Read Online The Brutal Language of Love by Alicia Erian - Free Book Online Page A

said. “I want you all to remember that now as I pass out my list of creative limitations. They’re designed to help you, not make your lives harder.”
    The list was called the “Mayer Memorandum” and consisted of six guidelines, all beginning with the letter M : no machine guns, no monkeys, no mission impossibles, no Mafia, no murder, no madness.
    â€œYou got something against action movies?” a guy named Benny Parisi asked her.
    â€œYes,” Shirley Mayer said. “Any other questions?”
    Brigitte raised her hand then. “Is the monkey literal or figurative?”
    â€œLet’s not overanalyze,” Shirley Mayer told her. When no one else raised their hand she asked, “Everyone unhappy now?” They all nodded except Brigitte and Paige. “Good!” Shirley Mayer said. “Then things can only get better.”
    â€œDamn!” Davis Bonaire said and, quite unexpectedly, he began to laugh, followed by the rest of the class, and finally Shirley Mayer.

    Brigitte’s movie was about a young woman who goes bra shopping and finds she likes the way the sales associate touches her skin. The sales associate fastens the young woman’s bras even though the young woman has been fastening her own bras all her life, then smooths her hand across the young woman’s shoulder. At the sales associate’s suggestion, the young woman tries on more bras than she’d intended—some violet, some lacy, some push-up—but only buys a couple of plain white ones in the end. As she pays for them, a young man approaches the sales associate and kisses her. The young woman looks questioningly at the sales associate, who looks away. “Come back and see us,” the sales associate says meaningfully when she hands the young woman her receipt.
    This had happened to Brigitte in real life, and when she’d described the event to Raoul, her stocky French roommate, he had suggested she write it all down and submit it to Penthouse Forum. “Just forget about the guy at the end and make the women get it on in the dressing room,” he’d added.
    Now, on a warm Saturday in September, Brigitte and Raoul sat together at their pink Formica kitchen table, watching the smoke from Raoul’s cigarette mix with the morning sunlight. Raoul wore boxer shorts and extremely short, dyed blond hair, while Brigitte was in dirty Levi’s, with no bra underneath her T-shirt. “I wonder sometimes,” Raoul said, watching the swirly, smoking air, “if this type of effect would register on film.”
    â€œYou probably wouldn’t want it to,” Brigitte said. “It’s kind of prosaic.”
    â€œProsaic?” Raoul said.
    â€œProsaïque,” Brigitte said, translating.
    Raoul, understanding now, was dismissive. “You Americans,” he said. “Always trying to invent something new. The trick is to learn to live with the banal.”
    â€œYou French,” Brigitte said. “Always bugging the shit out of me.”
    Raoul laughed and kissed Brigitte on both cheeks before heading for the garden shed in the backyard, where he lifted weights every morning. He had graduated from the film program the year before and now spent most of his time bodybuilding and bartending. Occasionally a local band would ask him to shoot a music video for them and Raoul would do it in return for beer or pot. Sometimes he did it for free. Film school, he liked to say, had taught him more about how to watch films than how to make them, and so this was his main focus at the moment.
    Brigitte and Raoul had moved in together as lovers, but when that didn’t work out, they were loath to separate since they were such compatible roommates. So she took the second bedroom in the small house they rented, while Raoul relocated his weight-lifting apparatus to the tin shed from Sears. They were only slightly jealous of one another when a third party entered the