Hella Nation - Evan Wright [122]
Both Richman and Jasmin were nervous. They had never performed the stunt before. Richman explained to me that the danger was that the plastic plug could superheat, melt down and possibly explode—though he assured me he had performed several practice runs in the garage of his apartment building without incident.
The room hushed as Richman delicately inserted the device and tested the control valve on his butane can. The sound of hissing gas filled the room.
I sat near the stage, closest to Jasmin. Kneeling on all fours, she turned to me. She was crying. “I’m scared,” she said. “Will somebody hold my hand?” She slid her hand across the stage and waved her fingers.
This was our most intimate moment. Jasmin’s vulnerability and fear had shown through her mask of supreme confidence.
I averted my eyes and fumbled with my notes. I had developed such an overwhelming crush on Jasmin St. Claire that I could not face her. I feared if our eyes met in this charged moment, my feelings would be evident to everyone in the room. Finally, a tech girl walked up and took Jasmin’s hand.
My shirking the opportunity to offer emotional reassurance proved to be our last magical moment together. Jasmin ceased her morning phone calls and her lunchtime visits to the office. Things were never the same.
Her stunt came off successfully, beyond expectation. She achieved six-foot flames. Photos appeared in adult magazines around the world of Jasmin shooting fire from her ass as men held skewers and roasted marshmallows. Two weeks later, however, a mysterious blaze destroyed Randall “Master Magician” Richman’s apartment complex.
EACH WEEK, dozens of adult videos arrived at my office on the third floor of the Flynt building. Occasionally, other products arrived—dildos, butt plugs, artificial vaginas, bondage hardware—that their manufacturers hoped Hustler would review and promote. One day, a representative from a company arrived to deliver in person what she claimed was a revolutionary product: a rubberized female torso with a removable vaginal insert made of a patented substance that she guaranteed “feels like the real thing.” The torso came with its own carrying case, lubricants and a cleaning brush for the vaginal cavity.
The rubber coating of the torso approximated the color of skin about as well as a Band-Aid. The vaginal insert did feel remarkably like human flesh, but touching it brought to mind feeling up a cadaver.
I never reviewed it. I gave it some thought, because someone had obviously gone to a lot of expense to develop and manufacture the product. I tried to see in it what they must have seen. But I couldn’t get around the fact that to use the product as it was intended would entail copulating with something that resembled an armless, legless, headless body. It was a nightmarish marish prospect. Thankfully, my editor never asked me to write a review.
I placed the torso on top of my bookshelf, where it remained for about a year. During that time, my thoughts began to turn. What if this torso were the last woman on Earth? What if I were trapped on a desert island with it? Would I fill it with memories of women I’ve longed for and loved? Would I eventually develop a sexual relationship with it? Would I pour out my heart to her and feel that she understood me?
As I read more of the letters to Barely Legal models from men who led desert-island existences of their own, I concluded that under the right circumstances I could probably love the torso. Perhaps she could even become a better alternative to the real thing. Just as methadone mimics heroin without any of its intoxicating side effects, a pornographic substitute might simulate intimacy without any of its dangerous consequences, emotional pain, fear of loss.
GREG DARK’S PERSONA WAS BASED on several essential