Post-Modern Sleaze: Chapter 1
“Sometimes I think I’ve gone through so much pain that my brain has tried to helpfully proceed with a lobotomy itself, and that’s why I come off as a worthless airhead,” thought Olive as she climbed into a pathetic man’s lap. Two women behind her were arguing over the phrases “infinite flavor” and “infinite hunger.”
She could feel the man staring at her. She turned her head, annoyed.
“So, have you read the book?” he asked.
“No?” Olive spit out, unapologetically.
She really didn’t want to push through another head-splitting conversation with her co-worker after their last one ended in an argument about whether Adam and Eve were real or not. She was still calculating in her brain all the ways to prove humans evolved from fish, but this new topic he prompted, she could not ignore.
“Why should I? It’s ancient and outdated. Also, he’s an atrociously terrible person. This ad campaign is only to make fun of him.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“It’s obviously satire. I mean…Carl’s Jr? He would be appalled. Half of the book is about how terrible consumerism and media is or whatever. Like the Year of the Whopper thing.”
The man scoffed.
“Obviously, you haven’t read it. It’s more about the dangers of media and television.”
“Oh, is it really,” Olive said blankly, one eyebrow raised.
“I’m actually confused. Do you think we’re here to like celebrate Wallace?” Olive asked, not bothering to hold in her laugh.
The man’s eyes drifted left, away from her.
“Well…despite his other issues, I respect him. It’s why I took this gig.”
Olive looked around, cringed, and sighed. Behind her, the two women were trying to frame them correctly into their camcorder. Olive had only seen cameras like that in old movies her dad showed her. She sighed impatiently, uncomfortably dressed in a matching bright blue underwear set with frilly tool lining the edges. Pointed-toe heels and a garter holding up thigh-high stockings in the same shade brought the ensemble together. Her white button-down shirt she once had on was now covered in condiment and grease stains and thrown over the dark wood desk behind her.
“Okay, let’s get going. We’re already way behind,” one of the women said to the crew.
Olive felt a tug on one of her side bangs.
“Okay, I heard!” she exclaimed.
“Those are some great roots you got going on there. You on that pill too?”
Olive touched her blown-out, platinum-blonde hair.
“Who isn’t? So? Accutane used to do the same thing. Are you one of the Christian freaks that think changing your DNA is immoral or something?”
“You know, David used to be a Christian,” the man said.
“Not really,” Olive muttered. “I don’t think a faithful Christian would sleep with like thirty of their students, but then again, they totally would.
“Ah, and here you are. Number thirty-one.”
“Ah, yes, but I’m sitting on a loser’s lap instead.”
“So, you would fuck him.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Well, what makes him better than me?”
“For one, he’s more interesting, older…that’s about it.”
“He wouldn’t like you. He didn’t respect girls like you.”
“Oh no, too bad he’s dead.” Olive rolled her eyes. “If you forgot, I’m a high-paid model doing this because I want to. I want the revenge on this shitty guy… let him roll in his grave for Christ’s sake. And you know another thing about him is—”
“You didn’t even read—”
“Of course, I read the fucking book! Jesus!”
“Action!” one of the women yelled.
Olive panicked, forgetting the play-by-play actions of the script and began running her hands over the pathetic man’s arms and chest with fake lust in her eyes. She knew the people wouldn’t buy this. She took this job to be shocking. She began thrusting herself onto the man…her mind erasing the people behind her and transforming the classroom into a place where the walls held secrets. Lastly, she knew she had to turn the actor in front of her into the real deal.
“My final frontier of madness,” she thought. “Nineteen and thirty-something? I’ve been in worse, I guess.”
“Sex & Candy” played in the background. Both Olive and the man didn’t recognize the song, but it made everything feel more real to them. Olive was jealous all the man had to do was sit there while smirking and looking slightly aroused. She walked up to the chalkboard and tried to slightly flirt with him, while writing the most complicated geometry equation she could off the top of her head. Something about the Temperature Paradox was pulsing through her brain. She worried the heat and nerves were beginning to make her look shiny. Wallace pulled her back onto his lap. She laughed while lightly slapping him. He spun her around in his desk chair, and Olive laughed again as she threw his un-graded essays up in the air. She felt she was in some creepy human puppet show with their soundless talking and loud music masking over the scene. She turned her face towards him, and he took it in his hand. Their faces became so close she could have kissed him as their foreheads pressed together. Both wore evil smiles.
When she pulled back and refocused her eyes on him, the year was 1998. She was so happy and sad at the same time that tears could only float on top of her eyes. Olive knew exactly who she was and exactly where she was.
“Your friends,” she said, scorning Wallace on the makeshift dance floor, encapsulated under a large rubber, plastic tent patterned with red and white stripes.
“C’mon, they know already know I’m a pervert,” he said, hand still grasping her face as they swayed.
“And they know I’m your student?”
“They know enough to know.”
“God, how did we end up here,” she said to herself.
“I get it. Just a few months ago, I was trying to prod you out of my office hours. Wasn’t I.”
“You didn’t try hard.”
“Unfortunately, not.”
He moved his hand from Olive’s waist to her hand and prompted her to twirl around. It was ungainly, and they both laughed. Olive felt much younger than nineteen. She felt thirteen, if not younger…at some middle school dance. At her eighth grade Valentine’s dance Olive begged her honors math teacher to dance with her for some reason despite her constant fear at the time of looking weird or uncool. She for sure thought he was her first love and was convinced he found her sexually attractive. She’ll never know. Unfortunately, he did.
Most unfortunately, Wallace took advantage of this mutual attraction, unlike the math teacher, so here they were—the most disturbing yet sexiest couple at the 1998 Illinois State Fair that 2046 Olive was creating in her poor lobotomized head. However, the energy of the event was buzzing. Colored lights from carnival rides and game tents were flashing and sparkling, and children danced with lobster hats on (or whatever) inside the tent. Dusk was approaching.
“Why are the paintings on carnival rides so sexual?” Olive asked.
“Hell, if I know…well, I do. Look at the people who are carnies. What’s at the top of their priority list?” he proposed.
“Yeah…it seems more complicated than that, though. You should write something about it.”
He just laughed and rolled his eyes.
“We’ll see.”
Olive was wearing the same long button white shirt as the one on the desk. It wasn’t stained but a perfect pure white. It was opened, revealing her black turtleneck and white tennis skirt. She looked at the white bandanna that he wore around his head and wanted it to be on hers but knew how corny it would be to match him, especially in this way. She lifted her hand from his shoulder to reach out and touch the fabric.
“Cut!” the main director yelled.
“I’m starting to think this teacher/student relationship is just too bizarre,” the other lady said.
The director shook her head, annoyed, and paged through the script as the two actors tried to return to reality. Olive felt as if she would never be the same after this one stupid, low-budget gig. She moved her hand from the pathetic man’s head and slapped it over his mouth the second she saw his lips move.
“Don’t say anything,” she gritted.
He held his hands up, powerless. She released him, and he ate a soggy fry out of the paper bag on the desk with his eyes still on Olive’s exhausted face. She was still perched on his lap but with her elbows rested on her knees and hand over her forehead. “This can’t be real,” she muttered.
She got up, pulling her underwear down to cover herself as much as she could and walked over to the classroom windows, almost tripping on a tennis ball on the way over. The windows overlooked a high school football field. Her slight reflection in one disgusted her even if she looked conventionally beautiful. She tried to avoid the morality and purpose of her life, subconsciously questioning through her brain. “How is our society so perverted that the word innocent has sexual undertones?” She imagined herself on that field… in a gymnast or cheerleader uniform, throwing a baton high up in the air, mimicking the bone the ape throws up in 2001: Space Odyssey. It would come down sharp and fast, and when she caught it, she would be back in that tent. The song “Monkey Gone to Heaven” from the directors’ embarrassingly well curated playlist faded out as her vision became clearer.
Instead of a baton, it was Wallace’s bandanna. And he seemed genuinely annoyed.
“What the fuck, Olive?” he said.
She laughed anxiously.
“Sorry.”
“Out of all the times you could have done that, why do it now?”
His mood shifted to a lighter energy as he snatched the bandanna back and started to re-tie it around his forehead.
“Sorry. I wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing.” “You don’t look bad without it,” she added.
“I look like an English teacher.”
“You kinda are…”
“God, don’t remind me.”
“Let’s go walk around,” Olive suggested. She was anxious about how the family crowd perceived them so magnetically close in the tent.
“No,” he said, pulling her close again by the waist, fingers brushing over the bare skin between her top and skirt. “Just dance with me a little longer.”
Nausea which had been hanging over Olive since they’d arrived at the event, ramped up suddenly, and she hunched over, looking at the concrete.
Olive jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder but was too busy hurling on the classroom tile floors to see who it was (she assumed her lousy co-worker, as the directors didn’t seem to be concerned for her well-being in the slightest since she arrived.) Still hunched over, she looked out the window when her putrid ritual ended. She swore she saw a grim reaper figure in the distance on that field with long, dynamic red hair coming out of its hood. It carried a twirling baton in its left hand and a long scythe in its right. She looked behind her, and sure enough, “actor of the year” was looking at her concerned.
“I want to fucking die,” is all she could get out.
“Olive, darling, it’s only going to be a little longer. Are you okay? How is your outfit looking?” the director projected in her direction.
“Spotless,” she said, wiping her mouth. “Let’s just do this.”
Olive’s co-worker just patted her shoulder. She was mildly amused at his continued promise to keep his mouth shut as well as the overall lack of confusion from everyone. Unsurprisingly with her luck, the moment was broken.
“I’m sorry. Am I that gross?” pathetic man said.
“No...no,” she responded.
“You’re beautiful,” Olive said.
The nausea had faded, and the concrete was fair food vomit free. She was still in a hunched position as she looked up at Wallace at this rare angle. She giggled at her mortifying but honest observation. She felt a pat on her left shoulder. He seemed phased for a second, but his signature smug face came back soon after.
“And you’re an enigma. You, alright?”
“Yeah, I felt like I was about to yak for a second.”
“You’re nervous around me during the most unusual moments.”
“I’m always nervous,” Olive said, standing up straight.
“Me too.”
“No, you’re not.”
Olive continued trying to sway with him as if nothing had ever happened.
“Did you know the song “Monkey Gone to Heaven” is about trash pollution? Olive said.
“Hm... I didn’t think so.”
“Do you really care about, like, the future problems America’s trash will cause?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I didn’t think so,” Olive smirked.
He brushed one of Olive’s side bangs out of her eyes.
“How is your hair so blonde? It looks almost white sometimes.”
“I don’t know. It really has always been this way.”
“That’s amazing.”
She gave him a little push. His mouth was far too close to Olive's ear for her to be comfortable with her sanity at the moment.
“You’ve never commented on it before.”
“I didn’t think it made for impressive conversation.”
“It doesn’t. Do you know how many frat guys or even old men at the bars have mentioned it?”
“Old men, hm? So, I’m not the first one you’re after.”
“I’ve definitely mentioned this before. And it’s not like I get with any of them.”
“We have brought this up at like two a.m., yeah.”
He took a firmer hold of Olive’s waist, and she did a little hop so he could lift her up. Her gleaming expression casted a ray of pure sunshine down on Wallace’s face that he could easily shield.
Pathetic man put his hands on Olive’s waist, trying to get her to stand up straight from her vomiting stance. She glared, slapped him away, and stood up to face him.
“You’re not that gross, I guess,” she mumbled, shoving past him to sit back on the desk.
“Okay, now we’re going to try Olive feeding the burger to you,” the main director addressed to him.
“What? That goes against, like, this whole idea. I’m confused,” pathetic man said.
“So are we,” both directors replied in unison.
“But something isn’t working right,” one of the women replied.
They set Olive back in her co-worker’s lap, where he sat still on the teacher’s desk chair. She stared down at his New Balance 530s and traced her eyes from them to his khaki pants, worn navy blue sweatshirt, glasses, and white bandanna. It transferred over perfectly to the “real” lover she had in her head. She shivered and hugged her arms around her bare body, slowly tracing her hands up and down. A crew member set a fresh cheeseburger on the desk, which was noticeably not from Carl’s Jr. and suspiciously looked covered in some sort of clear, gluey paste to bring out its unappealing nature even more.
“Ha!” Olive exclaimed. “Glad I didn’t have to eat this fake thing.”
“We promise the chemicals are safe,” the main director explained.
“Now straddle him, while holding up the burger to his mouth.”
“Straddle me,” said Wallace.
Olive was still lifted in the air, and after a short hesitation, wrapped her legs around him. He moved his hands to the back of her upper thighs to support her, while Olive wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling like she was a toddler again in one of her relative’s arms after winning a baton competition. He spun them around; she wanted to kiss him but refrained.
“What are you doing? We didn’t say start putting your lips to his mouth?”
Pathetic man jerked back from Olive’s advances. She was also startled.
“Sorry…I was confused.”
“And make sure to take a large bite from the burger, you. Really dramatize it but in a more masculine way.”
He nodded, even more confused than before.
“And…action!”
They finally made it out of the tent. Olive felt safer for some reason surrounded by more people out in the open at the event. She was feeding a piece of her elephant ear as big as her head to Wallace.
“I thought you said only obese people eat these,” Olive laughed.
“You are quite a brutal regime tonight,” he said, wiping cinnamon sugar off her face.
“Just stating the facts.”
“I can’t believe that old fair essay is your favorite thing I’ve written. I hate looking back at that stuff…especially after the book, you know. Messes with me.”
“Yeah, but I really like your old essays.”
A few seconds of silence passed.
“How are you eating this?” Wallace questioned as Olive took another bite of the ear. “Don’t they put you on some totalitarian diet for modeling.”
The spell was broken, as her co-worker tried to improv his way into having Olive bite into the chemical cheeseburger. She put her hand out, blocking it, and shook her head.
“Cut!”
“We certainly can’t have people rejecting the food in the commercials,” the director said.
“I’m sorry, but I’m getting stressed out about how much I’m eating here! I mean, I must have consumed like an entire burger while filming today, which is against my contract.”
“This doesn’t even taste like real food. Chill out, Olive,” pathetic man said.
“I don’t care! Why are we not even close to being done yet? I mean, what else of my clothes do I have left to take off?” she exclaimed.
“Olive, honey,” the director interrupted.
“Your underwear,” pathetic man muttered, amusing only himself.
Olive expelled a frustrated screech.
“You are so lame!”
“Olive, I think one day of eating like this will be fine. Your team will understand.”
“Remember, Kate Upton was the old Carl’s Jr. girl, not Kate Moss,” pathetic man added.
Olive glared at him.
“Hey, it was an innocuous question,” he said, putting his arms up.
“It’s one night. You forget I have a younger metabolism than you,” Olive smirked.
“You’re right. You are so thin. That’s probably doing you some good,” he gestured at the elephant ear, then pressed his fingers on her bare hip bone curiously.
Olive jerked back some but smiled at him.
“What are you doing this weekend? I want to see you before class Monday,” he said sternly.
Olive got the familiar sad rush that started in her stomach whenever she realized she liked Wallace way too much for whatever they were doing to be safe.
“Um, I have to leave for a shoot Sunday, and I have cheer practice tomorrow, but can I come over tonight?” “I miss your dogs,” she added to soften the sharp wanting. His crappy Midwest house felt much more exciting than her dorm… more seclusive and secreted from her college life.
“You have a rather peripatetic nature to you, Olive.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Wallace checked his watch… probably wondering if he should say goodbye to his friends, who were most likely still pontificating in the tent.
Pathetic man checked his nineties watch that went along with his get-up, which he hadn’t realized was also frozen since that time.
“Yeah, it’s already six.”
“No, if it was six, the sun would be up. Dusk was like thirty minutes ago,” Olive said.
“What the fuck is dusk?” he said.
“We have plenty of artificial lighting. Do not worry, guys,” the director said.
“Wasn’t really worried about you guys, per se,” said Olive.
“Wanna snort a line with me real quick?” pathetic man asked, exhausted.
“Are you being for real?” Olive said.
“Yeah… picked some up from the producer at my last Planet Fitness shoot.”
“You’re more useful than I thought,” Olive replied already leaving to retrieve a credit card from her large tote purse.
Olive glanced inside the giant bag she tugged along with her. It had a substantial number of toiletries and an extra pair of underwear in it, which she planned in case she got unfortunately lucky tonight. Honestly, nineteen-year-old Olive’s imagination didn’t really think through the logistics of who they really came with or why they were openly there together, or how they got back (if you can tell.) All she could imagine was they stopped at a gas station on the way back to his house because she got nauseous. It was the kind that had human-trafficking help numbers on the back of the stalls and slot machines in the corners. “I bet she’s quite the heartbreaker,” one of the local gamblers said to Wallace before the pair headed out. They made it safely back to Wallace’s disheveled house. She was still new to the environment. His large dogs slightly accepted her presence, and she still had only slept on his living room couch.
It was times like this when Olive crossed his sacred threshold of walls and un-calculated vulnerability where he was the most distant and cruel. “Well, you know where everything is,” Wallace addressed her as she threw her white button down on his couch. “We both have to be up early tomorrow, I’m assuming.” Before retreating to his room, he glanced over her body in a very honors math teacher-like way that made Olive wish she had worn a bra that night. She felt like throwing up and throwing something breakable at him. She assumed he would at least offer her the Harvard tennis t-shirt she usually slept in at his place.
Olive noticed the disapproving glances from the two directors and crew as she snorted cocaine off the back of her hand, even though she counted this as a selfless act for them.
“Do you want us to keep this shit up or not?” she interrogated them while wiping her nose.
Hailey Paetzel is a Texas-based writer and scholar attending the Savannah School of Art and Design. She is a guest fiction columnist for Delude Magazine. You can find more of her work here.