February 9, 1990 - Biak, Indonesia - Journal

Night has fallen and the rain has stopped pounding on the tin roofs. I'm lying in the hotel room. Overhead fan cools the room. I haven't shut it off since my arrival. It's hot here. LA was in the 60s. Oahu 70s. New York was cold. Winter cold. Snow cold. Nothing  like here. 80s during the day. 70s at night. Sweltering hot like my trip to Mazatlán in 1975.

I spent the night reading First Contact by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, recounting two white men's first incursion into the Papua New Guinea Highlands in the 1930s. According to the writers the Melanesians first arrived in these parts across an Ice Age land bridge natives about 40,000 years ago, maybe even more, who can trust white man science? I wanted to ask them, if they are a lost tribe from deepest Africa, but they don't resemble anyone genetically other than themselves. They are their own race. In the book author encountered about the white men with Dead return from death for strange gods who treated them as potential slave, buying loyalties with shells addiction tobacco, in the fear of the Dum Dum bullet. This was the last great frontier. Still is across the waters on the mainland, which is one of the biggest islands in the world. Here I am. Beer in hand on the edge of the world. 

I've met two American MD's on their way to the Highlands of Irian Jaya, , a Texas skin diver Larry Smith in his Indonesian girlfriend, Other than six drunk Japanese veterans of World War II. I'm basically the only tourist

Reading the rough guides Indonesian handbook chapter on Irian Jaya makes me want to forego the next leg to Bali and flying over to Jayapura and then up to the Bellamy Valley, but that would have to wait for another time, although the chances of me coming back this way to beak at the end of the world a slim.

I've been writing North North Hollywood, but not that much.

If I had an extra $500 I'd fly to Jaipur maybe next year, because I really like this archipelago of Indonesia after only two days.

So far the trip has been in success. I accomplished everything I wanted to do in LA. I saw Nina Smith. We had a night out. I got drunk as did she. We tried to make love in her car. I couldn't get it up. As much as I wanted her.

I saw Monty. Who's doing well at Propaganda Films. We were friendly. I thought he might be angry with me for asking for money, when he asked me to look at a Bentley Conti in London last year. I learned a lesson. Never ask the rich for money. You have to wait for them to offer it. The old boy from Atlanta wants me to come up with a Lethal Weapon script. He offered me a room in LA. But I'm not really into writing scripts and I want to finish North North Hollywood, which would make a great movie. I thank them for the offer and said I'd contact him. 

Sadly I couldn't get in touch with Sharon, because her husband's mother explained that after she left my place last year she got into dope very badly. She was fucking young men in the neighborhood, stealing from them and anybody else, the mother-in-law threw her out after she almost burnt down the house. She went through her her father's death money pretty quick. The mother-in-law didn't hold it against her. She had lost both her husband and son to drugs. She's not bad. She's just a junkie. But I don't really want to see her for a long time "Do you want her number?" asked the mother-in-law.

I thought about it for a second and said, I'll see you, when she gets better."

Such is the power of pornography to ruin people's lives no way do I want North North Hollywood to glorify porno as much as I like pictures of naked women, big cocks, and cum. 

Erotica. Is what I'm talking about hardcore. I kissed Nina and I want to write a scene about our near sex scene in her backseat. She was the first woman I kissed in ages, but who knows what tomorrow brings? Nothing in Biak.

Tonight I'm alone with the sound of the fan overhead in the hotel kick you

Lost in Erie and Jaya.

Meeting Sharon 1978 - The Nursery

The first time I ever saw Sharon she was not physically in the movie theater, but up on silver screen of a Times Square theater fellating the pizza boy’s cock, while doggie styling the man acting as her husband. Neither of the men were particularly attractive, probably so the audience might identify with them, however Sharon was a young brunette with a lithe acrobat’s body. Her ass was perfectly curved and her belly pouting with the right amount of fat. Her breasts were small. Almost like a boy. Once the action started, she became an animal unleashed on mankind. 

It was obvious neither man on the screen had any idea what to do with her and the director was also at a loss with this vixen, so she released the pizza boy’s cock and looked over her shoulder at the camera, a pink tongue snaked out to lick at cock-bruised lips, then her hand reached back to pull apart her asscheeks to provide the cameraman a better shot at the stiff penis rooting her vagina. She moaned, “Oh, yeah, fuck me, baby!” then dropped her head down onto the pizza boy’s cock, until the head lodged in her gullet. 

It wasn’t a deep throat, but I had my zipper down and cock in hand mimicking each thrust of the man from behind. Every man in the theater came together, as the pizza boy spattered the brunette’s face with a load of cum and her ‘husband’ blew his wad over her flawless ass.   

After leaving the theater I searched the porno shops for any photos of this slut, but found none. I asked the clerk overlooking the aisle, if he had any glossy mags with her and he sadly shook his head. “I know exactly who you’re talking about. I got nothing. That’s her first film, but trust me we ain’t seen the last of her yet.”  

Since the porno industry was centered in LA, I figured she was never coming to New York. A wraith in my fantasies and dreams.

Three weeks later I was playing the SLASH pinball machine at the Nursery, an after-hour club in the East Village. My fingers twitched over the buttons and my hip banged the machine, so the ball defied gravity beyond any of Newton’s laws. The score fast approached ‘best ever’, then someone bumped into the side and tilted the machine. I turned to the right, ready to swear, then my mouth went numb upon seeing the brunette in the shag-cut from the movie. 

Her lingerie barely hid any skin and she appeared to have just fucked her way through the entire bar. Stiletto heels gave her another three inches of height and she regarded at me imperiously, as she asked, “What are you looking at?”

“You t-t-tilted the machine,” I stammered, but before I could tell her how much I enjoyed her film, she snapped her fingers loud enough to be heard over the Ramones and two gnarly bikers grabbed me by the arms. In less than three seconds I found myself out on the sidewalk, exiled from Eve. 

Several thieves lurked in the shadows, ready to pounce on any hapless drunk. I scrambled to my feet to show that I was not worth the trouble. Skanky whores lined Third Avenue and junkies popped into the fleabag hotels for a quick shot. The arctic wind sent a shiver through my body. I only wore a thin leather jacket, a tee shirt, and torn jeans. I didn’t care, because I was

She only took a minute to come out alone. A tight-high rabbit fur coat covered her near-naked body. A gust of chilled wind blew the bangs off her face. Herr eyes coldly examine me before she stepped forward, opening her coat and pressing her fatless body to me. Her teeth nipped at my ear, before she asked breathlessly, “Well, where we going?”

“If it was warmer, I’d fuck you right here in the street.” I looked across the street to the Victor Hotel. It was a flophouse, but close. She smiled lewdly, then commented, “How romantic!”

“You have a problem with it?” I asked, fingering her ingrown nipples to erection.The style with which her hand rubbed my crotch told me neither of us should confuse this moment with love. We exchnaged no words crossing the avenue or climbing the hotel’s creaking stairs to room 33. The 40-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling was enough to light the room, as she shrugged off the coat. 

Standing with her legs spread and arms akimbo she let me admire her body for several seconds before dropping to her knees. Her hands expertly undid my zipper and withdrew my iron-hard cock. With one hand gripping my balls the actress’ mouth slithered onto my shaft like a snake swallowing its prey, proving the scene in the film had not depended on special effects. Her tongue flickered under my cock’s throbbing vein, while her hands wantonly rubbed that nether area behind my balls. Normally I would have shot right then, but she fell back onto the floor, then crawled onto the soiled bed. 

 I fingered her ingrown nipples to erection.

“Get naked!” the brunette commanded, then swiftly undid her bra and slipped out of her panties. Her thighs spread and she reached down to her vagina with both hands, so the fingertips peeled back her labia to reveal a wet slick cunt. 

My jacket hit the floor first, then I threw my tee shirt in the corner. My pants only came down to my knees, as I shuffled across the dusty floor to the bed. Kneeling between her legs, my tongue torpedoed into her warm wetness, as my hands wrestled off my boots and jeans. 

“Suck on my asshole!” She pleaded, as her middle fingers desperately scratched at her thickening clit. The tip of my tongue ricocheted off the sides of her inner ass before striking at her wrinkled asshole. Each time I pressed the flat of my tongue to the coppery pucker, the muscle flexed in jerks. Her panting became more frenzied, as my tongue probed through her sphincter like a harpoon.

Thinking she needed something more inside, I enlisted my thumb for his anal expedition, only to have her knock my hand away.  I couldn’t argue and lapped at her now clean asshole, until she shivered uncontrollably and her free hand seized my hair to pull my face forward. He fingers were a blur on her clit, as she called out, “Oh, yeah, fuck! FUCK! FUCCCCCK!!!”

Her spine arched and labia throbbed, as she came with a vengeance. I half-expected her to spend some time graining her breath, yet she rolled onto her stomach and begged, “Fuck me with your cock! Fuck me like a mercenary!”

Both her hands gripped her ass apart, so there was no mistaking where she wanted my cock. I stabbed forward and buried my cock, till the head rammed against her cervix. I had never felt so big and she told me the same, cooing, “Oh, baby, it’s so big. Split me in half with that log. It hurts so good!”

I fucked her like a barbarian fucking a nun who had been praying for Jesus’ violation all her life. Her pussy juice dripped from her cunt and formed a creamy froth around my shaft, as the walls of her steaming hole clamped on my member like we were two dogs in heat. The room stunk of her come and I bucked into her hole, as she screamed, “Fuck me harder!”

The guest in the next room banged on the wall, as I rammed in and out, until a geyser of sperm boiled out of my balls and erupted from my cock into her cunt. She moaned slavishly, as I milked the last shutters of pleasure from my orgasm. 

When I rolled onto my side, my heart pounding, my skin sheeted with sweat, and my lungs sucked of any air, she slithered down the bed to slurp up every trace of our mutual slime on my cock and balls. Finished she licked her lips, then stuck a finger into her slit. Bringing the tip to my lips, I sucked the ooze from her digit. She kissed me with cum-stained lips and said, “You’re sweet. My name’s Sharon.”

“I know. I saw your film ABDUCTION OF JOY.” I groaned, as her fingers stroked my penis back to hardness.   

"How was I."

“You were great.” I squirmed, as she pinched my nipple. I returned the favor to her once-again inverted nipple, and she squealed, “I bet you say that to all the girls in fuck films.”

“Yeah, all the time.” I wished it was true, but she was the only woman I had ever met who fucked on film. We fucked two more times before I crashed out between her thighs. When I woke, Sharon was dressed and at the door. I asked, “Where you going?”

She posed like a tart, sticking out her ass before throwing on her coat. 

“You need any money for a taxi?” I sleepily reached for my jeans, which seemed farther from the bed than I remembered.

“No, I’m good. We’ll see you around.” Sharon blew me a kiss and the door slammed shut before I could ask for her telephone number. I lay back in bed, then picked up my Levis. Going through the pockets I discovered why she hadn’t needed taxi fare. Sharon had ripped me off for every dollar and penny. Pulling on my jeans and boots, I swore madly, then ran out into the street, but the only person in sight was an old wino crumpled on the corner of East 19th Street. 

Across the street the dregs of the evening stumbled out of the after-hours club. I supposed I could have gone inside to see, if Sharon was there, but confronting her in a drug-maddened den of iniquity might prove a little more than dangerous to my health. She had fucked me and fucked me good, so I called it a night and walked home, thinking that she had gotten what she deserved. Next time it would be vice versa and next time wasn’t a long time coming.

Naked Fight A Paris 1985

On a Friday morning in January 1985 an Air France flight from Los Angeles landed on time at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Sharon and Amber exited from the 747 and proceeded through the terminal to pick up their luggage. Four big bags packed with exotic dancing costumes.

Male and female travelers stared at the slim brunette in tight leather and the buxom blonde tomboy dressed in North Hollywood erotica, then again men stared at them everywhere. No surprise. They were world famous XXX starlets. The two had been invited to shoot several adult films by a Paris porno production company and also educate the French male porn stars how to speak English. Basically Fuck Language 101.

A young man from the production company greeted them outside of the customs and led them to a Renault limo. He placed their bags in the trunk and introd his name was Rene. Sharon and Amber laughed at how he said his name. So very French. They slipped into the back and he sat up front with a surly unshaven driver. Both women smelled that the driver had not bathed today and maybe not this week or month.

"You are so French." Sharon almost expected them to be wearing a berets. The slender brunette had never been to France , but she had been born in Italy where her mother gave her up to adoption to a Catholic Family in New Jersey.

She always said that explained why she have become a porno actress. Her blonde buxom companion had different reasons. Amber came from Orange County California. The closest Amber had ever been to France was at Disneyland's IT'S A SMALL WORLD in Anaheim. Out the window was country flat farmland plowed brown dirt as far as the eye could see and not a single American car was on the highway.

“Rene, I wish you were wearing a beret, so I thought you were French.”

"I am French, but not that French." Rene smiled from the front passenger seat.

"Are you an actor?" Amber hoped he was in the movies, because most of the men she had seen in French XXX films were hairy cavemen. Rene was young and cute.

"No, I work in production, but I'm your daytime guide to Paris."

"What do you do at night?" asked Sharon.

She was already fantasizing about a menage a trois between the three of them. She had learned that phrase for two women and men in bed from her cousin Sean, who lived in Paris and presently worked at a nightclub called La Balajo.

"No, I work in production, but I'm here to be your daytime guide to Paris."

"What do you do at night?" asked Sharon. She was already fantasizing about a menage a trois between the three of them. She had learned that phrase for two women and men in bed from her cousin Pete, who was living in Paris and presently worked at a nightclub called La Balajo.

"I go out sometimes."

"My cousin Pete works at the Balajo and a couple of other clubs."

"Monday night. I know the club.”

In 1982 Sean had fled New York to avoid an Internal Affairs and FBI investigation into the Continental Club, a notorious after-hours haunt in West Chelsea. He hadn't been back for three years, except for the holidays. They had been fuck-buddies since 1978. .

"You talk about him all the time. You don't sound like cousins." Amber smirked having heard about their sexual exploits in New York.

"Oh we're cousins all right." They weren't really cousins but saying that they were saved time from explaining how they met at The Nursery, a sordid after-hours Club on 3rd Avenue in the East Village. Lovers ever since.

"He lives on Ile St. Louis."

“That address is very chic. In the middle of Paris, an island in the Seine." Rene lifted his eyebrow, impressed by her cousin.

"Funny, Pete lived in a slum in New York. So did I. These Village was a great place for the young and restless."

"Still is," added Amber, who had a couple of rock and roll boyfriends on the Lower East Side. New York was an always a fun town for her whenever she was dancing at Show World in Times Square. It was not Los Angeles and as they entered the Paris suburbs, she was sure that Paris was in Los Angeles either or even California or anywhere in the United States. "I'm looking to have a good time here. Are you single?"

"No, I have a girlfriend, but she likes to how you say swing with girls."

"With girls like us?” asked Sharon.

"Oui, with girls like you."

"I knew I would love Paris." She had been dreaming of this trip since the phone call from Paris in December. She had called Pete. He had promised to be a good guide and they both knew what that meant as did Amber.

The limousine drop them at a small hotel in La Marais, the Jewish quarter by the Seine. Pete had suggested the hotel. He lived on an island in the Seine not faraway. Rene unloaded the bags. The proprietor was a sweet Jewish woman, who laughed to see them.

"Tu es la cousine de Peter."

Sharon roughly translated what she said to understand that she was a cousin of Peter. She knew that he had been a guest here many times and the old woman must have loved him. Everyone loved Pete, except for those who did not love him. He was only trouble he to himself, but he was able to survive that danger. He was the luckiest man Sharon knew.

Madame Gruntuch lead them up to the top floor, a duplex with a large king bed and its windows overlooking rooftops with Notre Dame in the near distance. There was no phone and Rene translated to the owner had said they could call him downstairs and she will take your messages. He pointed to a business card on the bed table. The old woman left wishing them good luck.

"This isn't far from where your cousin lives." Rene dropped their bags, looking completely exhausted. He gave them a stack of Francs and said, "This is for you to get comfortable. You must be exhausted after your long flight. I have work to do, but I know my boss, Jacques wants to meet you at 5:00 over in St. Germain. Le Deux Magots. It's a famous cafe. I'm sure your cousin will know where it is."

"Not at all. We're ready to rock. I'll call my cousin. He's waiting for us. He'll be our guide." Rene seemed to relieved by this news and wrote down his phone number.

“I have work to do, but I know my boss, Jacques wants to meet you at 5:00 over in St. Germain. Le Deux Magots. It's a famous cafe. I'm sure your cousin will know where it is."

Rene left and the two women were alone for the first time since they entered the LAX terminal. They had made love in the jet's water closet over the Atlantic, just to claim another flight for the mile-high club.

"I don't know about you, but I could use a shower." Sharon stripped off her clothing

"Together?" Amber unbuttoned her shirts, baring her small breasts.

"Of course." Sharon and Amber were free. They were on the frontline of the Sexual Revolution . Sex was their gift to the world.

Any plans to do a morning tour of Paris ended after the shower the two fell into bed cuddled and fell asleep, despite Sharon's snoring. It was good to be in Paris.

The two woke to the rain at 10:01. All the rooftops were grey and wet from the rain. There was no threat of sunlight. Sharon got out of bed and padded across the cold wooden floor to the window. Down below the Narrow Street was empty. The Twin Towers of Notre Dame for shrouded by the downpour she turned to Amber and asked, "Did you bring any rain gear?"

"We live in LA. Why would we have rain gear?"

"Because we're in Paris and I remember my cousin saying to bring wet weather gear."

"And did you?"

"I brought flip-flops, but it's not flip flop weather out there. We're going to need an umbrellas and raincoats and maybe even boots."

Amber slipped out of bed and joined Sharon at the window. Both of them were shivering in their nakedness. She had been brought up in New Jersey. This cold was not like that damp cold. She felt it in her bones.

"I was not born to be in weather like this." Amber had seen rain like this in California during monsoon season and she hated that time. Nothing was ever dry.

"Don't worry I'll keep you warm."

The two returned to bed and pulled up the duvet over their naked bodies. Sharon looked at her watch and realize it was still on LA time. The only time she knew it was was daytime.

"You stay in bed I'll go get umbrellas and raincoats. Maybe Madam Grinch will bring us up some breakfast when I come back."

"Some good news finally."

Sharon dressed quickly in a warm-up suit and a leather jacket. Her only boots were leather thigh high stiletto heels. All her other Footwear were sneakers and sandal. Kissing Amber she left the hotel room and walk down the stairs to the front desk. Madam Grand took was there and smiled to see her guest. The old woman glance at the clock. It was ten to 11. She handed Sharon an umbrella and a note. It was from her cousin. He had left his telephone number and address, plus where he worked, the Balajo on Rue de Lappe. Madam Grintuch informed her where to buy raincoat and shoes on the nearby boulevard.

"Merci." the only other words she knew in French were Bonjour and Bon nuit.

Sharon stepped out onto the sidewalk the rain wasn't as heavy. She unfurled the umbrella and walk down Rue des Ecouffes to a broad boulevard. A pretty young woman pased by and regarded her with a disapproving scowl and Sharon wondered if her color blindness had cursed her with a crazy quilt of red yellows and purples. Her reflection in a pane of glass revealed nothing and she hurried down the street. The store was where Madame Gruntuch said it was. After telling the keeper that she wanted to look like Paris, she stripped out of her clothing and tried on a simple yet short gray skirt and a tight black sweater. Her outfit was completed with leather gloves, black raincoats, and shoes as well as two berets. THe other red for Amber who like bright colors. The shop lady approved of the change-over and said in broken English, "Now you are a Parisian."

Back out in the boulevard Sharon started to hurry back to the hotel. She felt warmer and the boots She spotted a cute cafe with an awning. The middle-aged woman behind the bar waved for her to come inside. Sharon nodded, but sat outside under the awning. No one else was sitting outside. Sharon wanted to see Paris in the rain in order to a cafe and a cognac. They came fast and she admired her reflection in the window. She looked very European, as she should having been born in Napoli far to the South. Here's world in Her Eyes. This is my continent my country is to the South i'm back home. Where I belonged. Sharon picked up a a napkin buried her face in the white cloth. The older woman came out and asked if everything was okay. Sharon nodded and said, "It's a long time since I've been in Europe. I'm happy to be home."

An hour later Madame Gruntuch clucked her approacl at the newe look and handed over the telephone, dialing her cousin's number, then passed the receiver. He was happy to hear that she had gotten rain gear and said he was coming over to give them a tour of the Left Bank whatever that was. Sharon went upstairs, followed by Madame Gruntuch with the breakfast tray.

Amber look like a movie star dressed in a pink and black catsuit high black boots and a leather jacket. Madam Grand took a remark how she was 'si belle'. Of course she was beautiful she was only 20 years old. The two of them ate the long stick of bread with butter and jam and drank the strong coffee with hot milk and plenty of sugar. The two of them hadn't done any cocaine since leaving LA. They had partially agreed to this trip to get away from the drug scene in Hollywood in the Valley. Drugs were everywhere in the porno industry in in Sharon suspected it was the same here in Paris.

"Does your cousin speak any French?"

"Yes, he says he learned it from the English subtitles of movies and his girlfriends, who he calls them the sleeping dictionaries and sleeping with someone was the best way to learn a language."

"Maybe he can teach me some French, while we're here. You're not possessive, are you?

"He's he's my cousin. Not my boyfriend. Thank goodness."

"Nothing worse than boyfriends."

Amber was lucky with Jamie, a veteran XXX actor. He was crazy sexually. More a boyfiend than a boyfriend, but Paris wasn't LA and they were free to be with whomever they wanted to be.

A knock on the door announced her cousin's arrival. Pete was dressed in black leather gloves jacket boots with a Black Beret. No umbrella. He never liked them. Amber stood across the room to kiss him on the lips and pressing her body against his, as if she didn't want to see Paris. He kissed her back for more than a second. The attraction was Mutual.

"Normally I'd say go get a Hotel, but we're in a hotel." Sharon wanted them both. He looked at the brunette and understood her desire but said, "Let's go see Paris."

Her cousin led them out into the rain. Amber also got a raincoat and sensible shoes. Sensible but sexy. They crossed the Seine onto Ile St. Louis. He pointed out his apartment and said ancient wooden beams cross the ceiling. Quasimodo could have lived there.

Amber look puzzled and Sharon said "The hunchback of Notre Dame."

"Which which is first on the list."

Both Sharon and Amber happy to have umbrellas and dry feet. They swiftly toward the gothic Cathedral, Pete pointing out the various Saints in the multi-colored stained glass windows. Patrick's in New York was magnificent, but Notre Dame was Heaven on Earth for Catholics. Above the choir with a small black statue.

"Black Michael, the archangel. He defeated Satan. Across the river is another greater statue let's let's like candles for our sins and we'll go there next."

Once more across the Seine in a light drizzle. None of this look like la or the valley or Malibu. There was no sun. Just a million Shades of Gray. He led them into a bookstore ancient smelling of old paper. Shakespeare and Company. He nodded to the clerks pretty girls, and walk to a small bookshelf.

"This is where they hide all the old porno. Great books from the 50s and 60s some even older. We can look at them and even take them if we want. No one thinks anybody would steal these books. These books are the first ones to teach me about sex. Here. The Itch. A classic by Stephen Hammer covering all of the major sexual deviations. Especially love Page 83."

Peter read that page to them both Amber and Sharon rubbed against both sides of his hips. The brunette bit her pouting lower lip. The XXX director of Personal Touch 3 had tutored her on that look She had been nineteen. All men loved it, but Peter's cousin kept reading the stroke book, as if it were the Bible. She wanted a line. nothing about this moldy bookstore said drugs and she said, "Lets get a drink."

"I know just the place.

THE STAFF OF SCHMOSES

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 1 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

Six women crowded the honeymoon suite of the Coastal Motel. The buxom 'groom' patiently waited on the bed for her 'bride', while the brutish camerawoman glanced at the director and tapped her watch.

"Lena, are you ready yet?" A bead of sweat trickled down the wiry director's spine, as she knocked on the bathroom door.

"One more minute," the female lead shouted from inside the tiled room.

“That’s fine as long as it’s sixty seconds.” Sherri Conti signaled the camerawoman to prepare for the money shot, acutely aware that the different segments of a movie set operated at contradicting speeds within the same time frames.

The technicians were habitually fast, except they were had nothing to do, and the talent was traditionally slow, especially when they were being rushed by the producer.

A director's job was to ensure the contrasting sides of the camera meshed during the actual shooting and Sherri checked the equipment for any potential miscue. Everything was in place, except for the girl in the bathroom.

There was no way that Lena was suffering stage fright. The young starlet had performed sex before a camera over fifty times and had not once gone up or blown her scene. Lena was simply dropping into her persona. Sherri had undergone the identical transformation in hundreds of hotels, condos, and ranch houses over her twenty-year career in XXX films.

The extra time had been worth the wait, because once Sherri had heard the word ‘action’, her body had exhibited a tangible hunger for sex and the camera never lied in an industry with no special effects.

Sherri’s name had once blazed on marquee lights in Times Square and her body had filled a millions of TV screens for audiences of one. A devoted fan had amassed a list of her on-screen lovers. The number ran into the thousands. The handful of stand-outs had vanished from the Valley like animals scourged into extinction. Sherri could have easily joined them, but her near-miraculous survival granted the forty-five year-old director the status of living legend.

The accolades, setbacks, or sins were meaningless to Sherri, for porno was still a business and time was money and she turned to the black woman on the queen-sized bed.

"Josie, give us a sound check."

"You got it, boss lady."

Big Josie Cane had worked for Sherri ten times.

The ex-actress’ production company paid better than the standard daily of $500 and the director had never blindsided the actresses with bizarre requests, so Josie gladly saved her best performances for Sherri. These girl-on-girl scenes were especially easy with Lena, for the Spanish girl shone in a business where most actresses were lightbulbs.

Rising off the mattress Josie spoke into the overhead boom.

"Testing, one, two, three." Josie cinched the belt of the strap-on dildo, which she didn't want to slip out of place during the shoot. This was going to be one long take and she meant to make the most of it.

"How clean is it?” Sherri asked the soundwoman.

Even with the taped windows and heavily blanketed door the microphone picked up the wet sizzle of 18-wheelers on the rain-drenched Ventura Freeway.

"Nothing I can't fix in the sound studio." The soundwoman had heard worst background noise.

The battery of Soft Ks, 10Ks, and Mighty Mole lights around the room pushed the temperature into the 90s. Sherri surveyed the sheen of sweat on Josie and figured that the male audience would appreciate the glistening ebony skin.

"It’s a go, once the 'jig inky' is in focus." The stocky gaffer in jeans studied the bed. Not a single shadow was visible on the sheets.

"Okay, we'll deal with that when Lena is in place." This scene needed to be shot and Sherri nervously pushed back her brown shag-cut hair. “Lena, that minute is up.”

“Ready or not here I come.” The raven-haired actress emerged from the bathroom and struck a provocative pose before the crew. The muscles of her girlish body were taut from dance classes without any deformation by gym training. A neutral-toned blush heightened the smoothness of her olive skin. Mascara accented the Oriental cant of her green eyes and her coal-black hair was cut to mimic Cleopatra.

She was more exotic than beautiful and this attribute converted into star quality. Her DVDs sold out every first run and the critics had nominated her ‘best new starlet’ for the upcoming XXX awards in Las Vegas.

“Finally.” Sharon clapped her hands and the crew snapped to attention.

Lena crossed the room to her off-screen lover.

The actress was an inch shorter than Sherri and her pouting pelvis grazed the director's thigh. The older woman stiffened, wishing that she was on the bed, instead of Josie, however the director had retired from that side of the camera five years ago.

"Nervous?"

"Nervous? I was made for this." The younger woman glided out of reach and every woman in the room studied her nakedness. Lena wouldn't have it any other way, for she was as much an exhibitionist as a voyeur.

Lena lay on the bed with her legs apart.

Her character in the film was called Desiree.

A runaway who had never been with a woman before.

Lena had run away from her home at the age of 14 and knew every aspect of this role inside out.

The gaffer adjusted the 'jig inky', as the make-up artist feathered the final touches on Lena's metamorphosis into a white trash virgin's first meeting with a bull dyke.

The market for most adult entertainment was predominantly male. Lena’s audience was evenly split between men and women, despite purely lesbian content of her films. Part of her appeal had to do with Lena's youth. She was new meat.

Sherri's first film had been a 8mm loop filmed in a Times Square studio. She had played a pizza girl delivering an order of pepperoni pies to a stag party. The invulnerability of her youth hadn’t lasted long in the meat grinder of adult film industry and Sherri was determined to protect Lena from such damage, but no one could survive forever without losing their soul.

Lena deserved to be in real films and Sherri had a plan to get the young girl on the silver screen, but now was not the time.

“Everyone set?” Sherri asked the crew.

“Ready, when you are, boss lady.” The gaffer retreated from the lights and Lena's hand dropped to her shaved vagina. Soon it would be replaced by that of another woman. The old Jefferson Airplane song SALLY GOES ROUND THE ROSES popped into Sherri’s head and the chorus repeated in her mind.

“Saddest thing in the whole wide world is to see your baby with another girl.”

“Josie, take your position.” Filming Lena with another woman was becoming increasingly difficult, but Sherri waved the make-up woman from the bed. In the end she was a professional.

“Places.”

Big Josie Cane assumed the 'top' position for the classic 'cowgirl reverse' shot and the Super 8mm video camera transmitted a pixilated image of Lena speaking her lines onto the video monitor. The picture was a little fuzzy.

“Sharpen it a little,” Sherri ordered the crouching camerawoman.

“Got it.” The camerawoman crystallized the focus with the deftness of a safecracker.

The image on the screen looked real and Sherri prayed a technical failure would halt the filming, except the words, "Lights, camera, action" transported the crew and actresses into the magic world of movie-making.

While the camera wasn’t 35mm and the budget was less than $20,000, every woman in the room prayed today’s filming guiding was a magic carpet them to Hollywood, that most promised of Californian lands, and no one was refusing a shot at the silver screen matter how big or small the stage.

Any god or goddess would have known the truth.

Not everyone gets a shot at fame and fortune.

Only the very lucky and the very good and sometimes the very bad reached the promised land and one look through the viewfinder was proof that Lena de Gama was destined for that heaven, for the camera never lies about the truth.

Pin Ball At the Nursery - 1977

how Sharon Mitchell and I became friends pinball at the Nursery 1977.

Paris - Dawn - Ile st.Rue Ile St. Louie - 1984

Thinking about Sharon Mitchell
Tied to the wooden rafters
On Rue Ile St. Louis 1984---
Dawn creeping over the Paris rooftops
You__naked
You__legs apart
You__your back red from the belt
You__your thighs quivering with each strike
You__moaning
You___ panties in your mouth
You___ ass arching back begging for my cock
Me__Leather engineer boots
Leather Gloves
A long dark green German leather coat
I free thee
You---collapse onto your knees
Hands tied tight
Behind your back
A slave___
Licking my engineer boots
Pret a tout
With dawn Crawling over the Paris rooftops

The you is Sharon Mitchell

A fellow sexual adventurer.

We are cousins sort of.

Masturbating Ban By Wasps - Conversation with Sharon Mitchell

Pete!

Text Conversation between Sharon Mitchell in Santa Cruz and me in Clinton Hill

Sharon - I think I'm losing my mind or something. I just keep having really weird dreams and usually every night when I take a shower, I use a little bit of body wash and then some oil for moisture but tonight it was like I couldn't get clean ENOUGH! I scrubbed myself with the hard end of the loofah sponge all over my body like four times. It was like I couldn't get cleaning enough!

I always masturbate every night in the shower, and I usually bring myself to a clitoral orgasm, ut tonight I couldn't come enough! I must've brought myself to orgasm nine times and it still wasn't enough, so I got my Lucite dildo out and fucked myself in the pussy, while jacking off with my Clit and it's still wasn't enough! So I got out my other dildo and fucked myself in the ass the pussy, while letting the water from the shower hit my clit and I finally had a huge orgasm. After ut I washed my hair again for the third time and scrubbed myself again with the loofah shaved my legs. It was the weirdest thing it's like I couldn't get enough of anything. I just felt I don't know what I felt like. I had an Itch from the inside out everywhere.

And no, I am not on meth.

Moi - Have you thought about issuing a restraining order against your hands?

Ha ha ha. Funny you should say that. Now I have one. I was watering last evening and I got bit by a flurry of yellow jackets. Look at my hand. (see above photo)

Moi - As a child a produce stand threw their fruit crates into a small gully. Wasps set up a colony and my friends, brother, and I decided to exterminate them with shovels. The neighborhood kids gathered to watch the show. We set to smashing the wooden boxes. The wasps rose from the gully in a swarm to attack their tormenters and our audience. Screaming kids swatting at the waps. My sister got it the worse

My father asked whose bright idea was it to disturb the wasps.

Everyone looked at me.

"I hope you learned your lesson."

Hell, yeah.

Foto Sharon 1980

The Neponsit Homes Eternal

The Neposit Homes overlooked Riis Park Beach. Originally constructed as TB wards and later serving as mental wards and finally converted to a home for local seniors. I recalled sunning naked beneath those windows in 1978 with Sharon Mitchell after a long night into the dawn. The old ladies shouting kind words to us in appreciation of youth. The old men just voyeured with a smile, as we fucked under a sheet.

That day Sharon tanned her Neapolitan Skin

My Hibernian flesh was burned to a crisp.

I survived as had the Neponsit Homes, but last year the city had the four buildings razed to the ground.

To make a parking lot

Better to let them join the dunes of the Rockaways.

My memories can picture the Neponsit Homes better that way.

Chinatown DREAM

My cousin's photo inspired a marvelous dream last night.
I was dressed as an officer and was aggressed by millenniums at a bar.
"If it were not for people like me you wouldn't be here now."
My uniform had been earned for my service in the War on Drugs for the other side.

I walked away without incident and two lesbians asked, if I wanted to go to a club in Chinatown.
It's not straight or vanilla."
"Sure."

Their offer was music to my ears and I slung on my leather jacket.

There was no noise on the street.

The lights and muffled music assured this place was it.

The door person saluted me for having fought the DEA for decades.
We went inside and my companion abandoned me to hit a room of bearish women and frail waifs.
I silently wished them good luck.

The nameless club melanged into an orgy disco, a Lausida drug den, and every other den of inequity across the centuries was out of control.

Everything was go.

I danced a little and retreated to a strangely quiet room.
I sat and a agelessly beautiful trans joined me.
Their tightjeans had been cut at the crotch to reveal their penis and they pulled out a bottle of syringes.
"My name's Ava. This is the Nod Room. Wanna get busy with me."
"I only wish I could "
"I really like getting in the ass and eject heroin while you're cumming in my hole."

Fifteen years ago I would have been sold by the offer.
"Sorry, Ava, I got to go."
My flesh was too weak against this temptation.

I left Ava and went to bar, hanging my jacket over a chair.
There was no sign of the two women.

I was happy until I discovered someone had stolen my leather jacket.
I trawled the club looking for thief, until I found an abandoned Armani leather.
It was a little large, but better than mine.

Ava caught me at the exit
"Last chance."
"Maybe next time."
Ava kissed me on the lips.
Wake up.

FINALLY by Peter Nolan Smith

All through the summer of 2014 I had been jokingly asking couples about the chances of us having a menage-a-trois with me. The response varied from disgust to a laughing rejection. I spared no one my query and no one accepted the challenge.

The ludicrous proposition was strictly a joke, but last weekend I attended the screening of the first 35 mm adult entertainment film JOY.

My good friend Sharon Mitchell had starred in the DEATH WISH take-off.

The producers Distribpix.com had flown out the founder of AIM Health Center to speak to a full theater of 1970s XXX film buffs.

Most of the fans at the Anthology Cinema were in their 50s and 60s. The veterans of the wicked White Way of 42nd Street were starstruck by Sharon's presence. My two guests were my godson Fast Eddie and his university friend, Jean Namur. Neither young man had been to an X-rated movie and I introduced Sharon to the twenty-year olds.

Fast Eddie said the retired actress looked young.

"Hell, Mitch, you look good for any age," gushed a frail bald septuagenarian. "I can't wait to see this film. 35 mm and full-screen. I hate TV porno."

"Thanks for coming." Sharon posed for a photo with my guests.

Other young men and women were in the audience. They were devotees to the genre of 1970s blue films. From the short Q & A session before the filming these neophytes revealed their devotion to the history of XXX films such as THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN and BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR.

The event's organizer asked everyone to take a seat and the cinema lights went dark for Harley Mansfield’s, 1977 classic with Sharon cast as a reverse rapist in a New York of dark alleys and empty trains. Her crimes lead to a spate of copycat sexual assault on men by her devotees. The viewers in the theater laughed throughout the film. It was funny.

After the lights came up, Fast Eddie and Jean Namur biked off to Pratt Institute. They had graduate engineering classes in the morning.

"Thank Miss Mitchell for us."

Fast Eddie knew how to be polite.

The second Q & A was longer and I waited for Sharon. We were getting drinks together.

Old friends and stars had popped out of the woodwork.

I knew none of them.

"I need a drink," Sharon whispered to me.

"Me too."

We ended up at Planet Rose, a karaoke bar on Avenue A.

The owner was Sharon's friend. He bought us drinks. Steven Morowitz of Distribpix got the next rounds. Sharon basked in the glory of another night of fame.

"It was great being a movie star again, but watching me in JOY was like watching my granddaughter on screen."

She introduced me to the king of the peepshow loops.

He had stories of Times Square.

Strippers, porno actresses, fat boys, dirty cops, bag men, and connected producers.

"Just don't tell anyone these stories," he cautioned me and looked around the room. "Some of those guys are still alive."

"You got it." I can hold my sand as can any one of 'Us'.

A small blonde man rocked on the mike singing Judas Priest. Sean came from Tulsa. I told him about passing through town in the 1970s.

"I drank with the Speare Sisters." They were good girls and true to their church, but liked a good time in the speakeasies of that Bible Belt city.

Sean loved Sharon.

He danced cheek to groin with her.

Out west she lived near Big Sur.

Crystal Creek was a small town.

She liked the big city.

Same as Sean.

I saw my opening and joined the two, as a fat girl sang Taylor Swift's YOU BELONG TO ME.

Her voice was brutally flat.

I liked it.

Sharon loved it.

Sean loved it too.

Technically nothing happened, but this fully-clothed encounter was as close as I was getting to a menage-a-trois this summer or any season to come and that was probably a good thing.

For everyone who said no.

There was only one yes thanks to the magic of JOY.

Fotos by Daniel Karpus and Peter Nolan Smith

To order JOY, please go to the following URL

http://www.distribpix.com/film/joy/overview

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 2 By Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after Labor Day the Continental opened its door without a liquor license. Limos lined West 25th Street well past dawn, as models, actresses, and strippers danced with abandon to the city's best DJs. Movie stars snorted coke with two-bit dealers and national politicians seduced Amazonian TVs on pop-art sofas.

Few revelers cared about the illegality of an after-hours club. The precinct police were on the take. Sanitation inspectors glommed drinks with big-hair wives, plainclothes cops strong-armed bribes, and Jimmie Fats siphoned the cash cow for the firemen. Greed blinded the bagmen to Arthur's wearing a wire for Internal Affairs and the FBI investigating our Russian investor for counterfeit twenties. I was counting the days until it all went bad and hoped to not be there then, but $100 tips pushed my day of departure back weekend by weekend.

By Halloween I had $5000. By mid November that amount reached $6000.

A week before Thanksgiving Arthur sold half his share in the Continental to three men in black suits.

"You been talking about leaving. It's a good time for you to leave."

Arthur paid me $500 for the week.

"I don't know where to go." My pockets were crammed with cash. It was getting cold, but I still hadn't spoken to Lisa."

"Anyplace, but here." Arthur nodded at his new partners.

Their shoes were FBI issue.

"I'll leave after Christmas." Another month was worth $3000.

"Don't wait too long." He was trying to tell me something only I wasn't listening as long as Lisa's Nordic profile, blonde hair and sculptured shoulders dogged my peripheral vision.

She was a siren and to other men as well.

Vadim’s bodyguards exercised Slavic etiquette to these suitors in the alley. My obsession rejected fear and I cornered Lisa once, when Vadim was out of town.

"All I want is explanation." It was almost Thanksgiving. The anniversary of her leaving.

"Of what?" She had embraced the comfort of amnesia.

"Why you left and never came back." I had thousands of answers. None of them added up to one plus one equaling two.

"If I explained that, then I would have to tell you everything." She looked through me as if I were glass and wearily walked away, saying "Sometimes you don't get answers."

Refused an answer, I slipped my hand into my pocket for a quarter.

Flipping a coin was another way to see the future.

Heads meant yes. Tails no.

"Does she love me?"

It came up tails.

A spike jabbed my heart like a junkie's hotshot.

"Will she come back to me?"

Tails.

I was plunged into darkness.

"Will we have sex again?"

Heads.

My limitless obsession accepted these 50/50 replies as the truth, especially since Lisa's neglect was a game and she chose to exploit a pawn in December.

The winter dawn broke on the club's fire escape. Danny was playing the Members' SOUNDS OF THE SUBURBS. I stood on the rusting steel, watching the stars fade from the night. High heels clicked onto the steel grating. Lisa wore a black sable fur coat. It was open and her silk shirt was unbuttoned to her waist.

"I needed some air."

Her flawless skin was the color of the first snow.

"It's cold this time of year." I started for the door.

"I'm from Buffalo and it's not that cold in this coat." She leaned against the door. "Don't worry. Vadim is too high to care what I do."

"What about his bodyguards?"

"They're drunk too. Russians like their drink." She reached out for me. "Hold me."

I melted into her like a nuclear core going China Syndrome through the Earth.

After a breathless kiss the ashen blonde claimed, "I haven't stopped loving you."

"Me neither." I wished our bodies were wrapped in silk sheets instead of buffeted by an alley wind.

"I can't give you any answers." Her hands spoke with desire and she looked over her shoulder as if her eyes could see through the steel door.

"I don't want words." It was a well-rehearsed line.

"Good." She pulled me closer and we embraced like lovers in a silent movie for a half-minute. Her heart was bare to my hand and her heart beat like a clock ready to sound its alarm.

"I have to go."

"I understand."

"I wish I didn't have to go."

"Then leave with me. I have $6000. We can go anywhere. Europe, LA, Florida. Anywhere."

"$6000 goes fast." The narrowing of her eyes revealed that she was adding up the pros and cons of my proposition.

"We can rent a house in Key West. I'll work at a bar. We'll watch the sunsets from the pier." I loved the sea. It was only one of a million possibilities, if she said 'yes'.

"Vadim says poets go nowhere." She was weighing my worth.

"Only because I've been waiting for you."

Applause from NYU co-eds had rewarded my poems about two days stranded in Garrison Junction, Montana, yet a drifter's code wasn't tattooed on my skin. "I could get a real job. Move into a nice apartment."

A nine-to-five held little glamour to someone who has travelled first-class through Europe and her icy stare announced her final appraisal. Her hand withdrew from mine.

"Sean, it's a nice dream, but life's too short to live a dream."

My one minute of overtime ran to zero.

"Why you never call?" Asking questions was not part of my daydreams.

"Your phone got shut off." An unpaid bill was only partially the truth.

"You could have sent a postcard." This plea cut the scene short.

"The last thing I need in life is someone who lives for breaking the score of CBGB's pinball machine." Pity was not her forte.

"I'm good at pinball." I owned the record for the SLASH machine at CBGBs.

"But your name isn't Tommy." Lisa fled inside the club and joined Vadim and his partner, Viktor Malenski, in the VIP lounge.

Before I broached the velvet ropes, his two Ukrainian bodyguards created an immovable barrier. I possessed other means of touching Lisa and went to the DJ booth with two beers.

"Nice entrance." Danny sported a broken nose and two black eyes. His hailing from Old New York money more than compensated for a crooked beak with the girls at the Continental. They loved him all the more.

"I wasn't trying to be discreet." "I can see you're treading on razors." Danny touched his nose. "I'm not worried about Vadim's thugs." "Really? The big one punched me for speaking with Lisa. I learned my lesson One punch had taught Danny to keep his distance from Lisa. I think you'd get hit a little harder than me." "I've been hit before." I pushed him away from the turntables and picked out an LP. Danny grimaced at my choice of the Romantics' WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU. "That song only has an audience of one." "Two. You're forgetting me." Two years ago the Romantics had played Hurrah. Hundreds of young women packed the uptown rock club to see the Detroit band. I took a break from the door to check out the show. A blonde stood before the speakers. Her beauty belonged in a fashion magazine and I leaned forward to smell hair fragrant as peaches dipped in burnt tar. Mere mortals didn't stand a chance with her, but she backed into me, as the group played their hit song. Her intent was more than flirtation and I should have retreated to the club's entrance.

My hillbilly girlfriend waited at our East Village apartment. She said she loved me. I ignore her declaration of devotion and grabbed the blonde's hand. The encore of their hit accompanied our sex in the stairwell.

Now Lisa laughed, as if the song was for someone else. The dance floor emptied quickly. Arthur frowned at the DJ booth and slashed his hand in the air to cut the song short.

"Sorry, but I get paid to make people dance." Danny didn't need another broken nose.

"Put something else on." I accepted its failure.

Danny segued to Chic's LE FREAK and ransacked the EPs for a floor-filler to his next tracks.

"There are other women out there."

"And I've been with more than a few." Vixens lounged on the club's over-stuffed sofas in a languid mockery of foreplay and braless teenagers danced like they had graduated from stripper training school. I had slept with several. None of the one-nighters succeeded in erasing the ruins in my head. There had to be a magic word. A gesture. Something to change the present into another now.

"You ever hold something in your hands and know it belongs nowhere else?"

"My Little League baseball bat." Danny grasped an imaginary slugger. "Women are mist on the water and no man can hold onto a ghost."

"Lisa's flesh and blood."

"A zombie is the one ghost you can never raise from the dead."

"She told me she loved me." I watched, as she led Vadim onto the dance floor.

"No phone calls, no letters, and a Russian boyfriend don't spell love in any language."

"Not if you're only reading the subtitles." Lisa swayed to the music without looking my way and Vadim moped like a trained bear. I danced better than him and I had read her TS Eliot in the bed of a Niagara Falls Hotel. Poetry under the sheets had to count for something, but cutting in was not an option. The bodyguards glared at me.

"She never said she was going away forever."

"Never can change to forever in a heartbeat. You were a poet a year ago. Your shit was funny. Why you stop?"

"I walked into a bookstore. Thousands of books were on the shelves. At least five hundred said what I felt."

Self-pity delivered a coup de grace to my muse.

"So now you're a thug."

"And Vadim is a gangster." Vadim and Lisa stopped dancing and went to the coat check. They were leaving for the night. My quitting time was dawn.

"If a woman has to choose between the lesser of two evils then she'll always go for the money."

"Love's not about money." Not at the moment of orgasm.

"That coat is worth more than you earned last year." Danny focused a light on Vadim covering her shoulders with a sable fur.

"So?" My memories of Lisa rotted like a Playboy pictorial left in the rain.

"So no matter how much a woman loves you, she'll always seek the safest harbor."

"And my life's too messy to offer a woman shelter." My apartment was in a ghetto, my bank account languished in double figures, and my plans for the future extended no further than breakfast.

"You're a storm at sea." Danny spun TAINTED LOVE and revelers thronged onto the dance floor.

Arthur waved for me to return to the door, as a flat-chested brunette in a slick black leather dominatrix outfit slinked into the DJ booth. Several men on the dance floor recognized Sherri. My cousin had starred in scores of XXX movies. Her most famous role was as a teenage runaway. I had seen the film twice. We had met in a Times Square bar after she tilted my pinball machine. Our mutual affinity for self-destruction determined that we were better off friends than lovers.

"Hi, cous." Sherri greeted me with a kiss on the cheek.

Sherri was more than a hellbound succubus. The porn star was smart and very funny. We had good times together. Claiming a family tie avoided any explanation of our relationship.

"You've really have to give her up. No woman will cross a bridge she’s burned." Sherri followed my eyes to the couple exiting the club.

"What if I walked across water?"

"We're sinners and sinners can only perform sin, not miracles." Sherri's failures in love rivaled my debacles.

"I can change my ways like St. Paul."

"St. Paul was chasing redemption, not another man's woman."

"Your cousin thinks Lisa's and his bodies were created for one another." Danny almost played James Brown's IT'S A MAN'S WORLD and then switched to Sly Stone's TAKE ME HIGHER. "Like Adam and Eve."

"I don't care what is written in the Bible, God created the first woman for himself. Adam had to make do with the animals until God got tired with Eve." Sherri's opinion of men hovered below the ground.

"I'm not saying Lisa was created for me."

"No woman is created for any man." Sherri preferred girls. Her fans felt the same way.

"And worst you think there are only two kinds of women other than your mother."

"Only two." I had thought there were at least five.

"Marlon Brando has his way Blanche in STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and two minutes later is calling out, "Stella." Your ex-girlfriend looks like a virgin, except she’s sleeping with another man. Men can't choose between the virgin and the whore. You have one. You want the other. No woman can be both. Not the Virgin Mary. Not even me."

"Okay, most men are suckers, but all I want is someone to love." I was hoping that she possessed a secret potion, instead Sherri said, "Your first night with Lisa you supposedly 'made love' five times. At least that's what you told me." Danny's eyes widened in admiration.

"My heart was on fire."

"Yes, and that 'five times' has been a yardstick for involvement with a woman. Lust is not love. Lust is lust. See the girl in the boa feathers."

A scantily-clad redhead teased a circle of leering worshippers. Che Chasta was the leading lady in Sherri's films.

"I told her you were good in bed."

"How would you know?" Danny turned up the volume.

"If I'm great, then my cousin has to be at least good." Sherri tapped my cheek.

"Are you two really cousins?" Danny had a thing for Sherri. "You don't look alike." "That's, because I was adopted, but our blood is still thicker than thieves." She dragged me from the DJ booth. The hopes of the redhead's admirers were dashed by Che's kissing my cousin like a boa swallowing its prey.

"Che, I think you should go home with my cousin." The two women were more than on-screen lovers, but Sherri wanted to keep her distance. "He needs some TFC."

"And I'm an expert at 'tender fucking care'." Che's feathery caress scintillated my marrow. "Anything stopping you?"

Lisa had left with another man. The sexual revolution was burning the moral tenets of America. Everything was 'go' and not 'no'.

"Just a second." I went up to Arthur. "I need to go home."

"I can see why." The wily owner glanced over my shoulder at the waiting redhead. "Good luck."

Envy accompanied my departure. The bouncers flicked thumbs up, as we got in the taxi. Che gave the driver a show on the way to a Tribeca loft. In the elevator she stripped naked, singing Rick James' SUPER FREAK, "I'm a Super Freak, Super Freak."

"You're really sexy." Her lingerie smelled of cigarette and Estee Lauder perfume.

"I hear that all the time."

"You have anything else you want to tell me?"

I spoke dirty. She cooed with a little girl voice and caressed herself with a shiver. The elevator door opened and she danced into the loft. Cameras and lights were arranged around a large bed.

"Tomorrow Sherri and I are shooting two sex scenes." She unzipped her boots. "Tonight I need to rehearse."

Che lay on the sheets. Her breasts flattened on her chest. I peeled off my clothes. I knelt between her thighs. Her tongue licked at her lips and hands guided me inside. I shut my eyes. Men across America would have killed for this moment of heaven, except my erection withered under a phantom's stranglehold and I faked a premature ejaculation. "Don't feel so bad, softies happen to a lot of men with me," Che consoled me with an expertise forged by cinematic sex. "Let me fluff you for seconds." Che expertly tried to arouse me, but something was broken. After three minutes she stopped and asked, "You're not gay, are you?" "No, I'm sorry." I didn't want to discuss about my futile fixation and deserted the sex icon, for my East Village apartment, where I scissored women from glossy stroke books to construct a Frankenstein collage of Lisa. Our reunion was the one lie I believed, as December collapsed towards Christmas.

I lived off cocaine bribes from customers and sold the excess to customers. My $6000 rose to $8000, but I wasn't leaving, despite things going downhill fast.

Sherri was arrested by the precinct police for possession. My threat of snitching to Internal Affairs prevented her being the station house’s party favor. Vadim ODed on heroin. My reviving him earned scant thanks from Lisa, although the Russian stopped cease to consider me his enemy. Danny's parents threw him out of the apartment after he stole a family heirloom. He crashed on my couch. We were our own worst enemies. Inexplicably outsiders viewed our lifestyle as glamorous.

A French magazine front-paged my photo and their journalist wrote that I was a legend at 29. Bernard based this title on my urban exploits without any knowledge of my stalking Lisa from her apartment on East 73rd Street to Vadim' Central Park penthouse or tailing the couple's ricochets around Manhattan.

Vadim never spotted my gaze, as he met with Odessa diamond traffickers and his thugs visited gulag violence on complete strangers. Lisa endured the beatings with heartless sighs, but I wasn't the pair's only shadow.

Right before Christmas Vadim's partner was arrested by the FBI. Viktor refused to talk. The precinct police were hauled before Internal Affairs. They maintained a silent wall of blue. These harbingers of the approaching end failed to pierce my narco-ambulation. My wake-up call came on New Year's Eve, when Viktor Malenski was shot dead in front of the club.

This execution bared the Continental to a public frenzy fed by the city's newspapers. I had only heard the shots, yet my name skirted the periphery of the widening scandal of drugs, fame, and beauty with NYPD's Internal Affairs drawing lines between the dots.

Lisa came to my apartment. We stayed in bed for an entire day. She swore that she hadn't pulled the trigger. I believed her every word and pleaded ignorance nothing during a police interrogation.

"Don't leave town." The Internal Affairs sergeant wasn't buying my version.

Nineteen cops were suspended from the force. I knew half their names. Arthur knew them all. A phone call from Paris averted my appointment as state's witness.

Bernard told me that the magazine Actuel wanted for an American to work a nightclub in Paris. Bad French was a prerequisite for the position of physionomiste. A round-trip ticket was waiting at Air France. My passport was up-to-date and I asked Lisa what I should do.

"You have to go. We won't be safe here. Not from the police. Not from Vadim's gang." She lay in my arms naked. Her skin smelled of tar. "I'll meet you in Paris five days from now."

"Notre-Dame." It had to be easy to find.

"At noon." She sealed the pact with a long kiss.

The morning of the flight I felt like Ingrid Bergman's leaving Rick in CASABLANCA.

Lisa walked away from East 10th Street, saying. "Twelve noon."

"In five days." I tried to trap her scent in my lungs, but exhaled as her taxi merged with the traffic on 1st Avenue.

Sherri drove me to the airport. Che was in the front seat. They were heading cross-country to set up a life in LA. I sat on the rear seat with Sherri's parrot, Boo.

"Best thing about this trip is your leaving that blonde bitch." Sherri dodged a truck. She was colorblind and couldn't see brake lights.

"She's meeting me in Paris."

Both women groaned and Boo cackled, "Ha-ha."

"You really think she's going to meet you?" Sherri glanced in the rear-view mirror.

"She says she loves me." That shifted the odds to 50/50.

"You buy her a ticket?" Che swung her head to the back.

"No, she said she would get it from her agency."

"Make that 9 to 1."

"Which are better odds than I had before." Slush on the Grand Central Parkway slowed traffic. I leaned back in the seat. Paris would be our refuge. I would write a book. Lisa would grace the cover of ELLE. We'd practice French in bed, drink espresso in small cafes, and wander along the Seine in the rain.

"Everything will be fine." Sherri turned on the wipers.

"Whenever I'm in her, I feel like she is a glove." Lisa's scent simmered on my skin as burnt fruit. "She has to feel the same way too."

"I’ve been hundreds of men and I've never found one who fits me. On the other hand women are another story." Sherri reached over to Che. Boo screeched her support.

"This will work out."

"Cous, don't bet your heart on a long shot," Sherri was glad to say it about someone else other than herself.

"I promise I won't."

Sherri braked before the Air France terminal. We hugged good-bye. I said she should visit Paris. She told me the same thing about LA and then drove away into a flurry of snow.

I half-expected the police to stop my boarding the Air France flight, but I got on the plane and within in an hour the 747 was banking north over the northern tip on Long Island.