Everything Happened to Susan (2 page)

They are told that the final scene will now be filmed. Susan was not sure; she has lost some fundamental sense of time. A large, sullen German Shepherd is brought into the working area and Susan is told that she will have to copulate with him, preferably in a rear-entry position as this is where he is most experienced. The point of the last scene, the director explains to give her motivation, is to illustrate the utter degradation of the character’s life and the depths to which indiscriminate sex can lead even a respectable person.

The dog is half-dragged in on a long chain, the assistants concentrating on doing something with its rear legs. The beast eyes Susan with suspicion and the director says that there will be no trouble with the animal; it is the most docile and well-trained of all the dogs with whom he has worked and is so slightly built that Susan will not even feel entry. There have been troubles, he says vaguely, with certain dogs or actors in the past but not since they began using the kennel. For the first time, Susan protests, not because of the animal but because of what she calls an artistic revulsion; she asks if it would be possible to skip this scene or to assign it to someone else because she does not feel capable of doing it with conviction. The director repeats that the whole point of the film is to show the brutality and degradation of the character as she falls into fucking at random. The director is an old man, at least in relation to the principals in the room — forty-five or so with glasses that glint under the spotlights. And he has what seems to be a foreign accent but there is such a precision in his speech and gesture that Susan is unable to take him personally. He seems mostly to be another piece of equipment in the room, moving her in and out of position. The whole film has led up to this scene, the director goes on, to eliminate it would be to deny the movie its artistic integrity. He has been in this business for too long already and anyway time is important, too important for this nonsensical argumentation. The boy with whom she has been copulating giggles and tells Susan that there is nothing to worry about; he is rather experienced in this business and says he recognizes this dog and he has always behaved like a professional. Susan asks again if it would be possible to have another actress do the scene and the director replies that unless she completes her assignment, her pay will be withheld. For that matter, everyone’s pay will be withheld unless the movie is wrapped up now. The other actors circle around the director, but, instead of showing anger toward him, they give her baleful looks. “You can’t be a college girl all your life,” one of them says, which seems to Susan to be a harsh and unnecessarily cruel remark inasmuch as she has been out of college for two years.

She sighs and says that she will do her best. She will try to go through with the performance. Then she allows herself to be placed in the appropriate position and closes her eyes, trying to imagine how the character she is playing would react to the situation. Remembering her theatrical training she forces herself deep into the role, thinking of herself as an inexperienced, rather stupid girl who, in a search for humiliation gravitates toward German Shepherds. She conceives herself to be in the back seat of a car, perhaps a 1961 Ford Falcon, moving on the stiff pins underneath the cushions as the driver looms over her, still looking for the gearshift. In less time than she might have thought, it is over and she decides that it has not been that bad.

The partial manuscript of Timothy’s novel-in-progress has been submitted to seven hardcover houses, three paperback firms and, for serial use, to seventeen magazines. None of the responses have been particularly encouraging although one of the quarterlies did return his manuscript with an offer of a reduced subscription to writers that would have enabled him to receive the next five years of their review for only a fraction of what he would have had to pay at his local newsstand. Timothy tore up the subscription blank and form letter, muttering something about the exploitation of writers but this was a mystery to Susan, who remarked that in making its offer the review was certainly acknowledging that he was a writer and this was a part of the recognition for which he had been struggling. Timothy became savage when she said this and called her a stupid cunt, but, later on, after they had made up with a brutal fuck, he said that he could see her point and that no outsider could ever understand the agony of the writer, which was a very private and terrible thing.

Timothy lives in a walk-up apartment on the fourth floor of a building on the lower East Side of Manhattan; this building adjoins an all-night fruit stand and a bus terminal. Even in the early morning hours, Susan can look outside and see, through the fumes of buses accelerating their engines, the figures of old women leaning over the fruit stand, probing goods, their shopping bags over their arms. The clash of gears and the high shrieks of the women as the buses roar past them blowing clouds of pollutants, give her the feeling that for the first time in her life she is communicating with something real and basic. Timothy, however, has said that he cannot stand the location much longer and will have to look for something else in a quieter area, perhaps in the upper West Side where the streets are abandoned by midnight.

After the filming she has coffee with Phil in a small, dismal restaurant near the loft. Phil seems to be on excellent terms with the manager and the staff because they are given the one decent booth in the place. “You did very good,” Phil says, looking between his watch and the kitchen doors, peering around the screens, “very good; I hear excellent reports about your work. I think that you very definitely have a future in this place if you want it. Very few people can come in like you, cold off the street, and act worth a damn. But you showed heart and real conviction. For you this is not just a way to turn a few bucks; you’re a pro. I can always tell the difference.”

“But I don’t know if I want to do it any more,” Susan says. “I did need the money very badly, but it just isn’t the kind of thing that I think I could do again although I have nothing against it on moral grounds.” In her handbag, over her arm, she has the check for the day’s work, seventy-five dollars instead of a hundred because casting, and direction fees have been deducted as well as a small amount per capita for the use of the loft. This is not what she had been promised but, it is not a bad sum for eight hour’s work and it is, although she will never admit this to Phil, the first money she has made as a professional actress. “I have to go home soon, you know,” she says. “This man I’m living with … I’m living with a man you know … I have to make dinner for him. We have an agreement to share the household tasks and this is my week.”

“Oh don’t be concerned about that,” Phil says with a shake of his bald head, looking at her intently, “I get the drift; I don’t mean to put the make on you or anything like that at all. It’s strictly business; I never get involved with the help. That’s the first thing you’ve got to learn in show business. This other stuff never, the make isn’t on my mind; I’m a married man and I just wanted to talk. Not that you aren’t very attractive, you understand.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I just wanted to talk about a project,” Phil says. “They’ve got something coming up, what you might call an epic, and I’d like to see you try out for it if you’d be interested in some serious work. They couldn’t pay a hundred a day on this one because that’s only the rate for one-shots and specials. It would have to be maybe half of that — like fifty, say, but it would be steady and you’d have yourself a secure income.”

Susan thinks abstractedly about the epic. “What kind of movie is this? Is it a straight part?”

“Something like that,” Phil says. “The sex emphasis would only be there to keep the viewer’s attention but actually it’s a very serious idea. You want to go up to my place with me and maybe discuss a little bit what this project will be?”

“I don’t — ”

“Yeah, I know about dinner and so on but the thing is I don’t like to do business in public places because you never know who might be listening in. But if we can go to my apartment where I know it’s confidential, I’ll be able to fill you in very quickly. Of course it’s up to you to say yes or no about that, but, unless I have a chance to talk to you very soon, I have no way of knowing if you’ll be right for the part, and there are lots of others I could ask. You saw them all around you. Kids coming into that loft are desperate for work; they’d grab any part. I don’t really have much to do with the production but I’m like a liaison in case you want to know my basis of authority.”

He extends his hand. He is a heavy, short, man, not unlike her father physically although her father has what Susan has come to think of as a suburban veneer or maybe only a kind of resignation which has turned him expressionless. Phil has vigor or at least a certain attitude of positiveness and hope which she finds rather attractive by contrast, not that she ever had much use for him because he had felt that she was wasting time in a dramatics major and should have done something practical like teaching which would have made her very much like her mother. She and her mother have nothing to do with one another at present. Her mother would hardly be sitting across a table from the New York producer who is now patting her gently across the table, his eyes fixed upon her with concentration. She feels the touch, cold as guilt, harsh as memory, and her fingers curl against his palm. She realizes she is being suggestive, that not to follow through would be unfair to him. “All right,” she says. “I’ll go to your apartment and discuss it if you really want me to.”

Susan imagines herself in bed with him. This is one of her oldest traits; she can always picture herself having sex with any man, no matter how repellent he may be. In her mind she lies spent against his necessity, the feel of him rushing into her again and again and finds that, despite what has happened to her already today, she can apprehend him as she never could Timothy … or even the German Shepherd.

Susan lies underneath Phil in his bachelor apartment. It was very simple really; he wanted to discuss business but, first he must have a drink and, as long as he is having a drink, she might as well too and then the shades in the apartment were drawn and they went into the bedroom and Phil began to tell her how really attractive she was and Susan felt the old mixture of reluctance and fascination coming over her. The tensions of sex emerged from the contradictions between the two of them and it became very easy, in fact inevitable to undress. She took off all of her clothes and lay beside him. In the dark she could hardly see him and imagined his body as it came down to drape her, as the flesh of many lovers. A multitude of scenes pass through her mind, recollections from college through Timothy. Then somewhere in the middle she has a twitch of feeling, a small explosion and an uncoiling. “That was good,” Phil says, getting off her, instantly talkative, instantly efficient, “that was very good; you’re really very good.” And, putting on the lights, he begins to dress hurriedly, tossing Susan’s clothes over to her at the same time to indicate that she should dress as well. He seems to be one of those men who make a complete distinction between sex and their ordinary lives, no flow between them. But she can hardly credit herself with being very experienced. Being sexually experienced for a girl is not something to be aimed for, or at least Susan still believes this. Phil, dressing, seems to move further and further from her and in the act of dressing herself she suppresses all knowledge of what had happened between them. It had been as mechanical and limited as a transaction in a store; a little bit of seed had passed from one of them to the other but that was no reason to get personally involved. Vaguely, she wonders if everybody in the pornographic films business approaches sex in this fashion or whether her relationship with Phil has been unusual. It hardly seems worth being concerned about, in the fading light of the room with her clothes back on, sitting comfortably in one of the easy chairs flanking the bed, a cigarette in her hand while Phil puts the final touches to his appearance and sits down facing her. “This really isn’t where I live.” he says. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I live this way because it wouldn’t be fair to you. I just use this place for business. I don’t want to have you think that I make a habit of going to bed with girls either: I’m strictly business, strictly, but I found you very attractive and just lost control of myself.”

Susan wonders if this lapse of control to which Phil refers is really true and wonders what he would be like if he was really detached sexually; she decides not to follow this line of thought through. She is not experienced, she is willing to admit this (sexual experience being the kind of thing which girls from her background cannot concede to) and she may, just possibly, be in a little bit over her head. “It’s all right,” she says, trying to sound matter of fact and holding her cigarette uncomfortably. “It doesn’t matter at all. You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

“I’m not apologizing. Where did you get the idea I was apologizing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t mean anything by it. Please,” Susan says, beginning to feel really uneasy: what would Timothy say?, “you were going to tell me about the picture.”

“Oh yes,” Phil says, “the picture. I have to fill you in on that, don’t I? I don’t really know that much about it; I’m just kind of a liaison man for them and really don’t know what they have in mind most of the time.” He looks vaguely at his fingernails, shrugs, examines the ceiling. He seems to have lost all interest in her, at least for the moment. His eyes perfectly blank and dull as he stares at the smoke coming from her cigarette and says, “Why don’t you drop by early tomorrow morning and I’ll discuss it in the office? I really don’t have the time now; I got another appointment. If you want the job you can have it, that’s what I said, but after the day you’ve had you must be tired. I know I am.” He stands heavily, ponderously, even with a gesture not unlike her father’s, and goes to the window, pulling aside a curtain to look at some unknown aspect of New York for a few minutes and then wander back to the center of the room. “If that’s okay,” he says.

“All right,” Susan says. She stands, finds her balance slightly uneven; wonders if there is a slope to this room as there is supposed to be in all buildings in New York, but decides that it is only the aftermath of compound sex; she has, after all, had intercourse or simulated intercourse at least ten times today, the last instance being a social relationship and she has the right to feel tired. “Do you want me to come down tomorrow?”

“I guess so,” Phil says vaguely. He is informed by vagueness, everything about him is vague; even his figure seems to have a blurred outline in the half-light of the room. He paces abstractedly and goes to the door. “I got a lot of things to think about so if you don’t mind, maybe I’ll run along right now. You don’t have to leave this second. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I’m going,” Susan says, “I’m going,” but, before she can even rise to follow, Phil is gone, the door swinging vacantly behind him; she sees its absent sway on the hinge, hears the diminution of his footsteps, hears the clatter of traffic outside.

She has had a full day in New York. She has participated in the making of a pornographic film, she has had intercourse with the agent of the film’s producers, she has been offered a leading role in a forthcoming production by the same company, she has come to terms with herself in, perhaps, ways that she was not accustomed. At the end of all of this she stands in a hotel room fully dressed somewhere between retention and flight; she has a delicate feeling of being poised at some critical instant and she senses that if she could only investigate this feeling, if she could allow it to come over her fully, she might find out something about herself that she never knew before. Even as she understands this a spotlight whips through the window, traversing toward the other side of the street and she decides that she had better go. Timothy is waiting for her (or she hopes Timothy is waiting for her) and, at the end of all of this, perhaps in sleep, will come another accommodation. She leaves the room slowly, quite a pretty girl really, only a certain high tension moving from her cheekbones to her eyes indicating that anything at all has touched her. She senses that if she were to tell the men in the street who stare at her what she had been doing that day, they would be amazed but, then, they might be perfectly matter of fact. People in New York accept all sorts of things as matter of fact.