The Secret Sex Museum: Exhibit 321ph10

K. Holland & M. Mackenzie

{And that brings us to:} Exhibit 321ph10, directly to your left. I must remind you that no photographic equipment is permitted. That, by the way, is under the strictest penalty of what laws apply--and they are many and, umm, quite fearsome...

{So just imagine this,} says the catwalk-thin cutie, trembling all over from head-to-toe, her blue lips blood-flecked, blood-glittered, blood-dusted, and her large painted eyes not quite, and yet, even so, coquettishly a-flutter: My lover informs me that she's planned a surprise dinner party--a surprise to me, anyway, a sort of debutante's death-ball, is how she puts it, my "coming-out" party, with an ominous, secret little smirk that only strikes me as ominous and secret when it's no longer any secret, plenty ominous, and way too late to escape.

In the meantime, I mindlessly fret and flutter about what to wear; in the end, of course, it's not important, because the plan doesn't require me to wear much, but I don't know that--it's part of the fun to keep me blissfully ignorant, in a state of perpetual pre-orgasmic suspense. I've managed only to don a sexy little half-bra and ruffled panties when the injection kicks in, the curtain goes up, the show begins; half-blinded, I struggle to slip into a pair of thigh-high stockings, clumsily getting the seams straight, costing myself valuable seconds. It's when I bend forward over my ankle to buckle the strappy stiletto sandal that the inky black fingers of whatever illegal cocktail of drugs that's been introduced into my bloodstream slides over my brain like a malignant mutant (nine-legged) octopus, smudging up and squishing out the last of my consciousness and thereupon I tumble forward in slow-motion to the polished hardwood floor like a soft little pillow at my mistress's booted feet.

For half the party--my own party!--I'm just not with it, drugged dopey, I stare through glazed eyes at a lot of people I don't know, or half-know, or, worst of all, know all too well, these emissaries from the past and present intermixed, like in a dream set in a place I don't recognize and have never been before, but familiar all the same, an archetypal banquet hall, like the kind they use for weddings or mitzvahs, bar or bat, and I'm still in my underwear and I'm seemingly hovering just above the crowd, (look at them down there), god, I'm so loopy, and it's a good thing, too, since I'm starting to understand that, as unreal as it all seems, as surreal as it looks to my own eyes which are only inches away from my open palm, my head having flopped lazily to the side at the prompting of a dull, faraway pain, like the flicker of distant lightning or the faint drums of a still far-off marching band, I see the impossible: the fact that I'm nailed to a wooden cross erected in the middle of this milling gathering like nothing so much as an incidental conversation piece! Well, maybe not so incidental... But, then, certainly not so important either; this isn't my party, after all, but hers, my pre-op transsexual mistress in her ultra-glam gold lame evening gown, an ex-male bodybuilder turned glamour-puss film star, or something of the sort, well, you know what I mean, not exactly a film star, per se, but... Listen...they are mingling, chatting, sipping cocktails and noshing on catered hors d oeuvres and hozzie-whatzies, every so often throwing a glance my way, curious, bored, chuckling at my precarious plight--"whose is that freakthing anyway?" To which comes the ubiquitous response "Cyn's little girlfriend." The retort to which invariably is some variation of "Oh...(laughing)...Jesus...I didn't recognize...well, I'll be damned they've finally gone and done it then...well, good for Cyn; she deserves it...by the way, have you seen the first rushes yet?" and so it goes, the small-talk people make, even at funerals, the chitchat they generate clustered around sickbeds, and deathbeds, the pointless albeit essential buzz they doubtless made on the walk back from the crematoriums in the concentration camps, the firing-squads, the death marches, too...

Tears have meanwhile dried in my thickly-applied make-up, so thickly-applied, in fact, that it's like a mask of sludge, so thick, to be precise, it's like my face is under an inch of mud; why, I wonder. Why--this heavy-handed, intentionally inexpert job? It's theatrical make-up, that's why, corpse make-up, that's what I suddenly realize, puddinged on the way they prepare the dead, or the slow dancing actress portraying an archetype of death on stage, her face emotionless, unblemished, vacant--serene, by which I mean to say, soulless, un-transcendent in every sense...does that make sense? Yes, there is no other conclusion to draw. I've made up my mind. I have been made-up like this because in everyone's mind I am, in fact, already dead.

I whimper. My bowels, as the Bible has often put it, have turned to water.

An older man, sipping a Cosmopolitan, perhaps (I'm no Mr. Boston!) puffing a cigar, appraises me meditatively, almost appreciatively, but nonetheless with blank unseeing eyes, as if he were thinking of something else entirely (which, quite naturally, he is), which would mean he wasn't appraising me at all now wouldn't it? for crissakes you're not the goddamned center of the universe, you fucking egomaniac, you!), that he was merely looking, absently, because I am absent; occasionally someone (is it Cyn?) quiets my groans by thrusting a sponge between my teeth; it's soaked, I think, with a lemon-flavored tranquilizer; the older man gets bored, resurfaces from his private meditation, gets tapped on the shoulder, knocks the ash off his cigar and extinguishes it, off-handedly, against the inside of my left thigh, and so it goes.

My ribcage, exposed below my pink polka-dot halter (yes, I'm now wearing a polka-dot halter and pink short-shorts, don't ask me how this is possible) is slashed (for effect, non-lethally, Cyn assures me, she looks so radiant!) and my taut tummy is stretched (and similarly slashed with what looks to be some sort of Mayan hieroglyphic) between my prominent hipbones, navel pierced, of course, with a dangling rhinestone trinket.

A party game has started up, seemingly spontaneously as these things often do, with the abrupt and incongruous appearance of an aluminum baseball bat--"Break the Pansy's Legs" it seems to be called--is that what this is really all about? Someone has tacked a sheet of paper above my head with the words "Impotent Fag" scrawled across in pink block letters, and so, now that all's prepared, let the game begin! I guess you could say that the general idea of the contest resembles (more than anything else I can think of at the moment) a sort of cross between pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and beating a piņata.

Someone takes up the bat, they blindfold him or her, turn them around two or three times, set them in the general direction of my crucified body, let them go with a push forward--and the hilarity ensues. Staggering towards me, bat-on-shoulder to the accompaniment of encouraging cheers, hoots and laughter, to the spirited and shouted instructions (left, right, no left, left, left, now right, that's it, a little bit forward, not so much, almost, almost, right, yes...right there...stop...SWING! SWING!). Each participant eventually arrives in the approximate vicinity of my cross, at the foot of it, I mean, and, with all their might, takes an awkward, off-balance hack, the idea being to break the bones in my legs so that, unable to support my weight at all, unable to relieve the pressure on my nailed wrists and feet, my diaphragm will collapse, my lungs fill with fluid, eventually cease to function, and in exhaustion and agony, lapsing into shock, I'll suffocate and expire, which is generally the way the crucified of all centuries meet their deaths. And nothing more than this is the goal of the game, this is how the winner is determined! Who'll be the one to succeed in breaking my legbones so that I croak, that person is the lucky champion! Can you imagine? What kind of people are these, anyway? What kind of world is this that they inhabit? How did I end up among them?

The worst part is that this isn't even the worst part of my terrible ordeal. The blows, you see, are excruciating in themselves, but invariably, (barring a lucky strike--lucky, that is, for me--which, unluckily--for me--is never struck), they are for the greater part wildly inaccurate, more painful, perhaps, for their wildness and their inaccuracy, thunking as they do across my shins, glancing off my kneecaps, clipping my ankles. They cause pain, in other words, but they do not lead to the quick and efficient end of my life (=suffering).

The game doesn't hold everyone's interest, not at first, nor all at once--two or three take it up, abandon it, then two or three more, another and another, joined by four or five, losing a few here and there who drift off by ones or twos, until sometimes for a time, at least, the game is neglected altogether, and then someone weaves drunkenly up or takes up the bat while waiting for the bathroom, and without even bothering with the blindfold that supposedly provides the challenge--yadda yadda yadda...

There's my ex, oh Christ, it's true, there she is, I can't believe Cyn invited her, here she comes, blindfolded, grinning, her chopping blow catches me in the groin, the backswing lands square on the nail driven through my right instep--I go icy cold with pain, blinded by a brick wall of white light. Her lover comes up behind her, wraps his arms around her, guiding her through a swing or two. The blows land without a great deal more accuracy, but they provoke a good deal more amusement . At last, oh thank god at last, the coup de grace is delivered; it's her new lover who takes the bat, removes his sports coat, and takes what is recognizable to anyone as an expert stance. A crowd materializes out of thin air, like ants around a fallen chunk of cherry popsicle (even Aristotle believed in spontaneous generation).

Tall and athletic, broad-shouldered and muscular, an ex-ballplayer in the minor leagues of one professional team or other (the St. Louis Cardinals? the Cleveland Indians?), he won't be cheated, so he cheats. I catch his eye from beneath the blindfold he's managed to partially slip to the side as he strides purposely and unerringly forward, takes up that expert stance--he's a switch-hitter!--first from the right side and then from the left, his beautifully fluid and level swing measures me up just right and he catches me on the sweet-spot (an inch above each knee), a pair of homeruns for sure, going, going, see ya, gone! He wins the game, my ex throws herself ecstatically into his arms ("my hero!"), and the crowd goes wild. I sag down, fatally, on broken legs, never to rise again for breath (or anything else); my head drops dumbly to my chest and through fluttering lashes I see my pink bikini-style panties rapidly redden as my bladder empties, and I wonder, am I actually pissing blood?

Standing on hand, monitoring my progress (Progress? Can you really call it that? Sure! Why not? Fine...progress then) is the surgeon with his scalpel and his cooler of dry ice. Nothing here will go to waste; after all, a human body is a treasure chest of invaluables--an iconic senator dying of nephritis, the aging rock star with the pickled liver, the clogged and rotten heart of the ruthless venture capitalist-turned-philanthropist alas too late--who said money can't buy everything--it can by whatever you can afford! Already, unable to wait, and because it makes for better theater than carving up a corpse, the surgeon has worked the urine-soaked panties over my hips and down my smooth thighs and is performing a makeshift orchiectomy, that's castration for you laymen, slitting my scrotum open down the middle (my what?! How did that get there?!), reaching inside and prying out my testicles (my what? My testicles?! Hey, what gives? Surely you jest!), cutting the cords and nerves and whatnot, his latex fingers slick with blood and unexpressed semen. There's some impotent Russian bazillionaire somewhere in the Urals who's convinced that a ground and dried concoction including such illicit ingredients harvested fresh from the source makes Viagra seem like baby aspirin. Corneas, hair, teeth, not to mention lungs, the pancreas, and adrenal glands, the skull cracked open, that jellied meat a delicacy, the pituitary rare as a four-leaf clover, bones have uses too, damn it's all good, and when the body is empty so long as there are recognizable orifices and a certain quantity of meat a necrophiliac can be found somewhere who'll pay to fuck it, a cannibal to eat it, and when that's gone there are master tattooists around the world who’d kill for skin to stretch and ink with secret grimiores; rich collectors are paying fortunes even as we speak (so to speak) to secure such precious canvases for the unimaginable collections of the darkest galleries of the most private museums.

Cyn will make a bundle on my carcass, not to mention the film she's paid a photographer to make of my torture and butchering, enough to never have to work again, even if her film career doesn't work out the way she plans, and knowing her, with that short attention span, addictive personality, and alarming tendency to self-destructive dissolution, it surely won't. Well, she'll be able to have that child she always wanted and that's not cheap without a womb and all, but what can science not to if it has a mind to--and a full enough pocketbook...in a word, nothing! They'll implant it in her tummy, or thereabouts, like a virgin birth, a child of no man (and, in this case) no woman born, a propitious and unprecedented pseudo-event. It's always been a dream of hers, motherhood, that is, the ultimate fantasy, to be a big-bellied, big-titted, transsexual earth mother with a Munchausen's fetish--it's nice to be able to help a dream come true, although I have to admit I wish it hadn't cost me quite so much, speaking of which, why haven't I lost consciousness by now, haven't I suffered enough, why does this horrible moment seem frozen, like it's going on forever, if only I could wake up, if I could wake up, maybe, just maybe, I could die once and for all at last...

{This way, folks, please,} this way follow right along, no lingering before the exhibits, please. Catalogs will be available for purchase in the gift shop at the end of your tour. That's it, thank you very much, let us proceed, then, shall we?

The preceding diorama is one of countless others, innumerable in the sense that additional ones are being constructed all the time, each illustrating a new discovery in the compendium of research compiled by that preeminent sexologist, secret police interrogator, serial killer, museum curator, surgeon, and god knows what else who, up to now--and from now on--we've been pleased (as we've no choice but to be) to identify in our narrative (inasmuch as it narrates anything whatsoever) as "Mr. Thoth."

Each previously heretofore undreamed of variation of sexual fantasy unearthed, coaxed, coerced, induced, deduced--well, take your pick--by the esteemed Mr. Thoth is thus represented here in these wonderfully intricate and disturbingly lifelike tableaux for the education and illumination (and, in some cases, let it be admitted, the titillation) of visitors such as yourselves. Endless hallways of such exhibits, a vast and labyrinthine network not unlike the inextricable (and inexplicable) knot of a large tree's root system, a kind of psychic world oak of humanity's sexual psychopathology, impossible to uproot, is laid out here, far beneath both ground and consciousness, as museum, symptom, and scene of the crime--all at the same time!

Quite a feat of inhuman engineering, don't you think? On the wall beside each sickeningly lifelike diorama is a descriptive plaque, which, at the touch of a button, offers in seventeen different languages, Mr. Thoth's ruminations upon the matter which opens up before you, these being updated and expanded in real-time even as Mr. Thoth continues to ruminate, which he does, let us assure you, constantly, like a cow.

With incomparable art and technological artifice, the characters appear to move and speak as if they were, in fact, still alive, and, thus, they seem to suffer the same cruel sufferings again and again, lending the facility a certain similarity, we must admit, to commonly held notions of Hell.

So be it. We make no apologies. Even if we did, they'd fall on dead ears. Ha ha...did we say "dead"? Ah-hem. We meant "deaf," quite obviously.

Come now, step lively. Careful, don't slip on that slick patch. You wouldn't want to break a leg at this point. We'd have to leave you behind for the wolves. After all, we are very nearly done with our tour...

--from our upcoming novel The Mansion of Beautiful Corpses

available Fall 2010

our website: thefreakbox.blogspot.com