by Arica Carlos
(12/22/04)
Anonymous Johnson was not a critic by choice, but by nature. The problem with most critics was that they had chosen to become critics in the first place, and having made this decision, they continued working on the assumption that such decisions mattered, that their choosing to like something was what made that thing likable. Anonymous Johnson had no choice. In the presence of beauty he would go suddenly stiff and the blood would rush to his head all by itself. He had not chosen to be this way; he had been chosen. The only thing he had in common with other critics was the swollen head.
A critic's work could become clouded by opinion and other trivial influences, anything from education to indigestion. Johnson dealt in hard facts. He admired George Washington for his inability to tell a lie, and shared with the Founding Father a strong desire to harvest cherries like a lumberjack.
The only problem Anonymous Johnson had was that he belonged to the lower realms of a writer of erotic tales. Each night, like some stereotyped sex slave, Johnson was forced to submit to a session with the word processor. He had little enthusiasm for these sessions -- he had already seen what the food processor did to food -- but if he slacked off, the writer would become annoyed and jerk him awake.
The stories were always the same. Damsel in distress, stranger on a train, same old same old. The dialogue looked like the results you got when you turned off the family filters at AltaVista.com. Cum was the author's favorite word, but Latin was always lost on Johnson.
The characters were as wooden as those poseable puppets that artists used for figure drawing. A typical scene had two of these marionettes knocking together until their strings became tangled. The women were always naked and faceless, and this disturbed Johnson, because he knew that even beautiful women wore clothing periodically. Johnson was a gentleman and never failed to rise when a well-dressed lady entered a room. Alas, the writer knew nothing of fashion, though he did know fifteen different ways to describe the dimples just above the ass. (He also loved to describe a woman's shape by comparing her to a violin or cello. He was so dedicated to writing erotica that he rarely read anything else, and didn't know this was a cliché. He'd seen it in a 1924 photograph by Man Ray, which he was certain no one else had ever seen.)
Johnson had always wanted to snuggle between the breasts of a beautiful woman, but the writer was forever describing breasts as "two scoops of ice-cream with cherries on top." This only left Johnson cold. Whenever the author went to Baskin Robbins, Anonymous Johnson would shrink back, fearing the worst.
Of course, Johnson didn't understand the stories. He'd never met a vagina, though he'd been reading quite a bit about them. They had petals like flowers, and yet you could open them to find a pearl inside. Apparently, a vagina was some sort of clumsy mixed metaphor. He didn't know whether to look in a flower bed or an oyster bed, but he was sure there would be a bed involved somewhere. Meanwhile, he'd keep looking behind bushes.
The author had grown tired of bushes and decided to do away with them entirely, but his hands trembled at his own originality and he quickly typed: Suzie opened her legs and I saw at once that she had saved her pubs for this occasion. This sentence confused Johnson, but the spellchecker swore it was perfect.
One night Johnson met a vagina and immediately head-butted her clitoris.
"Delicate bastard, aren't we?" said the vagina (she was a mouthy type).
"Sorry. I'm not very good at this," said Johnson.
"Do you always eat your dessert first?"
The vagina also belonged to a writer of erotica. A female one, she explained.
"And high-minded," she said. "None of this lowly smut for us. My mistress belongs to the I-want-to-be-fucked-in-places-I-can't-pronounce school of writing."
Johnson was already shriveling.
"Could you please explain that?"
"It's strictly for the ladies, mind you. You tell a sexy story set in some exotic place you've never been but always wanted to visit. Say, France. And you copy the names of all the places from a map or another book. Satisfies the wanderlust as well as the regular kind."
"How does she make the settings convincing if she's never been there?"
"Just mention the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame cathedral, a long loaf of bread, or -- best of all -- The Louvre, in italics."
"Fascinating," said Johnson. "My master will be interested, I'm sure. How does one go about creating believable European characters?"
"Just take an American girl and add hair under her arms. And make her passive. One can't write too many victim stories. People just love to read about characters with no goals, ambitions, or personality."
"Oh," he said.
"Precisely. O is the perfect example of flawless passivity. The very vanilla of all victim stories. The crème de la crème ."
He thought of ice-cream and began to wither away.
"How did you get that limp?" she asked.
He ignored the remark.
"Umm. I was wondering." He made a feeble attempt at standing again. "You being an expert and all. Is it absolutely necessary for the characters to say when they're coming?"
"How else will anyone know what's going on?" she said. "It's best to use some sort of emphasis as well. Capitals, italics, perhaps a few exclamation points. Emphasized text is the modern man's aphrodisiac, and it's so easy to do with computers and everything."
"I beg to differ. Perhaps what's needed is better description."
"Shut UP!!" said the vagina. "See how that works? I win. Characters must always announce when they are coming. In a pee story they must also announce when they are going."
"I think I'll go now," said Johnson.
"You're going to make me wet!" she cried.
"No," he said. "I mean, I'm leaving. I've had enough of your lip!"
