by Dana Spiotta
“Their size.”
“Yes, their glorious, single-serving, one-portion, huge size. It’s terrible. But I’m depressed, and well, that’s what I feel like.”
“A little gluttony is charming.”
“Maybe. But it isn’t something I really wanted to explore at length with anyone this morning.” Miranda stopped eating the scone. It no longer interested her. She needed a private suite somewhere where she could consume her pastry in peace. Now, well, too late. She sipped her coffee.
“I’m sorry. I was just walking by and saw you.”
“No, I’m glad, sit.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m happy to see you.”
“You’re visiting?”
“I’ve been back for a week now. We’re staying downtown. The Ace.” Miranda smiled, slightly embarrassed. “Josh wanted to stay at a hotel.”
“So how is Josh?” Nash said.
She studied him for a moment. He was quite bald. But he had a good face, a nice-looking head. He would look better if he just shaved all his hair off, or if he cut it very, very short. “I have been meaning to call you, or come by the bookstore,” she said.
“I know.”
“He’s fine.”
“What has he been up to?”
“I’m not sure, he doesn’t tell me. I don’t really ask, actually.”
She sipped her coffee.
“You look very good. Disaffection suits a woman,” Nash said.
“He works for Allegecom.”
“Your face has thinned out, despite the monster muffins. You look very sharp and intimidating.”
“Scones. It is a scone.”
“Right, sorry. Allegecom, that’s peculiar.”
“Full-time. He works quite hard, in the website-research whatever department. I think.” She started to laugh. She really didn’t know what Josh did. And that made Josh seem grown-up and old. Older, somehow, than even Nash.
“He watches a lot of TV. He has to monitor the culture, you know.”
“Of course,” Nash said.
“He took me to the wax museum last month.” Miranda finished the last of her coffee and hated the fact. “Madame Tussaud’s, I’m not kidding. Have you ever been to one?”
“No,” he said. His halfhearted, slight smile.
“Well, the line was a half-hour wait, on a weekday. And it cost nineteen dollars to get in.”
“Is this Josh culturally slumming? Is he there to sneer at people? Can’t he get enough of that watching daytime TV?” Nash said, suddenly annoyed.
“You really don’t like Josh, do you?” she said. “I thought that too, but he really wanted to see the wax museum. It is pretty insane, I mean as an indicator of things, as a barometer, or whatever. See, you go through these rooms and there is no pretense made to it illustrating history, or whatever. It is all wax celebrities. Even the historical figures are more celebrity than anything else. That’s the whole point: if you don’t really know what a person looks like, you’re not going to really be impressed with the verisimilitude of a wax likeness, are you? I mean, are you going to be impressed by a wax depiction of Diderot or Princess Diana?”
Miranda started back on her scone and then realized eating it would complicate telling her story. “But here’s the thing, all these wax figures, you know, Oprah and Madonna and Cher, they are not in some glass diorama, apart from you. Here is the crux of it, here is why people wait on line to get in: the wax figures are all around you and among you. So people can take pictures with their arms around Nicole Kidman’s waist, or put a two-fingered antenna behind the head of Giuliani. Or put a hand on Diane Sawyer’s upper thigh. People are allowed to touch, to walk among, to desecrate these lofty beings. See how short and helpless they are, smiling and unmoving? And although you can’t actually damage the things, you can do whatever else you please, and it was something, the minions loose among the celebrity dolls. There is a real air of hostility toward these creatures, people put real energy into these feelings. It was a sick scene.”
“It’s so good to see you,” Nash said.
“We were appalled, fascinated, freaked out. We understood, though. And no one else seemed to think it odd, which was maybe the most disturbing thing about it.”
“I really don’t like Josh.”
“He took a photo of me embracing Castro,” Miranda said.
Miranda returned to her hotel. Josh sat at his computer and didn’t say anything when she came in. The room was dark. The TV and the computer gave off the only light.
“Did you go out at all today?” she said.
“I have a lot of work to do.”
“Like what?”
Josh sighed and turned to her. “We’re launching the website for Ergonomica, and I had to make sure everything works.”
“Really? Making sure it can’t be hacked?”
Josh turned back to his computer. “Something like that.”
Sometimes her own boyfriend gave her the creeps.
Jason’s Journal
WHEN YOU finally figure it out, it seems you knew it all along.
I hadn’t given any of it any thought for quite a while. Not true, of course. I thought about it all the time, but I hadn’t actually made any progress on it. Gage wanted to watch VH1’s Lost Videos. As a rule I try to avoid VH1. This despite the fact that they have, particularly in their classic rock and California rock specials, a nice fixation on all things Beach Boys. Naturally, I find this nostalgia embarrassing. But Gage was shameless. He was over his ’70s thing, and now he had fixated on late-’60s American psychedelia, specifically the band Love. You may remember Love. Classic candidates for obsession: forgotten but once quite known. Several hits and a great, dated, specific sound. And two African-American members. And we are talking 1966. Most important, Love was led by a neglected, self-destructive genius who is currently rotting in jail. Arthur Lee scared the shit out of the hippies; he was an angry black punk who called his band Love and then played as though he hated everyone. He used hard drugs and finally got busted in the ’80s on a concealed-weapon charge. Gage seemed to find this element most fascinating. Admittedly, I like Love. Their attitude, their look and their badass freak sound, simultaneously baroque and garage. Not at all groovy or flowery—it was tough and new and kicked hard.
Of course, if Gage was interested in black proto-psych rock-and-roll, you’d think he might be into Hendrix. I mean we lived in Seattle—Hendrix is a native son, a local hero. And he died tragically. And no one dressed cooler, ever. Ahh—but you haven’t been paying attention. The very fact that Hendrix is a near god here makes him an impossible choice for Gage’s devotion. No, Love’s Arthur Lee was it—both first (which counts) and forgotten (which really counts).
Anyway, I went over to Gage’s to watch “California Classic Rock: The Lost and Forgotten.” I agreed, knowing that even VH1 might still have something I’d want to see. Like the infamous Lost Love Movie. Which I had never heard of, but I pretended I had.
“That was made in ’68, right?” I said.
“No, I think ’69, actually. After the decline had set in.”
“I never saw it. I heard about it,” I said.
“Apparently the bootlegged copies are floating around again. I saw it for sale once, and I should have bought a copy while I had the chance.”
Shortly into the part of the program about the great bands of L.A. in the late ’60s, they went into the story of Love. Love discovered the Doors and Hendrix. Love never toured, which is why they never got as big. And Love took so many psychedelic drugs that they finally disbanded because none of them could even play their instruments anymore. And oh yeah, there is an underground film about them, known as the Lost Love Movie. While the voice-over glossed on the film briefly, they didn’t show a video clip. They showed two black-and-white stills. One was of Arthur Lee in sunglasses on a bench in a park. The angle was quite low. He leaned back on the bench with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops and his legs spread. He wore
wide-wale cords and a wide belt. Then they showed another still. This still was shown for maybe six seconds. A long time. I don’t remember what the voice-over said. But the photo depicted three people on a ledge next to the freeway. The person closest to the camera was Arthur Lee, in the same pants and glasses. The person to the right, the farthest away from the camera, was another Love band member (although as I recall he was technically no longer in the band by ’69), Bryan MacLean. Also in sunglasses. But the person in the middle, the person between them, was not a band member and not wearing sunglasses. Despite the graininess of a still garnered from a video of an old film, I could see that this person was unmistakably my mother. A younger, prettier version of the woman I live with every day.
I gasped and quickly coughed to cover it. I stared at Gage. He was barely paying attention and clearly had not noticed.
“Bogus. Just show the fucking film, don’t talk about it. Let’s turn it off.”
“No, it’s almost over,” I said. I wanted to see the credits. No mention of the film or film stills.
After I got home from Gage’s, did I storm into my mother’s room, demanding to hear all about her life as a California groupie? No, I didn’t. Because I know, absolutely, that that isn’t the story. That there is a bigger secret, something that makes my mother the sort of odd person she is. I know, somehow, what it is. I just can’t quite name it yet.
No, after I got home from Gage’s, I went to work on the Internet. I went to the site most likely to sell copies of the film: www.undergroundmedia.com, where a year earlier I had in fact purchased a very distant-generation bootleg DVD copy of Eat the Document (the notorious never-released documentary about Dylan’s ’66 gone-electric tour). They said the Lost Love Movie was not available. I kept trolling around until I finally found a site that listed the film. It was part of the neo-Luddite Web ring and only sold original-format items: Super 8 films, 16-millimeter film, reel-to-reel audio. They said they no longer had it. But they directed me to someone else who archived a site devoted to outlaws. I discovered the Lost Love Movie was made by Bobby Desoto, who made several underground films as part of a collective before they set off a series of bombs to protest the war and went underground in the early ’70s.
I started to feel physically ill, nauseated, but I couldn’t grasp it all yet.
Desoto is still at large, as well as others from his bombing and film-making collective, so naturally people are interested in him.
Now I was starting to fit it together. It all fit together.
The guy from the website finally agreed to sell me a copy of the Super 8 and 16-millimeter films made by the collective. But he said he was an Original Formatter and refused to transfer it to video on principle; in fact, he made me swear I would never transfer it to video, so I had to get that done somewhere else. I bought not only the Lost Love Movie but all the Bobby Desoto he had, three films. And when I finally had the transfer, all contained on a VHS tape with a blank label, I locked my door and settled in for a look.
Here’s exactly what I saw:
FILM 1:
A black screen. “Love” appears, in flowing, fat, cartoony script. This is Super 8. There is a sound track. No music, but people talking, out of sync with the images. Not slightly out of sync but deliberately off, not even close. There are scenes of an interview where you hear nothing but cars going by, then scenes in the park where you hear the interview. It was kind of cool, actually. And then a freeway scene, sort of cliché L.A. stuff, but there, briefly, is my mother. She has long, straight brown hair center-parted and pulled flat and smooth behind her ears. She wears those round, oversized John Lennon glasses. She is smiling and then seems to ask Lee some questions, but all you hear is music (the gorgeous opening riff from “Alone Again Or”—a song from ’67, not ’69, but never mind). Lee mouths an answer to her questions, and then there is a close-up of my mother’s face. She looks, well, playful. She laughs, then glances off camera—a shy, flirty move. She’s having fun. Then it cuts to the band playing, but now you hear the interview, and I hear my mother’s voice say, “What do you call it, your type of music?” And then Lee answers, “Love, baby, can’t you feel it?” and then the remarkable sound of my mother’s laugh. Then it ends. The credits list the names of the band members; Desoto’s art collective, Soft Art Film Elastic, or SAFE; and the interviewer, apparently my mother—Mary Whittaker.
FILM 2:
A stop-action animation film, silent, again Super 8, made with G.I. Joe dolls. And doctored Barbie dolls. Intercut with army films, recruiting films, corporate in-house films. Artifacts, found clips, stolen and recontextualized. I think I have heard of this film. A rather silly send-up of corporate militarism, but well made, and hey—the first, perhaps, of its kind?
FILM 3:
This film is noted as the last, 1972. It is 16 millimeter, I think. It is called “The Scientist.” It shows an old man being hounded obnoxiously by this dick one assumes must be Desoto. The film cuts to a speedy montage of some shots of corporate headquarters signs: Dow, Monsanto, General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Raytheon, Magnavox, Honeywell and Valence. Not the subtlest film I ever saw. Again, credited to the collective SAFE (but now it stood for Soft Art Film Efflux). And again, under the listed members of the collective: Mary Whittaker.
I don’t really know what to make of this. I have to find out more about the collective and Desoto. And Mary Whittaker.
Tracers
NASH HEARD someone approach from behind as he locked up Prairie Fire. He turned cautiously. Miranda stood there, somewhat winded, hair loose around her shoulders. It was cold, and her breath made little mists in front of her open mouth. He smiled at her and pocketed his keys. She put her hand on his arm and looked up at him.
“What does Miranda want from me?” Nash said. He liked saying her name. She just stood there looking at him. Both of them waited, and then Nash leaned over and kissed her. She pulled herself closer to him and the kiss—harder than he expected, actually—until their lips slid apart and the one kiss became small, slow, breathy kisses on neck and ears. Slow, but urgent still. Nash breathed for a moment into her long hair; he held himself against the skin just below her ear and paused there. Miranda clutched at him. He couldn’t feel much of anything through his wool peacoat, but he pressed against her anyway. She then tried to pull back for a second full kiss, but he wanted to stay where he was, where he was breathing through her hair, his hands now on both sides of her head. She smelled, variously, of stale, all-night cigarettes; something citrus and dried; flowers also, or perfume oil. Something else too, a vegetal brightness, not decayed but living, a woman-skin musk, barely there.
She took his hand and walked him back to his house, no longer smiling, and then she stopped suddenly on the stairs leading up to his doorway. She didn’t turn around but stood there in front of him. He stepped up and pressed against her back and legs. She leaned back into him.
This is the best moment I will ever have, he thought, but it was already over, they were on their way up the stairs. She undressed quickly. It was cold, and she got under the covers, leaving just her panties on. Then she reached under the sheets and took those off and tossed them on her pants and blouse on the floor.
This is the best moment I will ever have.
This is great good luck.
Nash felt the same thing again as he sat by the window early the next morning and watched the sun come up. He looked at Miranda asleep in his bed. Her hair was in her face, and he could just see her lips and nose. He watched her stir, push the hair out of her closed eyes and then sink back into sleep. He sipped some water. The worn oak floor reflected light, the sky brightened from deep blue to light blue and Miranda finally pulled herself up on the bed, smiling.
Miranda had been at a bar in Belltown with Sissy. At ten o’clock she decided to take a walk up Pike Street, over the freeway, and up to Fifteenth Avenue. She made it there just as Nash was locking up. She thought of a funny thing to say, but when he turned around she just smi
led. He seemed so surprised. Then almost resigned when she put her hand on his arm. She didn’t expect that he would kiss her, but as he did she realized why she was there. She held his head and kissed him again. She was cold, and she felt the warmth of his body. She decided they should continue indoors. Partially she was cold, and partially she couldn’t help thinking of Josh, or Josh’s friends, seeing them on the street.
She practically dragged him up the steps, so quickly was she moving; then she stopped abruptly near the top so Nash almost crashed into her. She didn’t turn around when she felt him behind her but leaned back, gently, into him. She liked this long body pause, the tease of it. Something you can barely stand to do.
She began to pull off her clothes. She felt him looking at her, and she wasn’t embarrassed. She felt young and lovely, which was something she didn’t often feel, certainly not with Josh. But don’t, don’t think of Josh now. And she didn’t.
They moved awkwardly. His arm in her face, she banged her head at one point. “Sorry.” “Sorry.” The condom was a disaster, it was on, but oh, how it felt. After a while they gave it up—which is what people do, because it feels worth it—then pauses, whispers, adjustments. Calibrations.
Despite the confused and awkward coupling, it was still painfully exciting. Miranda felt that if it went too smoothly it would mean it didn’t matter as much. She thought this during, and she then decided to stop for a moment and just hold him close, kissing him slowly. She pushed against him and stopped “trying” to do anything except feel his breathing and his weight next to her. She let him move her to her side, facing him and leaning back on the bed. He placed a hand across her and rested it on her middle back; then he moved it slowly to the indent of her waist, then down the curve of her hip, and very, very softly along the edges of her thighs. She moved her legs slightly apart, and he barely touched her inner thighs. He traced his hand lightly up to her stomach, and he looked at her, unsmiling. She stopped smiling too, and let him touch her. That could have lasted hours, the gentle touching, the close faces, the kisses. Eventually, they did the beginning part again, not awkward at all, but easy, easy. And somehow without warning they both slipped into a deep, calm sleep. When she woke up he was watching her. It felt nice. She beamed at him.