“Larry was very forward,” Lady agreed.
“Larry?” I asked incredulously. “Tell me . . . what did Larry do?”
“Don’t nobody up here call me that,” Rag Man said hurriedly. He moved his wife’s hand off his thigh and back onto her lap, whereupon she immediately placed it back on his thigh.
“But now we will,” Timberlake assured him, smiling broadly. Larry. .
“You’re testin’ me, huh, Red? Lucky for you my best girl’s here, or I’d give you some kinda smack.”
“Larry, I’d like to practice some gapes later. You’re available, I assume?”
A normal woman would have given us a good tongue-lashing for using that kind of foul language in the house. But Lady relaxed into the land of enormous schlongs and scatological humor like she’d been born there. Though Timberlake and I attempted to persuade her otherwise, she slapped a red ball cap on her head and insisted upon shadowing us through the course of her first working day. Lady watched our scenes with splendid concentration, frowning, rarely blinking, standing about three feet from the action, licking her lips as she stared into the actresses and their spectacular tits.
“I think some of the girls might be weirded out,” Timberlake mentioned to Pitts.
“So, very nicely, ask her to take a step back,” Pitts said. “Not a big deal.”
“But Гт frightened of her!” Timberlake cried. “My penis is retracting into its shell. Everyone’s is.”
“She’s his wife,” Pitts said firmly. “Make it work.”
But the Rags were a hard nut. Soon I learned that they had been in a religious cult together, before the man of the house had begun tinkering with black porn. During this heady period, they had followed a guru. They had done ritualistic dances. They had enjoyed a “sexually unstructured environment.”
“What the heck’s that supposed to mean?” I whimpered.
“We was swingers,” Rag Man whispered. “Getting buck wild.
Don’t tell her I told you, because she’d skin me.”
Against my will, my mind flashed strobe-lit images of Lady sporting tight jeans and a cowboy hat in the jungles of Pittsburgh, getting down on her knees for a quick meal of guru cock. The image haunted me. Please just let the ’70s die ...
“And Rag Man’s all rewed up these days,” I complained to Timberlake and Ashley Moore, as I attempted to prepare a mushy soup of green lentils. I consulted my recipe, frowning. “He told Byron, git that baby-batter ready! I mean, that’s just dumb, right?”
“Oh, come on, they’re cute,” Ashley said. “I mean, still married, after all those years? And still in love? It’s really rare and special.”
“They’re working together to craft buttbangs,” Timberlake said. “That’s not cute.”
“The moment she picks up a camera and starts directing,” I promised, “I am out of here.”
But Lady would make partner more quickly than anyone could imagine. When a four-man in the garage brought together the tremendous talents of Tony Eveready, Domeniko, Wesley Pipes, and a long-haired, mildly handsome actor named David Steele, she was there to observe and take notes. Steele, a light-skinned, male-model type who was probably not even truly black (Egyptian?), was pleasant and polite, but radiated a sick kind of narcissism that I’d grown to associate with only the most pathological of my female stars. Still, Lady stood there watching Steele hungrily, never taking her eye off him, just mouth-breathing loudly.
Midway through the boring, workmanlike bowel movement of a scene, an argument broke out between Eveready and Steele, in reference to an accusation that Steele was trying to “bogart the pussy.” Steele, unwilling to back down even in the face of the likes of the thuggish, bullying Eveready, made a grumbling remark to the tune of Get in where you fit in, dude, at which point Eveready told Steele to back the fuck up, cuz, before he murdered him with a gun. But none of that could dull the desirous embers that smoldered in Lady Rag Man’s lint-colored irises. “He’s handsome,” she gushed to me and me alone, after the scene was finished. I was packed into my special corner of the kitchen, pushed up between the broken fax machine and the ionized aluminum garbage can, trying to write my checks. “Right you are,” I mumbled, zoning out on the bottles of lube, the never-ending bottles of lube.
Things were going to get worse before they got better. Feeling self-conscious about my body, I stripped naked and stood in front of a full-length mirror and regarded the insides of my thighs, which now seemed kind of bulgy. With more time to spare, I might have rustled up a quick eating disorder, but the best I could do on such short notice was immediately go find a yoga class at a strip mall near Zuma Beach. Yes, there are strip malls in Malibu; bad ones that don’t have any life to them. At least the strip malls down in Koreatown and Culver City are bustling with dirt and pestilential energy. At least you can laugh about them. It was a terrible feeling to drive your car into one of these quiet, West LA two-story jobs and see all the red Miatas and silver Mercedes stacked up, announcing untouchable fortunes and quiet 401 (k) hells.
I plucked my yoga mat from the trunk of my car and bounded up the steps into a room full of big rose-colored crystals that were also lamps and Zen fountains that peed recycled water infinitely. I paid my sixteen dollars and tried to relax into something good. But the class was packed to the gills with black-souled entertainment lawyers with frosted hair. One dude wore black biker shorts. In the mirror that lined our western wall, I could read the outline of his anus.
Somehow, my life had morphed into a slow, reflective stroll through a sewer. The human waste and vomit and semen was waistdeep. I had purchased a sweet pair of waders and a conductor’s cap, but they were coming apart at the seams. Idly, I wondered why I was doing this to myself voluntarily. Because I was good at it?
Vinyasa flow.
Because I had no idea it would turn out like this?
Downward dog.
Because shit happened, and I had turned out to be one of the shits?
Upward-facing dog.
That night, Timberlake, Pitts, and Ashley headed back to the Malibu Inn to listen to a live band and suck down a few beers. They invited me to go along with them, but I said no. I returned to the dour confines of my pool-house bedroom, where I fell asleep heavily. When they came back late at night, their drunkenness woke me up.
“What’s the madness all about?” I said, rubbing my eyes, as I trudged into the kitchen.
“He was there!” Ashley exclaimed. She washed her hands in the kitchen sink, her eyes flashing with enthusiasm.
“Who was there?”
“Emilio,” Timberlake answered casually, cracking open a fresh beer. “We talked to him for a while. Very cool guy. He says he’ll check the site.”
“Aw, hell,” I muttered.
“What’s the matter with you, grumpy?” Ashley said, coming behind me to give me a hug. I reached behind my back to pull her tall, muscular torso closer into my body. Her small breasts felt good against my back.
“The body’s not even cold in the ground,” Timberlake said, clucking, “and already he needs another one.”
Reluctantly, I released Ashley from my grip. “You moralistic bastard.”
“You have a girlfriend!” he whooped.
“Liz and I are having domestic difficulties,” I said.
“She’s upset with you?” Ashley asked, taking a seat behind the kitchen table and tapping a cigarette out of a nearly empty pack of Marlboro Lights. She yawned.
“As it turns out, yes.”
“Why?” Ashley asked absently.
“I may be a bit too porno for her.”
“Too рото?” Timberlake said, grinning. “Sam, oh Sam. What kind of shit did you try to pull off?”
“Yeah, what’d you do?” giggled Ashley.
“I didn’t do anything, you guys,” I said. “I mean, it was like totally harmless”