(Editor's Note: This is the latest installment of a new series in which I take content from the outline of a recent dream and flesh it out with fiction, hence the title. Rest assured, there is nothing but offices and ice machines in the Steamworks basement. For now.)
Every time I approach Durango I’m curious what the mix of familiar/new will look like. Steamworks Brewing Company might be the ultimate microcosm of this phenomenon.
On my last
visit, I came across Jeff Baker, who was both.
He’d moved
to Denver some time ago having hung up the general-manager skates of the East
Second Ave. brewpub. There he was, though, running the place again, and perhaps
he was most proud of the refurbished basement, which had been notorious even
pre-renovation.
I can’t
recall on which day of the week he invited me down for a tour, but the
construction of an entire corridor proved far from the only thing that
surprised me. In fact I couldn’t even process my surprise before the
temperature of new wing widened my eyes.
It was
freezing down there, regardless of the ultramarine, wall-to-wall soundproofing
and the monastral carpeting. Full-bar-equipped break rooms with extensive denim
neon signage and a pair of cobalt gaming chambers joined the list, as did the
feeling that I’d already lost the sliver of an idea of how to find my way back
to the stairs that led back up to the outdoor patio. As quick as I was to feel
astonishment at these new discoveries, shock ran over me as we arrived at the
outermost (or innermost, depending on your current placement) wing of
underground corridors.
Under the
tutelage of Mr. Baker, a healthy portion of the outfit’s staff members and
locals were…well…making pornography.
It’s
unclear how long my face held the jaw-dropped frozen pose, but when I turned to
look at my tour guide, he offered one of his signature grins that seemed to
blend in well with his steel mirror shades, glaucous Polo, and Tufts lei.
Even odder:
our tour of the live action.
Odder
still: zero flinches from the sea of recognizable female talent.
While I
recognized them, not a single one seemed in place.
I mean, I
tried not to stare, but a guy’ll throw a neck out drawing back and
rubbernecking in such a zoo of labial folds and spread sphincters. But we
walked through, me gawking and Baker texting for most of our stroll. Gaffers
gaffed; boom guys boomed. Makeup anterooms reflected predictable lighting and
people exited restrooms. Director-types issued hushed hollers. Videographers
swung their equipment. And everywhere I looked, people fucked. Or masturbated
one another or sucked on genitalia.
You get the
picture.
The first
woman from whom I could not remove my eyes caught my attention because her
extended torso and arms lay in our path. She sat (in a sense) atop her
partner’s lap (who was perched in the shadows atop the corner of a bed or stool
or something I could not see) and her shoulder blades rested upon the floor. I
say “rested” but I imagine they were the recipients of some sort of friction
burn. Regardless, when I went to step around her hands, our eyes met and she
would not stop looking at me for what felt like minutes.
At first I
was embarrassed, having allowed my progress to stop and retrace the final step
for the sole purpose of inspecting her face from a closer distance. And though
I was quick to take note of my error, I could not pull my eyes away. Her face
developed this expression that suggested arousal via eye contact. Like, she
wanted me to watch her be pleasured (assuming that she was enjoying that
particular take) in this odd position. Then it dawned on me: She wanted me to
recognize who she was. Or both. I’m unsure. Either way, it was totally Joanne
Samuel, and I totally jogged a few paces to catch up to Baker so I could slap
his shoulder, only he just looked at me with this Just wait type of expression.
“Don’t
worry about it,” he said.
For a
second I stopped walking. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing in the
Steamworks basement having sex on film. Even weirder: She looked like she
hadn’t aged a day in 35 years; her skin was wrinkle-free and her hair as brown
and frizzy as a shimmying, out-of-water bear.
It was
bizarre.
It wasn’t
as bizarre as walking into the neighboring Persian cubicle to see a naked man’s
ass gyrating before us, but bizarre, nonetheless. I almost took my eyes off the
sight in haste, but just as I looked at Baker, the man leaned into a
skin-on-skin missionary stance and the face of his partner appeared over his
right shoulder. Her aim was to kiss his neck, but just before she placed her
lips upon him, she gazed at me and winked. Or maybe she was winking at Baker. I
have no idea. Either way, I knew in an instant that the face -- in all of its
poignant British features -- belonged to Patsy Kensit. This was all of her that
I could see, but from my angle, she appeared just as slim and athletic as she
had in 1989.
“Dude,” I
said to Baker, running to catch him. As I approached I realized that he’d taken
a phone call; I could only follow in silence, looking back in the hopes of
catching a sneak at one of those perky little tits of hers. After colliding
with my tour guide, I apologized and repeated my one-word sentence.
“What,” he
said.
“That was--
“Goldie
Hawn?” He grinned and removed an azure dugout from his blue-jeans pocket.
“Huh?” I
looked into the mirrors of his sunglasses and he responded with a nod in the
direction over my shoulder.
When I
turned, I was quick to spot the face of the mother of Kate Hudson displayed on
a large, wall-mounted flat screen. In the darkness of the room I could see the
small, blue LED light of a cameraman’s shoulder-mount. He appeared to be
filming her on a bed. She appeared to be being serviced by the hand-held device
of someone behind her.
“What the
fuck?”
“Come on,”
Baker said.
“Who you
got in the next room? Jodie Foster?”
Baker
stopped and placed a forefinger to his lips.
“Nope.” He
whispered. “She’s in there.” Baker gestured with his head to the door behind
him. “Not a fan of random audience members.”
“Bullshit,”
I said.
“She’s not,”
he said. “She gets pissed.”
“No,” I
said. “I mean bullshit that Jodie freaking Foster’s in that men’s room.”
“Have a
look,” he said, tapping an icon on his phone. In a matter of seconds, some
grainy footage appeared, displaying the actress in some 1950s Royal ballroom
gown, the hem of which fell around her waist and touched the floor beneath the
weight bench upon which she laid. A pile of petticoat ruffles hid her lady
parts but her 32-year-old legs shone, extending up to the shoulders of the man
that stood thrusting at her waist.
Baker made
the clip vanish and put his phone away.
“Gets
better,” he said, and continued walking.
Through an
iris-shaded Plexiglas window, he pointed at Sophie Marceau, who danced a strip
tease on a table top. And across the hallway Patricia Kalember assumed an orgy
role.
“Dude,” I said. “What kind of fucked-up
shit is this?”
“What,” he
said. “You don’t like porn anymore?”
“No,” I
said. “Of course I still like porn.”
“So,” he
said. “It’s theme night. We do it all the time.”
“Theme
night?”
“Yeah,” he
said. “Theme night. You wanna get a beer?”
I stood
there for a minute, half shaking my head.
“Yeah,” I
said. “Sure. But…”
“But what?”
Baker eyed me with a you-know-better look. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured
it out.”
“No,” I
said. “I have. At least I think I have.”
“So let’s
hear it,” he said, pushing open a sapphire door beneath an exit sign.
“I dunno,
man. It looks like…” I shook my head and walked past him.
“Like
what?” His voice echoed inside the indigo concrete stairwell. When I reached
the first landing I stopped and turned to face him.
“It looks
like you’re making a movie out of girls who’ve been love interests for Mel
Gibson characters,” I said.
Baker
paused with me on the landing.
“Nice,” he
said, and proceeded toward the next half flight. “It looks like that’s what
we’re doing because that’s precisely what we’re doing.”
“What?” I
watched him jog up, then turned to follow. “Who the fuck’s gonna buy that?”
“Nobody’s
gonna buy it,” he said, his voice amplified.
“But a shit ton of people are gonna watch it.”
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