Flickers

Hard and Soft Focus

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Lynch fondled the cigarette in his pocket, what was left of a cigarette after a rushed snuff out and pocket jam, the young usher in the lobby utterly shocked that someone would have the audacity or poor breeding to light up inside The Lumen.

The little joint had been a legit theater, then a second run movie house, then a porn theater infamous for booking live appearances by some of the film’s stars. Lynch assumed smoking of all varieties was a regular occurrence in those days.

After the adult theater shuttered, the place was vacant for years, before being resurrected as the art house theater it was today, with upholstered walls and what appeared to be behind the scenes stills from the film Giant.

He couldn’t be sure but in one photo it seemed to be Elizabeth Taylor scratching her butt through jodhpurs.

Craig Anson’s maintenance company had done some work on the place and told Lynch there was a store room of old films, some of which Anson was positive were from the theater’s adult era.

Anson had been complaining that the door didn’t shut properly due to an extension cord being run, and that the films would degenerate to the point of not being viewable.

When he brought it to the attention of the owner of the place, it had been strongly suggested that he was there to epoxy the floor in the gender neutral restroom, and that the gentleman’s brother in law handled the electrical work.

Lynch had the choice of two films being shown. A Turkish drama about a schoolteacher in love with a ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary, and a Russian comedy about a woman who handmade pencils on a home made lathe during a famine.

He chose the screening room with the Russian film and sat in the last row.

15 minutes in, after the only thing that happened was the Siberian widow using the lathe to amputate a frost bitten toe, Lynch snuck down the hall, through the door that said Employees Only under an AI photo of Abbott & Hardy.

At the right at the end of the hall was the door,cracked open with an extension cord running under another door that said Employees Only above a picture of Fred Astaire flipping off a camera like the famous picture of Johnny Cash doing it.

Lynch pushed the door on the right open slightly and it made a noise like an ostrich trying to fake an orgasm for a director it didn’t like.

He decided right then that he had come far enough that he would be willing to fight anyone who opposed him being in the apparently neglected film storage room.

There were two shelving units packed with films.

Some marked.

Some unmarked.

He found a shelf of marked canisters.

Praise Joe Bob Briggs the films were alphabetized!

He was in the R’s.

Ricochet of Love

Raunch Island.

Rabid Mistresses.

He followed his way down the alphabet backwards until a row of N’s;

Nurses on Holiday, Naughty Forever , Nana Knows Best, switched to D’s.

Dunmore Scottish Studs, Desire on Display…Dammit, he needed the K’s.

Lynch made a serpentine route through the dull metal canisters… It would be his luck that what he was looking for would be unmarked, but he had to try.

He accidentally knocked over a container that said “Adrian’s Bar Mitzvah “ and wondered, almost aloud if it was a very niche Triple X film or simply one young man’s rite of passage. Maybe both.

He thought he might have heard footsteps and froze.

In front of him were dozens of canisters marked Spanking, with either Arabic or Roman Numerals designating where they were in the franchise. He briefly pondered how Spanking 10 differed from Spanking X, then continued down the row.

Lynch didn’t believe in ghosts, but something whispered to him to look to his right.

L films.

He was possibly getting warmer, and he was definitely sweating.

After the L’s was a short row of unmarked films, then the K’s.

His heart did a triple salchow, stuck the landing, and he jammed his head closer to the circular tins of celluloid.

If metal with small green labels could sing, one of the containers was belting out an aria.

King Kog.

K-I-N-G K-O-G

He pried open the container with a small pocket screwdriver, hoping the spool of film wouldn’t disintegrate in front of him.

It was intact.

16mm of glory.

********

Lynch was the only male at his mother’s divorce party.

He was also the projectionist.

He overpaid on eBay for the 16mm projector, but he thought it would be worth it.

At first he found it to be an odd, almost distasteful request.

All it took to change his mind was thirteen pictures on Instagram of his 88 year old father in Cabo with Goth Superstar Lili Pentagram.

He had taken end-of-life crisis to the absolute pinnacle or nadir, depending on one’s point of view.

Though Lili had her own money, Roderick Lynch was certain her and her legal team would try to pry away his father’s.

The screen at Judith Ulmer’s-she was already in the process of legally changing her name- divorce party flickered to life.

There was Corcoran Lewis Lynch the Third, appearing as Russell Leeves in King Kog.

It was certainly his father, the birthmark on his neck visible above the collar of his safari jacket.

Corky and his Yale fraternity buddies had bastardized the original story of King Kong. The explorers would discover no such ape. Corcoran Lewis Lynch, whose screen credit on his self-financed adult film would be Bob Swiftly, would be bit by a chimpanzee and turn into the beast.

Somewhere in his gut, Lynch felt weird.

The film was well lit, flowed even if the premise was flimsy, and a few of the guys could even act a little bit.

As clothes started to come off, Lynch wondered again why his mother wanted her friends to see this thing so badly.

His father’s transformation to the giant ape was amateurish…well, c’mon, it was 1975.

Without warning, his mother, whose mobility was limited, stood from her chair.

He thought she might say “I’ve seen enough, girls. “

She did not.

The giant ape plows through a city of miniatures , grabs a tiny woman…more than obviously a doll… and continues loping across a soundstage.

Then he climbs the Sydney Opera house.

Leave it to some rich douchebags from Yale to make a mini replica of the Sydney Opera House.

The camera comes in close on the now nude doll, until its not a nude doll anymore, it’s a blonde actress.

Lynch’s eyes and blood pressure registered a glimpse of recognition.

Then the camera quickly pans down.

The massive ape, whose trust fund paid for the production was far from proportionately endowed.

Judith Ulmer used her cane to point at the phallus on the screen.

“Do you believe I was married to that for forty eight years, bitches?”

The partygoers gasped and howled and spilled overpriced wine.

“That’s enough Roddy,” Judith said to Lynch,” you can stop it now. I’m satisfied.

Then, more quietly, she said “I’m sorry you had to see your Aunt Margaret’s tits, Roddy.”

Roderick stared at his mother.

Judith smiled guiltily. “Yeah, that story about me meeting your dad at the Yacht Club was bullshit.”

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This was written in less than two hours as part of the Keyboard Catharsis Creative Writing Program I co-founded and moderate at Passenger Recovery Community Center in Hamtramck, Michigan.

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