Death in Eden

by Paul Heald

  II.

  THE IVORY TOWER

  “You want to do what?” Kurland narrowed his eyes and repeated his question. “Explain this to me one more time.”

  Stanley had spent a sleepless night trying to figure out a way to sell his idea to his department chair, to Angela, and to himself. Once the shock wore off of seeing his former housemate talking about pornography on national television, the professor had asked himself a simple question. Had anyone ever done a serious study of women working in the porn industry? Johansson had talked as if having sex on camera were just another type of job. Then couldn’t it be studied like other jobs? Could this be the magic last chapter he needed to finish his book? Max presented the easiest hurdle. He had once enthusiastically approved a new course on “Sexuality in the Internet Age” to attract students to the Sociology Department.

  Stanley himself felt a fleeting misgiving about possibly legitimizing the porn industry by taking it seriously, but given the number of porn stars cropping up on talk shows and reality television, that boat seemed to have already sailed. Besides, his involvement would consist of professional interviews in a clinical atmosphere. His role would be academic, not cheerleading.

  Convincing his feminist wife that his plan was not the ultimate in sleaze would be a more challenging proposition.

  Stanley answered the department chairman’s question with a sober expression, heightened, he hoped, by the conservative gray suit that he was wearing. He sat in Kurland’s office, soft spring sunlight streaming in through the high windows behind his colleague’s desk. The spring day was perfect and so, he told himself, was the plan to finish his book.

  “You want the University to fund a trip to Los Angeles so you can interview porn stars?” Kurland paused and shook his head in wonder. “It’s brilliant! How come I never thought of this?”

  “Probably because your specialty is cooperative behavior among Appalachian farmers.” Stanley offered his most confident smile. “Does this mean I can do it?” He watched Max open his mouth to say more, but nothing came out. The administrator gave him a quick look and then scanned through a folder on his desk, murmuring underneath his breath and finally nodding affirmatively.

  Money was not a problem, given that the audiovisual equipment had long ago been purchased and money had been allocated for travel expenses, but there was one possible hitch. Kurland flipped the folder shut and tossed it to the side. “What are you going to do about the university’s human subjects committee?”

  Stanley groaned inwardly. He had forgotten that any interviewing conducted by a faculty member had to be approved by the famously obstructive and recalcitrant committee established to protect the rights of interview subjects. They had raked him over the coals and then taken six months to approve his list of questions for the pest control workers.

  “Shit, Max, I don’t have time to deal with that bunch of assholes.” He felt a familiar pessimistic wave pass through him. This was the first promising idea he had had for a long time and a bureaucratic technicality was about to derail it. He had no time to go back to the institutional review board and convince them that interviewing porn stars was an academic necessity.

  “Well,” the department chair nodded at this assessment of the committee, “let’s think about this. Aren’t you going to ask the same questions to the porn stars?”

  “Basically, yeah. We’re trying to measure the same kinds of attitudes, but I imagine the follow-up questions will be different, given what they do.”

  “Sure, but you can’t be expected to get spontaneous questions approved, can you? As long as your initial script is the same, I think we can wink-wink, nudge-nudge the substitution of adult entertainment workers for hairdressers.” He gave his younger colleague a broad grin. “Don’t want to create unnecessary paperwork, do we?”

  “Max, I love you!” He then explained his plan of attack to the fascinated administrator. The biggest problem would be setting up the actual interviews. When he interviewed lumberjacks, he had to go through the union, which had been a bureaucratic nightmare. Both the pest control and carnival workers had been non-union, but the companies that employed them were paranoid that he might be an undercover investigator trying to document illegal practices. It had taken months to win their trust, but the porn industry could potentially be cracked by exploiting his connection to Don Johansson, aka Dick Ramrod. Max admitted knowing the name, and there seemed little doubt that a cooperative producer could make arranging interviews much easier.

  As Stanley talked about the project, it became more real, and he began to believe that he could pull it off. The racy subject matter would certainly spice up the rather dry chapters that he had already written. Surely Angela would see the logic of his plan, even if she wholeheartedly disapproved of the profession he would be studying.

  “Okay, keep me up to date on your progress.” Kurland stood up and his tone got more serious. “I know this is a perfectly legitimate and promising line of research, but let’s not publicize it too widely, alright? Almost half the faculty is women now, and I don’t know what they’d think about this. And you’ve already got doubters among those who think all good research has to rest on numbers and statistics.” The two colleagues walked toward the door and paused. “Once the book is done, this will look like a serious study and I don’t think anyone will question it. But until then, let’s not look for trouble. Understood?”

  Stanley nodded, shook Max’s hand, and suddenly wondered whether he was playing with fire. If he was, he pondered while he walked back to his office, it felt surprisingly good.

  * * *

  Angela sat in bed with her laptop updating photos on two pieces of real estate where she was the listing agent, and trying to come up with a humorous new subject for her weekly newspaper column. She had just split a large commission with her best friend and colleague, Nanci Nguyen, and the closing day negotiations over a brutally ugly bird bath had the makings of a hilarious commentary on human irrationality. She had just finished describing the seller’s frothy billowing ear hair when Stanley slid into bed next to her explained his plan for salvaging his career by diving into a cesspool of porn.

  For someone who bought her bathing suits from Land’s End and had a hard time distinguishing between Penthouse and the Victoria’s Secret catalog, her husband’s proposition was a lot to swallow. While he earnestly explained his insane research plan, she scrambled for a way to push him in another direction.

  To avoid being labeled a prude, she tried to explain her reservations using internet poker as an example. Even though online money games were illegal, she had noticed the popularity of televised poker tournaments with well-dressed commentators treating the competition just like it was a sport. Now, all sorts of gear were for sale: visors, hats and t-shirts, and suddenly the general public viewed themselves as poker fans instead of victims of corporate gambling interests. Porn was being mainstreamed in the same stealthy way, from sex toys being sold by pretty “hostesses” on QVC to late night Girls Gone Wild ads on the edgier cable networks. She did not want her husband to give it all a patina of legitimacy.

  Stanley remained irritatingly calm during her disquisition, insisting that being a neutral observer was different than being a promoter. She was not so sure. After all, his avowed goal was to take the adult film industry seriously, and if he succeeded in making his comparisons with other legitimate businesses, wasn’t he part of the mainstreaming process? His response, depressing though it was, was hard to refute. Academic books by sociologists seldom sold more than five hundred copies, mostly to university libraries, so the chance of his chapter having any impact one way or the other was remote. This gave her pause, and she wondered for a moment what had motivated him to become a professor in the first place. Her own newspaper commentaries might be a little fluffy at times, but each one reached thousands more readers than his.

  But whether anyone read his book or not, the project still made her uneasy. She had to admit to herself that she simply did
not like the thought of him locked up in a hotel room studying voluptuous and uninhibited women who had sex for money. In theory, she trusted him completely, but she had put on twenty pounds since they were married and every year she had felt more out-classed by the lithesome students who flounced over to the house for the class parties he hosted every semester. Her husband was a handsome guy, and she had always felt a little insecure.

  “But Stan, no matter how the study is eventually received, I’ll be worried sick the whole time you’re gone.” She pouted as though her only concern was loneliness, but he saw right through her.

  “Don’t you trust me?” He looked eager to convince her otherwise.

  “Of course I do! But I sure as hell don’t trust them. Why should I trust a bunch of women that I’ve never met, who do what they do?” She folded her arms across her chest. “I know you think this is a good idea, but it’s such a bad idea!” At this point, the conversation started to slip away from her as he took the initiative in a dialogue where she felt like she was one step behind.

  He reminded her of how hard he had searched for an appropriate topic and then scooted in front of her and looked her in the eye. “How many times have you shown empty houses to men, alone?”

  “A lot of times,” she admitted, “but I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “Well, I trust you to be alone in bedrooms with men who are probably fantasizing about the sexy young broker at their side.” He cocked his head and looked up. “Have I ever worried about you?”

  “No, but I’m not like Nanci. I don’t have guys drooling over me all the time. And you know I have no interest in other men anyway.”

  “And you know that I have no interest in other women.”

  “Aaargh!” She pulled the pillow onto her lap and squeezed it. “It’s just not the same. I don’t show houses to porn stars.” She suggested that he conduct his interviews in some public place, but he explained to her that privacy was necessary and probably required by the notorious human subjects committee.

  Then she listened wide-eyed as the conversation spun out of control. He outmaneuvered her completely. He took her concerns seriously and found an irritatingly reasonable solution. All the interviews would go more quickly and smoothly if someone were with him in the interview room to work the camera and change the digital memory cards. Why shouldn’t she come with him and help out? They could stay in a nice hotel in Los Angeles and kind of have a second honeymoon. He leaned over and gave her a warm kiss to seal the deal even before she assented. While he went on and on about how wonderful it would be to travel with her, she realized she was trapped. She had to let him go, or go with him. He knew that she did not need to stay for work and that Nanci could handle her small number of listings while she was away.

  She frowned and worried a lock of hair. “Let me think about it.” She reluctantly concluded that whether she went or not, she would have to let him to go to California. The compromise he offered was just too reasonable to reject. She finally gave in with a long sigh. “What does one wear to a porn interview, anyway?”

  III.

  CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

  Stanley leaned against the airplane window on the flight to Los Angeles, wishing that Angela had been able to book the same connection. Although her friend and colleague could handle most of her listings while she was away, a botched home inspection had forced Angela to delay a day in order to hammer out a new sales contract with a pair of skittish buyers.

  He studied the familiar emerald topography of America’s heartland drifting slowly beneath him. Born in Illinois, in a small oasis of a town in the midst of endless rows of corn and soybeans, he had escaped to the University of Virginia for his undergraduate studies and then on to Penn for law school and his doctorate. Ironically, his best job offer had come from the BFU, back in the flatlands, back in the sea of corn. Even so, California evoked strong images for him. Early in his initial job hunt, he had received an offer from Belle Meade College, a small liberal arts school in a Los Angeles suburb. For two weeks, he had lived there in his mind, idling in a snow-free, laid-back utopia where his Spanish-style townhome teemed with tanned and fit neighbors ready to invite him over for a Margarita or an impromptu salsa lesson. Then, Max Kurland had called from the BFU, and he had done the most sensible and boring thing: taking the job that offered the best salary and the most funding for his research.

  Maybe studying the adult film industry would break him out of his rut. A clever Google search had found Donald Johansson’s email address buried in a pdf file listing the members of the Outreach Committee of a Los Angeles Episcopal church. His former fraternity brother had replied enthusiastically by phone a few hours later, inviting the professor to California to set up some interviews and introduce him to other major players in the field. They spent over an hour catching up and sketching out a workable plan of attack. Just as helpful, Stanley had found almost no serious research on adult films in the huge BFU library. The shelves were stacked with hysterical diatribes against porn and impassioned First Amendment defenses of it, but for every one hundred firmly-held published beliefs, he found one maybe one piece of actual data.

  He brought with him on the plane the only two books of real interest, both written by a UCLA professor of abnormal psychology who concluded, contrary to his initial hypothesis, that adult film stars were not typically mentally ill (or at least no more crazy than the general population in California). This was heartening news. If actresses ended up looking statistically like workers in other professions (maybe with the same levels of STD’s as insurance adjustors!), then he would have a publishable book that coincidentally bore out Johansson’s assertions in the television interview about the mundaneness of adult filmmaking. The sociologist didn’t consider whether the lack of academic interest should be raising any red flags.

  He turned his attention back to the book lying on his tray table. His love of reading had made law school surprisingly enjoyable, but once he had experienced sixty hour work weeks and mind-numbing document reviews during his summer clerkships, he had jumped at the chance for a doctorate and a career as a professor. Sometimes he wondered whether he should have figured out a way to practice law without being suffocated in a large law firm. Surely a nerd should be able to sit and read and do serious analysis without having a partner with a large yacht payment breathing down his neck.

  * * *

  Arriving mid-morning at LAX, Stanley found the expressway northbound blissfully clear all the way to the Van Nuys exit. He drank in the warmth of the sunny spring day and promised to make time to explore the mountains rolling scenically to the northeast. His sightseeing ended abruptly when he left the highway and drove his rental car through the jungle of scarred warehouses and potholed parking lots that led to the headquarters of Eden Studio. The business occupied a huge corrugated steel building with a single story add-on that served as entrance and office space. He frowned at the gritty scenery and was glad he had booked a hotel in an upscale adjacent suburb. Angela would not have appreciated staying in the junky mish-mash at the epicenter of the porn world.

  He pulled into the Eden parking lot, grabbed the old fraternity paddle that he had found in his attic, and got out of the car. He wondered once again what his friend was doing there. Nothing in Johansson’s past had foreshadowed such a bizarre choice of career. If he had gone completely off the rails, then the whole California sojourn could get really uncomfortable.

  Stanley pressed a button next to the glass entryway into the studio office and was buzzed in by a middle-aged woman with tortoiseshell glasses and a grim expression on her face. She did not bother to get up from behind her desk as she motioned for him to sit down in a small furnished alcove. “Mr. Johansson is in a meeting and will see you in a moment.”

  He glanced down at her name plate and gave her a warm smile. “Thanks, Miriam.” If she noticed his courtesy, she was not impressed.

  He sat down and looked for something to read. A table next to a sofa held recent
issues of Time and Sports Illustrated, as well as a trade magazine for the adult film industry. He picked it up and thumbed through it, stopping abruptly when he came to the casting announcements.

  “Oh my god,” he mumbled under his breath, prompting a disapproving glance from the secretary. The advertisements painted a sordid picture. A single production was asking for: Asian schoolgirl-type, must be flexible; mature brunette for foot fetish sequence; busty blonde for stripper role (dance experience preferred). Dozens of other ads called for every size, shape, race, age, and hair color of every gender and transgender imaginable. The only thing they had in common was the requirement that each applicant prove he or she or s/he was at least eighteen years old. He was staring open-mouthed at an ad for a production provocatively entitled, Starsky and Crotch, when the door to the office down the hall from him flew open and a stunning young woman burst out.

  She charged toward him. A thick mane of dark hair trailed behind her, revealing a finely sculpted face and a flawless cocoa butter complexion. She moved with the grace of a pagan goddess, her devastating body worshipped by a tight pair of blue jeans and a half-buttoned sweater. But it was the dark eyes that entranced him—even with a muttered curse on her twisted lips, Stanley thought this was the most compelling face he had ever seen. Her eyes flashed with anger as she swept past him and slammed the door, but the glare did nothing to diminish the impact she had made in the space of five seconds. He was still sorting out his visceral response to her when Miriam announced that Mr. Johansson was ready to see him.

  Stanley walked down the short hall to the open office door and peeked inside. Johansson was clearly agitated following the blow up with the woman, and he stood by a book case clenching and unclenching his fists. Stanley cleared his throat and waved hello with an ironic waggle of the Alpha Omicron paddle that he had brought with him. Johansson’s mood changed instantly and he strode quickly across the room to embrace his former fraternity brother.