61 Frames Per Second by John Constantine Today in Nerve's videogame blog: Street Fighter. The movie. A new one. With that chick from that Superman show. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Mad Men's January Jones struts her stuff in Vanity Fair. Plus: Damages returns, the latest Gossip Girl guest star and Donna Martin capitulates.
"Be frisky, risky and spontaneous!" That was what Don Ross, a businessman in Germany whose email address I happen to have, advised when I was asking around for sex tips for my Mademoiselle article. Specifically, he meant: shave down there, pick up your man at work pantyless and casually bend over in the grocery store or restaurant. "He'll be drooling from both ends," Don promised. Though I wasn't sure I wanted that reaction, I will take any advice at least once. Dave did not drool from either end, however; he gasped with horror. "That's . . . not . . . natural," he said.
So there I was, bent over in the produce department, grossing my husband
out, when who comes trotting down the aisle with her egg substitute and
lemonade mix in a quaint little handheld basket, but the woman with whom
Dave has been having intrigue at work. He whispered that it was "her!"
and then turned away so she wouldn't see him blushing.
My competition wore skin-tight bellbottoms, oversized clodhoppers and one of those cutaway sweaters that covers the arms but reveals the torso. She was about ten feet tall, and displayed the little pot belly and downy fur you see on advanced-stage anorexics. This was my first actual encounter with one of Dave's workmates. It's all been so other-worldly up to now, his descriptions and my conjectures. When she clonked away, I said, "Dave, I can't believe you made me take part in fantasizing about someone who looks like that. I feel tricked."
"She does have nice lips though, doesn't she?" said Dave, licking his.
"You wouldn't have to touch her body — just her lips."
I remember when "Radar Love" came over my car radio late one night when I was driving fast to Dave's apartment in Boston and love was new, and I thought I knew what they were singing about. I've always felt like I had him under secret surveillance, I knew all his bad thoughts through E.S.P. Now dream and reality collided under the florescent lights of Shop-N-Save, causing me to discover my husband has thoughts and desires I didn't know about. Disgusting ones!
"It's like you want to take advantage of someone with cancer," I said. "At least I don't look like a space alien when I bend over," he retorted.
Rough Sex for the Messenger
October 28, 1999
We fight all the time. Our latest fight, caused by his rejection of my
hairless experiment and my inability to understand his skinny dying girl
fantasy, had been going on for thirty-six hours, culminating in me
jumping out of the car at a red light. I followed the mist of my breath
down every street in the neighborhood and plotted revenge.
Instead, when I got home, I decided to come clean. I'd tell Dave for the
first time why I'm always so excitable and quick to fight. I'd never told
anyone before, because I know how it sounds. The trouble is this: all my
life I've believed I'm some sort of messenger. I don't know what my
message is, or who it's from. I just know it's my job to figure it out
and somehow dispatch it to mankind, and that's the meaning of my life. I
can have fun, but if I ever relax too much, I might forget my mysterious
job or lose parts of the unknown message. So I'm nervous — all the time,
even in my sleep.
That's what I told Dave, with my back against the door and my coat still on. "I don't even know if I'm supposed to be married," I said. "I know probably I'm wrong, people don't have fates to fulfill . . . but what if I go ahead and ignore this feeling, and it was true, and I cast aside my one duty in life? Common sense always separates people from their destiny. I'm getting closer to figuring it out. I think maybe it's that life is good — that's what I'm supposed to explain." I checked to see if he was believing me. It didn't look like it.
"Oh Dave," I moaned. "Sometimes I feel like my head's going to catch on
fire, and just fall off. I have the strangest idea that the whole
universe will fall down without me holding it up, I mean if I let go of
the clues to my message. It's like no one but me can do it, I have to
bring relief to everyone — all six billion people. If only I knew what
it was, I could protect it better. Or if I just knew it wasn't there for me to find, I could do something else. What to do, what
do I do?"
Next thing I knew I was on my back on the stairs with bony knees holding
down my shoulders and a big thing in my mouth so I couldn't talk. I sucked it. Then he took it out and slapped me with it and it was gross because no one wants to have their own saliva wiped all over their cheeks, but I really liked it, and he said, "I should just come all over your face and let it drip on your dry-clean-only coat." I guess he was trying to distract me. He was doing a good job.
"It's okay to love somebody," Dave said when it was over. "It's all right
if you love me. No one is suffering in the world. You can forget
anything."
