Taboo

Keywords: A, Autoeroticism:, of, Review, Crash,

*"Autoeroticism*"

As technology increasingly becomes a major part of most everyone"s lives, our dependency upon that technology has grown exponentially. Many science fiction and non-fiction writers over the last few decades have specifically addressed and expanded upon this growth. J.G. Ballard, in his underground classic Crash, perversely explores this phenomenon. He merges one of our most personal items of technology, the automobile, with the most intimate contacts of our personal relationships.

Setting his novel in the busy highways, ramps, service roads, parking lots and garages surrounding a major airport, Ballard establishes a driving tension that permeates his entire story. He accentuates this tension by providing the end of the story in the first chapter with a fiery crash, as a car narrowly misses a limousine and careens over a guard rail to dive nose first into a crowded bus.

As the spectators gather to stare at the carnage and at the occupant of the lucky limousine, Elizabeth Taylor, Ballard steps back in time. We meet James Ballard, a young film executive, several months earlier as his car slides out of control barely missing two other cars before crashing head-on into a small sedan. As James regains some of his senses, he stared directly into the face of the female driver of the other vehicle. Both, still dazed, silently stare at each other, as the woman"s husband lay lifeless on the mangled hood of James" car.

Both drivers, shockingly changed by the images, are taken to the hospital and swept into a long series of operations and other procedures meant to heal their bodies. In the hospital, James learns that the woman"s name is Dr. Helen Remington and after several strained meetings in the hospital, they both happen to meet at the storage yard where they examine their crumpled automobiles. Inexplicitly drawn to each other, the damaged automobiles and the scars they received in their shared experience act as a sexual catalyst. They both have become perversely attracted to the automobile, more specifically the mechanics and consequence of the automobile crash.

In their first, inevitable, sexual encounter, obviously taking place inside a car, the driving force of their desire is hinged around the automobile and the damage it creates. Excited by their scars and the car they are in, they park the car and have sex. In the very language of their sexual contact, their obsession with the automobile is apparent:

""I touched her mouth with my own, denting the waxy carapace of pastel lipcoat, watching her hand reach out to the chromium pillar of the quarter window. I pressed my lips against the bared and unmarked dentine of her upper teeth, fascinated by the movement of her fingers across the chrome of the window pillar.""

And later:

""The brief avalanche of dissolving talc that fell across her eyes as I moved my lips across their lids contained all the melancholy of the derelict vehicle, its leaking engine oil and radiator coolant.""

Although he is married, the open nature of James" marriage allows him to continue contact with Helen. Their fascination with automobiles and crashes bring them the film studio for the filming of a car accident. While watching the filming they meet several others who share their fascination, including one of the stunt drivers, his wife, a female friend named Gabrielle and an odd man named Vaughn. All were scarred in some ways by automobile crashes and James soon learns all share his sexual fascination with cars, crashes and the resulting scars. This fascination becomes so overpowering that normal sexual contact loses its appeal.

In an encounter with Gabrielle, who wears an intricate metal and leather brace due to her injuries, and once again in a car, James finds their initial, "normal" contact unexciting for both:

""Gabrielle placed a drop of spit on my right nipple and stroked it mechanically, keeping up the small pretense of this nominal sexual link. In return, I stroked her pubis, feeling for the inert nub of her clitoris. Around us the silver controls of the car seemed a tour de force of technology and kinaesthetic systems. Gabrielle"s hand moved across my chest. Her fingers found the small scars below my left collar bone, the imprint of the outer quadrant of the instrument binnacle. As she began to explore this circular crevice with her lips I for the first time felt my penis thickening.""

Continuing later:

" "As she stroked my penis I moved my hands from her pubis to the scars on her thighs, feeling the tender causeways driven through her flesh by the handbrake of the car in which she had crashed. My right arm held her shoulders, feeling the impress of the contoured leather, the meeting points of hemispherical and rectilinear geometries. I explored the scars on her thighs and arms, feeling for the wound areas under her left breast, as she in turn explored mine, deciphering together these codes of a sexuality made possible by our two car-crashes.""

These auto-inspired sexual encounters occur during the never ending din of traffic caught in an eternal traffic jam. Accidents become spectacles of amusement for the injured and other spectators alike. As the stunt driver dies in a crash on the highway, they find him dressed as Elizabeth Taylor, re-enacting an admitted fantasy of Vaughn"s, the pressure builds for everyone. After an intensely auto-inspired encounter between Vaughn and James, Vaughn tries to run James over with his car in a drug induced, sexual death fantasy. The police are now looking for Vaughn in connection with several fatal accidents on the local highways. He evades them until his final, spectacular crash.

The entire book speeds with a breakneck intensity and eroticism that will have most readers ignoring speed limits and longing once again for a back-seat rendezvous. The intense sexuality attached to the scars and braces may shed a new light on what readers consider beauty. With this compelling story, J.G. Ballard perhaps has shown us a new art: "the art of the crash."

J.B. Ballard Crash original copyright 1973 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Current paperback edition by Picador USA, October 2001, IBSN: 0312420331.

Keywords: A, Autoeroticism:, of, Review, Crash,