7••••

THEY SAY THE GODS WATCH OVER FOOLS AND DRUNKS— surely Trahearne and I qualified—and whoever they are, they’re right too often for comfort.

Once we were downtown, we stopped at a quiet bar, and I called every dope dealer, police officer, and old girl friend I knew. They gave me some names and numbers, all of them absolutely useless. How was I supposed to know that every porno kingpin and czar in the city spent Sunday afternoons in religious retreats, consciousness-raising sessions, or est seminars? Out of boredom and hoping to stay sober, I hit the bars and theatres around Broadway and found a bored college student taking tickets. He knew a sociology professor who knew more about pornographic movies than either the Legion of Decency or the Mafia.

The professor was home on Sunday afternoon like any good citizen, watching an old silent porno flick about a young fellow who is fooled by two young girls at the beach into fucking a goat through a knothole in a fence. Several months later, the girls con him out of his walking-around money when one of them slips a pillow under her old-fashioned bathing suit and accuses him of having fathered it.

“I’ll be damned,” Trahearne whispered as he wriggled on the hard metal folding chair. “That’s almost funny.”

“Almost?” Professor Richter said, glancing down his sharp nose. “Almost?” he repeated with the proprietary air of someone who had written, directed, and starred in the movie. He did resemble the young protagonist. “It’s hilarious!” he screeched. “And that is the major problem of modern pornography: it’s too serious. With minor exceptions, of course. Usually, when it attempts humor the modern pornographic film tries for the lowest level, and when it succeeds, however slightly, as in the case of Deep Throat, they have a national hit on their hands,” he said gravely. “It’s the same in all the arts: as technology advances, humor declines. The limits and definitions of art disappear, then the art is forced to satirize itself too earnestly, and the visual arts become literary, and that, my friends, is the very first sign of cultural degeneracy.” Then he slapped his slender, dusty hands together lightly, lifted the corners of his mouth, and added, “Don’t you agree?”

He had the glittering eyes and pained smile of a fanatic, the long face unmarked by emotion, so Trahearne and I nodded quickly. His face wasn’t unpleasant, just blandly, hysterically objective. Maybe a steady diet of porno flicks had softened his features, but I couldn’t begin to guess what had happened to his clothes. Perhaps he had slept in his shiny black suit. Several times. Badly. Certainly he had dined in it. Or off it. A blossom of tomato sauce with a dried mushroom bud served as a boutonniere, and his thin black tie, tugged into a knot the size of an English pea, as a napkin.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked as it became apparent that we hadn’t come to discuss the state of the art.

I showed him my license and explained my business.

Before I could finish, he scampered to a 5×8 file, rifled it, and came up with both hands full of cards, waving them at the walls of his small apartment, which were banked with file cabinets and shelves and stacks of film cans.

“Animal Passion,” he said, holding out his right hand. “Animal Lust,” he added with his left. “Take your choice, gentlemen. Not a particularly imaginative title, either of them, but damned popular.” He simpered at his own joke.

“Low, low budget,” I said, “with a group grope for a finale.”

“Aren’t they all,” he said with his frail laugh. “Could you give me an approximate date?” “Late sixties maybe.” “Major actress blonde or brunette?” “Blonde.”

“Right,” he said, then replaced the cards into their file, shuffled them again. “Perhaps this is it,” he said as he read a card, his narrow bloodless lips mouthing a long number. He dashed over to a stack of film cans and jerked one out of the middle so quickly that the ones above it fell down with a neat solid thunk. “If I remember this one correctly, it’s simply trash,” he said, “without a single redeeming feature. Would you like to

see it?”

“You mind?” I asked Trahearne. “Why should I mind?” he said, looking very confused.

“Your romantic illusions,” I said, then laughed.

“Oh,” he said, “oh yeah. Those.” His confusion seemed to clear itself up. For him, though, not for me. “Roll it,” he said crisply, and Richter threaded the film.

It was basic, all right, perhaps even pitiful. It was Betty Sue Flowers, too. No matter how often I looked away, when I looked back she was there. She had

gained enough weight to make her figure more than Reubenesque, and if she hadn’t been able to move it with some grace, she would have seemed grotesque and comic as a chubby young housewife clad only in a frilly apron, her thick blond hair gathered into two unbraid-ed pigtails that framed her fat face.

At least the plot was thin. First, a little minor-league action with a pair of bewildered toy poodles, then some major-league work with the neighborhood help: a postman, a milkman, two meter readers, and a grocery boy with pancake over his wrinkles. Among the five men, they had enough beer guts, knobby knees, blurred tattoos, dirty feet, and crooked dicks to outfit a freak show. In the finale, as they gathered in a carefully arranged pile about the kitchen table, they looked even more distraught than the poodles had, and their faces contorted with pain as they all tried to come at once as Betty Sue worked at all of them together. Everybody was stoned blind, and the crew kept stumbling on camera or into the lights or jerking the camera in and out of focus. You could almost hear the sigh of relief when they ran out of film. The whole thing seemed about as exciting as jerking off into an old dirty sock.

But Betty Sue, in spite of the fat and her eyes, which were as blank as two wet stones, had something that had nothing to do with the way she looked. She seemed to step into the degradation freely, without joy but with a stolid determination to do a good job. In spite of myself, I was excited by her, which made the whiskey curdle in my stomach. I worked on righteous anger but only came up with quiet sadness and a sick sexual excitement. I saw why Gleeson hadn’t wanted to talk about the film; I didn’t either. No more than I wanted to look at a large, ugly scar that split the center of her pudgy abdomen.

“That wasn’t funny at all,” Trahearne growled as the film unthreaded itself and flapped like a broken shade.

“Don’t blame me,” Richter said as he began to rewind it.

“Think I’ll hobble outside for a breath of fresh air and about a gallon of whiskey.” Trahearne said as he heaved his bulk out of the chair.

After he left, I asked Richter if he knew any of the actors’ names.

“Surely you jest,” he said. “In this business, only the creme de la creme have names, and usually they are assumed. However, I did recognize the chap who played the milkman—in another context, of course.”

“What context?”

“He once ran a pornographic bookstore downtown,” he said, “and I think his name was Randall something … Randall Jackson.”

“Is he still in town?”

“No, he left after this film,” he said, “which was his single effort. I seem to remember someone telling me that he was some sort of paperback distribution agent. In Denver, I think.”

I asked if he knew anybody else or anything else about the film, but he had never seen the girl again, which meant that she had dropped out of the business. I thanked him, then stood up to leave.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I said.

“Of course not,” he answered pleasantly.

“What are you doing with all these films?”

“Catalogue, classification, and cross-indexing. Preparing for a scholarly study of the decline of American pornographic film.”

“Isn’t all this expensive?”

“I have a grant,” Richter said blithely. I didn’t ask from whom. I didn’t want to know. As I left, he was humming as he reloaded his projector.

Outside, Trahearne and Fireball were sitting back, drinking and watching the Sunday traffic on Folsom

Street—two cabs, a babbling speed freak, and an Oriental wino. I climbed into the car, wishing I had a greater variety of drugs with me. Or less blind luck.

“Was that the girl you were looking for?” Trahearne asked.

“No,” I lied. “It looked something like her but it’s some chick named Wilhelmina Fairchild.”

“Could be a stage name,” Trahearne suggested.

“No,” I said. “Richter knows the lady personally. She’s working in a massage parlor over in Richmond. So unless she’s developed a German accent since she left home, it wasn’t Rosie’s daughter.” I wasn’t sure why I lied to Trahearne. Maybe because I was embarrassed for Rosie. Or for myself. Whatever, I didn’t want him to know that it had been Betty Sue on the screen, flickering among so many hands.

“For Rosie’s sake, I’m glad,” Trahearne said. “I stopped in her place by accident and drank there a couple of days because I liked the place and her bulldog. I didn’t talk to her much, but I liked the way she poured the beer and handled the bar, so I’m glad her daughter didn’t end up like that. Or worse.”

“Me too,” I said. “What now?”

“Palo Alto.”

“Why?”

“To talk to Betty Sue’s best girl friend from high school,” I said.

“Maybe she’s out,” he said. “Maybe you should call first. Maybe we should hang around the city tonight. Have a few drinks, you know, relax and rest a bit.”

“No rest for the wicked,” I said, then tucked the Caddy between a taxi cab and a semi-truck, ripping off two dollars’ worth of Trahearne’s tires. “It’s a nice day and a pretty drive,” I added as soon as the truck driver stopped blowing his horn.

“If we survive it,” he said.

“You want to drive this fucking barge?” I asked angrily, mad about my lie and the movie.

“You just drive it however you want to, son,” Trahearne said, holding up his hands. “But don’t get mad at me. I’m not in charge of the world.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m crazy or the world’s a cesspool,” I said.

“Both things are true,” he said, “but your major problem is that you’re a moralist. Don’t worry, though.”

“Why?”

“It’ll pass with age,” he said. “But talking about crazy—what was that fellow doing with all those films?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

I was partially right. It was a nice drive. Except for a scuffle Fireball had with a large gray poodle who wanted to sniff his ass at a rest area, and except for the rich lady in the Mercedes who belonged to the poodle and who slapped Trahearne when he suggested she do something impossible and obscene with her lousy damned play-pretty mutt, it was a lovely drive. But Trahearne was right about calling Peggy Bain first.

The girl who lived in the apartment address Albert had given me didn’t know where Peggy Bain lived, but she did know somebody who might. We spent the afternoon kicking around from apartments to bars and back again, talking to a long series of people who knew where she might be. Finally, as we tried the last possible place, a backyard barbeque all the way up in La Honda, the sun headed behind the coastal hills and Trahearne began to whine like a drunken child. He had forgotten his promise to stay at least as sober as me. Trahearne and Fireball were as drunk as dancing pigs.

At least the bulldog had the decency to pass out in the back seat. As we parked in the string of cars beside Skyline Drive, Trahearne sniffed the air, muttered party, and stopped whining.

“Maybe you should stay in the car,” I suggested.

“Nonsense,” he said as he tugged a fresh quart of Turkey from under his seat. “If my famous writer act doesn’t work, lad, I’ll show them my invitation,” he added, waving the whiskey. “I’m always welcome at parties,” he said as he lurched out of the car.

Of course the old bastard was right. The bearded young man who answered the doorbell had met Tra-hearne some years before at a poetry reading in Seattle, though Traheame didn’t remember him, and he welcomed us into his house, introducing Trahearne to his guests as if he had been the guest of honor all along. Within minutes, he had arranged glasses and ice and Peggy Bain sitting across a picnic table. Traheame shooed the host and his fans away, sat down beside Peggy Bain, and flopped a heavy arm over her shoulder as he called her honey. She was a genial lady with a face as round as a full moon looming above her thick wool poncho. When Trahearne explained what we wanted, she glanced at him, then me, then broke out in a fit of stoned laughter so fierce that she had to remove her rimless glasses and set them among the dirty plates on the table.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said over and over again, only stopping to giggle. Then she lowered the pitch of her glee, rubbed the tears out of her eyes, and said, “Man, I haven’t seen her since high school.” She paused long enough to shake a hash pipe out of her sleeve and light it, then offered it to Trahearne. He took a greedy hit, then held his breath and muttered dynamite dope! like some kid. When she offered it to me, I shook my head, trying to stay straight for a few minutes longer. “I ran into her father down in Bakers-

field a few years ago, and he said Betty Sue had been living in a commune up in Oregon, but she had left.”

“Remember the name of it?” I said.

“Man, who can remember those names,” she said. “Sunflower or Sunshine Starbright Dreaming or Sun-fun or Sun-kinda-pretentious-hippie-shit.” After she stopped chuckling at her own joke, she added. “Whatever its name was, it was somewhere outside of Grants

Pass, I think.”