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He is not obsessed.
‘Obsession’ is such a seedy term — it shows up all in black, reeking of PET-bottle wine, with wet paint still sticking to it from the park bench. This is not that. Nor is it ‘infatuation,’ which sounds like a fucking Pokémon status effect.
It’s just… affinity, isn’t it?
A meeting of true minds, as the Bard put it.
Sefa Badem: …and then I got a red carpet for my living room!
Interviewer: Ha ha! Let me ask you something else. Why did you accept this role? Dark Liturgy is somewhat outside your wheelhouse, isn’t it, with the jump scares and the twenty-minute torture scene —
Sefa Badem: Hey now, are you typecasting me? I contain multitudes. My mom and I stock up on Red Bull and marathon the latest slashers every Halloween — that’s nine hours of uninterrupted stabbing, whipping, and intestine fondling for you. Good stuff. Anyway, I took the role because of Dave. You’ve seen Fields of Oleander, right?
Interviewer: Of course.
Sefa Badem: And The Sixteenth Wedding? He just has this incredible energy that makes his actors do things you didn’t know they were capable of — that they didn’t know they were capable of. Everything is so producer-driven nowadays, you don’t see many auteurs in the director world, but he is definitely, definitely one of them. He is one of my idols. He could direct a hardcore porno or a-a Bollywood sci-fi movie, I don’t care, I’m in. And he’s the reason I took this role, too.
Interviewer: Not Kenny Doyle?
Sefa Badem: No, not Kenny Doyle! Jesus, why does everyone think that? When was the last time we even did anything together, like, five years ago?
Interviewer: Sorry.
Sefa Badem: Seriously! Kenny fucking Doyle!
Boeotia, Greece. Dark Liturgy location shoot.
They have just finished the third take of the breakfast scene, and Kenny flashes him a dimpling smile. He does the same thing later, on the way to their trailers, and stretches just enough to bare a snooker hole of a navel, felted with fine hairs. His eyes are like shining, wet stars. His nose is pert, wide at the bottom, unforgettable.
He doesn’t know the power he has.
They’re filming most of the movie in the Hosios Loukas monastery. The walls have a threefold composition — brick, stone and marble — and keep the interior relatively cool, even in the teeth of the heat wave. The saints’ faces give off a certain chill up in their frescoes, too. There is a terrible distance in their eyes, like they are communing with man from an alien, impassable world, more deep-sea abyss than garden.
Kenny says everything here is post-iconoclasm. That’s the period when people were allowed to pray to icons again, after a decree by the Byzantine empress. Sefa doesn’t think much of art, but he likes to hear Kenny talk about it.
He is not obsessed. He really, really isn’t, and he wishes Starz Zine would drywall its own glass house before printing shit like Badem’s in a Bad Way: Revisiting Old Sexual Assault Allegations. Lying bastards. Aside from the wrestling scene and a few towel flicks in the hammam, Sefa never even touched the guy.
Hopefully, when the new film comes out, the paps will shut up about ‘suspicious interactions’ and ‘uncomfortable bloopers.’
In it, he and Kenny are both monks.
Interviewer: What was it like, then? Working with him?
Sefa Badem: Kenny?
Interviewer: No, Dave Bulstrode.
Sefa Badem: Oh.
Interviewer: I guess right now he’s mainly known as the Man Eating a Chip Sensually meme. (laughs) But before that, he had a reputation of being very exacting, very harsh, didn’t he? Especially with Method actors like yourself.
Sefa Badem: Working with Dave… was okay.
Interviewer: (snorts) You said that like you were in a hostage video and someone just yanked off your hood.
Sefa Badem: Ha ha. Really, it was okay. I mean… I knew what I was getting into.
“No, wait. Wait. Hold on.” Sefa is steaming: in a moment, he expects to hear a cartoon whistle emanating from his ears. At least they aren’t in a real monastic cell but in Studio 3, so there’s decent ventilation. “What the actual fuck?”
“I should be the one saying that!” And Kenny does look equally aggrieved: eyes wide, fists clenched, mouth thin. “Mr. Bulstrode, this is madness! We don’t need such excesses to get into character. It’s our job.”
Sefa agrees. He was in agonies even before he received this… unique direction note. Just the other day he realized that Bulstrode hired him not for his talent, but for publicity: to get the press yakking about a Turkish-born atheist impersonating a Greek Orthodox priest. What a piece of shit.
It all comes rushing out now: “Do you have any idea who I am? I’ve won a BAFTA. I’ve won a Golden Globe. So, let me be frank, Dave, I don’t think you have a clue about Method acting, I’m not doing shit for you, and I’m especially not doing this shit. Line in the fucking sand.”
The director is holding an aluminum bag in his left hand. Out of it comes a single, yellow, curling nacho, which he chomps with an inward absorption that even the monastery had failed to inspire. The sound is bifurcated: cho-omp. Cha-amp. Several more nachos are defeated in this way before he speaks.
“You’ve got sixty minutes. Make them count.”
That’s all the warning he gives before he exits and motions for everyone else to do the same. The pair are suddenly alone in the studio. The cameras gawk at them, blind and stupid. The props don’t stir. The HMI lights spread a glowing carpet on the floor, with a frayed tassel of terror at each corner.
Interviewer: What can you tell us about your character?
Sefa Badem: He’s very self-righteous. And he wants to have things his way, which he believes is God’s way. He doesn’t respect Kenny’s character, and claims it’s because he caught him sinning — stealing a neighbor’s eggs — but the audience can tell he’s really just a bully.
Interviewer: Do you recognize yourself in your character in any way?
Sefa Badem: I would say, I also have a cat I am madly in love with. And I tend to think I’m in the right about stuff. Because I usually am! And I’m also very single-minded when it comes to things I want…
Kenny’s pacing boots echo dully in the small space. He’s still wearing his black T-shirt, skinny jeans, and a colony of stud earrings. They never did change into costume, did they?
“So, he wants you to whip me,” he says.
Sefa nods. In the script, his character whips Kenny’s character for over twenty minutes, ostensibly to cleanse him of sin, although it’s implied that he takes pleasure in the act — that he’s the more sinful one of the two. It’s one of the film’s pivotal moments. The whipping effect is supposed to be accomplished through a series of cuts, point-of-view shots, and extreme close-ups. They talked about it at the table read.
“I mean, he wants you to do it for real,” Kenny continues. “But he doesn’t want to film it. He just wants us to, I don’t know, have that experience together. Trauma-bond or something. Isn’t that right?”
It’s wrong, Sefa wants to say, it’s so fucking wrong, but he only nods again.
“We can walk out and pretend we did it,” Kenny suggests. “Or walk out and admit we didn’t. Either one works, right? And then, whatever, Bulstrode fires us or he doesn’t. I mean, what the blazes. As much as I admire the guy, what he wants us to do — it’s just not worth it.”
Sefa pauses for a long moment, eyes on the floor. Lifts them again, slowly, resolutely.
“But what if it is?”
Interviewer: Stubborn. Self-righteous. Cat person. Is that all?
Sefa Badem: Um. Yes. Yeah. I think that’s all.
There is a switch in the cell: one of the props that weren’t cleared away with the crew’s departure. Sefa picks it up. He brings it down a few times, punishing the air, and listens to Kenny gasp sympathetically with every swish. The sounds alone are so gratifying, Sefa can feel himself warming to the scenario. Getting excited. Getting hard.
But then, some part of him always knew he would.
“All right,” he says. “Take off your clothes.”
Interviewer: And what about Kenny Doyle? Do you think he resembles his character in any way?
Sefa Badem: Oh, are we back to Kenny already? Shall we talk about his prolific child acting career? Or his insistence on doing his own stunts, no matter how painful? Or maybe his favorite hobbies, like art history and geocaching? I thought I was the one being interviewed here.
Interviewer: Okay. Uh. Moving on…
Sefa hits him again, again. The script calls for ‘a surplus of sadistic pleasure’ at the sight of the other man’s bleeding back, and Sefa feels exactly that — like a fault line hiccuping from groin to skull. The switch is practically welded to his hand. For every blow, he seeks out a new, unmarred spot, until Kenny’s back looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. It’s so intoxicating, Sefa can barely think. At some point, he has to stop and rub his erection through his pants, panting heavily. It only brings a moment’s relief.
Why the hell does Kenny affect him like this?
“Dammit, Sefa, slow down, you’re taking my fucking skin here! Listen. Listen. Maybe we should rethink —”
“Nah.”
The switch comes down with more force, and Kenny groans. Idly, Sefa wonders if the crew is still loitering outside, and if they can hear what’s happening.
“Like that? You like that?” Sefa huffs. “You always make like you’re, oh, such a serious fucking thespian. But you’re not even… that great. I’m so much more convincing, critics say, so much more honest than you. So then, why does everyone keep tying your name to mine?” He can’t articulate his next thought very well. “And I, myself — why do I constantly — why can’t I stop —”
Whatever; he doesn’t need to articulate it. He just needs this.
Another lash. Another.
When Sefa comes back to himself, he notices the other man is bleeding. Those last few swings must have been particularly vicious. That deep, dark red is like an alarm for the fire roaring inside him. Without knowing why, Sefa reaches down to touch one of the wounds. Something strange and fulsome twists within his loins. It’s like a cramp — impossible to ignore. And then Sefa pulls his guilt up from the roots, with mud and worms still clinging to it, and he digs his fingers into the wound, opening it up a little.
It’s his first time being inside Kenny, he thinks with wonder. It’s as warm and slick as he imagined. Magic. A beautiful precursor to the main event.
And everyone in a ten-mile radius must hear the screams now.
Interviewer: Do you have a favorite scene in Dark Liturgy?
Sefa Badem: Oh, yeah. That would have to be…
Smack.
“You slut. Look how hard you are. Naked, face down, and wet with three different liquids.”
Crack.
“Is that why you took this role, huh? You wanted me to whip you? Yeah… Bet you read the script late at night while you were jacking off in your trailer, mewling. Of course I heard — you left the door open. You wanted me to hear, huh? Admit it.”
Thwack.
“Did you start that smear campaign as well, five years ago? Telling the press I touched you, in the hopes that I would touch you? Fucking slut.”
Spittle flies from his lips as he hurls abuse at his costar — some he’s thought of before, some he’s indulging for the first time — until some kind of loading bar fills up, and he can’t take it anymore. He drops to his knees and turns Kenny over on his back. The man’s injuries do not take kindly to the stone floor, and his pained inhale makes Sefa quake with satisfaction. He takes Kenny’s jaw in one hand, using the hinge between thumb and index finger, and squeezes to force his mouth open. He kisses him messily, all tongue and spit.
Much too late, it occurs to him they don’t have any lubricant. Well. That sucks. But not fucking Kenny is inconceivable at this moment; he is as likely to forgo that as the moon is to forgo rising. In a stroke of inspiration, he reaches around Kenny and dips his fingers in that rich red spring-well of a wound again, and uses the blood to shine up his cock.
Okay. That will do.
At this point, Sefa hesitates — but then he puts his hand right back there, pulling the other man into a half embrace. Ah. Why did he hesitate? This feels so damn right. His fingers find the wound again and worry at it, stretching and prodding, which draws another shrill cry from the chest below his own. Mmm. Must be pretty painful. As far as Sefa is concerned, though, it’s nice and cozy and sweet. Makes him feel connected to Kenny.
When he takes him, Kenny screams even louder than before, for no apparent reason. His cock is still leaking, the fucking hypocrite.
“Stop that,” Sefa hisses. “Come on. You’ve taken worse for me. Okay. Okay. That’s good… You feel good, Kenny. Ahhh. And after I’ve fucked you, I’m gonna turn you over, and — listen to this — I’m gonna use my belt this time…”
Sefa Badem: The scene where Chrisostomos breaks down crying and kisses his mother’s feet. That was my favorite. Definitely.
When Sefa comes, he makes sure to do it inside the other man, plug him up good and tight, with the decadent groan of someone stepping into a warm bath. He doesn’t even bother reaching between Kenny’s legs; his cock gets enough friction from Sefa’s forward thrusts, and from what he’s seen today, Sefa guesses that creature can come from pain, insults and degradation alone.
An excellent guess.
Interviewer: What can we expect from you in the future?
Sefa Badem: I have a Netflix original coming up soon, about a plane crash survivor trying to find his way back to civilization. And I guest-star in an episode of The Simpsons. But honestly, I kind of want to take a break from movies to focus on my personal life. This will sound cheesy, but I think I’ve finally found my soulmate. I never would have imagined it, but we’re just so compatible, in all the ways that matter.
Interviewer: That’s it? You’re not gonna give us any more details?
Sefa Badem: If you want me to spill the tea, you gotta buy me wine first.
Interviewer: Ha ha. Well, Sefa, thank you for the interview. And best wishes to you and your partner!
Sefa Badem: My pleasure.
Driving back from the interview, Sefa finds a limo parked across his driveway, forcing him to get off a yard away. What’s worse: forcing him to trudge past his neighbor’s shitty penguin-and-snowman blowups, which she puts up every winter even though the temperature never drops below 40 degrees. Asshole. Sefa’s temper could broil a crème brûlée right now.
Just as he’s revving up to give driver and passenger a piece of his mind, Kenny steps out of the vehicle. He’s wearing his usual getup: black tee, jeans, three thousand and sixty-four earrings.
And a cross. That’s a new thing he’s trying now. He makes it look like the real deal, too, the way he bends his head, like he’s carrying it up fucking Calvary.
“You’re early,” Sefa says, mollified. They’re both Angelenos, but Kenny lives an hour away by car — not counting rush hour — so every time he makes the trip, it fills Sefa with a rush of narcissistic pride.
“What can I say?” Kenny grunts. “I was feeling particularly self-deprecating.”
“Hmm. That’s not the word I’d use.”
Kenny glares at him. But when Sefa places a hand on the back of his neck, he doesn’t shake it off. And as they walk down the path under the manzanitas and into the house, the silver around his neck appears to get heavier and heavier. In the living room, it brings him to his knees on the new carpet. It makes his head fall forward. It makes him whimper and plead.
Affinity.
Sefa will never want anyone else, ever.