Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

It was like the choking sweetness of some new cell they’ve just flung you in. Scented detergent, fighting a lost battle against another man’s fluids, another man’s fear.

Clint Smoker sat, for now, in a milk bar on Ignacio Boulevard. He typed: ‘So some so-called 15-year-old is crying “rape” after a bit of fun in a ditch with an older lad.’ He deleted this: got to pace yourself … Clint was expected, ninety minutes from now, at Karla White Productions on Innocencio Drive … No, it had to be admitted: he was having the time of his jounalistic life, was Clint Smoker. That morning he had interviewed a pimp named DeRoger Monroe in the Lovetown Greyhound Station, and filed an admiring profile. Emptying sachet after sachet of sugar into his Coca-Cola, DeRoger had told him how it worked: you tell them to go out there and be superstars, while, in the meantime, you do hard drugs with other pimps. Then when the birds are down to their last tooth, you ‘take them to Florida’: give them a final pasting and then boot them out the door … Soon, Clint would be meeting with Karla White. And, later, there was the mouthwatering prospect of an hour with Dork Bogarde.

Nor was it merely Clint’s reportage. What about the editorials, the think-pieces, the ‘virtual cult’ (as Strite had put it), back home, of Yellow Dog. He typed:

• So some grasping icequeen is seeking compensation for ‘sexual harassment’, having left her job after a bit of harmless horseplay round the water cooler.

She’s already had a few quid for her ripped clothes and the dental work.

And now it’s for ‘emotional distress’ that she’s taking those nine lads to court.

Well she’s not going to come clean, is she?

She’s not going to say: I f **king loved it!

All the girls Yellow Dog’s worked around go batty at the thought of a proper goose.

And don’t tell me there’s one of them, when you’re alone in the lift, that doesn’t like her nip being given a healthy twist.

Hallo, here comes old Marge, grunting and sighing with her mop and her pails.

She’s down on those shiny red knees, moaning and groaning, with her great fat arse in the air.

Look lively lads — where’s the office cattleprod?

Clint paused, and mused. Karla White: best norks in Lovetown. It’s well known. Dark glasses? Check. He mused, and paused, and worked on:

• So some old boiler in Hammersmith got smacked about a bit by a couple of lads while they were relieving her of her pension.

Now that’s well naughty, boys, and don’t do it again.

But spare us the violin, okay.

Spare us the clock-stopping photos of the biddy with the black eyes.

She’s only 77—a child in this day and age — and she can f **king well take her chances like anybody else.

Besides, she’s been stinking up the place for long enough, hasn’t she?

When they get like that they’re better off dead.

So get well soon Gran — if you must.

But leave out the f **king whinge this time. Alright?

A little light told Clint that he had an e in, which he now shared:

dear 1: o, it all went 1 derfully, 1 derfully — with dad. i was always his favourite, u c. when i was a child he worshipped the very ground i walked on; 4 him, the sun shone out of my *… he was as punctual as ever, & as gallant, with the bouquet of 4sythia and the creamy chocol8s. always the perfect gent 2 me, full of amusing stories about his girlfriends. i prepared his favourite dinner (tripe & brains), with 40fied wine, in the candlelite. Then the bombshell, the utter c@astrophe: my father has been diagnosed with: cancer. i am absolutely devast8ed. k8.

Poor little thing , thought Clint. Still, that can work to a man’s advantage. You get credit for not being dead.

For once in your life.

‘Fucktown,’ began Karla White, ‘in its current phase, which could be ending around now with the Princess Lolita phenomenon, might as well be called Hatefucktown. That’s the dominant form: Hatefuck. But let’s go back a bit.’

‘I’ll just see if this …’ said Clint, giving his tape recorder a malevolent stare.

‘… Porno was self-policing until the second term of the last administration, when, as you know, all of a sudden we had a porno president. Porno, under this porno presidency, stopped policing itself and entered its Salo period.’

‘Sorry, Karla. Salo?’

Karla considered her interlocutor, and wondered if there’d be any point in telling him about Mussolini and the Republic of Filth. She was enough of an American to grant interviews more or less automatically, but she had run a light check on Clint; she knew about his recent stay at John Working’s joint in the San Sebastiano Valley; she knew the circulation figures of the Morning Lark , and had some idea of its contents.

‘An embrace of dirt,’ she said. ‘Immediately there was an overwhelming emphasis on male-female sodomy. The rallying cry was Pussies Are Bullshit. They’d sign off with it on the phone: “Pussies Are Bullshit!” One director said, “With anal, the actress’s personality comes out.” Oh sure: her personality. They talked about female virility, female testosterone. Which is strange considering the next phase, post-Pussies Are Bullshit.’

Clint steadied his dark glasses and resumed his attempt to stare out Karla’s breasts. They stared back, irreproachably innocent and unblinking; and they awakened humility in him. He thought it was beautifully generous of her not to hide them, to allow them to be warmly present. It also occurred to him that at any moment they might count down from three and he’d do exactly as they said.

‘The essential self-policing had to do with two areas, male-female violence and paedophilia. Male-female violence was called Black Eye, and began with the notorious “line”, Male Dawn . They’d tell the girls: Don’t be too proud to cry while we do this. Basically they roughed them up, and roughed them up for real. The paedophiliac tendency was unofficially known as Short Eye, where the girls wore kiddie clothes and talked in squeaky voices and played with dolls while granddads peed in their mouths. And worse. I’m serious. The nymphets weren’t nymphets, of course. Along with your HIV-clearance, your birth certificate is your work permit. You have to produce it, even in geronto-porno, or White Hair. Even eighty-five-year-olds have always had to prove that they’re over seventeen. That’s porno.’

Clint thought: codger-todger. Good riff.

‘All this came to an end when the new administration started their holy war on porno. Black Eye and Short Eye disappeared right away. Pussies Are Bullshit staggered on for a while, because male-female sodomy is not illegal in every state. But then some busybody — some spoilsport or killjoy, Clint — would buy a sodomy tape in Arkansas, where it isn’t illegal, and take it to Alabama, where it is, and you’d be indicted in Montgomery. And so on. But porno people are believers too. It’s the contrarian nature of the form. And they wouldn’t give it up. Dozens of production companies were wiped out and some of the very top guys went to jail. And in an Alabaman correctional facility, I can assure you, they don’t need to be told that pussies are bullshit. Then the zoning loophole, and the founding of Lovetown. And the dominant genre, these days, is unquestionably Hatefuck.’

They talked on — about Hatefuck, about Cockout, about Boxback, about Red Face, about Yellow Tongue … After an hour with Karla, Clint was becoming vaguely aware of his surroundings — glass, mirrors, tubular furniture. It might have been any old ad-firm except for the posters: porno girls, in porno colours, with porno pouts … Throne Together, Royal Flesh, Pump and Circumstance, Anne of a Thousand Lays, Mary Queen of Sluts, Falstiff, King Rear , and Princess Lolita 2, Princess Lolita 3, Princess Lolita 4 …