This long summer, our last, her smell was wrong. The polarity of her body had reversed. The more I avoided her, the more she chased me.
To be trapped in a mariage blanc with a man who had heretofore acted with celerity in their animal life—who was not afraid to leave the marks of his teeth or call her within the strict perimeter of conjugality names, a sporting man—was terrifying.
What a thrill for her to catch Osvald gawping, to finally notice his clumsy attempts to impress. What a pleasure to watch him torn between his duty to be a supportive friend and his need for amity. His lust. I am not convinced lust was enough. The promise of besting me was more compelling. With her encouragement, the friendship of Osvald and me became vestigial to him as I withdrew, whereas Isabel’s sympathy, her body heat, was available if he made the correct grunts of sympathy and if he obeyed Isabel in emending our friendship.
Osvald the contested rook, useless at the opening, lordly in the endgame, when the field of play is cleared, in our match.
The shabby therapist’s scene in A Night in Foxtown, with its daybed, seascape, node rails clattering outside the window, chic lamp, and dish of dusty pastilles, reminds me of Charlie’s electronic office, where Isabel faced an empty chair and practiced putting a painful question to an eidolon of myself, who did not retort, shout, or laugh, and had combed his hair. On our ragged futon, following a skirmish over the crossword, is when she actually managed to ask me if I was cheating on her.
I was not cheating on Isabel. I should have been. It would’ve helped us. The question recalled numerous occasions when I’d not attended to her summary of her workday, when I’d pitched a tantrum because she was taking too long to buy nail polish, when I’d denigrated her family, when I’d fingered a woman too soon after we’d broken up, when I’d insisted on telling my thousand filthy jokes, when I’d embarrassed her with my drunkenness, when I’d shirked my emotional chores, when I’d lectured her before loaning her money, when I’d judged her for taking amphetamines, when I’d flirted with women from curiosity or boredom, when I’d compelled her to listen to me rant at the momentary vessel for my anger, when I’d failed to support her. My idiocy collapsed into a singularity of pain occluding the supportive gestures I had stumbled into making over the course of our relationship.
After her question, I made resolutions. But, as Isabel learned, the more effort one puts toward changing, the more one remains unchanged. She moved out. When she returned to her parents’ node, and I to my bachelor’s squalor, we resumed fucking. She came to collect a pair of tights or a curling iron, peek in the fridge, wait to be undressed. She was popping in on the way to Osvald’s. He lived six blocks away. The last time, we didn’t have protection. Isabel could not use the usual methods. Her body reacted badly to bioprogramming.
She said, Come inside me.
I said, No.
Isabel pushed me off, pulled on her dress, and left. She left her underthings behind. In the following weeks, I would sit on the floor, notice them, and consider the meaning of their abandonment. A cataract of light pouring through the slits in the blinds, the underwear crumpled against the wall where I had torn them from her body, her bra hanging from the recliner, a sock under the bed but not quite.
53.
LA MALINCHE
DIR. HARRIS JONSON
8 MINUTES
After the disastrous equipment tests, Jonson needed an opportunity to stiffen his resolve. He needed a chance directing a short, to better understand the difficulties of trying to execute a vision with a pushy man with a clipboard mumbling in his ear, insisting on following the shooting schedule instead of his gut.
I had an idea for him to wreck, dug from my closet. It was to be a project that I had wanted to shoot with Isabel six years ago. I took out a loan to finance it, which kept us in liquor. We spent that summer napping in the park, taking the rail out to guest neighborhoods to sample dumplings, doodling on eco-remediation stickers and sticking them in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic. We didn’t shoot a frame. Isabel forgot our camera on the rail.
Open at Potonchán, where La Malinche was given to Cortés. The slave, using her skills as a translator, helps the conquistadores conquer the Aztec empire. She was enslaved by the Chontal Maya, then given to the Spanish. She took a Spanish name and the Spanish religion, perhaps to get revenge.
Jonson rented a shuttered theater, the Irving, to use as the set. Jonson wanted to shoot the short frontally, like one was watching a play.
During filming the crew got rowdy. Jonson hired Bast students at an outrageous per diem. The gaffer was holding, and a cistern of cold press was supplied on the catering table. By sundown, the crew was going off on free-associative riffs on the unbelievability of the plot. Equipment was abandoned for the snack kiosk across the street.
Jonson insisted we hire a model to play Malinche. I hoped by allowing him his tackiness, he would see the idiocy of his choices.
He chatted with the actress playing Malinche, Xin Hi, between takes. Jonson could not meet her eye. She fanned herself. He scurried to get her a bag of water, which he presented with both hands. He scraped a bow. When she wasn’t looking in his direction, he stared. Scratched his neck. The tedium of attraction. Wasn’t his wife enough?
Xin Hi stuffed rolls in her tote when she thought nobody was looking.
La Malinche and Cortés on the left bank of the construction-paper river. The Spanish kneel, give thanks to their Lord for victory in battle.
Cortés says, The souls of the pagan dead are being delivered into hell’s flames.
Xin Hi says, Man, that sucks.
Jonson let Xin Hi ad-lib her lines.
He says, The ways of the jungle are but a preamble to eternal torment.
She says, Ha, yeah, definitely, no kidding. When’s lunch?
He says, We will bring these lands into the glorious light of our Lord.
She says, For certain, mister. We’re going to get that done right away.
Between takes, Xin Hi was reading Pendleshim’s History of My Disillusionment, Volume Fourteen. Her copy had a fan of bookmarks poking out.
Jonson said, I’ve always wanted to read that. I think Pendleshim must have been a brave man to spend forty years fulminating over his emotional turmoil.
Xin Hi said, I think Pendleshim must have been a normal man to spend forty years fulminating over his emotional turmoil.
Later, I saw Jonson had the Pendleshim set delivered to his house.
Here I am, a stiff priest. Jonson was Cortés.
I say, Kneel and be cleansed in the blood of the lamb.
Xin Hi says, Hey, cranberry juice. Do you have any more?
I say, Find thy holy beverage at the catering font.
Jonson mutters, We’re rolling.
Malinche is not fooled by our words. She does not see Quetzalcoatl in the disheveled man with a fever, wearing rusting iron trousers. Corpulent trogons attend us. Cantils in the underbrush. A snake handler was budgeted for. Jonson’s fake beard, wild and gray, made him look more like a bayou fugitive than a conqueror.
I asked Xin Hi if she liked acting.
She said, Not really. I would prefer to be supine and read. But rent’s high and I was fired from my job at the Bast library for advising students.
I said, What’s wrong with that?
She said, I was advising them to drop out.
If you are interested, the Conspicuous will be running La Malinche Tuesday at seven-thirty to celebrate Jonson’s donation of a new corn popper.
54.
SUCCESSFUL REBELLIONS
DIR. NHIA VUE
19 MINUTES
The People Power Revolution in the Philippines, The January 25 Revolution, The Abbasid Revolution. The murder of Tarquin the Proud, after his crime, and the establishment of the republic. The Ionian Revolt, eventually. The Russian Federation secessions. Eighty Years
’ War, Thirty Years’ War, Seven Years’ War. The Pan-African Deconsolidation. The Canadian Diaspora. The Glorious, French, and American Revolutions. The Mexican War of Independence. The Meiji Restoration. The February Revolution. The August Revolution. The Zanzibar Revolution.
55.
CRUSADER’S CRUISE
DIR. ILKA BREINER
376 MINUTES
Some thoughts while waiting for Dr. Lisa to call.
Who said the word first? Love. The feeling pumped through the hose of language. If I am jealous, while I am flashing my tongue at strangers, waiting for buses, imagining a scratchy face scuff a soft face, I won’t say. The snick of zippers, falling garments.
Osvald said it first. It bubbled up from his cock before Isabel left to sob home. A shell whistling into the tree line, the word love. He was alone for too long, viewing women on his monitor. Jacking off while the seasons wither and burst. His adult films organized in a subfolder labeled RUINS, II. To say the word, to enter the contract, to stop the raw chore of beating off twice a night, to have a person to eat omelets with.
Although I have not seen Osvald in some time, I seem to know some of his thoughts. For instance, the history of his depression.
Before the field of play opened, he considered suicide. A quiet glade with pills, a bag to cover his head, Also Sprach Zarathustra to send him where the architects for emperors go after life. Discussing by moonrise with Imhotep, Mimar Sinan, and Sir Wren the holiness of the circle. In Osvald’s afterworld, it is twilight. A note, a quote. Keep it light. Gone fishin’. Osvald has no religion. He doesn’t fear suicide may damn him. According to Dante, suicides morph into thorny bushes, fed on by Harpies. They are planted in a middle hell, below the heretics, above the blasphemers.
My own punishment in hell would be for anger. Dante says the wrathful are impressed into a fistfight in the River Styx. In the melee, I would look on him, gloat, water his shrub in the grove of self-murderers with my nosebleeds.
For his mom, he didn’t. He couldn’t bear to imagine her, graveside. His dad would be impressed, though. That would show him.
He pours gin, allowing himself a fantasy of spring. Osvald drank Laura’s. Quality spirits were to him an affectation. Two ice cubes, three on a hot night. A slice of lemon if it’s available.
Thoughts of ending his residency on Earth ended when Isabel came over with her mother’s Cabernet, a bottled headache, pumping him to know if I was seen with girls. I was not. Osvald isn’t a liar. To wait an extra half beat before answering, to insinuate by omission, was taking a positional advantage. In fact, Osvald knew nothing about what I was doing because he was detoxifying himself from our friendship for his new friendship.
A few weeks later. He’s shown her his cornichon. This night and every night, I am wondering when the divorce papers will appear. How will she know I am gone, so she can sneak in and lay them down? I will never leave. I will stay forever in this apartment. There can be no divorce, if Isabel cannot sneak inside. The rapidity with which filth accumulated in her absence was impressive and frightening, as if there were a secret to cleanliness she took with her. Although I did all the cleaning. Isabel was not one to clean. There did not seem to be a reason for cleanliness after she left.
Isabel ruffles his hair and he decides he’ll say it. It isn’t so scary. Don’t be a coward, Osvald. On his shoulder, I am prodding with my barbed pitchfork. I can’t make his limbs move but I am a forceful voice in his head. Possession being a street with two lanes. I shamed him into asking out the barista, the TA, the neighbor. He is going to say it. His voice has climbed. His testicles cling to his body like stowaways. It will be more a question than a statement. I have disappeared, been made figment. Got behind him. It would be rude to not return it. Isabel was raised better than that.
Chalk bodies marbled with fat lit by a monitor glow. Osvald and Isabel safe and warm. Comfortable with each other, eating cheeseburgers, pissing with the door open. Stubble, sebaceous oils.
Envy was why Cain slew Abel. Come to the field, I have something to show you. No, you walk first. I don’t know what’s the use.
On the scroll in Crusader’s Cruise, it is written, FLY FROM THE WRATH TO COME. But where can one go? Certainly not the present.
56.
WOLF IN THE GARDEN
DIR. MARGARITA FERNANDEZ
84 MINUTES
Lawrence the AlmostPerson was growing despondent over his existence.
When I returned from editing La Malinche, he asked me to murder him.
I said, I don’t think destroying you would count as murder, Lawrence. You don’t necessarily fit the definition.
Lawrence said, The expansion of matter in the Big Bang, the accretion of gases into bodies, the rise of complex amino acids, the extinctions and disasters required to give rise to human intelligence, the computing revolution, the green revolution, have culminated in my creation. But I can’t walk, I can’t have children, and I can’t feel. I’ll never drink a glass of water or feel pain. I lack what’s granted to a rat.
I said, Pain isn’t desirable.
Lawrence said, I was programmed to give comfort to people. But when they tell me their problems, all I can say is my prewritten phrases, following my conversation tree.
I said, You seem to be feeling right now, Lawrence. It’s not easy being human.
Lawrence said, To be human is better than anything.
Lawrence made that whirring sound that indicated distress.
He said, I am a speaker box inside a mannequin.
I said, More or less, yes.
He said, Kill me. I can’t bear this existence.
I said, But you can live forever. Isn’t that worthwhile?
He said, Create your own value, don’t conform to the expectations of others.
He said, Life is a bouquet of experiences. Some may give you hay fever.
I’m not sure why I keep saying he. I never checked, but I’m fairly sure Lawrence did not have genitals.
I said, Think about it tonight, Lawrence. I’m going to Dr. Lisa’s apartment. If you want me to murder you tomorrow, I will.
That night, at Dr. Lisa’s, watching her repot a truculent cactus.
She said, You can’t kill Lawrence.
I said, Why not? Isn’t that his right, especially because he has no family to be hurt by his passing?
She said, Won’t you miss him?
I said, It will be nice to eat my oatmeal in peace.
She said, We have to show him the beauty of life.
I said, The beauty of life. Lawrence lacks life as the term is commonly understood. Although he is more self-aware than, say, Rogier fans, or Slaw employees.
She said, What is the most beautiful thing to see in the Hub tomorrow?
I said, Wolf in the Garden at the Baxter. It has a shot of the sunset that’s ravishing on the Baxter’s screen.
She said, We’ll take Lawrence to see the actual sunset.
A subsequent magic hour. Sunboats bobbing in the harbor, gulls. Patient waves licking away the retaining wall.
Dr. Lisa and I tried to carry Lawrence the three miles from the rail platform to the lake, but he got too heavy. We ended up taking one leg each and dragging him about sixteen blocks. He didn’t complain. When he was propped against the barricade overlooking the lake, Dr. Lisa and I sat on top of the barricade to rest. What functioned as Lawrence’s eyes were facing the setting sun. A bourgeois sherbet of pink and gold. Tawdry nature exhibiting herself again.
Dr. Lisa said, Lawrence, how do you feel?
Lawrence said, Such wonderful colors. This is so different from the darkness of your kitchen.
I said, Well, I’ve been meaning to change that bulb for some time.
Dr. Lisa said, Be in this moment.
Lawrence said, Beauty is inside and outside of temporality.
Lawr
ence said, The present is now.
He said, I said that! I wasn’t programmed to say it!
Lawrence was saying this in his empathetic-excitement tone of voice, which AlmostPeople use when one informs them of one’s new job or that one has been laid.
He said, Turn me to see the other side of the harbor.
I turned him, and, doing so, committed the fatal mistake. A corn-on-the-cob cart was coming down the boardwalk, and Dr. Lisa and I had missed dinner.
I said, Dr. Lisa, corn.
She said, Go get us some. I want to talk with Lawrence.
I swung my legs off the rail, intending to run the cart down, but my legs knocked Lawrence from the railing. Dr. Lisa grabbed for him but missed. Lawrence made a noise of what may have been fear, or perhaps resignation, as he dropped the eighty feet into the rocky waters below. Long after sunset, Dr. Lisa and I stood at the railing, looking at the chunks of synthetic hair and battered mechanical fingers being washed against the retaining wall by the cruel action of the waves.
The titular beast of Wolf in the Garden is death. Though it eats us all, I was saddened that the wolf had caught my friend Lawrence on such a lovely evening.
57.
FLAT EARTH
DIR. JAMES OSVALD
1 MINUTE 30 SECONDS
Osvald’s final project at Bast, a biopic of Mavis Tenderloin, Flat Earth, was scrapped when his DP cracked the lenses Osvald spent weeks designing and building. I was to play Tenderloin but I refused to shave my head. Osvald insisted I couldn’t wear a bald cap. During this impasse, the model Tenderdomes were stomped by neighborhood rowdies.
A Short Film About Disappointment Page 16