Starlet

They always ask me why I do it.

But you look like such a nice lady, they say. Proper, respectable. Suburban and prude, they mean.

They sit dazed in the passenger seat as I tell them the hourly rates, the permissible acts, the available holes. Their anxious excitement is obvious, pathetic and not endearing: they work their wormy lips and swallow with dry mouths, they clear their throats and bite off nervous giggles, their eyes glint in the amber streetlight. Their expansive foreheads sweat and they wring their hands and they ask,

But why do you do it?

And I tell them I do it for you. My girl. My starlet.

I show them your pageant photo. The one from two years ago, the shiny bygone era before the accident. You were a cotton-candy fruit of a girl, pastel peachy and ringleted, plump and not a bit precocious. You were in three commercials. You won eight thousand dollars at the state fair talent show. You were on a billboard for a water park.

She would have been a star, I tell them. Wasn’t she something?

God, but she could’ve been something! If not for… well. I don’t tell them how it happened. We’re trying to negotiate a sexual transaction, after all, and blood and gore are not fetishes I cater to.

She’s adorable, they say, nodding, sweaty fingertips slippery against the glossy photo paper.

Then I tell them about the medical bills.

So expensive, but so worth it for you. Our financial ruin. The second mortgage, the dried up royalties, the lost wages, the lost potential. The never-to-be success of our starlet! They nod with sympathetic commiseration when I tell them about your feeding tubes, about the prevention of bed sores, about the lifeless floppiness of your comatose body.

It isn’t a sexy monologue, an invitation whispered behind a bitten lip — but a sob story opens the wallets just as easily. They coo their sympathy and then they give me the money. The nice prude suburban lady has proven that she swims in the depths of depravity for a good reason.

I count the cash in front of them while they stare at your pageant photo, their expressions full of sadness that disgusts me, with appreciation that validates all my decisions.

You’re still admired, even though it’s the you of the past. Look at them look at you, imagining so many dead futures.

Look at them look at you! Fame and adoration: they can still be yours, you fleshy puddle, you formless bag of organs. Is the starlet still inside you? Your eyes sometimes open; they fix upon opposite walls, they dry to a matte finish. Does the starlet see out of them? Does she know how loved she is? Does she know about the sacrifices we make for her?

The men always forget the tragedy of the tale somewhere along the drive. Thou shalt not let another’s pain diminish thine own quest for pleasure; such is the first commandment of the selfish world and thus my business prospers. Their excitement grows. They babble and posture, faux-confident and emboldened while their shirts darken at the armpits. They overshare, spilling pervy introspection like so much mental sweat:

I have a few friends who might be interested in a, uh, group session, if that could be a possibility…

I would love to have a video of our, um, encounter, but I don’t know where I’d hide it from my wife.

You look a little bit like my sister. Your daughter looks a lot like my niece.

I tried this ten years ago but I was too nervous to go through with it. But you’ve made me feel so comfortable.

They can say whatever they want. They can do whatever they want, for a price. I don’t care about their fetishes or hang-ups. Our preferences are curses we spend our lives trying to justify, settings we can’t reach the dials for. If I let them realize their fantasies, their money allows me to keep you alive — so I repress the pain and the guilt and the worry. It is my duty and so it must be nothing to me. We must all earn our way through the world.

I make them blindfold themselves before I take my exit, and I drive in a few circles through the subdivision. No one needs to know where this business takes place.

I lead them into a makeshift parlor, allow them to freshen up, have a drink and steel themselves. And I make my own preparations, and I remind myself that I do this for you, for us, for our family.

At these moments, I am glad you are beyond comprehension, ignorant of what I do and thus free of judgment. I am glad that I alone shoulder the burden. Relieved that you cannot feel the weight of the men, the aching itch of unwanted friction; you cringe from nothing, pure and unembarrassed.

I envy you, brain-dead child. Breathing tumor with my DNA.

A clump of my own twitching tissue, an exiled piece of my body. Simple reactive mass. A cutting. A propagation. You are more me than you are you. There is no you left.

Whatever is done to you is really only done to me. The origin. The witness.

They knock on the door when they’re ready. I let them into the room, and I step out of it.

I channel your vegetative dissociation to get through the encounter. All I picture in my mind’s eye is you. The old you, smiling with the certainty of future fame, hale and hungry for your inevitable adoration. I imagine you rosy-cheeked, curtsying with pleasure as they - the nameless collective, the man in your room - gasp and admire you.

Does she know how loved she is? It may be kinder for her, for you, not to know. To never see the way in which your dreams were realized — but they worship you, pageant queen, three-commercials starlet!

And it can lead to real fame, if we work hard enough. The camera is always on.