Papa John

Based on the theme 'Ambivalence', and my love-hate relationship with fame and Hollywood.

“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.” –– Marilyn Monroe

They told me Hollywood was a dream, but when I arrived, it was flesh. He called him Papa John, and the name stuck in my throat like liquor. He filled the doorway, broad and sun-kissed, heavy shoulders gleaming beneath a jacket the colour of coin. His laugh shook the glass in my hand at the party where we met. When he leaned close, the air smelled of leather car seats, tobacco, and champagne fizzling to flatness.

That first night, his mouth pressed to mine like a signature. A deal struck without words—heat, weight, a hand closing the door behind me—done. Something in me slid across the counter, stamped and purchased, though I didn’t ask the price.

Papa John was Los Angeles itself. His grin glittered like a Walk of Fame star embedded in the concrete, polished and trampled in the same breath. His arms spanned boulevards that led nowhere. His voice circled like a record on repeat, my words caught in his rhythm until they no longer belonged to me. He kissed like the night of a movie premiere—lights flashing, strangers clapping for a scene they’d never see again. And when he held me, I felt earth closing over me, as though my name had already been carved on a stone no one bothered to read.

He built love like a studio builds sets: painted fronts, propped shadows. He slid diamonds into my palm, then told me to smile. He whispered that success was reason enough to exist. His words tasted of ash, but I swallowed them anyway, because what else was there to eat in this place?

Nights with him felt like climbing onto a carousel already spinning too fast. He disappeared, then returned with chaos in his pockets—bottles, powders, women, boys, ghosts. He laughed until the walls vibrated, and pulled me against him until my ribs ached. “Chill, babe,” he said, breath heavy in my ear. The city blinked below us from the hills, a galaxy of bulbs, all glare, no air. My chest tightened; if this was love, it was eating me alive.

I packed my bags in the dark more than once. But the moment my hand touched the knob, his eyes caught me: polished steel, daring me to say I could do better. My grip faltered. The bags slumped back against the wall.

Desire paints its own bars gold. The cage looked gilded; only the weight in my chest told me otherwise. He was dazzling, grotesque, irresistible; part idol, part ruin. When he entered a room, chairs scraped, voices fell silent, and bodies leaned closer. He never had to announce himself—the air bent to make way. And me? I was the proof. My lipstick smeared on his collar like neon, proof of conquest glowing under the flash.

Days blurred into each other—champagne flat in the morning, regret sour in the afternoon. He drove me down streets that coiled like film reels, the city a set built just for him. Rooftops where the Hollywood sign burned like scripture, his silhouette cut sharp against the letters. “Do you love me?” he asked, every time. The word yes slipped out of me before I could find the truth.

Every kiss pressed me between altar and executioner’s block. Every touch an anthem, every silence a verdict. The rope burned my palms in our endless tug-of-war, yet I pulled back, desperate for the game to continue.

One night, music thundered in the open air, bodies swaying in waves, as floodlights drowned stars overhead. I turned in the crush, searching, but he had already vanished. The mansion balcony roared without him, and I still looked, feverish. When he returned hours later, drunk and brilliant, he hooked me back with a smile sharp enough to draw blood. That was his gift: turning neglect into devotion, absence into privilege.

The last time I tried to leave, I wrote him a letter. I still love you, but you are hollowing me out. I folded the page, smoothed the crease, and pressed the flap closed. But he walked in before I could hide it. His shadow swallowed the room, and I fell into memory’s loop: every kiss, every lie, every midnight whisper replayed at once. The envelope slipped from my hand. I vanished into myself.

But flesh cannot hold a ghost forever. One morning, I woke alone, the curtains thin as tissue glowing with sunlight. His cologne clung to the sheets, heavy as bruises. I rose, my legs unsteady, my face stiff with yesterday’s makeup, and I knew: this was the end. Not a finale with fireworks, not the crash of cymbals—only footsteps down a hallway, quiet, final.

Yet he remains. His voice stitched into my thoughts. His heat fused to my bones. At night, I still see him: gilded, colossal, terrible. My pulse stutters at the memory, my stomach knots, and I wonder if I would fall into his arms if he appeared again. I hate him for it, yet I still love him.

The kisses came easily with him. What cost me was everything after.

And I remember when I met him, how certain it seemed he was the only one. He lit rooms like electricity loose from its wires. Heads turned, chairs scraped back, everyone wanting his attention. He swung between sweetness and hunger, between kindness and appetite, as though life itself had torn him in two. And I thought: I can fix the break if I love him hard enough.

I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.

And I still love him.

But I walk with a different gait now. Wiser, perhaps. And wiser tastes a lot like broken.