The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [10]
“Well,” Arden said, “that sounds like just about the greatest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“It wasn’t that great, actually,” said Buster.
“What, now?” Kenny asked.
“I mean, yeah, it sounds great, I guess, but I pretty much sat around while a bunch of hairy, out-of-shape guys with their dicks hanging down waited in a line to fuck this woman who looked pretty bored about the whole thing. I interviewed some of the guys and several of them told me that they had told their wives that they were going golfing or to see a movie that day. One guy bragged about how his girlfriend had threatened to break up with him if he went through with it and, as he told me this, he got really sad and said, ‘And she was a pretty awesome girl.’ After every time a guy pulled out of Hester, she would look over at some guy who was sitting at a desk with three different clocks and tons of permission forms and an adding machine, and she would ask how many guys were left to fuck.”
Arden said, “That sounds like just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“And,” Buster continued, finding that he could not stop talking about it now that he had started, “there was this table with food laid out for all the people on set and these naked guys would be standing over the table, constructing these sad little sandwiches and eating handfuls of M&Ms.”
“Jesus Christ,” said David, shaking his head.
“And then you had to write about it, which I bet sucked,” Joseph said.
“Yeah,” Buster said, pleased that Joseph understood the strangeness of writing about things you despise, “and so I wrote this bizarre article about how Hester Bangs wasn’t an actress, wasn’t even a porn star, that she was more like a professional athlete. She was like a marathoner, and that, as disturbing as it was to witness, I had so much admiration for her ability to do it.”
Kenny nodded in agreement. “That sounds like a good article.”
“Well,” Buster finished, “three weeks after it comes out, some other porn star breaks the record by more than two hundred guys.”
Everyone in the car laughed so loudly that they almost didn’t hear the policeman tapping on the window.
As soon as he saw the cop, Buster had the overwhelming feeling that he needed to hide his contraband, the small detail being that he had nothing illegal on his person. Kenny rolled down the window and the officer ducked his head inside the car. “Parked on the side of the road, boys,” he said, “not a smart idea.”
“Okay, sir,” Kenny said, “we’re just about to get moving.”
The officer stared at Buster in the backseat, his eyes flickering with the disorientation of not knowing someone in his town.
“Friend of yours?” he asked, pointing at Buster.
“Yeah,” said Joseph.
“Army?” asked the cop.
“Special Forces,” said Arden, placing a hushing finger to his lips.
“Huh,” said the cop, “real Black Ops shit?”
Despite a lifetime spent lying without effort, Buster could only manage a weak nod in agreement.
“Okay, move it out, then,” the cop said, flicking his wrist and pointing toward the horizon.
“Special Forces,” Buster whispered to himself, everyone giddy with anticipation.
At the liquor store, Buster, emboldened by the feeling that he had made friends for the first time in years, used almost the absolute last of the cash in his wallet to buy all the alcohol the soldiers wanted. He felt warm and authentic inside his new clothes and thought, handing over all he owned to the liquor-store clerk, that he could live here forever.
Now it was Buster’s turn. He leaned over a massive air cannon mounted on a tripod, which the soldiers referred to as Air Force One. Instead of potatoes, the gun used two-liter soda bottles as ammunition. “See, we don’t like to call them spud guns,” said David, who seemed, as the night progressed, to become more tightly wound. “Some shoot ping-pong balls and some shoot soda bottles and some shoot tennis balls that you fill with pennies. The best term would be pneumatic or combustion artillery.” Joseph shook his head. “I call them spud guns,” he said. Arden said, “I only ever have called them spud