The Monkeyface Chronicles

by Richard Scarsbrook

  “Adeline, it’s not a big deal. Just put on some different pants, and let’s get going.”

  “It is a big deal!” she shouts, “And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not standing in front of Robert Raycroft looking like a sumo wrestler.” She throws herself face-down on top of her bed. “I’m gross. I’m disgusting.”

  I sit down on the bed beside her.

  “Adeline, you look great,” I say, meaning it completely. “You look fantastic. You make my heart race, you . . . ”

  “Don’t lie to me!” she says coldly, rolling over on the bed with her back to me. “I’m fat and bloated and I’m not going to Sneaky Dee’s looking like this. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But, Adeline . . . ”

  “I’m not going.”

  She pushes her face into her pillow to mute the sound of her crying. I reach over to touch her.

  “Go away,” she says. “I just want to hide now.”

  “But Adeline . . . ”

  “Go away.” She reaches back and pulls the pink comforter over herself.

  I’m not sure what else to do. Maybe Dennis will be able to help me; he seems to be doing pretty well with women these days.

  Directly outside the entrance to Adeline’s building I see a huge billboard advertising frozen microwave dinners. Lit up with bright white spotlights is an airbrushed Praying Mantis model, who says, “Don’t settle for nice. Be AWESOME!” She might as well be one of the Little Colour Girls, chanting “Fat-a-line Brown! Fat-a-line Brown!”

  As I swing open the door to Dennis’ apartment, it strikes something. A digital video camera, mounted on a tall tripod, falls over and clatters on the floor. From the couch in the living room, Dennis and his female guest look over their shoulders, first at the fallen camera, then at me.

  “Philip!” Dennis cries out, “What the hell are you doing here!”

  “Who’s that?” the woman asks.

  “It’s my little brother,” Dennis says.

  “It’s extra for a threesome,” the woman says.

  It takes me a moment to absorb the scene. Mounted on stands in the corners opposite the sofa are two white umbrella-like things, with a bright white light in the centre of each. Between the two light umbrellas there is second video camera setup, like the one I just knocked over. A third camera is mounted on the ceiling over the couch.

  All these cameras and lights are aimed at Dennis and his female guest, who grips the back of the sofa, her knees wide apart on the seat cushions, her back arched, and her butt angled upward. Dennis stands behind her with his knees bent, his groin pressed firmly against her behind. Both Dennis and the woman are naked, except for their socks; hers are thigh-high black nylons, his are white tube socks with blue and red stripes. Their sweaty skin glistens in the glare of the camera lights.

  “Well?” the woman asks.

  “Let’s just finish this scene,” he says. “I can edit this part out later. Philip, go wait in the kitchen or something, okay?”

  I am more than happy to oblige; witnessing just a few seconds of Dennis in the middle of a sex act will provide enough raw material for a month’s worth of nightmares. I stand in the tiny apartment kitchen, staring at the pile of dirty dishes decaying in the sink, listening to the woman mechanically recite, “Yeah baby, yeah baby, yeah baby.” When she finally stops, Dennis ambles into the kitchen with his semi-erect penis wagging from side to side.

  “I thought I told you to knock first,” he says.

  “I wish I had.”

  He opens the refrigerator, bends over to root around inside.

  “Dennis,” I say, “could you please put on some pants?”

  “Aw, come on, sport,” Dennis says, pulling a beer from the cluttered interior of the fridge. He straightens, then snaps the condom off from the end of his wang, tossing it in the sink with the putrefying dishes. “You come equipped with the same love-rocket as me, don’t you?”

  Actually, it looks like Michael and I scored higher on that particular roll of the genetic roulette wheel. I’ve never been into bragging about my equipment or swinging it around, though, so I ignore his question and say, “Just put some pants on, okay?”

  “Fine,” he says, shrugging. “Didn’t know you were such a prude. Just let me go pay Desiree . . . unless you want to have a turn with her before she goes.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You’re still a virgin, aren’t you? She’s still got another fifteen minutes on the clock. Oughta be enough time for . . . ”

  “Not interested. Really.”

  “You do like girls, right?”

  I just scowl at him, which, with my facial configuration, is not pretty. “She’s not the lawyer you told me about earlier, is she?”

  “Yeah, right! I didn’t make it past lunch with that one. She slapped me so hard I saw stars and little birdies.”

  Desiree walks into the small kitchen, with her mess of purplish-red hair now tied back. She’s wearing a leather miniskirt and red high-heels, but she’s still naked from the waist up. Mathematically spherical breast implants protrude from her bony frame, and her nipples are flattened and stretched into ovals. Her naked torso is about as sexually stimulating as a pair of streetlight globes on a post.

  “Wanna do up my bustier, honey?” she says. Strangely, she’s got a soft, maternal voice like an old Kindergarten teacher. She places the lacey lingerie over her chest, and turns around.

  Dennis clanks his beer bottle down and fastens the buckles on the back of her bustier.

  “Thanks, honey,” she coos. “You got my money, baby?”

  “Brown envelope on the side table,” Dennis says, “same as last time.”

  Desiree clip-clops out of the kitchen to retrieve her earnings, and Dennis swaggers out behind her, scratching his bare behind and whistling the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. She peeks into the kitchen and blows me a kiss, then leaves the apartment with her brown envelope full of cash.

  Still reeling from what I’ve just witnessed, I sit cross-legged on the living room floor; I don’t want to risk transferring any of Dennis and Desiree’s passionate emissions onto my shorts by sitting on the couch.

  Dennis emerges from his bedroom, clothed in a ratty old pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt with the slogan I saw on the handbill earlier today: Your Hometown Hardcore Hero — www.hornydennis.com. He switches off the umbrella lights, plucks each camera from its mount, and connects them to his supercomputer.

  “Come over here, Philip,” he says, “and observe the magic of digital movie production.”

  I get up from the floor and stand behind his chair.

  “So, I gather the raw footage from three different angles, right? Then I use this video editing software to break the footage into scenes. Twenty minutes from each camera cut together makes an hour-long movie. Thanks to the magic of digital editing, I last three times longer than the average guy! Then I upload it to my website, and lonely, horny guys all over the city send me money for the privilege of pulling their carrots while they pretend they’re me. Sweet, eh?”

  “You couldn’t think of a more legitimate business to get into?”

  “It’s totally legitimate,” Dennis says. “I provide for a human need. Every guy needs to clear the snorkel once in a while, and I provide the means. I lure ‘em in with a couple of free thirty-second clips, then I charge ‘em $19.95 a month for access to the site, or $49.95 for the entire year. Plus, I throw in a Horny Dennis T-shirt absolutely free! Then I automatically renew their subscriptions, so it’s a perpetual profit-generating machine.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?”

  “There’s an auto-renewal clause in the fine print,” Dennis says, “which no guy who’s in the middle of spanking his sausage will ever pause to read. They just click the ‘I Agree’ button to keep the video running, and I’ve got ‘em.”

  “Can’t they just call their credit card company and cancel the payments?”

  “No guy is ever going to file a complaint!
You think your average loser wants his wife or girlfriend — or more likely his mother — finding out he’s been paying good money to wax his flagpole to internet porn? They’d rather keep shelling out the fifty bucks a year than risk getting caught.”

  “Why do they pay for it at all?” I wonder. “Isn’t there tons of free pornography all over the internet?”

  “Ahh, Grasshopper,” Dennis wheezes, “there is tons of free stuff out there. That’s why you’ve got to find your own special little niche market. And that’s what I’ve done.” With a few mouse-button clicks, Dennis saves the hastily edited footage of his work from this evening and opens his web browser to www.hornydennis.com. “Whaddya think, bro?” he says proudly. “I designed it myself.”

  I have to admit that his website is as slick-looking as any I’ve seen. There is the now-familiar website logo and slogan, as well as a flashing banner that reads “Watch Horny Dennis nail a new sweetie EVERY WEEK!”

  “Every week?” I wonder. “How do you manage to find a new girl to, um, film every week?”

  “Well, the most profitable way is to meet a girl at a bar or something, and convince her to do it for free,” he says. “I always make sure she signs the disclaimer forms before we start. When I come up empty-handed, I just hire a hooker instead. It cuts into the profits a bit, but I’ve got a responsibility to my investors!”

  I laugh. Dennis is funny sometimes.

  “Besides,” he says, “you’ve heard the expression, Why buy the cow when you’re getting’ the milk for free? right? Well, I’m taking it one step farther: Why just drink the milk when other thirsty losers will pay to watch you drinking it? Hey, I just invented my own quote! Wouldn’t Captain Quote be proud?”

  “Yes, I’m sure our grandfather would be tickled pink to know that his eldest grandson is making his fortune as an internet porn star.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as a multimedia entrepreneur,” Dennis says. “But don’t kid yourself, bro — Grandpa knows the value of a dollar as much as anyone does. Regardless of how it was earned.”

  Dennis logs in with his password, clicks a few times, and a video opens with a close-up of his own face.

  “So, tonight I was hangin’ out at this little basement bar on John Street, when I met this cute little babe named Tammy,” Video Dennis says, in a strange tone of voice that is half Hallmark Hall of Fame Narrator and half gangsta rapper. “I wasn’t even lookin’ for it tonight, I just wanted to chill out and have a few beers, know what I’m sayin’? But this hot little chick Tammy just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and, as you boys know, Horny Dennis is more than happy to satisfy a woman’s needs!”

  “There’s always gotta be a story,” Real-Live Dennis says to me, “part of what they pay for is the story. They want to believe that something like this could happen to them the next time they go into a bar alone. They project themselves onto me for a few minutes, they madly pound their flounders, and then they walk away feeling temporarily satisfied. And I walk away with their credit card numbers.”

  They project themselves onto me. My grandfather said almost the same thing last week when he was talking about his career in municipal politics.

  The video cuts to a scene similar to the one I witnessed live: my older brother coupled with the so-called Tammy in various positions I’ve seen in The New Illustrated Art of Sex. Tammy calls out, “Yeah, baby, yeah baby, yeah baby,” just like Desiree did, like she’s reciting the words from a teleprompter.

  “Other guys get off to this?” I ask.

  “Ah, don’t act so shocked. Don’t tell me that you’ve never pulled the goalie, that you’ve never gone Hand Solo on Darth Vader’s helmet. Don’t tell me that you’ve never unloaded the love gun, that you’ve never helped put Mr. Kleenex’s kids through college.”

  He’s right. I cannot honestly say any of those things. Nevertheless, I couldn’t “pull the goalie” right now if my life depended on it; my penis has shriveled against my body like a frightened turtle. I feel like I need a hot, soapy shower, a handful of sedatives, and a dozen psychotherapy sessions.

  “I do my advertising exclusively around Toronto,” he says, like he’s trying to sell me a used car, “and I make vague references in my videos to places around the city. Then, local guys watch me, this average-looking guy, with an average-looking body and an average-looking apartment, have sex with a different babe every week.”

  He closes the web browser, and spins around in his desk chair to face me.

  “And that’s why they’re willing to pay for my site, even when there’s so much free stuff all over the net. They watch me having the life they fantasize about, right here in their own backyard, and they believe that they could do it too. So, Philip,” Dennis proclaims triumphantly, “I’m not selling porn. I’m selling hope.” He gets up from his chair and stretches. “I’m gonna have a shower now. I smell like Desiree.” He turns and wanders toward the bathroom and says, “If you want to familiarize yourself further with my work, my password for the website is ‘silverdollar1983,’ no spaces.”

  I think I’ve seen enough of Dennis’ work for one night, though, so I log into my email account instead. There is a new message from Adeline.

  Philip,

  I’m really sorry about tonight. It wasn’t quite the evening I’d had in mind for us. I wanted to call you, but your brother’s phone number isn’t listed. I hope you get this email. If you do, why don’t you meet me outside your brother’s building at midnight. I owe you an explanation for the way I acted earlier, and I think I know a way to make it up to you — see the attached photos for a hint.

  Love,

  Adeline

  PS — The beautiful man is what your soul looks like to me.

  I open the first attachment. It’s the photo I took of Adeline on the patio of the Hot House Café, her back arched against the back of her chair, her legs crossed at the knee, her eyes averted. If only she knew how gorgeous she is.

  The second picture is of the bronze lovers from the cemetery; intertwined, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. The impassioned expressions on the sculptures contrast dramatically with the empty poses of the women on Dennis’ website.

  The third photo is the close-up of the male figure’s face, lit softly by the diffused sunlight from earlier this afternoon. “The beautiful man is what your soul looks like to me.”

  The clock at the bottom right corner of the computer screen reads 12:08 AM. I jump up from the desk and run through the apartment door to the elevator, where I frantically jam my thumb against the down button. The elevator finally reaches the ground floor, the doors slide open, and across the foyer I see Adeline. She’s outside, sitting on the steps in front of the building

  I sit down beside her.

  Dennis has got a pretty good view from his apartment window, but the scenery around the entrance to his building is pretty grim: garbage dumpsters, cracked tarmac, the backsides of other buildings. A sandwich wrapper and an empty paper coffee cup spiral on the blacktop in a whirl of breeze. A car alarm bleats in a nearby parking lot.

  “Philip, I just want to . . . ”

  “Forget about it, Adeline. It’s okay.”

  One of the two overhead lights is burned out, so that everything casts a strange, sideways shadow. Everything is half light and half dark, including Adeline and me.

  “My period started just after you left,” she says. “My emotions always get knocked off-kilter when it comes.”

  “It’s okay, Adeline.”

  “You should see how crazy my mother gets when hers comes,” Adeline says.

  I contemplate for a moment how her mother’s craziness could possibly increase.

  “Listen,” she says, “do you want to come back next weekend, maybe pick up where we left off? We could see where Robert Raycroft is playing.”

  “Sure,” I say, “although I’m not sure I want to stay with Dennis again.”

  “You could stay with me. Dad’s leaving on a business trip Thursday night. He’ll
be gone for a week, and I’ll be all by myself.”

  “Our last hockey game before the playoffs is on Friday. I probably shouldn’t miss it.”

  “Oh,” she says, “that’s too bad.” She turns away, and her face disappears into its shadow.

  “I’ll come on Saturday, though,” I say.

  She turns back to me, and her face brightens again. “Okay. Good. Okay. I’ll see you Saturday, then.” She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now I’d better get home. I didn’t tell Dad I was going out.”

  Lightning and Flames

  This is the last game of the regular season for the Faireville Blue Flames Triple-A Junior Hockey Club. We are about to play the Clementville Lightning, a team that we destroyed twelve to one in our previous contest. Statistically speaking, this is a meaningless game. Even if the universe turns inside-out and the Lightning beat us, the outcome will be the same: we will advance to the playoffs in first place, and the seventh-place Clementville Lightning will have played their final game of the season.

  Nevertheless, it’s the biggest hockey crowd of the year at Faireville Memorial Arena. At most games we get about a dozen spectators, a handful of players’ bored girlfriends and a few hockey moms and dads, who holler helpful advice at their sons from the sidelines, like “Skate! Skate!” and “Finish ‘em!” Today, though, the arena is filled to capacity. People sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the wooden bench seats on either side of the rink, and those crushed in behind the boards where the Zamboni comes on and off the ice are tapping on the glass and taunting the Clementville goalie.

  Usually, the agitators from the Tabernacle of God’s Will would be assembled at the arena entrance, chanting and waving Music, Movies and Sports — The DEVIL’S DISTRACTIONS! signs, but today for some reason they’ve decided to allow Faireville’s hockey fans to enter the arena unimpeded.

  There is a red carpet rolled out at centre ice, and all the players line up, the Lightning in their Black and Silver jerseys on one side, us in our Blue and Whites on the other. The Tragically Hip’s “Fifty Mission Cap” blasts through the arena’s tinny loudspeakers, and a group of girls with faces painted blue and white cheer, “Faireville! Faireville!”