Crash (13 page)
Authors: J.G. Ballard
WERE there any limits to Vaughan’s irony? When I returned from the bar he was leaning against the window-sill of the Lincoln, rolling the last of four cigarettes with the hash kit kept in a tobacco bag in the dashboard locker. Two sharp-faced airport whores, barely older than schoolchildren, were arguing with him through the window.
‘Where the hell do you think you were going?’ Vaughan took from me the two wine bottles I had bought. He rolled the cigarettes on to the instrument binnacle, then resumed his discussion with the young women. They were arguing in an abstract way about time and price. Trying to ignore their voices, and the massed traffic moving below the supermarket, I watched the aircraft taking off from London Airport across the western perimeter fence, constellations of green and red lights that seemed to be shifting about large pieces of the sky.
The two women peered into the car, sizing me up in a one-second glance. The taller of the two, whom Vaughan had already assigned to me, was a passive blonde with unintelligent eyes focused three inches above my head. She pointed to me with her plastic handbag.
‘Can he drive?’
‘Of course – a few drinks always make a car go better.’
Vaughan twirled the wine bottles like dumb-bells, herding the women into the car. As the second girl, with short black hair and a boy’s narrow-hipped body, opened the passenger door, Vaughan handed a bottle to her. Lifting her chin, he put his fingers in her mouth. He plucked out the knot of gum and flicked it away into the darkness. ‘Let’s get rid of that – I don’t want you blowing it up my urethra.’
Adjusting myself to the unfamiliar controls, I started the engine and crossed the forecourt to the slip road. Above us, along Western Avenue, the traffic stream edged its way towards London Airport. Vaughan opened a wine bottle and passed it to the blonde sitting beside me in the front seat. He lit the first of the four cigarettes he had rolled. Already one elbow was between the dark-haired girl’s thighs, raising her skirt to reveal her black crotch. He drew the cork from the second bottle and pressed the wet end against her white teeth. In the rear-view mirror I could see her avoiding Vaughan’s mouth. She inhaled the cigarette smoke, her hand resting on Vaughan’s groin. Vaughan lay back, inspecting her small features with a detached gaze, looking her body up and down like an acrobat calculating the traverses and impacts of a gymnastic feat involving a large amount of complex equipment. With his right hand he opened the zip of his trousers, then arched his hips forward to free his penis. The girl held it in one hand, the other steadying the wine bottle as I let the car surge away from the traffic lights. Vaughan unbuttoned her shirt with his
scarred
fingers and brought out her small breast. Examining the breast, Vaughan gripped the nipple between thumb and forefinger, extruding it forward in a peculiar manual hold, as if fitting together a piece of unusual laboratory equipment.
scarred
fingers and brought out her small breast. Examining the breast, Vaughan gripped the nipple between thumb and forefinger, extruding it forward in a peculiar manual hold, as if fitting together a piece of unusual laboratory equipment.
Brake-lights flared twenty yards ahead of me. Horns sounded from the line of cars in the rear. As their headlamps pulsed I moved the shift lever into drive and pressed the accelerator, jerking the car forward. Vaughan and the girl rolled back against the rear seat. The cabin was lit only by the instrument dials, and by the headlamps and tail-lights in the crowded traffic lanes around us. Vaughan had freed both the girl’s breasts, nursing them with his palm. His scarred lips sucked at the thick smoke from the crumbling butt of the cigarette. He took the wine bottle and raised it to her mouth. As she drank he lifted her legs so that her heels rested on the seat, and began to move his penis against the skin of her thighs, drawing it first across the black vinyl and then pressing the glans against her heel and ankle bone, as if testing the possible continuity of these two materials before taking part in a sexual act involving both the car and this young woman. He lay against the rear seat, left arm stretched above the girl’s head, embracing this slab of over-sprung black vinyl. His hand was raised at right-angles to his forearm, measuring out the geometry of the chromium roof sill, while his right hand moved down the girl’s thighs and cupped her buttocks. Squatting there with her heels under her buttocks, the girl opened her thighs to expose her small pubic triangle, the labia open and protruded. Through the smoke lifting from the ashtray Vaughan studied the girl’s body in a good-humoured way.
Beside him, the girl’s small, serious face was lit by the
headlamps of the cars creeping forwards in the traffic files. The damp, inhaled smoke of burnt resin filled the interior of the car. My head seemed to float on these fumes. Somewhere ahead, beyond these immense lines of nearly stationary vehicles, was the illuminated plateau of the airport, but I felt barely able to do more than point the large car along the centre lane. The blonde woman in the front seat offered me a drink from the wine bottle. When I declined she leaned her head against my shoulder, giving a playful touch to the steering wheel. I put my arm around her shoulder, aware of her hand on my thigh.
headlamps of the cars creeping forwards in the traffic files. The damp, inhaled smoke of burnt resin filled the interior of the car. My head seemed to float on these fumes. Somewhere ahead, beyond these immense lines of nearly stationary vehicles, was the illuminated plateau of the airport, but I felt barely able to do more than point the large car along the centre lane. The blonde woman in the front seat offered me a drink from the wine bottle. When I declined she leaned her head against my shoulder, giving a playful touch to the steering wheel. I put my arm around her shoulder, aware of her hand on my thigh.
I waited until we stopped again, and adjusted the driving mirror so that I could see into the rear seat. Vaughan had moved his thumb into the girl’s vagina, forefinger into her rectum, as she sat back with her knees against her shoulders, drawing mechanically at the second of the cigarettes.
His left hand took the girl’s breast, his ring- and forefingers propping up the nipple like a miniature crutch. Holding these elements of the girl’s body in his formalized pose, he began to rock his hips back and forth, driving his penis into the girl’s hand. When she tried to move his fingers from her vulva Vaughan knocked her hand away with his elbow, holding the fingers securely in her body. He straightened his legs, rotating himself around the passenger compartment so that his hips rested on the edge of the seat. Braced on his left elbow, he continued to work himself against the girl’s hand, as if taking part in a dance of severely stylized postures that celebrated the design and electronics, speed and direction of an advanced kind of automobile.
This marriage of sex and technology reached its climax as the traffic divided at the airport overpass and we began
to move forwards in the northbound lane. As the car travelled for the first time at twenty miles an hour Vaughan drew his fingers from the girl’s vulva and anus, rotated his hips and inserted his penis in her vagina. Headlamps flared above us as the stream of cars moved up the slope of the overpass. In the rear-view mirror I could still see Vaughan and the girl, their bodies lit by the car behind, reflected in the black trunk of the Lincoln and a hundred points of the interior trim. In the chromium ashtray I saw the girl’s left breast and erect nipple. In the vinyl window gutter I saw deformed sections of Vaughan’s thighs and her abdomen forming a bizarre anatomical junction. Vaughan lifted the young woman astride him, his penis entering her vagina again. In a triptych of images reflected in the speedometer, the clock and revolution counter, the sexual act between Vaughan and this young woman took place in the hooded grottoes of these luminescent dials, moderated by the surging needle of the speedometer. The jutting carapace of the instrument panel and the stylized sculpture of the steering column shroud reflected a dozen images of her rising and falling buttocks. As I propelled the car at fifty miles an hour along the open deck of the overpass Vaughan arched his back and lifted the young woman into the full glare of the headlamps behind us. Her sharp breasts flashed within the chromium and glass cage of the speeding car. Vaughan’s strong pelvic spasms coincided with the thudding passage of the lamp standards anchored in the overpass at hundred-yard intervals. As each one approached his hips kicked into the girl, driving his penis into her vagina, his hands splaying her buttocks to reveal her anus as the yellow light filled the car. We reached the end of the overpass. The red glow of brake-lights burned the night air, touching the images of
Vaughan and the young woman with a roseate light.
to move forwards in the northbound lane. As the car travelled for the first time at twenty miles an hour Vaughan drew his fingers from the girl’s vulva and anus, rotated his hips and inserted his penis in her vagina. Headlamps flared above us as the stream of cars moved up the slope of the overpass. In the rear-view mirror I could still see Vaughan and the girl, their bodies lit by the car behind, reflected in the black trunk of the Lincoln and a hundred points of the interior trim. In the chromium ashtray I saw the girl’s left breast and erect nipple. In the vinyl window gutter I saw deformed sections of Vaughan’s thighs and her abdomen forming a bizarre anatomical junction. Vaughan lifted the young woman astride him, his penis entering her vagina again. In a triptych of images reflected in the speedometer, the clock and revolution counter, the sexual act between Vaughan and this young woman took place in the hooded grottoes of these luminescent dials, moderated by the surging needle of the speedometer. The jutting carapace of the instrument panel and the stylized sculpture of the steering column shroud reflected a dozen images of her rising and falling buttocks. As I propelled the car at fifty miles an hour along the open deck of the overpass Vaughan arched his back and lifted the young woman into the full glare of the headlamps behind us. Her sharp breasts flashed within the chromium and glass cage of the speeding car. Vaughan’s strong pelvic spasms coincided with the thudding passage of the lamp standards anchored in the overpass at hundred-yard intervals. As each one approached his hips kicked into the girl, driving his penis into her vagina, his hands splaying her buttocks to reveal her anus as the yellow light filled the car. We reached the end of the overpass. The red glow of brake-lights burned the night air, touching the images of
Vaughan and the young woman with a roseate light.
Controlling the car, I drove down the ramp towards the traffic junction. Vaughan changed the tempo of his pelvic motion, drawing the young woman on top of himself and extending her legs along his own. They lay diagonally across the rear seat, Vaughan taking first her left nipple in his mouth, then the right, his finger in her anus, stroking her rectum to the rhythm of the passing cars, matching his own movements to the play of light sweeping transversely across the roof of the car. I pushed away the blonde girl lying against my shoulder. I realized that I could almost control the sexual act behind me by the way in which I drove the car. Playfully, Vaughan responded to different types of street furniture and roadside trim. As we left London Airport, heading inwards towards the city on the fast access roads, his rhythm became faster, his hands under the girl’s buttocks forcing her up and down as if some scanning device in his brain was increasingly agitated by the high office blocks. At the end of the orgasm he was almost standing behind me in the car, legs outstretched, head against the rear seat, hands propping up his own buttocks as he carried the girl on his hips.
Half an hour later I had turned back to the airport and stopped the car in the shadows of the multi-storey car-park facing the Oceanic Terminal. The girl at last managed to pull herself from Vaughan, who lay exhausted against the rear seat. Clumsily, she reassembled herself, remonstrating with Vaughan and the drowsy blonde in the front seat. Vaughan’s semen ran down her left thigh on to the black vinyl of the seat. The ivory globes searched for the steepest gradient to the central sulcus of the seat.
I stepped from the car and paid the two women. When
they had gone, carrying their hard loins back to the neonlit concourses, I waited beside the car. Vaughan was staring at the terraced cliff of the car-park, his eyes following the canted floors, as if trying to recognize everything that had passed between himself and the dark-haired girl.
they had gone, carrying their hard loins back to the neonlit concourses, I waited beside the car. Vaughan was staring at the terraced cliff of the car-park, his eyes following the canted floors, as if trying to recognize everything that had passed between himself and the dark-haired girl.
Later, Vaughan explored the possibilities of the car-crash in the same calm and affectionate way that he had explored the limits of that young prostitute’s body. Often I watched him lingering over the photographs of crash fatalities, gazing at their burnt faces with a terrifying concern, as he calculated the most elegant parameters of their injuries, the junctions of their wounded bodies with the fractured windshield and instrument assemblies. He would mimic these injuries in his own driving postures, turning the same dispassionate eyes on the young women he picked up near the airport. Using their bodies, he recapitulated the deformed anatomies of vehicle crash victims, gently bending the arms of these girls against their shoulders, pressing their knees against his own chest, always curious to see their reactions.
THE world was beginning to flower into wounds. From the window of my office at the film studios I watched Vaughan seated in his car in the centre of the parking lot. Most of the staff were leaving for home, taking their cars one by one from the files around Vaughan’s dusty limousine. He had driven into the studios an hour earlier. After Renata pointed him out to me I managed successfully to ignore him, but the steady subtraction of the other vehicles from the parking lot soon focused all my attention on this isolated car at the centre. In the three days since our visit to the Road Research Laboratory he had come to the studios each afternoon — ostensibly to see Seagrave, but his real motive was to force me to arrange his formal introduction to the film actress. At an uncertain moment the previous afternoon, after meeting him at a filling station on Western Avenue, I had agreed to help him, well aware that I was no longer able to throw Vaughan off. Without any effort now, he was able to follow me all day, for ever waiting for me at the airport entrances, in the forecourts of filling stations, almost as if I were unconsciously steering myself into his path.
His presence had affected my driving, and I guessed that I was really waiting to be involved in a second accident, this time under Vaughan’s eyes. Even the giant aircraft
taking off from the airport were systems of excitement and eroticism, punishment and desire waiting to be inflicted on my body. The massive traffic jams on the motorways seemed to suffocate the air, and I nearly believed that Vaughan himself had conjured these vehicles on to the exhausted concrete as part of some elaborate psychological test.
taking off from the airport were systems of excitement and eroticism, punishment and desire waiting to be inflicted on my body. The massive traffic jams on the motorways seemed to suffocate the air, and I nearly believed that Vaughan himself had conjured these vehicles on to the exhausted concrete as part of some elaborate psychological test.
When Renata had gone Vaughan stepped from his car. I watched him walk across the parking lot to the entrance of the offices, wondering why he had chosen me — already I could see myself driving a target vehicle on a collision course with either Vaughan or some victim of his choice.
Vaughan walked through the outer offices, glancing to left and right at the enlarged sales photographs of automobile radiator grilles and windshield assemblies. He was wearing the same stale jeans he had unrolled around his hard buttocks during his sex-act as I drove the car. His lower lip had developed a small ulcer which he had opened by chewing on it. I stared with a peculiar fascination at this miniature orifice, aware of his extending sexual authority over me, an authority partly won by the accident memorialized in the scarred contours of his face and chest.
‘Vaughan, I’m exhausted. It’s been an effort to move in and out of this office, let alone chase up a producer I barely know. Anyway, the chance of her actually completing one of your questionnaires is nil.’
‘Let me give it to her.’
‘I know, you’ll probably charm her …’
Vaughan was standing with his back to me, broken eyetooth gnawing away at the ulcer. My hands, apparently detached from the rest of my body and brain, hesitated in the air, wondering how to embrace his waist. Vaughan
turned towards me, a reassuring smile on his scarred mouth, posed at its best diagonal profile as if I were auditioning him for his new television series. He spoke in an oblique and distracted voice, as if he had been clouded by the hash he was smoking. ‘Ballard, she’s central to the fantasies of all the subjects I’ve tested. There’s a limited amount of time, though you’re too obsessed with yourself to realize it. I need her responses.’
turned towards me, a reassuring smile on his scarred mouth, posed at its best diagonal profile as if I were auditioning him for his new television series. He spoke in an oblique and distracted voice, as if he had been clouded by the hash he was smoking. ‘Ballard, she’s central to the fantasies of all the subjects I’ve tested. There’s a limited amount of time, though you’re too obsessed with yourself to realize it. I need her responses.’
‘Vaughan, the likelihood of her being killed in a car-crash is remote. You’ll have to follow her around until doomsday.’
Standing behind Vaughan, I stared down at the cleft between his buttocks, wishing that these display photographs of car fenders and windshield sections could form themselves into a complete automobile, in which I could take his body in my hands, like that of some vagrant dog, and anneal its wounds within this arcade of possibilities. I visualized these sections of radiator grilles and instrument panels coalescing around Vaughan and myself, embracing us as I pulled the belt from its buckle and eased down his jeans, celebrating in the penetration of his rectum the most beautiful contours of a rear-fender assembly, a marriage of my penis with all the possibilities of a benevolent technology.
‘Vaughan …’
He was looking down at a display photograph of the actress leaning against a motor-car. He had taken a pencil from my inkwell, and was shading in portions of the actress’s body, ringing her armpits and cleavage. He stared almost sightlessly at the photographs, cigarette forgotten on the edge of an ashtray. A dank odour rose from his body, an amalgam of rectal mucus and engine coolant. His pencil cut heavier grooves in the picture. The shaded areas had begun to perforate under his more
and more savage slashes, blows with the broken pencil point that punctured the cardboard backing. He marked in points of the motor-car interior, stabbing at the protruding areas of steering assembly and instrument panel.
and more savage slashes, blows with the broken pencil point that punctured the cardboard backing. He marked in points of the motor-car interior, stabbing at the protruding areas of steering assembly and instrument panel.
‘Vaughan!’ I put my arm around his shoulder. His body was shaking towards an orgasm, the edge of his left hand against his groin in a karate-like hold, as if he were trying to injure himself, working away through the cloth at his erect penis as his right hand moved across the disfigured photographs.
With an effort, Vaughan straightened himself, leaning against my arm. He stared at the mutilated pictures of the screen actress, surrounded by the impact points and wound areas he had marked for her death.
Uneasily, I lowered my arm from Vaughan’s shoulder. His hard stomach was marked by a fretwork of scars. On his right hip the scars formed a mould waiting for my fingers, the templates of a caress imprinted years earlier in some forgotten automobile pile-up.
Controlling the phlegm in my throat, I pointed to the scars, five notches that described a loose circle above his iliac crest. Vaughan watched me without comment as my fingers reached to within a few inches of his skin. A gallery of scars marked his thorax and abdomen. His right nipple had been severed and re-sectioned incorrectly, and was permanently erect.
We walked through the evening light towards the car-park. Along the northbound motorway embankment the sluggish traffic moved like blood in a dying artery. Two cars were parked in front of Vaughan’s Lincoln in the empty parking lot: a police patrol car and Catherine’s white sports saloon. One policeman was inspecting the
Lincoln, peering through the dusty windows. The other stood beside Catherine’s car, questioning her.
Lincoln, peering through the dusty windows. The other stood beside Catherine’s car, questioning her.
The policemen recognized Vaughan and signalled to him. Thinking that they had come to question me about my growing homo-erotic involvement with Vaughan, I turned away guiltily.
Catherine walked over to me as the policemen spoke to Vaughan.
‘They want to question Vaughan about an accident near the airport. Some pedestrian – they think he was run over intentionally.’
‘Vaughan isn’t interested in pedestrians.’
As if taking their cue from this, the policemen walked back to their car. Vaughan watched them go, head raised like a periscope as if scanning something over the surface of their minds.
‘You’d better drive him,’ Catherine said as we walked towards Vaughan. ‘I’ll follow in my car. Where is yours?’
‘At home. I couldn’t face all this traffic.’
‘I’d better come with you.’ Catherine peered into my face, as if squinting through the window of a diving helmet. ‘Are you sure you can drive?’
Waiting for me, Vaughan reached into the rear seat of his car for a white sweat-shirt. As he took off his denim jacket the falling light picked out the scars on his abdomen and chest, a constellation of white chips that circled his body from the left armpit down to his crotch. The handholds of complex sex acts had been created by the cars in which he had deliberately crashed for my future pleasure, of strange postures in the back and front seats of cars, peculiar acts of sodomy and fellatio I would perform as I moved across his body from one hand-hold to the next.
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