“Holy shit,” Jack said. “If that happens the goddamn thing could be distributed all over New York in a few days, and that would be the ball game. What do you think we should do?”
“It's a long shot,” Mark said, “but I think we ought to look up some of these porno houses and see if we can locate it. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me, although it doesn't make much. After we get a hold of Art, maybe hell have a better idea. I left a message at his house for him to call me as soon as possible, and my answering service will take the message.”
“Why don't you give them a call now and see if Art has got back to you?” Jack suggested. “He should know about this as soon as possible—it would even be better if he came with us.”
Without a word, Mark got up, went to a pay phone, and dropped in a dime. Just from watching him, Jack could tell Art had in fact called his answering service. Jack went over and watched as Mark scribbled down a phone number. He recognized the area code as being Boston. Before Mark had even hung up, he had got a handful of change from the cashier, and when he returned, he dialed the Boston number and fed in lots of quarters. Arts voice soon greeted Mark at the other end of the line. Mark told him the bad news, and it was obvious that Art was pretty upset. He decided to fly straight back to New York on the first plane and meet them down at forty-second street. He thought it would take no more than a couple of hours for him to get back, since he was close to the airport. Meanwhile, Mark and Jack were to circulate around among the forty-second street porno houses, and see if they could find the film.
In seconds, the pair were on their way. Walking up and down in the strong light of the chilly afternoon, Jack felt the absurdity and the hopelessness of their task. There were literally thousands upon thousands of places the film could have gone, anywhere on the east coast. It would be sheer luck if it had stayed in New York. They began by dropping in to places that sold dirty movies, and viewing them one be one—but that was taking a lot of time, it seemed unlikely that the film could have been copied and put into distribution already. But when Jack tried to get the names of the distributors from the retailers, he had no luck. It was obvious that they thought he was a cop, and they weren't talking. Finally, Jack hit on a new ploy. While Mark dragged one of the porno sellers around his store buying three or four movies, Jack looked through the papers on the store's desk. It was not difficult for him to find an invoice with the address of a wholesaler on it, and he committed it to memory. Then he and Mark left.
They just had time to check out this one place before Art was to meet them, and since it was in the Village, they grabbed a cab and sped down to the address. When they got there, they were surprised to find that it was a brownstone on a side street, and there was nothing to indicate that it was a porno wholesaling operation. Mark went up to the door and rang the bell. This was going to take a lot of balls, but he had picked up the name of the retailer whose store they had been in on forty second street, and he was ready to try and bluff his way in. A short, balding man, in a business suit covered with cigarette ashes, opened the door cautiously, and peered out at them.
“Hi,” Jack said. “I'm the owner of a chain of movie houses in Montreal, small ones, and we're looking to pick up some stock down here. Jake Smallberg—you know up at that store on forty-second street—told us that you would be able to help us.”
“How do you know Jake?” the man said, pulling out a cigar, and lighting it, and puffing smoke into their faces.
“I don't know him too well,” Jack said, “but his name was given to me by a friend of mine from Canada, who'd bought films in New York before. I don't know whether he bought any from you, though. He usually buys in lots of about a hundred, so I don't know... do you do that kind of volume?”
As soon as Jack got the question out of his mouth, he knew he had made a boo-boo. He sounded too much like a cop, wanting all that information. The man, obviously intrigued by the possibility of selling a hundred of his crappy movies, was at once interested and suspicious. “I don't talk about anything like that,” the man said. “I don't talk about what kind of volume I do. I'm not even the owner—I don't even know who the owner is.”
Jack could plainly see that that was bullshit. “You just sweep the floors, eh?” Jack said.
“Are you a cop,” the man asked, “or what?”
“If I were, I'd be a little smarter than this, wouldn't I?” Jack said. “Anyhow, a partner of mine is coming in this afternoon from Boston, and we're going to do a lot of buying. Are you interested in selling?”
“Well,” the man said, “like I told you, I don't even know who the real owner of this place is—I just work here. So if you're a cop, it won't do you any good to bust me. But I can show you some of the stuff, and you let me know if you want to buy any. Then I'll find out if we can do business.”
“That's fine with us,” Jack agreed, “but I'll tell you—we just want the very latest stuff, we don't want any chance of getting something that's already been shown in Montreal by this other guy.”
“We're just running off a new batch of prints— they've been made in the last month. You won't get anything that anybody has ever seen before. Come on in.”
Jack looked at his watch. It was going to be close for meeting Art, so he suggested that Mark go pick him up and bring him back, while he went in and looked over the films. As Mark left, Jack whispered to him, “Tell Art to bring a pocketful of money—it might come in handy.”
“Right,” Mark agreed, and disappeared. Jack followed the seedy looking man into the brown-stone, and was lead up to the second floor, into a room with bookshelves full of film cans. “O.K.” the man said, “where would you like to start?”
Jack figured he had some time, and was sort of interested in the films. He looked around him, bewildered. He had always thought that there had to be dozens of stag film distributors in New York, but with all the material before him, he could imagine that this place alone could supply the whole east coast. Beyond the room in which he stood, there were other rooms, filled with shelves, jammed with film cans that reached to the ceiling and lay scattered on the floors. “How about if we go by categories,” Jack suggested. “Let's start, say, with group scenes, regular heterosexual stuff, and then maybe go on to lesbian and homosexual stuff, and maybe finish up with a couple that just have one person in them.”
“Fine,” the man said. “Do you know how many of each you're going to want?”
“The group scene stuff is really popular,” Jack said. “I guess we'll probably want about thirty of those. Naturally I don't want to look at all of them all the way through—that would take forever. But if you could throw them on the projector and just let me get an idea of what they look like in general, I can decide on them pretty quickly.”
“Let me get some help in here,” the man said, and waddled off to a back doorway. He opened it, and yelled up the stairs—“Teresa! Will you come down here for a second? I need you to set up a couple of projectors.”
There was an answer from somewhere above, and noise on the stairs. A short, energetic, and strikingly beautiful girl, clad in blue jeans and a halter top, came bounding into the room. Jack thought she was young, maybe only eighteen or nineteen. He also suspected that she had found a place in some of the porno films that he was about to see.
“This is Teresa,” the man said. “My name is Ben. And you're...?”
“Jack,” he replied, trying to think whether he should give his real last name or a phony one. “Jack Garney.” He had decided that it didn't make much difference—they weren't going to know who he was.
“Teresa,” the man said, chewing on a cigar which had for the moment replaced the cigarettes that seemed to flow past his mouth like an endless river, “set up two projectors, and run through that pile of new films over there. Start with the group stuff.”
Jack sat back in an old rocking chair that was incongruously placed amid the frenetic chaos of film cans, and in a second, there was a screen before him, and an im
age upon it. It was out of focus at first, and Jack thought it was some kind of micro photograph of an amoebae. But when Teresa shifted the camera lens, it came sharp and clear—a writhing mass of bodies in a close-up. A huge cunt loomed up as the camera zoomed on it, and practically filled the whole screen. The photography was exceptionally good, but Jack could tell right away that it wasn't Mark's—besides, it wasn't any cunt that he knew. It was covered with a very light, symmetrical fuzz of curly brown hair, which spread like a fan above the top of the slit. As the cunt came closer, and the girl's legs parted, the darkening of bunched hairs at the slit suddenly became lighter as the slit opened, and he was faced with a towering clitoris standing guard over a delicate valley. He felt his rod start to rise slightly, and glanced over briefly at Teresa, whose light, slim body was working smoothly as she put film into the other projector. She acknowledged his glance, her wide, brown eyes flashing, and moved her shoulders slightly so that her pendulous breasts swung back and forth in her loose halter.
Jack looked at a little more of the movie and than asked Teresa to wind the film forward so he could see what happened later on. When she had done this, he said, “O.K., I'll take that one. Wrap it up. By the way—how much are these?”
“We'll work out a deal later,” the man said. “You know, most places that distribute to film houses rent out the films, but we sell them. That means that you get these sixteen millimeter prints—and as you can see, they're fine work—for just a little over what you rent them for. Then you can do anything you want to with them.”
“That sounds good to me,” Jack said.
After they had gone through portions of about ten films, and Jack had committed himself to buying four, Teresa whispered something in Ben's ear. He nodded, and said “Well, go ahead then—if you're needed up there.” Then Ben turned to Mark. “Teresa has to go upstairs—they're shooting some new movies up there. Maybe I can get someone else to help here, or maybe we could stop—I need to get some lunch.”
At that moment, the doorbell rang, and it was Mark, returning with Art. “Here's the man with the money,” Jack said, introducing Art to Ben. Then, turning to Art, “I've already picked out a few good ones, but it's going to be a long process.”
“That's O.K.,” said Art, managing to hide his disturbed state fairly well. “Let's just keep on looking....”
“Listen,” Ben said, “if you want to, you can come up and watch us make some of these—afterward, we'll be in a better position to show you some more, because I'll have more help.”
“That's fine with me,” Jack said, and Mark and Art agreed. They followed Ben upstairs to the fourth floor of the brownstone, which contained two very large rooms which were strewn about with lights, with beds in the center of them, and a few stagey-looking pieces of furniture beside them. The cast was all assembled, and included three girls and two guys. Jack, Art, and Mark sat down on a low couch in the back of one of the rooms and watched the production begin. As Jack had expected, it was filmed from start to finish with directions being shouted out by a man who supervised the cameraman. The lights came on, the camera started rolling, and a red-head named Rosalind walked out onto the stage and sat on the bed, clad in clothes that made her look like a school-girl. Like Teresa, she was fairly young, and slim. She wore knee socks, a short flared skirt, and a white print blouse. She even carried a couple of school books as props. She threw them down on an end table beside the bed, then jumped up onto it. Then she grabbed one of the books, and following the directions of the man directing the show—whom they learned was named Ron—began to leaf through the book. After only a few seconds, however, she pretended to be bored with the book and absently put her hand on one of her breasts, squeezing it gently, as if milking it. She was lying on her stomach with her face to the camera. She unbuttoned her blouse, and pulled one of her breasts out of her bra and began stroking the nipple. Her breasts were very unusual. That is, the nipples were. At first sight, they seemed to have holes in the center. Jack had never seen anything just like that before. He wondered whether she had ever nursed a baby. But as she began to tease the nipple with her finger, it began to puff out, and the hole in the center disappeared. The nipple became a very large, round, hard button. She did the same with the other, and then sat up straight, crossing her legs and allowing the camera to probe beneath her dress to her panties, bursting with a full red-haired pussy. She turned herself on more and more, gradually stripping off her clothes, and fingering her cunt, and opening it up to the camera. Ron had the camera coming very close, and as Rosalind's cunt started to water he focused directly on the slit. At that moment, one of the male characters entered. The camera zoomed quickly back from Rosalind's cunt, and showed her turning her head quickly toward a guy named Sam, who entered from the right. Rosalind made a mock effort to cover herself up and look as though she hadn't been doing anything, but Sam threw himself on her, and a struggle ensued, which ended up with Rosalind acquiescing in a sixty-nine for the benefit of the camera, gluing her mouth enthusiastically over Sam's enormous cock and stroking up and down like a pro.
The movie progressed rapidly, and when it was done—by which time it had managed to include all three girls and both guys—another one was started immediately. The three were amazed to find that it took only about an hour and a half to make three movies, and Jack knew that they would not be cut or edited—they would be printed and distributed just as they were made. The operation was very smooth, and Jack figured it brought in a hell of a lot of money. During the action, Ben sent out for lunch for everybody, which they munched on while they watched the proceedings, and Art even donated a dill pickle to one of the movies. After it had been in and out of several cunts, it was given back to him, and he ate it.
It was getting rather late, and Art was getting fidgety, but Jack figured that if there was any way they were going to get his film back, they were going to have to make some pretty good connections with the New York underground film world, and they seemed to be well on the way to doing that. Jack couldn't imagine there being too many places as big as this, and he figured that there was a good chance that if the movie had been fenced to somebody, it would end up here. The trouble would be finding it here. There were so many films.
After a while, they went back downstairs, and began searching through films again. Jack could see that it was going to take forever. During the shooting of the movies upstairs in which Teresa had played an essential part, he had more than once caught her grinning at him and generally sending him signals. She seemed to be very young, and very straight forward, and out of place in this environment. He guessed that she was just an oversexed young lady, who had found a way to make a pile of money, but who didn't really have that much in common with the people she worked for. She seemed bright, articulate, and lively. While Art and Mark were looking at film upon film, and agreeing to buy about half of them, Jack managed to take Teresa aside a second. He figured it wouldn't look too suspicious— the most Ben could suspect was that he was trying to get a piece of ass off her. They talked quietly in a corner of the room, with the whir of the projector in the background.
Jack took Teresa by the arm, and looked straight into her eyes. “I need to tell you something,” he said, “because I need a favor, and perhaps you can help me. If you can, it might be worth a lot of money to you.”
Teresa looked at him strangely, but perhaps wondering whether he was really a cop after all. “I make enough money here...” she said.
“I know,” said Jack, “but I'm talking about a lot of money—like maybe a thousand dollars, or two. I'll tell you our story, because I trust you for some reason. We belong to a group of what you might call swingers here in New York. We're not from Canada at all, and although we'll probably end up buying a lot of films from Ben, we're never going to use them for anything. What we're really doing is looking for a copy of a film that we made ourselves—that was stolen out of Mark's car last night. It's a film of all of us, doing some pretty basic things, and if it ever got
copied and distributed, we could really be screwed. The thing is, it's really a good movie—probably better than any we've seen so far—so if somebody wanted to sell it, they could probably get a lot for it. Do you have any idea how the hell we could find this movie?”
“Well,” Teresa said, “things are a lot clearer now than they were before—I didn't think you looked like any owner of pornography houses. I think you're probably looking in the wrong place, though. If the film was stolen, and if the person took it knew what they were doing, they would take it to a guy over in the East Village, and we'd get it from him if he wanted to sell it to us. You see, we make our own films here, and then we also buy some from various other distributors, but we don't buy from people directly. This guy, though, hell buy anything. I'll tell you what. Finish up your business here, and when I get off work I'll take you over to his place. Now if he knows that you're in the film, he's just enough of a bastard to try and blackmail you for it. Would you recognize it by the can, or anything?”
“If the can is still the same, we'll recognize it. It doesn't look like any of the cans you have around here.”
“Right—well, finish up as soon as you can here. I can get off in about an hour, and we'll go then.”
Jack went back and reported his conversation with Teresa to Mark and Art in whispers. They sat around for another forty-five minutes looking at films, and Mark and Art decided on about twenty all together. Then they said they would have to leave, although they would come back the next day. Ben almost fell on the floor when Art pulled out a roll of hundred dollar bills and paid cash for the movies on the spot. But he managed to get himself together enough to throw them in a box, and show the three men to the door. They waited, as arranged, on a nearby corner for Teresa.
Escapades of a Porno King Page 9