Chorus
The driver stepped inside of the Motel 6 and steeled himself for the curious glance of the hotel clerk. He'd become used to the unflinching stare as his appearance became more dishevelled. He'd once surprised himself stepping into an elevator, as the doors parted and the full-length mirror stood before him to reveal the bearded, wide-eyed stranger with the mussed hair and streaks of oil and dirt on his shirt. He gasped audibly and tried to pat down his hair on the short journey to his room. Later as he spent more time in his car and less at hotels and motels, his urge to keep moving became more fevered, he felt paranoid in those rooms, checking the wardrobes, darting quickly into the bathrooms, pulling back shower curtains. Ultimately, his appearance began to deteriorate, the stubble a little longer, the eyes a little wilder, the headaches a little stronger.
Fucking Alice Cooper, he would later mumble to his reflection, as his hair grew greasy and lank, the rings around his eyes ever more troubled and dark. His journey, increasingly disjointed and frenetic, saw him, unknowingly, often, doubling back. He'd come close to running short of gas and struggled to work out where he'd been. He'd lost track of the maps he'd balled up and thrown from the car in anger and frustration. He once returned to a roadside gas station three hours after he'd already been there. When he sauntered in to pay for his petrol and pick up some snacks, the teenage boy behind the counter greeted him with a mix of courtesy and surprise.
Get lost? asked the boy, returning his change.
Nope, said the driver, just heading west. He adopted the stance of a surfer on his board indicating with an outstretched arm â as if for balance â what he assumed was true west.
Need a map? asked the boy for the second time that day, uncertainty creeping into his voice.
You don't need a map when you're on an adventure, the driver said, happily not recognising the person who had served him only hours earlier.
I guess not, said the boy watching his thin frame exit the store and make for his car.
Sometimes as he drove he listened to the CD
player, more often to the radio. Talk shows, Classic Rock stations, sports networks with double header hosts who punctuated their discussions (one would assume one point, the other the exact counterpoint, the subject matter was almost secondary) by bashing a miniature gong as an exultant full stop to their yammering. The babbling and righteous, the laconic and insipid, all human life, he thought wearily, is here. Call-in hosts with an agenda to bait the listener (which must have worked on more than one occasion when he found himself leaning forward in his seat to scream at the radio) and rouse the audience to interaction. It didn't take much, listeners sounded like they were queuing up to play punchbag to the braying hosts. Some songs would take him back to his basement. He used to play music for his friends in their wooden boxes, sometimes to soothe them, sometimes himself, sometimes just to drown out the moans and pleas.
As he became more reliant on the interior of his car and less sure of the outside world he found ways not to leave the safe confines of his vehicle. He amassed a collection of containers to piss in as he travelled. Sometimes when his confidence was high, he arranged the receptacle while negotiating the road in front of him, cheerily placing himself in position while overtaking and occasionally tuning in the radio dial. He tried a range of cups and containers in a series of trial and error that really was hit and miss.
Things he pissed into as he drove included a Coke cup, a Gatorade bottle, a Pepsi Big Gulp cup (and what a gulp, it took him three attempts to fill it), a Burger King container (with appallingly splattered results. He might as well have lain his dick on his thigh and let go. It was far more porous than he thought too; it had stained the car seat before he'd notice the box seeping). A KFC
bucket, it made a deep, drumming sound he found very satisfying, he played with the flow, stemming the rope of piss, building up the pressure and letting it go again with a rattling splash. The Colonel's cheery face vibrating happily with each splurge. He imagined the glasses sliding off his nose with the persistent tremor. He played that game until he almost went under the wheels of an oncoming truck.
Found dead with my dick in a KFC
bucket, he said aloud to himself, I might make the papers.
Two Häagen-Dazs tubs (Strawberry Cheesecake, Bailey's Irish Cream) and a plastic bag that he only noticed the air holes in once it was too late to stop. He considered the warning to keep plastic bags away from children printed on the side as his shoe filled up and his sock got warmer.
At the Motel 6, he pushed his hair back from his eyes and lay on his bed. He took the bible from the bedside cabinet and tore its pages out until he tired of the mess. He sat at the edge of the bed and pulled his boots off with a grunt, reaching for the TV
remote. One of the cable channels was playing some adventure movie which he thought he recognised, he watched it listlessly, propped up on his pillows, eating the packet of M&Ms that sat propped up on his chest. Intermittently they rolled away and disappeared beneath his torso. He was surprised to see the rescue scene on his TV
dissolve into a soft-core coupling, the diminutive blonde girl sitting atop her rescuer grinding him gratefully into the dirt, his hat snatched from his head to frame her pretty face.
He sat up and reached for the cable menu on top of the TV.
Dick Champ is the Sexy Explorer in Poon Raider, he read aloud bemusedly, full hardcore version available after 9pm.
He glanced at the screen to admire the careful editing that let the viewer think he was experiencing something he was not. It wasn't even lunchtime so he settled back on the bed as Dick Champ cracked his whip and bucked insurmountable odds. He could hear the admiring gasps of the next girl he'd saved turning into something more as he succumbed to sleep.
Song 6: Porn
In his dream Death was at the door complaining about the flies buzzing around his face. He attempted to wave them away with a long skeletal hand, but they persisted, floating in and around his hooded skull, disappearing in and out of the black maw shrouding his features, darting around the dull red gleam of his eyes. I'm tired, said Death, tired of this, tired of carrying all this sadness around with me. Death pulled back his long grey and black coat to reveal a ribcage filled with rows of gleaming teeth, dried, curling ears like slender cuts of meat and fat wet tongues. Cut, said the Director with a sigh.
He'd been daydreaming again.
He looked down at the twinkling eyes and brilliant teeth of his co-star, Trina Topps. Her bulging, silicone breasts sat as two giant, austere orbs on his thigh, the pink skin pinched around their base like an old woman's mouth. I have to stop thinking like that, he thought, it doesn't help. She flashed him a smile and all he saw was the greying roots of her dull auburn hair, the spidery lines around each eye. His dick lay against his stomach, pallid and soft, gleaming dully with globs of Trina's spit. He sat up dazed, someone handed him a towel, Trina gave him a wink as she wrapped a robe around herself, her tits unmoving, slowly disappearing beneath the folds of white cotton. Her nipples looked like drink coasters and were about as sensitive, he thought. He surveyed the room around him (they were in someone's palatial bungalow, behind two gigantic dark wooden doors studded with iron knots, ugly, mostly white leather furniture, far too many plants and a pool at the back clogged with leaves from the boughs of the overhanging trees) and shook the thought away like a dog with wet ears. Bobby was staring at him. Bobby was the director. You okay? he asked. If I were okay we'd have finished the scene, he thought, but he answered instead with a shrug, tightening the towel around his waist. The room smelt of sweat, it felt clammy, he walked into the kitchen and placed both hands on the worktop, he wondered why they hadn't cleaned the water in the pool, it looked like it was filled with hair, the spindly leaves and pieces of bark set as dark, swirling spots on its surface.
He'd first made his name in the San Fernando Valley with a series known as The Cocksman Movies. Eight in all where he, as rutting, strutting Dick Champ (that was his billing, who came up with that he thought, smiling thinly in spite of himself) parlayed his way, usually with his dick in his hand or someone else's, through a series of big budget scenarios â big budget by the standards of the porn industry at least. He'd been the lusty Indiana Jones, or his equivalent, in Poon Raider (hadn't a girl been bitten by a snake on set and sued the studio? It was all hazy; scenarios of convulsing flesh, tan lines and pumping fists merging in his mind), he'd dodged boulders, cracked his whip, fought and seduced Nazis and ended one scene with a girl wearing his fedora as she sat astride him, her hips making urgent, fervent circles as he lay there still inside her.
Indiana (or Dick Champ â The Sexy Explorer as the sleeve proudly proclaimed) was his favourite, he liked the outfit; he'd stolen the leather jacket after the shoot. The trousers were no good though, they were designed to come apart at the seams. He'd played Lord Invader in their Star Wars homage, that's what they called their thinly veiled, sodden remakes of contemporary classics; a homage. In the unimaginatively titled Sex Wars he'd spent half the film in PVC leggings that smelled second-hand and a doctored motorcycle helmet with a blackened visor that meant he was slick with sweat before every take. He'd grown to hate Lord Invader and his wheezing demeanour and consequently, the Star Wars franchise too. He only had to hear the familiar trumpeting theme before he flicked channels. They were the big moneyspinners though; they caught the editorial eye of Variety; to his equal delight and dismay the magazine ran a photo of him; unfortunately, it was a cropped picture of him delivering one of many money shots, his face contorted into a paroxysm of sexual delight. It looked like he'd been kicked in the stomach. For a while there were rumours of the big studios suing them, but it came to nothing. Consequently, both titles garnered cult status, showing as a double bill late on Friday nights in some mainstream cinemas. He'd been invited on to the Howard Stern Show, Howard told him he knew something about being sued himself while his production team made honking sounds and played hysterical canned laughter as he sat there utterly bemused.
You're a big guy, right? asked Howard. I'm tiny, I mean, I'm like a mouse, could I get a gig in porn? I mean, he leered; some of those chicks are hot.
He'd met a publisher at a party who broached the idea of him writing his autobiography. Maybe later, he countered, when I'm done with this life or it's done with me. They both laughed, clinking glasses as the party moved around them in the beaming faces of their fellow guests, girls stealing second glances at him, not sure where they knew him from, but that they did somehow. That was strong currency in this town.
He could remember the first time it happened or didn't happen. He'd worked with Kristal and Bunnie before. Two diminutive blondes who sometimes doubled up to play the part of sisters. They weren't of course, but the idea made them easier to sell. As the Crystal Sisters they were always the hot ticket for autographs at sex expos for long lines of bubble-shaped men in polo shirts and loafers. He didn't understand where the name came from and when he asked Bunnie she told him that it rhymed, stupid. She was giggling as she said it, she was always giggling, her perpetually gleaming mouth daubed in bright lip gloss. Kristal had appeared in Poon Hunter, he'd rescued and then seduced her, or had she rescued him and then he'd seduced her as a thank you, he couldn't recall. Very James Bond if that had been the case, he thought. The girls even had their own DVD hit with Sisters Under the Skin; he had no idea what the title meant either, but then he imagined it didn't worry them or their audience. It didn't matter, he liked them solo, but he liked them working together best. We're going to tag team you, they'd say before the director called out action. Kissing him sweetly on the cheek as if he were dropping them home after a date.
He'd been flirting with the bank teller, glancing down and then up to hold her gaze as she sat behind the partition opposite him, when she sat up straight her eyes flickered above the glass pane. Let me just check your account. She wore a lingering smile as she said it, she sounded playful as if they were sharing a secret. He smiled broadly back, toying with the idea of asking her out. Conversely, even pornstars wanted to date, though dates could be difficult when the conversation came round to what he did for a living. Some women thrived on the fact; others were repulsed, their faces wrinkling in horror, hands tightening around their drinks. Occasionally, they simply chose not to believe him. Once, a girl dragged him to the nearest video store; their dinner sat on the table next to hastily scattered twenty-dollar bills, scouring the adult section until she came across one of his films. She stood there clutching the case, glancing from the sleeve to him and then back again in utter disbelief. So like, she asked, are you famous? You've answered that yourself, he said, suddenly emptied of excitement or anticipation.
So, anyway, he started to say, nervously fingering the chain on the pen attached to the desk when he felt a shot of pain piercing his back, flaring up between his shoulder blades. Light spilled into his eyes and exited through his temples as the bridge of his nose crashed into the lip of the teller's desk. He felt blood filling his mouth like rusty spit and caught the panic in the girl's eyes as he started to slide toward the polished wooden floor.
Down, shouted the voice, everyone down, he smiled sluggishly, wanting to tell this stranger that he was down already, anyone could see that. The stranger stood over him, he was waving a handgun about and he had a red ski mask on that made him look like a paunchy Spiderman, his chins spilling out from under the cotton. We never did a porn superhero, he thought as he lay there feeling supine and warm, he liked the idea of wearing a cape. He had once played a criminal, a kidnapper whose victim had fallen for her captor. Just like in that Almodóvar film, he said to the director who regarded him so blankly that he wasn't sure he'd heard him and then decided on reflection that he almost certainly had.