The last thing I saw before the door was slammed shut was Margaret Atwood slumped by a storefront, a pathetic styrofoam begging cup on the sidewalk in front of her. I’d had no idea dystopic novels were selling that badly. Then, as the van pulled away, through the tinted rear windows, I spotted Kazuo Ishiguro, the British novelist — another writer who’d had many of his works adapted for screen; but, while to be down and out in Hollywood was one thing, why was he wearing that curious robe, which looked like a couple of camping mats and an election placard strapped round his torso? And what was he wearing on his head? Was it a hat — or a house? And if it was a house — which one? Darlington Hall, as featured in The Remains of the Day, or Netherfield Park?
But I had no time to reflect any further on these mysteries, for the van’s driver — who was hidden from me in a sealed compartment — must have seen a break in the traffic and accelerated, and I was thrust backwards on to the point of a hypo. I felt the drug ooze into me — then my consciousness, tissue-thin to begin with, was balled up, wadded and thrown away.
I get it back standing stark naked in what appears initially to be a featureless room: plain white walls, a high ceiling with recessed lighting diodes. Then I see, lying on the smooth white floor, the silky pool of a Spandex bodysuit. Next, I notice a single prop: a stop light, such as you might see at any LA intersection. It’s working, and as I look it changes from the red DON’T WALK to the green stick-figure with its legs parted. There’s no smell at all, except the stray whiffs of my own sweaty armpits — yet I sense altitude and aridity, and wonder if the room might be in a desert, say, the Mojave.
‘Put on the bodysuit,’ a voice crackles through a hidden speaker. I’m a little miffed — at forty-six I’m proud of my toned appearance, and, despite the kidnapping and the drugging, the idea of displaying myself naked to unseen voyeurs is the most arousing experience I’ve had since the girl in the CGI riot involuntarily came on to me.
The speaker crackles again, ‘Put on the bodysuit — or we will send someone in to put it on you.’ This time I reluctantly obey. It fits me like bespoke and, as delighted by my new clothing as I’d been with my nakedness, I swing my arms this way and that, then flex my legs. ‘Be still!’ the disembodied voice orders me. A door whines open and a huddle of white lab coats come bustling in, one of them pushing a shopping cart full of small balls covered in Velcro. They’re all wearing V masks and as they cluster round me I ask — I think entirely reasonably — ‘What’s going on, guys, is this part of the demo?’
But if they’re the children of Xenu they aren’t letting on; without speaking they begin sticking the Velcro balls on to my bodysuit, one each at all of my joints: ankle, knee, hip and so on. It’s done in a matter of seconds, then they retreat back through the moaning portal. I’m equally pleased with my new bobble suit, which resembles one of Leigh Bowery’s rather more restrained costumes. I start doing knee bends and humming Divine’s ‘You Think You’re a Man’ until meany-voice rasps: ‘Stop that!’, then begins ordering me about:
‘Now, do exactly what I tell you: walk towards the stop light, then wait for the green man. No! That’s too fast, begin again… Better. Now wait… OK, cross.’
I don’t snap back, ‘Cross what, exactly?’ I understand what’s wanted of me — you don’t get anywhere in life without being able to take direction. Besides, I enjoy strutting about in my bobble suit, while crossing intersections is something I’ve been doing for days now — it may be typecasting, but at least it’s my casting.
After we’ve done crossing for a while, the voice commands me to amble around the periphery of the room, then to assume various conversational postures, then pretend to take notes, then photographs. Next the V masks reappear, pushing before them a platform on wheels and a swivel chair, while two more bring up the rear carrying a table. With these new props the voice’s directions become more complex: it wants me to pretend to sit at the table and eat, to write, and then to make a phone call. After which I’m urged to lie down on the platform and feign sleep — in a foetal position, and also thrashing about in the flicker of REM. Next I’m to roll over and fake masturbation, before rising, sitting backwards on the swivel chair and straining my way through a realistically effortful shit.
All in all, over the course of an hour or so, a Marcel Marceau on crystal meth, I recapitulate the entire gamut of physical actions I might expect to perform in the average day. It’s an exhilarating workout, but, even as I prance and dance and stop and swing, something’s nagging at me — eventually I ignore the next direction and instead stand with my face petulantly downcast.
‘Bend over,’ orders the voice. ‘I said bend over,’ it reiterates. ‘Bend over or we will MAKE YOU bend over!’ it barks.
‘I truly want to do my best for you guys,’ I pout, ‘but what I want to know is what’s my motivation here?’
‘OK, OK,’ the voice fizzes, ‘you gotta point. Just bend over for us this last time and then we’ll get to your motivation, OK?’
I bend over.
The Vs come bustling back in; some spirit away the platform and the table, others remove the Velcro balls from my suit and depart with them. ‘Sit on the chair,’ orders the voice. A pair of Vs return with a basket of tiny plastic balls and begin expertly attaching these all over my face using some kind of clear adhesive. They stick balls to my lips, top and bottom, to my frown lines and to still more of my frown lines, all along my brows and on my eyelids, they near beard my chin with these nurdles. When they’re done there must be over a hundred of the things hanging off me, while presumably I look like a sufferer from some hideous alien skin condition.
‘Face the wall,’ the voice spits, then it coos, ‘Ree-lax.’
If the body workout was exhausting, the psychic one is both more demanding and more satisfying. The voice begins simply enough, getting me to frown, smile, scowl, laugh, mime soliloquizing, dialoguing, arguing and shouting. Soon enough, however, the directions become more complex: I’m to adopt an expression of weary pity, existential angst, frozen pride, justified hauteur. Then I’m asked by the voice to appear as if I’m listening intently to the recursive eddies of flute and woodwind that flow into the oceanic melodies of the Andante to Mahler’s Sixth—
‘Whoa,’ I cry, ‘that’s a hell of a subtle mien!’
‘You can do it,’ the voice urges — and so I unstitch my brows, flutter my eyelids and suck in my already hollow cheeks, because I’m beginning to warm to the voice — love it a little even. I can imagine that if we were penned up together for long enough in this rehearsal room we might have an affair — hadn’t I already pretended to masturbate for it?
‘Great!’ the voice cries. ‘I believed that one. ‘Next try conveying the countenance a character in a narrative might adopt, were he to realize not only that he was a character, but that the narrative itself was—’
‘What? Unstable — deconstructed altogether?’
‘Let’s just say… decentred.’
‘Interesting,’ the voice sighs. ‘Although perhaps just a tad forced.’
‘All right, d’you want me to go again at that one?’
‘No, let’s move on, we don’t have all day — how about this: a kind of “whither the Left” wistfulness, incorporating an acknowledgement of the bitter-sweetness of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a harder-edged perception of the fissiparous effects of post-9/11 conflict?’