She’s already waiting for us when we enter, standing square to face the door with her head arched back, eye’s half-lidded and her mouth ajar. She stands there rigid, like something from Invasion of the Body Snatchers receiving a message from her Divine Overlord. Her eyelids spasm, she raises an arm, points a finger at me.
Her mouth opens wider and, “I’ll be right with you.” comes out.
From an eyedropper in her other hand, she squeezes off a double-tap to her eyes. “New contact lenses,” she says.
I wait.
The reception area is a “welcoming” room the way a porn star is an “actor.” When she recovers, the young executive takes a moment to regard Stan. Her beauty runs as deep as the love between black people and the LAPD. She and Stan are all googly-eyed smiles. The girl turns to me and flicks off the friendly in an instant.
She introduces herself. Sort of. “I’m-Jen.” She hands us visitor’s badges. “This-way.”
I follow behind Jen and Stan. Her blood-engorged genitals stimulated by legs rubbing on each step. Stan has a hand in his pocket; a token of mutual masturbation. It’s a love story. Swell.
Through a corridor flanked by unmarked doors, Stan is the teen-aged kid looking to score, I’m the drooling little brother dragged along on a kiddie leash. The only sign he hasn’t entirely forgotten about me is when he gives my harness the occasional tug. “Tyler, let’s go! We got a schedule.”
The conference room. There is a middle-aged, black woman wearing a suit that looks made by a master tailor sitting at the table. She stands as we enter. In the center of the table is a glass-encased, dildo. It’s latex skin is sliced open and pinned back to expose skeletonized, robo-guts. Spread out in front of the executive are several stacks of documents.
The woman has one of those infomercial host smiles. She pours a glass of water from a pitcher and slides it across the table to me. She could be my mother and the cynic in me thinks the selection of her as my handler is by design. I accept the glass with a “thank you” but I do not drink.
“Well, Hello there, Tyler,” she says. “I’m Roberta! It is just such a joy to finally meet you?”
“Finally?” Noone at PENI knew I existed four weeks ago.
She’s elegant with the polish of someone whose directive was to study protocol. She offers her hand.
Reptilian?
I shake it. It’s dry but not too dry. She’s good.
Mindful of first impressions, I say something über charming like, “Hi.” I sit.
Roberta, in her over the top smarmy goodness, explains the reverse-engineered cock in front of me with great enthusiasm. I’m not listening as much as I’m letting an occasional phrase find it’s way into my ear.
“…like the next generation, teste-shaped motor housed in the scrotum!” She says. “The heart and soul of your signature vibrating phallus–”
Did she just use the word “teste” in a sentence?
“–because we want only the best. No expense will be spared for your product line, Tyler!”
The dildo’s endoskeleton consists of wire so it can be posed like a Gumbi doll.
Right.
There’s an impulse to leap onto the table and peel her skin back to see if it’s a mask. Fear of what I may find stops me.
Stan whips out his video camera and films the meeting.
Jen slides a document and a pen over to me. “If-you-sign-your-name-right-here-with-this-pen-you-can-have-your-next-check.” Since Jen laid eyes on me, she has been speaking at me in monosyllabic words as though she expects me to break out an English-to-Ebonic dictionary from my back pocket.
“Oh-Kay,” I say. Fucking with her, I hold the pen and ponder it with a grimace as if I’ve never seen one before.
Jen blows out her cheeks and sighs.“Please, Tyler,” she says.
I read and sign. Roberta snatches the document and thrusts a phat check my way.
Next, I watch them good cop, bad cop me through an explanation of the toy making procedure. But I’m not listening. I stare at mechanized penis-as -centerpiece.
There is a glow, faint and red coming from the “teste” inside the robotic-dildo’s surrogate scrotum.
The Future.
Eardrum-bursting bangs of concussive bombs exploding in the distance quake the ground; the crunching of concrete crumbling underfoot. Closer still, mechanized servos whine. Crackling fire stoked with burning flesh; the nutty stench invades my nostrils. A tattered sleeve to my face filters the soot but not the misery.
Gunfire.
What! The! Fuck!
I look around the room to see if anyone else saw the same thing. If anyone did, they don’t show it. When I look back at the robo-sac, the light is gone. I snatch the glass of water and kill half of it in a single chug before the ice slaps against my upper lip.
I slam the glass down, reach over to tap the dildo’s head and say, “Is this thing…on?”
Laughter all around the room.
I’d be in rare form if my intent was comedic relief. Eh, fuck it, maybe there was a dying battery — or some kind of charge inside.
Jen says, “What-else-would-you-like-to-know?”
I dig my crumpled STD test out of my pocket and smooth it out onto the table with the enthusiasm of a kid showing a report card full of “A”s.
“Yeah”, I say, “When do I get to meet my fluffer?”
Jen and Roberta glance at each other, passing information in the unspoken exchange.
“The what?” asks Roberta. Her demeanor shifts, now mirroring her coworker, Jen.
“Fluffer,” I say. “You know, the girl you guys are supplying to keep me going through the long molding and casting process?”
“There will be no fluffer.” Roberta says the word fluffer the way you would say “gonorrhea.”
More laughter.
My jokes are killing tonight.
I pour more water. Extra Ice. “Look,” I point to the dong. “I’m not a mechanized penis…”
Despite how sleazy it makes me feel to ask a woman who could be my mommy if a cocksucking consort can come out and play, I hold my ground.
“…you can’t possibly expect me to obtain, let alone maintain an erection surrounded by factory workers as you’ve described in the process.”
Stan joins in, offering his sage council. “You’re a professional. You should have no problem.” He zooms in on my face to capture my reaction to his poking.
Roberta steeples her fingers. “I’m sure we can get you some lube and a magazine to suit your tastes for the first molding. When we get to the body cast-”
I lean across the table nearly tipping the water pitcher. “Body what?”
“Yes,” she continues, “the body cast. You did bother to read the contract, right?” She punctuates her verbal bitch-slap by stabbing a finger at the stack of papers in front of her.
I’m rollin down the street in a gold convertible Caddy, smokin Indo with Snoop. Our bass sets off car alarms as we creep on down the LBC. Me n’ Snoop got on matching white track suits. My jewel encrusted chalice clinks on my four finger ring when I take a sip of my gin.
Backseat’s full of bitches and bubbly. Giggling shorties in bikinis throw fists full of money out of the cash-stuffed back seat–
Bitches, is you crazy??
–callin me out to live up to the zebra-skinned Dolomite hat I got low on my brow.
I smack a ho.
Snoop turns up the radio, without missing a window-rattling beat we bust a rhyme.
“…So whatcha gonna do?
She-e-i-i-t, I gotta pocket full of rubbers and my homies do too…”
Bitches and money.
“Of course. I read the entire document,” I lie.
“Very well,” she says. “As I was saying, when we get to the body cast portion of your commitment,” she punches each syllable of the word commitment, “you will be provided with a fluffer. Is this acceptable?”
She’s acting all indignant as if I asked her to personally toss my salad. What the fuck! I mean, we’re sitting at a table in a sex toy company, not a prime table at Le Cirque. Her job is to make dicks.
DICKS!
Fuck these cocksuckers!
I say,“Fine.”
“Fine,” Roberta says. She gathers the papers, places them in an attaché case and heads for the door. As she walks, she hugs the wall away from me as if she thinks I’ll put my hand up her skirt and grab muff. She says, “Good day,” to no one in particular. And leaves.
This fluffer better make my toes curl.
Jen says, “Come-with-me.” She heads for the door.
We leave for the production floor. Stan capturing it all on tape.
Continued…
Tagged: Creative Memoir
