A cute brunette who'd been putting on makeup in the kitchen laughed after Stacy left.

"That was harsh. I guess you sleep on the couch tonight."

"Just a friend."

"Excuse me. Could you move? You're blocking my light." She fumbled with a lipstick tube and mirror.

"Sorry. What shade is that?"

"Red."

"Could I have some?"

"Sure." She handed it to me, laughing.

"Red's my color." I smeared it around my lips and grinned across the room at Phil, lighting a cigarette in the corner of the kitchen.

"Please, please..." A man in a striped shirt, I assumed one of Stacy's housemates, darted across the room. "You can't smoke in here. Please put that out or take it outside."

"But the door's locked." Phil dragged the smoke. The housemate fumbled with the deadbolt to no avail.

"Please go out to the front porch."

"Sure." Phil headed for the front of the house.

"Put it out first." The housemate chased him.

"I've only got five left." Phil held open a pack of Camel filters.

"I'm sorry but some people in the living room are allergic."

"No one's allergic. They just don't like it. Let me finish it here."

The housemate sighed. "It really annoys some people."

"So does terrible music. What is this, the Gin Blossoms?"

"I'll change it if you put that out."

Phil stubbed out the smoke in the sink. "What do you have?"

"I'll find something. You'll like it." The housemate bolted. Phil's smoke was out. His mission was complete.

I grabbed Phil's sleeve. "You won't like it."

Bennett cornered me just outside the kitchen door, with a shotglass and the bottle. "Nice makeup. Here. You're up." He filled the glass and held it out.

"Give it to Les. Where is he?"

"He doesn't need any more."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Take the fucking shot." Bennett barked.

"Fine... Chaser?"

"You have a beer."

"This is a vodka and tonic."

"Same difference."

"Oh, shit. I'm so sorry." A red-haired girl bumped into Bennett, spilling the shot on the floor. "I'm so sorry, uh... I don't think we've met."

"I'm Bennett. A friend of Stacy's."

"I'm Susan. I work with the Frontier Group. We do a lot of PR for Stacy's group. Shouldn't we get a towel or something to clean that up?"

"It's already in the carpet." Bennett started pouring another.

"You have some smudging going on." Susan pointed to my cheek.

"I put it on in the cab." I wiped the side of my lip. "Is that better?'

"Not really..."

"What kind of PR do you do?" Bennett quizzed the girl.

"I'm in the internet group now."

"Really? I was just looking at the internet earlier."

"Scat." Phil half coughed back through his hand.

"What's that?" Susan looked at Phil.

"A type of jazz. I'm a big jazz fan. So where is, uh, your office, Susan?"

...Dwarf porn, anorexic beauty pageants and 80-year-old women wearing ball gags and nipple clamps... Japanese school girls fucking cattle prods and crackheads expelling grapefruit, mangos and those tiny plastic footballs you get on fan appreciation day... "Sparky the Wonderdog" scrambling around on the linoleum flooring of his owner's trailer, looking for traction to mount a 60ish toothless hooker... The home videos of Paris, Rob Lowe, Pam and Tommy, Pam and Bret Michaels and something purported to be the R. Kelly tape... Fistfucks, bukkake, triple entry, she male double penetration, conga lines held together with double sided dildos, the "gyno exam hidden cam" and the "he sticks his whole head inside" video... These days, most of us have seen it all by 25. Nothing's shocking anymore. Nothing.

Except "scat." Look it up on Google and you'll quickly find yourself in a very ugly universe. Scat's what separates those with iron stomachs from the rest of the amateur sex voyeurs. It's The Line... Bennett, of course, had folders of it on his laptop, sorted by subgenre. The last movie he'd sent me, "Dinner," was enough to trip the gag reflex.

"This is a nice house. Good air conditioning." The rap Bennett laid on the girl was awful.

"What is this shit?" Phil snapped from behind me. I had to strain my ears to make out the words. "...Mister Jones and me... We're gonna be big, big stars..."

"The band with that fat, whiny singer." I couldn't recall the name at the moment.

"That explains it." Phil rolled his eyes.

"The one with the dreadlocks and goatee. You know. Help me out here."

"Toad the Sprocket." Bennett jumped in.

"No. No. That's not it. Wait here, just a second." I made my way to the stereo in the corner of the living room. Halfway there I saw Les, running a tortilla chip through a bowl of chocolate fruit dip.

"The fucking hors d'oeuvres even suck here. Where are you guys? Where's the bottle?" He was getting surly.

"Just outside the kitchen." I pointed across the room. Les dropped his cup in the dip and started through the crowd.

"Excuse me." A pair of cute hipsters shot me odd glares as I angled around them to get to the stereo. "Red? I'd have gone with earth colors. Brown or peach would work better with your skin tone," one of them flipped off.

"I'm going for 'sassy'."

The compact discs in the drawer underneath the stereo were the sort of gelded "rock" you'd find in a Starbucks display these days. Portishead, The Smiths, a few Dave Matthews discs, piles of Electronica and even an Indigo Girls CD. In a corner was a stack of dusty loose discs - "Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits," "Tattoo You," "Presidents of the United States of America," "Duran Duran: Decade," the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack, etc... All scratched and covered in dried soda or booze. Half of them were stuck together, remnants of a previous roommate or owner. I cued up the only thing that made sense and darted for the kitchen.

"She's lump/She's lump/She's lump/She's in my head..." It roared through the room, barreling over every conversation. The place ground to a halt. Maybe a little too high. Fuck it. Someone will fix it. I slinked back toward the kitchen.

"Take your poison. Fucking take it." Phil was barking at Bennett.

"Gimme a cigarette. I'm out." Bennett snapped back. They'd gotten into fisticuffs over this in the past. Bennett chain smoked, and never had enough cigarettes. He was constantly bumming from Phil, who always carried two packs.

"First your shot. You made everybody else do theirs."

"I will, but first a cigarette." He flipped Phil off.

"Where's the song about peaches?" Les pushed my shoulder back.

"What?"

"This group sings a song about peaches. 'Peaches. Peaches. Thousands of peaches for me... Peaches for free...' You know that one?"

"I think it's called 'Peaches'."

"Yeah. Play that one."

"You go find it."

"I will." He stalked into the crowd, toward the stereo.

To my left I heard the sound of something slamming into the wall. "Get off me, you fucking dickhead." Phil was pounding his fists into Bennett, who was driving him into a spice rack on the kitchen wall. "First give me a cigarette!"

I was biting a paper towel, to fix my lipstick, when Stacy showed up. "Guys, you need to go."

"Why?"

"You need an answer?" Stacy eyed me closely. "You're an infant." She'd seen me in lipstick before, and she knew it wasn't even my idea. I'd learned it from our friend Harris years before. He used to ask girls to borrow their lipstick as a sort of demented pickup line. It worked - most girls found it was amusing. It wasn't too popular with anyone else...

For a certain person, there's something deeply wrong about a man in three days of beard stubble wearing fire engine red gloss on his mouth. All the badges are blurred, and a whole lot of deep neuroses and insecurities stirred just that tiny bit too much. I was almost thrown out of a bar in Cleveland a few years earlier for ordering drinks in bright lavender lipstick.

"Twelve tequila shots please. Could you send them over on a tray?"

"Get the fuck away from my bar."

"What?"

"I said get the fuck away from my bar or I'll call the fuckin' bouncer."

Observing the proper roles and all the cheap signals that go with them is important in a lot of circles. Stacy's party was one of them. Gender bending was welcome, just not from anyone in a torn madras shirt, dirty cargo shorts and flip flops. I was supposed to play the Republican here. If we didn't adhere to our parts, what did we have? What distinctions would we talk about... How would anyone in the place know who was avant garde?

"Oh, you're being overly dramatic about this." As I was talking to Stacy the music went dead and the feedback sound of speakers being turned to full blast filled the silence. I blocked my ears, knowing what that loud hiss meant - what came next. Sometimes, there's never enough volume... "Bwooooooooom!" The synthesizer opening shook the walls like a train going by, immediately blowing at least one of the woofers. "Modern day warrior, mean, mean stride! Today's Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride! Duh duh duh duh! Dud duh duh duh!" Odd choice. I thought he really wanted to hear the 'Peaches' thing.

Looking back, it was accidental brilliance. Rush? A wet burrito fart in the center of the room would have collected fewer winces. Les was fumbling with the controls on the receiver, trying to adjust away the ear splitting distortion filling the room.

That was the last straw... "Enough! Just go. Go." Stacy snapped. No use in arguing with her. Not there. We slinked out the door and went to a nearby place called Madam's Organ. I spent the rest of the night drinking Caipirihnas and watching some old woman feed oysters to her purse dog at the bar.

I was still annoyed when I got back to the office Monday, and called Bennett to vent.

"Who the fuck does she think she is?"

"She's all gummed up in that politics shit. Let it go."

"Do you still have that email that opens up and fills the screen automatically?"

"Which?"

"The little pig getting nailed by the elephant."

"I think."

"Send it to me."

The elephant and pig cartoon blew up all over your screen, blocking out all toolbars. When Bennett first sabotaged me with it, I couldn't shut it off, and the sound from it - a pig squealing out porn star moans - echoed through the hall outside my office. The only way to kill it was to shut off the computer, losing whatever you had on your screen. Or letting it run its full duration. The elephant takes the pig from behind right up to the point where he climaxes, shooting the swine into the sunset with a comet tail of semen trailing behind it.

I pulled the "ATT. Eleph." attachment Bennett sent me, repackaged it under a Hotmail address using the name of a guest from Stacy's party and sent it to her.

To: Shenderson@____.com
From: dmholland@hotmail.com
RE: Party

Stacy:

Loved the party. Really a thrill seeing you again. Here's an invite to something I'm throwing soon. Hope you can make it!

Toodles,
Don

[ATT: Eleph.]

CLICK. Sent.

Stacy called two hours later, seesawing between rage and tears. "Why? You fucking suck. You fucking... I fucking hate you."

"What?"

"Don't play stupid with me. I know it came from you."

"What?"

"You're the only person who'd do that. I opened that in front of people I work with. People who pay me. Do you know what that's like?"

"I... Look. First off, I don't know what you're--"

"It's not funny. You're not funny. You're a dick, and it's getting old."

"That's overkill."

"No, you really are a child. It's sad." CLICK. She slammed the receiver.

I'd aimed to be aggressive, but cute. Tweak her a little. Hence, the cartoon. I had no idea she'd take it that badly. I waited about a half hour, to think of something to say, then called her back.

"Hi, is Stacy available?"

"No, she's in a meeting. May I ask who is calling?"

"Please leave her a message that ______ called."

"________?" I don't think she wants to hear from you.

"Who are you?"

"This is Deborah. Stacy works in my group. You're the person who sent that email."

"Is that a question?"

"No."

"Well, it was a big misunderstanding."

"You realize we work against sexism here."

"Is that a question?"

"That was the vilest thing I've ever seen."

"I didn't realize I was sending that, you see..." A preposterous excuse... What other aim could that email have had?

"Why did you have it at all? That's not just gross or sexist. It's dehumanizing."

"I... somebody sent it to me."

"I certainly hope you didn't create it."

"Dehumanizing? Come on. It's a pig. A joke. A little blue, but come on... Really..."

"A pig? Really? A pig..."

I sensed a disconnect - we seemed to be were talking past each other. Something was missing in the translation. I turned down the sound on my monitor and clicked on the email attachment Bennett had sent me.

Son of a bitch.

He'd relabeled the "Dinner" movie "ATT. Eleph." I'd been burned on my own gag. Bennett was doubled over in tears imagining this scene. Shit. That film probably violates federal obscenity law.

The attachment opened across my screen and started playing a grainy 70s stag tape of woman delivering a massive "Cleveland Steamer" on the chest of a skeletal Gabe Kaplan look alike... The "glass table" scene in Portnoy's Complaint, in every vivid detail, only without the table. And it had that creepy low fidelity vibe to it, like it might have been made at gunpoint. You knew if the "actors" were getting paid at all it was in coke, and both had probably died long ago. Not in their sleep. The graininess and poor quality of the digital transfer was probably a blessing. In high definition, the extreme close ups would have exposed colors and textures of things no human should see at point blank range. I leaned in, to hear the soundtrack. Is that KC and the Sunshine Band? Or "Late December '63' (Oh What a Night)?" Deborah was still talking in my other ear.

Cut it short. Leave a message and get off the phone before you do more damage. There was no use in explaining Bennett's double cross. No "procedural" defenses... That I was in the orbit people possessing a thing that irredeemably repulsive was crime enough.

Still, there was one thing I couldn't square in my head - a point that didn't jive for me. Deborah's argument, or position or whatever, had a huge hole in it. She had me on liability - that was ironclad. I'd admitted I sent the film, and it was rank in every regard. But what were her damages? The elephant and pig movie was arguably sexist. "Dinner" was a lot of things, but "sexist?" Not in the traditional one sided meaning of the word everyone uses... Bennett had done me, no doubt. But I wasn't conceding to her, not with a flimsy argument like that.

"That is gross. You're right. Tell Stacy I'm sorry. I really am. But how is that sexist? The woman's pretty much in control from the angle I'm seeing... How's that not female empowerment? Really?"

It sounded absurd, but the point had merit - that was the physical reality of the film. And she couldn't hope to spin that fact back at me. If we were in court on a motion to throw my defense out for lack of a supporting law, I'd win.

I heard dead air in response.

"Hello?"

"I'm giving Stacy your message. Never, never call here again. Are we clear?" CLICK.

I took that as a draw.

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 2:16 PM

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