Chapter 21: Lord of Obstacles

I don’t call Livia and Mimi right away. I take the wheelchair and look for a part of the hospital with a payphone that’s quieter. I finally find one, an out-of-the-way alcove. I might as well do it now. I know the number; I’ve just been avoiding it. I could just not call. I don’t have an obligation, after all. I never made any promises. But that’s not what I’m like. I’m expecting this to be a long and difficult call, but it really isn’t. Long, I mean.

I call Sandra Venturi. “Hi,” I say. “It’s Marc.”

“Oh,” she says. “Hi, Marcelo.”

Her voice is dead, lacking any inflection, almost robotic and very weary. “What’s wrong?” I ask her, even though I already know.

“New Century Swimstyles let me, Tracy and Regan go yesterday, shortly after we were on your show.”

I was hoping that wasn’t going to be the outcome — that she might just feel ashamed and weird and want to talk — but in the back of my mind, I knew it. I just didn’t let myself realize it until now.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “I really am.”

“You got the show you wanted, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I admit. I did enjoy what we did to her and her friends; I don’t want to lie about it.

“Then what does it matter?” she asks dully.

“I wanted it to get you ahead,” I say. “Make a scandal that would help your career, like a sex tape but weirder and kinkier.”

“You failed,” she tells me bluntly. There’s a deadness in her voice that is horrifying to me. “You failed horribly.”

“We tried,” I say. “Listen, if there’s anything I can —”

“No,” she says bluntly. “You can’t do anything. You’ve done more than enough. You’re ... uh, not useful right now, at all, and really the last person I want to talk to.”

“Maybe Mimi could —”

Finally there is emotion instead of the dead affectless schizoid voice, but it is raw fury verging on a sob. “What the fuck did you think was going to happen, Marc?! The whole fucking crowd got off!”

“We didn’t ... I mean, I didn’t mean for that to happen. I thought it would be a few guys in the crowd, not everyone. It would be subtly pervy instead of whatever it was that actually happened.”

I realize mid-sentence I can’t assure her we didn’t mean that. I don’t honestly know if Livia wanted to pop the whole male audience or not. She did want publicity, after all, and getting clear answers out of her is often complex. I feel a knot in my stomach. I also realize I can’t be utterly certain that I’m telling the truth, even though I’m trying to. Livia and I had fantasized about getting everyone off. I just didn’t expect it to happen. I think. The knot gets tighter.

Nobody says anything for a while.

“I believe,” I finally say very slowly, “that people can indulge dark desires in clever ways, and cheat the devil of his due by not hurting the people they’re involved with, if they’re careful.”

I realize, as I’m saying the words, how vacuous they sound, how they are more about me and my situation than hers. They are like a mantra I repeat, more trying to make myself believe it than to reassure her.

“Were you careful?” she asks.

I close my eyes for a second, and images flash on my eyelids. Mimi’s torn tendon. Audra’s bleeding ear. The mob Jeri and I narrowly dodged at DanceSpace. A dozen oiled women, some with long press-ons, grabbing at my junk. The bite-mark on Livia’s ass. Victor’s berserk roar. And yet ... we tried. We try to take care of the marks who submit to us, to make everything safe, fun and carefree. But nothing related to sex is ever perfectly safe — physically, emotionally or medically.

But it’s worth the risks! my shoulder devil insistently tells me.

“Not enough,” I finally say back.

Sandra speaks very quietly. “Do you know what being fired from New Century even means?”

I know about their very valuable contracts, and their Hollywood dreams. I can’t fix that, I realize slowly. I don’t think it can be fixed. But it gets even worse than that. “I remember you told me how important it was,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t have,” she whispers. “I didn’t know what it means when I talked to you. Only Regan knew — that’s why she was scared.”

I feel sick. “Er, what?”

“It’s not just contracts; there’s blacklists, and image rights, and NDAs, and compliance officers, and ... god, why am I even telling you this?!”

“I’m willing to listen?” It’s supposed to be light-hearted, a quip, but I’m not able to make it come out that way so it’s just condescending.

“Listen, Mister Knight,” Sandra says to me. I do not want her to call me Mister Knight ever again. It’s not sexy when she does it; it just makes me sad. “You and I had an agreement that involved a level of discretion. The only thing you should focus on right now is maintaining that discretion. You will do that?”

“Yes! Yes, of course —”

“I think it would be wise for both of us if you don’t contact me again. I just ... I can’t deal with this right now.”

“All right,” I say. “Ten-four. But call me if you want —”

Click.

I read women — it’s my thing. I’m good at it. I’ve known something was profoundly wrong here since I watched Regan eat her banana. I knew something was wrong, and I let it go on because I was getting off on it so much — and because I want the Trips to be a success. I just couldn’t admit that to myself, so I pushed it out of my mind. It’s even deeper than what Sandra admit to me just now, too. I know that as well. My mind told me in a dream.

I stumble over to a concrete garbage can in the hospital parking lot and vomit in it. I wait for an hour, just doing controlled breathing. I have probably ruined three women’s careers. I hope I haven’t ruined their lives. It is chill out, even more overcast today than it was yesterday. The Florida sun that scorched us during the Cancer and Gemini Escalations is gone. Clouds are gathering; it will rain soon. I call Livia and ask her to come pick me up, telling her the entrance number I’m at. I go back into the hospital entry room to wait — I recall thinking I hear angry dogs barking madly outside, though in retrospect it’s likely my subconscious playing tricks on me.

I tell Livia the story in Scarlet on the way back. I trail off when I realize she doesn’t seem to care. I just focus on breathing, then, and not throwing up again.

“Jeez,” she finally says. “I guess it sucks, but you don’t have to be so moody about it.”

How did the banana segment go wrong? I ask myself. Everyone turned up the heat a degree or two. Livia turned it up with the hypnosis wheel, getting more of the audience tranced than we expected. I turned it up when I agreed to the yogurt nozzles. Sandra turned it up when she framed what we were doing to Regan in a more innocent way. Regan turned it up when she went full sloppy blowjob on the banana.

It’s like the old wives’ tale about a school prom back in the Fifties. People are more willing to get it on when they’re warm. The long, hot summer and the sudden heatwave are porn tropes for a reason. Maybe it’s psychological. Maybe it’s just that pretty people look prettier when they sweat just a little bit — they glow. And this gets shared around the school as grand male wisdom, and some girls even buy into the idea too. So people that want to get busy on prom night wander by the gym thermostat and just nudge it up a degree. After all, it’s just a degree, right? No one will notice, not consciously — but they’ve got a better chance.

But it’s not just one degree — everyone has the same idea, so it’s one degree per student who wants to get laid. Suddenly, it’s thirty degrees hotter, and I guarantee you everyone will notice that!

The Trips are a seriously weird little social bubble. We’re deranged perverts and we love each other for it. Spring Break is a weird social bubble on its own, and our Monday show made the Summers audience an even weirder little free love bubble — it set the tone. And when people want to know what’s acceptable and what’s over the line, what do they do? They read the room. We set up the room to lie to them, though — it’s one of our best tricks, for getting people past their own inhibitions. Maybe we set up the room to lie to ourselves as well, in terms of what people can get away with in the broader spectrum of society.

We touch base with the Gold Coast girls Tuesday afternoon. They make their flight back to Queensland, and will be on a road trip down to Surfer’s Paradise the next day. Friday’s first Decan alone has discharged our legal responsibility to the Queensland Board of Tourism, but it isn’t what they — or the girls — had been hoping for. Livia promises to promote Surfer’s Paradise in future shows, and the Tourism Board seems content. For their part, the meter maids are as well. Why wouldn’t they be? We did get them a free Spring Break in America, even if it ended rather weirdly. I think most of them would be willing to work with us again, schedules permitting, so we could film the You Bet Your Bikini finale we all really wanted — or at least, so they can get another free vacation.

We go down to the Broward County Courthouse on Thursday. All the charges against us end up getting dropped. I’m not sure if that’s impunity or just police incompetence, though — and there’s not much, beyond public indecency, we are actually guilty of anyway. So, we’re free to leave Lauderdale, and set out on the open road on Friday morning.

We’re going on tour again, but this will be slower paced than the one from Delaware to Lauderdale. Livia feels we’ve locked it down with the Gemini Escalation, that we just have to be mildly active and wait for our fame to spread. The plan is that we will gradually make our way toward Los Angeles, that immemorial mecca of the celebrities and performers, and when we enter the City of Angels it will be as triumphant lions with an entourage of fans and groupies, not hapless amateurs. I am still slightly skeptical of the scope Livia asserts, mind you, though even I feel something big is happening.

We will hug the Florida coast at first, hitting Boca Raton, Delray, West Palm Beach, Palm Bay and Daytona Beach before heading inland to Orlando, where we’ll end up bunkering down for a few weeks. Livia will pull a lot of beach pickups in this time, but I’ll be less active. I’m pretty morose and if I’m being honest my work in planning and rehearsals for the Trips does slip a bit. I will end up having one really memorable hookup in Daytona — but for the sake of narrative pacing I’ll tell you about that a bit later, O Horny Reader.

Things Sandra said on our last phone call haunt me. She seemed so broken, so terrorized. Why does being fired from a modeling agency have so many extra consequences, beyond not having a job? Now that Spring Break is over, I want answers to these questions. Livia does not — she shows active contempt toward my initial efforts to investigate. But I’m able to pull Mimi in, who does listen quite attentively to my concerns, and my recitation of both conversations with Sandra.

And I’m thus able to leverage her skills as a hacker, and we do the detailed research into NCSS as a company we should really have done before involving any of their models in the Trips. What we learn initially disturbs me, and then sickens me, and then leaves me in a state of all-consuming existential anger and disgust — but this is a slow and gradual process. I’ll spell out everything we learn in just a bit.

The worst news hits on a rainy Wednesday morning in Boca Raton, when we only know some things. Mainstream media seems to be ignoring the mass orgasm thing, but the sleazier papers aren’t. Mimi shows me a copy of the latest National Inquisitor she picked up. She says a similar story will be in the larger-circulation British tabloids, and in all the newspaper gossip columns. We show the paper to Livia, along with a draft of the article Mimi has ‘procured’.

“They’re are calling Sandra, Tracy and Regan the ‘Blowbang Gang’ — well, they’re careful to say that’s what the locals call them, and just not sourcing that — and saying their ‘sexy performance’ caused the Lauderdale Mass Assisted Orgasm, or LMAO, event.”

“The Sexy Scandal Spectacular caused a scandal, and it was both sexy and a pretty big spectacle,” Livia says airily. “Whoever could have predicted that?”

“But they never actually performed any kind of sex act,” I say. “The media are just glossing over that. They mention an erotic hypnotist, but only in passing. The article is constructed to imply the girls did far more than they did, without actually saying it.”

“It’s the tabloids,” Livia tells me. “They do that. They’re garbage. And those girls did show some nice technique with their bananas.”

“Livia, did you hypnotize the models to be lewd, to actually simulate a blowjob? I was expecting some hesitant touching of lips to bananas, some suggestive swallowing, but what happened was ... not that, and I still don’t know why. Did you plant some kind of subtle suggestion?”

Livia looks at me very coldly. I actually feel intimidated by her right then — it calls to mind how briefly terrifying she had been during Cherry’s ‘exorcism’. “I did not trance the NCSS girls. I’ve never used anything conventionally called hypnotism on them. I did nothing to deny them the ability to think or choose. As for ‘suggestion’ ... yeah, of course. We gave them thousands of subtle cues.”

I am actually pretty tense back. “I don’t follow. Maybe you should tell me exactly what you said to them.”

“I didn’t say anything, per se.”

I don’t argue back. I just stare at her and wait for more.

“We are a libertine brand, Marcelo. Everything, from our color choice to the oath to the body language and costumes, tells girls in the audience how much fun they’ll have getting their kit off on our stage. We also have a recurring thing for malicious compliance, and living to the letter of the word in order to have naughty fun you’re not really supposed to — another recurring theme with the Trips. You are not blind to this. We’ve had long, enthusiastic discussions about all the thousands of subtle ways at our disposal to send that particular message.

“I don’t know what the deciding factor was for the NCSS models. I suspect probably the first Decan put the crowd in a specific mental place, and the Make Her Blush bit two days earlier set that up for the girls. And you know what models and starlets do? They read the room. The audience was like the photographer to the NCSS models, and they did what it wanted. But nobody made them, or even limited their ability to perceive the consequences.

“Look. You told me those three ladies were going to be dropped at the end of the year unless they did something to stand out. They made a choice and took a gamble. You know what that’s like — a few months back, you dropped your life savings into the Trips’ kitty. Six months from now, you’ll be getting literal millions back on your investments. The NCSS girls did the same thing, but it was a bad gamble.

“I don’t know if they misjudged what they could get away with, or misjudged us, or misjudged their own self-control on a stage. They tried malicious compliance without really reading the contracts or the room, assuming that no nudity meant they were home free. Regardless, they got screwed. It’s sad, but it’s not our fault. They not only knew the risks, they knew way more about how NCSS operates then we did — back then, we had no clue.

“Sure, when we have time, we’re nice, we do due diligence for other people. But we don’t have to, and it’s not really our responsibility to do so. Unless you’ve been lying to me, you warned them that they’d be the punchline of a crude joke, and that guys in the audience would get off. That’s exactly what happened.”

“Did you try to get the whole audience off?”

“Yes, of course. I didn’t think we could, but — probably because of the Daughters’ performances — we managed it.”

“You didn’t think about how society might read that?”

“Not my responsibility.”

“Don’t you care?!”

Livia stands up. She isn’t casual any more. She’s furious, genuinely so. “Marcelo, figure out if you want to be in the line of work you’re in, and if you can deal with it. If you can’t decide, I won’t hesitate to decide for you.”

And this honestly intimidates me. The Trips is far and away the best life I’d ever had. Livia is generally a bro, not The Boss — but she still owns everything, and could fire me. I think — I put money in the kitty, but just like every other amateur rock star or up-and-coming starlet, I never had a lawyer check over the papers first. (If you’re curious in retrospect: she can fire me, I’d still own shares, and I’d get residuals from the later shows — my contract isn’t actually super-exploitative, but she can fire me.) The Trips has been, to date, the best part of my life by a long shot — both in terms of sex, and in more subtle ways too. There are so very many reasons I want to keep my role in the show.

Needless to say, this particular conversation is over.

If calling Sandra had been hard, this next call won’t be any easier. But the tabloids and gossip columns will run the story in two days, and I feel obligated to do something. We don’t know much about Oscar “Papa” Valetti — the founder and owner of New Century Swimstyles — at this point (though what we do know is not pleasant), but Mimi gets me a number, and one piece of specific information that will get me past his receptionist.

“Mister Valetti? Hello, my name is Marcelo Ambrose Knight. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of me, but we have a mutual interest in the form of three ladies —”

Uproarious laughter cuts me off. It’s an older voice, cavalierly macho in the particular way the Italians have. It’s jovial and playful, but there’s also a sharply dangerous undercurrent. “Marc, you dirty son of a bitch! I know exactly who you are, and what you did!”

“That’s good,” I say slowly. “Speaking as someone who was on stage at the time, I want to clarify your understanding of what happened. There was no sexual contact, at any time, between the models associated with your company and either myself or the audience. Nor was there any nudity, or inappropriate conduct, from your models. The show I work for played an immature and unexpected visual gag on them, and some men in the audience got off. That’s all that happened.”

Valetti chuckles. “Oh, Marcelo, you really assume you’re the first pickup artist to take a shot at my models? Come on, vecchio, you wanted to call Papa and brag. I’m not mad. In a weird way, you did me a service. NCSS prides itself on having quality women. You found three who happened to be trash, and helped me weed them out.”

“Those women are not trash, Valetti.”

An outburst of laughter. “Quit tryin’ ta fluff me, Marci. We’re both faccia di culo kinda guys here. Act like it. You really think I didn’t have a guy in your audience when you had my Daughters up there? NCSS looks after its girls. What I heard is, well, those three puttanas really know how to work a cazzo.”

God damn it. Out of everything, that’s the one thing I was hoping he would be misinformed about.

“You seem to be under the impression that this is a personal call. Let me correct that. In two days, several national-distribution newspapers are going to run a story which implies very unflattering things about these women. I understand your company has a strong investment in the public image of its models, and in fact has a diverse array of legal talent skilled in litigation aimed at protecting that image. I think under British libel law — where neither truth nor evasive wording is a perfect defense — you would have a solid case to prevent that story from going to press.”

“I’ve already seen the story. The tabloids work with us. They cover a lot of events our models are at in the UK. NCSS itself won’t be mentioned. As for the whores, I actually suggested they make an example of them. It will help with keeping the worthwhile girls on the straight and narrow.”

This honestly shocks me, and I lack anything to say for a second. Valetti misinterprets this. “Yeah, vecchio, I’ve got connections. Why are you so exercised about this anyway? They were puttanas. I understand defiling low-grade women is something of a way of life for you.”

O Wise Reader, understand the nuance of my revulsion. I am not as much of a hypocrite as I may appear. I do believe I told you, back in Chapter Sixteen, that the Trips “vandalized” and “desecrated” the NCSS models’ faces with yogurt, much like I vandalized Livia’s face with my cum the night I met her. Livia and I may even have spoken of “defiling” women, while bonding over our feverish shared fantasies. And I took some erotic delight in those words, and if you, O Sinful Reader, are truly in my target audience then you likely did as well.

So why, then, would I be so enraged now? Well, the answer is simply context. This difference between me and Oscar Valetti using the word ‘defiled’ very closely parallels the difference between a dominatrix telling a man he is her slave, and a plantation owner telling him the same thing. I do not think Valetti understands the distinction; to him both uses of the word are one and the same. But there is no utility to me right now in expressing this anger and revulsion, so I don’t.

“Mister Valetti. Let me make something crystal clear to you. If you allow that story to go to print, with the models’ full names in it, then I will in turn do everything I can to ensure that the corporate name of NCSS is also associated with said story. So it is in our mutual interest to —”

In retrospect, there was always a deep and primal current of hatred and anger in Valetti’s tone toward me, beneath the laddish faux-candor and hollow joviality. But that all goes away now. “Vaffanculo a chi t’e morto! Who the fuck do you think you are?! You are the pervert assistant in a crude, and crudely amateur, magic act! I am the sole owner of a major fashion concern! I have Darby Winesteen, Michael Winner and Roman Polanski on my speed dial! I was lodgemates with Silvio Berlusconi back at Propaganda Due!

“I am bigger than you, and I am bigger than that trumped-up harlot pulling your leash! I could end your show right now, legally or by other methods. The only reason I don’t is because I like it that shows like yours exist to parade an endless stream of worthless sciattonas before the masses. It helps to have a crucible, to sort out the trash and low-quality, low-intellect, low-virtue wannabes from the real beauties — and it helps to remind everyone why my girls are better than washed up bimbos like your bubble-headed victims or that withered old tart Konapolis.”

“Don’t say that about Livia.”

“Or what?” Valetti laughs. “You’ll cry?”

“I want you to know something,” he continues, and follows it up with my name — not Marcelo Knight, but the one I was born under. “I want you to know the difference between a Playgirl and a Treat in men’s eyes. Playgirls at least pretend to be the kind of girl a guy would want to marry and set up a family with. They’re not — after all, they’ve shown it off to everyone and are worth nothing but a cheap fuck — but they at least try. A Clubhouse Treat like Lily ... that’s a girl that’s only good for being jacked off on and dropped back in the trash where she belongs, and I take great satisfaction in apparently being the first guy to ever explain that to you.

“So I’ll tell you what, Mister World Champion Pickup Artist. You go back and enjoy the girl you clearly think is such a prize, well-used as she may be. You don’t say a thing about NCSS to the press, ever, and you stay the fuck away from my girls. And, in exchange, I will not make some phone calls to set a few simple things up, and you won’t get called in to a police station to identify Lily Konapolis’ heroin-wracked corpse. Do we understand each other?”

I don’t know what I expected from this conversation, but it wasn’t this. I can’t escalate this further or make threats without talking to Livia and Mimi first. I doubt I’m physically capable of being suave, or even civil, to Oscar Valetti at this point, and I’m increasingly aware that anything I say could have serious consequences. So I do the smartest thing I can possibly do in this situation, and just hang up the phone.

He knows a great deal about us, I realize. Nothing that’s really hard to look up, and not on the level of the background checks we do. But enough to imply effort. I think Livia and I made him really, really angry before I even picked up the phone. That is frightening, but also oddly satisfying.

For the first time in my life, I actually contemplate the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of a fellow human being. I don’t mean idle fantasies about killing someone you hate — everyone does that. I mean actually working out the practicalities and dynamics of the act in a realistic way, and giving it serious moral consideration. I would do it, I think, if it was remotely practical. I believe I have the conviction to carry it out, in this context, but I doubt I have the skills required.

The conclusion I come to is that it isn’t logistically viable — the story will go to press in two days, Valetti isn’t in Florida and might even be in fucking Italy, at his family’s ancestral loggia. I can’t think of any travel arrangements to reach him in time, and if I make him a martyr a month from now that will probably mess up the lives of Sandra, Regan and Tracy even more — not to mention ruining Livia’s career and her artistic vision for the Twelve Escalations in a scandal even she can’t spin. So in the end, the mental argument that turns me away from serious consideration of murder is simply that the act lacks true utility in solving any of the problems before me.

I give Livia a very abbreviated version of the conversation. It’s difficult for me, but I do convey the critical points: that I tried to intercede with NCSS and botched it, and that the conversation ended with him threatening her life, and that he bragged about having the future Prime Minister of Italy as a contact and might actually be dangerous. She is cavalier to the point of psychosis about it, but at least the security concern does get her to give Mimi and I the leeway to keep investigating NCSS — though we move with a lot more caution after this. I don’t ask her about doing anything for the NCSS models. I know this isn’t the right time. I have just fucked up, badly, in a way that might have hurt her professionally — or endangered her life. It’s not the right time to tread on thin ice.

I do something really stupid anyway, though it’s different. I am out of my normal equilibrium after the conversation with Valetti, and what he said about Livia deeply disturbs me. I want to ... to refute it somehow, but I can’t even bear to repeat it, so Livia doesn’t have any context. I grab her and hug her, crushing her to me with force born of desperation, and I say, “Livia, I love you.”

I don’t mean I want a romantic relationship or am in love with her. What I really mean to say is, “I respect you,” but there’s no way to say those specific words to a woman without sounding condescending or ironic, so my brain just reparses them. Livia freezes in my arms, and not in a good way. If there’s one thing she and I have truly bonded over, it’s that we don’t do romance. I have even mentioned to her that I consider a pickup artist saying those words without facetiousness being a signifier of sociopathy.

“Marcelo?” she asks quietly, with genuine trepidation in her voice. “Are you having a brain aneurysm?”

It isn’t snide. It’s sarcastic, but she’s really scared. I think she thinks I might actually be having a mental breakdown. She forces her way out of my arms.

We don’t fuck after that, for about the next month. Everything is very awkward. I wonder in that moment if I’ve messed up our dynamic in a way I won’t ever really be able to mend.

In the more immediate situation, however, I do have another contact in mind who might be more helpful. I take an hour to gather my emotions before calling her, because I apparently really need it. When I finally do, I’m pretty smooth while also being honest.

“Cathy Delapointe? Cathy? Yes, it’s me, Marc Knight. You remember — the guy who got you hypnotized, stripped naked and dipped in chocolate at a school event, then took you to a Love Motel? You know, Lascivious Livia’s Arm Candy?”

Cathy laughs with sincere warmth. “Marc! Yes, of course I remember you. It was a pretty wild night. Hard to forgot. Maybe we can have a second go at it sometime, if you’re up for it.”

I wince a bit at the anticipation in her voice — though I certainly am up for it, geography is a major barrier right now. “I would love that, but I’m not in your area right now. How have you been doing? I hear you’ve done quite well for yourself recently, and are graduating in just a few months.”

She tells me a bit about what’s going on in her life, and I listen. Not insincerely — I am interested — but perhaps impatiently. “I’ve been following your presence a bit on the Noodle campus BBS,” I tell her. “You’ve dealt really well with the fallout of what we did to you.”