“Dark ages.” I frowned, wondering where to position our lights so they’d illuminate the scene but wouldn’t get in my way as I tried to shoot the action from all angles. I wasn’t much for lighting.
“Indeed,” said Rag Man. “Here, try this.” He toggled a cord, repositioned a flood, and the living room came ablaze in the glow of hot, vivid porn lighting. “I was part of that BBS crowd, believe me I was. See, I was rentin’ videos, takin’ em home, snaggin’ vid-caps and postin ’em. People freakin’ loved it. I wasn’t chargin’ any money for my service, of course,” he said proudly. “Doin’ it all as part of the love of the game.”
“Then what happened?”
“Around ’97, ’98, computers finally got faster. More people were using the Internet, not just kids goin’ to college. I started playin’ around with video clips, and I hooked up my VCR to my computer with an RCA cable, started digitizing tapes. We still didn’t have the capacity for more than ten-second segments, but still, people just went balls crazy. They was talkin’ about me, posting comments. I was gettin’ famous, man.”
“But you weren’t making any money.”
“How could I?” Rag Man said. “It wasn’t my content. This was all stuff I was renting from the fuckin’ store, man. I was cuttin’ movies up and postin’ em on the Web, just because I loved the stuff.”
“Well, I don’t get it,” I said. “If there was such obvious demand to see the movies on a PC, why didn’t the owners of porn companies do exactly what you were doing, and charge for it?”
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Rag Man explained, simply. “That’s how most people think, Sam. Remember, it’s not like these guys were goin’ broke. Everybody was still selling lots of DVDs, videotapes, too. Hell, they were making so much fucking money, it took an outsider to see the new business model.”
“Which is where you came in.”
“Naw,” said Rag Man, his eyes glowing. “I was just a fat guy at home. I’d have kept on doing it for free and for fun until I died. I ain’t no businessman. But Pitts came in and he saw it from a different angle. You know what he was doing five years ago? That guy wasn’t no damn pornographer! He was cleanin’ fuckin’ carpets! Haw haw! But he’s a thinker. He listened to the ground, picked up what was hot.”
“Interracial?”
'You ain’t no dummy. He sees the black thing, takes a guess that there’s a big-time market for it. He thinks of a way of makin’ money off the computer from it. It took some balls. He basically thunk up that monthly membership idea.”
I shook my head, considering. It was all coming into place. “And he decided to bring in the guy at the head of the technological revolution to be his webmaster.”
“He basically drafted me,” said Rag Man proudly.
I couldn’t help but laugh. I tamped it down, as much as was possible.
“He’s got an eye for talent, that Pitts does,” said Rag Man, smiling. “Oh, I been watchin’ you, man! Don’t think I haven’t. You lucked into a great situation, and I think you got some real potential. Hell, I wish I’d been in your shoes, when I was your age. But everybody ain’t lucky like you.”
He took a good look around at the living room, surveying the scene we’d created, plumped up a few pillows on the couch, and smiled, satisfied.
Turned out Liz was laid up in bed. She couldn’t even get up to go to work.
“I can’t drive. It’s like there’s a hole in my leg,” she explained to me over the phone. “It’s fucking disgusting.”
“All that from one little spider?”
“Your house has like, brown recluses, or something,” Liz said. “Seriously, I’m stranded on my couch. The doctor said I was supposed to move as little as possible.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Liz,” I said. “Does he have you on antibiotics?”
“Of course,” she said. She sounded pissed. “Well? Can you come and see me?”
“Sure,” I said slowly, watching Lucky Starr lazing around the kitchen, waiting for Timberlake’s three-on-one to start. Our eyes met and he raised an eyebrow. “Today might be a little hectic, though. I have a late shoot. And then I have the early slot tomorrow morning. Look, how about tomorrow evening? Would that be okay?”
“Whenever,” she huffed. “If you can fit me in.”
“Hey, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” Liz said, and she hung up the phone.
“Christ, mannnn . . .,” I said, shaking my head.
“What’s the problem, big man?” Lucky asked, coming over to slap a supportive palm on my back.
“You know. Ladies.” I rolled my eyes. I pushed past him to open up the refrigerator, give it a good stare. Nothing in there that I was too excited about.
“Ladies ain’t no problem,” said Lucky. “It’s when you don’t have ’em, that they become a problem.”
“Boy, you are a philosopher, huh?” I said, picking up a tortilla wrap and putting it right back down.
“I dabble,” Lucky said. “I meditate and shit.”
I wandered outside and tramped down the hill, sighing. What good were Malibu porno grounds, after all, if you didn’t wander around them aimlessly once in a while? You had to put your time in, observing the foliage and the little bugs and slugs and things. Our gardener, Luiz, kneeled over a bush, trimming it. I waved to him, but he only coughed wildly into the bush and pretended not to see me. Boy, Luiz was shy. I felt horrible for a moment: here was this full-grown Mexican man in his late thirties, and for some reason he was scared of me. I wanted to draw him to my chest, tell him that I was sorry that we were shooting porn here, that I knew it offended him and frightened him and he didn’t find it funny at all. I wanted to tell him, if he was a religious guy, then I honestly apologized for pushing broken flesh into his face over and over again and making him flee the area with his weed whacker whenever we decided we wanted to stage a double-anal outside in the buggy sun. I wanted to embrace him, tell him, St, amigo, I know your wife probably feels a bit uncomfortable here, confused that she must be confined to the house during weekday hours. But I only waltzed by him, staring woodenly at my arms, and didn’t say a damn thing, of course.
These doubleheader days were a bit intolerable. When Timberlake would have a shoot and I would have a shoot, we’d utilize between us eight actors, which meant eight large and sometimes volatile egos to attend to —not to mention sixteen forms of ID, 4 sixty-minute Sony mini-DV videotapes, 10 Xeroxed seven-page stacks of model releases, 3 douches, 2 bottles of lube, 4 snug-fitting high-heeled shoes with giant soles, 7 to 8 automobiles featuring 28 to 32 absurdly expensive spinners, a black Panasonic stereo blaring hip-hop so loud it could make your eardrums bleed, crumpled halfdrunk water bottle after crumpled half-drunk water bottle, 6 blunts, 10 Vanilla Cokes, 2 green dildos, and 1 blue strand of greased anal beads that would have to be thrown away immediately; ruined towels with blush and eyeliner wiped on them, costume changes up the ass, harried phone calls to AIM Healthcare to see whose test was out of date, scumbag managers, and people’s older brothers watching with wide-open eyes. It made you want to wring your own neck, when you did it over and over and over again. Porn wasn’t the problem. The people weren’t really the problem, either. It was the schedule. It was the pace.
I called Liz again. “Can I come see you?” I asked her.
“What?”
“I changed my mind. I’m sorry. I want to look at your spider bite and watch how disgusting it is. I wanna take prom pictures with it.”
“You’re stupid,” she laughed. 'Yes. Come over as soon as you can.”
“I will be over as soon as porno allows me, my dear.”
I opened the refrigerator door again, looking for the surprise that never came. Nothing. In the distance, Timberlake was washing his Acura, slopping the doors down with a mop and a bucket and a brand-new purple sponge. He was whistling, happier than a pig in shit.