Rust and Bone (18 page)

Break for a set change. The cameraman slots a fresh tape into his handheld, the sound tech adjusts his levels, a gopher swabs the desktop with Windex. Towel wrapped round my waist, I consult the craft table's meager offerings—mesh sack of oranges, box of Triscuits, brown-looking bananas—select an orange and sit on the sofa.

I'm peeling the orange and stuffing rinds between the cushions when a girl sits beside me. She approaches from behind, barefooted, easing herself down stealthily as though her intention is to catch me unawares. Moderately tall, maybe five-six, long legs, narrow waist, high breasts. Naked as a jaybird. Untucking the towel, she takes me in her hand.

“Thanks,” I tell her, sectioning the orange.

“Just doing my job. Want some oil or anything?”

“That's okay. You got a soft touch. Not like the last fluffer—like pulling weeds.”

“There are those who believe I have healing hands.”

The girl's eyes swim with gold flecks like you'd find floating in a bottle of Goldschlager and she's looking off across the set, into darkened corners filled with dusty props and costume racks. The boom mike guy sits on an overturned milk crate, watching. She laughs softly, though at what I'm unsure.

The orange is dry and gross, like a pulp-sucking vampire's been at it. “Want some?”

“Hands are sorta full, here.”

“My name is Samuel. Sam Chancey. And yours is …?”

“Do you really need to know, Samuel Chancey? I mean, would it enhance any of this?”

“No,” I say. “Well, I mean,
possibly
. Who knows? Just like to know, is all.”

“And I'd like to fuck Douglas Fairbanks. Ain't gonna happen.”

“Okay, well then, are you new—like, to the city?”

“What's with the small talk? We're way past that stage—I'm in your pants already.” She snorts out her nostrils like a pissed-off bull. “What are you, one of those touchy-feely New Age types? Bet you got healing crystals in your nightstand.”

“Don't even know what's in there. Toenail clippers and Dristan nasal spray, I think.”

This gets a laugh and I ask her where she's from. She takes my hand and draws it between her legs. “Make yourself useful.” She's wet—I mean
sopping
—and I'm rubbing her pussy gingerly, then faster. Her face pinches up and she makes a noise like she's stifling a sneeze, orgasming twice in rapid succession. “Okay,” she's whispering, more to herself than me. “Okay, okay, oooo-
kay
.” Breathing heavily, splotches of color on her throat, clitoris the size of a pomegranate seed. She butts her chin against my shoulder, opening her mouth to orgasm again; when she pulls away thin crescent-shaped divots, the imprint of her teeth, are visible in my flesh.

“Thanks.” A slight shudder. “That was pretty alright.”

“You're not that hard to please.”

“I'm hypersensitive. There are drugs, but I don't take them.”

“Drugs to do what?”

“Y'know, like, dampen the sensation. Anyway, don't like them. Like my entire body is packed in cotton batten or something.”

“Who wants that?”

“I know, right?” She kicks a thigh over mine, hooks her foot around my calf, draws my legs wider. “Sure, it'd probably make things better in the long run, but we are who we are.”

“You betcha.” My winning smile. “Warts and all.”

Wayne Harvey sits on the sofa. A silverhaired veteran, women love my co-star's gallant demeanor: he treats starlets as though their maidenhood remains unsullied. Overlooking the bowlegs and turkey wattle, he's quite dashing: the Jimmy Stewart of hardcore porn. The fluffer takes him in her other hand.

“I thank you for your efforts, milady,” Wayne says. “But I'm afraid your kindly ministrations will have no effect.”

“Why—what's the matter?”

“Wayne's penis is broken,” I inform her.

He shoots me a sour look. “True, Samuel—if crudely put.”

It happened a few years back. Wayne was in a solo scene with this acrobatic little blonde: she was jerking and bucking and practically doing the loop-de-loop. Wayne was sweating buckets and holding on for dear life, now she's riding him, Wayne's thrusting up to meet her and the gal's biting her bottom lip begging for more but they come together awkwardly and something just went
snap
.

Shocking but true: you can break your dick. A fibrous sheath, the
tunica albunginea,
surrounds the tubes and blood vessels; when erect, the sheath is stretched tight and hard beneath the skin. Severe trauma can rupture the
tunica:
roughly the same force it would take to, say, bust your nose. The medical term is a penile fracture—though doctors familiar with the injury use the euphemism “bent wick.”

I was standing off set and heard this awful noise: the closest comparison I can manage is the sound of a drumstick torn from a roast turkey. Then the girl's screaming and Wayne's hopping around hollering. His cock hung buckled at this hideous jackknifed angle and the taut skin kept it bent, no way to release to the pressure. The tip a dusky eggplant bulb and a fearsome hematoma, this dark grape-sized bubble, swelling along the break. There's poor Wayne staring down at his mangled unit, black as blood sausage, squeezing it at the root as though that might help. I'm not going to lie: it was pretty fucking revolting.

Thankfully this story has a happy ending. Unable to summon a screenworthy erection, Wayne underwent IPP surgery—Inflatable Penis Prosthetic. The urologist made an incision at the base of Wayne's penis and threaded an expandable bladder up the shaft, then another incision in the testicular sac to deposit a pump the size and weight of a triple-A battery. A hole drilled into his hipbone anchored the prosthesis; the sundry tubes and wires were tucked behind his abdominal wall. Damn thing works like a charm: Wayne pumps up and wades on in, then deflates and lounges around until it's time to re-inflate for action. Porno's Six Million Dollar Man.

“Are you sure?” the fluff girl asks him. “Really, I don't mind.”

“Well, if it's no bother.” Wayne smiles. “But please view my lack of arousal as an expression of my physical limitations, not a comment on your skills.”

The two of them fall into an easy repartee, the sort Wayne excels at: meaningless and lighthearted, subjects ranging from recent movies to stale jokes to articles he's read on some humanitarian topic: Save the Monkey-Eating Eagles, Liberate the Goatherds of East Timor, Thalidomide Babies March for World Peace, et cetera. She even laughs at Wayne's ghastly puns:
I once knew a bailiff who moonlighted as a bartender, my dear. He served subpoena coladas
. Get the girl off and she won't even pay attention to me—how's that for gratitude? My nose is distinctly out of joint.

Before the final scene we experience what might be charitably described as a “technical malfunction.” More pointedly, Wayne's prosthesis … well,
explodes
. The guy's pumping up, cock rising steadily, then this panicked expression crosses his face and he's scrabbling at his crotch crying, “Sweet lord!,” clawing at his balls and I'm wondering is he looking for the pump in there, an off switch or something and his cock's just
monstrous,
I mean red and swollen and Wayne's staring down with an expression of sick dread then this
pop,
not loud exactly but percussive like a pistol fired under wet sand and his cock—Christ, it
expands
and Wayne's on the floor screaming bloody blue murder and there's this noise like when you blow up a balloon and let go except it's coming out his
pisshole
.

“Man down!” hollers the director. “Jesus, man
down!
”

Wayne's rolling around with his eyes rolled to the white, mouth open but no sound coming out. Two minutes ago you're cracking one-liners and detailing the plight of East Timorian shepherds; now your penis is curled like a fishhook and blood's leaking out. It's a funny old world.

The fluff girl kneels beside him. “Call an ambulance!”

I snatch Kitten's cellphone—she's actually
talking
to someone as all this goes on—and dial 911. “God, man—are you okay?”

The way Wayne's glaring at me—
yeesh,
if looks could kill. Of course, I've now found myself on hand at both his penile catastrophes. Could he think I'm somehow responsible—a voodoo doll? A miniature wax penis stuck full of pins?

When the ambulance arrives the attendants look puzzled, then, after a quick examination of the set and its players, get the idea. They

heap cold packs onto Wayne's groin, strap him to a stretcher. “Look on the bright side,” the cameraman says. “Makes for a dilly of a lawsuit.” The fluff girl insists on accompanying Wayne to Emerge. I offer to tag along but the attendants won't allow it. As the ambulance pulls away she's staring wistfully out the rear window—who's she looking at, if not me?

My name is Sam. I'm a sex addict.

Welcome, Sam.

Thanks, everyone. So, what have I lost—that's tonight's question? Everything, I guess you could say. Job, family, security. The normal life. Not that you'd find it surprising. The support of such systems requires some sort of a …
veneer
. A veneer of normalcy, right? Repeat the mantra: Happy family, happy family, happy family. But the secret was doing more damage than the truth. Told my friends, my boss, my co-workers. Full disclosure; the unobstructed facts. Four hundred sexual partners over the past five years, nameless and unremembered. What else can you do? Beg forgiveness. Grovel. I was demoted but kept my job. My wife and I entered counseling. Inside I realized it couldn't last. The person I was desperately trying to be—the husband, the family man—was a fraud. I'm incapable of that change. It's not that I'm weak or spineless: the process of transformation demands you become a
whole new person
. I'm not saying change is impossible or that you or you or you won't make a clean break; I sincerely wish it for everyone. But it's simply not in me and I won't apologize. Right now it's about learning how to cope, make my way as best I can without hurting anyone. That's why I do dirty movies: no commitment, no lies, no guilt, nobody gets harmed. Love and responsibility do not factor into the equation. Like those signs you see in national parks:
Take only pictures, Leave only footprints
.

EARLY EVENING
by the time we wrap. A crease of sunset lines the horizon, interrupted by the high rises of downtown: buildings I'd once travailed in, wheeled and dealed, buildings I'm now effectively banned from. Bright pinprick spires burn in foothills beyond the city, derricks venting sour gas, flames frayed by a south-blowing wind. A pale crescent moon sits like a toy boat in the gap between two dark mountains. Across the road an empty lot hosts abandoned shopping carts, old tires and castoff watertanks rusting in the nettles, a junked car with garbage bags taped over its shattered windows. A huge scavenger bird with a raw boiledlooking head perches on the car's spavined roof: a buzzard, though to the best of my knowledge such creatures are not native to this part of the planet.

Take a Phillips screwdriver from my glovebox, remove the license plates from Wayne's Buick Century, screw them to my Chevy Cavalier. A dastardly deed but Wayne won't catch any heat: got to figure he'll be laid up for a week. Ironclad alibi. Settle behind the driver's seat, doff my trousers, arrange a layer of Kleenex between my spread legs. Rev the engine, pull out of the lot.

This old Western movie crystalized it for me. Black-and-white, which generally I cannot abide. There was this cowboy and his horse, a Palomino. The cowboy doted on his mount—fed it apples and sugar cubes, brushed cockleburrs out of its mane with a wire comb. Towards the end they're on a wagontrain trekking through the Sierra Madres when the horse is slowed by a split hoof. The cowboy jams his pistol to the horse's eye and pulls the trigger.
Why'd you do that?
the wagon-master says.
Thought you loved that horse
. The cowboy spits and says,
Nossir, but I do love horses. That is to say, I cherish the nature of horses— hardworking, reliable, docile. But
alla them
is that way. Can always find y'self another horse
.

Now, it's conceivable to cherish the
nature
of women, right? They're beauteous and supple, willing to accommodate the man who knows how best to stroke them. But that's on a whole: you might feel nothing on a case-by-case basis.
A sex addict's relationship is with sex, not people
. For addicts it's crucial to break any object of desire down to its base elements: tits, asses, lips, hips, cocks, cunts. The process of dehumanization is like a
moral imperative
.

I dearly cherish the nature of woman.

Cruise streets in the gray twilight, past decrepit rowhouses and shops with gated windows, homeless persons and lean winter dogs hunched at the mouths of go-nowhere alleys, a boarded church cloaked in the shadowy overhang of tall maples, through cones of lamplight casting their blue nocturnal glow, on over a swing bridge spanning the blighted waterway. Mammoth construction cranes stand still as obelisks against the quilted sky. Difficult to shift gears with my pants rucked around my ankles.

Scan the sidewalks but fail to spot a suitable candidate: here a bagwoman, less human being than agglomeration of filthy ponchos trundling a shopping cart with a frozen wheel; there a chick resembling an ambulatory fire hydrant, bull-dyke by the looks of it, hieing a chowdog on a length of heavy-gauge chain. Real slim pickens. Call my pal Danny Dewson; we co-sponsor one another through Sexaholics Anonymous.

“Hey. It's me.”

“It's you,” says Danny. “How goes the battle?”

“Gotta be honest with you …”

“Honesty's the best policy, Samuel.”

“So here it is: I'm cruising. Right now, cruising.”