Clip

Chapter One

It was me who banged the yummy heiress in the clip that went viral on the Internet, and it was my magic wand she left swaying in the wind while insisting on answering her cell phone.  Couldn’t she just let it ring?  Not that little lady.

How slim are the odds that an educator could frequent the playgrounds of Beverly Hills and succeed in enticing a high-profile socialite to bare her taut flesh on film?  Imagine my surprise when I realized it was my face staring back at me.

My first thought was that someone wanted to pull my chain and had used some graphics software to cut and paste me into the segment.  My porno debut may have been nothing more than the handiwork of some IT nerd; perhaps, the twisted project of a spiteful colleague, or that of a former student who sought revenge for failing one of my language classes.

The rationale for picking this famous homemade video as a defamation medium was clear: I do vaguely resemble the sleazy fucker now infamous for releasing over the Internet a sample trailer of him having sex with his paparazzi-hounded girlfriend.  In addition, the grainy picture quality enhances the illusion that the white complexion and fair hair look more like mine than his. 

One cannot discount, however, that I shape-shifted into it like any inter-dimensional reptilian humanoid with the ability to change form at will.  As a member of such an elite clan of lizards, I could get that bimbo to do anything but refuse to answer her cell; few males, even shape-shifters, can stop the ‘social network.’





While still juggling competing theories, I decided to assess whether a colleague of mine was capable of manipulating digital movies.  I did so, one Friday night, while we were tipping a few at an Irish pub close to Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo.

"Let me get this straight, you want to morph an image in a clip?"  Ken looked at me through blue eyes that were a little glassy and bloodshot after knocking down half a dozen pints of Guinness in less than two hours.

I stared at my Jameson on the rocks. "Well, maybe change the face a little.  Do you think you could do that?"

"What would be the point?" 

I turned my gaze on him and said, "Character assassination?"  Unfortunately, I couldn’t discern a change in his expression beyond the drunken slackening of muscles on his puffy face. 

"What the fuck are you getting at?" Ken drained his glass and started to rise.

“I don’t know, I just thought it might make an interesting plot for some thriller or something."  I watched him wobble to his feet.  This flabby, middle-aged alcoholic seemed neither to possess the ability nor motive to implant my image in the video.

"Well Mate, I’m no assassin.  Just going to tap a kidney instead," he said leaning over and mumbling in my ear.  "You want to watch?"

"Hey, fuck you!"

"No chance.  I don't mate with schizophrenics," he said, staggering in the direction of the restroom. 

From behind the counter the pretty barmaid asked in Japanese, "Would you like another?"

"Nah, I'm about ready to call it a night," I replied in Japanese.

"I hate to bother you, but weren't you in that, that video?"  She leaned toward me as though worried a bartender or another customer would overhear our conversation.

"Did you watch it?"

"My boyfriend showed it to me."  She wiped a glass with a towel while she looked at me.  Perhaps she was puzzled by the incongruities between the man in the video and the reality that sat on a barstool in front of her.

"When do you finish work?"



Since it appeared that I might hook up with the barmaid, Mayumi, I decided to nurse my whiskey.  Ken didn't notice, kept pouring down the pints, and made about a dozen trips to "tap his kidneys."  After he returned the first time, we didn’t resume our conversation about computer graphics since Mayumi and I were busy discussing the video princess of the Internet.

"Yeah, she's cool, but we broke up just before she started the TV show," I lied.

"Whose show?"  Ken asked, with a big grin on his bald-headed face.

"Hey, that's our little secret."  I winked at Mayumi. 



Another hour or two later, after we jabbered about inter-dimensional reptilians and other alcohol-fueled topics, Ken left to catch the train home.  Within an hour, Mayumi and I took a taxi to my small apartment.  Evidently, she and her boyfriend weren’t that tight since it didn’t take long before I had her straddling me like the heiress in the video.  There were a few other similarities between the two, but one big difference was that her cell did not go off.  An even bigger difference was that Mayumi went off much stronger than the socialite.  Certainly, there are a lot more fireworks in Tokyo than L.A.  More to the point, by the time she left later in the morning, was she convinced that it was me in the video?  Well . . .





When Monday came, I was back in a classroom full of first-year university students.  Each of the twenty English language classes I had, at six different universities in the Tokyo area, met for ninety minutes, once a week.  I had shown them a short video and handed out an article and worksheet based on the same theme. 

While I moved around the classroom, a male student with rather long, dyed, brown hair raised a hand and motioned me over to his study group.

"Mr. Journeyman, uh, what's lod?" he asked through a toothy grin.  I walked over and observed that his powder-blue-tinted contact lenses seemed out of place on his Asian face.

"Didn’t you know that 'bou' or ‘sao’ is 'rod' or ‘pole’ in English?"  I smiled back, thinking his appearance suggested a hint of the alien.

"I understand that, but how could it fly?  Who think that?"

"Well, many people apparently." I felt a little defensive as I noticed grins on the faces of the other three students in his group.

"Who pick this article?" asked a petite girl in blue jeans and a pink T-shirt.

"Well, aren’t you interested in learning something that’s not usually covered by the major news sources?"

"You believe in these rod?" a student in a group across the room shouted.  More students began to giggle.

"'These rods' not 'these rod,'" I corrected.

Another student asked, "Journeyman believe?"

"Well, let's just say it may be feasible.  There are many instances of flying rods caught on video since 1994.  Actually, there are many sightings in Japan.  You may know them as ‘flying fish.’”

"This like lizard people from article last week?" another boy asked.

"Mr. Journeyman believe space lizards?" Miki, the petite girl wearing jeans, asked.  I turned to face her and noticed how similar she was to Mayumi, the barmaid I entertained Friday night.

"Do you want to see me shape shift?"

"Sure," she giggled.

"Sorry, not today and no, I don’t believe flying rods are anything more than an optical illusion caused by a camera blurring the image of fast insects."

"Well, I do," said Yoko, a heavy-set, black-haired girl with a round, pimply face.  Everyone turned to look at her.

"Flying fish?" asked Miki.

"Lizard people," Yoko said as the bell rang.

"Your homework is to answer the questions on the worksheet.  See you next week."  With that, I got the hell out of there.





That night, after a light meal of tofu and a salad, I fired up my computer to once more view the sex video.  While watching, I wondered for the umpteenth time how I got on it.  I had spent the past ten years living and working in Japan as an English teacher.  During most vacations I left Japan, so it was feasible that I could’ve gotten to know the socialite during one of those trips, and could’ve made the video, but I know I hadn’t.  Even though I couldn’t have been at the filming, an eerie sense of being there hit me when she answered her cell phone while having sex and started talking on it.  I could recall being unnerved by the interruption, and felt a momentary decline in passion.  After that, the rest seemed less familiar and even my resemblance to the man began to fade. 

Even though I had this strong sense of déjà vu, I believed the best explanation was that the video had been changed.  But why would someone alter a sex clip filmed in L.A. with the likeness of an unknown English teacher living in Tokyo?  What other explanations could there be?  An inter-dimensional reptilian definitely topped ‘the most improbable’ list.  Coming in a close second was the existence of a doppelganger.  Astral projection caught on film had to be included as well, I guess.  By default, doctoring the video appeared the most logical.  Subsequent events, however, shot logic to pieces.