Gwen pulled a tape from the stack of six videos on top of the TV, slid it into the VCR, and waited for the image to crackle to life. By this time, JJ had caught on to what Gwen was up to. "Are you sure you wanna do this now?" she asked, but they'd been together long enough that she knew not to try to talk Gwen out of it.
Then Emma's voice rose over the title credits, which read "The Essence of Desire." Petals floated from above as the artist's disembodied voice chanted. "He loves me, he loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not. Me loves me, me loves me not. He loves she, he loves she not. She loves she, she loves she not. Me loves she…"
Like so much art seemed to these days, the piece dealt with gender. And, like most video Gwen saw by young artists, the piece was self-conscious, with lots of arty effects thrown in to cover a lack of technical confidence. But the formal aspects of the work soon fell away as Gwen watched the vibrant presence of Emma. She appeared first dressed as a "woman," her hair styled, face made up, wearing deliberately sexy clothes, high heels. She spent several minutes in this guise kissing a skinny, red-haired man, passionate, responding to his lead.
Then a quick cut. Now she was dressed as a "man," her hair disappeared beneath a baseball cap, no make-up save a mustache glued to her upper lip. Baggy pants. Shirt and jacket that robbed her body of all shape. In this scene she kissed an Asian woman with equal fervor; this time she was in charge, and the woman responded to her. Other combinations ensued. Emma the "man" made out with the red-haired man; Emma the "woman" tongue-wrestled the Asian femme. Then there were threesomes with Emma first as "woman," then as "man."
In the final scene, Emma was naked but for her tattoo and the rings in her nose and eyebrow. Her hair was loose, unstyled, her face devoid of make-up. She knelt before a large mirror and began pressing her lips deep into its silvery pool, kissing her reflection. At various times the reflection changed into her image as "woman" and as "man." The tape ended with a shot from behind the mirror, the live woman embracing the flattened, two-dimensional plane, the blackened surface of the looking glass all but obscuring her image.
The tape ended and the screen was full of snow, hissing in the darkened loft.