Tyler Knight

The sea bag goes with me. Always. It slides heavy off my shoulder so I heft it back to its place and continue walking through the black. To lose the bag is to surrender. A dot ahead of me glows orange and hot before the night wraps around it with the indifference of a tar-pit smothering a bleating mastodon calf. The next time the dot flares it fires closer; the sweet scent of the kush reaches me a full pace before the man’s features fill in around the blunt between his lips.

I recognize him from the smut rags. For years, he’s always wearing his perfect shoes while railing hot pieces of ass.

His teeth glint gold in the light of a passing car; he wears chains like those our ancestors fought with their lives over many centuries to divest future generations of–chains that now rattle and slap against his chest with pride as we approach each other on the driveway; him on the way down me on the way up. I remind myself to pause and chat so I can maintain the subterfuge.

He smiles, but in Los Angeles amongst competitors a smile is never what it means. Although I never let on, the look on the competition’s face when he sees me coming is beautiful.

That’s how it works in this business. As a new guy I’m still a mope so I take what foothold I can get. Someone can’t get his dick hard, I get the call that starts with, “How soon can you get here?” He leaves, Tyler takes over. A pile of cash gets pushed my way and my “fuck you” stack gets a little bit bigger. I nearly have enough to pay the move-in cost for that apartment–two more scenes will get me there. I could use some of the cash stuffed in the bottom of the bag for a room for tonight but I save every cent. Discipline. If my old man taught me one thing it’s discipline. Still ringing in my eardrums.
—
Note to all the other male talent out there. I’m not your friend and if you see me walking up the driveway, you probably fucked up. Sure, I joke around with you and laugh at the appropriate moments, confide my throwaway secrets and pretend to listen to yours but I don’t give a damn about you. I want you to fail. I pray to God you blow a scene because at this stage in my career, just a lucky baker’s dozen number of scenes in, I’m fucking starving and your failure is food filling my gut. I’m sick of being a broke nobody and I have zero problems elbowing you out of the way so I have cash for a place to stay another night. Sure, I could call up Amanda but it’s still new between us and she deserves a man who is self-sufficient.
—
I see how the upper echelon guys live. They roll up in their flash cars, brag about the civilian girls that send x-rated MySpace messages or picture mails with their pussies spread open. The most famous male talent get stopped in airports by guys who would offer their girlfriends to be like them. And some do. The top male talent live like gangsta rappers and rock stars. The piles of cash, upwards of twenty thou a month. For fucking.

A grungy, pretty boy porn star–who thinks Linkin Park’s “Crawling” is an anthem not a warning–took me aside on a set last week to spin tales of Bacchanal parties in Vegas during the AVN awards; signing autographs at the convention for exotic milfs with wandering hands during the day then diving into a mountain of coke and cunt while the vacationers are long asleep. How he stood with his pants at his ankles while clutching his award–for fucking–back against the floor-to-ceiling glass window at a height that will kill a man long before he hits the ground, while twins played spit-and-swap on his cock; the lights of the Vegas Strip burst thermite-neon at his back below.

Pussy and money. The ultimate scam.

I pretend to be in awe of my gangsta-porn friend but inside it’s all glee.

He says, “If anybody hasta replace me, I’m glad it’s you–”
That Tyler. He’s such a nice guy, they always say. Good. I give them zero thought when it’s my balls instead of theirs slapping against the porn starlet’s taint and I’m cashing the check they should have been cashing.

This guy, like everyone, else sees me as a harmless, bumbling Colombo type allowing me to operate with impunity. Sun Tsu would be proud. My “friend” crosses his arms. I mirror him by crossing my arms.

“–and when you get to be my level Tyler,” he says, “soma these bitches will fuck with you. Normally I regulate on a ho, but this was my third scene today an that’s why I struggled–”

Right. Whatever makes you feel better.

He offers me a hit of his blunt. A police helicopter passes nearby so I kill it and crush the red embers between my toe and the driveway. He slows his speech to a drawl and his posture to a slouch. So do I.

He talks and talks. The kush seeps it’s thick, sticky fingers into skull, massaging my brain and I feel the ghetto-bird’s thwump-thwump-thwump tingling in the back of my teeth.

He looks down at his fresh-from-the-box shoes that cost more than the average American worker’s wages for a week. Fucking shoes.

I look down at my feet. The uppers look okay but there’s cardboard between the insert and the sole.

The ghetto-bird hovers a few streets over, its light snaps on turning night to day. The rotors split the air, waking the neighbors that have to slave away an existence in a few hours.

Hey says, “Hey Travis-”

“Tyler.”

“Taylor, come down to the street. Lemme show you the DVD player I put my car-”

I don’t believe this! This motherfucker is stalling. He’s trying to cockblock me from succeeding even though it’s too late for him.

“Some other time,” I say, “if I don’t get inside and let them know I’m here they’ll just call somebody else.” I excuse myself and continue up the driveway.

“Did you see my car is sittin’ on DUBs?” he hollers at my back.

I don’t slow down.

Shit, phone call and a taxi ride ago the sea bag was at my feet as I sat at 24 hour internet cafe where I was going to spend the night, stealing shut-eye by the minutes. Now it’s slung across my shoulder as I walk up the driveway to a single-level ranch style house in the asshole of Porn Valley. Panorama City.
—
I enter the house without knocking. There’s talking going on in the back of the house. When I reach for the cell to turn the ringer off I see there’s a missed call I didn’t hear because of the ‘copter.

It was the director of tomorrow’s scene, the one that with today’s scene will put me over the edge with the money I need to get a place of my own. I’ll call him back after I let these people know I’m here first.

The voices lead me to the kitchen. Sink full of dirty dishes that looks like they have been there since Man learned to cook with fire. One of those tables that has wings folded underneath that extend the surface area. Red cups that litter the table remind me of a college party.

Everybody is smoking. The director, the assistant and the girl. The naked goth girl is all elbows-and-knees. She reminds me of a hurt fawn limping alone in the woods, decoying would be predators straight to prison-where inside of ten minutes of incarceration the predator is now the prey–passed around, hurt, limping. Whore-red lipstick smudged around the filter of her cigarette she is holding. Not my type but whatever. The other male talent I’m told is on set in the livingroom. The director’s assistant hands me paperwork, takes my IDs to photograph them. The director explains the scene.

“Ever done a dp before?” he asks.

Nope.

“Once.”

The assistant hands my IDs back to me.

“How did it go?”

A roach scurries across the wall behind the director’s shoulder.

“Okay I guess,” I say to the roach. I finish my sentence to the six-foot tall insect that’s going to pay me. “the proximity of another dude’s balls as he digs in a girls ass while I’m fucking her pussy isn’t my favorite thing in the world to do but fuck it, it’s money so whatever. As long as there’s no sword fighting or ball touching involved I’m cool.”

The director walks away. Conversation over.

The girl and I play I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours with our std tests. The other male talent’s test is on the table.

After the homework is done, I shoulder my bag and excuse myself to the bathroom so I can freshen up and return the call.
—
The single, bare bulb above is layered with dust, basking my skin jaundice yellow in its light. Black and fuzzy mold or mildew, the fuck if I know for sure which, speckles the beige walls with their spores.

A Smurf-patterned shower curtain hangs outside the tub. It dangles on two rings giving the middle a depressive sag. Hanging there on its ring-as-hands for love of life. Caked-on soap scum at its tattered bottom. If it could speak it would beg for euthanasia.

The tub itself, a primordial tide pool with exotic life spawning from the sludge. A corpse could be dissolving in the bottom of the murk for all I know. I give it a wide berth as if I expect a hand to thrust out and pull me into the Abyss. It wouldn’t surprise me if the home owner has gills and fins. Calcium deposits on the shower head probably focuses the flow into an industrial water-jet beam that can cut steel.

Not going to wash my balls in that thing. May as well return the call.

He answers on the first ring. “Yeah, look man, I’m sorry but I can’t use you tomorrow.”

I take a breath before speaking. I don’t say the first four things to come to mind. “Why?”

There is a pause. “You know I like you and I think you’re gonna do well in the business-”

“Brian, get to the point.”

He says, “Nadia decided she doesn’t want to do interracial.”

I suppress a chuckle but nothing is funny. Even though I’ve never heard the term before, it’s self evident. I still want him to come out and say it. “What the fuck is ‘interracial’?”

“Look, your black-”

“Really?”

“-and she won’t work with you, Tyler.”

The police helicopter’s thwumping fades away. I want to set the bag down but think the better of it.

I say, “This is ridiculous, look at Nadia and look at me–I wouldn’t fuck her if I wasn’t getting paid either. Shit, I’ve fucked models from all over the world, my race was never an issue with women until I got into this business.”

He says, “Photographic evidence.”

“‘Photographic evidence’? What am I, a fucking yeti?” I reach into the bag still slung over my shoulder and pull out my toiletry kit. “That’s the problem, you people think everybody outside the porn bubble thinks like you do and you assume that most girls outside of the business think like that–”

“I don’t make the rules, man–it’s whatever the girls and the studio wants.”

This month’s AVN magazine has a full-page, one-sheet ad of Nadia doing some truly apocalyptic shit on camera.

I take out my toothbrush and go to run it under hot water from the sink but my hand stops cold at the spigot. I settle for toothpaste and the saliva in my mouth.

I say, “So the act of getting chain ass-fucked by ten guys–all of them coming inside her while dunking her head in a toilet, then blowing shit-and-cum bubbles out of her asshole on camera is okay with the parents at home, as long as it’s white and not nigger cock. Is this correct?”

“Hey man,–”

“Did it ever cross you mind to–gee, I dunno–cast a black girl for a change? Or perhaps one of the 4 trillion other girls, most of them way hotter than her, that have no ‘moral dilemma’ with doing an interracial porn scene?”

He says, “Well, her morality has a price. She will do the scene but I’d have to pay her extra money to work with you. It’s not in my budget but if you agree we can pay her the extra money out of your chec-”

I click the cellie shut.

Tyler, the mope.

I take my time brushing my teeth. The routine relaxes me. A little. When I’m done, I wrap the brush in toilet paper, put it and the toothpaste back in my toiletry kit. A thought occurs to me and I take my toothbrush out of the toiletry kit and drop it on the floor. In my toiletry kit is an in-case-of-emergency Viagra.

Bird in hand, Eric.

I chew the pill. It powders tart and citrusy in my mouth like licking a 9-volt battery. It bites me back with a twang in my salivary glands. With my tongue I pry loose the caked-on deposit from my molars and swallow. No water.

Lovely. I’ll still need one more scene after this.

The toilet. Unfortunately for me I really have to pee. As if there is no end to the indignities that can be thrust upon me, I am reduced to relieving myself in a vessel that would be cruelty to animals if a dog was forced to use it. What I think is piss-rust (can piss oxidize?) around the base also stains the grout between the tile around it brown. To my surprise, there is a neat roll of toilet paper in holder. I pull three arms-lengths of it, bunch it up into a softball-sized wad and use it to lift the toilet lid with hinges that said “fuck it” to being hinges.

More shit rings than Saturn, the inside of the basin looks like it was sprayed ass-snot brown with a paint-gun but the painters nozzle had a beastly clog. Gobs upon gobs of white toilet paper form an unholy shit-biscuit, trapping nuggets and pebbles like a county fair sized cookie from hell. The can hisses from the flush-jets under the rim creating a mini current that gives the pastry a graceful, counterclockwise rotation like majestic galaxy. Stabbing the middle of this web of woe, a half-sunk packet Meow Mix. The differences separating me from that packet are trivial.

Fearing splashback, I piss at the cesspool not in it, marking it top to bottom because what difference does it fucking make?

I’m aware that my eyelids have weight in my skull. The muscles holding them up want to relax and let gravity do its thing. I fight them up.

Continued…

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Tagged: Creative Memoir