Life Goes to the Movies (18 page)

Dwaine says, “I say we dig him up and kick his teeth in.”

At last the director arrives, rolling across the studio in a motorized wheelchair. His name is Hamilton Banes Driver, but those who’ve had the
dubious honor of working with him before call him H.B., as in Hamilton Beach, as in blender, he so likes whipping things and people around. His
wheelchair makes a high-pitched whirring noise and gives off a tangy, electronic odor—not always, but on occasion and in concentrated blasts, as
if wheelchairs, too, need to fart.

To hide his incipient turkey gullet Driver wears a puffed silk ascot, its loose ends tucked into a leisure suit. From a distance he looks like
someone’s annoying but benign uncle, the kind that blows raspberries into your ticklish neck, the type of character played to a fare-the-well by
Jason Robards or Burgess Meredith. Through an old-fashioned megaphone with his initials (HBD) painted on it he shouts his directions:

“Listen up, boys and girls. The Blizzard of ’79 has flattened most of Saskatchewan and all of Manitoba and is headed this way. So how about
we get things rolling here, huh?”

Scene One takes place in the Fantasy Room. The First A.D. calls for quiet on the set. Venus and I join the semicircle of crewmembers gathered to watch.
With cameras rolling, following a few lines of poorly improvised dialogue, the cast members shed their clothes. I feel like a spectator at a nuclear
bomb-testing site, positioned there by the authorities to calculate the effects of the blast: impact, windburn, fallout. My mouth goes dry as desert
dust; my legs turn into watery reflections of legs; my brain imitates sculpted Kleenex. I forget what breathing is for. It’s not that Ilikewhat I’m seeing, not really, it’s just that I can’t seem to take my eyes off the spectacle, as if the sight of bodies
fucking has its own irrepressible magnetic aura, like a bonfire or a car accident, turning us all, the rest of the cast and crew, into rubberneckers at
a fleshy demolition derby. (Wasn’t it Rilke who said beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we’re still just able to bear?)

We watch until things get boring. When Mrs. Huffnagel calls for the “money shot” we brace ourselves for the white-hot aurora, for the
blinding, billowing dome. On detonation Venus takes my hand and squeezes it, hard. Did thee feel the earth move?

As hot towels and plastic bags are distributed we go off in search of Dwaine, who has vanished. We find him lying supine on a lumpy jail cell cot, deep
into his Nietzsche.

My foot is a cloven foot, with it I trample and trod over sticks, and I am happy as the devil while running so fast.

10

The set of a porno film is a strange place to fall in love, yet that’s just what we do, Dwaine and I: we both fall for Venus. I see it in
Dwaine’s metal-shard eyes, in how they light up at every whisper of her name, and in his smile when one of us catches the other thinking about
her. On the third day of the shoot, between the Jailhouse and Locker Room scenes, we have to leave the warehouse, we’re both tittering so hard,
our titters occasioned by the director’s wheelchair—which, depending on our mood, we’ve taken to referring to as either the Electric
Farting Contraption or the Atomic Stinkmobile. But the underlying cause of our titters is our shared crush on Venus, a crush that has turned us into
giddy grade-schoolers.

“Admit it!” Dwaine threatens me with a fat wet snowball. “You’re smitten, all right. I saw you both holding hands in
there.”

“That was just a nervous response.”

“So is love, babe; so is love.”

A half-foot of snow has fallen on the city. We’ve stepped out into the winter wonderland of a full-blown blizzard, the flakes swirling around
fireboxes, fluttering among the elevated subway’s hodgepodge of girders. We fall into a bank of freshly plowed snow and tussle like twins,
powdering each other’s faces, laughing. A voice calls to us and we look up and there’s Venus, standing in the yellow rectangle of light
that is the warehouse side entrance. She steps closer, her face as pale as the snowflakes. She smiles her chip-toothed smile. “Now what
are you two troublemakers up to?”

The three of us make snow angels, on our backs with the snow falling gently on our faces, melting on cheeks, tongues, eyes, lips. We’re back in
first grade. Our teacher, Mrs. Szost, sits at her desk inside, waiting with crayons and construction paper and a map of the United States of America,
each state a different removable colored piece of wood.

The warehouse door swings open. Mrs. Huffnagel fills the yellow rectangle: “Hey, Snow White, get your frosted buns back in here! Driver wants you
to whip him up a fluffy muumuu!”

11

Day three and we still haven’t found the right bathtub. The director insists that it be pre-Victorian. No other tub will do. We’ve been to
antique stores, plumbing supply depots, salvage shops. We’ve searched all five boroughs and beyond, into parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.
We’ve seen every kingdom, phylum, class, order, family and genus of bathtub imaginable. But no pre-Victorians, none, not one.

“Without that tub I’m dead,” says Huff, kicking a set flat. “Driver says he won’t shoot the Hell scene without it. He
calls it the film’s centerpiece. Fuckin’ A-hole thinks he’s Cecil B. DeMille.” Huff swigs Philip’s Milk of Magnesia
straight from the cobalt blue bottle. “I may as well shoot myself right now,” he observes, though the closest thing to a firearm on the set
is a dildo dangling from the end of a fishing pole.

In desperation he offers a three hundred dollar bonus to anyone who can locate a pre-Victorian bathtub.

12

Having driven the rest of the cast members home to their doormanned Manhattan apartment buildings we double back to Astoria to drop Venus off at her
place.

“ ’Night,” I say and kiss her on the cheek.

We watch her walk up the stairs into her building.

“Man,” says Dwaine, watching.

“She’s really great, isn’t she?”

“Oh, man. Oh, man.” He puts the van in gear and drives off, still shaking his head.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“When will this torture end, that’s what’s the matter.”

I ask him what torture? What’s he talking about?

“Man, do I have to draw you a map, print you out a circuit, write you a manual? Or should I act out a goddamn charade?”

I still don’t get it.

“For God’s sake, the least you could do is take her in your arms, swap a little spit, box tonsils—but noooo, you go and kiss
her on the cheek like a goddamn blushing choirboy!”

“Fuck you!”

“Hey, I’m just saying that’s exactly what you did, isn’t it?”

“At least I did something. You just sat there.”

“You’re the one who’s in love.”

“Says you.”

“Am I wrong? Huh? Am I?”

“Eat me.”

“So I’m not wrong.”

“None of your business.”

“You’re in love, all right.”

“Kiss her yourself if it means so much to you!”

“Listen to you. You’d think I was asking you to eat worms or sit through another Fassbinder film.”

We ride the rest of the way home in silence, through tunnels of garbage bags. Along the way Dwaine takes his silver flask from the glove compartment
and drinks. It’s the first time I’ve seen him drink in a long while. Back in our neighborhood he parks by the river, in front of the
Pepsi-Cola plant where, before we head home, he stops as usual to admire the view across the river through the chain-link fence. As he does a stiff
gust blows, sending Dwaine’s military beret Frisbee-flying over the fence and into the river. Next thing I know he’s climbing the fence,
chain links rattling. “Dwaine, what the hell—?” But he keeps climbing, up and over. Soon he’s making his way down an old pier,
his boots breaking through the rotten wood every few steps. When he gets to the end he strips off his coat and stands there, arms swung out wide as he
leans further and further forward over the black, freezing water.

I go after him, stepping through the same rotten holes, and get to the end of the pier in time to see him dangling by one arm from a piling, swooping
out over the gelid waters like sopping Gene Kelly swinging blissfully from a lamp post.

“Just getting my hat,” he tells me when I’ve grabbed and pulled him back from the brink, slapping the sopping beret against his
knees. “Just getting my fucking hat.”

13

I dream of bathtubs chasing me in herds like porcelain elephants, to be woken by Dwaine on all fours in our kitchen, yelling. “Eureka! I found
it!”

Dwaine has torn away the surrounding wooden frame used to support an eating surface, revealing a tub of a different nature. We squat to scrutinize it.
No legs, a bottom as flat as a boat, a rolled brim like a derby, raised at one end like the back of a shoe. No question, a pre-Victorian. “Do you
believe it, babe? It was here all this time—right under our noses and other body parts!”

“How can it be? This building’s not that old.”

“Don’t look a gift tub in the mouth.”

It takes all morning and a half-dozen hacksaw blades to free the tub from its plumbing prison. Then bump-THUMP, bump-THUMP down five flights to the
street where the van waits.

Cheers rise as we carry the tub into the warehouse. Huffnagel hugs us. Driver circumnavigates the tub like Magellan, caressing its porcelain curves
with a moleskin-gloved finger.

Per his instructions we paint it: pink.

14

Time to shoot the Hell Scene. It’s the coldest hell on record, with a blizzard blowing and a wind-chill factor of five below—and the
temperature inside the warehouse, which isn’t insulated, not much higher.

“Imagine hell freezing over in our lifetime,” Venus reflects.

Crewmembers huddle in winter coats; cast members shiver under robes and packing blankets. All but a few of the men can’t perform. “This is
supposed to be hell, goddamn it,” the director shouts through his antique megaphone. “I won’t have breaths condensing in the
underworld!”

We raid every hardware store in the neighborhood, returning with seven portable space heaters, four electric, three kerosene. By three o’clock
the warehouse is an inferno.

“That’s more like it,” says the director.

Wearing angel and devil costumes designed by Venus, the entire cast converges around the pink-painted bathtub. Smoke machines billow. Red and yellow
lights simulate fire and brimstone. The lead cameraman circles his fists. The first A.D. says, “Action!” The director yells,
“Cut!”

“Now what?” says Huff.

“Devils. I need more devils!” says the director. “There are too many angels and not enough devils!” In fact there are an equal
number of both, but Driver feels the scales should be tipped in favor of the Common Enemy. Volunteers are offered a hundred dollars extra pay each.

Dwaine turns to me. “It’s movie work,” he says.

15

Dissolve to the Two Greatest Artists in New York wearing devil costumes. When the First A.D. yells, “Action!” we’re supposed to climb
into the pink tub brimming with soapsuds and angels and do suggestive things to them with our velvet tails and foamcore pitchforks. The tub is frothed
full of bubbles. The angels climb in (careful to keep their wings dry). The First A.D. demands quiet on the set. The lead cameraman rolls his fists
around each other.

“And—action!” says the First A.D.

I start toward the tub, the camera lights so bright in my eyes I can’t see anything beyond them, just a semicircle of dark heads and shoulders
watching. When I arrive at the tub’s brim I stand there frozen, foamcore pitchfork in hand, devil’s tail between my legs, not sure what
I’m supposed to do, exactly, or that I’m willing or prepared to do it. After standing there for what seems like days (with all sorts of
people shouting orders and other things at me), I do a one-eighty and walk off the set.

Out of the corner of my eye, through clouds of artificially colored artificial smoke, I see Dwaine doing what devils are supposed to do to angels,
prodding one with his pitchfork, snatching her tin foil harp and tossing it away, whipping her vigorously with the point of his pointy tail. A ravenous
leer floods his eyes. Every few steps I turn to watch him while slipping deeper and deeper into the shadows, until I’m standing in the dark outer
circle of watchers beside Venus, watching with her as Dwaine goes at it with two angels at once, tearing off their silk wings and pipe-cleaner halos,
straddling one in the pink tub, peeling the straps of her bra back as the other glides slowly down the length of his velvet devil’s pants,
unzipping him, with him meanwhile casting glances—at me? At Venus? At both of us?

“He’s good at this, isn’t he?” Venus observes.

I turn away. I can’t look.

16

I wake up pitching and swaying and seasick in the Fantasy Room waterbed. Dwaine and Venus are up, seated in the glow of a kerosene stove, watching a
fuzzy broadcast of Dr. Zhivago on the cast’s portable TV.

I take my blanket and join them. Soon we’re all huddled together watching Omar Shariff trying to write a poem in that frozen mansion. To the
haunting carousel theme I fall back asleep, only to be woken later by the sounds of Dwaine and Venus kissing, their shadows and sighs mingling in the
dark. They’re trying to be quiet about it, which of course only accentuates every sound. I close my eyes, pretend to keep sleeping, lying there
listening, a sexual spy. Dwaine grunts.

“Shhh,” Venus says.

They both fall silent as I get up, taking the blanket with me. Wrapped in it, I step outside to watch the snow as it piles up on car hoods and on the
elevated subway station’s pagoda rooftop, darkening as it colludes with sooty buildings and grimy streets. The snow and soot, I tell myself
sleepily, are two sides of the same argument: black vs. white, angels vs. devils, love vs. hate, innocence vs. experience. The extremes cancel each
other out, turn everything into gray slush, what I feel like inside.