by Mark Foss
I know the where, the when, the what, and the who. All I’m missing is the why.
Molly O
The Seductive cinema of Mickey Nailand
Home Films Suppositions About Me
Love and Theft
Posted by LJ
Oh yes, the music. Very strange, completely out of keeping with a silent film and thus designed to distance the viewer and undermine the erotic. More than that, the music often amplifies the conflict between the two main characters and the actors, Nailand and Molly O. It typically evokes theft, reinforcing the question of ownership. Molly O can never be bought, traded, or sold. She is too powerful. She is inseparable from the films. Without her, they do not exist.
For Little Red Riding Hood and One Hundred Percent American, Nailand steals songs that have already been stolen. In the former, he uses fragments of King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two,” previously appearing illegally in the erotic film Emmanuelle. Of course, by cutting in and out of the piece, Nailand uses it ironically — a far cry from Emmanuelle’s attempt to convey sexual build-up through the music. Since her riding hood appears in black and white, Nailand also throws in the opening chords from Crimson’s “Red” for a blast of colour. Little Red Riding Hood hesitates in the forest, studies a map, and then confidently burns it, all this to the strains of the celebrated theme song of Bonanza; she lights her match at the moment in the score when Hoss, Little Joe and the others burst through the burning parchment on their horses in the show’s opening credits. In One Hundred Percent American, to echo the “coming and going” of the auction and the sex, he inserts excerpts from the breathy “Je t’aime … moi non plus” by Serge Gainsbourg, who himself stole liberally from classical music. In Little Princess, Nailand throws in a few bars of “Blue Moon,” a song in which Rodgers and Hart steal from their own earlier composition. All these references to theft give one pause about the real-life relationship between Nailand and Molly O: who or what has been stolen, by whom, and for what greater purpose?
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28
WHAT IS CANDY'S GREATER PURPOSE? If she wants to hide from us forever, then why plant these clues? They can only mean she wants to be found. Maybe she’s like one of those old Russian Cold War sleepers who waits decades for a sign from the Mother Country to carry out a long-planned assault on democracy. Except in her case, the signal awakens dormant memories and desires. My blog is that homing device; it will find her. Love may or may not have been good to her. After such an intense and claustrophobic experience with Nailand, she may well have opted for a peripatetic life, passing through a series of lovers in Denver, Portland. Other places. I give her a week to cross the International Date Line. She will make a grand entrance, or she won’t. I’m sure she will. Her presence will bring my brother down a notch. To see his self-assured face blanch, to hear his squeaky voice rise to a fever pitch and his hands heat up, to witness him stand there, quivering.
HOSS SLIPS INTO the house alone. Anthea stops parading and starts with questions, which I answer with the clipped efficiency of a policeman forced to speak with crime reporters. No context, no tawdry anecdotes, nothing to allow entry into the inner Grant sanctum. She has the decency to blush, and the heat melts a layer of sunscreen from her cheeks.
— We’re not supposed to have relations at retreats. It disturbs the energy. But I had a kink in L5, and Janardan has these amazing hands. They’re like hot stones that move. Normally I would have a roommate, but there were only nine of us on the island. One for each number of the Enneagram. The place was so big it had separate floors for women and men. No one knew. We were quiet. But Janardan decides to fess up in the morning sharing circle. He apologized to Ashok and the whole group for his lack of self control. He couldn’t look Ashok in the eye. Especially after he got recognized the day before for all he’d done for Momentous Moments. Ashok’s sound system is finicky. Janardan is the only one who can make it work. We call him the Keeper of the Music. Totally helpful. He’s such a Two. Has he always been like that? We could all see there were father-son issues going on, big time. Everyone except Janardan. The apple doesn’t fall far from the septic tank. Ashok was totally cool with the transgression. But then he really pushed home that living in the moment means seizing the moment and then Janardan has this sudden panic that he will be too late to see your father. Your message freaked him out. I told him to call you, to find out what’s so urgent. He just cranked the music and floored it. I don’t know speeds in metric, but it was scary fast. I felt like I was talking to a wall. Completely zoned out. Like a deep meditation except he could have run someone over. I had never seen him like that. Have you? He wanted me to come to meet your father. Now I don’t know why I’m here. I’m walking on eggplants.
— Eggshells.
Piercing guitar chords wrapped in the thick mist of the English moors issue forth from the open bedroom window.
— Maybe it’s a call for help. Should I go see him?
— It’s Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick, side two. I would not disturb him.
Where does Hoss find these women? How could he bring a date to Joseph’s funeral? All right, my message was vague. Still. He must have expected Joseph to be in a weakened state, still unable to talk and with no interest in exchanging notes with his new girlfriend. Not unless she has some voodoo medicine to restore Joseph’s voice and repel the remaining invaders from his throat once and for all.
I don’t see Anthea offering much of anything. So far she has mutilated the crawl space where Candy and I used to lie in the cool earth and she’s trampled on the last traces of Candy’s performances. I won’t give her any credit for rescuing me since I could have backed out on my own, given time.
Hoss cranks up the speakers. I know what’s coming. The climax, where the busy musical arrangements suddenly stop and Ian Anderson sings a cappella in a dramatic offer to help pick up our dead. This is Hoss all over. Indulging in a progressive rock rendition of death, instead of being here in the flesh to help me ride Joseph out of the field. But when the record ends, and silence ensues, I leave Anthea on the stage all the same. Maybe it is a call for help after all.
The sock drawer is askew. A plaid lumberjack shirt has been removed from the closet. The mirror is off the wall, revealing an empty cubbyhole. Judging from the Playboys strewn on the bed, he’s even taken up the loose board where we hid our stash from the curious eyes of Candy and the judgmental frowns of Joseph. All of the room’s hiding places, in other words, have been thoroughly ransacked. Not true. Hoss is on his knees prying up the baseboard, inspecting a space that even I didn’t know about. It’s never too late to learn something about a sibling. I sense this is not the right moment, and walk backwards out of the room, silently, in my best imitation of our sister.
THE THREAT OF skin cancer diminished, Anthea has changed into full-length clothes to ward off mosquitoes spreading the West Nile and Zika viruses. So far, she has not been bitten, although she could hear them around her head throughout the guided meditations on the island. She wasn’t supposed to swat them, only focus on her fear.
Her tie-dye shirt, two sizes too big, has a mash-up of psychedelic swirls that would repel any sentient being. This loose upper-body garment is at odds with the form-fitting purple leggings, which show off her chiselled limbs and draw attention to how short they are. The kind of outfit Candy would not be caught dead in.
Anthea makes a salad from the remnants of pale green Iceberg lettuce and pink hothouse tomatoes in the refrigerator, waving off the Hungry Man options. I make a mental note to stock up on fresh frozen food for Candy.
Hoss is reverting to a primitive state, the kind of insular and numb being he has worked so hard to leave behind. He stares at his Buffalo chicken strips, fork hanging limply between his fingers. All that’s missing are the headphones.
— Just be with whatever is happening for you, as Ashok says.
Knowing Hoss, he is clicking through all the scenes of paternal deaths from the vast
archive of television shows in his head. He falls into the category of all the sons who arrive too late to the deathbed. Except he didn’t know Joseph was dying so there is guilt at having spent three days at the retreat. He may catch glimpses of Joseph out of the corner of his eye, and think of the ghostly afterimages on television when channels start to break down, and characters from one show seemingly cross into another. But that’s me guessing. I don’t really know.
— I lost my father when I was twenty. It’s a terrible blow. You feel you’re never going to get over it. But then you do. Time —
— What’s with the you, you, you? Own your own fucking experience, it’s nothing to do with mine.
He chases the chicken strips around the plastic compartment like a Sioux warrior forcing a buffalo over a cliff to its death. When the pieces do leap over the barrier to crash into the mashed potatoes, Hoss spears them with his fork to make sure they’re dead.
— If you hadn’t made me stop for sunscreen, I might have got here in time.
Anthea inhales sharply a few times, unable to get a full breath. She finds her purse in the living room and takes a few shots from her puffer, then disappears upstairs.
— Nice going, Jann Arden.
Hoss jumps up, pivots, and takes four strides towards the back door before turning to deliver his retort.
— You can’t smell E. coli. You can’t see it or taste it. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re infected until it’s too late and your kidneys start to shut down. When was the last time you had the water tested? I’m going to order an autopsy.
He spots the blackboard, with “Rx. Later” carefully preserved.
— This is the real poison. Never letting go. You’re filled with the same shit. So here’s how I’m going to help you. We’re going to cremate Joseph and get rid of this place, and everything in it. Then we can all start living in the moment.
I don’t need your help, you philistine. Candy is alive, and will be here momentarily.
29
THE AUGUST 1979 DOROTHY STRATTEN issue was the pride of our collection. We were enamoured of her nude poses long before she was named Playmate of the Year, and I liked to think that Hugh Hefner himself made the final selection. He left the hot tub in the Playboy Mansion, slipped on a robe, and, lighting his pipe, said, “Yes, she’s the one, the girl from Vancouver.” I took out the magazine whenever Hoss went on a bender, and Rox was in seclusion with Candy. Although Rox’s voice through the walls could shake my hands, and I had to take care not to tear the pages.
It was the first time someone we felt we knew intimately had been murdered. I look at the photos, so still now. Innocent family snapshots, the list of turnoffs that includes jealous people. Dorothy never saw it coming. Naive girl, and slimy impresario turned ex-husband. Do I hear an echo in the relationship between Candy and Mickey Nailand? No, I like to think they were good together. It’s what happens after he dies that I can’t fathom.
— I HAD A teacher who talked through laryngitis and wrecked his voice. I don’t want a permanent rasp like him. My voice is getting better, don’t you think?
Anthea scans her iPod for eco music, either rainfall or crashing waves. Then she dives into a book on breathwork, turning each page with a forceful exhale. She keeps up a steady rhythm until a moth flits inside the lampshade.
— Your screens are okay, right? I didn’t want to spend the extra money for health coverage. If I have problems here, I am royally fucked. I’m having a prolonged healing crisis. Chicken pox last year. Now I’ve hurt my tonsils. If they come out, it’s ice cream for a week and I put on five pounds. My wisdom teeth are next. At the retreat, I felt a twinge on the right side of my mouth. Did Janardan say when he’ll be back?
More than ever, I miss Candy’s silence, the way she lets gestures and movement speak for her. All those Sunday afternoons together on the couch watching classic films on pbs, the hint of a smile during the screwball comedies, the feigned yawn to hide the tear during the three-hanky melodramas, the urgent notes on what the actresses were wearing.
— It’s Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick, side two. I would not disturb him.
The patrons all saw the stylized “G” on Candy’s frilly black tutu as an echo of the giant letter perched above the archway to Grant’s Auction Service rather than as a nod to Louise Brooks in Now We’re in the Air. The night Candy sat on an oak barrel in a satin dress and top hat, raising a knee to reveal a garter belt, no one shouted out “Falling in Love Again.” Nor did anyone tell her to “put the blame on Mame” during her glove striptease.
None of it mattered to Candy who, as a true artist, delivered performances primarily for herself, and then for Rox and me. Probably she took secret pleasure in mystifying the riff raff. Brooks’s false innocence, Dietrich’s calculated androgyny, Hayworth’s tamed spontaneity — Candy captured it with a few telling motions.
— Janardan told me you show movies in college.
— I teach film in university.
— I do waste outreach in Buffalo.
She grabs a cushion and sets up on the floor cross-legged.
— I should have gone straight to the floor. I was trying to be polite. Take me as I am. Isn’t that what Joni Mitchell says?
Candy’s posture has always been perfect. She would bring silverware to her mouth — not like the rest of us who would bend our heads to the table. Whereas I would wait for the bathroom slumped against the wall, she would stand dead centre in the hall, unencumbered and free. Still Life with and without Towel.
— Sometimes I get fed up with the yoga postures, the breathing, the meditation, all this living in the fucking moment. I met your brother at a silent retreat two years ago. Not even. I saw his eyes through a burka. A few dates, a few treatments with those magic hands and I’m ready to apply for refugee status in Toronto. I am so not grounded. Just when I was getting used to being a Four, Ashok says I’m a Six. Sixes are afraid, Fours are depressed. I’d say you’re a Five. A seeker of knowledge, a little detached.
It must have taken tremendous strength of will to be Candy. Not just for the vow of silence, but also for the stamina required to get through each day. She would never drop out of character — whether surrounded by thousands of hostile eyes at school or crossing our front yard with me watching from behind the boulder. Without access to a character’s voice, her performances are anchored in wardrobe and body language. I see it all before me. It draws me in. How I anticipate her costume changes. Then, amid the awe and admiration, I experience a sliver of disappointment barely sufficient to register. It takes a while, decades, to understand I’m wanting Candy to wear my mother’s clothes again. That was the original costume, and the best.
— We’re supposed to have all the numbers within us so it’s no big deal. I’m only disappointed Ashok didn’t get it right the first time. I feel jerked around. You get invested in a certain idea of yourself and then, poof, it’s yanked away. Knowing Janardan has another name besides Eric really bothers me. I don’t want to know what it is anymore.
— Hoss, after the big dumb brother on Bonanza. No one’s ever called him Eric. I don’t believe in the Enneagram. I’m a free man, not a number.
In my irritation, I’ve botched the reference to The Prisoner. I miss Hoss. He would never let that kind of mistake go unremarked.
— Everyone has a number. Some people want to see themselves as unique is all. They can’t bear the idea that their lives are part of a larger pattern. Just saying.
— Who is Number One?
— Even Steven. That’s one of the grounding principles of Momentous Moments. No judgment, no hierarchies. We are where we need to be. Do you think I should call Janardan on his cell or give him more space?
Candy has never needed a retreat to discover herself, find her path, or be in the moment. All of her borrowed identities — from the auction stage to Molly O’s films with Mickey Nailand — have only served to fuel the creativity burning inside her. Her continual reinvention, distortion, and ca
mouflage make her impossible to pin down. Far from hiding her essence, the perpetual movement has made and kept her truly alive. As an artist, she has always been her own best creation.
— I’m trying not to call my son. He’s with his father this weekend upstate. They barely know each other. They both sing. Is music enough to bond over? He’s sent money all these years. I give him that much.
Why am I so convinced that Candy’s transition back into our family will be easy? I’ve sprayed myself with a new-and-improved product that wipes away all traces of doubt or my money back. Now the damned spots on my collar won’t come out, mosquitoes are lighting on my arm, and grey hairs are being unmasked despite all my attempts to stop time. Is she or isn’t she coming? Only Candy knows for sure.
— I am truly sorry about your father. And your sister, too. We did some family sculpting this weekend, and Janardan chose me to play Candy. I was so honoured. It was a real gift. I would have been happy just to hold space for him so he could work through his stuff. But Ashok gave me a signal to break Candy’s silence. He is so intuitive. He knows exactly when to push us to find an inner truth. So I trusted myself. I said, “I love you.” Janardan broke down. It was beautiful. He had been holding on to Candy without knowing. Now he has totally let her go. I felt so close to him. If only we hadn’t stopped. It’s my pigment. No one talks about the hole in the ozone anymore.