Nymph()maniac Vol III*
After the dramatic score of classical music mixed with Rammstein over a long shot of an anonymous city in a thunderstorm ends, the camera zooms in on a battered version of Joe, (Charlotte Gainsbourg) gazing out over the river outside a dark bar. Her clothes look as rough as she does. A bearded biker dude (Alexander Skårsgard+ 100 pounds) approaches her and silently offers her a large can of cheap beer. She accepts and he takes her to a bridge underpass. Their faces are revealed in the blue hue of the nearby anti-drug lighting. Biker dude squints, grunting “I know you.” Joe looks up at him with a blank stare. “Yes you do.” Classical Rammstein swells loudly again.
As they settle onto a stack of old newspapers they each crack open their beer cans. Some unknown junkies get high in the background. Their soft cries of ecstasy seem to arouse Joe, who has trouble keeping her hands out of her cargo pants as Biker dude takes off his leather jacket to show off the tattoos on his arms. Joe tries to seduce him but he turns her away. He confesses he no longer has sexual urges. He was made into a eunuch by accident years ago, when he dropped hot, buttered popcorn on his genitalia while compulsively watching documentaries on the Westboro Baptist Church. He confused the burning of his penis and testes with a vision from God, passed out, and woke up from his subsequent coma with a new toy called a permanent suprapubic catheter. (He is now writing a book about his experiences titled “How bigotry cost me my penis”, to be released in Fall 2015)
He mans explains to Joe that she should feel free to share her story, as she is in a safe space now, a place without sex judgment. Joe spots one of his pin-up tattoos and starts chapter 76 off by talking about the time when she was 18, just in university, and had to do porn to pay her tuition. She used a pseudonym because she didn’t want to be condemned for her choices initially (although she had no shame) but was discovered by an anonymous classmate who thought her sexual choices were his business. The entire Internet followed suit, offering threats of abuse as well as scathing opinions and soon her fame as the “University Porn Princess” soared to incredible heights.
Biker dude (now simply known as B.d.) interrupts the story with some additional contextualizing to tell her he recognizes her from her porn career. He explains that porn is as old as cave drawings, so the porn industry, if we really think about it, is not at all an evil product of the patriarchy or the male gaze as some weird academics would claim; it’s a natural expression of human sexuality, centered on desire. And desire, B.d. elucidates, is universal but above all; the most powerful force of all, as it is without boundaries. To claim otherwise is nothing but bourgeoisie privilege; if fantasies can be commercialized, monetized and sold back to us at a profit, there should be nothing standing in people’s way. B.d. closes his monologue by explaining in intricate detail that according to ancient Illuminati manuscripts the Victorians knew this, but kept this knowledge secret so as to not have the masses rally against them.
Joe stays silent for a little while. Then she takes a swig of her beer, and looks at B.d. in tacit agreement. Joe explains how she quickly realized this chain of events had spiraled beyond her control, and how she then cleverly re-branded her choice as one of power, and surprisingly (most of all to herself) pretty much everyone accepted and embraced her strategy to bank on the attention. Each time she innocently took her clothes off in a strip club, or wrote something to defend herself, the inane debate about Choices Women Make And How We As A Society Collectively Feel About Them was fueled and raged on and on once again. The money she made from her various media appearances was more than triple what she needed for tuition, and so she started her own virtual reality female-friendly BDSM porn hub on the side. Her business was so successful Facebook bought it, and she could retire with her billions at 25. Sadly though, when the aliens landed in 2019 and stole the Internet, she was left in ruins.
B.d. is about to start another boring highly relevant monologue when suddenly, a manifestation of Bacchus, the God of Wine, appears to them. As he hovers over the twosome he chants “the relentless pursuit of desire is also not an addiction, even if you feel like you can’t do without it anymore. It is important to make that distinction.” Joe, B.d. and a nearby Unknown Junkie all eagerly nod in agreement.
Joe continues to the next tattoo for chapter 453 after she orgasms twice, once at the hands of Bacchus. This next chapter is called “Hot guys buy me beer”, because wine and you know, Jesus.
*This will all be a lot easier to understand as the parody that it’s intended to be if you watch the latest Lars von Trier films Nymph()maniac vol I&II or read this summary of it.