We arise promptly at 7:30, finally able to hear my digital watch's alarm over the shriek of Los Angeles morning traffic.

Taking a last, frightened shower in the Land of La Cucuracha, we bid adieu to the still sated hordes (perhaps THEY had emptied the coke bag we found on the first night) and haul our clothes down to La Bomba.

Behind us we leave only four sheets, two hand-towels, one washcloth and a cloth bath-mat, white, uncolored and patternless. We leave a comforter and a pungent aroma, perhaps destined to enter the motel cleaning staff's legendry:

"Maaaaaaaaan! They was these two white dudes from outta town, and dey left strangest odor in room. Never smell anything quite like it."

More interesting smells probably confront them every day.

We, on the other hand, leave with indelible memories of the horrifying green carpet, the bathroom from Hell with its paper-wrapped (SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION) see-through plastic glasses (SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION? I don't get it. Don't they just stuff those cups into the little paper bags? Maybe reuse the paper bags if they're not too dilapidated?). We leave with memories of the non-cable TV with its persistently green and flickering screen, and Attila the Cockroach King and his massed minions.

After I get my two dollars back for the key, we pull out of the courtyard. If I never see that place again, it will be too soon. But it was FREE, after all. (Note to self: NEXT TIME, FLY IN, RENT CAR, STAY IN REAL HOTEL.)

This will be the last day of shooting. Pard'ner and I grabbed a couple of map books when we got back from dinner with Frank and Marsha. We agreed that we might have to cut FURTHER east through Nevada and Eastern Oregon. If we got out by, say 6 or 7 pm, we could make it to Bishop and spend the night in a motel with The Weather Channel and a REAL bathroom and working toilet, and decide from there. The storm coming in was, according to Doppler Radar, nuking Northern California, Western Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Meanwhile ANOTHER front was dropping down on Seattle from the Gulf of Alaska.

So the plan, on that sunny Thursday morning in November -- as we coughed and hacked our way towards the Hollywood Freeway -- was to shoot the last two couples, wrap the studio, pay off Camera-Man and Makeup Lady, and EXIT LA ASAP: back to the high desert and clean air of the Owens Valley. THEN we'd worry about winter in the Sierras.

Situation same: Over Laurel Canyon, this time much less traffic. Donuts and coffee at the donut shop. For the second straight morning, not a policeman was to be seen at the counter, which seemed eerie. As the Bangles pointed out, you can always find the cops hanging out in the donut shops. Perhaps a convention.

Arriving at the studio, we lock our luggage in La Bomba and across the street at AstroBurger, CameraMan waves at us. He finishes his breakfast and walks over to let us in.

Again, another hour of waiting. This time, Makeup Lady and the Agent are on time, but, again, the actors are all late. The Office Manager arrives a few minutes later, and informs us that Candi is at the AIDS clinic getting her test "RIGHT NOW" and will be there as soon as she's got her paperwork.

Now, things start to pop. Two actors show up, Cristann and Brian, and, within minutes, Candi shows up. The Office Manager is frantically trying to locate our first male actor, who is, evidently, holed up in a hotel room at the Magic Hotel, next to the Magic Castle. Suddenly it's bedlam, with three quarters of our cast present, and -- surprise! -- everyone is from the good 'ol USA. I don't mind immigrants trying to find the American Wet Dream, but when they don't really speak Englitch (sic), it sure as hell puts a crimp in the conversation.

After several minutes, it turns out that Mister Magic is "sick" and is not going to come in.

Well, Cristann is visibly sick, too, but she's a trouper, and she's here. She's going to live on a diet of DayQuil and aspirin, she tells me, until the shoot is finished -- she's driven about a hundred or so miles to get there.

On the other hand, Candi has stripped off her shirt, for some reason, and is standing in a Frederick's of Hollywood brassiere, white sweat pants, tennis shoes, and bears a small bandage with a fresh spot of blood on the inside of her left elbow -- testament to her recent prophylactic bloodletting.

I muse silently as to WHY Candi is wandering around the front office showing off her tits, but the chaos reigns supreme. Pandemonium.

Pard'ner and CameraMan set up the first set, and all is in readiness. It's eleven a.m. and I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to get started at ALL.

Today, at least, we only need to get two sex scenes under our belts -- so to speak -- and it should be a piece of cake -- minus, of course, the normal chaos. I just hadn't expected it to be ratcheted up so high.

There is something supremely surreal about Candi's insistence on showing off her tits to various and sundry, until I realize something that has been niggling at the back of my head all morning: remember those shots of Candi we saw in "The Book" when we first got to town? Candi had REAL tits. Now, Candi has FAKE tits.

Another victim of the surgeon's knife: and there goes our only natural pair of breasts. I don't have the heart to ask her WHY she's decided to augment her frame with silicone. But, at least, that explains why she's exposing herself to strangers -- they're new and she's showing them off.

"Get her into makeup," I tell Makeup Lady.

CameraMan suggests that since the second couple is there, we shoot them, and let the Office Manager work on finding a replacement for our magic man.

Good idea. "Let's get 'em into makeup," I say, thinking that at LEAST we can get Cristann taken care of and let her get home. I appreciate her willingness to shake off her cold and do her job. A lot of people don't think that this business is a JOB -- well, it is.

And that's when a diminutive, well-built fellow wanders into the office, dressed in his business suit, wearing one of those non-collar white priest collar, pinstriped shirts, sans tie. Hmmm. Must be the new Ellay thing.(Business suit? I think). He knows everyone, and they seem to know him, or at least there's that omnipresent Hollywood actors' kiss-kiss camaraderie that I used to hate so damned much. Actors are, in many ways, actors, after all. I figure he's a producer or somesuchlike. Oy.

(I never could get the hang of 'male fashion' thinking it an oxymoron. Sheesh!)

At this precise moment, while I'm patting myself on the back for being decisive, and having a direction, now that the donuts are all gone, the Agent rushes up to me.

"Austin can work, if you can have him out of here by 3 o'clock. He's got an appointment."

"Austin?" Who the hell is Austin? I'm thinking.

"Him," the Agent says, pointing to the fellow in the business suit.

Well, that tears it.

"Fine," I say. And, turning to CameraMan, and Makeup Lady, I say: "Change of plans. We're shooting Candi, and .... what the hell's your name, kid?"

"Austin," he says. "Austin Towers."

"And AUSTIN!" I yell. CameraMan eyes me balefully. "He's got to be out of here by three. We can be finished by three, right?" I ask.

CameraMan nods. "No problemo."

Fine. Cool. Whatever. We are now cooking with gas. Room's ready, and Candi breezes through her makeup at breakneck speed. The only real holdup is that AUSTIN is in makeup. (Whatever.)

Office Manager and I run our polished dance of proper Identification and AIDS test paperwork. We've settled into a well-oiled, efficient team in this regard. It takes mere moments. And now we're ready to go.

CameraMan shoots his pretty girl stills.

[I haven't really mentioned stills before, and I guess I really should now. One of the requisites -- both for box covers and ad slicks, and for magazine sets is a good set of chromes. I'm responsible for the magazine part in some ways, I suppose. Years ago when I was film editor at HUSTLER, my then-superior did one of his apoplectic tantrums over a set of stills I had, and said: "Kill the friggin' review. Why can't we get stills fer chrissake?" I mentioned, er, that porno people were, in many cases cheapskates, and the only stills they took were for hardcore magazines they'd print up from the shoot. Thus, there were hardly any decent stills to be had, from OUR point of view -- no penetration, no touching dicks or pussies, et al, etcetera. It changed month to month, and every magazine had an in-house censor, just to keep up with the ever-shifting what-is-OK-and-what-isn't that had very little to do with actual law, and everything to do with what POSTAL INSPECTORS -- our inheritance from XIXth Century Ubercensor Anthony Comstock -- felt was appropriate, and what was not. To make a long and tedious story even more tortured, my superior, in his inimitable manner told me: "Well friggin' tell 'em: NO STILLS, NO REVIEW!" And I dutifully drafted a memo to all the members of the old AFAA, telling them that. HUSTLER being the thousand-pound gorilla of the Biz then, stills followed ever after. Unfortunately, magazines got in the HABIT of free stills, and now we shoot sets for the magazines to run, gratis, as promo for the upcoming video pornucopia that we're shooting. CameraMan tells me that some of the publishers are printing so CHEAP that anything other than flash shots won't have enough contrast to print, and so he shoots about a roll per scene, starting out by shooting "Pretty Girl" -- i.e. no guy -- shots for box covers and suchlike. This is pure expense. We will NOT recoup the cost of stills, except in sales of the video. Would-be pornmeisters take note: We're talking a couple hundred dollars in film stock and processing.]

Candi (not her REAL fake name), having finished the pretty girl shoot, mentions something about Horned Frogs.

"I'm a TCU Horned Frog," I say. [NB: Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas -- ed.]

"Ohmigod!" she squeals. "I'm a TCU grad."

"Amon G. Carter Stadium!" I yelp.

"Sadler Hall!" she rejoins. "What dorm?"

"Tom Brown. I was a member of the evil TB-J axis."

"A GDI," she shrieks happily.

Everyone is staring at us as if we'd just dropped to ground from Mars. "TB-J means Tom Brown-Jarvis," I explain. "They were evil hippies who banded together to form linked male and female dorms -- it was the seventies. No coed dorms at our 'Christian' institution."

"GDI's" Candi continues, "Were ..."

"GOD-DAMNED INDEPENDENTS!" we shriek in harmony.

CameraMan and Pard'ner look at us like we're brain-dead, which, of course we are, but then again, you don't meet many Horned Frogs in the wilds of Hollywood. They mostly stick around Odessa and Midland drilling for oil.

Oh well. We return to our strange, unholy litany of Frog-dom.

"I was an Omega Sigma Sigma." [name changed to protect the evil frat rats -- ed.] Candi says.

Austin is now made up, and as he walks in, getting undressed, says: "Hey! I was a Delta Omega Gamma!" [Name changed to protect the snooty.]

Candi turns. "Really?" she says. "Where."

"Colorado Boulder," Austin proudly says.

Crap. I'm paying a frigging FRAT RAT! And, of course, he's in male humpa humpa mode, with the pickup lines etcetera.

Well, that's really the story of porn, as well. The actors are like going to a bar with your buddy Woodie, who's always just a LITTLE more interested in anything with a skirt than with being with you. It's adolescent, and obnoxious, but I need Austin to be a happy little humper, and, regretfully, I remove myself from the fray and let them reminisce about Greekdom whilst I get us set up for the shot.

The chat happily away until we put the runner up to the bed, let them get on it, and withdraw it. Don't want any evil footprints on the set.

Frick 'em Frogs, I think. Wonder what ol' Libby Proffer would think, seeing her favorite radical here shooting an evil porno film with one of her unsullied, delicate Southern Sorority Belles. (OK, OK, SOMEwhat sullied.)

The mere thought fills me with a gleeful satisfaction.

We have passed over the great Gulf that separates Texas Christians from Hollywood Hooligans: we have transmuted ourselves from Horned Frogs to Horny Toads. It must be an omen of Great Good Fortune from Aphrodite, in whose service we toil.

And so, Candi and Austin begin their horizontal ballet.

On the raw tape, you can hear yours truly vainly attempting to explain STAGE RIGHT, STAGE LEFT, UPSTAGE and DOWNSTAGE to the pair doing the horizontal bop. Obviously, I must have given up, since these terms are never again heard.

In many ways, it's very much as 'twas before. We run through our litany of shots -- standard and non-standard. But Candi is a delight. Funny, playful, and we all have a rollicking good time, except for Austin, who's DEADLY grim about all of this. The reason for this, I find out later, is that this is one of his first shoots, and the debilitating effects of male performance anxiety have managed to disconnect his sense of humor entirely.

But Candi is a pro -- warm and tender, and she takes the kid in hand and gently coaxes him through his travail. After about an hour of this, she's cramping up fiercely. You see: Candi can suck both of her toes at the same time. Her abilities as a contortionist (and as a fellatrix) are astonishing to behold, BUT, she worked out fairly strenuously the night before, and the heat and loss of salt are causing her painful cramps in her calves and the balls of her feet.

We break for a few minutes so she can get some salt into her system, replenish her fluids, and we can blow out the room with the air conditioning.

I walk out into the office to make sure that Brian and Cristann are doing OK.

She seems to have a personal grudge against me -- probably for making her wait all day to work. It is OBVIOUS that she despises the very ground I walk on. Geez. Like I NEED this.

The Agent is there, along with several other hangers-on and hangers-out, including a very nice black producer whose name I forget. A sleazy Euro-trash type is standing there in the requisite cowboy boots.

(Probably, I think, they buy them for the same reason that every illegal who ever snuck across the T.J. border wears a "Dallas Cowboys" t-shirt -- they think that it makes them look American. Yippie-ti-yo-ti-yay mofo, in the immortal words of Bruce Willis in DIE HARD. Us boys from Wyoming and New Mexico tend to wear Nikes and British Knights, cowboy boots having become so damned expensive ever since URBAN COWBOY. Besides, city streets tear hell out of leather soles, so, you have to have 'em half-soled twice a year until you finally give up and have the cobbler put Vibram soles and heels on your Noconas, which seems a blasphemy. Git along little dogies.)

"What's up?" the Agent asks.

I give him my standard lightning answer: "It's one of the six cardinal directions, the other five being north, south, east, west and down. Oh, all right. It's an adverb."

Cristann turns up her nose in disgust. She most DEFINITELY doesn't like me.

This is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too fast for the gathered auto da fe -- as I am to learn shortly.

"Wood problems?" the Agent asks. And everyone hunkers forward. "He's new in the business."

"He had some problems the other night," someone says.

"Whoa," I say. "Where'd you get that from."

"You said DOWN," the Agent says.

"Yeah," someone else chimes in.

"It was a JOKE, goddamit," I say. "Or, actually, it was LIKE a joke. Had it been an actual joke, you would have laughed."

You could have heard a pin drop. Tough room, methinks.

"No problems," I say.

"Are you sure?" someone asks, and I immediately remember something that I've consciously tried to forget about the Biz: Not only is there that Fighting Cock aspect to the competitiveness of the weenie erectors, but there is a definite Roman Arena aspect to the spectacle. Dickie down equals thumbs down for the carnal gladiator, and woe betide the penile warrior who can't keep it stiff at all times. They're standing on the sidelines, just WAITING for erectile failure. No wonder poor Austin's sense of humor remained back at his apartment.

The Euro Cowboy strides forward purposely and addresses me as a flunkie -- "Tell Candi zat ROLF IS HERE."

"Uh, yeah," I say and head back. It isn't worth mentioning that I am the frigging PRODUCER. Anyone who'd show up at a porn shoot in a pair of DINGOS isn't worth getting one's dander up about. You cowboys out there will understand what I mean.

(I am reminded of the story that TIME/LIFE used to tell in their THE WEST brochures about an old cowpoke who was fixing the fence on a Wyoming ranch, one day, when a British Snob comes riding up in his best fox-hunting gear to see his dear old friend, the Marquis of Something-Or-Other, whose daddy bought him an "estate" in Wyoming to get the poor sod the hell out of the line of succession. "I say there, chappie," the Brit tells the cowboy -- who happens to be the foreman of the ranch, without whom nothing would get done -- "Where might I find your Master?" To which the old cowpoke replies, "The sum'bitch ain't been born." And goes back to repairing the fence.)

I return to the room, and Austin is actually HAVING some weenie anxiety. I think he's overheard the Council of Compassion outside -- with the door open, it carries straight up the hallway.

I take a few minutes and counsel him, much like George. Only this time, we talk about the Mental Game of porn. I won't repeat it here, but some strange karma has always managed to turn me into a counselor for wayward wieners. Don't ask me. But whatever it was I said, it seems to take, and Austin actually manages a sort of smile -- although it looks as much like a death rictus as actual relief. Onward, as Mort Sahl used to say.

We return to the shoot, and Candi gives a short, resplendent demonstration of her theory that sucking cock is a sure-fire cure for cotton-mouth. (I leave it to you ladies to prove or disprove the efficacy of this delightful home-remedy.)

Well, Austin came in looking as neatly pressed and crisp as his linen shirt. He leaves looking like something the cat dragged in -- which is fine by me.

It is 2:55. We're right on time, even if Austin is going to be late. Well, what the hell. I promised to have him out by three. I did that.

Now, while Austin heads for the showers to freshen up, we shoot a certain closing scene that we only need Candi for, and, as usual, I walk over and stand by the door, to give her a mark to aim at.

"Look at Hart," Camera-Man says.

"Come on," I say. "Even a Communications Major could pull this off."

"How'd you know that I was a communications major?" Candi asks.

It was a lucky guess, but I'm not about to tell her that. "It's written all over you," I say.

She laughs, but there's a strange look in her eye as she wonders if perhaps I DID read her mind, or whatever.

Too soon, it's over.

And now it's time for Brian and Cristann (whose boyfriend, we will later learn, has been sitting outside in the car ALL DAY "He can't handle seeing me at work," she tells us).

First, I thank them for being so professional.

"Professional?" they laugh. "We've been heckling passersby on the street below all afternoon, and tossing cigarette butts on their heads, and she's been flashing them while I videotape it with my camcorder," Brian says.

"I don't care how you amuse yourselves while you're waiting." I say. "The fact that you showed up on time and spent all day says something. I don't really have the money in the budget for a bonus, but I'll do something for you when this is all over."

Now, somehow I seem to have hit the nail directly on the head. Cristann's entire attitude towards me changes, and from this moment forward, she is my dear and close friend. Women, go figure 'em, as Mark Weiss used to say.

Ah, but they're so darned CUTE. (Especially with their clothes off.)

Office Manager, ever competent, professional and lovely, brings me Brian and Cristann's paperwork. I lock it in my briefcase.

I call Brian and Cristann in and tell CameraMan to start without me.

I go outside and pay Candi and Austin off, while Rolf Of The Dingos hovers nearby. Well, if you're hanging out while your girlfriend fuck strange guys for a living, you'd probably be a bit tweaky, too. Ah, porn.

And, I pay off Makeup Lady, who tells me some stories of the old days that I would like to share here, but I think I'd be betraying confidences, so I'll pass, for the time being. I've made the transition back into the Biz. I'm "family" again.

I walk back into the studio, and they're already going at it. It is at this point that I begin to notice that I'm really a fifth wheel, here. CameraMan and Pard'ner have formed a smooth working relationship with Cristann and Brian, and my presence seems to be adversely affecting them.

So, I decide -- as the Producer -- that for the good of the film, the Director needs to hie his little ass out of the room.

But I DO notice something else: Brian and Cristann have been staring at each other ever since 11 am. It's 4 pm, now, and it's beginning to get dark, but THEY'RE horny as minks in heat for each other. (I'm told that they USED to be a couple, not so long ago).

I make a mental note to find some way of using this technique in future.

And so, the Producer yanks the Director's ear and drags him from the room.

Everybody but the Office Manager and Makeup Lady have left, now. The office is empty and funereal, and we all sneak in to the back room, and spend a happy hour or so smoking cigarettes and telling stories. It reminds me of another thing that I miss about porn -- I love women. I mean, TRULY love women, AS women. Not just as sexual objects, but there's a strange phenomenon in porn that I rarely experience anywhere else: you can relate being to being, not boy to girl. We have a nice, raunchy locker-room kind of talk about this, that and the other, but the sexual element, the double entendre element is missing. We're buddies.

And, certain confidences are passed. (hee hee hee).

Again, too soon, it's getting late, and they have to lock up. We hug, and promise to keep in touch. And I go back into the studio.

There's still another half-hour, and I keep mum while Pard'ner and CameraMan -- who are now a crack team (take that any way you like) -- smoothly and efficiently move the shoot forward to the Reverse Cowgirl, as Brian and Cristann glide between difficult positions with the effortlessness of mercury from a broken thermometer. Cristann's cold is not apparent, but what IS apparent is that they're truly into each other.

It will only be later that my little act of humility will bear a valuable fruit. When we look at the raw footage, several days later, this shoot will look like very standard porn footage. And I will learn a valuable lesson: the "vision" of the director has a LOT more impact on a scene than I'd thought. You can tell, in the rushes, which scene I wasn't present for. But we've shot well over 5:1, so we're OK. Fortunately, I'm there long enough to get the additional shots that we need, and a couple of special shots that I've been thinking about.

On the last one, nobody seems to understand WHAT the hell I'm talking about, so I grab a notepad and draw it out for them. Oh. OK. We'll try it.

Another thing about porn: they will REALLY fight you on a shot that they haven't done before. Why? I don't know. But when you start doing stuff that hasn't been done, there's a strange conservatism at work. Hey! That isn't a standard Gonzo Reverse Cowgirl!

Yup.

Ejaculation time. And then we wrap.

We are SEROUSLY exhausted, but it's only about six-thirty, and the LA rush is on.

We still have to strike the set.

Before they wash up, I have Pard'ner and CameraMan take some stills of me in my Producer's regalia, sitting on the bed with my naked cast -- the sort of stills that used to end up in the Graffiti section of ADAM Magazine (which, Requiescat In Pace, died a couple of years ago).

Neither CameraMan nor Pard'ner wants to risk it, but I have several lovely shots of Cristann sitting on my lap, putting her nipple in my ear.

After ten years, I feel strangely like I just came home.

Brian and Cristann take a shower together -- which is actually sort of sweet.

When they get back, Brian tells me he's a stringer for some cable or video "porn news" show, and he wants to interview me on what we've been doing. I think this is a great idea, and, at the same time, I pay her (as Cristann explains, her boyfriend has been waiting in the Fatburger parking lot ALL DAY).

But I tell them that I'd at least like to buy them dinner at a nice restaurant tonight, and give them a little bonus for being so patient with me. Cristann stands on tippee-toe and gives me a little kiss.

EXEUNT Cristann.

Brian hangs around, and does an interview of yours truly while I tear down the walls. At a certain point, he begins to ask certain technical questions that I've carefully avoided, even here, and I give him my special answer, which I'll give you. "What are you doing here?" Brian asks, having never seen anything quite like it (nobody, all explained during the two days had ever seen anything quite like what we were doing).

"I'm not at liberty to say," I reply mysteriously.

I take Brian out to the front room, and pay him, getting various receipts signed and so forth. I give him something extra for a nice dinner as well. I feel cheap, but I'm on a tight budget, after all. Still, a little generosity is a good thing in a porno producer, and would that more would take up the arcane practice.

They'll have to read about it in books, though. Hollywood is a pretty tough place to look for any living examples of the practice.

EXEUNT Brian.

Now, CameraMan and Pard'ner have pretty much wrapped the set, and I get there in time to finish up, as we move furniture, and prep the room for CameraMan's shoot tomorrow.

I pay off CameraMan.

We're close enough down Santa Monica Boulevard that we decide to have a farewell dinner at The Yukon Mining Co. down the street. Strange, I think, as we walk out and lock the door. Right next door is a Medical Marijuana Buyers' Club, and it's never entered my consciousness. Think about it: Legal Porn and Legal Pot. What an amazing concept that is. When last I was on a porn set, Ed Meese and Nancy Reagan were doing their level best to declare war on both. Life moves in some damned strange ways.

Down the street, we order prime rib, and I tell stories about the first apartment I ever had in Hollywood, before I'd ever sold my first piece of writing -- right across the street on Poinsetta Drive. We can see it from where we're sitting. God. Has it been twenty years? I remember when the Yukon Mining Co. had its grand opening, and how you could take a basketball down to Plummer Park a block away and shoot hoops with Eliot Gould on any given Saturday morning.

What's strange is not, I think, how much has changed, but how much hasn't changed. Big chunks of my life are on this block, but, as they say, 'twas in another Wifetime.

Pard'ner and CameraMan get into a very technical discussion of firearms in general and handguns in particular, and we feast on Roast Beef. And now it's seven-thirty.

We bid adieu, and take off for the Hollywood Freeway, which has pretty well cleared out. Thence out of Hollywood, through the Valley, off the Antelope Valley cutoff and to Palmdale.

We decide to gas up at the first Chevron that we see. I have fallen victim to the Millenium Bug, understand. From the first moment we entered California, Texaco computers have been freaking out at the (20)00 expiration date on my Texaco Card. I'm on the Chevron card now, and we pull off in Palmdale when we see the familiar sign.

We gas up, check that La Bomba's rear flaps are secured, and head back to the freeway.

And then the flashing lights appear in the rearview.

We're pulled over twenty yards from the freeway by Kern County Mounties. Pard'ner gets out with his driver's license while I search the glove box for the registration and the insurance. The problem, as we'd found out in Nevada, is that we have the papers from the PREVIOUS owner and the temporary papers from the state. Only problem is, the state isn't California.

That's when the County Mounties draw their guns. "Why'd you get out of the car? Keep your hands in plain sight!"

Madre de dios!

Pard'ner, however, has that master mechanic's way of talking to cops, and, while I keep my hands in sight and one cop shines a flashlight and holds a gun on me, soon I hear the sweet music of Guy Bullshit. You know: engines, Brand Names and such.

And we're cut loose. They never bother asking for our paperwork on La Bomba. We hit the road, and make tracks for Bishop. We don't talk much, though. The muffler has quietly expanded to a dull roar that drowns out EVERYTHING.

We get there, and check into a motel I'd seen next to the Denny's. SHOWERS! WORKING TOILETS! THE WEATHER CHANNEL!

We bathe and crap and watch the weather maps with great glee. Turns out there's a hole in the weather. We OUGHT to be able to hit it tomorrow, and take the route we came.

In the morning, we have breakfast at Denny's. We find a NAPA, and rewrap the muffler. Blessed silence. Now, on to Mono Lake, and thence to the California State Line.

Fifteen miles later, the muffler tape vanishes.

But luck is with us: we miss the storm front. We spend the day under patches of blue sky -- pulling into Reno as an ugly blackness moves in behind us. We managed to stay ahead of the closing front, encountering only dry pavement for the entire journey.

I wish I could tell you how painful it got to listen to the unrelenting blap, blap, blap of La Bomba. I won't. I'll just say that we literally gritted our teeth and made it back in the wee hours of the morning. I feel like somebody's been wailing on my skull all day with a dead mackerel.

We had returned. We had our footage. We were exhausted, but very happy. We'd pulled it off.

Now, all we had to do was edit and soundtrack and master and box cover, and ... well, you get the idea. The porn shoot proper was over.

The End.

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. c 1997 Hart Williams. All rights reserved.