We sleep right through the alarm. Fortunately, I'm supposed to call Camera-Man between 9 and 10 am. I drag on some clothes and call at 9:42. He tells us to meet him at the studio at 2 pm.

Holding our breaths and crossing our fingers, we decide to leave our bags in the Cucaracha Arms. We stick them in the closet and hope for the best.

Pard'ner discovers the Cockroach Expeditionary Force while he's brushing his teeth, he informs me. I nod. "I didn't think it would help your beauty sleep," I say. He laughs. I chance a quick shower. I survive.

Outside, LA is sunny and hot, in its perpetual summer mode.

Downstairs, a well-dressed black woman tries to sell us, by turns: a massage, a wallet, a pager, a hand-held massager and a key-holder. Her boyfriend, also dressed like a restaurant worker (crisp white shirts and ties) pushes a huge rolling suitcase like a handtruck. Their "inventory" is in the suitcase. We demur and they head down the street, looking for new customers. Since Pard'ner looks "straight" he is the object of their attention. I'm dressed in long-hair, beard, sweats, baseball cap, t-shirt and checkered shirt. I look like a logger. They ignore me.

After all, some hick lumberjack from the Pacific Northwest couldn't possibly be carrying thousands of dollars in cash in his briefcase, right? There's a lot to be said for disguises.

We walk down and eat at Carl's Jr. a block away in a new mini-mall. We pick up some muffler tape. We come back to the motel, and spend fifteen minutes patching the hole. Or, rather, Pard'ner does.

I have always had this weird karma: I usually have at least three close friends, of which one is a chef, one is a master mechanic, and one is a photographer. Pard'ner covers the latter two categories. I don't know if he can cook.

The sound has STOPPED! Hooray!

We're out on the road at 11 am. We stop by the camera shop on Hollywood Boulevard to pick up supplies. Not one employee speaks English as a THIRD language, much less as a second. Unfortunately, my Czech and my Korean are a lot rusty. We've picked up a nine-foot by 36-foot roll of seamless paper for one of the set backgrounds. In the confusion of communicating via pantomime, we forget to pick up still film -- this will haunt us tomorrow.

We run down to Mole-Richardson to pick up more supplies, near the Bargain Circus on La Brea. It's STILL there, 21 years later. When I was starving in 1976, I bought three reams of pink legal paper at Bargain Circus for 99 cents each, for "drafts." Who'd have thought, of all the Hollywood landmarks around, that Bargain Circus would turn out to be the store that survived? Mole-Richardson is where Aaron Bros. Art Mart used to be.

I decide to pick up a clapboard. It runs $66. I don't have time to shop, so I grit my teeth and pay it. I'll need that clapboard.

We get down to the studio, near the "World Famous Paris House Nude" on Santa Monica Blvd. 21 years later, I STILL don't know what they do there, but it's survived as well. Next to it, a Russian bookstore, with Cyrillic characters painted in gold on the display window. Danny's Oki-Dog is now a Fatburger. The old flagship Pussycat on Santa Monica is now a "Tomcat" or something like that. Sad.

Sort of like seeing the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. converted into a Taco Bell. LA eats its dead. But AstroBurger is still Astroburger, at least.

After a couple of fruitless roundings of the block, we finally find that most precious of precious-es: a parking space.

The digital camera and the briefcase full of cash have never left our sides through the entire trip. They don't now. Pard'ner stays with the Lowrider to guard the stuff while I reconnoiter. I manage to find the office stairs. Now the bad news: there is NO back way up. It's one steep two-storey set of stairs next to a bus stop.

I go upstairs. At the end of the endless stairwell, there is a well-fortified door, and inside, it rather looks like an upscale beauty salon in the middle of a remodel. Tasteful walls. An oriental rug on the indoor-outdoor office rug (which turns out to double as a doorstop during unloading) and Patrick Nagel prints framed on the various walls.

I walk through the deserted front office, down the hall, and meet the Agent. He's happy to see me. I'm happy to see him. Camera-Man is shooting, but NO ENTRY while he is. We try to catch up on five years. The normal pandemonium ensues.

Or, rather, I've entered the Hollywood Chaos Field: for the next two and half days, we will constantly be trying to do eight things at once, while carrying on three conversations with five different people. Yep. Welcome back, Hart.

I remember some of the things I DON'T miss about Hollywood.

Camera-Man is finishing a test shoot on a new girl. Various hangers-on come in and out. I'm trying to carry on several conversations at once, AND I NEED to find out just who the hell we're shooting tomorrow.

The Agent's waiting on a call back from the last couple.

He has pictures of some of the girls. None of the guys. Oh well, a guy's a guy, I guess. Still ....

I run back downstairs to Pard'ner, who's guarding the truck. At this moment, an Eastern European gentleman stops HIS small pickup beside us, eyes La Bomba with disdain and sniffs: "May I ask what business you have in this apartment building?"

"If you'll tell me what business it is of YOURS," I rejoin.

"I own it," he sniffs. "This is MY building."

"We're just parking here," I say. After a few moments, he decides that this is OK, and that he's NOT being a nosy asshole, and drives away. Hollywood. You gots to love it. Yeah. Right. Sure.

We tote the seamless the block back to the studio, and up the endless staircase. Pard'ner has been cool, calm, and professional throughout this whole ordeal. If anyone's been acting like an asshole, it's me. Lucky I hooked up with him.

I grab the book, and show the girls' pictures to Pard'ner. He's semi-mollified. Still, it's obvious that he'd hoped for something else. Who can blame him? It's catch as catch can, and ANYONE would prefer to have the final say over who they were going to cast in THEIR movie. And, it doesn't seem very promising that we don't even HAVE pictures of TWO of the girls. This is a GREAT time for paranoia to kick in. Somehow, we manage to keep it at bay.

We walk into the studio, and I'm hit with that scent of nostalgia that photographers get after being away from the darkroom for a long time and smelling hypo again: not a pleasant smell, perhaps, but filled with the richness of memories. It's that slightly funky locker-room smell and something else ... perfume, something feminine, the faint acridity of semen. I only notice it subliminally. It is only later, when Pard'ner mentions it that I realize what I've been smelling.

The studio is a windowless box, crammed with props, with one quadrant set up as a "gynecologist's office"

Camera-Man tells us we're in luck, and we can setup the studio immediately. He's preoccupied:

"If you find a set of keys let me know." He explains that he lost his keys the night before.

I leave Pard'ner and Camera-Man to work out what they want, and go back into the Agent's office to get the financial details straightened out. Instead, Agent and I go the back room, which we can't get into without the lost keys. I whip out my Leatherman, and we proceed to pry the lath away from the doorframe. Then, I pop the bolt with my knifeblade, and we UNLOCK the door. Then, we pull the brads and renail the lath back into the doorframe.

I've been in the office for a grand total of ten minutes, now. We go back to his office. Pard'ner and Camera-Man are rearranging the studio. We move the examining table from the "doctor's office" setup into the "dungeon" setup, which consists of gray "rock" Styrofoam walls outlined in a black flagstone pattern. There's only one stainless steel stirrup.

"Somebody stole the other one" Camera-Man says. No one can imagine what use ONE gynecological stirrup would be to anyone. Go figure.

I mention something about a speculum.

"Can you get me one?" Camera-Man asks.

I demur. Like cameras, I pretend to know as little about feminine plumbing appurtenances as I can possibly get away with. To me, an eyelash curler STILL looks like mediaeval torture equipment. Camera-Man drops the subject.

I go back into the Agent's office to try and get details squared away. He quotes the prices again. They're now the HIGH end of the range I was quoted last week.

After a precious few moments of business talk, a couple comes in -- from Eastern Europe, judging by their accents. Platinum blonde in tight sweater with obviously surgically augmented tits. The guy's three days into trying to grow a Fu Manchu mustache. Tall, short hair. George, like all Eastern Europeans in Hollywood, is wearing cowboy boots. Black and Acme brand, by the looks of them. They just "happened to be in the neighborhood." We're introduced. "This is George. And this is Emily." I sense that the introduction is other than merely casual.

"George and Emily?" I say. "Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, right?"

Blank stares. Agent too.

"You know: the play where there is no scenery, just small-town America?"

Blank stares.

The Agent looks at me. Shakes his head.

"Jesus," I say, "Since John Holmes died, there's no one in this town I can talk plays with."

The Agent says: "They probably don't know who John Holmes WAS."

More blank stares.

"John Holmes was a character in the play `Our Town' by Thornton Wilder," I say. They nod, wide-eyed. It is quite possible that they haven't understood a single word I've said. The Agent puts on his best poker face.

George and Emily are going to be our substitutes for the couple who never return the Agent's phone call. Is this OK?

"No problem," sez I. "They're fine." (I hope: at LEAST we've gotten to see what they LOOK like.) But I trust the Agent. Hell, I HAVE to.

We are about to find out that we've got to get a nine-foot roll of seamless to go on an eight-foot wall. The fun's just beginning.

Geez, Hollywood, it's GREAT to be back.

(c) Hart Williams 1997

Hart Williams wrote and worked in the "Business" from 1977 to 1987. He wrote for, among others, HUSTLER, ADAM, FILM WORLD REPORTS, VIDEO X, OUI, VELVET and many others. His film credits include "Caught From Behind III." His video credits include "The Other Side of Lianna," which was, in 1985, the runner-up to "New Wave Hookers" for XRCO's "Video of the Year." After ten years "away" from the business, Williams suddenly found himself doing what he'd sworn he'd never do again: writing, producing and directing an XXX video.