Authors: Terry Southern
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Film & Video, #Performing Arts, #Fiction Novel, #Individual Director
Boris laughed to see him so hopelessly stoned. “Boy or girl?”
“Huh? The kid? Oh wow, a
chick,
man, a fantastic little eight-year-old chick—you know, she’s playing Angela as a kid—well, we’re supposed to work on the script, right, so I walk into the dressing room . . .
pow,
rock blasting full-out—
Jackie K. and the Plastic Hearts—
and
she’s
sitting there alone, staring in the mirror and blowing this monstro joint of hash. ‘Want a toke?’ she says, then giggles—schoolgirlville, but evil, dig—and says ‘I mean, if you’re not from the FBI.’ So I sit there and get stoned . . .
wow.
”
“But did you get laid?” asked Boris.
“No, man, but dig . . . at one point I asked if there was anything to
drink,
and she said ‘No, baby, I don’t drink,’ and I said, ‘Well, I know
you
don’t drink, but I thought maybe your manager, or your
mother,
or something—’ and she smiles and says, ‘How about if I cop your joint instead?’ Eight years old, right? So I give her a big dumb
‘Huh? What’d you say?’
And she runs it down for me: ‘Well, you know, give you some head, blow you, suck your cock, that sort of thing.’ Well, I’ll tell you, B., it tore me up—I mean, I doubt if I’ve ever turned down a blow-job in my life, but
eight years old,
wow . . . I don’t know, maybe I’m old-fashioned . . . thirteen, twelve, terrific . . . maybe even eleven . . . or
ten,
for Chrissake, if she’s got any knockers—I mean,
any breast at all
. . . but the idea of making it with a pre-knocker . . . I mean, wow, who wants to fuck a chick with no tits? It must be a fag-trip, right? I mean, it’s got to be like fucking a young
boy,
right?”
“But she just wanted to give you some head,” Boris reminded him, “the no-knocker thing wouldn’t have mattered there, would it?”
Tony clucked and sighed and covered his face with his hand, wagging his head in despair. “I know, I know, I’ve been thinking about that—it was the fucking
hash,
B., I swear to God—it fucked me up . . . I didn’t know what I was
doing,
for Chrissake . . .”
Boris, ultimate funster that he was, did a big-eyed soap-opera elevation of eyebrow, combo of surprise and indignation: “Oh?”
But it was completely wasted, natch, on Tone the stone—who grimaced as one in pain misunderstood, shutting eyes tight, gritting teeth, shaking head, tolerance at an end:
“Man . . .
don’t you dig—that fucking
dope
fucked up my whole
motherfucking sense of values!
”
T
HE STORY-LINE
of the casbah-sequence was simplicity itself—Angela, or “Miss Maude” as she was called in the script, was a fabulously wealthy and freaked-out blond American beauty who maintained a luxurious house in Morocco, and allowed herself to be ravished by a seemingly endless procession of husky Africans. This footage would later be intercut with images from her childhood—illustrating, presumably, how she developed this insatiable taste, or perhaps more correctly, why she had determined on this particular method of getting a rise out of Dad.
The script called for four separate lovemaking scenes, each complete and highly detailed. In addition—by way of indicating the sheer scope and volume of the lady’s activity—there was to be a montage featuring approximately two dozen more of her black lovers, in various aspects and postures of intercourse with her. Several of these occasions called for her to “frolic tumultuously” with two or three at the same time. The
dénouement
—or finale, as it were—was a sort of
ronde extraordinaire,
which Tony had designated “Around the Clock,” and claimed to have actually witnessed in Hamburg. It was to feature Angela and four participants . . . one kissing each of her breasts, another kissing her mouth, and the fourth in full penetration of her perfect vage. As soon as the full-pen man reached climax, they would all shift, musical-chairs style, clockwise, to their new positions. By the time the first arrived at vage again, his member was once more erect at the ready—so that, theoretically at least, the
ronde
could continue indefinitely—and the use of a fast-dissolving montage would produce that effect to good advantage.
“I was wondering,” said Tony, while they were working on the script in Boris’s room, “if you’d fucked Angie yet?”
Boris, sketching a setup composition, held it at arm’s length, squinting at it. “No, man, I’ve had too much on my mind.” He crumpled the sketch and started another one. “Besides,” he added, “I’m not sure I’ve got eyes.”
“Hmm.” Tony absently unfolded the crumpled paper and looked at it. “I don’t know whether I ever mentioned it or not,” he said casually, “but I made it with her a couple of times.”
“Oh?” said Boris, expressing polite interest but continuing to work on the composition.
“Yeah, on
Marie Antoinette,
in her dressing room—once in full rig—you know, big hoop skirt, eight petticoats, high-button shoes, monstro hairpiece, the whole
schmear,
pretty weird.”
“How was it?”
“Yeah, well . . .” he seemed curiously undecided, “well, it was
good,
man,” he said, but almost begrudgingly. “I mean, just the
idea
of fucking Angela Sterling . . . well, that’s a score going in, right? I mean, even if it’s
bad,
it’s
good.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, at least then it’s out of the way—you’ve fucked her, and you can forget it. Know what I mean?”
“Hmm.” Boris held up his sketch, squinting at it.
“She’s got a great
body,”
Tony went on, half defensively, “and she’s, well . . . you know, quite
active
. . . I mean she gets that cooze pointed at the ceiling, and she really
throws it up there!
I mean, like
hard,
man . . . and the old scissor-lock working . . .
writhing . . . moaning
. . .
biting . . . scratching . . . nails digging into your back . . . muttering weird endearments . . .
you know, the whole passion-bit.”
Boris shrugged. “Sounds ideal.”
“Yeah . . .” Tony muttered, lapsing then, trying to get it together. “Well, the
first
time, the time she was in her full ‘Marie A.’ costume, she did a
rape
scene—like, you know, pretending I was raping her—and that was pretty
good
. . . I mean, I was just whacked out enough to get with it . . . I’d always had those fantasies . . . innocent blond beauty rudely pinioned to the mast, hands tied behind her, knockers thrusting out . . . you know, the whole corny ‘Big Bad Wolf Fucking Goldilocks’ syndrome . . . Christ, I tore that costume to pieces. Les Harrison flipped out completely—we had to make up a story . . . about some extra stealing the costume, and then getting hit by a Santa Monica bus . . . or something.”
Boris chuckled. “Beautiful. Maybe we can use it.”
“No, don’t mention it to her, B., for Chrissake. I mean, I don’t want to get in one of those kiss-and-tell bags.”
“That’s very funny—I was
wondering
where she got that ‘Goldilocks and the Bad Wolf’ bit. She’s still using that, you know.”
Tony was shocked. “What? You mean she actually told you about making it in the dressing room?”
“No, no, she just used the Bad Wolf thing—describing
all
men . . . except maybe me.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Well, what was the next time like?”
Tony frowned. “It was almost a little
scary
—I mean, it was like she wasn’t really all there, you dig.
Fantasy-bag-ville-time,
right? I mean, I got the feeling I could have slit her throat and she wouldn’t have noticed . . . except maybe later, when she got too weak to manipulate her ass.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Boris, head to one side, studying his comp, “I don’t think she’s that . . .
pure.
”
Tony shrugged, “Could be. Maybe she was faking the whole thing. Faking the fuck. Hmm. An age-old story, as immemorial as Woman herself. And I was just too boxed to notice. But the time in the ‘Marie A.’ rig, that was wild. I mean, you can’t fault that one. I wouldn’t mind trying something like that again sometime.”
“Raping Marie Antoinette?”
“No, no, something different this time.”
“Like getting sucked by a cute eight-year-old in pigtails?”
“
Yes,
you rat fuck! What heinous deception! How could you do that to your grand guy friend Tone? Now I’ll probably
never
know the thrill of pre-teen head!”
“Listen,” said Boris, “I don’t like to bring you down, Tone, but we’ve got to make some decisions about the film.”
“Decisions? Oh wow.”
“Well, let’s call it
choices
then.”
“Choices,
right—that’s much better.”
“Okay, do you think we ought to include a
gay
sequence?”
Tony grimaced. “Aghh.”
“Nicky thinks it’s a
swell
idea.”
“I’m hip he does.”
Boris smiled. “What, anti-fag, Tone?”
Tony shrugged. “Well . . . aside from that—
if
true, which I doubt—I just don’t think it makes it erotically.”
“We had the lez sequence.”
“And that was great. Lez, I dig—two chicks fucking, or whatever they’re doing—beautiful. I mean, that turns me on—but two
guys,
hairy legs, hairy ass-holes, hairy cock and balls—forget it.”
“What if they’re beautiful . . . young, beautiful . . .
Arab
boys, fourteen or fifteen, slender as reeds, smooth olive skin, big doe-brown eyes . . .”
“You mean, like
chicks?”
Boris regarded him curiously. “No man, I mean we’ve got an opportunity here,
and
a responsibility, to lay it
all
down—and I just don’t think we should blow it. I mean, I don’t want to cop out on some aspect of eroticism simply because I don’t happen to dig it personally.”
“Yeah?” Tony snorted, “. . . okay, why don’t we do some full-on S M? You know, burning off nipples, tearing out clits, that sort of thing. . . . Or how about some
coprophilia?
How about that, B.? We’ll do
the definitive cinematic treatment of shit-eating.
I mean, there
are
certain people who claim that’s the greatest.”
Boris cocked his head to one side, smiling, slit-eyed, doing his Edward G. Robinson: “I like the way you handle yourself kid—how’d you like to fight for
money?”
Tony drank, shaking his head in true despondence. “I really don’t know, man . . . I mean, I
know
I couldn’t write a good nipple-burning scene, or a good shit-eating scene . . . and I don’t
think
I could write a fag-fuck scene . . . I mean, not a
good
one—not like, say,
Genet
could . . .”
Boris considered it, preoccupied, moving the felt-tip pen silently back and forth across the page, slowly obliterating what he had drawn. “Have you ever
had
any homosexual experiences?”
Tony made a face, shaking his head. “No, man . . . well, I mean like not since I was eleven or twelve.”
“What happened then?”
“What
happened?
Well, we just fooled around with each other’s cocks, that’s all—I mean, we got hard-ons, and then we . . . Christ, now I can’t remember what the fuck we
did
do. . . .” His brow darkened, trying to recall, and he sighed, “Oh yeah, now it comes back . . . wow, ha . . . well, what we used to do—my friend and I . . . Jason, his name . . . Jason Edwards—we’d be in this tree house we built, and we’d jerk off together . . . sort of competitively, you know, like see who could come
first,
or
most
. . . or
farthest
—that was the best, we’d stand up for that one, like in a spitting contest. And, dig, he was about six months older than me, or anyway a little more hip than me because he had this
sister
—she was fifteen—and he’d get these diagrams out of her box of Tampax, these drawings of Tampax being pushed up into the vage, with one finger, and he’d show them to me, and he’d say: ‘Look,
this
is where you put your thing,
right in there.’
Fantastic! I mean, in these drawings, these profile cross-section diagrams—of uterus, womb, tubes, etcetera—the artist, for some weird reason, always gave the figure a . . .
marvelously rounded, pert, provocative, Jane Fonda type ass!
Well, I think that’s how we made the association . . . I mean, the idea of the
ass
—his and mine-being some kind of possible substitute for the cooze . . . or at least for jerking off, which was where we were at that moment. Anyway, we tried it a couple of times—but it didn’t particularly grab me . . . I don’t even remember if I came . . . I mean, the thing I was into then was watching his sister undress—we would watch her through the bathroom window, and she would stand in front of the mirror and massage her breasts, and that was pretty wild—and I began to use her as a jerk-off image . . . my
first jerk-off image
—I mean, aside from the Tampax-girl diagram, which didn’t really count because she was
faceless
. . . even
headless
and
shoulderless,
for Chrissake! And
legless! Absurd.
The point is, those couple of times I fucked Jason in the ass I was actually pretending it was his
sister
I was fucking.” He looked up at Boris then, and chuckled dryly as though aware he might be taking himself too seriously. “Pretty healthy imagery, eh, Doctor? None of your proverbial ‘cocksucking queer’ in that kind of relationship, right?”
Boris smiled, and went into his Strangelove accent. “Iz true you hafe tole zee
abzolute trut?
No suck?
Nicht kommen ven cornhole?”