THREESOME IN ABSENTIA

MEET ME YONDER: Two porn stars strewn on an upholstered lounge. It’s all faux-fur and hot pink velvet. The downlights are making their upper lips sweat. A singular bead of the stuff crystallises into a Monroe piercing by the cupid’s-bow. (It’s symbiotic and calculated.) 

There’s a man over there, off to the corner and dressed in a robe. In fact, there are men everywhere, crawling over the set. They dress in black and avoid eye contact. We are in between takes, they say,  just relax, enjoy each other's company chat between yourselves, try not to slip into any kind of quiet for it is any kind of quiet that will ruin the director’s vision and we do not want to ruin the director’s vision, must not let it seem incongruous, anything less than provocative, or god forbid… amateur. Can we get you a glass of water? How ‘bout a straw for the ladies? Haha. 

HERE: In the op-shop I found a pretty jar for $8.99. 

THERE: Fascinating stuff.

HERE: Before realising it was an urn. Urn, yes. But I suppose the lady at the counter already had the thought when she saw me pick it up, right? When I unscrewed the pewter lid to discover another seal. I thought, how strange! Must be a very well insulated lunchbox. We just don’t make things with such high quality anymore. Couldn’t exactly fit a sandwich… no. But I suppose it didn’t matter anyway because by that time I had sworn off sandwiches. What were they to me anyway? What business did two slabs of bread and a slice of overprocessed meat have hanging around in my lunchbox without paying any kind of rent?

THERE: Do you think we’ll start shooting again soon or are we moving onto the next set? The one with the funny title? In Space No One Can Hear You… Cream? Something tacky like that. I suppose they’ll paint us silver. My back aches sitting like this. You’d think they’d at least–

HERE: No, now I eat soups. All kinds. If my proximity to beauty is what makes me feel more attractive then my proximity to soup must also be of beauty. Goddess-sent. This, this urn, is the perfect vessel for a soup cause it’s round like the word soup, you see? The mouth has to make a round shape to even say the word. If you pucker your lips, like this, see–

THERE: I can feel it here, in the small of my back. It’s extending to the very base of my spinal cord. Tell them I’ve got meningitis. I don’t see why we have to stay spread out like this when He gets to prance about. Don’t you suppose he’s tired?

HERE: Something about continuity.

A beat. The man grazes over a tray of finger sandwiches. Classy. Slick with homebrand margarine and thinly sliced meat; ground from the best of the off-cuttings and floor scraps. He’s not thinking about ending up in the ground or a well-insulated lunchbox but perhaps, rather, wishes to be frozen amongst the rich ones. Yes, frozen. Just like how he keeps his plastic bags of mixed stir fry vegetables and white bread. He’s imagining being interviewed on national television about being the first Adult Film Performer to be stuck in the freezer. Yeah, that’s it. 

THERE: Wouldn’t you be scared you’d be drinking somebody's grandmother? 

HERE: I’d wash it first, of course. I’m no animal. 

THERE: A thing like that could haunt you.

HERE: I don’t believe in ghosts.

THERE: Really? I do. 

HERE: I don’t have time for ghosts.

THERE: You don’t feel at least the slightest bit haunted? What with all of these men coming and going and coming and going like it’s nobody's business? They tell you where they want you, you know. I remember this one guy, nameless, like the rest of them, body made from zeros and ones and nothing in between. He had no… meat to him. I asked him if he had ever been in love–

HERE: Silly question. 

THERE: He wanted me in all kinds of ways, he kept saying I want you THERE, I want you there!

HERE: It’s over there…the jar. I could paint it?

THERE: The urn, you mean.

HERE: Yeah, the urn. You know, now that I think of it, there was something strange engraved on the bottom of the jar. Even before I realised the substance of the thing. I thought it might’ve just been the company mark, but the more I mull it over the more I see it for what it truly is—

THERE: And then they say they want you there, but when you get there you are no longer there but here, which is a different space altogether. And then he paused, and asked me if I knew how to get to yonder. I answered by telling him I am not sure what he meant by this, to which he replied with a nod and an it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s just down yonder! But I have to pause because this word, yonder, catches itself in my hair and I can’t brush it out and it’s pulling me this way and that when the producer whispers in my ear “it’s a lexicological problem, obviously, not a problem with the apparatus.”

HERE: How could it not be a problem with the apparatus? The body, you mean. The jar. The urn. The play bow, the ass in the air and the hands outstretched on the mattress is nothing but the structure of boredom. That’s the first thing you learn in pilates. The instructor sits up the front in her matching active wear; the mandala tattoo hidden just beneath the surface of all that viscose and she asks you to bring intention to your practise?

THERE: Meet me yonder, he says, but how can that be? Yonder exists over there. If I had to picture it it’d be an empty car lot, and once I’m in that car lot I am no longer in yonder, for yonder has moved, slipped between my fingers all slick and unbecoming. Like you, like me. I turn around; behind me there is another car lot, further away, labelled yonder. The body, the apparatus can never exist in yonder. So then what is this? This display of the body; you in your black panties and me in my balconette bra with my nipples blinking at the world and not to any mewling child. This is not yonder; this is not any kind of time. What are we doing? 

HERE: Filming a threesome; you move your body when they say you should.