1 THE BEGINNING
In 1962 the United States of America and, indeed, the whole world,
faced an existential threat to our very existence! Yes, yes, I know, that’s
redundancy in the extreme, but this threat, this danger not only to our
lives but to our very way of life, was so imminent, so gut-wrenching, so
horrifying, so unthinkable, that surely I can be excused a little alarmist
redundancy, not to mention the exclamation mark.
Those of you who were alive at the time, or those of you who know your
history, or those of you with even just a vague memory of a hint of a rumor,
will immediately think I am writing about the Cuban Missile Crisis in
October of that year when President John F. Kennedy, through disciplined
and calm wisdom, saved our bacon bits—or tempeh tidbits, depending on
your dietary requirements. Not that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev didn’t
find a spark of humanity within his bald Communist cranium and
contribute to our bullet dodging, but Kennedy was the hero in our books. You
may well be thinking that this boiling pot of Cold War stew is what I’m
writing about. But you would be wrong.
I’m writing about something you and historians and even podcast pundits
have never heard about, something that was far more existentially existential
to our continued existence than a mundane nuclear holocaust. And you have
never heard about it because those who survived the calamity-that-almost-
was entered into a conspiracy of silence. No—let me rewrite that, ‘conspiracy’
is too jaundiced a word. They entered into a pact of silence for fear of causing
mass hysteria, and worldwide panic, and general consternation, and rampant
indigestion.
But now is the time to finally reveal the truth so long hidden from you.
And now is the time to speak of the hero and heroine (if I may not be too
politically incorrect in using the feminine) who in the summer of ‘62 not only
saved our bacon—but the whole damn pork enchilada. And only I can do that
because only I know the whole story.
And as it is a story of black and white, put on your black and white specs
and take a good look as we...
...enter deep into a dark swamp thick with bald cypress trees
standing on their cypress knees as murky and mucky water flows
around and all the cormorants and whooping cranes and anhingas
have run, flown, or darted away; all the ducks have ducked underwater, and even the bald eagles and various hawks have lit out for safer
territory as monumental hand-to-hand combat between a good-
looking, well-muscled, male human hero in khaki clothes and an
ugly, giant, two-legged lizardman of some exceptional martial skill,
disturbs the usual peace of the swamp. A high-pitched scream is
heard as a gorgeous blonde with perfect makeup and a blouse
missing some buttons, fears for the life of the male human she may or
may not have had carnal relations with and, not incidentally, her own
life as well while clinging to the knee of a bald cypress tree. Finally,
the male human hero gets the upper hand and manages to push the
lizardman into a shallow part of the swamp with strange gases
hovering close to the water’s surface. From his belt, the hero grabs a
flare gun and does not hesitate to send a flare straight into the water,
right between the lizardman’s legs. Hellfire explodes all around the
lizardman. It is a fire that one knows is red and yellow with white-
hot heat, but here it is only illuminated shades of gray. The lizardman, confused by the searing heat and pain lets out an unearthly
howl as he slowly cooks to death. The good-looking, well-muscled,
male human hero in khaki grabs the gorgeous blonde with perfect
makeup and a blouse missing some buttons, and holds her tight as
three-dimensionally looking letters in two dimensions fly up from
nowhere and smack against the screen spelling out ATTACK OF
THE LIZARDMAN and THE END and MADE IN HOLLYWOOD
U.S.A.
The broadcast of this early 1950s horror flick being over, the small
studio at Chicago’s WAGO-TV station bustled and burst with color
(colorful set, colorful language from frustrated technicians) as they
switched to live to finish this episode of Vivacia’s House of Horrors. The
beautiful Vivacia herself—pale of face framed by long raven’s wing
(what else?) black hair and wearing a slinky and slick ebony satin
dress with a plunging neckline (or décolletage if we want to bring a
little lift to the thought)—lounged sensually on her huge, round bed
with blood-red silk sheets (the producer had gotten the idea from
Chicago native Hugh Hefner). She looked directly into camera
number one and held up what looked exactly like a barbecued lizard
on a stick and said in her deep, silky voice, “Oooooooo—lizard
flambe!” With a ravenous, anticipatory smile, Vivacia parted her lips,
brought the lizard flambe to her mouth, and took a generous bite full
of sexual subtext. She chewed, savored, swallowed, then said, “I
love it!”
A snort and a whimper came from her side as a little hunchback
man with a twisted face bounced on the bed next to her. “Would you
like a little bite, Grossie?”
Grossie, snorting and panting, made it clear that he would, and so
Vivacia let him slobber onto the reptilian delicacy, licking it like a
popsicle, as she said, “Well, it’s time for me to close up the House of
Horrors for the summer, turn out the lights, and scream to my heart’s
content. But do tune in tomorrow for our first ever rerun of that masterpiece of waterfowl fright, Devil Ducks from Downunder. It’s
Australian, mate!”
The red light on the camera dimmed, and the director—somewhat
dim himself—shouted, “All right everybody, another classic in the
can.”
Vivacia relaxed as Grossie collapsed into her décolletage while
snorting out his signature snort. “Arthur! Please!” Vivacia said as she
pushed Grossie out of her cleavage and flat (sort of) onto his
costume's cotton-filled humpback.
Vivacia shimmied herself off the round bed just as her agent, who
was ironically named Al Hart, came up and handed her a cup of
coffee, which she took with gratitude and downed with alacrity.
“Baby, sweetie, that was great! I still have chills running up and
down my spine.”
Vivacia looked at her agent, a genial man who was never seen
wearing anything but a three-piece gray suit draped over his skinny
frame, and, one inferred, lifts in his shoes, as well as a gray fedora to
keep Chicago’s wind from sweeping across his bald pate. “How is that
possible, Al?” Vivacia asked in her deep, silky voice. “I didn’t know
you had a spine.”
“Are you kidding, kiddo? It’s steel, I tell ya, steel.”
Vivacia handed her now empty coffee cup back to Al and left the
studio floor to walk down a corridor to her dressing room. “Yeah,
yeah, sure.”
Al, who actually did not have an office in metropolitan Chicago,
but rather in a nearby suburb in a room over the garage of his “ancestral home,” quickly put down the cup and reached into his inside coat
pocket and withdrew with pride a folded document and hurried to
follow the mistress of the night.
“Well, maybe this will prove it to ya, baby. I got your new contract
right here. And I got you a great deal. Three years, no ifs, ands, or
buts. A 2.3% raise over those three years. And your dressing room
repainted.”
Vivacia continued down the corridor, shouting back, “Al, I told
you, no way!” And when she spotted the nineteen-year-old “associated producer” of Vivacia’s House of Horrors down the corridor just about to
dash into editorial, she shouted forward, “GEORGE!”
At the deep-voiced, silky, yet pointed command of the vampire
woman, George stopped midway through the editorial door. Vivacia
came up to him and held the “lizard-on-a-stick” with the generous
bite out of it right in front of his fuzzy face. “What the hell did you
fashion this ‘lizard’ out of?”
“Ah...” George’s eyes darted right, then darted left, then up,
possibly in supplication to a supernatural being for protection, then
down in avoidance as his mouth formed a feeble smile and he barely
articulated, “Lizard.”
“Youuuu bastard,” Vivacia said with a chill in her voice and revenge
on her mind.
“Gotta go!” George dashed into editorial and quickly closed the
door.
Vivacia began down the corridor again. “If my mind weren’t
already made up, that would have done it!”
Al quickly followed. “Listen, please, this is a great deal! It’s the highpoint of my career!”
Vivacia stopped, turned, burned a look into Al’s pinpoint eyes, and
said, “Al, getting a second client would be the highpoint of your career.”
Vivacia and Al came to the dressing room of one KATHY
ANDERSON (as it said on the door) and entered. Vivacia immediately
went behind an ornate but faded dressing screen that once resided in
Chicago’s once-great Studebaker Theater, and Al plopped himself
onto a worn and patched couch of no known style.
“Kathy, please, please, don’t do this to yourself. You turn down a
deal like this and the word goes out—and I hate to put it in these
terms, but it’s a cruel business—the B.I.T.C.H. is dif-i-cult. You’ll never
work in this town again.”
Vivacia’s deep and silky voice countered from behind the screen,
“Oh, don’t give me that, Al. This isn’t network prime time TV. This is a cheap local station, late-night, creature feature show, for Christ’s
sake. And I’m sick and tired of being a sex goddess for geeks!” she
exclaimed as she tossed her black dress over the top of the screen. It
landed on Al’s lap. “And who cares about Chicago anyway? There’s a
reason why they call it ‘The Second City.’ I’m a well-trained actor, Al. I
studied at the Actor’s Studio. In New York, Al! You know, the First
City! I should be plying my craft on Broadway. I should be doing plays
by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, even this new guy, Albee.”
“Broadway’s dying, baby!”
Vivacia’s deep and silky voice, laced with venom, came as a curse
from behind the dressing screen. “Al, don’t ever say that again!
Broadway will never die!”
Al was unrelenting. “TV’s killing it, kiddo!”
“Oh, Al, please...” Vivacia had vanished. Somebody else was
suddenly pleading, in a voice neither deep nor silky. Out from behind
the screen came Kathy Anderson. In truth more scamp than vamp, an
all-American blonde girl of leading cheers and making homes and
occupying the day and night dreams of countless young American
males who didn’t deserve her. Except, of course, Kathy wanted more.
“You have to understand,” she finished, standing in a warm light
wearing a simple nice skirt and a white blouse and holding Vivacia’s
black wig at her side like a large dead rat, “I am going crazy playing
Vivacia. I was meant to be Ophelia. Joan of Arc. Hedda Gabler. Not a
vampire woman who eats lizards on a stick!” Kathy gestured broadly
with the wig in hand, like a nightmare pom-pom from hell.
“But—”
“It’s all settled. First thing tomorrow I’m taking off. I’m going to
stop and see my parents for a couple of weeks so you can send my last
check there. Then it’s New York! The stage or die!” Kathy grabbed a
framed photo of her parents from her dressing table and her oversize
purse, stuffing the wig into it.
“Ah...,” Al said.
“Hey! I paid for this wig. Remember? It wasn’t part of the last deal
you got me!”
“No, I just thought you would want the dress too,” Al Hart said
offering up the dress from his lap.
“Oh, yeah! I paid for that too!”
Kathy snatched the dress from Al’s hand then marched to the door,
turned back to face Al with a bright smile, and a cheerful “Bye!”
accented by a little wave of her hand. Then she turned and left,
canceling this episode of her life. ============================================================== GET
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