The Venus Complex Read online

  The combination of sex and death is so powerful, so fundamental. Eros and Thanatos.

  I enter her and as I am making love to her, I hold the knife to her throat. She arches her back and her legs encircle my waist and her pelvis is humping away. She spreads her arms out, effortlessly floating and completely helpless, giving herself to me. Her mouth is wide open and she is silently screaming with pleasure. A ray of sunlight embraces her like a spotlight. It is the most beautiful image I have ever seen.

  My knife gently travels down to her chest and I delicately touch her nipples with the point. She is getting more excited and at the moment of her orgasm, she thrusts herself forward and skewers herself on my blade. She screams and screams, but I can hear her now. Screams of pleasure and pain. I stick my tongue down her throat and taste blood. I come while her dying body is convulsing on my cock. Blood billows around us and we sink down into the black depths of the pool, still coming, still fucking, a trail of blood in our wake.

  I woke up sweating after that one. Sweating and with a huge erection. Another dream about a dead woman. I am going to have to get laid soon, or I am not going to be responsible for my actions. I masturbated, thinking about the knife slipping in between the swimming girl’s voluptuous breasts and coming out her back, her mouth open and screaming, her body bucking in its death throes, and I came easily.

  I think I know what triggered my dream. I was watching the Discovery Channel that evening and saw a documentary about the ancient Mayans of Central America. A light-hearted bunch, they would periodically throw young virgins into a deep sacrificial pool in the jungle to placate one of their many bloodthirsty gods. Some divers explored the pool and found hundreds of skulls at the bottom.

  Nice.

  The following program was about sharks, so put two and two together and you get one screwed-up dream. Sometimes I wish that I did have some respect for psychiatrists because I am sure that Dr. Cordess would have had a field day with that particular nightmare.

  As I swim in the shark-infested waters of my subconscious, what demons do I meet?

  ENTRY 16:

  One of my neighbors came over today. The bell scared the shit out of me. I nearly didn’t answer, but then I thought, “what the hell,” and opened the door. It was Mrs. Donnalson from down the road. Nice enough woman, I guess, but Angie knew her better than I did. She was a typical resident of Manlius, the prosperous little village just outside Syracuse where I live. In her forties but well-preserved, upper middle class, professional, attractive in kind of a prim, schoolmarm sort of way. She had this cute habit of nervously tugging the skirt of her snazzy little suit down over her knees, like they were the crown jewels or something.

  We sat and talked. She even brought me a cake, for God’s sake. Mrs. Donnalson told me that she was shocked by the Accident and Angie’s unfortunate death. She apologized for not visiting me in the hospital, but her husband had to have a hernia operation, which was closely followed by the death of her father. I’m not sure that I believed her excuses, but what did I care?

  Then Mrs. Donnalson mentioned something that I thought was quite funny. She said that one of the reasons that it took so long for her to come over on her own was that my house disturbed her.

  “How exactly does it disturb you?” I asked.

  She said, “Honestly, Michael, why do you live in this hideous gray barn? It doesn’t even have any windows facing the road. It looks so creepy.”

  I laughed. Made some excuse about my abode’s other advantages, but the real reason was that even before the Accident I was always searching for increased separation from the crowd—enhanced privacy. The very idea of other people driving past my house and being able to see me going about my business bothered me much more than the concept of having no windows facing the street. The way I look at it, at least I am not as weird as the guy who built the damn thing.

  The conversation proceeded along amiably enough, and then something perverse transpired. I began to fantasize about dear Mrs. Donnalson. This is peculiar, because I’ve never been sexually attracted to her before, but I think that I am just desperate for a fuck. (See: previously reported dreams, not involving Mother.) I knew that she was married, so I didn’t try to hit on her, not that I would have had the confidence to do so anyway. We just chatted mindlessly and I imagined her without any clothes on, lying on my couch with her legs spread open, fondling her breasts with one hand and playing with herself with the other. It was a very amusing way to spend an hour or so.

  After a while I noticed that she had turned a bright shade of pink. She made her excuses and left hurriedly. I saw her to the door and as I turned to go back to the kitchen, I happened to glance down and notice that I had an embarrassingly large bulge in my pants. Somehow, I don’t think that Mrs. Donnalson will be back in a hurry.

  Well, I must be making progress. At least I am fantasizing about a living female for a change.

  ENTRY 17:

  I couldn’t be bothered to go out at all today. It was one of those cloudy, miasma-filled, early July days, not helped by the accompanying clammy humidity. The air of Syracuse in the summer months seems to have less oxygen in it, giving it an atmosphere as thick as Mexico City’s, but minus the Mariachi bands. I was gulping air like a guppy and getting no sustenance from it.

  So I stayed inside and browsed through some old art magazines that I hadn’t bother getting rid of. I came across one from 1999 that featured an article on the contemporary art exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, England entitled, Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art. It featured a photo of an alarmingly realistic wax statue of Pope John Paul II being pranged by a meteor. The piece was by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and it was called The Ninth Hour.

  I couldn’t stop laughing.

  I’m sure that this statue must have caused an outcry, but perhaps not as vociferous as the one that followed the Sensation exhibition at the Brooklyn Academy the same year. I remember that the portrait of an African Virgin Mary executed in elephant dung by British artist Chris Ofili was a personal favorite of mine. It was that painting in particular that had sent the good Mayor of New York ballistic.

  Frankly, in my opinion, all these conceptual artists are full of shit—no pun intended—from Hirst on down, but no one listens to me, do they?

  The Brits were much more sanguine about the squashed Pope. They don’t have the albatross of Catholic guilt hanging around their necks. They also don’t suffer from an irony deficiency, like most Americans.

  I cut out the photo of The Ninth Hour and taped it to the wall above my desk. Every time I feel a bit depressed, I look up and laugh my head off.

  The venerable Pope: the greatest confidence trickster of all. The only accurate thing Karl Marx ever said was that religion was the opiate of the people. (Did Marx say that, or was it Lenin? What does it matter? They were both sublime tricksters themselves, supplanting one religion for another. They just disguised it as a political system.)

  Religion allows people to hope for a better life in heaven when there is no heaven. There is no hell. Heaven and hell are here, now, on this planet. Experience them while you can, because when we finally shuffle off that mortal coil, all we are going face is a big, black NOTHING.

  We are utterly expendable beings on this planet, yet religion fools us into believing that we are unique and that someone is looking after us. Religions try to justify and explain the horrendous cruelty and viciousness of the world, but how do you explain the unexplainable? How can we understand the torture and death of one child, let alone the genocide of a nation? If we are made in God’s image, then he must be a cruel God who fashioned the world to a cruel design.

  Religion is the greatest weapon that man has ever invented. It is nothing but an endless rationalization of chaos. Most of the world’s population lives in such dire poverty that if they didn’t believe in an afterlife, then they would probably pull their own heads off right now. Believing in an afterlife is the only way to endure such d
esperate misery.

  All religion does is allow the powers that be to screw you, while promising the gullible populace so-called redemption. The amount of money and art and power that the Church has squirreled away in the catacombs of the Vatican would astound the general populace if only they were permitted to know about it. But when was the last time the Roman Catholic Church had to account to anyone, let alone file an income tax return?

  I’ll never forget visiting a famous monastery church on the outskirts of Mexico City. The architecture and artwork were fabulous, the gilt ornamentation baroque in the extreme. A rich Mexican friend who had accompanied me asked me what I thought of it all, no doubt expecting a response full of praise for the beauty of the place. All I could say was, “If it was up to me, I’d melt all this stuff down and give it to the poor.” The shock on the guy’s face was something to behold. What did he know (or care) about the grinding poverty of his own people? I was surprised at myself for my vehement response. I was an Art Historian after all, and it wasn’t as if I had suddenly and miraculously metamorphosed into a Socialist. It was just that at that particular moment, I found all that blatant display of wealth ostentatious in the extreme.

  But nothing will change. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer: nothing truer was ever said. The wealthy and powerful play by their own rules, while we work like drones hoping for some crumbs from their table.

  ENTRY 18:

  Last night I spent a mindless evening in front of the TV, channel hopping. I despair of the human race, I really do, when I look at a screen filled with morons, delivering meaningless pap to the unschooled masses. Talk about lowest common denominator. I watched about thirty seconds of a rerun of Friends. This used to be America’s favorite sitcom? Not one of those actors had anything going on behind the eyes. Every one of them looked totally brain-dead. If I had a Kalashnikov, I would put all of them out of their overpaid misery right now. And MTV? Don’t get me started. Nothing seems to have any spark, originality or intelligence involved in it. The songs aren’t even songs any more. (Shit, I am starting to sound like my father.) Honestly, would anyone really mind if Britney Spears or Justin Bieber got involved in some unfortunate accident? Tell the truth and shame the devil.

  It terrifies me that children are watching this pointless twaddle, but we all know that this generation is going to grow up to be more vicious and stupid than any of the previous ones. Look at Columbine, Arkansas, Oregon, Virginia Tech, North Illinois, Ohio. All those boys with guns strutting around with their cojones bulging and shooting the shit out of their math teachers before putting a bullet into their own tiny brains, just because THEY WEREN’T POPULAR. Poor babies. Hey, there is an interesting dating tactic: “You don’t want to go to the prom with me, you bitch? Die motherfucker!”

  Too many pointlessly violent movies, that’s what I say. Maybe the families of the victims should sue Hollywood, instead of blaming the school principal, poor bastard. That’s great, isn’t it? Your kid gets murdered at school and what do you do? Have a litigation fest. Sue the principal, sue the police for not noticing the kids were weird, sue the parents of the little murdering sons of bitches for not realizing that their children were disaffected losers. Sue the world. Hell, why not sue God? It is ultimately his fault at the end of the line.

  Perhaps I should make a drastic career change and become a professional assassin. I could start with targeting television executives and movie producers. That would get them worried. I’d demand that they start putting out some decent programming, or else. Maybe I should become politically motivated, make a difference and kill people who really deserve to die. Unfortunately, the list would be endless.

  I wish Charles Gibson was still anchoring ABC World News.I liked him. He seemed to be the only intelligent person on the tube. So measured, so grave when the situation called for it, then so twinklesome when he described some humorous news item. But aren’t they all like that, newsmen and women? I wonder if they go to some special News Anchor Training School. They all have the same head movements, scintillating smiles and flawless complexions. They look perfect, even the older ones, like Barbie and Ken dolls. I bet that they’re robots, just like The Stepford Wives. Now that would make perfect sense.

  Perhaps the whole world of television is populated by artificial intelligence life forms, like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It might even extend beyond entertainment. Maybe all of American society is living in a vast robotic recreation park, à la Westworld, and Yul Brynner is on his way to kick our butts if we get out of line.

  This is not so farfetched as it sounds. It would explain our current crop of politicians, anyway.

  Whew, the flights of fancy my mind takes when I allow it free rein. I should stop watching so much television. It is rotting my brain. I know that something is.

  ENTRY 19:

  I was sitting in my den today, going through old family photograph albums. I have no idea why I was doing this. Maybe I had some vague notion of gathering up and burning every picture I could find of Angie as some kind of final purification rite.

  Flicking through one album, I came upon a snapshot of yours truly when I was around sixteen. I was standing in front of an old Pontiac Catalina and looking as sullen and rebellious and sex-starved as only an adolescent can.

  Then a long-forgotten incident from that time popped unbidden into my brain. Like any other young guy of my age, I was obsessed with music. I used to go to a little record store a few blocks away from our house that was managed by an unpleasant-looking individual called Earl Saville. Earl wore a beard, but no mustache; a tonsorial affectation that I find both irritating and disconcerting even to this day.

  One day I was in the shop, wistfully looking at some vinyl that I couldn’t afford. Three little girls came in, all around thirteen—slender and graceful as young swans. It was summer and they were wearing tiny, brightly colored shorts and tops. They perused the records, picked out their favorites and brought them over to Earl. He looked over their selections, smiled and waved them out the door. Giggling their thanks, they left. Earl then turned to me and said, “You know, kid, one thing’s for sure: little girls’ pussies are the sweetest of all!” I asked him how he would know. He said, “Them little darlings and me got a great deal. They spread their legs for me and let me suck their pussies and I give them whatever records they want.”

  Half of me was utterly repelled by what he said; the other half contained an unsettling mixture of jealousy and curiosity. I had certainly never tasted female pussy of any age at that point. The thought of doing it to a little girl was so forbidden that I felt sinful even contemplating it, but I was intrigued. The girls seemed quite happy with the arrangement. None of them looked uncomfortable or nervous while they were in the store or when they were talking to Earl. On the contrary, they treated him as they would a favorite uncle. Who can fathom a young girl’s mind? At that age, I guess records were more important to them than keeping their knees together. They hadn’t yet learned the value of the precious treasure that nestled between their thighs.

  I made my excuses and left the shop, never to return. No one ever squealed on Earl and as far as I can remember, he died peacefully in his sleep at a grand old age.

  What made me think of that now? And what possessed Earl to take me into his confidence at that particular moment? He couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t spill the beans. Was he boasting? Lying? Worse still, did he recognize a kindred spirit?

  When I was a couple of years older, I was so desperate for sex that I used to drive around in my car, just looking at girls walking along the sidewalk. I would fantasize about kidnapping them, as I couldn’t imagine any girl going with me of her own free will. I even put ropes in the trunk of the car for the purpose of tying the girls up if I ever caught one. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your point of view—I never worked up the nerve.

  I don’t think people realize how frantic some young men feel about women at that age. Guys want sex all the time. They
are obsessed by it and it appears that all girls want to do is to keep it from them. The female of the species seems to hold all the cards. She has the power to say “no,” and she also possesses the frightful capacity to reduce a guy to a quivering mass just by a condescending glance. What’s a shy, hopeless guy supposed to do? Masturbate and fantasize, that’s what. But how much of that can you do before the fantasies become darker and more aggressive? Not only do you dream of having sex with a girl, you dream of totally dominating her. You dream of making her your slave. You are tired of being a nerd. You want to be a sheik with a harem of willing women to do your bidding. You don’t want rejection, only grateful acceptance and adoration. You dream of women in chains—golden chains—strapped to a bed, naked and willing, begging you to fuck them. The dark dreams start to become the only ones that can turn you on. Normal sexual fantasies don’t hack it anymore. The only thoughts that get you hard are the ones that are about violence and domination.

  When I was a kid, I used to buy detective magazines and masturbate to the illustrations of women tied up and looking frightened. I’d draw nooses around their necks and dream of them being strung up by their ankles, hands tied behind their backs. Their legs would be wide open and I could just stand there with their pussies at mouth level and suck them while they writhed and screamed with pleasure. Then I would take out my cock and they would suck me off while I was still giving it to them. Wow, that one worked fast. I’d better stop soon and do something about it.

  I hated my wife with a passion at the end of our relationship, but, in a small corner of my soul, I am profoundly grateful that I met her when I did. After all, meeting someone you can have sex with unblocks the pressure valves clogged up with disappointment. If I hadn’t, I am sure that something bad would have happened to someone.