The Cold Inclusive

You were staring at all that remained of Steven Tyler: some bones and skin and feathered hair, held together by a complex arrangement of silk scarves. He was lying in bed waiting for you, his heart monitor bleating softly in the background beneath the first single off the new Aerosmith album. Some release party. Why did your friend have to enter you in this contest? Why did you have to win?

Everyone had known Steven wasn’t going to be able to wheel himself around stage one more time, so instead of a tour, the record company had put together this contest to coincide with the release of their 25th album. “A Night Of Fucknication With Steven Tyler.” That was the name of the album, A Night Of Fucknication. Was that supposed to be a play on “fornication?” Honestly, whatever had happened to creativity. When you found out you’d won, you’d said “Well at least it’s not A Night of Fucknication with Aerosmith!” Bad joke; the other members had been dead for years. Steven was the only one still breathing (more to do with contractual obligation than personal volition), and everyone knew the album was just a bunch of old samples and outtakes from previous records, chopped and scratched, rehashed. There was even a crossover song with the second Britneybot.

You undressed down to your underwear (which felt naked enough), and slid into the bed. Steven moved slightly, sensing your presence. Oh, the skin on his face. Years of rubbery over-emotiveness, all that screaming and scatting and playfully saucy mugging, had rendered it slaggy and lifeless. You put your hands on his face and pushed his skin around until his lips were over where they were supposed to be. You leaned in to kiss him, but hesitated.

GOING DOWN HA HA HA his electronic voice prosthesis croaked.

Oh god. How were you going to get through this. Having sex with Steven Tyler wasn’t really the prize; clearly it wasn’t any prize, just a useful marketing hook. You would also get credits and medicine that you desperately needed, but not until the act was finished, not until the press got their complete account of the event.

You got to lose to know how to win, he had said, a lifetime ago.

Behind you, someone in the press box cleared his throat.

You took a deep breath and threw the sheets back.

Traffic to porn star Brandi Belle’s website had been headed steadily downward, ever since she got a boyfriend. Visitors wanted to see pillow-fights that lead to tongue-kissing with other underwear-clad 20-year-olds. They wanted to see her having passionate intercourse with up to three well-endowed men of African-American descent. They did not want to see her taking leisurely strolls along the beach, or sitting on her couch on a Friday night, watching Netflix’d episodes of Doctor Who. Her forum was ablaze with angry former devotees. Her website was now pulling in only a minute fraction of the revenue it’d been pulling in when she was single. As her boyfriend, you couldn’t help but feel at least partially responsible.

“That stuff doesn’t matter to me anymore!” she assured you. “As long as I’m with you, I’m happy!”

Great, awesome, but unfortunately the bills kind of don’t pay themselves. And as far as having “former teen porn star” on your resume, let’s just say it’s not yet a well-defined career path. You didn’t make enough as a Best Buy Sales Associate (Level III, management track) to support her; she had this huge apartment by the ocean and a fetish for shopping whenever she felt a bit down (which was apparently always). Not to mention the precariously stacked pile of bills for the dedicated servers, web designers, video editors, and forum administrators. She’d had a business manager who used to handle all this stuff, but he quit in disgust right after your second date, when she’d come home all starry-eyed and sighing unicorns. He’d seen this happen to other online porn stars and knew it wouldn’t end well.

But what could you do, ditch her? Even with all this new stress, you were still dating a porn star. There are a handful of ancient, immutable laws, written in stardust across the heavens, and one of them is that if you find yourself dating a porn star, you don’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble. No: you dig in, do the heavy lifting, and make the relationship work.

There was nothing for it: she was going to have to start having sex on camera again. No biggie, you still had her the other 23 hours of the day, love would sustain, relationships are all about compromise, etc. Get the African-Americans on speed dial, let’s just do this. But she wouldn’t hear it. It was you or no one.

“I vowed when we starting dating that I would never have sex with anyone else, ever! And you’re so good in bed! It’ll be great!”

Um. You weren’t sure how true that actually was. You’d seen her old videos, and some of them were pretty lengthy. You hadn’t been to the gym in, well, a while. And let’s just say you had some lingering questions as to whether or not you fell in the 50th percentile for penis length.

“You’ll be fine! Don’t worry! This will be the best! Thank you so much!” Brandi said, and ran off to post the news on her blog. Great.

Now every night at seven Pacific she pulls you away from whatever you’re doing to go have sex, live on camera. You’re the pizza delivery boy. The plumber. The overbearing teacher. The overbearing boss. The best friend’s boyfriend. The guy walking his dog. You have 2-3 lines written in cue cards off-screen, then she just takes over and does her thing while you try to imagine there aren’t 5000 people (some of them probably coworkers) watching and critiquing everything about you and your performance.

That first time, after she tossed your stethoscope and parabolic mirror headband aside and began to ride you, she noticed your eyes filling with tears. She leaned down–without stopping what the lower half of her body was doing– and in between licks of your face, whispered “Are you OK? Am I hurting you?”

You were outside your body, floating up to the ceiling, watching this happen as though it wasn’t you. “I’m just so happy,” your mouth said.

You were naked, hiding/reading a magazine behind a leather couch, deep in a sub-basement of David Hasselhoff’s stately manor. You could hear him moving through the rooms, somewhere up above you. Frustration bleeding through the syllables as he called your name in a singsong voice. You wondered how much longer it would be before he found you. And how he would act, once he did. You were still so angry that you’d had to sign an NDA; if you could write about this you would definitely have the most popular blog ever.

You’d heard stories. Sure, there’d always been rumors. I swear to God, it happened to a friend of a friend and she had no reason to lie. Oaths between starlets, sworn to God between lines of coke in nightclub bathrooms. The veracity of the story listed as “Undetermined” on Snopes. The specifics always in flux, detailed just sketchily enough to ring plausible, yet dubious. Each time the story was told, the game had a different name. The Amazonian Gauntlet. Dream of the Parlour Songbird. The Foxyhunt.

And then, just hours earlier, you found yourself being recruited at a nightclub. A man pulled you down off the table and whispered beneath the bedlam. The offer too outlandish to be taken seriously. Looking down at the stack of bills he’d pressed into your hand. And now here you were: running naked around David Hasslehoff’s house, playing the game. Playing David Hasslehoff’s Game of Sexual Jungle Cat.

You saw the title of the game printed on the laminated instructions that were handed to you as you entered his mansion and thought: Oh no. And then the reassurance, asterixed at the bottom of the page: No Furry business, this is strictly on the level. This is not about anyone pretending they are an animal. This is about submitting oneself to the passionate, atavistic glory of the chase. Imagine a deep, dark rain forest. Somewhere deep within, two small creatures of the night meet and become as one. Does it matter? Yes. It matters more than anything. In fact, everything depends on it.

OK. You skimmed the page and familiarized yourself with the rules. None of the rumors even came close to this.

Hasslehoff strips naked and is led by his manservant into a large metal cage. He can get out, but he pretends that he cannot. You then enter the room, stand in the center, and undress. Slowly, and with your back to him. You hear him growl and rattle the cage. Then, your last item of clothing on the floor (29. Hat last PLEASE.) you do a half-turn, give him a wink, and run. Sprint. He will give you a head start of anywhere from 30 seconds to four minutes, depending on his needs. You are to run for your life — run anywhere in the mansion, and hide from him. Elude him for as long as you can.

35. You must remain at all times within the house proper. 36. You will not be given a map, if you get lost that is your problem, and kind of the point. 37. No giving clues or saying anything or making noises, no matter how much you hear Mr H begging. No nor matter how much your desire for him. 38. In certain cases he may offer money for you to reveal your whereabouts but that is a trick and no additional monetary awards, proffered in the midst of passion such as they are, will be honored. 39. When Mr H locates you he will immediately begin The Act with you, in whichever manner his mood fancies. 40. Afterwards (plan on consummation taking 2-10 min.) Mr H will retire to his sauna. 41. Arrows will light up along the baseboards; please follow them to the nearest exit in order to retreive your clothing and any personal belongings.

All fine and good. But now it’s 3 a.m. and he still hasn’t found you. There’s a gigantic TV down here, could you turn it on low or would that be considered against the rules. You’re not even hiding anywhere difficult, what is his deal. You’d think he’d be awesome at this game if he played it as much as he—

—Actually. You suddenly notice that it’s eerily quiet. You can’t hear him walking. And how long has it been since he last called your name? This is kind of creepy now. There isn’t one noise, anywhere in the house. Is this still part of the game?

Fuck it. You get up to go look for him. Creeping quietly up the stairs, peeking around corners. Moving through the rooms, stopping to listen for anything. Feeling more naked and exposed than you’ve ever felt in your life. And then you find him, sitting naked at a desk. He throws a wad of Kleenex into the trash and misses.

“I looked everywhere for you. I couldn’t contain myself any longer, so you missed out. You missed out big time.”

He turns his head away, averting his eyes from yours. You are going to demand a copy of the NDA because surely there is some kind of loophole here. He claps twice and the arrows light up.

After the wrap party Paul brought you back to his house. Stumbling tipsy up the dark stairs. In the hallway he let go of your hand to turn on a light and when the room opened you–

–Something’s off. Is the room really big? Or is…no. It’s his bed. Why is his bed so small?

His bed is really small. It’s like a twin? No, maybe a full-size but still. Kind of random but whoa his shirt is already off and he’s pulling you towards him. No time to chat about it, apparently. He pulls you down and, OK this is just cramped. This is just– ow, fuck this is awkward. This is seriously his bed? This is where he has sex with other people? His hands are on you now; part of your brain is trying to pay attention to where your various items of clothing are ending up, already thinking about later. And really? Not a queen-size? This is just so…intimate. Weird that that’s the word that pops into your mind, because hello, look what he’s doing to you right– Whoa, easy, tiger. That is intimate. And one of your legs is like completely off the bed.

But whatever, you do it and it’s not your best performance but it’s fine. It’s fine.

Afterwards. You’re both lying there and God every part of his skin is touching every part of your skin. No one on Earth could think of a way to work up to it tactfully, so fuck it you just go:

“So this bed is kind of small?”

and leave the question hanging there.

And he turns his chin up thoughtfully and says “Hmmm, is it? Huh.” Like it’s never even occured to him. Like no one’s ever mentioned it? Are you the first person he’s ever brought back to his house? Paul Rudd? The actor guy? Surely he got treated like a pornstar after Clueless?

“It was my parent’s,” he says. “They were married for 45 years. I inherited it when they died.”

OK. Focus. Maybe try to find some sort of kinky thrill about having sex on his parents’ bed? No. No there is not a kinky thrill. He is a grown man, this is not high school. His parents grew old and shed hair and suffered from diseases and died in this bed. And it is a fucking god damn small-ass bed.

He’s rubbing the headboard kind of lovingly now, lost in thought. Where’s your clothes. “It didn’t go with the room, originally. I stripped and repainted it. Doesn’t it look nice? Took forever to find the right shade.” Do you need an excuse or should you just run for it. Your underwear is way over there, to hell with finding all your clothes. You map out the essentials as waypoints towards the door. He’s still rubbing the headboard. He’s a million miles away. Maybe if you just–

You tense your muscles. Hold your breath. Slowly start to shift your weight.

Finally, fully prepared to just give up and be sad forever, having exhausting every other option under the sun, you decide to risk everything and put an ad up on Craigslist Casual Encounters. Seeking attractive older woman to dominate me. I’ll do anything you want.

Fingers crossed, please let this not turn out horribly. Please let the person who responds not be a coworker or some horrible misconfiguration of skin and hair.

A reply came from Dina666@aol.com “Really you’l do anything I say?”

There was something sweet and sad and a little scary about that email address. Something desperate about the misspelling. You agreed to meet in person.

You couldn’t believe your luck, when you saw her. You didn’t recognize her, or place her name, you were too focused on the fact that someone actually attractive had reponded to an ad on Craigslist. Surely the first time that’d ever happened. And then she took you back to her place, which turned out to be a mansion? You realized that this must be a joke– you were being filmed and would regret having done this for the rest of your life. You would have to move to Arkansas and try to start a new life. Maybe get a job in a grocery store. Or worse: you were going to die here, tonight; she was a deranged killer and you would never be heard from again. What would happen to all your cats?

It wasn’t until an hour later –she had you shackled to the 4-poster bed, and was doing things to you that you did not know the names of and were going to have to look up on Urbandictionary later –when you realized: OMG this is Lindsay Lohan’s mom.

You didn’t dare let on that you knew who she was. Whatever was happening between you was magic, and you weren’t about to break the spell.

Luckily, Dina brought up the subject of her daughter first. It was later –much later– after she untied you, helped you fashion a tourniquet from an old t-shirt, and apologized for some of the names she’d called you. You hadn’t minded. She smiled, snuggled in close and pulled the sheets up.

“It’s so nice and quiet here without Lindsay around.”

You froze. Were you supposed to nod in recognition? Were you supposed to ask where Lindsay was, even though every blog on your feed reader had been posting all week about how she was in rehab again? Was now the right time to mention that you’d seen The Parent Trap six times, and had memorized the handshake she does with the butler? You decided: No, and went for a noncommittal hmm/nod-and-eyebrow-raise.

Dina seemed lost in thought, so you changed the subject. “This was my first time posting an ad on Craigslist.”

“It was my first time responding to one,” she said. “Something about what you wrote…”

Suddenly Dina was sobbing, curled up in a ball. “She never listens to me! She never does anything I tell her!”

You held her for a moment, until the tremors began to subside. Then you began pulling the sheets down off your bodies.

“That sounds really frustrating. Tell me more about it,” you said, and guided her hand to the cat o’ nine tails.