Bug Jack Barron

3

Jack Barron emerged from the closed environment of the studio—with its camera, set, vidphones, promptboard, foot-buttons, monitor, all compressed into a twenty by fifteen by eight foot pocket universe—like a man suddenly brought down from a drunk or a high or an adrenalin-stress situation into a different, and, for the moment of adjustment, not quite as vivid reality.

Barron knew this; knew it so well that he had constructed a fantasy-image to concretize the essentially nonverbal Wednesday night psychedelic moment into the normal stream of memory: The inside of the studio was actually the inside of a hundred million television sets. There was a creature bearing his name that lived in there (seeing out through monitor eyes, hearing with vidphone ears, monitoring its internal condition through promptboard kinesthetic senses, shifting image-gears with the foot-buttons, ordering, threatening, granting grace all through the circuitry and satellites of that great gestalt of electronic integration, the network, into which he was wired, the masterswitch in the circuit) for one hour a week, a creature indeed, designed and built by him like a Frankenstein android, a creature of his will but only a segment of his total personality.

Emerging from the studio was a birth and a death: kick-’em-in-the-ass, plugged-in-image-of-power, phosphor-dot Jack Barron died then, cut off from his electronic senses and circuitries of power; and soft-flesh, bellyhunger, woman-hunger, scratch-itch Jack Barron, the kid, the Boy Desperado, Jack-and-Sara (cool it!) Jack was born again.

Barron left the studio, walked up the corridor, opened a door, and entered the monkey block directly behind the control booth. He nodded to the boys who were stretching their muscles and swapping horror stories behind the three tiers of vidphone-packed decks, and was about to open the control booth door when Vince Gelardi stepped through it himself.

“Right in the old groove tonight, baby,” Gelardi said. They loved it in Peoria and other traditional show biz flak.”

“In the old groove?” Barron snapped with put-on uptightness, knowing it had gone over like gangbusters while avoiding the kamikaze plunge off the cliff. “In the old groove? You crazy guinea, you almost got me knocked off the air, is all! If I weren’t brilliant twinkletoes boy wonder Jack Barron, you and me and this whole silly monkey block would be out pounding the pavement tomorrow.”

“I was under the impression I was working Bug Jack Barron, the show with something to offend everyone, not old Parish Priest reruns,” Gelardi drawled. “We’re supposed to be like controversial, aren’t we?”

“You said the word, Vince, and the word is like controversial,” Barron said, now at least half-serious, he realized. “We pick on cripples, heartless bullies with feet of clay, if we feel real fancy we take on some big-mouthed dum-dum like Shabazz or Withers. We do not stick flaming swords into the tender hides of tigers with big FCC network-sponsor teeth like Bennie Howards. We tweak the tigers’ tails every once in a while to collect merit badges, but we don’t tie their tails around our waists and beat said tigers with bull-whips.”

“Aw, horseshit. I knew how you’d play it, knew how it’d come out, and you know I knew,” Gelardi said goodnaturedly. “Which is to say, with Bennie Howards getting no worse than a mild ulcer twinge, and that’s why I fed you Johnson. I knew you’d make points, but not belly-wound points. You’re my idol, Jack, you know that.”

Barron laughed. “And I suppose you knew that Teddy Hennering had suddenly contracted brain-rot, I suppose?” he said, immensely pleased with his fancy footwork in retrospect.

Gelardi shrugged. “So even the great Vince Gelardi’s not perfect,” he said. “Seemed more like an attack of conscience, though, to me.”

“There’s a difference?” Barron asked archly. “If there is, it doesn’t matter, ’cause the results are always the same. And speaking of results, did Howards’ secretary leave her number with you?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Gelardi replied, and Barron saw (aw, well!) that he meant it.

“Vince, m’boy,” he said, W.C. Fieldswise, “an esteemed acquaintance of mine, upon reading in a learned journal that one out of fifty women propositioned cold on street corners was willing, tested this theory on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. He received a severe battering with umbrellas, purses, and other painful rigid objects for his trouble. However, m’boy, he also got laid.”

Sycophant laughter drifted to Barron’s ears from the boys in the monkey block. “What?” he huffed, still in the Fields bag. “I hear them mocking my words of wisdom? For shame, for shame. No doubt ’twas louts such as those who forced Socrates to quaff the hemlock.”

“I see, as per your usual Wednesday night bag, you’re feeling randy,” Gelardi said.

“Randy?” Barron replied, unable-unwilling to shuck the Fields schtick. “Who is the wench, and is she worth feeling?” Dropping Fields, Barron said, “And so saying, he exits stage left and is off into the night.” He nodded to Gelardi, bowed to the boys in the monkey block, and was—off into the night.

“You really are Jack Barron,” she said, cool honey-blonde Upper-East-Side-27ish executive secretary with hippy Lower-East-Side-past hard-edged style. “I recognized your utter arrogance immediately, Mr Barron.”

“Call me Jack,” he said, flashing her a great traveling-salesman false smile. “All my enemies do.” He saw her grimace, badpunwise, on cue, saw uplift hemibra holding boobs not quite all that good, espied little hairs peeping out from shiny black kini (this one wears underwear) telltale phony-blonde black hairs, felt hard hungry legs, and knew instantly that living-color Jack Barron had it made.

He leaned on one elbow on the bartop, offered her his pack of Acapulco Golds, clocked the tiny little-girl conspiratorial grin as she took one and quickly lighted it with her own lighter—meaning she was pothead from years past way back prohibition days, when shit had spice of danger from manila-envelope furtive earnest small-time neighborhood dealer. Why, he wondered, do all old-time heads prefer Acapulco (my sponsor) Golds?

“I’ll bet you have all kinds of enemies… Jack,” (two points), she said, inhaling the offering, breathing out sweet smoke sweet breath off the bartop teasing his nostrils. “Powerful enemies, important enemies… like Benedict Howards.”

“Ah,” he said, “gotcha! You caught the show tonight. (Sharp chick, but not that sharp.) Don’t tell me, you’re an old and loyal fan of mine.”

Tiny flicker of annoyance told him (would never admit it) that she was, as she said, taking another drag, “I’m no fan of yours. I just dig…”

“The smell of blood?” he suggested. She favored him with a wee bit feral smile as the grass began to hit, began to loosen thighs, loosen centers of hunger reality hunger makes it hunger grab a piece of the action hunger ersatz power hunger fuck me into mystic circle of power where it’s all at hunger make me real with your living-color prick hunger.

“Yeah, we all dig the smell of blood,” Barron said, glancing around the carefully musk-dusky room, clean Upper East Side shuck barroom, filled with tightly casual aging young we made it we’re only one step from the top next thing to being real crowd, chicks no longer girls and never to be women. “I like a chick with the balls to admit it. (Dig verbal possession of male organs, don’t you, baby?) As you may’ve noticed, I’m a wee bit savage myself.” He cocked his head, caught chandelier lights off slick bartop in the hollows of his eyes, opened his mouth showing glimpse of lazy tongue behind teeth—conscious Bug Jack Barron image-trick.

Caught by his eyes, her eyes glistening flashed moment of girl-caught-looking embarrassment, big brown eyes pools of open hole hunger, she shrugged a can’t-fool-this-cat shrug, her shoulders slumped, elbows fell on to the bartop, hands came up to cup her face, eyes still locked on his, she smiled pink-tongue wet-lips smile.

“I think you’re probably a rotten swine,” she said softly. “You like to play with people’s heads, and you’re playing with mine, and I’d go take a walk if you weren’t so damned good at it.”

Knowing now he had her definitely made, Jack Barron said, “That’s the way I keep food on my table. Want me to split? Or would you rather I told you I loved your mind? Or would you rather let me play with your… head? It’s not all that bad, if you lean back and enjoy it.”

“I don’t like you at all, Jack Barron,” she said. But as she said it, he felt her fingernails through his pants on his thigh.

“But you’re pretty sure you’re gonna like what I’m gonna do to you, eh?”

“I’m queer for the smell of blood, just like you said,” she answered (feral, lost little-girl smile sending a pang through him, déjà vu pang déjà vu smile déjà vu honey-haired girl, hip-brittle carapace over sweet sigh loser softness), “even if it is my own. A man like you can smell that on a girl, can’t he? Okay, monster, lead me to the slaughter.”

Easy as that, thought Jack Barron. Better be if you want a piece of the action, baby—dozen others in here hungry as you, dozen other bars, dozen other honey-haired… (Cool it!).

“Let’s split for you-know-where,” he said, taking her dry, cool hand. “I’ll give you something to tell your grandchildren about.”

Picking instant pussy up off the rack was a sometime thing with Jack Barron, specifically a Wednesday night after the show ritual and Claude, the ordinarily wise-ass doorman, didn’t even crack a small behind-the-chick’s-back smile as he ushered the honey-blonde through the door, across the lobby, and into the penthouse elevator and that bugged Jack Barron.

Fucker Claude’s used to this, not even an in-joke between us anymore, Barron thought as the elevator swept them silently upward. Makes me feel like some goddamned fetishist. How long’s this Wednesday night thing been going on, how many Wednesday night Saras…? (Cool it—too late to cool it, man, who you shucking?)

As the elevator stopped, Barron looked at the nameless girl clutching his hand, saw honey-blonde-dyed hair big brown eyes slightly-prosthetic made-for-balling body, saw the latest in interminable line of honey-blonde, big-eyed not-Saras, felt pattern enmeshing him like fate, like creature plugged into Kismet-relay circuitry, felt stronger-than-lust weaker-than-love thing for the nameless girl, hungry for living-color image-prick of world-famous Jack Barron. Fair deal, he thought, value given for value received, like Howards’ Freezer Contract: ball me with your image, baby, and I’ll ball you with mine.

The elevator door opened and Barron led the girl out into his private entrance foyer with its bearskin carpeting, kinesthop mural (great humming retina-reversing, image-after-image calculated instability, yellow-on-blue spirals) facing the elevator, and shepherded her silently forward into the narrow dark hall wombtunnel between the closed doors to the office and kitchen and into the inevitable living room stupefaction.

On the twenty-third floor of a New York apartment house in the East Sixties, Jack Barron lived in Southern California. The hall opened onto a narrow breakfast-bar deck that overlooked a vast red-carpeted sunken living room, with the entire far wall great glass sliding doors that opened out on to a palmettoed, rubberplant-festooned patio. Backdrop was the East River lights haze, ever-dusk of Brooklyn. The ceiling of the penthouse living room was an enormous, clear plexiglass, faceted geodesic-dome-skylight. Living room furnishings: an entire wall of built-in electronic bric-a-brac—TV screens, videotape-recorder, tape-recorder, AM-FM-stereo rig, color organ complex, blipper, vidphones, yards of interlocking control consoles—couches in orange, rust, blue upholstery, black-leather hassocks, redwood benches with half a dozen assorted matching tables, camel saddles, six mounds of varicolored pillows, oriental style, all arranged around a ten-foot square sunken open-flame tiled firepit (sidedraft automatic gas type) casting tall, flickering, orange-red shadows from the already-kindled-by-switch-in-foyer ersatz bonfire.

Barron switched on a remote-control console by the bar (remote-control switches to all gizmos scattered throughout the apartment) and Barron-edited taped music-collage droned electricity into the air and the color organ scintillated the skylight facets with ever-shifting spectrum-flashes modulated to the music.

The honey-blonde gasped, eyes turned big (Berkeley eyes for hipstyle-campus hero Baby Bolshevik crusader adore worship eyes always those eyes before she blew him) with wonder on him, surprise-synapses whited out, and said dumbly, “Mr Barron…”

Barron blinked away déjà vu tenderness-images, hardened, picked up color organ flickers, firepit warmth, in hair, in half-opened mouth, eye-hollows, said, measuredly sardonic, “And you haven’t seen the bedroom yet.”

“I think I’d like to,” she said with hard-little-girl sweetness. “I have the feeling it’s going to be quite an experience.”

Barron laughed, found himself suddenly with this girl, right here right now, whatever her name was, smell of her stronger than lingering image-odor of Sara. Just a good simple fuck, he thought as he led her down the redwood stairs, across the carpet to the bedroom door. Make it with her, not with Sara.

Feeling like a horny, healthy, mindless phallic animal, he opened the door and they stepped inside to outside.

A balmy late New York May night, and the far wall of the bedroom was open, ceiling to floor, side to side, to the open-air rubber trees of the patio against the city-twilight dusky blackness ceiling was a single continuous clear-glass skylight-bubble starless city-sky blackness wall-to-wall carpet was sensuous green plastigrass undulating in the breeze off the patio big circular bed elevated on stage center illuminated in gilded light projected from the semicircular living-ivy-covered, weathered-wood headboard (built-in bookshelves, control console) that half encircled it. Taped distant surf-roar, quiet insect-sounds tropical night sounds filled the room, replacing the music as Barron adjusted a wall console.

“It’s… why, it’s…” the girl stammered, looking at him with new eyes no longer sure eyes looking down into the depths she knew (he knew she knew) she could never fathom, knowing flash-fashion that this (not luck, not accident, not trick) was why she was a reality-hunger executive secretary and he was Jack Barron.

Barron smiled a warm, proud, little-boy Berkeley smile, took both her hands in his, paused in ye olde bedroom routine to savor a moment of genuine non-seduction-oriented pride in the way the bedroom softened her eyes, softened his image, her image, made them two simple human beings holding hands before a bed on a warm spring night. The living room was a purposeful tour de force extension of living-color Jack Barron, but the bedroom was Jack, was Berkeley Jack-and-Sara pad up on the hill was little Los Angeles house in the Canyon warm summer night plant-scent balling was beachhouse in Acapulco Sara smelling from surf-body-sweat was outdoors-indoors-outdoors wistful double (New York-California-New York) expatriate image happy science-fiction California of the mind.

She broke the moment, fell forward against him, flung arms around his neck; he could see her mouth open tongue already hungrily extended in the instant before her lips touched his mouth—open, waiting, but sardonically compliant role-reversal.

Her tongue live desperation live wanting live make-me-real live in his mouth, she pressed her body undulating from shoulders down breast first belly finally hard angular pelvis totally against him pressed hard body hard tongue hard mouth hard his jaws aching stretching against him on all points of him—her interface pathetic frantic attempt to breach interface merge her vague body-image-self with the hard-edged living-color Coast-to-Coast electric reality of Jack Barron.

Through his open eyes light-years removed, he saw her tightly shut, felt yawning sucking energy-reality-life vacuum of her leaching hungry against him, mouth inhaling his magic-breath reality-breath in total desire to be filled, engulfed, permeated, transfigured (in his skin body image, inside looking out, to share electric-circuit-satellite network, public-property hyper-existence) by him.

Repulsion-attraction oscillating, he pressed against her, began to move his tongue drifting her back to the bed, felt her go soft-sigh totally yielding live-limp as she felt him at last as an active principal—softwomanflesh feast wanting only to be devoured, digested, incorporated in his flesh-image-power.

Slipping off his sportjac, he eased she drew him down on the bed nailed fingers clawing away his shirt digging into bare back flesh as he unzipped she slid out snakewise from discarded-skin-sheath-dress fumbling his pants as he pulled-kicked them away with his loafers on to the plastigrass floor reached down lefthanded flipped off socks, unhooked uplift hemibra glided down red silk kini (curled hairs dyed-blonde-black, as predicted) and they were naked together, breeze moving over skin.

Suddenly a strange moment of pause (full beat) as bedroom ripping clothes passion image hungers shifted by flesh-to-flesh in virgin breeze to new style of perception-reality: naked bodies elemental reality. Barron looked down, eyes slow, hands soft and still, saw nipples-breasts-belly-navel-crotch simple right-here-right-now woman’s body, warm, soft, well-turned woman-body, is all. The girl held her breath, smiled simple human smile up at him, eyes smoldering pure ball-me eyes simple you-Tarzan-me-Jane anygirl smile. He smiled back at her. Happy, sweet, shift-gears moment’s pause before…

She clamped legs-vice around him moved under him sucked him welcome in her eyes closed little grunts fingernails in buttocks he moaned moved over her into around with hands chest-muscles mouth organ, his consciousness in skin in hands in muscles in slowly-thrusting organ, tactile kinesthetic rhythmic he-she pleasure interface rippling itself wildly, independent of either of them.

He closed his eyes opened himself, felt pleasure-waves crescendoing through organs skin thighs of perception muscles in cresting rhythm-wave rising rising rising felt her riding half-beat ahead of him—me-you me-you—with each other meshing liquid-smoothly-functioning pleasure-pump organic mechanism to one beat from his own pain-pleasure-her-him synapse-white-out reversal spasm and she—

Came. Moaned screamed dug nails “Jack, Jack, Jack” cries mouth enveloped his ear tongue inside flicked him over the edge into timeless moment rushing orgasm: pleasure whiting out into reversal unbearable delicious déjà vu harmonic spasm, touch-see-hear-remember ecstasy images -

Tongue in ear “Jack, Jack, Jack” cries of Berkeley LA California houses Aeapulco beach her hair lips body sea-salty wet, moving Sara-tongue of Jack-and-Sara ears bodies, shared breath sighs smells sweats coming face to face (he opened eyes saw big blonde brown eyes ecstasy grimace) together, coming together, coming coming coming… together.

“Sara, Sara, Sara,” he cried, spending himself spending seed pleasure-images flashing through him leaving him moment of reflex-warm tenderness-emptiness; lips tender, he moved toward her mouth, stopped all at once, was back New York Wednesday night back, revulsion-remorse, and the wind blowing in from the patio turned cool, real cool cool.

“The name is Elaine,” said the blonde from continental long-distance operator hip-hard carapace 27ish executive secretary pick-up distance.

“No shit?” said Jack Barren.