by John Gould
Which left Matt alone and tentless with two girls and their three-man tent. Hanna and Helena eventually invited him in, but with a caveat. They wouldn’t be having sex with him, since the only sex they ever had was with one another.
Ah.
As it turned out, though, the two weren’t mutually exclusive, girl-sex and guy-sex. Hashed up and tipsy, the Finns got experimental. Penetration was out, but pretty much everything else was in. Equilateral, isosceles, scalene. Right, obtuse, acute. Who knew high school geometry would come in so handy? There were three nights of this, three candlelit nights—on two occasions a corner of sleeping bag began stinkily sizzling and the trio had to spill out into the briny gloom. Matt spent the days resting and rehydrating, and filling his diary with inanely mystical footnotes. In one place: “What if there were four of us? What if the triangle had become a quadrilateral? Trapezium, parallelogram, rhombus, rectangle, square.”
“My friend there?” he said to the girls one day. “Turns out he’s gay too.”
The Finns shared a good-grief look with one another. “How is it possible you didn’t know this?” said Hanna. “We thought you both were.” Gaydar, did the word even exist back then?
“Until you shoulder-checked me,” said Helena, mimicking Matt’s smooth move.
On the fourth morning the girls announced their plan to head east for Egypt, and ultimately Israel. Matt toyed with the idea of tagging along. It wasn’t until much later that he realized he’d been living in a porn addict’s dream, that what he should have wanted was to loop it forever. Maybe it was the girls’ unsettling bursts of laughter—could his pecker keep on being that funny?—or maybe it was the new feeling of lostness the sex couldn’t quite blot out. For one reason or another Matt decided to let them go.
He toyed, too, with the idea of heading south. Maybe he could pick up Zane’s trail, overtake him out on some sunbaked savannah, Born Free terrain. Was that what Zane was hoping, that Matt would hunt him down? Or had he intended all along to find himself alone?
Matt’s safest route was the route home. Next time though, in India? Matt will have a camera, and Zane will never shake him.
If DennyD’s at all mortified at being caught out in a lie, he isn’t showing it. He simply made no mention, in this morning’s message, of his claim to have seen the non-existent House of Straw. Then again, why should he be mortified? Who hasn’t been caught out in a lie this week? “I’m used to READING you in the press and now I’m reading ABOUT you, this just gets better and better. It’s so totally POST, the writer becoming the story because he’s written non-fiction about fictional things …”
And then—what the hell—that message from Nagy, the one Matt’s been avoiding since Saturday. Procrastination just keeps getting tougher as time goes on.
Dear Matt,
Couple of things. First off, I want to apologize for the tone I took in our last conversation. I’ve been under a lot of etc. No excuse. I was stunned by your stunt, and I’m still stunned, but I shouldn’t have lost it like that. Truth is I kind of admire the flair of the gesture. I’m not alone. Word’s barely out there and we’ve been getting mail.
Which leads me to my next. I’d like to propose that you start a new column reviewing DVDs. kritik@home, I’m thinking. What say? Laszlo
kritik@home, hey, not half-bad. A dream job for Matt, or at least it would be if it paid more than pocket change. The freedom to do work he cares about in the comfort of his own fetid study …
But no, not yet. Matt isn’t ready to abandon the cinema, the cathedral itself. Sure, he cherishes the fancy rig he’s got at home, but it isn’t the Real Thing. Even in its updated, vulgarized form, Matt still loves the thing of going-to-a-movie. Loves it? Needs it. From the first waft of faux-butter warming in the squirter machine to the sticky-treaded shuffle out at the end, it’s all sacred, it’s all sublime. This came clear again just last night, as he settled in to be Terminated. Coming Attractions: the vicious strobe of action sequences, the pushbutton emotion of hundred-decibel pop, the rivet-machine repetition of nauseating clichés … On either side of him Kate and Zane shifted and shuddered. Matt? For the first time in days he felt almost perfectly serene. The “primal screen” Sarris called it, the return of that luminous union you felt your very first time.
Plus his buddies. Going to a movie is one of the few things Matt isn’t just as happy to do alone. He’s always wished Mariko would join him more often. The uncanny combo of private and public, the appealing weirdness of being in your own little world in the company of others—could this be the solution, finally, to the riddle of individual and crowd, of self and other? “For wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I.” You’re huddled in the dark, staring together into the light …
Why hasn’t he ever fantasized about Sophie and Mariko? This is a question that grips Matt as he and Zane speed south. They’ve just about run out of Canada here, and are flashing past signs for the border.
Rainbow Bridge. Will Bush be there to greet them?
“Well, I just knew we couldn’t count on you Canadian pussies,” drawls Matt. “But that’s alrat. We’ll sort Saddam out just fan all by our lonesomes.”
“Wow, that’s an amazing accent,” says Zane. “Scottish, right?”
He’s certainly fantasized about Sophie, Matt has. Lithe and guileless—Franka Potente maybe, from the Bourne movies. Franka in blonde dreads. And of course he’s fantasized about Mariko, more and more often in recent months as their sex life has hardened into history. He’s fantasized about him and Mariko both fantasizing about Sophie, and he’s even, on one curious occasion, fantasized about Sophie fantasizing about him and Mariko. So why not—shades of Hanna and Helena—the obvious threesome? Butch and Sundance and the teacher lady, but the other way around?
He gets back from town a little earlier than expected one evening. There they are, the two women stretched out on the phony sheepskin in front of the wood stove, its little window intricately aglow. They’re enacting the uroboros, a pair of snakes swallowing one another’s tail. They look up from their labours … and they smile.
Why not? Why not a full-scale ménage à trois, the three of them setting up house together? Mariko could hardly object. Judging by She she’s way into collectivity, and how much more collective could you get? There’d be a grid magneted to the fridge, a spreadsheet specifying chores and sleeping arrangements for each night of the week, Mariko-Matt, Matt-Sophie, Sophie-Mariko (hey, he’d be happy to batch it the odd evening, rest up). Weekends they’d all pile in together. Maybe they’d keep two places, a country place and a pied-à-terre. He and Mariko would spend a few days a week in town and then ferry up to the wild retreat, to escape the buzz and re-immerse themselves in youth and estrogen. Sophie’s recycling might get a bit oppressive, but that could be negotiated. Hey, it might not be a bad idea to save the world anyhow. Chances are Sophie would want a baby, and that’d be fine too. The lucky brat would get a brace of mums, one for energy and one for wisdom, one for suckling and one for financial support. In every dimension the family would just keep tipping back to equilibrium.
“Easy there, bud,” says Zane. “Give the guy a break.”
Matt lets up on the accelerator, allows the minivan to pull away. Minivan—that’s probably what they’d need too, what with the four of them.
“Speaking of which,” says Matt, “did you hear the one about the guy who got busted for buggery?”
“If I say yes,” says Zane, “will you spare me the punchline?”
“Found himself a good lawyer and got it reduced. Following too close.”
“Ha,” says Zane. “Ha.”
“But really, what do you … what’s it like?”
This is a question Matt kept meaning to ask Hanna and Helena, back in the day. More recently he’s been trying to screw up the courage to ask Mariko. What’s it like? Sex with Sophie, sex with a woman—sex with somebody who’s like you. Where do you get the friction when you don’t get it from differen
ce?
“Like?” says Zane.
“I’m just trying … See, I prefer to take care of my partner first, and then, you know. Most men do. I researched it one time, I can’t remember the percentage, but you just want to flake out, right? Just drift off? You don’t want to find out you’ve still got all this work to do.”
“Matt—”
“So I was just wondering how it goes when it’s two guys.”
“Are you seriously asking me this? Which one of us gets off first, me or Nico?”
“Yeah. I’m doing like an openness-and-intimacy thing here.”
“Right.”
“So do you, I don’t know, maybe take turns? One time he—”
“Matt?”
“Zane?”
But then nothing. Matt makes as though to check his far mirror, and manages a peek at his friend. Zane looks as though he’d be willing to keep up the sparring, but the requisite gusto has plumb gone out of him. He’s got his head rocked back on the rest, his sock feet up on the dash. He’s keeping track of the road ahead through slitted, stoned-looking eyes. After a bit he says, “There isn’t going to be an answer, Matt.”
“Answer to what?”
“Why I’m doing this. Why this is happening to me.”
“Yeah, well,” says Matt. “Hey, you know what? I’m thinking maybe we’ve had our quota of thrills for today. What say we head back, try again tomorrow?”
Zane produces a mini-smile, an appreciative lip twitch. “Thanks, but no. I’m good. Quick doze and Bob’s …”
And he’s gone, lights out. Crazy joof.
Matt drives on alone, trying to take it easy on the bumps. He smiles to himself—following too close, not bad. For one of his early reviews he did some research into those old urban legends about men stuffing hamsters and sundry other rodents up their bums. He never found anything to corroborate these tales, but he did manage to rustle up an impressive list of objects that men, both gay and straight, were reported to have introduced into their rear ends. He worked up a pretty good riff about orifices—“two-way portals, crossings at the border of me and not-me”—how we use them both to foster and to destroy identity. Nagy made him drop the whole thing, on the basis that it didn’t pertain to the movie, whatever that might have been. Coward.
Zane—Hebrew variant of John. God’s gracious gift. Matt tries it on him now, “God’s gracious gift,” grabbing another glance over his way. But he’s zonkered, mouth an elongated O. Munch’s nap.
“What if nobody’s to blame, not even me?” says Matt.
Nada.
“Why do you always have to do something? Why can’t you just live with stuff like the rest of us do?”
Zip.
dear denny,
so gr8 2 hear from u.
Matt’s got one true fan, he can hardly afford to ignore the guy. He took a few moments this morning, striving for kool.
glad u liked the house of straw piece. thx for th@. your movie, dead, sounds dandy. the tyranny of narrative, we do have to push against it, don’t we? but what about this, what about when u start 2 dtect plot structure in your own life? u want paranoia.
seems i won’t be writing 4 omega anymore. un4tune8ly? that means i have nothing 2 give u just now but advice, & i haven’t any of th@ either. oh w8, here’s some. a wise old swami 1ce told me, follow your buzz. if u do th@, if u pursue the thing u r most passion8 about, doors will start 2 open 4 u & guides will come 2 help u on your way. if doors r not opening 4 u & guides r not helping u on your way then u must be on the WRONG DAMN PATH.
write back anyway?
c4n,
kritik@themovies
Matt had to poke around on the web for quite a while to find the apposite sign-off, ciao for now. Gtg was another option, but got to go felt kind of brusque, and kool as he is Matt couldn’t quite talk himself into ld. Later dude. Maybe later.
Ford. Chrysler. Dodge. GM.
Wendy’s. McDonald’s. KFC. DQ.
This could still be Canada, but it isn’t. They’re on the other side now, where all this stuff comes from. They’ve made it across.
Not by much, mind you.
“What the hell was that?” says Zane.
“Gimme a break.”
He was so cool most of the way, Matt was. Not much traffic, so they cruised effortlessly over the bridge, craning to take in the foam-marbled river, the postcard-ready froth of the falls.
“Five billion gallons an hour,” said Zane. “We did the little boat ride on our honeymoon. The tourist thing.”
“Gosh, that’s so sweet.”
“What we couldn’t figure out was, whose water is this? Is this Canadian water or American water?”
“That there’s God’s water, son.”
“Oh.”
The border guy was decent, no big deal. Licence and registration? How long will you be in the country? What is the purpose of your trip?
Purpose of your trip—that’s the one that got Matt. That’s the one that for some reason caused him to flash on the gun under his seat, and forthwith to panic.
“Pleasure,” he said. So far so good. But then, “Hey, why don’t you test us or something?”
“Pardon me?” The guard was instantly tense, giant jaw cording up. Christ. This is what you don’t do. You don’t get smart, you don’t go off script.
“I just mean, you know. Quiz us. See if we deserve to get in?” Matt’s plan must have been to disorient the guy, distract him from the whole idea of a search. Brilliant, just effing brilliant.
There was an alarm button nearby, presumably, for which the guard’s finger was no doubt itching. Or perhaps he was fixing to draw. Matt briefly envisioned himself grabbing for Zane’s pistol, having it out with this dude the old-fashioned way, peow-peow-peow.
“Something about movies, maybe,” said Matt. “You guys are the movies, right? You Americans? So shouldn’t you test people on the movies before you let them in?”
It could have gone either way. The frown on the guard said full body search, no question. But the frown, oddly enough, was fading. A bit of movie trivia had come to him, you could tell. He didn’t want to see it go to waste. He performed a quick three-sixty, checking on his buddies in their own little booths. Then, leaning conspiratorially in, he said, “What was The Birth of a Nation”—holding up a careful-now finger—“before it was The Birth of a Nation?”
“The Clan,” said Matt. Yes! No, wait. Black guy. Was it wise to know this?
The guard grinned. “Big fan, are you? Got your bedsheets in the back?”
“Hardly,” said Matt, with what he hoped was a comradely chuckle. “Listen, we’re film guys, so, you know … the technical innovations and everything. The night shot. The tracking shot.”
“Ah, the tracking shot,” said the guard. “I see. That’s probably why the KKK likes it too. Not the lynchings or any of that, not the tips on how to tame a crazed darky, keep him off your white woman. No, it’s the tracking shot.”
“I was just, I just meant—”
“Yes?”
Zane. Zane?
Zane cleared his throat. “My friend here?” he said. “He’s a complete moron. Complete, believe me. The thing is though, he’s not a bedsheet kind of a guy. He just isn’t. He’s actually kind of decent.”
The guard leaned further in, peered over at Zane. He made a gun-finger, aimed it at him. “And I’d believe you why?”
“I don’t know. Brotherly love?” said Zane.
“Yeah, brotherly love,” said Matt.
The guard grimaced. He uncocked his finger, leaned back out of the car. “The Clansman,” he said. “Get it right next time.” And he waved them on through.
Zane’s still shaking his head in disbelief, relishing Matt’s idiocy. “I mean have you lost your mind?”
They’re out the other side of town now, things are going rural again. No relief from the weather—America, it turns out, is under the same single-minded sky.
“The gun,” says Matt. “Did
you maybe forget about the gun? What if the guy’d found it?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” says Zane. “So your idea was to act so insane that it wouldn’t surprise him?”
“No, you ninny, so he’d never go looking for it in the first place. It’s all very psychological, you wouldn’t understand.”
Zane reaches under the driver’s seat, pulls out the pistol. “I’ve just about had it with your attitude,” he says. He levels the weapon at Matt, and squirts him in the temple.
“Jesus!”
Zane laughs alone for a while—it’s a few more squirts before Matt’s laughing too.
“You’re going to get us fugging killed,” he says, letting the car go swervy.
“Mm, not yet,” says Zane.
“And what if somebody sees you with it and thinks it’s real?”
“That’s the idea, my friend. Next time the other bastard pisses his pants.”
Matt scowls.
“I’d never shoot it anyway,” says Zane. “Might as well be fake.”
“That’s loopy.”
“Says the biggest faker in the world.”
Matt scowls some more.
“Oh, lighten up,” says Zane. “This is a collectors’ item, you know. Good fakes are illegal nowadays, Mercedes had to confiscate it from her nephew.” He tucks the weapon away again. “Anyhow, you’re supposed to have a gun down here, this is the good ol’ US of A.” He hums a few bars of representative rock ‘n’ roll. Springsteen? And then, “Hey, remember last time?”
“CBGB,” says Matt. Another clicker, another key to memory.
“CBGB.”
It would have been 1980 or thereabouts, the boys’ only other trip to the States together. Spur-of-the-moment thing, a weekend away in the Big Kumquat, as Zane called it. New York City. By day they did galleries, Warhol’s Marilyns and Maos, Basquiat’s graffitied skulls and skeletons. By night they did bars and cinemas. CBGB was already turning iconic at the time, dingy, a real dump—exactly the sort of noxious swamp you’d want punk to have come slouching out of. For movies they started at the brainy end, a night of Stan Brakhage at an arthouse so hip you needed granny glasses just to get in. No trace of narrative, DennyD would have been impressed. Matt’s favourite was Window Water Baby Moving, Brakhage’s silent, super-graphic record of his wife’s home labour—Zane got the woozies, needed Matt’s shoulder on the way out to the lobby for more licorice. The next night it was all cult, Ed Wood, Russ Meyer, and finally this new guy, David Lynch. Hard to think of a scarier baby than the one in Eraserhead—an ET-type creature trapped in the fouled nest of its own body. Birth as nightmare, how do you wake up?