by Joe Stretch
‘Oh my God, Rudolf de la Hooting, it’s an honour to meet you. I loved the film.’
She leans in and kisses the air either side of his face. The name is a bad one. Justin realised this as soon as Sidney said it. Nobody is called de la Hooting. But what do celebrities know? The two of them move to the bar, where Justin pays four hundred pounds for a bottle of 1986 Margaux. There is a commotion as the wine is sought. A cellar door slams. One by one, the incognito strippers congregate around Justin. The minor celebrities begin to stare.
The celebrity is, in essence, a gentle species. Doomed to teeter on the perimeters of reality, about which little is known for sure. The celebrity walks a tightrope. On one side lies the valley of mortality, where the living dwell. On the other lies a steep ravine, immortality, where the dead scramble at the rocky slopes and are eternally known.
Justin pays attention to each of the strippers, nodding and smiling calm asymmetrical smiles. In this comparatively overdressed state, the girls are a delight, convincing beauties. At least two, Sidney included, are so fit that they actually deserve to be real celebrities, seriously, they do.
‘So what do you reckon, de la Hooting? Seen a celeb you like the look of?’ Sidney whispers into Justin’s ear, the blubbered curves of her fake tits sighing into her dress.
‘I don’t know. Did Rebecca come in?’
‘She’s angry with you.’
‘Why? Because I’m going to shag someone famous?’
Towards the back of the room there is a round of crap laughter, like children imitating Gatling gunfire. Justin’s eyes scan the room, searching for a face he recognises, a face that has sneaked into his mind and pissed on the carpet. Eventually he spots the victim, located just across the room, no more than ten feet away. She’s standing at a slight angle, looking up at a black man in sunglasses. That’s her, he thinks, she’s fit and I know her face.
‘Got one,’ he says, moving Sidney to one side in order to get a better look at his prey. Sidney’s been talking, whispering into Justin’s ear about Rebecca, how she’s not sure about the experiment any more and feels she might be falling in love with Justin. But what of such nonsense? Love is the white lie of the West. Justin scrawls the words on the inside of his eyelids in lines of light. He blinks, then stares at the celebrity. Are her tits real?
If the company of the famous is to be kept, then new senses are required. It’s an entirely novel mode of being alive. There is no use in smelling and hearing; seeing is secondary. Never make the mistake of trusting your senses in the presence of the known. It is a culture of awareness and appreciation. Everybody can be seen, not everybody can be famous. The air is battery acid, energetic but reliant on successful currents, introductions, charmed hellos, chains and buzzing circuits of power. These people don’t pay, don’t listen or give a shit. They tell stories, they brag, laud, frightfully anticipate the next new thing.
‘Shriek, girls, everybody shriek with laughter, like I’m funny.’
Justin whispers the order to his congregation. The strippers shriek as if Justin has told the greatest joke ever told. Sidney bends double as if she might be sick into her wine. Jesus, that was funny. Men look over at the hysterical beauties, wishing they could tell jokes of that calibre. That must have been a great joke, they think, wishing to be exactly like Justin.
It works. Her eye is caught. Justin holds tight to it. He’s gliding through the crowd of laughing strippers and striding purposefully towards the celebrity. There’s nothing like laughter for drawing attention to yourself; it’s an advert for happiness. The celebrity glances briefly towards Justin and his entourage, away from the black guy in sunglasses. That’s all it takes, one look, eye contact, hope, the nature of the beast.
Justin’s walking across the room. The celebrity knows he’s coming already. She’s composing herself and talking to the black guy with a renewed and exaggerated vigour. The question is, who the fuck is she? Certainly Justin has no idea of the celebrity’s name; he doesn’t even know her character’s name. He suspects she acts in a soap opera, a Merseyside soap opera; that would make sense.
Her hair is brown and shoulder length, touched by faint strips of yellow dye. Her figure is full, breasts peeping out of her maroon dress like targets at a firing range. The celebrity has a delightful face, round eyes, soft nose, comfy pink lips. As Justin smiles at her, he recalls more precisely the nature of her fame. She appears on an early evening soap opera. Her character is sexually manipulative, but capable of love. She supplements her income with modelling, underwear shoots for lad’s magazines. She may have even made the front cover. Ha, the bitch, the famous bitch.
‘Hello there, and who might you be?’ says Justin, his washed face beaming.
‘I could ask you the same question,’ replies the celebrity, its black heart beating.
‘Oh, I’m nobody.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Perhaps. May I buy you a drink?’
Justin is concise and charming, the glass of wine hangs loose in his finger and his voice swims breast stroke through the air. God. The celebrity spoke. Who would believe it?
As Justin begins his manoeuvres, the black man removes his sunglasses. His eyes are dark brown with a thread of bright white woven around his pupils. He clearly has his own designs on the celebrity. He eyes Justin with irritation. But she is for Justin, that’s the way it must be. Justin is suave and detailed, devastating and brave, the experimenter, the winner.
‘My name is Davine, and this is Claude.’
Justin turns to the black guy, Claude, they shake hands and Justin stabs his large head with a shining, sharp, go-fuck-yourself smile.
‘Rudolf. My name is Rudolf. Come and join me at the bar.’
You’re beaten, you great big bastard, thinks Justin. Put your sunglasses on and fuck off. Justin places a hand around the celebrity. She draws breath and her chest expands, imprisoning air in her ribcage. Another smile from Justin and Claude is defeated. He retreats, the glass of champagne threatening to shatter between his sausage-meat fingers.
‘Claude choreographed a lot of the battle scenes, you know?’
The celebrity pirouettes, causing Justin’s hand to slide around her body, skin speeding over maroon silk, to the top of her arse.
‘No, I didn’t know that,’ says Justin. ‘To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen the film yet.’
‘Oh, so you weren’t involved?’
‘Well, not directly, although I paid for most of it.’
Back at the bar, the strippers continue to vie for Justin’s attention. At one point, Sidney seems to almost square up to the celebrity. The effect is charming, the celebrity is won. The bottle of wine is finished, another is ordered. The celebrity watches the fifty-pound notes pass over the bar. The celebrity is distracted and vulnerable.
‘Fine wine, my only joy,’ jokes Justin as he nimbly avoids the gaping grins of the strippers. They’re drunk now and their behaviour is becoming over the top. Justin moves the celebrity to a table, refills its glass and sits down opposite. He offers it a fag, which is accepted. They both smoke. All around the room, biologies begin to give in to the complimentary champagne; the embarrassment of tomorrow is foreshadowed. A woman at the bar impersonates a dog. She barks and bends over, woof, woof. A drink is spilled and an idiot mouths along to the music.
It’s not long before Justin is able to negotiate a fairly swift departure. The major celebrities have already left in search of a secret and more elite occasion. The crowd is thinning and the glamour of the event is virtually extinct. But Justin’s celebrity still seems interested. It’s talking. In fact, it won’t be quiet. This is certainly a good sign. Her eyes are animated, probing Justin’s face in that way that people do, to demonstrate their interest. Approximately every five minutes she puts both her hands into her hair as if she might be about to peel off her face. This manoeuvre affords Justin about two seconds to spend working out the finer points of her breasts. They are everything you would ex
pect from famous tits. Hairless and highly marketable, they seem almost laminated for the purpose of masturbation. They glow – a real feature. Maybe, wonders Justin, evolution will work in the same way. Maybe the great tits of the future will develop a kind of laminate, wipe clean finish on them, like skin but even smoother, more like plastic. Bums, too, perhaps. Indeed. People ejaculate on bums all the time. Men. Perspex skin. Finally—
‘Rudolf?’
‘What?’
‘Are you OK?’
The celebrity hasn’t shut up in half an hour. The expensive wine is in her blood and making her talk and talk and talk. The alcohol simplifies her, breaks her up into her component parts, pixelates her. Justin imagines her as a viscous puddle on the chair, a gloopy collection of beautiful eyes, lips, tits and rear. If he doesn’t do something soon, she will surely talk herself into some kind of mood. Women can do this if allowed to speak for too long while drunk. She’ll talk some problem into her head, some melancholy. She must be stopped.
‘Would you be prepared to leave? I find these parties rather dull, don’t you?’
She says yes, ha, I promise she does. Yes, says the celebrity, finishing her drink and looking in the direction of the cloakroom. Of course, she says yes. I promise.
Then comes the silence.
Justin and the celebrity sit in the taxi. It is completely silent, although for some reason the celebrity’s mouth is moving. In fact, the celebrity is talking. And yet there is only silence. There is no sound in the car, neither the sound of a celebrity’s voice, nor the sound of Justin shifting in his leather seat. Justin burps. Silent. A whiff of wine, but nothing else. The car makes no sound, nor does its driver. Nothing in the street is making any noise either. People shout, but it’s as if they’re just swallowing large objects, invisible American footballs. The wind is inaudible, the rain too. Absolutely everything makes no sound.
Whatever the celebrity is trying to say, it seems rather dull – no, wait, not dull, erotic perhaps, sultry. Her lips nibble at the air. Perhaps she’s talking about sex, or maybe about the misery of her former lovers. An arm drops between her legs, causing her dress to ride up her thighs. She’s leaning in towards Justin’s face, still mumbling something, mouthing the end of some sentence, trailing off midway perhaps, like lovers sometimes do.
The kiss, too, is silent. Justin waits for that sticky sound as their lips separate, like air being released from sealed Tupperware. But it doesn’t come, there is no noise, just the sight of the celebrity adjusting her posture and half-heartedly attempting to straddle him. Justin runs both his hands up her stomach and cups her breasts from below. There is that magical moment as she permits him: yes, it is allowed, my breasts can be yours. And Justin’s hands, oh the hands of men, childish and meek, as if all they ever wanted to be was a bra and all the punches and the strangulations were all tragically incidental.
Where is the tapping? This is serious: where is the sound of tapping? In the bridal suite of the hotel the sound of tapping cannot be heard, and it ought to be. Justin is cutting up lines of cocaine on the coffee table. Tapping at the larger blocks with his credit card until they break up, sweeping the powder into neat lines. The celebrity is reclined on the bed. Still talking, Justin imagines. Although, to be sure, he’d have to turn round and check, to see if her lips are moving.
And of course the healthy snorting sound that should accompany the taking of cocaine fails to materialise. Justin and his celebrity crouch over the powder and draw it up their nostrils. There is a silent gasp, like watching wind. The celebrity rocks back to lean on the bed, her lips flicker, silent words. You moved your lips without saying that, thinks Justin, as he crawls towards her fame and kisses at her numb gums.
Shit, the dreadful routine of life, thinks Justin, as he performs all his tired moves on the celebrity; a kiss to the neck, a finger gently circling the haunted regions of her inner thigh, the curdled flesh of her loins. This is celebrity in my hands, this is famous skin, this is fantasy and my world-weary foreplay has no place here. Justin wrings out his brain, desperate for a drop of inspiration. The drug begins to take hold.
The time is probably something odd like 1:27 a.m. when Justin stands the celebrity up in the middle of the room and begins to circle her slowly. The silence remains intact.
He kneels down at her feet and removes her black high-heeled shoes. He reaches up into her dress and pulls down her tights. He places the sagged fabric to one side. Her legs and her feet are naked, her face is candle wax, features pressed by thumbs into the warm substance. Justin dims the light slightly.
He goes round the back of the celebrity and takes down the zip of her dress. He frees her shoulders and the dress drops to the ground, maroon silk at her feet. Still standing behind her, he unfixes her bra and casts it forward, sensing the relieved lurch of her tits as they’re freed. On his knees again he pulls down her knickers of black cotton. They feel like a spider’s web. She’s completely naked now, silent, standing still. Justin fights the urge to run his tongue over the celebrity’s anus.
He stands, facing her. Periodically her lips move but there is no sound; it’s all swallowed by the silence. His eyes watch every section of her body. Her large feet, muscled thighs, her patchy sprouting pubes, the dip of her hips, her praying tits, collarbone, neck, whatever else. Slowly, and with complete self-assurance, he approaches the celebrity and carefully removes her left arm. There is no blood and, of course, there is no noise.
Having arranged the arm neatly on the hotel bed, he returns for the other. It detaches as easily as the first; the celebrity is entirely bloodless. Next go the nipples, then the breasts themselves, eased off her chest and placed on to the bed beside the two arms. The features of her face provide the biggest challenge. It’s with a steady hand that Justin peels off the eyes, nose and mouth of the celebrity and places them in an unused ashtray next to the bed.
Now he’s able to really get to work on her body. The legs are easy, a modest yank and they drop off. But they’re heavy, because of the fat in the thighs. Justin lugs them over to the bed, then pauses, breathless, running fingers over her severed calves. Next is the arse, which he dismantles buttock by buttock. Then the midriff, which drifts away from her back when pulled. Finally he’s just left with the little fiddly bits: feet, vagina, ears, hair. It takes about fifteen minutes, but it’s certainly worth it. As he pours himself a whisky and Coke, Justin can’t remember the last time he saw a celebrity so expertly taken to bits. He wishes Rebecca could see what he’s done. She’d be proud of him. They could have played games with the different parts of the celebrity, fucked amongst them.
How big is this silence anyway? wonders Justin as he slaps one of the separated buttocks to no audible effect. Is it all over Manchester? If Rebecca is caught up in it, she will certainly be frustrated. She’ll be dying to say something about free trade, how it’s got nothing to do with freedom, how the silence is the silence of protest and dissent, how we’ve been dumbed, senses dulled by senseless lives. But, of course, if the silence has got her, then she’ll have to keep quiet and just waggle her lips at the world.
Using the celebrity’s midriff as a pillow, Justin begins to drift off to sleep on the bed, surrounded by bits of body, thinking about the celebrity and the silence. A green light on the dehumidifier illuminates. I suppose the air must have changed a little.
Then finally a noise, a sniff, Justin’s nostrils hiss, snot gurgles, then the distant sound of a woman’s voice. Shit. Oh God, thinks Justin. His pulped brain bubbles inside its papier mâché skull. Shit. He’s dribbled gozz into the midriff’s belly button. He turns round, knocking a hand on to the floor with his leg. Where’s the voice coming from?
His head feels like someone’s been sick into it. The celebrity’s going to kill him for this. Time has passed. He scrambles over to the coffee table and sips from his whisky. The experiment is fucking up, he’s wronging society, playing games with the sexual fates of others. And still the woman’s voice, tiny and delicat
e: where is it coming from and what is it saying?
Justin crawls towards the bedside table, following the sound of the speaking. The voice is minute and sounds like footsteps creeping on gravel. He peers into the ashtray at the facial features of the celebrity. The mouth is leaning against the two eyes; the pink lips move like splintering wood.
‘Put me back together, you prick.’
Oh shit, thinks Justin, I should never have taken her to pieces in the first place. He runs to the bed, picks up a hand and tries to stick it to an arm. Is that right? Yes, hands and arms, classic, legs on feet, where the fuck is her back? Shut up. Shut up.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are? Taking me to pieces, what did you think you were doing?’
The lips are back on her face now and talking loudly. Justin positions the hair on top of her head. She’s beautiful again, and furious.
‘What about my stomach?’
‘I know, just give me a second.’
Justin picks up the midriff and squirms his index finger around the belly button. There is a sound – a faint squelch.
‘What’s that?’ asks the celebrity.
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s spit.’
‘It’s dribble.’
‘Give it back.’
Justin hands the toned midriff to the celebrity and she puts it back into place, wiping the remainder of the spit from her belly button with her finger. He hands her a drink. She’s drinking. Thank God she still works. She lies naked on the bed, gulping at the glass, the seams between her body parts fading. Suddenly she begins to laugh, then she just can’t stop, she’s lying there just laughing out loud.
‘Hahahahahahahaha.’
‘What’s the matter?’
The celebrity can’t reply, something is as funny as fuck, surely. Her oinking laughter is causing her body to fold; her stomach shudders and curves. Her eyes are squeezed shut, just creased skin leading to nothing. Justin panics, has he assembled her correctly? Yes, yes, it’s fine; her eyes are on her face, and her anus is in place. Justin is fretting.