the balls. It was like being a kid again, having to ask
permission for everything. He forced me to go to
school, said I had to make something of myself.
Christ, I’m thirty-six and I’m in junior college! If I
get good grades there’ll be a place for me at Car-michael
Oil. What a crock. Nothing’s gonna change
146
Jonathan Kellermaa
me into someone I’m not. What the hell does he
want from me?”
He looked at us beseechingly, wanting support.
My instinct was to give it to him but this wasn’t
therapy. Milo let him cool down before he spoke.
“And if he finds out about your current job, kaput,
eh?”
“Shit.” Carmichael stroked his beard. “I can’t
help it. I like doing that kind of thing. God gave me
a great body and a great face and I get off on
sharing it with other people. It’s like acting but
private, .so it’s better, more intimate. When I used
to dance I could feel the women’s eyes on me. I
played to them, treated them good. I wanted them
to cream right there. It felt so–loving.”
“I told this to your boss and I’H tell it to you,”
said Milo, “we don’t give a damn who fucks who in
this city. It only becomes a problem wheh people
get cut or shot or strangled in the process.”
Carmichael didn’t seem to have heard,
“‘I mean it’s not like I’m hooking or anything,” he
insisted. “I don’t need the moneymin a good week I
pull in six, maybe seven hundred bucks.” He dismissed
that kind of money with a wave of his hand,
Operating from the distorted value system of one
born into wealth.
“Doug,” said Milo, with authority in his voice,
“stop defending yourself and listen: we don’t care
about what you do with your dick. Your file will
stay sealed. Just tell us about Nona.”
The message finally got through. The look on
Carmichael’s face was that of a child who’d reo
ceived an unexpected gift. I realized that I kept
thinking of him as a big kid because, except for the
manly outer husk, everything about him was child-
like-, immature. A classic case of arrested”
opment.
“She was a barracuda,” he said. “You had to hold
her back or she got too aggressive. The last time wc
yorked together was a stag party for an older guy
who was getting married for the second time. A
bUnCh of middle-aged men, salesman types, in this
apartment in Canoga Park. They’d been drinking
hard and watching fuck films before we got there.
We were doing jock and cheerleader that nght. I
had on a football uniform and she was wearing a
jersey top, a little pleated skirt, and sneakers. Pompons,
her hair in pigtails, the works.
“Those guys were harmless old farts. Before.we
got there they’d probably been talking big, hooting
at the movies like guys do when they’re ‘nervous.
Then wc walked in,they saw her, and I thought a
few hearts were gonna give out. She wiggled at ’em,
batted her lashes, showed a lot of tongue. We had
the skit all planned out but she decided to ad lib.
The script says we do a little minor league fondling
while trading suggestive lineS–you know stuff like
I ask her how she’d like to be my wide receiver and
she says ‘Do it again, we like it, we like it!’ She was
a lousy actress, by the Way, rea] flat, no emotion.
But the audiences seemed to dig her–her looks
made up for it, I guess. Anyway, these old ‘guys
were eating it up and she got toff on it. That’s
probably what gave her the idea of getting really
outrageous.
‘”AH of a sudden she reached into my pants,
grabbed my cock, did a bump and grind, started
jerking me off all the time gyrating at them. I
wanted to stop her–we’re not supposed to go past
the ipt. unless we,re asked’to.” He stopped, looked
14 Jomthan
uncomfortable. “And paid to. But I couldn’t do it
because it would have ruined the skit and been a
downer for all those old guys.
.”They were staring at her and she was groping