams is not — not — about to fly off the fucking shelf — not even with that shot of the flying fucking fish! How the fuck did he do that?
Anyway, who gives a fuck if it gimps off the shelf, what with us controlling distribution and internet sales so margins can run the two hundred, two hundred fucking fifty percent they ought to fucking run? Unless we have to discount it sixty percent. Fuck.
The second product is your quick-reference guide in standard format with color plates and myriad data on each fish at a lower price point to reach a bigger market. “Yeah, the cheap motherfuckers. Gotta love’um. And I’ll tell you what: this motherfucker will ring the fucking bell. Twenty-nine ninety-fucking-five? Are you fucking kidding me?”
The third product is the calendar, rounding out the fucking package with twelve shots from the mix, because that’s how it’s done these days, in packages, like we’re Sony fucking Viacom or some shit, which is about the best way to goose your margins overall and pick up the chump change by the wheelbarrow on the back end with the fucking calendar. “Oh, don’t get me wrong; fucking calendars — they got more calendars than a dog has fleas out there now. But this calendar is the lowest price ticket to the show. Get it? Now this motherfucker will perform. And, when we start giving it away free as a premium when you get three of the standards or one deluxe edition, you’ll see the numbers jump. You watch.”
And so the attentive staff — Tiffany, Blaze, Dexter, Auriel and Edgar — watch Mr. Silvergold elaborate on performance and returns. “I’m telling you it can’t look any better than a package, and packaging gets no finer than such as the excellence before us, unless of course you can get to monthly billings, but we haven’t got that one dicked yet. But we ought to be close. What do we got, maybe fish of the month?”
“No, sir, we didn’t feel strongly enough that fish of the month would warrant capitalization. It’s a great idea, but we just couldn’t peg a medium.”
“We were considering, Mr. S, a Tahitian-beauty-of-the-month calendar, mixed in with the fish, two products actually, in male or female as an option, or perhaps an upgrade, with gender mix as a standard order. We have a supplier from Brazil who guarantees the finest lift and spread in the southern hemisphere, but it feels like too many moving parts for a start-up. So we tabled the tits and torsos for now.”
Well. What the fuck. The package is in production, target-marketed, focus-grouped, revised, tweaked and ready to roll. This is timing. This is synchronicity, with Ravid’s visit putting him in the flesh on The Tonight Show — “Are you fucking kidding me? We got Leno? What did that cost?” — where Jay Leno will hold up to the camera, also in the flesh, the goods, while introducing a new phenomenon in photography and art and fish and...
“What? Fish?” Jay can’t believe the prompter actually says fish, and as his amazing lantern-jaw drops, and his goofy eyes offset his wide open grin, as if to ask what the fuck can you do, and he says, “I kid you not, it says photography and art and fish, right here. Come on, Zig, swing around and show it. They don’t believe me. Look! Right here! See it! Okay — hey! Ravid Rock...ulz. Welcome!” So proclaims the oracle of late night to the viewing world.
And so begins the miracle of birth, by which a revelation of beauty and artistic prowess reaches sixty million people in sixty-two countries! This objet d’art in its varying incarnations is made to exist in the minds of one tenth of one percent of the viewing audience. One tenth of one percent of those retaining the image go out in the next three days and buy one or more components of the package...
Wait! What is that sound...that sound in the distance? Is it the tintinnabulation so warming to the soul of art in its ultimate performance? Do I hear the angels in their sweetest refrain: cha-ching cha-ching?
Oh, baby.
What appeared at first blush to be a large book, a medium book and a calendar is actually a social, cultural event — an artistic breakthrough and spiritual attainment that may well rock your world, if you buy it. To call it the next big thing would belabor the obvious. Never before have so many failed to imagine so much — until now. Now they see.
Many people in the studio and in subsequent studios along the path to media-event significance tell Ravid, “Wow, that’s really something,” which is code for smashing success, blockbuster, bell ringer, cultural phenomenon and yes, the next big thing.
The package tracks more profitably than a third world dictatorship. Staggering returns soon lose meaning. Revenue becomes a number on paper. Then come the peripherals — the lifelike action figures at twelve dollars each for the individual fish or a more economical fifty dollars for the reef fish community, though the community is actually in segments, with separate economies available for the wrasses, angels, damsels, puffers, eels, butterflies and invertebrates. The Ravid action figure is only thirty dollars, with accessories that cannot be economized in a package, because sometimes an artistic aesthetic requires à la carte, in case a young Reef Ranger — the lifetime membership club the kids love — will begin with the snorkel ensemble action toys and work up to the scuba ensemble action toys — with separate strap fins for Action Ravid!
From there, the truly committed kid can get the rebreather ensemble action pack, with peripherals available to match any kid’s imagination, like a little decompression chamber for when the Action Ravid doll gets bent, or a portable marine surgery unit with tiny instruments when Action Ravid needs an embolism removed.
Surgically?
Oh! Or the authentic Reef Ranger medivac helicopter or the dive boat or the video games, which sell like crazy, though everyone agrees that video alone won’t capture the essence...
Performance goes from staggering to numbing, and, though taken in stride, it makes for a few wobbles. Ravid declines the praise and congratulations of so many well-wishers who simply love a hero, even if it’s the hero of the hour, because this has gone on a few hundred hours, and he’s also numb! More impressive praise comes from the technicians at the core of every appearance.
The support crews — those tiny names at the end of every show — sense a phenomenon with more shelf life than your average media product line. These audio, video, techno pros seem less needy than the on-camera “talent” or administrative others appearing higher on the credits. They praise and thank Ravid for taking things to a higher level. They tell him their magic is easier to make with his magic to build on — easy, friendly, anonymous people, since nobody really reads the tiny names. They credit him for making their work happier, and so they show their stuff.
Does a vibrant waterman really need makeup? No, but an hour of dabbing, brushing, lining and so on looks like nothing to the average viewer, unless the untouched, fabulously handsome before is compared to the electrifying after.
The Ravid syndicate enjoys studious management, but even a wizened marketeer of Solly Silverberg’s aggressive second nature could not foresee the secondary development in the offing. That is, The True Story of Ravid Rockulz is either leaked or talked around or something or other, till the man who saves reefs and little fishes in the tropics with beautiful women at every turn also becomes a hero, surviving death defying odds in shark infested waters.
The fish guy swam in from the aggregation buoy at night.
What’s an aggregation buoy?
It’s this thing. Twenty-two miles. And these guys beat him up. Bad guys.
Twenty-two miles? Your dying ass. Nobody swims twenty-two miles.
They do in the English Channel.
That’s different.
Why is it different?
Because it is.
What?
Did somebody say something? Oh, yes:
Soon to be a Major Motion Picture Event!
This could be big — very big. The talk is big right off the bat. Nobody has the chutzpa to call it huge before the money is in place, but then Willis is very interested in the part on two conditions: 1) that his girlfriend, an unknown but lithesome blonde who can easily dye to black and can work wonders with a modicum of putty to actually render Polynesian perfection, will play the younger woman and 2) Angelina will play the older woman. Oh — and he also needs, I mean stipulates, that 3) the director’s understanding of action/adventure be subject to the sole ruling of his, Willis’s, agent. So far so good. What could be more reasonable? Except that Willis never asked Angelina what she thought — and she thinks Willis is older than her father, which he isn’t, but still, this puts one-up on the line, simmering, threatening to boil over with ugly innuendo, not to mention potential.
The options get renewed because of the amazing potential and also as a defensive measure to block other interests from bird-dogging what the option holders have paid good money on all rights to. More good news is that nobody balks at the option renewal acceleration clause. We’re talking defense!
But fallout reaches terminal velocity when the lithesome girlfriend splits for greener pastures when Brian Highlander ends his steamy liaison with Ashley Hetherington. Speculation runs rampant, but that’s incidental to the Willis connection, which, speaking of a little putty, seems, in a word, pathetic. With Brian Highlander available? Get serious.
Never mind. Not one minute after the second option lapses, new options are dangled before the hottest performing agents and packagers in town. Not to worry. This bait shall make them frenzy. Just you watch.
So the man becomes the myth, the legend, with the most amazing artistic commitment since...well, we hate to say this, because we’ll get so many letters, but since Vincent Van Gogh. The difference is that Ravid Rackultz is happily married to a fantastic beauty and didn’t cut his ear off. Send your comments to moltencore.com...
And so it flows.
An urgent meeting of market professionals, producers, directors and sage associates is called to plan strategy on the Speedos. That is, we need him on the set in his skimpy skivvies without looking prurient or salacious — without triggering the mad lust of LA’s fervent fans. Any ideas? Because leaving the Speedos under wraps, as it were, is leaving huge money on the table.
Ravid has two ideas: he can stand up from the guest seat and take off his shirt and pants to reveal the Speedos, which is a natural thing to do, and the viewing audience will see.
The echelon stare in awe and wonder, that such a simple solution may meet the criteria, avoiding the sex-mongering accusations sure to come. But it just won’t work; I mean, really, a man taking his clothes off on camera? Come on — and not just any man, but him?
Okay! The second idea is that they cut away to actual underwater footage of Ravid in his scuba gear, holding his camera with its strobes and so on. That way the cameraman can zoom in on the wavy tummy and lumpy nethers.
“Wait a minute... I’ll be wearing a wetsuit...”
“Yes! That’s it!” Three top tech execs cry out in unison, agreeing while adapting the idea to what happens best in LA: technical excellence. They’ll stage a simulation! “We won’t actually be in the ocean, bubby.”
And so it comes to pass at hardly over budget, not even a million dollars, which might sound excessive as the raw cash required to put a man-size tank on a sound stage, but when broken down to drawings, engineering, materials, including one-inch tempered glass, construction, the crane, the truck, the lifts and dollies and logistical coordination between the writers union, the construction union, the stage prop union and the stage handlers union, along with legal disclaimers and back-up docs, it’s a steal. Are you kidding me?
The segment runs seven minutes, cutting into a commercial break that ups the budget another hundred grand or so in lost revenue from said commercial break, but at this point, it’s the commitment that’s going to count. Sure the naysayers are scoffing and scorning the silly shit they’re trying to pull on The Evening Show. They splash so much water on the set that David slips and falls on his ass. He has the wits to make it look like a set up — what a ham, what a natural, what a beauty — but it isn’t a set up, and his hip may be fractured; as if that’s not enough, they short-circuit the audio and go to break for seven more minutes, giving up some freebie public service announcements, after they met their PSA requirement for the ratings period last fucking week!
But jeez, Louise, did you see the frikkin’ fuckin’ dingdong on that fish guy?
Bingo! Or, as Executive Producer Sol Silvergold elaborates, “Motherfucking bingo, you doubtful, shit-eating motherfuckers!”
Mr. Silvergold sounds upset but really is happy. The tirade comes the next day before lunch, when nobody can tell if Solly feels the joy or another coronary coming on. But he’s always in a better mood after eating, especially on Wednesday, when it’s the huge fucking corned beef on rye special with one of those semi-kosher dills bigger than Jimi Hendrix’s dick — bigger than it used to be anyway. Ha! Am I right!
“Gott! Did you ever eat anything so good? What is it? The mustard? The little bit fat? The bread? What? Did you ever?”
No, nobody never. And after lunch Solly settles down. It’s predictable: “Fucking motherfuckers. They’re gonna tell Sol Silvergold who or what is not going to be big? Fuck you. Fuck you, motherfuckers. Fucking mumzers.” And he laughs. Solly laughs, which proves that he’s happy and in a good mood and pleased, and everybody else can laugh too.
“Hey, kid,” he fondly asks Ravid. “You know from mumzers?”
“Ken, ktsat. Me-ha-mumzerim, megiaa ha-balagan ha-godol.” Yes, a little bit. From the bastards comes the big man.
“Hey. The kid is French. But I think he knows. Hey, kid. You from southern France, or what? Hey, Jews everywhere now. The fuck. Ha!”
So the whole wide world laughs — as it murmurs and mumbles snippets and images of fish, fish books, fish calendars and the fish guy — and what Solly said about Jimi Hendrix’s dick even as everyone is thinking about the motherfucking moray eel in the fish guy’s shorts.
When lunch at Solly’s is done, and it looks like another money gusher coming on, thanks to the fish guy and the best motherfucking management money can buy, Solly says, “Ha! Don’t you worry, kid. You’re gonna be a very rich man. Rich! Wealthy? I don’t know. But rich!” Then he tosses a set of keys in a lazy arc to Ravid and says, “Drive this till you get settled. Don’t take more than a year. Okay, five years. Ha!”
The car is right out front, presenting the next challenge with its glaring announcement that a waterman has sunk in the mire. The gleaming statement of material excess sitting at the tow-away curb is a flame red Jaguar convertible with matching interior, top down. Ravid’s blush doesn’t match, but not for want of trying. His embarrassment is overwhelming, till Oybek’s gruff whisper in his ear directs the action: “Get in. Look happy. Wave. Smile! Dig it, motherfucker!” This last is not a cliché of the hip set but a basic directive based on continuing survival.
Ravid’s hesitation doesn’t carry from the curb to Solly’s big window on the thirty-fourth floor. He waves up. Solly waves back down. It’s a deal.
Well, it’s a goof that tries to be a laugh, and Ravid is more or less comforted by friends assuring him that it’s a toy, a measure of success — and he’s doing extremely well — but it’s not a reflection of who he is or what he values. It’s merely a mode of expression, the glorious sentiment being victory over simple needs and practicality.
Which works for most commuters in LA, but Ravid loves a life of simple needs and practicality. And he can’t help but feel that the obtrusively red car is a reflection of values, of who he is and what he wants.
Here too, a waterman adapts, first in wincing a little less every time he sees the red car, then becoming inured to the brilliant redness, then thinking that it’s a car — a fucking car — your basic transportation, and that’s all.
The turnaround comes unexpectedly, out of the blue, as it were, in a lightning bolt of insight, understanding and appreciation. Celebrity by this time has become a challenge, then a burden, then a bad feeling of life forsaken in the swarm of fans, with the blinding red car a homing beacon on their hero. Ravid avoids certain routes that will surely expose him to more of the same, routes through thick fan habitat — fans whose loss of personal identity has left them bereft of anything but the stars to look up to. They stop in their tracks to point a finger and utter his name. He qualifies as a sighting.
One early evening when the radio announces triple fender benders at three exits in a row on just the freeway he needs to get home in less than an hour, he takes the low road, to make it in an hour and a half.
Somewhere on the fringe of West Hollywood, headed for Santa Monica, he sees a group of young prostitutes in an area thick with sexual traffic. They yell in unison at the likely john in the hundred thousand dollar car, for whom a five hundred dollar blowjob would be a pittance, even with a five hundred dollar tip, maybe. He won’t return their looks, even as low road traffic also slows to a crawl, and soon he’s hardly twenty feet from the lineup of tawdry boys in their short shorts, with their excessive eyeliner and other facial pastes, putties and colors. He quickly dismisses the similarity between this and a busy reef, since both may be garish and colorful, but one is innocent and the other is the lowest form of depravity. Well, one of the lowest, around here.
He reacts to a soft, furtive boy stepping off the curb to put both hands on the passenger windowsill and say, “You’re the fish guy. Ravid Rockulz.” Ravid looks up casually enough but can’t help a double take — is that rosacea or rouge over Kaposi’s? Well, what difference does it make? Except to the young man. It makes a difference to him. Unless it doesn’t. He says, “I love you. I love your fish. I want to be a fish. I want to be you. God.” And he yells to the other boys, “Hey! It’s the fish guy!”
So the boys of the evening gather at that corner, chattering like roosting birds at dusk, with their bangles and colors and suggestive flourish — normal looking boys, till they morph in macro mode, leaning into the car. Up close in lingering daylight he sees the grotesque, the abused, the habitat for microbes and skin parasites. These are society’s living dead, but don’t tell them; they’re up and at it, surviving another day. This bunch is hardcore, surviving by no other means than dollars earned quickly as possible. Yet they gather casually, without urgency, without shame. They seem to shed their lascivious postures in appreciation of the fish guy and what he does, where he’s been and how he thinks, as if a fish guy is different from other guys, as if the fish guy knows, sees and feels.
The most indelible praise of Ravid Rockulz’s showbiz career then careens out of nowhere. A soiled, salacious and obviously disturbed boy whose lipstick is smudged over one cheek, either from recent service or as merchandizing to suggest service available, says, “I got the big one, you know. It’s so huge. I love that. I get off about two or three usually. I mean unless it’s really busy, you know. People don’t realize that we’re like everybody else. I mean, I used to be homeless, but now I have a place, now that I suck cock, you know. Anyhoo, you know, I always like to open my book, your book, when I get home. It makes me feel, you know, so...I can’t really tell you what it makes me feel, but it’s so good.” The boy is twenty, give or take, and could have been stunt double to Leonardo DiCaprio — same wide jaw, same sandy hair swept sideways, same ski nose, same baby blues. Unless... Unless he’s more spot on for Johnny Depp, considering the eyeliner and the method insanity sparkling in his eyes.
Well, by this time the wayward boys are on the driver’s side too, some touching the fish guy in order to say they did, one caressing his hair, one offering to pay five bills to suck off the fish guy and most of the rest laughing, with a few waiting to see if the offer will be considered. Offering thanks all around with a quick, nervous nod, Ravid peers around the traffic ahead and sees it’s breaking loose and starting to move — even five or ten miles an hour would ease him out of this bind, and so it does. So he says thank you all around once again to reaffirm his gratitude for such great fans, and that’s that, except for the boy who gets home late and feels good, looking at the fish.
He says, “I love your car. It’s a flame angel, just like you. Please come and see us again. Okay?”
Ravid waves, and the flow picks up to twenty-five for another half hour, in which a waterman ponders the strange ways of God or Neptune or whomever, at long last approaching an exit free of fender benders and thinking yeah, it’s some crazy fucked up shit all right. But you know, those guys...those guys back there. Man.
Well, it’s not the sort of fan appreciation that any celebrity wants to share, surely not on a talk show or even with associates, many of whom may have spent a grand or two on that very same route, making them what, any different than the boys?
But not sharing makes the fan appreciation no less appreciated. How can a sane, stable man reasonably discuss or even consider these boys and what they do in any light but perversion and unfortunate circumstance? He can’t, but a glimmer shines through, in which the very worst of human behaviors — well, they’re bad, anyway — are preempted by something good. Maybe it will stay his little secret, and that’s fine by him; but the fact is that he loves those guys, first of all because of what they had to say, which were probably the nicest things anybody ever said to him, but mostly for their actual appreciation of the work. Those guys — at least one of them actually took himself thousands of miles away to a reef in his mind. That guy sees the light, which is maybe what everyone refers to when they talk about attitude. That guy has it, has to, which is a laugh, considering what else he must have. But the thing is, I always thought attitude was a primary component of the propaganda supporting this sick culture, that attitude is necessary for leadership, and leadership is what’s wrong with the place. Well, these street boys have attitude, and frankly, I think they’re on to something.
The studio techs help again with street cover, to enhance anonymity, mobility, privacy and a normal life or approximation thereof. A baseball cap, shades and a three-day growth restore the amazing waterman to life among the commuters and consumers. Newly amazed at this place, this dream, this fantasy seeking realization — this LA, he feels many people peering at him and at many others, both the famous and yet-to-be famous, all wearing the three-day growth, baseball cap and shades.
Is that you?
In collective anonymity, everybody looks famous, or could be. A few look exactly like characters in movies. Some capture the beauty and loss of souls unbound, seeking a role and reasonable direction. Do you realize the potential here?
Besides faces in the crowd drawn in comedy and tragedy there are players waiting discovery at street level. The dry cleaner no longer looks like Charlie Chan or speaks of number one son; he animate and crazy as chop-socky original, martinized to modern specs.
The ice cream guy has scorpions tattooed on his neck and glares on the verge of dénouement, as if this is the meaning you’ve been waiting on. His eyes glow incandescent blue. Sure, it’s contact lenses, supporting a very effective audition, in case you might be, you know...
Waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, clerks and the whole service army wear their second hats obviously over their first; it’s why they’re here, for a break in showbiz. Until then, they’re part of the kindred spirits in pursuit of artistic expression. “Hey. You’re the fish guy. Right on, man. You’re terrific.”
Well, that does feel good — not so profound as the boy hookers giving voice to their passion, but a certain return on effort. Then, it happens: he hears the verbal recognition and turns, against his better judgment, to see that the guy recognized looks amazingly like the fish guy but is not. How could he be? I’m the fish guy. Well, this is disconcerting. I wear a disguise, and for what? So some nebbish can claim the glory?
This too shall pass, in theory, in the short term, till later that night. Reviewing his work once again, as many artists will, looking for possible improvements or looking again after a long time without looking, to see the work as a first time viewer might see it, Ravid stops on a dazzling plate.
Normally a shy fish, this flame angel has come forward to mug front and center, and though fish are generally assumed to lack facial expression, this one has his eyebrows bunched in consternation. Behind him, peeking out of a deep recess, showing only her eyes and mouth, is his mate. On a whim and an impulse, he checks the files for an early, fairly mechanical, but technically excellent shot of a flame angel in profile. He prints it out and drives down to the custom car place, where the artistic crew provides an estimate to duplicate the four black stripes on the red Jaguar. Nobody sniggers or questions the strange request, because art is personal and sacrosanct. It’s a private statement of values, perceptions and praise. Ravid takes the formal written estimate of twelve thousand dollars, and on his way home he spends sixty dollars on a medium-grade, four-inch brush and a gallon of black enamel, satin finish.
It makes no sense to hand-paint a car of this value. Even rationalizing that it’s a car, just a car and only a car. The sheer value of the thing can’t be avoided — though it can be lowered, or raised. It’s a beacon of something or other, a classic design in a demanding color in search of context. The car will highlight its driver as a champion of those values we hold dear, namely vast discretionary income, or enough cash for a no-credit-check car loan, or a keen eye for an OK used car, but even then this short would run fifty or sixty K, so what the fuck? You know what I’m trying to say here?
Or, for most viewers, the car will reflect vast success in the entertainment industry, which is obvious if the driver has recog, and apparent if he’s a money guy, a producer, or an award-winning technical guy, maybe one with his own special effects studio to conjure the very best in car wrecks, massive explosions, airline catastrophe, perseverant cyborgs — you name it.
In Ravid Rockulz’s case, technical affluence is assumed, because a guy who takes fish pictures can’t very well have recog — until he does the TV talk circuit, that is, and a few laps around that block puts him on the retina register of more pedestrians than not. The stop-and-stare syndrome goes from recognition of success in an unknown category to hey, it’s the fuckin fish guy!
Which makes life simple and annoying. Public recognition is fun at first. Then come the news dogs and feeding frenzy on every move, touch, wink, pick, shift, scratch or personal pursuit. Life in its most subtle movement must be guarded.
But then simplicity goes all huhu again when one guy says hey, it’s the fuckin fish guy! And it’s not the fish guy. It’s a different guy, a nobody who never did anything but stand in front of a mirror and make himself look like me. What the fuck is that?
These assessments and rationalizations drift among the fumes as the fish guy holds a seventeen by twenty blow-up of a flame angel in one hand and his four-inch brush in the other, applying vertical black stripes to the amazingly similar red background. Now it’s more than a car, just a car. It’s more fun for starters, chucking the notion of value, maybe even upping the value in the process, singling this car out with identity, personality and a star-studded past. Special care is taken to control the breathing, relax completely, let go, let go, let go, simply and naturally in one upward stroke on a perfect exhalation, rendering stripes identical to those first applied by Neptune himself.
Ravid remembers his first embarrassing cruise in the red Jaguar, compared to now. On his way to Oybek’s office, he feels corrected, more secure in the statement surrounding him, more successfully adapted. He sells himself on the idea, the concept, the way of life he has discovered and embraced so effectively, and he shares his epiphany on entering.
Oybek’s receptionist listens patiently and says the phenomenon of non-constraint is growing in leaps and bounds in classic illustration of the Oybekian influence. “It’s like painting a perfectly perfect Jaguar with black stripes, by hand. It decries what we’ve suffered so long. We keep ourselves locked up inside. Just look at the surge in special effects studios. There must be eighty new studios — or four hundred eighty. We used to have one. Or two. They supplied the entire industry for decades. Now we do fabulous explosions. You can pooh-pooh explosions and wrecks as the death of drama, but they’re not. They’re an extension of drama. Take the golden age and Joan Crawford. She’s my all-time fave. I can’t tell you what it was, but she had it. Oh. Excuse me. Mr. Navbahor will see you now.” The receptionist smoothes a bushy eyebrow with a pinkie, in case Ravid grew up without the benefit of cinema, and with batting lashes says, “Now that lady threw some hand grenades. God.”
Oybekian?
Such is the show that never ends. The contract on Oybek’s desk is thick with caveats, subordinations, sub-rights, exceptions, conditions and continuing permutations. Oybek squeezes all but the last page between his thumb and forefinger and says, “Standard. I review same with your best interest. Good for you. Okay by me.” Then he folds the stack back for signature.
Many people between Oybek’s front door and the inner sanctum lingered in the hallway to praise Ravid’s fabulous launch, which gives him a fabulous foundation on which to build; just you watch. So he signs off. “Now you see. We make magic. Presto. From nozzing, we get rabbit out of hat. You see.”
A month later the same TV talk shows want Ravid again. Several producers say they didn’t take the fish guy seriously. Now they do. They want — they stipulate — that the fish guy be the fish guy and appear in mask, fins and snorkel, because nobody needs all that water in the tank business with the knock’em sock’em scuba gear and the clunky camera stuff. For what? We need him, the fish guy. We need him to show the body you get with artistic pursuit. That’s where we’re going with this.
Oybek masterfully declines all offers, then triumphantly resists all offers, then reluctantly agrees to see what he can do. Ravid merely declines, so the talks are off. Then they’re on again — and hey, no need to be so testy. Okay?
Then the rest want in, including the gaggle of women sitting on the same couch and all honking at the same time, and the esoteric funny guy, who puts glib humor above social order on the reef and is nearly throttled for his trouble. Naturally, the lunge and grab boost the fish guy’s stock, and so the lunge and grab appear contractually for an appearance on Jerry Springer, where a panel of reproductively viable trailer trash women will claim the fish guy is the father.
Springer is also declined, but when you’re on a roll a left-handed ass scratch can pump your ratings. Showbiz is still a chore, till pounding success calls for exotic locations. Dive sites anywhere out of town sound appealing, even the Bahamas, for starters, to tie in with another project to make even more money. Now work your magic.
Well, they want the fish guy cruising a Nassau street declining some fabulously beautiful hookers. The idea is to send a message to the viewing audience that combines safe sex with commercial lust — break to some car commercials, ab enhancers and boner pills. With some terrific cleavage shots, a few hard-marched camel toes and some winning smiles, ratings aren’t bad. Nothing Fishy in Nassau won’t go to sequel, but it won’t bomb.
Then, predictably enough, come the US Virgins and the rest of the loved-to-death islands up to Martinique in a dead reef medley of brown algae and familiar effluvia, both treated and untreated. Living coral is available a mile out and will likely be available next year no farther than a mile and a quarter.
Minna goes along, regretting postponement of her professional career on the one hand but loving the scenery, money, travel and glamour on the other. Let’s face it: she’s a natural, who loves telling the camera she married Ravid years ago. She just says no to the inevitable offer in the second year of Ravid’s fame — a center spread, such as it is; everyone in LA knows it’s only art, but the ‘ohana back home would never see it that way. Ravid is artistically open-minded but secretly pleased by her decision, made with no pressure from him. He surprises her with a triple-header to the Maldives, Truk and Colombo, but here too she declines. He urges her to reconsider, because this trip will be free of the resort tourist noise, and they can...
“I’m preggers.”
“Wha?”
“You’re surprised?”
Here too, a story might end on a happily ever after in modern terms. Or it could trickle into the near future, when the beautiful young family buys a place in Malibu with a great loan package that Stephan Andrew Monihan, Oybek’s money guy, helps arrange.
Hey, it ain’t Tahiti, okay? But LA does have some stimuli waiting to jump your neurons if you give it half a chance. Stephan Andrew encourages optimism and a positive outlook but makes no apology for what goes on here, because it is what it is, which seems painfully obvious in any application, the true test being the converse proposal: what in the world is what it isn’t? But this is La La Land, which is not to confuse apparent reality with what remains to be actualized, which, as yet, isn’t. What it is in the meantime is millions of fucked up people, and if you can’t see that, you’re not paying attention. “But I’ll tell you something: some of those people, including yours truly, are very busy finding themselves. Some of us are getting well. And I’ll tell you something else: we’re smart people. We have the money thing worked out. We want more, and that’s what evolution is all about.” Stephan Andrew is quick to correct when Ravid calls him Stephan. “Please, Stephan Andrew. Monihan. I made the last name up. Get it? Money — moni...han. You’d be amazed how much money I’ve made for flaky people who couldn’t remember my name. I suppose Stephan is a more popular name now, but there’s only one Stephan Andrew, so if you don’t mind, it really helps me out. Okay?” Ravid doesn’t mind, but he doesn’t say as much, so Stephan Andrew asks again, “Okay?”
“Yes, fine.” Well, the place is full of quirks, mostly harmless. But the house appears to be doable.
“And would you look at these views?” Not that a year-old baby, or the one in the oven, gives a rat’s patooty about the view, but still, maybe they will one day in their mid-forties, when they need more out of, you know, life.
The kids do love the yard on the bluff — not to worry; the fence keeps them and Little Dog from going over, though Skinny gives them a terrible turn one day, showing up out of nowhere on the other side of the fence, three feet from the cliff edge, stalking something invisible or tiny, casually as you please, till she stops and howls, “Meow!” She’s stuck. Or maybe she’s lost her bearings again.
And who goes slinking along behind for the rescue, herself as lithesome as a geriatric cat? “You tell me, what else could I do? The cat is like family. Like family! What could I do?” In fact, Basha Rivka could have spared Skinny a walk on the wild side by putting out the cat food as instructed. Nobody suggests neglect, since it wasn’t willful, and besides, contrary to the stereotype of relations between the wife and the mother-in-law, Minna and Basha Rivka have achieved their own symbiosis, where seldom is heard a discouraging word.
The basis for harmony is simple, what some would view as potentially bigoted or racist, but it is, yet again, what it is. Basha Rivka had braced herself for a shiksa, a goy with upper middle-class parents and all the snooty, boring crap that comes with that package — with a country club in the mix for all we know — a club that doesn’t allow you-know-whom, as if a bunch of big-boned, mostly blond and always boring stand-around types — unless they’re strolling the fairways — have something of interest to share with the chosen ones.
Hearing the blissful news that the new mishpocha are actually connected to Buddha, and that the connection is without dogma, brimstone, hellfire, crusades, missionaries, pedophiles, inquisitions, pogroms, social snubbery or even a general undercurrent of Jew-baiting, she is relieved. On second thought, she’s exhilarated.
Minna’s rationale is more practical, more adaptive, more in tune with modern LA, where, let’s face it, most of her friends are Jews or Buddhists already, and some are both. She embraces Basha Rivka as a concept. “A live-in babysitter? I love her. Are you kidding?”
Never have two women brought such praise, gratitude and respect to their commonly adversarial roles in the care and feeding of the man between them and the infant offspring.
Skinny suffers no lingering trauma from the cliffside event. Fourteen already, she forgets where she is, and maybe who she is, and sometimes what she is. Hunger is an instinct, free of rational thought. If not fed, she wanders in search of food.
The same is true for love, with solitary periods causing her to set up a howl. But no matter how deaf and senile she is, she jumps onto the bed beside Ravid with a good-night meow and a few circles turned before tucking herself in on the pillow, where she sleeps all night without snoring, though a fingertip on her chin gets her purring deep enough to chirp.
Minna sometimes wakens to ask, “Do you mind?”
In the daytime, between naps, she, Skinny, sits on his desk and watches him work. Sometimes, when he works too hard, she bats a pen around, and the other day, sitting on the back steps when two butterflies came in low, she sat up and swatted at them. Ha! She’s really some kind of fabulous cat.
Malibu feels more like home with the routine, the friendly neighborhood and the fabulous wealth the neighbors have in common. Money rolling in like ocean swells is a given. Sometimes it crests in breaking waves, and every now and then, with media follow-up on an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy or an Emmy, comes the tsunami. Then comes a lovely entertainment to celebrate good fortune, fame and more, in which neighbors can convene just like normal people, except for the Olympic pools, the Roman columns, the staff, caterers, valet parking and glittering guests.
Oh, money is good, first for the fabulous affluence and then as an accurate measure of performance. Did they love it? Okay, how much? Even when it’s way more than could ever be needed, the money is treasured, because it can accomplish great things and some day it will. Meanwhile, the money grows with interest, dividends, capital appreciation and some commercially zoned lots, where you really can’t beat the upside.
As if money pouring in from TV shows, book royalties, serialization rights, foreign rights, paperback and DVD rights, action toys and film options isn’t enough, next come the endorsements.
Ravid dove and shot for years with the best equipment available, with cameras and lenses considered professional, on the cutting edge of technology. He dove with housings so light, streamlined and efficient as to be exotic — dove happily, grateful for his good fortune in life, amazed that a humble dive leader could afford six thousand dollars for a camera housing. How did he do it? He could hardly believe it himself.
So when an exotic manufacturer offers up a camera housing with peripherals that retails for twelve grand, make that thirteen plus with the reasonable viewfinder and fifteen with the dome port, flat port, port rings and extensions, and make that sixteen while you’re at it, with a couple of strobes and arms, electronic interfacing, and a few back-ups Ravid says, “Nah.”
Oybek rejoins, “Wha? Nah?” Oybek is a student of the schtetl kvetch common to Hollywood and may not realize that these colloquialisms and slang are not actually English.
Ravid shrugs. “I don’t need those things. In fact, I want to get my next shots with entry level equipment.”
“You won’t get better shots.”
“Or maybe I will. I might encourage young divers by using basic equipment. People are so destructive in nearly everything they do. But young divers trying to take great pictures of fish should be encouraged to get out and give it their best, not to go deep into debt.” Ravid and Oybek are friends, sharing a bowl of hash in the LA equivalent of an enlightened negotiation, in which the party of the first part could confide in the party of the second. So Ravid exhales a celebratory billow and confides: “I want to take the technical aspect out of artistic excellence. I want to sculpt with a stone ax. I want to paint with a four inch brush. Can you see the value in that?”
“What if you get a hundred thousand dollars clear for your pocket along with this twenty thousand dollar set up?” What’f get you hunderd toozundolla fuhpocket you wis tvintyzoozundolla cumra?
“Why would they do that?”
“Why? Why not? You on. You it. The fish guy. Okay? They do that because they make it back and more. Don’t be simple. Okay?”
Well, okay.
And okay for the wetsuit, BC, regulator and dive computer endorsements, and last but not least, another quarter mil for an easy up and in on a hip shot aimed to change male fashion trends around the world, or, as they say, to sell the new look. Boxers are out. Briefs are back. So much for idealistic objective. But the money could at least be spent on making the world a better place. Couldn’t it? Besides, then comes season three, and then seasons four and five, each year generating more money than most men make in ten years, or twenty, and for what? For standing in front of a camera wearing scant skivvies that outline his cock is what.
Then comes the stock market.
Ravid is not obsessed by the acquisition of more money. He is grateful for the money he has and satisfied that it will surely pay for free time ahead, in which to pursue art with no concern for money. Humble origins, tough times and spiritual foundations intertwine to serve him well in showbiz. Hardly “big” enough to make the A-list inner sanctum, he makes it anyway on charm, humility, apparent courage, terrific anecdotes and the beautiful wife. He misses the old color and reef friends, but he visits from time to time, and the shallow scene in LA can be just as dazzling and predatory, if more tediously talkative and hungry.
He and Minna have many casual acquaintances and friends of friends, directly or indirectly networked. They see a few regulars at parties, events and in passing. Familiarity gains depth, but friendship and trust are secondary. Primary is the potential for progress — by which huge deals come together. The breaks are brief, the action fast. Consensus is that life is either bad or good, depending on the alacrity by which resources are brought to bear. Money, energy and spirit must be freely spent, and now. Life is best in maximum fun, with the pleasure centers stimulated and faith that smashing success is already upon us. As one dauntingly strident over-reacher put it: become the hugeness. Then, adequately buzzed and enamored of prospects, odds and cosmic certainty, the candidate for greatness must go for it.
With such a fabulous climate and abundant insight to spiritual and physical being, and such dedication to health and fitness, the potential for all things is, in a word, awesome.
This patently gratuitous formula is stereotypical of LA, but it’s also true, particularly in reference to drugs, liquor and sex. Ravid feels blessed that his external needs are simple: a reefer and a couple beers, and he’s in the groove. Sex he had plenty of and may again someday, but for now he’s content having intercourse and so on with the wife. She’s a natural, with no headaches, and a beauty to boot, after all.
She’s also a notable hottie — Minna, the fish guy’s wife, aka a fine fillet o’ perch. Unstated but understood is that you would indeed want some of that. Not yet pursued by the tabloid camera dogs, she is frequently spotted and shot, often at ten frames per second, in case she might pick her nose or scratch her crack, which she wouldn’t do with a camera on her, but hope springs eternal with the camera dogs, who want to ride that perfect fucking wave one time, just like the next guy.
The greater point being that two of Hollywood’s most beautiful people don’t make friends so often. How can they? Neither one goes to an office or has regular contact with outside people. They have acquaintances.
So they gravitate to Oybek’s orbit, where a few more acquaintances are made, who agree that Ravid’s work and love for the little fish and his books — especially the books! — are fabulous. Most new acquaintances at these Oybek-connected events also affirm the great good luck of having Oybek as an associate; he is such a fabulous man.
Ravid discloses his initial misperception of Oybek as an amusing anecdotal foible shared with a friendly couple, Stuart and Richard, at a lavishly casual cocktail party at their home, just five minutes up from Ravid and Minna’s. The two hosts are also in showbiz, Stuart a producer and Richard in entertainment law. The poolside buzz is that both Stuart and Richard may be nominated this year — for the same movie! Not that Richard could actually be a film credit for doing the legal docs, or that he could actually get an Oscar, unless they make a special category to appreciate who and what he really is and the wonderful changes he’s brought to art cinématique, but still. Stuart regards him as a colleague, both professionally and artistically, not to mention domestically, and Stuart’s the fucking producer!
Stuart and Richard take an interest in Ravid, asking if he’s ever worked on camera — in front of a camera, that is — underwater before. No, he has not, which elicits a knowing glance between the two hosts. They ask how he met Oybek, and Ravid tells of misperception and calamitous rescue during Oybek’s epileptic recurrence, which, by the way, has not happened again since, thank God, or whomever.
When the tale is told, the two hosts wait for more, perhaps a moral, an irony or a punch line. Hearing no more, Richard says, “You’re not the only one who saw him that way — mean, threatening. If you want to know my opinion, Oybek’s amazing looks are what got him going in this town in the first place. What keeps him going is another story. I’ll tell you that one later, if you know what I mean. I’ll give him his due, though: he’s one in a million, you know, who can get things done.”
Ravid has nothing to add, no wit, insight or elaboration, so with a bumpkin smile he confirms that Oybek sure has got things done for him. The obvious meets the incredulous; less sophisticated hosts a few minutes down the freeway might say, Duh. But Stuart and Richard rarely dally in the colloquial, so they offer the more astute response. It has no audio. It looks like disappointment or boredom or a blend. Then they flee, as if to catch a call from Marty, David or Sol.
So? How should he have returned the droll serve, with a mouthful of chestnuts?
But Ravid need not worry over a lame impression; Richard finds him again not an hour later and asks in confidence if he, Ravid, would, you know, consent to a, you know, screen test of sorts, underwater. By this time Ravid is familiar and comfortable with the gay lifestyle and senses nothing, as they say, inappropriate. He does wonder why an entertainment lawyer would want to set up a screen test, but he keeps his ignorance to himself. After all, Richard is big. So he says, “Sure. Whatever.”
But just as Richard is putting coordinates on the session, he’s apprehended, or, as Stuart calls out, “Busted!” Stuart’s rant is shrill and embarrassing: he makes a scene, calls Richard a slut, says he knew it all along. Richard seems tolerant.
Ravid commiserates, “Jealousy is very difficult. Maybe worse than alcoholism.”
“Trust me, sweetie: the hooch is worse. We’ll be kissy huggy in minutes. Liquor remorse lasts for days...” These are the last words Richard will speak to Ravid in months. Turning suddenly to his colleague and partner, Richard stands his ground. “You’re wrong, Stuart! It’s you! You’re the one and only one!”
Many friends laugh, and Stuart is consoled.
More affable by nature and fluent in modern girl talk, Minna eases into a coffee klatch, where she keeps pace on new colors, new products, the new looks, rumors, deals, ins and outs, and who is walking into this place right now. She calls it an unspeakable yak but goes along for the entertainment value. Well, busy is good, and one day we’ll look back on this time and place, and we’ll laugh. Maybe one day soon.
But Minna plays more than a bit part in the big picture. Fitting in with the girls with deft skills at modern jargon is cast to type. She transcends type through Basha Rivka. Naturally, a man with a wife and a mother under the same roof is relieved when these two females agree to share the podium. Ravid is grateful, except when they gang up, yet even then he feels the love in his wife’s adaptability and social skills.
Open to discovery and what might be available in the here and now, Minna goes along with pop culture as a way of life. She tries trendy new things and a few old things, like pottery. She takes a course. It’s okay, but she wants to try Japanese cooking, which is also okay; she finds it more like Texmex than the real McCoy but makes new friends who love her background and her place of birth and visit Hawaii often and apparently revere the top tier exclusivity of the born and raised.
She tries tennis and likes it, with a terrific court complex only seven minutes away. It’s not a club, per se, but a regular gathering of very nice people who show up, sign up and pick up games. Another woman there is taking French lessons she describes as fabulous, and another woman is actually French and concurs. So Minna revisits French; it’s so chic, and the three often practice after tennis, discoursing in French over a low-fat croissant and a double decaf skim macchiato grandé with organic carob sprinkles, hold the foam.
She feels better after exercise and takes a few lessons from a strapping young pro who goes eighty minutes to the hour on Minna’s lessons and would likely go another hour or three, if she didn’t beg off, because the girls are waiting.
Well, that’s life in a moneyed suburb, where young tennis pros have been trying to bang housewives for decades, often succeeding to the benefit and satisfaction of all parties. Not that Ravid would benefit or be satisfied. He would not. He loves Minna as he did from the outset, with the added dimensions of admiration and appreciation. Moreover, their congress is healthy and more frequent than the neighborhood average.
But here too a sign comes as if by chance. It’s nothing really, or so it turns out. Jimmy the tennis pro sends Minna a note. Jimmy’s wavy blond hair, with highlights, done in a strikingly camp semi-pompadour recalls Troy Donahue with a touch of Tab Hunter, or he could be a ringer for the CREW catalogue guy, whatever his name is, and is actually asked on a regular basis, following the semi-dramatic pause and double take by a random passerby — “Did you...do CREW? The catalogue?” Jimmy smiles internally, cutting a sculpted indifference on the outside; maybe he did, or could.
It doesn’t hurt that his V-neck sweater sleeves wrap around his neck, and his shades are on top to hold the coif in place and better frame his piercing blue eyes. What a hunk, though he could also play a sensitive supporting role, given the right script. Would he play gay? Is he? Hey, why speculate? Talk to my agent. Make an offer. Then we’ll see. Anyway, Jimmy thinks Minna is “great” in every way and says as much in many ways, opening with “attractive and intelligent” and attempting to close on “a strong desire” to know her better, maybe over lunch at his place, say from one to four on Thursday, if that’s good for you.
The note is folded inside another note, her response. She responds that the admiration is mutual: he’s a great teacher, and it’s not his fault if she can’t wallop a backhand without both hands. Maybe someday. Meanwhile, she’ll know him better soon enough, if they stay friends, because that’s what happens in life. Lunch at his place sounds like a terrible idea, because she’s not attracted to him, which isn’t his fault, because she’s in love with her husband Ravid, the handsomest, smartest man she knows. His way with the fish is amazing, and she’ll be under his spell for a long time to come. So please, don’t bother her again with this.
Well, you can’t blame her for saving Jimmy’s note. She likely planned to throw it away right after sending her response. Besides, what woman wouldn’t be flattered by a bid for intimate frolic and possible romance, even if it’s from a cardboard cutout with a sound track? A better question might weigh the difference between a strapping blond tennis pro and da kine lumpy cousin Darryl: Would one be easier to accept than the other? The short answer is easy and quick: no, especially considering the pornographic appetites so common to the area.
She’s scheduled for a lesson that afternoon, so Ravid offers to meet her for a sundowner. She says sure, and then asks why he’s being so nice. He blushes, insisting that he’s always nice, and he pledges to himself that he will try to be as nice. He picks her up after tennis, gives the young buck the stare down, takes her to a posh café with an ocean terrace for cocktails and talk, then home for a lovely screw, like it was years ago.
The following night is another dog and pony that makes the sofa, a doobie, a few beers and a three-star movie seem like the most fabulous view available. “Would you mind too much going without me?” But no sooner is the suggestion made than Minna models her new dress, an elegant number in a fabulously sparse blend of velvet and silk. The Lana Turner halter-style top wraps the neck in a daringly slim choker, going to lush bunches of hip-hugging gown from the midriff to the knees — with a devilish cut, up to the waist, that reveals a slice of firm, tan thigh on every third step — along with a maddening strip of thong bracing the upper buns. As if that isn’t enough, the sparse harness grasping the independent halves of the bosom is inlaid with translucent pink chiffon over the nipples, to generate a series of scenes revealed in a casual stroll, like a selected short subject. Ravid watches the little documentary and blushes, anticipating his public embarrassment. He would express his personal discomfort, but she precludes him by promising that it’s going to be a night for nipples, likely kicking off a year for nipples. Nipples are the new look, which sounds silly, one more reach for something different to help fend off the dazzling tedium. But it’s a look the girls — the women — have agreed is long overdue, and they’re fairly confident the boys will go along, especially in view of the most fabulous public awareness of breast cancer. Why should the nipples hide, when they can proclaim so effectively that they are a look not to die for? Nipples will be the icon for women who suffer abuse, sexism and breast cancer, who will show their nipples to prove it.
Or some such. Minna’s nipples are nice, and though he hasn’t considered them a source of pride, Ravid may have thought them a private resource.
Not to worry, Minna’s nipples are only two in the amazing crowd of nipples peeking through the mesh. Few will remember which nipples went under what faces without a program, and a fête of this stature would never allow photographers, except for the fish guy, but that hardly counts.
Minna is every man’s fantasy, an A-list exotic known for miles around, and coast to coast since they got her coming off the tennis courts in a sweat. But showing nipples playfully for a great social cause is the best response, like getting naked along with everybody else. It’s a trend-setting nipple buffet, with mashed nipples, carefully swathed nipples and a few nipples perked by chiffon chafe — could this be unintentional? You want little boy nipples, so cute and naughty, fat fluffy nipples, relaxed and assured, silver-dollar pancake nipples, droopy or indented nipples? This nipplefest will be the talk of the town, hailed as an important statement, not to mention an impressive set of nipples. Could awareness get much higher?
Best in show goes by consensus to everybody’s favorite money girl, meaning mortgage broker, Stevie Ann Monihan. Stevie beams, so lovely on the arm of Dr. Paulo Jacinto, the fabulous cosmetic surgeon from Bahia. He’s the best of the very best. Actually asked to sign his work, he declined with a laugh, which didn’t lessen the terrible demand for his services. He’s the ultimate in augmentation, reduction, lift, spread or liposuction anywhere — and eight months out! Stevie Ann deserves this attention, she’s so service-oriented, optimistic and non-threatening to anybody’s agenda. What a worthy standard bearer.
Paulo is brilliant, on the verge of a breakthrough to every transsexual’s dream: hips. Stevie Ann will be first, following some refinements in the procedure. Can you imagine, Stevie Ann with vivacious hips? In the meantime, any question of quality or artistry is quelled by Stevie Ann’s nipples. Are they augmented, implanted or donated? But if donated, what cadaver had such splendid nipples? So plump, pert and succulent.
Paulo is a charmer, everyone agrees, with his glowing eyes and Latin manner, a subtle cross between Ricardo Montalban, with the distinguished good looks, and Ricky Ricardo mischief — but with an eerie dash of Ramón Novarro too — oh, yes! I see it! Like in Scaramouche! With those mysterious dark features and deadly playful eyes. Well, Paulo isn’t talking, and you can’t blame him. What magician reveals his magic?
Which is all very entertaining, which is why we’re here. But the greater value is in context; Minna is flesh and blood with a sense of humor, sparkling charm and classic beauty. Ravid is her man, strong, tolerant and equally self-effacing in the clutch. Just look at what a good sport, laughing along at everyone ogling his wife’s nipples. Hmm. Nice.
Later, she tells him softly in a whisper that she’s proud of him for being such a good sport, and also for seeing how so many people admire him and love him and the work that he does.
He blushes in the dark and says he’s happy that she’s having a good time and has been able to find happiness herself.
“I am. I have. I have a great time here.” She rolls a quarter turn and speaks up, “I’ll miss it. I think it’s getting close, time to go home.”
A few nights later, in the afterglow of sexual relations Ravid turns through a troubling dream in an old, familiar setting, struggling for air at depth till he gives in to consequences and breathes, as it were, through gills. Mano hovers alongside, terrible and magnificent, till just before dawn, when she rolls and passes, brushing Ravid with her chin whiskers. Is this a warning? Or a threat? Will she open wide on the next pass? She turns back with quivering lips —
Wait! Sharks have no chin whiskers —
and makes her move.
“Nohhhh!”
He can’t tell if his yell is heard above the surface as he bolts through, wet as a man adrift.
The kupuna teach that contact is ambient and often a harbinger. So he ruminates on the stimuli of recent days.
Insight cannot be ordered on demand. So he meditates, sitting still and staring over the bluff and out to sea, as many in the neighborhood do. He sits for ten minutes or forty. Thoughts pass by like birds, till the sky is empty.
Nipples and a tennis pro, a solid backhand, homosexuality — I mean the gay lifestyle — as it relates to personal stuff, to sexual identity, change and commitment and the extremes people pursue to find happiness, even as happiness mutates daily in the land of the free and the home of the brave — like here in La La, where a successful man can become a woman, and for what? Social acceptance? Social altitude? Some attention? Sexual fulfillment?
Well, this is the showbiz place, where every ray of light hitting a square foot of anything comprises a stage or a screen, and stability is a long way from Elm Street and a picket fence... This ain’t the old hometown, but given a fair shake, it’s been a good run. It’s okay to have a household word for a name, once you manage the monster. TV hosts prate over rabid and Ravid, or raving and Ravid, or they call him Rocky Rockulz, testing the temper that has lain dormant in recent years.
Tolerance indicates personal development, no two ways about it. Meditation is good, even if it’s popular in LA, but a man has promises to keep and miles to fly...
Another name caller at the airport is easily ignored, till the unusual voice calling out becomes Richard, who once hosted Ravid at a fabulous cocktail party at the home he then shared with Stuart. Trouble is, it’s Stuart’s house and no longer shared, after all he, Richard, put up with, not the least of which were the scenes a jealous lush could manufacture. Then what? Stuart took up with the cabana boy. “My God, talk about tasteless. And cliché and passé and...oh, by the way...”
By the way, Richard says he’s been meaning to call for the longest time, not that he has any fantasies about, you know, Ravid, but he did think Ravid was so sweet when they met, that he just wanted to be sure Ravid knew about Oybek and his standard seventy-thirty cut.
Ravid did not know, but he understands very quickly. He can’t crunch numbers quite that fast but knows instantly that the stratosphere of personal income and wealth he exists in is a mere suburb of deep space, his rightful domain.
Well, what can he do, complain? Hire a lawyer? Spend ten years or twenty and all the energy a sane person has in trying to retrieve what is his by rights?
“No, no, no. That’s what you pay us the big money for,” Richard intervenes, hawking legal services.
But no. What Ravid can and will do is to express gratitude yet again for Richard emerging out of nowhere to confirm that the time is now. Time for what? Time for things to begin again.
Hey, where is Mano? Even in the asking Ravid glances down on Richard’s toothy visage, feeding up, as it were. Richard confides with soft sincerity that he hates to sell himself short, but he knows he hasn’t a chance with Ravid...
Has he?
Ravid laughs and then laughs harder, realizing that Richard is like a child asking for a lollypop, pull-eeze, then realizing that Richard is serious. He stops laughing on further realization that laughing in Richard’s face is a crueler response than a foot to the chest, which seemed normal, way back when, and may have caused less pain.
Grinning lopsided as a sad little clown, Richard says goodbye and shuffles off. “See you, huh Richard?” Richard doesn’t mean to be funny and doesn’t want to be sad. He only wants what he can’t have, which seems to be a pattern in the showbiz quarter, where few people labor for money or love; they work for the jackpot in dollars or forbidden fruit. It rarely comes, but oh, baby, when it does...
When it doesn’t, the players call it stalking or tawdry sex or failed art. Which is skewed and wrong and most often laughable, though a man watching a friend leave in a busy terminal is grateful for clarity when least expected. Even as Richard shuffles off to Bakersfield or wherever, Ravid hits buttons on his cell.
And he looks down from above at a waterman far from home, treading against the current of human traffic so thick he’s jostled like flotsam in the flow, waiting for his broker’s receptionist to pick up, then waiting to be forwarded to his broker’s secretary, and finally waiting for his broker to take the call. Ravid asks where he’s in the deepest.
The broker enumerates the big holdings, confirming liquidity and return on investment, now projected to average between twelve and twenty points in the next six months, which isn’t too shabby, and I’m glad you called, because we got a...
Ravid orders the sell on the biggest three hedge funds, based on nothing but a dream about a shark — well, not about a shark, really, but starring a shark, who didn’t say anything, because everyone knows that sharks don’t talk, not in words at any rate, but the message was real.
Of course the shark part isn’t shared — only silence is shared, till the broker resists the sell order, asking Ravid what he’s on, because he sounds like he’s on something, not like himself. Then the broker discloses that he’s recording this call for the record, starting now, even as the tidy commission accrues.
Yet it’s only hours before the fall. Freefall lasts five days before the safety nets come out. Billions are lost, except by a prescient few. Ravid avoids loss on his two million dollar asset sell-off, except for the commission, which hardly exceeds dinner and wine with a few close friends and a moderately spectacular view. And no loss in an earth-quaking market isn’t so bad, even if it took a year that was supposed to add twelve percent in value by virtue of being, or twenty percent for being better. Maybe he was better than that, considering that he could have lost one point six.
In the following days he looks for Mano, but she remains hidden, to his relief and chagrin.
And so again, a narrative weaves itself to a finished edge, a wisp or chafe here and there fitting in nicely to the perfectly imperfect artistry of the piece. Connecting to context, tying loose ends between now and what’s ahead via the ever loving moments, Ravid sees, feels and knows.
The aging mother can return to the home of her birth and the place where her days will end, happy at the incredible success of her son, the world renowned marine photographer, don’t you know, happy with her two lovely grandchildren who love her right back and will indeed come for summer work on a kibbutz, not one that stamps forks out of sheet metal but one that grows pears in need of picking at sunrise, which pear orchard happens to be where God spends his sunrise hours as well. Basha Rivka has a special embrace for Minna, because she sees the younger woman’s skill and dedication in mothering, love and cooking. Who knew?
The wife is equally pleased, evolved, as it were, from youthful, mindless and hurtful behaviors to sheer love and loving — and gratitude to the powers that be for granting prosperity, health and fun.
The marine photography is consistently excellent, its perfection achieving new standards, new angles, new drama and communion on each outing. The outings are fewer, but then things slow in general as a body presses toward fifty. Sensory heightening and a beginner’s spirit renewed are enough to compensate for less frequency.
The fan base has leveled in its rate of growth, but who could sustain the steep curve? It grows slowly, steadily, as book and peripheral sales grow too, worldwide. Ravid grants autographs at LAX and can turn a hefty fee at will on a college crowd or a highbrow conference or a liberal bunch gathering to bemoan reef death worldwide. Shelley, the booking agent, advises that they’ve reached the discretionary plateau, where they may choose only the most lucrative or influential groups. Or they can be selective on the odd event with significant spin-off or media, because it’s your secondary market where great performance goes stellar. “It’s all good, bubbela. Isn’t it?”
No, it’s not all good. Among the worst of it is cliché and cultural stereotype bandied like normal language. What a dumb thing to say.
And what a dumb thing to buy. Ravid Rockulz at forty-five, going on forty-six, sits on an overstuffed sofa he bought for eight grand new, though two dozen similar units at the 2nd Coming Furniture Outlet were available in the eight to twelve hundred range, slightly used. Yes, they all had a burn hole here or some cacka there, just like this one did halfway into its first week.
And who needs ninety-dollar khaki slacks, pressed, dry cleaned and spotless, when the twenty-dollar knock-arounds hang in the closet, comfortably wrinkled and just as stylish.
Slightly slouched, feet on the floor, he wonders why he’s wearing boat shoes. I haven’t had a deck under me in weeks, and the tick tock clock measures what’s left.
He wonders what might amuse a man for the balance of a sunny day. Maybe it’s a mood, this unassailable funk. A little dope might change his perspective, but then he’d feel dumb and dazed, leading to a double latte to wake up and three ibuprofens for the headache and the old question: Why did I do that?
So he sits and thinks, as a man in middle age will sometimes do, taking inventory on what matters. He has a talented and devoted wife, money in the millions, even if it’s only a few, two robust children who will take on reasonable personalities sooner or later, the best little dog in the world, a cat who is the love of his life, a satisfied mother, a terrific house with views to match and a...uh... What?
Ah, yes, memory banks overflowing with that certain je ne sais quoi of picking wild tomatoes for dinner and snorkeling the point of Pu’u Olai and on across the grottos, pinnacles and ledges of Oneuli at dusk when the water is flat and sunbeams tango on the reef. He sees himself walking up the road on a blustery night in French Polynesia with a beautiful older woman and going over the rail of a perfectly buoyant boat into a current with a crowd of tourists to make ends meet. Hitching down the road with his dog and drifting the pass at Rangiroa a hundred feet down and pegging two-eighty on a rebreather for the first time on tri-mix. Maybe the biggest cost of success is the loss of uncertainty. What’s missing this afternoon is life as we knew it.
It’s been missing for months now, maybe a few years; it fades so gradually, but who can complain with the wife, the kids, the stuff, the recognition and fan base indicating a legacy? Except that I am here, wild caught, observable in this, my captivity.
Four volumes in five years and a fair run with the pocket guides, reference guides, posters, slogan shirts, photo shirts, photo caps, toys, memberships and calendars has been great — listen to me, talking like it’s over.
Oybek took advantage for a few points. Forty points? Who knows how many dollars? Millions? Who cares with enough money on hand to retire anyway? Not that working was ever bad. Those were the days — sure, you forget the hardship, but still. More importantly, they may form up again.
Trouble is, French Polynesia has quarantine laws, and Ravid will allow no government to subject Skinny or Little Dog to that torment any sooner than he’d let them lock up the kids, what are their names, Leihua and Dustin — no, no, not Dustin. Justin. My son’s name is Justin. The fuck is wrong with you?
But pet bureaucracy is typical of government control. Ravid and Minna can prepare Little Dog and Skinny with three short-term rabies vaccinations and one long-term shot, and then the titer test Fedexed to the University of Kansas to document the antibodies. That and the vaccine against three respiratory diseases gives a six-month window into Hawaii with no quarantine.
Then, piece o’ cake, they’ll hang for a week or two and head back down to Tahiti, where quarantine is waived on pets from Hawaii. It sounds like a push, but what can you do? Never mind. They want to play; we’ll play.
Except for another small detour on the road home. Minna has no regrets and after five years away can still get a job at the hospital — on a shorter schedule now, with the kids. In fair play compensation for her career sacrifice comes the idea of staying — in Hawaii. Because her sacrifice is evident, along with her family begging her to come home, and bring that haole boy went all rich and famous.
Tonight show! Jay Leno! Ho!
Ravid says he can’t return to Hawaii because because. She touches him softly, assuring that he can. Well, it could be worse, and it surely won’t be permanent. How could it be, with so much development now you wouldn’t recognize the place from even ten years ago? Then again, compared to what? It’s actually quaint, compared to LA, and oh, the views.
So Ravid flies to Maui on a homecoming of sorts, coming home as well to the old spirit and back to the old neighborhood, though he sees no familiar faces — and no neighborhood. At least he can still call on the old spirit. He reckons the spot his soulful shack once sat on. Now it’s a mid-range deluxe that came on the market at 8.9 ten months ago, before the mortgage market went huli and the stock market kapa kai. The agent sitting the open house thinks the owner would entertain 8, or even 7.9. “I bet he would,” Ravid says. “I bet he would wine and dine eight. Or six. I used to live here. Before.”
“Fuck, yes,” the agent laughs, recognizing a former salt o’ the earth who’s made it — “Offer him...offer him five, man. Oh, I’d love to take him a five. Oh, boy! Can you imagine the look on his face?”
“I bet you would. Tell me something. This house came on the market at eight point nine. Why wasn’t it eleven point thirteen, or twenty-one point zero?”
“Good question. I can find out if you want me to.”
“Nah. Take him this.” So Ravid feels the power of a lowball in the strike zone at 2.2 with twelve hours to accept. What the hell, that’s hardly a half mil down and eight grand a month, which he can make on one lecture. Monthly might be a bitch, but what the hell. It would be something to bring Minna and the kids back to the old place, sort of.
As Minna packs to leave the glitterati coast of dazzling California, and Ravid puts his affairs in order, which is mostly a comprehensive equipment check including spare parts for backup, Oybek pays a call unannounced, though it is himself who is most surprised. “Wha? Moving? Wha?”
Farewell, if not gratitude, forms up in Ravid’s mind, but it comes out wrong — unless it’s right: “You fucked me.”
Master of the back quote in gaining a few more seconds to think and move, Oybek says, “I fuck you? No. I never fuck you.”
“Seventy thirty? I think I’m walking bowlegged and don’t even know it.”
“That! Is nothing — okay, I fuck you little bit, not too much. Hey, you are a wealthy man.”
“I am not a wealthy man.”
“You never have work again.”
“You mean I won’t need to work again.”
“Yes. Is what I say.”
“Yes. Is what you say. Oybek. Is okay. Okay?”
Oybek shifts for a new approach. “Okay. You are right. I fuck you. Little bit.” Oybek squints, or maybe he’s only relaxing. Then he laughs.
Ravid asks, “You think this is funny?”
“No. Is not funny. I laugh because we have saying — not saying but, you know, swear words: I fuck your sister. Or I fuck your mother. I think is better I fuck you. No? No, is not funny. You must know I am sorry. You are right. You know me from the time you see me. You are right all along. I am bad person.”
“You’re not bad person. You’re greedy. Unfair. Dishonest. Okay. You are bad person. But I accept you. I accept what you’ve done. I can’t accept you as my manager any longer. But that’s okay. We’re leaving. Okay?”
“Okay. But now we enter phase two. You know? Phase two is switcheroo. Thirty seventy. Okay?”
“What other agent gets thirty percent?”
“Why you care? I make you rich.”
“Oybek. Is okay. Thirty seventy. Okay. Get the documents over to my attorney. You know Richard. Okay? We change the cut on all residuals, royalties, benefits and accruals. Okay?”
Oybek hangs his head, not vying for time but to better grasp the approach he came with. “Please. My friend. Come.”
“Come? No. We go now. We go home.”
“Yes. Good. I am happy you go home. Yes. Is good for me too. But you think what I do for you. Now I want ten minutes. Okay, not ten minutes. Thirty minutes. No more. Okay?”
Twenty minutes later, they pull into a nondescript building, meaning uniformly ugly among the light industrial installations crowding that section of town. With no signage, the building gives away nothing but dirty beige. A single door opens beside two sliding doors. Oybek leads with a spring in his step and a jaunty pride as he turns and says, “Voilà! My friend: phase two.”
Dumbstruck as Lot’s wife, Ravid gazes on three thousand square feet of aquariums end-to-end and stacked on steel racks three and four tiers up around the perimeter and in from there. Most of the tanks swarm with movement. Some are conspicuously still. Puffers — segregated into eight species for quicker order filling — hover pectoral to pectoral, gazing out with a collective question: Why? Then comes recognition, and the collective plea to one they seem to know: Ravid!
In one row the tanks are filled with eels — dragons, pencil eels, juvenile snowflakes and giant morays whose sheer size and unrest draw the waterman in as they once did, though this time it is for commiseration and mourning. Oybek prattles on about China and money and more money and so much money you can’t imagine how much, and tanks covering three walls that need big fish — can you imagine the entertainment value of a giant moray eel in your living room, overlooking the lights of Hong Kong! Oh, boy! Especially a big, mean motherfucker like this one!
Ravid staggers, caught on the chin. Oybek rambles over the new package deal, a custom print suitable for framing with every fish. “Hey, sometimes a fish dies. You know what I’m trying to say? All people die, sooner or later. Fish too. Okay? So, maybe it won’t die for a long time. Or even a short time — like the fish you had for lunch. Hey! You keep the picture out of direct sunlight; then maybe you don’t feel so fucked in the asshole, you know? I mean, they still got the picture! Hey — we can frame it for them if they want. It’s another margin, and they pay the freight!”
The entire top tier is yellow tangs.
“Hey. Look this.” The second tier on two walls is fifty tanks, ten to twenty flame angels in each. “Look. Each one forty-five dollars. Each one! Okay, I got idea. Custom print from original fish guy, one hundred dollars, get fish for free! You like?”
Ravid is speechless. Personal paralysis blocks a response to the crime before him. Out of a low-lit cubicle steps a young Chinese man with a practiced, non-committal smile. “Hello.” He gives no name, offers no handshake or business card.
The young man has seen Ravid’s gaze before, so he turns to Oybek with annoyance, perhaps at bringing one of those people into this perfectly innocent warehouse — one of those who don’t understand but give in to ugly thoughts.
Oybek nods. “Don’t worry, you. He will love. You wait.”
Ravid turns and walks out. He looks inside Oybek’s car to see if the keys are in the ignition. No. And the curbstone is bolted to the asphalt. He can manage a fifty-gallon trash drum, however, and is amazed yet again at the strength a shot of adrenaline provides. Into the windshield and onto the hood, the drum speaks. Too spent to lift it again, he kicks the door panels to boost the body shop estimate. They’ll never total it on a few measly dings. It’s a fucking Bentley for Christ’s sake. Let ’em mask and paint.
Then he walks home, or the first few miles anyway, till fatigue and a cab take over.
Within the week Oybek lets a few close friends in on his heartfelt decision — via an exclusive interview in Variety — that he’s taking leave of the production end of the wonderful world of showbiz, because he misses the creative side. He plans to dive more and take up photography, because he thinks he’s seen the magic down there every bit as much as the next man and thinks he can capture it as effectively too, with one dramatic difference, which is the point of view a seasoned producer brings to the creative process. “Can you imagine how much cleaner the work will be without the burden of translation? As an artist, I will be communicating directly with the medium. I have a few ideas I’m very excited about.” ...Can imagine you cleaner the work...
So Oybek flies to Papeete and takes the ferry to Moorea and greets his old friends warmly, except for Hereata, who is cool — not hip but aloof and defensive. After all, he left her behind on a broken promise that he waves off, promising that he is here to make good. How good will he make it? Just you watch, he’ll make his magic in a little while, after a visit to what he loves best and what the world is waiting to see with new vision. He wants to try this amazing new equipment, which will produce the very best that anyone anywhere has ever seen, as you will be the first to see.
Moeava grumbles, mustering the boat in late afternoon; it doesn’t matter for whom, or how many crumpled hundreds are in his pocket. Moeava has a trip tomorrow and two women to serve tonight, which service includes the trash, sweeping, laundry and general clean up. The two women save the fantasy stuff for themselves, unless he’s so tired and stoned he can’t keep his eyes open — that’s when they like him and want him to perform, which seems devious and unkind.
Oybek plucks the bills — here, three hundred — and gears up on the dock where his baggage sits. Why not? Slipping into the water off the end into ten feet, he cruises out to the drop — what, fifty, seventy yards.
Oybek carries his very first camera and housing — a deluxe rig with a nine and a quarter inch dome port, two strobes on double elbow arms, synch cords, remote switches and a load of what he calls “other crap” that will surely sort itself at depth. He’s aware that his four power switches, one on the camera, one on the focus light and one each on the strobes, must be turned on. Beyond that, they don’t call it automatic for nothing.
Oy, fuck! No, Oy-bek. Ha! Just checking — lens cap off. Ten four, Walter Bilko, over and out. And down. Glug glug glug. Fish guy my asshole. Move over fish guy. Big fish guy is here.
Oybek’s underwater photography career is as spectacular as he knew it could be but far shorter-lived than anticipated, beginning, culminating and ending in three shots. The first shot is a murky silhouette with haunting familiarity as Mano approaches, impromptu and insistent that she and Oybek do lunch.
The lunch is not fois gras but foible au gratis for an aspiring waterdog. The paltry fare is hardly filling for Mano, who has a bad rap for eating people when all she really takes is a taste, to see. Most sharks attack in murky water, by mistake. They have excellent vision and know the menu by heart.
But as any crew will attest, shit happens, especially with sharks, especially with a big, old, hungry mama like this one. So Mano takes a leg at the knee as Oybek retreats, expertly composing, focusing and fulfilling his artistic promise, or fleeing for his life with a death grip on his camera housing. In either event, he squeezes here and there in panic and nabs the perfect predator profile in another amazing rendition of the electric moment between life and death, open wide, for shot two.
Mano has the good taste to chomp the lower leg precisely at the tendon and ligament joinery for perfect closure. Oybek’s many friends and staff will attribute this cosmic cleave to good karma. The Cedar Sinai specialist will admit that, “I couldn’t have amputated this leg any better than that shark did.”
Oybek will confide to the doctor that the lost limb is in fact on hand, in storage — don’t worry; it’s cold.
The doctor will be nonplussed; this and many other severed limbs come to him for miracle surgery as seen on TV, after resting on ice in a cooler for most of a week. The doctor shakes his head and begins to explain. Oybek waves him off —
“No, no, no. I know you can’t put it back. But I want you see for me what will be wery waluable to know...” That is, if the severed limb shows any signs of tumor growth, because that will support the prevailing theory of divine intervention by the Spirits of the Deep. Direct ramification on secondary markets here may be profound. The doctor will ponder Oybek’s cosmic salvation briefly before taking a call confirming a tee time.
Meanwhile Mano has the culinary discretion to discard the appendage, recognizing the taste, but then she continues, out of character, to approach Oybek for another go.
What’s got into her?
Oybek’s second stroke of luck is making an offering to the higher power, a behavior perhaps learned in LA. In this case he offers the camera in the housing, along with the strobes, cords and all that other crap.
Mano accepts.
In coming weeks Oybek will learn that many veteran divers of olden times, black coral divers, spondylidae collectors and all that lusty genre of ocean harvesters with no limits on their take, would carry a broomstick or other rigid object to offer an aggressive shark, because sharks hate bones, and biting a hard object may discourage further foul behavior. Oybek will claim this knowledge as his own, saying that experienced divers know these things, good thing, because he used it to save his life. He will make the claim repeatedly on the late night circuit, promoting his life and times as illustriously told in his new book, Oybek, The Chosen One, with the amazing cover shot of Mano’s molars and tonsils, shot three.
The housing, strobes and other crap are mangled to an amusing mess and show up on the back cover, photo by Oybek. Who else? Most amazing, however, is that the digital data card was intact, enabling both art and art history in the making. Which is all good, as they say, and maybe even gets no better. Oybek opts for a peg leg rather than a modern prosthesis. He fiddles with an eye patch in the mirror — left eye, right eye, strap straight, strap cocked — and thinks he’s got it right in a blend of Moshe Dyan and the Hathaway shirt guy, which actually blends his own singular intensity with a dash of savoir faire, kind of, if you can give one motherfucking red cunt hair of willing suspension here. Really, people.
He retains a professional firm to measure market response on the peg-leg/eye-patch combo. The stats are comprehensive but less than conclusive, suggesting that the most profitable pursuit may be the peg leg for a year or two, with a revival round of interviews to coincide with the sequel, Oybek Is Back, at which point the eye patch will renew interest. Plenty of time to come up with a riveting back story on the loss of the eye — which will also convert to performance, given proper crafting.
With interest fading for what’s-his-name, the fish guy, Ravid’s peripheral sales gradually dwindle. Calendar sales cease. Book sales stall on a failure to renegotiate, but a small, independent book publisher offers Ravid a fifty-fifty partnership on subsequent editions with new plates, if the waterman is willing to keep going.
He is willing, and it’s still more money than a dive leader would bring home. Oybek makes a few bucks but then fails on his bid for a round-two revival as the glittering fish market, so to speak, gets competitive. Noah Greene takes the showbiz name of Rufus T. Watermelon and makes a splash with his racist innuendo, but he is black, after all. The jury is out on that one, with the media waiting for leadership — self-correcting between black and African American. But then Oprah features Rufus T, asking her viewers, “You want fish pitchers? I got a fish pitcher for you.” She then tells them to buy the book, Fish Pitcher from Way Back, for a riveting, blockbusting, change-your-life, no-holds-barred account of a black man from South California making his way in the alien north country — Seattle, that is — where he gets on as a fish pitcher in the open market downtown. The sequel anticipates Rufus T as a catcher — with his hands! And these salmon run slick! At twenty pounds or better!
Ravid turns the TV off and wishes he didn’t have one but knows he always will as long as he can and that it’s a better addiction than some. He longs for the olden days, when a nice skull webbing would correct this unholy mockery of nature’s noble beasts. Or slow it down, maybe.