And then we’re standing.
Correction: She’s standing. I’m holding on for dear life, my arms wrapped around hers, my legs clamped on top of her thighs.
We spin.
She screams.
“GODDAMMIT WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU PSYCHO LET ME FUCKING GO OH MY GOD”
I’m getting dizzy. The spinning ends when she slams me against the wall, rattling the cheap paint-by-numbers picture that passes for roach motel art. This is the point where I stop breathing.
Danielle lets out a surprised, “OH!” and freezes there, breathing hard. I think a rib may have cracked and is now lodged in my lung. I’m still clamped to her like a barnacle on the hull of a ship. She jolts forward, trying to shake me loose, then falls back against the wall again, rattling my ribcage and stressing the thin drywall.
Breathing is overrated.
Oooo, look at the pretty stars.
Danielle says, “OH!” again and pauses, panting.
She leans forward and slams me back.
Again.
“OH!”
She finds a rhythm. Rock forward. Lean back. SLAM! “OH!”
Rock forward.
Lean back.
SLAM!
“OH!”
Rock.
Lean.
SLAM!
“OH!”
Rock lean slam OH! Rock lean slam OH! Rock lean slam OH!
I’ve nearly passed out from oxygen deprivation when she comes.
It’s loud, it’s long, and it results in much pain to my person. But even amid all this chaos, it’s magical. I realize that, not only did we maintain our connection, we did it standing up. And against the wall. And fair Danielle is currently coming her brains out loud enough for half of Muncie to hear her. That’s enough for me and, despite the hot pain in my chest and the gathering darkness of unconsciousness, I join her.
It’s an alligator fuckhouse for the history books.
Take that, Baton Rouge Bob.
Interlude 3
The Gameshow
I did what anyone whose wife just gave birth to someone else’s baby might do. I drank, a lot.
It’s actually a good thing. I have a very low tolerance for alcohol in all forms and iterations. Hard liquor, beer, mixed drinks, wine spritzers. I drank it all. I went on raging benders that lasted for days. I got into fights, got kicked out of bars, had random sex with strange women. Possibly a man who looked like a woman, but I honestly can’t remember.
That was a bad week.
But that’s all it took was a week. I hit bottom, saw the light, made my choice to stop drinking. Moved on. Actually, the first morning I woke up puking and hurting from a hangover, I was pretty much done. Like I said, I’m just not much of a drinker.
This wasn’t a vow to never drink again so much as it was a realization that making myself sick was not only stupid but going to get boring really fast. And I was always better at quitting things anyway.
I tried to move on with my life, what little there was left of it. I no longer had a wife, no longer had a job, no longer had a future. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would wake up on my brother’s living room couch, but there wasn’t much of a future in that, either. His wife wasn’t going to stand for it much longer, having me camped out in her living room all day, watching soap operas and talk shows and doing absolutely nothing but moping and feeling sorry for himself. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t want a loser like that sleeping on my couch for very long, either. I knew I had to get off my ass and try to find something. A new direction for my life.
Or at the very least, a new venue from which to do my searching. Before I figured out my future, I had to do something with my present. That’s why I answered the ad in the newspaper. It was something to do. I had nothing else going on, anyway.
It was a vaguely worded want ad calling for extras to work in the entertainment industry. It promised a chance to possibly ‘EARN BIG $$$$!’ Despite the rapey stripper connotations of the ad, it was good enough for me. I called the number in the paper and got a gruff sounding guy who had no idea what I was talking about at first. The phone was handed off to another guy who told me when and where to show up and then hung up on me. A little strange, but I didn’t really pay attention.
Two days later, I showed up at the when and the where and found about two dozen other guys milling about in a dingy waiting room. They all looked pretty much just like me — average, quiet, with a look of desperation in their eyes. I waited for an hour and a half before they finally called me back. We were in a bank of offices located in a warehouse-like building that until then I had always assumed was just an abandoned structure. Taped to the cracked window in the door to the back office where I was led was a piece of paper on which someone had written in craggy, black Sharpie, CASTING.
The guy inside looked like the guy I had imagined when I called two days earlier. He was short and round, oily-looking with thin hair. The office smelled like cheese. Mr. Oily sat behind a battered metal desk that appeared to have been salvaged years ago from a public school. The walls of the office were lined with more wrecked furniture. Mr. Oily motioned for me to sit in a rickety wood swivel chair in front of the desk. I did.
He didn’t introduce himself, just waited for me to get settled in the chair and said, “Why are you here?”
“Uh, because this is where the person on the phone said I should come.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean why are you here in a general sense, not a literal sense. Why did you answer the ad?”
I wasn’t following him. “Because I’m looking for work.”
“Have you ever acted before?”
My turn to shake my head. “No, never have.”
“In high school? Drama club? College Shakespeare theatre?”
“I didn’t finish college.”
“You didn’t answer my question, either.”
“No, nothing.”
“But you still responded to the ad calling for extras, even though you have no experience in the entertainment industry.”
This was discouraging. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”
I stood, but he waved his hand. “No, sit. That’s actually perfect.”
“It is?”
“For the project we’re casting, yes.”
“What exactly is this project?”
The guy watched me for a minute without answering. He seemed to be sizing me up, tilting his head to the side, looking me over. “You’re not a bad-looking guy,” he said in a fairly nonsexual way, putting the emphasis on bad as if to say I’m not exactly a good-looking guy either.
An internal homo-rape siren began to clang in my head and I stood up. “You know what, I think I made a mistake.”
“No, sit. Stay. Don’t worry, no homo here.”
I wasn’t convinced. The homo part didn’t worry me so much as the dingy office, greasy creep, and instinct that I was about to get involved with something I would regret.
I really wish I would’ve listened to that instinct.
After I talked to the ‘casting director’ (and said a prayer of thanks that his office hadn’t contained a couch) I was ushered into another room. There were a few other guys in there. I recognized a couple from the waiting room. We all milled around in silence for about twenty minutes before Mr. Greaseball came in and pointed at me.
“Mr. Porter, follow me. The rest of you, thanks for coming in.”
The dejected walked out without a word and I followed Greasy. He talked while we walked. “Congratulations, you made it.”
“Cool. Can you tell me what it is?”
“I’ll let the boss give you all the nitty-gritties, but you’ve been cast in a new reality game show.”