I actually gasp a little as he takes three quick steps toward her and lifts her off the chair, the two of them groaning in passion. He sits on the chair and places her on his lap and then they kiss in a kind of mad dash.
Their bodies move in an irritated way as Tim locks lips and fumbles for the control stick. He finds it and backs out of the bathroom as the chair goes BEEP BEEP BEEP.
I can hear Mr. Snake say, “Yessm, good, excellent – excellent cinema, glorious cinema.”
Tim and Joann slobber over each other – it’s a pecking contest, more like – and make crazy love sounds. The wheelchair reverses slowly then makes a silly BURP and speeds up. A horrified look crosses the actors’ faces and now they’re screaming for help as the chair rear-ends a table, knocking over a giant Chinese vase. There is nothing inside. The crew looks at each other with “O” mouths. Tim and Joann squeal at the crew as the chair bolts toward us.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Mr. Snake stands up in a panic.
“Run away! Run away!”
Everyone scatters as the wheelchair zooms past us and runs into the bed and bounces off. The chair spins around and around like a merry-go-round as Tim and Joann scream for help from God. Mr. Snake points an accusing finger at the old woman.
“You are to blame, toad!”
She cries and holds out her hands, pathetically.
“Please, kind sir, I don’t mean to be old!”
He pushes her away.
The old lady complains, but he doesn’t hear it.
“Get away from me, toad. I don’t like you anymore.”
Actors trapped on the wheelchair whine.
Tim throws his hands in the air as he bawls bloody murder.
“Blahhhhhhhh!
Joann cries in a wrong way.
“Waaaaaah!”
Mr. Snake runs up to me.
“Never stop rolling! Oh, God!”
I nod, afraid that he’s going to hit me.
He shakes me by the shoulders and says, “Stop nodding!” and then points to the actors who are still spiraling in place.
“This must be handheld to make it more hectic and therefore dramatic! I went to film school!”
“Yessm! Good!”
I carry the camera – tripod and all – and run to the wheelchair.
I zoom in on their confused faces. I want to help them, but I know Mr. Snake is standing behind me because he’s cheering the wheelchair on.
“Now make-out!”
The actors immediately begin kissing and shrieking at the same time.
The director steeples his fingers.
“Splendid…”
Tim pounds on the controls to no desired effect. He yells out curses…
“Curses!”
…and gives it one final POUND.
The chair farts and smoke begins bellowing out from its bottom. The crew watches – men & women crying, striking curious poses.
The mechanical monster growls and bolts toward the crew again, its front wheels in the air. All screech with their hands to their faces as the possessed chair runs into a wall, throwing the actors so many feet into the air. They ricochet off the ceiling, mind you, and land in dull thuds, limbs flailing about like rubber. Their bodies wiggle on the carpet as they moan for Jesus.
Mr. Snake slaps my buttocks and takes me by my terrified arm and we both kneel before the actors.
“Sexy time! Have sex now! We’re still rolling!”
The actors hastily squirm over each other and hug, rolling around in pain in front of the dying, overturned chair – its wheels smoking & coughing.
The director makes a rectangle with his hands and looks through it as if it were a camera.
“Now make sexy sounds with your mouths,” he says, calmly.
The actors try, but what comes out sounds like a hyena.
All I recall is: Moaning, pain, smoke, people crying behind me, hyenas, and an awkward cat smell.
The place is full of smoke now – so much that Mr. Snake jumps to his feet and exclaims, “Fire, fire!”
Over my shoulder Polly yells, “Clear the set!”
NOW everyone exits, screaming indescribable words. Someone, a female human, runs out screaming, “Blood!”
I help Mr. Snake and Polly as they carry the naked actors out of the room. The injured actors cry in sync, “Why me, why me?”
The two obese men I saw earlier kissing, now dressed as sumo wrestlers, run past us, carrying fire extinguishers, and charge into the smoke. I can hear them stomping about and throwing directions at each other as they put out the threat.
I run past a fat white cat.
We nod to each other.
“Fearing Hell”
WE BRING THE ACTORS into the kitchen and clear the table of empty Budlight bottles that smash onto the hard floor like glass bombs. We lay the actors down. They convulse and cry like they have splinters in their hair.
Polly instructs the spectators to beat it and give us some room to console. They don’t listen due to shock and intrigue, so Mr. Snake grabs a nearby, giant-sized, wooden spoon and chases them away. He screams “Gahhhhhhhhh!” but it does no good. They stand about in the living room. Some watch in concern with their hands over their mouths.
Mr. Snake and Polly give Joann a backrub. Tim is unconscious. There is some discussion about whether to call the police or not, but that idea is quickly thrown out the window.
Mr. Snake talks about someone who might be able to help – someone Polly isn’t familiar with, judging by the frown on her face. Apparently, this mystery person is a therapist. Or at least was – he was let go years ago due to insatiable reasons yet unknown. Eventually, they both nod in trust of the choice and leave to use the phone. They tell me to stay by Joann and make sure she doesn’t do anything weird.
I pull up a chair and sit in front of Joann.
She stares into the air with a blank expression on her face. Only now do I notice that she’s still in the nude, so I asked around for a towel, and drape it over her trembling torso. Fearing Hell, due to my Catholic upbringing, I try as hard as I can to keep my eyes off of her breasts, hoping that she’ll cover herself up.
She doesn’t…eyes forward, staring dead into mine.
I stare back…afraid that if I look away she may take it as an insult.
This goes on for a whole minute.
Then, she brushes her hair back and asks for a cigarette.
I light up.
So we sit there, smoking, staring at each other. It takes all I gots to keep my eyes on her eyes and not on her baby-feeders.
She ashes her cig onto the front of her neck.
Cigarette: “Sizzle…”
“I do that to show how much I hate my body. I’m so insecure. And fat.”
When consoling someone, there’s only one rule to follow:
Listen.
You’re only allowed to talk if you sense they’re ready to listen to what you have to say. Which is rare. People love to listen to themselves yack.
The hard part is looking for an opening to push in a few words.
Pause.
I make my move.
“I think you’re pretty.”
She blushes and smiles.
“Thanks.”
I inhale a puff of thick refreshing smoke and blow out an “O”. She’s impressed.
“I’m impressed. How do you do that?”
“You make your O-Face and click your jaw.”
She tries it and creates one. She laughs out in a proud way.
I nod.
“Some people can blow hearts and shoot smoke arrows through them.”
“Mother fucker.”
“It’s true! I’m not a shitter.”
“Can you do that with smoke?”
“I’m not that groovy.”
She farts. I nod.
“Aww, are you flirting with me?”
“Are my boobs hanging out?”
“I don’t know. I can’t look.”
br /> “Why?”
“Respect. I enjoy you as a person.”
“So you’ve never robbed a peek at a woman’s tits?”
“I do. Usually.”
“And I’m sure you’re careful about going about it, eh?”
“You have to do it quick. It’s like looking at the sun – you look, then look away.”
“When do you do it?”
“When I’m on the bus or in the mall or at church or at work or buying vegetables or in the library.”
“My breasteses aren’t that great. See? They sag a little. See?”
“Blame gravity. I do. Except for us men it’s a good thing. Understand?”
“Sadly.”
She scratches her forearm and I see a long rows of razor-blade smiles. Uh oh, I think. She’s a Cutter. Obviously, she wanted me to see them.
“What are those?”
Although I know, I ask to get her talking: To show concern. Caring is important. Every human being wants to be understood and cared for. Show concern. Most people do this by yelling awful things, like, Are you stupid? and Don’t do that, dummy! Cutters know they shouldn’t do it. All they want is a little compassion. Not a boot to the face.
She looks down and says, “Oh, nothing.”
“You know, if you do it on your thighs, no one can see them.”
“Then what would be the point?”
“Ahhhh. I see.”
Joann exhales, depressingly. I scoot my seat closer.
“Is it doing this job?”
“I can handle my job.”
“Oh? You almost died today.”
“Tis a scratch. No…it’s not work.” She leans in a bit. “Do you plan to have children one day?”
“I’d like to have a little girl. Someone I can feed – someone I can teach. Maybe more, later. I’d love to have little me’s running around, freaking people out.”
“If ever your girlfriend wants to have an abortion, do me a favor.”
“What.”
“Don’t let her do it.”
Pause.
Joann, eyes to the floor, covers herself up now.
Roaches scatter under my chair.
People are laughing again. Shadows are growing. The sun is falling, throwing a heavy orange tint onto the living room. They chat about their futures and of bastard lovers and what they would do to their bastard lovers if they didn’t have any fear about going to hell. Someone says, “If I had the bowels, I’d whack him on the face with the hard end of a fire hose. But I won’t because I’m scared. Booo.”
Joann sniffs and gives me a hard look.
“Let’s go into a room where we can talk in private.”
“Okay.”
“Feeling special?”
“Yes.”
As we walk down the hallway, something in my belly tells me to look over my shoulder. Polly and Mr. Snake stand outside the front, sliding glass door, barefoot and kissing with their toes slithering over each other like little snakes.
I clench my fists and moved on, eyes forward and heated.
Good Lord, I’m shooting laser beams.
We walk into the room where I saw the two fat men, eating face. We sit in the middle of the bed, legs crossed. She tells me a story. “Once upon a time…I went to a pal’s house for a little party. This was out in Kailua Town. It was fun, for the most part. The first thing I did when I got there? I dove off the roof, screaming, into a swimming pool full of 7o and 8o-year-old, still-current, porn stars.”
The house had been a meeting place, she tells me, and they were all to discuss the future of Hawaii-based pornography. Everyone was there: From actors to directors to editors to video storeowners – all from all over the island. There were even a bunch of business folks from the outer islands like Hilo and Kauai. Real stone-faced types.
Something bad happened that night, she recalls, at around ten o’clock. One of the older actors from Maui had smuggled in some cocaine from inside his body, somehow. By ten-fifteen they were all baked, especially Joann.
She went into the bathroom and threw up all over the floor, only managing to get a handful of her spill into the toilet. She went out into the kitchen and drank some Pepsi and ran back into the bathroom and threw up some more. Only this time the lid on the toilet was down.
She stumbled out, dizzy. Everyone pinched their nostrils and said her clothes were all green and stank.
Someone – an elderly, Australian man – took her by the hand and guided her outside, where they sat by the pool. He handed her a clean, white tank top, and a pair of blue jeans that smelled like a baby’s head. He explained that they once belonged to his daughter, that he and his wife used to watch over her and the baby after the husband ran away to Japan to marry someone named Yentle he met over the internet on MySpace. A week later, on April Fool’s Day, this old couple’s daughter and her baby were hit on the H-1 freeway by a drunken woman behind the wheel of a Big Rig, transporting life-sized dolls to Toys R’ Us. They died instantly. Except for the drunk driver, of course.
The six o’clock news later said that the driver was murdered by some insane, drug-maker, out for solace on behalf of the old man and woman. This seemed to make the two old folks jolly enough, although they honestly had no idea who the “good” murderer was, only that she – an ex-nun – wrote them a letter, stating:
“Dear Old People… I am your Angel of Vengeance. Please allow me to punish this wicked fiend of fiends.
-Love, Angel of Vengeance
PS: Enclosed, you will find a special, holy concoction of mine. I call it Jesus Juice. This will make your souls jolly. God made it. And he gave me the ingredients while I was riding a horse in Paniolo Country. Bless you both, and enjoy your Jesus Juice. Hallelujah!”
The old white man said that he thought Joann was “Very cute” and “Understood his old man dramas” and that Joann reminded him of his daughter. Then he put his arm around her and offered a needle that was bubbling with something yellow. Joann said, No. But he kept insisting that it would make the pain go away, much like how it had worked for them.
Now his much older black wife wobbled in. She sat down behind Joann and massaged her shoulders – also encouraging Joann to take the hit.
When Joann tried to stand and get away from these two yahoos, the older woman tightened her claws and forced her back down. Joann plopped to the wet floor and kicked a Donald Duck lifesaver into the pool. The old couple was surprised by how loud it splashed. They looked back to the house, scared.
Through the large, living room window, they could see the silhouettes of partygoers, dancing and drunking and tripping and touching. Tribal/trance music from India, full of bass, vibrated the glass – muffled. Joann made to scream, but the old people stuck their hands in her mouth.
She was raped that night by the pool.
The nameless old man did the deed on all fours. His wife got into the pool, on a floating bed, and watched the scene and pleasured herself in a crazy way.
Joann’s friend found Joann the following morning on the floating bed, crying and bleeding. She was taken to the hospital where she stayed for a week. She told all the doctors that she fell down the stairs.
Sometime later, Joann found out that she was pregnant. She was working in a strip bar called Centerfolds when she decided to have the abortion.
She embraces a pillow and looks into my eyes.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t regret having it. Every day I wonder what that kid would’ve looked like. I feel like a murderer. I don’t know if I’ll ever have another baby. I feel too guilty. I can’t look in a mirror without wanting to kill myself. Feels like the right thing to do. I think about it sometimes, and how I’m going to do it…jumping off a bridge, running into traffic, flying off a skyscraper, jacking up a car and laying underneath and kicking away the stand…it’s as if God wants me to do it. And I hate him for it.”
“I’ve thought about killing myself, too.”
“I’m sure everyone does. I’m
impressed people stop themselves from doing it. Most people.”
“Humans are stronger than they look. When I used to cut myself, I prayed for the strength to push down a little harder. You know what stops me from doing it?”
“What.”
“My future wife. My soul mate. I can’t do that to her. And I’ll be damned if I’m letting her marry some desperate, boring sucka that goes to clubs in collared shirts and blue jeans and white shoes with a shaved head. I can’t do that to her. It would be unfair.”
“How do you know that she’s out there?”
“It’s the law of the universe, dearie. Balance. If things are so shitty now, it only means that it can get much, much better.” I put my hand on her thigh. “It’s understandable that you don’t want to have another kid now. But I guarantee that later you will. Can you imagine how happy you and your family will be?”
“…I can.”
“Then there’s your reason.”
“How can you say all of this? You don’t even know me.”
“I see a lot of good in you.”
She smiles.
We walk out and meet Mr. Snake and Polly in the kitchen. He tells us that his friend Drac – the ex-therapist – will see Joann and Tim. She tells Mr. Snake that it won’t be necessary, but he doesn’t want to hear it, arguing that he already promised him “an assload of money and a free copy of the movie” by next month.
I tell Joann that any kind of advice, especially from a professional, can be helpful. She agrees and Mr. Snake asks if I can take her because he and Polly have other “business” to take care of. My first internal reaction to this is No, I’m scared going to some stranger’s house. But I look at Joann and can’t help but agree to it.
She smiles at me. Somehow, I believe that if anything were to happen, she’d protect me. Maybe it’s because she’s taller than me. Ha ha.
Mr. Snake writes down the directions for me on a discarded sock and we all try to wake up Tim, who’s still naked on the table, but it’s no use.
He’s comatose.
As we leave, I notice that there are flies nesting around Tim’s penis.
Great.
“Cured”
DRAC LIVES in an apartment in downtown China Town – in a place where office workers pay $1000 a month for a large, living/bedroom and a tiny bathroom.
We get into the elevator and stare up at the blinking floor numbers…
The ride over was silent.
The freeway was blinding bright as the sun slithered into the car. She drove while I tried desperately to keep my eyes open. I was afraid that if I fell asleep, she would see it as a kind of weakness – that I didn’t care for her company.