Bicycling in Los Angeles County is extraordinarily dangerous. Many drivers have never seen these strange bicycle machines before, and, mistaking you for a dangerous alien spacecraft bent on Earth’s destruction, will try to ram you off the road. Thus one must always don a thick white helmet before weaving through heavy traffic. The Styrofoam kind, made for epileptic fourth graders and available at most thrift shops, will do just the trick.
I cruised through Hollywood, pumping proudly, ignoring the rage of the impotent drivers all around me. Finding a lunchtime snack shop, I sat down for a quick Coca-Cola and a soothing doughnut. I received a pleasantly wide berth; people do not bother you if you leave your epilepsy helmet on. Yet something felt very wrong. My look was wrong. The hot porn chicks of this world didn’t fall in love with sensitive retards riding purple bicycles to doughnut shops. They went in for rock star types: chance takers. I needed a new image. Something that said, I’m a bad boy. I’m not afraid to get wild.
My opportunity came sooner than I expected. The next evening, I received a phone call from Felice Amador, the sex shop clerk I’d met in San Francisco the previous summer. Good Vibrations was making its first porno movie, and she’d been tapped to direct.
“Are you still ‘in the business’?” she asked.
“Baby, I am the business.”
Felice laughed. “Well, how would you feel about getting in front of the camera?”
“I’d love to,” I said. Finally, someone who recognized my unique gifts. “What do you need me to do?”
Felice explained: they were making a porn rarity—a legitimately bisexual video. Hot guys, hot girls, hot gender confusion. The whole nine.
“Where do I fit in?” I asked, suspiciously.
“Depends on what you’re willing to do,” said Felice. A pause ensued. “What are you up for?”
“Don’t know. What are you paying?”
“Flat rate,” said Felice. “Four hundred and ninety-nine dollars, across the board. For everybody.”
“Very democratic,” I breathed, somehow relieved. “Can I be the lead?”
“Absolutely!” said Felice, giggling. “You’ll have to take it up the ass, of course.”
After a few moments of my flustered stammering, she explained that she meant strap-on sex with a woman. I’d be topped, made to submit.
I considered briefly. Why not? It seemed a gutsy move, somehow. Courageous, in its utter disregard for my future.
“I’ll do it,” I announced, mostly to myself. “I’ll do it.”
They made plans to pick me up in LA two weeks later. Good thing, too: I didn’t have the money for a bus ticket to San Francisco. I was eating beans and scrambled eggs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Bob was just as bad off: he’d lost his job at the carpet warehouse for hitting on a reclusive but hunky janitor who turned out to be harboring some serious rage issues. Bob took a wrench to the groin for his troubles, and when he came to, he found out that he’d been canned. Now he lounged around the house all day, watching NASCAR and babbling about how Chester and he were going to get married.
“I want that man to have my children,” Bob declared, picking at the adhesive bandage that covered his left cheek.
“But what about the janitor you were so hot for?”
“Pity the janitor!” said Bob. “He had his chance.”
“So, you’re ready to start a family with Chester?” I asked skeptically. “Be faithful, all that stuff?
Bob raised himself up on one indignant elbow. “I’m speaking metaphorically, dude.” He shook his head. “Some people.”
It was a tense time. With Bob no longer bringing in any income, nerves frayed quickly. Soon he informed me that he was very sorry, but he was going to have to ask me to leave
“Leave? What the hell did I do?”
“Not a thing,” said Bob cryptically. “Not a damn thing. Look. I’m not worried about you. You’ll land on your feet.”
The timing wasn’t ideal, considering my own lack of funds, but a friend of a friend hipped me to a dingy storefront in Echo Park that was renting for pennies. I arranged for a meeting with the Mexican slumlord who owned the place. All of his tenants slept in their stores, from the so-called “pet shop” to the “hair salon” to the “incense factory,” but he pretended not to know about it. Of greatest importance, it seemed, was the clear understanding that he would never, ever pay for a single repair or improvement. Under any circumstances. The place had no gas and only a rancid stall shower. But none of that mattered to me. It would be a roof over my head. And I was one strap-on scene away from being able to afford it.
“We’re calling it Slide Bi Me,” Felice announced, when they came to pick me up.
“Why?” I asked, cautiously. I hugged a paper bag’s worth of costumes closely to my chest. There were two cans of vegetarian chili in there, too, just in case. I had literally twelve dollars to my name. I felt insane.
“We have a Slip ’N Slide theme going in the movie. It’s gonna be silly, you know? Fun, playful. Don’t worry, Sam. We’re making a different sort of porn.”
So there was someone else who believed in my mission. I relaxed. I was with friends now.
We made the ride up Interstate 5 with little problem. Felice bought me lunch at McDonald’s, and as she drove, I balanced a large black sketchbook on my lap and drew, like a contented little child. As we made our way up the Central Valley, we passed Cowschwitz, the giant cattle ranch. It was a frightening sight—all of those spooky beasts pushed up against one another, murmuring a secret language, gently shitting onto their own legs.
We arrived at our set, a wooded spa retreat, located an hour outside the city. It was dusty and dry, but suffused with Northern California calm. I was the only member of the cast who was from LA—all the rest were art students and friends of Felice’s from San Francisco. Of course, I thought them amateurs. I found Sarah, the film’s producer, more exotic, though: she was a beautiful, sensitive, dreadlocked lesbian in her late twenties, with quiet charisma and a poetic Ani DiFranco-style secret rage locked up inside her. She had the Good Vibes, women-empowered vibe written all over her. She was a grown-up, mostly, and I wanted her to like me.
A script found its way into my hands. Though ^written by members of the so-called creative class, Slide Bi Me boasted a typically threadbare porno plot revolving around a company picnic, some dynamite potato salad, and a host of randy trust-building exercises. Clearly, I was going to have to improvise at length in order to give my character sufficient depth.
Ten years of teen drama angst came gushing out of me in rehearsal as I hammed up every single word. “That’s not necessary, Sam,” Felice snapped. “Just do the line and let the other people talk.” But I couldn’t stop. I delivered each line as if it were a Shakespearean soliloquy, and the crew, fledgling film students tickled to be shooting “erotica,” giggled to one another. It was a wonderful experience.
Though I was aiming to play it cool, I had to admit the prospect of being on film was making me excited. Down in LA, I was the rookie, the kid, but here, no one had ever been in a dirty movie before. 1 was the pro here. I knew porn. Porn was my middle name. Finally, I was the rock star.
“Where’s the guy who’s taking it up the ass for the first time?” yelled Hiroshi, the costume designer.
“Oh, that’d be me,” I coughed, raising my hand at half-mast.
He held out a pair of chinos. “We got these for you special. Please try not to bleed on them.”
“Of course.” I laughed weakly. “No ... no bleeding.”
He smiled. “You’re gay, right?”
“No. Straight.”