Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

The only thing that nature had endowed him with was a well-proportioned body, which he improved by regular exercise and building. He started with weights in army service. At first, he had no particular aim, just a desire to kill time. After leaving the army, he brought his weights to the oxygen plant. From then on, during his shift, every hour when he recorded technical parameters and emptied the oxygen compressor separators, he did a set of exercises. That made eight sets a day. So Zongora had a well-developed body, but not enough to make him a professional body builder. His facial expression was far too stupid for modelling.

He chose to exercise as a means of killing time in any way he could; he did nothing and envied cleverer men, like his colleagues Végh and Czanner, for example. They spent the long shifts chatting about growing oyster and button mushrooms one day. They discussed every aspect of production problems until it got on Zongora’s nerves. He wanted to nod off, and they were stopping him. He did his best to make fun of their prattle. But when the enterprising pair rented an abandoned limestone quarry between Nová Ves and Devín and began their planned mushroom growing, Zongora nearly exploded with envy. What really hurt was that they hadn’t invited him to join them. After hours and hours of discussion he felt that, despite his negative attitude, he had a share in their venture, which was why he was so surprised and bewildered when Végh and Czanner one day suddenly handed in their notice and left to follow their dream. They had sorted everything out officially and left Slovnaft filled with optimism. Zongora felt left in the lurch when the two so suddenly became businessmen. To the very last moment he was sure they would take him into their new radiant future, even though he was lazy and ignorant, simply because he was there at the start.

A few years later, Czanner visited the oxygen plant: he had come to Slovnaft to buy polyethylene foil. While his employees were loading, Czanner sat in the communal room, his mobile phone on the battered table, drinking coffee made for him by one of the technicians. He had put on weight and grown nice moustaches. He was doing well. He had broken up with Végh and joined forces with a nobleman, a real prince. Together they privatised a small cannery and their brand “ Méltóságos konyha , Noble Kitchen” of sterilised meals was sold worldwide, competing seriously with Uncle Ben’s. Zongora nearly died of envy; he, too, was buying jars and frozen packages with a label showing a moustached Hungarian aristocrat in an unbuttoned hussar coat sitting at a groaning table. Zongora, too, liked the witty advertising with the slogan: “Hungry as a prince?” But not even in his dreams could he have guessed that these were the products of a former colleague whom he spent years working shifts with and whose smelly boots he had put up with for years.

While Czanner was explaining how down in southern Slovakia they raised pigs exclusively on acorns and how in an abandoned quarry somewhere in Central Slovakia they grew mushrooms, he could stand it no longer. Swallowing his despair and hatred, he grabbed the ear muffs from the table and instead of listening, went to the machine room with its humming compressors. To calm down, he gathered the oily rags kept by the moving pistons of the air compressor and took them up to the skip. In front of the building’s metal door Czanner’s Chrysler was parked. That was too much for Zongora. He looked at it for a while admiringly, but then scratched it ruthlessly with his key.

But fortune finally smiled on him, too. He found an ad in OKM, an erotic magazine. A film company was seeking suitable actors for its porn films. Applications with a brief biography and a picture of the whole body (men had to include a picture of their erect penis) were to be sent to the editorial office. Zongora took his own picture and sent in an application. In his biography he included the following: “I very much want to become a porn star and am willing to do scatological sex, too.”

This must have worked: soon he got an invitation to an audition.

A famous company called Freddy Vision had organized the audition. Besides Zongora, there were some thirty hopefuls, women and men, all young. The audition members sat in armchairs and at the side on a tripod stood a camera to film the audition. In front of the camera was a big double bed, which is where the crucial part of the audition took place.

The selection committee head was a corpulent man with jerky movements and a bossy manner: obviously the owner of the company. The committee also included several personalities known to any consumer of pornography. Zongora was a consumer, and he could not keep his eyes off Siedah Strong, a popular porn star. There was also Bruno Tatarelli, a pure-bred Italian porn star, of gypsy origin, from the nearby village of Lozorno. Zongora almost pitied him: he knew that when he unpacked his tool, Bruno with his ten inches would have tears in his eyes.

“I’m the Freddy of Freddy Vision ,” the committee chairman introduced himself. “But always Mr Mešťánek to you. So let’s get going!”

Some young people had come in pairs, a boy and a girl. Freddy was not interested in their doing it together: he split the couple up. He tried out the girl with another man and made her man have sex with another woman. Not all candidates agreed to be split up.

“Get out!” Freddy shouted. “Out! Someone who can only fuck one partner has no place in our business! Do you think I’ll write screen plays just for you? You think you’re Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Get out! You think you’re a famous couple? Get lost! Out you go!”

Another candidate blew it when he had a huge ejaculation just at the sight of his partner, chosen by Freddy — a beautiful mulatto girl who had just turned up and was offered a contract while still in her clothes.

“Get out!” Freddy shouted. “And wipe it properly after you, and then leave! A rag? We don’t have rags. Does anyone have a rag? Nobody has one. Why are you gawping? What’s your tee shirt for? Wipe it and go!”

A girl was thrown out for refusing anal sex (“Anal is the foundation of pornography, didn’t you know that? Get out!”). Another hadn’t shaved her legs properly (“With depilatory products now available, it’s a crime to run around with legs covered in fur! Out you go!”). A third refused to have sex without a condom (“Just for your sake we’ll start using condoms, right? If you’re afraid of getting infected, join the Salvation Army, not the porn business! Get out!”).

Another girl didn’t fancy having sex in front of so many people. She was under the impression that porn was produced in an intimate setting, with the director and cameraman present, at most. Freddy was quite beside himself with rage, for otherwise the girl was very attractive.

“Get out!” he roared. “Film yourself masturbating at home! Pornography is mass culture. Thousands of people will see you fucking. Thousands will know the inside of your vagina intimately. And you’re too embarrassed to undress in front of this committee? Out! Out!”

These scenes happened in front of the other participants, whose numbers were steadily diminishing. Some fled even before their turn came; others were so flustered that they couldn’t even get a hard-on.

Freddy was merciless. He took pleasure in humiliating candidates and making them suffer. They all had to undress completely; women were allowed to keep their stockings and shoes on.

“What? Tights?” Freddy was raging. “Has anyone ever seen tights in a porn film? Are they at least crotchless? No? Where did you buy them? In a prosthetics shop? Get out! Out! Wait a minute, stop! You have a nice behind. Take them off and wait, we’ll try you out.”