A Clockwork Orange: Late Show

“Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian masterpiece – Beethoven, ultraviolence and the old in-out in-out” was how it was advertised. The midnight showing had definitely attracted quite a crowd. Everyone was in an excited mood, chatting with their friends, looking forward to the film. There was, Lara noticed, a preponderance of men. Quite a few of them wore their ‘droog platties’. Enthusiasts who had dressed up for the occasion. White trousers and braces, white shirts, black bowler hats and combat boots. Many of them had gone to the trouble of wearing matching white ‘jellymolds’- that strange item, something like a medieval codpiece, that the droogs wore in the film, simultaneously protecting and drawing the eye to their groins.

Lara looked around again. A handful of the ‘droogs’ she noticed were women. Besides them, there were three or four girls in a sort of early seventies style – long straight hair, long dresses pulled tight at the waist with a broad belt, and black knee boots. Not quite dressed in character, dressed more in the spirit of the film. Lara couldn’t see anyone else dressed as she was – red shoes with a gold buckle, red knee stockings, a broad elasticated belt and a one piece flared red pyjama suit. Looking at her, as she flicked back her shoulder length auburn hair, with that wicked grin he had that reminded her so much of Alex, Calum whispered in her ear. ‘You should see yourself. You are nothing short of iconic. You’re a real Mrs Alexander’.

It had been Calum’s ides that the two of them should come dressed in character. Inevitably, he was Alex, not through a lack of imagination, but through that sense of identification that was so clearly on display now, where the foyer held another twenty or thirty more little Alexander De Larges. His costume had been easy, even the jellymold, which was the ‘box’ from his old cricketing gear. Only the bowler had proved hard to obtain, but he’d found one for £5 in a charity shop. She could not imagine where he managed to get hold of her red pyjama suit. ‘There’ll be lots of people there dressed the part’ he’d assured her. ‘Besides, you’re sure to be the centre of attention, and you know how much you like that.’ What was it he’d said about Adrienne Corri, the actress who played Mrs Alexander? That was it. She’d stiffened more cocks than Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera put together. You wouldn’t find a man in the audience, he’s laughed, who hadn’t pulled out his cock and wanked himself stupid to that scene, with the red pyjama suited devotchka being snip, snip, snip, stripped and getting the old in-out in-out from Alex and his droogs.

‘Viddy well, little sister. Viddy well’, Calum whispered to her. A cold shiver of excitement ran down her body. Lara looked again and became aware of heads turning towards her, conversations stopping in mid sentence. She noticed the ‘droogs’ grinning to each other, canes being twirled, and a couple of them started doing funny little dance steps. From somewhere behind her, a voice started to sing, “I’m singin’ in the rain, just singin’ in the rain….”, and then other voices took it up. “I’ve a smile on my face, and I’m ready for love….”.

2

The film was marvellous, absolutely astonishing, even better than she had imagined. Lara had seen it at home on DVD many times, but never in the cinema. She leaned back and revelled in it, totally absorbed in the world of A Clockwork Orange. Sliding in, through the opening images, Alex smiling at the camera, raising his glass, wicked and inviting, the baroque strains of Purcell’s stately ‘Ode for Queen Mary’ distorted by a synthesizer into the measured promise of strange things to come.

Then ‘her’ scene was on the screen, the one she had played over and over again on the DVD, the one she had fantasised about: ‘the surprise visit’. The writer’s wife, Mrs Alexander, dressed exactly as she was now, in that iconic red pyjama suit, answering the door, the look of sudden realisation on her face, then the rape. Alex singing and dancing and laughing with his droogs as he snipped her clothes from her in front of her husband, and displayed her naked to his droogs. The way he utterly possessed her, the pure physicality of it, devoid of any vestige of what the world calls love or pity, the look of pure joy on Alex’s face as he took his pleasure, plunging away with his stiff cock without conscience or thought for anything except his own desires and the pleasures of the moment. And the woman, Mrs Alexander - her face filled with fear and then a different emotion, something complex that lies below words and thought, as though she has a realisation that this is not just some brutal fucking by a gang of louts, but that, for Alex, life is one long performance, or a ritual whose sole aim is to celebrate ones own joy in living, of the amoral delight in giving oneself over to one’s desires, whatever they may be and however you want to gratify them. And Mrs Alexander too has her appointed role in that performance, that she is undergoing a change, a cruel and beautiful transformation, and for one brief hour of her life she becomes, not the loving wife of some bourgeois academic, but, the object of Alex’s glorious and unrelenting desire, swept up and savagely fucked, like some sacrificial figure, without who there could be no ceremony.

The film seemed all too short to Lara. The final scene was upon her all too quickly. Alex smiling and giving a ‘thumbs-up’ to the audience, the fellow travellers on his journey, his friends, his accomplices, in short, his ‘droogs’. Then the credits began. A bright red screen, and as the houselights came slowly up, the voice of Gene Kelly rang out, cheerful and innocent, without a care in the world, ‘I’m singin’ in the rain, just singin’ in the rain….’

3

Lara had been aware of it from the moment the film ended. As she walked up the central aisle to the strains of ‘Singin in the Rain’, she had seen the excited looks, heard the eager murmurs spreading through the assembled droogs. Now, in the foyer, Lara felt herself go cold, and shiver with a mixture of fear and excitement. Standing there in that red pyjama suit, she felt herself to be the embodiment of the transgressive, a representation of the desire for disorder and a celebration of the joys of complete amorality, devoid of the restraining hand of conscience or consequences.

Calum had put on his mask. That half comic half sinister mask with the exaggerated phallic nose, bristling with import, that Alex wore during the surprise visit. She noticed that others too, were sporting them, turning them into smiling copies of their hero, Alex. She could hardly tell Calum apart from them. The foyer seemed to be awash with Alex De Larges. “Wait here” said Calum quietly in Lara’s ear, leaving her standing by a large photo of Stanley Kubrick, camera in hand, focussing on Alex as he snipped at Adrienne Corri’s pyjama suit. Calum moved into the ranks of droogs, smiling and whispering to them as he disappeared into their midst. There seemed to be a still moment, a moment when everyone stopped, and then, like a tide turning, the ‘droogs’ started to move slowly towards Lara, grinning and laughing to themselves. She could hear them singing softly under their breath, ‘I’m singin’ in the rain, just singin’ in the rain….’, then chaotic scraps of the song “….I’ve a smile on my face…. up above…..the sun’s in my heart, and I’m ready for love”.

“Get ready for love!” shouted a voice, echoing the line that the crowd was singing, a joyful cry, a cry full of brutish desire, an echo of Dim’s mocking promise to the writer’s wife.

The ‘droogs’ moved in on her, slowly advancing, their eyes running up and down her body, greedily drinking her in. This had been a night to indulge their dreams and desires. A midnight showing. The chance for once to dress up, to assume the character and absorb the wickedly joyful soul of their hero; to indulge their dark imaginings. Lara quickly looked around for Calum, scanning the oncoming group, but in this masked crowd in white, all alike in that familiar uniform of the droogs, it was impossible to make him out.

She felt a hand touch her, touching and stroking her arse. She turned her head and looking over her shoulder met the greedy lust filled eyes of a masked droog. Breaking into a broad grin, the droog ran his fingers over her arse. Other hands reached out, touching her thighs, her arms, her hair, her tits, inquisitive, eager fingers, probing, stroking, squeezing. It excited her and frightened her at the same time. She thought of all these men with just one thought on their minds, to ram their cocks in her and fuck her senseless.

Suddenly, Lara was lifted up and swung over a shoulder. She found herself being carried like this, the centre of attention, at the head of a procession. Behind her a laughing, cheering, singing crowd of droogs was following, like a medieval carnival, celebrating its nights of misrule. Past the posters and the displays, past a sign that said “A Clockwork Orange – Stanley Kubrick’s Masterpiece. A stylish and witty black comedy. A dazzling vision of the future!” Past a photograph of Alex, smiling and raising his glass to the mundane world. Past a photograph of Adrienne Corri, mouth taped and holes cut in her pyjama suit to expose her tits, framed by Alex and Dim, like the centre figure in a triptych. Then she was outside in the darkness of the car park.

She heard a shout, the echo of a line from the film, “Right lads. Get her clothes off”. She was swung down of the shoulder and onto her feet, held tightly, her arms were locked behind her back. From somewhere, a pair of scissors appeared. Amidst the laughing and shouting, another cheerful chaotic chorus of ‘Singing in the Rain’ started up. She felt the pyjama suit being stretched, and two perfect round holes were cut in her pyjama suit, her tits poking out like a pair of unblinking eyes, cooly surveying the assembled droogs. “A real horrorshow pair of groodies, my brothers!” cried the droog, stepping back and showing off her tits to the laughing crowd.

Lara looked beyond the immediate circle and noticed that others had followed them all out. A group of lads, who could not have been more that sixteen, were pointing at Lara and laughing with their girlfriends. The young women in seventies clothes were there, with huge astonished smiles on their faces. Small groups of men and women were staring wide eyed at Lara. Even a couple of the cinema staff had followed them out.

Her belt was unfastened and tossed aside. From behind a voice whispered in her ear, “Ready for love?” That voice. It was muffled and distorted, and barely audible over the sound of the crowd. Was it Calum? She turned her head, but was again met with the unfathomable gaze of a masked face. Then her head swung backwards as the grip on her arms was rudely tightened and the droog in front of her dropped to his knees. She heard the snip snip snip sound of the scissors cutting through the material and then felt the cold touch of the blade going up her right leg, past her knees, slowly inching along her thighs and then between her tits. The sleeves of the red pyjama suit were pulled down her arms and over her hands, freeing her for one brief second before her wrists were seized and held tight. She felt something hard and unfamiliar press against her arse. The mask, she realised. Then from behind, she felt kisses on the small of her back, then her buttocks. Her left leg was lifted up and the remnant of the pyjama suit were pulled off, and thrown into the cheering crowd. While the one behind began to lick and tease and explore her arse hole with his tongue, the one in front stepped back, displaying her naked body to the crowd. Lara felt one final kiss on her arse and from behind that familiar excited voice, louder this time, so that the whole crowd could hear, “Get ready for love”.

Then, scissors discarded, arms triumphantly aloft, trousers round his ankles, advancing with his huge stiff cock at the ready, the droog in front of her shouted out to the crowd: “Viddy well, my brothers. Viddy well”.