Blue World (34 page)

Go home, he told himself. For Christ’s sake and the Holy Mother, go home!

His legs did not obey his mind.

They took him across the street. A few people still milled around the adult bookstores and the other movie houses, but not many. One of them saw his collar, did a double-take, and picked up his pace in the opposite direction. Two kids in black leather jackets hollered something at John, but he paid them no attention. He slowed his pace; the Pacifica Theater was coming up fast.

A middle-aged man slept in the ticket booth. And then John realized--thankfully--that there was no need to go in, because there was a big poster advertising

Animal Heat in the display window. He could see what Debra Rocks looked like and, his curiosity satisfied, go home. That’s what all this was about, wasn’t it? Curiosity? He prayed to God that she had a face that would shatter glass.

But the poster didn’t show Debra Rocks’ face. It showed a slim, long-legged woman with black hair spilling over her shoulders, her back to the camera. She was wearing a tight-fitting leopard-skin swimsuit that allowed most of her behind to show through. At her feet, their hands clawing at her legs, were three men who looked to be in the throes of insane passion.

Like me, John thought. He recognized the supple shape of Debra Rocks from his view of her at the church today; the way her body curved at the waist and swelled at the hips reminded him of a cello carved by a sensual master’s hand. That impression was heightened by the tan of her flesh, as smooth as if the healthy shade had been painted on. He stared for a moment at that poster, moving to another place on the sidewalk as if his change of angle might give him a three-dimensional view of her profile. He glanced at the ticket booth; a sign said it cost five dollars to get in.

He looked at the door. It was a door just like any other, but he knew he would be damned if he walked through it. Still… just one peek. Five minutes in there; ten minutes at most. He burned to see the face of Debra Rocks, so he could have an image to put those ruby lips on. Her voice came to him, smoldering like a flame that would not be extinguished:

God made the world, right? He made sex too.

True enough.

Maybe it would not be as bad in there as he feared. Maybe not. Maybe all the movie showed was playacting.

He had to see. He had to.

He took a five-dollar bill from his wallet, approached the booth, and tapped on the glass.

The man looked up, bleary-eyed, and finally focused on John’s collar. “You gotta be kiddin‘,”

the man said.

“One ticket.” John’s voice trembled.

“You really a priest? Or you just dressed up like one?”

“Give me a ticket, please,” John said.

“Is this a joke? Like ‘Candid Camera’?” The man glanced around, grinning, as if in search of Allen Funt.

“I’d like a ticket, please.” Suddenly there was a new horror: a man in a gray overcoat lined up behind him, and John thought that it might be someone who knew him. “Come on, come on!” John said.

The man grunted and shook his head. “This beats all! Well, the pope goes in free, so you might as well.” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Hit it, padre.”

John shoved the money through the booth’s portal and, shivering from the wind, walked quickly into the Pacifica Adult Theater.

He heard the moaning as soon as he reached the concession stand. The sound of it, and the smell of stale popcorn, made him feel queasy. He kept going, into the darkness, but he stopped square in the doorway as if he’d run into a glass wall. On the huge screen was what looked at first like an exploratory surgery. It’s a medical movie! he thought, amazed and dumbfounded. But in the next second the camera moved back and showed a nude woman atop a nude man; her back was to the audience, and her body was arching in a frenzy of action.

“‘Scuse me,” said the man in the gray overcoat, and John almost leapt aside to let him pass.

John’s eyes gradually became adjusted to the darkness. He saw eight or nine other men sitting there, all seemingly absorbed by the on-screen movements. He took a few steps down the sticky-floored aisle, somehow got into a seat, and stared at the screen like all the others were doing.

The girl--who had shoulder-length black hair, a healthy tan, and a body like a sculptured cello--kept up her rhythm. She turned her profile quickly to the camera and then away, but it was too fast for John to see what she looked like. His heart was pounding, he felt as if his lungs had constricted, and he was brain-dazed. And then, from the right, another nude man entered the frame. He had a stick of melting butter in his hands, and he rubbed the stuff all over his fingers. As the girl continued to moan and work, the man with buttered fingers reached toward her arched behind.

A head came up from the seat directly in front of John. A man had been sitting there all along, slouched down. He turned toward John and, grinning, croaked, “It’s hotter’n hell, ain’t it?”

John’s nerve broke. He got up, turned, and fled as Debra Rocks gave a gasping moan that penetrated his stomach like a gut-punch.

“Hey!” the ticket seller called as John reached the sidewalk and kept running. “Didn’t you like the flick, padre?”

John’s face was flaming. The truth--the awful truth-- was that he had liked it.

He stopped running as soon as he was across the street from the Pacifica. His brain felt cracked open and oozing in his skull. A hundred cold showers couldn’t cool him off-- nor could they make him feel clean again. He felt contaminated to his soul, about to weep; but his crotch pounded, and there was no denying the power of its rhythm in his blood.

In the middle of the next block, John stopped again. To his left was a shop whose windows were covered with aluminum foil. A sign said

Vic’s Adult Books. 100s of Movies. VHS, Beta. Marital Aids. Adult Novelties. MasterCard and Visa Accepted.

The place pulled at him like a physical force. Now it seemed that a dark appetite within him had been whetted, and he could not shove it away.

He entered the store.

Hell, he discovered in another second, was not underground, a realm of burning caverns. Hell was Vic’s Adult

Books, on Broadway a block south of the Cathedral of St. Francis.

Racks of magazines displayed every possible sex act and perversion, and some that John had thought before this moment must be physically impossible. Some he knew he’d be damned to purgatory for simply considering. Behind the counter, where a fat guy smoking a cigar sat watching Dr. Ruth on his portable TV, was an assortment of… well, there was only one way to describe them: false members, in every size and color, ribbed, waited, convoluted, ridged, smooth. John stared at them, aghast; that anyone could use a thing like that shocked him beyond belief. And, turning, John found another display: this one a wall packed with VCR tapes.

“Help you, bud?” The cigar-smoker looked up. His gaze found the white collar as John turned toward him, but his face showed no reaction. “You tomcattin‘, Father?”

“No. No, I…” He shook his head. Everywhere he looked, he felt sick--but compelled to look, too. Compelled to fill his eyes up with these forbidden sights. He took a staggering step toward the VCR tapes.

And there it was. Right there. On the row to his right, fourth from the top.

Rough Diamonds. Starring Pam Ashley and Debra Rocks.

His hand went out with a will of its own. His fingers grasped the tapebox and pulled it from the rack. On the cover was a pretty, smiling redhead holding a palmful of diamonds. She was bare-breasted, and they were huge. The price tag read thirty-nine-ninety-five. He only had thirty dollars in his wallet, and he dared not use his Visa and sign his name.

“Half-price sale today,” Vic said around his cigar. “Sale goes on till Saturday.”

Oh, my Lord, John thought, and pressed his hand against his sweating forehead. Oh, my Lord…

“That’s a good one. Nice and juicy.” He returned his attention to the TV. “You ever see Dr. Ruth? She’s a scream.”

John wanted to put it back. Wanted to wash his hand in battery acid. But his fingers had clamped tight, and then he turned and walked to the counter, his face pale and eyes glazed.

“Call it an even fifteen bucks,” Vic told him. “I like to be a good businessman.”

“Put it in a bag, please.”

“Sure thing.” Vic accepted a twenty and gave John five dollars change. He slipped the tape into a bag that had vic’s adult books stamped on it. “Hey, you might be interested in this.” Vic turned a little hand-written sign on the counter around so John could see it.

The sign said:

Saturday Special! Two-thirty to Three! Debra Rocks Live in Person!

“She’s in

Rough Diamonds,“

Vic told him. “She’s a real looker. Promotin‘ her new flick, just opened at the Pacifica. You know, she lives right here in San Francisco. Yeah, really! Don’t know where, though. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sittin’ here watchin‘ Dr. Ruth, I’ll tell you that!” He laughed noisily, and ashes plummeted from his cigar.

John, his hands trembling, took the bag and put it under his arm. He hurried out of the store, and only when he was walking quickly in the wind did he allow himself a full breath.

In the bookstore, Vic heard the sound of cowboy boots clumping through the back doorway, from the area where the peep shows were. “You’re not gonna believe this, kid!” he said to the guy. “Just had a priest in here! No shittin‘!”

The man, who wore a long brown duster and had blond crew-cut hair, strode to the counter. He’d already seen the sign announcing the arrival of Debra Rocks on Saturday, but now he stared at it as if mesmerized. “I saw her in

Super Slick,“

he said dreamily. His dark brown, hollowed-out eyes with their tattooed crimson teardrops looked into Vic’s fleshy face. “I love her,” he said.

“Right! You and about ten thousand other horny bastards!”

“There’s a difference,” Travis said softly. “She loves me too.” And then he turned away and walked out the door into the night.

“Freak!” Vic muttered, and turned the TV’s volume up a little louder.

Obsession.

That’s what was going on here, John thought as he took the videotape out of its bag. The bag itself was incriminating enough, and would have to be shredded to pieces before it went into the trash. His hands shook as he fumbled to open the box and slip the cassette out.

Obsession.

But no, he decided momentarily, it wasn’t like that. Not really. He was simply curious. He wanted to see the face of Debra Rocks, that’s all. If he could just see her face, then he could throw the videotape away too. One good look at her face, and his curiosity would be satisfied.

He turned the TV on, set the volume low, and pushed the tape into its slot. The machine automatically began to play, and the opening credits of

Rough

Diamonds--the huge-glanded redhead, dancing lasciviously--appeared on the screen. And if anyone had ever told him such a sight would be playing on his home television set, he would have thought they were totally insane. But here it was, in living color, though the tape quality was grainy and marred. Here it was, and John wondered how he was going to confess this sin.

Inwardly trembling, he pulled a chair up in front of the screen and sat down to watch.

The movie had no plot. It was something about diamond smugglers, but it made no sense whatsoever. The lighting was terrible, the camerawork was done by a palsied hack, the sound was out of sync. The redhead paraded around, displaying her flesh at every possible angle to a group of supposed diamond smugglers, and finally the three men tossed aside their booty of diamonds and climbed onto the redhead with the single-minded purpose of tramps jumping aboard a moving freight train.

At first John thought that watching the gyrations and insertions was going to make him scream and leap out of his skin, to go running through the church in his naked bones. But after fifteen minutes or so, a strange lethargy settled in. He was no longer watching human beings have sex; he was watching the slamming of meat. He thought at one point that all of them had gone to sleep, because the three men and the redhead all had their eyes closed and it looked as if their hips moved like automated machines. Even the cameraman seemed to be sleeping, because the camera ceased its shaking and stayed fixed for an interminable length of time.

John kept staring at the screen, his eyes glazed and his mouth half-open. The three men finished their duty, mercifully for the viewer. The redhead stretched and smiled as if she had just known nirvana, and John saw that she didn’t shave under her arms.

Dreadful, he thought. This wasn’t even sexy any longer. He reached out to press the Fast Forward.

The scene changed.

A girl with tanned skin, shoulder-length black hair, and a body that would drive an angel to tears was reclining on the chest of a nude man, both of them lying in bed. Her face was averted from the camera, but she was talking to the man and John instantly stiffened again. It was the smoky, incredibly sensual voice of Debra Rocks.

She began to lower herself to the man’s crotch. The breath hitched in John’s lungs, and he thought: Oh, my Lord…

Debra Rocks turned her face to the camera.

She was wearing a feathered, glittery mask over the upper half of her face. A Mardi Gras mask, John realized. But he could see the color of her eyes: a dusky charcoal gray. Her hair flowed in rich black waves around her tanned shoulders, and her breasts… oh, Lord, her breasts were as beautiful as John had hoped--had feared--they would be.

Still, the mask prevented him from seeing exactly what she looked like. And then her full red lips strained toward the man’s crotch, and John thought lightning might split the ceiling and strike him dead between the eyes. But the ceiling remained solid, though John felt his own foundations starting to collapse.

The red lips of Debra Rocks worked with slow passion. The man held up an “Okay” sign to the camera, and grinned so lewdly that John wished he might see him on the street one day so he could bash his head with a brick. No, no, of course he wouldn’t do that. But why did the man have to grin like that?