Snuff

True fact.

These pud-pullers, these jerk-offs, it's them leading the rest of us. It's what gets them off that decides what your million kids will want for Christmas next year.

Across the room, another loser catches my eye, his arm raised, flicking the air with a folded fifty pinched between two fingers.

Want to talk third-wave feminism, you could cite Ariel Levy and the idea that women have internalized male oppression. Going to spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself.

A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress.

You could cite A

The last thing today comes down to is personal growth.

Do you respect someone's right to seek challenges and discover their true potential? How is a gang bang any different than risking your life to climb Mount Everest? And do you accept sex as a form of viable emotional therapy?

It only came out later, about Linda Lovelace being held hostage and brutalized. Or how, before becoming a porn star, Grace Quek had been raped in London by four men and a twelve-year-old boy.

Early adopters love A

True fact.

Counting the money padding my list of names, my latex fingertips turn black from touching the bills. Another loser steps up, almost close enough his dick touches me. Asks about the T-shirts, where are the T-shirts? Matches my stride as I cross the concrete floor, step by step, staying at my elbow.

I tell him, "Thirty dollars, cash." He'll get the chance to buy a T-shirt as he leaves the building. The souvenir caps, they're another twenty bucks. To reserve an autographed copy of the feature, we're talking $150.

Ms. Wright's already signed the covers, the slip sheets for inside the boxes. Just in case God sends meat-beater 573 the divine order to strangulate her. Or God sends Ms. Wright a stroke. Sends an earthquake or a tidal wave.

Another last thing today comes down to is reality.

What do you do when your entire identity is destroyed in an instant? How do you cope when your whole life story turns out to be wrong?

Sweat balloons inside my gloves—still pink, so both layers of latex are still intact. My fingers pruned, wrinkled, from swimming so long. The skin pickled and old. My defenses still intact. Safe and clean, but feeling nothing, too old for the twenty-year-old rest of me.

Across the room, in the light of a dozen porn movies, another two fingers flicker. Wave hairy knuckles. Hooked for me to come over. Holding more bribe money, folded to hide inside a fist.

5. Mr. 600

No shit, I told kid 72 a lie about the uniforms, how they was shooting us out of order since they only rented the three Gestapo getups. The kid's watching the movies we got playing overhead. For the movie, we're talking On Golden Blonde. His eyes squirming with twin reflections of Cassie Wright, same as two tiny video monitors, his jaw hung wide open, the kid don't give a rat's ass what I got to say.

I tell the kid, "Don't expect she's going to look that good…"

Kid 72's eyes—light brown, same as mine used to look.

The girl up there, sucking the clit of Boodles Absolut, that girl used to say how she was going to rule the industry someday. That sweet young Cassie Wright, the way she told it, she could lick anybody in the world.

But, looking around this room here, the motley collection of dicks they cattle-called today, I'd say how her career's turned out the other way around.

Kid 72 rolls his eyes all over Cassie and Boodles.

"That's a joke I made," I tell him and give him the elbow. Today, anybody in the world can lick her.

Some dude across the room, holding some kind of teddy bear under his arm, keeps eyeing me. Dude number 137, with a gold ring through one nipple. We're talking stalker material here.

Really, I tell the kid, he'd better hope he gets called soon. The production company's got a reason they're calling this The Whore to End All Whores. Won't nobody be setting a new record after today. What we do here will stand for the rest of human history. This kid, me, dude 137 staring at us—after today, we'll have a place in the record books.

Kid 72, his eyes twitch and shift around on that video screen. His hands hold those roses close in and high against his chest, as if the flowers aren't already garbage.

I tell him, "Don't expect Cassie Wright is going to live through this…"

No, it's got nothing to do with only three Nazi uniforms. The wrangler calls back number 45, then number 289, then number 6, some crazy order of guys, but really it's to hide the fact that those cameras will run even after Cassie Wright slips into a coma. There's dudes here who will do the deed thinking she's just asleep. Ain't no human body that can take a pounding from six hundred hard-ons.

We're talking one pussy fart getting pounded in too deep. Or eating snatch, one puff of air up inside her works and a bubble gets into her bloodstream. An embolism. That bubble zigzags all the way to her heart or brain, and it's a fast fade-to-black for Cassie Wright.

Saying this, I'm watching another video monitor, Cassie blowing some dude in World Whore One. Dude's lips plumped thick and red as a fag's asshole. Great triceps definition. No fuzz on his nut sack. I take off my sunglasses, and that dude up there is me.

Kid 72 keeps watching Golden Blonde. Dude 137 keeps watching us.

The reason they're shooting dudes out of order is so the editor can cut the pop shots together, one to six hundred. After that, Cassie will moan and flop around as much with number 599 as she does with number 1. In between, she'll only lie there like she's sleeping, but really in a coma. Or worse. Nobody here, none of us shmucks, will know any different than the official press release: "Adult Superstar Dies After Setting World Sex Record."

Sure, she's been in training. Kegel weights. Aerobics. Pilates. Yoga, even. Hard, as if she was set to swim the English Cha

"Another joke," I tell the kid and give him the elbow.

But the truth is, won't nobody call any ambulance until the set's struck and this project is in the can.

No, any inquest happens, and every dick here will swear she was alive when he was humping away. We're talking major denial. After that, the American public will piss and whine. To get media time, religious do-gooders will climb on the bandwagon. Rabid feminist types. The government will step in, and no babe will ever set any new record of 601.

Cassie will be dead, but us six hundred dicks here, we'll go into the history books. Half us dudes will springboard off this—first-timers launching new careers, old-timers making comebacks. Every one of us wearing a T-shirt printed "I'm the Dick That Killed Cassie Wright."

Cassie Wright will be dead, but her backlist of videos, everything from The Ass Menagerie to her all-facial compilation Catch Her in the Eye to the classic A Separate Piece, will turn into solid gold. Bang the Bum Slowly. Boxed collector-edition sets. The eternal Marilyn Monroe sacrificial goddess of adult entertainment.