Rapt and Happy
1998 17 mins
Angie
There's something wonderful about feeling sad, lonely, or mad at times, but really everyone likes being happy the best.
Cat Fight
cat#1: I put on lipstick.
cat#2: You look like a tramp.
Faces
A Word of Advice
Cooper: Being famous will not make you any less boring or insecure...
Stephen Ellwood: I don't want to talk about it.
Bananas
I hate pornography. It has colonised my orgasm. But here I am, enacting it again.
Group Action
Sometimes it seemed we were the envy of everybody. Three-way action, a place right downtown, money, all the kinds of abundance.
We were all so stylish. Beautiful. Desired. Then the cup would dump and the cats would go hungry cause none of us would get out of bed. They'd crawl all over us in tears. “Daddy, I'm hungry! Daddy, mommy, wake up!” They could get mean when four o'clock rolled around and we hadn't stirred. We were obstinate, even with them. You should've seen the way we'd treat each other. Some people say it's familiarity that breeds contempt. With us it was much uglier. It was a compulsion.
When there's three in a bed it's inevitable that someone sleeps in the middle. We never resolved it. We just started to pay for it. Now the day has passed and I can't say I'm sorry to see an end to the squabbling. It's just the glamour I miss. The way it looked to guests--every table in the place loaded down with white tulips. Tranquilizers and stimulants always close at hand. And thetall walls bare and the mirrors everywhere.
Two cats, two males and one fine white lady throwing up in the sink. No-one's getting off in there, no-one's feeling good, not even okay--but I forgot, we're not talking about that. This is how it looks. Each surface is a smear of pages: drawings, missives back and forth (talk about articulate, these three sure do); And books and photos, head shots and full body; incidental dishes, crumbs and an illusion of cleanliness thanks to the special lighting system devised by one, executed by another, merely appreciated by me. I'm not handy. I believe I contributed something, though. I doubt they could have pulled it off without me. I'm like a wire. I conducted.
Curtains for Stephen
I think of you and the sadness comes down like curtains after the show.
I think of you to bring the sadness down like curtains.
Parties
Emily: Sometimes I hate to be around other people. they appear pathetic, and it reminds me of myself.
Cooper: God, you can be so harsh!
Y.O.U.'.R.E. O.N. M.Y. A.R.M. A.G.A.I.N. ⇑ I L.I.K.E. I.T.
Sick, Tired and Bored
Cat#1: We are sick and tired to be your slaves.
Cat# 2: Sick, tired and bored.
Daddy's porn
P-p-p-porno
I l-l-love you
P-p-p-pornography.
P-p-p-porno
I l-l-love you.
You make me come reliably.
But H-h-hustler
You make me angry
With your corrupt iconography.
But Nancy Friday
You make me horny
And you frame it politically.
All you need is love
Pipedreams
Cat# 1: I'm sick of trying to be a star. From now on I am just going to try to be a good person.
Cat# 2: God, it's just one pipedream after another with you, isn't it.
We Think that We are in the Movies
Shary: regular user
Emily: Bulimic
Mark: Trendy
Heather: Pot-head
Alex: Fashion hound
Angie: Misanthrope
Halpern: Pushover
Emily: Orally fixated
Bradley: Blends in
Cooper: Mooch
David: Sycophant
Devon: Cold fish
Allie: Drug-hound
Jim: Porn addicted
Joy: Jesus freak
JP: Star fucker
Kika: Melodramatic
Cooper: Suck-up
Kim: Drinker
Lucy: Bargain hunter
Maggie: Spiritualist
Michael: Perverted
Patterson: Loves TV
Shary: Clothes horse
Kim: Rage-aholic
Steve: Socially awkward
Stephen: Theory buff
Shinobu: Hard worker
Warren: Space case
Steve: Lowered expectations
Kim: Fashion hound
Stephen: Compulsive shopper
My Aim is True
The moment my fist hit your face I was so fucking shocked and horrified. I truly didn't expect it to be happening, which is so foolish cause I had been imagining doing it and then saying to myself
“Do not. Absolutely do not punch him, you know that's off limits. No punching, you will hate yourself after”.
But then I was so mad, I was thinking “I'll show him how out of control he's making me. Then he'll know how angry I am. And then my fist was hitting your face, and at the last second instead of pulling it back I got even more angry, and I drove the punch in against the face of the human I love the best, and the gentlest.
It makes me sick to remember, cause I felt the teeth in your mouth. I had always had a somewhat abstract notion of how it feels when you punch someone--that it's soft and absorbent. But it's not. It's horrible. It's all bone and teeth and veins, and I was sure from the sensation that I had knocked one of your teeth out. Then when I saw the blood it really clinched it.
I panicked. I realized quickly that it was just a nosebleed. I had punched my boyfriend and his nose was bleeding, and it had just been an idea which I knew was a bad idea. But then it was true, already done, and you were all bloody and wet and we were in a Christian vegan restaurant. Only you, only you and I have ever brawled in there.
And of course I am so fucking hysterical and only thinking of myself, thinking "I'm going to lose him, I'm going to lose him, I deserve to lose him, I will die if I lose him." and I picked up all the money from the floor where you had thrown it, and all I could think on the way home was how anything I said was going to sound like something an abusive boyfriend would say, like "I won't ever do it again, please forgive me, do not leave me, blah blah blah."
But it's really true and I really want to tell you the truth. Though somehow the only thing that seems fair is for me to tell you that I will get out, that I will go away from you.
It's not because I'm fickle or jealous my darling that I connected my fist with your pretty pink mouth. It's because I believed in the lie I got told that goes "being in love means being out of control”.
Babies
You've never experiences this pleasure before. You'll rarely experience this pleasure again.