Mark Leigh: Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe

Slightly confused, Dick walked out to see if he’d entered some Church of the Latter Day Saints Book Shop, or whether Borders was now owned by the Taliban or Amish, but could find evidence of neither. He continued down the virtual street and reached a busy intersection where a huge video screen mounted on the side of a monolithic building caught his eye. It was broadcasting what appeared to be some sort of public service health advertisement. At first Dick thought it was warning about the dangers of VD or AIDS but it was only after he’d watched the whole commercial that the penny dropped. The pallid looking young man who had lost his girl, his job, his self-esteem and the respect of his entire family was not suffering from a sexually-transmitted infection. He had been caught masturbating. A society with no pornography was one thing but criminalising masturbation was quite another. This future had no place for anyone like Dick Longg. This world that Alice was presenting as her own made Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ look like a jovial uncle. But then Dick asked himself why he was getting upset over a prank film; some sort of scam that Alice was obviously pulling. With a mixture of horror, disgust and annoyance (and a little bit of nervousness thrown in for good measure) Dick ripped the headset off and thrust it back at Alice.

‘It’s not a nice world is it?’ she asked rhetorically.

‘OK. You’ve had your chance. I don’t know how you pulled that stunt but I admit the effects are pretty good’, Dick told her. ‘Now just supposing your whole future deal is right, and you really have come back in time — which I must say, can never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be the case — you’re asking me to give up everything I’ve got here; my career, my luxurious, exciting lifestyle including my Hummer and my 60 inch plasma TV, to travel to your time to bring down a whole government and risk being killed, or worse, being rendered impotent by injection as soon as I arrive — and that’s before I even start fighting for your so-called resistance organisation!’

Dick was on a roll. The last time he felt this animated about anything was when he campaigned for the establishment of the Adult Film Actors Guild. He’d led the fight to set up this union for porn stars to stop them being exploited and also devised its motto, ‘Let the actors do the screwing, not the film companies!’ (his only regret was the union’s unfortunate acronym which he hadn’t foreseen but by then all the stationery had been printed).

Dick reached for the door handle. ‘Lady, the decision you’re asking me to make is such a no-brainer… that… that… even someone without a brain wouldn’t need to think twice about it! I’m going back on set and suggest that you make yourself scarce as soon as I’ve gone or I will definitely call security!’

Opening the door of the trailer, Dick stepped out. As soon as he surveyed the set and thought about the next scene with Alpine he was instantly aroused. ‘A world without sex?’ he thought to himself. ‘It really doesn’t bear further consideration!’

Dick was walking towards Ron when he heard the exact same noise that occurred when Alice appeared in his trailer, immediately followed by the exact same smell (but not the rose-scented perfume part). If he was surprised when Alice materialised then he was totally dumbfounded when two smartly dressed top-hatted gentlemen appeared out of thin air to his right. He was astounded when one of them raised his arm and fired some sort of pistol at Ron that emitted both a loud, popping noise and a concentrated beam of blue light. The first beam grazed Ron’s shoulder but was powerful enough to spin him around. Another loud ‘pop’ and the second blast caught his upper body. Ron grimaced, screaming the scream of someone you knew would scream no more. He collapsed to his knees and rolled over on the floor, a three-inch hole smouldering in his chest. The whole thing happened in slow motion. Or maybe it just appeared that way as Ron was so heavy-set and lumbering, any progress he made seemed to be in slow motion whatever speed he actually moved at. Although Dick wasn’t sure exactly what had happened he sensed that the rest of the day’s filming was in serious jeopardy.

His first thought was that one of Ron’s many enemies had decided it was payback time. Ron had made many errors of judgement in his time and although he wasn’t homosexual himself, had produced a series of exploitation films in the 80s including ‘The Gay Godfather’, ‘Mafia Fags’ and ‘Cosa Nostra Queers’. These had made him an awful lot of money but also an awful lot of people of Italian descent who wanted him whacked. Dick knew that a lot of Ron’s enemies had threatened to tear him ‘a second asshole’ but he was sure that whoever had just shot him wasn’t one of them, if only because anyone with even the most rudimentary medical knowledge knew that no one would tear you a ‘second asshole’ in the middle of your chest.

Although his mind was numbed by these sudden events Dick was certain that these two strange men who’d just killed his director were somehow connected with Alice. The two visitors fired their weapons several times again. There was that same sound and the same blue rays that shot across the set. The smell of seared flesh filled the air and the cries of people with the seared flesh rang out. The loudest screams belonged to Alpine Peaks as one of the beams scored a direct hit on her right breast. That was the moment that Dick realised that a) silicon implants are highly flammable, and that b) his life was in mortal danger unless he took immediate cover. He jumped back through the door of his trailer and cowered down in a corner next to a crouching Alice. In one fluid move she grabbed his arm, locked the strange bracelet around his wrist and simultaneously pushed a button on hers. At the same time, in one fluid move of his own, Dick grabbed the chilled bottle of Cristal. A split second later a blast rocked the trailer and it disintegrated.

But in that split second Alice and Dick had vanished.

They appeared again, much to Dick’s astonishment and panic (Dick later learned that time travelling technology was never 100% reliable) but then disappeared a microsecond later.

This time for good.

Dick was never a good traveller. He was sick when he filmed ‘Tit-anic’ on board that cruise liner. He was sick when he had sex on that locomotive in ‘Screw Momma On The Train’. He was even sick when he got that blowjob driving a limo during the making of ‘Riding Miss Daisy’ (and if something’s going to upset the ambience of a sex scene, then vomiting will). When Dick did eventually re-materialise six thousand miles and 140 years away it was with the accompaniment of severe nausea and acute stomach cramps. He hadn’t thrown-up but felt like he really, really wanted to. Instead, Dick crawled around on all fours, farted twice, dry-retched six times, and did a more than passable impersonation of a cat with a fur ball. This was definitely not the sort of impression that anyone would want to give their hosts from the future.

Eventually Dick stopped making noises that sounded like the Devil with laryngitis talking backwards. He regained his composure to see he was in a room that resembled some sort of comfortable lounge with traditional wood panelling, leather wing-backed chairs and a roaring fire. Had he travelled through time? His new surroundings definitely didn’t give that impression but those men on the set with guns and his sudden disappearance and reappearance here… Something really odd had definitely taken place.

As Dick continued to look around he realised he had absolutely no idea where he was or how he got there. For the moment anyway, until he could figure it out, Dick decided to play it safe and go along with Alice’s bizarre charade. He stood up, a bit unsteady at first, to see a few people looking at him, including Alice. It soon dawned on Dick that these spectators weren’t, in fact, looking at him — they were staring. Dick was still trying to work out why, when Alice stepped towards him and whispered something in his ear. He looked down to see his robe was undone. Whatever ill-effect this apparent time travel had on him, the ability to have and maintain an erection was not one of them. Coughing awkwardly, Dick put down the bottle of champagne that he was still holding and secured his robe. He was spared further embarrassment by a tall, distinguished-looking silver-haired man in his early fifties who stepped forward and broke the awkward silence.