ME
by Max Palermo
Boar’s Head Black Forest Ham, that rose-colored hunk of savory-sweet, naturally smoked deli meat, carefully processed and cured by an industry-leading company of expert men that never compromised their standards and values as the company grew. Juan proudly grabbed a loaf of the scrumptious luncheon meat from the deli case, sliced five pounds, and packed the last of the day’s annoying Instacart orders.
Juan Mendez was the deli manager at a Publix in Deerfield Beach, Florida. He was an average-looking bachelor in his fifties with a basic goatee and a diploma from Deerfield High. His father Victor Luis, a suave Dominican dishwasher, and his mother Shirlee, an easy piece of Key Lime pie from the trailer park in Sandalfoot Cove, met at a bar in Tamarac on the fateful night that Juanito was conceived. The boy was born and raised in Broward County and didn’t speak a lick of Spanish—a common reality for many Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans in sunny South Florida.
At about 8:00 p.m., he took off his apron and headed to his apartment in Hillsboro Pines. When he got home, he warmed two Jamaican beef patties and jumped on the couch for dinner. Shelves lined his living room walls, overloaded with books and magazines, VHS and DVDs—an impressive media library composed entirely of adult entertainment. The Bridge—an eighty-five-inch flatscreen TV on a balsa wood stand—was centrally located between two shelves in front of the couch. Juan grabbed the remote, pointed it at his DVD player, and pressed play. A busty blonde in a leather tricorn hat finger-banging a redhead appeared on the screen. A close-up of the ginger, biting her lip, primed to cum. Juan was picking it up twenty-three minutes into Pirates, one of his creature comforts.
After dinner, he paused Pirates and headed to his bedroom. He grabbed his high-performance Lenovo and sat in bed. He clicked a folder titled My Collection and started scanning his near terabyte of saved porno videos. Juan’s collection was meticulously organized into folders upon folders, following a set theory taxonomy of proliferating genres, ethnicities, types, and categories: hardcore or softcore; gay or straight; mature or teen; white, brown, ebony, or Asian; seventies, eighties, nineties, or post-two-thousands; clips, shorts, or features; DIY or professional production; pornstar or amateur; anal or bareback anal; nuru massage, stepdad, twink, golden shower, gangbang, scat, yoga farts, and so on—and that’s just scratching the surface of his truly prolific collection.
He had a little something of everything. He liked pussy, and he liked dick, chicks with dicks too—but always adults—human adults. No animals, no kids. Juan wasn’t some kind of vile degenerate. He was simply a man with refined tastes in the ancient art of erotica. Above all, this deli manager thought himself truly a collector, not much different than moneyed, scarf-wearing brokers in the arts scene or those cultured eccentrics, the history buffs with their armies of hand-painted toy soldiers, staging past wars.
Juan had come up in the simpler age of skin mags and porno tapes, when a boy hung a secret poster of Jenny McCarthy sitting on Santa’s lap in his bedroom closet, when two friends took an older sibling’s Playboy out to the woods, when a healthy young man brought a crispy Hustler centerfold to school so that he could rub one out in the soap dispenser between classes and then pass it off to a needy friend.
After turning eighteen, Juan became a regular at the Adult Video Warehouse on Powerline Road in Pompano, a spectacular establishment boasting the widest array of adult entertainment in South Florida. It was his temple. They had all the big names, Jenna Jameson, Jill Kelly, Air Force Amy, Asia Carrera, and countless others. There was even an aisle for historic work: vintage Candy Barr, of course, and so many anonymous titles.
Mr. Leroy—a grungy sixty-seven-year-old with a narrow face and wolfish features—was more than the store’s clerk. He was an incredibly knowledgeable connoisseur and voracious consumer himself, capable of making informed recommendations from the annals of history to the adult industry’s most contemporary award winners. Mr. Leroy had become something of a mentor to the young man, and one late night, he offered this piece of sage advice:
“You’re a good kid, Juan, but you gotta be careful with all this stuff cause there’s guys like you and me, and then there’s a bunch of sickos out there, especially in Broward.”
When the Internet took off, everything changed. At first, it was amazing. Juan surfed the crank-tank superhighway day and night, the whole world at his fingertips. Specialized subscriptions, webcams, and chatrooms with like-minded individuals who shared in his passion. The earliest pieces of his digital collection were downloaded during that era. But as the quantity of X-rated content increased, the quality began to suffer. The great Ron Jeremy felt like John Wayne from a bygone golden era. Videos got shorter and increasingly ephemeral. Flashy prosumer production and camerawork, but no plot or substance, and little vision. Upstart, high school philistines streamed bullshit on Pornhub—no account, not even the decency of leaving a comment. They weren’t in the chatrooms, they didn’t belong to the mailing lists, they didn't frequent brick and mortar institutions like the Adult Video Warehouse in Pompano. Kids busted a nut in two seconds on their smartphones to the first anonymous video they got served on the frontpage of Pornhub. No risk. No sacrifice. No adventure.
Juan was proud to have grown up differently. He liked to nut as much as the next guy but he saw the art of it all, the angles, the lighting, the casting, the story, the irony! Such irony! He would analyze the tiniest details, the cockwork, the buttplay, the clitoral response. He could tell if a good fluffer had been brought in or if the bull had been juiced up on Viagra. Magic potion gave the guys a throbbing zombie rocket and made them look pale, uninterested. Juan would get so impatient because he could tell it was hard for these guys to bust a nut—again, no vision, no sense of timing. A good fluffer’s work looked natural on camera, and the onus was on the actor to keep it up, to keep it honest. Titans like the Hedgehog never needed rocket fuel, and that’s how they got where they got. He always remembered what one of his favorite directors John “Buttman” Stagliano had said about Viagra, “You also lose a dimension. The guy's fucking without being aroused.” The Buttman’s critique resonated with him.
The collection was how he showed respect to the artform and the community. No one downloaded porn anymore, no one actually stored it on their computers, but Juan did as a matter of principle. And he wouldn’t be caught dead on a torrent or file-sharing site, pirating the stuff—he bought digital copies directly from the production company. More so, he preferred physical media, VHS and DVDs, for masterworks like Pirates and especially for rarities. Buying newer releases on DVD generally came with a digital download as a bonus—a nice perk—but his most prized pieces were underground and entirely obscure, nowhere to be found online. For the triple-X gourmand, a run-of-the-mill creampie compilation couldn’t float his boat, the porn patrician needed a tinge of the esoteric, something mysterious and a bit recherché to excite his educated porno palate.
***
It had gotten increasingly difficult to find the truly cult material since all the adult video stores were going the way of the dodo, some converting into sex shops, paying the rent by hawking jazzy dildos, hefty buttplugs, and high-tech blowup dolls. Certain shops still kept a few classics like Flashpoint and Deep Throat in the checkout counter case, but that wasn’t what Juan was looking for—he already owned all of those, in fact. Offering Flashpoint to someone like Juan was like selling Tupac to an avid rap fan, Metallica to a metalhead, it was like “Stairway to Heaven” on Big 106, South Florida’s favorite classic rock station.
He went to the Swap Shop to sniff around since he had heard a lot of good things about what you could find at that carnival of oddities if you had the patience to dig around the stalls and look past the random elephants and dentistry equipment. Right as he got there, a fat wigga with cornrows tried to sell him oversized white tees from the trunk of his Lincoln Towncar. Juan bought a three-pack just to get Everlast off his back. He spent the rest of his day off at that circus flea market, browsing with a box of popcorn in his hand, and truth be told, he did find a lot of strange titles he had never heard of—foreign stuff from the islands, the Middle East, or India, which at first glance had a lot of promise. But the problem was that the guys at Swap Shop mostly sold bootlegs, burned CD-Rs in soft plastic cases with low-quality inserts that had been printed at home. Juan bought one with three Arab women holding AK-47s on the cover, wearing hijabs but naked from the waist down, thick black bushes covering up their private parts. He was excited for the find but when he got home, the disc didn’t work at all. He was devastated and decided never to go back.
One afternoon, eating a chicken tender sub during his lunch break at Publix, Fritz, a Haitian man who worked in the produce section, told Juan that he had gotten a ten-disk box set of Twoubadou music on Craigslist for dirt cheap.
“I only see that back in my country, Juanito,” said the man.
The horny hamster in Juan’s head started spinning its wheel. He rushed home after work and opened up his Lenovo. He knew that Craigslist was a virtual cesspool for the worst kind of sketchy bartering—drugs, prostitution, human trafficking—but Juan had a good head on shoulders, was single-minded in his need, and in this particular case, the site’s sleazy reputation could actually work to his advantage.
His search in the Broward Forum resulted in all the usual suspects: a used DVD copy of Pirates, tons of Flashpoint, a VHS copy of Tarzan X: The Shame of Jane, which was cool, but already part of Juan’s collection. Another dead-end, Juan thought, would real collectors like me even post on Craigslist? Then, an auspicious listing caught his attention: ten XXX bins, rarities and collectables, name your price, serious inquiries only. It hit all the marks—who knew what sort of juicy hardcore miscellany was contained in those ten XXX bins? And serious inquiries only? Must be good, Juan thought.
The listing came from an account named MrTNAspecial. Juan decided to send this MrTNAspecial a message and inquire into his bins:
TheRealJuanXXXcollects: “hey, im interested in the ten bins…im in broward…what u got?
MrTNAspecial: hello, thanks for the message…mostly indies and stuff ive made on vhs….u interested?
TheRealJuanXXXcollects: i might be. stuff u made? r u a director?
MrTNAspecial: yea, i work locally… shoot here around broward…DIY scene, south
miami sometimes…got other stuff too…u interested?
TheRealJuanXXXcollects: interested…can we meet for me to take a look?
MrTNAspecial: nice! yea, lets meet next week…friday?...i am at place in downtown ft.laud…exchange lofts…near himmarshee…u know it?
TheRealJuanXXXcollects: i know the area…i can find it, 8pm?
MrTNAspecial: sounds good…see you then…sixth floor…apt four…bring cash
TheRealJuanXXXcollects: see you then…thanks.
The chat ended with a thumbs-up from MrTNAspecial. Juan was excited about the potential additions he would find in MrTNAspecial’s ten XXX bins. The internet is not so bad, he thought, man, Craigslist gets a bad rap, he thought. Juan fell asleep shortly thereafter—he didn’t even need to jerk off.
***
Back at Publix for his Monday shift, Friday night couldn’t come fast enough. Work felt tedious. Glistening balls of fair-toned domestic turkey, slices of London Broil roast beef that were crumbly brown at the edges and juicy pink in the center, long and slender Boar’s Head traditional franks—everything made Juan think of Friday night. It’s gonna be a long week, Juan said to himself, packing a half-pound of London Broil for an orange, tanning-oil-sodden, A1A cougar with double-D breast implants and a Prada handbag—classy mature, he thought with a smile.
Juan was pumped up as hell when he clocked out on Friday. He raced home to change so he could head down to the Exchange Lofts in Himmarshee. He took a quick shower, spritzed himself with Drakkar Noir, and put on his white Xtreme Couture button down, the one with the intricate crucifix graphic over the left pec and the matching tribal angel wings across the back—it was his favorite piece of evening attire.
The Exchange Lofts was a luxury, high-rise apartment building—chic and modern rental lofts in Downtown Ft. Lauderdale. Walking up to the front entrance, Juan could tell it was a fancy place, and he was happy that he hadn’t underdressed. He looked at the door buzzer but the slot for apartment four on the sixth floor was blank—no name, nothing. Juan thought it was a little suspicious, but the porno world was very private after all. He rang the buzzer, and waited a second, and then someone responded:
“Who dis?” the voice asked.
“Juan from Craigslist. I’m here about the ten bins.”
Buzzzz!
The apartment was exactly as expected: an open platform, a stylish industrial aesthetic, exposed piping, and a funky loft with an affixed steel stepladder. Juan immediately noticed the place was completely unfurnished however, except for a king-size bed in the middle of the living room. There were cameras on tripods, lamps on stands, and a group of black folks standing around the island by the kitchen. Holy shit, Juan thought, this is a shoot!
In the middle of the crowd, a shorter, chunky guy railed a line of white power and lifted his head from the mirror.
He glanced at Juan, asking, “Ey, you Juan? Come over here homie.”
“Hey, yeah, I’m Juan. MrTNAspecial?”
“Yea, that’s me! What it do?” MrTNAspecial yelled out with a big laugh, continuing,
“Nah doe, my real name’s Donovan, you find the place OK?
“Yeah, it was easy enough. So what you got going on here, Donovan?” Juan asked.
“We’re doing a shoot, homie, I got some hood bitches up here from Lauderhill, and we about to do the thing. I got a bunch of my boys up here too—gangbang, ebony, gangster shit.”
“Oh, OK, awesome,” Juan said, “so can we check out the bins before you all get started?”
“Yeah, yeah, fo sho, fo sho, I got them right in the back over there, come with me”
Donovan led Juan into what was the bedroom of the apartment, where the bins—in reality, they were cardboard boxes—were sitting on top of two card tables. Juan put on his collector’s hat, quickly opening the boxes and scanning the crates to see what sort of magic was in store for him. VHS in official-looking gray cases. Little note cards in transparent plastic slots showed the titles in courier script. Shaniqua in Once Upon a Cock at Hollywood Beach, Ebony Broward Bitchez in the Trap-Fuck-House, Mamma Sharenise’s Key West Adventure.
This was the motherload. Independent, local, and underground with fascinating titles that indicated to the avid collector that whoever had produced these tapes had vision.
“This all you?” Juan asked Donavan.
“Yeah, it’s me. I been pitching all over, but I’m trying to downsize, and so all these demo tapes gotta go. You still interested?”
Juan responded, “Hells yeah, looks like some good stuff. You know, I collect and I’m into underground shit, so to add demos of an up-and-coming guy in Broward, would be real cool.”
“Nice, what you thinking for them?” asked Donovan.
“So I brought two hundred cash. That good for you?”
“It’s a little low to be honest, but you seem like a good dude and I dunno if imma find anybody else who wants them. So, yeah, two hundred works. Deal.”
Juan gave the man two hundred-dollar bills. The smutty local producer told his guys to bring the tapes down to Juan’s car. He could tell Juan was a real porno nut, so he asked him if he wanted to stick around for the shoot, to see how it all worked behind the scenes. Juan accepted without hesitation, foaming at the mouth to be an insider on the set, to be rubbing shoulders with these local industry people.
In the living room, the actors were getting ready for their scenes. There was a heavy-set girl with buck teeth in a bathrobe, spreading baby oil on her legs, and another one, girl-next-door type, sitting on her phone. Two bros were standing in the corner, getting fluffed by a hardworking saint, jerking off both guys at the same time. Juan couldn’t tell if the fluffer was a man or a woman, but it didn’t matter as long as they stayed on their knees and kept doing god’s work.
Donovan asked, “Hey Juan, you want a drink before we get started? I got tequila, rum, a couple mixers?”
“I don’t usually drink, but it’s a special occasion, so what the hell? Yeah, hook it up, make it as fat as you want,” Juan answered.
Juan took his drink, stood against the wall out of frame, and had a few sips. The ladies took off their robes and sat next to each other on the bed. They were wearing neon-green fishnets and micro bikinis made of what amounted to dental floss. Donovan yelled Take 1! and the guys approached. Juan started feeling dizzy, a little drowsy—he looked down at his drink and noticed particles swirling in his glass like Goldschläger. He got very very sleepy…
***
Juan woke up violently in his own bed like he was coming out of a fever dream. He was still wearing his favorite shirt. Car keys and wallet on the bedside table. He looked at his alarm clock—1:00 p.m.—fortunately, Saturday was his day off. He had a splitting headache and his whole body ached. What the hell happened last night? he thought.
He walked out into his living room to check if everything was OK, hoping that those motherfuckers hadn’t wrecked his place or touched his collection. Everything was fine—the VHS and DVDs were on the shelves, the Bridge was unmolested—just as he had left them. He went into his kitchen, fired up the Keurig, and brewed himself a quick cup of coffee. Standing in the kitchen, he saw the bins stacked up by his front door. Donovan’s guys must've dropped him off and left the bins behind—Juan felt reassured.
Then it hit his stomach like Hurricane Andrew. He ran to the bathroom and splat! Violent, explosive diarrhea. When the storm finally passed, he tore a few squares of toilet paper and started to wipe. His whole ass was irritated, sore to the touch, his cheeks—sticky, greasy. What the fuck is this? Juan thought, I’ll never drink again.
Juan cleaned himself up and went straight to his Lenovo. He needed to talk to Donovan to know what had happened. He navigated to Craigslist, but the listing had been taken down, and he couldn’t find MrTNAspecial’s account page. He messaged in their original conversation, but the messages didn’t seem to be going through. They hadn’t exchanged numbers, and his stomach was in no shape to drive back to Himmarshee. He went to Google, searching tna special porn broward. The search got a bunch of hits, mostly links to community porn sites with videos posted by TNA Special Productions. It was all Donovan’s work. He continued scrolling, looking for contact information of any kind, and then he saw it. A sinking feeling hit the pit of his stomach, which he wished was diarrhea but was certain was not.
A video that had been posted that morning on ghettogayXXX.com by TNA Special Productions, a video called “Latino stepdad sloppy gangbang.” Keywords: BBD, DP, gay, ebony, latino, gangbang, money shot, creampie, drunk. The thumbnail showed Juan, Eiffel Towered with a black dick in mouth and two up his ass. “Latino stepdad sloppy gangbang” had already been viewed a half a million times and had gotten a ton of comments.
Juan didn’t flip out. He wasn’t happy about the situation but he didn’t lose his shit. I’ve got the bins at least, he thought, at least they’re leaving comments. He clicked the link, but didn’t watch the video. He noticed it was downloadable and so, he did what he felt was the only thing he could do. He saved it to a subfolder in My Collection. It was the third file he had put in that folder—the folder called Me.
An admirer of authors like Harry Crews and Joe R. Lansdale, Max Palermo is a writer of pulp, grit, and horror with a comedic flair and a penchant for the bizarre. He is one of the main contributors to the Orbit Drive-In Zine, a publication for the schlock cineaste, and has stories forthcoming in Close to the Bone and Schlock! Webzine.
