A magazine advertisement initially lured me in: “How’d you
like to sleep with strangers for money?”
Was one of them Gonorrhea? I wondered.
Twenty-four hours later, we were in an airline VIP lounge, Queensland bound. Normally I’d have flown myself but the flack was keen to give me a more modern image.
Just before he tipped his head back to drain another glass of the lounge’s complimentary domestic sparkling wine, he sighed: “Those giant leather-like wings which suddenly sprout from your shoulder blades, the gleaming horns rising up from your forehead and, let’s face it, the fiery but bloodshot eyes are putting the punters off. To get your numbers up and attract the less evil amongst humanity, you need to be more approachable. This TV show will humanise you.”
My Devil’s Island audition was held in a Gold Coast industrial park warehouse. The PR guy waited outside in a chauffeured limo, buffing his nails. “I’d hate to see you being humiliated,” he said.
Inside the warehouse, three men and a woman sat behind a wide desk. As I walked in, no one looked up. “Take your pants off,” said one of the men.
Reaching for my belt buckle, I said: “Spoiler alert. I don’t kiss on the first date.”
The woman raised her head, squinted at me and shuddered. “I’ve just had lunch. I’d like to keep it down, so keep your pants up.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” I said.
“I’m missing seeing my $28 chorizo, corn and avocado salad again.” She gave another squint. “Name?”
“Lucifer O’Beelzebub. My friends call me ‘Lucky’.”
“Not after this program airs,” she said. Plucking a silver toothpick from her purse, she began digging between her lateral and central incisors to free some embedded dry-cured pork sausage.
Their first question was predictable. Hobbies? I thought of replying “Stealing the souls of the dead” but I went with “Pressing dried wildflowers into poetry books.”
All three men were unimpressed. “You’re going to have to butch it up, big boy,” said one. “What say we write down: ‘Wrestles wildlife’?”
“Now you mention it, I recall the Emperor Vespasian giving me the thumbs up in the Colosseum after I’d dismembered a lion with my teeth.”
“The Colosseum? The one at Caesars Palace Las Vegas?”.
I held back an urge to reach across the desk and tear his heart from his chest. But, to be fair, they weren’t auditioning me for Mastermind. “The very one,” I replied.
After 30 minutes of questions ranging from current STDs to sexual preferences (“Everyone in this room looks good to me,” I reassured them, prompting the woman to throw up a little in her mouth) I made it through to the next round.
Round #2 questions included: “Can you take criticism?”
“I only respect the opinions of the people I respect.”
“We’ll put that down as a ‘No’,” said the woman.
A week later I was flown to the Whitsundays on what I thought was Con Air. Fortunately, the other passengers turned out to contestants too. Who knew neck tattoos were the dernier cri amongst Australia’s jeunesse dorée?
With limited foliage on the sun-seared island, the producers had opted to bring in stands of moping palm trees to encircle our makeshift camp. The island’s few other pieces of greenery held cameras running live feeds into a control room with an adjacent makeup suite, all crammed into an air-conditioned Nissen hut. The hut also featured a septic tank. Crew only. The contestants’ “toilet option” was a short shovel and a squat behind a clump of scrawny melaleucas.
I’d pictured Versace bathrobes, fine soaps and 24x7 bar staff preferably wearing pants (the only thing I want popped into my Negroni is an orange peel garnish). The reality of reality TV was less of a fairytale: narrow camp beds, the sponsor’s warm rum in flagons, and cold showers from a rainwater tank with a seagull’s carcass floating on the surface.
To the seagull’s credit it was more animated than the show’s host, Tab Porter – a former actor whose career peaked on the superbly-scripted ‘80s TV soapie, Sons and Daughters. Stitched together by the A-to-Z of plastic surgery (from Abdominoplasty to Zero-Work-Without-Prepayment), Tab was proof that walking and talking at the same time was an overrated skill. Moving made his scars stretch.
The program’s premiere at 7.30pm was live to air, revealing scenes of we 12 contestants splashing each other in the shallows of the island’s main beach, romping, giggling and trying not to step on the venomous stonefish lying motionless on the ocean floor.
So as not to startle the viewers, I’d tucked my tail into the back of a pair of candy pink board shorts. My cloven hooves were covered by Crocs clogs. My new tan, the result of body paint being smeared on by squeamish staff, gleamed as I strolled out of the water.
The lighting crew had lit the beach like the night trots. My body threw three shadows across the sand when I reached Tab who was standing rigidly on his driftwood master-of-ceremonies stage. He smelt slightly of one part rum to three parts cola.
“And here’s our first contestant, Lucifer O,” Tab shouted in the general direction of Camera One. “His hobbies include fighting lions barehanded in Las Vegas.”
Turning, I gave the camera lens a 6,000 Lumens LED smile. “My friends call me …”
“Moving on,” interrupted Tab. “Luc, how’d you like to choose one of the lovely lady contestants for your First Night Date?”
The word “lovely” threw me. I studied the half dozen women arrayed along the shoreline, ankle deep in seawater. None were strangers to the potential of collagen-enhanced lips to attract either spawning trout or men eager to kiss inflated wine cask bladders. And, metres away, stood those very men, currently out of camerashot but still preening for an imaginary audience. Drawn from society’s leper colony professions – advertising, marketing, property development, journalism and search engine optimisation – the men didn’t appear to be the types a woman would give up her virginity for. Admittedly, that particular gift was unlikely to be an option for these female contestants.
Pointing to a tall, golden-haired woman on the far end of the lineup, I attempted to be gallant. “She’s Botticelli’s Venus come to life, of course minus the scallop shell and …”.”
“Wrong,” said Tab, peering at the teleprompter. “She’s Marilyn M. Come over here, sweetie.”
Pausing to sneer at him before slipping on a pair of slingback high heels, Marilyn then tottered across the fine sand, finally reaching Tab and myself after only two stumbles. Brushing the sand out of her hair, she gave me a look I imagined she kept in reserve for males unlikely to cut the mustard.
“You’re a perfect match,” declared Tab. “Marilyn meet Luc, the only thing small about him is his talk. And Luc, you won’t be surprised to hear your date tonight is a glamour model. Why don’t you two sneak off somewhere private?”
Alone except for a cameraman, soundman, assistant director, production runner and makeup artist, we settled on part of the set resembling a beach bar.
Apparently torn between fleeing for her life and staying in camerashot, she leant forward. “Is that a forked tongue?”
“It’s very à la mode where I come from.”
In reality, I pictured a long, lonely night ahead. Nevertheless, I edged closer: “What do you model, Plaster of Paris?”
Copyright 2020 GREG FLYNN
