“You know, when I met you, you seemed like such a nice guy,” Liz said. “That’s what’s confusing to me. Lisa says you freaked her out from the very beginning. That you had bad energy.”
“Lisa was too busy grooming her mustache to think clearly.”
“I never agreed with her,” Liz continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I always felt that you were this sweet guy who stumbled into the wrong job. I thought we were both on the same level—sort of working in this business temporarily, kind of as a joke, you know?”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s what I am”
“But the other night... I was really caught off guard, Sam. I’m sorry I kicked you out, but I felt threatened. Now I just want to understand: why does it turn you on to see girls look like subhumans?”
“I can’t explain it,” I said stubbornly.
“No clue at all?”
“I like to feel... big.”
“You like to feel powerful?”
I like to feel empowered,” I said. “There’s a difference.”
“Did you ever hit a girl before you got into porn?” Liz said.
“Well.. . no.”
“Are you going to keep on hitting girls?”
“If they’ll let me?” I said, miserably.
There was a long pause at the end of the line.
“You didn’t respect my boundaries,” Liz said.
“I know,” I said. “I messed up.”
“And actually, I’m not interested in empowering you. I like you better when you’re a little bit more buttoned up, I think.”
“Fine,” I said, beginning to smile.
“And if you ever slap me like that again, I will rip your testicles off,” Liz said. “Understood?”
“Agreed,” I said.
“I don’t mean to be a prude, but it disgusts me. Sorry.”
“Give me another chance, Liz,” I said. “Please. I’ll act right.”
“Well.” She exhaled, mightily. “If you act nice and take me out to Thai food, like, tonight, and also try to learn how to behave around Lisa, who happens to be my best friend, then perhaps I will consider letting you sleep over again sometime soon. Okay? How does that sound to you?”
“It sounds great. I’m serious. I’m glad you reconsidered. This is all really good.”
“Come on,” Liz said. “Hurry up and pick me up. Maybe I’ll let you spank me with a belt someday if you learn how to ask right. You sick puppy.”
A strange interlude, the next two weeks. Something tight in my stomach: I had never been a liar before. My records show me that I . continued to function normally, however; that I continued to work diligently in my trade, just as I always had, accruing greenbacks and karmic debt at a modest clip. A butterscotch one-namer, Mamacita, was delivered into the fold by Wesley Pipes. “There you go, Sammy,” he said, nodding toward her. Mamacita smiled up at me expectantly. She was eighteen, Mexican, already built like a pear. Pipes had discovered her at a bus stop. I coughed politely. I could never have been so bold.
Ashley Moore moved out of the house. First her makeup case disappeared, then her clothes. Finally, she was gone entirely. I’d like to believe her departure was due to the hot, smoldering sensuality of our poolside soiree—J can’t go on with this charade!—but more likely, she was just kind of ready to move on, and so was Pitts. Ashley would bunk with DK for a while until she got on her feet. Meanwhile, there was an available space in Pitts’s bed, and that never lasted long. Soon, Crazy Chloe was the new chick in town.
We called her Crazy because she was one. I shot her several times, with pleasure. In one scenario, we created a “wilding,” where she pretended to be a jogger. Four black men leapt down from trees and pinned her to a blanket.
Timberlake found in Crazy Chloe a goggle-eyed audience for his tales. I caught them both sitting in the gloryhole one night, sharing the toilet stall like a confession booth.
“I drove out to visit my mom a month ago,” Timberlake whispered, his eyes locked on Chloe. “Took the Acura. Blew her mind.”
“Right,” Chloe whispered.
“It was shocking. My obese, superpsychotic mother has turned into a fat, sweet lady. She said to me on the way to an Italian buffet, 'I’m sorry about never being your mom. I was never there for you, I never supported you.’”
“People change,” Chloe said sagely. She peered into Timberlake’s soul. “Did you forgive her?”
“Forgive her? I felt years of angst lift off of my shoulders. Have veal Parmesan on me, Ma!”
Elsewhere, the porno machine moved forward, coasting on its own wretched momentum. Rag Man and Lady Rag Man strapped on their coveralls, revved up the engine. Displaying savvy I didn’t think they had, they obtained the go-ahead to use the house as an after-hours “location” for scenes they themselves were bankrolling and producing. They were ready to grab a piece of the pie.
‘ I’m gonna sell the tapes on eBay, man,” Rag Man bragged.
“Hot lesbo action,” Lady added. “That’s our bag.”
I assisted them on a few shoots, holding down second camera for them. How could I refuse? They were the only family I had.
“I can’t pay you, of course,” Rag Man reminded me.
“I’m insulted you would even ask,” I said evenly, taking in a deep and cleansing breath. “Remember? This is what I do.”
Tony Eveready was arrested in Nevada for carting a truckload of drugs across state lines. We bailed him out. Upon his return to Malibu, I was instructed to hire Eveready as often as possible; instead of paying him, I was to subtract $400 from his now-massive debt. Family rate. It all made a kind of twisted sense. On September 20, a check was made out for $63.23 to Sav-On Pharmacy. You know what that is? That’s enemas, right there. Enemas, baby wipes, and douches.
How could a man like me survive? I desperately needed to come clean to Liz; common decency demanded it. And yet, I resisted confessing. She and I dined together, shared special looks. In a way, we had never been closer. The deception added a layer of complexity; it was adult. We went out to a Hollywood club, met Lucky Starr there. He danced with us in the darkened club. The DJ, red-bearded, wearing a kicky little cap, was only so-so. After a while, we noticed there was hardly anyone else dancing besides us. It was this huge dance floor.
One evening, I received a bizarre, excited email from a friend of mine who was traveling through Southeast Asia:
I’m fasting, dude!
He’d landed in a health resort on a little island in the south of Thailand, where he was eating just one bowl of thin soup every day and submitting himself twice daily to hour-long colonics: one in the morning and one at night.
I’m getting clean/
Over the course of sixty minutes, he would filter ten gallons of cold water through his intestines, a gallon at a time. His belly would swell up with the water, and he would massage the length of his guts, and then, when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he’d release the water, and along with it, old bits of debris that, apparently, had lined the walls of his intestines for many years. Crazy things were coming out of his body: bile, mucoid plaque, and even what looked like old bits of undigested meat. The lucky bastard.
Pitts and I were mopping up the wreckage from yet another gangbang when I introduced the idea that maybe it was time to cut the apron strings.
“I’m thinking about quitting porn,” I told Pitts. “You know. Find something new.”
He looked around, confused. “But we have this place booked until the end of the year.”
“Let Timberlake shoot my scenes,” I said, reaching down to pick up a soiled baby wipe. Wrinkling my lips with revulsion, I tossed it into the black trash bag that Pitts held open for me. “Or Rag Man. Hell, he’d love it.”
“But why? What’s the matter?” Pitts asked.