The thong created an empathic in situ reality. "Be the leather." I knew something about Stanislavski before I ever set eyes on Eva, but I reviewed the Method that I might enter the multifarious SM consciousness needed for my nightly "performance". That's why I wore both day, and night thong. Getting in character is harder than you might think. I have a new respect for the Art, now.
The rest of my porn shop get-up? The overcoat simply hid the fact that all I wore was the thong. The tennis shoes were for running. I told you, it got weird sometimes in the back. Sometimes you had to bolt. The cops would raid every so often, just for fun I think. Bastards. Real crimes going on all over the city-rapes, muggings, robbery, murder, unlicensed psychometric testing-but the Heat feels the need to roust a few harmless perverts. I tell you, many heavy scales of prejudice fell from my eyes during my porn shop "phase".
Not to drag it on any longer....I never found out what "happened" at Cannes, and how Eva fit into it. I really believe I was getting close, but the demands of the search and holding down the day job conspired with sleep deprivation and Stanislavski. You see, I figured I just wasn't getting into the role enough. It dawned on me that I needed to understand, to feel that pleasure/pain high, the rush. So I went shopping.
Actually, all I had to do was ask Mel, my nightly partner in perversion. "Uh...say...Mel?" "Yeah, Troy?" "Look, I was wondering. I mean, you know I've been looking at a lot of Eva, right?" "Yeah man, you are badass dedicated. I like your style, I gotta lot of respect for your devotion, man." Even though we were cohorts in perversion, co-verts-so to speak, I had a hard time asking as I stammered, "Uh, uh, well, uh, might you know, like, where I could, maybe, experience the actual thing?" Mel smiled, "I wondered when you'd get to that. Yeah, I can tell you. But, I gotta say that I've been there, and you're better off sticking with the books. But, I know that once it gets on your mind you just gotta go do it, so.."
So Mel told me. And that's when I made the acquaintance of Mistress Emma. Emma looked nothing like Eva, let's get that fantasy out the way right now. Emma was in her early 50s, battle scarred and a bit fat, tortured not teased red-dye hair. Emma ran a nightly SM game, not even two blocks from the shop.
"What is it that you want?" Emma asked directly. "You look like a nice man, why don't you go back home to your wife and dog?" I broke down in tears. "I have no more wife. Snuffle. I have no more dog. Snuffle. I have no more life except my job at TechMatic and nights at the porn shop. Snuffle, snuffle. I'm looking for clues to what happened with Eva Herzigova and a crowd of people in 1996 in Cannes, were Eva is wearing an SM outfit and sporting a whip."
"Why the fuck you wanna know that?" Emma queried, truly interested now and maybe getting a little concerned. I explained it all, just about like I told it to you. Seeing Eva, then Eva in the Nemesis, then the CIT, the TFG, the TTEAL, TFT, Analogies #1, and how it cycled back to Eva and Nemesis. I told her about Stanislavski. I told her about the divorce, my flat, the porn shop, my job and the thong, and how I thought I was losing my grip.
"Sit down here." Emma said. "Do you have a mother?" "Yes." I whimpered, "but she died a long time ago." "Did you love her?" "Of course," I sniffled still red-eyed and teary. "Did you get to say goodbye?" she gently asked. "Not really," I replied.
"That's it then. From now on you just call me Mother."
I visited Mom then for one hour every day (rather, night) before I went to the porn shop. Let me tell you, getting in character was pretty rough. Mom would beat the living shit out of me for one whole hour straight. I asked her where she learned how to inflict all that pain without leaving bad marks. Mom told me that the North Koreans trained her.
To Be Continued
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