The Hoax of Hypocrisy - 2011

Many years ago the BBC announced that the Vatican Library was publishing its collection of banned manuscripts and books online.

Fans of antique erotica, rejoice. The world's largest collection of pornography is about to be published on the web. Just make sure you have a credit card handy.

The Vatican Secret Archives announced yesterday plans to digitalize a previously unacknowledged collection of prohibited materials.

Kept hidden by an act of pontifical secrecy, the items, once decreed obscene, are being unveiled as part of a new papal directive on transparency. The collection includes tens of thousands of drawings, frescoes, engravings, artifacts, and ephemera dating from the Renaissance back to classical antiquity.

Included in the materials available for a free but censored preview are an illuminated manuscript depicting the Song of Solomon and several illustrations of Mary Magdalene.

Profits to Defray Bankrupt Dioceses.

Costs and pricing for full access to the online collection have not been finalized. Income generated from paying subscribers will be set aside in a special account administered by the Catholic Church.

The account will be used to reimburse losses by churches that have declared bankruptcy to eliminate their obligation to pay court judgments in sexual abuse cases.

Government, Industry Experts to Oversee Project

Funding for the collection's digitalization has been procured via an executive order from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has expressed a strong interest in "protecting our priceless cultural heritage." Berlusconi has appointed a confidential liaison to oversee the process.

Age verification, credit card processing, and account maintenance will be run by adult entertainment magnate Larry Flynnt."

The Vatican and BBC-News quickly disclaimed the announcement as a hoax, for despite constant rumors of the Secret Library within St Peter's Basilica the Papal Office has denied the existence of such a treasure trove of trash.

Of course it was an April Fool's Hoax, which comes from the pagan holiday of Hiking on Mount Rainer minutes before a snow storm 1999.

March 25 instead of April 1.

Next year I'll be ready for Hilaria as will the rest of the pagan nation.

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.

The Smell of Eucalyptus 1986

In June of 1986 I came back from France to write porno scripts with an old girlfriend strung out on H. North Hollywood, the ground zero of the XXX film industry. Obviously I was not thinking straight, but I had confused lust with love, especially since Sharon was a porno actress skilled at faking orgasms.

One rainy night Sharon drove her big gas-guzzler over to rescue Harry Reems for an OD. She called 911. the dispatcher said EMS had been to that address too many times.

"It's a waste of time," said the dispatcher.

A junkie herself Sharon knew better and on a very rainy night we drove over the Hollywood Hills to a Laurel Canyon cottage. The nocturnal gloom was thick with the scent of eucalyptus trees. The door was open. I recognized Harry, having seen DEEP THROAT once in a Times Square theater. We were in time to revive Linda Lovelace’s co-star from death. He groaned, “Stop slapping me.”

I sat by the bed, as she rummaged through the desk, closet, and under the mattress without finding a stash. Sharon left to score and never came back.

The rain worsened to a deluge. I was going nowhere and settled into a lounge chair with a blanket over me. It was cold and damp. I was going nowhere.

The next day Harry woke around noon and asked, "Who the fuck are you?"

I explained, And then threw me out. My parting shot.

"You have a small dick."

I walked outside.

It was a sunny California day, but weren't they all.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - CHAPTER 6 By Peter Nolan Smith

SIX

The 757 descended for its final approach to Las Vegas. The passengers tightened their safety belts and the male steward knocked on a bathroom door. A single passenger was missing from the flight.

"Sir, you have to get back to your seat."

"Just a second." Sean Coll was unraveling the turban of toilet paper in front of the bathroom mirror. The blonde man in the reflection resembled an aging extra from a 1960's biker flick. The wedges inside his shoes added another inch of height and his rumpled black suit shadowed his persona with a nondescript aura. He exited from the bathroom and said to the steward, "Thanks for being so patient."

The steward was visibly dismayed by the passenger's bizarre appearance, especially since no golden-haired man had boarded the plane at JFK.

"What seat are you in, sir?"

"32-A, I can show you my ticket, if you would like."

"No, that won't be necessary."

Satisfied by the steward's bafflement, Sean proceeded past the passengers gaping at the wonders of Las Vegas below the 757. They should have been recoiling in fright like they were meeting a thief in a dark alley, yet none of them cared a fig whether they won or lost at the gaming tables or slots as long as they weren't home watching television.

A black boy about eight years old had changed seat for the view.

"Are you the same guy here before?"

Sean raised his eyebrow to indicate 'maybe'.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's waiting for me at the airport." The boy peeked out the porthole.

"First time flying?" Sean stashed his bag before buckling into the aisle seat.

"Yes, sir." His small hands gripped the armrests for dear life.

"Empty planes never crash." Sean imitated the exact tone with which his own father had calmed his son on a shuttle flight from Boston to New York decades before, except the boy slouched fearfully into the seat.

"Mister, last year I seen this movie, where a plane crashes in the mountains. Everyone had to eat everyone else."

"Trust me, I won't eat you." Sean reached over to tighten the boy's seatbelt, as the 757 dropped with a wiggle of its wings. Seconds later the tires touched down on the runway. The young boy had survived the worst of his fears and proudly announced, "That was nothing."

"Just like I said and you'll be with your mom soon."

The 757 stopped at the terminal gate and the young boy was escorted by the steward. Sean positioned himself behind two beefy men in Giants paraphernalia and shuffled from the plane in a slouch. Inside the gangway a bearded air marshal dismissed the bleached-blonde man as a danger only to himself.

Two old ladies elbowed him out of the way and scuttled over to the nearest WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machine. All seniors loved that show.

Waiting friends, relatives, lovers, and drivers ignored Sean and no one called his name on the ride down the escalator or as he walked out of the terminal into the warm desert air. He had visited Vegas in 1971 and gazed dreamily at the hazy outline of distant mountains. Somewhere over those peaks lay Death Valley and California.

A rough voice short-circuited his attempt to flag a taxi.

"Nice outfit, Tempo, "Although it's a little late for Halloween, ain't it?"

"You know the East Village." Sean turned around hoping the voice belonged to a mirage, but he should have known that deRocco would have never sent him on that plane without his maddog partner being on the receiving end.

"Yeah, it's Halloween all the time with those losers." Driscoll's eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The invalided cop was on a binge of speed and dope.

"So I didn't fool you at all?"

"No, but I almost bust a gut seein' you do this hobo thing. Where'd you learn that shit anyway?" Driscoll was in a dark suit a size too small for his waist, but his belly didn't matter, because ex-cops like Driscoll never ran from trouble.

"I went out with this married make-up artist in Paris. She disguised me to keep from finding out her husband from seeing that she was going out with a man."

"She did you up as a woman?"

"Yeah." Sean was telling the truth. "That deception lasted about six months and finally the husband came up to me at a bar. He was a big guy about your size and showed me some pictures. At first I thought they were me, but the husband told me they were of her old boyfriends."

"Why he tell you that?"

"He thought I was her lesbian lover and wanted to go out with me."

"I woulda liked to seen you as a girl. You have nice hair." Driscoll?s laugh stuck in his throat. ?I woulda thought you got the disguise thing from your ex-wife. She's an actress, right? Or your friend, Vic Granollers. Now he's really big in films now, right?"

"I didn't know you were such a movie buff."

"I like to know all about my friends and their friends."

They entered the shade of the parking garage and Sean changed the subject.

"Where we going?"

"I'll tell you, when we get there." Driscoll ran his hand through his thick hair.

A blue-jacketed peace officer was ticketing a car and Driscoll jabbed Sean's ribs with what felt like a pistol muzzle. "He's havin' a good day, so why would you want to spoil it?"

"Not me." Sean walked past the local policeman to a fire engine red Mustang 5.0.

Driscoll forced him into the front passenger seat and handcuffed his wrist to the door.

"Just think of the cuffs as an extra safety feature."

"What if we get into an accident?"

"This piece of shit has dual air bags, Seano." Driscoll got behind the steering wheel, and revved the engine once before peeling out of the parking lot. Sean took the wedges out of his shoes and the ex-cop chuckled at the show.

"What's so funny?" Sean rubbed his feet.

"Whatcha gonna do with your hair?" Kevin Driscoll pointed at his head.

"Let it grow out." Sean smoothed down the brittle blonde hair and looked out the window at the throngs of tourists. Even the sorriest of the casino fodder was better off than he was.

"It might take some time."

"And I have plenty of that, right?"

Driscoll didn't answer him and drove under I-15.

The glittering hotels and tourists on holiday were replaced by car repair shops, sleazy go-go bars, truck stops, cheap motels and transients permanently down on their luck. Driscoll pulled into a heat-warped parking lot of a run-down motor lodge and stopped the car before room #7. He undid the handcuffs from the door and said, "Get your own bag, cause I ain't no bellhop."

Sean got out of the car.

Dust devils swirled across the vacant lots into the desert where Las Vegas ended for better or worse.

"There's nothin' to see here." Driscoll pushed him into the small room. Two single beds were topped by faded polyester spreads. A Formica card table and two plastic chairs leaned into the corner and the bureau was missing its bottom drawer.

"How romantic." Sean dropped his bag on the mildewed carpet.

"Cheap and cheerful, not in the middle of town, so no one sees us come in or out."

"Place stinks." The disinfectant had failed to kill the smell of a thousand illicit affairs.

"This might help." Kevin Driscoll twisted the AC to the max. "Now strip."

"What for?" Fear crawled like a million fire ants on Sean's skin.

"Be cause I said so." Kevin Driscoll performed the finger-breakings, the baseball bat beatings, and the killing for the two-man team. The ex-cop took off the gray suit jacket. Sweat stained his white shirt. A shoulder holster held a 9mm Beretta, his weapon of choice.

"What if I don't want to?"

"You don't want to know." Driscoll wasn't usesd to people saying 'no'.

"Since you put it that way, no." Sean took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt. Once he was down to his boxers, Driscoll said, "Stop there. I don't need to see your pecker."

"You sure?"

Several years back deRocco and Driscoll had staked out a cocaine warehouse on Avenue D. A lookout spotted the unmarked car and three Dominican gunmen surrounded the car to discover one man fellating the other. The dopers told the maricons to get lost. When the warehouse was busted, Driscoll capped the three witnesses to his giving head and earned a citation for the killings. Later deRocco had joked that his partner was the only cop in NYPD history to get a medal for sucking cock. Driscoll never thought it was funny and was very touchy on the subject.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

No one in the 9th Precinct had had the balls to ask what his cock were doing out at the stake-out and Sean followed their lead. He lifted the handcuff on his wrist. "What about this?"

"Thanks for reminding me." Driscoll holstered his weapon and snapped the open manacle onto the TV stand.

Both men eyed the telephone and Kevin Driscoll tugged the wire from the wall.

"Sorry, it just broke."

"I wasn't calling anyone anyway."

"That's for sure." Driscoll punched Sean's arm.

It was not a playful gesture and Sean slumped into the wall.

"I'll see you."

The door slammed shut and five seconds later Sean tugged at the chain, but the TV stand had been bolted to the wall by anti-theft experts. These four cinderblock walls were his Las Vegas.

No showgirls, roulette, blackjack, craps, or even a nickel slot machine and he couldn't help from asking himself aloud, "What I ever do to deserve this?"

His first bad deed had been erased from his memory, but his most recent sins shone crystal-clear; greed for fencing those watches, lust for trusting Mira, and pride for thinking he'd fool Driscoll. He slammed his fist into the wall. The shock of pain to his long-abused knuckles was enough to prevent any repetition and Sean turned on the TV.

Its bright glow wavered across the bleak room. He was in purgatory and his only release from this limbo depended on his breaking the 5th Commandment.

Sean attempted to visualize whether his target was a man or woman, good or bad, young or old, usually ending up with the image of a lowlife criminal deserving of this death sentence, as if this boldfaced delusion could render homicide more doable in his eyes and Sean once more tried to free himself from the TV stand.

After futile five tugs he rubbed his chaffed wrist, resigned to the fact that the world's population had been savagely reduced down to three people; Driscoll, himself, and the unknown victim. Everything had become very simple, when kill or be killed were your only options.

Ten minutes later Kevin Driscoll entered the room with two large paper bags from McDonalds.

"Dinnertime."

"Great. I guess the condemned man doesn't get a choice of last meals."

"What wrong with Mickie Ds?"

"The beef is everything of a cow other than the moo and I don't think there's any potatoes in the fries." His mouth watered upon smelling the fries. Hunger does strange things to the mind.

"You're wrong. The fries are 65% potato. I read it on the wall, besides you're not gonna do the dying, so stop the drama." Driscoll flipped one bag to Sean, who caught it without spilling the soda inside and lifted the cuff.

"Think the prisoner can eat with his hands free."

"Stop rushin' me." Driscoll snapped before freeing Sean from the TV stand.

"What about my wrist?"

"What about it?" Driscoll ignored whatever Sean was implying until headed across the room and Driscoll asked, "Where you think you're going?"

"My teeth are floating. Mind, if I go to the bathroom?"

"Knock yourself out," Driscoll mumbled through a mouth filled with fries, as Sean entered the bathroom.

"Don't shut the door."

"Can't I do this in private?"

"What and let you slip out the window? No way."

Once Sean finished, he squeezed past Driscoll to sit on the bed with his food. The barely-warm cheeseburger tasted good after having not eaten anything for seven days. The ex-cop ate a second burger in three bites.

"Everything is go for tonight."

"Tonight?" Sean choked on his food.

"Yeah, tonight. It's better this way. You come into town and do the job, then you're history. A quick in-and-out."

"You mean, I go in, kill him, and come out alive? No one seeing me?" The burger trembled in his hand.

"That's the way it's supposed to go."

"And who am I killing?" Sean doubted whether Driscoll had any idea as why the victim was being targeted. To him it was just another job.

"You ask that question, when your French whore poisoned those businessmen?"

"That was different."

"Take it from a pro. The Whos and Whys are unimportant. Names only make you remember the faces later."

"So I kill a total stranger and then what?"

"You go your way and I go mine."

"After you give me the five grand."

"You think I'm gonna welch on you."

"Sorry to hit your sensitivity button, it's just that I never killed anyone before."

"Don't think nothin' about it, this is basically your 'wham-blam-thank-you-ma'am' deal." Driscoll stroked the barrel of the 9mm inside his jacket.

"Nice to put a sexual angle on it."

"Hey, everyone gets their kicks different ways."

"If you say so." Sean had no doubt murder gave the ex-cop a hard-on and finished his meal in silence, as Driscoll brushed the crumbs from his lap.

"Get dressed, Seano. We got places to be."

"Now?"

"Now." Driscoll repeated with a directness detouring any argument.

Sean dressed in his black suit and the ex-cop patted him down. He pulled out the $5000 from deRocco and handed back the roll.

"All you gotta do is pull a trigger. Boom, and you get another five Gs. Ten Gs for a day's work. Good deal?"

"You keep telling me that and I might believe it." Sean stuffed the money in his pant pocket and checked himself in the mirror, thinking he looked more like a defrocked priest than an initiate to murder.

"You'll be thanking me once it's over. 10 Gs for a minute's work."

"Too bad I'm not working every day."

"Too bad is right." Driscoll left $50 to cover the mini-bar and the damaged telephone. He swiftly policed the room for any trace of their presence and plucked an empty Fed-Ex package out of the trash, then pushed Sean toward the door.

"I'm not going anywhere, till this cuff comes off." Sean dug in his heels.

"No?" Driscoll flexed his knuckles and the tendons of his neck stuck out like a garrote was cutting off his wind.

"No." Sean prepared to dodge a punch, however the ex-cop unlocked the handcuff.

"You happy now?"

"Happier, yes. What about you?"

"I would have been happier killing you a few seconds ago."

"You wouldn't kill someone who owed you $10,000?"

"I'd grease 'em like lightning," Driscoll spoke with a cold-bloodedness of which only true killers are capable. "When you want to kill someone, screw the money. Now pick up your shit and let's get out of here."

Sean grabbed the leather bag, stuffing the extra French fries and a packet of ketchup into his jacket pocket.

"I thought you didn't like Mickie D's."

"I didn't, but I might get hungry later."

"Have it your way."

The two men exited from the motel room.

Only two other cars were in the parking lot. Their passengers had not come to the Desert Inn to look out the windows. The distant mountains were tipped with snow and across the street a train hauled a long piggyback of boxcars southward on the Union Pacific's tracks. The squeal of the steel wheels on the rails mingled with the peal of a couple's laughter from a motel room. "This why I like this place. No one is nosy, so nothing can connect us to here." "I'll remember that next time I want to kill someone in Vegas." Sean pulled up his collar against the cold wind and lifted his head to the sky. The stars seemed bigger in the desert night.

"You'll have plenty of time to stare at the stars later." Driscoll shoved Sean into the Mustang's passenger door. "Throw your shit in back and get in the car. The door's not locked."

"Okay, okay, chill your jets." Sean strapped himself into the seat, wishing he was a couple of inches taller or had studied Kung Fu or Frank deRocco had not found him at the diner this morning or he had not blown the money Mira Lachelle had left him or he had not met her in the first place.

deRocco started the car.

"Put on your seatbelt. I don't want the Vegas PD stopping us for somethin' stupid."

The car's V6 revved into the tach's red zone and Driscoll stomped on the gas. The Mustang burned rubber out of the parking lot to cut off a commercial van, then accelerated through a yellow light to catch up with the flow of traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"So much for doing nothing stupid." Sean shook his head.

"I'must driving like the rest of the losers. How about a little mood music?" Driscoll tuned on a country-western station.

"Country?" Sean reached for the dial.

"Yeah, country." The driver karate-chopped his left arm. "Don't touch that dial. I love Willie Nelson."

Sean rubbed his wrist and stared out the window. The only signs of human life were the heads and shoulders wrapped inside cars.

"We're goin' to where we'll do it later." Driscoll steered past a slow-moving camper with Michigan plates. ?It's a glassed-in stairway. You wait on the second-floor landing. Out of sight. There are no video cameras. No guards either. When the 'guy' shows up, you stick the gun in his ear and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. You get his wallet to make it looks like a robbery. You come out and meet me. I give you your money and we split. One, two, three, maybe four, five, six, sounds easy, huh?"

"A snap." Sean rotated his wrist, which he had broken three years ago on the Thai-Burma border, when an opium farmer's pick-up truck rammed his motorcycle head-on. He had been shocked to have survived that crash and sometimes thought that this existence might be the After-Life, although tonight was not one of them.

"After checking out the hotel, I'll take you out to the desert to pop off a few shots.

"Target practice?"

"You're gonna be too close to miss. Just get used to pullin' the trigger, so you don't freeze up."

"You have a picture of this person or do I have to guess who he will be?" Sean scratched at the day-old stubble.

"You're doing him." Driscoll handed Sean a photo of old man in his 70s.

Somewhere along the line he had committed an offense great enough to warrant his being wanted more dead than alive.

"Why don't we give him a couple of weeks to die of natural causes." Sean passed back the photo.

"Cause that's not the way this works. The next time you see that guy, you're gonna do him." Driscoll inspected his passenger's shadowed face, trying to ascertain whether he could go through with this. Not many people could, but twenty-two years ago he had seen Sean beat a Russian Mafia member close to death, which meant somewhere he had it in him to go all the way and if Sean couldn't, then doing Sean would give him the right motivation for doing the stranger.

"It'll be over before you know it." Driscoll drove into a hotel parking lot across from the Casino Center.

"Yeah, that's real comforting."

All that was required was a little nerve and a few ounces of pressure on the trigger.

A little more than a breeze.

How easy a steel-jacketed bullet ended the universe for another human being bothered Sean, but he would find out soon enough how hard it really was.

SIX

The 757 descended for its final approach to Las Vegas. The passengers tightened their safety belts and the male steward knocked on a bathroom door. A single passenger was missing from the flight.

"Sir, you have to get back to your seat."

"Just a second." Sean Coll was unraveling the turban of toilet paper in front of the bathroom mirror. The blonde man in the reflection resembled an aging extra from a 1960's biker flick. The wedges inside his shoes added another inch of height and his rumpled black suit shadowed his persona with a nondescript aura. He exited from the bathroom and said to the steward, "Thanks for being so patient."

The steward was visibly dismayed by the passenger's bizarre appearance, especially since no golden-haired man had boarded the plane at JFK.

"What seat are you in, sir?"

"32-A, I can show you my ticket, if you would like."

"No, that won't be necessary."

Satisfied by the steward's bafflement, Sean proceeded past the passengers gaping at the wonders of Las Vegas below the 757. They should have been recoiling in fright like they were meeting a thief in a dark alley, yet none of them cared a fig whether they won or lost at the gaming tables or slots as long as they weren't home watching television.

A black boy about eight years old had changed seat for the view.

"Are you the same guy here before?"

Sean raised his eyebrow to indicate 'maybe'.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's waiting for me at the airport." The boy peeked out the porthole.

"First time flying?" Sean stashed his bag before buckling into the aisle seat.

"Yes, sir." His small hands gripped the armrests for dear life.

"Empty planes never crash." Sean imitated the exact tone with which his own father had calmed his son on a shuttle flight from Boston to New York decades before, except the boy slouched fearfully into the seat.

"Mister, last year I seen this movie, where a plane crashes in the mountains. Everyone had to eat everyone else."

"Trust me, I won't eat you." Sean reached over to tighten the boy's seatbelt, as the 757 dropped with a wiggle of its wings. Seconds later the tires touched down on the runway. The young boy had survived the worst of his fears and proudly announced, "That was nothing."

"Just like I said and you'll be with your mom soon."

The 757 stopped at the terminal gate and the young boy was escorted by the steward. Sean positioned himself behind two beefy men in Giants paraphernalia and shuffled from the plane in a slouch. Inside the gangway a bearded air marshal dismissed the bleached-blonde man as a danger only to himself.

Two old ladies elbowed him out of the way and scuttled over to the nearest WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machine. All seniors loved that show.

Waiting friends, relatives, lovers, and drivers ignored Sean and no one called his name on the ride down the escalator or as he walked out of the terminal into the warm desert air. He had visited Vegas in 1971 and gazed dreamily at the hazy outline of distant mountains. Somewhere over those peaks lay Death Valley and California.

A rough voice short-circuited his attempt to flag a taxi.

"Nice outfit, Tempo, "Although it's a little late for Halloween, ain't it?"

"You know the East Village." Sean turned around hoping the voice belonged to a mirage, but he should have known that deRocco would have never sent him on that plane without his maddog partner being on the receiving end.

"Yeah, it's Halloween all the time with those losers." Driscoll's eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The invalided cop was on a binge of speed and dope.

"So I didn't fool you at all?"

"No, but I almost bust a gut seein' you do this hobo thing. Where'd you learn that shit anyway?" Driscoll was in a dark suit a size too small for his waist, but his belly didn't matter, because ex-cops like Driscoll never ran from trouble.

"I went out with this married make-up artist in Paris. She disguised me to keep from finding out her husband from seeing that she was going out with a man."

"She did you up as a woman?"

"Yeah." Sean was telling the truth. "That deception lasted about six months and finally the husband came up to me at a bar. He was a big guy about your size and showed me some pictures. At first I thought they were me, but the husband told me they were of her old boyfriends."

"Why he tell you that?"

"He thought I was her lesbian lover and wanted to go out with me."

"I woulda liked to seen you as a girl. You have nice hair." Driscoll?s laugh stuck in his throat. ?I woulda thought you got the disguise thing from your ex-wife. She's an actress, right? Or your friend, Vic Granollers. Now he's really big in films now, right?"

"I didn't know you were such a movie buff."

"I like to know all about my friends and their friends."

They entered the shade of the parking garage and Sean changed the subject.

"Where we going?"

"I'll tell you, when we get there." Driscoll ran his hand through his thick hair.

A blue-jacketed peace officer was ticketing a car and Driscoll jabbed Sean's ribs with what felt like a pistol muzzle. "He's havin' a good day, so why would you want to spoil it?"

"Not me." Sean walked past the local policeman to a fire engine red Mustang 5.0.

Driscoll forced him into the front passenger seat and handcuffed his wrist to the door.

"Just think of the cuffs as an extra safety feature."

"What if we get into an accident?"

"This piece of shit has dual air bags, Seano." Driscoll got behind the steering wheel, and revved the engine once before peeling out of the parking lot. Sean took the wedges out of his shoes and the ex-cop chuckled at the show.

"What's so funny?" Sean rubbed his feet.

"Whatcha gonna do with your hair?" Kevin Driscoll pointed at his head.

"Let it grow out." Sean smoothed down the brittle blonde hair and looked out the window at the throngs of tourists. Even the sorriest of the casino fodder was better off than he was.

"It might take some time."

"And I have plenty of that, right?"

Driscoll didn't answer him and drove under I-15.

The glittering hotels and tourists on holiday were replaced by car repair shops, sleazy go-go bars, truck stops, cheap motels and transients permanently down on their luck. Driscoll pulled into a heat-warped parking lot of a run-down motor lodge and stopped the car before room #7. He undid the handcuffs from the door and said, "Get your own bag, cause I ain't no bellhop."

Sean got out of the car.

Dust devils swirled across the vacant lots into the desert where Las Vegas ended for better or worse.

"There's nothin' to see here." Driscoll pushed him into the small room. Two single beds were topped by faded polyester spreads. A Formica card table and two plastic chairs leaned into the corner and the bureau was missing its bottom drawer.

"How romantic." Sean dropped his bag on the mildewed carpet.

"Cheap and cheerful, not in the middle of town, so no one sees us come in or out."

"Place stinks." The disinfectant had failed to kill the smell of a thousand illicit affairs.

"This might help." Kevin Driscoll twisted the AC to the max. "Now strip."

"What for?" Fear crawled like a million fire ants on Sean's skin.

"Be cause I said so." Kevin Driscoll performed the finger-breakings, the baseball bat beatings, and the killing for the two-man team. The ex-cop took off the gray suit jacket. Sweat stained his white shirt. A shoulder holster held a 9mm Beretta, his weapon of choice.

"What if I don't want to?"

"You don't want to know." Driscoll wasn't usesd to people saying 'no'.

"Since you put it that way, no." Sean took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt. Once he was down to his boxers, Driscoll said, "Stop there. I don't need to see your pecker."

"You sure?"

Several years back deRocco and Driscoll had staked out a cocaine warehouse on Avenue D. A lookout spotted the unmarked car and three Dominican gunmen surrounded the car to discover one man fellating the other. The dopers told the maricons to get lost. When the warehouse was busted, Driscoll capped the three witnesses to his giving head and earned a citation for the killings. Later deRocco had joked that his partner was the only cop in NYPD history to get a medal for sucking cock. Driscoll never thought it was funny and was very touchy on the subject.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

No one in the 9th Precinct had had the balls to ask what his cock were doing out at the stake-out and Sean followed their lead. He lifted the handcuff on his wrist. "What about this?"

"Thanks for reminding me." Driscoll holstered his weapon and snapped the open manacle onto the TV stand.

Both men eyed the telephone and Kevin Driscoll tugged the wire from the wall.

"Sorry, it just broke."

"I wasn't calling anyone anyway."

"That's for sure." Driscoll punched Sean's arm.

It was not a playful gesture and Sean slumped into the wall.

"I'll see you."

The door slammed shut and five seconds later Sean tugged at the chain, but the TV stand had been bolted to the wall by anti-theft experts. These four cinderblock walls were his Las Vegas.

No showgirls, roulette, blackjack, craps, or even a nickel slot machine and he couldn't help from asking himself aloud, "What I ever do to deserve this?"

His first bad deed had been erased from his memory, but his most recent sins shone crystal-clear; greed for fencing those watches, lust for trusting Mira, and pride for thinking he'd fool Driscoll. He slammed his fist into the wall. The shock of pain to his long-abused knuckles was enough to prevent any repetition and Sean turned on the TV.

Its bright glow wavered across the bleak room. He was in purgatory and his only release from this limbo depended on his breaking the 5th Commandment.

Sean attempted to visualize whether his target was a man or woman, good or bad, young or old, usually ending up with the image of a lowlife criminal deserving of this death sentence, as if this boldfaced delusion could render homicide more doable in his eyes and Sean once more tried to free himself from the TV stand.

After futile five tugs he rubbed his chaffed wrist, resigned to the fact that the world's population had been savagely reduced down to three people; Driscoll, himself, and the unknown victim. Everything had become very simple, when kill or be killed were your only options.

Ten minutes later Kevin Driscoll entered the room with two large paper bags from McDonalds.

"Dinnertime."

"Great. I guess the condemned man doesn't get a choice of last meals."

"What wrong with Mickie Ds?"

"The beef is everything of a cow other than the moo and I don't think there's any potatoes in the fries." His mouth watered upon smelling the fries. Hunger does strange things to the mind.

"You're wrong. The fries are 65% potato. I read it on the wall, besides you're not gonna do the dying, so stop the drama." Driscoll flipped one bag to Sean, who caught it without spilling the soda inside and lifted the cuff.

"Think the prisoner can eat with his hands free."

"Stop rushin' me." Driscoll snapped before freeing Sean from the TV stand.

"What about my wrist?"

"What about it?" Driscoll ignored whatever Sean was implying until headed across the room and Driscoll asked, "Where you think you're going?"

"My teeth are floating. Mind, if I go to the bathroom?"

"Knock yourself out," Driscoll mumbled through a mouth filled with fries, as Sean entered the bathroom.

"Don't shut the door."

"Can't I do this in private?"

"What and let you slip out the window? No way."

Once Sean finished, he squeezed past Driscoll to sit on the bed with his food. The barely-warm cheeseburger tasted good after having not eaten anything for seven days. The ex-cop ate a second burger in three bites.

"Everything is go for tonight."

"Tonight?" Sean choked on his food.

"Yeah, tonight. It's better this way. You come into town and do the job, then you're history. A quick in-and-out."

"You mean, I go in, kill him, and come out alive? No one seeing me?" The burger trembled in his hand.

"That's the way it's supposed to go."

"And who am I killing?" Sean doubted whether Driscoll had any idea as why the victim was being targeted. To him it was just another job.

"You ask that question, when your French whore poisoned those businessmen?"

"That was different."

"Take it from a pro. The Whos and Whys are unimportant. Names only make you remember the faces later."

"So I kill a total stranger and then what?"

"You go your way and I go mine."

"After you give me the five grand."

"You think I'm gonna welch on you."

"Sorry to hit your sensitivity button, it's just that I never killed anyone before."

"Don't think nothin' about it, this is basically your 'wham-blam-thank-you-ma'am' deal." Driscoll stroked the barrel of the 9mm inside his jacket.

"Nice to put a sexual angle on it."

"Hey, everyone gets their kicks different ways."

"If you say so." Sean had no doubt murder gave the ex-cop a hard-on and finished his meal in silence, as Driscoll brushed the crumbs from his lap.

"Get dressed, Seano. We got places to be."

"Now?"

"Now." Driscoll repeated with a directness detouring any argument.

Sean dressed in his black suit and the ex-cop patted him down. He pulled out the $5000 from deRocco and handed back the roll.

"All you gotta do is pull a trigger. Boom, and you get another five Gs. Ten Gs for a day's work. Good deal?"

"You keep telling me that and I might believe it." Sean stuffed the money in his pant pocket and checked himself in the mirror, thinking he looked more like a defrocked priest than an initiate to murder.

"You'll be thanking me once it's over. 10 Gs for a minute's work."

"Too bad I'm not working every day."

"Too bad is right." Driscoll left $50 to cover the mini-bar and the damaged telephone. He swiftly policed the room for any trace of their presence and plucked an empty Fed-Ex package out of the trash, then pushed Sean toward the door.

"I'm not going anywhere, till this cuff comes off." Sean dug in his heels.

"No?" Driscoll flexed his knuckles and the tendons of his neck stuck out like a garrote was cutting off his wind.

"No." Sean prepared to dodge a punch, however the ex-cop unlocked the handcuff.

"You happy now?"

"Happier, yes. What about you?"

"I would have been happier killing you a few seconds ago."

"You wouldn't kill someone who owed you $10,000?"

"I'd grease 'em like lightning," Driscoll spoke with a cold-bloodedness of which only true killers are capable. "When you want to kill someone, screw the money. Now pick up your shit and let's get out of here."

Sean grabbed the leather bag, stuffing the extra French fries and a packet of ketchup into his jacket pocket.

"I thought you didn't like Mickie D's."

"I didn't, but I might get hungry later."

"Have it your way."

The two men exited from the motel room.

Only two other cars were in the parking lot. Their passengers had not come to the Desert Inn to look out the windows. The distant mountains were tipped with snow and across the street a train hauled a long piggyback of boxcars southward on the Union Pacific's tracks. The squeal of the steel wheels on the rails mingled with the peal of a couple's laughter from a motel room. "This why I like this place. No one is nosy, so nothing can connect us to here." "I'll remember that next time I want to kill someone in Vegas." Sean pulled up his collar against the cold wind and lifted his head to the sky. The stars seemed bigger in the desert night.

"You'll have plenty of time to stare at the stars later." Driscoll shoved Sean into the Mustang's passenger door. "Throw your shit in back and get in the car. The door's not locked."

"Okay, okay, chill your jets." Sean strapped himself into the seat, wishing he was a couple of inches taller or had studied Kung Fu or Frank deRocco had not found him at the diner this morning or he had not blown the money Mira Lachelle had left him or he had not met her in the first place.

deRocco started the car.

"Put on your seatbelt. I don't want the Vegas PD stopping us for somethin' stupid."

The car's V6 revved into the tach's red zone and Driscoll stomped on the gas. The Mustang burned rubber out of the parking lot to cut off a commercial van, then accelerated through a yellow light to catch up with the flow of traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"So much for doing nothing stupid." Sean shook his head.

"I'must driving like the rest of the losers. How about a little mood music?" Driscoll tuned on a country-western station.

"Country?" Sean reached for the dial.

"Yeah, country." The driver karate-chopped his left arm. "Don't touch that dial. I love Willie Nelson."

Sean rubbed his wrist and stared out the window. The only signs of human life were the heads and shoulders wrapped inside cars.

"We're goin' to where we'll do it later." Driscoll steered past a slow-moving camper with Michigan plates. ?It's a glassed-in stairway. You wait on the second-floor landing. Out of sight. There are no video cameras. No guards either. When the 'guy' shows up, you stick the gun in his ear and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. You get his wallet to make it looks like a robbery. You come out and meet me. I give you your money and we split. One, two, three, maybe four, five, six, sounds easy, huh?"

"A snap." Sean rotated his wrist, which he had broken three years ago on the Thai-Burma border, when an opium farmer's pick-up truck rammed his motorcycle head-on. He had been shocked to have survived that crash and sometimes thought that this existence might be the After-Life, although tonight was not one of them.

"After checking out the hotel, I'll take you out to the desert to pop off a few shots.

"Target practice?"

"You're gonna be too close to miss. Just get used to pullin' the trigger, so you don't freeze up."

"You have a picture of this person or do I have to guess who he will be?" Sean scratched at the day-old stubble.

"You're doing him." Driscoll handed Sean a photo of old man in his 70s.

Somewhere along the line he had committed an offense great enough to warrant his being wanted more dead than alive.

"Why don't we give him a couple of weeks to die of natural causes." Sean passed back the photo.

"Cause that's not the way this works. The next time you see that guy, you're gonna do him." Driscoll inspected his passenger's shadowed face, trying to ascertain whether he could go through with this. Not many people could, but twenty-two years ago he had seen Sean beat a Russian Mafia member close to death, which meant somewhere he had it in him to go all the way and if Sean couldn't, then doing Sean would give him the right motivation for doing the stranger.

"It'll be over before you know it." Driscoll drove into a hotel parking lot across from the Casino Center.

"Yeah, that's real comforting."

All that was required was a little nerve and a few ounces of pressure on the trigger.

A little more than a breeze.

How easy a steel-jacketed bullet ended the universe for another human being bothered Sean, but he would find out soon enough how hard it really was.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter One

Six women crowded the honeymoon suite of the Coastal Motel north of Ventura. The buxom 'groom' patiently lay 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.

Technicians were habitually fast, except when they had downtime 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 had never lied in an industry with no special effects.

During the 80s Sherri's name had blazed on marquee lights in Times Square and her body had filled 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. In the 90s the standouts had vanished from the Valley like animals hunted into extinction. Sherri could have easily joined the missing, except her near-miraculous rise from the dead had granted the forty-five year-old director the status of living legend.

The accolades, setbacks, or sins were meaningless to Sherri, for porno was a business and time was money. 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 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 mere light bulbs.

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 caught 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 raised the temperature. Sherri surveyed the sheen of sweat on Josie and figured that the film's viewers 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 without seeing a shadow on the sheets.

"Okay, we'll deal with that when Lena is in place." This scene needed to be shot and Sherri nervously fingered 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 displaying the natural tautness of her girlish body. A neutral-toned blush heightened the smoothness of her olive skin, while kohl-black mascara accented her green eyes' Oriental cant. Her coal-black hair was cut to mimic Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile and this suggestive exoticism converted into star quality, which had earned Lena a 'best new starlet' nomination in the upcoming XXX awards in Las Vegas.

"Finally." Sherri 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 were on the bed, instead of Josie, however the director had retired from that side of the camera five years ago.

"Nervous?"

"Nervous? I was born for this."

The younger woman glided out of reach and every woman's gaze followed her nakedness across the room. Lena wouldn't have it any other way, for she was as much an exhibitionist as a voyeur.

Her character in the film was called Desiree, a runaway who had never been with a woman. Lena had fled her home at the age of fourteen. She lay on the bed to become a white trash virgin at the mercy of a bull dyke. The metamorphosis was simple, for young actress had lived every aspect of this role over the past six years.

The market for most adult entertainment was predominantly male, however Lena's audience was evenly split between men and women, despite purely lesbian content of her films. A good part of her appeal had to do with Lena's youth, however the invulnerability of her years hadn't lasted long in the meat grinder of adult film industry and Sherri was determined to protect Lena from suffering her fate.

The young girl deserved to be in real films and Sherri had a plan to get her 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."? Sherri waved the make-up woman from the bed. Filming Lena with another woman was becoming increasingly difficult, but she was a professional in the end.

"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 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.

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 regarded today's film as a magic carpet 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, that only the very lucky and the very good are blessed with such opportunities, although 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, because the camera never lied about the truth.

MY LIFE WITH A PORNO STARLET #1 by Peter Nolan Smith

NEW YORK 1978

That winter I entered the Victory Theater on 42nd Street to view THE VIOLATION OF CLAUDIA. A friend had recommended the hour-long XXX film about a housewife lured into prostitution, saying, "There's not much of a story, but the skinny actress has no breasts just how you like your women. A little boyish."

I sat in the middle of the theater. There wasn't much of an audience. The lights went down and my friend was right about the slender brunette with the shag cut. Sharon Mitchell performed sex acts with a wanton enthusiasm set ablaze by the director saying, "Lights, camera, action."

None of the men on the screen could handle her succubus. The director was so transfixed by her libertine performance that he only shot one take. Sherri understood the limited width of the camera’s vision and remained within frame for seven solid minutes.

Releasing Jamie Gillis' cock, she glanced over her shoulder at the camera. A pink tongue licked at bruised lips, then her hands parted her asscheeks and Sharon moaned, “Oh, yeah, fuck me, baby!”

I had my zipper down and cock in hand mimicking Jamie Gillis' each thrust. Every man in the theater stroked in unison like the Harvard crew and we arrived at the finish line seconds ahead of the actor spattering the money shot over her flawless ass.

After leaving the theater I unsuccessfully searched the porno shops for any magazines featuring Sharon Mitchell. A middle-aged clerk 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 my chances of meeting the actress were nil.

I was dead wrong.

Three weeks later I was playing the pinball at the Nursery, an after-hour club in the East Village. My fingers twitched over the buttons and my hip banged SLASH, as the ball defied Newton’s Law on Gravity and the numbers whirled on scoreboard. I was heading toward history, then someone bumped into the pinball machine to tilt my game 50,000 short of Highest Score.

I turned to the right, fists clenched, but my anger evaporated upon seeing a miracle.

Sharon Mitchell was the offender.

“You____” Her flimsy lingerie hid little skin and stiletto heels gave her another three inches of height, as she imperiously asked, “What are you looking at?”

“You t-t-tilted the machine,” I stuttered, 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 Hell's Angels tossed me onto the sidewalk.

Adam, exiled from Eden and Eve.

Several thieves lurked in the shadows, ready to pounce on a 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, for I was wearing a thin leather jacket, a tee shirt, and torn jeans. Snow drifted in the air.

I didn’t care about the cold, for Sharon exited a five seconds later.

Alone.

A tight-high rabbit fur coat covered her near-naked body. A gust of chilled wind blew the bangs off her face. She stepped forward and pressed her fatless body against mine.

“Well, where we going?”

I looked across the street to the Victor Hotel. It was a flophouse, but close. She smiled lewdly, “How romantic!”

“You have a problem with it?” I asked, twirling her ingrown nipples to erection.

“If it was warmer, I’d fuck you right here in the street.” Her hand crudely rubbed my crotch, telling me neither of us should confuse this moment with love. We didn’t speak crossing the avenue or climbing the hotel’s creaking stairs to room 33. The 40-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling was enough light for the sordid room

Sharon shrugged off the coat and dropped dropped to her knees. Her hands expertly undid my zipper and withdrew my iron-hard cock. One hand gripped my balls. Hermouth slithered onto my shaft like a snake swallowing its prey, proving the scene in the film had not depended on special effects. Normally I would have shot a load right then, but she fell back onto the soiled bed.

“Get naked!” the brunette commanded, then swiftly stripped off her bra and slipped out of her panties. Her hands reached down to her vagina.

My jacket hit the floor. I threw my tee shirt in the corner. My pants dropped down to my knees and I shuffled across the dusty floor to the bed. Kneeling between her legs, I wrestled off my boots and jeans.

“Suck me!”

Someone had said that line recently. I didn't care who. I was living a dream.

My tongue ricocheted off her flesh. Each time I pressed the flat of my tongue to the coppery pucker, her body flexed in jerks. “Oh, yeah, suck it! Suck, my dirty asshole! Only your tongue. That’s all I need.”

Every word echoed from a recent memory and I lapped at her asshole. Her fingers blurred on her clit, as she called out, “Oh, yeah, fuck! FUCK! FUCCCCCK!!!”

I had heard those words before too.

Her back arched with her spine cracking in unison and she came with a vengeance. I half-expected her to spend some time regaining her breath, instead she rolled onto her stomach and begged, “Fuck me like a mercenary!”

That phrase also sounded like deja vu.

I stabbed forward and buried my cock, till the head reached her cervix. I had never felt so big and she moaned, “Oh, yeah, fuck me, baby!”

It all came to me at once. That line came from THE ABDUCTION OF CLAUDIA. In fact every word out of her lips was from that movie.

I looked for a movie camera, but there was only a cheap lightbulb in the room. I didn't care if it was all an act and fucked, until a geyser of sperm boiled from the soul of my balls. She sighed slavishly, as my lungs suck air and my heart pounded in my chest. She slithered next to me and whispered “You’re sweet. My name’s Sharon.”

“I know. I saw your film ABDUCTION OF CLAUDIA.You were great.” I squirmed, as she pinched my nipple. I returned the favor, as 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 performed sex 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?”

“I got to shoot a film.” 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.” Sherri 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. Sherri had ripped me off for every dollar.

Almost $20. Pulling on my jeans and boots, I swore madly, then ran out into the street and up the 3rd Avenue. The winter sun was coming up over Brooklyn and good citizens were walking to subway. They took one look at me and hurried on their way. Across the street the dregs of the evening were stumbling out of The Nursery.

I supposed I could have gone inside to find her, but confronting Sharon in a drug-maddened den of iniquity was 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 I would have to make sure it was vice versa and next time wasn’t a long time coming, wasn’t a long time coming, because Sharon was like me.

We got around.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 6 By Peter Nolan Smith

At the beginning of 1986 Candia left for a photo shoot in the Alps.

Several days later She phoned to say her boss had invited the fashion team for a ski trip to Isola 2000. Having heard her opinion that skiers were too poor to vacation in the tropics, I bit my tongue and drank heavier than normal that weekend. Candia called on Sunday to say they were stranded by a snowstorm. After she hung up, I convinced myself this was a fling and everything would be like it was before, otherwise she would have never bothered with the call.

On the day of her return I cleaned the apartment, bought flowers, chilled a bottle of champagne, and sprayed a perfume on the bed for an evening of coaxing her into my arms.

Candia arrived late. A new silver fur coat adorned cinnamon skin untouched by the alpine sun and my heart crumpled like a cheap beer can. The telephone rang and she snatched the receiver out of my hand. After several whispers Candia announced, "I have to meet the Italian client at the Hotel Crillion for dinner."

"Go ahead." The look in her eyes said nothing I could say would change her plans.

She left without mentioning what time to expect her home. For certain it wouldn't be early.

I had dinner at La Coupole and took a taxi to the club. It was an off night and I ordered a whiskey-coke. By 3AM I drank myself partially deaf and dumb.

"What's wrong?" Bernard stopped my dancing on a stool to Arthur Lee's HEY JOE.

"Nothing another whiskey-coke wouldn't cure." I shouted for a refill and Bernard annulled my order. "Go home and sleep this off?"

"A house is not a home." I staggered to the entrance and a runway model from Baltimore waylaid my departure. "Care to join me for a nightcap."

"Where?" I had champagne waiting in a bucket of melted ice.

"Where is unimportant." And she whispered an obscene proposal. Her idea of a nightcap differed from mine. "So?"

My girlfriend was probably making love to another man, however I held the high moral ground. "Another night."

"Another night?" The beautiful redhead graced the cover of Elle. No male in their right mind had refused her favors and she said, "You're making a big mistake."

"It won't be the first or the biggest." I weaved out of the club into a flurry of errant snowflakes. My feet trudged across Place de La Concorde to the Seine. The river lay between the two banks like octopus ink and I lifted my leg onto the parapet.

Rue St. Honore. I ran off the bridge, as the fat flic yelled, "Arrete, arrete."

I easily outran the portly gendarme into a thick snow softening the night. Cars glided noiselessly on the streets, as I marched relentlessly to the 15th arrondisement, realizing while I might not forget this trespass, I could forgive Candia's sin. I just needed the chance.

Reaching the Impasse Dantzig I lifted my eyes. The lights in the atelier were off. My key turned in the lock. The door opened with a creak. An empty champagne bottle was on the floor between shiny Gucci loafers. They were neither my size nor style. A man moaned behind the nearest closed door and I charged into the bedroom with a roar. A balding man lifted his arms too late to deflect my fist and he tumbled semi-conscious onto the floor. I threw Candia on the floor. The girl nursing my cold, the lover cuddling me after sex, and the dinner companion laughing at my jokes were gone

"Why?"

"You know why," she spat with an unrecognizable hostility. “You never loved me. You loved a ghost. Your cousin told me about this 'Lisa' and she never loved you. No one will ever love you.”

I envisioned a deadly blow, police, and trial. No French court had convicted a man of a crime de passion, but my blow would have been revenge for her speaking the truth. I chucked the Mickey Mouse telephone through the window into the street, after which I scourged the couple from the apartment with the frayed wire. The man's suit and shoes followed it out the broken window as a petty act of vengeance.

I packed my clothes, journals, tape deck, camera, and photos. Five minutes later I fled the apartment fearing the arrival of the gendarmes, and hailed a taxi on the nearest boulevard. The hour and my bag explained the story and the unshaven driver shrugged knowingly, "Un hotel?"

"Ouais, le Hotel Marais." My accelerated breathing worried the driver, who asked, "Mssr., vous etes okay?"

"Ouais.

I lowered the window. The cold air failed to pluck the splintered razors from my heart. A bottle of tranquilizers rested in my coat. Three or four were on the menu. It took the driver 20 minutes to reach Rue Des Ecouffes. I paid with a 100-franc note.

"Keep the change." The sky was cloaked by glowering gray clouds. The day held no promise of a dawn.

"Merci." He drove away to pick up a couple holding hands.

I entered the hotel lobby with my hand gripping the bottle of tranks. The old woman was asleep at the desk. Waking her seemed a sin, except I had nearly broken the 5th Commandment twenty minutes before. I rang the bell and she blinked several times before recognizing my face from the previous stay.

"Ah, Mssr., je imagine que vous voulez une chambre."

"Une chambre pour un nuit." A room with a bath fulfilled my physical needs.

"Chambre 312." She passed over a brass key and indicated the stairs.

It was the same room from my previous stay. Nothing had changed. I sat on the soft bed and weighed my options. The pill bottle was only one route. The window was another. Neither would save my soul and I dropped three pills. The rest would have to wait for a more desperate occasion.

I woke to the shouts of the little gangsters on Rue des Ecouffes. The bells from a nearby church toned out the noon hour. The throbbing of my hangover was replaced by the resurrection of Candia's infidelity. She had brought her lover on purpose. Jack Lemmon must have felt the same way in THE APARTMENT when he realized Shirley MacLaine was having an affair with his boss, Fred MacMurray.

My hands mimicked the act of strangulation. I choked her ghost dead. Thin air was no replacement for a seventeen year-old's neck, except I was only a murderer in my most grievous thoughts and Candia's wrongs were forgiveable to a lost man, but I tore up the photos of Candia naked in the changing cabinets of the Piscine Deligny, singing in Clermont-Fernand, and visiting her grandmother in Vichy. The shreds built a pyre in the hotel ashtray and burned with a chemical speed. The flames wrinkled her face and an acrid fume corkscrewed into my nose. Fearing Candia might invade my body, I flushed the flaming photos down the toilet, then left the hotel for a drink.

The icy wind hurried me to the Tartine on Rue Du Rivoli and I sat on the terrace sheltered by a glass wall. The waitress wrote down my order of a cafe au lait, croissant, and two shots of Calvados before disappearing inside.

Waiting for my breakfast I viewed passing couples with hatred. Two more Calvados numbed my senses to the grisly weather and diminished the bite of Candia's words, Vanessa's coldness, and Lisa's disappearance. After a fifth applejack I failed to register someone sitting beside me, until he lit a cigarette.

"I've been looking for you." Bernard's stubble indicated taht he had not woken at his apartment.

"Why?" My face was numb from the alcohol.

"I called your house this morning and spoke with your girlfriend." Bernard signaled to the waiter for another round.

"More like my girlfiend." The change from dropping an 'r' from friend was lost on the Frenchman. "What she say for herself?"

"She is worried about you.” Bernard's eyes pursued two schoolgirls.

"If she cared about me, why she bring home that man?" I blew into my hands.

You Americans treat women as men. They are women and we have to protect the double standard, otherwise the battle between man and woman will be lost." Bernard waved to a model heading to a casting call. "You allowed her to have affairs and she concluded you did not care about her. She said you were still in love with another love. Some blonde."

I had told Candia the story once. I hadn't thought about Lisa since then. At least I didn't think that I had thought about her.

"I struck that man."

"He deserved The French like stories of hot blood. "Excellent, and now she respects you."

"Respects me?"

"Yes, a woman is like a horse. You hold the reins tight and the horse will throw you. Too loose and she will run away." He slapped his hands together. "Yeehaw."

"You've been watching too many cowboy movies. I wasn't raised to ht a woman. A man without a problem. Especially if he is in my bed." Not striking a woman was my parents' one rule that I obeyed without question. I was sadly learning that there should have been more.

"The caveman drags a woman by the hair to the cave." Bernard inhaled deeply on his cigarette. "They have a little corps-a-corps. She stays with him. Not the man who lets her ugh-ugh with another caveman."

"There are no drawings of Neanderthals dong that, only TV cartoons, however man's dominance over woman needs no historical proof in France. Women are not horse. This is the almost the 21st Century."

"Eh, alors, the collapse of classic family structures reinforces the need to establish a rapport de force," Bernard stubbed out his cigarette. "Yell at her, hit her, and make love. She expects you to act like a man, not a Mickey Mouse."

"Couldn't I be another Disney character? I really like Pluto."

"No, you are not a dog, you are not an ape. You are a man." My passivity ignited his machismo for my own good. "I saw you throw Brigitte Bardot out of a nightclub. Your friend Danny talked about your fights with the Russian mafia. Are you going to let a teenager push you around?"

"Sometimes you have to know when to do nothing."

"If you let this wound bleed, you will be no good for the next woman you meet."

"I'm done with women."

"Ha, there is always another woman. Even for you. A plus tard."

To prove his thesis Bernard stalked a fashionably-attired woman in her thirties. Within a few paces she rewarded his boldness with a smile and they linked arms.

Bernard was right. I had sung I'M A MAN a hundred times.

Restrengthened by the Yardbirds song, I shambled to the boulevard, foreseeing my kicking in the door, except every taxi was occupied and the urge to reclaim Candia was humbled by the icy drizzle.

I called Brigitte. She came across the bridge for lunch. Angus was happy to see me.

"I knew this would happen."

"I knew you would say that."

"Philippe said she was too young to be faithful." This was hard to take coming from an adulteress, but my problem with Candia had nothing to do with her infidelity.

"I was faithful."

"Only in body. That blonde in New York has a lock on your heart. She hasn't thought about you in years. Fool." Brigitte offered my old place on the sofa. Sleeping with Angus might accelerate the healing process, however I opted to remain at the hotel.

The owner brought me tea and a baguette every morning. Candia came to the club and asked for a second chance. It was more like the fifth. We slept together three nights and I got a venereal disease. She said it came from a toilet seat. Our final good-bye was at the VD clinic.

I bought a typewriter and wrote a novella about a nightclub owner being offered fame and fortune by Satan. A French production company invested money in a script of GO-GO GIRLS FROM HELL. Bernard hired three models to cut a record TAKE ME HIGHER. The three models got pregnant from their boyfriends and blamed me for the miracle of Immaculate Conception. The hundred sample records of TAKE ME HIGHER arrived warped as potato chips and the film company lost interest without the girls.

Worse Vadim and Lisa showed up at le Reve.

"Surprised to see me here." I bought a bottle of champagne.

"No, everyone said you were here." Her eyes were distant.

"They said it was fun here." Vadim held her hand.

"Some nights it is." Usually the ones Bernard and I drank too much.

"You ever get back to New York?" Vadim ordered a better bottle of champagne.

"Only once. I was told it was a good idea to stay away. No one has told me different."

"I followed the same advice." Vadim's eyes followed the waitress to the bar.

"Vadim can't go back to the States." Lisa ignored his surveillance. Her beauty was still breathtaking, but that gift was endangered at age thirty by the passage of youth.

"But we are welcome in Russia.” Vadim toasted me with a nearly empty glass.

"Back in the USSR."

"You should come out there. Moscow is wild like New York." Vadim glowed with pride. "Another few years and communism is dead."

"Yeah, you two were made for Russia." Lisa's disdain extended to both of us and I wondered how Vadim had survived the last four years with her.

"I like any place fun."

Bernard joined our table. We drank more champagne. Lisa kept saying she wanted to leave. Vadim wasn't in the mood to sit in a hotel. Bernard and he became friends that week. Lisa never came to the bar again.

Bernard accepted Vadim's invitation to vacation over the holidays in Ibiza. He wanted me to come too, but instead I bought a one-way ticket to America from a travel agency on the Boulevard St. Paul.

A taxi got me to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport with an hour to spare. I dumped my spare change into the charity bowl for children. There were no good-byes.

My parents didn't question my unannounced return and I celebrated a family Christmas with all the trimmings. My brothers and sisters sensed my smiles were superficial and asked me to stay, except Boston was too small after Paris and New York.

The Amtrak train took 5 hours to reach Penn Station. A taxi drove me to East 10th street. My apartment seemed tiny after living in Candia's atelier, but the pizza at Stromboli's was good and TV was in English. My friends initially greeted me with suspicion, since any absence from the city was regarded an act of treason to New Yorkers.

No one mentioned the Continental, Viktor Malenski, or Lisa, for Manhattan moves too fast to allow scandals to take permanent root. My mail from the past year held nothing from the NYPD and the phone messages complied by the subleasee were from friends and not Internal Affairs.

At the end of January I instructed Bernard to sell my share of the club. He warned this was an imprudent business move. I needed the cash. The money arrived the end of January.

An albino producer hired me to write a screenplay. We spent the winter in the Berkshire Hills, fleshing out a tale about a young mistress inheriting an offshore island in the Keys. He had me sign over the rights to WHERE THE HIGHWAY ENDS for $10,000 and a 1964 Triumph Tiger. The movie was made it to film.

"You should come out to LA," Sherri said XXX companies were paying good money for porno scripts.

"You said that before."

"And you said 'no'."

"Give me a good reason to come out."

"Maybe you can meet a nice girl."

“In the porno industry?"

"Well, maybe not nice, but sexy." She never lied to me, except about herself.

"I'll come out there."

I flew out to the valley and wrote several screenplays, however the industry was switching from film to video for the fast-forward action crowd and starlets would rather fuck a car valet than a writer. North Hollywood was hell for writers.

Without Che's star quality my cousin's films had degenerated to sloppy free-for-alls. Her name dropped from star to supporting roles and Sherri's condition worsened with an arrest for indecent exposure. After I bailed her out, she drove her battered Skylark directly to the dealer in Sunland.

"Maybe you should cool out. We could go to the desert."

"So you can fuck me for free like everyone else?" This was the drugs speaking.

"No, so you don't die." Her arms and legs were stitched with tracks. She was nodding behind the wheel and we narrowly missed a semi-trailer on the Ventura Freeway.

"Let me drive."

"No."

"You're going to kill us." I was desperate, but not that desperate.

“I survived being abandoned by my mother. I survived adoption. I survived these films. I survived Che leaving me." She cried for an hour by the side of the road. I held her in my arms. Worst was sure to come.

"You can't die on me. You promised you would push me down the stairs when I need to die."

"I’ll live that long." Sherri sniffed away the tears. "Even if it kills me."

Several days later Sherri dropped me at LAX and I wondered whether I would see her again. Our friends and enemies died from AIDS, ODs, suicides, and stupid accidents. Natural causes were for the rest of the world and so were normal relationships.

New York women were looking for millionaires. I didn’t stand a chance against bald-headed bankers or loud stockbrokers. On a visit to Boston my mother suggested visiting Ireland to find a woman like herself or my sisters.

"I’ll even pay the ticket. I know you want to marry and have kids."

"I do." It was the first time I admitted this goal.

"You'll never meet a girl like that in New York."

"Other people do. Maybe I'll be lucky."

"Lucky is for horse races." She believed more in prayers than casinos. "What about Ireland?"

“I’ll save it for a rainy day.” Every Irish woman left the Emerald Isle once she's old enough to breed or else she'll have a brood of five by age 20. I would go when the time was right and that time was not now.

A Marc Stevens Snowstorm

Yesterday meteorologists predicted the season's first snowstorm heading toward New York.

Their forecast warned of a 6-10 inch accumulation or what I called a Marc '10 and 1/2 Inches' Stevens Blizzard.

A real blizzard hit New York in 1978 and I partied with Marc and his tranny girlfriend Jill Monroe throughout the three days the city was shut down like a Siberian Gulag. No one was gong anywhere.

We did drugs and more.

I vowed to both of them to never to say what, but in truth nothing happened.

We were high on blow.

Marc's vaunted penis was a green bean and mine was a cashew.

And Jill had been trimmed by doctors in Holland. She wanted our worse.

Neither Mark or I could do a thing.

When the icy tempest subsided, I left their Bleecker Street apartment.

"Remember, not a word." Marc kissed my cheek.

He had a reputation to protect.

Back in my boarding house on East 11th Street I pulled the covers up to my chin.

Safe but not really sound

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 20 -by Peter Nolan Smith

Two seconds after the woman hung up, Sean Tempo dialed 911.

"Yes, may I help you?” the 911 operator answered within ten seconds.

Sean explained the nature of the emergency and gave the operator the woman's address. Several seconds passed in silence before the operator stated, "EMS no longer responds to that address."

"What do you mean? No longer responds?"

>"EMS has logged seven suicide attempts, four domestic violence calls, and four reports of attempted break-ins from that address in the last year. Always from the same caller. Che Chasta."

The name strummed a chord in Sean's memory.

"Which means?"

"No one will answer that call. Not the EMS, the Fire Department, or the police. Sorry."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Go over yourself,” the operator suggested and signed off saying, "Have a nice day."

If the State of California was abdicating its social responsibility, then he would answer this woman's plea, if only to take her to a hospital. Sean star-69ed the caller's number. The phone was busy, and he reckoned the caller had dropped it on the floor. He searched the Yellow Pages for a taxi service. A dispatcher informed him that a cab would arrive in less than five minutes and the ride over to Hollywood at this time of the afternoon would take no more than twenty-five minutes.

Sean hung up and stuck the sheets from the bed in the dryer, then plucked a real $100 bill in his pocket. He snatched a set of house keys off the kitchen counter and left the apartment. The door shut behind him. Maybe he should have left a note for the women, but every second counted in matters of life and death.

The corridor led to the elevators. The walls were unpainted sheet rock and the hallway smelled of damp concrete. Most of the doors to the other apartments had no knobs or locks. Light bulbs hung by a wire from the ceiling by a wire.

Whoever had financed this repair project had run out of money, but at least the elevator was working and Sean stepped inside the car.

When the doors opened on the ground floor, Sean ran through the dusty atrium to the waiting taxi.

He gave the driver the destination and the Sikh driver pulled out of the parking lot.

Rain bounced off the pavement of a broad boulevard lined with body, brake, and transmission shops. The lights ran in sequence to the Hollywood Freeway. Sean could barely see out the windows and cracked open the window. The driver chattered in Punjabi over the radio, as the taxi swerved through traffic. The cab narrowly missed sideswiping several trucks, although none of these close calls fazed the driver. At Highland he sliced across four lanes to the exit and slipped past the single queue of vehicles to stop abruptly at a yellow light.

Sorry, sir, there are too many policemen to burn the light." "No worries."

The driver waited out the oncoming traffic, then swerved right onto the boulevard, maintaining the speed limit until turning onto a street of sad bungalows. The taxi halted before a dull green house with an overgrown lawn. The rain had let up, but the air was thick with a cold damp.

"Just wait a few minutes." Sean opened the taxi door.

"No problem, if you give me something to hold."

"You mean like money?"

"Exactly, sir."

Sean was a little hesitant about handing the Sikh a hundred, but this woman might need a ride to the hospital, so he noted the driver's permit number and said. "I'll be right out."

"And I shall be waiting, sir." The driver held up the bill.

Sean got out of the taxi.

Several stray cats sulked through the lawn's high weeds, ignoring a crow pecking at a crumbled piece of trash. The only sound was a dog barking in he distance. People lived in these houses, but no one was walking around in this weather.

Overhead dark clouds were preparing for another downpour and a wet wind rustled through the bushes.

Sean tried the front door. It was locked. On a hunch he lifted the doormat and found a rusty key. It turned the lock.

The scent of musty mildew welcomed him into the living room. An old RCA TV was surrounded by stacks of videos and the furniture was buried under soiled clothing. The fireplace was filled with take-out containers and garbage overflowed from two trash cans. Whoever had called him earlier certainly didn't hold with cleanliness being close to godliness and he heard a phone off the hook.

"Anyone here?”

No one answered him and he studied the life-sized posters publicizing the various adult videos. They featured a big-breasted blonde surrounded by muscular men. The photo told the storyline of the movie in one word.

Gangbang.

Many men with one woman.

Sean connected the face and body with the name Che Chasta.

Six years ago he had seen her dance at the Triple Threat Theater in Times Square for ten men at the afternoon show. This had to be her place.

He pushed open the last door. The busy signal was coming from inside. The bedroom was surprisingly tidy in comparison to the rest of the house.

A video camera was pointed at the blonde woman on the bed. She was naked other than the cuffs restraining her to the bedposts. Che Chasta was in the proper position to perform her cinematic specialty, except Sean wasn't sure she was breathing. After shutting off the video camera and hanging up the phone, he touched her neck. His fingertips felt a pulse under the deathly cold skin. He tapped her face.

"Wake up."

The blonde opened her eyes and croaked, "Who are you."

"Me?" Sean stared at how her unnaturally firm breasts were stretched to a translucent thinness.

"Yes, where did you come from?" Her eyes wandered in and out of focus. A needle mark reddened the inside of her elbow. Someone else had shot her up and tied her to the bed. The video was for fetishists into sleeping women. There was an audience for every genre in porno.

"From Sherri's." He resisted touching her breasts, but undid the cuff from her wrist and then loosened the restraints on her ankles. "I came, because you sounded like you were in trouble."

"I still am.” The blonde lazily rubbed her wrists, as her eyes drifted up inside her skull. The taxi blew its horn outside.

"Who's that?"

"The taxi." The smell of woman roiling in his nostrils. His arousal felt like a betrayal of Sherri and he stepped back toward the door. Sean was not the type of man to take advantage of a woman in this condition.

Even of a porno star.

"Where you going?"

"I was going to take you to the hospital."

"No hospital." An expression of recognition passed over her face. "I know you."

"How?"

"You're the man from the highway."

"I am?"

"Yes, the man from nowhere."

"It seems to be my new name."

Che had fit in another piece in his puzzle.

He saw himself asleep in the back of a car with Lena and Che in the front seat. His mind played a dirty movie. Looking down at Che he started another. The horn blew outside. "I got to pay the driver. I'll be right back."

Sean threw a blanket over the blonde and ran to the street. The driver gave him the change and Sean handed him a $10 tip. He returned to the house and locked the door. When he entered the bedroom, the blonde said dreamily, "Funny, you showing up again."

"Why?" Sean sat on the edge of the bed.

"Just we help you that night and now you help me." The blonde actress touched his face, as if she were a blind person trying to read his features.

"So I guess we're even, but who did this to you?"

The blonde licked her parched lips.

"I'd love to tell you everything, but I need a glass of water first."

"Sure thing." Sean went into the kitchen. finding a clean glass was impossible. He washed a tea cup in the sink. When he got back to the bedroom, Che Chasta was crashed out in a distorted parody of Sleeping Beauty.

Sean rechecked her pulse.

It was stronger, but she didn't react to his touch and he surrendered to the temptation of caressing her breasts. They were as hard as they looked. His other hand fingered her soft hair. She was completely at his mercy, yet however easy as it was to think about doing it, which in many women's minds that was just as punishable as rape, he was incapable of executing the actual deed.

Sean pulled the covers over her body and unplugged the telephone, since Che needed sleep a lot more than any contact with the outside world.

Sean entered the living room and cleared off the sofa room. His body was shaking with frustration. He hadn't been with a woman in six months and nothing in the last two days suggested that this stretch of celibacy would end in the near future.

The only women he had met in Los Angeles were two lesbian lovers and a drugged sex star.

Both scenarios were promising in his fantasies, but not in reality.

He sank onto the couch and noticed the hundreds of videos scattered around the TV.

They were all X-rated.

Che was in every one.

Sean flashed Che Chasta watching these videos as Gloria Swanson had viewed her old black-and-white films in SUNSET BOULEVARD. He fought off the disturbing image, since he cast himself as William Holden, and picked out a box titled NEW PUSSY ON THE TOWN. The video dated back to the early 80s. The starlet wore her darker hair in a Farah Fawcett shag and her body mirrored the nubility of a teenager out for her first wild fling.

Sean decided to reward himself for saving her life by setting in motion a one-man Che Chasta Film Festival. He armed himself with a remote control and pressed the PLAY button for YOUNG AND BAD, which captured Che right off the pumpkin truck. None of the bearded studs were memorable, while Che demonstrated a star quality ready to blaze nova.

He fast-forwarded through the inane dialogues and the repetitive sex scenes. Hundreds of males spurted semen onto her breasts, backside, thighs, face, belly, yet never inside, for long ago someone in the porno business had decided that the money shot was more visually dramatic than the man just groaning in pleasure.

Psychologically this institutional coitus interruptus also helped the masturbating viewer regard his own onanistic orgasm as the greatest sensation a man could experience. None of it was the truth.

Somewhere in the middle of the retrospective Che Chasta's body artificially morphed the physical ideal the worshipped by brainwashed American males, though this corporeal modification thrust her into a maelstrom of more and more men and women.

Pornography was supposed to be sexy or maybe even erotic, yet Sean was unaroused, until selecting A THING CALLED LUST whose cover portrayed Che and Sherri embracing a nude statue.

They were both ten years younger and their eyes glowed with scorn for damnation. He slipped this video into the VCR and returned to the sofa, pressing the remote control's PLAY button.

The film's quality was low-grade, the dialogue worst, the lighting muddy, however the sex scenes between Che and Sherri was like watching two cougars fighting over the same kill and for the first time this evening Sean wished a time machine would transport him back in time to the two women on the TV screen.

Thwarted by temporal physics, Sean did the next best thing and undid his jeans. Part of him became Che, while his stroking hand mimicked Sherri's vagina and tightened. A lava flow surged from him with a shudder, though within seconds the fire died out and the dream was over. He was just watching a TV and zipped up his trousers, feeling emptier than ever, for there was something about the act that no longer fulfilled him. He was tired of being alone, but that was not going to change tonight or any time in the foreseeable future.

Worse was that he would have no warning, when it all went to shit, but then that fate went with his territory.

It went with the territory.