| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Pete Guest is a writer and journalist based in West London. He is editor of the counter-culture ezine Small Fish Online. (www.peterguest.co.uk). |
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| © 2007 zygoteinmycoffee Ink. |
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| Postmodern |
| by Pete Guest |
| The Taoist master Chang Tzu once had a dream that he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he was a man again. But, he questioned, was he now a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly still dreaming he was a man? I’m starting to understand. I’m in a shower, being lathered and plucked. And filmed.
This is a scene from my life, though the first time she was strawberry blonde, rather than platinum like this toy they’ve found for me. The actress playing the actress. She was very glamorous, which is why they kept the scene in. Very glamorous, but not very pretty without her make up and scaffolding. Close up you could see the pores and the porcine tube of flesh along the jawline that glowed lobster pink beneath her unguents and potions. And naked, her curves were rolls. But then, there’s nothing at all romantic about sex in the shower, feet slipping on the greasy porcelain, the sexual geometry of placements and thrusts and grips, it’s more like judo than intercourse. We choreographed it for celluloid, filmed it through jets of real steam, placed cameras, then placed ourselves accordingly, so as not to reveal the intimacies of the impossibilities of our embrace. They have even put oil on us, because it looks wetter than water. It’s fucking ridiculous. Sorry, it’s Fucking Ridiculous, the film of the book. My book, my life. And I’m playing me. Well actually, I’m playing me as I was at 27. I’m 38, and my agent sells me well. I can play anyone from 25 and up, even me. I’ve had to work off the weight for the role, and while I might be the same waist size I was, I’m not the same shape. I’ve expanded and contracted and expanded and contracted, so like worn leather, my skin has expanded and contracted into a cracked and browned crust. I have a bag of unmoveable fat that rests on the top of my pelvis, around my spine. And I am aware of my heart. I am increasingly aware of it. You are not supposed to know these internal workings. They just are. But I can feel my heart like it’s a bruise. I’m also aware of my arse, once a part of me, now a cancerous protuberance. But that’s just vanity, I think. “It’s My F**king Life” say the billboards. There is one above the train station as I get off to come here. For the book, you understand. There is a phenomenal degree of prescience amongst the film industry, and it could have been preordained that my life would become book would become film about the time the first pap snuck a range shot of me sculpting a Himalayan line of Colombian on the brickwork of the barbeque at my nineteenth birthday. But they haven’t organised the ad campaign yet. I’ve been called a shooting star. Sorry. The blurb calls me a shooting star. I have an image consultant, who tells me when to shoot my mouth off. There was an American friend of mine. I say friend. Co-star. He actually shot his face off through his mouth. They didn’t call him a shooting star. Somehow it wouldn’t be funny. He’s in the film, though he’s someone else. It’s a gritty film. That’s a marketing word. Cinema verité, of sorts. Is cinema mensongé the opposite? Who knows? What it means is that there are none of those camp twists. The love, for example. Most lovestruck characters would, in real life, be classed as criminally obsessive. And the violence – the violence is close to real. Film violence is open, wide swinging, sexy violence. Not so the reality. Stiletto heels aimed for the face. Biting and headbutting. Tiny gobbets of semi-liquid flesh that come out of lips, noses and cuticles and stick to everything. It’s not pleasant, and it’s certainly not clean. They do that alright in Fucking Ridiculous. But we’ve got one of those verité auteurs, who know how to artfully disgust. It starts beautifully. I’ll say that. Dark, with the vague outline of a bed. And on the soundtrack, something that could be tears, or could be moans of pleasure. That’s a peculiarity of film, that sobbing sounds like sex. And this is, as much as anything, a film about films. And it’s not revealed which it is. That’s up to you to interpret. There is plenty of sex, there are plenty of tears. Plenty of violence. It’s a masculine, misogynistic film, but with a heart. I can really feel my heart. I get it sometimes. The doctors have one explanation, I have another. Who can tell who’s right? “Cut!” Someone hands my co-star a robe and throws me a towel. This scene will be shot in two parts. For dramatic effect the blazing row that follows will be filmed separately, with better makeup and angry jets of steam firing out at us. They have to get the fake blood ready. You see I am about to beat her senseless. To within an inch of her life, according to the tabloids at the time. Then I will drive around for hours in her Lamborghini until my agent – my gold-hearted, bull-headed rock of an agent, played by a contemporary of mine who once fed bad pills to a groupie and legged it when she went into shock – phones me up and talks me into stepping in at the last minute on some talk-show. The guy they had dropped out, it’s a chance for me to plug the film etc. So I will go on, already steaming from the half a bottle of JD that I’ve had in the green room, and play my part. I will go on, the violent, the boorish misogynist. The character actor in real life. I will swear until they have to ask me to stop. I will tell the host that the film is shot like a home movie and the plot has more holes than a Vietnamese whore. They will love that line. Someone daubs waxy paint on my cheeks. ‘Positions!’ How much will go in the sequel, I wonder. But I know how it starts: “The Taoist master Chang Tzu once had a dream that he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he was a man again. But, he questioned, was he now a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly still dreaming he was a man?” That will surprise them. |
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| Jan. 2007 |
| 77 |