Rock Bottom

by Michael Shilling

  Darlo was fun-loving. He had a party-hearty nature like his dad. But he was not his dad. Who was this strange woman, from whom half of him had sprung?

  “Your mother,” his father said, smoking at the pool. A blonde massaged his shoulders. “She was peaches and cream. Peaches … and cream.”

  After a bunch of letters, Darlo wrote her back. Hi, I’m Darlo, uh, I read what you wrote, uh, it was good, I have a pretty good average in school. Uhh.

  They went back and forth for a while. Darlo kept meaning to rip up her letters, but he didn’t.

  When he told his dad about this continued correspondence, David Cox adjusted his jock strap, fingered his graying chest hair, and shrugged. “Good for you,” he said. “Now the son goes looking for the mother. He goes off to the wilderness. The biblical, the biblical. It had to happen. Find out who you are. Hey, can you call the caterer and make sure he doesn’t bring turkey to the shoot? Turkey gives the actors gas. Maybe I ought to have a series about fuckers with a fart fetish! Call it Blowing Smoke!”

  Her letters, intense as they were, did not illuminate any corners in his past, did not inform, effect, or mitigate his burgeoning sex addiction. For how could you grow up in a world where bodies had no autonomy, when the images of them contorting, twisting, and malleable were more common to you than a family, at a table, eating a meal, and not just roll right into it?

  Yes. Sex. The problem with sex.

  He lost his virginity at twelve. Her name was Sandy Rose. She was a short, long-lashed, small-bosomed Latina who got paid extra to be his dad’s fluffer. She opened his door one sunny afternoon as light from the swimming pool danced on the windowpane. He was watching Stripes. Her bikini was the color of unripe bananas.

  “Your poppy says it’s time,” she said, and mounted him.

  Seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade; the years were a blur of afternoon interludes, morning glories, night visions. Comic flesh configurations, maximum sweat, the rippling of muscles, girls on him, in public and private, among crowds and in churches, dare you to do this, bet you won’t do that. Oh, do that again. Do that again. Over here and over there. Over under sideways down. Clench your teeth and arch your back. Hold still. Over and over till his fucking knees buckled.

  Compulsion.

  His friends treated Darlo like the luckiest guy alive. But they didn’t see what had happened on the inside. They didn’t see his brain rewired. They didn’t see how his life resembled that of a lab rat, overloaded with sensation, glutted with pleasure, fattened up with ecstasy until the taste went bland and only one feeling was left.

  His body ached if he went without it for a day. He couldn’t sleep until he had the smell of it on his fingers, the faint taste of it on his tongue, the assurance of it upon waking.

  What people didn’t know was the pain of it. What people didn’t understand was how saying no felt like reversing gravity, how pulling away from pussy was like rending muscle from bone. He could never get in far enough. He could never really touch it.

  Compulsion. Cold sweat.

  In eleventh grade he started playing the drums as a way to calm this ache. He leveraged his horny groove into four-four rhythm. His girlfriend, Jenni Feingold, had encouraged this hobby when she broke up with him.

  “You should see a fucking shrink, too.”

  “Fuck that.”

  He went and bought a kit at Guitar Center. The bottomless aching hole started to fill up. He could bash away and feel less empty. Still, she wouldn’t get back together with him.

  “So you can fuck me and another girl at the same time?” she asked. “So you can pay me to slap her? Darlo, I want a commitment. Not a life in porn.”

  Jenni Feingold. Putting the Fine back in Feingold. The only girl who ever understood him. The one who started off as a drug buddy from the estate next door and ended up trying it all with him. Never a kink for her. Never slumming it. They just wanted the same thing. Until she wanted the weakest thing a person could want. Monogamy.

  He practiced his drums. The more he practiced, the less he wanted to spend all night looking for tail. Even his dad, the Captain of the Mighty Cumshot Exxon, thought it was good for him.

  “You have talent,” he said. They were walking around the fulfillment warehouse in Pasadena. Stacks of tapes and DVDs surrounded them. College boys in USC caps stood at counters, processed orders, stuffed packing popcorn and product into boxes. “I hate it when kids with money just sit around and count it. You’ve got good rhythm. I hear the noises the girls make upstairs, by the pool, in the den. I hear all that. Put that to good use.”

  The letters from his mother kept coming. He was starting to maybe, uh, like her. She was honest and relaxed on the page. She seemed to be at peace.

  “I think I want to go visit her, Dad.” They were sitting in the kitchen: copper pots hanging from the ceiling, a pack of Trojans sitting in the napkin drawer. “So what do you think?”

  His mother’s latest letter included a promise of airfare to lovely greater Des Moines, where the buffalo roam and the skies are not cloudy all day.

  “Why would you want to?” the old man asked, sipping a Virgin Mary.

  “Obviously she wants to get to know me.”

  Père Cox swirled his tomato juice and looked as if he was actually thinking before he talked. He only looked that way when he was choosing box shots.

  “Your mother never forgave us for the lifestyle we chose. She says I chose it, but she knows that it was a joint decision. She liked to swing. She liked other guys and me at the same —”

  “That’s my mother you’re talking about,” Darlo said, because that’s what they said on TV. Indignation seemed like a thing worth trying. “I know that you guys used to —”

  “— fuck other people. Your mother led the charge. Off-camera, she wrote the book on double penetration. She’s just Linda Lovelacing it.” Darlo heard fracture in his father’s voice, actual hurt, a knife piercing hard ground. “Really, Darlo, you don’t know the half of her world-class denial. And now she’s gonna save you from de old debbil David.”

  “I just want to meet her.”

  “You spent nine months inside her. Wasn’t that enough?”

  Darlo tabled the issue. He stuck with the drums.

  “When you’re ready,” she wrote, “come see us.”

  Darlo’s first band was called Salvage Yard. Four guys from Hollywood High. One of them was Darlo’s drug dealer, a poor man’s Beastie Boy named Jesse. He lived in a French Normandie mansion near Darlo. Jesse’s stepfather, a British film executive at Universal, had built in the basement a nice little sixty-four-track, all-digital recording studio for himself, complete with isolation booths, a six-figure bank of compressors, and a two-hundred-gallon exotic fish tank. This was where Salvage Yard practiced, and it was also where Darlo brought his conquests, until the day that the British film executive stepdad caught him taking a girl over the mixing board.

  “Can I have a piece of that?” he said, and unzipped his fly.

  “I’m into it,” the girl said, and moved to oblige.

  Darlo had been reading his mother’s letters over and over, letters that described the calmness of nature and the kindness of strangers, letters like blades, the words slashing through his fattened-up lab rat mind, confusing everything, rearranging nothing.

  “You bitch!” he yelled, and went for her eyes.

  Now he was under some heat. Now he had to go see a shrink.

  “You are one sick puppy,” his dad said after the incident. “Good thing Poppa Dog and Jesse’s stepdad have deep pockets. But that doesn’t change how disgusted I am.”

  “You hit girls in your films. You hit girls in every room of this house.”

  “Please.” His father scoffed. “Acts of consent.”

  Once, Blood Orphans had done ecstasy. They’d gone out to the desert, to Darlo’s house in Palm Springs, and loaded up. All the others were bonding about how much they loved each other, man, and can I touch your arm, it feels s
o good, and oh man, we’re just going to fucking take over the world, dude. But Darlo had wandered off into the Coachella Valley scrub and cried about that girl all night.

  Outside of Morten’s, he adjusted his jock and slipped on his aviators.

  “Pussy,” he said, sniffing. “Which fucking way to the tail?”

  Lately he’d lapsed back into the kind of sex that was, to put it mildly, problematic. Girls were different here in Europe. They didn’t bother so much with the pretty scents. They didn’t mind smelling of themselves, and they fucked like animals. American girls fucked like the idea of animals. These Euro carnal trysts hooked him into a part of himself he didn’t understand, some murky spiritual swamp where right and wrong were indistinguishable.

  Another problem was the flab he was starting to get around his midsection. He hated it when he couldn’t see his abs. His abs were drowning in a sea of chocolate beer. He hadn’t done his hundred situps a day since this second trip to Europe started. Where was his willpower? When he got back to America he needed to hit the gym.

  His phone rang again and he ignored it.

  He was so looking forward to giving interviews about the next Blood Orphans record. He would talk about all they had learned about hard work, and say that just because you get a big advance, it doesn’t mean that anyone owes you a living. Also, people say we don’t get along. That’s crazy talk. I mean, sure, we’re competitive, that’s what makes the music shine, but enemies? Are you kidding? We’re totally bros! All that onstage banter is just that. To call it what one reviewer called it, what was it, oh yeah, “a shit shower of bad will,” that’s just crazy, man! And Europe was totally a gas, a balls-out great time. There’s no anti-American sentiment there, no way! That business in Sweden was so completely a misunderstanding. We love Sweden.

  When he saw Joey later, they really had to map out talking points for the whole band. Especially Shane. Shane needed to ix-nay the uddism-Bay.

  But first Darlo had to get some pussy. The sweats were not far away. And he was in the right town for pay-to-cum.

  He found an ATM a few blocks from Morten’s, housed in a superclean kiosk shaped like a thatched Dutch country house, but there was some kind of problem with his debit card. The screen blinked Your account cannot be accessed.

  “Fucking Dutch technology,” he said, and failed to catch the eye of some hot piece passing by. “Nice coat,” he purred, but she didn’t even glance his way.

  He put in his credit card, and another error message came up. He punched the screen and a small crack appeared in the side.

  “Fucking bullshit,” he said, and went to find another ATM.

  He really didn’t want to have to call his bank and complain. He had loaned Citibank many thousands of dollars for them to do what they pleased with, and for a very small amount of interest. And this is how they said thank you?

  Another ATM appeared. In the distance lay the main thoroughfare of the red-light district. He stared at the glittering Sinstraat like a child nearing a candy store.

  “Come on, you bitch,” he said, and entered his PIN.

  Another error message. Funds not available at this time.

  He was beginning to shake.

  “Fucking ATM bullshit,” he said, and looked behind him. A young woman held the hand of a little boy. He tried to smile.

  “It’ll be just a minute,” he said. “My card isn’t —”

  She looked down.

  He tried another credit card. No dice. His phone rang again. He ignored it, grabbed his card from the ATM, and punched the screen. Another fracture. That was two for two. The woman looked up, horrified. Horrified and superior. Fucking Dutch, he thought, and strolled to the avenue, taking in the wares, laughing at the Museum of Cannabis, looking for a woman who resembled Winona Ryder or Kirsten Dunst. He saw a girl in a window who looked, well, sort of like Winona Ryder. At least she had biggish tits and black hair. She sat on a chaise longue in red-and-black frilled lingerie, trying to look alluring, leaning to one side, showing her little rump. Her office space was candy pink.

  Aside from his two trips to Amsterdam — one on tour and one accompanying his father when he filmed the first three volumes of Awesome Amsterdam — his experience with legalized prostitution was limited to the Mustang Ranch, outside Las Vegas. There you had to go to some parlor and actually have a conversation with a few different women before you got to go upstairs, play the whole howdy-sailor routine. Here you smiled, swiped your credit card, and got down to it. You did have to do this funny little thing where you knocked on the door, whereupon the girl acted demure and unsure of what you were doing there, like maybe you were lost and wanted to know the way to the Rijksmuseum.

  The Winona-frau watched him cross the cobblestone street. He knocked on the door and she opened it a crack, showing shoulder.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m a stranger in town, looking for a good time. Are you a good time?”

  Her smile seemed to flag, like a car struggling not to stall.

  “I am a good time,” she said in a smoky voice. “Come on in.” She shut the door, pulled the curtain closed.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. “Mine’s Steven.”

  She smiled. “I will run your credit card, Steven. And then my name is whatever you want it to be.”

  Winona disappeared behind another curtain. He had taken off his jacket and shoes and started thinking about positions when he saw, through the little section of window that remained exposed to the street, the faces of several college-aged boys. They smiled and looked mildly retarded. Darlo walked right up to the window and spat at their faces. They reeled back.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, emerging.

  “We had spectators,” he said. “I had to teach them a lesson.”

  “Don’t spit on my window,” she said. “Draw the curtain. Jesus in heaven.”

  “I’ll show you heaven. Are you ready?”

  She rolled her eyes and disappeared back behind the curtain.

  “Can’t wait to get inside you, baby!” he said, and took off the rest of his clothes. “You are one sweet-looking bitch.”

  He heard the swipe of his card, and another swipe, and the tap of her nails, and one more swipe. He thought some more about interview talking points. Had to keep Bobby from whining, and make sure they plugged the Shins, and Spoon too. Had to lay the groundwork for some new strategic relationships. You could reinvent yourself in the music business. It had been done before. U2 did it. Madonna did it. All they had to do was —

  She reappeared, tapping the card against her palm.

  “Denied.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t act stupid.” Black pubic hair teased out from her panties. “Give me cash or another card or you can go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled at himself. “Fucking try it again.”

  The giggling face of one of the kids had reappeared in the corner of the window. He grabbed his crotch. “You want some of this?” He shoved his crotch at the kid, who had birthmarks dotting his face. Spittle grew on the corners of his mouth. He laughed and shoved off.

  “Listen, man,” she said, “if you don’t have the funds, we can’t play. Got it, Steven?”

  He tugged the curtain shut and turned to her, hard, stiff.

  “Fucking try it again, please.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Please,” he said seriously. “The card works. It’s just your fucking stupid Dutch computers that have everything all fucked up, for fuck’s sake.”

  She smiled and went in the back. He turned to the window to see if there were any more eyes peeking through. He heard footsteps behind him.

  “Did you finally get it to work?”

  Darlo turned to find a big blond white guy in a three-quarter leather jacket staring him down. He wore all the right pimp accouterments: rings, greasy hair falling into his eyes, motorcycle boots, and a bulge that indicated what, exactly? A gun? A knife? A copy of the Dutc
h constitution?

  Darlo began hastily putting on his clothes. The guy threw his credit card at him and said some Dutch in the key of get the fuck out of here.

  “I thought the idea with regulated pussy,” Darlo said, “was that it cut out guys like you.”

  The large fellow said nothing.

  “I thought,” Darlo continued, flexing his arm, “that the police handled problems.”

  “Shut up,” the man said, and cracked his knuckles.

  “Oh my God, are you kidding?” Darlo cracked his knuckles too. “Woo, scary sound. You need a better trick than that if —”

  Leather Jacket Man picked him up, opened the door, and threw him out. Darlo landed on the right side of his face. A few pebbles found a home in his cheek. He jumped up, and the passers-by parted fast, as if he were a ruptured sewer pipe, and then, as the door slammed, he realized that he didn’t have his aviators.

  “Give me back my sunglasses, asshole!” he yelled, and banged on the door. The door opened, and the man stepped out and shoved Darlo back to the ground. A few seconds passed, and then he heard his precious shades die under the heavy’s heel. His phone rang and he didn’t answer it.

  Darlo looked up. A long, spindly loogie emerged from the air and landed on his cheek.

  “Prick,” the man said, and closed the door.

  Enough was fucking enough. He went into a smoke shop and bought a phone card. One euro a minute.

  “You guys really are a bunch of rip-off artists,” Darlo told the cashier, who stared at him. “You know that?”

  He marched over to a green KPN phone booth, shining in verdant hues, and dialed his voicemail. His cock, pressing against his leather pants, was still hard from the nonevent with the prostitute, and he wondered why he felt queasy. There were seven messages awaiting him, and the first six, cooing from LA fuck buddies, shed no light on the subject. The last one, however, did.

  “Darlo, my sweet boy. Greetings. It’s Dad. I’m calling from the North Hollywood police station. I’ve been arrested is all. Some bullshit entrapment. Tax evasion, they say. Money laundering, they claim. My arraignment is tomorrow and then we can celebrate. Of course I’m innocent. I’m the subject of a witch hunt by the FBI. They’re trying to suppress freedom of speech. Anyway, the bad news is that they’ve temporarily frozen all assets, which includes your bank cards. No money will be available for a few days. Yeah, it’s a bummer, man, so stretch those panties — I mean pennies. Gotta keep a sense of humor! Rock-and-roll hootchie-koo!”