I had been typing in the park all day. I was working on my next, most ambitious book, a factual retelling of The Bible. I had everything I needed to write set on the dusty orange-wood picnic table: my typewriter, my gin and my ice. The lone table was perched upon a sparsely wooded embankment with a view of clay tennis courts; I watched girls in short skirts hurry to and fro, crying passionately as they swung for the ball.
As the day got on the world grew stiff and tired; the blazing sun beat town and I broke into a torrid salty sweat. The girls walked to the edge of the court with flushed faces, sipping from plastic water bottles and smiling congenially. Then they disappeared. The whole park dried up from exhaustion as people sought refuge from the thickening sky. But I remained posted, religiously, tap-tapping in a mad poetic fervor.
The sun went down but the temperature didn't. I had drunk a fifth of Gordon's Extra Dry Gin, with no regard for the Slutski screening, and had begun to feel slighlty sloppy and rather out-of-my-mind dehydrated. Finally, upon the horrific apparition of an oversized overhead bird, I thought I'd had enough and shoved off for the evening.
I strolled to the house where I sleep and keep my things. I had let Consuela, my cook and concubine, spend the weekend with her fast-dying husband and it was just as well: I was a better cook than her anyway. I ate linguine, fresh mussels and asparagus and sipped delicately from a glass of Andy Sauvignon. Then I summoned the courage to review the day's work. I was pleased and thought I had earned a whimsical respite, not the tortuous affair looming ahead of me--so I extracted two pills of ecstasy from my underwear drawer along with my best satin shorts.
I exited the taxi at the base of a twisting smooth-cement drive, preferring to ascend on foot and gather my thoughts. I was well-fed, the air had cooled slightly, but I walked with apprehension. I was approaching the symbol of success for the entire adult-art industry. Leopold Slutski was the king--and this, The House That Come Built, was a veritable Versailles, complete with countless vaginal statues.
Slutski had first gained international recognition exploring existential questions of implants and impotence. Since then he had become increasingly pretentious, shooting all his films in black and white using interracial pairings. His most recent release had been nearly three hours in length and shot entirely from inside, using a tiny dual camera and contraceptive of his own invention. No matter how far-out he reached, however, sacrificing content for technique, he was praised lavishly by critics and the community. He was so well-revered as to afford almost absolute freedom; accordingly, he elected to host these screenings at his own home-theater, so he could retire to his bedroom should inspiration arise.
I was a relative nonentity, a hasty last-second addition to the guest list known mostly by my comedic first novel--the kind of juvenile work I wanted to leave in the dirt, the kind of mold I wanted to shatter. At the screening I would have to accept praise for a work I now hated, and criticism for my second, more serious novel--which surely pointed the direction my art was taking. As I strode heavily up the stairs before goliath double-doors, my stomach sunk for fear of the event I was about to endure.
Inside my eyes met with an incomparable cavern, a room designed to resemble a magnificent, sparkling cave, illuminated only by stalactite-reflected candlelight and the starry wide window above. The walls were cragged and rocky, sloping inward toward what functioned as a circular skylight but which, from an aerial view, served as the areola of a giant female breast. The room was more or less bare; a heavyset bearded man I'd met somewhere before was hurrying a young girl across the floor and out of sight, causing her to stumble drunkenly over her heels, while a solemn house servant stood to my right watching me. I looked to him inquisitively and he gestured me to the right of the room--"This way, Sir."
I followed his finger and entered a brightly-lit metallic room filled with stars of the adult industries. I recognized at once famous actors, actresses, directors, makeup artists, stuntmen, authors, poets, painters, musicians and historians, all dolled-up, like me, in their finest formalwear, milling about making idle conversation. Sweeping among them were midgets in spacesuits, carrying unrecognizable hors d'oeuvres on platters high above their heads.
"He has a very modern conception of decoration, don't you think?" I would overhear in conversation. "Every room is a different theme, a different feel--has a different aura."
"Yes, it's very kinky."
Striding slowly, ever so casually across the gleaming silver floor, I was accosted by an hysterical blonde girl wearing a tiny red-sequined dress. "Are you Damien?" she exclaimed excitedly.
"Excuse me?"
"Damien--from the movie?"
"Um, no--my name is Gene. And you are?"
"I'm Jeanette" she said proudly, "And this is--Shelly!" she called obnoxiously to a nearby redhead in a gold-sequined dress, who quickly joined her, grinning. "This is Shelly. We're best friends."
"I see. It's nice to me you. Were you in Slutski's new picture, then?"
"Picture? Oh, movie. We were extras," Jeanette said, and turned to Shelly who nodded as if in confirmation. "I thought he was Damien. Doesn't he look like Damien?"
"Who's 'Damien?'" I interjected.
"He was the star of the movie. Only we don't know exactly what he looks like, because he wore a brown paper sack on his head. We all did."
"Oh, but I look like him. Can you tell me what the picture's about?"
"Um, I don't know. Nobody told us. I don't think anybody knows. It's an, uh, 'pictorial tribute to the future of New York fashion' or something."
I left them standing there with a nod and a grimace and walked to the bar, where a spaceman poured me a healthy glass of gin. I stood beside the bar looking haughtily at all the well to do people, going in circles putting on airs and trying to impress each other.
A notorious critic named Dave Cretin stepped in front of me, standing much too close and studying me through a fat and forested face. "I read your last book" is all he said, but I knew he was looking for a kind of explanation.
"Well," I started, "Cock Puppet was written with too much an, I think, self-conscious literariness." But Cretin was already rushing away, saying "Is that Damien? I must speak with that young man."
I was thoroughly low-down and desperate, so I tried my luck with a woman standing across the room. She was five-foot-eight, one-hundred and twenty-six pounds, with glossy brown hair, sharp classy cheekbones and breasts and ass that would make any father proud. I sauntered toward her coolly.
"From across the room I couldn't help but notice your good child-bearing features, so I think we should entertain an idle and meaningless conversation to function as an adequate segue to animalistic copulation."
She didn't even blink. "No, I don't think that's a good idea."
"Oh?"
"Not at all. If you couldn't tell from my outward appearance, I am completely and totally daft--wind blows in and out my ears. My one valuable commodity is my body which, if you haven't noticed, is unbelievable--and I plan to invest it in someone of better financial standing. Thank you."
I bowed courteously, reading by a subtle body language that I was being rejected. I returned once more to the bar, and then excused myself stealthily onto the back patio.
I found myself standing alone at the edge of uncertainty; I could hardly see my reflection in the backyard pool. I stood isolated between two polar extremes, both of which I found shameful: on one side, big-budget musical adaptions of the Kama Sutra--on the other, the pretentious sterility of filmmakers like Slutski. I desired, almost hopelessly, to return the human element and a literary sensibility to sexual intercourse.
I stood staring in self-assessment for some time. When I looked back I saw, through small circular windows like those of a ship's lower deck, the crowd of celebrities being ushered toward Slutski's home-theater as space-midgets tidied up in their wake. I made no rush to follow. I sensed I had seen the film many times before, and feared I would sit through it many times yet. I felt a hundred times alone.
I was not alone in the pool. I had disrobed and entered the dark shimmering water slowly, gently, so as to not disrupt its cool, perfect mystery. I quietly splashed water first over my forearms, then my shoulders, chest and neck—I heard a girl's short stifled laughter. I surveyed my rich verdant surroundings with a sharp, staring-gaze and caught a rustling fly-trap and a flash of bare skin. Then she revealed herself to me: a slender gold fox with a quiver in her smile and a fire in her eyes.
She carried her naked body as if it made no difference—as if she had been born naked. In her I saw an exploding vitality absent in Consuela and a sparkling adroitness missing from the bimbos at the screening; prismatic rays of effervescent heat shot between us at pulse-quickening speeds and I knew I had to fuck her.
"Hello" I said coolly. "Are you with Slutski?"
"No," with a coy smile, "but I live here."
Her ambiguous answer spoiled my nonchalant countenance; she smiled wider and gestured me toward her. I half-swam, half-trudged toward her ethereal form; she turned calmly toward the pool’s edge, found it in three graceful strokes, and deftly hoisted herself from the water. I followed her wordlessly.
Marigold hair clung dripping all the way to her backside, which was mindboggling in both its shape and movement. I stared lustfully as I stepped closer and, for a moment, there was nothing in the world but that bulbous piece of flesh. Her entire body was uniformly bronzed. She stepped without apparent purpose and brushed branches aside as naturally as anything; she didn’t have to try—she was purpose; she didn’t have to live—she was life itself. I loved her then.
She stopped and pivoted toward me, cocking her head to the left to indicate direction. What I saw was the most resplendent picture, as eye-evoking as the phantom herself—a jungly makeshift mattress of dirt, sticks, leaves and ferns.
“You live here,” I echoed dumbly. She nodded.
We made love in her bed. The setting, the circumstance, and her astonishing sexual technique kindled in me a primeval fire; our delirious cries pierced the vespertine silence. We were like Adam and Eve fucking around in a capitalist Eden. Afterward we held each other buried beautifully in the dirt. Then we arose together, holding hands, and walked straight into the pool.
I had forgotten about the ecstasy but now I excused myself to retrieve it from my dress-pants. When I returned I was alarmed to find my lover standing beside the pool stroking the feathers of the phantasmal pheasant from hours before. It had not been hallucinatory: the pheasant was nine feet tall and appeared fully capable of killing us. I stood stock-still and terrified, but Marigold laughed. Cautiously I extended a hand to pet the overgrown bird and it cooed its appreciation. Then Marigold took my hand assertively and we climbed dripping and naked onto the pheasant’s back.
“Can pheasants fly well?” I asked.
“Khalil can.” She said.
I had ridden on planes, trains, and hot air balloons, but never a giant pheasant. Its wings beat mightily as we elevated, whooshing freely into the clear black overhead. I saw the colossal breast below and now felt pity for its occupants. They had more money than me but lived in a world of their own invention. I rode beside a golden fox; I saw the world sprawling before me limitless and wonderful, everything an adventure to be had, feeling liberated now to live and work on my own terms. I held Marigold closer as the pheasant increased its speed.
We swallowed the ecstasy and soared southward. We leaned precariously from the bird’s back, staring in wonderment at the murky blue fields below. I mark that as the night I learned everything is better from the back of a pheasant. I felt the joy coming up my throat, choking me gladly, and I howled at the silver moon.
We floated on euphoria until I had lost all sense of direction--and time, which seemed trivial. Then once again we saw Slutski's palace. I watched as Marigold gently rubbed Khalil's back and, kissing him sweetly, plucked an elephantine golden-brown feather from the base of his neck. "Thank you, Khalil" I said cordially, and my love and I clutched the feather and slid lightly from our friend. We descended slowly on the wind toward the sprawling front lawn below. We were dry now, and rather chilly, so we made mid-air love to stay warm. We were headed directly for two persons kissing each other on the grass--the ditzy extra, Jeanette, and the critic Dave Cretin--and by the time they saw us it was too late. The girl managed to take three steps out of the way but we flattened Dave Cretin to the dirt.
"WHAT THE FUck--WHAT THE FUCK" Jeanette screamed.
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