Pornstar

Pornstar 3: Stake

"Hello, Nancy!"

Mrs Price's voice rang surprised out of the shadows. We walked in to meet her. When our eyes had adjusted I could see she was looking at us with a very alert, wary gaze. We exchanged greetings politely, perhaps even a little formally. Mrs Price asked how I was, and when that sort of nicety was out of the way, asked Nancy whether she was joining the planning team. Nancy said she hadn't yet been invited properly, and wasn't sure whether she would anyway because there were some issues which she still had to resolve. Carefully no-one mentioned sex or sex scenes. Mrs Price asked whether I thought the barn would do for the prison scenes.

I looked around; there were a couple of big, solid old wooden loose boxes at the end, with board doors and boarded sides a good five feet tall. At some stage someone had bored a two inch hole through the partition to run a water pipe for a trough through it, and at some later point someone had taken the trough and the pipe away. I ran my finger round the edge of the hole...

"Hey," said Nancy, brightly, "it's even got a hole in the right place!"

Mrs Price looked at Nancy. Nancy looked at Mrs Price. Nancy put a hand up to her mouth in a classic 'oops' expression, and we all laughed nervously. At that point Paul and Lill walked in. Each of them in turn did a visible double take when they recognised Nancy, but they greeted her politely. Mrs Price showed them the looseboxes. She was still visibly uptight.

Finally Paul said "OK, shall we get started?"

"Hang on just a minute. Nancy, you know what we're here to talk about. Are you in or are you out?"

"You mean about the..."

"No, don't tell me about it. Just, yes or no, do you know and are you in?"

"Well..."

"No," said Mrs Price. "It's not well. My career is on the line here. I need you to say yes or no."

Nancy looked at me. I looked back blank.

"Look," said Nancy, "can Kyle and I have a couple of minutes quiet just to sort a couple of things?"

We went outside. Nancy turned on me. "Did last night make any difference?"

"Yes."

"So is it still OK with you if Paul screws me?"

I looked at her. I looked at the barn. I thought of the film and what I thought I could do with it. I thought about losing Nancy when we'd just started. Most of all I tried desperately not to cry again.

"It's not OK, is it?"

I shook my head.

"Are you going to say I can't, then?"

I looked at her. I thought about last night. I though about losing her.

"Hey, something I need to know..." I said.

"OK?"

"Are we an item?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, was last night just something that happened, or was it the start of something big?"

"That's kind of what I'm asking you."

"Do you want it to be?"

"Do you?"

I nodded, emphatically. "More than anything else."

"More than this film?"

"Way, way more than this film..."

"Then you want me to say no?"

"Hey," I said. I saw where we were getting to. "Hey, no, no. You're free. That's what you said to me yesterday. You're free. You say what you want to say. I'm not saying for you."

And then she had her my arms round me again and kissing me and saying I was brilliant, did I know that? And there was a moment or two when not much happened which advances this story any.

"Kyle," she said, still holding on to me, "do you want to do this film?"

"Do you mind?"

"It doesn't matter whether I mind, do you want to?"

"Yeah. Yes, I do, but not if it..."

"Hey, I don't know whether it will or won't. I don't know what will happen. This kind of scares me. But I think you should do this, for yourself. I think you have to make those storyboards come to life."

We went back in, and Mrs Price asked Nancy again, well?

"OK, well, it is 'well', whether you like it or not. That's the way it's got to be. I think this whole thing is really emotionally explosive and I think there are some people here who aren't as emotionally strong as they need to be, and if I think me being in is going to do real damage to anyone else then I'm out, and if that isn't good enough for you just say so now. But if it is good enough for you then I'm in, OK?"

Suddenly Mrs Price smiled and held out a hand to Nancy, which Nancy shook.

"I think that's a really adult and mature attitude. It'll do for me."

"OK, well, there is one more thing. I'm in on this because I want Kyle to be able to do his shot, and because I want to see his shot, but I'm not in on this to get used by any wannabe Casanova. I'll do the scene and I'll do extra takes if Kyle or Mrs Price says so. But I'm not going to do any extra sex scenes and I'm not going to do any undress rehearsals, OK? Any rehearsals I keep my jeans zipped. And, yeah. And when we do the scene we use rubbers, even if Kyle complains they spoil his shot. OK?"

"OK by me. Paul?"

Paul nodded. He was grinning in a way I found kind of hurt me in the stomach.

"Gretchen?"

Lill (yeah, Gretchen is her real name) was looking at me, and it seemed like she was angry with me. She nodded too.

"Kyle?"

Mrs Price was looking at me. Everyone was looking at me. I didn't know whether it was OK with me. I felt scared and confused and totally out of my depth. I shrugged. Mrs Price looked at me hard, like she was anxious about something.

"OK, then, we're in. We're here to plan the sex scenes that we're proposing to shoot to splice into the movie we're making at school. We all know that if anything leaks out about this I'll get sacked and you'll all get expelled and that's the end of it. Alright so far?"

No-one dissented.

"Right. We've got two female leads signed up, and the cast calls for five. Who else is in?"

No-one said anything.

"Paul, who have you asked?"

"Well, hey, look, you said yourself that secrecy was really important, and you know how the girls gossip runs in the school. Anyway, I thought you said to Kyle that if he signed up Nancy you'd make sure it happened..."

Horrified, I looked at Nancy. She was looking at Paul. She was looking kind of amused, in a not very sympathetic kind of way. Kind of, like, she was really enjoying watching him squirm.

"Look Paul," said Mrs Price, "I'm with Nancy in this. I'm in this because Kyle sold it to me, because Kyle persuaded me it was worth taking a risk on. You haven't persuaded me of anything yet. Yes, I know you wrote most of the script. I've told you it's a good script. But it's Kyle who has persuaded me it's a film worth making. He's the person who seems to me to have put himself on the line for this, risked things he really cares about, got himself hurt. And you're just sweetly proposing that you just walk in and get to screw the people he's lined up for you. I just don't think that's creditable behaviour. Gretchen?"

"Yes?"

"Who have you asked?"

Gretchen looked even whiter than she usually tries to and sort of muttered "nobody."

"Look, that just isn't good enough. This is as much your movie as anyone else's. You're the one who wrote the plot. You've encouraged Kyle to persuade Nancy and I to put our dignity and our bodies on the screen for people to gawp at..."

"Hey, hang on," said Nancy. "You and me? There's just two of us and it's you and me? No, sorry, Lill, that isn't on. That isn't any ways on. You're in. You get screwed on camera or none of us do."

"But, look..." said Lill...

"Hey, hey," I interjected. "We've all of us got stuff we can't do. You can't just blackmail people into doing this kind of stuff..."

Nancy and Mrs Price both turned on me and I just sort of cowered under the onslaught. But it still didn't seem OK to me.

"No, look, I'm sorry. I'm, like, sorry to both of you. If I've got you into something that isn't cool and you don't want to handle then I apologise. But we can't do it like this. It's like Nancy said, like too dangerous. If we're not all in then look let's just drop it, OK?"

"Look, Kyle, Nancy and I are here because you've persuaded us. If it's cool with you that we who aren't your friends should be talked into doing porn but someone who's in the project doesn't have to just because she is your friend, then I don't think that's treating us with any sort of respect. What I think you have to do now is I think you have to talk to Gretchen. And when you've done that we'll all see where we are."

I got up and walked towards the door. I looked back. Lill got up and followed me.

"You fucked the bottle blond bimbo, didn't you?"

"Hey, what? What's this about?"

"You fucked her!"

"Yeah, OK, maybe I did. What's that got to do with..."

"So she's fucking good enough and I'm not?"

"Hey, she wanted me..."

"So hey, look, what do you think I've been doing mooning around your fucking office all term?"

"What?! Hey, no, you didn't ... no!"

"So now you've got your little fuck-puppy to play in your movie, and you want me to..."

"Hey no. Fuck, no. No fucking way. This is not my movie. This is your movie and Paul's movie. I'm only doing anything in it to support you. To support my friends. Hey, look, I wasn't even fucking there when you wrote it. I went and presented it to the class because you asked me to. I'm not in this thing for myself. So if you don't want to do your movie, that's cool. That's like, completely cool. But don't hang that on me, because it's not my shit, OK?"

I went back in and sat down, and it seemed like it was just sort of an accident that I sat down between Mrs Price and Nancy, though I guess a psychologist would say it wasn't. Nancy squeezed my hand. I don't know if anyone saw, but I was well comforted.

After a couple of moments Lillith came back in. She'd been crying.

"OK," she said. "I'm really not completely cool with this. And I think we maybe all need to think about whether we actually want to do this. But if everybody else is still in, my stake is like this. Either I'll talk two other chicks into doing it or I'll do it. Is that OK?"

Nobody said it wasn't.

"Ball's back to you, Paul," said Mrs Price. "Where's your stake?"