The Job Pirate Page 21
After that, it was official: Our first day of filming the finale in Jamaica was over. Everyone went back to their rooms for a shower or quick nap then we all returned to the enormous outdoor courtyard buffet for another jerk chicken and margarita meal. Between the cast and crew, there were about fifty-five of us there. And after gorging ourselves on goat and libation, we all scattered off in different directions to investigate the mysteries of the resort with our wide-open night ahead. Every bit of that place was clothing optional—even the gift store—and although public sexual acts weren’t condoned, they also weren’t hard to find. The resort had six or seven lagoon-like pools, a few dozen palm-shielded Jacuzzis, and open bars every 60 feet, so receiving an underwater handjob, joining a poolside orgy, or getting blindass drunk was an option pretty much anywhere you went, whatever direction you chose. But over the course of the past two months, being so submerged in the seedy, behind-the-scenes underbelly of pornography, my desire for sex or any kind of intimacy had diminished to almost nothing. The romance had been taken out of the process for me; the sweetness, the mystery, the taboo—it had all been violently removed from the sexual act because of this job. It’s a bizarre moment for a man to see a pair of breasts and a vagina right in front of him, there for the caressing, yet all he can think about is getting as far away from them as possible.
So instead of joining Corey, Steven, and some male crewmembers watch four of our female contenders daisy-chain each other at the Jacuzzi, I snuck off to the empty beach, smoked a joint, and deliberated how long it would take for the novelty to wear off of being in zero gravity. Seriously, watching a pen float at eye-level would definitely have a short entertainment shelf life.
I was already beginning to loathe these people whom I was writing dialogue for. Not so much for who they were personally, but for who they were trying to become. Sex was simply an overrated act that too many people thought solved everything when all it really did was deprive you of the time for doing other, more-productive things. And these people wanted to bathe in that ignorance, and spread it thickly from TV screen to TV screen. I suppose I was that way in my mid-20s, or at least attempted to be because everyone I knew was doing it, but now 10 years later I knew better. I knew that sex either got you killed, got you sick, got you broke, or got you a family you didn’t want.
I went back to my hotel room, smoked a little more, and retired in front of something Pierce Brosnan on cable. The next day I woke up to do it all over again with the remaining eight contestants in that same hotel room. The only thing that remotely interested me the entire day of filming was the Pink Couple having their turn on the mattress of dreams. They were cool and collected, and they didn’t try to impress anyone with raised legs or fake screams. They simply had sex the way they normally did at home, and it turned out to be quite the romantic scene, according to the judges.
The Pink Couple’s climactic finish signaled the end of our second day of filming as well as the end of the First Round of the competition. After another jerk chicken dinner, Carmina, the producers, and celebrity judges drank daiquiris and sorted out their score cards from the past two days, deciding which eight contenders would be staying in the competition, and which eight would be going home (but not really “going home,” just no longer in the competition; the losers were allowed to stay at the resort for the remainder of the week). None of the cast or crew were allowed anywhere near them while they debated the merits of a large penis versus a cute face or a bad blowjob versus an attractive, young-looking vagina. But I ran into one of the celebrity judges a few hours later at the poolside bar. He was the editor-in-chief of a major porn magazine and he could really put away the free daiquiris. He told me that the Pink Couple, the Filipina girl, 1974 Brad Pitt, Hershey Soft, Platinum Blonde #3, just one of the twins, and only Brianna or Bailey or something with a B (without her barrel-chested fiancé) would be moving on to Round Two of the show. Aside from Matrix making the cut, I agreed and let him know by ordering the next free round.
Just like American Idol or that semicelebrity dancing reality TV show, we also dedicated an entire episode to the elimination process. It was a big, filmed to-do over who was staying and who was leaving, shot on the white sandy beach with all 16 contenders in attendance. Carmina threw out teary hugs and industry advice to the departing eight, and encouraged them to keep on trying—but to keep on trying with a different adult entertainment company. The eight who were staying were then told that their scene partners would be shuffled around to make things fair and exciting, and everybody would have a chance to fuck everybody before the show was finished. After the cameras shut down for the afternoon, the producers informed the eight contenders that their next-day scenes would be shot outdoors, filmed at a local, privately owned island. It must have sounded like a dream come true to them at the time. Then the next day happened.
The island was indeed privately owned, just not by a legal, reliable, aware-of-our-arriving source. Seconds after beaching our two small boats onto the isle’s shore, three masked men fired rifle shots into the air from behind palm trees. The cast and crew jumped back onboard and we puttered around to the far side of the island and shot our hurried scenes there. The director fell in love with this isolated palm tree growing horizontally out of the sand, and she shot most of the scenes with it as the sole prop. The couples were told to get inventive with it, so they did. The lone twin bent Platinum Blonde #3 across the tropical bark and pounded her from behind, shredding up her stomach in the process. Hershey Soft finally achieved his erection and went all Cirque du Soleil on the little Filipina chick he was partnered with: five toes in the sand and one whole leg lifted up and over the palm tree, giving both cameras a clear view of his shaved black balls slapping against her little childlike ass. The Pink Couple was to be divided up for their second scenes, and Mr. Pink was going to give it to little Brianna or Brittney while Ms. Pink was supposed to have fucked 1974 Brad Pitt. But little Brianna or Brittney had a change of heart and didn’t want to sleep with anyone that wasn’t her fiancé, so she quit the competition right there on the beach. Now having an odd number of actors left in which to shoot two partnered scenes, the director improvised and proposed a threesome. I wasn’t too sure how it panned out because I took one of the early shuttle boats back to the resort and went straight for the daiquiri bar.
But all four scenes were shot that day, and it was again time for another elimination round. So later that night after a dinner of jerk chicken soft tacos, the remaining eight cast members collected on the evening beach before a half circle of fiery tiki torches and cameramen. Carmina stood in her bikini and wireless microphone at the center of the group and explained to the camera audience the rules of the competition.
“We’ve had so much fun watching you guys perform, and I wish you could all stay here with us on the show. But only two of you get the $250,000 and movie deal, so … looks like half of you won’t be moving on to Round Three, our final round of the competition.”
A cameraman slowly walked his lens down the line of shirtless and bikini-clad contestants, getting a nice close-up shot of each of their faces. Carmina bowed her head as if in mourning then brought the microphone dramatically back up to her mouth. She gave each of them a sincere glance.
“Craig, Bella, Jeremy, and Cynthia, please take one step forward.”
1974 Brad Pitt, the Filipina Chick, Lone Twin, and Ms. Pink all stepped forward. They were nervous—they weren’t sure which way it was going to go; was taking a step forward good or bad? Were they still in the running or were they going pretend-home? They would seconds later find out.
“You four … what can I say about you? What I can say about you is congratulations! You’re moving on to the final round! And the four of you in the back row … you’re not. You’re going home.”
The front row jumped and cheered while the back row all shook their heads; two of them looked relieved and the other two were genuinely pissed. But hugs and tears were again shared between all, and Matrix ag
ain complained in his postinterview about his scene partner’s unprofessionalism. From what I could tell, nobody felt too badly about him not moving on to the final round.
That next morning, just minutes before the final two scenes were to be shot, Ms. Pink explained to the producer and director that she never thought she’d make it as far as she had—it had been the boyfriend’s idea to do this all along, and they both thought he would have succeeded and not her. And now that he was out of the competition she didn’t want to continue without him. The producer snidely reminded her that he had posed this very likely possibility to her many times before agreeing to fly her to Jamaica, and this isn’t how Show Biz works, honey. She apologized and apologized and Platinum Blonde #3 was back in the show.
It was all on the line for these last two couples—what they did in these final scenes would decide the competition. We shot at a rented millionaire’s villa about an hour away, and Pitt pounded the shit out of the Filipina while the Lone Twin got it on with the blonde twice his size. My presence wasn’t really needed at the villa—in fact, I hadn’t been needed for the past three days; I had just been sitting around and watching people screwing—but the producer wanted to get his money’s worth out of me, so there I was, smoking cigarettes and eating at the buffet table from setup to wrap-up. I had no impact on the entire day of filming, and the only thing my laptop did was beat me at chess.
It was a torturously long drive back to the resort because I got in the crew bus that Corey wasn’t on, so I had to sit with a dozen guys who I didn’t know and who didn’t smoke pot during long drives like this one. But the finale was now finished for the most part—at least all the scenes involving sex. Once back at Whispers, I spirited off to my hotel room with two daiquiris and a bunch of candy, and decided I never wanted to date again.
The next day, the crew set up their cameras and tiki torches beside a tropical pool for our grand finale, where we would find out which two would leave Jamaica with the two-movie deal and the $250,000. The entire cast was reunited as if they hadn’t seen one another for months, when in actuality they had all just shared a breakfast of jerk chicken sausage and waffles an hour before. The cameras followed Carmina as she walked her microphone to each of the 12 expired contestants and gave a little recap of their journey through the competition—no doubt it would be peppered with video highlights of their auditions and Round One sex scenes in postproduction. Then she approached the final four and retold their rise through both rounds to make it where they were now. Then, with tears in her eyes and a Puerto Rican accent on her tongue, sweet platinum Carmina announced the winners to be 1974 Brad Pitt and the little Filipina chick. It all sort of felt like one of those situations where you knew there was a surprise party waiting for you behind the door, but you still acted surprised and probably overdid the shocked expression a bit once the door opened. But it was official. The show was finally officially over. In a day and change, we could all—cast and crew alike—check out of this sodomite resort and return to whatever city we called home, and probably never see one another again … not counting on a TV screen or magazine.
But realizing this pending conclusion just made it feel weirder. This show that was at one time just a simple, crazy job offer, then pages and Post-it notes taped to a rented office wall in West Hollywood … it had actually grown flesh and cameras and a budget and tits and cocks. This two-month fuck-fest had taken me to Miami’s ritzy South Beach and put me in a waterfront, $450-a-night hotel room. It had shown me my first taste of New York City and Jamaica. It had introduced me to per diems and limousines and bleached assholes. It had also illustrated for me just how far people were willing to go for a taste of fame. Had it not been for this job, I never would have imagined that hundreds of men and women would wait in lines for hours just to undress and masturbate in front of a camera crew in hopes of a little stardom. People you would never imagine, too. At the early auditions, only 10 percent of the tryouts actually looked like someone you would see performing in a porno movie; the other 90 percent looked like homely regular people you see every day: your balding 45-year-old neighbor with all the plants, the alcoholic lady with big red glasses who works at the grocery store, the old smiley black guy who drives the bus, the Renaissance Faire gal who acts out role-playing fantasy games on weekends and dates from Craigslist. And we had to watch each one of these dregs undress and pleasure themselves to too-near completion, from the West Coast all the way to the East Coast. And it was all finally finished. I could return home to Los Angeles with about $8,000 more in the bank than I had when I left, my name in an actual TV show’s titles as “Head Writer,” a few new contacts for future porn-writing gigs, plus my newfound disgust for anything to do with pornography, including writing it.
The following night I left my laptop in my room and decided to tour the resort and maybe even socialize a little, seeing as it was our last night in Jamaica. But I couldn’t find anybody I knew. I sauntered down the beachy paths wondering if they were all avoiding me and having some grand party in a secret location. It gave me time to reflect on the past week, and I came to the conclusion that I had A) acted like a royal asshole to every porn star and aspiring porn star in the show, and B) I was pretty much whoring myself out just like they were. This show had been my own taste of fame, just like the contestants, only I had used my words to jack off for the camera. I wasn’t really all that distraught once realizing it—it was an entertaining, well-paying, and eye-opening ride the whole time, and my literary sodomy was a hell of a lot easier to take than some of the contestants’ actual sodomy. But it did bother me that I had been treating “the talent” so assholeishly, looking down upon them from such great heights where Head Writer titles bloomed. I had always prided myself on being empathetic and open to people from all walks of life, especially the underdogs and the misfits. I was a misfit, after all. I should have embraced these people, and wrote for them scripts that might have revolutionized their porn scenes, and brought tears to the eyes of romantics and boners to the laps of the masturbators. But I hadn’t—I had given them a rewritten scene from Jaws that had two ladies comparing their breasts. I had been a dick to them; I knew it, I saw it, and I even began to relish in it, to be honest. And then to discover that we were the same! We were the same, my bare-backing brothers and semen-spilt sisters. We were both whoring ourselves out for that sweet taste of fame and fortune.
I heard laughter and splashing nearby and walked a little closer to a lit but empty pool. On the far side was a big bubbling Jacuzzi set into the stone floor with Carmina and a few of the crewmembers getting in. I walked closer wanting to at least say “hi” as some sort of amends for being kind of a prick to them over the week. Then Corey appeared from a side path with a handful of margaritas.
“Dude, where you been? I’ve been knocking on your door.” He handed me a drink, got into the Jacuzzi, and handed out two other drinks. “We’re having a little wrap party for the crew here. Get in.”
“Yeah, get in the Jacuzzi!” Carmina added with that colorful accent and her tanned boobs bouncing in the water. “You work too hard. The show’s over; it’s time to have some fun now!”
I kicked off my flip-flops and eased in between Steven and a brunette “celebrity judge” porn actress. The two cute production assistants we picked up in Miami were also in there plus a few of the cameramen and their very liberal wives. We each took turns running to the cabana bar to retrieve new rounds of margaritas every 15 minutes until someone finally got wise and brought a pitcher over. Then a few joints were passed around, and then we all got a little naked once truth or dare started. As I took a puff and passed the doobie to the topless porn star on my left, I realized two things: A) what an amazing bar story playing truth or dare in a Jamaican Jacuzzi with pot-smoking porn stars would be and, B) there weren’t many “truths” to be had when you’re playing truth or dare with drunken porn stars and porn filmmakers. There weren’t many secrets to keep in a crowd like that. Within the first 30 minutes of the game
, almost everyone there had admitted to having had some form of a same-sex sexual experience in their life, cheating in a relationship, past STDs, trying heroin, even tasting their own semen. So our truth or dare turned into more of a game of dare-or-really-dare. I made out with one of the cameramen’s wives right in front of him before getting dared to do naked push-ups over an equally naked Carmina without getting an erection. Corey was dared to do a titty-fuck with the brunette porn star then the 20-something production assistant, and compare the two. Fingers were poked in orifices left and right, and margaritas were poured down tits and penises and between ass cheeks into eager open mouths. It was a Jacuzzi party worthy of its own TV show, but it was only as amazing as it was because there were no cameras around to capture its glory. We could all let our guard down and just let tits be tits and peckers be peckers again—no camera angles or lifted legs or job titles. We were just nine people in a Jacuzzi getting drunk and doing weird shit to one another.
“Hey, whatever happened to Donkey Dick?” a cameraman drunkenly asked with his face slouched between his wife’s armpit and breast. “I wanted to see that thing live, man.”
“I think he went to the wrong resort,” one of the assistants replied, the top half of her bathing suit floating beside her.
“That prick of his was huuuge, bro,” Corey slurred. “Homeboy was fucking ugly as hell, but that prick was huge!” He went back to sucking on the neck of the other production assistant.
“Fuck it,” the cameraman whose wife I made-out with said flatly. “I don’t want to think about any of that shit anymore. The show is done, man. This is all us now.”
That said it for all of us. A few moments of silence followed while we all drunkenly absorbed the two-month cost for our night of freedom, then we returned to the laughter, the margaritas, the joints, and the underwater hand-jobs. My only regret that night is not being able to acquiesce to Carmina’s final dare for me to stand at the center of the Jacuzzi and whack-off to her fondling her breasts, then unload on her stomach for all to see. Because I discovered that, like a large portion of the male contestants who never made it past our open-call auditions, I couldn’t perform in front of a crowd either. I gave it one hell of a try though.