At the time, the most famous prostitute in Rome was named Scylla, and Messalina challenged her to a competition to see who could couple with the greatest number of men in one night. Tacitus records that Scylla stopped after her twenty-fifth partner, but Messalina kept going and won by a wide margin.
The historian Juvenal records that Messalina would go slumming, sneaking into brothels, where she worked under the name Lycisca, gilding her royal nipples with gold dust and selling access to the aristocratic vagina that had birthed her son, Britannicus, the next likely emperor. There she’d work until well after her fellow whores had quit for the night.
At the age of twenty-eight, Messalina hooked up with Gaius Silius and conspired to murder her husband; however, her plot was revealed to Claudius, and he ordered her execution. Messalina refused to kill herself, even as her mother begged her to commit suicide, the only honorable way to end her life. Roman soldiers forced their way into her palace, found her waiting in her garden, and killed her on the spot.
All of this I told to Ms. Wright as we sat in my apartment eating popcorn and watched Annabel Chong fuck her way through 251 jizz-juicers. Groups of five. Ten minutes per group. Sock-soakers. Bone-beaters. The set decorations, the white fluted columns and splashing fountains, a historical re-creation of Messalina’s challenge to Scylla. The fake marble and Roman statues. The World’s Biggest Gangbang. A student in gender studies at the University of Southern California, with a grade point average of 3.7, this film was Chong’s tribute to Valeria Messalina.
True fact.
The top-selling porn video of all time: a feminist history lesson lost on countless willy-wankers.
Watching, I asked: How is this any different from the Olympics?
I asked: Why shouldn’t a woman use her body any way she wants?
I asked: Why are we still fighting this same battle two thousand years later?
Both of us eating popcorn. No butter. No salt. Drinking diet sodas. Our casting notice already running in a couple newspapers, a news item on a few Web sites. Pud-pullers and palm pilots already calling to get on the list.
Our faces caked in avocado, pore-reducing, collagen-enriched masks. Hair combed with Vaseline and turbanned in towels. The bowl of popcorn between us on my sofa. The two of us belted in terry-cloth bathrobes. Ms. Wright says, “A take-charge gal like that Messalina was – she shouldn’t have let them kill her.”
Only a few years after ordering her execution, the Emperor Claudius stuck a feather down his own throat. In A.D. 54, he was pigging out at a banquet, trying to puke so he could eat more, and Claudius choked to death on that feather.
Hearing that, watching Annabel Chong get fucked, it was Ms. Wright who mentioned life insurance. Made me promise to look into a policy. Made me cross my heart, in case anything went wrong, I’d find her lost kid and hand over the insurance payout, plus whatever royalties from the video.
She was still talking how she wanted to make her kid rich when I reached between the cushions of my sofa. Feeling between the popcorn kernels, the old maids, and pocket change until I touched slick paper.
Right there, I handed Ms. Wright the paperwork for six policies. All they needed was her autograph. Total potential payout – ten million.
Without her bifocals, Ms. Wright squints at the paperwork, her avocado mask crumbling, cracking, and flaking green crumbs. She holds the papers at arm’s length. Eyeing the fine print, she says. “Always one step ahead, aren’t you.”
That’s why she pays me the big bucks, I tell her. My fingers plucking a ballpoint pen from between the sofa cushions.
And Ms. Wright says. “That empress gal?” Autographing each life insurance policy. Nodding at the television, she says, “That Messalina, she should have just killed herself…”
∨ Snuff ∧
17
Mr. 600
Player dude’s yakking on his cell phone when he goes ballistic. Player dude with his black hair combed, stretched back, and gelled to cover his bald spot, to show a forever space of tall, white forehead, he’s yakking stock options and sell prices and reserve margins when Sheila looks up from her clipboard she’s holding.
Sheila shepherds the crew of us and yells, “Gentlemen.” She yells, “Listen for your number, please. I need…”
Every ear turned to listen, tilted up to hear, dudes stop chewing their mouthful of taco chips. Dudes step out the bathroom doorway, their dick still in one hand. Eyes open, wide, looking for the words. Dudes hiss for silence, hold up hands, and pat the air to make other dudes quiet down.
Sheila drops each word heavy as a money shot right in your eye, saying, “…number 247…number 354…and number 72.” She waves a hand toward the stairs and says, “Would those gentlemen please follow me…”
Dude 72, Cassie’s maybe kid.
That’s when the cell-phone player dude goes ballistic. Dude flats his phone against his chest. Dude’s sporting a model shave, where you snap the number-one guard on your clippers and buzz all your chest hair down to the same quarter-inch long. Same as the International Male dudes in the catalogue, but minus the cut muscle. Dude tells his phone, “Hold on a sec.” He throws his head back and yells, “This is horseshit, lady!” Yelling after Sheila, dude says, “You think we’ll wait all day to drop a wad in some old bag?”
Climbed halfway up the stairs, Sheila stops. She looks back, one hand shading her eyes to see across the hairy ocean of dudes’ heads.
Above us on the TVs, the head of Scottish Yard or Interpol or some wop police dude’s eating out Cassie Wright in the back of a paddy wagon. His tongue comes across a diamond. Then he’s pulling the long string of a diamond necklace out her snatch. Diamonds being her best friend, Cassie is juicing up a storm.
Kid 72, dude with the roses, springs up next to my elbow, saying, “What do I do?”
Fuck her, I tell him.
Kid says, “No,” shaking his head. He says, “Not my mom.”
Player dude, his arms and legs sport a San Diego tan. Not the rich caramel color of a Mazatlan tan, or the smooth dry brown of a Vegas tan. On his face and neck, that’s not the even wipe of a box-bought tan, or deep and buttery, like dudes get in Cancun or Hawaii. Dude’s standing there in a cheap, beach-fried San Diego tan, and he’s got the nerve to yell, “I’m number 14, and I have places to be. I should’ve been out of here hours ago.”
The number ‘14’ inked on his beige-brown San Diego arm, the player dude says, “This bullshit is worse than the DMV…”
Every dude still playing statue, froze, waiting to see how this plays out. Now that the player’s said what’s on every dude’s mind, we’re primed for a revolution. Dudes ready to prison-riot, mount those stairs. Sheila’s staring down the threat of a boner stampede.
A herd hell-bent for Cassie Wright or for the exit.
Kid dude, number 72, says to me, “I’ll tell her how much I love her…”
Go ahead, I tell him. Fuck up Mommy’s comeback. Be a needy little boy and ruin all Mommy’s hard work and planning, all her training she’s put into this world record. I tell the kid, Do it.
Kid 72 says, “You think I should fuck her?”
I say it’s his decision.
Kid says, “I can’t fuck her.” Kid says, “I can’t get it hard.”
Halfway up the stairs, standing with numbers 247 and 354, both dudes flogging their meat, their hands stretched inside the waistband of their boxer shorts, standing here, Sheila says, “Gentlemen, would you please be patient.” She says, “For Ms. Wright’s well-being, we need to conduct this in a calm, organized manner.”
Player dude yells, “Fuck that.” He walks his plain, brown feet across the concrete to where the paper bags are stacked. With his San Diego-tanned hands, he pulls out the bag inked with ‘14’, starts pulling out a shirt, pants, socks. Shoes that look like Armani but aren’t. His skin looks like better-quality leather.
Above us on the TVs, the ugly dago police dude’s jackhammering Cassie, pounding her poop chute so fas
t that diamonds, rubies, emeralds spill out her snatch, slot-machine style.
Kid 72 leans close, his lips by my ear and his chin almost hooked on my shoulder, and he says, “Give me a pill and I’ll do it.”
Fuck her? I ask. Or run up those stairs and squeal, “I love you, Mommy, I love you, I love you, Mommy, I love you…?”
Player dude takes out a shirt, shakes out the wrinkles. Not a real Brooks Brothers. Not even a Nordstrom. He puts his arms through each sleeve, starts doing the buttons, shooting the cuffs like this was real silk. Or even 100 percent cotton. Player dude flips the collar and slings a no-brand tie around his neck, saying, “Screw your world record, lady.” Saying, “I am so, so out of here.”
Above us on the TVs, the ugly dago dude, I’d bet that his under-tan goes two years back: a decent week in Mazatian with clouds the last two days, then, a few months later, a weekend in Scottsdale, maintenance-box tanning, a week grilling in Palm Springs, a long stretch of fading, and finally a week in Palm Desert for that kind of smooth, dry finish. Not a satin-smooth Ibiza tan. Or one of those coppery Mykonos fag tans. That ugly wop dude on the TV sports a greasy shine thick as cooking oil. A tan sexy as a thin coat of dirt.
Kid 72 into my ear hisses, “Give me the pill.”
Sheila standing, calling the bluff, waiting.
Dudes all waiting.
Next to me, another dude’s voice says, “So, Mr. Bacardi, is that Demerol in your locket?” Here’s the teddy-bear dude, number 137, saying, “Are you planning an encore performance with Miss Wright?”
Kid 72 says, “What’s he mean?”
Dude 137 says, “Why not drug your son? You already drugged his mother…”
Player dude’s strapping on a knockoff Rolex President. Out of his brown grocery bag, he’s fishing a bad imitation of a Hugo Boss belt I got hanging in my closet back at my apartment.
Sheila looks our way, saying, “Number 72, if you’d care to join us?”
Kid 72 whispers, “What’ll I do?”
I tell him, Fuck her.
And the teddy-bear dude says, “Obey your father.”
Kid 72 says, “What’s that mean?”
And I shrug.
The player dude’s working his cufflinks, milking the job to take long as possible, his cuff links nothing better than nine-karat, even in this dim light.
Kid dude turns to the teddy-bear dude, sweat shining on the kid’s face, his whites showing all around his eyes, and he says, “Give me a pill?”
Dude 137 gives the kid a long look, up and down.
Teddy-bear dude smiles and says, “What’ll you pay for it?”
Kid says, “All I got is fifteen bucks in my wallet.”
Still watching Sheila, her watching the player dude in their stalemate, I say money ain’t what the teddy-bear dude is after. At least not fifteen bucks.
Kid says, “What, then?” He says, “Hurry.”
I ask the kid if he knows the term ‘fluffer’, what it means. I say that’s what dude 137 wants.
Dude still smiling, holding his bear, says, “That’s what I want.”
Above us on the TVs, the camera comes in for a close-up penetration shot, and the wop dude’s nut sack is pockmarked with botched electrolysis scars. Craters of the moon. Showing on a dozen TV screens, both his nuts pulled up tight under the exploded disaster of the dude’s wrinkled red asshole.
The player dude ties his shoelaces.
And, still halfway up the stairs, Sheila yells, “Would everyone please pipe down. Just let me think…” She looks at her clipboard. Looks at kid 72. Looks at the player, dressed and ready to walk out. Sheila says, “Just this once…” She jerks her thumb at the player, saying, “Number 14, come with me.” Pointing a finger at the kid, she says, “Number 72, stand down.”
Dudes start back to talking, chewing their taco chips, taking leaks and not flushing the toilet. Their fingers come uncrossed. On the TVs, the ugly wop dude’s sweating so hard his bronzer rolls down his cheeks in brown zebra stripes, showing the dry, flaky, fried skin underneath. To no dude in particular, pointing up at the television wop dude, I go, “Dudes, do me a favor?” I go, “Kill me if I ever look that bad.”
Beside me, standing a little behind me, dude 137 says, “That was a close call…”
The kid, dude 72 says, “What’s a fluffer?”
And Cord Cuervo says, “Dude, what are you saying?” He makes a fist and gives me a little sock in the shoulder. His bronzer glues tight to my bronzer, so he has to peel his knuckles off my shoulder skin, and Cord says, “On the TV? That is you, dude. From, like, five years ago.”
∨ Snuff ∧
18
Mr. 72
Mr. Bacardi stares up at the TVs they have hanging from the ceiling, showing porno, and he keeps saying, “No…no fucking way…”
Mr. Bacardi just stands in one place, staring up at the TVs, maybe using two fingers to pinch the loose skin under his jaw, pull it tight, and let go. He’s staring at the movie on TV, running his fingers over his cheeks, stretching the skin back toward his ears so his wrinkles around his lips disappear, saying, “Fucking camera dude, he made me look like shit.” His skin in some spots as wrinkled as my pink plastic sex surrogate, Mr. Bacardi keeps saying, “No way I look that trashed. Fucking lighting dudes…”
Guy 137, who used to be Dan Banyan, he holds up his autograph hound, staring it straight in the button eyes, and says, “Somebody’s in denial…”
The headlines on those newspapers they sell at the grocery-store checkout counter, they’re true. The gossip stuff about why Dan Banyan got his TV series took off the air. That gossip they printed was real.
“I was starving. I was a starving actor,” says guy 137, his head tipped back but not looking at the TVs. Instead, he’s grinning at the ceiling. Laughing at the nothing there. And he says, “If anybody can identify with how Cassie Wright feels at this moment, that person is me…”
Above us, on the TVs, my mom’s starring in The Italian Hand Job, where she plays an international mystery woman looking to steal the crown jewels of some place.
Mr. Bacardi sucks in his stomach and stands taller, saying, “The cheap-ass video like this, the resolution is crap.” He says, “They might as well have shot this from a damned satellite.”
Anger, guy 137 calls it.
“I was your age,” the 137 Dan Banyan guy says and looks at me. He takes a big breath and lets it out, slow. His shoulders shrug up, high to his ears, and he says, “The finance company kept phoning me about repossessing my car. A couple late payments on my credit cards, and they jacked the interest rate up to thirty percent.” His shoulders drop so his hands sag almost to his knees, and he says, “Thirty percent! On a balance of twenty-five grand, that looked like the rest of my life to pay off.”
So he made a porn movie, he says. “It can only take a moment,” the 137 guy says, “to waste the rest of your life…”
He asks did I know a movie called Three Days of the Condom. He says, “Well, it paid off my car. Didn’t touch the principal on my credit card, but I got to keep my car.”
He didn’t figure anyone would ever see it. At the time, his acting was going nowhere. It was ten years before he got his big break in Dan Banyan, Private Detective.
That condom movie’s been hanging over his head ever since.
“Doing an all-male gay gang-bang movie is an act of resignation,” he says and waves one hand, his eyes sweeping over half the room. He says, “You and every man in here, no matter what you do up in that room, whether you tell Cassie Wright you love her, or you fuck her, or you do both – don’t expect you’ll ever get confirmed to sit on the Supreme Court.”
Porn, he says, is a job you only take after you abandon all hope.
The Dan Banyan guy says half the guys here were sent by their agents to rack up some face time. He says the entire entertainment industry expects Cassie Wright to die today, and every would-be actor in town is wanting to springboard off the controversy.
&
nbsp; “Just between you and me, kid,” he says, pointing at me, then pointing at his own chest, “when your agent sends you on a look-see to fuck a dead woman, you know your career’s in the toilet.”
A little ways off, Mr. Bacardi digs his fingertips into the skin of his stomach, saying, “You think, if I did more hanging knee raises?” He opens both hands, turning them and looking at both sides, and says, “They have that microdermabrasion to give you young skin again.” Grabbing a handful of skin above one hipbone, he says, “Maybe liposuction isn’t out of the question. Calf implants. Maybe those pec implants.”
The Dan Banyan guy holds up his dog, looking eye-to-eye at it, and says, “Bargaining.”
On the TV screens, it’s some old scene of Mr. Bacardi ramming my mom from behind. Every draw back, when he shoves his wiener in, his saggy old-man balls swing to spank my mom on her shaved taint. That no-man’s-land dividing her snatch and ass.
The Dan Banyan guy, he says the only trick to starring in an all-male backdoor gang-bang movie is you have to really relax. Keep breathing, deep. You need to forget all your decades and decades of toilet training. Picture puppies and kitties. He says you kneel on the edge of a bed and five other guys come in and dork your ass a couple strokes each. Those five blow their loads across your back. Then another five come in. He really wasn’t counting. Then he lost count. Taking a strong dose of Special K helped.
My mom, up those stairs, behind that locked door, under all those bright lights.
The Dan Banyan guy looks at the ceiling again and laughs, saying, “It’s a lot less romantic than it might sound.”
To this day, he says, you put anything up his ass and he can tell you Trojan or Sheik. Rubber versus latex versus lambskin. Without looking, just only from the feel, he says he can even name the color of the condom.
“I should do product endorsements,” the Dan Banyan guy says. “I could tour as the ‘Psychic Asshole’…”