‘We’re not,’ I tell her, and we hug. My skin is still a little tender, but I think I can live with it.
PART
THREE
INTRODUCED BY
MIKHAEL STUCK
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for that warm welcome, and thanks to the Film Institute for asking me to introduce this screening of the first and last film by the visionary director Max Black: Sticking Point.
Max was one of a kind.
He was best known as an actor, and in that he excelled. But since his death nine years ago it has been my goal to make his talent as a director better known to the world, based on the footage he shot whilst attempting to tell the story of my life, and the lives of five others. We became known through the media as the Stuck Six, and everybody thought they knew everything there was to know about us.
But there was so much more.
When people are deeply in love we say they become like one person, one soul, united. I don’t think that’s true. We retain our individuality, and our right to our own interpretation of the love we share. Max was deeply interested in that idea. Not the notion of getting to the truth at the heart of the Stuck Six, but of realising there was no one truth about us. He bought the rights to Howard’s autobiography, but that wasn’t what he was filming. He talked to all of us, and he became my friend when I realised he was trying to construct something complex. Something both moving, and fair to my life.
I found a like mind in Max Black.
When I first met him I was surprised at how different he was from his media persona. I thought he would use his charm on me to get what he wanted, but instead he did something that people rarely do. He listened to me. He wanted to understand what having that love, and losing it, had done to me and to my family. We began to talk regularly in preparation for his film, and often the conversation focused on how different the world would be without moulting. He pictured a time when love cannot be bought or sold, lost or gained in a skin.
I wonder what he would have made of the huge changes we have all faced in the last few years as that world has become a reality. I think he would have been overjoyed. I only wish he had waited to see it.
New studies show that over seventy per cent of the UK’s population now take a daily supplement of Suscutin, delaying the moulting process indefinitely. We now have the choice whether to moult or to remain in the skin that loves. We can leave love behind when we’re ready.
This means that now, in the year 2022, Max’s only work as a director is already outdated. He’s not alone in this. Every piece of art made before 2020 is a historical record. To watch, read, or listen to anything made before that date can feel like the equivalent of watching a public information film about the horrors of smallpox. These problems no longer apply to us, do they?
I’ve asked myself many times, particularly once Suscutin came along, why I’ve spent so much time working to get Sticking Point finished, and to the attention of the general public. Even once I had enlisted the support and belief of our director, Sofie, and the backing of our distributor, Silverfish, I wondered what I was attempting to do. Why does this one film matter so much when there are so many other films, finished films, on the subject of love already? Surely this is the time for new artists and new visions?
I was surprised, when I looked deep inside myself, to realise that the answer wasn’t based purely on my personal connection to Max. It sprang from my belief that when someone’s way of living becomes history, it doesn’t automatically become irrelevant.
Love is still love. It’s going to take us all a while to figure that out, maybe. But whether we feel it alone, or with a special person, or in a group, it is the same emotion. Whether it lasts for one skin or one minute, or forever. In its essence, in its time of existence, it is the same, and it unites us all.
I can’t think of a film that explores that concept better than Sticking Point, and I never knew a person who understood that better than Max Black. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoy the film.
After the screening there are drinks to be drunk, congratulations to be borne, photos to be taken with Sofie and the suits. We all smile and wrap our arms around each other’s backs. We stare straight ahead as if we share a vision, one way, travelling. Fuck it, fuck them all and their demands and compromises. It’s not the film I wanted but I’m done with it, and with them all. I’ve done my best by Max, and now maybe I can sleep.
Yes, I can sleep. I sneak out, find a cab, and don’t bother to undress once I’m through the door. I fall on the bed, and it all goes away. I’ve let him down, but I’ve done my penance. I’ve got nothing bad left to dream about.
The phone wakes me up early. It’s Gwen.
‘You should have come last night,’ I say, and she says, ‘Mik, can you get here? It’s back.’
SOMETHING TERRIBLE.
I ask her all the right questions, and try to make sense of her answers. I find myself saying ‘Right’ after each reply, as if things are being sorted into the correct order.
‘You couldn’t tell me you were having more tests?’ is my final question. The one I have to ask, for my own sake.
Gwen looks terrible. This was a fit woman, tall and strong and capable – a bodyguard, for Christ’s sake. All of the qualities I associate with her have been sucked out of her body by this disease. Her skin is the wrong colour and texture. It’s too white and papery on her face, dry and cracked, and blotched with red that has coagulated into purple swellings behind her ears, striping down her neck. When did I last see her? Surely she didn’t look like this.
‘You’ve lost so much already,’ she says. ‘I kept hoping it would be—’
‘A bad dream? This isn’t about me.’
‘You’re the one who’ll get left behind.’
This cottage. This cottage is too small, I should have bought her a bigger one. I can’t pace in this living room; I can’t breathe with this low-beamed ceiling pressing down on me, the wood painted black, everything about it belonging to some other version of England. I take back what I said last night – screw the past, forget it, it makes no sense. Let’s start again.
Although the future’s not looking any better.
‘Sit down,’ she says.
‘Let’s just stay in the present, okay?’ I sit on the sofa, beside her, and feel like a hulking mess next to her new fragility. I shouldn’t have driven after the amount I drank last night. I’m probably still over the limit.
‘From the look of you it was a good night,’ she says.
‘It really wasn’t.’
‘You want painkillers?’
‘Yes.’ I rub my temples while she gets up, unfolding with a delicacy that makes me feel ashamed of my mere headache.
‘Ibuprofen or one of my personal stash?’ she calls from the kitchen.
‘You choose.’
She comes back with a glass of water and two white oblong pills. I knock them back. ‘So how long?’
‘I thought you wanted to stay in the present.’
‘I’m asking how long we can stay in the present for.’
‘Not long,’ she says, curling back up to her original position, knees tucked in, spine curved against the cushions. Why should she say that so calmly? I want her to rage with me, to challenge it all. We had plans for after I’d done with the film. We were going to go travelling and do things, physical things like climbing and swimming and hiking. It all had a reality to me that is growing more ephemeral by the minute, and I can’t grasp it, or her.