Borderless Erotic Geography

Borderless Erotic Geography

I've crossed deserts and valleys, passed over hardcore rocks and softcore steppes, seen sundowns and moondowns, followed the earth to primitive ends to discover: you're the one for my movie. I've sung slack-jawed out the window, the beatnicking wind riding auteur, to call your name, and you came, you came, to my dirty pool film set. So hello, welcome, make yourself at home! We've hired a professional caterer, even on this low budget, to accommodate your taste for salmon. He's a cheap molecular gastronomist who dishes Coca Cola caviar and cream cheese foam.

The premise of this movie is just you & I fucking eternally. We have hired a team of desperate stagehands and long-living bacterial spores in case we go severely overtime. The film begins with me lounging by my pool and you saunter in after a long, difficult day at the office, wishing aloud for someone to just ravish you for the rest of time. You then look at me in a way that reads to the audience, "Fuck me forever." Beautiful, baby, camera-closeup: look at me that way again and I'll love you as long as I last.

We ran a dummy reel for test audiences who agreed an unending session of lovemaking is a satisfactory way to spend the remainder of our days. They did not sympathize with the blow-up anime doll I so tenderly screwed, and voiced a preference for a buxom blonde babe like yourself. Gorgeous, you are the real thing, and audiences crave you. 

Desired eternal scenarios included an ouroborosian 69 at the pyramids of Giza, blowjobs in the Elysian Fields, yogic anal sex in the temples of Tibet, and sisyphean doggystyle up a great hill in which no matter how hard you try you end up falling back upon my rock-hard member. We'll do it all and more — everywhere, forever.

Filming begins as soon as you say "Yes," 'yes' being the password to paradise. You want to think it over? Sure! Take your time. I have all of mine to hear back from you. We'll be here eating deconstructed blini and essence of Caesar salad. Call me, babe. You're my one and only, always. Let's get it on. 

Ruinology

Ruinology

"Everything is a gate," you once said to me, and your words are some of the few things I have managed to hold onto.

In all my walks I could not ever recall seeing your gallery until that January evening. I do not know how I could have overlooked it. You were in there at your reception desk, reading a book, with a large mauve sun hat and a drapery of long black hair. I surveyed the collection of newly made antiques, the new paintings of old myths and the nostalgic pottery. I complimented your collection and left.

I began to visit regularly. I told you it was a sure sign of my old age that I spent my after-work walks seriously perusing a gallery of expensive imitations and Southwestern-themed niceties. You laughed then beckoned me to the backroom with your bejeweled fingers. You had a secret to share, you said.

You presented a dusty painting of a "magic ring," a painting, you insisted, that was authentically old. This was your most valuable possession, you said, and for whatever reason you passed it into my hands and insisted I go home with it. "With this, you will have access to every entrance in the city, and you will leave no trace of your break-ins," you said. "You will become invisible."

On my next walk I decided to test your forewarning in the hopes of joking about it on my next visit. To my surprise, my first attempt, the locked Joey's Barber Shop, gave way, and I stood flabbergasted amongst the unwatched combs and hair gels. I felt very alarmed and ensured I left everything as I had found it. Could this work everywhere? I wondered.

My curiosity got the best of me and I went on a night-time prowl with my newfound power. I learned the contents of private storage spaces; I tiptoed through countless apartments; I toured the gemstones exhibit at the natural history museum. I was entirely unaccounted for. I had access to a secret world. I began to know the innards of a city that, until now, I only saw from the outside. Now I was deep within.

I expected my mischief would catch up to me. I awaited police phone calls or security team apprehensions, but no matter how many cameras saw me, no matter how many alarm systems I ghostily passed through, I heard nothing. As you said, I had become invisible.

Inspired, I lived out an early childhood fantasy and made slight disturbances across the city. I skipped work to restyle and reconfigure mannequins in the Macys storefront. I missed appointments to move cars. I stole the finest wines. No matter how much I altered, I was neither seen nor stopped. In daylight and under moonlight, I may as well have been thin air.

The city took on the feel of a ruin: open and accessible, marked by inhabitance but mine to explore without witness or admonition. I was the chartered tourist of distant lives.

After my intrusion bender, I returned to your gallery to talk but could not get in. The door was locked. You were in there talking with a new customer. I saw you presenting to her the most terrifying thing: an ancient portrait of a man who looked very much like myself. I knocked loudly on the glass, shouting and questioning. You turned your gaze to mine, smiled, and then resumed your conversation.

I returned to my apartment for the first time in days, and was locked out of my own home, too. I made every attempt to enter, and called every contact I could — landlord, neighbors, police — to no answer. I realized, then, what you had done to me: in granting me access to every door, you shut me out from my life. In letting me plumb the worlds within our world, I had ceased to exist as I was.

To this day, I remain shut away from my old life. The unsold painting stands in your window. My likeness mocks me from behind glass.

I have lost interest in breaking indoors. I kick up dust in alley ways and look at the lives still lived, defined by what they can and cannot access, as I slink between gates and barriers, the bottom feeder of a common abyss.

Love Song of the Involute Shell

Love Song of the Involute Shell

"Our love was written long ago, my dear," said the captain to his mermaid lass, but speaking to the horizon, "in the shells and chambers of the deep." 

He puffed his pipe. "As a young skipper upon these waters, I used to fear the churning sea. She seemed to me unending in her heartlessness and indifference — the dull repetition of wave after wave! She would swallow us and we, too, would be reduced to nothingness, another temporary speck in the mighty blue. The older I have grown, however, the more I see in her the patterns of love. Yes, my dear, love! A love as deep as the ocean herself." 

He gazed out at the setting sun. "Imagine, if you will, life in prehistoric times. Imagine a terrifying abyss of chaos — amoebae splitting and mutating without order, currents without continents to curb them. Pure chaos! A world in constant upheaval!" 

He glared, with great purpose, at the repeating waves. "But formlessness needs form to guide it, else it shall continue to mutate without end. And so, out of necessity, came shells! Protective shapes to shape the shapeless, outer bones to bind the boneless! Beginning at the smallest point, a core of simplicity, began a shell, a shell which through maturation birthed additional septa. So grew this shell, logarithmically, towards a living chamber, and hence the cephalopod. Life is built in simple steps, you see."

He puffed again on his pipe. "It has seemed to me that life is written by a single rule: reproduction. That is why the waves give birth to waves, and why our time upon this blue beast in so small a wooden craft will one day, to our children's children, be a footnote; we are mere ancestors already." 

He smiled to a flock of seagulls flying in sync overhead. "But, Captain — you must be thinking — is not this the same meaninglessness you so feared? Is not this unending reproduction but sister to the ocean's monotony? Perhaps — but I prefer to think of it differently. For does this pattern not manifest itself in so infinite a variety of shapes? The world is not monotonous, but a complexity of endlessly beautiful variations on a single principle! And that principle, my dear, is love. Love, the ever-beating heart of the whole; love, the common factor between opposites; love, the simple origin point that births the world!"

He outstretched his arms to the horizon. "For is it not love between man and woman that creates each and everyone one of us? Was it not with love that God created out of shapeless sand the first human upon this earth? Is it not love that connects contraries, love that warms us in the harsh winter, love that seems, by my reckoning, to be the final conclusion of every creed, belief, and wish?"

He put his arm around his mermaid lass. "And so like the nautilus, my dear, we are formed from the beginning by this simple rule, and no matter how long and windy our road, however complicated our union, you shall trace in our stages the same lovely pattern, and you shall arrive, after so many revolutions, at a single starting point: love. What say you, my fair maiden?"

The mermaid shrugged. "You're weird," she said, and dove into the sea.

Background

Background

    As John put on his raincoat he felt overcome with a sense of deja vu. A sense that he had worn the same outfit on a similarly gray day; a sense that he had checked his watch with the same mindless deliberation; a sense that he had eaten his eggs and toast with the same pace, the same groggy body ache, the same morning thoughts. He felt — crazily, it seemed to him — orchestrated in a way by something greater than routine, but he could not say what.

    That day he met with Sarah at their usual cafe. They met to continue a long-established tradition the origins of which neither could recall. They spoke the same lines about their day, voiced the same complaints, doled out the same compliments. Sarah looked lovely; John, he wore a nice tie. John admired her indifferently and vaguely. He remembered maybe once falling in love with her but their meetings now were a matter of established ritual.

    They spent most of their meetings watching other people. Sometimes they appeared to engage with one another for the benefit of other people-watchers, but mostly they watched in silence. John noticed the same man in a blue blazer etching the same course along 3rd Street as the man had done before, and could not help but feel he had just yesterday seen the same woman in a niqāb who was now, like then, entering the post office.

    Thirty minutes into their meeting, after numerous starts and stops in conversation, John and Sarah heard a loud explosion. Everyone on the street stopped in their tracks and looked. A great shadow fell upon the city blocks. Some massive something lurched towards them. A woman screamed and people began to scamper as if they had some thought-out place to shelter. John looked at Sarah and said “I love you” as a matter of course. He knew something grim would happen to them and supposed they had been overtaken all along. So they continued talking out of habit, their words coming without thought, falling out with the buildings collapsing like so many dominoes.

The Weekend Girl Cloud

The Weekend Girl Cloud

[for Geneva]

The weekend girl cloud blinks across the pink sky to deposit cartoonily exaggerated rain drops, blue with a badge of reflective iridescence, on the land below. The candy children, in button up dresses made of animator cells, stitched with cheesy cliche dreams about flying, about showing up naked in class, and about lost loved ones, celebrate to their venerated revenant above. The grass, of course, is sheened like green butterscotch suckers. All is glassy glee in the land rained upon by the weekend girl cloud.

This is the usual scene.

The problem with the weekend girl cloud, so worshiped by so many, is that she harbors the wet spirits of all my fantasy crushes. I should say, that's my problematic relationship with the weekend girl cloud. I am reassured by the automaton mechanicals that I will outgrow my pubescent ideas and one day stick to earthly pleasures. Obviously, they have never been a 17 year old boy.

On this particular weekend I wait upon the hillside for the sky to smear across its palette. Then in comes the girl cloud. She sparkles Powerpuff style. Her rain bubbles down, intermixing the colors and the forces that mold them. A chorus of candy children hobble under her shadow, arms skyward, feet springing them off the green crystal grass. They offer to make a Skittles sacrifice. The weekend girl cloud beams and rains down to heal their cheeks and crops.

I get jealous. I run out into the field, painted poppies tumbling up into the air behind me, and I shout: "Weekend girl cloud! I bring you more than these petty worshipers can offer. I bring you love!" I crash through the chorus of candy children and unpeel my shirt, fall to my knees, and sing an eternal love song.

The weekend girl cloud has an eye for sincerity and hoists me up. I am lifted by little winglets of rainwater. I am misted into her folds and greeted by my heavenly hosts. They are more transparent and spooky than I anticipated. They pilot a bright vessel but they are like dull candles. I say to them, "Hi, I am in love with you." That is the most creative I can be at 6000 feet in the air.

They all speak in unison in the most thunderous whisper: "WE LOVE YOU MORE."

With that, I am ejected on a tornado's twirl. I spiral to the ground flecked with dewey love. I land and look around at the bewildered candy children. I grab the nearest kid, a pigtailed girl with countless freckles. "I have tasted divine love and it is beautiful," I say. "I have never felt more adored. You crave the rains, but I — I have felt the cloud's real power."

The girl grabs me back by the shoulders. She pierces me with very wide eyes. "We have all been inside. Each and every one of us. We aren't a cult, mister. We are bunch of lovesick individuals each pleading his or her pain. And I know in my heart the cloud girls love me more than all others. So get on your knees and beg, mister. She's only taking one of us."

My eyes widen. I let go of my revelator. I look up and start yelling upwards like the rest of them. I have been yelling ever since.

She Pulls the Strings

She Pulls the Strings

Mr. Hartford Bickley gazed upon the geese and grouse in his yard; his wife, Elinor, meanwhile, only saw these foul through an obstructing window pane. So went their summer days: the artful conversationalist surveying his property with his friend Walter in tow, his quiet wifely companion, removed and afar. The two only united upon the husband’s return when he, fresh from a hunt, would demand food and drink, and she would oblige, alone in the kitchen with sorrow as her only true companion, sorrow for a marriage that once held so much promise, sorrow for the vacancies and recognized barriers between man and wife.

Until one day, when, having tired of contemplating the mocking greenery beyond the household walls, Elinor retired to her husband’s vast library, where she found, curiously tucked into one volume, a long, thin, black string, spooling from the pages. She opened the book to where this string was threaded and found there its termination; the rest of the string trailed to floor, to shelf, then seemingly to ceiling, then yet beyond, further up, threaded through the skylight and to the roof of the estate house. Like a cat she toyed with the string —  a few tugs —  and then left the mystery to rest.

That evening, her husband returned bruised and distraught. He spoke of a phantom force tugging upon his neck, as if he were ensnared by a noose. He was dragged, he said, by an unseen instigator, thrown this way and that under a ghostly chokehold. Elinor, recalling the string, understood her newfound power, yet kept quiet, choosing instead to dissuade her husband from indulging superstitions. “There are occasions when our bodies seem to work contrary to our minds, and may give us the most misleading signals, the most inscrutable urges, that neither you nor I nor any physician can accurately account for; we must accept these short bursts of instability as one of the inconveniences of being alive,” she said.

And so it went, she feigning the role of unaware wife, he becoming the newly troubled and damaged husband. No longer could he stroll through his estate without the occasional ensnarement; no longer could he circle the pond without fear of being yanked round its perimeter, as if made the sole competitor in a perverse hippodrome. In short time, the fearful man sheltered in the estate and took to more productive hobbies, cooking and general upkeep, out of suspicion his idleness had inspired some godly wrath; while good Elinor, ever the quiet one, continued to pluck gently at the string as needed, the silent looser of unseen knots, the tinkerer of worldly rules.



Sayings (The Movie)

"A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush"

Uplifting CGI kids flick about a pair of bluebirds who fall in love amidst competing interests only to realize the one you have is worth at least twice more than the one you don't have. They cherish each other's company in the hand of a nearby birdwatcher. (PG)

"Genius is One Percent Inspiration and 99 Percent Perspiration"

The untold story of Albert Einsten's hyerhidrosis. Documentary. (NR)

"Jump On The Bandwagon"

Moralizing western action piece about one outsider's life-or-death decision between saving a hurtling cart of judgmental villagers or preserving his own self-worth as they plummet to their dooms. With a rockabilly soundtrack from Lee Hazard and the Damned Branch Band. (R)

"Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder"

Confrontational indie drama about two college students who fall in love only to realize their attraction would benefit from the pains of absence, and deliberately study abroad at the same time to ensure mutual infatuation and devastation. They vow to stay true, simultaneously swelling and wrecking their poor young hearts. (PG-13)

"The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword"

Hilarious sendup of the unlikely friendship between a journalist and a professional fencer, who meet upon a sinking cruise ship. (PG-13)

"The Early Bird Catches the Worm"

Horror film about a man who is always on time — to die. (R)

"That's All, Folks!"

.003 second art flick that ends prior to audience seating. (NR)