The Juliette Society

17

Jack’s come home and I’ll do anything for him to take me back, to make him feel he’s wanted and loved, that we’re meant to be together.

I cook him a meal and while we’re eating I search his face for any indication that the ice has melted, because the conversation between us is stilted and awkward. And I realize that just the fact that he’s here, eating something I’ve prepared, is a good sign.

We’re still feeling our way around each other after our time apart. A week that feels like a month. But I’m so happy to have him here.

After dinner, Jack turns on the TV and catches the end of a campaign ad for Bob DeVille. He’s sitting on the couch like he’s watching the last thirty seconds of a football game that’s too close to call; perched forward with his elbows resting on his knee, his hands clasped below his crotch. His whole body tensed and poised. I have my legs curled up under me like a cat and my arm stretched over the back of the couch, exactly where Jack’s body would be if he was leaning back.

This is the closest we get to intimacy. And I’d do anything for that not to be the case. I don’t know if this means we’re back together or not. Jack’s sending out mixed messages and it’s so confusing.

We’re looking at a two-shot of Bob in some sort of factory, listening intently to a young man in a work shirt and a weathered face whose short life has clearly aged him way beyond his years. He looks like he could be Bob’s dad, when he’s probably young enough to be his son.

Bob is looking earnest and nodding sagely. And just in case we don’t get the message, he’s giving that impression in the voiceover too. He says, ‘People are looking for a change. They’re looking for someone who will listen, really listen, to their concerns and their problems and their fears. Someone who will listen, respond and react.’

He says it like he’s reciting Hamlet’s final soliloquy, or reading Moby Dick. It’s epic and intoxicating and you really want to believe him, because he sounds so damn convincing.

He’s talking in soundbites that convey a message so bland it’s inoffensive; so familiar, it’s comforting; something that really speaks to people, goes right to the core of their being, seems to mirror their values; even as it’s saying absolutely nothing – all of those things at the same time.

Soundbites are all well and good but they’re just words on a page that sound real phony without somebody who can deliver them. And Bob’s a natural at that.

He was born to be a politician, the way we think people are born to be artists, writers or sportsmen. But actually that’s a fallacy because people who are creative or who might excel in some particular field, although they might be born with the seeds of genius inside them, are only what they are because they’ve honed a talent over many years, focused in on it completely and made it the very core of their being.

It doesn’t take any particular talent to be a politician, just a particular psychopathology. So it’s absolutely correct to say someone was born to be a politician. They are part of a select breed of individual who thrive on using the quirks of their personality, their cunning and wiles, rather than a specific set of skills. Who’ve worked out the shortcut to achieving the same goal others reach solely through hard work and discipline. Playing the game and cheating the odds to make sure they go beyond.

And I don’t mean to do Bob down, because he’s very good at what he does. He’s one of the best and I totally get why Jack’s so in awe of him.

Bob manages to pull off the trick of seeming city slick and country at the same time – without alienating either one, the city dwellers or the country folk. He speaks from both the head and the gut at the same time. I reckon Bob could sell toothpaste to people with no teeth, shoes and gloves to amputees, and life insurance to inmates on death row. He’s that good.

And he looks the part as well. Bob has what I call ‘politician hair’. So perfectly set and wet and shiny that it looks like it was made in a Jell-o mould. A strand may get loose every now and then but, other than that, it never ever loses shape. Just quivers.

The ad cuts to a close-up and it seems like I can see every pore of Bob’s smooth, tanned, clean-cut face. He looks a little like Cary Grant, who I figure must be the model for the way all politicians see themselves – suave, intelligent, sexy and vulnerable. The kind of person that men want to be, or be friends with, and women just want to fuck.

Bob is delivering his coup de grace, the killer line that’s going to convince voters he’s a stand-up guy, the guy they want to send to Washington to represent them. He’s talking about what he’s going to do for the State if he’s elected. He says, ‘I want the people of this State to see the real Robert DeVille.’

And I have to stop myself from laughing out loud, because no one ever calls him Robert. Everyone calls him Bob. It’s like he’s got two personas: one for the public and one for everyone else.

Bob disappears from the screen and there’s just a caption that reads, VOTE ROBERT DEVILLE, and a voice stating that the ad was paid for by some SuperPAC or other.

His face is replaced by Forrester Sachs, Jack’s favorite anchorman.

Now, I really don’t know what Jack sees in this guy, because to me he just seems like a pompous ass. But if Jack’s at home, he never ever misses this show.

Forrester Sachs is Bob DeVille without any of the intellect or charm. He has a name that sounds like a corporation. And he looks and talks like one too.

All the stuff I said about the psychopathology of politicians? It applies doubly to news anchors. Anchormen are wannabe politicians whose vanity precludes them from entering into competition with anyone else except other anchormen; for more airtime, better slots, higher Nielsen ratings – all the things that really matter in life.

Forrester Sachs has the highest-rated news show on TV. He’s a shark in a designer suit, with short-cropped salt and pepper hair, a jaw so square it looks it was cast in steel, and arched eyebrows that are plucked to perfection; a look that conveys all his key values: sobriety, earnestness, youth and wisdom. He’s a sexless automaton talking straight to camera with all the mock seriousness and import he can muster. But nothing could prepare me for what’s about to come out of his mouth.

He says:

‘Tonight…

‘On Forrester Sachs Presents…

‘We investigate…

‘Bundy Royale Tremayne…

‘The man behind a website that drove four young women to suicide in as many months… ’

My jaw drops. Now it’s my turn to sit on the edge of the seat, even if I can’t let on. Because I’ve never told Jack about Bundy. Never even mentioned him. If he knew about Bundy, he’d have to know everything. And even if I didn’t tell him the whole thing, it wouldn’t take him that long to figure it all out.

In the background, in the top left corner behind Forrester Sachs’ smooth, strangely unlined face, they flash a mugshot of Bundy that some researcher on the show, who’s far too good at their job, has somehow managed to acquire.

From what or where I don’t know, but I can’t imagine he was busted for anything more serious than a DUI or possession of pot because Bundy’s just a jackass, not a major criminal. In the photo, Bundy looks tired and possibly a little bit worse for wear from drink and he’s got hat hair.

But it’s not about how bad he looks in the picture, it’s about how it makes him look. As far as the viewing public are concerned Bundy’s already a dangerous felon. In the thirty seconds it took for Forrester Sachs to trailer his show, he’s already been arraigned, tried, convicted and sentenced in the court of public opinion.

By the time the end credits roll, Bundy’s name will be trending on Twitter with some or all of the following hashtags:

Facebook pages will have been created in his honor, both anti and pro, that bear his name, age, place of birth, city of residence, sexual history, and mugshot. Each with several hundred thousand likes already. Girls will have left their phone numbers and bra sizes in the comments section. There will be as many open death threats as there are words of encouragement.

Bundy’s an instant villain, an instant celebrity, a bonafide folk hero. His brand has gone global and it all seems so very wrong.

Bundy’s being vilified on national TV and he deserves it. He’s a jerk. Plain and simple. Even if I’m more angry at myself because I should have seen him coming. Just like all these girls should have seen him coming. But they aren’t here any more to talk for themselves and say what really happened. Instead, they have Forrester Sachs to talk for them. An anchorman who can spin their stories and their tragedy into ratings gold.

‘Twenty-two-year-old Kirstin Duncan felt she had no choice,’ Sachs intones. ‘Her one night stand turned into a nightmare from which she realized there was no escape.

‘A nightmare that lead her to take her own life.

‘But before she did, she made this video, to let the world know her side of the story.

‘And expose the sexual predator who made her feel like there was nothing left to live for.’

They run the video, without any commentary or voiceover. And I have to say, it’s pretty damning. Kirstin doesn’t go as far as naming names. But she makes it pretty obvious. Who pushed her into it. Who was responsible.

Bundy.

The video is shot in Kirstin’s bedroom. Through the webcam on her laptop. She’s sitting at her desk and, behind her, everything is white and pink, and My Little Pony, and either fluffy or lace. It looks like a child’s bedroom that’s been outfitted with no expense spared.

But a child’s bedroom inhabited by an adult.

She’s all made-up and wearing her favorite clothes. She looks really, really pretty. So innocent and sweet. She looks like someone’s daughter. Not someone’s one night stand. She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And try as I might, I just can’t imagine her mouth wrapped around Bundy’s penis and his semen lying on her tongue. It just doesn’t seem right. Which is the whole point of this little exercise, I guess.

It’s a silent video – in the age of the internet and the smartphone, as if talkies were never invented – with a Nickelback song as the soundtrack. Kirstin holds up a series of cards that she’s already prepared from a pile in front of her. These are the things that she wants to say, that she wants the world to know. These are all her secrets. Written neatly in black marker pen – all caps – on eight by ten pieces of white card, albeit with no regard for grammar, punctuation, or spelling. I wonder how a girl could reach her early twenties and still be writing like a ten-year-old. And I’d hate to be the guy who had to mark her term paper.

As she holds up each card, she acts out an emoticon that seems like it might be appropriate – as if she’s playing a game of charades, where everyone knows the answer before they see the mime.

She holds up the first card.

And the next:

She gives the thumbs-up sign and a big cheesy grin.

Couldn’t really be anyone else but Bundy.

She mimes a belly laugh.

I THOUGHT HE LOVED ME

I THOUGHT WEED BE 2GETHER 4EVER

She makes a heart with the finger and thumb of each hand, presses it against her chest and grins again.

She shakes her head to mime regret.

She bites her lower lip and nods.

Kirstin shakes her head solemnly.

She frowns and nods her head again – slowly, a can-you-believe-it nod.

She’s given up miming along. Now she’s just throwing the cards up as quickly as she can, because she just wants this to be over. Because it’s really embarrassing airing this stuff in a public forum. Her face is a mask of regret.

It seems like the more emotionally devastating the story gets, the more her spelling fails her.

That’s where the video ends. I think back to the night I spent out with Bundy and Anna, watching him at work, and I decide she’s missing out the details, blurring others, to protect her dignity. Only half of it sounds like Bundy. The really bad bits. And I’m not cheapening what she went through, what she felt she had to do, but the rest of it’s a pretty clear-cut case of cyber-bullying, and who really knows which part was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Forrester Sachs is solemnly recounting Kirstin’s final hours, with all the gravitas he might employ if relating the death of a much-loved head of state. And he begins to intone the names of all the other girls who appeared on Bundy’s websites then ended up dead.

When he gets to ‘Daisy Taylor’ the penny drops. Daisy, the girl who worked with Jack in the campaign office. I’m not sure why I didn’t make the connection before. Maybe because things you see on TV never seem real, never seem to have any connection to your own life. They just seem like all the other things you see on TV that are just pretending to be real, pretending to be about real people and real events.

But this isn’t just about Bundy now, it’s about Jack. I look at Jack, he’s staring at the screen, stony-faced. I put a hand on his back to let him know I’m there, for him and with him. He doesn’t acknowledge me, but he also doesn’t move away. He’s fixed to the screen, because Forrester Sachs hasn’t finished yet. He’s still got a few more nails to put in Bundy’s coffin.

Sachs reveals something else about Bundy that I never knew. That if any of the girls who ended up on his website regretted it later; if they made a complaint, if they begged and pleaded for him to take down the photos, he said he would. But only if they paid him.

Bundy’s full of surprises, said Anna. He sure is.

Photographer. Pornographer. Pimp. Extortionist. All-round creep.

It’s at this point that Jack’s just about had enough. He says, ‘This guy’s a fucking jerk,’ with such vitriol that I’m almost afraid, because I’ve never seen him so angry. I never knew he had it in him. ‘Why are we watching this shit?’

I have to remind him that it’s his favorite show.

He wants to change the channel. I tell him I want to watch it all, because Bundy’s a friend of Anna’s.

‘Anna should pick her friends more carefully,’ he says. ‘Have you ever met him?’

‘No,’ the lie comes to me quickly, ‘but I’ve heard her talk about him.’

If only Jack knew the half of it. If he knew that Bundy tried to turn me, his girlfriend, into a high-class whore, he’d do more than just curse at the TV and try to change the channel.

That’s why he can never know.

The TV cameras have tracked down Kirsten’s parents, Gil and Patty, to say their piece. Gil’s an oil executive. Patty’s a housewife. They’re standing together in the driveway of their mansion, putting on a show of strength, despite being locked in a bitter divorce battle.

‘My little girl would never do the things they said she did,’ says Gil. ‘I’m going to take this up in Congress. They should censor the entire internet. Clean it of all of this filth, erase those images that pervert took of my little girl.’

He pauses, then decides he hasn’t made a strong enough case, and adds, ‘So her little brother never sees them.’

It doesn’t sound like Gil knows what the internet is. He’s an oil executive who’s completely out of touch with the real world, whose secretary handles all his emails and even switches on his computer, which he doesn’t know how to use anyway and just sits there like a large, ugly black plastic desk lamp that makes a lot of noise.

It’s as if he doesn’t comprehend something quite fundamental about the internet: one stupid mistake and it will stay with you.

And Kirstin apparently didn’t know that either – even though she used to spend eighty percent of her waking life browsing, texting, messaging, uploading – which is how she got into this mess in the first place. She met Bundy online, agreed to meet him at a bar. The rest is internet history.

Now, she’s no longer Kirstin. She’s ‘Dirty Blonde Cocksucker #23’ on Filthy Rich Bitches. She’s fifteen million uniques alone during the second ad break of Forrester Sachs Presents. Kirstin has just become instant jerk-off material for several million sleazy guys who would never have linked her face to a name if Forrester Sachs hadn’t done all the hard work for them. Not just in America, but all over the world. Hotlinked and reposted to porn blogs from Azerbaijan to the Cayman Isles. And it’s not just Bundy’s brand that’s gone global, his website spiked so hard that his server temporarily went down and his ad revenue soared.

This poor girl is dead. Bundy’s rich.

Life is so unfair. It really fucking sucks.

But Bundy, he’s gone to ground. He’s disappeared and no one can find him. And because Forrester Sachs can’t get to him for an exclusive interview, his producers convince someone else to talk for Bundy.

Bundy’s mom, Charmaine.

‘After the break… ’ says Sachs.

‘We talk to Bundy Tremayne’s mother…

‘To hear what she has to say about her son.’

During the commercial, I fetch Jack a beer, and while I’m in the kitchen, I call Anna. She doesn’t pick up. I text her instead.

She doesn’t text back in the time it takes me to pull the beer from the refrigerator, so I leave my phone on the counter and lock it, in case Jack wanders in.

I bring him in his beer just in time to see Charmaine standing on the balcony of her beachside condo. The condo that Bundy bought for her. The condo that will be repossessed if he doesn’t keep up the monthly payments – because Charmaine doesn’t have an income of her own. So I’m sure she jumped at the chance to appear on primetime TV to beg for Bundy’s return.

After Bundy was born, Charmaine cleaned up and felt in need of something to fill the void in her life where the narcotics had been. Anna told me she turned to religion, but treated religion like everything else in her life, like being a compulsive shopper or experimenting with different combinations of pills and powders. And now, she thinks she’s tried them all.

New Age, Christian, Judaism, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim.

Every time she found a new religion, she couldn’t quite bring herself to drop the old one. So she added to it instead, adopting new rituals, superstitions and icons. They’ve each left their mark on her person. She has henna tattoos on her hands, Native American charms around her wrists, and a Jesus piece around her neck. She practices yoga, chants, goes to confession, observes the Sabbath and takes the fast. She’s a walking contradiction of God’s word. As if she believes in all religions and none at the same time.

Anna had also told me about Bundy’s dad, Richard Savoy Tremayne, how he took a similar but slightly deviated path. He kicked drugs, got out of banking and set up a self-help group to assist others who wanted to do the same. Without realizing it, just like Kubrick, he hit upon a rich seam of need in the financial sector. His business thrived. Junkie bankers flocked to his door, all looking to Richard for support and advice. The self-help group grew into a sect, made up of former crackhead account managers, heroin-addicted CFOs and tweaker traders, with Richard as their figurehead and guru, and Charmaine at his side. Bundy was raised in the sect, until he reached puberty and started to rebel.

Around the same time, Charmaine briefly converted to Islam and took a Muslim name – Leila. She came to the realization that she’d only married Richard for his name because it so rhymed nicely with hers. So she left him. And he cut her off and left her without an income.

Watching her on the TV, I can tell by the look on Charmaine’s face that she really doesn’t get enough sex, or the right kind of sex. She’s like one of those female office supervisors who’s so uptight and stiff that she drives her male colleagues to distraction, and behind her back, they all say, ‘she just needs a good fucking’.

And they all think they’re the ones to give it to her. They’re probably right, she probably does just need a good fucking. But at the same time, I’m not sure if it’s quite that simple. I think starving yourself of sex breeds an insanity that rots your body and your mind – from the inside out – like syphilis, and eventually it shows on your face, in your skin, your behavior and your entire manner of being.

Charmaine Tremayne has sacrificed her soul for her son. But she’s only agreed to appear on Forrester Sachs to save her condo from foreclosure. What Charmaine doesn’t know is that she’s at a distinct disadvantage. All she knows is that Bundy is missing. She thinks she’s on the show to play the grieving mother, like all the rest, pining for the return of her baby boy. When she’s really there to play the scapegoat.

‘I’m proud of my son,’ says Charmaine. She must have had a few drinks to steel her nerves before this because her eyes are a little glassy and her diction’s pretty shaky. ‘He’s a businessman. A self-made man. He’s a success.’

‘He’s a sex predator, Charmaine,’ says Sachs. And the words ‘sex predator’ roll off his tongue so beautifully that he was probably up all night rehearsing how to say them with casual indifference, just a dash of righteousness and no apparent malice.

‘No,’ she says, ‘No.’ Like she’s not quite convinced of her denial. If we could see Charmaine’s feet now they’d be unsteady.

‘He drove those girls to suicide, Charmaine,’ says Sachs, and he’s looking down at his notes nonchalantly as he says it, because he knows he’s so fucking good at this that he could do it in his sleep. And I wonder if someone is paid to write this stuff or whether he does it himself.

‘No,’ she says, ‘No.’

And this time it’s because she really can’t think of anything else to say. You can tell Sachs isn’t really interested in what she has to say anyway. That, to him, her answers are immaterial. Just dead air while he takes a breath before tossing out another volley of slander posing as inquiry, because this has all been scripted in advance. To make Forrester Sachs seem like the hero, the big man who’s standing up for all the little people in the world. He’s an anchorman with a Messiah complex in a Tom Ford suit, with arms so big they could embrace all the victims of the world.

When, really, he’s just perpetuating the cycle, victimizing them in death as much as they were in life. Airing everybody’s dirty laundry without any regard for the consequences. Sacrificing his subjects on the altar of his vanity. I wonder how he sleeps at night, I really do.

‘What do you want to say to your son, Charmaine,’ Sachs says. ‘Now that you know what he’s done. Now that you know that people have died.’

And now Sachs is looking for the big pay-off, that killer piece of footage that will end up being syndicated to every news show on every single TV channel, where it will run near-continuously as a two-second soundbite to trailer the story.

They cut to Charmaine and she’s looking straight into the camera, or rather where she thinks she should be looking. She’s looking at the cameraman, addressing him and not the camera, and so it seems on TV like she’s staring off into the middle distance, like she’s not really with it, not really there at all. And her glassy eyes are welling up with tears, her lips are quaking like she’s about to cry, and she says, in a voice cracked with emotion:

‘Mommy loves you, Bundy. Mommy loves you.’

You can almost see the smirk on Sachs’ face because he knows he’s got what he’s wanted. And as I’m watching all this unfold, I realize it’s turning into one of those tragedies you see on TV but never ever think you’ll play any part in. Blanket coverage, round-the-clock, day-in, day-out. These lives, or deaths, celebrated for a brief moment in the frenzy of a news cycle. Or if they’re really lucky, maybe three or four. Maybe celebrated isn’t quite the right word – fetishized. Then just as quickly forgotten. Becoming just another nameless, faceless victim of a tragedy that probably could have been avoided in the first place.

And, at this point, I decide I’ve had enough too. I tell Jack to change the channel and he’s all too happy to oblige. We catch the end of the same campaign ad for Bob DeVille again, and Bob’s still talking about how he wants people to see the real him.

‘Bob’s invited us to spend a weekend at his house,’ Jack says, his attention still fixed on the screen, on Bob.

‘He has?’ I say, surprised, but delighted.

‘I thought we could spend some time together there,’ he says.

I’m beaming inside. It sounds like an olive branch, like he’s giving us another go.

‘I’d like that – when?’

‘This weekend,’ he says.

And I’m secretly delighted because it’s Columbus Day weekend – a long weekend, the last public holiday before the election – and we’ll be together for an extended period of time. And I’d do anything for that, even if it means playing the dutiful girlfriend to Jack in front of his boss.