Our first read-through went well. While not prompting the outbursts the "Temporary Pleasures" script had, my script still got plenty of laughs. Cool, I could be funny too, not just Eddie. Maybe we could put our heads together and make another juicy satire. Dale asked me, "Why are there big spaces between some of the lines? The pages have all these blank spots."
I replied, "That's primarily for the benefit of Ellen and Bekka, and Elspeth to an extent. Bekka and Ellen are going to be doing very physical comedy, slapstick stuff, like a somewhat restrained Three Stooges. So their japes work well, they're going to need to take some serious notes about their blocking. Their relative positions with each other, and what jape they're doing, needs to be worked out tightly. While their japes won't have the duration or the complexity of the Three Stooges, we still want them fast, tight, and clean. So Ellen and Bekka needed space in the scripts to take notes and maybe make basic diagrams."
I waited until West sound stage emptied out, then ordered our traditional first read-through Chinese lunch. Roach, who had a twenty mile radar for a free meal, rumbled up on his Harley and came in to see how things were going. Bekka was running lines in the media room, using her devil's voice. She wanted an honest critique of it. The consensus seemed to be that she had the right idea, but it was too harsh, too cartoonish, and very un-sexy. She needed to dial it back some, let it be more of an inflection.
Compared to "Succubus," creating our shoot schedule was a breeze. Small Steve and I got it done over lunch. We would be knocking out about half the dialogue and fuck scenes in the studio over the first five days. We'd get our exterior location shots in Oceanside, then be at the UTC mall the next day for those scenes. Two days, two beaches. Then back to the studios, where both sound stages will have been massively rearranged in our absence. First though, everything needed to be blocked. We would really need to work out blocking carefully in many spots, as there were multiple actions happening in the shot. Many of Ellen and Bekka's japes were sort of in the background, they were not the camera's focus. So their action was not intrusive, but was not being obstructed, people would be needing to time movements closely. On "Succubus," the girls had been allowed to follow the muse to an extent. That wouldn't work now.
I skipped our second morning of read-through, needing to go up to Oceanside and meet with a Mr. Ogden Cooper of the Public Use department. We had worked together before while making "Bewitched II," putting our heads together to find locations that wouldn't be too disruptive to daily life in Oceanside, but would still function well and look good for our shoots. I'd originally wanted to close an entire block of Vandegrift Blvd. for my outdoor orgy scene, which was flatly refused. Not only did I want to close a major thoroughfare, I would be doing it so I could stage a thirty person orgy, right in the middle of the street. Keeping people out of the location would have required half the cops in Oceanside to re-route people. We'd ended up using a residential street, Cooper pointing out we could take over the street for much longer, and with less disruption to the locals. (We'd bribed each household on the block to go to the movies for the afternoon while we worked.) It had worked out all right, I was happy with the results.... But it still would have looked better to have fifteen couples fucking in the middle of a commercial strip.
Cooper and I cruised around in my Fleetwood, me showing him the locations I wanted to use. As I was requesting no street closures, just sidewalks, he agreed to the use of all the spots I'd chosen. The only sticking point was shooting at the train station: I'd have to talk to Amtrak, not Oceanside. "Uh.... How about if we shoot across the street from the station?" I asked. That was fine. Inana would be monopolizing two cops on the two days we'd be doing the location shots, they would provide security and control pedestrian traffic, keep people from wandering into the space we were using. Since we were used to working fast, we'd be getting the scenes from three locations done the first day, the remaining two the next day. The same cops would just follow us from place to place.
"So how much public sex will be occurring in my city this time?" asked Cooper. "I still can't believe I agreed to let you film what you did, on a public street."
"None at all this time," I assured him. "Just dialogue scenes. We'll have two women who won't have much on in the way of clothes, but they will be covered, and remain that way. So are you disappointed or relieved I'm not filming public sex this time around? I know you were there on the sidelines when we shot that one big scene."
"My God," said Cooper. "If I hadn't seen what you were doing with my own eyes, I'd never have believed it happened. Where did you get those people from? Hell, who had the brilliant idea for that scene anyway?"
"Well, it was my idea. Have you seen the movie? 'Bewitched II'?"
Cooper shook his head.
"Okay, what was happening there was a demonstration of a magic spell that had gotten out of control. A witch makes a 'love spell' that doesn't cause love, but sexual attraction. People under the spell become irresistible to others. However, the spell can be spread like a virus. Have sex with someone under the spell, now you are also under the spell, and a sexual magnet. The spell is so strong that people disregard all social tenets and even common sense, having sex with each other right on the spot, no matter where they are. In the scene you watched being made, the spell had spread through an area, and was wreaking havoc, people abandoning their cars so they can have sex with the spellbound, right then and there. You saw the witches, they were desperately trying to break the spell and end the chaos. It was like they were defusing bombs. The only edge was that the spellbound were in one place and not going anywhere, since they were too busy having sex. The witches could step up to couples screwing and neutralize the spell, when a couple was finished having sex they would be free of the spell. That's what you were watching."
"Okay. And how did you manage to hire all those people to have sex with each other in public? Are they couples, like swinger couples?"
I said, "No, they were all professionals. They were adult performers from two adult studios up in Los Angeles. Angel Morelli, who owns Inana Productions, also owns five other studios. He got the guys and girls from two of them to come down and work for Inana for the day. They got their regular rate, plus a per diem and a motel room for two nights. Other than the fact that they were outdoors, it was just another day at work for them."
"I've never understood how someone gets a job like that to begin with," said Cooper.
"Male or female, you need huge amounts of self-confidence. That's one requirement. You need to look good naked. You must be able to engage in various sex acts for extended periods of time, long past when it was any fun. At Inana, you need some genuine acting skills. And you need to be able to hold a very objective view of sexual activity. The people you work with are not your lovers, shit, they might not even be your friends, you might have met them ten minutes earlier. On a set, various parts of the human body are not a source of joy or pleasure, they're tools and stage props. You have to be able to engage in intimate sex acts with no emotion whatsoever, totally clinical. Performers don't really consider what they do to be actual sex. Sex is something they have with their boyfriends or girlfriends. What happens at the studio is just.... performance, a very unusual form of acting. The physical interaction between two performers is as emotionally barren as a politician's handshake. The performer's job is to engage in sex acts, and give the appearance of enjoyment, while actually not enjoying themselves at all. It's another day at work, the same old thing, just with different people. The people on the screen in a porn video? You wouldn't believe how bored they are in their heads."
"I imagine people would become horribly cynical and cold from doing the work. Why would anyone do that for a living?"
"A few reasons," I said. "For women, the ratio of hours worked versus income is incredible. Women can have sixteen hour weeks and live very, very comfortably. The men don't make much money, they scrape by. It's far easier to find men willing to have sex with a stranger in front of a camera than it is to find women willing to do the same thing, so men are paid crap. Anyway, another reason is ego, an exhibitionist streak. I've yet to meet a woman in porn who doesn't take a degree of pleasure in the knowledge they get thousands of men excited and turned on every time they get in front of the cameras. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my wife has probably made more men come than every prostitute in France combined. The knowledge that she has influenced such a feeling in so many men makes her very happy. And lastly, the cynics in porn probably entered the industry like that. Performers maintain a very solid separation between work and their personal lives. My wife is one of the sweetest, joyful, loving people I have ever met, and she's been in the industry for nine years. To her, and to the others in the business, performing is just a job. It's a very unusual acting job she holds, that's all. We've pointed out to people before, if she didn't have love and passion in her life, did not experience those feelings, she wouldn't be able to fake them on a sound stage. If someone cannot separate sexual activity from emotion, they'd never make it in the industry. My wife engages in very enthusiastic sex acts while at work, but they are meaningless to her. She can't wait to get home and cuddle up with her husband, the man she loves. I'm one lucky bastard, because that man is me."
"Who is your wife?" asked Cooper.
"You'd know her as Becky Page," I answered.
"Oh! Oh yes. A very striking young lady, and famous too. How did she get all her fame, doing what she does?"
"She has starred in adult features that have, if I may brag, shattered the paradigm of what people think a porno movie should be. Look how I've just spent the last couple hours, taking care of the business of arranging exterior locations to shoot video at. Inana Productions did something that no one else had or has, which is to make adult features that actually work as movies, genuine entertainment, not just an excuse to show people fucking. Watching an Inana feature, you're allowed to keep your brain in gear. We provide both the prurient pleasure of hardcore sex, and simultaneously provide the intellectual stimulation of a good movie, plot and dialogue and action that draw you in. People who had never watched porn in their lives own our movies, because we are able to entertain on multiple levels at once. And Becky had the talent to bring central characters in those movies alive, really engross people with her acting skills."
"You two should go to Hollywood," said Cooper.
"Oh, Christ no," I muttered.
"Why not?"
"Because we'd hate it. Right now we get to play by our own rules, have fun, and knock out bestselling videos on $500,000 budgets and three weeks of live production time. Hollywood is an oversized, lumbering, wasteful, poorly designed machine. I have no desire to be a part in that machine. I'll just stay where I am in La Costa, doing what I damn please and getting rich."
I dropped Cooper off at city hall, him saying he would fax copies of the use permits to me, so I could read them over before I signed them and paid the fees. I returned to the mansion in time for lunch. People were getting ready to take off, towards whatever food they desired. I found Bekka and we agreed to go to Carl's Jr. On the way there, Bekka said, "Oh! Some guy from UTC called. He says he wants a copy of the script, I guess to make sure the mall's image is not being dirtied."
I frowned and gripped the steering wheel tighter. "He'll get portions of the script, the ones that are being shot at UTC. Shit, Hollywood would just laugh at him if he asked for a studio's script, why does he think I feel like sharing my intellectual property with a stranger? And I thought him and I had settled this. The mall remains unnamed and anonymous. We will show no signage, and they won't be in the credit roll. Only people in San Diego will know University Town Center was the backdrop for dialogue scenes in a fuck film, those who recognize the place anyway."
"Maybe he's worried about the blowjob scene I'm doing in the parking lot," said Bekka.
"He can't be. First of all, I never mentioned it to him. And second, we're not shooting the action in the parking lot. We get our exterior shots there, yeah. But all footage of you with a dick in your mouth is being shot in the driveway of the mansion, where we'll have better control of our surroundings."
"Won't people notice we're no longer in a mall parking lot?"
"Nope," I said. "All your action is getting shot from the same relative position, through the open door of the car. Most of it will be fairly close up, so your head and Tex's dick will be taking up most of the screen. We'll get some shots from further back, but if we shoot from a up-from-below angle, like Spielberg loves to use, people will only see sky through the car window on the far side. No, if I was going to shoot any kind of fuck scene at the mall, I'd go all out and have Elspeth getting fucked on the counter of the Orange Julius."
Bekka told me, "Elspeth still thinks there should be an incest angle with her character's brother. Now she's saying her and her brother should actually be fooling around. It would add another fuck scene, and a really dangerous and taboo one."
"Elspeth can cry me a river. We're in read-through, the script is locked down and pretty much has been for a while. If she'd come to me with this idea while I was still creating the structure, I might have considered it, but she's missed the boat. Why the hell would she want to have a fuck scene with a brother and a sister? Is it some sort of Texas thing? An inbreeding fetish?"
"Texas is the wrong part of the South for her to have been exposed to much incestuous romance. You gotta admit, you show the two characters as being awfully close."
"Yeah, duh, they're brother and sister, and they're also best friends, have been for years. Elspeth's character admits that her brother has all the qualities she's looking for in a man. Doesn't mean she's going to start considering the possibility of sexual compatibility with her brother. They're in Southern California, we don't do that shit here."
"Or it's just kept very low key," Bekka said quietly. "I can guarantee it's around, but the people engaging in it use a lot of caution, in a lot of ways. A sister having the epiphany that her brother is sexy doesn't just happen in Appalachia. Nor is that the only place it's acted on. Incestuous couples in California have the damn sense to use birth control, or engage in things where there is no risk of pregnancy, they'll only use their hands and mouths, you know? Dammit Lenny, I've kept a secret from you for a long, long time now, but I've kept it a secret from the entire world. Me and my brother used to fool around. We started when he was fifteen, and continued until I moved out on my own. We never fucked. I'd suck his dick, and I taught him how to make me come with his hand. We'd fool around at any opportunity when we first started, then it tapered down more and more as we got older and started having more stable relationships. I know it's supposed to be wrong, but I've never been able to feel one bit of shame or guilt about it. We were in the throes of adolescence, we loved and trusted each other, and we were available."
We sat in silence for about ten seconds. I finally said, "So.... Who seduced who?"
"I guessed I seduced him, but not really on purpose. Remember, I'm three years older than him, he was fifteen. Puberty had been very kind to him so far, and he lifted weights. It just struck me one day when he walked past in shorts, wow, my brother is turning out to be pretty damn hot. I didn't really pursue that thought any further, and I didn't start plotting to seduce him. But I stopped seeing him as just my kid brother, he was a good looking young man. I started hanging out with him when he lifted weights, just so I could admire his body. I allowed him to be eye candy.
"What happened was our parents went out of town for the weekend. We'd got a hold of a twelve pack of Stroh's from somewhere, and were drinking it Saturday night at our house. We were talking about all sorts of stuff, and being really open with each other. The subject of sex came up. He told me that he'd made out with a few girls, and had touched boob, but his only real sexual experience was with his own right hand and a few hardcore mags he'd bought from a kid at school. I explained that I'd been fooling with boys in a big way since I was fifteen, but had never actually had sex yet, I was still a virgin. I kidded him that I was surprised the loose chicks at his school had never made a move on him, at least sucked his dick in the school parking lot. He said, 'I wish. I've heard that's really incredible.' I said, 'It's supposed to be fantastic. My boyfriend says I'm totally awesome at sucking dick, he's always begging me to blow him at every chance. I think it's fun, so fine with me.' We sat there for a few seconds, and without really thinking about it I said, 'If you want, I'll suck your dick. You can find out what it's like.' I wasn't thinking, 'I'm going to seduce my brother,' it just seemed like something nice I could do for him.
"I think he choked on his beer when I said that. He's all, 'Are you serious?' I said, 'Sure. You'll finally know what it feels like, and you can tell me if I'm doing any good, or if my boyfriend is just blowing smoke up my ass. Go ahead, take off your shorts and lay down on the sofa.' He had the most amazed look on his face, but he did what I said. I knelt down next to the sofa and started. He lasted a while, probably out of sheer amazement at what was happening. After I made him come, he caught his breath and told me that yeah, that was the most incredible thing he'd ever felt, and he felt bad because he didn't know how to make me come. We sat down next to each other on the sofa. I pulled my pants off and told him, 'Give me your hand.' I showed him how to masturbate me. He got the hang of it real quick, and he made me come. Quite hard, too. We drank more beer in silence. My brother finally asks if it's okay if he holds me. I said sure, and we cuddled up. He told me he felt like a weirdo, that guys aren't supposed to think their big sisters are sexy. I told him, 'I'm in the same boat. My little brother is turning into a stud. Whenever you walk around in nothing but shorts, you get me all turned on. I guess we should be happy, the feeling is mutual.'
"We tried making out, and liked it. We finally got rid of all our clothes and fooled around a second time. At his request, I gave my brother instructions on how to go down on me. After we both finished the second time, I said, 'I wouldn't mind if we kept doing this. We'd have to be careful, and it would be an inviolable secret. Absolutely no one can know. But I'd like having someone in my life I love and trust, that I can fool around with for the fun of it. We're brother and sister, we can't have romance. And I think I'd be uncomfortable if we actually fucked. But we can have fun together, no strings attached. What do you think?' He thought that was awesome, we could sneak into each others rooms at night after our parents were asleep. We could both have positive sexual contact, with someone we cared about, but unfettered by a romantic connection. We agreed we should pursue normal relationships, I already had a boyfriend, and not become dependent on the other person. We would still be brother and sister, it's just that the two of us would have a little hobby we did together, that we kept a secret from the rest of the world.
We slept together in my bed that night. The next day, we never left the house or put on clothes. Shit, you know how chronically horny you were at fifteen. I don't think my brother's dick got all the way soft all day, and he had a raging hard-on a lot the time. He said he couldn't help it, seeing me naked made it happen. I ended up blowing him, like, eight times that day. For his part, he said he wanted to get really good at eating pussy, because he knew girls were supposed to really like that, so he spent a lot of time practicing on me. He got better, and was really making me rip 'em hard by afternoon. Around five we were flopped in front of the TV, still naked, when all of a sudden my brother jumps up and runs into the garage. Then he comes back in and heads for the back of the house, and I start hearing these weird short hissing noises. I went to see what he was doing. He was spraying WD-40 on the hinges of our bedroom doors, so they'd be quiet when opened. Our house had a cement floor, so we didn't need to worry about boards creaking. I congratulated him on his forward thinking, now we could sneak into each others rooms at night unnoticed.
"We went to IHOP for dinner around eight. We were both starving, we realized we hadn't bothered to eat all day, just cans of soda. Walking through the lot, he tried to hold my hand, and I brushed him off. I said, 'I'm your sister, not your girlfriend. Look, if you think you're going to develop romantic feelings about me, we'll have to stop. You can't think about a member of your family like that, it's unhealthy. We love each other, but not like that. Do you understand?' He nodded and said yeah, I was right, we weren't hillbillies. Then he said, 'If I get a girlfriend, you're not gonna get all jealous, right?' I said absolutely not, I would be overjoyed for him. In the meantime, I'd keep teaching him how to make a girl feel good using his hands and mouth. That way he would hopefully impress the hell out of girls he dated. He started laughing, and I asked what's up. He said, 'Wow, it's like I'll be in the most awesome home tutoring program ever!' We both started busting up right there in the parking lot.
"For months we were sneaking into each others rooms every single night. We loved Wednesdays, because our mom did volunteer work on Wednesdays, dad was at work, so we'd have the house to ourselves all afternoon. He broached the subject of us having sex a couple times, after I'd finally lost my virginity. I said no. Like he said, we weren't hillbillies. He thought about it and agreed I was right, that was a line we shouldn't cross. It's like we both knew it would be bad for our souls.
"Our visits to each other began to taper down after a while. I'd switched boyfriends, and he started having girlfriends. Sometimes when we'd have our night visits, we'd just make out some, and then talk about what was going on in our lives. We'd talk a lot about who we were seeing, using the other person as a sounding board. I remember him complaining about one girl he was dating, who apparently liked to give him head, but was really, really bad at it. He would try to give her gentle instructions, but she wouldn't catch on. He said he felt like telling her, 'Look, you, me, and my sister are going to get together. My sister can teach you how to suck a dick, she's really good at it.' Apparently the girl didn't get that it's called sucking dick for a reason, that 'sucking' is a key word. I was pleased to learn my own coaching was working. He told me he'd go down on a girl, and they'd go wild. They'd say afterwards, 'Oh my God, guys have tried doing that to me before, but it's never been anything like that!' So my brother would have high school girlfriends with a much higher degree of devotion to him than normal.
"By the time he graduated from high school, we would get together maybe once a week. The girls he was dating were more willing to put out, and they'd stay together longer. We didn't need each other for sexual release as much, or as often, but we knew we could count on each other. Like, he'd go on a date with a girl, and they'd start getting hot and heavy, but the girl wouldn't go any farther. She wouldn't put out, or do anything to help get him off. The poor guy would sneak into my room that night so blueballed he could barely walk, begging me to make him come. Or I'd date a new guy, and we'd fuck, but the dude would have a really short fuse, done in two minutes. Then it would be my turn to sneak into my brother's room, saying, 'Eat me now!' We'd give each other advice about the other aspects of our dating life, too. I remember him telling me about this one girl he'd just started dating, she acted really horny, and her moods could change in a heartbeat. She'd do things just to piss him off, trying to get a negative or violent reaction out of him. He explained some of the details of her behaviors, and I straight up told him, 'Drop her like a hot rock. She's nuts and she's got daddy issues, big time. I don't care if she says she likes it when you come all over her face, it's not worth it.' In my case, I was dating a guy who seemed nice enough most of the time, but seemed to have sudden flares of temper over minor things. Like, we'd be driving somewhere in his car, and I'd reach over to turn the radio down so I could say something. He'd snap, 'What the hell did you do that for?' I said I just didn't want to have to yell a conversation over the stereo. 'No, you never fuck with my stereo without asking first! Never do that again!' After I described the guy to my brother, he said, 'Dump him, quick. He's got major control issues, and probably just with women. I'll bet he'd never talk to one of his guy friends like that. I think he could turn out to be violent.' My brother nailed it. Six months later the guy was in jail for hospitalizing his new girlfriend with a tire iron, in one of the UCSD parking lots.
"By the time my mother got sick, we'd all but stopped. We were both having strong, satisfying relationships, and we just didn't need each other for that kind of companionship any more. We went for a drive at one point and talked about it. It was one of the very rare times we actually used the word 'incest' when talking about us. Yes, him and me engaged in sexual activity together, so we were incestuous. But we never fucked, we both felt there was a line being crossed if we did. And neither of us felt the slightest bit of guilt or regret over what we'd done. Neither of us had pressured the other one into fooling around, there was no coercion in either direction. We shared our pleasure, not being selfish. It had been totally consensual, from the very beginning. My brother could have said to me, 'No, that's weird,' when I offered to blow him that first night, and it would have ended there. I could have been all, 'You can eat my pussy, but you're not allowed to kiss me,' sort of a double standard or mixed signal, and that probably would have confused the hell out of my brother at the time.
"We finally concluded that yes, we had an incestuous relationship. May as well call a spade a spade. But since it was mutual, nobody had pressured the other person, we shouldn't sit around wondering why we didn't feel bad about fooling around with our sibling. If anything, we felt the richer for it, and were happier people. My brother pointed out that thanks to me, he understood women's sexuality much better, and at a younger age, than most guys, and if incest wasn't taboo, he'd have girls he dated sending me letters of thanks. I thanked my brother for letting me experiment on him, letting me take my time and learn how to handle a dick like a goddess, with no pressure to just get him off.
"It's been years now since him and I did anything together. I doubt we ever will again, I'm married, and he's engaged. If he called up and asked if I wanted to relive some old time, it would probably piss me off. Asshole, why the hell do you think I'll cheat on my husband? Funny, when we were younger, it never felt like we were cheating on the people we were dating when we'd fool around. It was like, what him and I was very separate from the rest of the world. We were the only two people who knew about it, so it didn't affect any other aspect of our lives. We went out drinking one night after my mom died and I'd been at Inana awhile. At one point I asked him if he'd ever seen any of my videos. He said yeah. I asked him what he thought, and um, did he get off on them. He told me, 'No, not really. I mean, I'm very familiar with your body, and I know I could make you come better than any of the guys you work with. Yeah, you're doing stuff with them we never did, but we agreed that would have been a bad idea, so it didn't matter. The first time I saw you blowing a guy on camera, all I could think was, she's not putting her heart into it. And you've always said that being in front of the cameras is just a job. Watching you, I could tell you didn't care about what was going on, you weren't having fun, no matter how much you faked it. So seeing you perform didn't do anything for me. I know what you look like when you're enjoying yourself, and you weren't, you were just going through the motions. I think I would have gotten turned on if you were getting off in your videos, but I could tell you were faking it, so that killed it for me.'
"I think what I need to do in the near future is go out with my brother, go for a drive or something. I need a sense of closure, and he probably does too. What we did together is over with. We're happy it happened, but it's done. Look, we were young. Both of us had realized, in the backs of our minds, hey, my sibling is actually pretty hot. We were well past the age of sibling rivalry, we got along fine. We loved each other, we trusted each other, and we were both coming into our sexual awareness. It was a perfect storm of circumstances for him and me to fool around. It wasn't some hillbilly raping his sister in the woods, it was me making an offer, no pressure, and him accepting, and things just moving on from there. I believe there are only three people in the world who know it happened, him, me, and now you. He may have told someone, but I doubt it. And look how long it took me to tell you, my husband. So that's how it is. Not all incestuous relationships are toxic, or coerced. Sometimes they just happen, and work out okay."
I looked at my watch. We had burned up a huge chunk of lunchtime sitting in the parking lot of Carl's Jr. I sighed, leaned over and kissed Bekka, then opened my door and lit a cigarette. I said, "This is wild news, but I think I'm processing it okay. I never would have guessed. Look, um, you let me have Jane, and Terry, and Sue. He's your brother, if you ever want to, you know, spend time with him, that's okay...."
Bekka cut me off. "But I don't want to. That's in the past. Both of us have entirely different lives now. We no longer need each other for that kind of companionship, you know? Yes, it was more than us just being young and horny, we were also showing in a very direct way how much we cared for each other. But he knows I still care about him, and if I feel like my caring needs a demonstration, I'll send him a Hallmark card. If he's pining for me, he's doing a damn good job of hiding it, and I doubt he would. That was one of the positive things about us getting together. The physical intimacy spilled over into how we communicated. We would freely talk to each other about anything, we hid absolutely nothing from each other. Friends, school, our sex lives, everything was out on the table. No, if my brother wanted to get together with me, he'd call and say so."
"Are you going to tell him you told me?" I asked. "I can keep a secret. If you want, when we get out of this car, the whole topic will have ceased to exist, it never happened."
"Maybe, I don't know. And I may want to bring the subject up again, for whatever reason. I thought about telling Jane, to let her know she's not the only one with an incestuous relationship under her belt, but it would feel like I was bragging. My relationship was consensual and worked well, while hers started because her father basically raped her, and was always coerced. She says it didn't take long for her to be quite willing to do whatever her father wanted to, but it didn't start out that way. Her father warped her badly, she came to believe that sex is something you can do compulsively, and it doesn't matter the person or the circumstances.
"The first thing she learned from her father was to give up her pussy when instructed, no questions. What she figured out for herself was that if she offered her pussy first, guys would be very obliging of her. She told me she never outright whored herself, but she would use her pussy as a thank you gift, and the gift didn't have to be very big. A guy buys her beer? He got to fuck her. She came to think that the answer to any of life's problems was sex. It certainly seemed to smooth the path in her life. Her father started buying anything she asked for. She got her own TV and VCR, she got clothes, records.... Her and her folks would go out to dinner on a whim, Jane knew she just had to ask her father first, he'd clear it past her mom.
"And of course the local boys learned that all it took was four beers and telling Jane how beautiful she was would get her clothes off. She'd play them right back, though. She says she started smoking when she was thirteen, and actually paid for cigarettes maybe a half dozen times until she left home. She stopped riding the school bus, because it was so easy to walk across the street to the high school and get a ride home, for the price of some suggestive talk and the promise of future possibilities. Jane knew how to work boys like a punch press, like a lot of girls do, only in Jane's case she actually would come across with some pussy after a while."
I said, "And then she comes out here, where her behavior just scares people. What people back home saw as behavior that was a bit naughty and flirtatious, out here screams, 'raging slut.' I'm glad we impressed upon her that she needed to tone her act way down around here. People are more laid back, more subtle, communication between boys and girls is a lot more low-key. If she approached boys out here the way she was used to doing, they'd have just run like hell. Everyone would figure that a girl demonstrating the levels of sexual aggression Jane is capable of must be genuinely mentally ill, and even suburban teenage boys have the sense to not stick their dicks in something crazy. Okay, she still dresses like a sex bomb, but her behavior is more demure, so her fellow students don't have her pegged as a mentally ill slut, just kind of weird. The other students probably write off her leather corsets and alligator skin pants as a punk rock thing, not that deep down, Jane wants to be the Hard-On Fairy of Southern California. Look, we've gotta grab some food damn quick and head back to the mansion, we'll eat in my office. You're not on the board this afternoon, right? What are your plans?"
"Ellen and Elspeth are going to help me practice falling off of things," said Bekka. "We've got a judo mat, I'm going to practice falling off the hood of a car and off a bed. Also falling on my side in a straight line. They're going to watch, and help me look as though I don't see it coming, get me to not be bracing myself for the landing. Also springing back to my feet as quickly as possible, trying to look as though nothing ever happened. The three of us will work on our tight blocking for japes, so they're fast and seamless, and not exaggerated like in the Three Stooges. Jesus, we're making a porno movie with slapstick in it. I have no clue what people will think."
"That's just it, people won't have to think. This movie is intended to be fun and lightweight all the way through, a date comedy. Okay, 'Temporary Pleasures' was hilarious, but it was satire, and to enjoy satire the viewer has to use their brain. We won't be taxing people like that this time around."
"Wow, this may be the first Inana feature where we don't have groups of hardcore fans obsessing over every detail," Bekka said. "This one will be just plain entertainment, a no-brainer."
"'Lust Instructor' was no think piece," I pointed out. "That one was just another hardcore flick, the only difference being we used more big words in our dialogue, and the music worked. I'm embarrassed by 'Lust Instructor.'"
"It was also the very first screenplay you'd ever written, and the first movie you'd ever produced. And at the age of twenty-one. You went into both tasks totally blind, and with no experience. Given those circumstances, you did damn good, and you learned from the experience, and you just keep getting better. You may not have been happy with the results, but compared to most other porn features out there, 'Lust Instructor' was a breath of fresh air. Porn with tight dialogue, good pacing, and a coherent plot. Not many others out there like it, at that point."
I chuckled. "Vinny says both Vivid and Leisure Time are headhunting for English majors on college campuses now, desperately trying to find people to write good screenplays for them. He heard a Leisure Time producer is vowing to either make a feature as good as 'Bewitched,' or put out a hit on Lenny Schneider. The big studios are sick of me. I've fucked up their business model, and I wasn't even trying. They hate that the days of writing scripts in one day is over, and that people are demanding features that are entertaining the whole way through. I was being offered fat money to jump ship when we were at Eroticon, I wonder just how high the studios would bid for a one year contract out of me these days. I could end up living like MC Hammer."
"Just so long as you don't start wearing pants like his," said Bekka.
No comments:
Post a Comment