“I was born to a family of wealthy coal barons in West Virginia. I had a governess and a pony and was being groomed for child beauty pageants when still a toddler. Then, my parents were killed in a car accident deep in the hills of coal country when their Mercedes Benz S-Class sedan plunged into an abandoned mine shaft. Ironically, that very shaft had been left as an open hazard by their own coal company to avoid wasting money.
“Surviving the wreck by a miracle, I was taken in by a Pentecostal preacher and his wife who lived up a holler in a small shack that had intermittent electricity but no running water.”
“The Preacher took his calling very seriously. His nine natural children and I were schooled on Hell and damnation on a daily basis. Any serious transgressions, such as failing to fully close one’s eyes during prayer, or a momentary delay in passing the red-eye gravy, were met with generous physical punishment. The old man became especially vigorous in his application of the switch to me and my sisters as we got to be around 11 or 12 years of age.”
“We did not see the inside of a school, instead being tutored exclusively from the Scofield Reference Bible and a moldering set of McGuffy Readers from the 1930s. However, we did frequently attend services, occasionally involving snakes, in tents and leaky old churches throughout the county. One Sunday afternoon when I was 13, I was receiving special instructions from the youth minister when he shockingly violated me, calling out to God and speaking in tongues while doing so. When I told my devout stepparents, they called me a liar and a slut and kept me locked up in the root cellar for an entire year, during which the old man would sneak in three or four nights a week to remind me that I had already let myself be defiled by the youth minister. Then they married me off to a 53-year-old sometime mechanic and erratic church elder, who took me even further up the holler.”
“There followed a year as a virtual prisoner of a crude man who took me as he wished and beat me if the scrambled eggs were cold. I avoided pregnancy by a variety of means, aided by the fact that he was plastered on moonshine and limp as a jellyfish much of the time. One day I up and hitched out of the holler with a couple of deer hunters. I made my way to Louisville where I waited tables, babysat, earned my GED, and refined my diction and accent.”
I got to know some actors who were also waiting tables, and they talked me into participating in community theater, for which it turned out I had quite a knack. I was playing Cordelia when a gentleman offered to be my agent and take me to Hollywood. On the way there, my entrepreneurial agent tried to purvey my services to various travelling salesmen and the like, but, thanks to a young Marine corporal who slugged the phony agent in the brisket, I managed to “borrow” his car and make my own way to Hollywood.”
The Old Woman continued her story. “Once in Hollywood, I discovered that various agents and producers were quite anxious to help develop my talent. I soon learned right that preliminary screening auditions usually involved demands for me to demonstrate intimate skills that were not related to my actual potential as an actress. Despite my demurrals, I got a couple of very small parts in forgettable movies. One night, my agent called and said I had been invited to a business meeting with the well-known Garvy Vinstoner at the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel. Instead of meeting Mr. Vinstoner at the restaurant however, a polite male assistant drove me out to the Hollywood Burbank Airport, where I was ushered onto a plush private jet along with several other young actresses. Some of them seem very young, even to me. Champagne was abundant. Needless to say, I had never seen such things.”
“We were flown out to a luxurious ranch complex in New Mexico which we were told was the famous Ground Zero Ranch owned by international financier Janus Pedostaino. Upon arrival, I was invited to join Mr. Vinstoner in his suite for a business discussion before the evening’s social event. Once there, I heard a man’s voice summoning me to a massive ensuite whose double door was wide open. There, in a hot tub, lounged a corpulent whale of a man with bad skin and gray stubble. He was drinking champagne, bottles of which stood in ice buckets surrounding the hot tub. He asked me to take off my clothes and join him. I refused and started to back out of the room. He climbed out of the hot tub, angrily demanding that I advance my career by being friendly to him.”
“I ran for the door. He came after me, naked and obviously excited to engage in serious casting negotiations. Though raging, he looked like he was crying. I crashed out of the suite, running down the hall, grabbing at doorknobs to find refuge. One door opened and I careened into another suite, slamming and locking the door behind me. I turned to see a tall man with huge coppery moplike hair looking at me in surprise. He asked if I was okay, and I was relieved to see that he appeared genuinely concerned.”
“The mop-hair man gestured for me to sit down and offered me a glass of Diet Coke. I collapsed with relief, glad to hear no pounding at the door. The mop-hair man asked me what I was doing at the ranch. I explained that I was pursuing an acting career and had happened upon some disconcerting circumstances.”
“In turn, he modestly shared that he was one of the world’s best golfers, that he was a genetically endowed genius, that he owned a great lot of stuff, and that he was worth over a hundred billion dollars. He seemed open, friendly and good-natured. He said that he had many important friends who gathered at the Ground Zero Ranch for pleasant diversions now and again. He shared that he was married to the world’s most beautiful woman, had the world’s sexiest daughter who reminded him of me, and also had two loyal but somewhat obtuse sons.”
“I excused myself to go to the bathroom to regain my composure and splash water on my face. When I emerged, the mop-hair man was standing right in front of the door. He pushed me up against the wall, banging my head against it sharply. It took me a moment to recover my senses, by which time he was grabbing me by that certain private part of my body, probing with short but agile fingers, while trying to kiss me. I put up a furious struggle, but he was large and clearly skilled in this form of engagement. The mop-hair man paused his grabbing for a second and said “I’ll move on you like a bitch. Hah, I love that line. I take what I want in this world. I do it because I can. You must understand how it works. When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.” And he did.
The Old Woman seemed to choke up at the memory, but she took a breath and finished her story.
“At one moment during this grotesque assault, I pretended for a moment to yield, and when he eased back a little, I violently twisted my way free. I ran through the open doors to the second-floor balcony. Seeing that the swimming pool was directly below, I vaulted the railing and jumped. Unfortunately, I was just a little short and I ripped a significant chunk out of one buttock on the coping of the pool as I plunged in. I was rushed to the hospital in Albuquerque where they patched me up, but I was forever disqualified from an acting career too most often dependent upon unblemished pulchritude.”
Kandude, Cardoshia, and the friendly trucker all expressed their horror and dismay at the abuse the Old Woman had experienced at the hands of men at every turn. But she deprecated. “I resolved never to be abused again,” she said. “I got work in restaurants, banks, casinos, and bail bondsmen offices. I went back to small community theater to do as much of what of what I loved as I could. I earned a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I had relationships with men on my own terms. I will never submit to the Bulgarians, nor will I ever allow a bunch of pious old white men to dictate the terms of my life.”
“Ironically,” she concluded, “the tall mop-hair man won the most country club golfing titles in history and became one of the most powerful individuals in the world. And despite his history as an adulterous rapist, his friends, supporters and promoters, including many women, revere him as a god.”
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