"Where's Joey?" Ross asked.
Chandler, busy shuffling a deck of cards, did not look up as he answered. "Same place he's been since you asked seven minutes ago."
"Still?"
"Uh – I don't know, Ross. Do you think he could've made a major engineering breakthrough and built himself a Star Trek transporter just so he could leave his room without us knowing about it?"
Slumping back in his chair Ross rolled his eyes. "You know, those transporters would never work in real life."
Chandler dealt the two of them seven cards. With that done, he flipped over the top card. "Blue or seven."
"I'm serious. They're impossible."
"Great. Can you go, or do you need to draw?"
"Don't you want to know why they can't work."
"If my curiosity were a cat, it would be dead."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means play your damned card, Ross!"
Standing from the kitchen table, Ross fanned his seven cards out and used his "Reverse" card to scratch his nose. "Transporters disassemble a person down to the atom and then reconstruct you at your destination, right?"
"Why do I get the feeling you don't want to play UNO right now?" Chandler groaned.
"But if you did that to a person, they would die. So how can putting a person back together make you yourself again? I mean, if I broke a vase and then glued all the pieces back in place, you wouldn't see it as a whole vase, would you? Something's been lost in the process."
"Ross, if you don't make a move in the next five seconds, I'm pressing 'ATTACK' until you do."
"And then there's the philosophical questions that come next. Even if you could make the reassembled person capable of living, would it still really be the person you beamed down? Is allowing yourself to be killed and then brought back to life for the sake of expediency morally justifiable?"
By the time Ross finished positing his theory, the entire UNO deck lay in a heap at his place where the UNO Attack machine had dispensed them.
"So what you're saying is Joey probably didn't invent a transporter."
"Exactly!" Ross replied.
"Well I'm so glad you cleared that up." Chandler turned in his second to last card. "UNO!"
"Hey, how come you always win?" Ross asked.
"I don't know. Shall I consult my Magic 8-Ball?"
Ross threw down his cards on the table. "Forget it. I have to go get ready for a date with Emily."
Chandler watched his friend leave the apartment, slamming the door behind him. "Hey! Thanks for helping with clean-up!"
Minutes after Ross's departure, Joey peeked out of his room. He plopped down in front of the tv on his recliner and searched for the remote.
"Looking for this?" Chandler stood off to the side, holding the remote just out of reach.
"Hey! No fair."
"What happened? I haven't seen you since you came back from your shoot."
Joey crossed his arms and huffed. "I don't want to talk about it."
"That bad?" Chandler relented, handing over the remote. "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you."
"Where'd you get that idea?" Joey asked.
"My mistake. Your moping around should have been all the evidence I needed to know for a fact that you're having the time of your life as a porn star."
Joey growled in the back of his throat.
"What happened, man?"
"You really want to know?"
Chandler bit back another sarcastic comment, knowing it would discourage Joey from sharing his woes. "Yes!"
"Alright. Fine. It went a little something like this…"
Joey followed Didi Peru to a room where five buff men sat around a table and busied themselves with a game of Farkle. One of the guys glanced up at the newcomers and flashed a sultry grin at Joey.
"Okay sweetcakes. Since you're new here, we want to make you as comfortable as possible. We don't usually do this, but I'm going to let you choose your scene partner." Didi took out a cigarette and lit it. As the porn director puffed on the smoke, it made Joey think of Didi as a masculine version of Estelle.
Tearing away his thoughts from the lecherous director, Joey glanced up and down the table. The assembled men represented a variety of America's backstories. It took him a few minutes of stunned silence before Didi noticed Joey had stumbled into a dilemma.
"What's the problem?" Didi asked.
"How am I supposed to choose?"
"I don't know. Which one gets your motor running the hottest?"
Joey shrugged. All five of the men were attractive.
"Wait a minute!" Chandler interrupted. "You're telling me your problem was you couldn't decide which guy you wanted to bang?"
"What? No!"
"Well, that's what it sounds like. Good gracious. I kinda wish I'd tried for this job now."
Joey narrowed his eyes and Chandler. "Do you want to hear what happened or not?"
"Could I see them turn around and take off their underwear?" Joey requested.
"Ah! An ass man. Got it!" Didi clapped hands. "You heard the man. Strip!"
The five models did as commanded, though a few of them whined about how they never got an opportunity to choose their partners. Joey inspected each posterior. He reached out and touched them, judging the firmness with brief squeezes to each buttock. Didi allowed him time to feel up each man a few times. The third man in line moaned at Joey's touch. It sent a jolt through to Joey's cock.
"This one," Joey announced.
"Ah, Paulo. Nice choice." Didi said, caressing the back of Joey's neck with fingers that had two-inch press-on nails.
Paulo stood upright and put on his pants once more. Joey realized this had been the man who had smiled at him earlier. The model's dark, tanned skin and black hair went well with his thick, kissable lips. From his muscular body, Paulo must have been an active man who might still be in college.
"What do you think of Joey, dear?" Didi asked.
"Oh, he's cute alright." Paulo had a voice that reminded Joey more of a theater nerd than a football player. "What's his dick like?"
"Darling, he puts Ken Ryker to shame." Didi took a long drag from the cigarette and blew the smoke toward Joey's face.
"Who's—" Joey had a coughing fit. "Who's Ken – who's Ken Ryker?"
Joey paused to drink from a glass of water.
"Well…" Chandler said.
"Hmm?"
"Who's Ken Ryker?"
"No idea. They just laughed like hyenas for a few minutes."
"Then why didn't you just skip over that part?"
Joey shrugged and drank more from his glass.
The script in Joey's hands was thinner than any he had ever held before. Even the lines for the forty-second Cheez-It commercial he had appeared in had taken up more room. The characters each had two lines to say, then the words in parentheses summarized the rest of the film: "They fuck." Joey wondered how Chandler would have reacted to the half-sheet of paper. He would probably say something witty like, "They don't pay the writers enough for gold like this."
"Hey, Didi, I have a few questions about my character."
Didi waddled over to Joey. The director's high heels appeared to be a tight squeeze based on the grimacing smile. "Yes, sugar. What can I do for you?"
"Well, I'm trying to understand my lines here. I start by saying, 'I'm sorry about your boyfriend.' He says, 'I can't imagine what I'll do now.' I say, 'Maybe I can ease your suffering with my big boner.' He says, 'Wow, that's so big.' Then we're supposed to fuck."
"That's right, dear. Was there a question in there somewhere?"
Joey glanced at Didi with eyebrows furrowed. "It's just, this guy's boyfriend has been eaten by a shark. What kind of cop would offer to have sex with someone in mourning?"
"A horny one." Didi's reply did not miss a beat.
"So that clarifies my motivation, I guess. But what about the other guy? Did he just forget about losing someone he loves?"
"Well, what would you suggest? My husband spent all week writing this."
Joey held himself back from scoffing at the shoddy work. "Maybe Paulo and I can workshop something. We'll try inhabiting our characters, and that could lead us to the right words to say."
"Honey, we're filming a porno. People fast forward through the talking so they can get to the good stuff. Why complicate this?"
"Didi, I'm an actor who takes pride in his work. That's something I can't turn off." Joey tried not to think of his rabbit ears or how ridiculous they had made him look. "I want to make something that people will love. If we film these lines, people will fast forward. But what if we try for something bold? What if our story compels our audience to care why Paulo and I are in the throes of passion?"
Didi shrugged. "I guess it's worth a try. Just remember, we need to get to a cum shot at some point."
"Now I get it." Chandler interrupted once more. "You wanted to write your own lines again, Dr. Ramoray. Remember what happened last time you bragged about that?"
Joey backhanded Chandler in the chest. "Dude! Could you fucking not? Every time you talk over me, you break up the sequence of the story."
Chandler massaged his struck nipple. "Sorry."
"No, that isn't the problem. It turns out, Paulo was pretty good at improvisation. We ended up with something way better than that trashy script."
Now wearing a police costume, Joey stood on a set designed to look like a cheap facsimile of Chief Brody's station from the movie. Thanks to the studio's low budget, there were no props set out on the desk. Not even a framed family picture. Hollywood filmmakers could afford to focus on those kinds of details, but Cocky Jock Studios needed to spend all their money on models and cameras.
Paulo sat in a chair by the desk, his head down and eyes gazing at the floor. Joey entered through the set door holding two mugs of coffee. He set one mug in front of Paulo and took a sip from his own. Pretending the brew did not taste like it had motor oil mixed in, Joey put a hand on Paulo's shoulder.
"I'm sorry about your boyfriend," Joey recited. Of the written lines, that had been the one authentic bit he could work with.
Paulo did not look up. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Yeah. Josh is – was a good guy. I don't know what I'll do without him."
"What were you and Josh doing in Amity? You grow up here?"
Paulo shook his head and met Joey's eyes for the first time in the scene. "No. Josh thought a weekend at the beach would be the perfect vacation for us. A time to catch some sun. Enjoy the salty air. Maybe make love on the sandy shore."
Joey frowned to show empathy. He dragged a chair over to sit beside Paulo. "Well, I'm afraid no one is going to be doing that any time soon. I'll be closing the beaches after this."
Paulo nodded before picking up his mug of coffee. The bitterness made him spit the coffee all over Joey's costume. Joey leapt out of his seat, gasping from the unexpected heat. He began taking off the uniform shirt, revealing his bare flesh underneath. The spilt coffee had soaked through to the cotton fabric.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Paulo jumped up and tore off his own shirt, offering to use it as a drying rag.
"No need for that," Joey objected, but the boy had already begun dabbing at his chest to soak up the coffee.
Glancing down, Joey examined Paulo's bared chest as if for the first time. The two men's hands touched for the briefest of moments, but Joey recoiled as if static electricity had shocked him. His eyes focused on Paulo's lips. In a flash, he scooped the kid up into his arms and pressed kisses onto him. Paulo pushed back on Joey.
"What are you doing?"
Joey licked his lips, dying to have them on Paulo again. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."
Moments later, Paulo leaned forward and smooched Joey. The younger man backed away for a moment, studying Joey's bewilderment. "I think that's what I need right now. To stop thinking and fuck the pain away."
Joey took those words as an invitation to make out with Paulo, wrapping up his scene partner in a tight embrace. Their tongues warred with each other as if wrestling for dominance. Joey could feel his dick standing on end, hard as a tree branch.
"AND CUT!" Didi Peru shouted.
Joey sat back, grinning at the thought of that moment. He let out a sigh, remembering the taste of pineapple that had coated Paulo's lips.
"And then…" Chandler asked.
"And then I went home."
"What?"
Joey took a sip of his water. "I came home. They stopped shooting for the day."
Brows knitting in consternation, Chandler gaped. "But this all sounds like a great day! Why are you so upset?"
"Because I didn't get to spend the time with you."
Chandler's eyes bugged out.
"Don't get me wrong, Chandler. Paulo was hot. I'm not exactly dreading tomorrow when we actually film the sex. But every time I kissed the guy, I was thinking of you."