Norma Desmond

INTERVIEW WITH NORMA DESMOND 

The intercom buzzed.

“Have Miss Jerk-Off come in now.”

“Yes, Mr. Smirk.”

The receptionist smiled at Miss Jerk-Off. 

“Mr. Smirk will see you now, Miss Jerk-Off.”

Miss Jerk-Off shrugged, putting out her cigarette. She tossed down the usual ratty beat-up National Enquirer magazine you still sometimes see in producer’s offices. El Primitivo check-counter jive stuff.

Miss Jerk-Off yawned. She was used to dealing with these slimy producer pricks in Hollywood—they were a dime a dozen.

“Ah, Miss Jerk-Off,” Mr. Smirk said without looking up from the dossier on his desk.

“I see here, Miss Jerk-Off, that you’re a writer from the Big Easy. Welcome to the Big Apple. We’re always ready to accommodate our fellow size queen colleagues from way down South, honey.”

Miss Jerk-Off yawned. “The smoothie type” she said to herself, lighting another cigarette.

“Hmmm, you’ve got quite an interesting dossier, my dear Miss Jerk-Off. Some really interesting biographies right up our alley.”

“I’ll bet,” Miss Jerk-Off said to herself, sizing up Mr. Smirk as a real jerk-off prick. 

“Let’s see now, you’ve written a charming memoir of your nice teenage Southern Decadent youthful years, CONFESSIONS OF A SIZE QUEEN. Quite an interesting story of bad boy bildungsroman gone wrong, sweetheart.”

Miss Jones shrugged, chewing her gum.

“And then, there’s this exquisitely engrossing, if not truly tres chic portrait biography of tragic middle-aged Euro-Queen Decadence, THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONED.”

Miss Jerk-Off nodded, gazed out the window—getting bored real quick with these usual boring ho-hum interviews with these same old crummy mid-level management types schmoozing through her stuff.

“It seems, my dear, you were quite the connoisseur of cock back then in the ‘70s during the late great Gay Lib Lit Period—just oodles and oodles of dainty little poetic ditties in all these various and sundry early gay lib queer journals and anthologies.”

Miss Jones frowned. “They always wanna bring up the same old used has-been queer-angle stuff it seems,” she said to herself. 

“That was then but this is now,” she said.

“Hmmm. It seems your latest manuscript here dips into a rather interesting fictional account of the fabulous faded film star Norma Desmond? The great campy film noir Queen Bee actress of Billy Wilder’s famous flick SUNSET BLVD (1950)?”

“You got it, Mr. Big,” Miss Jerk-Off said rather nonchalantly, looking at her watch. She had a luncheon date for cocktails with Miss Capote downtown and she didn’t want to miss it.

“Let’s see now,” Mr. Smirk said, thumbing through the filmscript. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but your idea is to ditch William Holden and put in this other gigolo actor that’s extremely well-endowed.”

Miss Jerk-Off stared at him, chewing her gum.

“Yes, a kind of Size Queen take off on the original ‘50s Gloria Swanson movie about a fading film star struggling to make her grand dame Hollywood Come Back, right?”

“You’ve got it, Mr. Right,” she said.

“With the new twist—pardon the pun—that Norma Desmond likes well-endowed young gigolo boys there by her swimming pool on Sunset Blvd, right? Or rather, if I may be so bold, Norma Desmond is a Size Queen and prefers big dicks?”

“You got it, Mr. Smart,” she said.

“And the working title for you filmscript is SIZE QUEEN OF SUNSET BLVD?”

“You got it, Mr. Smirk,” she said.

Mr. Smirk tried to conceal a smirk, but it kind of crept out of his smirky, jerky rather lubrugrious lips rather apparently.

“Here we go again” said Miss Jerk-Off to herself.

Mr. Smirk leaned toward his intercom. “Miss Yack-Off? Please get me Mr. DeMille on the phone right away. I think we’ve got a real winner filmscript possibility here today in my office.”

Miss Jerk-Off smiled. “By the way, Mr. Smirk. Please tell lovely Mr. DeMille, I’m ready any time now for my latest charming Close-Up, will you please?”

Mr. Smirk nodded. “And tell Mr. DeMille that she’s back again, will you?”