We didn’t know if we were staring up at it, or if it was staring us down, sizing us up, ready to give us the old run for our young money. It stood in the center of the block with a fierce glare, like Nolan Ryan on the bump, poised to saw off the heads of some knee-shaking rookies. That summer we were a handful of wet-behind-the-ear first timers, not knowing what to really expect from the place we’d talked so much about during lunch, at recess and on our long city walks after school. We stood with our McDonald’s bags and Super-Sized soda cups, the 1992 Olympic Dream Team souvenir cups to be exact, ones featuring action shots of the greatest basketball team to ever be assembled and placed in conjunction with flimsy fries and leaning-tower Big Macs.
“Do you think he’s home?” Tim said. He brushed his side spiked black hair back a bit, took a sip of Dr. Pepper from his Clyde Drexler cup and looked into his brown bag, double checking the contents. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for this. I even bought an extra thing of fries.”
“He usually gets up around noon in the summer doesn’t he?” Drew held a John Stockton cup. On his head was a red St. Louis Cardinals hat and he wore a Utah Jazz John Stockton jersey over a white t-shirt.
“He’s supposed to. His parents are always at work till like 4 so we have plenty of time.” I said.
I couldn’t hold back my excitement. I was a bit nervous, but only the kind of nervousness that accompanies the nagging urge to really impress someone. I was more nervous for my friends than for myself. I wanted to see them basking in their own satisfaction. I had been there the previous week, embarking on a noontime adventure, only to have it cut short, severed by an interrupting parent, that as the wise had stated so many times before, just didn’t, and couldn’t understand. Right before us that afternoon, nestled in the middle of a hot South St. Louis neighborhood waited pornography’s answer to the Library of Congress. It was rumored over lunchroom milk cartons, that Stan’s old man owned two copies of every porno ever filmed, all on 8 hour VHS tapes, stashed into the spider ridden corner of his bedroom. I whet my whistle with a straw sip of Hi-C Orange from the cold depths of my Scottie Pippen cup and noticed the droplet trail of condensation. It had rolled from my cup and landed onto my Scottie Pippen USA jersey, right above the big red number 8. My dribbling grin was one of sick anticipation. I was eager to show my friends what I had first discovered. I was their Magellan of the sex tape, on my block, I was the Vasco de Gama of the vintage 70s porno.
We walked onto the gray painted wooden porch, poised to explore what we dubbed Porn Hall, due to its two white pillars on its façade. The front of the apartment had the prestigious look of some kind of academic building, though it was merely a run-down boyhood wet dream factory, a two family flat on the south side, overrun with water bugs. Stan answered the door, standing in front of a dark stairwell, blocking his apartment style adult theater. He wore a Michael Jordan USA jersey and in his hand was a matching cup from which he sipped iced tea.
“You guys ready to get boners or what? I thought about what to watch all last night and I think I got it narrowed down to two of them.” He said. “There’s one where these guys dress up like chicks at an all girl’s camp just to get with them. And this other one where the girl’s boyfriend gets run over by a car and his ghost comes back to do it with her every night.”
“Dude I woke up with a boner just thinking about it.” I told him.
As we ascended the staircase, my Samba Classics clopped along, the wide tongue of the black shoes pressed against my shin. “You can check out my dad’s porn library if you want.” Stan said.
“Oh do we ever.” Tim replied. He brushed past Stan and ran up the dusty steps, pushing Drew into the crumbling plaster wall.
“Does he have any Playboys?” Drew asked. “My brother’s got a few under his bed. When I get a chance, I sneak into his room and look at them.”
Stan led us into his parent’s bedroom. “Playboys? Dude Playboy’s are for weaklings.” Dirty clothes and crap stained underwear seemed to have been strategically placed all over the floor like land mines protecting a bunker full of top secret war documents. We had to sidle around a bookshelf that was filled with every kind of clutter known to man, but not one single book.
“I got your mags right here.” Stan pulled a stack of old magazines from behind an empty 50 gallon fish tank that sat on a stand, nearly pressed against the room’s corner. Drew, wide eyed, flipped through one and passed one to Tim. They were so filthy looking in both appearance and content that staring at them long enough would’ve left us with some venereal disease, or at the least, given us crabs.
“My dad calls this his bullpen.” Stan explained about the area behind the fish tank. “He goes to it at the end of every night, after he watches Letterman.”
“Doesn’t he get any from your mom?” Tim momentarily peered up from his magazine that was simply titled Cherry. On the cover was a girl in a Catholic school jumper, holding a report card that boasted mostly F’s.
“Have you ever seen his mom?” I said. “It’s no wonder he has all this naked lady stuff.”
“Hey! That’s my mom you’re talking about.”
Drew set down his magazine and started laughing uncontrollably. Soda trickled down his chin, splotching his Stockton jersey.
“What?” Tim looked up again from his Cherry mag.
“What’s her report card say?”
Tim hadn’t paid much attention to the cover. He eyeballed it and laughed. The gelled hairs of his neatly boosted side-spike bounced accordingly.
“History…F. Algebra…F. Social studies…D-.” He touched his face to his lap. His Chinese-Irish face was flushed crimson. “Sucking cock…A+” We all busted up in unison. “Licking balls… A++”
“She must sit at the front of that class.” I was laughing so hard I could barely say it.
“Back door action.” Tim continued. “A-.”
Our laughter declined. It was as if a vinyl record skipped and groaned to a halt. “What’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Tim chewed the straw from his Clyde the Glyde cup.
“You’re the porn ambassador’s son.” I said to Stan. “What’s it mean?”
“I think it means like doing it in the butt. You know, back door.”
“Duh.” Drew mocked. “Hello?”
“Shut up. You didn’t know that.” I said.
“Sure I did. My brother told me. He’s got a magazine called Back Door Brides.”
“Why didn’t you say something then?”
“Because I wanted to make you look like a fooool.”
I thumped him behind the ear with a fully cocked middle finger.
“Dude check it out.” Stan pulled out a thin plastic penis from his dad’s top dresser drawer. He peeled back the head and revealed the roller and button of a cigarette lighter. It was perfectly molded, anatomically correct down to the veins.
“I bet you wish yours did that.” I said.
Stan grinned sheepishly. “That would be awesome.” He pressed it against his crotch with the lighter end outward and lit it. “Cigars anyone?”
Stan reached back into the sock drawer and pulled out a hollow, penis shaped apparatus and made it vibrate. “I think my dad puts this over his pecker when he does my mom like once a year.”
“Sick.” Drew belted.
“Touch it.” Stan waved it in his face.
“Get that away from me you dork. It looks like it has crust on it. If it touches me I’ll punch you.”
“Punch me and you won’t be watching no pornos.”
“Hey, hey.” I interrupted. “Let’s not forget why we came here.
“You guys came to use me for my dad’s porno collection? I knew it.”
“No way Stan. You’re our friend.” I reminded him. “We do want to see one though.”
“Yeah. Let’s see the stack.” Tim stood up from the slumping mattress and adjusted his multicolored Umbro shorts.
Stan yanked an old pee-stained sheet from a tower of VHS tapes, as if he were unveiling the latest breakthrough in technology before the judges at a science expo.
“Ladies and gentleman.” He said. “I present to you, the archive.” Stan whipped the sheet up and down like a magician in front of a sawed in half box with a lady inside. He was partially blocking the stack, his chubby knees seeming to buckle inward, his Jordan jersey slightly too tight.
“Where do we even start?” I said.
“There’s like six pornos on each tape.”
The stack was almost as tall as us. It was hastily piles, with jagged, protruding black corners. The aged labels on the fronts of the tapes had been written on, scratched over and written on again, as if Stan’s dad had systematically deleted some just to add others. The tower was a literal porno tape Jenga. If we chose the wrong one, it would’ve crumbled to the tarnished hardwood floor.
“Just grab one. Who cares which one, I just wanna see some naked chicks.” Drew said.
Stan grabbed one from the top of the pile and we all grabbed our McDonald’s bags and migrated into the darkness of the living room. There were no real curtains in the large window that overlooked the car-packed avenue, only a black, king-sized bed sheet, fastened to the top of the wooden windowsill with thumbtacks. The couch was big enough for all of us. Its ribbed, burgundy material was heavily stained and laden with white dog hair. There was a crater on the far right side, where Stan’s dad would plop his 400 pound frame each night after work and watch his volumes of classic ‘70s pornos. And when I say classic, I’m talking big bushes, real tits and actual storylines. Stan popped the tape into the VCR and I readied my small tub of sweet and sour sauce for my fries. I stuck the foil lid on the side of a giant trash can that was overflowing next to the coffee table. I saw my bag from the previous week’s pornographic escapade still resting, crumbled on the floor.
“Have you ever seen a porno?” Tim was sitting directly next to me.
“Just for a second.” He replied. “My brother taped himself beating Contra on Nintendo without getting shot once. I tried to watch it. I saw the first level and all of a sudden, there was a chick easting out another chick on the screen.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. I turned it off before my dad looked up from his paper.”
“Here it comes.” Stan said as he pressed play. “No pun intended.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Drew took a bite of his Quarter Pounder with cheese. “No dicks Stan.”
“Shut up. That’s not my favorite part.”
“That’s not what we hear.” Tim said. He jammed a fry into his sweet and sour sauce.
“Shut up or you’re outta here.”
“Come on guys, we’re trying to watch some sex here. Aren’t we?” I reminded them.
Stan fast forwarded through the beginning credits and extra fluff. We wanted to get straight to the naked truth. My friends had envisioned what it would be like for the entire last week of school, heads down on their booger-caked desks, pretending to sleep through social studies class. Their young minds only incubated hand-me-down stories from older brothers or other kids like me who had been blessed with the pleasure of sitting through a viewing. It all slowed down on the screen and we saw him: Curly brown locks, child molester mustache, a shotgun blast of tightly woven chest hair. He kneeled over a nude woman, ready for action.
“Look at that guy.” Tim chuckled. “He looks like Super Mario.”
We all laughed collectively, none of us realizing we were watching a future hall of famer at work, a virtual legend with his grips on the middle of a ten-inch turkey neck. The show began with some mouth play. Without letting our focus drift one bit, we jammed fries into our traps. I dredged them into the tub of sweet and sour, bending their delicate frames into the corner of the white container, sopping up every morsel of the brownish goo. The Hedgehog went to town and we couldn’t tell whether or not the woman on the receiving end of his boar’s tusk was being tortured or pleasured. There was a close up shot of her zone and I gasped when I saw it, nearly inhaling a swig of Hi-C into my lungs.
“I heard it’s got three holes.” I told them.
“What does?” Drew had his knees tucked into the mesh of his Stockton jersey. The number 12 was stretched into a lighter color.
“You know. The pussy.”
“Says who?” Tim chimed.
“My cousin.” I said. “There’s one they piss out of. One the baby comes out of, and one the dick goes in.”
“I think he’s right.” Stan said. “I’ve paused a bunch of close ups just to see.”
“How does your cousin know?” Drew asked.
“He’s done it before.”
“Shut up.” Tim tossed his fry container at the trashcan. It bounced off the mounded top and landed on the floor.
“No for real. He’s had to have. He’s like 12.”
Drew shook his head with a chewed straw in his mouth. “Who’d he do it with?”
“One of his sister’s friends was babysitting him when he was 9. She tied him to a chair and made him get a boner.”
“I wish some chick would make me get a boner.” Stan said.
“Not gonna happen.” Drew assured. “Your mom wouldn’t even tie you up and make you get a boner.”
“Screw you Stockton. No one likes your Utah Jizz anyway.”
“Oooooh. Hang another Jordan poster on your wall bandwagon jumper.”
The scenes on the TV screen were continuing to intensify. I watched as Tim grabbed a pillow and carefully placed it over his lap. Sooner than later, Drew did the same. I wanted to follow suit because things were beginning to stiffen up. I tried to sit like my dad often did, knee bent and foot crossed over my thigh, but it just looked out of place. That style of sitting wasn’t readily accepted by my generation and would’ve only drawn further attention to my situation. Stan upped the volume and the lusty sounds echoed off the dusty walls, startling our eardrums and branding themselves permanently into our minds. In my own head I was panicking. It was almost ruining the experience for me. I knew why my friends had sauce stained couch pillows placed so nonchalantly over their groins. To me, I was being watched and ridiculed, my Umbro shorts resembling a circus tent. Stan’s Shi-Tzu mix came to my rescue and sprawled out across my lap. As wrong as it was, beggars couldn’t have been choosers. That being said, big Ron yanked out for the money shot and Stan pressed fast forward. His medium paced strokes now appeared as if he had lubed up with rocket grease and strapped a small engine to his wrist. We all looked around and laughed as he blasted away at quadruple speed. Stan had the volume up so loud that we failed to hear all the crucial things going on around us. We didn’t hear a car pull up out front, or a rickety Caprice station wagon door creak open. We heard no screen door pop shut, or no one pounding up the long flight of stairs. Before we knew it, there were five of us in the room when seconds earlier there were only four. Stan’s dad stood in the living room entry way, blocking the light from the window by the steps. His hair was a greasy comb over, his mechanic’s shirt untucked on one side, and black oil was smeared all over a set of zucchini sized fingers that pinched two bustling McDonald’s bags. His large, sagging cheeks resembled those of an aged English bulldog in need of a nap, puffy and full of whiskers. We sat terrified. He looked directly at his son with a stern grin of disgust. Stan had dropped the VCR remote and was fumbling around on the floor it.
“Stanley.” His old man said in a raspy, high pitched voice.
“Dad I can explain.”
“Explain what? How you got the boys all over here to watch some of my tapes?”
“We were just on our way out.” Tim said as he stood up, brushing crumbs off his lap.
“You’re not going nowhere. Have a seat.” His dad commanded. He let his bags dip to the floor with a thud. “Unbelievable Stanley. I know I’ve taught you better.”
“I’m sorry Dad.” Stan started to cry.
“You should be. You damn well better be sorry.”
“Am I grounded?”
“You better believe you’re grounded son. I can’t believe you guys all sat around here watching my stash and didn’t even bother to invite me.”
Stan looked up and wiped a tear from his cheek. “You mean you’re not mad?”
“I’m mad because you didn’t invite me.”
“Am I still grounded?” Stan whimpered.
“Hell yes.”
“Well Mr. Poole, you’re invited to watch some of your own pornos with us.” Drew told him.
“Well that’s so nice of you Drew.” He said. “Dre needs to get out of my spot. And Tim, pass me your leftover sweet and sour sauce.”
I vacated Mr. Poole’s couch crater and Tim passed him a brown bag full of unused condiments.
Stan’s old man let himself plunge into his space like a sawed-in-half sequoia tree. “Say, you kids ever heard of John Holmes?”
“Not at all.” I said.
“Well you’re about to meet him. Stanley, take your grounded ass into my bullpen and find me one called Johnny Wadd. The yellow label’s all scratched up. You can’t miss it.”
