VIII. The Photo Shoot

"Make the shot sexier for your ward, there,
And roll out the military hardware,
After all, it's the greatest luxury,
Befitting the Reagan presidency."
"These Stallion cockpits are so high tech!"
"Shoot one of Raquel against the flight deck.
Those camo leggings really hug her curves;
Rest the muzzle on your hip, where it swerves."
"Her breasts are marble, her body nubile--
They'll name that life preserver a 'Raquel'"
"This pose is devine with a hint of cleft.
Do we have more of those explosives left?
This is why the West repels all attacks:
Our military and our chicks are stacked."

"Is this one of her and a gun cliché?"
"I was just thinking, let's make it more gay,
Play up the bulging, black metallic rod--"
"By which we wait on our knees to be had?"
"Guns are her riches is my assumption,
And sex substitutes for gross consumption.
Don't forget to keep ev'rything shiny.
She's sixteen, but we can show her heinie.
Does it make sense she's in a bikini?"
"Yes, because it's a nuclear navy."
"You know what's the weirdest fun fact of all?
How 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' became 'Thunderball.'
I hear Shirley Bassey singing, 'Mister!'"
"With three Bond themes she's the Welsh soul sister."

"Do people know his name comes from Fielding?"
"Whose does?""The pop singer you've been hinting."
"Didn't he nearly invent the novel?"
"You must be thinking of that guy Samuel..."
"Richardson! That's right. It was Clarissa.
"More boobies, Raquel! Think: America!"
"He was a printer trying to sell books:
A damsel in peril was all it took."
"Wait! Isn't Cervantes' the first novel?
She should put her lips right on the barrel.
The virtue of women, now there's a theme!
Spread it around and it becomes a meme;
In novels, the hero defends it once,
Its serial defense is a romance."

"In one of these sessions I was hoping
We could do one of those Bond openings."
"The way they conflate women's sex function
With virile weapons of mass destruction?"
"I mean how they use projections and light,
So you can't tell if she's naked or not."
"What difference does it make? It's illusion."
"Because with people it's always something:
Comparing every object to sex is
A signature of the human species."
"Like a hole and the thing that goes in it?"
"The list burbles on and on, doesn't it?"
"What's at the heart of this search for meaning?"
"'Shoot the lawyers,' is a good beginning."





Brooke Shields was a cover girl in her teens in 1982. She was barely 12 when dir. Louis Malle cast her as a prostitute's child growing up in a New Orleans brothel for Pretty Baby.