Candy Everybody Wants

‘GAY!!!’ Willie added, eager to take part in whatever this repetition game was.

‘I would hope,’ Jayson began, trying to hold back his anger, ‘that you are not making a derogatory judgment on my sexual preference.’

Jayson had decided that he was homosexual while watching a Phil Donahue episode on the topic eight years earlier. He’d come home early from kindergarten that day because he’d gotten a stomach ache from worrying about whether his Hee Haw overalls were too outré for his peers. Jayson had been sent home from school fairly often over the years, including the first day of kindergarten when he’d become inconsolably agitated that the school wouldn’t change their spelling of his name from ‘Jason’ to ‘Jayson.’ He felt very strongly that he needed the extra flair to set himself apart from the other, obviously less special Jasons in the class.

The mustachioed men on the stage of the Donahue program fascinated Jayson. He wasn’t sure exactly why he felt such a kinship with them. Maybe it was how they deflected the barbs of angry audience members with jokes. Or maybe it was their outfits–no piece of which could be found in the Sears catalogs that Jayson was forced to shop from. Or maybe it was just that they were celebrities–put on stage in front of an audience–for no reason other than the fact that they existed. In the deepest corners of his soul, Jayson also knew that he deserved an audience. And it would be his lifetime mission to find one.

When the credits began rolling on that defining Donahue episode, the five-year-old Jayson had breathlessly shouted his revelation to his mother, Toni, who was out smoking on the back deck.

Ma! I’m a homosexual!

And precocious! Toni shouted back, smiling at him through the sliding glass door. I’m a precocious homosexual!!! Yes, you are, Butter Bean. Yes you are.

The many men who had played the role of Jayson’s stepfather during the last decade generally hadn’t been as accommodating about Jayson’s self-discovery. So Jayson agreed to a pact with Toni to keep this news on a need-to-know basis. She’d patiently explained to Jayson how others’ jealousy of his uniqueness might sometimes, perhaps, manifest itself as anger. And/or punching, spitting, and murder.

As a result of this conspiracy, Jayson could count on his fingers how many people had been informed of what Donahue called his ‘sexual preference.’ There was his mother, the twins’ parents, Willie, Phil Donahue himself (via an eloquent eight-page thank-you note), his elementary school principal, his middle school principal, a trucker he talked to once on a CB radio, the woman behind the pie counter at Pick N’ Save, and, of course, Trey and Tara. Jayson and the twins knew almost everything about each other, being born within a few months of each other, and having spent their entire lives divided only by a fifteen-foot-wide strip of driveway. At the urging of both sets of parents, the twins and Jayson had been keeping Jayon’s ‘special difference’ a secret from his classmates. Though now, as Jayson and his peers began suffering the afflictions of puberty, the secret was becoming harder to keep hidden.

Jayson stood up on the dock defiantly, and indignantly puffed forward his leaking water balloon chest.

‘For your information,’ Jayson continued, ‘early Shakespearean plays were cast entirely with men and boys playing all the female roles. And I’m sure that Shakespeare, were he alive today, would completely concur with me that action plus passion equals huge goddamn ratings.’ He took a calming breath, before continuing. ‘Which, I think we can all agree, is precisely what we’re after here.’

Trey sighed.

‘Besides. Who else is going to play Amethyst Carrington? Tara’s busy playing Patricia in this scene. I mean, I’m sorry that I’m not Lola Falana, but you’ll just have to make do.’

Trey spit into the water and watched the gob sink.

‘Alright. Whatever. I’ll do it,’ Trey finally said, breaking the impasse. He stood up and resignedly climbed back into the pedal boat to make his entrance. Jayson exhaled his relief.

‘Who the fuck is Lola Falana?’ Tara muttered to no one in particular, moving to her scene starting mark.

‘Okay then! Willie, we’re ready. Aim the camera over here,’ Jayson instructed. ‘Willie?’

Willie was preoccupied on the far edge of the diving dock inspecting the insides of a 100 Grand candybar wrapper he’d found floating in the water. Always unbearably hungry, he was scouring the inside of the wrapper for stray smears of chocolate. He licked at a piece of brownish algae.

‘Willie. Buddy. Put that down. We gotta roll,’ Jayson said again, tapping his husky younger brother on the head.

Willie lumbered his doughy frame into a standing position, tilting the dock at a precipitously unsafe angle.

Jayson pressed the record button on the Radio Shack cassette tape recorder which captured their dialogue.

‘…And…ACTION!’ Jayson called, taking his mark next to Tara.

Lorimar Productions was going to love this scene. It was probably the most intricately choreographed shot thus far. Episode One was good, no doubt, but it takes time to really get into the characters’ development. Even Three’s Company didn’t find its ratings legs until after the first season.

Jayson worried that synching up the accompanying cassette tape soundtrack to the 16mm home movie film footage might be a bit tricky for the producers. So to help them, Jayson held up a card to the camera at the beginning of each film reel that instructed them to: ‘Press Play On Tape Recorder…NOW.’

‘I have had quite enough of your lies, J. B. Ewing!’ Tara said, opening the scene. She didn’t deliver the line with quite the level of haughty anger Jayson had envisioned. But as lukewarm as Tara’s performances generally were, there was no stopping once a scene was in progress. Jayson had no editing capabilities, so each scene was filmed in one take, sequentially, picking up wherever the last scene left off.

‘Well then maybe you should take a break…IN THE LAKE!’ Trey shouted.

After Trey shoved her, Tara executed an impressive wind-milling plunge into the lake and convincingly thrashed about in the water, improvising some sputtering heartfelt expletives. As he stood on the dock watching her ‘drown,’ Trey theatrically ‘wiped his hands clean’ of her. It was a little over the top, but Jayson was pleased that Trey was exploring the boundaries of his thespianism.

‘Sayonara, BITCH!’ Jayson shouted in his best Amethyst Carrington falsetto.

All that remained was the kiss.

Suddenly, from the shore behind them, came a barrage of shouting. Adult shouting. The group on the dock turned en masse–even Willie with the camera.

‘Sayonara, BITCH!’

It was Jayson’s latest stepfather, Garth, whom Toni’d met earlier in the summer in the audience of a waterskiing show in Waukesha. He was standing in the driveway of their split-level ranch, which was painted lilac with eggplant trim and shutters. He had a suitcase in one hand and the middle finger of the other hand raised defiantly back toward the house.

‘Congratulations, motherfucker. You finally got SOMETHING up!’ Toni’s voice shouted back from inside the kitchen window.

All four children stared at the domestic explosion occurring onshore. There was another brief volley of expletives before Garth climbed into his Chevy Citation and roared down the driveway in reverse, severing the sideview mirror from Toni’s chartreuse Ford Maverick.

Jayson had been convinced this marriage would last at least through the summer. It had seemed more promising than the other eleven. Twelve? Jayson couldn’t remember the exact number. His mother, Toni–for all her free-spirited ways–had one deep-seated remnant of her strict Catholic upbringing. She would never fool around with a man until she was married. Since Toni also had a deep-seated devotion to fooling around, she found herself in front of a lot of altars. Generally not Catholic, obviously.

After Garth’s car sped noisily out of sight down Lake Labelle Drive, Toni emerged from the house. Jayson always thought she looked her most beautiful when she was angry. Her heavy black hair would be tousled from being pulled, and her squinting green eyes flickered with brilliant rage against her pale skin. She wasn’t rail thin like most of the women on television–Mrs. Kotter, Laverne and Shirley, Vera the waitress on Alice. But she wasn’t fat either. She had the full curves that most men truly wanted–more than the waifs they were fed on TV. She was, she always said, ‘half Italian, half Russian, half black Irish, and all business.’

From their spot in the middle of the lake, Jayson, Willie, and the twins watched her march down the driveway, pick up the amputated mirror from her Maverick, and hurl it into the lake while letting loose with a primal scream. The chartreuse glinting mirror arced overhead and landed in the water with a phloomp only ten feet away from Jayson and his cast.

Only when it landed did Toni notice Jayson, Willie, and the twins watching from their floating island. Her mood changed instantly, as was her style. ‘Fleeting’ was the only constant trait of Toni’s personality.

‘You kids ready for hot dogs?’ Toni called out to them cheerily. ‘I got the kind with the cheese inside.’ She planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head with incredulity. ‘The cheese is on the inside! Can you motherfuckinbelieveit?!?’

Willie was still filming. He’d learned the hard way not to stop until Jayson yelled ‘cut.’ Jayson wasn’t sure how he was going to work Toni’s domestic explosion into the plot of this episode. But he’d find a way. It was good material. Very natural.

His most immediate directorial concern was finding an ending for the unexpectedly prolonged scene.

Jayson turned back toward Trey, rose on his tiptoes, pulled Trey’s head toward his own, and kissed him as the original script had called for.

The water breezes kicked up as the sun set behind the houses on the far shore of the lake and Jayson lost himself in his first ever kiss.

Never confuse yourself with your character, Jayson reprimanded himself silently, repeating acting advice he’d heard Bette Davis offer on Johnny Carson.

‘Annnnnd, CUT!!!’ he shouted at Willie, reluctantly separating from Trey. The twilight sky was streaked with purple, and clouds of mosquitos began swarming around them.

Tara coughed and sputtered as she pulled herself out of the water and onto the dock.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she hissed at Jayson, ‘if you’d made out with Trey any longer, I would’ve fucking drowned for real.’

Trey didn’t say anything. He pretended to be concentrating on gathering his belongings for the pedal boat ride back to shore. Jayson ignored Trey’s discomfort. The only thing that mattered now was finishing the Dallasty! episodes and mailing them off to CBS.

Soon enough Jayson would be on his way to Hollywood. He would escape all of this small town nothingness. The petty domestic dramas. His insufferable unpopularity. The strangers who would stare at his strange clothes and strange brother and strange mother in the A&P.

Don’t touch that dial, he thought to himself. The newest, greatest season of Jayson Blocher will premier right after these messages.