All of this I told to Ms. Wright as we sat in my apartment eating popcorn and watched Annabel Chong fuck her way through 251 jizz-juicers. Groups of five. Ten minutes per group. Sock-soakers. Bone-beaters. The set decorations, the white fluted columns and splashing fountains, a historical re-creation of Messalina's challenge to Scylla. The fake marble and Roman statues. The World's Biggest Gangbang. A student in gender studies at the University of Southern California, with a grade point average of 3.7, this film was Chong's tribute to Valeria Messalina.
True fact.
The top-selling porn video of all time: a feminist history lesson lost on countless willy-wankers.
Watching, I asked: How is this any different from the Olympics?
I asked: Why shouldn't a woman use her body any way she wants?
I asked: Why are we still fighting this same battle two thousand years later?
Both of us eating popcorn. No butter. No salt. Drinking diet sodas. Our casting notice already running in a couple newspapers, a news item on a few Web sites. Pud-pullers and palm pilots already calling to get on the list.
Our faces caked in avocado, pore-reducing, collagen-enriched masks. Hair combed with Vaseline and turbanned in towels. The bowl of popcorn between us on my sofa. The two of us belted in terry-cloth bathrobes. Ms. Wright says, "A take-charge gal like that Messalina was—she shouldn't have let them kill her."
Only a few years after ordering her execution, the Emperor Claudius stuck a feather down his own throat. In A.D. 54, he was pigging out at a banquet, trying to puke so he could eat more, and Claudius choked to death on that feather.
Hearing that, watching Annabel Chong get fucked, it was Ms. Wright who mentioned life insurance. Made me promise to look into a policy. Made me cross my heart, in case anything went wrong, I'd find her lost kid and hand over the insurance payout, plus whatever royalties from the video.
She was still talking how she wanted to make her kid rich when I reached between the cushions of my sofa. Feeling between the popcorn kernels, the old maids, and pocket change until I touched slick paper.
Right there, I handed Ms. Wright the paperwork for six policies. All they needed was her autograph. Total potential payout—ten million.
Without her bifocals, Ms. Wright squints at the paperwork, her avocado mask crumbling, cracking, and flaking green crumbs. She holds the papers at arm's length. Eyeing the fine print, she says. "Always one step ahead, aren't you."
That's why she pays me the big bucks, I tell her. My fingers plucking a ballpoint pen from between the sofa cushions.
And Ms. Wright says. "That empress gal?" Autographing each life insurance policy. Nodding at the television, she says, "That Messalina, she should have just killed herself.»
17. Mr. 600
Player dude's yakking on his cell phone when he goes ballistic. Player dude with his black hair combed, stretched back, and gelled to cover his bald spot, to show a forever space of tall, white forehead, he's yakking stock options and sell prices and reserve margins when Sheila looks up from her clipboard she's holding.
Sheila shepherds the crew of us and yells, "Gentlemen." She yells, "Listen for your number, please. I need…"
Every ear turned to listen, tilted up to hear, dudes stop chewing their mouthful of taco chips. Dudes step out the bathroom doorway, their dick still in one hand. Eyes open, wide, looking for the words. Dudes hiss for silence, hold up hands, and pat the air to make other dudes quiet down.
Sheila drops each word heavy as a money shot right in your eye, saying, ". number 247. number 354. and number 72." She waves a hand toward the stairs and says, "Would those gentlemen please follow me.»
Dude 72, Cassie's maybe kid.
That's when the cell-phone player dude goes ballistic. Dude flats his phone against his chest. Dude's sporting a model shave, where you snap the number-one guard on your clippers and buzz all your chest hair down to the same quarter-inch long. Same as the International Male dudes in the catalogue, but minus the cut muscle. Dude tells his phone, "Hold on a sec." He throws his head back and yells, "This is horseshit, lady!" Yelling after Sheila, dude says, "You think we'll wait all day to drop a wad in some old bag?"
Climbed halfway up the stairs, Sheila stops. She looks back, one hand shading her eyes to see across the hairy ocean of dudes' heads.
Above us on the TVs, the head of Scottish Yard or Interpol or some wop police dude's eating out Cassie Wright in the back of a paddy wagon. His tongue comes across a diamond. Then he's pulling the long string of a diamond necklace out her snatch. Diamonds being her best friend, Cassie is juicing up a storm.
Kid 72, dude with the roses, springs up next to my elbow, saying, "What do I do?"
Fuck her, I tell him.
Kid says, "No," shaking his head. He says, "Not my mom."
Player dude, his arms and legs sport a San Diego tan. Not the rich caramel color of a Mazatlan tan, or the smooth dry brown of a Vegas tan. On his face and neck, that's not the even wipe of a box-bought tan, or deep and buttery, like dudes get in Cancun or Hawaii. Dude's standing there in a cheap, beach-fried San Diego tan, and he's got the nerve to yell, "I'm number 14, and I have places to be. I should've been out of here hours ago."
The number «14» inked on his beige-brown San Diego arm, the player dude says, "This bullshit is worse than the DMV…"
Every dude still playing statue, froze, waiting to see how this plays out. Now that the player's said what's on every dude's mind, we're primed for a revolution. Dudes ready to prison-riot, mount those stairs. Sheila's staring down the threat of a boner stampede.
A herd hell-bent for Cassie Wright or for the exit.
Kid dude, number 72, says to me, "I'll tell her how much I love her…"
Go ahead, I tell him. Fuck up Mommy's comeback. Be a needy little boy and ruin all Mommy's hard work and planning, all her training she's put into this world record. I tell the kid, Do it.
Kid 72 says, "You think I should fuck her?"
I say it's his decision.
Kid says, "I can't fuck her." Kid says, "I can't get it hard."
Halfway up the stairs, standing with numbers 247 and 354, both dudes flogging their meat, their hands stretched inside the waistband of their boxer shorts, standing here, Sheila says, "Gentlemen, would you please be patient." She says, "For Ms. Wright's well-being, we need to conduct this in a calm, organized manner."
Player dude yells, "Fuck that." He walks his plain, brown feet across the concrete to where the paper bags are stacked. With his San Diego-tanned hands, he pulls out the bag inked with "14," starts pulling out a shirt, pants, socks. Shoes that look like Armani but aren't. His skin looks like better-quality leather.
Above us on the TVs, the ugly dago police dude's jackhammering Cassie, pounding her poop chute so fast that diamonds, rubies, emeralds spill out her snatch, slot-machine style.
Kid 72 leans close, his lips by my ear and his chin almost hooked on my shoulder, and he says, "Give me a pill and I'll do it."
Fuck her? I ask. Or run up those stairs and squeal, "I love you, Mommy, I love you, I love you, Mommy, I love you."?
Player dude takes out a shirt, shakes out the wrinkles. Not a real Brooks Brothers. Not even a Nordstrom. He puts his arms through each sleeve, starts doing the buttons, shooting the cuffs like this was real silk. Or even 100 percent cotton. Player dude flips the collar and slings a no-brand tie around his neck, saying, "Screw your world record, lady." Saying, "I am so, so out of here."
Above us on the TVs, the ugly dago dude, I'd bet that his under-tan goes two years back: a decent week in Mazatian with clouds the last two days, then, a few months later, a weekend in Scottsdale, maintenance-box tanning, a week grilling in Palm Springs, a long stretch of fading, and finally a week in Palm Desert for that kind of smooth, dry finish. Not a satin-smooth Ibiza tan. Or one of those coppery Mykonos fag tans. That ugly wop dude on the TV sports a greasy shine thick as cooking oil. A tan sexy as a thin coat of dirt.