A Stranger Like You

by Elizabeth Brundage

  Later, back at the studio parking lot, Harold kissed you on the forehead and thanked you for joining him.

  “It’s a beautiful synagogue,” you said.

  “You’re welcome any time.”

  You nodded, but you had no plans to return. You were not a person of faith. You didn’t believe in religion; you didn’t believe in anything.

  Then he did something strange. He reached out and gently touched your cheek with his open palm. “It’s good for the soul,” he said. “In a town like this, you can forget you have one.”

  6

  In November the weather turns cold. Everybody is wearing sweaters and coats. They complain, but you can tell they really like it. They like walking around in beautiful sweaters, long woven scarves. The first several minutes of every meeting is dedicated to a discussion of the weather. It’s all right with you; you don’t really mind. The days are bleak. The wind unusually strong. That morning your lawn was covered with sycamore leaves.

  There are meetings and more meetings. Meetings go late, meetings are canceled and rescheduled. You are charming. You are funny and edgy and dangerous and benevolent; you have croissants and raspberry jam; you have sashimi and drink too much sake and promise too many things; you have grilled trout with almonds; you are not in love, it’s not your cup of tea; you are looking for something darker; you are intrigued; you haven’t laughed so hard in years.

  You feel as if something has been lost. You cannot explain it. You are on your hands and knees like a blind person, and yet you have forgotten what it is that you are trying to grasp.

  Perhaps it is the beginning of winter, the grim prospect of hibernation that you remember from your youth. And yet, this is Los Angeles, there is no true winter here. Your days are complicated with the hopes and dreams of strangers. Writers come to tell you stories, to peddle their ideas. They are all the same. Most are dull little packages. You are eager to hear something new. Something fresh. You don’t know what it is, but you will know it when you hear it.

  And then, during a screening of a rough cut of The Promise, a film you executive produced, something unexpected happens. At twenty-four frames per second, in the span of eight minutes, you witness three murders, two explosions, and an admittedly thrilling car chase through the narrow streets of São Paulo. Two minutes into the second act, you begin to feel a creepy sense of isolation. Watching a love scene, you discover, surprisingly, that you are offended—and you are not the type who is easily offended. You glance around in the darkness at the others in the small screening room: Harold; Armand, your assistant; Buddy Meyers, the film’s director; Jim Gage, his assistant director; and Vic Peters, his editor. Their faces are calm, almost placid. They absorb the images without dissent. The only other women in the room are Bethany, an “intern” (Harold’s cousin’s daughter), whose IQ is even less than her body weight, and the women from the commissary, soundlessly delivering coffee and pastries. You sit back and watch. Of course you had read the scene in the script, and yet Buddy’s interpretation of it gives you pause. The fact that he is dating the female lead, Claudia Wells, who is twenty years his junior, probably hasn’t helped the situation, and the camera, as it grazes her body, seems to proclaim feast your eyes. Antonio Ramirez plays a misunderstood gangster; Wells plays the wife of his boss, a ruthless mobster. She has left her husband, who has threatened to kill her. They are on a desolate Brazilian beach and it has begun to rain—the sky is black—the wind gusts at the ocean, the sea grass undulates—they run up the beach to a cement shelter—a public restroom—as the rain comes down. It is a grimy, disgusting place with cement floors and gray stalls. Closeup of Ramirez’s hand twisting the lock as Wells dries her face on a paper towel. She turns, sees the way he’s looking at her, and knows what is to come. She waits, cautious—he advances on her with a predator’s certainty, violently sweeping her into his arms—the camera backs up and we realize that there is somebody else in the room—a dubious shadow in one of the stalls—watching. Cut to the lovers, the tops of her thighs, his hand as it rips off the lacy g-string then curves around to lift her up—a swift shot of her buttocks as they come in contact with the cement block wall, someone’s graffiti under her flesh—anonymous initials inside a heart—and he pulls her onto his hips and opens his pants, the punitive sound of his buckle as it drops and dangles—and he’s in her, pushing her up against the cement—bashing her into it—as their passion insinuates itself onto the sound track—the sound her back makes as it hits the wall—the grunt that escapes her mouth each time she hits—which the audience will misinterpret as pleasure, excitement, ecstasy—and the camera watches their hips as we register the velocity of their fucking—his fingers clutching her naked skin, the muscles in his arms, her torso, her flushed breasts, her face, her grinding pleasure as her lover pursues his climax and, finally, her face as they “come together,” panting with euphoria.

  You stand up, shapes of light flashing across your body, and for a split second you are part of the scene. Your voice cuts through the sound. “Can we stop a moment?”

  The projectionist stops the film. Dim lights come up.

  “What? What’s the matter?” Harold says.

  “What’s with this scene?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m getting really tired of this bullshit.”

  “What?” Buddy Meyers looks confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “What’s the scene about?”

  “What’s it about? It’s pretty simple, Hedda. It’s about sex,” Bud says.

  “I don’t understand.” Harold glances around uncertainly like someone who’s been accused of shoplifting. “What’s the matter?”

  “The scene offends me,” you proclaim.

  “What?” Harold jerks like he’s been pinched. “The scene offends you?”

  “Yes, it offends me.”

  Buddy and his AD chuckle.

  “The scene offends you,” Harold inquires again, as if he can’t believe it. As if it’s impossible to offend a woman like you. “Why?” He smiles a little, humoring you. “Why does it offend you?”

  “I think it’s very sexy,” Armand interjects, and you shoot him a withering look that tells him to shut his mouth if he plans on keeping his job.

  You realize what you’re up against here. Only the history of modern cinema. You think of Klute, the legendary scene when Jane Fonda, a prostitute, checks her watch while her trick’s fucking her. To your memory, it is the only scene in the history of movies that actually indicates how remotely satisfying sex can be for women.

  “Who has sex like that?”

  The men look at each other, their solidarity building.

  “Evidently you don’t,” Meyers mutters.

  You ignore the comment. “It’s not like she’s going to come in that position.”

  “Speaking from experience,” Jim Gage snickers.

  “Yeah, speaking from experience. She’s hitting her head on a cement wall—you’re telling me that feels good? He gets to come, and she gets to have stitches.”

  “It’s just a sex scene, Hedda,” Harold says. “You’re taking it too seriously.”

  “Really?”

  He opens his hands as if it’s obvious.

  “Why is this what people want?” You present the question, sounding more like a high school principal than a producer.

  “Because it’s sexy, it’s hot,” Buddy Meyers answers.

  “Hot for who?”

  Harold frowns, uncomfortable, and looks embarrassed.

  “Hot for who?” you repeat, but of course no one answers.

  “What is this all about?” Harold asks as if it’s obvious that you are having some sort of mental breakdown.

  “It’s about a lot of things. It’s about all those seventeen-year-old girls out there who are going to think that this is what it is—that getting pounded against a cement wall is a turn-on. It’s about all those confused women who wonder why they’re not having orgasms when their husba
nds and boyfriends do this to them—I hate to break it to you guys, but contrary to popular opinion, it’s not necessarily about the penis.”

  Buddy Meyers sighs audibly. “I feel like I’m being lectured. You’re starting to sound like my ex-wife.”

  “Look,” Harold says. “Look, Hedda—”

  “No, let her talk,” Buddy concedes. “I want to hear her perspective.”

  You persevere: “The scene—it gives men license to be violent. It tells women they should want to be taken, that being submissive is sexy. ‘Fuck me harder. Do whatever you want to me, I’m a bad girl, I deserve it.’ I know it’s not intentional . . . but I think you underestimate the effect it has.”

  “It sure as hell has an effect on me,” Gage says.

  “We’re saying: This is what love is. This is the best sex you can have. We put it up there on the big screen and people believe it. They think it’s real.”

  “But it is real, Hedda,” Meyers argues. “Maybe not for you.”

  The men in the room are looking at you in a way that makes you feel naked. Somehow, you feel as though you are on trial. They are watching you closely, judging you. Their eyes accuse you of being frigid, that, perhaps, this is your own personal issue and has nothing to do with the film. That perhaps this isn’t a concern for most women. Most women, their eyes suggest, have no issue with orgasms like you do. Their wives and girlfriends, for example, are completely satisfied. Their wives and girlfriends and mothers even come up a storm every night. But you—a woman like you, with your pale skin and ratty blond hair and hawkish nose and insignificant breasts, are lucky just to get laid, let alone fetch a determined lover. They are actually feeling sorry for you.

  Nobody says anything for several minutes. The air closes in, your cheeks flush. An awkward tension fills the room. And then Meyers asks, “So what would you change? How would you shoot it?” He chuckles as if over his own private joke then trains his eyes on you, lightly, as if you are somehow touched in the head. “How would you shoot it—let’s say from a feminist perspective?”

  Just the way he says the word burns you up. You can feel your face turning colors. You scramble for ideas, but you are flummoxed, empty. You are beginning to feel embarrassed. Jim Gage whispers something into Meyers’ ear and they both snort with mockery.

  “It’s not even about feminism,” you say quietly. “It’s about behavior. We just keep going over the same ground. The women are always at a disadvantage. I think it’s confusing, that’s all.”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” Harold says, which feels like such a betrayal.

  “Maybe.” It’s suddenly clear to you that they don’t really care. If anything, the discussion is purely academic. “Maybe I am.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Meyers says accusingly, his ego stinking up the room like a nasty fart.

  “How would I shoot it?” You look at him. “I don’t have a clue.”

  Meyers grunts as if he’s made his point. “Look, I can’t change the way people behave, that’s not my job. I’m in the entertainment business. That’s what I do. I entertain. And judging from my numbers, I’m pretty fucking good at it. As far as I’m concerned, that film’s in the can.”

  Surprising everyone, he gets up and walks out. You stand there, feeling oddly ashamed. Harold is glaring at you. Without wasting another minute, you gather your things and walk out.

  It isn’t until you’re in your car that you begin to cry and you hate your tears, you resent the ease with which you’ve come undone. It is so definitively female—and yet it may be the essence of your strength, you just don’t feel it now. Your colleagues always seem to bring the attention back to you, suggesting that your criticism is a consequence of some personal problem. They interpret the things you say as though you are speaking a different dialect of the same language—the subtle differences of inflection seem to weaken your position and they can easily rationalize and discount your opinions. It is, you admit, a sophisticated form of passive aggression.

  Back in the screening room, you couldn’t possibly explain all of the reasons and ramifications of why that scene bothered you, because to do that you’d have to review the entire Western canon—you’d have to break out your old Henry Miller books, your Norman Mailer, in order to illustrate for them the myriad ways in which we have condemned women to living lives of subservience—even now, yes, even now! Centuries of cultural propaganda dispensed by a male regime!

  You drive onto the freeway, trying to calm down. Maybe you should see your therapist. You try to breathe. How would you shoot it? Meyers’ question comes back to you—the way he’d said the word feminist, like it was some sort of disease. You review the scene in your head. First, the location sort of bothers you. Realistically, it is not the most conducive to sex—and yet, perhaps you can work with it—yes, perhaps the location is sexy, the implicit contrast, the seedy texture, the beauty of love in a brutal, impossible place. You’re not sure about the strange voyeur in the scene—what does it represent? The fact that we are all voyeurs in some way—that there is always some stranger in our midst, watching us—that we are never alone? Maybe, in some way, it’s a Jesus reference—it’s not impossible—but then you remember that the screenwriter is a Scientologist. You suppose, if you shot the scene, you wouldn’t have them actually fuck. You’d have them kiss. You’re thinking From Here to Eternity—the legendary kiss in the surf—you’re thinking Witness. Yes, you decide, that’s all they would do, they would kiss. You don’t really need the sex, it’s gratuitous. Not that you’re a prude—no. You remember having sex like that, standing up. First of all, it was awkward—you couldn’t get past the idea that your boyfriend was struggling to hold you up while attempting to fuck you—you were maybe twenty pounds heavier at the time, too—but then again, he wasn’t built like Antonio Ramirez. You felt like one of those acrobats in the circus, doing some elaborate trick, and you remember changing your minds and finding a bed, instead. Perhaps the lovers in the scene could lie down on the floor—but that appeals to you even less. Once, you had sex on a dirty floor—it wasn’t necessarily the most pleasant thing—you did in fact contract a strange viral rash—you’d had to go to the dermatologist for treatment. So, yes, you decide that if you were to reshoot the scene, you’d have them simply kiss, and it would be a wildly passionate, beautiful kiss—it would be enough.

  On impulse, you get off the freeway and drive into Santa Monica, toward the beach. You turn down Colorado Avenue and head toward the pier. The sun is bright, the air warm—maybe you’ll take a walk. Thinking back on it now, you realize that much of your information about sex came from movies. Growing up in the seventies, you were empowered by films like An Unmarried Woman or Kramer vs. Kramer—even Manhattan seemed to encourage you to be sexual for the sake of your own pleasure—if Mariel Hemingway could have sex with a forty-year-old man, why couldn’t you? And yet, still, it seemed like the sex was for him. You remember not fully believing that she was as ravenous a lover as Woody said she was and, in retrospect, it reeks of wet dream. You were further confused by Swept Away, which had been directed by a woman, Lina Wertmuller—the first woman director you’d ever heard of. You remember feeling somewhat betrayed by her treatment of the female character, a wretched aristocrat, who, on a yacht in the Mediterranean, verbally abuses the impossibly sexy Giancarlo Giannini, a member of the crew, who later, when they are castaways on a deserted island, retaliates by depriving her of food and sodomizing her (another cinema first for you—you had not yet seen Last Tango in Paris, which had come out a year or two earlier). When you’d watched the Wertmuller film at Yale, the discussion by your mostly male classmates had revolved around the political implications of the film, the fact that the male character was a communist, and that the rape was a political act, not a sexual one—it’s a familiar argument, one you’ve heard since. But, to this day, you can’t get past the flagrant misogyny of Swept Away.

  Now that you have succeeded in getting yourself into a sta
te, you turn down a side street near the beach, looking for a place to park. You rarely come here—and you are slightly worried about being alone—but you are desperately thirsty and need to pee. Miraculously, you find a parking space and retreat into a dark little bar called Sullivan’s. Feeling a little lost, you use the bathroom, wash your hands, then go to the bar and order a drink. Vodka neat with half a lemon, just the way you like it. Just having the drink, having a reason to sit here in one place, alone, without anyone saying anything to you, without having to speak, is a relief. The bartender has the eyes of an undertaker. They haven’t turned on any lights and the place is dark and quiet. The windows glint with late sunlight. You notice the tail of a cat slipping under one of the tables. Somewhere outside you hear chimes. There are only a few people in the place, regulars. You like it here, nobody knows you, and you stick it out at the bar for a couple of drinks. At last you begin to relax. You think of going home, but for some reason you don’t want to be alone. Just as you are about to leave, someone taps you on the shoulder. “This may be awkward,” you hear him say. “But we were lovers for a while, back in film school.”

  You turn to see Tom Foster. “Tom?”

  “Shove over, sailor, and let a man buy you a drink.”

  You move to a table in the back, near the games and machines. It is dark now and the place is crowded. Your conversation is punctuated by the smacking collision of balls on the pool table, and the cheesy, jubilant gush of the pinball machine. Although it has been nearly twenty years, Tom Foster looks almost the same. He is a big man, well over six feet, and yet he is thin, almost gaunt. His arms are long, his hands swift, powerful. The same dark, intelligent eyes. For so large a man, he moves with unusual agility, even grace. You remember his tendency to be slightly vain and yet, in fairness, it is part of what makes him interesting. And so you are not surprised by the beat-up leather coat and motorcycle boots, the twine bracelets around his wrist that resemble the delicate twigs of a bird’s nest. He tells you about a documentary he has just shot, about a homeless shelter in Hollywood, and you remember the expression on his face, the passion he has for his work, the particular shine in his eyes. In your twenties, you had been students together at the Conservatory. Somehow you’d fallen in step with each other and become fast friends. Your lovemaking was almost an afterthought—in truth you were better at being friends than lovers, mostly because you had a tendency to get jealous and resented the attention he paid to other women. He was like a peacock flaunting his feathers. He lived in an efficiency apartment on Franklin Avenue that had a Murphy bed. Making love, you’d hear the cats yowling in the Dumpster outside the bedroom window. He’d write his screenplays at the kitchen table on an electric typewriter. You both smoked Camel straights and drank too much bourbon. Once, he even made you dinner, pork chops and canned soup—you didn’t have the heart to tell him that, even though you were only a Reform Jew, you still didn’t eat pork. You were in your Lauren Bacall phase. You wore dark red lipstick and parted your long blond hair on the side and were fond of saying: You wanna know how to whistle? Just put your lips together and blow. You had a tiny apartment in Beachwood Canyon, on a strange little street called Glen Alder Terrace. The apartment was in a compound of crooked Spanish cottages, set into a canyon, with red rooftops and rusty windows without screens. A long paint-chipped stairway led up to a plateau where the little cottages stood under the avocado trees. Sprawling thickets spit their purple berries onto the steps; you would carry them inside on the soles of your shoes, dappling the floors with purple, star-shaped stains. It was a strange place with lots of spiders. Sometimes at night you’d hear coyotes. Once you caught one going through your trash. It was after midnight and there was nobody around and you were frightened, standing there alone with a wild animal. The coyote looked at you with the sheepish eyes of a drug addict, a jumble of tin foil in its mouth, and ran away. You had trouble sleeping in those days. Being alone made you anxious. Sometimes you’d wake in the night, sweating, feeling a weight upon you—the weight of a horny ghost. You’d watch TV late into the night; reruns of the old shows you’d grown up on, and drink until you were too drunk to think about all of the terrible things lurking out in the dark. Your neighbors were movie people: a script girl, a set decorator, a sales rep for Fuji Film; they ignored you. In one of the cottages lived Leo Zaklos, a bumbling iconoclastic lunatic who was now considered a screenwriting genius. Once, you’d knocked on his door to borrow some bug spray. He leaned there in the doorway, leering at you with his plump slippery lips, his stubby tobacco stained fingertips, and convinced you to come inside. You could scarcely walk, the floor was covered with filthy clothes, garbage, but he lured you out to his terrace in the back, a splendid enchanting place dripping with hanging orchids, where he convinced you that he was one of the smartest people you had ever met. You introduced him to Tom, and the three of you became an unlikely trio, watching movies every night together and ripping them to shreds.