CHAPTER 7
Shelves (or How I Failed to Star in a Pornographic Movie)
My father has a real throbbing work ethic. Can I put it like that? I guess I did, because it was powerful and strong, but at the same time it reverberated. If his work ethic was a sound, it would be a foghorn—nice to hear in the fog and helpful to the safety of fellow travelers, but hard to sleep to.
I have always felt both admiration for and aggravation by his steady dose of principled, hard work. I guess you could say he’s the ocean in our volatile post–climate change world, and I’m the seawall. He is a force that, in time, slowly erodes away all that resists. I know that sounds like an insult, but honestly, it’s more a tribute. But at best, we worked at cross-purposes. I was the “yawn” to his yang. To be blunt, he was industrious, and I was sluggish (am sluggish). I like to think that our master/apprentice relationship went just sideways, which is at least not down. Still, he tried.
* * *
—
As mentioned, he owned an electrical supply business, and that left open many opportunities for me to work there or help out on weekends, etc. I was a pitiable employee. I was like the Billy Carter of the place, a fun-loving embarrassment. People liked me, but I was completely inept at carrying out simple tasks. I broke more bulbs than I sold and lost many customers by wandering about the warehouse trying to find inventory without a clue where it was. Work was like a foreign language to me, which was all the more curious considering how easily it came to my father. I was good for a little light conversation and made a relatively easygoing lunch companion, and I could definitely nap at will.
The ability to snap-nap served me well in future employment. I remember, once, I took an order at the counter of my dad’s store, and the next thing I remember, I was woken up in a large box on the floor. I had actually taken an order, started to fill it, then found a box to take a nap in, never to return to the customer. That pretty much sums up my work ethic.
My father’s ceaseless attempts to right my ship led him to outsource my services to another company: a friend of his who ran a fledgling commercial phone-installation business. This was more likely than not some underhanded Trojan horse–style attack on this man, considering how detrimental I was to my dad’s company’s bottom line. My task was to build shelves in his new warehouse space to store his cables and wire and other inventory. A big task for a sixteen-year-old with no carpentry skills whatsoever.
The kicker was that I was working alone, with no help or supervision. Supplies were provided, including the lumber and tools to make the shelves. I had the whole summer, but time wasn’t germane in this practical experiment. It felt more like a thought experiment. Like Schrödinger’s cat, but in this case, if a boy is put in a room alone for two months with materials to build shelves with no ability to build shelves, is it only to serve to illustrate how a random subatomic event that may or may not happen in this room or outside renders the point of the task moot, thereby is there even a task at all if it can’t be performed, or can there be no task and a task simultaneously?
For about a week, I sat next to a pile of wood and listened to the radio in a state of quasi-suspended animation. I knew I couldn’t start, because then I would have to finish, and I knew that would be pointless since I would then have to answer for my work, which would have been definitively not shelves. Better to just wait. I thought maybe I could better explain having done nothing than try to justify the work I would have done. This convoluted logic was something of a comfort to me. And no one ever came around, so I was really in the groove.
After a few weeks, I had moved the wood around a bit and set up something of a model of where the shelves would be. It was more as if a toddler had been told to make shapes out of some wood. A guy who worked for the boss came by and looked at my work thus far and he shockingly gave his approval—a “keep it up.”
“So, yeah, I’ve set up the basic outline of where the shelves will go, and then I’ll start building them up, but I’m basically pretty sure I will build with this basic setup, unless it changes, which I doubt, but I want to make sure this plan works best before I really get the shelves up.”
“Sounds good, I’ll tell Barry.”
“Oh yeah, I’m hoping to really get started quickly now that I’m good with the setup.”
“Yeah, all right then.”
“But based on this, it could change, as in orient this way instead of that way? Right?”
“Yeah, that would work.”
“Good, just want to make sure this works best for the shelves, because, you get one shot at this.”
“Yup . . . back to work.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I knew now that stalling was my best quality and best hope for a reasonable excuse for never building anything. An acceptable nonconclusion to this job. So, the plan was as follows: I would keep moving the wood around in different configurations and would keep this up as long as possible. In the event of another supervisor coming by, I would state that I’d changed the plan so as to maximize the best outcome for the shelves. Hopefully this would get me through the next few months. At least, that was the goal. So I went back to listening to the radio and sipping iced tea. Another stretch of time where I was never visited. Just me alone with my wood. And then, one morning, quite early, a van pulled up and changed everything.
A man exited, with ankles shackled, led out of the van by some sort of uniformed guard. Barry, the boss, was there along with a couple of other employees. They signed some paperwork and then he was led over to me.
“This is Jerry Franklin, he’s going to be working with you for the rest of the summer.”
Jerry was smiling but had no teeth. He appeared to be either in his late twenties or his early fifties. Hard to tell based on the lack of teeth. I shook his hand.
“Jerry is on a work release program from the Walpole penitentiary and he’ll be with you till five every day. Jon, show him around and what you’re working on and he’ll work with you on the project.” And that was that. Everyone basically went their separate ways, and there I stood with Jerry from the Walpole prison. You know that feeling when you realize you have to spend an entire summer with a convicted felon? That’s how I felt.
The upsides right off: he was very friendly. I’m guessing getting out of jail puts one in a good mood. So chipper he was. And talkative. I had been talking to a pile of wood for the last three weeks, so company was welcomed. Also, the way he talked. Having no teeth makes people sound funny, and he did, like Walter Brennan singing “Old Rivers.” There was a lot of excitable lisping. The last (and for obvious selfish reasons) was that now somebody could actually build the shelves, which was a major relief considering I was increasingly on edge about the inevitable showdown with Barry when I would have had to confess that I couldn’t build shelves.
So I took the good with the bad in this case. Jerry had to be good with his hands, right? If you can murder, there’s a good shot you’re handy. And look, I was not aware he was a murderer, yet, but I was curious, considering I was alone in a warehouse with him surrounded by things to murder with, like hammers and nail guns and saws and screwdrivers and table saws and shovels and wire to strangle with and heavy-duty garbage bags to put me in, etc.
Jerry cased the place and stood around the huge collection of wire on spools, which were accumulating in one corner of the warehouse and the reason the shelves were being built—to store the wire.
“Thatsh a lotta wire.”
“Yeah.”
“You gosh a car?”
“Umm, yeah?”
“Coolth.”
The next day, the prison van pulled up and Jerry bounded out, bound. He looked extra happy. That big gummy smile. I hadn’t exactly slept, knowing I was working again with Jerry. He had told me he was in jail on drug charges and “some other stuff,” so it was still up in the air what “other stuff” meant.
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br /> “Gonna be a bishy day today!”
“Yeah.”
Jerry was lanky and strong, and very jumpy, like a puppy. He did have this positive energy, and that cut against my paranoia.
“Can you build shelves?” I asked.
He laughed. “I can’t build shit.”
“Oh, I assumed you could build, that’s why they brought you here.”
“No, man, I’m here becush a guy who knoth Barry put in a word for me and he help thet thish up.”
“Oh, ’cause I’m supposed to build shelves in here.”
“Oh, well I can help.”
“I don’t know how to build shelves.”
“Oh, did you tell them?”
“Not yet, no.”
He laughed. “Ain’t there nobody ’round here?”
“No, pretty much just me all day every day.”
“So you don’t do nothin’?”
“Not really.”
Jerry laughed hard again. “Thatff thumpthin’.”
He looked around.
“Okay, well, here’s what we can do.”
He led me over to the spools of copper wire and enlisted me to cut small lengths off each spool and put them in a box. Then he instructed me to take the box into my car.
“At lunch, we’ll go to the scrap-metal yard.”
I didn’t question it, and it wasn’t like I was going to take some righteous stance to a guy from Walpole who I had to work with all day, every day for the rest of the summer.
“It’s just some clippings, we won’t get in trouble.”
I drove him to the yard and we sold the copper clipping for around six or seven dollars. He was beaming. On the way back, he did the math. Six to seven bucks a day, at around three days a week, so as not to arouse suspicion, would net him close to twenty-five bucks a week, which apparently was a haul in prison. I was hesitant to make this a regular thing.
“Jerry, why don’t I give you some money every week, since I get paid, and then we won’t do this anymore, since we could get into trouble if we get caught.”
“No! Thatff crazy. I ain’t taking your money. We gotta earn it.”
I didn’t really understand the reasoning, but, again, he was in jail for “some other stuff,” so I decided not to voice my dissent.
After a few weeks, Jerry and I settled into a pretty comfortable relationship. He was making beaucoup money from his copper scheme and I was enabling his satisfaction. I started to realize that the more he was out of prison, the more I was in prison, doing his bidding every day, buying his lunches and driving him to sell his wire snippets. I was basically his bitch. But just like the majority of prison bitches, I was content as long as the relationship remained uncomplicated.
He regaled me with tales of how he was spending his money in jail. You know, cigarettes and Top Ramen. Very short stories. He was on the rise at Walpole, and I was helping, and he was generous with his praise. So I was abetting a very, very small criminal enterprise and essentially getting nothing out of it. It was like a really anemic Bronx Tale. And on top of it all, no shelves. About a week after, Jerry was in an excitable mood, and he said he had big plans for lunch.
“Today we’re goin’ to my coushin’s for lunch.”
“What?”
“I spoke to my coushin on the phone and we’re gonna go for lunch.”
“Okay.”
We drove to a three-decker not far from where we worked and walked up a half flight of concrete steps to the ground-floor apartment unit. A woman opened the door and hugged Jerry. He introduced me as we walked into the apartment. She was in tight jean shorts and a tank top and was maybe in her mid-twenties. I don’t remember her name, so let’s just call her “the cousin.”
We stood around for a minute in her kitchen and chatted. There was a smell that was unpleasant, but I was just trying to be polite and process the thought of eating lunch there. There were dirty dishes in the sink and a general vibe of uncleanliness. Jerry then told her to get changed. She went into the bedroom. It was, for sure, a curious moment.
“Are we going out?”
“No. Do you want to fuck her?”
“Ummm . . . uh . . . what?”
“On film?”
“On film?”
“Yeah, I shet it allz up.”
“Set up what?”
“Shet up to record you and her in the bedroom. We made it look like a hotel room.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, a porno about you and her fucking in a hotel room.”
Decent plot, but . . .
“What made you think I would want to do a porn movie?”
“You don’t?”
“NO!”
Now the cousin came out wearing a robe.
“He doeshhn’t want to do it,” Jerry blurted.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was being brought to do this.”
I think I had had sex once before, and that can best be described as my penis going into a girl’s vagina for a second and a half before I abruptly pulled it out and ejaculated onto my parents’ white shag rug. So, now, technically the second time, if agreed on, would be on camera with Jerry from Walpole prison and his cousin. I also didn’t know a great deal about the porn industry, but I didn’t think it was done on this scale. She handed Jerry a pre-tied bow tie. Jerry put it on.
“I was going to be the bellhop.”
There was a part of me that most certainly was interested in the proposition of doing it. I was sixteen. I was horny often enough without the opportunity of ever doing pornography, and as far as life-changing offers, this was definitely one, whether good or abysmally bad. There were too many questions. Did they have decent distribution? Would I receive an ownership stake? Was the cousin a patient lover? Do people enjoy watching less than three seconds of intercourse? Would this hurt my career opportunities both in and out of pornography?
“Well?”
“So what happens?”
“I show you into the room as a bellhop, holding this bottle of champagne, and you two go fuck on the bed.”
The cousin stared out blankly as if pondering her character’s motivation. It was a deceivingly simple story line. Couple goes to a hotel room. So many title possibilities. HO-tel, Motel 69, The Cummer’s Suite, A Room with a Jew, Turn-On Service, Go-Down Service, Dial B for Boner (I know that’s not technically hotel-related but I like it). I looked at Jerry with his bow tie hanging loosely over his dirty T-shirt and his come-hither-and-fuck-my-cousin grin, and I had a real thought to do it, if only for Jerry. I mean, I pretty much did everything for him. And what were the consequences if I said no? Would Jerry kill me because I wouldn’t have sex with his cousin? I was beginning to enter my Danger Zone: that place where I need a paper bag to breathe into, so as not to keel over. I said the first thing I could think of.
“I’ll be the bellhop.”
I realized only after I sputtered this out, the ramifications of this. In essence, it involved a cute way out for me, but via a wildly unorthodox scenario: Jerry fucks his cousin. When I realized what I’d suggested, I became even more tense, as in, was he going to kill me for even floating the idea of incest on tape? He looked over at his cousin, and she looked at him. There was no “light bulb” moment, but they did look at each other for an extended amount of time.
Twenty minutes later, I entered the cousin’s bedroom with a pre-tied bow tie around my neck and delivered the line, “Your champagne, sir.” An hour after that, I was back at the warehouse with Jerry, sitting next to a pile of wood, listening to the radio.
We never finished the shelves. We tried. We built a portion of them. I hope they kept them, because they were more public art than shelves. Jerry got in the van that last day of our job and he turned around and smiled and waved. Even though he fucked his cousin, I knew I would m
iss him. In any event, it was shot on Beta and it’s out there somewhere. If any of you readers are die-hard porn aficionados, keep your eyes peeled for the sixteen-year-old bellhop.
CHAPTER 8
The Threesome (or How I Failed to Quantify It)
There are different kinds of ménage à trois experiences. To be brief, I’ll break them down into three categories. The “intellectual threesome,” the “classic threesome,” and the “Benjamin threesome.” For the intellectual threesome, Carl Jung and his wife, Emma, and Toni Wolff serve as a prime example. Wolff was a student of Jung’s and became his lover. The relationship took place over several decades and became deeply personal and involved. It was, as I understand, primarily sexual to start but it evolved into a binding, evocative, and complex triad that fueled both discord and intellectual rigor. The “classic threesome” is more immediate and short-lived and involves, as a matter of course, clear liquor and lube. “The Benjamin threesome” is altogether unique.
Threesomes are not always smooth. Or at least, mine wasn’t. For some people, threesomes are natural. I’ve talked to people who speak of them like they are not awkward at all. Like, “Hey, I hooked up with these two girls last night and it was totally sweet,” or “I met these two guys at a bar and we went back to my place and went at it,” or “When I was in Canada, I had a threesome with this member of the House of Commons and his wife.” I bristle at sexual openness and easygoing attitudes.
For me, sex has always been an intensely anxiety-provoking proposition. Maybe it was the way I was raised: feral by wolves—wild, heathen sex wolves. Watching those wild wolves go at it all night and day can affect a child’s disposition on sexual mores. Sex is, admittedly, problematic for a lot of people, so I’m not a total anomaly. I’m a second-guesser when it comes to sexual behavior. There’re a lot of fits and starts with me. Like, fussing about and excusing myself a lot to go to the bathroom. It may just be a general lack of confidence, but is this turning you on?
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