god Interviews: Julian King
Short Stories from the world of Olisbeth Mason
By
Mandy Oviatt
Copyright 2014 Mandy Oviatt
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Introduction to the Demigod Interviews by Olisbeth Mason.
Sometime after discovering my identity, and after taking an interesting adventure with Phoebe and her long-time friend Jason, I decided I wanted to work on a project, just for myself. If Arthur was going to go around tracking and seeking the Great Creatures, I would do the same with Demi-and quarter-gods. I want to trace, to see exactly how prevalent the ichors of Olympus spread.
Thus began my Demigod project. In my spare time, I seek out the children and grandchildren of gods, to determine what they know of their divine heritage, and to see what divine purpose the gods had in their creation.
Phoebe was the one to give me the idea: Gods have children for a reason, and I want to know why each god had each child.
I’ve had to be surreptitious in my acquisition of this knowledge. Not all of the demigods are willing to admit their heritage to a complete stranger, and most don’t even know their parents are divine.
What you read here is the product of my interview with Julian King, born in 1952 to French model “Yvette Bazin” and unknown father of Los Angeles, California.
Before I discuss Yvette’s son, let me mention a few facts I learned about her from a journal she kept in the last few years of her life. Yvette Bazin was born in 1932 (the year is uncertain) in a Parisian Brothel to a prostitute mother and unknown father. During the Second World War, the brothel was decimated by bombs and she was taken in to be raised by a German family. When she was young, probably 13, she ran away from home to escape her “stepfather’s” unwanted attentions and the cold disapproval of her “stepmother.” This was also when she discovered her divinity. She did not mention how that discovery was made in her notes, only that “The attempted sexual assault lead to me by the very man I’d learned to call ‘Papa’ revealed to me, allowed me to see the truth, that I am Aphrodite, goddess of Love.”
She made her living as a singer, dancer, and actress in a variety of burlesque shows, and by the time she was 16, she was proclaimed the “Most beautiful woman in Paris.” She was still pretty poor, and had to work in some fairly seedy places. In the 1950s, she starred in a series of rather dirty films. In 1952, she had her son Julian.
Julian King sat down in his office in New Orleans, Louisiana fixing his curly brown hair. He had an appointment in a few minutes, one to do an ‘internet chat interview.’ He’d already returned from lunch, ensured he had no bits of avocado stuck in his teeth, and picked a speck of lint off his pink-and-maroon checked tie. He needed to look his sharpest for this interview.
This interview was with a small website, a blogger who’d somehow managed to find him, connect “Julian King” with his mother, the ‘nymphamous’ Yvette Bazin.
It was nearing the thirtieth anniversary of his mother’s murder. His mother, the ‘nymphamous’ Yvette Bazin, was strangled in her bed with her own silky stockings by his stepfather while he was in college. After her death, he’d been in the spotlight for a few years, seen his family’s dirty laundry dragged out by the media. Ultimately Julian moved to Montreal, changing his name so that people would forget about who he was. He’d only just moved to New Orleans the previous year.
A small part of Julian thought he should hold out for the money he could make by selling his story rights to a film or television producer, or to a ‘real newspaper,’ but Julian already had more money than he would ever be able to spend. He was not going to share his story, his mother’s story, for something as trivial as money. He’d spent nearly thirty years trying to forget the night he’d found his mother’s body, and the upcoming anniversary was bringing up the old memories. Perhaps by doing the interview, he could achieve catharsis, purge the thoughts.
At the very least, this interview would prepare him for the oncoming storm of reporters wanting to discuss the anniversary of his mother’s brutal murder. This was the first in a long string of interviews to come, since the anniversary was coming.
As the time for the interview arrived, his computer alerted him, and he pressed the “start call” button on the screen to see a confident blonde woman on the other side of the screen. She was slightly overweight with piercing grey eyes and wore her hair in a bun.
“Hello, Mr. King?” She spoke with confidence, despite the questioning tone in her voice. She seemed to be straightforward. Perhaps, if the final product of her blog was satisfactory, he’d contact her about writing the memoirs.
“Please, call me Julian. And your name is ... I’m sorry, I’ve never seen this name before...how do you pronounce it?”
“Olisbeth Mason. Like All-Is-Beth.” She smiled. “Thanks, I get it mispronounced frequently. Now, if we can get to the interview, if you don’t mind...
♀♀♀♀♀
Julian King’s earliest memories involved sitting back stage at lurid Parisian nightclub while his mother performed her bawdy routines for audiences. Several nights a week, two or three performances a night, as long as Julian could remember, he grew up on greasy bar food while his mother ‘entertained.’ After the end of every evening, one of his various “uncles” would drive them home, or walk them home, depending on the Cabaret and the uncle. And “home” was an ever-shifting concept as well. Typically he and his mother shared a single twin bed in a shared apartment with a half dozen other ‘girls’ from the shows his mother performed in, but the location changed every six months or so, depending on the landlord’s whims. When nights out with the uncles required Maman stay out all night, one of the girls would baby-sit him.
Some nights, Maman didn’t perform in the cabaret; she’d spend those nights with his uncles, ‘making movies,’ she called it. Though Julian was never allowed to watch the films his mother starred in. They were for grown-ups, though he did occasionally see posters for the movies at the clubs where his mother performed. The posters called his mother Plus Belle Femme à Paris, the most beautiful woman in Paris. Julian knew the posters were wrong in one respect; Maman was the most beautiful woman in the entire world.
When Maman came home a few weeks before, she declared that his latest ‘Uncle,’ Lawrence Barnett, an American, will be his new father.
Not that he ever knew who the original man was. Whenever he asked Maman, she simply refused to tell him who the man was. Odds were she didn’t know; Julian suspected he was the son of his mother’s English friend, Miles. Miles was funny, had a great laugh, and always brought Julian presents at his birthday and Christmas.
Julian hated Uncle Lawrence. He was short, overweight, and had a nasty facial burn on his left cheek. Lawrence had been in “in the War” and had all sorts of stories about how he’d taken a bayonet to the face while killing a “Nazi bastard” (that’s what Uncle Lawrence called them, anyway). He also smelled of a mix of rotten meat and mint. Maman tripped over herself to make the man happy, cutting her hair, quitting her jobs, even kicking Julian out of the shared twin bed when he stayed over.
“Mon beau petit fils, don’t you want your Maman to be happy?” She would ask any time Julian protested his mother’s marriage, or relationship with Lawrence
. There was something he did not like about the older man.
When he’d protested, insisting that he wanted Miles to be his father, Maman refused. She couldn’t marry Miles, she told him. Julian took that to mean that Miles already had a wife, kids, and a family in England. Mother entertained a lot of ‘married’ Uncles. And now, she was marrying this one.
Julian tried to be happy for his mother; she’d explained that her “dear Larry” had a lot of money, and was going to take them to America. She’d be able to make more money for them, as an actress in Hollywood, where they would live.
Today, Lawrence was marrying his mother, which meant tomorrow, they were leaving for America. Julian hated the man, and even more so for taking them away from home. But, Mom was going to have a career in Hollywood movies! Perhaps he’d actually get to watch some of his mother’s movies for once.
So maybe the marriage was good.
“You may now kiss the Bride,” the priest said solemnly. And when his Lawrence kissed his mother, Julian swore that he saw a blanket of darkness covering his mother’s face.
Perhaps I should explain myself. I think what I hated about Larry was how mom acted around him. When she was with every other man she