She had shaved for the occasion, which had been stupid of her, a waste of materials. This is what its all coming down to now: materiality, as if she were an art project that went asunder, a homemade piece of furniture a husband slaved hours over in the garage, only to have the nails spring loose and the boards fall apart. But everything is products now; her entirety is being held up by products, more and more of them, every aspect of her requiring something in a can, something in a bottle.
It was over by the dining table at the party, with its festive tablecloth and fondue pot sitting on top of it, that she stood by him and watched his movements. The lack of facial expression tucked away under that beard as he spoke, the linted hat covering his need for a haircut. He looked nice in his tee-shirt, not that it was anything special as she had seen it before, but his arms emerged from its sleeves well, and he contained something virile for a moment, and she found herself turning in slowly, coiling inwards- perhaps she liked him afterall, more than she'd thought. For just a split, brief second, he glowed for her unknowingly, like a halo surrounding his whole being, and she considered briefly a life with him being perhaps pleasant.
A coworker of his, middle-aged and bloated-looking, came over to the fondue, a dribble of cheese string attached to his chin, and spoke shoptalk. She was barely listening, all of her movements this evening were halfhearted and she felt herself slipping, going through the social gesticulations, an accessory for him, a pillar to stand next to and slip his arm through. As the bloated man spoke, information emerged in the form of a wink and nudge: lucky him for working on the set next week, get away from the grind of the office and work on a shoot instead. He played it off well- be humble, sound bored. But the truth of the shoot sprang free suddenly; this fat man with cheese on his face had told too much unwittingly; he had no idea the trouble he had instantly caused by outing him. Probably at the moment he wished the bloated man to drop dead, anything to have prevented him from talking, anything to prevent the pageantry of pleasure between her and him- keep those good times rolling, keep that good sex coming- from disappearing. Things were better when she wasn't earnest.
.
He'll take in everything around him: the running back and forth of people in a blur of productivity, the lights shining too brightly or else not enough, the girls themselves, lets not call them women because in our minds, face it, they're here for titillation. He'll take in their painted metallic forms, hard like insects' shells, shining phosphorescent. He'll sit back in the corner on the small stool provided, behind his computer screen which conveniently acts a barrier between reality and himself. He'll be polite, be respectfully aloof and distant just as they all will, each and every one of them in the room: look around and see them, the men hovering in the corners like cobwebs, attempting professionalism. But their eyes are darting, they're trying to look elsewhere, keep eye contact or make no contact period; look closely, they've made themselves present for the small prizes this situation awards- women strutting in pasties and thongs, perfect model bodies so different from what they'll go home to this evening. They'll make love to their wives with a newfound tenacity and their women will wonder what got into them; they will hope the cause is something they've done.
Himself, he'll go home to a lonely bathroom where he'll sit on the grimy toilet (she had thought of cleaning it for him, poor thing!) and jerk off. He'll fill this physiological need as basic as shitting, everything becomes an excising of waste matter, products his body has to store up or release. He'll use the lemon-verbena hand lotion he bought from the health food shop (he's no barbarian), and picture what? The day's events. The shining bodies, nameless and undifferentiated from the next. The image of naked women surrounded by a room of clothed men, like an old salon of society artists centered around a model, or else 18th century surgeons hovering over the young female cadaver. He'll picture old girlfriends from university that got away, that he never had the chance to exclaim love to, he'll think of subway riders, random women from the street, coworkers he finds emasculating but indefinably is made more attracted to, body parts floating in an otherworldly space: a bent-over bum here, tits staring like two conglomerated eyeballs there; a crevice, a mouth. Then he'll picture her. It won't be something he meant to do, in fact he's been consciously trying to train himself out of it, eradicate her from the depths. But there she is, huge and painted silver, glaring as ever, the eyes silver as steel and penetrating. What do they see? His faults, all of them, just as he feared. They're peering into his crevices right now, burning right through the hand as if his cock were pure open flame. There go the holes in his arguments; there goes the empty air of his excuses, deflating like punctured tires. He's young now suddenly, he's full of baby fat and hairless and his penis resembles a tiny furred animal, defenseless. She takes hold of him, she could turn mothersome and cradle him like an infant, love him anyway like a wayward child, but she doesn't. She instead turns, her body creaks backward, and the cold hard machine that she has become, the metal insect shell she resides in, simply stops.
