Jillian Lauren - Pretty

Table of Contents

A PLUME BOOK

PRETTY

JILLIAN LAUREN is a writer and performer who grew up in suburban New Jersey. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Some Girls. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

Leonard Cohen

Deepest gratitude to Alexandra Machinist and Becky Cole.

During the writing of this book, both friends and strangers were remarkably supportive and generous. Many thanks to Signe Pike, Leonard Chang, Jim Krusoe, James Russell Packard III, Joe Gratziano, Anne Dailey, Tammy Stoner, Shawna Kenney, Bett Williams, Rachel Resnick, Ivan Sokolov, Sarah Kim, Colin Summers, Nell Scovell, Claire La-Zebnik, Lynn Breedlove, the Writers Sunget, Suzanne Luke, Whitney Lee, the Dreskin family, the Shriner family, the Samuels family, Dr. Keely Kolmes, Jerry Stahl, Pamela Ezell, Arthur Avary, Pastors El and Fran Clarke, Joy Clarke, Dr. Reef Karim, and Shannon Reese. Thanks also to Connie, Monica, Linda, and Anival from Moro Beauty Academy.

I am indebted to Mark Vonnegut for his amazing book The Eden Express and to Milton Rokeach for his visionary The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

And, always, I am grateful beyond words for my husband, Scott Shriner, who long ago told me that I was a lousy hairdresser and urged me to consider taking this writing thing more seriously.

How I got here the long version is a longer story than I want to tell. How I got here the short version is the story of a night a year and a half ago. I was with Aaron, who was supposed to be the love of my life.

Did I win, baby? I sang out to Aaron across Rajis bar, pretending I was more stupid than I actually was. We had landed in L.A. six months before and that was when I really started laying on the dumb routine. I found it advantageous to be underestimated. You have to be careful how you fake it, though, because things like that can stick and before you know it you become what youre pretending to be.

Not that Im some kind of genius but Im not dull enough to think I lost even when the other guy sunk the eight ball. But I hollered at Aaron anyway because he was deep in redbar-light, sparkle-eyed conversation with a smart, dainty blonde named Madison, for Christs sake. Madison. Madison from USC film school no doubt.

It was a bad night already. Bad even before it got worse. I was pitched sideways with the cheap well liquor and the dope wed smoked off foils in the bathroom and the lines wed snorted off Madisons compact mirror. I had smoked cigarettes dusted with cocaine and was tumbling too fast. I flirted with Aarons friends just to piss him off.

Hey, Chaaaaaaas.

I baited my hook and let my line fly. Chas was such a ridiculous mark, with his wire-rimmed glasses and his oversized-sweater-wearing, womens-college-going girlfriend. I like to taunt people like Chas because, really, what other power do I have? I have the power to make him think of me when hes fucking his girlfriend. Chas has all the rest. Chas will graduate from law school and make lots of money and the most I can hope for is that hell still vote liberal so that when things get too bad people like me can get a bed at a state-sponsored rehab.

My mom used to say to me, Pretty is as pretty does.

Shes like the fucking clich almanac, my mom. But she was pretty, too. Prettier than me even because she wasnt as tall and broad in the shoulders as I am. I watched her and decided that it wasnt true. Pretty isnt what pretty does. Pretty just is. Pretty is pretty and it can get you a few things. And it doesnt last long so whatever the hell you can get with it while you have it, go ahead and get it.

So thats all I was doing. Just trying to use what I had to wring the last electrical charge out of a night that was fast slipping through my fingers while Aaron turned his face away. When I remember it now I can almost see the red lights glowing in my eyes, the flecks of foam at the corners of my mouthsome animatronic horrible girlfriend monster.

I hopped up and sat on the edge of the pool table. I swung my legs and pouted.

Be my savior, Chas. No one else is volunteering. Tell me. Did I win?

I let it run right off the rails; let it get all out of hand. My love for Aaron was so acid it scraped my veins raw. He twinkled his liquid chocolate eyes at some other bitch, waiting a beat before he turned to me after I called out to him. I loved him so hard right then that I wanted him dead is the truth of it.

I could always see Aarons head over the others in the bar. He was an explosion of dreadlocks and gangly limbs. He had an enigmatic not-white-not-black thing going on that inspired strangers to constantly ask him, What are you? Which bugged him to no end. I mean, what kind of question is that? He would simply answer, Im Aaron. He was nobodys easy anything.

Thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses cemented his face in place, but otherwise he was constant motion, constant, easy, seamless motion. And me, I was a long redhead glowing next to him like some Irish peasant from an old painting. What I thought when he stood behind me with his arms clasped around my waist in front of the full-length mirror was that I was something more glorious than I ever had been before. Someone I didnt recognize.

Aaron did love me. But not, I think, like I loved him. Not so that it twisted him ugly and desperate.

You Shook Me All Night Long came on the jukebox and it is a universal law that all strippers must dance whenever that song comes on no matter where they are. And thats what I was by thenan exotic dancer out at Jet Strip by the airport. I had meant it to be an emergency measure, something to get us by until Aaron could score another gig.

When I met him, Aaron was playing the horn on tour with Billy Coyote, a pretty well-known jazz guitarist. One humid Thursday in July he had walked into Rustys where I worked in Toledo. My real pop was a horn player, too. Theres a lot I cant remember about him, but I remember hearing him play. I live my life now with two trumpet songs like sad angel voices in my headAarons and my pops. Sometimes I cant remember anymore whose horn was whose, except that Aaron had a flaw that Billy berated him mercilessly for. He could be tentative with how he finished a phrase. Sometimes when Aaron took the horn from his lips you had the sense of another note hovering somewhere in a parallel universe, a note he could have chosen but didnt. Not so with my pop. He always hurled himself at the finish line.

When I first started working at Rustys, Rusty had called me into the back office and showed me old pictures shed kept of my pop. He was tall like me, taller than the other guys on the cramped stage. In my favorite picture, my pop is blowing his heart out in the smoke haze blue spotlight. Wide-collared suit, a lock of greased hair falling in his face, forehead glistening with sweat, eyes closed. I wondered where, in the Toledo I knew, was anyone half as cool. If I met someone as cool as that, I vowed I would follow him wherever he went.

And then in walked Aaron. When Aarons band left Toledo the next morning that was exactly what I did. I climbed into the bus with them. And when I say that pretty can get you a thing or two, thats what I mean. I mean it can get you a bus ride to the West Coast with a jazz musician who hardly knows you but might already be suspecting that he loves you. We were headed to San Francisco at the end of it all, Aaron had promised me. He told me there was even a church in San Francisco that had canonized John Coltrane. Clearly the place for us. So L.A. was never really the plan, but when we got stranded here and Billys ex-girlfriend offered to help me get a job at the club where she worked, Aaron and I both thought it was a good idea. Heres another thing pretty can get youit can get you a job. Me being a stripper seemed real jazz to Aaron, kind of picturesque and romantic. Thats how it was in our minds before I started.