Walter Mosley: Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

I was reclining on my backside, thighs spread wide open. The smell of flower-scented lubricant filled the air, and hot lights burned down on my sweat-slick black skin. Blubbery and pink-skinned Myron “Big Dick” Palmer was slamming his thing into me, saying, “Oh, baby. Yeah, baby. Daddy’s comin’ home. He’s almost there, almost there.” There were two high-def video cameramen working us: one moving from face to face while the other focused on our genitals. The still photographer was Carmen Alia from Brazil. The recycling hum of her digital camera buzzed around us like a hungry horsefly circling an open wound.

“More passion!” Linda Love, the director, yelled.

She was talking to me. Myron always had the same passion in any sex scene because he closed his eyes and imagined that he was with Nora Brathwait, his high school sweetheart. She had never let him go all the way and every sex scene he ever did was dedicated to wiping that humiliation from his heart.

Luckily for me Myron’s size pushed his thing against a sore spot deep inside. So when Linda called for more feeling I stopped thinking about the details of the shoot and began to concentrate on how much he was hurting me with his attempt to penetrate all the way back to adolescence.

I allowed the pain to show in my face with each stabbing lunge.

“That’s better,” Linda said.

“Almost there,” Myron moaned for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Uh-uh.”

The grunting meant that he was about to orgasm. I knew it, Myron knew it, and, worst of all, Linda was aware of what was coming — so to speak.

Within the next six seconds she’d cry, “On your knees, Debbie,” and I’d have to jump down while looking up into the bright lights as Myron Big Dick ejaculated on my face and breasts.

That was the money shot, the reason I woke up at five a.m., spent hours doing makeup and hair, toes and fingers; it was the reason I’d capped my front teeth, had breast implants, worked out two hours a day five days a week with trainer-to-the-stars Efron Fuentes, and shaved my pussy more often than my husband shaved his chin.

The money shot was not only my paycheck but the salary of every grip, cameraman, makeup artist, and gofer in the room. Our reason for living would spout from Myron Palmer’s big pink dick.

This was no revelation. I had experienced thousands of ejaculations from men of every color, size, and nationality. I had been spouted upon in Moscow, Kingston, Paris, and Johannesburg. This was my job, and the only thing I worried about was keeping the acrid stuff out of my eyes.

I was preparing to slide down from the sofa onto my knees when something amazing happened.

Myron grunted and Carmen switched to a double flash setting, Linda cried, “Debbie...” and Myron plunged up against the one spot in my entire sex that still had sensation. I could feel a blast from the air conditioner and the crusty fabric of the sofa where we teetered, me on my back wearing only leopard-print high-high heels and Myron on his knees thrusting, thrusting. And then, completely unbidden, I imagined a tall, olive-skinned man with intense eyes standing in the corner of the crowded room. I knew this man but could not name him. I was moving toward him and at the same time I was being stalked by the most powerful orgasm that I’d ever experienced. The faster I moved the closer the feeling came until suddenly I was bucking and screaming, begging for more.

“... on your knees!” Linda shouted, but I was way beyond taking orders from her. I could feel my nipples getting so tight that they seemed to be pinching themselves, and I felt the full weight of the experience of every one of my thirty-one years.

Myron pushed me off the red sofa and onto the floor. Then he stood up, drizzling his semen on me while I jerked around like a mackerel just landed on the deck of a day boat off San Pedro.

I wanted to stop but the orgasm was relentless, like a series of storm-driven waves crashing down on the shore. The only option open to me was to let go of consciousness while Linda and her producers tried to figure a way to save the shot and all our paychecks.

I woke up in what was once the nursery of the Bel-Air mansion. The owner of the house had been a movie producer for one of the big studios until his star waned. He foolishly mortgaged his house to finance his girlfriend’s film, Fun for Fauna . The movie didn’t even make it to DVD and now the owner, Sherman Pettigrew, rented his place for porno shoots whenever he could. Sherman lived in a trailer behind his ex-girlfriend’s new beau’s house in Topanga Canyon.

Anyway... I came awake on a daybed in the barren nursery of the failed movie producer’s house, stillborn into wakefulness after wasting what seemed like the last iota of passion in my life.

“You okay?” a soft voice asked.

I raised my head and saw Lana Leer sitting on a pink wicker chair. She was very petite, very white, with hair as short as a new recruit’s buzz cut.

“I passed out,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“It’s so embarrassing.”

Lana giggled. Then she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

“I don’t mean to make fun, Deb, but it is kinda silly for a woman who’s had sex with five men at once to be shy about an orgasm.”

“Where is everybody?”

“They left. Linda asked me to stay and make sure you were all right but I would have anyway.”

I realized that it was dark outside. When I shifted in the bed I felt the long-lasting slick lubricant between my thighs.

“How long was I out?”

“A long time.”

“Was Linda mad?”

“No. Myron really saved the day. You looked good with him standing over you like that. It looked real.”

“I have to get home, Lana,” I said, trying to gather the strength to sit upright. “Has anybody heard from my husband?”

Linda reached out and took my hands. She remained steady and I was able to pull myself up.

“No. I called the house but only got the service.”

“Thanks for staying with me. I remember once in Jamaica that dickhead Lester Foley got me high and left me in a hut on the beach without any clothes.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” the diminutive personal assistant said.

There were three police cars, their red and blue lights flashing angrily, parked on the sidewalk, the lawn, and up in the driveway of our home on South Elm in Pasadena.

Lana and I were walking up the slight incline of the lawn headed for the front door when someone said, “Excuse me, ladies; this is a possible crime scene and we’re not allowing anyone in.”

He was a small man in a black uniform with blue eyes and pink skin. He recognized me from his porno collection; I could see it in those startled eyes. There aren’t many black-skinned women with long white hair and deep blue contact lenses. Debbie Dare was almost unique in the capital of a clichéd profession.

“Aren’t you—” he began to ask.

“The owner of this house,” I said. “What crime has possibly been committed?”

“Wait here, ma’am,” he said, and I knew the news had to be bad.

Lana put a hand on my shoulder. It felt so heavy that I almost fell down. My legs were still weak from the unwanted orgasm and now this.

The uniform called into the front door of my house. A few seconds later a slender man in a cheap dark green suit came out. He traded a few words with the cop, looked in our direction, and, hesitantly I thought, walked toward us.

“Mrs. Pinkney?” he asked, looking at Lana.

“Yes,” Lana said, “this is Mrs. Pinkney.”

“Your husband, ma’am,” he said, shifting his gaze to me.