Oh, the hell with it. It was fun to do and Alan won’t be able to prevent its inclusion in the movie, and I only got involved in this dumb venture in the first place because I thought it would be fun. And I guess it has been fun, at least from time to time, but if I had it all to do over again...
Oh, forget that line of reasoning, too. If I had it all to do over again, I’m sure I’d do it all over again.
Sophie and I had a late dinner at one of those ersatz British pubs that have been springing up like measles all over the East Side. She was a pleasant enough companion, although aside from the interview we did not have very much to say to each other. Filming went well enough today, she said, but she’ll be glad when this picture is finished. She is not alone in this sentiment. After shooting’s completed, she’s going to Bermuda for a week.
I know how she feels. I’d like to get out of town for a while myself. The heat is getting oppressive lately. It was hot as hell today, and it may be some time before the heat wave breaks, according to the Weather Bureau soothsayers. Maybe I’ll take off and get up to Vermont for a little while.
While Sophie and I were dining, I indulged in a private fantasy of suggesting to her that we rehearse our scene together. I don’t know whether she would have gone for it or not. I decided not to bother finding out. I’m not sure what stopped me, whether I didn’t honestly want to have sex with her or whether I thought she might regard my proposition as unprofessional and uncool and I was thus afraid of rejection. Very possibly a combination of the two. I should think it would be fairly devastating to be turned down by a girl you have already watched do everything in the world. Also, if it did go poorly in any way, it would make it still more difficult when it comes time to film our scene together.
So it’s a lonely night, and I’ve already typed more than I intended to. I think I’ll go out and hit a bar or two. I might run into somebody. You never know.
— Saturday
Well, I didn’t run into anybody last night, but I hit a lot of watering holes in the process of reconnaissance, and I had a real rat bastard of a hangover this morning when Tim Benton called me. He was in town, he announced, and he had his fucking sheepdog in tow, and he hoped today was really the day when we were going to film the orgy sequence.
It was, and we did, most of it, anyway. Including the bit with the sheepdog.
The girl who co-starred with the dog was a little awestruck when she got a look at the animal. I guess she thought sheepdogs were smaller, or less ponderous. She kept saying things like, “How will she be able to see what she’s doing, she’s got all that hair over her eyes.” Tim assured her that the dog could see out of that forest of hair even though one couldn’t see in. He parted the mop and invited the girl to examine the dog’s eyes, one blue and one brown, and he told us some folklore about why sheepdogs commonly have one blue eye and one brown eye. I don’t remember the explanation, and I have a hunch you don’t care about it any more than I do.
The girl was still a little dubious, for which I can’t say I altogether blame her, but damned if she wasn’t game. Tim got her to get acquainted with the dog, and I’ll have to say this for the dog, she was friendly enough. The girl just had to pet her a little bit to get the dog very enthusiastic about being her friend.
The original plan called for us to have the girl tied up when the dog went at her. The girl didn’t seem to object to this, but it suddenly occurred to me that, if the dog did get carried away or start biting or anything, it would be more sensible to have the girl capable of flight. So she just sort of sat down and spread out and Tim pointed the dog in the right direction.
The dog, whose name is Pumpkinseed for reasons that escape me, was interested but not wild with passion. She approached cautiously, took a thoughtful sniff, and then backed away.
The girl said, “I don’t think she likes me.”
Tim guided the dog back in place for another exploratory sniff. Same reaction from Pumpkinseed, and a rather annoyed reaction from the girl.
“You know, I’m like clean and all that. I had a shower this morning.”
Somebody asked if she had done a headstand in the shower. If she heard this impertinence she surely gave no sign of it. She made a rather nasty remark about the dog.
Then Tim had an idea. I feel ridiculous reporting it, but I don’t know how to avoid it. It seems there are these little peppermint candies that Pumpkinseed goes bananas over, and as luck would have it he had some of them with him. He said that, if the girl would cram a handful of them up herself, the dog would probably give a more convincing performance.
The girl wasn’t crazy about this. She said for all she knew she was going to get an irritation from the peppermints, not to mention the possibility of getting an irritation from the dog. Alan suggested we drop the damned sheepdog scene, at which point I thought Tim might go into cardiac arrest. He was literally pleading with the girl to give the peppermints a try.
I think the girl was by now rather surprised to find herself the center of attraction. You could see she was wrestling with the idea, not at all delighted at the prospect of having the dog gobble peppermints from her snatch but unhappy at the thought of letting everybody down. Finally the trouper instinct triumphed and she nodded and accepted the peppermints.
At this point Vinnie and I got into an argument over the relative perversity of showing the girl cramming the peppermints in there or just showing the dog doing her big number. I felt it was sexier without letting the world know about the peppermints because that way the audience thinks the dog is really into the whole thing in a sexual way. Besides, we already have some scenes scheduled of guys eating grapes out of girls and things like that. Vinnie said the idea of the girl conning the dog with the peppermints would be better. Then Alan got into the act and suggested it would be better still if somebody else stuck the peppermints up the girl, and I don’t know what we decided was better about that, but it provided a way for Vinnie and me to come to terms.
It was suggested that Tim do the honors. He wasn’t having any. We got another of the girls to do it, and the way the scene was filmed, or at least the way it’ll look, is something like this: First we open with a shot of a girl leading the dog into place between Our Girl Sunday’s plump little thighs. The dog sniffs, backs expressively away. Then a third girl crouches and rams a handful of peppermints up our blushing heroine. They say a few cute things, provided by the trustworthy Writer On Location. The dog is brought back into position, and at this point the dog goes out of its fucking canine mind.
I’ll tell you, porn freaks, it was really something to watch. I wish there was something on earth that I wanted as much as that dog wanted to scoff those peppermints. And, in the process of reaching them, which took a long time, the peppermints having been placed in the inner recesses of the girl’s inner recesses, that dog did a job that would have made Sappho throw in the towel in resignation.
The girl, very apprehensive at first, rather rapidly lost her apprehension. As nice as a faked filmic orgasm can be, it’s really not a patch on the real thing, and this young lady gave us the real thing. I think she went into some sort of serial orgasmic state that just didn’t quit. Screams and moans and descriptions of just how great it felt. I swear I never heard anything to compare.