Scott Sherman - Third You Die

“Today?” I’d croaked.

“Yes, today,” Pierce stated. “Do you still have the address?”

“Yeah, but today? ” I wasn’t looking forward to this. I figured I’d have a few days to prepare, although, thinking about it, I wasn’t sure what that would entail. “Can we do it later in the week?”

“We can do it today at two,” Pierce agreed with himself.

“Well…”

“Mason did explain you’d be paid one thousand dollars for the primary audition, with possible bonuses depending on what you are willing to do.”

“Willing to do?”

“Extra acts not including the opening interview with masturbation.”

Something about the way he said that last part made it sound like an item on a Chinese menu. I’ll have an Opening Interview with Masturbation. Sauce on the side, so to speak.

“You know, I’m not totally committed to doing the whole-”

“Mr. Jarre told me about his conversation with you. I’m well aware of your wavering intentions, Mr. Connor. Unlike some people, I don’t need the same thing repeated to me a hundred times in order to understand it. But as Mr. Jarre made clear, the only way he’ll be able to fit you into his schedule is if you agree to be taped while talking with him. Two birds with one bone, if you will. As is the case with any of our models, you will not be expected to do anything with which you are uncomfortable or that you’re unwilling to do. Of course, your remuneration will be commensurate with the acts you’re willing to perform.”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“So, will we see you at two?”

“I’ll be there,” I said with obviously forced cheer.

“Very well,” he confirmed. “I’m breathless with anticipation.”

I wish.

We said good-bye and I made my next call.

“You are not,” Freddy growled, trying to sound threatening, “going there alone.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer,” I told him for the third time. “It’s just that I don’t want to do anything to put them on guard. I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ve walked into worse situations than this one.”

“Yeah,” Freddy agreed. “You’ve also been shot at, beaten, and tied up against your will.”

True that.

“The guys at SwordFight might not be model citizens, but it is a legitimate business. I’m glad you’ll know where I am, just in case, but I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

“It’s not that I think they’re going to kill you,” Freddy said. “But I figured out a way to keep you from having to blow your cover-no pun intended-on film. I go with you. We tell them I’m your boyfriend and that I’m going to wait outside. Then, in twenty minutes, after you’ve had enough time to ask your questions but before they get you down to your skivvies, I burst into the studio in a jealous rage and drag you out of there.”

“That would work,” I said, “assuming I could get my questions answered that fast. And assuming they don’t call the cops on your ass and get you arrested for trespassing or felony interruption of a jerk-off scene.”

I didn’t want to inflate Freddy’s ego by telling him my more likely concern-that they’d get one look at him and wind up offering him ten times what they’d pay me for an audition.

And that, knowing him, he’d take it.

“So, then how do you get out of there?” he asked. “They’re gonna make you sign some kind of waiver or contract, right? You probably can’t just walk out in the middle without getting arrested yourself. Or sued.”

“No, I think you’re right. I also don’t want to make enemies of these guys. Even if I don’t get the answers I want today, I may need their help later on.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I have an idea,” I said. “Believe it or not, it actually came from something my mother said.”

“That’s it,” Freddy said, more determined than ever. “I’m coming with you. Your solution is based on something your mother said? You’ve obviously lost your mind and need supervision.”

“No,” I said. “Listen.” I told him what I had in mind.

“Huh,” he said after I was done. “That’s actually not bad.”

“See?” I reassured him. “I told you I’d be fine.”

“I’m not saying that,” he countered. “This is you we’re talking about, Kevin. You had plans those times you got shot, beaten, and tied up, too. Somehow, you and plans don’t get along very well.”

“This one, I think I’ve got.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, let me ask you a question-did you remember to take your medication this morning?”

“Of course,” I lied, opening my drawer to take out the vial of Adderall I kept there. One pill would help me keep my thoughts more organized as the day went on. I downed it dry.

“You did, huh? Then what was that swallowing sound I just heard.”

“That was, uh, practicing. You don’t audition for porn without practicing your swallowing.”

SwordFight Productions had their own building in New York’s trendy Tribeca neighborhood. When I arrived, I was given consent forms to sign and shown to the room where the shooting occurred.

A floor of the building had been converted into one large studio, where industrial video lights hung from the ceiling and various props littered the corners.

The area where I was told to wait was made up to look like a tacky motel room. I was perched on the end of a cheap twin bed. A plywood nightstand next to it supported a plastic table lamp with a dented cardboard shade and a large pump bottle of SwordFight-branded lube. Above the bed hung a painting of a lighthouse so bad it might have been meant as parody. And why a lighthouse? Was it chosen for its phallic symbolism, for the viewer too impatient to wait for the actual phallus that would be making its appearance soon enough?

I was nervous. I was babbling, if only in my own head.

Focus, Kevin, focus.

I was also hot, but not in the good way. I was literally overheating. The studio lights roasted me like a tanning bed in a Final Destination movie. Maybe it was intentional-one of Mason’s techniques to get first-time models naked as quickly as possible. No pressure. Strip or melt. You decide.

The lights also served to blind me to whatever Mason was doing out there. I heard him puttering around, but he hadn’t answered me. I found it unnerving.

“Mason?” I asked.

Long pause. “Yeah?”

“I said, ‘I hadn’t expected to get in here so quickly.’ ”

“Huhn,” he grunted.

He’d been chatty at the party and on the phone. Here, not so much.

He stepped from behind the lights into my faux hotel room.

I’d been wrong.

“I’m not Mason,” Pierce Deepley, former porn star and Mason’s current assistant, announced. “He stepped out five minutes ago. He had to take a call. I was just finishing setting up for him.”

I didn’t like not knowing who was in the room. Maybe there were others there, in the shadows. Unseen viewers hidden by the darkness.

But wasn’t that a metaphor for the whole experience of being in porn? You never knew who was watching. That was a level of control you had to sacrifice.

Maybe that was part of the appeal. For a model into exhibitionism, it could be the perfect trifecta: getting paid for getting off by showing off.

For me, not so much.

“Oh, okay,” I said to Pierce. “I was thinking it was strange Mason didn’t answer me. Now I get it.”

“I don’t know he would have answered you even if he were here,” Pierce said. He always sounded annoyed to be speaking to me, as if I were somehow beneath his attention. “Seeing as how you didn’t actually ask anything,” he added.

“Sorry, I forgot to phrase my response in the form of a question,” I clarified, feeling as if I were being chided by Alex Trebek.