In my mind I make that short step and Grace’s big lips are on mine and I’m sliding my hands around her ass and we’re grinding our crotches together and then I’m hunkering down onto my knees to feast on that sweet bounty . . . no bitch tastes finer than one with a fusion of Latin and African American blood coursing through her veins . . . — Ohhhh . . .
— You okay, Lucy? Grace’s head snaps around the corner of my stall.
— The water got kinda cold all of a sudden, I say, stepping back in terror.
— It can do that, she smiles, stepping out, big yellow beach towel like a candy wrapper around that sweet block of milk chocolate.
I’m too mortified to say anything so I get myself dried off and pull on my clothes.
Sometimes Grace and I grab a drink or a sandwich, but she’s back on call, so I’m on a solitary walk up to Lincoln. It’s hot now, the Bank of America clock is saying 80 but it feels more like 90, and I’m heading down the street, browsing in store windows, and to kill time I go into Books & Books. I start looking at the art books, which I generally never do, and I realize why I’m acting this way when I see the spine:
LENA SORENSON: FUTURE HUMAN
I pick it up and leaf through the pages. There are numerous plates of the little bird-boned monster men with their reptile-green translucent skins I saw Sorenson trying to assemble in her workshop. I’m scanning around shiftily as I read, worried the stalking loser will come in, catch me red-handed, and identify me as being
like her
. So I take the book up to the cashier and pay the ludicrously expensive price of $48. I feel both relieved and exploited as the sales clerk slips it into a brown bag. It makes me wonder what Sorenson or the photographer and/or author team of Mathew Goldberg and Julius Carnoby get paid for this?
Retracing my steps, I continue down Washington. On 14th I’m arrested by the presence of a man with greasy blond, sun-bleached hair, his skin tanned under a coat of grime, clad in the middle-aged Miami sex offender’s uniform of grubby Hawaiian shirt and stained beige shorts. I can’t quite believe it: it’s Winter. Timothy Winter. The fucking pedophile, the short-eyes whose miserable ass I was stupid enough to save! He’s with a balding obese guy with a grimy layer of sweat on his pustular face. This guy wears a buttoned vest and nothing else on top; a brown gut swells down to an underpants waistband with
David Beckham
embroidered on it. Although this fucking tramp must be in his forties, his pants hang hip-hop style below his gross ass. It’s Winter who revolts me most, though; his sneer of entitlement as he tries to bum cigarettes from smokers standing outside one of the Irish themed pubs. He doesn’t even recognize me when our eyes meet! A doorman, sitting on a stool outside, tracks him and Fatboy Gross down the street.
I follow him, watching as Winter, egged on by his blubbery sidekick, panhandles some change from a group of vacationing girls who look grossed out, as well they might. I want to punch that monster’s smug face in. But it’s Washington and it’s broad daylight and this asshole has caused me enough grief as it is. Flight takes over from fight: exit stage fuck.
I go home and lay the art book out on my small coffee table, flipping through some of the plates. What is it with all this sci-fi and monsters stuff? I’m betting Sorenson was the love-starved chunky goth chick who hung around with the fucked-up losers and nerds, the type who attend those science-fiction and comic-book conventions. It all makes sense. I can smell her pathetic cosseting of those twitching semi-autistic weirdos, as I turn every page to let myself pause over the nauseating notes. Something makes me check my cell; I knew it, a couple of bland messages from Sorenson. I am
so
going to hunt this bitch down.
I change and drive up to her house, parking around the corner. Creeping into the backyard, bending down behind the big hibiscus bushes, I look into the living room. Sorenson is stuffing her face from a bag full of cookies. I know the brand and there are 250 calories per cookie, and ten to a package. She’s about halfway through that poison and on course to self-mutilate further by finishing the fucking lot. She disgusts me; she’s worse than any pathetic junkie or alcoholic, no better, really, than those sniveling predatory pedophiles who can’t keep their cruddy hands off children. The weak fuckers; how they always wear that same stupid, hapless expression. Looking for help. Well, I’ll help you, you motherfuckers! I’ll help every last one of you fucking pricks by drowning you like kittens! Cute fucking carnage!
I gaze through that window with hatred at the time- and energy-wasting beached whale washed up on the sofa, gaping mindlessly at her cable television. I pull my cell out my jeans pocket and hit her digits. — Lena. It’s Lucy. What are you doing?
— Hey, Lucy. Sorenson pulls her bulk into an upright position. — I’m just watching TV.
— Are you eating shit? DO NOT LIE TO ME, LENA! I WILL KNOW IF YOU ARE LYING TO ME!
Sorenson shuffles a little bit, looking around, as if I’m in the room. I move back, further into shadow. Then she springs off the couch. — No . . . I’m just going to do some work . . . she cries, bustling into another room, causing me to lose visual contact. Now I can see her coming out through the back patio door, heading out toward her studio, looking nervously around again as she waddles through the falling darkness.
— I’ll probably pop by in about twenty minutes or so.
— Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . okay . . .
She turns and runs back into the kitchen. I steal forward, watching her through the big window, as her cookies go straight into the garbage.
I’ve just saved that fat fucking fool two hours of running on the treadmill
.
I stealthily tiptoe out the yard and down the street to the Caddy. Victory. Of sorts. I drive home and watch some of
The Biggest Loser
repeats and immediately fall into a fantasy about a three-way with Jillian and Bob Harper. Jillian has me on the treadmill, she’s shouting at me, but I can tell that she’s hot for the femme fake tears I’m shedding in order to lure her into my web. I’m storming along at 15 mph and Jillian ups the speed, and I spin off, into Bob’s tattooed arms and I’m sobbing into his naked chest which smells of sweaty-man talc. I feel Jillian’s hand in my hair, tearing my scalp, saying “you suck” and pushing my head south towards Bob’s crotch. I look up and catch that manic gleam in his eye as I pull his dick out of his sweat pants. I’m sucking on it, taking it to the back of my throat as Jillian lets go my hair and joins me on her knees, alongside me, and is pushing my face away to get her share of Bob’s cock. I’m ceding it to her hungry mouth but only in order to position myself behind her and get her into a ju-jitsu choke, and as her eyes bulge under his cruel thrusts, Bob starts to look a bit like Miles and I realize that Jillian is really Mona.
Not Mona and Miles, Bob and Jillian, Bob and Jillian . . .
My phone is on vibrate and I push it down the front of my panties. As I’m thinking about Bob and Jillian, it goes off, and I know it’s Sorenson . . . that’s it, you needy bitch, keep ringing . . .
. . . ooohhhh . . . shout louder, Jillian . . . tell me I’m a lazy bitch . . . slap me, Jillian . . . Bob, Jillian hurt me . . . kiss it better, Bob, kiss the fucker better . . . ooohh . . .
OOOOHHH . . . AAAAGGGHH!!
Holy moly . . . that was a goddamn tea party . . .
I’m fucking wet and breathless after that explosion as I pull the dripping phone out of my panties. It stops vibrating in my hand. The caller ID flashes up: LENA S. I get my breath, watching Jillian onscreen, bawling out one tub of lard, cutting to Bob shaking his head in that disappointed-but-caring parental way, the
exact
look Dad excelled in when I came up short in track and field or, later, in martial arts. Then I get back to Sorenson. — Lena, something came up. I’m not going to make it over.
— Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . .
— See you
mañana
at the gym, bright and oily!
— Oh . . . okay, I thought we could have—
— Till tomorrow. I click off the phone, then immediately call my dad, and tell him about the gun-shy TV motherfuckers.
— Tough shit, pickle. I guess the moral of the story is: never trust the media. It’s one big conspiracy by old WASP money—
— Fabulous segue into “you,” Dad. What took you so long?
— Whaddaya mean? Can’t I offer some support to my daughter—
— I’ve read all your shit, Dad. This is the plot of the second Matt Flynn book,
A State of Nature.
The one where Matt befriends the TV presenter in New England who’s being sexually blackmailed by her own bosses at the corporation—
— Wow . . . you
do
read the books!
— Of course I do. I take an interest. You’re my father. And I’m you’re daughter. So reciprocate!
— Cut me a break, picks, your old pop is still reeling after the
Globe
’s review of
The Doomsday Scenario.
And I quote: “Try as he might, Tom Brennan will never be Dennis Lehane. Which wouldn’t be a big problem if being Tom Brennan was anything to write home about. Here’s the news: it most certainly isn’t. Matt Flynn is every corny, clichéd wish-fulfillment stereotype straight from the late-middle-aged Irish American male’s fantasy list, as he hauls his wheezing bulk onto a bar stool and mops down some Guinness with his beef stew . . .” and this from my fucking hometown paper! The asshole that wrote it, Steve French, would never have the integrity to tell his dwindling band of readers that he’s been papering his shithouse with publishers’ rejection slips for fucking years! I oughta remind him that one Bostonian is a millionaire on the
New York Times
bestseller list, and the other is a prick clinging on to his miserable hack job—
— Enough already! I’m sorry to hear about the review. It might not mean anything to you, but I called you for support cause my life is going to shit!
I push the red button, then power off the cell.
Thankfully, as I switch on the local news, the tide does seem to be turning. There’s no mention of me, for the first time in days! The most interesting feature is about the Wilks twins. About the organs they share and the ones they don’t, and whether they can or cannot be separated. But now both twins have filed lawsuits against the other. Annabel Wilks has said that her sister, Amy, is preventing her from going on a date with her boyfriend Stephen. Amy has countered, claiming that her rights are infringed if Annabel drags her somewhere she doesn’t want to go. Her lawyer is making a case for coercion. Their mother appears on the screen. — I don’t wanna see them fight. They need to be together. Maybe we ought to have considered the operation to separate them when they were babies. Joyce Wilks’s eyes grow big as she inhales on a cigarette. — But I believe it was God’s will they came out together like they did.
I feel a little shaky and lie on the couch. My blood sugar must be low. I pick up the Sorenson book.
“A SCIENCE-FICTION COMIC-BOOK
illustrator who gate-crashed the art world” was one critic’s unflattering description of young American artist Lena Sorenson. Despite the derisive nature of that statement, it’s true to say that Sorenson’s futuristic, dystopian view of humanity greatly informs her perspective.
Lena Sorenson’s mission, as expounded by her in her most successful exhibit of sculpture,
Future Human
, is to examine “what human beings, should they still be on this planet, will look like, and how they will behave, in several million years’ time.”
Sorenson, somewhat uniquely, had huge initial success as a freshman student at Chicago’s renowned Art Institute. Her first exhibition,
Void
, the series of dystopian futuristic paintings, was exhibited at her own co-run Blue gallery in the city’s West Loop, before being curated by Melanie Clement at her GoToIt gallery in New York City, after several pieces were purchased by influential collectors. The exhibition then went on to London, eventually touring the world to great acclaim. The major piece in the exhibit, also entitled
Void
, acquired by influential New York-based collector Jason Mitford, owed a debt to biblical-inspired English painter John Martin (1789–1854), whose huge canvases were set against panoramic and often apocalyptic backgrounds. Sorenson had reputedly seen Martin’s work on a visit to London’s Tate Britain. Rather than look to Martin’s biblical, creationist past, Sorenson, an avowed atheist, used the Englishman’s scale and form to produce futuristic, dystopian landscapes.
The Fall of New Babylon
(2006), for example, is based on Martin’s
The Fall of Babylon.
New Babylon is Los Angeles as viewed from Hollywood Hills.
Zero
(2007) derives from Martin’s
The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum
(1821); Sorenson depicts a crumbling New York City. It’s Ground Zero 9/11 reconstructed as the whole of mid and lower Manhattan Island. She confessed that as a teenager in Potters Prairie, MN, she was haunted by television images of the World Trade Center collapsing.
The End Trinity
(2007) is strongly based on Martin’s
Last Judgment
triptych, with the end of the Earth and resurrection forecast.
Her smooth painted surfaces also recall the accomplished hyperrealistic offerings of illustrators, whose works are almost never seen in major galleries, and the likes of Dali, who himself was often denigrated as repetitive and populist by critics.
Yet if the critics dismissed Sorenson as a one-trick pony, this view had to be revised when she produced a satirical painting that garnered much political controversy. In
You’re Lost Little Boy
(2008), a predatory Abe Lincoln cradles a clearly sexually aroused Minnie Mouse in his lap, as a tearful Mickey, head poking out from the side of Abe’s chair, looks helplessly on. Sorenson’s Lincoln appears to have slightly oriental features, and some have speculated that the piece could be a reference to America’s changing (and increasingly subordinate) relationship with China, particularly with America’s capitalist class’s continuing investment there at the expense of developing the domestic economy. Sorenson steadfastly refuses to comment on this, trotting out the standard line, which artists love but makes the rest of us want to tear our hair out: “When an artist explains their art, it’s no longer art. I am not a critic.”