61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Hooksexup's videogame blog: Street Fighter. The movie. A new one. With that chick from that Superman show. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Mad Men's January Jones struts her stuff in Vanity Fair. Plus: Damages returns, the latest Gossip Girl guest star and Donna Martin capitulates.
Rocco sways like a loose-hipped hula dancer, snipping at the edges of my contorted limbs with his shutter. I tug at my sweater, rub a palm over my belly, roll onto my back like a huffy insomniac, squirm some more, trying to get a little turned on so the pictures won't suck as much as this shoot does. Rocco says, "FYI, you look like hell warmed over. Heroine chic is over, you know." PJ Harvey sings:
Get girl out of my head
Douse her with gasoline
Set it light and set it free
I'm wearing my new bra in my old favorite color and a pair of black tights with a hole in the toe that distracts me to no end. I sit up to free the toe from its miniature noose, also swiping a quick nosepick -- this overheated apartment has dried up my sinuses, hardened my snot to the consistency of pine bark. Underneath, the skin is new, bleeds a rivulet down my hand. This has happened before, but usually only on airplanes. I throw back my head and run for the bathroom.
"You could've just said you wanted to stop," he calls sweetly after.
Rocco always believed that illness was psychosomatic. Especially if it was mine. Migraine? You should quit looking at those old pictures of your mom and dad. Tendonitis? Meditation will relax the ligaments, just try it, Zepha! Gut-wrenching stomach ache after every meal? It's not what you're eating, it's that you're not digesting your stress. And my chronic yeast infections (which happen to have subsided since I left him) were just an "excuse." Not to have sex. But Rocco could cure all my excuses! Letting go of years of pent-up sexual tension (coming) would flush the evil bacteria from my vaginal walls, he assured. But it wasn't -- and isn't -- that easy. The yogurty-cool cream I inserted before slipping into our King futon brought an immediate relief that his hard, hopeful dick never could. It let me be an ailing princess instead of an ice queen.
So I was a mess. What was I, twenty? Thought there was something to that princess shit. Didn't know the difference between being in love and being impressed with the record collection of someone who loved me more than said collection.
"Rocco, can you come in here and take a picture of all this blood?"
By the time I leave it's stopped raining outside but individual people are still walking around with their annoying, family-sized umbrellas up. With a wad of Kleenex lodged securely in my nose and a rude sendoff -- "I have to make a phone call now, mind letting yourself out?" -- rousing my gladiator spirit, I vow to seize the next parasol that pokes me in the face and splinter it.
"Mmmmm, honey, nice high beams, how 'bout a smile?" A pony-tailed limo driver in a shiny, teal double-breasted suit leans on his Lincoln Town Car, ogling my under-insulated tits with comical zeal, probably betting on me to lower my eyes and quicken my step.
Unfortunately, he holds no umbrella. Unfortunately, I have always taken great pleasure in flipping the bird. Such a simple, offhandish gesture -- yet it satisfies physically (like letting a tic twitch) and emotionally (no shrill swear words to cringe over afterwards). Its the only appropriate response I can think of on such short notice, and I look him in the eye and give it to him, coming and going.
When the stun-gun effect of this gesture has worn off, he's all action, shiny Italian tassle-loafers slapping the wet pavement behind me. "You have a problem, slut? You have a problem with somebody giving you a compliment ugly whore?"
That's it . . .
He jumps in front of me, skip-walking backwards, face puckered with the mouthful of bitter fruit he can't spit out fast enough, and I can't get past him, don't want to turn my back on him. At the corner he looks over his shoulder and I step sideways into a gutter, run through a red light, a herd of taxis gunning their engines at me, horns blaring.
On the other side of the street, a man has seen everything. He looks at me kindly with eyes like warm gray pebbles, and wants to know if I'm alright. I've lost my Kleenex and my nose is bleeding again. The blood tastes like fear and I say no and start to cry in big, heaping shudders right there under the kind man's umbrella, about which I suddenly have no complaint.
When I was a kid I could run off my tears, just run and run, sometimes tripping over my dog, who ran too, until the sound of my gasps and the Technicolor blur of everything that stood still lulled me into a melodramatic sense of peace. The sidewalks of New York City aren't as good as country roads for the full-blur effect, but I try, I try, I try until I am bursting into my apartment upon a roomful of faces with no features, turning to see who. Stuck in the doorway, I'm thinking death, it's got to be death. Then I see the daisy chain of hands holding hands . . . Of course, the intervention! Michael, my roommate, is hosting it for his friend with a so-called drinking problem. I was supposed to be there, here, and Michael is not pleased, though the friend, Lenny is. I've interrupted someone's speech, kissing Lenny's pocked cheek on my way into my bedroom, where I call up my voicemail.
It would be nice, right now, to hear a female voice, soft with her affection for me. A girlfriend. Instead, it's PJ Harvey -- who probably has lots of guitar-smashing, raspy-throated girlfriends who'd do anything for her because she is like a guy, but not -- singing,
You leave me dry
You leave me dry
You leave me dry
But it's not really her, just Rocco, blasting a few stanzas of "Dry" in the background before he tells me he'll send the negatives, there's no need to call, in fact, he thinks it would be good if I didn't call anymore for a while, at least for a couple months, because he's got so much to do, like fifty jobs and visiting his little sister in rehab . . .
At least it was me he kicked me out to call. In the dresser mirror, a pair of bee-stung eyes stare back at me, cried-out, momentarily wizened. I wipe the last traces of dried blood from my nostrils and venture out into Lenny's personal hell, where I am wanted.
your mom and dad. Tendonitis? Meditation will relax the ligaments, just try it, Zepha! Gut-wrenching stomach ache after every meal? It's not what you're eating, it's that you're not digesting your stress. And my chronic yeast infections (which happen to have subsided since I left him) were just an "excuse." Not to have sex. But Rocco could cure all my excuses! Letting go of years of pent-up sexual tension (coming) would flush the evil bacteria from my vaginal walls, he assured. But it wasn't -- and isn't -- that easy. The yogurty-cool cream I inserted before slipping into our King futon brought an immediate relief that his hard, hopeful dick never could. It let me be an ailing princess instead of an ice queen.
yet it satisfies physically (like letting a tic twitch) and emotionally (no shrill swear words to cringe over afterwards). Its the only appropriate response I can think of on such short notice, and I look him in the eye and give it to him, coming and going.
