Kamikaze Lust Page 8

  “Less pressured, that’s a laugh,” I said.

  Alexis looked at me, her brow furrowing inquisitively. “Are you a lesbian?”

  “No.”

  She eyed me suspiciously and within seconds I was ten years old again, running to confession for a crime I didn’t commit.

  “Really, I’m not,” I said.

  “I’m sensing something, a sort of karmic sound bite. Are you in therapy?”

  “Been out a few years, thank you very much.” That question was easily answered. As far as I was concerned I’d fulfilled my quota on shrink time with Sam in Miami.

  “Then you must have hit on this?” Alexis said, eyebrows raised as if she were waiting for a salacious disclosure. I became conscious of my tight-fitting blazer, the double-breasted wool jacket that wasn’t exactly power suit material, but had been conservative enough to get me through the courts. Here it felt constricting, and heated up the back of my neck as if I were hiking the Stair Master. Besides, all the lights and cameras and action had made the set extremely hot.

  Think journalism, I told myself. I am a journalist. My job is asking questions. Ask a question. I squeezed into my reporter’s face, the one where my brow caverned in between my eyes and my lips pursed downward. “So what happens if Tessa won’t do it?” I ventured.

  “Oh, she’ll do it, she just needs a little tender loving care. Anyway, forget her for the moment. I want to know what’s got you so flustered.”

  “I’m not flustered.”

  “You are too. The second I asked if you were a lesbian your entire face changed.”

  “It did not.”

  “You should see yourself, your cheeks are all red.”

  “It’s hot in here, aren’t you hot?” A bead of sweat dripped down the side of my face.

  “Heat is an emotion.”

  I laughed out loud. “That’s ridiculous. Heat is a physical condition.”

  “Brought on by emotion.”

  “Or temperature.”

  “The temperature in and of itself is irrelevant. Unless you’re moving through it or self-combusting, you don’t feel the heat. This is basic physics. So what’s got you all worked up? What’s making you feel the heat, so to speak?”

  “I don’t know, maybe the goddamn klieg lights.”

  “And why?”

  “Because they’re hot.”

  “What if I told you the lights were shut off ten minutes ago?”

  “Were they really?”

  “Immaterial.”

  “Of course it’s material, you just said what if. I have the right to know whether we’re speaking hypothetically or not.”

  “That is exactly my point. We’re not talking about the lights, we’re not talking about the heat, we’re not talking about any physical characteristic of the set. We are talking about why when I asked if you were a lesbian you got flustered.”

  “I am not flustered!” I shouted, heat brimming beneath my skin, a mockery of my argument. Whatever argument that was. Confused, and embarrassed by the force of my words, I turned my head the other way. Across the set, a group of young women sat laughing and smoking cigarettes. Their easy communication made me angry. So free and libertine they were, working on a radical porno film. I felt even more isolated, more protective of my own world.

  Alexis put her hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I have too many freaked-out people around here already.”

  “I’m not freaked out.” I turned to face her. “It’s just that this ghostwriter thing won’t work if you keep asking the questions.”

  “But it’s only fair. Yesterday I talked for three hours about my adolescent masturbation to Playboy. All I’m asking for is a little reciprocity.”

  “The more you know about me, the less you’ll trust me. I lose my authority.”

  “You have no authority, Rachel, you work for me.”

  I stared at her eyes, the folds around them conferring an air of wisdom earned the hard way. Times like these she looked her forty-two years, distinguishable from the rest of her cast and crew, from me, too. She took her hand from my shoulder and tapped my thigh twice, letting her palm linger a moment on my leg. The gesture wasn’t at all sexual; it was, in a word, maternal. “All I’m saying is stop being so rigid, this isn’t some dumb news story—no offense. Whatever you lose, who cares? Look at what you might gain.” Her voice was a combination of brass and silk, it was a Penthouse spread transported to the New York Philharmonic, and it provoked the same mesmerizing power I’d felt upon our first meeting, the baptismal belief that my life would be incomplete were I not her ghostwriter. What I hadn’t realized was just how unfulfilled I’d been until then. Something like a ghost.

  “I really don’t want to talk about me,” I said finally.

  “Oh, I think you do, you’ve just never been able to. You haven’t felt safe.”

  “You know, I can get this kind of self-help crap anywhere. I didn’t have to come to a porno film.”

  “Say what you like, but it’s true. Do you know how many times I’ve been called a pervert? And practically anytime anybody reviews one of my films I’m mistaken for a whore, but this is what I do, it’s who I am. When you’re honest with yourself, it makes no difference what anyone else says.”

  “Just measure it in inches, right?”

  “Pardon me?” She studied me as if I were speaking a different language. I’d forgotten how sensitive this industry could be about measurements.

  “That’s…uh…Warhol,” I said, my ears tingling at the silent valleys in between my words. “He…you know, he said you shouldn’t read your own press…just measure it.”

  “I’ve been saying that for years and I never even knew him. Some of my friends did back in the seventies, but how did you know that? Did you know him?”

  “No!” I almost laughed out loud, imagining Andy Warhol coming to Bay Ridge for Thanksgiving dinner.

  Alexis tilted her head back and forth. Watching her, the weight of my own hair grew heavier. I tucked it back behind my ears, one side at a time. “Rachel,” she said, “if there’s one thing I know—well, of course, I do know more than one thing—but I’m an expert on people.” She took a deep breath, and I thought if we were part of the movie she would have taken a drag from a cigarette for effect. Instead she made a quick surveillance of the set. The young women were still laughing, a miasma of shimmering hair and cigarette smoke, the man in jeans fiddled with the knobs of a sound mixer, a woman with a clipboard sipped from a paper cup rimmed with big cherry red lipstick stains.

  “You can see how being a student of human nature helps in this business,” Alexis said, still scanning the set as if we were sitting together at a basketball game.

  “No doubt.” I feigned sophistication, but my words reverberated self-consciously.

  Alexis pivoted toward me. “What I’m saying is, I’ve been watching you. You hide behind your one-liners, your facts and pithy insights. Believe me, I know irony feels like a safe space, but it’s not. You’re entitled to your emotions, Rachel. Especially the heated ones.”

  I felt a disabling sensation, like gas pains. In just a few minutes, Alexis Calyx had managed to disrupt the entire journalistic relationship. If anything, a reporter was supposed to remain emotionally disconnected. Alexis should know better. She’d been interviewed hundreds of times before, even once by Kim Mathews, the doyenne of TV interviewing and perhaps the country’s most recognizable journalist, though I use that term loosely.… I stopped myself, for I was indeed making light as she’d accused me of doing, but also because I realized just how flimsy my credentials were around here. I felt like Tessa Tureen, splayed with my dirty feet in the air.

  Any real world concerns had spilled out into the East Village streets, while within the studio’s sound-proof walls was a greenhouse of possibility. I could have known Andy Warhol. I could be gay. I could be anything I wanted here.

  I clutched the back of my neck, wet with perspiration, and stared at Alexis. Our
faces were indeed similar, oval shaped, with dark brown, hard-to-manage hair and black coffee eyes; just two little girls from the biggest of boroughs. We shared the ineffable bond of a Brooklyn childhood, just as Aunt Lorraine and Kaminsky together conjured ghosts of Nazi-occupied Poland. In spite of my anger at her invasiveness, as well as her reckless disregard for the tenets of my profession, I was drawn to her. A sensual telotaxis I could barely contain, let alone control.

  “I’m too old for this,” I said.

  “Please, then I’m a dinosaur.” She tapped once more at my thigh, and I wanted to tell her about the time Neil locked me in the handcuffs. How I was more afraid of telling on him, of what he might do next, than I was of the restraint. Before I could say anything, however, Alexis and I were interrupted by Alia the A.D. Everyone was set to go. Alexis stood up and winked at me, “Watch closely, this is the take.”

  My eyes trailed her as she walked toward Tessa, all dolled-up in her red teddy and g-string combo. Alexis leaned her elbows on the star’s shoulders. Their eyes locked, Alexis talking and occasionally slipping a couple of fingers through Tessa’s strawberry blond hair. The doe-eyed porn star looked almost innocent, an admirable feat given her attire. Again, I felt the encumbrance of my own clothing. Next time I would wear jeans and a T-shirt like everyone else.

  Tessa’s bare arms locked around Alexis’ crisp, white Vneck. Alexis towered over her, stroking her hair. They could have been mother and daughter. Who else would hug her half-naked child that closely? I thought of my own mother, and how I couldn’t remember her once putting her arms around me. All my life I’d been waiting for the repressed memory that would prove me wrong.

  I felt slightly put off. A little bit of sibling rivalry. Or perhaps the roots went deeper. For they could have been mistaken as lovers, Alexis and Tessa, their bodies entwined in what seemed a comfortable power imbalance.

  Alexis gave Tessa’s butt a light tap the way football players do after a huddle and then clapped her hands: “Okay, let’s get on with it.” Tessa flashed her a final adoring look, and I wondered if she was a lesbian. I remembered reading that lesbianism among women off set was as common as men with plumbing problems on it. Somehow, this made sense.

  Yet we were all soon shrouded in the shadows of heterosexuality. Only the white of Mark and Tessa’s skin shone in cones of amber light. Even Alexis had stepped back as the scene fell into formation. Mark, his limbs sparkling as if they’d been dipped in a barrel of glitter makeup, had no erection trouble. Tessa, too, was more accommodating, her face a blush of lust and satisfaction, her body in tune with Mark’s thrusting. Their rhythm was a modern ballet for an unknown audience.

  You could smell it, too; the soured lotion, the sweat, the onions, the sex. It came to me in a craving so ignited, so aching, so incomprehensible, I felt myself blush. And I was pulled toward Tessa, this woman with her body arched and head thrusting back and forth. A clump of hair snagged across her mouth, and Mark without taming their beat moved his fingers to her face and gently pushed it away. His touch was so private, so spontaneous, and the way they eyed each other, as if love might be the byproduct of sex and not the other way around, made me envious. Seeking solace, I looked around the audience as if staking out the faces of fellow movie-goers, trying to gauge…what? If anyone else was moved by this? If anyone was aroused by it? Ashamed of it? Part of me wanted to giggle childishly…these people are fucking! Yet another part wanted to jump into the scene, to lick Tessa’s nipples, to suck Mark’s penis, and sandwich myself between them, the three of us thrashing and burning until we all collapsed in a nest of exhausted arms and legs.

  Mark, sweat dripping from his rosy face, shouted, “I’m going to come.” Tessa screamed back at the top of her lungs. No words, just a series of loud grunts that had me leaning forward with my eyes shut, slipping into the heat, the motion, a desire so palpable it dripped down my limbs. I could barely catch my breath. Mark screamed, “Oh baby, I’m coming!” I slipped backwards, my eyes shot open. Mark fell on top of Tessa and his breathing slowed…and her breathing slowed… and my breathing slowed….

  Alexis, face glimmering proudly, screamed, “Cut!” I leaned against a folding chair, still captivated by the naked bodies on set. So at ease in the aftermath, they gave the impression of being a long-married couple. Next to them I felt almost prepubescent.

  Mark jumped up and shook out his hair. “That was so hot,” he said, giving Tessa’s forehead a light kiss. “Did you want to come?”

  “In front of all these people, are you kidding me?” Tessa stood up and purred a round of thank-yous to the crew parting beside her with coos and compliments as she retired to her dressing room. A job well done.

  And she didn’t come. And nobody found this strange or incomplete. Nobody questioned her womanhood, suggested analysis, or stomped with iron feet back and forth, trying to resolve those issues that would set her orgasm free. She walked off the set even more of a diva for not coming. The next time anyone complained about me not coming I would say I was a porn star.

  The idea stayed with me as I waited for Alexis amid the end-of-day collapsing of the set. Before today I would have thought my breasts too small, but they weren’t any smaller than Tessa’s. Maybe I wasn’t as skinny as Tessa, but I wasn’t exactly fat. Actually, I was in pretty good shape for a woman just over thirty who hadn’t been to the gym in a few weeks. I would work out more. I would also need a few glasses of wine, or—who am I kidding?—I would need a couple of Quaaludes before I could take my clothes off in front of all those people. No wonder most porn stars used pseudonyms. Perhaps, then, it was someone else people were ogling at, panting with, masturbating over.

  Alexis herself had adopted a whole new identity upon entering the industry; few people were aware her real name was Patricia DeFabio. If I were to take a name, I would keep something of myself in it: maybe Rachel Sliver or Rachel Slipper. No, I liked the word silver, its prurient shine, the way it bit back when you had it in between your teeth. And it was all mine, the name I’d chosen myself on my eighteenth birthday. Silver…like the chrome of the klieg lights, the glint from Hi-8 lenses, the beams, the rays, those silver rays…oh, yes, Silver Ray…sweet sobriquet. One in the Hand, Two in the Bush staring Mark Vladimir, Tessa Touche, and Silver Ray.

  Yes, I could be a porn star if I wanted to.

  I whispered the name Silver Ray until Alexis came to fetch me. Though giddy with my new identity, I was silent on the way back to the office where Alexis said she had a few “special” videotapes for me.

  “I’m looking for my favorite girl-girl scene,” Alexis said, pulling tape after tape from the shelf. Apparently, she thought she knew my sexual secret, although I had neither confirmed nor denied it myself. Oddly enough, I didn’t mind. Having lesbian tendencies seemed an asset among this crowd. “It’s an important theme for us, subversively that is,” she said. “Time to steal it back from the boys and their computer-generated fantasies—it’s like they keep remaking the same triple-X version of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. All of those shaved pussies and long red fingernails, please…and then they Vaseline the lenses to make everything so soft and dreamy. Have you ever seen women fuck each other? I mean really fuck each other, it’s—” She paused, turning her head over her shoulder as if to make sure she still had my attention. Caught in her stare, I felt the heat of the set return to my cheeks, only this time I was more fed-up than embarrassed. I wanted to tell her I’d had enough, tell her I’d grown weary from her little theories on feminism and film and sexuality and shaved pudenda. I wanted to go home.

  Perhaps she sensed my discomfort, or she’d fallen upon her own internal censors, for at that very moment she said she didn’t want to prejudice my thinking before I watched the film. She swung her head back around and continued with the tapes until she found a box with the title X-posure scrawled along the spine.

  “Here’s my baby.” She handed me the tape, along with a few others. I took them in exchange for the four tapes I had
in my bag.

  “You don’t mind if I hold onto Sensurround?” I asked. The truth of it was Aunt Lorraine wanted it. She said it made her laugh, brought back memories. Memories? Nobody had those kind of memories, but I couldn’t ask her to elaborate.

  “Ah, Sensurround,” Alexis sighed theatrically. “It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Robbie’s swan song.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, he still acted, but….” She leaned her hand on the doorway and looked up in her thinking-woman’s pose. “They say it’s dangerous for an artist to know success too early. And that’s what he was back then, an artist. He wasn’t like the others, never a one-day wonder man. After Sensurround they all called him Orson Welles; then they crucified him for it.” She turned to me, a faraway gaze in her eyes as if she were vacationing in the seventies. “I fell in love with him because of that movie. Bastard.”

  “Is he?”

  She smiled slyly. “Show me a man with a twelve-inch cock who isn’t.”

  “Jesus, that’s bigger than Barbie.”

  She shut off the light, led me out of her office, and although only a few minutes earlier I’d been eager to leave, the way she spoke of her ex-husband had roused my curiosity. Yet as much as I wanted to keep the conversation going, say something more about measurements perhaps, I experienced the strange sensation of stumbling down a dark street and coming to a well-lit diner, but as I went for the door a hand turned the sign from Open to Closed. Alexis Calyx and I were through for the day.

  Before X-posure, I’d been looking without touching. But I did get aroused, omnivorously so. There was no telling which scenes might catch my fancy: boy-girl, girl-girl, girl and her large electronic appliance.…Pleasuring myself, however, seemed disrespectful to Alexis. She was my employer, her videos part of my research.