Harry Ugly with His Millions

 - To Buddhism -

Harry walked out of his agent’s building onto the street, smiling secretly as he felt the check in his pocket – eighty five thousand dollars. He was almost resentful of having to pay his agent Sam the fifteen percent commission of fifteen thousand dollars. But he let the thought pass, as he realized that his newest play after a long draught was a tough sell. People had forgotten how good he once was, and Sam had to work extra hard to find a buyer for his production this time.

Eighty five thousand dollars was still a sizable haul for a dried-up artist, for a piece of work that he knew in his heart was nothing but a hack job. He lost his flames long ago after a string of blockbuster successes. He made millions but lost his soul, the soul that had sustained him through all those lean years as a struggling playwright trying to make it onto the big stage. For that reason, he held on tight to the check in his pocket, ashamed and yet happy. Who knows? This could be his last paycheck, he thought. Spreading this money over the next ten years would still afford him the luxuries he had grown used to over the years.

He paused by the window of an upscale jewelry store. I could buy that pearl necklace for my wife, or for my girlfriend! In fact, I could buy the whole window, or even the store! Suddenly the pearl necklace lost its luster, seemed worthless. He saw in the glass his round and sagging face, his balding head, his sloping shoulders, his pudgy figure, his wrinkled pants, and his sad eyes. After all the successes, he thought, you still look like a failure. He moved on without looking back.

A few steps down, a good-looking woman smiled at him as he passed, “You wouldn’t be Harry See?”
“No.” He kept going, did not turn, fearing that she might stop him and begin the conversation that would be unbearable for him by now.

What would he reply to these people, who after all, at least some of them, might be his fans? “This new play is the smartest, funniest play I have ever written…” “Don’t you dare to steal from me, my money or my ideas…”

The fame and millions had taken a toll on him. The freedom to have every wish fulfilled by the millions thrown at him was not freedom at all. For a while, he tried to sneak into a movie theater in the neighborhood only after the movie had already begun to avoid public attention. That was a huge sacrifice, considering how much he would have enjoyed watching a good movie on the big screen among his fellow movie buffs. Now he could afford to buy the whole movie house all to himself; but what fun was that to watch a movie in loneliness? So he stopped going to the movie theater altogether.

Still, the temptation of fame was too alluring to resist. He remembered scouring obsessively the magazine racks in the corner newsstand for any news and pictures about him or his plays; wondering at all the airplane terminals, train stations, kitchen tables, and dental offices where people would be staring at his face on the magazine covers. He thought of growing his hair long, wearing a beard, putting on a rumpled pair of corduroy jeans to fit his artistic image, or maybe having plastic surgery to look younger to the public. But then, he thought, they won’t recognize me. Anyway, he was hooked, hooked to the trappings of public eyes.

Occasionally in his morose honesty, Harry remembered those years when he was young but not famous, sitting beside his lovely ex-girlfriend’s naked body, his notebooks spreading on the bed they shared in a summer cottage as he frantically constructed play after play about this beautiful woman of his desire. So fresh, so pure, and so rich.

Do I have anything that I really treasured that just sort of vanished? I used to have her, but now she’s gone somewhere. Where did she go, I wonder?

Now that Harry’s plays succeeded, it was almost inconceivable to make a real connection with any women he knew.

He had married his wife for quite a long time. Admittedly she was a loyal wife, suffering through his long years of struggles and depression, and now thoroughly enjoying the fruit of her investment in a theatrical genius. Yet he wished he had never married her! It was no joy to come home to the old wife who had simply grown fatter, sloppier and greedier over the years.

He had tried to seek pleasures elsewhere. Why not? He had a lot of money to burn, and boredom to kill. So he went around buying girls who would jolt his senses. At high prices, they provided him temporary releases and companionship, and they whetted his appetite for ever more exotic sexual games in the name of stimulating his senses. It worked for a while; then all the sensations became dull and even unpleasant. He tried to remember the pretty faces of the girls who had entertained him, and in each he saw nothing but calculation and look of starstruck emptiness. The whole thing was exhausting him, and he had hardly written a single note from those episodes.

In the hollow part of his heart, he questioned: Is it possible to write another play with the passion and fire that I had when I was young? And the answer was always: Thankfully I don’t have to. I have already made my millions…

As he headed downtown, he passed by the Peking Duck restaurant, an inelegant place where he had dined with Sam years ago. It would probably be empty at this hour. (No one would recognize me.) He pushed opened the red front door and saw that the bar was empty and there were two customers sitting in the restaurant part. So he took a stool at the bar. The bartender took his order without showing a sign of recognizing him.

After downing the second drink of Scotch into his empty stomach, he stood up, propped his head up, staring into the mirror behind the bar, hanging his trunk over by the neck: Harry Ugly, but a millionaire with plays running in three continents. Isn’t anybody noticing?

The Chinese bartender came over, “Excuse me. Are you okay?”
“I am Harry See.”
“I know. I recognized you. On Good Morning America, right?”
“Right.”
The bartender looked past Harry’s shoulder nodding wildly at someone behind him; then turned to Harry, “The boss invited you to have a drink on the house!”

Harry looked around and saw a Chinaman sitting behind the cash register, bowing to him lavishly. Harry smiled, and nodded back with some aristocratic satisfaction. (How refined these people are! How they love their artists! This is a great country!) He then quickly finished the drink in his hand, and ordered another Scotch.

“Excuse me,” a small round man sitting down next to him on the stool, “Are you Harry?”
“Yes,” the alcohol made him reply.
“Do you remember me? Ben Johnson.”
He must have met this fellow somewhere, sometime. “I am sorry, Ben. I can’t recall where I knew you?”
“I was your college classmate in English department.”
Harry had shut off all his college connections. But the name sounded familiar. “I have a terrible memory. I remember your name, though.”
“Come on, we were best friends for four years.”
“I believe you. I mean, I just can’t place you at this moment.”
Ben seemed a bit more at ease, “Well, you don’t look much different, except for the beard and hair. I could tell it was you in a minute.”
“What do you do?” still feeling guilty of forgetting, Harry was prepared to listen to a tale of successes.
“I run my own import-export clothing business with the Taiwanese.”
“That’s great,” Harry felt a relief. At least he was not a total failure, which could be awkward for him. “I’m glad that you’ve done well.”
“What do you do?” Ben asked.
 “I’m a writer.” He could see the pity in Ben’s eyes.
“What kind of writing do you do?” Harry’s resentment was palpable. If only I could shake off this weasel from my back, he thought.
“I write plays.”
“Really?” He still kept the pity in his eyes.
“I wrote Good Bye Plum Blossom Pavilion.”
Ben’s jaws dropped, and his skin turned red.
“And Shanghai Moon.”
The two smash hits that cracked open Ben’s face like thunderbolt. “Are you…Harry See?” he whispers.
“Yes.” Harry felt an instant gratification at seeing this poor man’s pity look turning into awe. It gave him a perverse pleasure to smother a weasel.
“I…I’ve enjoyed your shows…”

Harry stood up, closed up his coat jacket, and quickly exited the front door into the street.