Every Hollywood star told the same origin story and I knew it by heart. First, their belongings were packed into a beat-up old car and driven (despite the fact that it was humorously incapable of the job) to Los Angeles. Next, they lived in a cheap motel and worked a comically difficult blue-collar job while they hustled. Hustle, the verb, was used in a way which offered no tangible details but connoted a superhuman work ethic that erased the uncle, aunt, father, mother, brother, grandma, grandpa, sister or spouse who was the producer truly responsible for their success.

I flew to LA for my unpaid mailroom internship, worked in the (not funny; not blue collar) Bank of America on Wilshire as a teller and my only connection to Hollywood was through my Grandmother who ate dinner (she thinks) in the same restaurant as Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman.

My story was not the story. I did not belong.

The mailroom was a callback to my middle school dances: I hovered on the perimeter and watched more attractive people have fun. I excelled at the real work of sorting and delivering mail but floundered at the far more important job of networking. The goal was to convince someone with juice that I was destined for a meteoric rise. But aside from my dusty black suits (raided from my father’s closet and cut to seventies’ tastes) and my three hundred pound mass, there was nothing meteoric about me.

It was hard. My cohorts were promoted regularly, seemingly on the sole basis that they were complete, insufferable assholes. My friends back home were living real, adult lives: they had homes, careers, children: I had a heat rash on my entire body.

To survive, I returned to the comforting delusion that my life was a movie. I shunned reality’s insistence that being incredibly ill-suited for a job did not, in fact, guarantee success, but strongly predisposed things to the opposite and recontextualized my continued failure as a plot device designed to bolster my inevitable triumph. I operated under the assumption that if I could just hit rock bottom, I would shuttle out of Act 2 and into the glorious success of Act 3.

And, somehow, that was exactly how it happened. Simons found me as I was drafting a resignation letter. He peeked his head into the mailroom, laughed and said: “I told Rex you’d be fucking perfect.” I was ninety-nine percent sure an insult was nestled within the compliment but I followed along. When Rex gave me the same probing stare and sighed, “Fuck. You really are perfect,” the ninety-nine percent turned into one hundred; but I didn’t care. Rex, in the midst of the fifteenth sexual harassment lawsuit of his career, had become a financial liability, which meant something actually needed to be done. I was that something. I was hired as his ‘assistant’ but my real job was to ‘stay fucking ugly’ and act as an ‘anti-viagra’ or ‘human scarecrow.’ The inner circle hoped my presence would deter him from pursuing any more assistants/cleaning personnel/visiting family/living women who happened to cross his path. The plan, sadly, worked, for the better part of two years, until a ‘blue balled’ Rex, furious at my ‘virgin funk’ threw a script at me, missed, and hit Simons’ receptionist in the back of her head. She was concussed. I was brought in on the NDA, which included a promotion to Junior Agent and the culmination of my hopes and dreams.

#

I am in a cab, driving away from downtown for nearly an hour before I arrive at The Kingsway. A children’s clothing store and comic book shop flank either side and only the modest marquee, which still reads ‘Waterworld,’ distinguishes it as a theater. It’s quiet elegance stands at odds with the chaos I have unleashed upon it.

My cab drops me several storefronts away, unable to penetrate the wall of distributors which ooze into the street like a fungus sprouting from within The Kingsway. The words he’s here pass through the crowd as I arrive. I feel like God until Randall’s meaty hand cups my shoulder. He waves diplomatically, says earnest “Hello’s” and violently elbows his way through the crowd.

“My man,” Randall says, as we arrive at the front of the theater. The doors are closed and it is quiet. He is still underweight from his transformation and displays a truly gargantuan head; he has the proportions of a tulip. “Can you–”

The doors open and the quiet gives way to a roar as distributors funnel in.

Randall pulls me closer.

“Can you smell that?”

I sniff. I smell my sweat; tangy like an onion and his cologne, ripe like a magazine ad.

“I–”

A scuffle breaks out: two distributors try to jam themselves into the last available seat. The loser of the battle trudges sullenly into the aisle and sits on the floor. Randall watches it all with glee.

“It’s legacy,” Randall says and grasps me behind the neck. “Me and you, buddy. We smelled it. Not Rex, none of the other yes men. You believed in me.” He lets me go, but I am immobile in the tractor beam of his gaze; he holds up his hands and pushes them towards me like he is presenting a gift. “Now, I believe in you.”

His belief is a gift. I take it in my hands, feel its weight. Calm spreads from my palms; my back straightens and a smile forms. The fear of failure that was my baseline since childhood, gives way to a certainty of success. “You can count on me.”

“Good. Because the guys at CAA, they’ve been yapping at me throughout this all. And out of loyalty, I’ve demured but…they assured me if they were handling this, the absolute minimum would be fifteen.”

“Huh?”

“Fifteen.” He smiles warmly and then vanishes into the thicket of distributors. There are no seats left, no room in the aisle, so I jam myself against the door to the lobby. I check my pulse, which I must do wrong because it comes in at two-hundred-and-fifty-two, but Randall returns, and the room falls quiet. He stands beside the screen and says a few words of introduction, during which he uses the word ‘Brechtian’ four times, my pulse hits three-hundred, and the movie starts.

The version I watched began with a somber rendition of the same Debussy song that accompanies Rocko’s death. Now though a muzakky version of Axel F. plays. I ponder this mystery until I am elbowed in the ribs by the woman beside me who says, “Answer your fucking phone.”

I push through the lobby doors and answer.

“I want it.” The voice evokes sandpaper run over gravel and, unfortunately, I recognize it. His name is Adrian. Rex calls him ‘Ratfuck.’ His reputation for buying indie films is superseded only by his reputation for being the biggest piece of shit floating in Hollywood’s toilet bowl. “And if I don’t get it, I’ll kill you.” He laughs and my panic attack finishes its foreplay and begins to fuck me.

Gravity, emanating from some source in the center of my chest, collapses me inwards. At the same time, I am yanked outwards like a puppet whose strings are pulled taut. I recall a piece of advice given by my childhood psychiatrist, Dr. Sheinkman, who said in the event of a panic attack I must activate my five senses, ground myself.

I lower the phone and try.

Sight: the teenager manning the popcorn stand has a constellation of acne peppering his forehead.

Smell: the urine-like stench of synthetic butter fills the room.

Sound: Ratfuck screaming, “…make me wait a moment longer and I will end you. Tear your limbs off one by one, ground them into a fine dust, snort it, shit it out and then, for reasons I don’t even understand myself, eat the dust despite the fact it’s now mostly my shit…”

I am not grounded.

“I need fifteen,” I manage to say, a herculean feat.

“You’re out of your fucking mind. I can go as high as eight.”

“Randall needs fifteen.”

“Fuck Randall. You’re taking eight. Let’s sign.”

The phone slips from my left hand whose fingers have gone numb. I am certain this is still the panic attack but, in my panic, I am equally certain I am dying of a heart attack. I funnel my energy into a desperate attempt to waggle my fingers, which I am certain will prove I am not dying. I cannot waggle my fingers but, by some miracle, Ratfuck interprets my attempt as an advanced negotiation tactic. “Fifteen.” I hear from the ground.

My right hand still functions enough to grab the phone. “Really?”

“Absolutely. I buy it for eight and we tell the trades it’s fifteen. It’s a win-win.”

And I come to palming the wall. A set of warm hands grips my shoulder and I am certain Ratfuck has sprung forth from the phone, to eviscerate me in person.

“Dude.” It is only the teen from the popcorn stand. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I say.

“Do you like, need an ambulance?”

“Who are you talking to?” Ratfuck, still audible, from the floor says. “This is my deal. No bidding war.”

“I’m calling an ambulance man,” the teen says.

“No.”

“Don’t you tell me no,” Ratfuck screams.

“You’re like, dying,” the teen says.

“You’re signing?” Ratfuck is apoplectic.

I shove the teen away, pick up the phone. “Fest,” I scream, for reasons I don’t understand.

Ratfuck screams back, “You’re a piece of shit!” but lets out a resigned sigh. “You’re not bidding me out of this. Fifteen. The deal is done.”

And, it isn’t a heart attack after all. The panic slides off me like chains from a prisoner; my hand regains function and I twirl my fingers in delight. “That’s it?”

“It’s a deal. You have my word. Now, go tell Randall. I want him to be part of the press release.”