The Girl With The Hungry Eyes


he girl is a top model in the United States. But she is unlike any other. She is unnatural. She is morbid. And she is unholy.
The Girl is the Face, the Body, and the Look of America, but noone knows anything about her, where she came from, where she lives, what she does, who she is, or even what her name is. She has never been drawn, nor painted. All her portraits have been worked on from photographs. Neither has she been interviewed before now.
The Girl has skinny arms, a thin neck, and a slightly gaunt, almost prim face; a tumbling mass of dark hair, and, looking from under it, the hungriest eyes in the world. The reason she is displayed all over the fashion magazine covers is for those eyes, a hunger in them that is all sex and something more than sex. Everyone has been looking for the image of the Girl: something more than sex.
The girl has worked for only two photographers and has never given her name, telephone number, or address to anyone. She arrives at work always on time, she is never tired, and she forbids the photographers to follow her out of the studio or so much as look at her leaving the building from the window, threatening that if they do so, they will have to hire another model.
There is a theory, conjured up by one of the photographers, that may explain the success if the Girl. Suppose the desires of millions of people focused on one telepathic person. Say a girl. Shape her in their image. Imagine her knowing the hidden hunger of millions of men. Imagine her seeing deeper into those hungers than the people who had them, seeing the hatred and the wish for death behind the lust. Imagine her shaping herself into that complete image, keeping herself as aloof as marble. Yet imagine the hunger she might feel in answer to their hunger. This is how the Girl appears, this is what one feels when looking into those hungry eyes.
The first photographer to ever take a picture of her, and to make her famous,was the only one who eventually came to know her truth. He felt dizzy in the studio whenever she was there, attracted and strangely repulsed at the same time. As the fame of the Girl began to increase, the photographer looked through all the papers in the morning to see how many of his photographs of the Girl had been published; he noticed, however, that every week there had been murders in the city which the police could not find an explanation for, since the manner of killing was completely unknown.
The photographer was hypnotized by the Girl. He made a pass at her and she refused him with a smile. In the manner of men, there were many other passes, less smiles, and more refusal. He eventually decided to follow her, risking his fame in attempting to know more about her. He saw that she waited by the side of the curb intil a car, driven by a young man, picked her up. They drove off together into the night. That evening, the photogrpher got drunk. The morning after, he saw the face of the young man in the paper: he had been murdered.
The photographer then decided to risk it all and to walk down the stairs with the Girl on his arm after work. She asked him whether he knew what she was doing. He said that he did. They went walking in the park, she was very silent and eventually sat down on the grass, pulling him toward her. He started fumbling with her blouse, she took his hand away saying she did not want that.
What she wanted was this:

I want you. I want your high spots. I want everything that's made you happy and everything that's hurt you bad. I want your first girl. I want that shiny bicycle. I want that licking. I want that pinhole camera. I want your mother's death. I want the blue sky filled with stars. I want your blood on the cobblestones. I want Mildred's mouth. I want the first picture you ever sold. I want the lights of Chicago. I want the gin. I want Gwen's hands. I want your wanting me. I want your life. Feed me, baby, feed me.

There are vampyres, and there are vampyres, and the ones who suck blood are not the worst.













~Little Fugue in G minor~