What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery Page A

tell him what he wants to hear.
    “Yeah, I do.”
    “Then we’ve got something in common, you and me. Because I like being watched, too. Oh, yes. Not because I’m young and beautiful and—virile. Like you. But for—other reasons.”
    He’s breathing harder now, and waiting, and I have no fuckin clue what to say.
    “Would you like to watch me, Sid?”
    In theory or in practice?
    Or sitting on a cactus?
    Jesus.
    But Blitzer said just stick to the script. And that must be what he does too.
    “Fully. I mean, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”
    “Then we’re going to have fun tonight, aren’t we? Because I like being watched, and you like being watched, and I’ll be watching you while you watch me. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
    “It sounds great.”
    “All right then. I’m going to play a videotape for us. And while I’m seeing to the machine, I’d like to ask a favor of you. May I?”
    “Sure.”
    “Once my back is turned, I’d like you to remove your undershorts. So when I settle back down beside you, and the tape begins to play, I’ll be seeing you in a new way, just as you’ll be seeing me in a new way.”
    I just push my shades up the bridge of my nose and nod. What-fuckin-ever. Talk about Fantasyland. Then he sits up and maxes the Beta and next thing you know it’s Showtime.
    The Merv Griffin Show
.
    “Here today live from Hollywood with Charo and Charles Nelson Reilly, and welcoming after a word from our sponsor, Bill McDaniel, Dog Groomer to the Stars.”
    And from now on I do the talking.
    “That’s you?”
    “On Merv Griffin!”
    “Whoa!”
    “Dude, you’re a star!”
    “You know Bo Derek?”
    “Personally?”
    “Robert De Niro?”
    “Stallone?”
    “Damn, I want your autograph!”
    “That Charo chick sounds a little sweet on you, buddy.”
    “Who the fuck wrote your lines for you, I bet it was Chevy, wasn’t it?”
    “You just thought ’em up?”
    “No way!”
    “Zsa-Zsa’s poodle?”
    “Bob Hope’s bulldog?”
    “Angelyne’s whippet?”
    “Those guys in Vegas get paid millions for shit like this!”
    “Man, Merv is bumming.”
    “Seriously!”
    “You’re getting all the laughs!”
    “You’ve got them eating from the palm of your hand!”
    “You’re funnier than Merv!”
    “You should get your own show!”
    (Oh most defiantly, not a turd, not a plane, not a tumor or a rumor, it’s Here Comes the Groomer! Exclusively on Pay-Perve-View!)
    “I mean it, man!”
    “Hell fuckin na!”
    “Can we watch this again?”
    The magic words, Blitzer said, so magic they’re tragic, the Everest of octane for the groomin’ machine. Because once you know how the tape goes you can time your chatter so it sends him summitwards then and there, and you don’t have to sit through the whole goddamn thing twice. But Blitzer told me going into it cold I’d have to live with the rewind, and it’s maybe six minutes max so it isn’t that bad, since I basically just say what I said before, it doesn’t matter if it’s word for word, in fact it’s better if it is.
    The only thing is, about halfway through round two I’m feeling gut-bombed, I guess it’s the mix of the nast pot with the smells of the candle and his hair oil and the lotion he’s using, and I want to ask him to crack the window more, but Blitzer schooled me hard on facing the screen and talking him up all the way through, nonstop, so even when sweat beads break out on my forehead and this sour spit rises up the back of my throat I keep the Hollywood babble on, and with him panting next to me faster faster faster at least I know we’re in the home stretch. Then right after I say he’s funnier than Nerve Stiffen’ll ever be his free hand vise-grips the back of my neck and pulls my head down towards his crotch while he gasps out “Fondle my balls!” in this strangled wheezy voice and Christ on a cream puff, Madonna on a mattress, I can’t help it, I can’t hold it, I puke.
    All over him.
    Right at the magic