Past

Dick Spitz strutted across the Chelsea Hotel lobby on an October Day in 1978, his gold lamé disco pants tented to design limit. Loitering prostitutes took notice of his manhood at full sail and catcalled him with “Save some of that for me, sugar” and “My tuna salad sure could use more mayo.”

One of the older whores who worked the lobby regularly was less impressed. Resting her hand on a meaty hip, she said, “Mmmhmm, you don’t want to be touching none of that. He does that pant-load porn. He’s nasty.”

Dick had no time to argue. He was supposed to be upstairs in Room 602 a half hour ago. With a wave of his hand and a curt “ladies,” he made a beeline for the elevators.

It had been a very long night. He was out until four at this club that tried very hard to be Studio 54 and catered to a clientele who had no hope of ever getting into Studio 54. From there, he went home with a girl named Nadine who said she worked somewhere and aspired to be something or other. At any rate, she was a mediocre lay. At least no one was pointing a camera at him, which meant there wouldn’t be any shit involved.

Regular poop sex was bad enough, but future-poo fucking was even worse because of the rash it gave him. Dick was allergic to excrement. A lot of people are, but it largely goes unnoticed because the nutrients neutralize the allergens. Future poo has no nutrients so any reaction to it is severe. Nadine had asked about the redness covering one side of his torso. He told her to shut the fuck up and suck his meat pole.

One might think a porn actor would be all tapped out at the end of the day. However, Dick had an arsenal of Priapaine at his disposal. Only people who had come from the future could get their hands on the stuff because it hadn’t been invented yet. Even primitive medicines like Viagra and Cialis were a long way off from being available. Priapaine was far more advanced. The erection it gave you stuck around as long as you took more of the stuff and if you snorted it, it got you high like coke. Dick called it “boner blow” and did lots of it both on and off the job.

Dick’s current film was Yule Log Humbuggery, a shit-porn retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Like the other two Pynchon-Lohff productions, The Prince and the Pooper and The Masque of the Brown Death, it was a loose adaption of a literary classic. This one, however, had seasonal appeal so everyone was on a tight schedule to get the movie finished so it could be shown in the stroke houses before Christmas.

Dick Spitz was cast as Ebenezer Spooge.

The elevator doors opened. Dick walked down the hall and into room 602. Inside was the movie set and steps were taken to make the place look more like 19th Century England. The TV was wheeled off camera and a likeness of Queen Victoria was put up on the wall. It was a poster, but at least it wasn’t a blacklight one.

Everyone there, except for the woman with the bleached blonde hair and New Jersey accent with affected Britishisms, was from the future. She had been cast as young Ebenezer’s fiancee because she would work for drugs and lived in the hotel so she was easy to fetch if she forgot to show up. Drugs were always on hand because Pynchon-Lohff had a sideline distributing black-tar heroin made from China white and future poo.

“So glad you could join us,” said Felix Pynchon, who was the producer of the film. Yesterday, he had onscreen time as Jackoff Marley, in costume, clanking chains together, and overacted up a storm. Today he was back to wearing his usual lime-green leisure suit and burgundy ascot.

“Sorry, I overslept,” Dick said.

“The important thing is you’re here now,” Oscar Lohff said. Oscar was the director of the film. He was also the main cinematographer. He was wearing an androgynous white hippie robe that hid his considerable girth. He would be playing the Ghost of Christmas Past later in the day.

Rhea Dyer sat on the floor in the corner of the room, flipping through a magazine and staring daggers at the blonde. Rhea was 18 when she got sent back in time, but looked much younger. She had been cast in the role of Tiny Quim.

“So when do I get to a shag scene with Ebenezer?” the blonde said.

“Nancy, I already told you there wouldn’t be one,” Oscar said. “Once again, what you do is writhe around on the floor and smear shit all over yourself in an effort to entice Ebenezer, but he is too busy measuring a piece of poop floating in a fishbowl and writing the results in a notebook to notice you.”

“Oh yeah, I knew that,” Nancy said.

“You don’t know shit,” Rhea said.

The day’s shooting progressed. Oscar the ghost guided Ebenezer Dick through the world of  Christmas past. Their verbal exchange was delivered while standing in front of a gray tarp intended to represent fog.

Dick was no great actor. He managed to get by in part because he was easy on the eyes and possessed the requisite mustache for this genre in this decade. Far and away, Dick’s greatest asset was dick. His wasn’t freakishly large, but its Priapaine-induced tumescence was enough to make the average adult-film patron take note. Still feeling the effects of the drug, the scenes with Oscar were shot from the waist up to avoid any homoerotic overtones.

Despite Dick Spitz’s lack of thespian chops, his performance during these scenes was surprisingly good. Perhaps he had to make a real effort rather than let his shvantz to the acting for him. Also, he was in some way playing himself, a lonely time traveler in an era he did not truly comprehend.

It was time for the big scene with Nancy. With his ruler, quill, and leather notebook in hand, Dick crouched behind an eight-inch croissant of future poo floating in a fishbowl that sat atop a wooden barstool. If he had to work with future poo, Dick thought, this was the way to go. He wasn’t going to get a rash just from looking at it.

Nancy stood naked in the middle of the room. She was handed a pile of future poo on a paper plate and told to put it on herself. She took it into the bathroom to satisfy an inexplicable need for privacy and emerged a few minutes later with a fine layer of shit applied over her groupie-whore slathering of mascara and lipstick. The rest of her pale self had nary a smudge.

“No, no, a thousand times no!” Oscar said. “This is shit porn, not beauty tips with poop. The character you’re playing is a dirty bitch and I expect you to look the part. Now please smear yourself real good, OK?”

“And what if I don’t wanna?” Nancy said.

“Don’t worry, chief. I got this,” Rhea said. She put down her magazine, stood up, and walked over to the table where a supply of future poo was kept. The poo in the bucket she selected came from the future Third World so it was extra runny.

Rhea spun around and tossed the contents right into Nancy’s face. She stood in shock as it ran down all over her. She then began to cry. It was an aggrieved, selfish sobbing, the kind of crying that elicits not sympathy as much as a punch.

“Tears are good. Tears are very good,” Oscar said as he,started to film and zoomed the camera in on Nancy. “That’s it. Cry for me, you little cunt.”

“How dare you,” Nancy shrieked. “I quit. I know you’re all drug dealers. I’m going to report you to the narco squad.”

“I understand how you feel,” Felix said. “Things got out of hand and I apologize for that. Go home and think it over. If you still want to quit tomorrow, that’s fine.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, handed Nancy a nickel bag of future-poo black tar, and told her this should help her relax.

“There better be a whole lot more of this tomorrow or I’m going straight to the narcs,” she said. She got dressed, pulling her clothes over her shit-streaked body, and left.

“Dick, I need you to kill that bitch,” Felix said.

“Kill her?” Dick said.

“Yeah, but it can wait until tonight. She’s got a bag of smack so she won’t run to the cops until it’s gone. If you get her while she’s high, it’ll be extra easy.”

“I’ll kill her,” Rhea said. “Let me do it.”

“I don’t care who does the job as long as it gets done,” Felix said.

“Looks like we’re done for the day,” Oscar said. “Hey Dick, let’s go get a drink as soon as I change out of this drag-queen get up.”

It was late in the evening. Dick and Oscar were seated in a quiet dive a few blocks from the hotel.

“Reminds me of old times,” Oscar said, slapping his own thigh and letting out a fat-man belch.

“Does the future count as old times?” Dick said.

“You know what I mean. We used to go drinking every night after work and I kept trying to get you to go back in time with me, and you always said no.”

“I was married.”

“Yeah, but your wife was a bitch.”

“That she was, but still.”

Dick remembered the going-away party for Oscar. Despite her demand that he not stay out too late, he ended up closing the bar that night. That’s what saved his life. When the the massive poo transfer intended for the 1984 Bermuda Triangle went awry, the bulk of it peppered the space-time continuum roughly half a decade in either direction. However, a sizable chunk of it ricocheted to its point of origin, a man-made diarrhea lake called Laguna Del Poo. The sudden influx of fecal matter caused the dam to burst. The residents below in Charmin Canyon, including Dick’s wife, never had a chance. It was the deadliest diarrhea flood to hit North America in weeks. Now a widower, Dick had nothing holding him back. His application was quickly approved and he was on his way. Dick thought his doodie duties as an operative would be largely clerical. He never imagined he would end up as a porn star. If it weren’t shit porn, his assignment would have been a dream come true.

“Dick, I’m saying this as a friend. You need to ease up on personal use of Priapaine,” Oscar said after making sure the bartender was out of earshot.

“I don’t do it that much,” Dick said.

“You do it all the time. Hey, I get it. You like to fuck a lot. I like to eat a lot. We both like to have fun. But Felix, he’s strictly business. You don’t want to get on his bad side.”

“And what about Rhea?”

“She likes to have fun. But with the kind of fun she likes to have, you don’t want to get on her bad side either. You know, we should hang out like this more often. It’ll be good for both of us to be distracted from our vices. Maybe you won’t knock up anybody and maybe I can avoid bypass surgery. What do you say, Ebenezer?”

“Sounds like a plan, Ghost of Christmas Past.”

Felix and Rhea came into the bar. After the bartender checked Rhea’s ID, the two sat down at the table with Dick and Oscar.

“I want you both to congratulate this little go getter. She just popped her murder cherry,” Felix said.

“Piece of cake,” Rhea said. “She was far too wasted to put up a fight and I was really looking forward to wringing that bitch’s neck.”

Dick nodded. He’d gotten a hand job from Rhea before. That girl could strangle.

“But then I saw a knife just laying there,” Rhea continued. “And I thought, hey, that’s as good a murder weapon as any. One thrust to the abdomen and she was toast. Icing on the cake: Her junkie boyfriend was passed out in the room. He’s going down for this one.”

“Ew, she actually had a boyfriend?” Oscar said.

“Yeah,” Rhea said. “Some English guy. Name’s Sid, I think.”