CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Muttering, I peered at the clock beside his bed as he reached for his cell phone. It was two in the afternoon, and I would kill whoever was calling.
“Hello.”
“Jude, darling,” Eamon’s voice said. “So sorry to wake you. I wondered if, seeing as you’re an experienced actor and all, you can handle a video camera?”
I rubbed my chin, palm rasping over my stubble. “Yeah. Why?”
“Because we’re filming a little show here, and one of the camera crew is ill. Any chance of you coming into work and helping us out?” There was muttering in the background. “We’ll pay union rates plus $100 as a bonus for waking you up.”
$100 bonuses? That would mean I could make his next mortgage payment. “Yeah, I can do that,” I said. “Give me a few minutes to shower and shave.”
“Come right in, dearie,” Eamon said. “We need you. You can always shower and shave here before your shift starts.”
“OK. I’ll be twenty minutes then.”
“Quicker than that, honey,” Eamon said. “Right now.”
I clicked off his phone and rolled out of bed. Clean clothes, he needed clean clothes. Dammit, he’d only dropped Billy back at Daniela’s two hours before, and he’d hoped to sleep a few more hours, but union rates plus a bonus, on top of an ordinary shift, was too much money to refuse.
I pulled on clean jeans and shirt, found my boots, then brushed my teeth and was out of the door.
***
Eamon must have been looking out for me because the door to Club Jade opened as I got out of his car. “ear boy,” Eamon said, slapping me on the back. “Upstairs in the party room.”
I followed Eamon up the stairs and stepped over the cabling snaking across the corridor floor. “Everyone, this is Jude,” Eamon called out, and a short man with a beard slapped me on the back and thrust a video camera into my hands.
There were stage lights set up in the corners of the room, and someone switched them on, flooding the room with light, and I took in the scene. Glenn was sitting on the edge of the huge bed, a cigarette in his mouth, making me want to tell him off for smoking inside. Charlie was peering at herself in a hand mirror and pushing at her hair, and there was a lean and tanned man sprawled across the bed, wet washcloth across his face.
“OK,” the short man called out. “Fluffers now.”
Glenn opened his knees and Yuki crawled between them and began to suck his limp cock. The man on the bed took the washcloth off his face and shooed away the unfamiliar young woman who sat on the bed beside him. My eyes widened. It was George, the British tanned blonde hunk with the curved cock, which was easy enough to be curved. George jerked at his own cock a few times with his hand and slid off the bed.
The short man with the beard slapped me on the back again. “Jude, you’re doing close-ups.”
I nodded. I switched on my camera and sighted through the lens and then looked around the room to place the rest of the crew. The sound guy with the boom on the left by the bathroom door and the guy with the beard who seemed to be the director was also a long shot camera guy, on the right. I picked his shadow lines and fixed them in his memory and looked back through the viewfinder.
Yuki scrambled out of the way and grinned at me for a moment, and the bearded guy called out, “George, you’re getting blown, Glenn you’re at the back. Charlie, can we hurry this up? We’ve already lost half an hour.”
I watched Charlie pout at the director and put her lipstick away, then climb onto the bed on all fours, and the director called out, “Let’s go.”
I switched my camera onto the record and edged closer in, circling around the tableaux on the bed and zooming in on George getting blown.
I had done enough threesomes to know exactly what another guy getting blown looked like, but this was completely different. Sure, the visuals I was watching through the viewfinder were hot, and I was hard in seconds, but I was also distanced from what I was seeing too. It wasn’t being done for my benefit, and I didn’t care whether the people were having a good time or not, I was only there for the money.
I pulled back out a little, tracked down Charlie’s body, zooming in on the way her boobs swung as her body moved, then checked the sight lines of the other camera and where his own shadow was and tracked across Charlie’s hips.
Within twenty minutes my shoulder was aching from holding the camera and I had shot the threesome on the bed from all the angles which were available to me, and the director called out, “Ten seconds, then swap ends.”
I pulled back a little, so I had all three of them in a shot, and filmed them rearranging themselves, then moved back in for the close-ups. I was deeply grateful that porn was so formulaic, and that I’d paid attention to how the shots were set up because I’d be floundering if the director decided he wanted to do anything different.
After forty minutes, Charlie called out, “I need a break. George, for god’s sake, use more lube.”
It was a relief to put the camera down and stretch my shoulders, then I found my hand being pumped by the director. “I’m Steve,” he said. “Nice work there. You shot porn before?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve only done mainstream camera work.”
“Doesn’t show,” Steve said. “Listen, that’s a decent package you’ve got there. If you’re in good shape, I’m always looking for guys for the mature line we do. If you swing a little, always makes it easier to film if the guy’s bi.”
I would have blushed, if the lines of coke didn't distract me, the three porn actors would have. If I inhaled so much powder, I'd be stuck to the ceiling for a week. “Thanks, but no thanks. Behind the camera is fine.”
Steve was still looking at my crotch. “You sure, because you look like you’ve got nine inches there? I need someone to work with Reg.”
“No, thanks,” I said to Steve, then I waved away the mirror with much more moderate lines on it that Yuki carried over to me. Steve waved the mirror away too.
“No, babe,” Steve said. “Some of us are working.” Steve turned back to me. “Smart move not using, that’s what wiped out the previous cameraman.” His eyes went back to Yuki. “Could you shoot a little footage of her?” he asked me. “She’s cute.”
“Sure,” I said, shouldering the camera again. I moved in closer to where Yuki was fluffing Marco, making sure he got a good angle on her face. She wasn’t made up like Charlie was, so she looked a little sallow in the bright lights, but she turned on the charm for the camera, flirting with it then stretching back on the bed so I could take good footage of her body.
It made me a little uneasy to be filming Yuki like I was. I knew her, she was a real person to me, someone who wanted to be an actor who wanted to get out of hooking; and moving into porn would ruin any chance she ever had of being a mainstream actor. I didn’t like objectifying someone I knew.
Steve called out, “Babe, don’t leave without giving me your number. Now, George, if you’re fluffed, let’s get the anal happening.”
After two hours, my shoulder was killing me, and I had got past being turned on by what I was filming to being bored with it. There were only so many angles I could shoot, and I had ceased to be amazed by the number of drugs it took for Charlie to stand so much double penetration. Whatever they paid her, she earned every single cent.
They filmed two sets of cum shots over about twenty minutes, and regardless of how Glenn and George felt, I was exhausted by the time Steve yelled out, “And that’s it. Thank you, everyone. Beer and pizza in the kitchen in thirty minutes.”
Steve, the sound guy, and I knocked down the lights and packed the cameras into their cases ready to be carried to the cars. I looked around the room. It was a mess, but it was only five, he had two hours before they opened for business. I’d come back later and clean up the condoms on the floor and replace the bed cover. I needed a beer first.
***
In the kitchen, Eamon was dispensing beers while Autumn opened pizza boxes, and I sat down at the table. The sound guy took out a notebook and said, “Jude? What name do you want on the credits? I’m to keep track of this stuff.”
I hesitated. It hadn’t occurred to me that I'd get a mention in the credits, and it made me smile. Fuck the establishment, I could do this. “Jude Freeman,” I said, and the sound guy wrote it down.
Steve put down the chunk of pizza he was eating and said, “What are we doing about paying you, Jude?”
Eamon leaned forward and said, “I’ll pay Jude in-house. It might be easier for everyone.”
Steve nodded. “Much appreciated, Eamon. It’s a good location to shoot in, we must see about making an entire video here.”
***
When I went back upstairs to clean up the party room, Eamon followed me. “I wanted to thank you,” Eamon said as I gathered up the wet towels from the bathroom and dropped them on the bed. “For coming in during the day. If Steve films a video here, business will go crazy. Not to mention the location fee we get for them using the room.”
I used the corner of a towel to pick up the condoms. It was a job the boys always did after a client, but I guessed neither Glenn nor George would crawl back upstairs and do it, so I’d better. “No problem, Eamon,” I said. “It was fascinating in a macabre way.”
Eamon shuddered. “It’s not for me. I’m far too squeamish for that.”
I dropped the condoms in the bin and stared at Eamon. “You run a brothel, Eamon? How could you be squeamish about people having sex for profit?”
Eamon looked a little embarrassed. “Yes, but I don’t have to watch them do it, do I?”
I shook my head and bundled up the wet towels and the bed cover and dragged the bundle out to the corridor. When I came back, Eamon was spreading the clean cover over the bed. “You shower,” Eamon said. “I’ll get the rooms ready and do something about the drugged up cameraman in the front room.”
Well, that answered the question of how come I had called in the afternoon.
***
The director and sound guy were still sitting in the kitchen drinking beers when I had showered and shaved, and Yuki or someone must have called around because the girls were in the kitchen too, despite it only being 6.30. They were never ever early, but there they were, Chloe, Peyton and the fake blonde with freckles who had started with them, Ira.
I ignored them and stuck his head into the TV room, and Glenn was flat on his back on a couch, bare feet dangling over the end, sound asleep. He was trying to gather his strength to face a night of sex.
Yuki caught me by surprise while I was collecting the used coffee mugs from the TV room. She hugged me, wrapping her arms around my neck and holding on tight, despite my best attempts to step back. “Thank you, Jude, thank you, thank you,” she said as I attempted to extricate himself from her embrace. “If I get a contract for a video, it’ll be because you shot the footage of me.”
“Er, no problem,” I said. “I was doing what Steve told me to. Look, are you sure you want to get into porn? It’ll ruin whatever chance you had of an acting career.”
Yuki shrugged. “It’s acting.”
I shook his head. “It isn’t, hon, it’s something different.”
Yukmy voice dropped. “It’s alright for you to say that.”
I paused. She was right, I wasn’t the one having sex with strangers for cash. “Point taken. I hope it works out for you if that’s what you want.”
There was a movement at the door, and when I looked up, Selene was glaring at me. I stepped back, this time dislodging Yukmy arms from my neck, and took the coffee cups to the kitchen, stepping around Selene on the way.
I walked straight from one uncomfortable moment into another. Jarrod was in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge with his back to me. As I passed by Jarrod at the fridge, he backed into me and I dropped two of the coffee cups.
The mugs shattered as they hit the ground, and Jarrod spun around. “Er, sorry Jude,” Jarrod said as he shook his head and walked away. I had hoped that I’d get a moment alone with Jarrod somehow, just to sort out whatever might have happened between us at Jarrod’s apartment. However, Jarrod’s face was closed off, there was no flicker there at all, and it looked like that was all I would get.
I bent down and picked up the pieces of the coffee mug and then swept the rest of the shards up and dropped the lot in the bin.
I helped the sound guy lug the cameras and lights out to the van parked at the back of the brothel. While I handed the cases to the guy for him to pack them into the back of the small van, the guy said, “I know where I recognized you from now.”
“Oh,” I said. There wasn’t much else to say.
“I even remembered your name. Sebastian Everett. We worked on the same movie years ago.”
I said, “Sorry, your face didn’t ring any bells. But thanks for not saying anything in front of everyone in there.”
“Yeah, I figured you weren’t using your real name here. Guess your career didn’t pan out that well if you’re working in a brothel.”
I shrugged. “What about you? How come you’re making porn?”
“Union rates are union rates. Minx pays union rates, same as all the big studios, so I work for them often. It’s a change from an ordinary film set, and the women are hot.”
“I guess so,” I said, and he handed the guy the last of the rolls of cabling.
Jarrod was in the TV room, staring at a news program when I went looking for him half an hour later, and the set of his shoulders was resolute, and I walked back out into the kitchen again. It would be a long night.