A Tear in the Veil Read online

  Felix laughs and lets go. “Fine. I wouldn’t want to get you in more trouble with the Brakhage and Deren wannabes.”

  Audrey scoffs, “And what’s wrong with Brakhage and Deren?”

  “Nothing. They’re great. And it’s great to have heroes. Just don’t copy them and say you’re original.”

  “That’s not all of them. Some are really talented this semester. Now, none will compare with your insects fucking, cars crashing, girls dropping ice cream cones in slow motion ‘stutter-cut’ epic, of course.”

  “You joke. It will be powerful. It could change the world. It could make people cry.” They make their best pretentious snob faces and hold them up in the air looking down their noses at each other until she snickers and they both laugh.

  Felix says, “Hey, parody is a sincere form of flattery. Plus, I’d personally like to carry the torch for the Kuchars, Arnold, and Baldwin myself.”

  They kiss. Felix nibbles on Audrey’s neck and runs his hand down to the small of her back, lingers there, then keeps going. She moans then pulls away.

  “Oh, uh-uh. What did I just say?” Audrey says before pressing the back of her open hand against his face then wagging it back and forth like she’s going to slap him.

  “Not my fault! It’s nature!”

  “Control thyself, boytard. Besides, you smell like bed farts.”

  “Yeah, yours,” Felix retorts.

  “Girls don’t fart.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  Audrey sits up and swings her legs out of the futon. She gets up and walks to the bathroom across the hall that runs the length of the flat. Runs the water, washes her face. Takes an Ibuprofen gel-tab. Combs her hair until it’s smoothed out. Straight down, naturally wavy with a casual part. Basic. Tasteful.

  Wait, hold up…

  She looks at her reflection, thinks, and wraps it into a loose Chignon bun, long bangs framing her lovely face.

  Casual yet serious? Possible hard-assitude needed? Must be critiques today. He chuckles to himself.

  Felix met Audrey in art school in San Francisco. He went back and forth from painting to printmaking, to photography, to film and video. Dabbled in sculpture along the way. Almost burnt out in undergrad but rode his confusion through all the way to a masters in “Interdisciplinary Studies”, which makes him kind of like the art school equivalent of a Red Mage. That means he is decent-to-good at several things but a master of: Fuck All. At least in Felix’s mind.

  Some of his teachers and friends thought he did some good stuff. Besides his drawings and paintings, the only stuff he was ever remotely proud of was a series of really short horror movies.

  Short as in the longest ones were the earliest which were all around a minute. Most were around twenty or thirty seconds. The shortest, and by far his favorite, was nine seconds. Like cinematic grindcore or powerviolence. The visual equivalent of blast beats, guttural howls, squeals, barks, and crunchy math guitar. The soundtrack was a mini symphony he layered from recorded screams and sounds of real human death from a messed up website that was shut down around the same time. Probably for the best. He got what he needed there but it was hard to watch a great deal of their video offerings. Made Faces of Death look like a Disney princess cartoon.

  Actually, he’s also pretty happy with his series of really short documentaries about things others would deem insignificant. Insignificant as in his favorite was about the journey of a snail on a rainy day. Right after the rain stopped, He noticed the snail, went and grabbed one of his super-8s, then followed it using stop-motion until it was crushed by a passing Cooper Mini. Long macro close up on the crushed, juicy corpse. A single tear. Not actuality. Dramaticality.

  Those masterpieces aside, Felix is still confident in the belief that he bumbled through school and cleverly disguised his artistic mediocrity every step of the way in an attempt to stay close to Audrey.

  The most he does with his education now is screen-print shirts and show posters for friend’s bands. An occasional weird music video. A little stencil and slap tagging here and there for the lulz. He still draws and paints, but that’s just for him.

  He did start writing a screenplay a couple of years ago but he definitely didn’t learn anything about doing that from his art school. Felix calls it Brain Wrap after a cataclysmic malfunction that occurs with modern film projectors. He was a projectionist off and on during high school at a few theaters in the city but he eventually got sick of being treated like a minimum wage high school kid–even though he was one–and condescended to by theater managers who didn’t know the difference between “Flat” and “Scope” when left on their own with a projector.

  In modern(ish) film theaters, you can forget changeovers and cigarette burns. You get the same old metal hex boxes of separate reels but you have to “build” them onto one of three five-foot diameter platters which are parallel to the ground and top-to-bottom on a support “tree”, attaching each reel with splices and making them one big one. That’s after you attach trailers and “snipes”, one of which Felix likes to think of as the polite “SHUT THE FUCK UP” warning. So instead of a changeover from one part to the next, you’re dealing with one thing made of attached parts, let’s say.

  You thread all this through a “brain” which is a detachable circular piece in the center opening on the big movie reel made up of a tension arm thing at the center of a formation of rollers. The film comes out of this at an angle and you thread it through the projector and onto one of the other platters. Once it goes all the way through, it’s ready to start again and then again and again until you “tear it down” and ship it back in the hex boxes. Don’t get me started on “inter-locking”. Awesome and nerve-racking at the same time.

  So, “Brain Wraps” happen from static usually. Sometimes from having bad loops on the thread causing the tension to be too erratic. That’s what the union projectionist told me, anyway. My first day filling in at Kabuki 8 in J-Town and I walk in on him and this befuddled fellow minimum wage projectionist trying to fix a whole two reel chunk of Big Daddy that got sucked into the brain and wrapped around until it was like a growing volcano off the top platter and to the ceiling of glinting acetate and frames of Adam Sandler arguing with Steve Buscemi about when McDonalds breakfast ends. 10:30? 11:00? It took hours to get it apart and we ended up just ordering a couple replacement reels. Brain Wraps suck.

  The funny part is you’ll be able to forget all of this soon too because it’s all going digital and none of this will apply.

  Brain Wrap, the unfinished mess of a wannabe screenplay, is also kind of like existential fantasy action rom-com. He’s not much of a writer so it’s a little heavy-handed here and a little too vague or unclear there.

  Now, Audrey…

  She lives and breathes Experimental Film and he admires that. Scripting with light. Writing with color. Poems without words burning and flickering on the wall of a dark room. Digital is a dirty word to her. She hand-processes all of her film, even color. She teaches at the school they went to now while she works on her own little art stardom.

  She doesn’t even have to work. Some sort of inheritance from a late relative in Europe. She makes her own money, though, and he admires that too. She only uses the inheritance when she really has to. She also really enjoys teaching others who are into what she is. That’s cool.

  The thing about Audrey is she’s smart. Real smart, but chill about it. Some people know a little about a lot of things, a lot about a few things, everything about just one thing, not much about anything, or somewhere in between. Audrey Myron knows a lot about a lot of things and everything about several things. Science, history, math, and, of course, art. She uses that knowledge to make incredible and poignant or just timeless art pieces and short films. Her shadow boxes can make people weep.

  But she’ll also just smoke a few bowls and hand the controller back and forth on Shadow of the Colossus with Felix for hours on end. She still kicks his ass at the hard time attacks. She’s
especially wicked on the huge bird; the fifth one. She pulls the vertical wing tip transfer drop perfect every time.

  I think some people call that one Avion. There was a list from like a Japanese game magazine or something which gave all the colossi names. It’s probably my all around favorite game of all time but I can never remember all their names. Either way, it’s a great game. Point being, she’s good at it. Probably better than Felix.

  He doesn’t say it much, but Felix loves Audrey. She seems to feel the same. Even says so sometimes. Enough to let him move into her Victorian flat a little over a year ago, at least. They live together well.

  Audrey slips on a tank top and a sweater, then some old, well-worn jeans. She grabs her Pumas and sits on the edge of the futon. “You still down for H and K’s party?” Audrey asks as she pulls over the left set of Velcro straps.

  Felix thinks for a second. “Yeah, wouldn’t miss the big unveiling. Dinner at Walter and Isidora’s first, though.” He watches Audrey’s face.

  She frowns just a bit and does that little sigh. Clockwork.

  “Oh yeah? Have fun,” she says and shakes her head.

  “What?”

  “They hate me.”

  Felix caresses her arm, stopping her from fastening the other set of straps. “No, they don’t.”

  “They do. They obviously do.” She’s already on the verge of tearing up. It’s profoundly important to her that people she likes or respects, or are at least important in her life one way or another, like her. “Have they ever said why?”

  “They don’t hate you. They’re just… they test people. They’re weird.”

  “And this process takes what? Years?” She gently wrenches her arm free from Felix’s caress and finishes fastening.

  He sighs. “Bitching Walter out didn’t help.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about that. I just hate that he gets all drunk and starts talking shit about your dad. He should have more respect.”

  Felix chuckles mirthlessly. “My dad was his brother. I think he has the right.”

  Audrey closes her eyes and sighs. “I know. The dead should be respected is all I’m saying, okay? I’m sorry I get weird. I just hope they relax someday. I’m gonna take off. Wannabe’s dreams to crush and all that.”

  She leans in and they kiss. Felix smooshes her bun a bit as he cups the back of her head. She growls playfully.

  “Sorry. You should wear a helmet if you’re so worried about it.”

  They laugh.

  Audrey gets up and walks toward the hall. Felix watches her butt as she goes. She stops and looks back, catching him. She shakes her head.

  “Pig. Hey, have fun with your new toy, by the by.”

  “As a consolation prize? Sure, I guess.” Felix says, smiling.

  She walks down the hall. He hears the front door close and his smile fades as he stares at the ceiling.

  Felix sits in the shower on the edge of the bathtub. Water runs down him as he stares through the tiled wall into his memories. He looks down at a slightly darkened ring of birth-marked skin around the base of his left ring finger.

  The mirrored medicine cabinet door is propped open so that Felix can’t see it.

  Felix hates mirrors.

  It’s not just the thing with his dad’s… with his dad and the mirror. That’s definitely a big part of it.

  The other problem Felix has with mirrors is that he has ‘complete’ heterochromia iridum. His left eye is a deep, bright blue and his right a dark brown. Usually in that combo, the right would be more of a light brown or hazel or the blue would be darker, which would have looked less distinct.

  That would have been a little more forgiving. Kids never miss an opportunity to call attention to something that makes someone appear different, to put it nicely. But Felix had to have a less common form of a very uncommon trait. Kids had a field day.

  It turned around some time in high school. A lot of girls started to think it was cool and it gave him this undeserved mystique. Probably didn’t hurt that he was always into the weirder girls. Plus the Manson Family kids were jealous which was funny to him. ‘Cause I can’t just take out some contacts and look “normal”.

  When it first developed, doctors had trouble determining if it was congenital or acquired. Some gibberish about autosomal dominance as opposed to blunt trauma from his dad’s head slamming into his. Either way, it didn’t come on until after that. Before, his eyes were blue like his dad’s. Within a year of his father’s death, his right eye had turned a deep, almost black, brown.

  His hair also went from baby blond to a dark, reddish brown but that’s pretty common. It was finer and limp against his head when it was blond too but it became thicker and stood up by itself when it got darker. Due to that, he usually wears it in a dry, loose pompadour of varying lengths and from wild to styled. Might as well take advantage of the lack of need for hair products, right?

  The exception is when he lets it get a bit longer and has it cut into a “short back and sides” by an old barber in Daly City and flops it over the top and back of his head like he’s in the 30s or 40s. It really complements Audrey’s more vintage looks when he does that one.

  So, his dad’s death and his discomfort with his eyes combined to make Felix really dislike looking at his reflection. As a result, he hasn’t intentionally looked at his own reflection in about fifteen years.

  The picture on his ID card is safer but he still hates looking at it. Pictures are safer because they aren’t alive. But that presents its own problems.

  Due to his mirror aversion, he shaves from touch and memory which is pretty impressive because he uses an antique straight razor. As he runs his fingers down his cream-slick jaw line, he feels the scars from where his father’s teeth chipped off into him. Most days, he just tunes them out. After a nightmare, it’s not that easy. He rubs the scars and stares at the razor. It’s sharp. So sharp you could…

  Felix’s hand trembles. He sighs and shakes his head, then starts shaving his neck.

  Two pop tarts shoot up, jump half out of the toaster then drop back into place. Felix quickly snatches them and drops them on a small plate. He blows on one and starts to nibble at it as he walks down the hall to the living room.

  Felix stops and feeds Ganges and Yamuna, Audrey’s two Butterfly Tail goldfish.

  They’re kind of ugly and pretty at the same time.

  One is black and white and one is orange and white with splotches of blue-black. He can never remember which is which.

  He thinks about turning on Audrey’s ancient twenty-seven inch Trinitron TV but it takes a while to warm up and he’s in a bit of a hurry.

  He sees his ‘new toy’ on the table, the Victor HDV-426 camcorder he had shipped over from Japan. He already has a badass Canon SLR that can shoot HD video, but this camera is even crazier; basically made for documentary shooting of all kinds. It comes with special attachments for ease of mobility and those are balanced with programmed motion-dampening hardware and the best digital anti-shake he’s ever seen. Not to mention it doesn’t use tapes or sticks. It just spits practically raw data onto a terabyte solid state drive. That’s a thousand gigabytes with no moving parts in the storage system. Was not… cheap.

  Audrey won’t let him pay rent, so he has a little money in the bank. Felix doesn’t know what kind of documentary he actually wants to make with it, but after trying the camera out at a tech convention, he just needed one.

  The camera just came out in the US under JVC-K but he wanted one actually made in Nihon. It’s more and more common for Japanese electronics to be outsourced now and that bothers him.

  He’s not a weeaboo or wapanese or whatever but he has a definite thing for Japanese history and culture. Their video games, comics, anime, and perceived wackiness are fun too, but it’s more than that for him. He has an acceptable, modest level of Japan-ophilia, as he might put it. Felix is of the opinion that if there is nothing about the Japanese–history, martial arts, culture of the past and present,
etc.–you find at least a little fascinating, you either aren’t paying attention or you aren’t very interesting yourself. Yeah, he’s been on the edge of weeaboo-dom at times but he can at least back it up some and doesn’t wear a Naruto headband thing and clog the manga aisle at the bookstore.

  This sickness usually starts with a gateway show on TV or maybe a more mature film but those are harder to see at a young age so we’ll go with localized TV shows. For many of Felix’s elders it was Speed Racer or Star Blazers or even Astro Boy or Kimba. The younger enthusiasts seemed to get hooked by more varied titles as the popularity grew and there was eventually an embarrassment of riches; a glut even. These were usually Pokemon, DBZ, Digimon, Yu-gi-oh!, and eventually Naruto and One Piece; stuff like that.

  Robotech was his gateway animu.

  Felix loves Robotech. The intro music alone gives him chills every time.

  Mostly first and third Generation, but second was alright if the others weren’t on. The Robotech Masters were cool bad guys but Zentraedi were just cooler and the Invid were more weird and scary than either which maybe made third Gen my favorite, all things considered. The characters were just better in first and third too, as were the weapons and vehicles. Maybe my favorite thing in the whole show was how missiles would fly all around in dramatic swoops and arcs but always end up hitting the target together or right after each other.

  Of course, at this point in his life Felix knows that Robotech was actually Frankensteined together from three unrelated Japanese TV shows made by the same production company. They shared similarities in design, so it sort of worked. Carl Macek must have dug Macross enough to tack all the rest together. There were a minimum number of episodes needed to syndicate a show and Macross didn’t have enough on its own. Macek went so far as to splice together parts of the three series with each other to connect the stories between “Generations”.

  Not what the creators intended, and yet it exists.