by Jeffrey Meyers
Family fights are the worst; they leave the deepest wounds and cause the greatest pain. Since everyone’s version of what happened was contradictory and self-serving, it was impossible to know what actually occurred. The clash of volatile half-siblings, spiked by incestuous feelings, had been boiling over for decades. Though Stella and Tony had been close in childhood, even sharing the same bed, she drew away from him at puberty. Their hostility began early on, and they would do anything to destroy each other while trying to capture their mother’s house and money. Disaster was looming but unavoidable.
Stella, an angelically beautiful child, had bad luck and lamented, “my life is shit.” Abandoned as an infant by her wealthy doctor-father, she never saw him again, never recovered from that rejection and bore the emotional scar for the rest of her life. Now wiry and wound up, she was still sweet-natured and charming. She wanted to be a ballet dancer, but injuries destroyed her career. Drawn to a series of hopeless boyfriends, one of them brain damaged from a motorcycle accident, she failed to rehabilitate the losers. She wanted children, but started too late. She never went to college, never qualified as a physical therapist. While working as a personal trainer and massaging arthritic old ladies, a feeble client lost her grip on the handles of an exercise machine. They knocked out Stella’s front teeth and the replacements seemed too big for her narrow jaw. Always insecure, she began to worry about her aging and appearance.
She inherited million-dollar fortunes from her maternal grandfather and from her guilt-ridden paternal grandsire. Ignorant about how to handle money and unwilling to take expert advice, she made foolish investments in stocks and real estate and quickly lost everything. She then borrowed $100,000 from her mother to reduce her mortgage and improve her decrepit dwelling. Despite assurances, she never renovated it. When Tony found out about the extravagant loan, really a gift, he was furious. Her rough hippy commune earned a bit of cash by taking tourists through the nearby deep and echoing caves. But it would take 17 years (excluding interest) to pay back her loan at $500 a month. Before that time—if all went well—her mother would be dead. She hoped to inherit her mother’s grand house, with an elaborate garden and view of the ocean, though she could not afford to maintain it or pay the crippling taxes. Meanwhile, she drove an unreliable pickup truck on the dangerous curvy road to the top of the nearby mountain, hotter in summer, colder in winter, than the coastal town below.
Stella didn’t like the common name of her current partner, the bulky, gray and pony-tailed George, and called him Fritz, an equally common German name. A failure like all her beaux, he had an architecture degree from a prestigious college, but barely supported himself as a handyman instead of a designer of houses. Frustrated and embittered, he had not achieved anything in middle age.
Tony was the handsome son of a deceased French father who resented and disliked him. His father never wanted a child and loved Stella more than his own blood. The ill-favored brother was jealous of his well-beloved sister. Though poor at school and sports, Tony was a talented musician and glass-blower, which he had to give up when the silicates affected his lungs. He couldn’t make money from either music or art, didn’t try anything else and admitted that he’d wasted a lot of his life.
Long years of heavy marijuana smoking affected Tony’s brain and caused several car accidents. He was notably dim, failed out of junior college and left art school. Current New Age ideas had floated around the coast and settled inside his empty head. He wanted to give all the land (but not his family property) back to the local Indians, dabbled in but didn’t understand oriental mysticism, and became a Rastafarian complete with fuzzy dreadlocks and floppy knit hat. He fiercely defended the rights of oppressed minorities, but refused to work with low-class Mexicans on Fritz’s repair jobs.
Jendra lived with Tony, rent-free in the one-room, downtown flat owned by his mother, who also supported them. Like her own mother, Jendra was illegitimate and never knew her father. She claimed it was better to have an unknown rather than a hostile father. Extremely pretty and seductive, but hopelessly ignorant, she trapped Tony by getting pregnant. By refusing to drive, she also turned him into her slavish chauffeur. Though unskilled, she thought no job was good enough for her. Tony was bored by and fed up with Jendra, who had no money and no place to go, but could not get rid of her. With no background, brains, education, experience or talent, her only asset and weapon was sex. She skillfully used it to gain power over men and make her way in the world.
Tony was surprised, jealous and furious when he first discovered that Jendra had been publicly exposing her once-private parts and screaming for sex on the net to attract customers and earn money. But he allowed her to help support them by acting in amateur porn. Jendra exploited her clients’ thrill of seeing but not being seen, of knowing but not being known while watching the most secret part of life. More vivid and sexually exciting than professionals in a porn film, she seemed wildly aroused and apparently insatiable.
Jendra was tall, thin and coffee-colored, with high pointed breasts cantilevered in a pushed-up bra. In her first act, the camera focuses on Jendra’s face as a man dives under the bedcovers to pleasure her with oral sex. She sticks her toes and feet out from under the covers, twitches them as if electrocuted and howls with increasing intensity. Every few minutes, like a deep-sea diver in distress, he surfaces for a gasp of fresh air. After this formidable foreplay he vigorously penetrates her. When he’s spent himself and she wants even more, he rubs and rehardens his member for another spectacular effort.
In her second act, she strips off her clothes, does a charming naked dance and goes down on him for an indecent interval. She mounts him and shakes as violently as a jackhammer till he’s completely worn out. She then stands up, revealing a hint of her cleft beneath the sparse bush, and daintily sanitizes herself. The following night another man arrives to replace her previous lover. He’s sent to Rest & Recreation to recover from his Herculean efforts and prepare himself for the next assault.
Jendra, as frustrated and unhappy as Fritz, sent him the link to her salacious show.
On a reckless day she either invited Fritz to visit her or he arrived unexpectedly, knowing that Tony was working and she was at home alone. Aroused by watching her enticing performance on the net and acting like an impulsive college kid, he thought she was available for all manner of perversions and could satisfy his most primitive fantasies. But Fritz, her convenient first mark, had no money and was not a profitable customer. She later claimed that he took out his member, shoved it in her face and said, “play about with it, that’s a good girl.” Though not the most subtle way to win a young girl’s heart, they did have sex. Her account of his behavior was unlikely but could have been true.
All the motives were complex. Fritz, insisting that he was chaste and protesting his innocence, claimed he went to Jendra’s room at her request to give her emotional support and professional advice. Tony told Stella about Fritz’s betrayal and he seemed guilty as charged. Stella had been keeping the marriage and business going while he’d been unfaithful and had rejected her for a more exciting young lover. But she desperately wanted to hold on to Fritz—her last chance in life.
Stella convinced herself that Fritz had only visited Jendra to offer generous help. The possessive Jendra had plotted to separate Tony from Stella so she could completely control him. Though Tony probably knew the truth, he pretended to be outraged by her behavior, which he seemed to have tacitly encouraged. Jendra was either seeking paternal advice from an older man or trying to seduce and blackmail him. She manipulated Tony and Fritz just as Stella and Tony manipulated their mother. Both men resented their weakness and Jendra’s sexual power.
The crisis occurred when Tony took revenge for Fritz’s sex with Jendra and Fritz took revenge for Jendra’s sexual slander. Fritz went to his mother-in-law’s house, demanded her loyalty and asked:
Do you believe me?
I don’t know who to believe.
You must believe me.
I don’t believe anyone anymore.
She refused to accept his story, or even pretend to, and he retaliated by smashing all the pretty vases that Tony had made. She noted, amid the chaos, that the shattered colored glass looked like bright coral shining at the bottom of the sea.
The mother called Tony for help and he appeared at her house for a showdown. Fritz was still there—waiting for him. He grabbed a beer can-opener and jabbed at Tony as his victim jumped away and kept a table between them. Tony then seized a knife, attacked Fritz and both got slashed. Later on, at a conciliatory dinner, they got drunk and tried to be congenial. But the inevitable fist fight erupted and, vilifying each other with cascades of filth, they severely damaged the house that Tony hoped to inherit. The screaming mother urged them to make peace. As they calmed down and embraced each other, Tony—in an atavistic Corsican gesture–bit Fritz’s ear. Blood poured down his face and blurred his blunt features. The mother, longing for a quiet life instead of an emotional maelstrom, locked the door, acted like a teenager and ran away from home.
Their motives, if not their past behavior, were clear. Stella wanted to hold on to Fritz. Fritz wanted to keep Stella while having sex with Jendra. Tony wanted to alienate Stella from their mother, get her share of the money and gain financial, if not sexual, control of his consort. Jendra wanted to continue her starring role in the narcissistic sex show. The mother, when passions cooled, wanted to protect her house and have some peace in her sunset years. Though it was impossible to reconcile the opposing scenarios, they had a significant effect on both marriages. In the end, Stella opened a massage parlor. Fritz became a bisexual interior decorator. Tony kept the hippies and townies profitably supplied with marijuana. Jendra assumed the role of madam and ran a classy escort service.
Jeffrey Meyers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has published many books on literature, art and film.