Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

It wasn't the easiest truce, it was awkward, and more than a little forced, but their ship was momentarily righted. They were in this together, more or less, and so Lorraine did not tell Lincoln that it had been the third videotape he'd forgotten in the machine. Nor did she tell Lincoln that she'd been a little curious about these tapes, that the thought of them had turned her on more than a little. She did not tell him that she had watched his smut, or that some of the rough stuff had awakened certain urges. Nor was there any need for Lincoln to know that, sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon, when everybody else was in organizational meetings, and stuffing envelopes had her bored out of her skull, just every once in a while, she cruised dirty chat rooms.

But everyone in those things was a boy. What she needed was a man.

And your smart motherfucker, he thought it was hilarious.

The glorious awfulness of it all. Pounds of pancake and yards of fake lashes. Times where the carpet didn't come close to matching the drapes. Dumb fuckers who had no discernible involvement in a plot, but just sort of magically showed up and started fucking. Five-second close-ups of a single pelvic thrust that got looped so they played for like two minutes straight. The gonzo stuff, shot with shaky, handheld retail cameras, so it looked like home-movie footage: two hours of coeds in the shower, as taken from the partially blocked perspective of an air duct; four hours of skirted women being followed up stairwells and escalators; scene after scene where some overtanned asshole went through the motions of pretending to pick up a college student, and you the viewer were supposed to believe that this hard-looking chick with Russian satellites for breasts, heavy metal hair, and a Computers for Dummies manual (which she held upside down), you were supposed to believe she actually was in college, and truly didn't have a problem with a camera filming her being picked up, and was completely cool with a camera taping her having sex with some graceless, charmless asshole, who, oh yeah by the way, she'd just met. Right. Totally. Absolutely. Excellent. Ponyboy watched the same supposed amateur chicks get nailed in like eight or nine different gonzo amateur series. Regular as clockwork, he watched sequences when all of a sudden the director's hand reached into the shot and he grabbed himself some ass. Moans from closed throats. Dubbed squeals that made kung fu voice-overs sound authentic. How almost anytime you wanted to see a woman's face, the camera was on her body. How anytime you wanted to see her body, it was on her face. How when the unthinkable happened and a chick had a climax that wasn't faked, guess how many of those the camera missed? Fucking classic ! All the cutaways they made to the guy's reaction instead! Like that wasn't the least important thing in the world?

To Ponyboy, it was funnier than that soap opera hag who got nominated for best actress for like nineteen years in a row and kept getting dressed up and going to the awards show— nineteen straight years they announce someone else's name and she's sitting there knowing she's a schmuck and a laughingstock and just ate shit yet again. Ponyboy watched. He duplicated those videotapes. His pile of bootlegged stock increased and the bloopers and discrepancies swelled toward infinity. And as he became more and more accustomed to the possibility, this festering new idea, simultaneously, Ponyboy began to appreciate how the soap opera bitch and the people making those pornos, how they were alike in one other important area, too — because that soap opera hag had gotten more famous for losing than she ever would have for a win. And as for the porno biz… um… well, maybe they hadn't gotten famous off them discrepancies or nothing, but… okay maybe the comparison didn't technically work. But fuck it. Yeah. That's what he was getting at. What your smart motherfucker found so wonderful. So long as they had the desks and chairs to fuck on, who cared if the office didn't have computers? Why worry about a plot when the mook's just gonna fast-forward through the talking anyway? Fuck it. They're fucking fuck films.

You look at this shit right, it's liberation.

So Ponyboy sat tight on his girlfriend's carpet and he made his duplicates and he passed the point where he knew the names of the major actors and minor actresses, where he not only had favorite porn stars, but also favorite parts of those stars. Your smart motherfucker got used to damaged dental work. Smiles whose imperfections had been accentuated by the business's necessarily oral nature. He became accustomed to skin that hung wearily around gravity-defying silicon. To soft and scarred and loose buttocks, needle marks and bruises. Your smart motherfucker, he watched so much porn that straight up normal fucks no longer cranked his motor.

Two months ago he had not been able to understand how the guys could be staying flaccid while going down on the women. A month ago he had mocked how much effort some of those jackasses put into erection maintenance, calling them retards for the way they choked up on their bats. Now Ponyboy made sure Cheri was asleep and he loaded the machines and watched hot scorching anal scenes, he watched double penetrations and gang bangs, he watched bukkakae and fat chicks in bondage and sexy seniors delivering golden showers. Ponyboy watched truly obscene shit. Still it was a chore to prompt life from his woebegone, scabrous dick.

He couldn't say when he'd started concentrating on the male bodies. The camera's priority always had to be the act of penetration, Ponyboy knew, so the rest of the male body had to stay out of the shot. This resulted in the guys performing calisthenic routines, doing the deed in positions that seemed like stunt work as much as anything. Guys in porn were in unbelievable shape, yet to a man they were so plastic, so empty of personality, that it was difficult to envision any of them being able to get laid on their own — yet another tidbit that Ponyboy found hilarious, perfect as an egg, right up to the moment he worried that paying so much attention to the men meant he was a fag.

His dreams became twisted, sexual mutations, until he stopped dreaming, began waking up flaccid, his morning hard-ons — once mammoth and regular as tax time — now gone like the fucking wind.

Honestly, about the only thing that got Ponyboy excited anymore were the red videotapes from Jabba's office.

Each started the same way: with an unfocused, shaky shot from a handheld video camera.

Low-resolution focus. A cheap motel room. A dim and scantily furnished apartment. Half-barren, badly lit. A woman lounging on a couch. Sitting on the edge of a bed.

After a second or two, the picture was honed, and came in with a fine-tuned clarity that allowed the viewer to make out the types of flowers on the bedsheet print.

She was in or around or just leaving the flower of her youth.

She had the fresh face and tight bod of a high school student.

The dumb unworldliness that showed no awareness whatsoever of her sexual power.

The enhancements and lingerie and crucifix tattoos that certified her as a stripper.

The razor scars that documented all the nights she had not brought back enough money to her pimp.

The gleam of someone dangerously unstable.

Most seemed nervous, at least a bit uncertain. A good amount glanced toward someone out of the camera's view, which was a minor distraction.

A voice from behind the camera. Throaty. Deep timbered:

We have some new talent here today.

The beautiful and lovely Appolonia.

Nice to meet you, Silky.

Mei-Ling, is that how you pronounce it?

You're how old?

And you're a dancer, correct?