“Look, don’t take this personally,” I said, “but I think I need to clean out my colon.” >
Pitts looked at me strangely. He put the garbage bag down. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” I said calmly, walking away from him a few steps. “I’m . . . considering a new way of life.”
Pitts snorted. “And what’s that?”
“I’d like to do something that helps people.”
“Why don’t you just volunteer at a soup kitchen?”
I laughed. “Look, this is stupid. Forget I said anything.”
“Fucking really?” Pitts said. He reached into the couch, spying a mostly spent bottle of Astroglide lubricant. For a brief moment he inspected it, then dropped it into the garbage. “Well? Are you serious? Should I hire someone else?”
“I’m totally kidding around,” I assured himfts‘1 love what we do here. It’s so full of mystery. I want to do it until I can’t walk anymore. Until my brain fills with blood.”
“Tell you what,” Pitts said. “I’m going to pretend we never had this conversation.” He looked at the lubed-up garbage bag, and dropped it suddenly, in disgust. “Clean up the rest of this shit by yourself.”
I swept the floor, then mopped it, turning the notion over in my head. Maybe I really could bail. I’d feel a bit guilty about abandoning the ship, certainly, but Jesus, it was so stupid. “Mamacita,” indeed. And that gloryhole rankled me particularly. Everyone wanted to try it. Especially the amateurs. After all, what could be easier than getting your wang sucked through a hole in a piece of wood? Even I had to admit that, jealously, I sought to take up an hour behind the wall. (But I couldn’t, because only black penises are allowed in the hole.) Byron Long’s cousin Darius stuck his whole small cock and tiny balls through the hole. A new girl calling herself “Mariah Cherry” hesitantly accepted them into her life. Darius strutted out into the light afterward, glowing with pride.
If I left now, I’d be giving up on my “dream.” Withdrawing from the race without ever having produced the kind of cinematic masterpiece I’d planned. But brilliance had eluded me to this point. You know, maybe I had studied semiotics. But, like, so the fuck what? Making a real film took more talent than I’d figured. I suppose that I had always believed that part of it would just sort of happen—like I would wake up one morning to find that in my sleep, I had penned a brilliant, cutting-edge screenplay. Instead my body of work comprised a cluster of self-published, eBay-bound VHS masters and a towering pile of crude, workmanlike gangbangs. Boy howdy.
“I want out,” I whispered to Timberlake one night, as we huddled on top of the brick wall that separated our compound from the outside world, watching the sky.
He sighed. “No way. Listen, I feel anxious. I need a massage like nobody’s business. Samuel? Work on my neck?”
“I’m serious, I’m not into it anymore,” I said. “I failed, man! I let it pass me by. I was out to change the game, but I didn’t rise to the occasion. Now my only choice is to cut my losses. Get out while the getting’s good.”
‘You know, in this light, you look like a really light-skinned black man,” Timberlake said, studying me. “That amuses me.”
“Porn was stronger than me,” I said. “Wow. This is crazy. I’m really going to quit.”
“And leave me all alone? You smug bastard. What are you going to do with yourself? Got any money saved up?”
“Yes. A bit.”
“You are truly odd. Seriously, you’re thinking about giving up this life? No more girls?”
“The girls weren’t as delicious as I’d imagined them to be,” I admitted. “Some things are best left to the imagination.”
'’You wanted the centerfold, and all you got was the staples,” Timberlake said.
In the distance, there was a rustling. Some kind of meandering coyote, or a balding studio executive out for a saddened walk of shame.
'You know what porn is, man?” I said thoughtfully, picking up a pebble that lay atop the big brick wall, tossing it up and down in my hand a few times. “Porn is the embodiment of our cheesy imaginations. We dreamt up these girls with great legs and unidimensional personalities, and that’s basically what we got.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Timberlake said pleasantly. “That makes zero sense. Don’t try to philosophize, you’re bad at it.”
I groaned. “I hate you.”
“Hey, did I tell you that I nearly had a head-on collision with Spielberg today?” Timberlake said, brightly.
“What? You’re lying.”
“I swear, I’m not. Steven Spielberg himself erratically fired his early-’80s, Hart to Hurt-style Mercedes through a gas station and into my lane. Fortunately, we both swerved in the right direction. Halfway through my hateful stare, we made eye contact, and I achieved recognition.”
“Well? Then what happened?”
“He flew by me, parked in front of Radio Shack, and ran in.”
“But why would Steven Spielberg be going to Radio Shack?” I cried.
“He may have needed an extension cord,” Timberlake said soothingly. “Maybe a calculator.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “You . . . there are no words for you.”
“All I’m saying, in my own little way, is that I know where you’re coming from.” He patted me on the arm. “I support you.”
“I’m quitting,” I said, picking up the pebble again and clutching it in my palm. “You just watch me.”
Liz started working for Deep Productions. DK, heartbroken, refused to get a new secretary. He came over one afternoon to collect some checks for a few jobs Timberlake owed him. Ashley Moore came with him.
“Hi,” she said to me, giving me a little hug, and a lascivious grin. “How have you been?”
“Great,” I said. Electricity ran through my body. “Great. Hey listen, there’s this little thing I want to show you in my room. Do you have a minute?”
She came into my room and we laughed. Right away we kissed.
And then she went I want you to choke me with the belt. I said, yeah! and I got this leather belt out of my closet that I’d had forever, since high school even. It had a square metallic buckle and the leather was dark and smooth in several places where the buckle had rubbed it into a kind of permanent polish. I ran the belt under her chin and clasped it in two behind her neck and then I used it to choke her out while she gave me a blowjob. Ashley gasped and gagged. I may have slapped her once or twice. I don’t recall.
But it was different this time. There was a certain pleasure in it, of course, but it also felt sort of forced. I tried to call her names, in hopes of re-creating some of our magic we’d experienced down by the pool, but neither of us took it seriously and we mostly only laughed. I fucked her face, but I think we were both feeling rushed. DK was in the living room; if we dallied, sooner or later he’d start to wonder what Ashley was up to. But mostly, it just seemed kind of rote. I looked down at her and there she was, gaacking. And it just seemed so pointless. We were playing out parts in a play. We were getting attention. We were misbehaving. Sinking that ship.
Soon Ashley stood up.
“Do you want to pee on me?” she asked, carefully.
I rubbed my jaw, considering. “Yeah, sure,” I said, after a second. “Why not?”
I don’t remember that transaction. We walked into my bathroom, and I don’t remember quite how it felt. I don’t remember how the carpet felt, under my bare feet. She had all her clothes on. She’d never taken any off. She knelt and her face was over the toilet bowl. I don’t remember peeing into her mouth, how it took me a moment to get started. It’s weird, when you’re hard: some sort of vesicle switch needs to happen. I don’t remember the feeling in my stomach, like I might stop myself, or say something—except why bother? I wanted to know what it would be like. I wanted to know how it would feel.