Porn Writer, a journal of experiences and opinions, is definitely the writing of one person, alive and well, that would not be possible without the love and support of three people who mean more than life itself, the inspiration and enthusiasm of a published writer who deals in boxes of gold, a devoted and highly professorial instructor at a nearby college, and the comings and goings of muses and wild ones both real and imagined.

Chapter One PORN WRITER

“Write me some porn,” he breathes just loud enough for me to hear. We are leaving school, crowded together like tinned fish and I turn to talk to him but he has already vanished.

I am thinking about his request all the way home on the rotten yellow bus stinking like jelly sandwiches and rolling with teenage sweat.

God, I hate being 17.

Tonight I am thinking about his request as I brush my shaggy mop. My bedroom mirror is cracked and so is the window but I push it up anyway and careful of my fishnets I skid across the roof and hit the ground like an overripe fig. Hailing a rail, I hold onto the strap and eye the passengers. A dull and sleepy lot, they nod and drool in their respective corners.

The city lights call to me like promised rewards and I can feel the lust of the place

when I first step off the rail and into the chill of downtown. Stats with pockets of pills and drugs rolling off their fingers fight for first call but I shove past them all.

There is one dive that flashes especially bright and I lay my bucks across the greasy palm of the multi-studded bouncer and push my way downstairs.

The place is hot and musky and animals pass for humans here but that doesn’t bother me much and I walk up to the bar and order a top- heavy tank of suds. Over the foam I notice a sweet number immediately to my left and I imagine him as my first piece of legitimate research. The bulge in his trousers tells me that my instincts are correct, as usual, and so

I turn and smile him a big one. He falls in the face of my innocence and we teleport to this empty booth in the back.

“Geez Louise,” I say to the big stud. He’s hot handed and wild and all over me. My pens scatter on the floor and my journal is crushed under us as he pushes me back on the cracked plastic seat. His teeth ram against my lower lip and his knuckles are all I can feel at my crotch. Geezers are easing past us and I think some of them are catching a glance as he unzips his pants and rubs himself hard. With a practiced hand he guides himself in my front door and without even a decent hello or goodbye he leaves by the same way and I am left soggy and groping for my journal.

“Write me some porn,” he says and so I turn to page one and this is what I write:

The bar was almost empty. She sits down and orders a perfect martini with one fat little stuffed olive. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him. His hair gleams and so do his muscles. She winks. He winks in return and moves a seat or two closer. The jukebox cranks out one of her favorite love songs and just as the song ends he moves close enough to brush her lips with a warm, sensuous kiss. She returns his favor and bites his lower lip as an invitation. He motions to a private booth in the back and takes her hand.

His fingers are long and they grip her hand tightly and only let go when they reach the velvet seat next to an indoor fountain. The scent of night blooming jasmine fills the air around them. His eyes are golden brown and his lashes are soft against her cheek as he bends to kiss her throat and unbutton the front of her blouse.

She runs her fingers through his hair and pulls his mouth to her breasts. His tongue is gentle and she lets him undo her skirt and slide it off. The velvet of the seat tickles pleasantly. As she unzips his pants her desire becomes stronger than her will to resist this handsome stranger and she pulls him out and inside of her in one . . .

“Excuse me, Miss?” a Modesto mechanical stands before me with a full tray of brew. “Are you waiting for anyone in particular? These booths are reserved for clients.” I slam my journal shut and clip the arrogant beehive a good one before I walk off, dripping just a bit and sore where it matters. Full swagger in swing I make for the door and flip off the arrogant

crowd with a final toss. Adios amigos.

The main drag street is screaming now, lights full on and flashing, reapers striking, random blood drips from rooftops and I dodge puddles of toxic slime while looking for my next page of notes. “Write me some porn,” he says and damn if I’m not trying to pull some passion from the guts of this sickly twisted mass of humanity.

I spot a skin shredder halfway down the block. His limp has a decent spread and the shine off his mohawk fairly dazzles. I can see the stud in his chin from here.

Oh God, I know that I am irresistible and sure enough, the guy drops the skins he has stacked and reaches for my platinum chest piece. “My place is real close to here,” he gasps in awful agony and his breath reeks of ginger and coke and maybe hash and I’m not sure what else but I am sure that his ass is great. I am thinking all this to myself as I hitch up my sags and stick my journal under my arm in order to lock arms with the kid and climb the stairs to his apartment.

There is no roof and I am counting stars within a few seconds as he sweeps I don’t want to know what off of a stained mattress and lands me on my back.

As my eyes adjust to the starry darkness and my body to his oddly smooth hands I notice that we are not alone. Poppers and needle hags hunch in corners, picking their noses and pinching lice. They are colorless and faceless even and I forget about them when he bites into my neck and jams both hands into the knots of my hair and pulls my head back to sink his teeth in even deeper.

“Gosh,” I start to stammer but the moment passes and he keeps my head pulled back as he tries to loosen the front of my shirt.

His skinny knees are poking holes in my thighs. His breath goes to rank. He gives up on loosening my shirt and rips it open instead and attacks my nipples like a newborn. Bumping and jagging against my hip he flails his puny stiff until moaning and pleading for some pathetic form of deliverance he bursts and soaks himself. Pushing him off I buckle my platinum back in place over my shreds and head for the stairs before the poppers and needle hags start stirring and demanding their share.

Safe under a streetlight I open my journal to page two and write:

The evening breeze is warm and scented with the fragrance of roses. Deciding to stray from her usual path down the main street of town she takes a detour along the river. Strolling across the grassy bank she notices an absolutely gorgeous hunk of a man coming in her direction. His eyes are snapping black and friendly and he motions for her to sit next to him. Wildflowers and the scarlet rays of the setting sun surround them. Birds

wing across the sky and he reaches for her hand. “I like to make the first move. Do you mind?” Her kiss is all the answer he needs and he nuzzles sweetly at her neck and puts one warm hand gently down the waist of her skirt. He brushes slowly across her crotch and she shivers. She turns to face him and straddles his lap. She can feel his hardness beginning and reaches to loosen his pants . . .

A big glob of spit lands smack in the middle of my page. I stagger some kind of scream and jump up only to confront a local law pusher. His medals and badges are blinding me with the power of his authority and he starts barking before I can say a word. He says them for me though and linking a cuff to one of my slender wrists, he drags me, without a thought for my fishnets, to his alarm car and we are gone and racing for the station. Ripping off one precious page of my journal I slobber and spit soggy paper balls at the back of his shaved head all the way there.

He leads me in front of the legally greased main desk like a common chow and then there is the usual noise about age and gender and behavior and then I am sentenced without a word from me in my defense, I swear, and he is dragging me off once again to some rat hole in the basement. He flushes the toilet as we enter and locks the other end of my cuffs to the bars of the cell. He takes my journals and pens and puts them on the bunk.

“Sorry about the spit,” he says.

“Yeah. How rude,” I manage to say but he has rammed two fat fingers through my fishnets. With a decent sort of pull he manages to rip them down my legs and while he is down there, ripping, he starts licking the insides of my thighs. I twist against the bars and the cuffs but he likes this and my struggling only makes him lick harder and faster. His head is all the way under my skirt and his hands hold my waist tightly. He catches my knee in one hand before I quite have the chance to do any serious damage and with a laugh more cruel than kind he makes for my mouth and crams his official tongue down my throat. I am choking with the importance of him but he is oblivious to all but his own needs. He is as wide as he is long and my back grates against the cell bars. His motions are deliberate and quick from much practice at this you can be sure but I am grateful for his efficiency and speed and I guess he is grateful too because when he finishes he releases me from the cuffs, the cell, and the whole sod place.

“Write me some porn,” he says but I decide to put some time and distance between the law officers and me. Speeding in my best manner I send myself to the next empty doorway and I crouch there, backlit by a porch fire, and open up my journal and write these words:

Page three. The day has been long and busy but she answers his knock in a hurry. When she opens the door, he stands there, all six feet of him, and as she lowers her flushed face he sweeps off his hat and offers his hand. “You’re parked illegally,” he says. “You’ll have to pay the penalty,” he continues. She loves this game they play and she takes his hand and pulls him into the tiny apartment.

The smell of floor wax and glass cleaner hang heavy on the air and his excitement becomes reality in the flush of her familiar domesticity. She begins unbuttoning the dozen shiny buttons on the front of his uniform and as she reaches the last one he grabs her ass and pulls her hard towards him. His badge pricks her throat but who cares as they find the bed, her punishment, their pleasure, and . . .

Breathing a sigh coupled with cold, I stand up, joints cramped and lonely, and decide to head for home. Guns clanking and slamming, packers jostle me aside as I jam coins in the turnstile. The rail is late, as always, but it finally cranks in and I end up standing, grasping the shaggy strap once again, and swaying with the motion of the late night express. My reflection, haggard and old, strobes by in line with the bright lights of the rapidly disappearing city. I’ve lost an earring and my fishnets are shredded and shagging with the weight of it all. My crotch is wet and raw and my skin gleams coldly pale. My breastplate cuts into my ribs. I pull my coat more tightly against the sneezing, stinking, sleep dreaming rail riders.

God, I hate my life at 17.

My whole house has nodded out, what did I expect, and my apathetically disturbed parents are asleep, locked in their married embrace of mutual hate and dissatisfaction. Silently I make it up the stairs to the sanctuary of my room. “Write me some porn,” I hear as I carefully and quietly close my bedroom door and peel myself clean of the city and its clients. He is here, unbelievably enough, he is here in my room with me, breathing of fear and lust, and in the dark he reaches for me. Holding tightly to his sticky curls, I look into his cloudy eyes for direction.

What I see scares me so I leave him and head for my bathroom. My hands are shaking as I open the cabinet and take out a single, bright razor blade. The nightlight punches a faint glow into the dark surrounding me but it is hardly enough. I know what I want though and I fill the sink with warm water. Slitting my wrists is surprisingly easy and sinking my aching wounds into the water is soothing somehow and I sit down on the edge of the tub as my knees weaken beneath me. I can hear his quiet breathing

through the door.

The slight sliver of the new moon is just visible over my shoulder. My thighs are long and lean and I hang my head between my arms and stare at them and begin shaking like a two-day drunk. Blood moves quickly when it is warm and I know without looking that the sink is full to overflowing with the singing red. My heart beats more slowly now but it is comforting and all right. My final story is here.

I imagine him forcing his way through the locked bathroom door, gathering my fragile, failing form into his arms and carrying me back to my bedroom, back to my bed, my warm blankets and stuffed cats and bears there for company. I imagine him bandaging my wounds, bathing me in rose water, and drying my sweaty shag with his shirt. I imagine him tonguing my ear studs, licking the tattoos at my throat, and following on down the jag of my bones and skin. I imagine his throaty voice hot at my ear when we finally manage to do the thing and I imagine that he lies tightly with me until we hear my parents stirring to their morning alarm.

All of this I imagine, and even more I swear, I’m a fine porn writer here in these last moments. All of this I imagine and more but as reality finally darkens hard around me and my dizziness becomes all I can comprehend, I hear him sitting and breathing. Slowly and deeply, I hear him breathing quietly and calmly and turning the pages of my journal.

Chapter Two

Cowboy Trucker Lover

I can’t do it. My blood spirals off under the running water and my ears have that tingly feeling and I think I am going to puke, but I can’t do it.

I pull a towel off the rack with my teeth and dripping blood and water I sit down on the toilet and try to wrap my cuts.

I can hear him in my bedroom. Still turning the pages of my journal. Still reading. After a few minutes I feel better. I think about going out there, out into my room, and seeing him and saying hello and starting the whole desperate slow slide into curiosity, into involvement, but for what reason? I am tired. I am tired from my long night of walking and writing and this man, all men actually, hold no mystery for me right now at this moment with my wrists throbbing and my face pale and my makeup running down my cheeks. I sit and think. I sit and think about my next move out there in the wide, wide world.

I sit for so long my legs get cold and stiff and my wrists stop bleeding, there is just a banging sort of feeling to remind me of what I almost did, and I listen for him. There are no sounds. No pages turning. No breathing.

Slowly I push open the bathroom door and peek out. My bedroom is empty and with more than a sigh of relief I crawl under my blankets and sleep. I try to sleep. Actually, I lie there totally awake with my thoughts racing out of control. I’m thinking that I have to get out of here. I have to find a place, a city, a town where I can make some sense out of my life. This place is small and cruel and I know too many people.

My clothes will have to stand, just as they are, I’m no beauty queen on the best of days anyway and I look around my room for valuable stuff, things I can’t leave behind, things that I need for my escape. My journal and my pens are all that matter, there never was any doubt, and I pack them and pull the knots around my wrists a bit tighter and sneak out of there for one last time. I won’t be back. Ever.

The first rays of morning light are sitting there on the horizon but it’s still so damn cold I can see my breath. What am I going to do? Where in the hell am I going? These thoughts scream at me for attention, for answers, but I don’t listen. I have never been concerned with reality and all of its mundane complications. I don’t dream of a house anywhere or a career of any sort or a love of any condition.

Rats are finishing their nightly rounds and I hear a few cries and yells coming from the cozy cracker box death traps lining this street. This street that my parents call home, this prison, this life that nobody wants and nobody loves.

Lights snap on here and there and I can see the sick glow of televisions. I imagine my parents getting up and waiting for me.

When will they wonder where I am? How long will it take them to knock on my bedroom door and call out my name?

This I definitely don’t want to think about or imagine but not because I care about my parents. I am so far past that feeling, but because oh god they are annoying and they make me sick always criticizing me and trying to trap me. My writing is trash they say, my life is trash. Where is my

direction? What are my goals? They don’t have a clue.

The morning is full fledged now and I can no longer see my breath. I think about my goals in life and I remember back to school and the endless lectures and the long, boring hours spent sitting and listening and doing anything but moving, anything but living. Writing in all of the columns of my books, on every scrap of paper, filling the pages with comments about my classmates, my observations, and my descriptions. Their looks and their clothing and their conversations, oh god I love their conversations. I mean I hate their conversations, so shallow and selfish and so self- righteous. I hate the little bitches and sometimes I copy down entire conversations, word for word, written down for all of eternity in the columns of my textbooks.

Open any of my well-studied books from this year. Take Warner’s Grammar. My writing is thick on those pages.

You have got to be kidding. No. I’m not. He really did that? Yeah he really did and I wonder if I should tell anyone? Well, yeah of course you should, I mean what was he thinking? Did it hurt? Yeah. Fuck yeah it hurt. Did you cry? Well, fuck no, not in front of him anyway. I went home, I waited until I got home and then I had a good cry. Did your parents hear you? No. I was cool, I was quiet, and I got in my bathtub and soaked for the whole damn night. Oh my god, I always thought he was a creep. Well, here’s the thing, should I tell anyone what he did? Can I get pregnant from that? Oh my god, are you fucking kidding? Are you serious? Of course not, not from what he did. Pregnant is not something you have to worry about, uh uh not from what he did.

Then these two big busted, fat lipped drips keep going on and on about their pink mohair and their multi-hued dye jobs and the heels on their shoes and all the rest of their important stuff which is more important than what he did to her, or should I say with her, but who will ever know and I get happy just thinking about next year’s English student opening my book which is now their book of course and reading about the exploits of these two lucky senior chicks.

Life doesn’t get much better than the fiction of memories and just remembering that girl’s big round ass in pink mohair fur hovering inches away from my desk, away from my mouse girl kingdom, my gnawed off fingernails gripping my gnawed off pencil scribbling as fast as I can and just sweating with the closeness of it all, her ass, my thoughts, her words, my writing, gets me so hot that I sit down on the curb and slide my hand down the front of my jeans. An erection would be so convenient right here, right now because I could just jerk it up and down a few times, that’s all it would take for damn sure and I could spit and drip a little and relieve myself of these memories, these desires, these longings and then I could