Lightning Rods (2 page)

What he didn’t realize is that a genius is different from other people. A genius doesn’t waste time like other people. Even when he looks like he is wasting time he may in fact be making the most productive possible use of the time. In fact the only time a genius wastes time is when he tries to follow the rules and act like ordinary people.

What he didn’t realize was that all that time he spent twiddling and worrying about the roll-down blind would one day lead directly to a multi-million dollar industry that would improve the lives of millions of Americans.

Another fantasy was about a game show with three contestants with their upper bodies sticking through a hole in a wall. In the first part of the game, one contestant was penally challenged from behind. Panelists had to guess which. The contestants got points if the panelists guessed wrong. An inset in the screen showed the thrusting buttocks of a man giving the contestant the old Atchison Topeka. In the second stage of the game, any number could be involved, from zero (though this had never happened in the whole time he’d been watching the show), right on up to a full house (this was actually surprisingly common). The panelists had to guess how many, and which ones.

Each panelist got to ask questions, or set tests. The panelist then made a decision on the basis of the behavior of the contestants during the questions, and made his or her guess.

After a while one of the contestants started to get a personality. She was a consecutive winner for twenty shows. She wore a pink jacket and immaculate pink lipstick and make-up, and she had dark hair in a hairsprayed permanent. People looked at the heaving buttocks in the inset and they couldn’t
believe
that someone that cool could possibly be getting the full-service 24-hour Revco from the rear. Then after she won the round the MC would say Let’s just see that amazing performance again.

In her final play-off one of the panelists, a real bitch, said she’d like to see her put on nail polish. She took a bottle of pink nail polish and started on her nails, and everybody watched, and her nails were absolutely perfect. It turned out later that this was one of the times when all three contestants were getting the old Triple Jeopardy. One kept smearing her nail polish, and one dropped the bottle, but Suzie just kept quietly finishing her nails.

Afterwards the MC said: I’ve never seen anything like it. I take my hat off to you. Let’s just see that again.

The screen divided in half, on one half the heaving buttocks on the other Suzie quietly painting her nails.

MC: Well, I see it and I still don’t believe it. What’s your secret?

Suzie: That’s my secret.

He really liked her. And he always played fair. It was all right to replay highlights of her game career. But she’d won her million fair and square; she didn’t have to play the game again, and he never brought her into any new episodes. Sometimes he’d think of her, out in the world, in her pink suit, with a million to blow. She did what she had to do, and then she did what she wanted to do.

He often wondered whether other men did this. Did they have participants that developed personalities? Did they have a sense of humor? Was there a story that developed over several episodes?

And being a salesman he could not stop analyzing in a really micro obsessive nitty-gritty way what got him off. It’s not what you see it’s what you know. Because it wasn’t the bare buttocks or the thrusting cock into a tight wet cunt but Suzie in her pink jacket painting her nails that sent Old Faithful skyward every time.

For a while, anyway, he went on rerunning favorite episodes in Suzie’s brilliant career, looking in once in a while on current episodes just to see how things were going and then going out from time to time when he felt like a piece of homemade pumpkin pie with ice cream.

Then one day he noticed that the game was rigged.

For some reason he hadn’t noticed it before, but once you knew what to look for you couldn’t miss it. The contestants varied, but there was always one with platinum blonde hair and pink lipstick and big tits in a tight top who had no self-control whatsoever. The thing was a joke. The MC would start the game and suddenly the girl’s eyes would widen and her pink mouth would open with this ostentatious
Oh my God, there’s a cock up my twat
kind of expression.

Is anything the matter? the MC would say in a syrupy voice and the girl would say No and then suddenly catch her breath or bite her lip or widen her eyes just to make sure everyone knew what was going on. How obvious can you get?

And the MC would say OK, we’ll get on with the show then. Panelists, our stud for this session was Mr. Body for Arkansas four years running. As I speak Clint is giving one of the girls the kind of workout only a serious bodybuilder can provide. Let’s have a quick look at the service offered by Clint, and there would be an inset of the thrusting buttocks.

Well, that’s one bodybuilder who thinks there are no holds barred, he’d say, and the studio audience would laugh. Ladies and gentlemen, your job is to decide which of our lovely ladies is enjoying this magnificent stallion of a man. Heloise, it’s your turn to ask the first question.

And the blonde girl would whimper or shout Oh my God and the panel would laugh. Sometimes the panel wouldn’t take it seriously. It would be absolutely obvious what the answer was but they’d laugh and guess wrong on purpose.

Sometimes he could enjoy it anyway and sometimes it was just irritating. They were only doing their job but sometimes it irritated him anyway, and he missed the days before he realized the whole thing was a set-up.

One day he lay on his side on the bed and they had yet another of these blondes on the show. He lay there wondering where they got them all. The studs today were three guys who were putting themselves through college. They had called the studio’s 800 number in the aftermath of a frat party and left their names and when they got the follow-up call they all thought
Shit
. But in the end they agreed to go on the show because it was something different and because people only saw you from behind and because it was something to say you’d done, and because of the money. Would they do it again?

Jeff: No way. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed myself today, it’s been a really unique experience and it certainly will be something to look back on, I’ll say that, but I don’t think I’d want to make a regular thing of it.

Shane (laughing): Is that an offer?

MC (laughing): No.

Duane: Well, the way I see it, Mike, there’s a whole lot more goes into this than meets the eye.

MC (laughing): You can say that again! (studio audience laughs)

Duane: No, but seriously. On the one hand, you’re there to do a job. It’s up to you to take a professional approach. But on the other hand, it’s important to have a good time. So would I do it again? Sure I would. Because there’s no way you can bring everything to the game that it’s possible
to
bring, on your first time on the show. And the other thing I’d like to say is, I’d just like to say thank you to all the girls, it was a pleasure to work with them and they definitely made it a day to remember.

Joe lay with his head on his arm. His hand, he realized, was holding a limp, wilted dick.
Jesus
, he thought.
Jesus
. This was
exactly
the
problem
. What
was
it with him? He was the type of guy to go out and try to sell vacuum cleaners and end up eating twenty fucking pieces of pumpkin fucking pie.
Jesus
.

He pulled a magazine out from under the bed, opened it to the central spread, stared narrow-eyed at the girl’s tits and jerked off.
Jesus
.

He got up off the bed, zipped up his pants, and went outside to sit on the steps.

“Look, Joe,” he said. “Things can’t go on like this. Do you hear what I’m saying? This can’t go on.”

He sighed. The sun was setting behind the pines. Another day comes and goes.

“Look,” he said. “The game is not rigged, OK? The only reason it’s rigged, if it
is
rigged, is because you made it up that way. Nobody did anything behind your back. You decided, for reasons best known to yourself, to move in the direction of a rigged game, so you got a rigged game. You didn’t
find
anything
out
. There was nothing
to
find out. You made the whole thing up in your head. And now you’re talking to yourself. This has
got
to
stop
.”

The sky was a dark clear blue, all except for the narrow band of blazing orange behind the black pines.

He said, “All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.”

The sky slowly blackened and the stars came out, and still he sat on the steps.

He had hit rock bottom. Because let’s face it, the kind of guy who gets ahead in the world, the kind of guy who makes a mark, the kind of guy who makes a difference, is the kind of guy who deals with his sexual urges and gets on with the job. He is not the kind of guy who lies around obsessing about whether some completely imaginary game show is rigged. He is not the kind of guy who gets side-tracked out of his masturbatory fantasy into a non-masturbatory fantasy about three guys from college called Jeff, Shane, and Duane.
Duane
. Where the fuck did that
come
from?
Jesus
.

What he realized later was that this was exactly the mistake he had made all his life, assuming that if he was different in some way that was automatically worse. Assuming he’d be all right if he was just like everybody else. Assuming the thing he needed to work on was getting rid of all the things that stood out. Because after all the basic raw material of his fantasies was probably not all that different from a lot of guys, look at it this way you could find similar types of scenario with some of the elements in magazines and videos which had to mean they thought it would appeal to a lot of guys. The thing was just that most guys would not replay favorite episodes from the days when Suzie was on the show, and wonder what she was doing with herself now that she had a million bucks to play around with; most guys would not get involved in the personalities, they would not get pissed off because the MC was an asshole and start wondering how to get him off the show, they would not wonder why it had to be rigged, and they would not decide that the thrusting buttocks behind the screen belonged to three college guys named Jeff, Shane, and Duane.

What he should have realized is that if there is something that makes you different from everybody else it may be that that very thing is your unique selling point.

Because as it turned out, it was his tendency to gradually start seeing the personalities, to start bringing in all kinds of irrelevant stories to the point where people would have names, that turned out to be his hidden strength. Gradually the people would turn out to be ordinary people just like you and me, only involved in a situation most ordinary people would not put themselves into. And instead of getting obsessed with the sex, the way most guys would, he just happened to have this tendency to start seeing the whole picture with the sex as part of the picture. He happened to have this ability to imagine what it would be that would get ordinary people involved in something like that.

The sky was a velvety black. The stars were out and the moon had risen.

He said, “Come on, Joe. You can do better than this.”

He started wondering what it was about sex. Because if you think about it the pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Some people use it as an adjunct to a fulfilling sexual relationship, sure, but what about the rest? If you could figure out a way to deliver the real thing you’d really be onto something. A way to deliver the real thing where people did not have to worry about running into the criminal element, or getting arrested, or just getting recognized.

He started looking at it another way. The way he looked at it was, why is this not a problem for homosexuals? A couple of guys could be just working together in an office and they can meet in the john and get back to work. A lot of guys would not have a problem with doing this kind of thing with a female partner, part of the problem obviously was segregated toilets and part of the problem was that a lot of women would have a problem with it.

Any salesman knows that you have to deal with people the way they are. Not how you’d like them to be.

The crickets were chirping in the long grass.

Joe sat on the steps, jingling the change in his pocket.

“Come on, Joe,” he said. “There’s got to be something you can do.”

His thoughts turned again to the guy who had cleaned up after Hurricane Edna. Basically the guy had identified a disaster that had struck everyone and he had identified a problem that faced everyone who had been struck by the disaster. Then he had gone in with a solution to the problem.

Somewhere around midnight the idea came to him.

“Joe,” he said, “you’re in big trouble.”

SPECIAL K

In the morning the sun was shining, birds were singing, and there was dew on the grass. The crazy thoughts of the night before did not look so bad. They looked crazy, but they did not look like crazy things he would seriously think about trying out. Everyone gets crazy thoughts from time to time, it’s what you do about them that counts.