Necropolis

by Santiago Gamboa

  Giorgetta looked at me enthusiastically and said, okay, I get the idea, call your friend and tell him you need to increase your clientele, an Italian cousin of yours has arrived who wants to conquer Paris, tell him if he wants to pay to fuck me, to try me out, I’d be delighted, tell him I scream a lot and I love S and M and do Greek and French, and even swallow, that’ll excite him, tell him. I called him with her standing there and of course Petra, who was sex crazy, asked if he could come that very night.

  He arrived at ten and when he saw Giorgetta, who had had a good shower and put on some make up, he said he had a better idea, which was to do it with the two of us, a threesome. We looked at each other dubiously, but he immediately added: I’ll pay double, of course. We agreed. I had never felt either desire or repulsion for a woman, so it didn’t bother me having Giorgetta naked beside me, because I had known her since she was a girl. When he told her to suck me and she approached, I didn’t feel any disgust. Petra had a great time. He cried out, sang in Romanian, quoted Shakespeare and Sophocles as he penetrated me and Giorgetta sucked his balls, and afterwards, to round off the evening, he took us out to eat couscous at the Royal Maroc, a restaurant in République. We drank three bottles of rosé wine from Boulaouane and then, quite merry by now, ended the night drinking cognac in a bar in Bastille. At dawn, we went back to Kay’s apartment to sleep.

  A week later, Petra called about the job with the mentally retarded guy. When I’d finished I said to his mother, madame, I assure you that I do it with a lot of respect and consideration for the patient, so please, if you have any acquaintances with similar cases you can call me, I have a cousin who needs work, a very healthy young woman, and the mother said, of course, Sabina, I’ll talk to the people at the special help center and if there’s anything I’ll call you, of course. Three days later, the telephone rang and the first job for Giorgetta arrived. A young man of twenty-five suffering from something very serious, dementia, mental handicap, Williams syndrome, I don’t quite remember. The young man was bedridden and obese. When Giorgetta saw him, her first impulse was to jump out the window, but then she thought of the money, so she undressed and did the job, telling herself, these are God’s mistakes, people who also feel, and even if it disgusts me I have to think that for them it’s much worse, I can take a shower and go out and back to normal life, the streets and the metro and the parks are waiting for me and I’m free, and that should give me strength, this is what she told me when she got home and prepared herself a good fix, pleased with the two-hundred-euro bills she’d come away with, and as we took a dose she told me that for her to give him a blowjob, two nurses had had to support his belly, he was that obese, and that his penis was small and flaccid, like a child’s.

  We clung to each other all night and the next morning the telephone rang, and it was Petra, announcing a good job, something that could be really important for both of us. I asked him if he wanted to drop by and he said, no, this is something different, I prefer to talk to you face to face.

  The appointment was in a café near the Belleville metro station, a neighborhood where everyone is black or Chinese or Arab, and Giorgetta was getting quite nervous by the time we met with Petra, who greeted us and said, come, it’s this way. He led us down a side street and we entered a building that wasn’t too dirty, in fact it was the least dirty in the block. We went up to the fourth floor. On the door was a sign saying Eve Studios. We were received by a man with a businesslike look who, when he saw us, cried, at last I’ve met you. Petra has told us all about you, and he was right, come this way, I want to see you properly, my name is Dimitros, I’m the head of the company. He explained that he published porn magazines that sold well in Europe, and that he now wanted to make the leap into movies, which was why he needed two actresses. He had studied the market and had worked out that he could make two films a month, which would mean approximately five thousand euros a month for each of us, and that would be just the start, because if the company grew the income would increase, what did we think?

  Giorgetta was about to say something but I gestured to her to be quiet; she had never had much of a head for business, so I spoke up and said, first we’d like to see something of what you do and to know what kind of films you want, and he said, of course, the thing is, I only do normal stuff, fellatio, Greek, sodomy, DP, facial ejaculation, all the classic stuff, no

  fornicating with donkeys or eating shit, and then Giorgetta, intrigued, asked, what’s DP, and Dimitros replied, double penetration, darling, two penises in your body simultaneously, if you’ve never done it before you may find it uncomfortable at first but you’ll get used to it, it’s a difficult position, you have to have good abdominal muscles, how’s your physical condition, girls? and we both said, very good, so Dimitros continued: as I said, I only film the traditional porn themes, because what I’m interested in is art, eroticism, I’m a disciple of Lasse Braun, you may not know who he is, but I said, yes I do, I’ve seen his movies, my favorite is Sin Dreamer. Dimitros looked at me wide-eyed, and said, that’s amazing, girl, that’s the best porn movie ever made! tell me, what’s your name?

  We began two days later with a fairly simple scene. I played a nurse in the house of an elderly man. To give him something to eat, I phoned out for a pizza. The young man who delivered it, a fairly well-built Yugoslav named Yarco in real life, was helping me to divide the pizza into triangles in the kitchen and used the excuse of a few olives that had rolled onto the floor to start stroking my legs, my nurse’s skirt being short. That developed into a scene of oral sex and then penetration on the table, at which point the cleaner arrived. That was Giorgetta’s role. When she saw that Yarco had me on the table with my legs open and was thrusting into me, she started masturbating herself with the mouth of a wine bottle. This scene, of course, Dimitros rehearsed many times, because he wanted the reflection of my legs beating in the air to be seen in Giorgetta’s bottle. That was his art, he said, through the camera he was expressing his anger at the world and his nihilistic vision of life, which he had no faith in.

  We patiently repeated the scene. The next thing to happen was the miracle, which was that the old man, played by Petra, alerted by the noise, managed to drag himself to the kitchen to see why he was being left alone and once there, seeing Giorgetta sticking a bottle of Burgundy inside her and his nurse lying on the table, being sodomized by the young man, a ray of light from the window fell on his forehead and filled him with newfound strength. He threw off his pajamas, took out a fairly respectable penis, and set to with Giorgetta. In the climactic scene, which was the most difficult, I took Yarco from the front and Petra from behind while Giorgetta sucked their testicles in turn, and at the end came the great ejaculation, which hit Giorgetta’s cheeks and mine and which we pretended to savor with relish.

  All this took the whole of Saturday and Sunday, but at last Dimitros congratulated us and told us that even though we were beginners we had a lot of talent and a keen sense of art. He was sure he had pulled off at least three or four shots that showed his stamp, the mark of the artist. We left with three thousand euros in brand new bills each, so we decided to treat ourselves. We bought new clothes, went to the hairdresser, had dinner in a good restaurant, and of course, a good fix and a snort, a full dose, not the half we took to feel good during the filming. After three days of excess, I suddenly remembered Kay, and it was as if the sky had fallen on my head. I rushed to the hospital with my heart pounding, and the premonition that he had died, that they had been calling me but my phone had been off or mislaid, and when I got to his room and saw him there, lying on his back in bed, I felt the soul come back to my body, and I cried and cried, falling to my knees, and spent the night telling him about Eve Studios and the plot of the movie and how the fact that I’d seen his Lasse Braun movies had helped me, because the director was a very artistic and demanding person who didn’t just hire beginners. You might earn more having sex with mental defectives, but this is a real job and gives you the opportunity to learn a
trade. I told him everything until day broke and the bustle of cleaners and nurses returned and I went home, with the impression that he approved this new development.

  Two weeks later we saw the movie and laughed our heads off. Neither Giorgetta nor I had ever seen our vaginas on screen, let alone from such daring angles. The name of the movie was Home Delivery, and, from what Petra told us, Dimitros managed to sell it quite well, so the next week we got down to work again. Before introducing the new actor to us, Dimitros got us together and gave us a little speech, saying, the porn world is going through a great revolution and it’s necessary to meet its demands, which means there are some changes in this new production, beginning with the actor I’m about to introduce to you and who, I hope, will be to your liking, girls, and I said, what’s with all the mystery, Dimitros? and he said, it’s just that, you know, the buyers really liked the performances and the artistic shots, but they also said, it’s a very white movie, not very politically correct, Dimitros, how about something African, of exceptional size? and well, darlings, that’s what I did, and now I have the pleasure to introduce Clarence, a son of post-revolutionary Liberia, and with a theatrical gesture he opened the door and brought him in, a man of about thirty-five, quite strong and well preserved, with a broad smile and bulging eyes, who said, hello, shyly, without looking us in the eyes, which made me immediately want to be his friend, so I stood up and gave him a kiss on the cheek, hello, how are you, it’s going to be a pleasure to work with you, and he returned the compliment. Giorgetta greeted him less effusively, and then we started reading the scripts, it took us a while to learn our parts while Dimitros and his crew prepared the shots and arranged the lights. When we went to the bathroom to give ourselves our little shot to calm us down, Giorgetta said to me, are you going to have sex with the black guy? and I said, well, I don’t know if that’ll be me, in the script it only says I have sex with First Man, but if it’s me I’ll do it. Giorgetta didn’t think the idea was right, and said, don’t you think they ought to pay us more to have sex with a black man? and I said, don’t talk crap, all human beings are the same, but she said, if we’re talking about the soul or the spirit maybe yes, but not the dick, black men have huge dicks, you’ll see. I tried not to take any notice and said, don’t think about that, we’re built to take any man.

  Giorgetta never forgot that day, she probably still remembers it, because what with talking to me and taking her shot she forgot to sit on the toilet and empty her rectum, so in the first anal scene with the African, when he withdrew an avalanche emerged from her orifice, drawn out by the suction, which was all the bigger because of the size of his cock, which really was king size. There was a loud laugh and Giorgetta gave a scream. Clarence was covered from head to foot and had to take a shower. The cameraman, who had been filming in close-up, spent an hour cleaning his glasses and his camera with sponges and cotton balls, while Giorgetta was in the bathroom, hysterical with shame.

  What happened next was that Giorgetta, who, as you will have already noted, had a certain tendency to fall into the abyss, started to take more than she should in the syringe before filming and one day the scandal broke, when Vidiadar, the Pakistani actor, stopped the scene and said to Dimitros, look, how can I work with a woman like this? I’d feel more heat if I stuck my dick into a gimlet. Dimitros cursed, because delays cost him money, and went up to Giorgetta. He noticed that her eyes were open and her mouth was emitting moans, but her brain was as far away as the rings of Jupiter. So he lost his temper and said, you fucking junkie, how dare you come to the set like that? I have nothing against the fact that you fill your brains with shit, but if you want to continue with me you have to be clean, do you understand? the streets of this old continent are filled with cunts begging for an opportunity to get into movies, so think about it, that’s if you’re even listening, is there anybody in there? I had to take Giorgetta to the bedroom.

  The next day, Dimitros brought in a Romanian named Saskia to replace her and as a punishment put Giorgetta with the fluffers, the girls who are on the set to suck the actors’ cocks before they go on and leave them erect or arouse them in case their tools undergo a sudden shrinkage. It was that night, after the fight, that I told myself for the first time: you have to give up drugs.

  My cousin stayed on in Paris, but sank into one of her heavy depressions. She tried to contact the family of the mentally ill guy to offer her services, but when they saw her they almost slammed the door in her face, because she was in an awful state, so one day I said to her, listen to me, I’m giving you a week to get your things together and leave, I know you have nobody but it’s time you got a grip on yourself, I’ve done what I could. Giorgetta cried and told me I hated her and had always envied her and wanted to destroy her, but I said, Giorgetta, you’re the destructive one, you’re the one who wears out the people who protect you, do you know Murphy’s Law? well, you’re one of the people Murphy’s Law was invented for, any situation you find yourself in, if you can make it worse, you will, and you drag the people closest to you down with you, which in this case means me, I’m just as young and inexperienced as you and just as hooked and alone, but I have a tremendous desire to live and succeed, so you have to understand, I’m not asking you to disappear, but I am asking you to let me breathe a little, I need to think and I can only do that when I’m alone, Giorgetta, don’t hate me for this, goodbye.

  Giorgetta left and I spent three days in the hospital, beside Kay, who was my source of consolation, and I told myself, I have to be good for when my love wakes up. I decided to go into detox. The heroin had protected me over the past year, but now things had turned around and I was its hostage. I got up courage and went to a rehab center. I assume everyone knows what detox is, so I shan’t expand. It’s a painful experience, which you remember only vaguely, because the brain blots most of it out as a defense mechanism. Nobody likes to hoard horrible images or such extreme feelings of pain, as if a thin knife slashed right through all the nerves in your body, which becomes your main enemy, that body you become tremendously aware of because every pore in it is screaming, and so the minutes and the hours pass, with all the slowness of pain, and you know that at the end of time, there in the distance, behind a chain of Himalayas and on an invisible horizon, is that morning when you slough off your old, sick skin and your body wakes up and your blood flows clean and you can go out because you’ve been reborn, that’s the challenge, there are those who can’t stand it and their brains melt, they blow a few fuses, and they are the former addicts who wander the world with a stupid smile and dribble hanging from their lips.

  That didn’t happen to me, because I hadn’t been addicted for long. I suffered unspeakable pain but came out the other side, unharmed. When I felt well, I called Dimitros and he immediately hired me again, this time for a shoot in Brussels. I liked the idea of traveling so I agreed and it was a great experience. I got to know some Hungarian actors and two very pretty Russian girls, who looked so innocent you’d have thought they were virgins, an impression, obviously, that I forgot when I saw them sucking cocks as if they were eating candies and cream. It was a very professional session, from which I returned with four thousand euros in cash. Then, in the hospital, I told Kay all about the horrors of detox and I said in his ear, you don’t know how lucky you are to have been spared that, when you wake up you’ll be fine, your body will be as clean as a baby’s.

  I also told him about the filming of Vixens in Heat, which was the name of the latest Eve Studios production. I said: you’ll get along very well with Dimitros and Petra, they’re fantastic and make a great team. We could work together, you’re a terrific photographer and, you know, during filming they take photographs, that way they generate more income. It would be a brilliant deal and we’d be together, what do you think, my love? But Kay was still silent, breathing softly. Suddenly the room filled with shadows and I went to the window to watch night fall. The city was drifting like a bank of seaweed toward the brightly lighted cafés. It was Saturd
ay. I felt nostalgic for a normal life. I missed what I had, in fact, only experienced with the man lying by my side.

  I carried on working and the year ended. I traveled to shoots in Budapest and Prague, and once in London, and the fees were always good, because Eve Studios was doing very well, Dimitros and Petra and other girls like Laura and Saskia and Valérie and Delphine, and guys like Bruno and Anatoli and Hervé and Alec, who worked on most of the movies, were becoming my family. One day the telephone rang and when I answered I almost fell to the floor with emotion. It was the magazine Hot Vision, asking if I would agree to an interview. They had seen Vixens in Heat and seven other Eve movies and thought I had a lot of talent. I put down the telephone, feeling really moved. I had an appointment with them at the Banana Café in Châtelet the next day. I couldn’t believe it. Hot Vision was the best known magazine of its kind in France and every two years awarded the Golden Hot, a prize for the best porn actress. Of course that was a dream, but an interview opened the doors to a possible nomination, oh, I felt so happy that I went with Alec and Delphine to the Casbah Bar and drank a bottle of champagne all by myself. They were all happy about the news and we celebrated in style, until seven in the morning, which confirmed, in passing, that my body was cured, because I didn’t feel at any moment the desire to snort.