by Tyler Knight
“Who was that, Papi?”
I smile. “DVD Gangstas,” I say.“I’m in the male talent rotation.”
• • •
The shower is set to magma. Hospital tag on my wrist. I cough, shake, and cough some more. Droplets plink against the basin around me. I move into the denser, humid air and turn to face the nozzle. My hands brace against the wall, straddling the showerhead. Head bent down, I hack my lungs inside out in back-arching fits and my throat feels like I’ve gargled shurikens.
Eventually, but not today. Amanda sleeps. Her mouth naturally inclines up at the corners, hinting at a smile…like she knows something I don’t. She probably does.
She’s let me spend nights at her spot since I came down with this fever. Her idea. One day of sleeping at her place carried over to a few days. This is the first chance I have to sleep in a bed for a few days in a row, but I have to camp on the couch instead lest I make her ill. I still haven’t unpacked that bag because…the fuck if I know why, really?
The fever wouldn’t break on its own after a few days so last night she put my ass in a taxi for the ER.
• • •
No insurance. I wait amongst the knifed, the burned, and the left for dead who have changed their mind about dying and crawled into the ER waiting room. People are seen, and afterward, some of them leave. Some don’t. My name’s called over the PA.
• • •
I’m pulling my underwear back on underneath the gown to salvage some dignity when she zips in like a hummingbird. Clear skin. Firm calves. Bags under eyes. How old is she? She says, “Take your underwear off.”
“Can you put on some Barry White first?”
The doctor shakes her head.
She got the reference… She’s older than she looks.
She turns her back, dashes to a counter, and hovers there long enough to snap on latex gloves, then takes her stethoscope off of her neck and quick-steps toward me.
I need all my strength to climb onto the table. While in motion, there’s a sliver of a time where I may not make it up to the top on my own power, but I don’t let on. I sit. Though I don’t have an erection, I’m still pitching a mini-tent because I’m full commando under the gown. If I fold my hands in my lap, will that call unwanted attention to it?
She puts the business end of the scope on my chest, listens. “Take deep breaths.”
I clear a lingering tickle in my throat. “You know, this gown isn’t my color. I’m a winter.”
She glances at my pile of rubbish I wore to the hospital lumped on the chair. “I seriously doubt it matters. Stop talking. Breathe.”
Doc puts a disposable thermometer strip under my tongue, and steps out of the room. When she returns, she carries a goddamn lawn dart sealed in plastic… A syringe! She places it on the counter.
She reads my temperature and tosses the strip in the trash then she takes a swab of my throat.
“How long have you been feeling ill?”
“I dunno, two days?… Three?”
“And you’re just now coming in?”
“Yep.”
I can’t stop looking at the syringe. It’s massive enough to have its own gravitational pull. She places her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and says, “That’s stupid, you have a fever of a hundred and three. I’ll be back with the results of this culture.” She leaves again.
Chicks dig me.
I consider putting my underwear back on, but I doubt I’d make it back onto the table by myself.
No fucking way am I staying overnight and missing tomorrow’s scene… Almost have enough cash saved up.
I swing my legs, the paper rustles.
The doctor comes back into the room, pushing a stainless steel cart. The top of the cart has all kinds of shit on it.
“So, what’s up, Doc? Will I live?”
“Not if it’s up to you.”
I read her face for a sign of jest. Stoic.
“What do I have?” I ask.
“Strep. Bacterial pneumonia.” She snatches the syringe off the cart. She says, “Hop off the table, lift up your gown, and bend over.”
“But Doc, we just met, ha-ha-ha.”
“I don’t have time for games. There are many other people needing care.”
I say, “Aren’t you supposed to distract me with a sock puppet?”
“Please. Act like an adult.”
“This is gonna suck.”
“Good. Next time you’ll seek medical care sooner.”
“What happened to ‘Do no further harm?’”
She swabs my ass cheek. “Stop moving.”
“Can’t you just give me a pill?”
She sighs. “Let me do my job!”
I say, “I know, but—”
Doc says, “Relax your buttocks!”
“I’m trying.”
Okay, think of something else:
On my back, looking up. Argyle, knee-socked legs straddling my head. Amanda standing over me in a skirt. White cotton panties. Cooing in Spanish. She sits… I feel Doc wiping the injection site, slapping on a Band-Aid and then some tape.
“Get dressed.”
I walk over to the chair and balance myself against it as I pull on my boxer-briefs.
She writes something on a pad of paper with brisk strokes of the pen. She says, “The hospital pharmacy is closed for an hour so I’m writing you a ‘script. Fill it, and take all the medication until it’s finished even if you feel better…and stay in bed.”
She furrows her brow as she gives me orders. Under other circumstances I’d love to oblige, but fuck staying in bed and losing my slot in DVD Gangsta’s male talent rotation.
I say, “Listen, Doc, I’m not normally such a smart a—”
“Apology accepted. We all have our defense mechanisms.” She pushes the cart to the door. “Are there any questions before I see the next patient?”
“Yeah, can I get a lollipop?”
The corners of her eyes crinkle as she gives a hint of a smile, but it’s gone before it develops at her lips.
She says, “You can get out.”
• • •
The next morning I stuff my wallet and key in my pocket, kiss sleeping Amanda’s forehead, and go out the door.
I should be in bed like Doc said. I’ve got some reservations about going to work and possibly making my costar sick, but it’s a zero-sum business and I’m far from home free. So I’m gonna get that paper. Either it’s me or the next guy who wants my slot. Fuck the next guy. Besides, short of a dirty STD test result or oozing lesions, many studios will film you, sick or not. And there have been cases of directors and talent fudging STD tests, as well as directors filming blatant Herpes-afflicted crotches from their “good” sides instead of canceling a scene.
The first time you see burst-open Herpes pustules oozing from someone’s genitals, you are never the same. I saw my first two Herp victims on one set during a five-on-one gang bang scene. One of the other mopes had some sores on his dick head. It looked like his bookie held a Zippo lighter to it until it bubbled and popped. The mope passed his sores off as “razor bumps” from shaving, and nobody, not one person, protested.
But the girl. She had the porn affliction trifecta: Staph on her ass that she claimed was a spider bite; opaque, Gonorrhea-induced discharge seeping from her crotch that reeked of something digested alive inside her vagina (you’re only required to an STD test once a month these days, so you can carry STDs for weeks between tests), and Herpes that looked as though the girl shaved her pussy with a sand blaster. There is no testing for Herpes in porn.
Why in the name of fuck would you show up on set like that with the intention of having your diseases immortalized on film for thousands of people to see? Another mope, without a second thought, went down on her.
It’s sti
ll dark outside when I leave for the set, but my call time is early and I don’t want to risk being late because I miss a bus. That shit won’t fly in LA. (The caught riding a bus part, not being late. Everybody is late in LA.)
• • •
After several bus changes I get to the barrio where the set is located. An abandoned hospital. Vic Vermont, the cage fighter turned porn star, stands by the door, watching my approach.
I say, “Are you with the DVD Gangstas shoot?”
He points into the dark mouth of the building. “No, I’m shooting for Red Assholes films. There’s a lot of different shoots going on here today. The Gangstas crew is on the third floor.”
I look up at the building. Each floor sprawls the length of a football field. “Thanks, I’ll find it.”
I enter. Each step I takes greater effort than the one preceding it.
• • •
Dana Divine greets me. “Tyler, I’ve heard good things about you!”
“Really?”
She gives me a hug. “You’re burning up, are you okay, honey?”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, Stan said you did well for him,” she says, “and the number of black male talent worth a damn can fit into my SUV, so I’m excited to have you here. Speaking of good men, have you met Jack Hammer?”
She points to a dreadlocked kid bursting out of his black wifebeater with a Punisher skull on it. I need to get on creatine.
He offers me his hand but I counter with my elbow. He looks at the elbow for a moment, shrugs, and bumps it with his. Dana takes my copy of my HIV test and my IDs.
Dana says, “Alfred is shooting camera. I handle the ancillary issues. We’ve got two scenes before yours. I told him to push your call time back a few hours,” she shakes her head, “but he never listens to me.”
My body trembles. My eyelids feel weighted.
I say, “You got a place I can lie down while I wait?”
“Yeah, there are some old hospital cots around the corner but I can’t speak to their cleanliness.”
“That’s okay. Don’t care.”
“I’ll come get you when we’re ready for you.”
The cot. I curl up. Shaking. Eyes shut.
• • •
Eyes open. Hair soaked.
Dana says, “Welcome back to the living.”
I stir. Moan.
Dana says, “How much longer? Well, Alfred is shooting Jack Hammer’s scene right now so it won’t be too much longer.”
Dana, smiley. Crinkly foil triangles.
She says, “I saved you some pizza. I wrapped them for you.”
I moan again.
“Oh…okay. Well, it’ll be here if you change your mind later.”
Eyes shut.
• • •
I awaken feeling a bit better but still weak. My tongue is dry. Light filters through the dusty windows at the same angle as when I arrived, but when I look outside the sun is setting instead of rising. Different cars are outside. I set out in search of water. All the same items of video equipment lay wait in the staging area where I met Dana and Jack Hammer but nobody is there. Silent. I snatch a water from the ice chest and explore the hospital. Peeling paint. Office furniture and documents piled into corners. Medical equipment from the mid-century. Freddy Krueger would love it here.
Voices.
I stalk down the hall, down a flight of stairs, following them to their source.
“…or hold my cock steady.”
“Why can’t you do this yourself? Don’t be such a pussy.”
I peek in an abandoned examining room. Two guys. One with his eyes shut and his pants down. The other, fully dressed, but kneeling and aiming a syringe at the side of the first guys dick.
Walk away, Erik.
Too late. Needle Boy looks up. He says, “Hey, you. C’mere and gimmie a hand with this.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Cock Boy’s eyes are still squeezed shut.
I say, “You guys getting high or something?”
Needle Boy has a Boston accent. He says, “Nah, were caving.”
“What’s ‘caving’?”
“Caverject. I’m shooting his dick up to get him hard for my scene, yah know?” He clarifies, “I’m the director.” He turns back to the cock.
This time, Cock Boy speaks. “Look, if you’re not gonna help then don’t distract him, okay? Please, just leave!”
“Whatever.”
“Thank you!”
• • •
I return to the staging area. Fucking sounds from porn ghosts echo from various shoots occurring throughout the building.
Dana returns. So do my shakes.
Dana says, “Hey sweetie, we’re ready. Follow me to the basement.”
• • •
The basement, which reeks of standing water and sewage, could be a set from a first-person shooter zombie game. Industrial and damp. Pipes and valves jutting from the walls, and puddles welling on the concrete floor. Nothing obvious to fuck on… For that matter, where’s the girl? Dana and I stop next to a ladder.
A man twists his way through the labyrinth of pipes as he approaches, swelling his lats like a cobra. I’m tempted to start a bodybuilding pose-down duel.
He says to me, “Wanda said you were taller.”
“I’m six foot seven when I stand on my cock.”
He stares.
Dana says, “Tyler, Alfred. Alfred, this is Tyler.”
I say, “Howdy,” and offer my elbow. Nothing.
He says, “I already shot the girl’s part of the intro leading up to the sex. I’m going to shoot yours now.”
“Okay, but I left my vibrator at home.”
More stares.
Dana says, “Why don’t you explain the scene to Tyler.”
“Yeah…right. Remember the video for Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf,” where the girl is crawling through the sludge in the jungle? That will be you. You’ll start over there…”
He points to a console of switches and levers on the other side of the basement.
“…then you make your way through the maze of pipes on your hands and knees—and this is very important—like there is a deep need inside of you, but you don’t know what it is.”
“What is it that I need?”
Stares.
“So anyway, you’ll make your way through here and up this ladder…”
With my eyes, I follow the ladder up until my head is at a 180-degree angle with the floor. I feel unseen presence peering down at me.
“…to the top of this boiler tank where the girl is waiting for you. When you get there she’ll judo flip you over like in the video—be careful, there’s no railing—and she’ll attack the cock. I cleaned off the dead roaches and most of rat shit, and I even laid out a blanket so it’s cool.”
He stares again.
I start to tell him what I think of him and his plan when Dana says, “Wanda says you called her every day for weeks until you got on the male talent roster. Alfred, remember how much you worked for DVD Gangstas back when you were just starting out?”
• • •
The detritus-strewn floor chafes my knees raw. God knows what pathogens from the floor are invading my body through the countless takes crawling on cement.
My shaking now comes and goes in fits. On the ladder, I have to stop climbing twice on the way up to gather strength. The “set” is a platform no bigger than the hood of a Prius, high enough from the basement floor to have its own microclimate. Gasping, I crawl onto it and flop down to the girl. Her hair piles on top of itself in several tiers, resembling at once a beehive hairdo and a wedding cake, acrylic nails at a length that makes closing her fist impossible, and shoes with heels lo
ng enough to punch clear through a cinderblock… How the hell did she get up the ladder?
Alfred clings to the ladder, camera in one hand with its red dot blinking.
“Action!” Girl flips me, snatches my cock… Does things to me. Position after endless position… Finally, doggy. On my knees again, trying not to wince on camera… Maneuvering behind the girl. She backs up. I back up. We fuck. She backs up to adjust herself. I back up. My knee finds—nothing.
Dana screams.
“He’s okay, Ranishia snagged him before he went over,” Alfred says. “Thank God. I still need to get the pop shot from him.”
• • •
“Don’t stress, Tyler,” Dana says. “You’re sick. How you got hard again is beyond me.”
We’re back at the staging area. This scene put me over for what I need to get my own place but I have to smooth shit over with the Divines because Wanda will ask for a performance report on how I did today. I’m not giving up my slot in the rotation without a fight.
“Thanks, Dana. I’m not one to quit.”
Alfred says, “Yeah, well, you still took too long to pop and time is money. It’s your fault this production lagged and we went way overtime today. I’m docking your pay to compensate for location fees.”
Cocksucker! I could point out his fucked-up time management skills, but that would be a Pyrrhic Victory. Even after the partial theft of my money, I’ll still have enough for move-in costs.
• • •
Amanda wakes me. She speaks to me in Spanish. “I filled your prescription. Sit up…come on, sit up… Open your mouth.”
She puts a pill in my mouth, then holds a paper towel under my chin as she pours a few sips of water into my mouth from a cup of water. It’s still dark outside but I don’t remember how I got back. Where’s the bag? My old shoes?
“I gave you the top two drawers,” she says, “and washed what was worth keeping.”
My copy of Sartre’s No Exit stacked atop of Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night on her dresser… Well, our dresser now, I guess. What’s to become of this? How wise is it to live together before you know what the other person’s like at that point in a relationship where everyone stops being polite?
She says, “Tú eres el mío.”
For the first time in my life I feel the power of a woman’s unconditional love.