Not Safe for Work

by Michael Estrin

  I’m not sure why Dean switched to Spanish or what exactly the shit-machine is, but before I can ask for clarification I notice that Dean is in a pagination rhythm, rocking and clicking like he’s about to get sucked into a Quark-hole.

  “They’re publicity whores,” Sunny says. “Getting mainstream PR is the lifeblood for these fuckers—that’s where you come in.”

  I look down at the press release, which has three flowery quotes about the deceased. I wonder if Dean and Sunny are serious. I should’ve asked about this organization’s commitment to serious journalism, but that ship probably sailed in the interview when the soon-to-be-fired publisher asked me about dildos being jammed into buttholes.

  “Here’s a number for the company,” Sunny says, handing me a piece of paper. “Call that first, then run down the numbers in the press release to confirm. Two sources—two!”

  “All right,” I say. “Then what?”

  “Then write the story,” Sunny says, as if what to do next is obvious, which I suppose it is.

  “How many words?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dean says. “This is the Web, dude.”

  I look at the magazines and wonder if Dean calls everyone dude, or if it’s my new nickname.

  “Longer is better,” Dean continues. “If you write it long for the Web, I can chop it down for print.”

  I nod like I understand, but I don’t. Dean says something about going back to “layout mode” before putting his headphones on. I catch the muffled bars of a Grateful Dead song, probably “Sugar Magnolia,” which is entirely predictable for a dude Dean’s age.

  Sunny turns her attention to something else. I get the hint and turn for the door.

  “Call if you have any questions,” Sunny says. “And when Booty gets in, send him back.”

  ***

  When I was in school, my professors told me that newspapers regularly assign low-level obituaries to cub reporters. There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, the stories usually don’t require much heavy lifting—a few phone calls and some research in the paper’s morgue.

  But more importantly, obituaries are about as immune to fuck-ups as you can get in the news business because you can’t libel the dead. Even the most half-assed hack-job won’t get the paper sued. Memorializing the dead is like training wheels for a cub reporter in much the same way that dissecting a body is how medical students become doctors.

  I consider this before Sunny’s warning reminds me that, basically, my main task here is to make sure the dead guy is, in fact, dead. Incorrectly reporting someone’s death never came up in my journalism classes, despite that often-repeated anecdote about the news of Mark Twain’s death preceding him.

  My dead guy is Angelo “Big Juggs” Picati. It says “Juggs” in the press release, which identifies him as a pioneer in the field of titty-fucking, which explains the sobriquet. The press release also identifies Juggs as the 58-year-old owner of Legit Productions, which is now being run by his son, conveniently nicknamed “Little Juggs.”

  I pick up the phone and start to dial the number Sunny gave me. But after punching in the 818 area code, I realize that I don’t have any questions. Rereading the press release doesn’t help.

  Do I just ask if Big Juggs is dead? It seems rude. But it’s also my job. Still, there must be a tactful way to handle this. I think for a minute and decide on a little subterfuge. I will call Legit Productions and ask for Big Juggs. The response, I figure, will most likely tell me if the man is alive or dead. It’s more cowardly than classy, but Big Juggs isn’t just my first assignment, he’s also my first dead guy.

  “Hi, this is Heywood...” I say. There’s a gap of dead air where my last name is supposed to go. A reporter is supposed to identify himself with his last name, but something gives me pause. You don’t use your real last name in porn, even if you aren’t actually in porn, right?

  I put the question out of my head and continue.

  “I’m a reporter for The Daily Pornographer, and I’d like to speak with Angelo Picati—Big Juggs. Is he there?”

  My voice is unnatural and strained. I find it hard to say I’m looking for Big Juggs without giggling a little. But it doesn’t matter. The woman on the phone is crying so hard I can’t make out anything she’s trying to say.

  I find myself scribbling the word dead on a legal pad. But I’m not sure if crying is really confirmation, so I ask a direct question.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I understand this may be a difficult time, but I need to confirm—is Big Juggs dead?”

  There’s silence for a moment. Then, in a strained voice the woman on the other end says, “Yes, he’s dead. Didn’t you get the press release?”

  “We did,” I say. “That’s why I’m calling. I need to confirm...”

  “Confirm? Who would lie about something like this?”

  Briefly, I consider telling her that I’m not really sure who would do such a thing, either. But instead I hurl another question at her, so as not to get sidetracked.

  “Can you tell me your name, for attribution?”

  The crying starts up again.

  “Just run the press release, jerk,” she says before hanging up.

  I look at the receiver in my hand for a moment, then hang it up.

  “Rough one, huh?”

  The voice belongs to a grinning, pudgy guy about my age. He has just enough scruff on his face to call it a beard. He says his name is Booty Blunt.

  “It’s a nom de porn—booties and chronic are my jam,” Booty says. “You got a porn name yet?”

  I shake my head no.

  Booty blows kisses to each of the autographed headshots on his wall. I hear the sound of a bubbling bong when he turns on his computer.

  “Sunny says she wants to talk to you,” I say.

  “Fuck that noise,” Booty says. “What are you working on?”

  I explain the obituary assignment, angling for some advice. But instead Booty says, “Another fucking dead guy—the old-timers be dropping like flies. Figures...the way things are these days...”

  “How’s that?”

  “No country for old pornographers, you know?”

  I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. Booty steps out, leaving me with a dead pornographer and canned quotes.

  I make a few phones calls to the numbers listed on the press release. Everyone I speak with rehashes their quotes. I try and pull something out of them by asking each if they have a special memory of Big Juggs. But each source gives me the party line—Big Juggs invented the titty-fucking niche, and he was a “legend.”

  When I get to the number for Little Juggs, I expect voicemail. Instead a cheerful man picks up the phone and waxes poetic about how much his father meant to him and to the industry. Little Juggs talks about his father the way D-list celebrities on those VH1 specials gush about pop culture icons they’ve never met. Hungry for a good quote, I eat it up like a dog.

  “And can you tell me what this means for your business?” I ask Little Juggs.

  He pauses before answering.

  “Unfortunately, we’re filing for bankruptcy,” he says. “It’s this internet thing—social media. Pop wasn’t hip to that—he was old school, you know?”

  I find myself writing old school for no apparent reason.

  “It’s a real shame. Pop dies and the company goes with him.”

  “That is a shame,” I say.

  “Yeah, but he had a good run—Big Juggs left his mark...on a lot of chests!”

  Little Juggs laughs a little. I scan my notes to see if I need anything else.

  “Just one more question, if you have a second.”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you tell me the cause of death?”

  “The cause of death?”

  “Yeah, I mean how did he die?” I say, trying to rephrase my question in a less clinical way.

  “Natural causes,” Little Juggs says. “He died of natural causes.”

  I write natural causes on my
legal pad, and Little Juggs hangs up before I realize that I have no idea what that means.

  Chapter 3: Clean copy, dirty words

  Sunny and Dean scan my story. There are no typos, which seems to please them.

  “And you confirmed that he’s really dead?” Sunny asks.

  “I got confirmation from his son and the receptionist,” I say. “Two sources.”

  “That’s nice clean copy, dude” Dean says. “But next time, don’t use the word fuck so much.”

  “Huh?”

  “You wrote fuck seven times in this story,” Dean says. “Eight if you count the headline: ‘Titty-fucking legend dead at 58.’”

  “A lot of those were quotes,” I say, defending myself as Dean strikes the offending copy with a red pen.

  “Oz doesn’t like us to use foul language if we can avoid it,” Sunny says. “He has a real bug up his ass about making porn into a mainstream business, as if these dirt balls are going mainstream.”

  I smile like I understand, but I don’t.

  Dean tells me to email him the correct, fuckless story so he can publish it on the website. Then Sunny tells me to catch up with Booty.

  “He’s going out for a set visit,” she says. “Tag along, learn something.”

  “Do I write a story?”

  “You better,” Sunny says. “We need a minimum of three stories a day from you.”

  “Can I pitch a story?”

  Sunny looks at me like I’m an idiot, which actually seems rather kind. I get the hint that the spoon-feeding won’t last long.

  “Little Juggs says Legit Productions is filing for bankruptcy,” I say. “There’s a hearing the day after Christmas.”

  “You ever cover a bankruptcy before?”

  I shake my head no, deciding not to tell her about the time in college when I broke the news that the student assembly was insolvent and therefore unable to book Weezer for the spring fling. My advisor called that one a beautiful piece of investigative journalism. At the time, the story was a bummer because I really wanted to see Weezer. But thinking about it now, the real bummer is that the story remains my best writing sample. I’m just barely hanging on as a professional journalist, and after my first assignment I doubt that this job will lead to anything but the unemployment line.

  “OK,” Sunny says. “Cover the hearing. Maybe we can stretch the obit into a feature for the mag.”

  “Death of a pornographer,” Dean says. “But we need art. And there should be skin. Maybe a retrospective of the juggs Big Juggs made famous, that sort of deal.”

  Dean has a wide, vacant smile plastered across his face. It’s the kind of smile you’d expect from a used-car salesman, only instead of lies and lousy deals, Dean takes a perverse interest in death and tits. I don’t know what made Dean such a creeper, but I’m pretty sure the job hasn’t helped him on a human level.

  Back in my office, I gather a few supplies—pens and a reporter’s pad. I’m going to join Booty for a set visit. But before we leave the office, there’s an “uh-oh” sound from my computer.

  “That’s Oz,” Booty says, pointing to my screen. I look over at the monitor, where I see a brief instant message from the man who signs my paycheck:

  B professional

  Chapter 4: Fuck-Whores 8

  We’re heading north and west, deep into the Valley, which gives me time to think about how I can squeeze art, with skin, into a feature about death and bankruptcy. Booty drives, which is good because my car is still running on empty. Such is the nature of a new job before the first payday.

  I decide to use the drive to ask Booty for some professional advice. For me, porn journalism is uncharted territory. Ever since the interview, I’ve adopted a philosophy that’s best described as fake it until you make it. But that could be a long road considering I never even knew there was such a job as porn journalist, until I saw an ad on Craigslist. I applied because I figured things couldn’t get much worse than going broke while writing night and day for content mills. But chatting with Booty it’s clear that I have a lot to learn.

  “I. Love. This. Job,” Booty says as he exhales from a one-hitter.

  Booty’s weed smells like citrus fruit and cheap stripper perfume.

  “But it’s like the Good Doctor said about the music business,” Booty says.

  For a second, I think Booty is going to lay the quote on me, but a searching look crosses his face.

  “Take the wheel,” Booty says.

  He reaches for his cell phone and I take control of the car. A second later, Booty finds the quote he’s looking for.

  “Oh yeah, here it is. ‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.’”

  Booty takes the wheel back. I laugh politely, hoping that a shared moment of humor might chip away at my neophyte status.

  “Seriously, don’t trust anyone,” Booty says, straining to be heard over Anthony Kiedis’ frenetically sad voice.

  I nod like I understand, but I don’t.

  “People can’t be trusted around money,” Booty continues. “Look at Wall Street.”

  Booty doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy who follows the stock market, but given the current economic malaise, you’d have to be a nut, banker, or industry shill to trust a bank.

  “I read Matt Taibbi,” Booty says. “I know what’s up.”

  We pass a block that Booty declares “butt-fucked and left for dead” by the Great Recession. It’s all weed shops, pawnshops, and fronts for Medicare fraud in this part of the Valley. Occasionally, there’s a lonely Indian restaurant, or a donut shop.

  “And you definitely can’t trust people when it comes to sex.”

  Booty stops his Honda Civic at a light at the edge of a residential community. The crosswalk is counting down from eighteen, which means Booty has enough time to pack a quick one-hitter and puff. He doesn’t offer me a toke, but I don’t take it personally. Such is the nature of being the new guy at an office with an undefined substance abuse policy.

  The light changes. Booty smiles as he hits the gas hard. All four cylinders of his beater push us forward with a mighty noise and unsatisfying momentum.

  “Sex and money,” Booty says. “You can’t trust people when either one is involved, and porn has them both.”

  Booty turns onto a residential street. He parks in front of the only house on the block with a driveway full of cars.

  “So what are we doing here?” I ask.

  “It’s a set visit.”

  “I know, but...”

  “The main thing is not to do anything that will get you fired,” Booty says. “Oz fires people all the time. That’s why there was an opening for you.”

  Booty straightens his baseball cap, checks his camera, and stuffs his reporter’s pad in the back pocket of his baggy jeans.

  “Just chat up the girls, or whoever, and see if there’s a story,” he says. “We’ve got to do six stories.”

  Booty heads for the front door and I follow a few steps behind, wondering how my stoned mentor has managed to keep from getting fired. I also wonder how we’re going to do six stories about a film called Fuck-Whores 8.

  ***

  My first impression of a porn set is that it smells like cheap pizza and baby wipes. The pizza is lunch for the cast and crew. The baby wipes are for the mess, both professional and culinary. The floors are dirty enough to negate the five-second rule and the lighting rigs throw off enough heat that I instantly regret wearing a sweater.

  Immediately, Booty locates an Asian woman with rock-hard fake breasts and pointy nipples that could take out an eye. I surmise that she is one of the fuck-whores.

  I briefly make eye contact with a guy in a towel who’s jamming a folded piece of pizza into his mouth. He ignores me and focuses on his slice, cleaning his greasy fingers on his hairless chest. The oil from the cheese glistens slightly under the lights.

 
; All at once, I am keenly aware that I am the new guy—the interloper. It’s kind of like that first day at a new school, holding a tray in the cafeteria, searching for a friendly face. Except half the people I see are half-naked, and none of the faces are friendly.

  “Who the fuck are you, man?”

  I catch the smell of cigarettes and Old Spice before I see the man who wants to know who the fuck I am.

  “Closed set, asshole,” the man says, getting in my face. He’s tall and sturdy, and he wears a heavy black leather duster. He extends his left arm to push me out the door, but I’m already backpedaling.

  “Johnny, he’s with me,” Booty shouts from behind a wall of silicone.

  Johnny—whoever he is—has closed the gap between us, his right arm coiled, fist aiming at my face. My feet think faster than my head, but without direction they slide on the linoleum floor. I tumble back into a grip and fall flat on my ass. The grip drops a box of hot pizza onto my head and everyone laughs, even Johnny.

  “Put that on the fucking blooper reel,” Johnny says. “That’s going on YouTube, sucka!”

  “Johnny, this is our new reporter,” Booty says, reluctantly parting company with the porn star.

  “Oh shit. Sorry about that, man.”

  “No problem,” I say, because I’m not really sure what else there is to say.

  “Johnny Toxic,” he says, holding out his hand as both a greeting and an offer to help me up.

  I take Johnny Toxic’s hand and suddenly I’m vertical again.

  “You all right, bro?”

  I nod yes, somehow placated by my newfound status as a “bro.”

  “OK. That’s lunch everyone!”

  ***

  Johnny Toxic makes gonzo porn, a concept Booty explains as we watch a blonde woman suck her costar’s cock with the enthusiasm of a postal worker at the end of a double shift.

  The word gonzo pays homage to gonzo journalism. But this is porn, which isn’t the sort of industry where a word like homage gets a lot of traction. The idea, Booty explains, is to put the viewer into the scene in much the same way that Hunter S. Thompson inserted himself into the story. Except it’s not that highbrow. Most pornographers just think Thompson was a badass rebel who devoured dope and women in massive quantities. They also see Johnny Depp when they picture the famous outlaw journalist, because none of them actually read Thompson’s book, but they all saw the movie.