Tasia giggled at both of us, we who were so obviously whiffing her perfume. Nerdish lust and tiny boners sprouted from us; we were stuttering and stammering, begging for a piece of the pie. Ah, Timberlake. Already I could sense that he and I were so clearly a pair, awkward in the best tradition, brothers in dorkhood. It was just obvious. But instead of feeling comforted by our allegiance, I resented him for it. I regretted the association with his weakness: with his obvious, corny remarks, the flip of his wrist. I was going to be rich now, in a mansion; I wanted to be around men, like Lucky Starr. Suck up some of their strength and their powerful black energy.
“All done, guys,” Tasia said with a smile. She handed me the model release. She posed shyly in front of the brown oaken door of the guest room, a black tube top cupping her little tits, black shoes on her feet, heavy and weird. Behind me, Timberlake observed silently, maybe sullenly. Lucky Starr and Brian Pumper shuffled their feet restlessly, wanting in. I said no. I pointed my camera at her, recording her, savoring Tasia all for myself. Her face was gorgeous. She had no imperfections on her remarkable little body. No drug scarring on her cheeks. No little zitlings rouging her buttocks.
There was nothing complicated or even interesting about what happened next, which was the blowjobs. The blowjob scene was always my favorite part of the shoot, not just because they were pointless from a reproductive point of view and thus reassuringly perverse, but also because the girls’ faces would occasionally mangle and distort from the effort of wrapping around the large cocks; sometimes they would choke, and saliva would drool out of their gobs, and their throats would close up, their eyes watering, and it pleased me in this horrible way I was scared to describe to anyone. I just got off on it, got off on the fact that sometimes they looked like monsters, vaguely inhuman, and although I had only just met Tasia, a little part of me longed to see her upside down and humiliated and lonely and slammed to the ground . . not all of me wanted it, just a flicker of me wanted it.
“This is one beautiful woman,” Pumper announced to the world around him. “I would like to make love with her.”
“Brian,” I whispered. “Talk less.”
“All right,” he said, looking hurt. Tasia was holding on to the shaft of his penis with one hand, trying to get her fingers all the way around it and failing to do so. “Look, all I’m saying is, this bitch is one delicate flower who really gets me.”
Pumper flipped Tasia upside down and began to plow her in impossible circus positions. I filmed, my forehead frowning in pure concentration, one hand outstretched to the side, to aid my balance. I tensed, ready to pounce, prepared to record every moment of available footage. Downstairs, the doors creaked open: a pair of intruders slipped off their shoes stealthily and tiptoed in, slinking up the regal staircase to join us. DK and White Liz, our neighbors in porn. Limousine Jerry followed their lead. White Liz yawned. Jerry, startled at the sight of Tasia’s tiny anus, coughed up a gob of phlegm in the background.
I shot them all a look that said: Quiet on the set.
Tasia, mind-blowingly flexible, curled into yoga backbends and Mobius strips, hand meeting ankle meeting head. Lucky saw that aerobic madness and raised it, tilting Tasia’s chassis on an impossible bias, hopping up on one leg to impale her good. I hefted my video camera to one shoulder, shifted my weight, zooming in and out slo-o-o-w-ly, the way I had learned from the masters. No one make a sound. Pumper edged into the fray and simply stole Tasia for himself. He hoisted her tiny buttocks into the air and carried her over to an eighteenth-century cherrywood fuck-bench with a hand-rubbed finish, antique brass hardware, and snag-free drawer bottoms. He seated her on his lap, and there she rested like a Chihuahua. We all watched Pumper pump, and he pumped, and he humped, caressing his giant foal of a penis, triumphant, not sweating at all, Olympian, beaming, emanating light from the proud, shining beacon of his smile. He cupped his massive mulberry-colored balls in his palm, confirming their heft. Tasia seesawed back and forth, concentrating, still wearing her odd, giant shoes.
By the time it was over, by the time we’d smothered the wet fireworks, commemorating yet another ritualistic frenzy, however scripted, the Malibu day was fading into night. DK clapped Pumper on the shoulder, rubbing his well-formed deltoid with a strong hand. “My man! You rocked it, once again.” Pumper glowed in the fatherly approval. Lucky kissed Tasia on the check, collected his check, and dipped out. The sound of beatboxing followed him fading into the night. Tasia sipped coyly from a bottled water. Sidling up to me, she said, not shyly at all, “I want to do a scene with you.” She flashed her eyes at me, gave me a long hug. With her eyes, White Liz shot daggers at Tasia. They all made the exodus to their cars. As she left, White Liz turned to me, looking at me hard, as if to dare me to look away. I grinned at her and shrugged my shoulders. I couldn’t control someone like Tasia. If a Tasia or any other porn girl wanted to climb on my vines. . . well, there it was. Pumper jumped into the backseat of the limo, saluting me like a soldier, and DK laughed and dug it, and I waved as they all drove away.
That night, I showed Timberlake how to write a check out to himself.
SIXTEEN
The following morning, Pitts wished us farewell and Godspeed.
“Got to head back to Seattle for a little while,” he said. “Take care of business up there. But don’t worry. I’ll be available by phone if you need me.”
“But... who’s gonna handle the house?” I asked, surprised.
“You guys,” Pitts said, laughing. “I can trust you not to burn the place down, right?”
“Right,” Timberlake agreed. “You can trust us.”
Will’s inaugural shoot was that afternoon. His girl’s name was Veronica Light and she didn’t have a manager or a driver, so it was up to us to drive into West Hollywood and pick her dumb ass up at Reb’s PGI. Even though I had only been up in the mountains for about two days, the hard, yellow light and bad smell of the real LA now disturbed me. After enjoying a steamy stall shower and only wiping your ass with baby wipes, you really got used to being a rich guy and comparing yourself to Tom Selleck in the fogless mirror. The smoggy, transsexual, hard LA light really bothered me now.
“So, you like this town so far?”
“Love it,” Timberlake said, dryly.
“What about porn?” I asked him. “Got any questions?”
‘Sam.” He looked at me. “Come on, man. This is the easiest job known to man. I’m gonna knock it out of the park.”
I sighed. “I’m there for you. Just so you know. I got your back.”
Veronica was eighteen years old and sitting on a stoop out in front of Reb’s. She had bottle-blond hair with deep, dark roots. Her hair was as short as a boy’s; you looked at her and just imagined she had cut it herself with a pair of scissors standing naked in front of a mirror one afternoon when she was bored and drunk and possessed by Satan. Reb’s Pretty Girl had the ability to give us just the craziest talent in the land, C- and D-listers who would do four or six scenes and absolutely fade the fuck away or commit themselves to mental asylums. To exist for a good long time in the adult industry, one must be thick-skinned and lucky; also, it helps to be pretty. Veronica Light was chubby, bordering on ugly. Some companies actually preferred the ugly girls, Extreme Associates for example. It fit their degrading aesthetic. They hated women and wanted to represent them in the absolute worst light possible, so it helped if they hired really ugly young girls with pleasant pancake tits who would eat hamburger meat out of a garbage can. But there weren’t enough companies like Extreme out there to support the Veronicas, Butters, Charitys, and Candyliciouses of the world. So they would do their four scenes and then disappear, and then the next one would arrive.