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by Eurydice (c) 1999
JAILBIRDS' SONG Ela is chatting with a young pock-marked guard at the prison gate who turns out to be Bob the zookeeper's twin. He wears a violet silk scarf around his neck under his uniform and a blue
carnation in his chest pocket. He looks off into the distance as he inhales the smoke squinting with Bogart-like eyes and muses: "I am a balletomane: I hunger for aromatically musical movement, for tons of froufrou and costly toe-shoes, for beanstalk ballerinas and their midget tits. Love for me is like dancing asleep. After sex I ask: Must it be like this? I always lock the door before sex. Afterwards I eat like a Roman." He adds: "What is `life' in Latin? I used to know it." Ela: "Pussy." His eyes light up and he nods, yes, now he remembers it.
Ela feels like a fraud without her cunt and talk of sex offends her. She tells him she needs information. He tells her his name is Rob. She wonders if there have been any pussy related incidents recently in his prison; she is researching prison promiscuity for NOW. In her loins she can feel her crater coiling in hang-jaw anticipation.
Rob says of course, he's right now in fact getting a hardon, why, only yesterday a lifer got his cock chewed off, isn't that something, tsk, unimaginable; he doesn't know how, but inmates go through those things all the time, they'll pull anything off, they're maniacs in there; it is impossible to keep up with all the sex hysteria; and the lifer is in the hospital, knocked off. She asks to speak to the vic-tim's cellmate, or to any other prisoner who has been there long and knows all the gossip, a Dick, a Tom, or a Harry. Rob promises to bend some rules and pull some strings for her; all he wants in return is the light from her pussy, he says. She agrees, lying. It is a deal.
Walking off with Rob, Ela wonders when her new conservative sex repulsion first originated. What has happened to her historically renowned lust for the perfect fuck? Gone the way of all good things.
In the visitors' gallery at the prison, Ela is shooting the breeze with red-headed hairy dirty Harry through the visitors' window. By now, having shed her cape, cap and sunglasses in the subway, she is left in the tiny red lace dress and pink elfin boots, like a plucked bird. Harry is 6ft. tall and wide like a truck in his gray uniform. Ela tells Harry she has come for a clue regarding a cannibal.
Harry says she's come to the right person. He discloses: "First all of us boys thought it was a pink plastic dildo, I mean Pocket-Pussy; but high quality, man, exact-ly like the real thing; a killer. Someone must have sneaked it in and it was doing the rounds. I've got a love doll called Sheena, sells for $39.95 and has fleshlike extra thick wet latex labia for a lasting relationship, says the label, but that is nothing in comparison..I mean totally high tech..the guys were fighting over it and everything like it was a real broad. So it finally reached Dick, who's the big man here and has got tattoos on his chest that look exactly like that Pocket-Pussy. It turns out, Dick said it was a real-life woman's cunt, on its own..what a find..and that this was a real man's job so he'd keep it to himself..he wanted to sleep with it every night 'cause he said he'd never screwed anything so tight..this is the best fucking cunt in the world you jerks he said..and Dick's had pussy from all over..he's done hundreds of pussies from every town and country..said he'd let us watch and jerk off but that was all..he punched Tom's eyes out for asking to borrow it..he ordered `no talk with Rosie!' That was final..maybe they knew each other from before. Dick is a smart little pig, but Tom said to me secretly this thing will ruin Dick, he'll fall, it's like a man's calling to love one broad once for good and this was it for Dick..so Dick kept it on a string all day, a wire or rope or some-thing, I dunno, like a bird, a chick..and said to us all `Rosie this' and `Rosie that'..in the mornings he called out "I've got a live one here!" and laughed..he let it free at night to screw.. he'd stick it in and be screaming crazy `fucking Hell, I'm God!'..he kept the jail up..everyone was jerking off..I've never heard a man come for so long ..we thought they'd have him removed to the madhouse or shoot him up to shut him up..but I guess they liked to listen too..until the fourth night that he had it. Now that was weird. Just dead silent all of a sudden. We couldn't get a peek because we were locked up; but this guard says Dick tried to fuck it but it was slipping out of Dick's fists like a live eel, watersnake, it wouldn't stay put. It shook and squirmed like the devil, but you don't know Dick—he held it hard and went in, all the way. Then it happened. Blood and all. Dick being tough, bit his tongue off and didn't utter a sound. They found him halfdead. The guard had passed out too. The creepy thing had gone off on its own, just like that, carrying along old Dick's cock."
Ela suddenly feels as if she's oggling at a peepshow on Times Square, with Harry looking more like Roseanne. She realizes: No one here has playful eyes. Harry, bringing her back to real time: "The doc searched the toilets and they asked us all if we saw it but Pete's cock vanished with Rosie. Who knows where! Reno, for all my guess is worth. Having a screwball. My notion is, the cops should shoot it, or else it'll put a lot of our guys out of use. You can't bite off a man's cock and run off with it like nothing happened!" Ela: "Don't they want it alive?" Harry: "Who can trust it? You've no idea how good it is! I'm talking heady stuff." Ela: "I must find it. Who is the guard who saw it? Where can I go next?" Her voice sobs.
Harry: "The guard has been off-duty since, maybe he's having nightmares or getting drunk or whatever, it shook him up. My theory is, it's killed a dick! Check out the women's. If it's a cunt, that's where they'd take it, if they caught it. But if they wait to fry it in the chair, it'll do much damage yet. Once a cunt, always a cunt, I say. They better not let it in back here, I'm telling you. We'll lynch it like they used to, give it what it deserves this time, tear that hole apart. We'll fuck that sucker, in the name of dead Dick!"
Ela is going to the women's prison. It is early evening, visiting hours are already over, the wind is blowing hysterically and Ela has began to stoop already. But she can't afford to wait another day, or hour, if her cunt is in such serious trouble. She must catch up to it.
Anxious to avoid all timeconsumming communication, she scribbles a note on her knees and holds it up at the first crossroads. It reads: I'M CATHOLIC. I'VE MADE A VOW NOT TO SPEAK TO ANY MAN NOR HEAR A MAN'S VOICE FOR A YEAR. A HOLY VOW TO ST BARBARA. PLEASE HELP ME KEEP IT. IT IS TO SAVE MY DEVOUT SISTER, WHO IS DYING FROM UNKNOWN DISEASE. I MUST NOT BE TEMPTED. MAY THE GRACE OF ST. BARBARA BE WITH YOU.
She looks out in the characteristic composed-and-absent way of the deaf. She knows that if she makes people feel like heroes in a world full of love, she can be safe and expedient.
As expected, the note instantly performs the miracle. A cabbie slams his brakes, beams, and breaks into a radiant smile from hairy ear to hairy ear like a proud simpleminded father. She slides in the car and jots down her next destination. He continues to smile throu-ghout the trip, blinking his eyes sweetly in the rear-view mirror.
"From jail to jail, huh?" he comments, through the foggy window that separates them. He has the hearty chagrin of an immigrant whose dreams have been undone by the constant drip of fatigue. He wears a brown oily suit and a black velveteen tie with Elvis painted on it, which hangs loosely around his soiled collar with a knot so tight and old it is the size of a pea; he evidently prefers to pull his beloved tie over his head rather than untie it. He has a nose like the prow of a ship, lidless brown eyes, an alcoholic's dry skin, a blacksmith's shoulders and his nails are beaten to the roots. He tells himself:
"How unusual to find someone who still believes these days! This seminaked girl is the first saint I meet in person. I mustn't speak, or God knows what blasphemies might come out of me. She is a nice-looking vehicle, someone to tear up the night with. But this is my chance to do a favor for God. She will go far, this funny-looking pretty holy punk! Maybe she will be Mother Theresa one day! And the poor sister, how lucky to be loved like this!" He imagines every detail of her heartbreaking story that she would otherwise have to invent herself. Now at last, Ela can take a nap on the back seat.
Finally the happy driver opens her door, bowing and glowing. His primeval smell pervades her. A smile is now permanently on his face, as if glued on it. He says: "Please, I want no money for the ride; I'm so moved by your story, I want to be a part of it." At once he realizes with shame that he is not supposed to speak according to her vow, covers his mouth with his calloused hand and shakes his finger as in "bad, bad!" He then shakes his head right and left, opens his arms up from the elbows and shakes them left to right, and his entire body motions one non-stop "No!" his head pointing toward the meter.
Ela nods and smiles humbly. She is terrified to speak herself and test the virtual reality of her oral castration. She turns toward the prison gates, summoning her courage to address the guard on duty. But before she can get a word out, the uniformed bulky woman shuts the gates to her face: "After hours." Ela feels like a mouse trap has been clamped to her mouth. She furtively looks behind her.
The cabbie is waving at her, clasping his hands together upward, in a handshake with himself, like a coach outside the boxing ring.
Ela thinks: Once upon a time, I could have used my cunt to get what I needed. Now I must depend on words. What torture! She pleads with the guard: she's come on the recommendation of Bob and Rob, no, she does not want to see a prisoner, but she must see the director.
The gates open laboriously but close sharply and fast behind her. This prison seems to Ela more austere, cold, drab, dangerous. She is led into the imposing building to a room crowded with hundreds of women, inmates and guards, all glued immobile to a TV set. They are watching a Hard Copy special on promiscuity in the women's prison. Ela stares at all the tight-tongued women vengefully. In her mind she pictures herself stealing their cunts, cutting them out quietly, freezing them, pickling them, drying them, wearing them each alterna-tely, changing into two or three different cunts in the course of a fuck, or exchanging them—at a ratio of 100 for 1?—for her own.
Ela is introduced to the warden, an anorexic platinum blonde in a Paul Poiret chiffon uniform and Salvatore Ferragamo heels, with ruby lips and diamond earrings who moans: "You're a striking woman. Do you need my advice? Let me ask you first: Do you need a martini?"
She leads Ela to her office. There is a Tamara de Lempicka on the wall, an old gramophone, and a Louis Vuitton octagonal beauty case on the spotless desk. They sit down to discuss Ela's plight.
The anorexic jailer: "Food makes me feel guilty like a criminal." Ela: "Have you been to San Blas? When women get their first period they paint their faces black. The dye stays on for a year. I'll do that tonight, cover my face with ashes. I'll hold a candle under the mirror." Anorexic jailer: "I had a Mexican gal here who'd known Cas-taneda, and she explained to me why food is poisonous." Ela: "I was in the sauna in Santa Barbara when a Mexican laborer peeked in and sank his infected teeth into my cunt on impulse. It was a nice surp-rise." Anorexic jailer: "I cannot even begin to picture what happens to food inside us. Were you naked?" Ela: "He must have come to clean the pool." Anorexic jailer: "Love is our habit of saying: `Give me from your mouth to eat.' As the Hunger Artist in my past life I was happier, proud inside that cage. Since then I keep having to prove my innocence by not being burned when I put my face into a bowl of hot soup and not drowning when thrown in with a stone on my neck." Ela: "Love is my carving board; it's an accessory."
They sit across each other, like thin-lipped tough-talking broads in a film noir exchanging words that are bullets from their hearts. The anorexic jailer pats her hair which reminds Ela of the Caribbean sand and looks painted on her skull. She keeps her cheek under her other hand throughout their talk as if concealing lesions on her face.
Anorexic jailer: "If I were writing about you, I would say: some-thing in her denies participation." Ela: "I do enjoy undressing in front of old paralytic men in wheelchairs and lying naked at their feet to sunbathe. The impossible turns me on." Anorexic jailer: "I would be happy if it was impossible for me to go to the bathroom and evacuate; that function disturbs me profoundly. During work, I often fall on the ground screaming, frothing from the orifices." Ela: "I've come to ask you for an orifice. A prisoner of yours." Anorexic jai-ler: "Did you say Orpheus? I believe it was a brandname in antiquity. I am not a good consumer. I stick my thumb into each hole to stop the flow, but this corroding liquid is everywhere. I dream of plugging up all the holes. I feel it flow out of my pores in my sleep."
Ela: "I know; I must find her before it's too late. I was told she came here because she bit some cock off." Anorexic jailer: "But that's common practice. I'll check the files. What name does she go by?" Ela: "She's generally called a cunt." Anorexic jailer: "Is that her Christian name?" Ela: "Oh well, she's wet, petite, tense, very quiet but she likes action." Anorexic jailer: "Is she the one who just went on hunger strike? Wait here. Please don't eat anything."
The anorexic jailer returns with the TV set. She says: "It's not here anymore. I sent the girls to sleep; I'm afraid it's on TV." Ela watches a smiling Hard Copy announcer report on the following story:
"A vaginal parasite was brought into the women's prison today by prostitutes. Police has no idea what it is: there is no FBI file on it, no social security number, they can't even handcuff it properly." SCREEN CUTS TO: The anorexic jailer interviewd in lipsync: "Whores who are trustworthy regulars here, brought it in a sealed shoebox. They said it should be kept off the streets because it was emasculating all the customers and they were losing trade. It even attacked the pimps. It couldn't be shot with a gun as it is an open hole, nor hacked up because it moves constantly. A bomb might do it but it'd destroy much else too. It's like the alien in Liquid Sky.
"The alien was trapped into a Macy's shoebox by a new girl who'd just come out on the street from Milwaukee. Around 7pm she reportedly felt something suck on her um, genitalia. She thought she'd got a bad infection, but it didn't smell fishy; it smelled like old orchids and oxidized apples. She put a mirror in front of it and saw a different layer of labia shining over her own, so she pulled it away even though it hurt a lot, for the alien um, private part wouldn't let go willing-ly. Her own um, reproductive organ hurt like the thing was glued on it; she tore it off. The kid was bleeding, but you know farmgirls, she even had the presence of mind to put it in her new spike-heel shoebox and tape it shut, before she took it to the elder whores who immediately brought it here, not knowing where else it would be safely removed from their world. I thought they were on crack or something."
SCREEN CUTS TO: Two smiling announcers as they amicably discuss:
"So we know the monster drops its guard and likes to sit on young girls.." "Perhaps to recharge itself like a dead battery.." "Aha, ve-ry good, Pete. But as soon as a man tries to penetrate it, it strikes fatally. It sounds those old wives' tales. But it's news, folks!"
The anorexic jailer limply lifts her deepset colorless eyes and opens her skiny arms in a slow motion gesture of bitter disapproval.
My God, Ela thinks, my cunt has become a female Stanley Kowalski! A meathead! A woman starts to scream from a cell below.
AFTER THE COMMERCIAL BREAK, SCREEN BACK CUTS TO: The anorexic jailer, now lipsyncing with a constipated official's concern:
"I opened the shoebox as due procedure to have the criminal stri-pped and deloused. There was nothing there. Seriously. It was a big hole, just as the women said, and so it was released at once. That is the bare-all truth: "It" is nothing! A signifying absence! The whores begged me to keep it here, promised to sleuth, even pay for its keep. But one has to put away something, in order to keep society calm, so it is useless to imprison nothing. It goes against logic and rules."
Ela shouts: "Big? How big? What do you mean by `big'?"
Not big enough to trip over and fall into, the jailer assures her, not like an open well, for instance. Ela: "Where did she go?" The anorexic jailer: "That is not a jailer's business. I can send you to the inspector in charge of the investigation. Why are you so interested in Ms. Cunt? She seems to me like a loose cannon. The saddest most worrisome part of it is that these types, as you must ha-ve noticed, soon show signs of bloat; turn themselves into fruitcakes, like Adjani in Possession. I foresee her moebius-like agility will turn into a trunk. She'll be reduced to fatty tissue. All girth." Ela: "I think she is mine." The unknown woman continues to bellow in the bowels of the jail until her lungs pop loudly like paper bags.
The anorexic jailer: "Ontologically speaking, there is no such thing as `mine.' The liquid around us is a disease. In this liquid all floats loose, nothing belongs to us, not even our bodies and sen-ses. But to drain this liquid is to kill us all." Ela: "But now I can't live without her." Anorexic jailer: "Life is a homoerotic battle of the bulge. We feed off death to stay alive until all death has been consumed and life and death become interchangeable. That is why I loathe food." Ela thinks: When will my cunt learn its lesson and come back? Is this a time of growth for my cunt?
Ela suddenly feels terribly hungry. She runs to the waiting cab.
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