"I have decided to be happy; it is excellent for one's health!"—Voltaire

In Bed with the Girls, a Toby Moment

“I hate a chore.”—Lord Byron
When I’m in bed with Zozo, I’m nervous. Zozo is the French mistress of Boston billionaire Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, a man whose displeasure it is dangerous to incur, and the father-in-law of Marcie Harding, who is, how shall I put it, my support in life. Discovery by either would mean ruin, but Haze would have me killed.
Zozo, however, tiptoes into my chamber and slips in next to me nude before I can gather my thoughts.
“I can do whateverything you like to me,” she says.
“I’d like you to piss off.”
Zozo wants you commit acts upon her by which she will then affect to be shocked. She wants you to hurt her so she can say “T’aime ca, uh?” She is exquisitely passive, and inserts her submissiveness under one such that one is drawn against one’s will into exploiting it.
Why do I do these things? All I really want is to sleep.
“Did you enjoy that?” I say, when I roll off.
“Extremely much. Now that Haze is gone I can come to you every after-day!”
English is an adventure for Zozo.
“He won’t like that.”
“I can just fuck him off.”
“He’ll turn me over to his bodyguards.”
“That would be much more worse,” she agrees.
I give her a little shove onto the floor. “Bye.”
When I’m in bed with Darleen I feel used. Darleen is Toad’s teenage wife, though in sophistication she’s more like age seventy-five. The young are like that, don’t you find? 
Toad looks like something, if it were growing on your skin, you’d spray it with liquid oxygen. But despite his short bumpy greenishness he was an eminent ladies’ man, and could succeed where handsome, elegant, accomplished men—like, for example, oneself—would not have thought of trying. 
It wasn’t just that he’s rich. I mean, who would dare to look like that unless he was rich? It was something he secreted, some enzyme that disarmed the prey. Darleen was the only woman ever to show immunity, and he therefore became her prisoner.
She is so disappointed that Toad didn’t turn into a prince when she kissed him that her every act is one of revenge, most especially her ravishments of myself.
Everything he does offends her. She was stung by a jellyfish and he, thinking ammonia was the thing, outed hose and peed on her—which not all women like. For Zozo it would have been fine. Just now, engaged in the act with Darleen, he had taken a selfie, and she had stomped indignantly from the marriage bed.
“Without even be ablin’ to warn me!” she said. For Darleen, too, English is an adventure. “Where’s that dumb-bum gonna put that picture?”
Indeed, Toad is of a vulgarity as pronounced as my own and we are, for perhaps that reason, friends, so to speak. 
When she protests these outrages by stealing into my quarters for succor, I believe is the word, I can muster no meaningful objection. A little change is nice. 
“Toby,” she says, relaxing in my arms after the first round, “why don’t we go away together?”
I shake my head firmly. “I want my mommy.”
“I can take care o’ ya! You’d be surprised!”
“I don’t want to be surprised. I want my mommy.”
When I’m in bed with Marcie I swim in the sea of mommy, her soft blonde flesh and reassuring aromas, her strawberry secret essence, madonna with her child.
“Toby,” she says, “do you love me?”
“Of course I do!” And who’s to say I don’t mean it? I like women of a certain, what, maturity. Someone to wrap yourself up and go to sleep in.
She’s no Einstein, but then one isn’t an Einstein oneself. IQ-wise, we match! She is beautiful; I am irresistible. I have no money; she has lots.
“Give me a huggymuggs,” I say.
She is under the covers doing me an oral favor when Toad bursts in and yanks them back so hard she nearly bites me. 
“Where’s Darleen?” he says.
“Toad, you almost cost me my manhood.”
“Was she here?”
We look up at him, double-exposed.
“Toad, this is embarrassing.”
“I’m sorry,” he tells Marcie, and replaces the sheet with what tact he can manage, veiling her insulted modesty.
I peer under it to indicate that she may resume. 
“Goodbye, Toad.”
And he sulks out.
Asshole.
She gets my engine restarted and I am just finding myself when Haze throws the door open and rips the sheet off. We watch it float to the floor.
“Haze,” I say, “there are times when I’m available to talk. This might not be one of them.”
But he stands there, hands on hips, unapologetic. 
“Haze!” says Marcie. “Do you mind?
“Where’s Zozo?”
I attempt solicitude, but my eyes betray mirth. “Can’t you find her?”
“No.”
“Did you look under the bed?”
“I give you money to feed this leech!”
“So?” says Marcie. “I don’t even give a care!”
“He does nothing but lollygag!”
“All part of the service.”
He smiles like he’s brushing his teeth, picks something out of his nose and puts it in the ashtray. We look at it.
“Check the closets,” I say. “We can wait.”
“May I say something to you that I truly mean?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Eat your nose!” says Marcie. “You big phony-baloney!”
He goes out and slams the door.
I nod at her that she may continue and, as she nuzzles me back into a sense of my value, Zozo eases herself from under the bed, gives me a lingering wistful glance, and slips out.

Here on the blog:
Toby books:

"Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half."—Charles de Montesquieu

Shakespeare on death:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Pretentious Pictures Presents:

Faust: the movie
Woody Allen’s audience—older, educated, sophisticated—has been abandoned. 
They need us.
In the tiny Balkan country of Panurgia, wedged between Italy and Slovenia—

(See it? You really have to zoom.)

—German hacker Heinrich Faust, under contract to the Kremlin, has removed Pentagon files and is waiting in a bar he won in a card game for his money to be delivered digitally. 
In the same game he lost his soul to Mephistopheles—and won it back again, and now the two are dueling over who exists and who doesn't.
Sister St. Helen, vivacious, callow, naïve, a Candide of a girl, believes anything. The other sisters are so in love with her that they think she's an instrument of the Devil, and subject her to a cruel exorcism.
Faust's mistress, Sasha the Assassin, is also a mistress of disguise. You never know who's coming for you.
Despina Mirou
CIA asset Priapo Smegman’s foot fetish leads him into Faust’s bar, into the clutches of the CIA, and into abducting Sister St. Helen—
—with whom Father Rosario is also in love, and he must witness the sadistic casting out of the Devil, until Sasha takes a hand. He finds his sense of direction in Faust, who teaches him about life, not to say murder.
A radiant angel has Mephisto in her cross hairs, but he refuses to be drawn in.
Antigone Kouloukakos
Panurgia’s Queen Delicia, much to the king’s distress, is having an affair with Faust, and in her official capacity is able to help him with the disposal of the bodies. She can get anything done.
Georgia Siakavara

Question: When you rescue a kidnapped nun 
and she falls in love with you, what 
do you tell your mistresses?
Pretentious Pictures Presents
Faust: the movie

Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His recent The Light Touch is on Amazon PrimeTubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains, but an intellectual snob.

I was beastly but never coarse. A high-class sort of heel.

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean

Foreign Matter

Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is.  Based on the novel:

   

“A very, very funny book"—The West Coast Review of Books 
“Enormously enjoyable”—Kirkus Reviews 
“Fresh and spirited”—Publishers Weekly

Think of:


Proposed cast: Matt Dillon
Toby Tucker gets along as a tour guide, though all he knows how to do is keep the clients amused.  In Venice he falls for rich bubble-head Marcie but can't afford her style.  "To-bee!  Let's just live on my money!"  Well—it’s awkward but what can one say?  He reclines into the good life.

Proposed cast: Leslie Mann
Marcie Harding, sweet, fresh, blonder than blonde and all heart, is a lonely widow who takes a tour in Venice.    Toby abandons the tour to take her to Rome, and when he runs out of cash is about to abandon her.  He loves her more than he knows.

Proposed cast: Amber Liddicoat
But for Andrea, things would be perfect.  "The child."  Toby and Marcie are no smarter than anybody else; the child is smarter than anybody else.  She'd have got rid of him long ago but her mommy loves him, so she keeps him around to, how shall I say, play with.  When you’re not looking she rotates her head like Linda Blair.

Proposed cast: John Goodman
Marcie’s father-in-law, billionaire Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, loathes Toby, and loathes giving Marcie her allowance to feed him.  But he loves his little granddaughter, and there lies the control.
When Haze spends Marcie’s money on a painting for the Harding Memorial Museum it looks like Toby's meal ticket is gone.

Proposed cast Pamela Shaw:
Johna Nerg is the butch-nightmare artist whose painting Toby accidentally steps in, sits in and sets on fire.  He really doesn't mean it but she thinks, as who does not, that he's trying to destroy it—and gets real mean with him.
 
He has no choice, finally, but to try to steal it.  But until the child takes a hand, nothing works.
Light, charming, sophisticated, and the first of a series, each set in a new pleasure zone.  Total Moisture, one of the sequels, is set in the south of France: 

Foreign Matter is set in Venice and on a Greek island, and is available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Smashwords, and the usual places: Apple, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel—the whole street.

Pretentious Pictures presents a summer comedy.