by Charles Bock
Honestly, about the only thing that got Ponyboy excited anymore were the red videotapes from Jabba's office.
Each started the same way: with an unfocused, shaky shot from a handheld video camera.
Low-resolution focus. A cheap motel room. A dim and scantily furnished apartment. Half-barren, badly lit. A woman lounging on a couch. Sitting on the edge of a bed.
After a second or two, the picture was honed, and came in with a fine-tuned clarity that allowed the viewer to make out the types of flowers on the bedsheet print.
She was in or around or just leaving the flower of her youth.
She had the fresh face and tight bod of a high school student.
The dumb unworldliness that showed no awareness whatsoever of her sexual power.
The enhancements and lingerie and crucifix tattoos that certified her as a stripper.
The razor scars that documented all the nights she had not brought back enough money to her pimp.
The gleam of someone dangerously unstable.
Most seemed nervous, at least a bit uncertain. A good amount glanced toward someone out of the camera's view, which was a minor distraction.
A voice from behind the camera. Throaty. Deep timbered:
We have some new talent here today.
The beautiful and lovely Appolonia.
Nice to meet you, Silky.
Mei-Ling, is that how you pronounce it?
You're how old?
And you're a dancer, correct?
Tell me, what do you like most about dancing?
Why are you trying out for us today?
Great. Great. What's your favorite part of sex?
What's the biggest dick you've ever had?
What's the craziest sex thing you've done?
Craziest place you've done it?
That's cool. Let's see your tits.
Wow. Real tits are taboo in this biz. Like how kinky is doing it on a bed.
Ponyboy kept waiting for one to show some personality, shed some insight into her life. Nothing doing. The interviews were wheels spinning in mud: too basic to have been scripted, too pat for epiphanies. The young women waved their hair back and out of their faces and twirled loose ends around their fingers. They smiled big and pretty and uncertainly, playing along as best they could, trying to get through the butterflies, doing their best to vamp and sass and be flirty, drawing out their answers as if to tease. —Twenty-three years old. —Twenty-uhm-five. —I turned eighteen three weeks ago.—I'mgood at being bad.—I'ma nasty girl.— I'm an exhibitionist, so what that means is I like being naked in front of lots of guys for money.
Mid-answer, the sound could disappear. Some words were purposefully overdubbed, replaced by static, probably to protect those who might have needed protection. Sometimes the girl just stared through the questions.
Eight and ten years, she answered.
Three mont. Three mont in America.
No in school.
No in job.
That's some pooper you've got there, went the director.
Stick it out.
Bend over and stick it out for the camera.
Yeah. Give us a little show.
Take it off, yeah all of it, slow and sexy, yeah, like you're on stage, give us a good look.
Don't be embarrassed—what, him? Our photog. For the magazines. Don't worry about him. He's seen bush before.
The lens zooming in for an absurdly close close-up: a pubic mound that had been shaved bald. Shaved to look like a heart. The rare holdout, thick and curling and wild.
There you go. Beautiful. You, my dear, have a beautiful pussy. Now play with your pretty pussy. Go ahead. Just like you do at home.
If she liked that, asked the interview voice. How that felt.
The talent giggled, or smirked, or ignored him. She kept her eyes shut and strummed and the screen flashed white from the bulb of the still camera guy. For a count the camcorder shook and was out of focus, then everything was back and clear, coming from a medium distance now.
An overtanned, unshaven man stood by the side of the bed. The musculature of his upper body was beginning to sag and he was naked, except for a pair of blue braces on his knees. He was stroking himself.
Ready for your woodman? the interviewer asked.
A coy smile, maybe a pleasantry. The woodman lurched and shoved his tongue down her throat. He put his hand up her crotch. Whenever he grabbed the top of the woman's head and started guiding her face downward, Ponyboy noticed, the streetwalkers and porno vets did not protest, but went with it, spitting on their hands, smoothly widening their jaws so that their teeth did not scrape the skin. They bobbed their skulls, jacked their hands up and down. Pros knew how to pitch a man's tent, as well as how to override the gag reflex. Also they had a trick where their fist pumped up and down and it looked like they were deepthroating, but in reality only the head was in their mouth. In this and many other respects, watching a seasoned veteran try out was exactly like watching a regular porno; which is to say that Ponyboy was not the least bit interested.
The sections that held Ponyboy's interest, that had him forgetting about his plans and his girlfriend and what was going to happen next, that sprung him to life, those were the truly amateur ones: the girls who gagged and threw coughing fits and looked dumbly to the camera for help and guidance, the strippers and party gals and dead-enders and nymphomaniacs who figured they'd had plenty of sex before, and so of course they could manage this. Ponyboy liked watching the ones who understood this was not going to be the same kind of night they'd spend with a boyfriend, who knew this was not going to be a session of gentle and sweet lovemaking, and yet still remained clueless as to the significant differences between uncaring and promiscuous and even quid pro quo sex, and just what they had signed on for here. How could they know? They were desperate creatures. They had their own concrete reasons for arriving in front of those cameras. How the fuck could they know?
And it was when the blood had accumulated in the base of the woodman's penis, and his wood had revealed itself to be a full-grown sequoia; when, without compunction or pause, the woodman was pounding the girl through the gamut of positions inherent to a porn scene; when the director was calling out, You like that, baby, and Let me hear you scream, and Fuck her like a jailhouse boy; it was when the woodman increased his pace and the director shouted Fuck her like her daddy used to, and the woodman slapped her ass and spread her cheeks and laughed directly into the camera and plunged into her as deeply as he could, and the director screamed Break that colt and Who's your daddy now? when this happened, what always got Ponyboy was the face of the girl. The pulse of worry as she realized she was in too deep. The pain. The abject terror. What Ponyboy got off on were the girls who grabbed the bedsheet and held on for dear life. Who tried not to look as if they were being split apart. Whose legs buckled and gave way. The girls who had to lie down and fan themselves with a hand, then had to search to find which side of the bed the camera was shooting from so they could start staring at the lens again. The girls who gasped and winced and curled their upper lip and gnashed their teeth and shut their eyes. Who checked out and shut down, their faces freezing with distance and shock, and who then were told, Hair, hair, hair. It was the girls who ignored the welling tears and, through their shocked, victimized stares, compliantly looked at the camera. Who grunted from the force of the next thrust and wiped away the strands of hair and forced their tightly shut lips into a smile.
Your high-end garbage, your fake amateurs, even them tryout videos, in all of them, the money shot was as the name implied, the most important part, the payoff for all the guys, both on and off camera. Porno women never swallowed for this reason, because lots of your suits and mooks needed an on-camera money shot to trigger their own orgasms. The woodman would make eye contact with the chick. He'd warn I'm gonna pop. He'd pull out and quick like a rabbit she'd be off her back, on her knees, making sure to face that camera. Cut to the dude's head all jerking back. Now cut a
gain, that first hard burst and the overflow, thick white drops scattering into her hair and her eyes. Smart motherfuckers delayed their own burst. Waited until after that first on-screen gush. You make it to those precious seconds after the girl's tonsils are splattered; now she's regurgitating the money shot and letting it gurgle all over her lips and down her chin, she's sucking that cock with a sexy laziness, draining its last drops and looking up at her partner. Your smart mother-fucker he's pumping and holding and ready to burst. That whore on the screen is nowhere near as pretty as Cheri, nowhere near close to being as good in the sack as Cheri, and all of a sudden this plan seems possible to Ponyboy, an event that might actually happen.
A rustle from the next office.
The cleaning staff doing its thing a ways down the hallway.
Lincoln Ewing shut his eyes and shuddered and then slumped forward. He took a breath and his heart fluttered like a baby hummingbird's wings, and he felt the same depression he always felt immediately after an orgasm, this intense sense of deflation. The smell of ejaculate strong and embarrassing. From the periphery of the hallway, the vacuum cleaner moving closer. He just sat there with his pants around his ankles, an excess of sperm sticky down the side of his fist and along his wedding ring. He was in no great hurry to hit the remote or grab a Kleenex from off his desk. In no hurry whatsoever to proceed with the rest of the night, let alone with the rest of his life.
Those girls, Lincoln would find himself thinking.
Where do they get all those girls?
Chapter 6
6.1
Ghostly light filtered from the streetlamps in diffuse pockets, giving the parking lot a desolate, almost virginal glow. The Plymouth plunged into an opening in the sidewalk, its front bumper scraping against the pavement, its trunk flying open and slamming back down. A harsh squeak rose from the chassis, as if someone were torturing a cat, and the Plymouth came out of the bounce, riding the dregs of its momentum. White smoke came from beneath the hood and the junker eased its way toward the rows of unoccupied gas pumps.
Newell remained jammed against the passenger door, as far from Kenny as the vehicle's confines would allow. A sound like the blast of a twelve-gauge came from deep inside the engine. The car stopped rolling; immediately Newell pushed open the door. He stumbled out of the shaking hull and his shorts slipped and Newell jerked the waistline upward. Heat rushed to his face; he had to control himself to keep from looking backward, checking to see if Kenny had seen his underwear. He left the door open behind him and hurried away from the car.
Whatever the time, it was way, way past his curfew. Beyond this, Newell wasn't sure. He wished he were in bed, although the moment he opened the front door to his home, a thunderstorm was surely awaiting. About the last thing Newell wanted to deal with was Hurricane Lorraine. Not that he wanted to be stranded with Chester the Molester, either.
He felt a taut line aimed his way, a concentrated focus that tugged at the back of his neck, warm there, and he increased his pace—away from the car, from the watching eyes, from anything the Molester might have to say.
He rushed past the side-by-side phone booths without noticing them. Pressing his palm on the glass, Newell pushed on the door. An electronic chime accompanied his entrance and overhead fluorescence stung his eyes. He'd believed getting inside would make him feel better; but the store came off as too clean and cold for comfort. A few stragglers mulled without enthusiasm: two crones in the closest aisle, grimly sitting on stools and pumping coins into video poker terminals; a scruffy guy in a John Deere baseball cap doing something over by the hot dog rotisserie; some frat boys noisily opening cooler doors and arguing about imported beers.
Newell was approaching the register counter when his eyes caught sight of the midget—or maybe it was a hobbit, but some sort of fully formed miniature type person was sitting on the counter, his tan slacks dangling halfway to the ground, his muddy hunting boots swinging forward and back. Newell could not help but gawk. The dwarf paid no attention, he was leafing through a biker magazine, pointing out something to the counter worker, a tub of goo in an orange smock.
There was no better destination for a troubled boy than the candy aisle, no place offering a larger measure of safety: the triple deck of bins; the inviting colors and shiny wrappers; chocolate bars; chocolate bars with peanuts; white chocolate with peanut butter and real peanuts; chocolate bars with nougat caramel centers surrounded by white cream filling . . .
He had not made it a quarter of the way down the aisle when the entrance chimed again.
“Just an overheating engine. Should be back on the road in no time.”
Newell froze and stared at a bin of chocolate dollops, each one wrapped in shiny foil. Distaste spread through his mouth; the chiming remained in his ears, extending, repeating.
A voice from the kiosk interrupted: “In or out, buddy.”
Kenny quickly stepped into the store and the chime stilled. Looking slightly embarrassed, he slunk to the opening of the candy aisle. Now Newell's former friend shifted his gaze; the boy felt Kenny's palpable dismay, his unspoken desperation: How bad is what happened? How mad are you?
The thing about being hyperactive, doctor's orders turned candy aisles into a giant tease. You could look and you could even touch, but tasting was off-limits. You had to settle for an apple. You couldn't have soda. Even the joys of orange concentrate were off-limits. Orange concentrate isn't orange juice, Newell, and even if it was, that's still too sweet. When you'd been officially diagnosed as hyperactive you were placed in the same category as the kids with their own sets of holidays and students whose breathing problems kept them inside at recess. By all accounts, you weren't normal. You were a spaz. And the king commandment of the playground was that protesting your spazziness only proved how irredeemable a spaz you were. So on the one hand there was no arguing against your spazziness, while on the other, attempt to prove that your body was fine and dandy and just like everybody else's—if, for example, at lunch, you found someone willing to take your weekly allowance in exchange for some chocolate chip cookies—well, then, ten minutes later, turns out, you could not sit in place without thrumming your fingers. You were jumpy, you were abrasive, you did stand up in class and babble and wave your arms, reaffirming to the teacher and your fellow students and yes, even yourself—you really were a spaz. So there wasn't any way out. You were either a spaz or you were Lord God King Spaz.
Pretty much the only thing that made sense, if you could, was not to go in either direction.
Newell kept his head down and trained all his attention on the middle and bottom bins. His hands stayed in his pockets, and he pulled up his shorts, fighting against the gravitational effect of all those nickels. Kenny's eyes were still on him, Newell could feel them. But with his head down and low, the boy was able to look up, through the top of his eyes, at the elevated glass-circle thing—that reflective oval they hide the video cameras behind. In this way, Newell, without seeming like he was looking, successfully snagged a peek at the thin young man who brought up so many strange emotions inside of him: Kenny, blurred and gray and sticklike.
In the small featureless gaze from the mirrored oval ahead of him, Newell felt the looming worry, the concentrated focus—Kenny's need to be acknowledged, unavoidable, inescapable.
And implicit within that need, something else.
If a classmate wronged him, when that kid's birthday came around, Newell crossed his arms atop his desk and buried his head and refused to sing along with the song (not that he got to eat the stupid cake, but at least he showed them). In first grade, Newell had done a show-and-tell about the merits of grapes and cherries, as opposed to the impact of sugar on your teeth. His back rigid as a yardstick, he'd stood at the front of the class and delivered his report, swelling with an odd pride, because his condition made him special. It was nice to feel that way, even if he'd secretly remained envious toward the other kids for the way they got to devour candy without limits. Though Newell had acted pr
oprietary about the taste of skim milk and walnuts, it had been just that, an act; the sugar-coated cereals still called to him, the forbidden appeal of caffeine magnified in his psyche.
Newell does not apply himself consistently appeared in the handwritten comments on his take-home report cards. Newell has trouble respecting other people's personal space, explained the apologetic and encouraging young teacher. Newell is uninterested in any conversation or subject that he is not the center of or expert at, said the jarhead disciplinarian at St. Andrews. If such a conversation occurs, he frequently makes a point of disrupting it.
Again, no matter how things played out, which direction he chose, the boy was screwed. Ergo, it was only natural to play both sides. Grab as much as he could.
By the same token, Kenny was waiting, seeking some sort of acknowledgment from Newell, searching for what might even have been forgiveness.
But not giving someone what he wanted, that came with its own charge. And not giving it to him precisely because he wanted that thing, this had its own propulsion. Spite came with the taste of your own blood.
A taste to which Newell was not accustomed.
But maybe could grow into.
He leaned down to the bottom troughs, where all the loose treats were—gum squares wrapped in the colors of the American flag, gelatinous animals sealed in plastic. Newell pretended to examine a few small, dense cubes of chocolate, then put them back down in the wrong bins. Discreetly, he checked different areas of the store. Moving so as to be out of view of the counter dorks, he positioned his back to shield his actions from the overhead glass mirror. In one fluid motion, Newell reached into a bin and scarfed up a handful of Old Glory gum singles. A deft move deposited them into his front pocket.
Newell waited for something to happen but nothing did: the scruffy guy was still loitering by the microwave; the frat guys were shouting about one another's tastes in brewski; and the dwarf was on that counter, kicking his legs and showing his biker magazine to the register blob.