The Sexual Medium

© 2003 Vince Darkangelo
All rights reserved.

"Jesus, hurry up," Marlena whispered from behind the tree—a tiny, leafless profile with serpentine tangles of branches twisting toward a smoky, blackened sky. The grey luxury car moved swiftly through the cemetery under cover of midnight, the engine giving a low, anxious rumble as the vehicle traversed the meandering dirt road. Stones and twigs crackled beneath the rolling tires like bad timber burning. The vehicle's headlights were extinguished, leaving only the pale yellow parking lamps and the dim, silvery moon for illumination. The grey sedan came to a halt next to the predetermined tree, the driver tentatively stepping outside.

"Judy?" he called into the dark.

Marlena just wanted to fuck, get her money, and go home so she could get out of these god-awful heels. She smoothed the hem of her dress and sucked her lips for gloss; the outfit was just right, down to the crimson lipstick, the obsidian earrings, and the red tint to her hair. Marlena adopted the woman's smile and mannerisms. She'd practiced all week, studying photographs of Judy and comparing herself in the mirror until she had it perfect. Once Marlena was certain there was nothing of herself in her appearance, only Judy, she took a deep breath, stood on the balls of her feet, and took a step forward.

Then another.

"Let me look at you. Dear god, look at you. Oh, Judy, it's been so long. I've missed you so much," he muttered as she emerged from the shadows.He stepped toward her with arms opened wide, but Marlena halted his progress. She held her hand forward, palm up and fingers extended. "I'm happy to see you too, Gregg." Her breath tasted of the cinnamon gum Judy used to chew. "But first, didn't you bring me anything?"

He stammered. "Yes, I'm sorry. I just—in the excitement, I forgot. Right here." He shoved a fidgety hand into his pocket and withdrew a folded stack of bills.

"Oh, and something else." He reached through the passenger window of his car and produced a small bouquet of flowers. "I brought you these, Judy. For your grave."

She inhaled and sighed with approval.

"Pink carnations. Your favorite. Did you miss me?" he asked.

"More than anything. More than I can say, Gregg."

"C'mon, let's put those flowers by your headstone," he responded with a big smile, basking in the glow of requited longing. The years of tormented separation vanished in that glorious moment when he slipped his fingers inside of hers, and then the past didn't matter anymore. It was as though the brain tumor hadn't been real, just a horrific nightmare. Like it had never happened. He took his long-lost love by the hand, and together they moved through the misty cemetery.

"Come on, pick up, damn you." Marlena willed her agent to answer the phone, but her cursing was to no avail. Every unanswered ring mocked her with its patient rejection, and she was fatigued from leaving messages.

She tapped her fingers against the coffee-stained manuscript. The reading called for ten brief lines, her cues highlighted and every meter of dialogue underlined with bold black ink. Marlena scribbled Oscars and limousines and marquee lights in the margin of the script. She had practiced her lines nonstop, but somehow she'd managed to screw up the audition, bumbling over an oddly placed alliteration.

A framed volunteer training certificate sat in the center of her desk. At one time it had allowed her to work a grief counseling hotline. It was supplementary to the psychology degree she was pursuing at Arizona State, but she'd lasted only two semesters at both. Next to the certificate were a stack of suggestive business cards and a box of rubbers. Beside this were a slew of headshots, resumes, and a list of casting calls.

"Hello, this is Mary B..." a raspy voice greeted from a skyscraper in Los Angeles.

"Hello, Mary, this is Marlena. Marlena Dodds..." a desperate voice pleaded rapidly for recognition from an efficiency in North Hollywood.

"... talent agent for ..." the ethereal voice continued.

"... I auditioned for the role in ..."

"... Class Talent Agency. I'm not available at the moment ..."

"... and I know I'm just perfect for the part. I know I screwed up the audition, but if you could talk to them about giving me a call back, I'll get it right. I'm perfect for ..." Marlena's voice rattled like machine-gun fire.

"... leave a message at ..."

"... Mary?"

Beep. Marlena wordlessly set the receiver back in its cradle. She had already left a dozen unreturned messages with her agent. She was too proud to leave another.

She recognized the woman that stared back in the mirror, though she didn't recognize the woman as herself. When Marlena looked in the mirror, she saw Tamara. Or was it Susan tonight? Or Karen? She was seeing her third client this week, so it was hard to keep track. Marlena could manage all the physical details. She could alter her looks, as the keenest mythical shape-shifter, until she became the other woman, but the names often escaped her. With so many clients, the women were beginning to blur together. The silver, strapless dress was embroidered with rhinestones, the sides slit up to her thighs.

"Ah yes, I am Elizabeth."

At least tonight's client was a regular, so she could go into the situation knowing what he wanted. And Kevin was one of her easiest clients. He would make love quickly, then withdraw suddenly and stumble away—leaving Marlena in the stillness of the graveyard, fucked and deserted in Elizabeth's dress.

If only they all could be that easy, but each client had a unique way of dealing with his grief. For most it was sexual, wanting to feel the caress of his loved one again. Others simply wanted to talk. Some were repeat clients, but the majority were one-timers. No matter their preference, the grieving men were all after the same thing—one more night with their deceased partner, whether they wanted to talk or screw.

A radical grief counselor, or surrogate lover, she called herself; Marlena Dodds had essentially created this profession. Some would call her a prostitute rather than the euphemistic "surrogate lover." Others would call her a grief therapist with sexual role-play therapy involved. Those with a predilection for the occult would liken her to the mediums of old, though conducting a more provocative type of sˇance—a sexual medium, channeling the spirit of the deceased through her loins.

Marlena paced her tiny office/apartment, puffing an American Spirit and scanning the casting call list again. Nothing had changed since last examination. The same rejections were scribbled out, and the hopefuls remained unchecked, but no new role had magically appeared. Readings were few and far between for her, and she hadn't received a callback in close to two years.

On top of that, her agent appeared to be angry with her. For whatever reason, Mary wasn't returning her calls. But Marlena always tried her best. She may not have gotten any parts, but she put all of herself into every audition. How could Mary hold that against her? Wasn't it the agent's job to set her up with the right auditions and provide a solid reference?

A piercing ring sent her scrambling to the desk. Finally. She picked up the phone and cradled it to her ear, expectant of the good news. "Hello? Mary? Mary?"

"Yeah, hi. Uh, is this the counseling line?"

She slapped the call list onto her desk, scattering the haphazardly piled headshots. Marlena plunged her cigarette into an overstuffed ashtray. Mashed yellow butts spilled over the side; stale, grey ash speckled the desktop like crumbs. She cleared her throat for composure and took a deep breath. "Yes, this is Marlena Dodds, radical grief counselor. How can I help you?"

"Well, I...." his sentence broke off into painful sobs. Marlena sighed away from the mouthpiece and worked herself into character. She fingered the counseling certificate on her desk and spoke in a soothing, understanding voice. "Shh. Slow down, baby. It's going to be okay. First off, tell me your name."

Before long, the man was put at ease by Marlena's calm, conversational tone, and they began negotiating the terms of their first session. If only she had this same confidence and talent at her studio auditions.

If only.

Marlena lay prostrate, feeling the cool grass and fallen leaves of autumn pressed beneath her back. Kevin groaned desperately, his every sound and movement riddled with loss of such magnitude that it nearly broke Marlena's heart. With every thrust she could feel him digging, poking about, searching for someone he had lost. She was the surrogate: a living, breathing photograph of Elizabeth—one that would even put out. Yet she was not the dead woman. Marlena could mimic her smile, dress up with props, and Kevin could close his eyes while they made love, but tactile memory is too strong. Though Marlena shared all parts in common with Elizabeth, he could feel how she was different. Still, he thrust into her, both accepting and hating her as the next best thing to his dead wife.

Before climax, the mind asks to be lied to, willing to believe all the heart sells, willing to see the other person as something other than what she is. But after he climaxed, Kevin lost this buffer of stimulation and masquerade. He wordlessly ran away, leaving her to clean up the mess. But she knew he would make another appointment in a few weeks, when the horror faded and the need returned.

With an exhausted gait, she stumbled up the stairs to her apartment. She bore the carrion smell of the tomb, but a thick wad of cash was stuffed into the dead woman's bra—making the cemetery tryst worthwhile. She checked her machine to see if Mary had called back yet, and discovered a lone message. She pressed play, and a static, otherworldly voice buzzed through the compressed speaker of the machine.

"Hello, this is Mary Burns with First Class Talent Agency. I'm calling in regards to the repeated phone messages from someone at this number." The nasally voice was terse and imposing. "Look, I don't know who you are, but I've never had business dealings with you, and our files do not show that you have ever been a client at our agency. If you are interested in representation, you should send a portfolio to our general mailbox and go through the proper channels. In the meantime, cease and desist making phone calls to my private line or our lawyers will be in contact. Thank you."

She balled up on the floor like a discarded lump of clothes. A burning cramp swelled in her ribs, and it almost felt good because it made her feel real—as if there were still something left inside of her. She cried and pinched herself until she vomited on the floor, then fell to sleep.

The red in her hair had been replaced with jet black. She was playing Sarah tonight. Or was it Melissa? Laura? Celine? She made slight adjustments in posture. She had long forgotten her true stance, her own mannerisms. They were lost inside some other woman's dress. Somewhere beneath the temporary dye was her natural hair color, but she couldn't recall what that was. When was the last time a man had complimented her on her hairstyle, the way she dressed? When was the last time a man had told her he loved her and followed this declaration with her name? She stroked her hair gingerly, having curled it for that evening's date. The feel of the twirling locks felt so ... Other ... in her fingers. Someone else's hair; someone else's touch. The realism was remarkable, but she felt like a mannequin. A marionette sans strings. A paper doll in a little girl's playhouse. Or a man's playhouse, as it were. The line between good acting and dissociation is dangerously narrow, and at the end of a session, who was it she saw in the mirror? It was as though the dead women had become a part of her, taking over piece-by-piece. They consumed her like rigor mortis.

She came to believe that she could channel these women through her. Sitting in the graveyard, she would swear she heard their voices shouting in her head. They called her name, but she barely recognized it as her own. Who's that? I'm Sarah, Elizabeth, Judy. She was losing her identity, assuming the character of each headstone she passed over. So she would wait, whomever she was, for her date to arrive and remind her.

"Tonight I am Lisa," she remembered as the vehicle rolled to a stop before her. Lisa emerged from the fog, completely recovered from the lung cancer that had taken her piecemeal a year prior. Her client exited the car and nervously approached; this was his first time with her.

As he came closer, his smile faltered. It drooped like melting wax. His pallid visage twisted with confusion, anger, and mostly fear, as though he were staring at a ghost. They studied each other in the dim illumination of the moon, as though they had never met. He trembled and started to cry. Then the monetary offering fell from his sweaty hands, and he spun around wildly. He clambered back into the vehicle and drove madly away.

He refused to look back, for he knew what he'd see. That apparition. That abomination. That ghost standing by the tree, studying him with those eyes that were not Lisa's, that seemed too vibrant. The eyes of the ghost were too alive and piercing, her skin not the sickly color of chemotherapy, her motions too fluid, not brittle and weak. The deep black hair of that, that ... thing, thick and flowing, not coarse and prone to crumbling from her scalp beneath the most delicate touch of his fingers.

He kept driving, racing his car to outdistance the past. He tilted the rear-view mirror so it faced the floor, so if he haphazardly glanced up there would be no chance of seeing what was behind him, even accidentally. He stared straight ahead, bug-eyed, leaving the cemetery, the ghost, and his history where it lay.

As the taillights faded into midnight, the ghost started the lonely walk out of the cemetery. She counted the evening's take and mused over another successful session, but there wasn't time to savor her winning performance. She was booked solid through the week, and the fledgling actress had to get home and get into character for her next big role.

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