David Cronenberg - Consumed

IN THE CORNER of the room between the minibar and the TV dresser unit crouched two sets of unopened bags: two camera rollers, two backpacks, two small black Samsonite four-wheel Cruisair Spinner suitcases with faux carbon-fiber-weave finish (Naomi and Nathan aspired to Rimowa Topas, the sexy German dentable aluminum stuff, but that was, for the moment, out of their range). It was not so much that they had the same taste in gear, but rather that they collaborated on their consumerism; it was a consumerist dialectic that led to the same commodity. That’s what Naomi was thinking in the floating part of her mind as she sucked Nathan’s cock—so delightfully, boringly, not curved much at all, not a mutant organ in any way, but a classic, modern circumcised penis—in room 511 of the Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Hotel. And she was surprised to find herself thinking in Marxist terms, because up until that moment at the electronics kiosk, in which she discovered three books by the Arosteguys—cheap-looking rushed editions in American English pumped out to take advantage of the philosophy-cannibalism scandal—she had barely heard of Karl Marx or Das Kapital . And yet those books, small, with large, inviting typefaces, and so easy to read, like owner’s manuals for hitherto undiscovered parts of the brain, made her feel as though she had been born a Marxist economist. Not that Marxism was the subject of the books, but that the lexicon of Marx somehow underpinned the Arosteguys’ evidently profound understanding of contemporary consumerism—and of Naomi herself, as it turned out.

The lack of an available direct flight, which would have been a short hour-plus hop from Paris to Amsterdam, meant a seven-hour ordeal involving a layover in Frankfurt. But the time dissolved in an odd way, because instead of wandering among the randomly strewn high-tech shops of that stainless-steel commercial kitchen of an airport, punctuated by intense bouts of Wi-Fi hotspotting, Naomi found herself settled into a lounge chair near her gate, submerged in the deep inner sea of the Arosteguys—a warm sea nurturing a coral reef inhabited by the most bizarre and engaging creatures—continuing a dive she had begun on the flight from Paris. By the time she came up for air, she had been transformed into a quiveringly, giddily passionate Arosteguyan.

And now those three books— Science-Fiction Money , Apocalyptic Consumerism: A User’s Manual , and Labor Gore: Marx and Horror —lay innocently on the glossy desk by the window as Nathan unexpectedly, and somewhat unsportingly, came in Naomi’s mouth, phlegmy and bitter. It was her breasts that did it, or rather, it was all four breasts—two of Naomi’s, two of Dunja’s, superimposed on each other, the image fermented in Nathan’s brain and downloaded through his penis into Naomi’s hot, distracted mouth. Or so it felt to Nathan, absorbing Naomi’s jet lag and distraction as his own, and confusing her breasts, beautifully wobbling as she sucked, with Dunja’s larger, mutilated ones, and somehow even adding Dunja’s swollen armpit glands—six breasts?—to the mix. He had his arms behind his head and wasn’t even touching Naomi’s breasts. It was the distance that made the hallucinatory laminating of breasts possible, and his usual come-control ineffective. Or had he even tried to exercise that control? Was he like a small dog who punishes his mistress for staying out too late and leaving him locked in the kitchen? Naomi never swallowed unless she was very drunk. Naturally, she had a rationale. It was more porn-like to just let it dribble out of her mouth, to let it form a stringy bridge to his penis and his pubic hair. She did it now, not startled, exactly, but maybe puzzled by his betrayal of their routine, which was that they would decide in advance of her mouth enclosing him whether this was foreplay or this was it for now. Naomi didn’t like sexual surprises. She was always willing to play, but she wanted structure.

And so it was a surprise to Nathan, then, that Naomi, abstractedly wiping her lips with the back of her hand, said, “What do you think about Marx and crime, Than?” No sexual reprimands, and a reversion to her infantile name for him, Than, suggesting a thumb-sucking, asexual state of mind.

“Well, I’m not sure, Omi. It’s a huge subject, I guess. You’ve been deep into it? Marx? That’s a first for you, isn’t it?”

Naomi rolled onto her back, flattened by the enormity. The ceiling was a stained plaster swirling. It matched her mental state. “I’ve been deep into the Arosteguys.”

“They’re Marxists?”

“I’ve been reading them. I realize I have no education. It’s intimidating and depressing. It hurts my head. I need the internet to read them. And exhilarating. I’m not sure what they are. Were. She’s very dead. And dismembered.” Naomi folded both arms over her eyes, shutting out the oppressive ceiling. “Omi, Than.” Nathan began the cursory wiping of his penis with an obscure corner of the bedsheets, a habit Naomi had forced herself to decide was endearing. Was it a passive-aggressive statement? Did he hold off doing that when she swallowed? She couldn’t remember.

“That’s us,” he said. “Omi Than. We sound like a Vietnamese gynecologist.”

Naomi shook her head under her arms. “So weird that you say that. So weird.”

“Because?”

“Because there is a Vietnamese gynecologist in my life. Or almost.” Naomi unfolded and rolled back over to face Nathan, lips still sticky. “Célestine’s GP. Dr. Phan Trinh. She definitely had an intimate knowledge of her patient’s vagina.”

“And a Marxist? A criminal?”

“Dr. Trinh? No, I was thinking about Aristide when I said that.”

“A Marxist and a criminal?”

Naomi rolled off her side of the bed and squatted beside her camera roller. She dripped a few drops of lazy viscous fluid into the carpeting as she unzipped the bag and groped its innards. “I was thinking more like a Marxist and therefore a criminal. I mean, the way he—they—wrote made me dizzy-crazy, made me feel intelligent and deep, and you know how seductive that is for me, you used it yourself to get me into bed that first time.” And now she flopped back onto the bed, a white-and-silver iPhone 5s in her hand. “Lemme take a shot of you cleaning your cock.”

Nathan stared at her in disbelief. “You have a bag full of the highest of high-tech photographic shit that you’ve lugged all over the globe, and you’re shooting my manhood with a cell phone? And since when do you have an iPhone?”

“Since Charles de Gaulle. It’s a natural segue from my well-documented-by-you desire for disembodiment. I want to junk the camera roller bag and travel with only this, this implement. It shoots HD video too. And you can edit it on the phone, while flying. Touch focus. Dual LED flash. Fingerprint security. Great macro. Look.” And she swooped down to within centimeters of his cock-head and started snapping, the phone making an absolutely delectable shutter sound, reminding Nathan of the Australian lyrebird that would replicate the shutter sounds of forest paparazzi to seduce a mate. Or was it a more sinister thing? Was the iPhone a malevolent protean organism, the stem-cell phone, mocking him who had cameras with real physical shutters whose sound you couldn’t turn off ? Promising to replace every other device on earth with its shape-shifting self—garage door openers, solar timers, television remotes, car keys, guitar tuners, GPS modules, light meters, spirit levels, you name it? “And now mit Blitzlicht .” The LEDs embedded in the glass back of the phone blasted the tip of his cock with 5,400 Kelvin degrees of cool-blue daylight. He thought he could feel it. She held the phone up to his face. “You see how the flash throttles down for the macro shot. Perfectly exposed, matches ambient color temperature, doesn’t blow out your cock, as it were.” She pulled the phone back to look at her photo, then, drawn by its ruthless intensity, kissed the image. Her lips left semen smears on the screen. Commodity fetishism at its finest.