“Man, I swear, I would move in over here, if I was y’all.”
“We already did,” I confessed. “Me and Timberlake got rooms.”
“Who’s Timberlake?” Lucky asked.
“That crazy man coming toward us,” I said, pointing to the redhead as he approached, holding his Canon XL-1 video camera and waving at us. “Say hi.”
“You guys! Do something more entertaining,” Timberlake ordered, waving at us from behind the camera’s lenspiece. “Right now, what you’re doing is terrible.”
“You better enjoy playing with that camera now,” I warned him, “because you’re not going to be doing any kind of shooting once we get our scene started.”
“Aw, bullshit,” Timberlake said, disappointed. “I figured we’d take this first one together.”
“Then you were sadly mistaken,” I said. “I don’t codirect. Besides, you don’t need my help, remember? You can just sit back and watch how it’s done. See how a pro crafts a scene.”
“What, you new at this, bro?” Lucky said, laughing loudly. “Oh shit, this fool is here to get schooled?”
“I’ve been looking at porn since before you had a penis,” Timberlake snapped.
“That don’t make no sense,” Lucky said, momentarily confused.
I smiled, happy and high. “Willie T, meet Lucky Starr,” I said. “He’s here to ramp up our production value.”
Timberlake shook his hand grudgingly. “You’re pretty gangster, I guess.”
Lucky laughed pleasantly. “Good to meet you, too.”
“Pop quiz, Starr,” Timberlake said brusquely. “I’ve been thinking this over, can’t get it off my mind. You do this every day, right? So you must come across some real pigs. Now, how can you possibly maintain your erection if you’re doing a truly ugly girl?”
“First of all, all women are beautiful and lovely, whether inside or on the exterior,” Lucky said.
“Yeah,” Timberlake said.
“Second of alclass="underline" Viagra.”
“Are you serious?”
“ ’Course,” he said, looking at me blankly. “What?”
“I just thought... no one ever admits to using Viagra.”
“ ’Course I use it. I ain’t secretive about my dick.”
“No,” I considered. “I guess not.”
“Viagra’s the shit. I mean, seriously, I love that shit. Dick all hard and shit.”
“We get it, Lucky,” Timberlake said. “Thanks.”
“But you want to know what’s truly the bomb? Caverject.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“Okay, don’t quote me on this, now, ’cause I never tried it, understand? But from what I hear” Lucky said, “you inject that shit right in your dick. Right at the base.”
“Oooch,” Timberlake hissed, guarding his crotch.
“It ain’t that bad,” Lucky said dismissively. “Be professional, son. See, with a pill, you gotta be somewhat turned on for it to take effect. Girl smells funky? You having a bad day? Well, then it just might not happen for you. With this stuff? Man, you just prick yourself and fifteen minutes later, someone could come up to you and tell you your daughter just got hit by a car. You’d stay wood, no problem.”
Brian Pumper arrived shortly thereafter. He was a handsome son of a bitch with a perfect haircut, a solid boxer’s body, and a giant lightskinned cock and balls. He was more than just a pretty face with Polo jean shorts and Nike ankle socks, though: at twenty years of age, Brian was one of the youngest working male porn studs in the business, and he already had earned a reputation as one of the best. Pumper didn’t know how to drive a car, so he was escorted by DK’s limo man, a geriatric Jew named Jerry. Jerry’s limo had plenty of scratches on it, and it smelled like anal lubricant inside; nevertheless, a limo is a limo.
“Fellas,” Pumper addressed Timberlake and me quietly, pulling us aside on that first day. “I get paid four.”
“Seriously?”
“Definitely. I’m definitely serious.” He looked toward Jerry for assurance. The old Jew nodded obediently.
“You really couldn’t do three hundred?” I asked.
“No,” he said, gazing down at the ground. “I get paid four.”
Pumper. He had grown up alone and abandoned in West Babylon, New York, a precocious, lonely boy raised by his maternal grandparents. Now, suddenly granted the job of his dreams—of everybody’s dreams—and more money than he knew what to do with (not to mention a source of unlimited, though degraded, “attention”), he had developed into a big-mouthed black narcissist sex addict with mild sociopathic tendencies. Well, fine. I could forgive all that.
Timberlake and 1 looked him up and down, and finally I said rather gruffly, “I’ll have to clear it with my boss.” We ran upstairs to Pitts, who peered down at Pumper’s figure on the lawn from his post in the master bedroom and immediately caved. “The kid’s got a great body,” Pitts said. “Pay him his rate.”
All we needed now was a woman. And shortly thereafter, she arrived. Our lady’s name was Tasia. Tasia was new to the industry and four foot eleven if she was an inch. She sported braids and a bubble butt and an aerobic upkeep that, combined with high cheekbones and an exceptionally pretty freckle face, belied the fact that she was here to guzzle cock and let cum drip off her face and onto the carpet.
As soon as Tasia arrived at the house (escorted by a driver of her own, a young man who emanated a leech-like quality that suggested he was angling to become her manager), Timberlake and I buzzed heavily around our actress like two drunken fruit flies. “Mostly I’ve done lots of dancing,” she told us. ‘ Lots. Also, I was at the LA Exotic Erotic Ball, and I met Max Hardcore there. He loved me!” She had never performed in a full scene, though —much less one for Max, who had a rather gruesome reputation—and certainly, she had never taken on two fellows at the same time. “But I’m giving this a shot,” she said, sensibly.
Before very long, Pumper and Lucky joined our swarm, dislodging her manager with a swiff twist of their broad shoulders. “This her?” Pumper asked me, in his deep baritone, caressing Tasia’s curvaceous tush while she giggled.
“Yup,” I laughed. “Tasia, meet Brian Pumper and Lucky Starr. Soon, you’ll be having sex with them.”
“Oh my,” Pumper murmured, doing his best Isaac Hayes. He refused to address Tasia directly, even though he was nose-nuzzling her breasts. “She is ripe, fellas.”
“Guys, guys,” Tasia giggled. “How about giving me some air?”
“Yo, you heard the lady,” Pumper announced, waving off the rest of us, but moving not one inch himself. “This delicate flower must be allowed to breathe.”
“Upstairs?” I suggested gently, herding our group to the wooden steps, where we swung around the spiral of the staircase up into the mammoth guest room. There, Lucky and Brian sat down on our vast guest bed and stared at each other guardedly. Who would get to lick the pussy first? Who would sloppily swing his cock into the other’s thigh?
I clapped my hands meaninglessly a few times, then nodded at Timberlake, who took Tasia by the elbow and steered her into the bathroom, as she giggled. I watched her face to see if she was duly impressed by the finery and rich, peachy towels, then passed her a seven-page model’s release to sign and initial. As she worked her way through the document, I warmed up the GL-1 (which weighed only two pounds, 12.8 ounces, and was a true porn camera if you asked me, which no one ever did, with an external Sony unidirectional microphone attached to the shoe atop the apparatus, though that didn’t come with the model and, in fact, I had had to buy it in downtown Santa Cruz when all of this was just beginning—I had seniority, see?), and I glanced at Timberlake to see if he was checking this all out, studying the master, but he wasn’t even looking at me. His attention was focused on Tasia and her tight tan breasts and her almond eyes and svelte forearms. Her sensational tiny body. Feminine essence fogged his windshield, engulfing him.