by Mark Foss
18
THE FIXED LENS IN ROX'S camera frames her face between the eyebrows and neck. The covers are pulled up tightly and no doubt she’s crawled into bed fully clothed in four layers — not to deal with changes in temperature, but to thwart unwanted sexual attention.
She only Skypes when we’re both in my Montreal condo, on opposite sides of the wall. We talk virtually until she falls asleep; but she often wakes suddenly, worry lines tightening in confusion until she sees me on the screen. In a few hours, the battery in her mobile will be dead and the connection lost. Until then, she fades in and out of consciousness, long periods of silence interrupted by a rumbling laugh that jerks my hand off the mouse and rolls my chair backwards. She won’t calm down until I fall out of bed, the way I did when we were kids. I bang plastic hand weights against the wall to create the satisfying thud her unconscious craves.
She shows up without notice, so I have taken to sleeping on the couch in the office, giving her the bedroom, just in case. At times I try to decide if the ripples and curves of the comforter hide human form. She blends into the landscape, perfectly camouflaged. I swear my bed is empty, only to find her fixing breakfast in the morning.
Since she spooks easily, I have installed three deadbolts on the front door and left the hardwood floors bare and squeaky. I peck at the keyboard when she’s around; the clicking keys make her think someone’s picking the lock. I would have been happy with a somber, ground-floor rental. No hauling groceries and my bicycle up winding stairs. But Rox has been visibly relaxed in the bright space on the second floor, so I have no regrets about buying.
In these years of her intermittent squatting, we haven’t so much as hugged or air kissed. We eat our own popcorn. We separate the laundry by gender, as well as colour. Neither of us evokes the ring-around-the-collar reenactments, how she usurped me as the narrator belittled by Candy’s unrepentant housewife. Our mixed feelings remain unsorted.
We do not speak of Candy’s disappearance, yet she is the bond between us, our shared unspoken history. What secrets Rox is protecting, I don’t know. I’m just glad she comes around, and resent when she doesn’t. There is always the chance she will bring news of Candy, and I am invariably crushed and relieved by the silence between us. It’s all I can do not to deliver handmade, gold-embossed invitations on bended knee. I entreat you, Rox, to reveal all you know about Candy’s current whereabouts. The blank look of despair on her face would be too much to bear.
It’s easier to be close when she is not here. The mixed tapes she sends, with hand-drawn covers, are treasures, even as the format grows increasingly anachronistic. I read into Annette Peacock songs like “So Close Is Still Too Far,” “Safe Inside the Fantasy,” and “No Winning, No Losing,” convinced Rox is transmitting a message. What, I don’t know.
The first time she arrives at my door, I don’t recognize her. Her body and voice are too thin. I don’t ask, simply offer my couch. She hibernates, fattens up, disappears. Every winter is the same. No questions, no answers. The unexpected arrivals in the shoulder seasons. She works in Montreal when she’s here. Or at least she disappears most days, and buys vintage clothes from the friperies. Some of her dresses could be Candy’s costumes. We both know it. There’s no reason to express it aloud.
I don’t ask about her love life, nor does she about mine. For me, the height of the sexual act brings a moment of addictive forgetfulness. But I can’t bask in this state for long, and the awakening is rude. I can fake connection curled up against my lovers, but my inattention to their words gets me into trouble. Only so many times can I get by with “Hmm hmm” before they ask a question that requires a more thoughtful response. The confession that I haven’t really been listening at all, the hurt feelings, the tears, and even the reconciliation, all wear me out. I prefer the platonic silence between me and Rox, even if, at times, it weighs heavily. All those nights in my bed. Sometimes I have unnatural thoughts. She is like a sister to me. I stuff the feelings before they grow. Who am I fooling? I don’t know if Rox feels the same. To speak these thoughts aloud would betray, or at least water down, the purity of my preoccupation with Candy.
These past few months have seen regular and longer visits, and I have been tempted to share my discovery of Molly O, to invite her to help edit the collage from the Molly O films or to read my blogs. Except that I’m convinced Rox knows about Molly O already. It’s not possible that Candy could have disappeared without telling her best friend. All these years Rox has guarded her secret, respecting Candy’s desire for privacy, occasionally teasing and tormenting me. So it seems, at least.
Scenario one: I’m screening Diary of a Lost Girl, a Louise Brooks film I discovered in high school, when two figures slip into my dark classroom. I recognize the shape of Rox’s flounced flamenco dress and bohemian shawl, which shields her short companion from view. They sit discreetly at the back, as if they rejoined the film club. I break my own rule, switching the lights on early, while the credits are rolling, but both are gone. Only a pair of white satin gloves on the floor hints at Candy’s fleeting presence.
All that evening, I wait for Rox to show up triumphantly with Candy. Then for days and weeks after. Doubts set in. I set the gloves on the kitchen table with the subtlety of product placement. Two months pass before I wake to find Rox writing in her journal at the kitchen table. No reaction to my dropped hints about diaries or glances at the gloves within her reach. I start to question whether Candy has the audacity to make a cameo appearance in my classroom. In Public Enemies, Johnny Depp as Dillinger walks brazenly into a police station and passes unnoticed; but, as Rox prepares breakfast, I’m thinking more of Public Enemy, how Cagney shoves half a grapefruit into his lover’s face at the breakfast table. Sure I’m angry. At whom is not so clear.
Never before has Rox Skyped me when I’m not on the other side of the bedroom wall. It must mean something. The lost girl could be sitting at the kitchen table right now, fingering her gloves.
Molly O
The Seductive cinema of Mickey Nailand
Home Films Suppositions About Me
Hand in glove
Posted by LJ
Molly O is never entirely naked. She may be exposed or paraded on screen — either obscured or so fully frontal her parts are distorted — and her body may be contorted into all manner of sexual positions, but her hands are always covered. Even more interesting: she only wears gloves in the sex scenes. In what amounts to a jump cut, the gloves suddenly appear on her hands as soon as her clothes are off.
It’s no accident or mistake: it happens in every sex scene in Nailand’s oeuvre. Is it fetishism or prudery? No, the regular appearance of the white gloves illustrates the creative tension between Nailand and Molly O, and how the actress is truly in control. The glove is a sheath, in more ways than one.
In the original M’liss, a plucky young girl in a rough-and-tumble mining camp falls in love with her teacher, helping him escape a mob that wants to lynch him for a murder he did not commit. In Nailand’s remake, a black teacher seduces a thirteen-year-old white student, Molly O, who seems remarkably experienced for her age. They meet after school for several weeks until the secret is out. The girl’s enraged father pounds on the school door; and, with a posse of self-righteous white folks, lynches the teacher in the yard next to the play structure.
In each of the sex scenes, the teacher watches Molly O undress. Stein has argued persuasively that the act of striptease is, in fact, homoerotic: the woman’s body signifies the phallus, and men are watching the clothes drop to see it revealed. Nailand makes this connection literal: he intercuts the teacher putting on a condom with the girl inserting her fingers into satin gloves. After sex, the teacher carefully discards the condom, while the girl throws her sheaths off with abandon, much like Rita Hayworth strips off and throws her glove after singing “Put the Blame on Mame” in Gilda.
Gilda, of course, is slapped in the face for stepping outside the bounds of propriety. It seems that a woma
n’s sexuality must be controlled at all costs, but nothing can contain Molly O. For her, the gloves are a way to retain power in unbalanced relationships. Never will she allow her guard down: her body sheathed, her soul armoured. If she lets go, it will be on her own terms.
In the final scene, the girl’s father spanks her bare behind. The title card: “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” Her apparent indifference enrages him all the more. He shakes his sore hand. Yes, finally, his actions did hurt him more. Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley offers an even more complex take on the power struggle between director and actress, and deserves as much notoriety as Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, released a year later, in 1991.
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19
UNDER ROX'S INTENSE STARE — RIGHT into the lens of her iPhone camera — the news about Joseph’s death remains unspoken. My eyes stray to the bulletin board on my wall and the notice for Pandora’s Box at the high school film club. Not for the first time do I wonder whether Louise Brooks’s character Loulou is a prototype for Molly O. Both sow lust in the hearts of men and women, leading them to rash decisions.
Rox dozes off, and her iPhone slips a notch in her palm. The faintest white puffs of smoke have invaded her ebony hair. When did this happen? Truth is, I might be looking for the first time, which is still a better record than my own self-regard. I will pace the apartment with my toothbrush and cordless razor rather than face the mirror. It disturbs me too much, to take notice of the years that have passed.
The “Recent Publications” page of my website is gathering dust. My irreverent reviews and acerbic banter with the host of the afternoon radio drive-home show have long been archived on cassette tapes, a medium that none of the young bucks in the department seem to recognize. My classes devoted to early cinema and experimental filmmakers like Stephen Dwoskin have been displaced in popularity by the post-colonial and feminist concoctions of the new hires. Once my sabbatical ends, if I don’t raise my profile, I may end up teaching Slasher Films 101 to earn my keep.
I don’t talk to Rox about any of this, but her sudden appearances make it easier to handle all the same. While she is a tangible connection to Candy, I actually become less preoccupied with finding Candy when Rox is around. A day after one of Rox’s equally abrupt departures, of course, I plunge into a dark hole, full of anxiety and guilt for time not spent obsessing about Candy. Where does Rox go when she disappears out my door? How does she spend her days? I imagine a series of friends with whom she squats, never so long to be a nuisance, always the perfect guest.
Rox has a cameo in Going, going, gone. She is editing images of Candy dressed as Marlene Dietrich in tails, unaware Candy has snuck into the barn with the Bolex. Frame by frame, the images are deconstructed, appear less and less real. Candy zooms in on the Marlene image on the screen, leaving Rox’s shoulders and head slightly out of focus. It appears spontaneous. Yet nothing in film is accidental. Not like life. I could tell Rox I’ve got the film on my computer, along with the entire Molly O collection. It might ease us into speaking about painful subjects. Except her iPhone slips completely from her hands and she disappears from my view.
I wake on the floor, shoulder and knee sore to the touch. It’s been decades since I’ve been driven out of bed at the Wasteland. There is only one explanation. Rox is here. She knows Candy is coming. They have been in contact through the years, just as I’ve believed. I’m shaking now — not from the vibrations but rather from the betrayal. Always the two of them pushing me to one side. Even now, after I’ve engineered this reunion, they are the stars and I am the voice-over. Not the omniscient, authoritarian, voice-of-doom style narrator I would prefer to be, but a fragmented, self-doubting author unspooling in a mess behind the projector.
I crawl into the hall on all fours. Scrambling to my feet, I’m thrown against the door by a muffled laugh from inside Candy’s room. My sister’s bed is made up, pillows fluffed, covers turned down — just the way I left it. Rox lies on the cot on the floor, just the way she did. The force of my body against the door has soothed her fears, sent her into a deep sleep. I make my way back to my room, determined to shut out her infectious laugh if it emerges again, knowing I’ll crawl back instead.
Molly O
The Seductive cinema of Mickey Nailand
Home Films Suppositions About Me
Of blank slates and sham love
Posted by LJ
With the high-minded narrative strategies at work in Mickey Nailand’s films, the uncomfortable use of the male gaze, the uneasy relationship between director and star, the tragedy of his early death and Molly O’s vanishing trick, it’s easy to overlook the one element that unites his work: humour, often relying for its effect on an appreciation of language and idiom.
In Oh, Uncle, as Molly O defends against the advances of Uncle John, the film’s title is repeated with varying degrees of intent: disgust, boredom, embarrassment. The last title card, in an echo of the old schoolyard submission, can be read with a dreamy sigh: “Uncle!” This film also has the first of Nailand’s visual puns: a scene where Molly O, wearing her French maid uniform, removes her panties and then “trips” in the dining room with the tea service, flying literally “ass over teakettle.” As the uncle paddles her backside with a switch, Molly O proclaims “Oh, I love slapstick!”
One Hundred Percent American is also full of visual puns. My favourite is the bondage scene where the auctioneer’s daughter forces the draft dodger to tie her up, and makes him bid for sex — a perverse form of “liberty bond.”
All this humour comes from the characters played by Molly O. The deadpan look of Nailand is more Buster Keaton than Fatty Arbuckle, whereas Molly O can conjure up the pithy look of Theda Bara or Louise Brooks at will. Whatever its source, the humour is double-edged, undercutting the eroticism.
In Mrs. Jones Entertains, Molly O plays a deaf-mute maid who helps her mistress prepare for a grand party in the mansion. She carries a small blackboard and chalk in her apron so she can communicate. Each time she prints her words on the blackboard, the inter-titles reproduce chalk-like block letters. A hand subsequently appears on the screen with a shammy to wipe off the words. Given this is a silent film, everyone is mute. When Molly O laughs, an inter-title appears with “Ha, Ha, Ha,” as if it’s not enough to see the expression on her face.
Molly O becomes the “mistress,” drawing each of the male guests into the drawing room. Earlier she has been drawing erotic figures on the blackboard. With each new lover, she holds up the same claim on her chalkboard: “I’m a blank slate!” The hand with the shammy appears on the screen, makes a motion to wipe off the blackboard, then reconsiders. Cut to Molly O, with her white glove, catching a shammy thrown from off-screen. She uses it to protect the furniture while she stimulates her lovers.
The gag is repeated four times, with the letters on the blackboard getting “rubbed off” more each time. This creates collusion between Molly O and the audience: we admire her cavalier attitude towards the men, how she can’t be bothered to reprint the message; we enjoy recognizing the tension between her claims and how the words are represented figuratively and literally. Ultimately, “I’m a blank slate” becomes “I’m late.” Late for freedom? By the end of the film, she has emptied the suit pockets of all her would-be suitors, and fled. The joke, finally, is on them.
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20
ON OUR SECOND GO-ROUND on Skype, Rox looks at me rather than the camera in her iPhone, which sends her gaze off-kilter — an attempt at intimacy that falls flat.
— I found Joseph in the field. The ambulance snuck up on me. No sirens. The way you do.
— He came to me last night in a dream.
— I think …
— Can I finish my feelings, please? His voice bathed me in a warm light. I used to visit. My own house was so sterile. Joseph took an interest in my life. He had to ask me questions twice because I would lose myself in his voice. I stopped coming by. I don’t know why.
I felt the need to see him again. We wrote sometimes.
Rox wants forgiveness for keeping her visits to my father a secret or for ending them abruptly. All I can think is how Joseph never asked how I was doing. Maybe I should have gone to see Rox’s parents. I want to keep Rox talking. I don’t want this moment to end.
— He used to watch this soap opera with twin brothers. You remember when we acted out laundry commercials.
— No, we never did. You and Candy, then me and Candy.
— We were always cleaning something. Something was always dirty. Did she ever tell you about Phebe?
— The girl …
— … who lived here. They shared a birthday. She left a message.
— The lock …
— … of hair, yes. And a message too faded to read. Did she ever tell you? Hoss is coming. Maybe.
— Does he …
— I can’t reach him.
— He’s at …
— … a retreat, yes. On an island. Not far. With his Momentous Moments group. He says he’ll come if the moment feels right.