Tell-All

servants, clergymen. Before the storming of the Place de la Bastille , before the national razor and Jean-Paul Marat , these crude line drawings infiltrated citizens’ hearts as the vanguard for rebellion. Comic propaganda. Obscene little sketches and dirty stories marched as advance men, eroding respect, smoothing the path for the bloody massacre to come.
    That’s why the Webster specimen had written such filth.
    Continuing to read from the final chapter of Love Slave , the voice-over of Terrence Terry says, “ ‘Plunging my steely manhood, sounding the noble depths of Katherine’s succulent hindquarters, I couldn’t help but experience every one of her magnificent performances. Moaning and slobbering beneath me, here was Eleanor of Aquitaine . Squealing and clenching, here was Edna St. Vincent Millay . Her diminutivewaist gripped between my insatiable, beastly paws, Zelda Fitzgerald tossed her head, howling with every breath.…’ ”
    In soft focus, the younger, idealized lovers loll, tangled in gauzy sheets. The voice of Terry reads, “ ‘The lovely thighs which gripped my tuberous lust had trodden the boards at Carnegie Hall . The London Palladium . The luxuriant flesh which rocked below me in synchronized bliss, the delicious symphony of our mutual devouring of each other, this delicate flower grunting at the brutal onslaught of my plunging invasion, she was Helen of Troy. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Mary Queen of Scots …’ ”
    Chirp, cluck, bark …
Lady Macbeth .
    Growl, bray, tweet
… Mary Todd Lincoln .
    “ ‘Abandoning the sodden glory of her puckered shelter,’ ” Terry continues reading, “ ‘I spewed my steaming tribute, gush upon jetting gush, the pearlescent globules of my adoration and profound admiration spattering Katherine’s unutterably beautiful visage.…’ ”
    The idealized lovers immediately vacate the bed and begin to dress. They towel off. Without speaking, Miss Kathie applies lipstick. The specimen shines his shoes, buffing them with a horsehair brush. In separate mirrors, each inspects their own teeth, checks their profile, snarls and uses a fingernail to pick a stray hair from within their respective cheeks. All of this physical business conducted in dreamy slow motion.
    Terry’s voice continues to read, “ ‘Perhaps it was Katherine’s primal nature which lured her to her doom. In retrospect, she felt at ease only among a wider variety of sentient beings, and this impulse once more prompted us to venture into society with the ravenous, imprisoned residents of the Central Park Zoo.…’ ”
    The two lovers stroll, leaving the town house, walking west toward Fifth Avenue . Sunlight streams down from a clear blue sky. Songbirds twitter a bright chorus, and dazzling geraniums bloom, red and pink, in window boxes. Liveried doorman tip their hats, their gold braid flashing, as Miss Kathie passes. The idealized Miss Kathie, her face smooth, her feet gliding, almost floats along the sidewalk.
    “ ‘To Katherine,’ ” continues the voice-over, “ ‘perhaps life itself occurred as a sort of prison she felt compelled to escape. A film star must feel akin to the beasts on display in any zoo.…’ ”
    In a tracking shot, we see the lovers wander down a path, wending their way into the park, past the pond filled with sea lions. Beside the colony of emperor penguins, the idealized Webster waddles, heels together, to mimic the comic seabirds. The idealized Miss Kathie laughs, revealing her brilliant teeth and arching her willowy, slender throat. Suddenly, impulsively, she dashes ahead, out of the shot.
    “ ‘Among the last endearments Katherine offered me, she confided that I was in possession of the most gifted, skilled male equipment that had ever existed in all recorded human history, ever.…’ ”
    The voice-over says, “ ‘Raspberries to those grouches who had branded her box-office poison …’ ”
    As Miss Kathie slowly sprints along the path, her movie-star hair streaming in the air, we hear the voice of Terrence Terry read, “ ‘I bounded in pursuit of my splendid beloved, declaring my devotion in a breathless public proclamation. In that instant of greatest joy, I threw open my arms in order to capture and embrace all the women she had been, Cinderella and Harriet Tubman and Mary Cassatt.…’ ”
    In soft-focus slow motion, the idealized Webb runs, hisarms outstretched. As he reaches Miss Kathie, she tumbles backward, falling out of the shot.
    In