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For Stephen Cooke, Age 30 I was a low-level producer on a local Los Angeles daily TV variety talk show in the early seventies. The best part about my job, beside the chunk of cash that they paid, was getting to interact with the stars that were our guests on the show. I did the pre-interviews. Top 40 musicians and low-level movie and TV stars aren't as interesting as they'd imagine so I'd have to talk to them until I could find something they could speak intelligently about. It was a struggle, but remember this: everyone can talk about food, passionately. Paul Lynde, the gay center square of the Hollywood Squares, was a frequent guest, and he was the best. He was so flippant and ironic that he could say incredibly vulgar things in a coded flitty way that made everyone happy. He only let us down once. Hung-over worse than John Holmes after the seventies, he came on one Thursday in such a mess that his typical slur sounded way more like a lisp than normal. He ended up only talking about bananas for five minutes. We sent him home and extended the cooking segment by a side dish. On the way out the door he licked my ear. Drunk and famous, he could do whatever he wanted. Ike and Tina were on the show four times. They did any paid media they were offered, or at least that was their reputation. Tina and I clicked right away and Ike didn't mind me because after out first meeting I introduced him to a friend of mine that wrote music for commercials. My friend hired Ike and earned him thousands and thousands of dollars that I assume rode the magic pipeline from Ike's wallet to his nose. I don't know what Tina liked about me. Probably that I was a new man that she could talk to in public without risking getting her ass beat. I also have a confidential, gossipy air that celebrities love to be fooled by. If I had to choose sides, like anyone, I would have chosen Tina, of course. She was as hot as a marathon runner's balls. I would get a hint of wood by just making eye contact. Ike could see the way men were attracted to Tina and it just seemed like another thing he built into his life to drive himself nuts. He loved to be angry. In a way the sweet crush I had on Tina probably just fed his anger habit, gave him something to agitate his urge to justify rage. Like most people, I need to have a real crush on something all the time, requited or unrequited, or I'm pretty miserable. The way I thought of Tina warmed up life in the desert for me. And Ike allowed it, I think No one likes to admit now that everyone liked Ike, somewhat. He was a committed and focused performer and demanded that of everyone around him. I think the excitement and focus of being pissed at something made him come alive. He had to play angry because that's just how he lived. He threatened our hairdresser once, saying she just about clipped his ear. All of us, including Tina, knew it was because the hairdresser wouldn't fuck him. When Tina would come in with sunglasses on, black eyes poorly hidden like a bald spot, we would all tell her to leave him. "Where would I go, Pete?" she asked me. "You can stay with me, of course," I whispered like a man whispering out loud to a picture in a Playboy magazine. "You don't know him," she kept repeating. And I was glad that she was right. So when she did come to stay with me right after a huge fight she had with Ike in Houston, I was scared shitless, of course. But I was also titillated as a dog wrestling with a friendly houseguest at the mortifying prospect that she would come stay with me. She had called me in the middle of the night from a hotel room that she couldn't pay for. I was the only man whose phone number she knew. I wired her some money and a plane ticket, and had a car pick her up at the airport. I called the cops anonymously from a pay phone to find out what I could do if Ike came for her. They said I didn't have to let him in at all, but they could only do something if he hit either of us. "What if he beat the shit out of her in Houston?" I asked. "Well, call the cops there." I knew I should probably get a hotel room because if Ike ever came to my house, I couldn't call the cops because of all the cocaine that was everywhere. I didn't even know where it all was. I imagined myself wandering the house with a straw clearing out the last specks, but I wasn't prepared to do that until I was almost completely out. A testament to the power of cocaine: the main reason that I ultimately did not get a hotel room was because I was sure Ike or someone would break into my house and take all my coke. I waited up till 2 a.m. for Tina. When she walked in my front door she looked awful, as bad as a burn victim in some parts of her face. I hugged her and kept telling her how sorry I was. "I'm not sorry," she said. "He got his, too." I hugged her again and got scabby blood on my cheek. The show wasn't in production so I was home the next afternoon at 1 p.m. when she woke up. She came out of my bedroom, which I had given her in favor of my couch, and she had a plan. She was going to the Scientology center. She had run into one of her childhood friends on the road and the friend said Scientology had saved her life. So Tina was going to go to them and save her life, too. I admired her courage, but declined the invitation to join her in favor of doing coke and sitting by the pool. As she left, I watched her walk down the driveway and thanked God that Ike could never bruise her figure, which curved tightly and fully like the Santa Monica Mountains. The car I called to drive her around that day scooped her up at the corner, and I thought: I don't care how expensive she is; I'm keeping her, at least for a while. Then I did some coke and sat by the pool alternating between swimming and reading a Harold Robbins novel in fits. Tina came back home right as the sun fully set. She was upset. Scientology wasn't going to save her life. Some of the doubts that had been placed in her and others about Scientology's financial motivations had been agitated by their unwillingness to give details about how much things cost. The Scientology representative they assigned to her was a bossy older man. He told her that the personality test they gave her said that she didn't listen and needed someone to tell her what to do. Something had flipped in Tina and she was not about to go along with anything that made her scared or dependent again, especially if it cost money. When Tina walked in I was watching a tennis match on TV and sipping a martini, having switched to alcohol at around 5 p.m. "Love, I'll tell you all about it," she said. "Just let me shower." "Sure," I said. I didn't care. I was wasted. I was fading in and out of sleep when there was a pounding at the front door. The shower was going and the knock was angry and forced. I shrank into the couch. "Open up!" It was Ike. I didn't respond. More pounding, and then he just walked in. Tina hadn't locked the door. If he had a shotgun I couldn't have been more scared. "Where the fuck is she, Pete?" He rushed towards me. He was wearing a cape of some sort and his face looked fucked up, almost as bad as Tina's. "She's in the shower, Ike." "Fuck man, you just sell her out like that? How do you even know I knew she was here?" "You followed her!" "You don't know that, man!" He didn't know whether to kill me or laugh at me. "Go get her," he said. He didn't want to go looking around the house and have Tina sneak out the front. "She's in the shower, Ike." "GO GET HER!" He kicked the couch and somehow it hurt me. I got up and ran into my bedroom. Ike sat down on my couch and finished off the coke I left on a little glass. I wanted to cry as I got into the bedroom and locked the door behind me. I knocked on my bathroom door. "Tina! Tina!" She couldn't hear me, so I got louder and high-pitched. "WHAT?" she said. She was loud and angry. Her voice was filled out like a chorus. I thought of Ike's torn-up face. She must have had quite a bit of Ike inside her, just to stay alive. "TINA." She stopped the shower and I heard her get out. There was a knock at the bedroom door. "What's going on, Pete?" Tina said through the door. "TINA!" Thirty seconds passed. For some reason, Ike didn't knock, Tina didn't open the door and I didn't move. Finally Tina opened the door, with towels wrapped around her hair and torso. She was freaked. "He's here?" I nodded. "Do you have a gun?" "NOOOOOOOO. NO. NOOOOOO." I reminded Tina that I was Jewish and fundamentally ill-equipped to defend myself against Fascists. I felt more suited to grab a bag of my things and jump into a packed railcar. "OK, stay calm," she said. "We'll just stay in here." I sat down on the bed and she came and sat next to me and hugged me tight. "We don't have to do anything. He won't break down a door, he's afraid of breaking his hand." I looked at Tina's face and troubled myself to imagine that Ike was a conservative guy with his punches. A blast of knocks on the door. "Pete, open this fucking door! Open this fucking door right now. NOW!" He kicked the door and it sounded like a tree having a seizure. Tina started to laugh. He kicked again and she laughed harder. "Please, Ike. Please don't hurt me!" I jumped up away from her. I couldn't believe how crazy she looked and how much of her leg she was showing. She must have caught me staring because she began to get dressed. SLAM. A thick, angry kick to the door. I realized it was sick humor that Tina expected me to believe Ike's fear if hurting his hands would keep us safe. "You come out here right now, Pete," Ike yelled, "or I am gonna fuck up your house!" I heard a glass break. I tensed and move to the door. I pressed my ear up and felt him kick the door, then something wooden, like a speaker or bookcase. Tina came out of the bathroom, clothed. "What the fuck are you doing?" she screamed. "He's going to fuck up my whole house." She walked up to me and said to my face, "Pete, if you go outside of this room I will kill you before Ike can lay a finger on you." She stared at me thickly through her dark eyes. I thought again of Ike's face and his bruises, and sunk to the floor. Tina grabbed my hand and pulled me up. Under her direction we pulled the dresser up to the door, and then we fell on the bed. For once since I had bought my house I was glad my room only had small windows with bars. The previous owner's paranoia was paying off. We listened to Ike freak out all over my house and then outside. I prayed that the cops wouldn't come and that Ike wouldn't find my coke. I kept reminding myself where it was hidden, under the cat's litter box. It was like suffering a storm with an older sibling; only the sibling was Tina Turner, so kind of getting off on it wasn't that taboo. We cuddled and waited for the end. When I woke up at 4 a.m. the room was dark. Tina was asleep and in the moonlight she looked perfect, even thought her wig had fallen off. I knocked on the door. There was no sound, no reaction. I hoped he was gone. I lay down next to Tina again, and after relaxing myself in the most time-tested way, I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, my hand was on Tina's ass. I didn't move it; of course, I wanted it to stay there for as long as possible. But after a minute, she caught me. She woke up and slowly looked at my hand and then my eyes and went back to sleep. It was the best thank you I've ever received. You like the story? The drawing? Much more of the same at dosmasks.com. |
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