Marc Olmsted

 

Not of this Earth
(Lightning House excerpt)

Lew and I went to the Strand -- a drafty beat theater on Market street that changed movies daily and occasionally showed first run horror pictures other movie houses wouldn't pick up -- we were both interested in a remake of Roger Corman's Not of this Earth -- a 50's camp sci fi picture that in this 1988 version starred porn crossover queen Traci Lords. I'd seen her underage illegal porn -- wow -- must confess -- very hot indeed. In this picture -- a terrible untalented version of the brilliantly trashy original -- Traci took her clothes off quite a bit -- a great body it was -- though Lew and I found a new reaction we hadn't expected -- a forlorn gray ectoplasm seized us as we voyeured the screen -- a dirty wind blew through our hearts -- this very theater I had stumbled into the restroom while on mushrooms years ago and there was some guy in the open toilet brandishing his penis -- ("Does it frighten you? Does it excite you?" -- Mickey Rourke Nine & a Half Weeks) -- toilet sex happened a lot there -- that same urgency and innate loneliness hovered over us -- watching Traci get nude invoked a lost desperation, like running away at age 13 and in a few hours knowing I couldn't make it. We came out into the early dusk sad, parting, almost not wanting to leave each other.

Vampire malady -- ah poet nothing to be done -- hands of white housepaint -- gray sky -- how hard to yearn for the bride that wasn't.