by PW Cooper
If you could just have her. If she only wanted you.
But she's gone. You lost her, man, couldn't keep up with that. Before you ever had her she was gone gone gone.
She's the one, the only one. And she's gone.
* * *
In the Republic of Pigs
He watches impassively as the four men undress his wife. They tear away her clothes, ripping stockings, tearing buttons, clawing through sheer fabric. Their naked bodies glisten with sweat, hairless and pale under the studio lights. Their hands squeeze at her flesh, gathering handfuls, leaving red marks where their fingers dig in. Her head thrown back, offering the swan-curve of her white neck, skin painting bruise-black. He pauses the film and studies the frame. They are reduced to nothing in the glow of his computer screen, little creatures subhuman in their frantic congress. They mean nothing to him. He finds a close shot of her red lips opening and splices it in. Swollen lips smeared crimson. Lips you imagine parting with the tip of one finger, sliding into. The wet mouth, the wet redolence. He returns to the footage. One of the men is putting a leg up on the couch and arching his pelvis at her. She takes him in her mouth, squeezing herself tight around him. He clutches her hair and pushes himself deeper. A mouth you could lose yourself in.
He fights a yawn, fails to hold it back. Only dregs in his coffee cup. Swirl and pour. Grit in the back of the throat. He pushes up his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. Something went wrong in the world today. He turns the phrase over and over in his head. It is stuck there, revolving in his thoughts. He does not know what it means, from what truth it was born. He feels a sort of cosmic unease. The arithmetic of the universe slipped one digit and the whole equation gone quietly off. He does not like to see a good thing end. What are we going to do now?
The men are parting his wife's legs and reaching two hands four five to clutch and worry at her. He looks away from the video, his attention drifting. He is vaguely aware of his arousal, a faint and distant throb in his lap. It almost amuses him, seems somehow quaint. He hadn't been aroused shooting the film. Too much worry over technical matters, too much the desire to get the thing in the can. Timing the pulse of human sex on a digital clock. And this is their last film. He wants to get it right.
He remembers meeting her. He was just a cameraman then, gravitated by some as-yet unexplained freak of chance away from juvenile Hollywood dreams into the glitz and filth of the porn world. And it is a world.
Just a cameraman, he told himself, and shot what they told him to shoot. He said to his mother that he was filming movies and when she asked which she wanted to see them he demurred said they wouldn't be playing out there ma. He wasn't exactly ashamed but it was his mom, you know?
She was his sixth shoot. It was still exotic then, a kind of hideous magic. The stench of sex in the air, silicon lube and silicon bodies. The starlets smoked and read magazines or novels between scenes, eyeglasses back on and fluffy bathrobes draped over absurd bodies. He'd been filming down at her, she kneeling and smiling up with her mouth wide while a pair of men jerked off in her face, sprayed strands of themselves across her cheek and she cooed her delight. He handed her a towel when the scene was done, he didn't remember where he'd got it, somebody must have passed it to him. She'd thanked him after wiping off and with the words he had finally noticed her. You're alive, he'd almost said, caught himself in time. Churning meat product looking up and talking at you, it was an unnerving thing. Something dead coming alive. He'd been so young then.
He ran a sepia-tone effect through the editing software. An artistic touch, he thought, then decided against it. Too showy, too weird. Just let it play out. Her and the four men like a puzzle of twisted limbs. One standing above slapping her backside with his cock, another pumping from below, one at the mouth. The forth standing back a pace, holding his dick. That annoyed him, that he'd not caught it during the shoot. Ruined the fucking shot. He used another angle and cut out a bit, stitched his way past the offending image. Cut it out, slice it up. Here is time in my hands, string it out as you like. He cuts past a long sequence of her lubing her anus, stretching and flexing. He cuts straight to the man kneeling behind and thrusting himself inside. Like none of the rest had ever happened. Nobody wanted to see that, the preparation, the tawdry reality. Her mouth was twisted into a tight snarl: Fuck me! You fuckers! Fuck me! Fuck that asshole!
He sneezed, caught the snot in his hand. Momentary disgust, regret. Wipe it off in the tissue. Nose twitching. He takes a squirt of hand sanitizer and rubs it into his skin.
She'd been his big break. He started dating her just before she went big. Kalinda Knox, the name of new industry. He asked her once how she had come by the name, what made her pick that one. The hard rhyme nom de plum. Kalinda Knox loves cocks. It had been chosen for her, she said. Picked by the company. The brand, burned in on the thigh. It was just starting to become a real name when he first asked her out. She'd been surprised, he liked to think flattered. He wasn't some cretin trying to fuck her. He didn't want to screw her. Anybody could fuck, that was the first thing he'd learned in this business. He wanted to hold her, caress her cheek. Kiss her softly, put her to bed like putting a child to bed, tucked up under the warm covers and her eyes shut her soft snores her cold painted toes finding his leg in the middle of the night. They'd only had sex a few times. Not so much after the first few months.
He shot every single one of her films, hers exclusively. Sometimes it made him faintly sick, the wet slapping of the flesh, the heaving the moaning the gritted teeth and pearls of sweat the machine of the body churning and groaning and writhing like a broken toy. He forgot sometimes who he was, lost in that slaughterhouse din. Pink pigskin flesh surrounding him and he strapped to his machine, his great glass eye.
Who are you really? You just do a job. You just show up and stand where they tell you, fuck who they tell you. Get down on your knees and shut your eyes.
She told him that sex was like music. You play it with your entire soul and everybody can feel it, vibrating way down the spine. Make something beautiful of it.
But not love.
Not love. But beautiful.
She started getting her name more and more places. At a certain point, he didn't know when, she stopped attaching her name to projects and starting having projects attached to her name. Kalinda Knox's Virtual Vixens. Kalinda Knox's Threesome Extreme. So on, so on. It was a blur to him, an inverted mirror. Nothing quite the right way up. But it was a kind of fame. They went to a premiere together, a real movie premiere. He wore a suit and everything, tuxedo. Down the red carpet. Photographers shouting out her name, her brand name. Kalinda! Kalinda! He hadn't realized at first that they meant her. He'd felt like a child playing dress up. The director said they were all fans, got her autograph and made few nasty jokes that made Kalinda Knox howl with brassy full-throated laughter.
He'd chuckled along and tried not to look while the guy grabbed her ass.
The studio door opens behind him and she comes in. She wraps her arms around his neck, loose like a pendant two hands clasped. She kisses the back of his neck. Her body hanging over him. She feels old, worn, used up. Her cheek is against his and they watch together as the men plunge into her body over and over. It is soothing, he thinks, tidal. Cosmic. Squeeze life until the blood runs down your arm.
“Maggie asleep?
“Yep.”
“Good.”
“How's it coming?”
“It's coming.”
“Huh.” She smiles.
He reaches up, touches her arm, strokes the skin.
It was three years ago that they decided to go on their own. She had all the connections, all the equipment, all the people and crew she needed. Porn wasn't hard to get into. All it took was a camera and a body. He shot and edited and directed, though there was little for him to do but stay out of the way. He tried, in his own fashion, to make a mark on it. He'd dreamed of being a filmmaker. A child dreams: astronaut, marine biologist, an explorer of some
wild darkness. He'd plunged himself into the closest mystery, and greatest. They got married last year, a little ceremony. All the men firm-bodied with fake tans, the women tattooed and long-nailed, grinning like a hive of drunk aunts. His parents hadn't known what to do with themselves. Her five year old daughter was the flower girl. She was just becoming aware of what her mama did for a living and that, he suspected, was what had pushed Kalinda into calling it quits. And now here they were, stitching together the last scenes of her career on his home computer.
After this, what then? He feels the great tug of yawning space and time opening, waiting to swallow him. He'll have nothing left but her, and ugly memory.
She was crying in pain, an ecstatic pain, warped beyond natural emotion. Everything taken to its peak. The crescendo rising rising. That nude form doll-sized on the screen. They watched her in silence, fascinated, amazed. It was beautiful and repulsive. He took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses.
“This is good,” she said, “I like this shot, that's cool.” She points to the screen.
His lip turns towards a grin. He knows that she is looking for something for which she can praise him. Make him feel good about himself. He appreciates that about her. Simple kindness like spilling milk.
On the screen she is staring open-mouthed up into the fish-eye lens, yards of semen spooled out across her face and breasts. She licks her lips, raises one hand, waves two fingers. Goodbye.
The screen goes dark. Sudden plunge into lightless oblivion. There's nothing there, no credits, no denouement. An absolute blank. He'll have to put something in. The black unnerves him. She hugs her arms tight around him and speaks in his ear. “Guess she's dead now.”
Deep inside himself he feels the first cold twist of sickness.
* * *
She strokes his hair, tracing her fingers over the whorls and tangles of it. Like a fingerprint. She brushes over the thinning crown. It fills her with a terrible love to see the light shine through and reveal the balding scalp. She has never told him this, it embarrassed him terribly. At parties he would cling to the shadows to hide the signs of age, as if concealment were as good as a cure. But she loves to see it; it reminds her that they are alive.
She leans down and kisses his head. He flinches, hunching lower in his chair. She rests her hands on his shoulders. “What's wrong?”
He swivels his chair, face slouched in his hands, gnawing the thumbnail. “Nothing, nothing.”
Always nothing. Nothing was ever the matter. Worse than pulling teeth, this man, this closed-off thing. He could go blank, close it all off. He could turn to stone before her eyes. “You can tell me.” she says.
“What's to tell?”
“You're upset.”
“I guess I am.”
“Why?” But of course she knows.
“I just... Forget it.”
“You don't want me to quit.”
“I don't.” He looks at her. She can see her image on the screen reflected in his glasses, always between them like a wall, that image. Can he even see her through it?
“We'll talk in the morning.”
He sighs and turns back to the screen.
She leaves him there, walks down the hall, trailing one knuckle against the wall.
She should feel worried, upset. Something wrong with him and it's going to come out ugly and fierce, as it always does. But she rejects that sensation, feels rather curiously buoyant, fulfilled. The world is open to her, and everything in it. She'd once worried that she might miss Kalinda Knox, would miss being that person.
She is content.
In the other room the television set is switched on, playing crude late night cartoons. She watches idly, far away from what she is seeing. Who is this world made for?
Her daughter is sleeping in the next room. She goes there, watches the child. She wonders what her daughter will think of her when she's all grown up. Mommy did porn, sweetie. She wants to laugh. It is such an alien thought. She a mother, she not the child. She doesn't feel old, doesn't feel like an authority figure or whatever. She feels so alive, so full of energy. There are a thousand things she wants to do.
She brushes a curl of black hair off her daughter's sleeping face. Everything is beautiful.
* * *
Fragment
Going down now, and deep into the heat of subconscious. Dark and wet and steaming like an abandoned gulf in some mythic jungle; a dark continent. This is the male mind bubbling up to the surface. Angry red like leaking pus, like a fierce eye.
“Nobody loves the word cunt like a feminist loves it. That's because they all loath themselves at heart.”
“Women want to be our slaves, it's the only way they'll ever be happy. They're all masochists deep down.”
“They say that women are sexually excited by rape as an evolutionary defense mechanism. I think we both know that's not exactly true.”
“You know what I hate most about women?” he said to me, “It's their smell. I can always smell them.”
“Fucking bitch was asking for it, looking like that.” he said.
“I don't think that men can be feminists. We don't have the right.” I said as he hacked her apart. As I watched her die.
* * *
In the Garden of Love
June 22
It crawl.
Breath rasp in throat. Fur fall out. Skin blister. Skin break. Skin sores weep. Gum bleed. Teeth fall out.
Weak. Weak. Weak.
Crawl.
In dirt. In mud. In brush. Thorn tear flesh.
Limbs heavy. Head heavy. Drag self. Mouth ache.
Eye blister. Eye red. Eye water. Blind dog. Eye ache.
Bone ache.
Claw click sidewalk. Breath wheeze. Blood mouth. Needle to flesh. Break the needle.
“Good dog.”
Hand touch head. Skin slough. Fur shed. Snarl mouth. Blood mouth. Claw click.
“Are you okay, boy?”
Weak. Tired. Weak. Lift head. Boy face. Hate boy. Needle? Mouth snarl. Blood mouth.
Shoe squeak sidewalk. Claw click sidewalk. Blood mouth. Tooth ache. Weak. Boy. Man. Needle.
Bite.
Boy scream. Boy kick. Bone break. Boy stomp. Boy kick. Skull break. Skin break. Body break. Eye break. Ache. Ache. Ache. In dirt. In mud. In white room. In white light. Needle. Hate needle. Eye roll over. Mouth in mask. Eye in glass. Hate needle. Chew leg. Chew self. Eat self. Ache. Break. Chew wire. Chew fence. Teeth break. Mouth ache. Crawl. Crawl. Bite. Kick. Kick. Break.
Dead dog.
July 4
Fireworks are blooming over the lake, and all down the shore picnickers huddle on checkered blankets, half-eaten sandwiches and sticky beer cans scattered in damp grass. There is light painted on upraised faces, blue and red and gold. A man stands at the grill, turns the last few hotdogs over glowing charcoal. A craggy veteran stands against a tree and smokes a cigarette, shaking at every boom and not looking and swallowing back bitter memory. A child runs along the shore, throwing stones out to break the reflected faces of the fireworks on the water. Above the lake, just under the shade of long low elms, a boy in the backseat of his father's station wagon leans close and presses his lips against his girl's mouth.
This is America.
She lays back. He can feel the muscles tense in her back and neck, in her arms her legs her thighs. His weight is against her, his heavy male weight. Hers is such a presence. Her mouth is open. He leans down over her, covers her with himself. The heat of her mouth is more than he can bear. Her hands are everywhere, caressing, squeezing, stroking, reaching in. Her hands hot on his skin. Her eyes alive with feverish light, her breath a hungry groan. She touches his cheek, kisses him.
Fireworks are trapped in the glass, in the windows. Caught there and raining down. All of this light is raining down.
His fingers trace the sheer nylon length of her leg, up toward the hem of her skirt. Twitching skirt. He slides his hand under. She catches the wrist. “Are you sure?” He kis
ses her. No word has ever meant anything. This is a time before words. He has such a need of her. Such a desire. He covers her mouth with his mouth. He covers her body with his body. There is here a waking animal.
Touching her underpants. The thin hot fabric, silky and clean and tight. Thin as anything. He can feel her inside, feel her right through. The smooth mons curve, the soft bristle of tuft hair, the wanting lips. The wet heat of her. His finger slips around, back of the knuckle run up and down that slick vein.
She is shuddering, head arched back, eyes squeezed shut, hands in tight fists, legs bracing. Her teeth are pressed tight, her lips parted. Her body shakes. He touches her.
“Have you ever done this before?” her voice small and brittle.
He shakes his head. Wordless question, unspoken: Have you?
She says, “I want it to be you.”
He kisses her. She is reaching for him, toward the bulge in his jeans, the masculine form. But she pulls back. He unbuckles the belt himself, unbuttons the button, unzips the zipper. He tugs down his jeans. She reaches out, touches. Her fingers wrapping around the stiff smooth thing, light, gentle. His entire body shakes with his need for her, his want. His breath shakes.
His leg is throbbing. A searing constant ache. The two crescent-moon marks of the dog's teeth there. The wound does not seem to want to scab over. It runs sometimes with a clear liquid, like pus. Burns with bleary fire. He has grown accustomed to the pain. He will not allow it to worry him, the unhealing hurt. Why won't it stop? He had seen sickness in the animal's eyes.
She pulls him inside her. She cries in her throat. An open-mouthed noiseless cry. A curve of the spine. Inside she is all soft and wet. He shudders. He is inside.
It is not as he thought it would be. He doesn't know how to think. This is something beyond his knowledge of the world. His mind burning, his skin afire. Her arms wrap around, nails scraping down his back. Her teeth bare, bite the soft skin at his neck. Her breath is hot on him. Something in him is burning. A great fear rising, a fear he will be drawn in too deep, will disappear into her and never find his way back out, wander forever in a blissful darkness.
The fireworks are building towards a great finish. Fire fills the dusk sky, and color. Night is falling. Flashing flashing flashing. All the world on fire. Independence day. Everything is burning.