“My psychologist says I should tell you that I feel like you never listen to me,” says Aníbal Manta, looking out of the corner of his eye at Saudade, joined at the waist to the swaying figure of the prostitute. “He says that I have to talk to you directly and be completely honest. That that's the only way I can solve my problems with you. He says that I have to explain how I have the feeling that you never pay attention to me and that that makes me feel bad. That I already feel bad enough because I'm big and fat and I like comic books. You're my work partner and my psychologist told me very clearly that I have to take the bull by the horns and be brave and tell you all the things you do that make me feel bad.”
Manta stops when he establishes that Saudade isn't listening to him. At this point, it not only seems clear to Manta that Saudade's inability to concentrate betrays a classic case of attention deficit disorder. It also seems clearer and clearer that his colleague's sexual compulsion is a subconscious mechanism to avoid facing the here and now. Especially when that here and now involves a conversation with elements of serious emotional exchange. Now Saudade moves the prostitute's head away from his penis and indicates to her through signs that she should turn around and lean forward. The prostitute turns around with a neutral expression. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand and leans forward with her back to Saudade. Manta feels a stab of emotional stress when Saudade's enormous and vigorous penis skewers the prostitute with dyed hair from behind. With incredible ease, it seems to Manta.
“My kid has one of those things you make ice cream with,” says Saudade, charging furiously with his hips against the prostitute's ass, which is soft and pale and covered in freckles. “Not one of those cheap ones where you put in some powder and mix it with water and then you freeze it with a little stick inside.” He pauses and wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand before resuming the onslaught. The prostitute exudes professional sounds of sexual satisfaction. “It's one of those things that make real ice cream. The creamy kind. You can put in chocolate shavings or whatever you want. I gave it to him a couple of years ago, for his birthday I think. The kid likes ice cream.” He nods, satisfied. “Like his dad.”
Aníbal Manta's penis still hasn't achieved a satisfactory erection, and the prostitute kneeling in front of him finds herself forced to pause in her fellation to grab it with her hand and give it some energetic shakes. The paintings of deer infiltrate Manta's visual field obstinately. With their wrong-colored skies and their out-of-proportion deer that stare at him from the walls looking like dogs or other animals in costumes. The transition between Aníbal Manta's moments of severe emotional stress and his fits of rage, along with the control mechanisms he's had to develop in order to repress said fits, have become, over time, the main focus of his therapy sessions. The same fits that he began to experience in the school yard when he was a boy of elephantine dimensions whom the other kids called The Thing. The Thing, according to his therapist's explanations, is a superhero grotesque in appearance but endowed with solid emotional values and colossal strength who is absolutely crucial to the Fantastic Four. To the functioning of the Fantastic Four as a supergroup with balanced superpowers. Those are the elements of The Thing's identity which make his therapist consider him a superhero that embodies the difficulty and pathos and nobility of Aníbal Manta's life. Now Manta closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on those ideas of nobility and difficulty in spite of the fact that the professional noises of sexual satisfaction coming from Saudade's prostitute have turned into shrieks of pleasure that are not strictly professional. Manta's prostitute pauses, raises her head and asks him something in Italian.
“Don't worry, darling,” Manta says to her, kneeling to retrieve the pants at his ankles and pull them up. The idea that The Thing has no penis beneath the blue underwear of his Fantastic Four uniform flits around his brain like a malicious little animal. “Go with those two if you want.”
Saudade plows into the prostitute with dyed hair, her hands now against the wall, making all the furniture and the paintings of deer tremble. Aníbal Manta lights a cigarette.
CHAPTER 12. Iris Without Eric
The set of the shoot of the second low-budget production featuring Penny DeMink is filled with those elements designed to represent opulence and sophistication that one finds on the sets of low-budget productions where no one, from the production designer to the viewer in his hotel room, seems to have ever had any experience of opulence or sophistication. Adult films that will never see the light of theaters or ever be published in DVD format. Tapes with generic titles destined to fill the late-night loops of the last television channels in airport hotels for businessmen. Films devoid of the glamour and genuine excitement of the real pornographic industry. Without real sex acts between sex goddesses and Olympic studs. Where slow motion is a way to fill time and close-ups are a way to distract attention from the lack of budget for set design.
“Get closer to her,” says the director in a bored tone. In that same bored tone one uses to talk to one's mother or sister while paying attention to what's happening on TV. “And put your hand on her ass, fuck. Don't be afraid. Her ass won't bite you.”
The back wall of the set is covered with a moth-eaten curtain that someone took from a bankrupted theater. It's a detail of the set that no one seems to have bothered to justify in terms of the plot. As often happens with this kind of set. There are statues that look vaguely classical depicting nude women in positions close to sexual ecstasy. There is a statue of a cherub that emits a parabolic stream of water from its tiny penis. There is a canopy bed and someone has attached what look like sequins to the gauzy curtains that hang from it. There doesn't seem to be any plot justification for the sequins. The charmingly coarse signs of opulence found in low culture. Out of the darkest sewers of the film industry. And in the middle of it all, standing beside the canopy bed, Iris Gonzalvo caresses her svelte neck with a melancholy face. Her white flesh glows beneath the lights. Like a heavenly body illuminating its own crown of rotating debris. Turning it all into mere reflections and shadows of its glow. With her Rococo-style powdered wig and her high lace-up boots and her corset that constricts and raises her breasts on which someone has painted a beauty mark with eyeliner pencil. Magnificent in spite of the infinite clumsiness of her character portrayal or maybe precisely because of it.
“Are you deaf?” the director asks Iris Gonzalvo. With his eyebrows raised in an incredulous expression. Then he turns to his assistant. “Is she deaf? Am I not talking loud enough? Where did we get this girl from?”
The director's assistant shrugs her shoulders and pats the pockets of her photographer's vest as if the answer to the director's questions might be in one of them. In addition to the photographer's vest, the director's assistant wears combat pants and a stopwatch hanging from a chain around her neck and a pocket protector filled with pens and one of those baseball hats with a jokey message.