Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin Page B

he’s just one more Mattel action doll we’ve been sold for the summer.) Even the hookers—I swear to you—are wearing Desert Storm camouflage tube tops. Whores for Oil. Bimbos Against Baghdad. It’s too surreal for words.
    A billboard has just gone up in West Hollywood depicting a sleek and sinister-looking car (I forget which make), headlined byone word: STEALTH . How’s that for subtle? The people who buy this car should be issued license plate holders that say MY OTHER CAR IS A BOMBER . Look at what has happened to us: warfare has become so attractive again we can actually sell cars with it—to guzzle the gas we killed all those people for.
    After the movie we went to Book City, this huge old Hollywood bookstore with floor-to-ceiling shelves. I like it because there’s always lots of stuff at eye level and because I can lose myself so thoroughly in its maze. Renee gets bored easily with this routine, so she usually runs out for a milk shake while I’m there. At least that’s what she tells me. I think she’s really checking out the panties at Frederick’s of Hollywood. She has a terrible weakness for them. All I want out of Frederick’s is a spot on the sidewalk in front, the perfect location for my star.
    I found a copy of Rumpelstiltskin at Book City. I’ve been looking for a good one for ages, since it would make a fabulous movie and I’d be just right to play him. I wouldn’t mind cross-dressing one more time, as long as my face remained visible. In this new version of the fable, which I read tonight while I drank my Cher shake, Rumpelstiltskin is delicately described as “a little man” rather than an evil dwarf. Such liberal revisionism is progress only if one prefers complete invisibility to outright scorn. I’m not sure I do.
    The legend was pretty much as I’d remembered it, with the poor dude getting his usual bum rap. When he’s banished at the end, having stomped himself completely into the ground, his only crime has been to establish an adoption contract and attempt to abide by its terms. The real villain of the piece, if you ask me, is that venal bitch of a miller’s daughter. Following the dwarf’s instructions, she spun whole rooms full of gold for the king, eventually luring him into marriage, knowing from the start that the fee for Rumpelstiltskin’s services was her firstborn child. Then she has the gall to act wronged when he comes around to collect. No wonder he sends her out to learn his name; she’s treated him like a complete cipher, someone whose feelings count for nothing. The book doesn’t say that, of course, but it does let you know that littleguy couldn’t be bought off for all the gold in the kingdom. He valued human life above all else, which was why he wanted a child of his own so badly.
    Call me a nut, but I think there’s a real story inside the fairy tale, which would make for a fascinating movie: a crusty, cantankerous but entirely human old dwarf, living on his own in the woods and longing for single parenthood.
    When I explained all this to Renee, she said: “Yeah, but most people are used to the old story.”
    I told her this was the old story, just another way of looking at it.
    “Yeah, but, you know…it’s no fun if he isn’t…”
    “A turd.”
    She giggled.
    “It’s not funny,” I told her sternly. “Dwarfs are always the bad guys in these things—vicious, vindictive little bastards who live under a bridge and eat children for lunch.”
    “Really?” she asked meekly, trying to look serious but making a total mess of it.
    “I know you’ve noticed it, Renee. Name me one nice dwarf in a fairy tale.”
    After a moment of serious pondering, she screwed up her face and said: “Dopey?”
    If there had been beer in my mouth, I would have spewed it at her. “ Dopey ?”
    “Well, I don’t…”
    “Good, Renee. Dopey. Good answer.”
    She stared at me, slack-mouthed, apparently wondering how badly she’d fucked up.
    “That’ll look fabulous