Now
These girls, they walk out to the bar, in the bitter cold, in glorified bras and mini-skirts, low-rider jeans and various textures violently form-fitted to be as streamlined as a porpoise. The bar opens up—the two second feedback of amplified screams and hoots and excitement—and then the girls disappear.
But here is one girl is walking back. Alone.
Alone. This girl is walking back alone.
He hated them. He was a nice guy, and he would look into beautiful faces and warm, open eyes and imagine some humanity in them, pretend that function met form. He believed that they would understand him, that all his life he just needed a beautiful girl to love him.
But they just give him that look. Flocked with their friends on all sides, how transparently disinterested they look, how obnoxiously hypocritically, overhearing them calls guys pigs and pricks and "all the same" and "only after one thing" when they were the ones after one thing, after a guy with money and looks and everything unnecessary.
They put their pictures on their websites, their Facebooks and their MySpaces—coy pictures overflowing with exposed flesh and demure smiles and overt celebration—and as you keep their sites open you cycle through static porn pictures, notice how their smiling faces aren't so far removed from the come-hither gaze of a porno slut, realize that its not a far stretch to picture these Facebook whores as real whores; you transpose faces, match foreign breasts to a familiar face, pick which bitch from high school should be matched up with the dehumanized pussy of some slut you will never know.
This girl was alone. This girl was an ignorance-feigning slut. Look at the way she's dressed.
If he was more attractive and richer, this would be the opening of every recent porn:
"Hey," he would say. "where you goin', the night's young."
"Hey….home," she would say, all glazy-eyed.
He wasn't actually sure how they all went down: he only needed to watch the online trailers to finish off. But probably money would be offered, the girl would be attracted by both cash and attention, and the fucking would commence, maybe in some back alley.
He realized he was following her into some back alley. This dumb bitch was doing the job for him.
In any other circumstance she would be making fun of him, she would be ignoring him, she would be embarrassing him, she would be a living testament to masculine frustration:
But not now.
*
Earlier
The crew had spread around the lab, doing their own work. Mooney had headed downstairs, caught Morgan Flim going back into the raise room, schematics and notebook in hand. It was his lucky time of the month alright.
Each month one of them got to go into the appropriately named "raise room." Scope out the newest pornography—"new" being a relative term, since pornography had a rate of production rivaling Happy Meals—and do research on the newest angles, the newest themes, (on the street, amateur, professional, aggressive, low-fi, gentlemanly), the newest target (Asian girls, bbw, blondes, petite, teen, incest, diamond, hooters, older, geriatric, pedophilic), everything and anything to get a better handle on the streets.
"Lucky" time of the month was a euphemism. A barrage, a never-ending masochist viewing session of all the newest, updated-to-the-day porn had a deadening effect on even the most eager new employee who was prematurely excited to tell his friends what he got paid to do all day.
He often joked that you could get all "addicts" to quit just by making them watch all of it: addicts live off the needling desire to view porn at any time, but porn at all times would be, well, kind of like sleeping with your wife day-in-and-day-out—the repetition and boredom from which they were probably escaping. But, maybe not, as the kaleidoscope of different porn options made sure no consumer was left unsatisfied; the fact that a subject as simple as "college whores" could be so variegated left little doubt as to the depth of the modern porn well.
Sure, almost everyone wanted less porn, more real intimacy, more stable families, less "addiction," whatever that meant. Porn (which we can identify but not define) was a strong bacteria that once targeted, mutated and flourished. Obscenity? Devoid of substantive content? It's amazing how quickly established pornographies would begin with a reading from the Bill of Rights, offer strained political metaphors (Lady Liberty eating out Blind Justice?) or admittedly cute political satire (they had lost count of how many pornos featured busty conservative lawyers being fucked—literally and metaphorically—by a defendant, or how many gay pornos featured surprisingly accurate portrayals of the president of Focus on the Family learning to tolerate and become less (or more) anal.)
Well, poor old Flim was in the raise room, and Mooney was getting some schematics when he saw the feather-tipped Japanese girl across his desk, face pallid, worthless as a dead battery. The desk's contact with her swell breasts arched her ass toward Mooney.
He stood, dumbfounded. Was she okay? He felt his pulse quicken. He stared at the form on his desk. He couldn't help feeling guilty at indulging in her immaculate body. Her picturesque form, rendered immobile for optimal viewing, seemed almost aesthetically justified.
She seemed okay before…..He wondered, was she ill? A drunk?
Like an answering machine whirring after the power comes back on, she bolted up to her feet.
"I…I…Oh my god, I am sorry…I, I don't know…"
"It's okay," he said.
Oh my god.
"Oh my god," Mooney said aloud, the thought demanding vocalization.
He wondered how his staff had prepared her, made sure she was unconscious and prostrate. He could picture his staffer Morgan Flim popping out her tits while she was knocked out, just to see if she were truly unconscious. He could picture what Flim would say, "It's not like she feels it or anything," or "Hey, I'm just preparing her for her future!" Mooney felt disgusted at Flim, regardless of whether Flim actually did anything like that; just knowing that Flim would do something like that was bad enough. Worse he felt disgusted at himself for not imagining some general idea of sexual molestation. Repugnance toward the idea of Flim popping her tit out was bad enough, but he had to wonder, the image necessitated imagining what her tit must look like, and that could just be revealing his own…
Fuck.
He saw the note next to where she had lain.
In big bold letters, he could see:
"Impressed yet?"
Stupid question. Of course he was.
What boasts from lab would be contained in that letter.
What boasts fucking deserve to be in that letter.
Goddamn, they were good, he told himself, goddamn we were good, he told himself, to make his insides stop foaming.
