Edwin 1 ev ¤ 1

Rutger, Harrison, Marlon and me

The Find

It was another one of those dismal dinner parties. We all had something stuffed up our derrières to guarantee a total absence of naturel . Karloff, the top dog producer, was in it for something. He’d just catapulted Pandy, his current pet, from soda jerk to top billing. She’d never read a book in her life and here she was playing Simone de Beauvoir in under a year. A kind of modern day miracle! On which woman, boy, dog, reptile, insect or microbe would his Midas wand next rest?

There was a high level of testo-testiness around the table that night. Jousting for the limelight we were and yet stale- oh so stale, we, the purveyors of the world’s latest fantasies and dreams. To be sure, every once in a while some guilt-ridden businessman would throw a few billion at a problème but, ultimately, we ran the show. Actors, producers, and directors ruled the waves now- providing the agents got muzzled in time. Even business start-ups were our domain… Nothing took off if it didn’t go through us. We could sell cheese using sex and sex using cheese.

Lest we forget, there were the neo-paparazzi to contend with. A feistier, more aggressive breed than in the old days when you just went over and biffed ‘em…

So, the upper crust assembled in Karly’s penthouse on a Saturday night. Not quite San Simeon but way more clout. Choppers, lawyers, expensive toys- some human, some sub.

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 2

The rest of humanity? Living out lives where they keep falling just short of the benchmarks we set.

We’re talking Western world, here. Africa is too painful to think about, just now. South of the Border’s under a socialist shroud called Bolchivex. Australia’s an open pit-tit thanks to China and India’s cravings. Mother Earth sure girded her loins for them but it didn’t go according to plan. Now it’s BYOB to the subcontinent. Bottles… Without oxygen you’re dead in Madras in 6 hours. We’re going to have to do a comprehensive facelift on that place real soon. Un coup de comm, as they say, with a real tight myth lid… Fuse the cheese back into the Kundalini! Because they’re M-A-D mad, those people, collectively mad. The burgeoning middleclass are still jumping out of high-rise windows by the truckload as I dictate. And Bollywood! Just not coping! Unable to reinject an ounce of fantasy, let alone spirituality, into the fucked-up industrial landscape…

But all this is yesterday’s papers and the last thing on our minds right now. We’re into a third round of tired, old pre-rehearsed anecdotes about Papraz stun-guns and the latest orgiastic thrills. Tell me, how do you put so much animation into your voice? And such infectious laughter generated from behind that handlebar moustache? And all that compassion mixed in with the passion? Ah, of course! Stella Adler, the third. Someone else I know recommended her! I’m still with Stanislavski, the fourth! Tough but fair. Not easy to get in, though!

A last-ditch lurch to connect with Le Naturel, assisted by a few bottles of Romanée Conti an over-rated wine, if ever there was one. But who are we performing for, finally? The domestics serving up the dugong? The helicopter chauffeurs outside? Each other? I’m

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 3

playing to the wallpaper, myself. At least it can’t make those “I’m with you, bro” sycophantic grunts as if it’s actually listening. What do the women do? Coo like doves, bien évidemment …Phonies incorporated, all for one and one for all!

Which is why I found the scrap of paper she slipped me so intriguing. When your whole life is a continuous screen test, it’s hard to stay tuned to the notion of privacy. It felt relatively safe to read it under the glow of my watch in the hallway leading to les toilettes. Bound to be an abuser-sensitive camera further along.

It doesn’t have to be like this …

Says who? Another cream-puff squirter? Another casting-couch-potato? Get real, babe! This is as good as it gets!

Study her, though. You never know. Some casting agent might think that we…

She was petite, fine boned and didn’t give off an actress’s vibe- which is more than I can say for the others, including the men. She had managed to stay quiet and distant all evening. She wasn’t trying to graft a little bit of Marilyn in with a whiff of Catherine or Mae.

To be fair, I had no right to feel superior. She’d been in a couple of go-global soaps and would have had a much higher credibility rating than mine. I’d flogged social issues that no one wanted to hear about in a brain-dead form re-baptised ‘rudimentary’ for most of my professional life. My hit rate was low- extremely low. And soaps ruled. They had been the main medium for the past 30 years. And while I’m not crazy about them, I have to admit they’re evolving. It’s amazing how they can now do simultaneous

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 4

dubbings as each episode gets made. One studio boasts over 100 booths- including an obscure aboriginal dialect. The delay between completion and screening is now down to a matter of minutes. Remember Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Berlin? Bus stops where the driver halts only if signalled…

It was strange the way she’d gone straight to the point. These days, you don’t take a first step before, at the very least, asking to see the other’s cellphone credentials and health profile. We’re over-saturated with sordid tales of transmissions and palimonies that start with a kiss- so people are, generally speaking, guarded. Had she asked, she would have seen that I belonged to a men’s group called ‘The toothless tigers’ and that I’d done honours in ‘Taking her up the mountain’ and ‘Troublesome take-offs with excess baggage (Advanced).’ It didn’t really qualify me as anything much beyond someone willing to try.

“Marlon got through. He found them.” She whispered when we were off in our private corner.

What the hell was she on about? What the hell was she on? Something hard and spacey, I presumed.

There was only one Marlon. Marlon the magnificent- truly unique in his day. I decided to try bluffing my way through.

“Some good it did him! 2 vats of ice-cream a day and…”

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 5

“Topiaca! Topiaca!”

Now she was talking in tongues! To be fair, she didn’t seem that spaced.

“What?”

“That’s what made him so round!”

She sensed my bewilderment, even in the dark.

“His Polynesian wife, the island, the Bounty- all a smoke screen.” She whispered. “It was the topiaca that did it!”

“ Did what?”

“Helped him.”

“Helped him what?”

“Get out! After he’d got in…”

“Listen, my sweet, little kookie-brain, I’m through with mind-games, mind-fucks and all that shit. You look like an intelligent woman. Next time you go in for a screen test, have your head read at the same time, OK?”

I tried to walk away but her nails were on my arm and if she dug them in any deeper it

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 6

could lead to bleeding and possible infection. These days, you never can be too careful with pre-plants and stuff. There’d been some horrible stories about agonising deaths, only last week, in the Hollywood Scribe .

To humour her and to get her to disengage, I threw in two more questions.

“Are you high?”

“No, I’m not.” I sensed the indignation in the nails.

“Okay, so where’d he get in and out of, your Marlon?”

“Listen, I know you think I’m a wacko but I found all this out from…”

I put a finger over her lips to hush her. With all the bad Karma that family had had I didn’t care to know.

“So, where?”

She hesitated, unsure how to shore up her secret.

“I want to go there. With you…”

“When do we leave, my sweet? At dawn on the Titanic? Have you booked us a cabin with one of those spasming beds?”

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 7

“Don’t laugh!” She’d now drawn blood. “It’s your only chance…”

“What is?”

“The Nomedians.”

“I thought it was a place?”

“It is. I mean, it isn’t.”

Make up your mind, for goodness sake!

“Nomedia…” It was the way her upper lip curled as she said it. And yet it remained a hideous alien concept- a word that could only bring trouble. Best lock it away on the Index, once and for all.

Our eyes had adjusted to the low light and locked off. I wanted to read her. I wanted to take her in. Her whole face was pleading, pleading, pleading. I knew it wasn’t an act. With my left hand I unclasped the claw- which then cupped mine in its warmth.

“Your place doesn’t exist and I don’t know you.” I said.

“Doesn’t matter. We need time...”

She was bonkers! A certified crackpot, heretic, and substance abuser - all rolled into one…

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 8

The Flat

We finished up at her apartment after a skirmish with 3 neo-paparazzi who were phoning in saucy headlines after seeing us together on a dark, unlit street. We’d activated our virtual- image skedaddlers- both well past their use-by dates. I mean, who stands a chance, these days, with daily upgrades? Either way, there’d be a fresh, juicy slanderswipe on our love life at your nearest web- agent within 2 minutes. Complete with a list of every other person we’d (supposedly) ever slept with. These days, most people get to bonk in some scandal sheet well before the real thing happens, providing the lies don’t kill off the budding libidinous urges first.

Her name was Samantra. Her apartment was tastefully decked out in tones of black, red and chrome. A plastic tulip lamp against dark satin sheets, cardboard poster tubes glued over a whole ceiling- painted silver. What she didn’t have in the way of bucks she made up for with craft skills and imagination.

She poured me a bright yellow drink and handed it across the chrome counter.

“Topiaca?”

“Banana-mango smoothie.”

“From the Never-never? From the islands?”

“Don’t be an asshole! It’s best not to mess with topiaca unless you’re ready.”

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 9

“Ready? What kind of ready?” I did my best to suppress a smirk.

“Fully initiated… Men twice your size have keeled over after just a drop.”

“Drunk?”

“No, dead...”

I straightened in my seat. In my head, the cameras were rolling. “If it’s so shit-hot and powerful how come it hasn’t been commercialised? And what about the CIA? Why aren’t they onto it? They would have done comprehensive tests on their lab rats by now!”

“You haven’t got a clue, have you? This isn’t some D grade film you’re in.”

Her hard-arse attitude reminded me of a Leni Riefenstahl film I still admired. “Enlighten me then, oh, wise one.”

She came over and lifted me out of my chair with one arm, tossed me in the air above her head, giving me a double backhander before catching me again with the same hand! Half my size! A size XS Amazon! The slaps felt like chrome under a glove of skin.

“Are you some kind of machine? A Replicant?” I was still dangling in mid air. It came out as a squeak.

She was shaking me now with both arms, trying to exorcise any frivolous film associations I might still be holding onto. Then she sack-of-potato-ed me back into a

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 10

chair, trying to quell the hi-octane cocktail of vexation and scorn that I’d produced. Her first attempt at a smile was a sour leer not unlike the ones Judy Davis used to generate.

“As I said, you’ve got to be physically and mentally ready.”

“What makes you so sure I’m your guy?”

“Your heart.”

“So, you know about the pacemaker?”

Her mouth dropped. A glitch. I’d thrown her.

“We can get around that.” The Triumph of the Will side had a sexy edge. Physically and mentally ready I would have to be…

She went on: “Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?”

As a matter-of-fact I had. And I wanted to appease her, to win her back. Soften up her black, red and chrome world…

“Before everything turned to Scheisse , I hitched around Mexico, sleeping under the stars, camping wherever the next ride took me. There was this pier on Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacan… You know where that is?”

She nodded.

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 11

“My longest ride was with these architecture students from Guadalajara who kept stopping by the roadside to sing. They didn’t care where. Wherever their fancy decided the car’d stop, out’d come the guitars and off they’d go… They were on holidays. Remember holidays? Just singing and visiting colonial buildings with interesting interior courtyards…

At the lakeside their folk tunes drew in 40 bedraggled urchins from a nearby village. On seeing me mute and off to the side, one of the kids said, ‘he’s not from here’ and insisted I sing a song. I didn’t speak Spanish and I wasn’t much chop as a singer. No way I could deliver up a Guthrie , a Sinatra or a Springsteen. But they stood firm and there was no way out. I wracked my brain! What to do? What to sing? I ended up acting out all the parts of a silly African kid’s thing called Don’t shoot that lion, Bwana… I sang the hunter, the natives the chorus and the lion, jumping around like a demented jack-in-the-box! During the whole song I had no sense of what they were feeling about the croaky melodies I was squeezing from my tone-deaf cranium and lungs…”

I stopped to look at her. Her features had softened.

“When it was over I collected myself, resting up against some feeble wooden railing head still down. Finally, I looked up and faced my judges for the verdict. And what a verdict it was! A circle of warm brown eyes, a ring of keen, white teeth! A wave of glee, so pure and potent that it swept me out of myself lifting me 15 feet into the air! So, there I was- looking down at this throng that had surged forward and wrapped itself around me. I stayed hovering for a few seconds before I re-descended, fused back into my body and began to sob… I mean, who wouldn’t after something like that?”

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 12

She looked pleased. Despite our rocky start and the pacemaker thing she’d chosen well.

She got out a sketchbook and began flipping with a certain reverence. I didn’t get it. The sketches fell somewhere between Maori tattoos and samples from a wallpaper catalogue.

“What are they?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She looked exasperated. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

“You mean, I’m sleeping here?”

“Yup. Safer.” She stood up and walked over to the window. I followed. Through a tiny slit in her curtain we could see our neo-paparazzi gloating over porn or football on their mobiles. Before I could touch her hair (and kiss her) she’d pointed to the couch. “Your punishment… It’s 3am.”

She was out like a light. Definitely worth framing, this pixie curled up without a blanket on her bed. Red lips and chrome against black satin sheets. I shouldn’t have stared for so long. I felt like a cat that had stumbled on a bowl of cream.

I turned to inspect the couch. Just long enough. I wanted to know more about the swirls but it was best not to bother her till 5 when even a Doubledose plus would have worn off. The residents of Californica (ie the part that the Saint Andreas fault had not turned into a Pacific Atlantis) prided themselves on how few zzzz they needed now that they could sleep in peace. That quake was the biggest seismic shock since the nukequake that

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 13

destroyed Iran. 23 million Californians died here. Even more than the collateral damage we caused in the greater Middle East. Our local catastrophe remains so painful and oh, so recent that no one argued with the Governor when she re-baptised the chunk that was left. My parents and my little sis went under with the crumble. They’re down there with the fishies just like in the Hendrix song. My remaining land-based family all get around on four legs except for Tripod , my Airedale, who met with a hit-and-run schweinhoon 8 months back. He still runs with the pack, though, bless his heart. They just love it when I let the Robo-rabbit go berserk-o on the plastoturf near the abandoned greyhound track.

I was running even faster than the dogs and the Robo-

rabbit

was

nearly

mine

when

the

phone’s

ping

woke me.

Naturally, I thought it was for her but the polite thing was to press incoming and pick up the receiver.

Silly, old unsuspecting me.

“Hello, sugar?”

“Hel…” Hells bells! I SLAMMED down the receiver and drew my hand away as if I’d just been scalded. A Telefunken Lorelei! She got 0.5 seconds out of me.

“Who was it?” Samantra called out dreamily from her bed.

“They know I’m here- unless you’re a…” I didn’t finish. I didn’t want to get slapped around some more.

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 14

For 5 years now, Mamafunken had prided itself on perfecting the research on their public’s REAL personality profiles- including sexual orientations. Each of their electronic voices had full erotic suction - individually tailored and totally hypnotic within a second. A close friend of mine gave in to temptation 2 months back and clocked up $2,000,000.00 on his credit card within the hour. Someone else I know blurted out over Stratosphere penthouse olives that his Lorelei was a 3 year-old girl. His girlfriend dropped him like a hot potato there and then and, next thing you know, his social security’s number’s gone missing... It’s all very well incorporating real flesh receptors into our plasma screens and supplying women with hunkaspunks that say, ‘I love you’ at all the opportune moments but, seriously, isn’t it about time they started curing people rather than hitting them for every last centime ?

I fell fully asleep second time round, rock-a-byed by a self-generated loop of the Lorelei’s Italian leather voice and all the innuendo it’s scientifically possible to pack into 2 words. I could see her. She was definitely my type. She has the sort of body I’ve always yearned for. Tomorrow, I’ll get onto Mamafunken and plead so that they’ll put her name and number up for auction…

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 15

The Flick

The remains of the banana-mango smoothie woke me at 4: 35 am. I didn’t have a clue where Samantra’s toilet was, or if she even needed one. As I staggered towards the entrance to a dark corridor, I noticed she wasn’t on her bed. When you’re sleeping off a Doubledose plus, such details merge in with the general fog.

On my way down that faraway hall, I found a slit of light cutting across my path. I peered into what was a cross between a pantry and a mechanic’s shed. She’d undressed. Her neon-lit body was turned away from the door. Couldn’t see her eyes. She was halfway through chug-a-lugging a quart of engine oil from a plastic stein. I’m not absolutely certain it was oil. Most of today’s ‘witch’s brews,’ and Chinadoc concoctions have that syrupy industrial run-off look. Whatever it was, she wasn’t enjoying it, which ruled out topiaca.

Despite my haziness, I was touched by something sad in the way her head was tilted back and how her eyes were half-focused on a dot 500 million light years away. Her mournful skol had a ‘gloup, gloup, gloup’ soundtrack and her protruding rib-cage reminded me of a beaten horse. Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast as a science-fiction remake. An existential E.T, more forlorn than that wetback humping his pillow on a glacial, Nebraska morning after Salma’s found ‘the real thing’ in Acapulco. More lost than that cute blond kid at the zoo with a mum (Gena Rowlands, if I remember rightly) bar-side, knocking back her fourth shot of whisky for the day. Lonelier that Rutger on the roof…

Had I knocked on the door, she’d have turned around and I’d have stepped inside. Our eyes would have met and her faint smile would have emboldened me. We would have

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 16

walked towards each other, kissed, or at the very least, hugged. But my bladder wouldn’t have it. And the sea green luminosity would have highlighted all our blemishes and unwanted protrusions. So, I tiptoed on, biting down on my lip, only to have the bathroom door betray me. That soft squeal of the hinge… As a sound effect, I know it! Come on, now… Bela Lugosi in… In…The scene where… Damn! I’ve forgotten the title! --------------------------------------------------------

When I got back to the living area, she was waiting with a mise en scène worthy of Cecil B. de Fassbinder, himself. Her bed had been hoisted high up on the wall with her hanging on it, arms strapped in- à la crucifixion scene in The Robe minus the loincloth. Her legs were free, slightly bent yet together, supported by a little ledge. If you got the censors on a good day, such modesty would secure you a Not-under- 18 rating …

From not wanting me to kiss her to fast-tracking me straight to fourth base! If machine she is, several Botox Valley geeks should have their spotty bottoms kicked for not programming in the foreplay. How dare those morons give her the sexual expectations of a outback Australian barmaid! Those gismo-nurds are currently clocking in 22-hour workdays. Beyond the company gym and coffee fountain, they get to visit the vibroscreen once a week. It comes with a bunk (and fresh sheets) for wet-dream catnaps. Small wonder…

“So, Samantra, you’d like me to be Sylvester Stallone, in a bedroom version of Cliffhanger ?”

“Something like that…” The scorn went perfectly with her down-the-nose gaze. Beyond

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 17

the hand-straps, her hands held two remote controls. A couple of jabs on the left one lowered and purpled up the lighting while keeping a spotlight on her.

“Last night, you wanted to kiss me... Now’s your chance.” Along with that sour smile.

Her painted, sparkling toes were a good 3-metres off the ground. The wall was as smooth and slippery as ice.

“How do I get a grip?”

“Get your hands up on my feet. After that, I’ll take over. Work it out…”

I moved one of her chairs up against the wall. I was going to have to do a mini Touching the Void...

“I’m going to jump after I count to three, okay?”

“Go ahead. I’m ready.”

I half-crouched and limbered up my arms, hands and neck. It gave the hidden cameraman time to double-check his focus. “Ready… One, two, three…”

“I sprang, stretching out my body to the max. As I lunged for those irresistible toes she snatched her feet away, letting me crash back down to the ground where I splintered her chair. She howled with laughter. As I picked my bruised body up off the floor, she quipped:

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 18

“It’s been ages since I’ve had a good chuckle! Thank-you! You had the starring role!” Then she added, pensively. “I know, I’ve insulted your good, trusting heart. I apologise. I won’t do it again.” ------------------------------------------------------

Nothing can prepare you for the dexterity of those legs. Even those Chinese Kung-Fu masters flying and somersaulting all over the place seems amateurish by comparison…

And the kiss! How was I to know that she’d scissor me only half the way up and hold me there before, finally, lifting me higher so that our mouths could meet as an afterthought. Which is when round two started…

For the record, she’s no machine. No way! Although I still can’t explain where the superhuman strength comes from.

Anyway, we were lying together -still on the vertical- after an Olympian workout -cuddling, if you will. She was dozing (despite her grip on me!) while I replayed the whole thing in my head, giving myself an occasional pat on the back.

You see, way back when I was just out of adolescence still learning the ropes, this older, wiser guy gave me some pointers. “To last, you’ve got to take your mind off what’s going on…” He suggested I fill my head with dramatic loops: Bulldozers shifting garbage cans full of dead rats, a librarian on an eternal quest for a lost book, journeys into filing cabinets (now replaced by the hard disk), that sort of thing…

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 19

Needless to say, I’ve finessed it. Instead of his unromantic bullshit, I’ve got a bottomless supply of cinematic beauties that, to be fair, get drawn out of me by the woman I’m making love to. So, when Samantra turns her head in a certain way, it’s Jean Seberg in Breathless; her hand goes up to her mouth, Monica Vitti on the grass in L’Avventura . And so it goes. But Samantra’s no fool. Even though she seemed to be enjoying herself, she stopped at one point and asked me to look in her eyes and tell her what I saw. Well, I couldn’t just blurt out Claudia Cardinale, now could I? Which lead to a tear, which I put down to a bubbling over of emotion.

She’s awake now. In fact, she’s looking at me. Something about me puzzles her.

“Have you got a moment?” Her voice was serious and a little sad.

“Sure! How can I help?”

She manipulated the remote in her right hand which activated a screen on the wall.

“Can you see that?”

“Yup.”

The next finger-flick brought up some text.

The candidate is proving unsuitable for any further rapprochement with Nomedia. All efforts to detach him from his advanced case of SOS (Superficiality Overload Syndrome) have failed…

Edwin 1 ev ¤ 20

Crikey! Her brain has a cordless connection to a computer. Wait a minute! “So, I’m not the only one?”

“No, you’re not...” Those were the last words she spoke to me.

Some dexterous button pressing with the left hand got her living-space window to slide wide open. With a flick of her legs she propelled me out into the heavily polluted turbulence that licks the walls of the twenty-first floor. ---------------------------------------------------------

It’s highly unlikely that they’ll have put out the nets for me. If anyone’s listening, please help me find a replacement owner for my dogs. Just for the record, I’d like to say that I do half-remember a second where our eyes met and held. A moment of tenderness before Milla Jovovich’s curves took over…