Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

♦

Another cut. The car draws to a halt on the edge of a desert. There is sand and scrub. The girl lies on the ground beside the car. This time she is actually naked — shoes, stockings and suspenders are nowhere to be seen. The man seems, curiously, to be fiddling with the groceries, and his reason now becomes apparent. He stands over the girl with an egg in his hand. He breaks the egg so that the yolk falls through the air and lands very precisely on the girl’s left breast — a direct hit. More eggs follow until there is a film of albumen and broken yolks over most of her torso. Events now progress rapidly. Via a series of jump cuts we see ketchup splashed around her neck and shoulders, chicken livers splattered across her thighs, honey coating her chin and cheeks. Baked beans, instant coffee, cling peaches, vegetable oil all follow until she is all but entirely clothed in this (more or less) edible silt.

♦

The front door of ‘Sorrento’ was thrown open and a sea of people flooded into the house. Photographers, cameramen and reporters were at the front of the mob, closely followed by police. Behind them were the ambulance men, the firemen and the sightseers from the village, and finally there was a number of men in very sharp suits with very sharp haircuts, and guns spoiling the neat lines of their jackets.

Everything got filmed and photographed — Marilyn and Ishmael, alone and together, with Fat Les and Davey, with other members of the commune. The house got photographed — every room, including Marilyn’s mother’s exotic bedroom — the garden, the drive, the wagon wheel gates and of course the five Beetles.

Ishmael and Marilyn posed in front of Enlightenment and answered a few last questions. Marilyn took care of the bright, breezy banter, Ishmael restricted himself to hammering home the spiritual message. They made a good team. The media lapped it up. So did the crowd of well-wishers who had gathered.

‘Finally, Ishmael,’ a reporter from ITN asked, ‘after all that you’ve been through, what are your feelings about Mr Lederer?’

Ishmael thought long and hard.

‘I forgive him,’ he said.

The well-wishers cheered and one or two plucked up enough courage to ask Ishmael for his autograph.

♦

The man is now naked and one would assume that he is about to lower himself on to the swamp of food within which there is the naked body of a woman. But that would be a hasty assumption. The camera focuses on his penis which is only semi-erect and slowly a stream of urine emerges. The camera follows its descent and roams over the areas of the girl’s body where urine mixes with food and where a nipple or navel occasionally shows through. The girl does a reasonable job of pretending to enjoy herself.

So far the film has been unusual yet plodding. It is different from the run of the mill blue movie but there has been nothing spectacularly inventive, and nothing, as Max and Renata have been all too aware, spectacularly erotic. Certainly there has been nothing to prepare them for the extraordinary filmic coup that the director pulls off in the dying minutes of the film, a coup which completely transforms the base materials with which he has been working.

The man and woman, she still on her back, he finishing his pee, become aware that someone is approaching. There is a long shot of a stranger walking towards them. The man and woman register mimed alarm.

And then comes the master stroke.

The film suddenly switches into fast motion reverse. Urine streams back into the man’s penis, ketchup leaps back into its bottle, eggs reform themselves. In less than a minute the groceries are whole and returned to the car. The girl is still naked but her body is perfectly clean and she now (in forward motion) slips her fur coat on just as the stranger passes by. There is a final shot of the Beetle driving away along a desert road before the film ends.

♦

The police wanted Ishmael and Marilyn to help them with their inquiries. Ishmael and Marilyn wanted to sleep.

‘We were the victims of this siege you know,’ Marilyn said. ‘You’re treating us like criminals.’

A man with a sharp suit and haircut said, ‘No we aren’t, madam. We just hope you’ll be able to clear up one or two matters for us.’

‘Any objections if we go to a motel?’

‘None at all, madam, so long as we know which one.’

Ishmael said, ‘I’ve had it with motels, this time I’m going first class.’

‘Really, sir?’

‘Really. If anybody wants us we’ll be at the Kensington Astoria.’

He’d heard the name on a radio programme. They took Davey as their chauffeur. At first Ishmael felt uneasy about letting anyone but himself drive Enlightenment, but now that he was going first class it seemed appropriate.

‘What are you going to do when you get to the hotel?’ Davey asked.

‘I’m going to wait for offers,’ Ishmael said.

♦

‘Pornography is like pastoral poetry,’ says Max. ‘It must fulfil certain inviolable conditions. The rules are set. The requirements are rigid. To be inventive within that strait-jacket of form is the mark of the true genius.’

Renata sips her drink and doesn’t say anything. She has heard Max’s opinions on other occasions, knows them well, and feels that they result from too many years spent in the seminar room.

♦

They arrived at the Kensington Astoria. Ishmael asked for a suite of rooms for himself and Marilyn, and a single room for Davey. The hotel was happy to oblige. They knew who their guests were. They were celebrities. They’d been on television. Nobody asked whether they had money. Nobody told them how much anything cost. The hotel staff just said what an honour it was to meet Ishmael.

The suite of rooms was a bit ostentatious for Ishmael’s tastes. Everything was cream coloured and had mouldings. Ishmael headed for the bedroom.

‘No, Marilyn,’ he said, ‘you can’t be with me now. I need to be alone. You stay out of the bedroom and answer the phone. Tell them all I’m in conference but I’m prepared to consider all offers.’

He closed the bedroom door behind him, stretched out on the king-size bed and fell deep asleep.

When he awoke it was dark. From the sitting room of the suite he could hear a television, and Marilyn talking on the phone. He entered the room. There was mess everywhere. Marilyn was sitting on the floor amid an undergrowth of newspapers, letters, flowers, telexes, wine bottles, two video recorders and a number of telephones, two of which were ringing.

‘The phones have been jammed all day,’ Marilyn said. ‘They all want you, Ishmael. It looks like you’re a star.’

‘Who wants me? And what for?’

‘So far you’ve been offered radio spots on ‘Start the Week’ and ‘Any Questions’. They want you to read your favourite Bible passage on some Sunday religious tv programme. Radio One wants you to play your ten favourite singles of all time. You can be a guest on ‘Breakfast Time’, ‘Celebrity Squares’, ‘Call My Bluff’ and ‘Blankety Blank’.

‘ The Observer wants to discuss your being guest motoring editor. You’ve been invited to address the Volkswagen Owners’ Club of Great Britain — small time, perhaps, but probably worthwhile. The Sunday Times wants to do a Life in the Day and the Sunday Express wants you for their Things I Wish I’d Known at Eighteen. Oh and the TV Times would like you to take over their problem page.

‘Then there are the people who are prepared to pay just for the pleasure of interviewing you. In the last half hour alone I’ve spoken to Woman’s Own, Penthouse, Fast Lane , the Church Times and the New Musical Express .

‘You can open supermarkets, endorse products, test-drive any car in the world, meet anyone you want to meet, have free tickets to anything, and you can have all the sponsorship anyone could possibly hope for.