The same billboard, the same glass or vase with purple Vanda orchids. Episode Two begins with a repeat of the high note that strikes and resonates. We’re on to a system, a logic, a bid for consistency, the deliberation of design, the imperative of style. The itinerary is in motion, the thread being strung together.
The thread - out of, or into, the maze of our consciousness, this island of our being.
The vision says we’re still in front of the TV, the couple strolling underneath those trees of lust in bloom in that movie in gray and white.
Do we know what movie it is?
We can guess.
It is a Japanese movie alright, but no Kurosawa or Ozu, given the woman masturbating in the shower. It shall be something new-wavy, and it’s more than guessing we can do, we know. This is from the erotic year 69, and the fundamental theme will be: “How to change the world, and what is it that needs to be changed?”
Oh yes, Eros + Massacre, Yoshishige Yoshida.
We got you.
Listen carefully, a woman’s voice, not clear whether it is the same from the previous episode, speaks in low volume, asking her conversation partner how he or she, presumably he, had pictured her. How does he imagine her? In all politeness, a request to make the fantasy explicit.
But we’re not listening. We’re on the move - we in full battledress, sword drawn. We ride the wind, we walk on air. Swaggering, or wobbling. How much tequila did we down? Are we sure it was tequila? Or mescaline, or LSD diluted in water, or some kind of mushroom extract. Holy water. On the back of our shirt, over the armor, we have the same family crest as on our shield. The double-headed, red-beaked black eagle.
We can hear a trickle of water, the streaming of a creek, as we’re moving past a writer’s desk. We glimpse a collection of red wine, more than a dozen bottles.
The crusader passes through the kitchen, enters the bedroom. Vaguely aware of more flowers on our way, Camellia this time, and artwork on the wall. The house, Casa Miki, seems spacious. Surprisingly so, for a doll house.
Be sure for Shiraishi to want to impart something here. Note 24 of the little white philosopher’s anti-stone, “The idealist’s question would be something like: “What right have I not to doubt the existence of my hands?””
But where are our hands? Who carries this crusader that we are?
Crusading not for the cross of Christ, but with the counterthrusting of doubt. What right do we have not to doubt? What allows us to be certain of anything. The question marks collapse from fatigue, from excess of inquiry. Doubt is a matter of stamina, and the lack of it gives no certainty but resignation.
There’s the bed, and there’s Miki on the bed, still in her cabaret outfit, but lying on her back now, fast asleep. We pant.
And it’s not an elegant panting, if there’s ever such a thing as elegant panting.
There’s just fat, greasy, ugly panting.
Heavy breathing.
Heavy breathing as we move in and out her crotch, still in hotpants, it’s not even clear whether we’re really trying to gain access to the vulva, there’s moving in and out, yes, but could it be just a project of friction, a practice of rubbing, essentially merely jacking off.
Or maybe this is metaphor, sticking the sword between her legs. What right do we have to doubt the existence of metaphor, of carrying over – remember the attempt to break the record? Eleven certified ejaculations in the space of twenty-four hours. How we almost blew it, back in the days long gone on the other side.
And here we’re busy blowing it. Blame the tequila, or whatever it was.
Our fat, greasy, ugly panting turns from heavy breathing to downright grunting, but the sword between her legs achieves exactly nothing. Riding from behind – to no avail. And from grunting to pushing and shoving, impotently. With one last huffing and puffing we give up.
“No good,” the dying breathes twice.
From the green tears and the blood trickling down our face, the out-of-body loop deduces what we are. A zombie crusader, shaking in disbelief.
“It’s your fault,” says Miki in her AI-generated voice, the scolding slightly accelerated.
How we shake in vain, hovering over the Chronicle of Beauty’s perfect shape.
