Chapter 19a

Los Angeles, California
January 9, 1990

Now this is something new, Jake thought as he listened to the grunts and groans, smelled the smells, and felt the exquisite pleasure of a new sensation providing enjoyment to him. It really wasn't very often that he had such a thought about sexual activity. After ten years as a performing rock musician, the last eight of those years as the lead singer of one of the most popular bands of all time, there was little he hadn't tried at one time or another. Leave it to Mindy Snow to come up with something unique, kinky, yet not quite falling under the heading of total depravity.

They were in a Venice beachside condo that belonged to Darla O'Banion, Scott Winslow Adams' personal make-up artist. Jake was naked, lying on his back on Darla's bed. Mindy, her body naked, sweaty, and flushed, was atop him, her breasts against his chest, her mouth chewing on his neck, moaning into his ear, while Jake's throbbing erection was buried to the hilt in her shaven, slippery vagina, thrusting carefully in and out. Behind Mindy, her petite body almost (but not quite) naked, her red hair hanging in sweaty clumps in her face, was Darla O'Banion. Darla's only article of clothing — so to speak — was an eight-inch strap-on dildo. She was gripping Mindy by the hips and thrusting the fake phallus in and out of Mindy's lubed anus. It had taken awhile for Jake and Darla to establish a rhythm that allowed both of them move simultaneously, but now that they had, they were driving Mindy insane.

"Yes!" Mindy panted, her eyes wild. "Oh fuck yes! Fuck me, you guys! Fuckin' fuck the shit out of me!"

They continued to fuck. Jake had already come once about thirty minutes before. That had been while fucking Darla from behind while Darla first fingered and then actually crammed her entire tiny fist into Mindy's swollen vagina and began to thrust it in and out. It was a good thing Jake had had the release then because the sensation of the thrumming, vibrating dildo rubbing against him through Mindy's thin perineal membrane, coupled with the sheer kinky nastiness of what they were doing, already had him fighting to remain in control of himself — something he hadn't had to do in quite some time.

Jake had never met Darla before this evening. He had never even been told about her, although there was quite a story there. Mindy had simply given him an address to show up at for this Tuesday night rendezvous while her husband was going over some final paperwork in his study and he'd driven there. Her explanation had been that the condo in question belonged to a discrete friend. He had not known in advance that the discrete friend was going to be there as well, or that the discrete friend had always had a crush on Jake Kingsley and desperately wanted to get it on with him. He certainly hadn't known that the discrete friend — a petite, thirty-year-old natural redhead with freckles on her nose and her breasts — had been fucking Mindy's husband for the past six months and that Mindy had known about it.

"And... you're okay with her fucking your husband?" Jake had asked Mindy after being told the situation.

Mindy simply shrugged. "Why should I have all the fun with Scotty's golf-pencil dick? Darla's a cool girl. She's only doing what she has to do."

"Wow," Jake said. "This is a little weird."

"I'm only fucking him to keep my job," Darla said with a shrug of her own. "It's the way things work in Hollywood. I was actually kind of relieved when Mindy told me she knew about it and didn't care. I've always liked Mindy and I hated doing something like that behind her back."

"So you two are... friends?"

"Oh, we're more than just friends," Mindy said. "Much more."

"You mean... uh..."

"We don't go all the way," Mindy said. "Remember, I'm not a lesbian. I don't like putting my mouth on women or letting them put their mouths on me. That's just too much."

"I see," Jake said, although he didn't. Not right then, anyway.

"I do like women touching me though," Mindy said. "And... well... wouldn't you know it? Darla likes to touch."

"How convenient," Jake said.

"Yes," Mindy said. "And there are many different ways to touch another woman, aren't there, Darla?"

"Very many," Darla agreed, licking her lips.

"Would you like to see some of them, Jake?" Mindy asked.

"Well... if you were going to do it anyway," Jake said.

And so it had begun. Jake started out as an observer but that only lasted about five minutes — the amount of time it took the two women to shed their blouses and bras and start feeling each other's breasts. They then invited Jake to feel each set of breasts and judge which ones were the fairest in the condo. Jake did so, declaring a tie, of course, even though Mindy's breasts were far softer, bigger, and more squeezable than Darla could ever hope to achieve — even with the finest plastic surgeon in southern California on retainer. This activity quickly led to the three of them naked in the living room, Jake's condom-encased manhood thrusting in Darla from behind while the make-up artist and adulterer fisted Mindy to a violent orgasm. After that, they broke out the strap-on and Mindy demanded a rough, brutal double penetration.

Mindy was now panting her way through her fourth orgasm of the night, the second of this particular round of activity. Jake felt her clenching against him as she came and had to renew his struggle to suppress his own orgasm. Darla reacted to Mindy's spasms as well. Unable to contain herself, she leaned forward and attached her mouth to the back of Mindy's neck, licking and sucking the flesh there.

"No no!" Mindy moaned, reaching back with her left hand and pushing Darla's face away. "You know the rules."

"Oh god, Mindy!" Darla pleaded. "Let me kiss you! Please? Let me put my mouth on you and lick you and suck you and..."

"You know the rules," Mindy repeated. "Keep your girly mouth off of me or you'll never touch me again."

Darla groaned in frustration but quickly turned the situation around. She grabbed hold of Mindy's breasts and, using them for leverage, began to slam rapidly in and out of her anus. "You're just a fucking bitch, aren't you, Mindy?" she asked.

"Yes! Yes! I'm a fucking bitch!" Mindy agreed.

"And you like my fake cock in your ass, don't you?"

"I fucking love it!" Mindy groaned. "Fuck me harder, both of you! Fuck me faster! Twist my fucking nipples! Somebody spank me!"

Jake really though he wasn't going to last another ten seconds under this onslaught. Fortunately, he was saved by the bell. Sitting next to the bed was Mindy's Louis Vuitton purse. From within it, a shrieking electronic warbling began to sound. That was Mindy's cellular phone, the gadget that was all the latest rage among the elite these days. Jake didn't have one yet. He didn't see the point in allowing people to call you while you were away from home or in your car, especially since there were so few towers to transmit the signal that it was out of range half the time anyway. But Mindy's husband had given her the latest, greatest, most technologically advanced model available on the market these days. It was actually small enough to fit inside of her purse as long as she took most of the other stuff out first.

"Oh god," Mindy moaned. "I gotta answer that. It's probably Scotty."

"Let it ring," Darla told her. "I wanna watch Jake come in you."

"I have to answer it," Mindy said. "He thinks I'm meeting with Georgette tonight about the premier party we're having next month. I don't have an excuse not to answer. He already knows I have coverage in Georgette's house."

"Asshole," Darla grunted.

Mindy leaned over and grabbed her purse. Darla and Jake both moved to withdraw from her but she wasn't having any of that. "No," she said as she pulled the fourteen-inch, four-pound phone from her purse and extended the eleven-inch antenna. "Keep fucking me while I talk to him."

They looked at each other and shrugged. By now, both were aware of Mindy's vicious contempt for her husband. Darla resumed pushing and pulling the strap-on in her butt and Jake resumed moving his more permanent structure within her vagina.

"This is Mindy," Mindy said brightly into the phone, not a trace of a grunt or groan in her voice. "Who's this? You're a little scratchy." A pause. "Oh hey, baby. What's up?"

Jake could hear the tinny sound of Winslow's voice talking in Mindy's ear but he couldn't quite make out the words.

"Oh, we're just finishing up here," Mindy told her husband as she ground her pelvis around on Jake's erection. "Yes, we had quite the session."

Darla had to stifle a little giggle. She then gave an extra-hard lunge into Mindy's body. Mindy let out a startled "hmmph" in response. Winslow's voice squeaked out a few more tinny words.

"Oh... nothing," Mindy said, casting an amused glare at Darla. "I had a little cramp in my tummy is all. Yeah. Must've been something that girl is feeding me."

A few more squeaky words.

"Scotty says hi, Georgette," Mindy said.

Darla leaned back a bit, put her hand in front of her mouth, and, using a voice much deeper than her own, said, "Hi, Mr. Winslow."

"Yeah," Mindy said. "She has a little bit of a cold. Well, listen, hon, we're gonna finish up here real quick and I'll be on my way home. Right. Okay. Love you. Bye."

She clicked off the phone and dropped it back in her purse, where it made a fairly respectable thunk.

"What a moron," Darla said with a giggle.

"Yep," Mindy agreed. "Now, how about we 'finish up' like I said we would. I need to get home pretty soon."

They finished up, although it wasn't exactly quick. It was thirty-one more minutes before they disengaged from each other. Jake said his goodbyes before Mindy and Darla climbed into the shower together to "clean each other off". He was invited to stay and watch but he politely declined. He was tired, sore, and pretty much used up for the night. He also had to be back at the rehearsal warehouse at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Now that the start date for the tour was less than two weeks away, they had actually progressed to the point that they were playing music almost more than they were arguing.

He drove home listlessly, sipping a can of beer from Darla's refrigerator and chain-smoking cigarettes. It was just after eleven o'clock when he pulled into his driveway. He was thinking that if he had just two more beers (just two, he told himself, not four or six), he could get into bed my midnight and sleep peacefully until the alarm went off at seven-thirty.

He found a note from Elsa on the bar refrigerator. It said that Pauline wanted him to call her, no matter how late he got in and, that if he'd been out visiting "whatever new friend you've made" and if he had not showered before donning his clothes again, that he was to remove his underwear and pants and place them directly into the washing machine so she would not be forced to handle them ("and remove your goddamn cigarette lighters and beer caps from the pockets", she added as a PS).

Jake tossed the note into the garbage can, pulled a Corona and a lime slice out of the refrigerator, opened the beer and inserted the lime, and then picked up the bar phone extension, wondering what kind of shit had hit the fan this time. There was only one way to find out. He dialed Pauline's private number.

She picked it up on the third ring.

"Hey, sis," he said. "It's Jake. What's up?"

"Hey, Jake," she said, sounding a little tired and frazzled. "Where have you been? I've been trying to get you all night. Elsa said she didn't know where you were off to."

"I was out visiting a friend," Jake told her.

"Ahh," she said. "In other words, mind my own business. I get it."

"And I appreciate it," Jake replied. "So what's going on? More bad news?"

"I suppose you could say that," she said. "Charlie got arrested at about eight this evening."

"Oh shit," Jake said, shaking his head. "For what? Drunk driving?"

"Uh... no. For lewd conduct."

"Lewd conduct?" Jake said, not totally surprised. This was Charlie, after all. "What happened?"

"Two LAPD cops were on patrol and spotted his car in a back corner of Macarthur Park."

"Macarthur Park? Jesus. What the hell was he doing in that part of town?"

"Getting a blowjob from a known prostitute," Pauline said. "They caught him red handed — so to speak. He had his pants down around his ankles in the front seat of his car, two condoms on his whanger, and two pairs of latex gloves on his hands. The prostitute, one Bobbi Martinez, was orally servicing him."

"Christ," Jake said. "How bad is it going to be? Is it going to delay the tour?"

"Well... not directly. The most likely scenario is that he pleas guilty to the lewd conduct charge in exchange for fifty or sixty hours of community service — deferred until after the tour, of course — and the stipulation that he not have to register as a sex offender. He's already back home. They booked him and then released him on his own recognizance."

"Okay," Jake said. "That doesn't sound so bad."

"Uh... yeah... well... I haven't actually told you the bad part yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Bobbi, the prostitute, was dressed in a really slick leather mini-skirt and had a really fantastic set of knockers — from what I'm told anyway — but... uh... Bobbi's actual name is not Roberta, as you might think, but... uh... Roberto."

Jake took an extra-long, extra-deep drag from his smoke and blew it out slowly. "Roberto?" he finally said.

"Yeah," Pauline said. "Roberto apparently looked pretty hot, but she... he... is actually an outtie, not an innie."

"Wow," Jake said as he let that sink in. Sure, Charlie was weird, and he had made some... well... disturbing remarks in the past, but... Roberto? "Did Charlie know this... uh... chick was a guy?"

"He says he didn't," Pauline replied. "He told me he just likes to go out and score the occasional blowjob from a street hooker and he had no idea that drag queens did their business over by Macarthur Park."

"Did he seem upset by the fact that a dude was sucking his dick?" Jake asked. Jake could imagine how he would feel in such a circumstance. He was a live and let live kind of guy and if two dudes wanted to slurp each other's schlongs, it was no skin off his ass, but the thought of letting another person with the Y-chromosome put his mouth on him... and to do it by misconception, that was just wrong on every level.

"He seemed kind of dazed by the whole thing," Pauline said. "I only talked to him on the phone and it was kind of hard to get a read."

"Hmm," Jake said, shaking his head and feeling vaguely nauseous. He took a few sips of beer to help quell the sensation. "What are the odds that the media won't get hold of this?"

"Zero in a million," she said. "They already know about it, probably from contacts in the LAPD. Bobbi's booking photo and rap sheet have already been released to the press along with all the sordid details. It'll be on all the news channels and in most of the newspapers first thing in the morning."

"Jesus," Jake said. "What a mess."

"Yeah," Pauline said. "Charlie's gonna be a laughing stock no matter what, even if people do believe it was a simple case of mistaken identity."

The story about Charlie and the drag queen was indeed in all the newspapers and on all the television news programs the next morning. On the Channel 5 morning newscast it was actually the top story. Through Pauline, Charlie had released a brief statement to the effect that he was not a homosexual and that he had not known that the prostitute he was consorting with was a male (pictures of Roberto Martinez did lend credence to this statement — he really did make a pretty cute-looking chick), and that he was embarrassed and angry about the entire situation. Charlie granted no interviews and made no appearances before any cameras.

Charlie did, in fact, seem quite mortified by the whole situation when he showed up at the rehearsal warehouse the next morning. "Hey, guys," he greeted, his face flushed, his eyes downcast. "I guess you heard about what happened?"

"Yeah, we heard," Jake said and then was unable to think of a single thing to follow that statement up with. What the hell were you supposed to say to a guy when something like that happened to him? There wasn't really an entry in the Guy Handbook that covered this situation.

Coop, Nerdly, and most of the road crew who were helping produce the show were somewhat at a loss for words as well. A lot of the roadies flat-out avoided Charlie and then whispered things behind his back. Everyone seemed to go out of their way to avoid actually touching him. Only Matt treated him exactly the same, which was to say he didn't talk to him in any way unless he absolutely had to.

"Do you really think he didn't know it was a guy?" Coop asked Jake as they ate their sandwiches during their lunch break (Charlie was in the bathroom, washing his hands for the fifteenth or twentieth time at this particular moment).

"I think, for my own sanity, I'm going to have to force myself to believe him," Jake said.

"That's a good way to look at it," Coop had to admit.

Matt just shook his head. "He's a fuckin' fudge packer," he said. "There ain't no way in hell he didn't know it was a dude. You don't go to fucking Macarthur Park unless you're looking for some shit like that."

Matt's opinion on the matter was shared by about three-quarters of the road crew. After all, they knew Charlie, had worked closely with him through three tours now, and the thought of him specifically going out looking for a transvestite didn't seem that far off-base. As for the public, though they did indeed make a laughing stock out of Charlie by the end of that first day, the general consensus seemed to be that were giving him the benefit of the doubt. No one really believed that a member of the raunchiest band in history — the band that was infamous for the coke in the butt-crack episode and the notorious sex and drug orgies described in the news reports of their New York City arrest — could possibly be gay.

That benefit of the doubt shifted on its axis two days later, however, when Bobbi Martinez — now the most famous transsexual on the planet — held a press conference outside the Los Angeles City Jail (he had not been released on his own recognizance at the time of arrest due to multiple previous convictions and two outstanding failure to appear warrants). There, dressed fashionably in a pair of hot pants and a tube top, he told the world that Charlie Meyer had known very well that he was actually a guy because the night they had been arrested was not their first time together.

"I've been with him dozens of times," he said. "He asks for me by name when he's out cruising for some action, and what I got caught doing to him, he's done to me more than once. He knew what was under that dress."

Charlie, both in person and in a press conference of his own, emphatically denied that he had ever seen Bobbi Martinez before that night and that he'd ever knowingly engaged in any sort of sexual activity with a male. "Look," he said, "Something embarrassing and revolting happened to me because I was doing something that I really shouldn't have been doing. I've learned my lesson and I'd just like to put it all behind me now. I believe that this Bobbi character is simply trying to cash in on the circumstances and keep his fifteen minutes of fame going and maybe try to score a little money from my misfortune."

Public opinion swung sharply against Charlie for a few days. Despite his denials, people were willing to believe the transvestite hooker when he said Charlie was a repeat customer. It swung back in the other direction a little bit when, two days later, it was revealed that Bobbi Martinez had agreed to do a photo shoot and a complete expose on his activities with Charlie Meyer for one of the raunchier pornographic magazines. In return for this, Martinez was to be paid sixty thousand dollars.

"As I've been saying all along," Charlie said in a prepared statement released through Pauline, "this Martinez person is making this all up so he can profit from the circumstances. I find this all very disturbing."

He was not the only one who found it disturbing. Matt pulled Jake aside shortly after Martinez's first press conference and tried to get him to fire Charlie again.

"He's a fuckin' faggot," Matt said. "We've always suspected that, and now we have fuckin' confirmation. And not only that, the whole fuckin' world knows he's a faggot now. If we go out on tour with a confirmed faggot, people are gonna start thinking we're faggots too. Let's get Darren back in here, Jake. It'll delay the tour by a month or so, but we won't have people thinking were all a bunch of fudge packers out there and it'll ease some of the tension we've been dealing with ever since Freakboy started playing with us."

Nor was Matt the only one to express this opinion. Steve Crow, representing the rest of National Records' management, was worried about public opinion as well. Completely independent of Matt, he called Jake later that same day with very much the same concerns. "Whether he did it or not, a good number of your fans think that he did. The demographic you appeal to is a very homophobic bunch, Jake. There's a very good chance this may affect sales of the album and concert attendance on the tour if Charlie is still a member of the band. Now, I understand it's illegal to fire someone for being gay, but perhaps he could be persuaded to voluntarily resign his position in exchange for a monetary settlement in advance. We at National would, of course, put up half of any amount agreed upon."

"No," Jake told both of them. "I won't vote to out Charlie because of this. I'll uphold any decision a vote of the band dictates, but I'll vote no on firing him and I won't be any party to getting him to resign."

The issue fell along the same lines it had before, only this time there was no Darren to cast a vote since he'd been officially fired. Coop and Matt were both of the opinion that Charlie should go; Jake and Nerdly were of the opinion that he should stay. That left Charlie with the deciding vote on his own fate.

"It's for the good of the fucking band, Freakboy," Matt told him on the one occasion they actually got together and discussed it.

"Actually, it's not," Jake immediately countered. "It'll delay the tour by at least two months, if not indefinitely, and Darren is not capable of playing all of the music we have planned because he's not as good on the bass."

"We'll fuckin' pay you, Freakboy," Matt added, trying Crow's enticement. "You'll keep full royalties on the album and we'll give you half a million in severance pay. How's that shit sound?"