I looked around for something to sit on—for now, my pool house lacked any furniture. Never mind. I would purchase a bed, eventually. If things turned out the way I hoped they would, mere household expenditures would prove little obstacle. Porn would provide me a bed to sleep in.
Bright and early the next morning, we headed to DK’s Royal King Talent Agency. DK stood for Derrick King, but nobody called him Derrick, and only his mother called him King. Forty years old and gifted with a white toothy smile and greasy, dense hair, DK was the only black agent in the game.
“I got some terrific guys for you,” DK announced, spreading his hands wide. “This one brother? Bruce Vain? He looks like an Adonis.”
“All right,” I said, trying to sound agreeable.
“Vain’s a gentleman lover,” DK said. “Soft-spoken, but just top-notch.” He winked, nodding all the time. DK emanated the sweet perfume of a fallen record executive: habitually short on luck, yet unable to wrest himself from the deluded conviction that he was just inches away from that next big score.
“That’s terrific,” I assured him.
“Now, Lucky Starr is a bzg-dick brother,” DK began. “But extraordinarily sweet. Nonthreatening, if you follow me.”
‘Cut the bullshit, all right?” Timberlake interrupted. “We need some guys who can get gangster.” His eyes roamed belligerently all over DK’s office, taking in the box of Kleenex, the broken sticks of incense, and the couch-bed in the corner, which looked suspiciously well used.
“Gangster?” DK said, chuckling good-naturedly. “Sure, I follow. Ever heard of a fellow named Wesley Pipes? He’ll fit that bill to a tee!”
“Never heard of him,” Timberlake said, icily.
“You’ll have to excuse my partner,” I said. “See, he’s not really familiar with all the players in the industry. Hell, neither am I. That’s why we had to come to a stone pimp like you. We heard you were the best.”
DK beamed at me and laughed. “You heard goddamn right, bro!”
I could feel Timberlake projecting distrust and disapproval beside me, but I couldn’t help but beam back at our new friend.
Maybe DK was sleazy; maybe he was a bit disorganized, a little impulsive. Nonetheless, I liked him. So what if he was going to spend his commission on stonewashed jeans? Just talking to the guy, I could tell he was here to help.
“Oh,” I said, “I almost forgot. How much are these guys going to want to get paid?”
“Liz?” DK called. “Hey, Liz, earth to Liz, sweetie? What’s everybody been getting lately?”
White Liz, DK’s major-league porn secretary, emerged from behind her computer for the first time. She was wearing headphones, but she slipped them off. “Say what?”
“I said,” DK grumbled good-naturedly, “how much are the fellas getting over at Deep for a gangbang nowadays? How much are they paying over at Devil’s Films?”
Liz shrugged, gave the matter a moment’s thought, then answered, “Three hundred dollars is pretty standard for a gangbang.”
“Three hundred could work for us,” Timberlake said.
White Liz slipped her headphones back on her head and zipped back behind her computer. She was a catch by any porn agent’s standards: not only was she twenty-two years old, with bright eyes, tight pants, curly red hipster hair, and blue-black tattoos running up and down her arms, more important, she seemed not to mind too terribly the freaky environment into which she’d stumbled by answering a classified ad in the back pages of the LA Weekly. While everyone was always trying to convince White Liz to get naked and get nasty on camera (“just like one foot fetish scene, baby”), she’d kept her wits about her, calmly relating to all parties that she had no interest in performing. She simply held on to her job for DK and fielded all the abusive phone calls meant for him, and also set up his clients with jobs.
“Fine. We’ll need the names and numbers of five strong black male performers,” Timberlake said. “With huge dicks.”
“No problem,” DK chuckled. “You guys are a trip.”
I leaned back on the couch, trying to catch White Liz’s eye. No dice.
“In exchange for your help,” Timberlake said, “you’ll receive five hundred dollars up front, no questions asked.”
“You got it!” DK said. “Deal. And I look forward to working with you from this point out.” He grinned happily, as well he should have: no one really paid for male actors in those days. It was a charity if you did. Agents received $75 to $100 for every actress they referred your way, but the men were a different matter. Male actors tended to fend for themselves, getting their own bookings, rarely remaining faithful to one agent the way that most of the girls did.
But we had deep pockets now. That was the difference. As DK rummaged around his office for paper, I scribbled out a check, which DK accepted most graciously. Carefully, he wrote down five porno names on a piece of paper. I looked the paper over and nodded, then passed it to Timberlake, my junior business associate, who looked it over and nodded We turned to go.
On my way out, I couldn’t resist eyeing White Liz one more time. She had a nice aura about her. There was dignity in that package. At the last possible moment, she finally looked up and stared right back into me. I gave her my best smile, but she just raised an eyebrow at me in a way that I couldn’t decipher. DK looked up from his rummaging, noticing us, and immediately he emanated the most furious schoolboy lust toward Liz. There was no hint of malice there, no jealousy; he was just dying of horny. Liz just laughed at him, and laughed at me, then returned to her work, typing rapidly, headphones glued to her ears, a single Parliament Menthol on her desk, waiting to be smoked in the sun.
FIFTEEN
Descending upon the house like a black superhero here to save our asses, Lucky Starr warned me immediately, “I’m condom-only. I got a girlfriend, a fiancee. And she don’t play that.”
“But we can’t use you if you’re condom-only,” I informed him, irritated. Fucking DK.
“Yeah, okay, but see, I am condom-only,” Lucky said, backtracking quickly. “But, I’m gonna make an exception, just for you. Because I like you and everything. Plus, I really need the work.”
I smiled and extended my hand. “So pleased to meet you.”
Lucky Starr came as promised: he was black, and yet he wasn’t threateningly black. In fact, he was basically harmless, and he actually made me feel like a black guy myself. It was a funny thing, and I doubt if I can explain it as well as it needs to be explained. I mean, Lucky Starr was honest-to-God black, grew-up-on-the-South-Side-of-Chicago black, ex-gang-member black. But his fiancee was white,
like British white and fat white and funny white and loud white; just weird white. Lucky’s best buddy was white, as welclass="underline" slant-eyed Russian white, Mongol white, chunky white, and maybe carrying-a-gun white. His main problem was that he believed he could rap. And beatbox. Both he and Lucky did. Often, I was made to listen to the diseased fruits of their labor.
“This is one hell of a setup that you got here,” Lucky said, strolling about the grounds. He removed a pipe from within the pockets of his short pants and tamped it full of purple kush.
“We like it,” I said absently, gazing out into the distance at Catalina Island, hazy but visible in the noonday fog.
Lucky torched the bowl, then exhaled a thick plume that nearly enveloped his face in a white cloud. “You want this?”
“Nah, never touch the stuff,” I demurred.
“Like hell you don’t,” Lucky said, smiling through the smoke, his eyelids lowered.
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind a small hit,” I confessed. “Just to taste.”
The smoke hit the corners of my head from the inside out. I coughed a little, which brought out a little giggle. I glanced, embarrassed, at my new black friend, but he was giggling, too. Together, we took quick care of the rest of his bowl, and we became quite high, inebriated and dazzled, on top of a mountain in Malibu. Poolside, on white deck chairs, together in collective weed delirium, we were on the rise.