“Ashley, my dear!” crowed Timberlake. “I’m gonna need to check your boobies! Can I see those boobies, please?”
Ashley wore a goofy tweaker’s grin. “All of you guys are freaky, huh?”
“You got that one right, darlin’!” crowed Rag Man. He elbowed me in the solar plexus, causing me to choke. “We’re professional perverts.”
“Professional perverts? Well, if that’s not the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!” She laughed loudly.
Rag Man glowed in the warmth of his success and joined in with his haw haw. I wondered when was the last time he’d made a twentyyear-old girl laugh out loud, laugh with him, include him in on the joke, make him feel like a million bucks. Ashley was sweet, I got that right off the bat. She didn’t have it in her to be snobby or standoffish.
“Let me take some test shots!” cried Rag Man, caught up in the heat of the moment.
“Nah, I got bad skin!” she said.
“No!” we all cried at the same time, except for Pitts, who was still standing quietly in the corner.
“Your skin’s great,” I remarked casually, from my post behind Rag Man. Timberlake shook his head at me, holding his palms facing down. Pipe down, kid. This is my show.
“No, it isn’t. Drugs!” laughed Ashley, crooking a long wrist to her hip, so her elbow stuck out, triangular and tan. “It’s my own fault. But I’m getting sober, dudes!”
“Are you?” said Timberlake, politely.
“Well, from speed!” she cried merrily. “Just from speed. DK said to me, ‘I don’t work with speed whores.’” She giggled, highly amused at the thought. “Isn’t that funny? That I can’t be in pom unless I get clean?”
My wallet grew and grew, and I was getting fatter. My actual face was getting fat. I could buy whatever the hell I wanted now, and it showed. I took biweekly trips to Whole Foods and loaded up on the organic peanut butter—flavored goat’s milk. Then I upped the ante, branching out into the more esoteric shit: flaxseed husks and lemon rinds and dehydrated beets and blue-green chlorella powders. I cornered a stoned hippie girl with hairy armpits in the Health and Beauty aisle, pressed her up against the wall, and forced her to recommend some vitamins that might calm Timberlake’s frightful nervous system, bring him back to earth. Psyllium was a terrific source of fiber. Cold-milled hemp seeds provided a balanced source of omega-3s. Bioflavonoids—onions, garlic, berries—were good for musculature. Vegetarians were prone to depression.
Her hippie lips moved up and down. Dysmenorrhea was the painful discharge of menses. Hepatitis A had a long incubation period (four to six weeks). Xenoestrogens could be found in soft plastics and in pesticides. Irritated colonic mucosa led to irritable bowel syndrome.
“Quick question.” Rag Man was huffing in the kitchen after his morning stroll. His breath smelled like canned pork and beans. “Either of you guys know what a gloryhole is?”
Timberlake shook his head without looking up. He was hunched over a paperback copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, tense with concentration. He couldn’t make a dent in that thing to save his life. Neither of us could. I hadn’t read a book the whole summer.
“Nope,” I said. “We don’t know what one is.”
“And we don’t wanna,” added Timberlake.
Rag Man belched softly and sidled over to caress my shoulders with his fatherly palm. “Sam,” he said, “you know when you take a shit at a truck stop?”
“Nope.”
“And there’s, like, a hole in the side of the door?”
“Nope.”
“That's a glory hole!”
I gave him a noncomprehending look.
“Are you guys slow?” Rag Man frowned. “What the hell are you drinking, by the way?”
“Peanut butter goat’s milk.”
“Why’s it blue?”
“I added some algae to it,” I said, defensively.
“Well, goddammit, the hole . . . didn’t you know, guys stick their dicks through it? And someone sucks on ’em!”
“Mr. Man?” said Timberlake, his interest piqued almost against his will. “What universe do you live in?”
“It’s a gay thing, of course,” said Rag Man. “Don’t think I didn’t know that. But save your jokes, gentlemen, because the visionary in me says we could bring this one over to our side.”
“I don’t like where this conversation is going,” said Timber. “I object.”
“We’ll get our girls pretendin’ like they need to poop,” murmured Rag Man, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully, “and then all of a sudden, a big old black wang comes wigglin’ through the hole!” Rag Man chuckled merrily, like a chubby, victorious child.
“What a hateful scatological fantasy,” I said.
“Right,” said Rag Man. “So let’s build us one in the garage'.”
“Are you a tiny bit gay, do you think?” said Timberlake. “Do you want to, like, explore your sexuality?”
“Look, you two,” said Rag Man, holding up one pink walrus hand. He smiled wanly, not his usual style at all. I recognized it as the smile of a crafty man, a man who already knows he has won. “Pitts is behind me on this. He thinks it’s a sure moneymaker. So finish drinkin’ your blue milk, and put the book away. ’Cause the three of us got a job to do.”
We walked out into the light of day and boarded Rag Man’s rented Kia. To be annoying, Timberlake and I both sat in the backseat. “Oh, I suppose you guys think that’s funny.” Then we drove to the Home Depot in Thousand Oaks and bought a porcelain roundfront 3.5-gallon twenty-four-inch dual Jet Flush with a left-handed trip lever. We also bought paint, screws, hinges, three ten-by-six-foot pasteboard panels, a black Magic Marker, and ten rolls of toilet paper.
Back home, Timber rammed the panels together. Rag Man bored a circular hole in the side of one of the walls, at crotch level. I supplied the offensive graffiti. And there we had it: a facsimile of a public restroom cubicle with dirty toilet paper trampled underfoot, where pretty girls could give unhygienic blowjobs to anonymous black dicks.
“Nasty,” announced Rag Man, pleased at his handiwork.
“Promise me that I won’t have to shoot these,” said Timberlake, a desperate look on his face.
“I ain’t promising nothing, city boy,” laughed Rag Man, clapping his meaty hand on Timber’s white neck. “We all got a job to do around here, and we need to pull our weight. Frankly, I wouldn’t rock the boat right about now, if I were you—you’re overpaid as it is, and if I get the notion to tell Pitts just how damn worthless you are, well, you’re bound to land on your ass in the driveway with the locks changed behind you, like the redheaded stepchild you are.”
“I object,” mumbled Timberlake.
“That said, I’ll happily take responsibility for this garage-based operation, at least to begin. Silver-tongued as I am, haw haw, I’ll take it upon myself to introduce the ladies to the ’hole.”
Finally, Rag Man was out from behind the ignominy of his editor’s desk, basking in the cold light of the gloryhole, a director at last. He proved himself to be a talented piggybacker, too. After each shoot, instead of skulking off alone and forgotten, Rag Man would allow the actress to shower and dress herself, to gather her thong and whips and chains and slimy tube of personal lubricant, to say the last of her good-byes, before he’d sidle up to her and murmur into her eardrum —quite casually—“Now, do you feel like making an extra four hundred bucks today, or what?” It was only after she said yes that he would show her the toilet in the garage.
Quite the innovator, Rag Man. But the interesting thing about him was how much he liked the girls. Despite his braggadocio about how much he loved dirty porn, in person, Rag Man was always respectful, and he spoke to each actress with courtesy and deference. He was also totally in love with his wife and probably constitutionally incapable of cheating on her. He never made gross passes at the talent, or tried to corner them in the bathroom for blowjobs, or anything like that. But there was this disconnect he had when it came to evaluating their performances. He simply lived for seeing a woman choking on cock through a hole in a restroom wall. If she didn’t end up upside down in a puddle of drool and her own vomit, then she hadn’t “done it right.” She wasn’t hardcore.