King of the Perverts (4 page)

Interlude 3

The Gameshow

I did what anyone whose wife just gave birth to someone else’s baby might do. I drank, a lot.

It’s actually a good thing. I have a very low tolerance for alcohol in all forms and iterations. Hard liquor, beer, mixed drinks, wine spritzers. I drank it all. I went on raging benders that lasted for days. I got into fights, got kicked out of bars, had random sex with strange women. Possibly a man who looked like a woman, but I honestly can’t remember.

That was a bad week.

But that’s all it took was a week. I hit bottom, saw the light, made my choice to stop drinking. Moved on. Actually, the first morning I woke up puking and hurting from a hangover, I was pretty much done. Like I said, I’m just not much of a drinker.

This wasn’t a vow to never drink again so much as it was a realization that making myself sick was not only stupid but going to get boring really fast. And I was always better at quitting things anyway.

I tried to move on with my life, what little there was left of it. I no longer had a wife, no longer had a job, no longer had a future. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would wake up on my brother’s living room couch, but there wasn’t much of a future in that, either. His wife wasn’t going to stand for it much longer, having me camped out in her living room all day, watching soap operas and talk shows and doing absolutely nothing but moping and feeling sorry for himself. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t want a loser like that sleeping on my couch for very long, either. I knew I had to get off my ass and try to find something. A new direction for my life.

Or at the very least, a new venue from which to do my searching. Before I figured out my future, I had to do something with my present. That’s why I answered the ad in the newspaper. It was something to do. I had nothing else going on, anyway.

It was a vaguely worded want ad calling for extras to work in the entertainment industry. It promised a chance to possibly
‘
EARN BIG $$$$!
’
Despite the rapey stripper connotations of the ad, it was good enough for me. I called the number in the paper and got a gruff sounding guy who had no idea what I was talking about at first. The phone was handed off to another guy who told me when and where to show up and then hung up on me. A little strange, but I didn’t really pay attention.

Two days later, I showed up at the when and the where and found about two dozen other guys milling about in a dingy waiting room. They all looked pretty much just like me – average, quiet, with a look of desperation in their eyes. I waited for an hour and a half before they finally called me back. We were in a bank of offices located in a warehouse-like building that until then I had always assumed was just an abandoned structure. Taped to the cracked window in the door to the back office where I was led was a piece of paper on which someone had written in craggy, black Sharpie, CASTING.

The guy inside looked like the guy I had imagined when I called two days earlier. He was short and round, oily-looking with thin hair. The office smelled like cheese. Mr. Oily sat behind a battered metal desk that appeared to have been salvaged years ago from a public school. The walls of the office were lined with more wrecked furniture. Mr. Oily motioned for me to sit in a rickety wood swivel chair in front of the desk. I did.

He didn’t introduce himself, just waited for me to get settled in the chair and said, “Why are you here?”

“Uh, because this is where the person on the phone said I should come.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean why are you here in a general sense, not a literal sense. Why did you answer the ad?”

I wasn’t following him. “Because I’m looking for work.”

“Have you ever acted before?”

My turn to shake my head. “No, never have.”

“In high school? Drama club? College Shakespeare theatre?”

“I didn’t finish college.”

“You didn’t answer my question, either.”

“No, nothing.”

“But you still responded to the ad calling for extras, even though you have no experience in the entertainment industry.”

This was discouraging. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

I stood, but he waved his hand. “No, sit. That’s actually perfect.”

“It is?”

“For the project we’re casting, yes.”

“What exactly is this project?”

The guy watched me for a minute without answering. He seemed to be sizing me up, tilting his head to the side, looking me over. “You’re not a bad-looking guy,” he said in a fairly nonsexual way, putting the emphasis on bad as if to say I’m not exactly a good-looking guy either.

An internal homo-rape siren began to clang in my head and I stood up. “You know what, I think I made a mistake.”

“No, sit. Stay. Don’t worry, no homo here.”

I wasn’t convinced. The homo part didn’t worry me so much as the dingy office, greasy creep, and instinct that I was about to get involved with something I would regret.

I really wish I would’ve listened to that instinct.

•

After I talked to the
‘
casting director
’
(and said a prayer of thanks that his office hadn’t contained a couch) I was ushered into another room. There were a few other guys in there. I recognized a couple from the waiting room. We all milled around in silence for about twenty minutes before Mr. Greaseball came in and pointed at me.

“Mr. Porter, follow me. The rest of you, thanks for coming in.”

The dejected walked out without a word and I followed Greasy. He talked while we walked. “Congratulations, you made it.”

“Cool. Can you tell me what
it
is?”

“I’ll let the boss give you all the nitty-gritties, but you’ve been cast in a new reality game show.”

“What the hell is a ‘reality game show’?”

“Boss will tell you when you meet him in person.”

“Are we going to meet him now?”

“Yep. You get airsick at all?”

“We’re flying somewhere?”

Greasy turned and smiled for the first time. “Ever been to Vegas before?”

•

I’d never been to Vegas before. I have to admit I was a little star struck. The plane ride out, sitting in first class, a limo from the airport to the Strip. A room at the Rio. A personal assistant to guide me where I needed to go. All my meals paid for. All that I wanted to drink, which wasn’t much, but I couldn’t resist a few. I knew I shouldn’t, but I broke down and had a glass of champagne and some wine with dinner at Buzios, which was the best seafood I’ve ever had. It was such a whirlwind I didn’t think to ask any questions until the next day when we went to meet the boss.

My first impression of Peter Garnier was a good one. He was well dressed in an expensive-looking suit, had a very nice office modestly appointed with artwork and modern furniture. Nothing at all like the dingy warehouse offices back in Muncie. He explained to me those were just temporary spaces rented out during the casting process.

“Not the prettiest space available,” Mr. Garnier admitted, “but sufficient for our purposes.”

I took that to mean cheap. I was brought a glass of mineral water, which I sipped while I listened to Mr. Garnier.

“I trust your trip out has gone well.”

“Oh, yeah. Thank you for that. Everything has been amazing.”

“Now that you’re settled, it’s time to get to it. What do you know about the show so far?”

“Not much, really. All I’ve been told is that I’m going to be part of a reality game show of some sort.”

“That’s right. It will be the first of its kind. We’re broadcasting it exclusively online through our website, and we expect it to be very well received. It’s a homerun of an idea.”

I nodded and sipped, excited to hear more.

Mr. Garnier smiled as he said, “Dixar Studios is proud to present the first Sexcathlon. The show is called
King of the Perverts
.”

I choked on my water. He laughed. Then he explained, talking for twenty minutes straight. My head was spinning by the end. He stood and offered his hand and said, “And now, it’s time to get ready. We’ll film the opening segment tonight. See you there.”

•

The rest of the afternoon was a mad dash from wardrobe to makeup to the studio where we would be filming. I was herded into a waiting area, a green room I guess is the correct industry parlance, with nine other guys. They were all very familiar-looking. I felt like I was surrounded by clones. We were all similar – average height and weight, appearance, dressed well in new clothes that looked nothing at all like the kind of threads we wore on a daily basis. We cleaned up well enough, but everyone had the same edge of desperation behind their smiles, the same look in their eyes. Confusion, maybe a little fear, a hint of sadness akin to what I still carried with me following my divorce. Despite the new clothes and pampering, we still had the reek of recent failure on us. Desperation was a scent you couldn’t wash away that easily.

None of us said anything and before long a dumpy woman with short hair and men’s slacks fetched us from the green room and guided us to the studio. There were two rows of seats off to the side of a stage set up on risers, and we were herded there. We sat and waited, a curtain separating us from what sounded like an audience filing into a theater on the other side. A murmur of anticipation penetrated the curtain and I started to sweat. I was getting more nervous the longer we sat there and waited.

Finally the studio began to brighten as more lights came on. The curtain raised and we all squinted against the lights shining in our faces. My nervousness jumped by a factor of ten when I saw the audience and the cameras. Producers just behind the cameras flashed hand signals to each other. I wondered if this was what it felt like to face a firing squad.

Somewhere offstage, an announcer jumped into the show’s intro spiel, his deep voice reverberating through the soundstage.

“From the publishers of the very finest
cliterature
in the land, the purveyors of only the best in cinematic and online fapfests, the most popular entertainment company in the world, Dixar Studios presents the new game show that’s taking the country by storm! Ladies and gentlemen, freaks and sluts, connoisseurs of smut from around the world, you are about to witness the first ever Sexcathlon! Where the contestants must complete ten sexy challenges of increasing difficulty for the chance to win ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Please welcome your hosts, four-time AVN award winner, the man with the industry’s Golden Rod of Love, Peter Oh’Tool, and the hottest young female talent on the planet, Miss Juicy Cumdumpster, as we get set to play…”

On cue, the studio audience, which appeared to be about 99 percent pasty, white, unshowered males of all ages, took their cue from one of the off-camera producers and shouted in unison, “KING OF THE PERVERTS!”

Mr. Garnier strolled onto the stage in a pair of skin-tight leather pants and no shirt. The sausage-heavy crowd booed him, save for a couple very effete, high-pitched squeals of delight. Behind the scenes, he was the boss man, Mr. Garnier, but in front of the camera, Mr. Garnier assumed the role of Peter Oh’Tool. The difference in his demeanor was striking. So was the thing in his pants.

Peter Oh’Tool smiled right through the crowd reaction and stood in the middle of the stage with his hands on his hips. The boos instantly morphed into murmurs of surprise and eventually reverent respect. You couldn’t help noticing the tubular bulge in Peter’s pants, snaking halfway down to his knee. If I hadn’t just learned he was a porn star, I would have thought he had some awful tumor growing out of his thigh. It seemed to pulse beneath the bright studio lights, transfixing the sweaty-palmed crowd of jerkoffs.

“Hello folks, I’m Peter Oh’Tool, and this is
King of the Perverts
. Please give a warm welcome to my co-host, the immensely talented Juicy Cumdumpster.”

The crowd exploded as Juicy wobbled onto the stage. She was all sorts of strange angles and unnatural proportions and I thought she looked sort of like an alien not used to walking erect had donned a human skin suit to try and pass for a person rather than a horrific space spider. It was either that or the enhancements Miss Cumdumpster had undergone had stretched her skin so tight one wrong move might cause her to split wide open. I was relatively repulsed, but the crowd of spankmasters were practically jizzing their pants.

Juicy waved and smiled and put her microphone to her balloonish lips. “Hi, y’all.”

The crowd went nuts again. Once they settled down, Peter plowed ahead.

“So, this is how it works.” He turned toward the ten of us with a grand sweep of his hand. “Ten contestants, chosen from thousands of applicants in dozens of cities across the country, have been assembled to compete against each other in this great sexual race to be crowned the first King of the Perverts. Over the course of this show, they will have to use their instinct, their guile, their charm, and their sexual prowess, if they have any, to complete ten challenges. Each time they complete a challenge, they’ll receive instructions on the next challenge. These challenges will not be revealed to them until their current test is completed. Each contestant will have a cameraperson, but they will only be along to capture their journey. They will receive no outside help. They will not be allowed to reveal to the women they are courting, or men if they swing that way, any information about the contest. They must not let anyone know about the game, or they will be disqualified. The losers, and there will be nine of them, get nothing. But the winner…”