Six: Johns a-laying

Unsafe sex throughout Eyes Wide Shut

If you’ve not yet opened the first panel on your Kubrickian advent calendar, do that here. For those who’ve already had five mouthfuls of plastic-moulded chocolate, read below for your sixth piece in which Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) can’t even get it when he pays for it.

Following his assault by the frat boys Bill has a chance to, in his eyes, remasculate himself. He’s picked up by a beautiful young woman, who asks whether he’ll “come inside with me,” hohoho. In her building lobby hangs an ad for ‘body-oriented psychotherapy’, a good euphemism for the services she offers (and a good subtitle for Eyes Wide Shut). Her name is ‘Domino’, both a game of chance — like the chance that Bill’s taking by hiring her — and a cloak you wear at a masked ball, the sort he’ll hire in a couple of scenes’ time. He and Domino agree a price then kiss, but before they get further he’s interrupted by a ring-ring, pun intended. This time it’s not somebody else’s fiancé like Carl but his own wife, Alice: phoning to check when he’s be back.

Wilted Bill leaves, though insisting on paying for sex he didn’t have (what a guy). In the hope he’ll have it yet he returns the following day to Domino’s, not the pizza place and bearing cake. She’s out, as he hears from her room-mate Sally, who, having heard of his sweetness, lets him…