The New Pilgrims
Malik Selle
Milo: …women so beautiful they don’t seem like they exist.
Father Rogers: It only seems that way because you’re young. (cigarette) Or actually—you’ll stop caring eventually. Time has a way of levelling it all out.
(speaking on Naya)
Milo: It’s the voice that goes before the laugh. I’m thinking of getting myself hypnotized because she’s still there completely if I have a dream or something. It’s not my fault, the impression, you know, the somatic thing…starts to fade. It’s a defense mechanism. It’s time…
Rogers: Leveling it all out, taking care of it all…
Milo: I don’t want that—like this. (beat) We spent too much time apart when we knew each other anyway. I was always leaving. It becomes unreal, all the pain and then the memory of pain—and if you’re the one who got left behind in the end it doesn’t matter if she starts to fade away. Bit by bit is the knowledge she took something from you, something very important, and she probably doesn’t even care that she has it. Forgetting, if you call it that, doesn’t really matter.
(perhaps some time passes)
Milo: Now imagine it happens again. This story of estrangement gets told once more—part self-fulfiling prophecy from the last time, part cosmic rite—because you can’t have a New Testament without an old one.
(Evie levitating, crickets sing)
Father Rogers: Jesus likes to do this.
[AT THE END OF THE MOVIE]
Evie Lange, in a later-career, solo outdoor concert…
she sings Sex (I’m A) while many characters from the movie watch
—the setting looks a little like near the De Young in San Francisco—
and during the Happy Hooker spoken sections pan to Maguerite
in glass cubicle, now a performer, Lady Lazarus again in disguise
Milo watches, thinks, he’s seated a couple rows behind Naya
her black hair—turns slightly—never sees her face.
She gets up, he follows. Follows her backstage,
down grim back tunnels of the rotunda,
homage to crime debated in the Movie Within Movie #2
As soon as it seems like Milo is close enough to grab her…
[THIS IS POSSIBLY WHAT HAPPENS]
As Evie reaches ecstasy: “I’m a goddess, I’m a—”
backstage possibly Naya sees Milo out the corner of her eye
and she stabs him with the javelin (same that wounded Virgina)
desperately now he tries to get back out of the rotunda hallway
montage, last minute of Sex (I’m A)…
Milo can’t fit out of the hallway
has to pull the javelin out of his eye
bleeding, can’t see out of that eye,
can never see out of that eye again
Malik Selle is a writer and visual artist. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, he earned his B.A. in literary studies and creative writing. His fiction and poetry have appeared in America and abroad, in publications such as Beyond Words Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The West Trade Review, and others. Recently, he has produced and directed several experimental short films within the San Francisco underground film scene and has presented artwork in several group shows at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto.
