So I go to this movie-making camp with Steve Guttenberg and a bunch of other people in the industry. On the third day, Steve and I sneak out of camp and hide in the bathrooms at the Space Needle until it closes. From that moment on, we claim the Needle as our own after-hours apartment. It doesn't take the security guards long to find out, but none of them want to throw Steve Guttenberg out of the Space Needle. Who would? Besides, it's good publicity. The media keeps calling it "Andy Warhol's Factory of the Oughts" or "the Zips," or whatever.  

After we get back from the World Series of Poker, Leo DiCaprio throws us this big welcome-back bash. Somebody starts handing out these weird acid aperitifs on contact lens croutons, but they're hard to pick up, especially for those of us who have never worn contact lenses. An hour later everybody's rolling around on the floor oooing and ahhhing in ecstasy. One guy is "so gone" that he rounds up a big group to go down to the monorail with him so he can reenact a scene from the Elvis movie, It Happened at the World's Fair. Except the acid totally isn't doing anything. I tell Steve, hey, Steve, this shit is totally bunk. All these people are poseurs. Let's get out of here.

So we take off in a mini and he gives me some real good junk from his personal stash in the glove box. And all this time I've been thinking Steve's clean, so I go: Goddamn it, Steve, I thought you were clean! You're supposed to start shooting Police Academy 8 in two weeks and look at you! You look like shit. You haven't washed your hair in months and people in the tabloids are starting to call you "Sloppy Steve." Then the asshole tears across five lanes of freeway traffic, kicks me out onto the median and drives away. There are other people stranded on the median as well. Some of them have been camped out for years. They've built a pretty decent deck and all these Adirondack chairs. I start to get a little bit nervous because I don't know any of them and I'm starting to come on pretty heavy, but then Steve's dad ambles over with a big fuck-off bottle of sarsaparilla and he says: hey, whatever happened to acid rain? It seems so quaint now, n'est-ce pas?

Karyna McGlynn is the author of Scorpionica (New Michigan Press, 2007) and Alabama Steve (Destructible Heart Press, 2008). Her micro-fiction has recently appeared in Unpleasant Event Schedule, Quick Fiction, La Petite Zine, and the Open Face Sandwich.

To link to this story directly: http://wigleaf.com/200802mymov.htm

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