He looks harrowed, checks his watch, and turns the
television to a channel displaying the time. His movements are clumsy
and urgent. He is thin but not from any effort, but from malnutrition
and long hours sweating in nightclubs. His look that unadorned
meticulously casual hip that sends judgment back to all but those
similarly pared to style. Rifling through a garbage bag he removes a
disk and puts it into the player.
Our screen fills with his screen. For a moment, we see only static and
horizontal distortions, the sky and branches, a building, cars
passing, all chaotically unframed and thrown around, then breathing
comes over the speakers, the sounds of frustration, grappling,
struggle as the jumble settles; the video is grainy, the color
oversaturated and anachronistic. The vehicles, the buildings on the
screen are similar, but all out of place, out of time. The film is from
eastern Europe, a city of utilitarian curves and older, more western
looking structures, public buildings and bridges in the Haussman
style. The inelegant camera work calms to focus on a girl walking.
The names of streets and signs are spiked with dashes and accents, a
mixture of I's and Y's. The camera follows as she walks into a tunnel
and the screen goes dark. We can clearly hear two pairs of steps,
unmatched but in pace together. The rapport of her heals are less
subtle than the camera-person's; she is walking with greater urgency.
The end of the passage appears as a set of stairs that the camera does
not follow, but falls a few feet short of, and instead it points
upwards. She hesitates, turns, and says, Mit akkar? Hagyon békét!
She doesn't climb any further. The camera zooms and focuses on her
back. Her dress is made of an uncomfortable and very bright synthetic blue.
Her breathing is compact and her tension is clear.
Her legs and ass come into central view and fix on the screen; her skirt
so short that if she ascends any more it will be hard for her to
prevent an illicit view without some complex and awkward sideways
climbing. Instead, she raises her skirt with a resolved quickness and then
leaves it up. Her panties are yellow with a reddish flower print. They
are scant enough that they do not cover her flanks, and a dark
cellulite rumple, a kind of phantom reflection of her asshole... She hooks her
fingers through the fabric at her hips. She slides the garment down to
her ankles and bends to the camera. She brings her hands up the length
of her legs and the back of her thighs, she holds her ass apart, and
arches to show her vagina.
Ez amit akkar?
The camera doesn't answer, nor blinks. She fingers herself slightly,
touches her breasts, but still the camera remains an unwavering,
unblinking, ceaselessly surveying eye. She drops the fabric and turns
and looks angry.
Ha csak meg kérné, meg fújnám, meg basznám. De ellenörizet es most
már félek. Nem kap semit. Söt, menyen a francba!
She stomps up the remaining stairs and the camera hurries to follow
her across a square. She waits near a bus shelter until she recognizes
the driver of an approaching Opel. The camera again scrambles as the
camera-person retreats. Paving stones, branches, the stairs again,
then darkness.
A jarring edit to men kissing under a street lamp. One man undoes the
top button of the other man's stiff denim trousers with difficulty. It
takes time and force to undo it, and it gives the camera a moment to
draw in to the eventual pop of the button, through the tricky hole.
The video reverses, cues to that moment again, and replays, and
replays, and replays. Pop, pop, pop.
The environs change again, the outside world has shifted to something
recognizably American. A girl in a red t-shirt and no bottom unties a
ribbon and lets her hair fall nearly to her waist. She is at home
idling behind a house on a suburban lawn somewhere, at that hour of
light that makes the camera unfailing with her simple beauty. The girl
walks, talks, waters. She mentions her undergrad plans, a professor,
an annoying administrator. A long silence as she brutalizes a rogue
encroachment of crabgrass with a spade. When she rises she looks at
the camera and must recognize the desire of the operator, she smiles
and runs her hand over her chest and down, and without
a beat, several of her soil covered fingers disappear, and she says she
is so dirty.
A long cut of a beautiful native in a snow-field.
Indescribable light.
Now it is as if the camera hides under something, on a table in a
crowded café. A voice complains of the smell emanating from a
bathroom. A man and a girl drift into view and a door opens revealing
a long mirror, a sink and a toilet. The couple signal to someone out
of frame, the man looks furtively over his shoulder. Another man
appears and grabs the girl by the hand and then the other man. The
three all squeeze into the tiny room, and the door shuts quickly, but
with some effort as the trio struggle to clear their limbs, and to
seal themselves inside.
Another break and a raddled and sour queen makes watch over a young
dancer in a halter as she dances with a very young African boy on a
hazy street of walk-ups. She shows him her breasts with a flash and he
smiles wild uncontrolled gums, his eyes glazed. His body is lean,
sinuous, and a near opposite the queen and his colorless, overfed,
squashy contours. He massages his cock through spotted lamé. A
thin visible snake encased in a sweltering metal pantsuit has a
partner streak, a soak of semen. The music is not typical dance music,
it bares and changes signatures, is atonal and aggressively modern,
but then settles into a predictable disco throb as the African grinds,
as she winds in the foreground, and the transvestite in a cower
mournfully runs his index finger and thumb along his shaft.
The phone rings. The video pauses, two white bars appear in the corner
of the screen, his screen and our screen, and the young man sighs.
He has to put his pants back on. His cock bounds filled with blood. He
reaches the phone and says a short and pitched hello.
Mom. Yeah… I got in just a little while ago and… What? No, I don't
know if I will stay.
Her picture is on the wall next to the phone, when she was young. She
is felinity, coquettish, looking mid-century.
I might stay with Andrea instead. I haven't seen her in a long time.
She is everything that she was in her Tiffany and Chanel, accurately
and specifically dressed to impress boys with her breeding and charm,
the picture taken at Fordham, even though she went to Barnard.
Mom, don't say that. Don't already! That's the other reason why I
don't know if I'll stay. I've known Andrea such a long time and… Well,
she doesn't say things like that about you! God, how can you say
things like that! Who believes that anymore! I think I'll go, but I'll
meet you at lunch tomorrow. No, no, I didn't bring my camera, no.
You'll have to bring yours… At the diner on 52nd? Ok, ok. I'll call if it changes…
I'm going to go now.
He re-starts the film and brings it forward to an explicit montage.
The camera focuses on a cock, so we are sure the camera-person is a
camera-man. A girl with a short tangle of curls bobs her head on the
cock, slicking the veins and hair, her glistening glissando elicits
ahs and profanity. The camera registers the voice of another man coming
from behind it, demanding attention, and the camera moves and sets on a
bureau, pointed to a divan. The girl positions like a tripod, on a
knee and on her head. A young man, not so different from our young man
is behind her, but it is uncertain, because another taller and sturdier
man, is behind him. The three fuck in tender unison.
Our young man spumes a froth on a very expensive looking couch while
looking from his vantage into the living room and to the picture above
the television. He closes his eyes.
His face registers inarticulately a certain unction he feels so integrally,
as to believe it is his alone, as though nobody had felt his mixture of pleasure and sadness,
for ruined, lost images. It is hard to believe in sole belief, in a belief free of
other possible representations different from one's own, to have belief in unrepeatable belief.
Unique belief, impossible to stage or to re-enact, a belief that is
purely interior, would be directed at a grave disadvantage to the real.
television to a channel displaying the time. His movements are clumsy
and urgent. He is thin but not from any effort, but from malnutrition
and long hours sweating in nightclubs. His look that unadorned
meticulously casual hip that sends judgment back to all but those
similarly pared to style. Rifling through a garbage bag he removes a
disk and puts it into the player.
Our screen fills with his screen. For a moment, we see only static and
horizontal distortions, the sky and branches, a building, cars
passing, all chaotically unframed and thrown around, then breathing
comes over the speakers, the sounds of frustration, grappling,
struggle as the jumble settles; the video is grainy, the color
oversaturated and anachronistic. The vehicles, the buildings on the
screen are similar, but all out of place, out of time. The film is from
eastern Europe, a city of utilitarian curves and older, more western
looking structures, public buildings and bridges in the Haussman
style. The inelegant camera work calms to focus on a girl walking.
The names of streets and signs are spiked with dashes and accents, a
mixture of I's and Y's. The camera follows as she walks into a tunnel
and the screen goes dark. We can clearly hear two pairs of steps,
unmatched but in pace together. The rapport of her heals are less
subtle than the camera-person's; she is walking with greater urgency.
The end of the passage appears as a set of stairs that the camera does
not follow, but falls a few feet short of, and instead it points
upwards. She hesitates, turns, and says, Mit akkar? Hagyon békét!
She doesn't climb any further. The camera zooms and focuses on her
back. Her dress is made of an uncomfortable and very bright synthetic blue.
Her breathing is compact and her tension is clear.
Her legs and ass come into central view and fix on the screen; her skirt
so short that if she ascends any more it will be hard for her to
prevent an illicit view without some complex and awkward sideways
climbing. Instead, she raises her skirt with a resolved quickness and then
leaves it up. Her panties are yellow with a reddish flower print. They
are scant enough that they do not cover her flanks, and a dark
cellulite rumple, a kind of phantom reflection of her asshole... She hooks her
fingers through the fabric at her hips. She slides the garment down to
her ankles and bends to the camera. She brings her hands up the length
of her legs and the back of her thighs, she holds her ass apart, and
arches to show her vagina.
Ez amit akkar?
The camera doesn't answer, nor blinks. She fingers herself slightly,
touches her breasts, but still the camera remains an unwavering,
unblinking, ceaselessly surveying eye. She drops the fabric and turns
and looks angry.
Ha csak meg kérné, meg fújnám, meg basznám. De ellenörizet es most
már félek. Nem kap semit. Söt, menyen a francba!
She stomps up the remaining stairs and the camera hurries to follow
her across a square. She waits near a bus shelter until she recognizes
the driver of an approaching Opel. The camera again scrambles as the
camera-person retreats. Paving stones, branches, the stairs again,
then darkness.
A jarring edit to men kissing under a street lamp. One man undoes the
top button of the other man's stiff denim trousers with difficulty. It
takes time and force to undo it, and it gives the camera a moment to
draw in to the eventual pop of the button, through the tricky hole.
The video reverses, cues to that moment again, and replays, and
replays, and replays. Pop, pop, pop.
The environs change again, the outside world has shifted to something
recognizably American. A girl in a red t-shirt and no bottom unties a
ribbon and lets her hair fall nearly to her waist. She is at home
idling behind a house on a suburban lawn somewhere, at that hour of
light that makes the camera unfailing with her simple beauty. The girl
walks, talks, waters. She mentions her undergrad plans, a professor,
an annoying administrator. A long silence as she brutalizes a rogue
encroachment of crabgrass with a spade. When she rises she looks at
the camera and must recognize the desire of the operator, she smiles
and runs her hand over her chest and down, and without
a beat, several of her soil covered fingers disappear, and she says she
is so dirty.
A long cut of a beautiful native in a snow-field.
Indescribable light.
Now it is as if the camera hides under something, on a table in a
crowded café. A voice complains of the smell emanating from a
bathroom. A man and a girl drift into view and a door opens revealing
a long mirror, a sink and a toilet. The couple signal to someone out
of frame, the man looks furtively over his shoulder. Another man
appears and grabs the girl by the hand and then the other man. The
three all squeeze into the tiny room, and the door shuts quickly, but
with some effort as the trio struggle to clear their limbs, and to
seal themselves inside.
Another break and a raddled and sour queen makes watch over a young
dancer in a halter as she dances with a very young African boy on a
hazy street of walk-ups. She shows him her breasts with a flash and he
smiles wild uncontrolled gums, his eyes glazed. His body is lean,
sinuous, and a near opposite the queen and his colorless, overfed,
squashy contours. He massages his cock through spotted lamé. A
thin visible snake encased in a sweltering metal pantsuit has a
partner streak, a soak of semen. The music is not typical dance music,
it bares and changes signatures, is atonal and aggressively modern,
but then settles into a predictable disco throb as the African grinds,
as she winds in the foreground, and the transvestite in a cower
mournfully runs his index finger and thumb along his shaft.
The phone rings. The video pauses, two white bars appear in the corner
of the screen, his screen and our screen, and the young man sighs.
He has to put his pants back on. His cock bounds filled with blood. He
reaches the phone and says a short and pitched hello.
Mom. Yeah… I got in just a little while ago and… What? No, I don't
know if I will stay.
Her picture is on the wall next to the phone, when she was young. She
is felinity, coquettish, looking mid-century.
I might stay with Andrea instead. I haven't seen her in a long time.
She is everything that she was in her Tiffany and Chanel, accurately
and specifically dressed to impress boys with her breeding and charm,
the picture taken at Fordham, even though she went to Barnard.
Mom, don't say that. Don't already! That's the other reason why I
don't know if I'll stay. I've known Andrea such a long time and… Well,
she doesn't say things like that about you! God, how can you say
things like that! Who believes that anymore! I think I'll go, but I'll
meet you at lunch tomorrow. No, no, I didn't bring my camera, no.
You'll have to bring yours… At the diner on 52nd? Ok, ok. I'll call if it changes…
I'm going to go now.
He re-starts the film and brings it forward to an explicit montage.
The camera focuses on a cock, so we are sure the camera-person is a
camera-man. A girl with a short tangle of curls bobs her head on the
cock, slicking the veins and hair, her glistening glissando elicits
ahs and profanity. The camera registers the voice of another man coming
from behind it, demanding attention, and the camera moves and sets on a
bureau, pointed to a divan. The girl positions like a tripod, on a
knee and on her head. A young man, not so different from our young man
is behind her, but it is uncertain, because another taller and sturdier
man, is behind him. The three fuck in tender unison.
Our young man spumes a froth on a very expensive looking couch while
looking from his vantage into the living room and to the picture above
the television. He closes his eyes.
His face registers inarticulately a certain unction he feels so integrally,
as to believe it is his alone, as though nobody had felt his mixture of pleasure and sadness,
for ruined, lost images. It is hard to believe in sole belief, in a belief free of
other possible representations different from one's own, to have belief in unrepeatable belief.
Unique belief, impossible to stage or to re-enact, a belief that is
purely interior, would be directed at a grave disadvantage to the real.


