Girl with a Pearl Earring

The messenger staggers inside the granite-lined court, past the heavy oak door gaunt in darkening old iron standing ajar. Everything about is pure granite : the stones sett in the pavement, sloping gently but very evenly towards a drainage sligtly off-center, all polished smooth by what must've been centuries' worth of female fret in wooden sabot ; the faces of buildings towards it, standing morose as if to say "This, too, shall pass, young man. Like you, and like your youth, this too. All passes just the same, leaving no dent, no trace. Granite polishes slowly, by faint degree, its permanence measured in lifetimes, and not just one or two." Even the tiles on the rooves had over the years and through innumerable cold rains acquired the impenetrably gray appearance of granite. There's a special lichen that does just that service for old tile standing exposed in cold wet climate ; perhaps other microbes make the women's faces look quite so Dutch as they age out of sexuality as well.

The messenger is thoroughly dusted, his face and hair like his boots equally covered in the fine offerings of travel. Dust, ground by horseshoe after horseshoe out of the land and stored in the road, to salt all who pass with the freely offered remembrance of what was once a place, but now's just merely a way. Dust, like ashes, one of the precisely two things in this word patiently awaiting your return. The messenger looks haggard, unslept, his habit thoroughly trashed, slashed in places, altogether betraying what might very well have been a roll down a steep hillside, through rocks and trunks and all, and worth a good half mile at the least. His horse, a nervous little creature all poise and determination is sparing its left hindleg gingerly. The ankle's bloody under the white scarf tying it, the horse's ears perked just as a clever horse's ears perk in and about grave danger of the exact kind the best riders tend to get a good horse into. As the messenger's ushered quickly inside the Sun above sets itself to the complicated alambications and unknown procedures of its eventual setting, half hour to an hour hence.

The lord to whom the message's intended grabs it from the messenger's hands nervously, greedily. As his own bow and leave he opens the canister, glances over the contents, then turns towards he who has brought it. Just a boy, really, not older than sixteen, perhaps even not as old as that.
"You're early. I was expecting you with the moonrise. Certainly not before sunset."
"Yes, milord."
"A stiff progress ?"
"It was, milord."
"For your reward, and while you wait, go to the kitchen. Seek the new girl, her name is... Griet, was it ? Something like that. Have her feed you, say I bid so ; and while she does play with her titties. Then when you're done have her lick your rod, like a kitten. Like the Frenchwomen do."
"Yes milord."
With that the last has gone ; the court's master and owner's left to his own pacing about, under great stern portraits of great men long gone lining the walls, their faces dimming towards darkness alongside the fading day's light.

At length the lord sits, and writes and scratches out and writes more and copies and then seals. He goes to ring, but then changes his mind and storms out. He finds his way to his own kitchen, all silent in the dark. There's one thick candle stood on the edge of the long servant's table, illuminating on one side the remains of what might've been a feast for three or four ; but all the bones are sucked clean, and all the gravy sopped up, and all the plates polished to near mirror. There is no wine, the girl to silly to profer it no doubt, the boy too well restrained to ask. He will grow out of it, in time, or perhaps not. They're together, their bodies catching faint light on the other side : he, laying against the wall, almost on his back and she, atop of him, her breast dangling freely out her bodice. She's kissing his manhood, very gently ; the lord steps quietly behind her and lifts her skirts over her waist. She turns, without letting go of the prize in her mouth, just as the lord murmurs "Ah, what delight."
She reaches around with her left, pulling her buttocks apart ; kissing away for a brief moment she says "Your lordhsip need but ask."
He looks at her, from behind her ample offering ; for a moment their eyes meet and there's a conductivity through her, like through a medium, connecting his mind and its desires through her body.
"Eager, are you girly ?"
"Yes, milord."
With that he impales her, making her eyes roll high in her head and her lungs inhale sharply. Her innocence slaughtered, she pushes the rod into the back of her throat as far as it'll go, and then proceeds to pound its head down in step with the pounding of her other end, wincing slightly at first.
After a while the immobile messenger lifts his body somewhat, still under the delicate cannonade of her loving mouth. He seemed passed out, but perhaps was just enjoying himself, with his own thoughts. Eventually he looks up and inquires with the lord of the place : "May I have this girl for my wife ?"
"Just as soon as I'm done with her." comes firm the reply.

The foregoing's what Girl with a Pearl Earringⁱ could've been, and also absolutely all that's worth saying about it. I can't imagine why they insist miscasting that consumate pornstarⁱⁱ in softcore bullshit made for "careerwomen" and other overgrown girlies like she's fucking Fabio. Her obvious talents are just as obviously wasted thus, and really nobody gives a shit what girlies think they think or think they want or whateverⁱⁱⁱ.

1. 2003, by Peter Webber, with Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth. [↩]
2. No, bitch's not an actress, in that she can't fucking act. She can be sexy, that's all, nor is there anyting wrong with that -- at least, not until the pretense starts.

   Bette Davis can be a maid if she so chooses (not that she ever did), but Scarlett can only be Griet in the foregoing, or the plaything & fucktoy of the older chicks in Bound if someone re-wrote it that way (not that anyone should), or I suppose an alternative Denise Richards in Wild Things or an alt-Sherilyn, replacement Hurley and so on. [↩]

3. Back in 2004 the Hollywood was being "taken over" by yet another generation of failed highschool principals and assorted public nuisances, resulting in this dementedly socialist reinterpretation of cinema whereby they're going to cast pretty girls as "ordinary people" doing "ordinary things" under the twin pretense that a) nobody's gonna notice, somehow, the girls themselves included and b) everything's gonna be organized as if anyone had in fact noticed anyways. Truly reprehensible dumb shit such as the stock "uncouth rich guy" from down at the sports bar impossibly retrofitted into a 17th century Holland where he did absolutely not exist finding out her name so therefore two scenes later the butcher delivery boy just fucking knows it too! How the fuck did that happen ? Just like that, magically. So important's the pretty girl's pretty that while nobody will mention it, discuss it or react to it explicitly, and while she gets to pretend she's "just a maid", yet nevertheless everyone runs messengers back and forth to keep each other appraised of her every detail, like faggoty highschool boys. That's what the "uncouth rich dude from down at the sports bar" does, in this Hollywoodian "Holland" of the "17th century" : he runs off to inform the "love interest" what to call the dumb bitch.

   This purely imaginary, painstakingly constructed highschool universe, this enchanted lala-land wherein she still "has to show up for class", though there's better things available (or rather -- there's still such a thing as a class for her to show up to!), and the athlete still has to turn in "his homework"... this is false, how shall I put it. I'm sure it's the world some children inhabit, mentally ; I see nothing wrong with some adults being adled enough to actually spend some time in there as well. But it's not life, it's school "life", it has nothing to do with either reality or fiction ; and "historical setting" is not there to provide be co-opted into "oh, they were absurd back then, we're absurd right now, should be ok". It ain't fucking ok, it never is ok, they were "absurd" in their own logical way, just like you're absurd in your own "logical" way ; and never the twain shall fucking meet.

   What the fuck next, "everyone believes in representative democracy just like everyone believes in Santa Claus -- just look at all the stores stocking relevant products!!!" ? Pshaw. [↩]