He had taken none up on the offer. It was not that he did not want to have sex. On the contrary, he craved it very intensely, thus his current activity. It was that he was not ready to throw himself out into that scene, was not sure if he would ever be ready. Even before he had become involved with Celia—that seemed so long ago now—he had never been a fan of the one-night stand; of picking up some anonymous bimbo, using her, and then discarding her when he was finished. Like Celia herself, he needed to have some sort of connection with someone he was having sex with. It did not have to be love. He had not loved Cheryl the makeup girl and he most certainly had not loved Mindy Snow, but there had been a connection, a certain kind of chemistry with them. Even the two bimbos he was watching on the video screen now. He had to come up with a fantasy in his mind in order to enjoy the sight of the two of them, some sort of fantasy that would explain why they were having sex with each other and allowing him to watch it. It did not have to be a realistic fantasy (and it was not—in his mind the two women were support staff on a project who had confessed their bisexual curiosity to him separately and, grateful that he had introduced them to each other, invited him to watch and participate) but it had to meet the basic requirements of suspension of disbelief. Even when he had looked at the pictures in the edition of Smooth Operator where Mindy’s escapades had been documented, some form of fantasy was required for him to become aroused. It was just the way he was wired.
And he was not ready to go out and make that sort of required connection with a real woman just yet. It was still too soon after the breakup, for one thing. And if he were to meet such a woman, there was the small fact that he was a multi-millionaire and thus a prime target for a pregnancy scam—again. He would certainly never be able to trust any woman—no matter how trustworthy she seemed—if she told him she was on birth control pills. And even if he did not deplore using condoms—he did—they were far from a perfect method of contraception, especially when dealing with a possibly conniving female. Jake had told him horror stories of women would go so far as to dig a condom out of the trash after use just to impregnate themselves. And even if there was no conniving, accidents happened. Jake had told him the story of Celia’s drummer, Coop, who was now paying five-digit per month child support to a woman he had had a brief affair with because the condom he was using had come off in the middle of the act.
“Never let a chick suck your dick right before you put the rubber on,” Jake had advised sternly (and in all seriousness) during this discussion. “That’s just asking for a Coop incident.”
And so that was why the man who could have almost any woman he desired was sitting on his couch and whacking off to high quality lesbian porn. And why he had no serious prospect for changing the equation on the horizon.
When the two women on the screen switched into a sixty-nine position—blondie on the bottom, brunette on the top—and the camera focused on brunette’s rear end and blondie’s tongue licking at her swollen, wet, gaping vagina, Greg finally reached the point of no return. In his mind, this was when the two women invited him to get in on the action. This was where he would walk up and slip his member into the brunette’s body while the blonde licked and sucked his testicles. This is where the spasms started and he shot his load all over the towel that was arranged specifically to catch it.
When his breathing returned to normal, he took a few deep breaths and then wiped his right hand, which was sticky with semen and slippery with hand lotion, on a clean part of the towel. He then picked up the remote control, stopped the VCR and ejected the tape. He stood carefully, extricating the towel from beneath him and then bunching it up into a ball, dirty side inward. He pulled up his pants and buttoned them and then fastened his belt. He then carried the towel up to his bedroom and tossed it into the hamper. After this, he washed his hands in the bathroom sink, doing a thorough job of it. He sighed. After releasing his tension, he always felt a little ashamed of himself for indulging. But he was getting used to it now.
He went back downstairs and finished the job of covering his tracks. He pulled the cassette from the machine and placed it back in its cover. He used the remote to return the television to the Discovery Channel before turning it off. He picked up his glass, which still contained half of the third shot of rye whiskey he had poured, and the bottle of hand lotion, and went upstairs. He put the porno tape and the lotion in a drawer at the foot of the bed—a drawer that could be locked and that his housekeeper was forbidden to get into. In addition to twelve other pornographic video tapes (eight of which had been distributed by Mary Ann Cummings Productions) and three pornographic magazines (two Smooth Operators and a Penthouse), there was a bottle of Ambien that his doctor had prescribed for him about two weeks ago. He opened the bottle, took out one of the pills, replaced the bottle, and then closed and locked the drawer. He carried the pill over to the nightstand next to his bed and picked up his rye. He washed the pill down with the remainder of the whiskey.
Once that was done, the clock was ticking. He had learned very quickly that once the Ambien was in his stomach, he had about thirty minutes before he fell asleep, whether he wanted to or not and no matter where he was or what he was doing. When they said that Ambien make you sleep, they had not been kidding.
He quickly undressed down to his underwear and put all of his clothing into the laundry hamper on top of the bunched-up towel. He then pulled on his silk pajamas and got into bed. He turned off the lights and looked up at the dark ceiling.
It was now just past eleven o’clock. Right on schedule, sleep sucked him down forcefully at 11:33 PM.
Such ended another day in the post-breakup life of Greg Oldfellow.
Jake spent much of the latter half of April 1996 traveling with Bigg G and the boys as they pounded out the final eleven dates of the Livin’ It tour. The final stop was Detroit, where they played three dates at the historic Cobo Arena. All three of those shows were recorded in digital audio and videotaped by multiple cameras in anticipation of a probable live album and video release later in the year.
G then threw an after-tour party for all of the band, roadies, techies, and everyone else involved in making the show what it was. It was a party that lasted for three days and nights and quickly became the stuff of mythology and legend. He rented out the entire Detroit Civic Center and Hotel for the occasion. Five open, unlimited bars were stocked and staffed throughout the facility, operating from seven in the morning until two the following morning each day of the party. Catering was available in the convention center auditorium twenty-four hours a day. Four separate DJs kept music playing in the auditorium for the entirety of the event by rotating every six hours. The Detroit Police Department was called to the event eight times during its run, resulting in fourteen arrests on a variety of charges. Two police officers and four party guests were injured and had to visit the hospital due to these encounters. The entire thing finally wound down after last call on the morning of April 27th. When all the expenses were added up, the party ended up costing Gordon just a hair over a million dollars, not including bail money, which totaled another sixty thousand but was theoretically refundable.
“Yeah, it was an okay party, I guess,” G was quoted as saying afterward.