Serialization Sunday – The Flick: Chapter 19
Every Sunday, Fiction365 presents a new chapter in a previously unpublished novel. Our first novel, the taut thriller City of Human Remains, can be found in full here.
Our second novel, Hoodoo, tells a story of visionaries, heretics and lunatics in Utah, centered on a 12-year-old girl who believes that God wants her to have an affair with her guidance counselor, can be found in full here.
Our current novel, The Flick, is the correspondence between a legendary porn star of the 90′s and the girl who got away – and kept going. Read previous chapters here.
Letter XIX
October 31, 1990
Dear Phoenix:
Patches of forest sprouted all over the island. I hid in a cluster of trees not far from the beach. An oasis of shade. Away from the glare. Trying to piece it out. Sitting there butt naked, getting sand up my crack. The cut on my leg still wept.
Something kissed my inner thigh. 3 times. Something wet and slimy and penetrating. The kisses hurt.
Three huge, bloated leaches dangled on my thigh like gangrenous new testicles. I pried them loose. One by one. Fell into the puddle of blood at my feet. The leaches rolled around. Still alive. Sucked and groped in the clotting pool. By accident, two of them found each other. And joined.
I scooped up the leaches. Watched them writhe. Locked in their own painful kisses. On a bloody bed in the palm of my hand. They looked like a yin and yang symbol.
While I was looking at the leaches, Phoenix cornered me. We had a moment to ourselves. Just a moment.
“Do you know the story of Candaules and Gyges?” she asked.
“Jay told me.”
“What, the version I told him, or the real story?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Candaules and Gyges was originally a true story, found in Herodotus. It was the truth but somehow it became a myth. That’s a pattern you see throughout history. Part of the human condition transforms truths into lies and back again, an eternal cycle which permeates our heritage. Myth becomes history. History becomes myth. It nourishes the ecology of our consciousness, not entirely unlike the biological systems that turn compost into sustenance, and sustenance into compost.”
“Sounds like you’re feeding me shit, Phoenix.”
“Candaules loved his wife obsessively, and took such pride in her beauty that he wanted to show off her most intimate skills to his friend Gyges. It was all arranged for Gyges to watch, in secret. But the woman spotted Gyges, hiding like a thief. And she demanded of Gyges that he either slay Candaules on the spot and take his place forever, or be destroyed.”
“I won’t lie to you. I wish I could take Jay’s place. Without killing him, of course. But now there is no chance. It isn’t going to happen. It can’t.”
“Let me pull you down into my plot, Die.”
“You need to do something about this drinking thing of yours, Phoenix.”
Jay appeared just at that moment. Very suddenly, like he’d hitched a ride on a shaft of sunlight.
“You’re wondering how much I heard,” said Jay. “I heard… at least the part about how Phoenix should tend to her drinking problem…”
“How about getting me a drink, Jay,” said Phoenix.
***
The four of us sat around a dying fire. It was my birthday, June 16, 1984, but there was no birthday cake, so Phoenix offered up a dripping substitute. She handed me a S’more. With a candle on top.
Conversation slowly tapered off. Mouths bit into blackened marshmallow husks. A flood of warm, gooey sweetness followed.
The day had been long.
Grace rested her head in my lap. Her eyes closed.
Phoenix reclined against Jay, like he was her chair. Her hands fluttered up the length of his arms. Her fingers kept creeping upward, until they reached his mouth. He caught a fingertip with his lips. Sucked it in.
“How about it, Die, are we going to stay friends?”
He had one hand inside Phoenix’s t-shirt. Fabric fluttered. A nipple protruded in the glow of the fading fire.
Phoenix caught me looking at her. Her eyes went cold. This was her revenge. As well as Jay’s. I wondered if he had told her about his plan.
Grace began to kiss me. She blocked my view, on purpose. I kept on kissing Grace. But I looked past her. At Phoenix.
Jay’s hand wandered to Phoenix’s loose fitting cut-offs. Vanished behind a fringed flap of denim. I tried to force myself to look away. But I was hooked. My eyes strained for a glimpse of any part of her that came to light. I could only see Jay’s fingers kneading softness. Her breathing spread out. There was a lengthening of sighs. Long breaths. Then short. Nature’s Morse Code for surrender. Jay’s fingers began to glisten in the orange light. It was a torment to me, but I kept looking past Grace. Past her kisses. Through the film of her hair.
Grace pushed me over, rolled me into the sand. I couldn’t look anymore.
“Why are you watching?” asked Grace. “It is wrong to spy. Bad karma.” She freed herself from her bikini bottom as she nestled closer.
She folded into me, blocking my view again. Straddling my thigh. She swiveled her hips back and forth, letting my leg fur brush her center. She tightened her lock on my thighs. Her ride became faster. More slippery. She was leaving shiny stripes on my leg.
The tide began to wash in around us. Wet lacy sheets.
At this point, Grace impaled herself on me. She writhed. Bucked. She was leading this dance.
She made me feel like a stag being swallowed by an anaconda. She had such tight muscle control, she would have been able to blow smoke rings with her vagina, if she weren’t so opposed to cigarettes.
Grace didn’t seem to mind being watched. Maybe having an audience inspired her to show off how supple and energetic she could be. She was really into sex as a kind of performance. Whatever taboo she applied to the viewer didn’t seem to apply to the viewee. My moves seemed crude compared to Grace’s Tantric dance. Using my pelvis for a stage. The mismatch between us was obvious. We were each caught up in our own private worlds. Less like making love and more like we were using each other’s bodies to masturbate.
When I twisted around to where I could see, Phoenix and Jay stood up. Turned their backs to me. They retreated into the shadows. Gone.
Minutes passed.
A scream tore the night. A shredded human voice. So loud, and sounding so close I thought for an instant it was Grace. But it wasn’t. Even though there was reason to scream. A flotilla of Portugese Man-of-War bobbed in the water around us. Their blue and pink bubbles rode the crests of our turbulence as Grace and I shook the lacy sheets.
Then I heard the sound of Phoenix’s voice. It carried on the breeze. I couldn’t tell if she was crying out in pain or in passion. Her cries continued. More and more. They sounded like pain. Real pain. It sounded like pain, to me, anyway.
I started to pull away from Grace.
“Sounds like she’s in trouble,” I said.
“Nah.”
“I’m worried.”
I was thinking about how Jay had crept up on Phoenix and I in the scrub brush. Had he heard us? Did he know what Phoenix had in mind? The real story. What would Jay do if he had heard it all?
“Where do you think you are going?” she asked.
Where was I going? Nowhere, it seemed. As long as Grace had her way. But the voice of Phoenix got into my ears and into my head. Phoenix had my heart. But Grace had my body, or at least the part of it with the greatest portion of my blood supply. At that moment. I didn’t know if I was going or coming.
At this point Phoenix was yelling, screaming, cursing. Long drawn out warbling cries of help… or hell. An operatic wail. A siren sound.
“What’s going on?”
Grace sensed my desperation to get loose. Clamped her steel thighs around me. A hydraulic press impossible to escape. Indifferent to the Man-of-War looming closer. Bursting on the beach. Spilling acid.
How far would I go to get free? I leveraged myself to push Grace into the blue bubbles. Just as a threat. She fought back. What power. It was like riding an earthquake on a surf board.
Phoenix, let me tell you how I tried to solve this problem. Maybe you’ll want to cut this part on account you think people won’t believe it, even though it is true. You might see it as me at my worst, arrogant and all. Some people might think I’m bragging. My fans won’t. They expect attitude in a Die Smiling film. There was only one way I could think of to get away from Grace. Wear her out. Totally and utterly wear her out. To the point of unconsciousness. Fuck her senseless. I had done this to women before. Really. Believe me. Even though I could never do it to you, no matter how hard I tried. I wouldn’t put it in our Flick if it wasn’t true.
A pleasure giving contest began. The rhythm built up. Fast but gentle. Faster and faster. We went. Like marathoners straining their muscles to the limits. Hoping something wouldn’t rip. I felt a vacuum trying to drain me. Like a vampire hunger, sucking. Going for the vital fluids. A wet emptiness. A quaking void. An abyss of drowning tension. The barrage on my senses was driving me to surrender. If I gave in at that moment, worked up as I was, I would have been the one to pass out.
Her well defined muscles glided under their sheath of oiled skin. She was superb. Graceful. Totally in control. But wrong for me at that moment. I don’t know why. Visually flawless. As appetizing as a piece of wax fruit.
It seemed that the more distant I became, the more dissociated from the act, the more Grace intensified her assault. Clouds of hormone perfumed the air. Silken Waves. Constricted. Grew more luxuriant.
She pushed toward the edge. It was an edge we both rode. An edge that pushed upward as it pushed in and out. And upward we went. She wouldn’t give up. Pushed higher. To a height where when we fell, we would splatter.
I bit my tongue. Fought to keep from falling. The pit yawned. The Grand Canyon.
Bit my tongue. A bloody kiss. I rammed a stake into the core of her vampire hunger. Hammered it home. Again and again.
Grace cried out.
She surrendered. Over. And over. And again. And over. Turned over. Moaned. Closed her eyes. Like a wild spirit finally at peace. Laid to rest.
I was free to chase the cries of pain. A trail of discarded clothes led the way. Into the scrub brush. To a cave built of coral and rock. Pink mouthed in the moonlight. Surrounded by moss and overgrowth. Ribbed by fallen trees and exposed roots. There were many holes. Cries echoed through the opening. I went in the back way. Cries were everywhere. In the chambers. Vibrating through the air.
I looked through a small peek hole. The sea rushed in. What I saw looked like a pink squid head. Up so close it looked gigantic. Pink tentacles wrapped around a large whiteness. A wail. I smelled the sea.
Up that close. Watching. I was in the grip of crazy feelings that I hesitate to call love because you and I hadn’t even kissed yet. So I think of it as hype. I am a victim of hype. Hype from Jay. Hype from my own head and hype from any other part of my body that did my thinking for me.
Jay was right, the devious bastard. The image would stay with me. Every time you cheated on me. And even when you didn’t. I would think of that night. Of Jay’s skills as a lover. Your desire. Exposed.
I climbed up one of the fallen trees. Slippery as the tide rushed in around it. To the roof of the cave. Another hole up there.
Through the hole I watched. Falling into a scheme against my will. The tide crashing against the outer walls of the cave. Drops falling on me. Like rain. But not cleansing. Mud splatters blooming on my skin like asterisks. Splatters of grit and slime. Spider shaped.
Pink began to color the sky. Seep into the hole.
Then you looked directly at me. Like you knew I was there. Like you could see my eyes glittering in the hole. In the dawn. You met my gaze.
Strange as it sounds, I felt connected to you at that moment. Even though Jay was the one who had possession. I felt I had the more genuine stake in you. Jay turned into an artifact. Something in a vicarious experience.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I just couldn’t. I would drive the two of you apart, no matter what it took. Even if I had to throw away my only chance at the greatest love of my life. I didn’t want it this way. Not by being caught in a plot. Not by being someone who once was real, but got turned into a myth.
I started pushing handfuls of mud through the hole in the roof. The mud fell in gloppy, dirty lumps on Jay and Phoenix. You two wouldn’t stop. You frolicked in the filth. Other holes started to show through the roof of the cave. So many holes. The place was turning into an observatorium.
Man-of-war started splashing into the cave. They fell all around. They washed through the holes and rained down with the sea water.
Now the screams of horror and pain were real. One of the creatures had washed over Jay, and as he pulled away, cursing, a stray, blue, stinging tentacle whipped over your face.
And at the same moment, one of them popped near me. Splattered drops of poison on my chest. I struggled to stay quiet. I grunted. Maybe loudly. Probably not loud enough to be heard over your screams and Jay’s.
By then, Grace had revived, and wandered over to see what the hell was going on. The naked Grace quickly took up the task of caring for weeping and wounded. Not including me. I just got out of the way and let Grace take over. Jay would think this was my fault, somehow. And maybe it was. Revenge for the leaches.
Phoenix, I will never forget the next day. The way you looked at me when we said good-bye, both of us certain it was good-bye forever. You stared through slitted eyes. Lips pouty with swelling. Cheeks dotted by strings of pearly blisters. Like a grizzly facial cum shot.
I had blisters, too. I was burned as well. But no one paid attention to the brand on my chest, like a bubbling firebird over my heart.
“Too bad what happened to you and Jay,” said Grace. “I had a wonderful time, just wonderful. We should do this together again, and soon.”
Responding both to her and to me, Phoenix, you said, “If it doesn’t happen, you two have a good rest of your lives.”
***
I didn’t tell you about something that happened during the early stages of our script. I got a summons from a magician. He lured me out to San Francisco. Something about a proposition. Something about the most beautiful woman in the world. He goaded me with mysteries. He could easily be Jay.
A magician. And one of the best actors in the business. Iream (pronounced Ire Am) Insider wanted to use his real name in porn films, but couldn’t. He is the closest male friend I have, alive. A man I dearly love.
I was willing to drop everything on Iream’s account. He is a rare being. Someone who achieves an uncompromised degree of excellence. In everything. When you first fall into the sphere of his hyperkinetic energy, and you listen to him spout esoterica from on a wide variety of topics, like a Jeopardy junky showing off his stash, you start to wonder if you have met a master bullshit artist who got his material from comic books and pulp magazines. Or if not that, maybe you’ve met an alien. Or a slumming God. Nature’s own antidote to hubris. Or any of the above, pulled off as a con job by a consummate actor.
All right. Maybe I used that kind of hype back in the days when I was setting up a woman for a swap with Jay. Don’t let my lapse into fawning admiration mislead you to thinking I’m trying to set you up with Iream.
Iream claims to have been in and dropped out of many different grad schools. Dentistry. Architecture. English. Maybe even Law.
“What is your secret?” I asked him once. “How can you cram so much information into your head and pull it back when you want it?”
“By being nobody.”
“Which means…?”
“I can be anybody. I let go of my self. I try to copy the way other people think. Once, I tried to learn how to be a master fuck by thinking like Sir Richard Burton. And I found I had picked up a knack for foreign tongues.”
I don’t know how old he is under all that plastic surgery he’s been through. Older than me. Though I wouldn’t mind being in the shape he’s in. He looks thin at first glance. In fact, he is solid muscle. He can double his size at will, by flexing and pumping. Like a cobra spreading its hood.
He is like one of those mad geniuses who can’t hold down normal jobs, so they have to work as cess pool cleaners or private eyes or stunt cocks.
If he could get himself focused, he could do anything at all. What ever he wanted. But then, I suppose he’s doing exactly that.
I flew to San Francisco in a plane full of living skeletons. Some paled to the point of being almost translucent. You could whiff the brewing of opportunistic infections in the recycling air. The same smell floated in the fog all over the city. Fermenting spit. An army of ghosts, translucent transvestites, roamed the undulating streets.
The address Iream gave me turned out to be an old theater in the Tenderloin. A very old and very neglected theater. Ruined doors opened out into the fog.
I was greeted by Eerie Canal, Iream’s beautiful assistant. She led me through a maze of backstage passages. I steeped into what I thought was going to be the dressing room.
Suddenly found myself in the spotlight. On stage. Looking at an audience, which was looking back at me. Then they burst into applause.
Iream mounted the stage and offered very high grade dope to make up for the way he had taken me by surprise. Somehow, he had found out about our Flick. Don’t ask me how. Iream is like that sometimes. He seems to be plugged into mysterious sources of information. Like he has a network of spies or something.
Iream offered to cut a deal. Right there in front of the audience. Like I would be intimidated by all the onlookers. He not only wanted to play Jay, he wanted to be Jay.
“No, no, no,” I said. “You’re all wrong for the part. You’re nothing like Jay, aside from being my best friend.”
“I can be Jay,” he said in a voice that sounded disturbingly like Jay’s. A voice Iream had never heard. It caught me off guard again.
“I can be anyone,” said Iream. “Anyone can be me.”
Iream turned to the audience. He said, “I am going to ask you to give up something that sounds like a lot, but which is really nothing. Let go of your self. Come with me. Individuality is an illusion. We are all bound together by a single force beyond our comprehension. If you are willing to let go of yourself, you can know what it is like to be me. As you watch me, you will become me. And I will become you.” He began to stroke Eerie Canal, saying, “You can caress her through my fingers. Smell her perfume. I will be you. You will be me. Put yourself in my body as I put myself in her body.” He pointed to a tall guy on the front row. “Will you be me?”
“Sure.”
“Sure,” replied Iream, in perfect echo of the man’s voice. He pointed to others. Copied their voices. Like he was a vessel. Many inside him.
“Give me your life, all of it. I can be you. You can be me. Give me your life. Your name. Your woman. Everything. Hold nothing back.
“When she makes love to me, she will be making love to all of you. We will think each other’s thoughts. There is a magic in all art that makes us lose ourselves. We live in an age where the mind can create anything. Every man can be a superstar… a John Holmes, an Iream Insider, a Die Smiling… Every woman an Eerie Canal. You all have felt the magic of art in one form or another. All you have to do is believe in me. Believe, absolutely and unconditionally, and I will let you share in my body. You will see the world through my eyes. Taste the world with my tongue. Believe in me, without question, without hesitation. Your belief will be rewarded.”
He kept this up for a long time, this rhythmic, hypnotic incantation.
The audience did exactly what he told them to. Unlike their usual habits, they let go of themselves. They came the way Iream led them.
Then began a sex show and magic act. Two in one. Filmed before a live audience that had to pay to get in. Iream knows how to get the most bucks for his bangs.
Fog poured onto the stage. Like fog had leaked through all the openings and rents in the battered walls. Iream arrived amid rolling screens. Stepping in and out of secret panels. Appearing and disappearing as lights from many sources hit his body. He cast strange shadows on the rolling screens. The shadows bent into a monstrous face. Then unbent into a throbbing coital cluster. Iream emerged from behind the screens. He held the hand of Eerie Canal.
The show proceeded to a series of tricks, many involving S&M imagery. Chains. Shackles. Hand cuffs. Straight jackets. Whips. Flames. Ice. Swords. The potential for grievous bodily harm, only narrowly averted. Much skin displayed.
In one trick, he whipped harp strings into Eerie’s flesh. The harp strings hoisted her into the air. Harp notes plucking as she writhed around. She hung there. Impaled. Or that’s how it looked. Actually, thin hollow tubes had been wrapped around her body. The harp strings were drawn through the tubes by near invisible nylon cords.
Most of the tricks I could figure out, especially from my back stage vantage point. Iream made the usual use of smoke and mirrors, seemingly impossible contortions, holograms, wires and secret panels. But there were some tricks I couldn’t figure out.
Most of the time, I would do anything for Iream. Well, almost anything. There was a girl, once. Someone he loved. He said to me, “Promise me that you won’t try to steal her away.”
I told him that I’d broken a similar promise to a similar friend years ago. I said, “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Meaning you won’t poach?”
“Meaning I won’t promise.”
Later that night he told me about a supermodel he was dating.
“She is the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You said that about the last one, Iream.”
“The last one was very beautiful, true?”
“All of your women are very beautiful, Iream.”
“But this one is really the most beautiful woman in the world. Really. You would trade anyone for this woman. Even Phoenix, I would bet.” It all sounded very familiar. I had the greatest sense that he was trying to dig himself into my story. His motives can be strange sometimes.
I love him.
But don’t trust him. Like who else we once knew?
I was almost going to turn down his bid to be Jay. Worried about setting the pattern in motion again. He imitates Jay perfectly. I feel like I’m fulfilling an old promise. Repaying an old debt. I’m bringing Jay back to life.
Since that time, I’ve met Iream’s supermodel. I’ve been sworn to secrecy. That was part of the deal. I can’t tell you her name. I’d tell you that she is actually the most beautiful woman in the world, but that is too much of a clue.
Love, Die.
DIE SMILING– MY VOTE FOR MILLENNIUM MALE BIMBO
By Gail Pettigrew
All right, I’m going to admit it in public (Oh God, I can’t believe I’m doing this): I like to watch Die Smiling films. I’ll put on a wig and my crummiest clothes, sneak into the back room of the video store, rush to the counter with my goods, rent a tape and cringe when I have to show my membership card– which has my name on it! And I say, “I’m not really Gail. I’m her ugly, stupid, evil, half-twin sister, Randy. But she let me use her card.”
My editor voted for Fabio.
But I voted for Die Smiling because:
(1) He doesn’t shave his chest.
(2) He shows what he’s got.
(3) He’s got a funnier name.
(4) He’s a better form of revenge.
Not that revenge is what this is all about. It isn’t, but it is a nice side benefit. Revenge for high heels, revenge for the bikini. Revenge against every male who ever drooled over gravity defying breasts on a woman wearing rabbit ears and an oversized cotton ball on her behind. And a very special revenge against Tommy Morton who sat at home on Saturday nights dreaming of Helen Hall’s 36 bust and tapered legs instead of calling me.
To all you men out there, I offer the image of Die Smiling. Six foot four. Broad shoulders and tight butted. Sleek muscles without a trace of fat. A big man. All meat and no potatoes. Do you dare to look? How many of you measure up?
Really though, more than revenge, I think my interest in Die Smiling presents a marriage of convenience. I never used to like microwave cooking– but my present lifestyle doesn’t leave time for anything else. Eventually, I developed a taste for it. Microwave cooking and microwave sex.
It is a simpler market at the video store. Less dangerous, and usually more satisfying. Let’s face it– there’s slim pickings in the reality market. Men these days, what a waste. You could say that all the good ones are taken– but that isn’t really the problem. The married ones don’t stay that way forever, if you know what I mean. I haven’t even found any married men worth waiting for. There are no truly desirable men anywhere, anymore.
Not even Die Smiling.
It is great to watch him in action, so tireless, so skilled, so gorgeous. Pure entertainment, whether you think of it as art or a spectator sport. But to actually touch him? No way. That’s not where my interest lies. I’ll let him run the length of my cathode tube any day of the week– but the only way this guy will ever enter my house is in a box.
You have to assume he’s HIV positive, just from the staggering number of women he’s bedded on film (and that’s not counting the number in real life– assuming he sleeps with women off camera). But that’s even less a consideration than his personality; a selfish, narcissistic, pretentious, obvious woman hater. The kind of guy that probably subjects his bed partners to such insidious psychological abuse, a beating would be preferable. Here is someone you would never give the key to your apartment to– because when you came home, the TV would be gone. You couldn’t tell him your secrets, because if they were interesting enough, he’d reveal them to the world in his next film.
And can you imagine introducing your parents to someone named Die Smiling?
Uh-Uh.
Regular readers may recall in the April issue of Femillenium, Dr. Galen Weiss harkened back to the Garden of Eden, and two gender linked punishments for eating the forbidden fruit. Man had to work by the sweat of his brow — that was his punishment– and woman had to carry a passion for her man — that was her punishment. So what happens to this gender linked passion/jinx/curse now that woman has to work by the sweat of her brow, too?
So much of what I like about Die Smiling flows from the absence of old fashioned problems like worrying if romance is real or if he’s going to make a commitment. In him, I have found a way to liberate myself from the power struggles and failed expectations that characterize modern male/female relationships. I have my freedom, and I did it without resort to the lesbian alternative that never much interested me. In an age where sex should only be performed by highly skilled professionals, I found this man, this microwave man. I don’t have to ask him if he loves me. He don’t have to ask if the sex is good. It is.
I was always told that a lady doesn’t get pregnant out of wedlock. A lady doesn’t get venereal disease. A lady doesn’t stay out in bars. A lady doesn’t pick up strange men.
How the hell does a lady enjoy herself?
She can watch Die Smiling films.
——-
Stuart Hopen’s writing has been published by various comic book companies, including D.C., Marvel, Eclipse, Amazing, and Fantagraphics. His science fiction novel, Warp Angel, originally published by Tor Books, will soon be reissued by the Misenchanted Press in a newly revised edition. Cannibals, a series of six interrelated novellas, will be available online in 2014.
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