Did I think of him every now and again? Sure, every time I thought of how much more money I could be spending whenever I went out to shop, or to a restaurant. God, I might not have even needed to resort to doing the The Anna Nicole Show were it not for Howard’s incompetence in drawing up a Will that included me. I know he was old and frail, but for fuck’s sake, how could he not have considered me? I let him lick my tits, my tits. The most precious gift any man–young or old–could have hoped for. And that was before they got all, you know, saggy-like ’cause of the weight I lost with TrimSpa.

He should have paid me just for the pleasure of having something so beautiful in his presence. I was goddamn Marilyn Monroe reincarnated. Except that even Marilyn wouldn’t stoop to fucking someone so ugly (granted, Joe was ugly, but at least he was rich and in the same age range). Poor guys were more her thing (like that writer or whoever that basically drove her to an early grave–even I beat Marilyn in age by checking out at thirty-nine to her thirty-six). Well, not mine. I always wanted money, and a lot of it. And I knew the only way to get it was by securing a sugar daddy. The older the better, that’s a no-brainer (and I’m not the brightest bulb among the Klieg lights). Because, yeah, it means he dies sooner. Like I wish my own dad did, the guy who used and abused me (and my pussy), conditioning me to believe that’s how it always would and should be. 

I had no use for high school. What was the fucking point with bombshell looks like mine? I just wanted to break the fuck away from my so-called family. My uncaring, unfeeling mother, who let more shit happen to me than an oil company does to the environment. It didn’t take me long to make my way into the strip club world. I thrived in the spotlight there. Where attention was lavished on me in a positive way–unlike at home.

I knew from the moment I laid eyes on J. Howard Marshall at that strip club in 1991 that he was the man of my dreams. The sugar daddy I had waited my entire all too brief life for. I slithered and shimmied his way, making my way slowly, oh so slowly toward him. After all, any sudden movements might have given him a heart attack, and I needed him nice and alive for my cash-draining purposes. At first, I didn’t exactly know who he was until another girl told me he was an oil tycoon. Back when that really meant something. All I knew from the start was that he was a high roller, tossing hundreds at me like ones with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old boy seeing his presents under the tree on Christmas morning. I guess my titties and ass looked better than any presents he ever saw under the tree. And as the opening notes to Guns n’ Roses’ “You Could Be Mine” came on, I knew he was a goner. I had him in the palm of my fucking hand and he hadn’t even spoken a word to me yet. Not that it was ever about words between me and Howie. Just looks (though I had the feeling he could only decipher shapes–couldn’t really make out the complete picture ‘cause of glaucoma or whatever)… and feels. I’d always let him cop one, but that was the main extent of our “romance.” 

Still, it was enough to get him to propose. I played it real cool, as though marrying him for his money was the last thing on my mind. Even refusing him a few times so that he kept having to ask, really believing it was all his idea, and not exactly what I had set him up to do–his fate predestined by my own spray tanned hand. Even if it took him much longer than I had anticipated for him to lock down a date. It was getting to the point where I was actually getting nervous that he might kick the bucket before we managed to get married. Of course, it didn’t matter anyway. I would spend the rest of my miserable existence fighting for what was rightfully owed to me from his Estate. Even after my accidental death (in the wrong fucking Hollywood, mind you–I had to settle for Florida instead of California), people were still fighting for what was legally rightfully mine. Just because Howie never had the presence of mind to put what he wanted down  on paper during the year we were together as husband and wife didn’t mean that I was lying about his oral agreement. And my god, how oral I had to get with him in order for him to give it. 

Sometimes, I can actually feel his papery liver spots on my fingertips from all those times I stroked his mutant member. And I shudder. Not that shuddering is so easy anymore in a non-corporeal form. And that’s another thing, all my talent–all my finesse–for getting a sugar daddy is completely useless in a place like this. Here I am, with all this charm oozing out of my ectoplasm, and it can only channel itself into another game of Taboo with Zsa Zsa Gabor–who, while she’s perfectly lovely, isn’t much in the way of great company in terms of being relatable to my age bracket (not that I’ve ever really gravitated toward people who are). Plus, she had more money than me in life, which is just added salt to my plastic surgery wounds.

I just wonder sometimes, you know, if I had it to do all over again, would I be taken in by all his pretty, expensive gifts? Settle for him the way I did just because Hugh was never going to be the Daddy I really wanted despite all my attempts at the Playboy Mansion (by the way, I still haven’t seen him up here, which must mean he’s in a better place, dancing with the devil. I bet in hell you can spend money, too). I’d probably have to say: yeah. Fuck it. That marriage made me into a legend. I don’t think I could have become one on TrimSpa alone.