The Legend of the Ditto Twins (52 page)

Jay shook
his head. "You'll see when we get on the set. Just listen to what I say. I
want your reactions to be real."

That's
when my cell phone rang.

"Who
could that be?" I looked at Clark. "No one has my number, except
you." Then I remembered. "And Helmut." I opened the phone.
"Hi! Only forty-eight hours to go."

"More
like fifty, but who's counting?" shouted Clark, squeezing close and
pulling the phone slightly away from my ear. "Hi, Helmut. We're both
on."

"Good,
good."

"What's
up?" In unison.

Jay moved
closer, also straining to hear.

"I'm
afraid I have bad news."

"Bad
news?"

"Ja
ja.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to
cancel."

"Cancel?"

"Something's
come up."

"Oh."

"This
incredible opportunity. I hope you will understand. This very rich millionaire called
when I was walking in the door and asked me to join him on his yacht for the
entire next week. I... I could not turn him down."

"Why
not?"

"The
money is unbelievable. Enough for me to pay for my entire last year of college.
For only a week's work."

"What
sort..."

“...of
work?"

"You
know. Look gorgeous. Entertain him."

"Oh."

"Perhaps
you could delay your trip here for a week?" "Afraid not. We have
to..."

“...get
back to school."

Jay
stepped closer. "Excuse me—but you're going to have to cut this short—or
we'll lose the sun." We nodded.

"Look,
can we talk about this later? Jay..."

“...needs
us on the set."

"Of
course. Work comes first. Always."

"Call
us tonight?" In unison.

"I'll
try." A pause. "I'm sorry."

Paralyzed,
Clark and I just stared at each other.

"Come
along," said Jay. "We have a scene to film."

"Can
you just..."

“...give
us a minute?"

Jay
looked at his watch. "I will give you exactly five minutes. Not a fuckin
second more."

"Is
he a whore?" In unison.

"The
preferred word is escort."

"Is
he?"

"Dear
ones, it goes with the territory."

"What
does that mean? That all porn stars are..."

“...whores?
Are we whores?"

"Certainly
not."

"We're
getting paid..."

“...to
have sex."

"It's
not the same." Jay sighed. "Maybe it's a cheap rationale on my part, but
for me there's a big difference between renting yourself to a client and
creating explicit art. And don't kid yourself—what we've been doing here is
going to be called art someday. Mark my words."

"But...
Is that the way..."

“...we're
going to end up? Being escorts?"

"I
hope not. It all depends on how greedy you are. See, in one way, fucking seems
the easiest way in the world to make a buck. In another, it's the hardest. It
takes its toll."

"And
what about the airline tickets? Clay..."

“...said
they weren't refundable."

Jay
nodded coldly. "It's an expensive lesson, isn't it? Just be thankful for
what you have left."

"And
what's that?" In unison.

"Each
other." He looked at his watch again. "Your five minutes are
up."

In the
script, the last sex scene takes place right after a big blow-up between the
twins and their mom, when they threaten to leave home for good. We'd shot that
sequence already, of course, so the afternoon shoot began with us storming out
of the house and driving out behind the barn to let off steam by washing and
waxing the car. Considering what had just happened, it was not difficult for
Clark and me to find the rage we needed to play the scene. And the pain.

We
watched Jay as he slipped into the jacket he'd worn in the previous scene as
our Dad. Somewhere he'd found an old John Deere cap, too. He motioned to Phil
and Felix, and they activated their cameras. He never said, "Action!"
He didn't have to. When he turned slowly around to face us, he began to speak
in a completely different voice.

"Guys,
I need to have a few words with you."

We looked
up and realized the cameras had begun to roll. Phil's camera was on him,
Felix's on us. All we had to do was listen.

"Boys,
your mother—she shouldn't have treated you the way she did, but you shouldn't
have talked to her the way you did, either." He raised a forefinger for
emphasis. "You should know by now that she has a lot of trouble talking
about sex. Especially The F Word."

He
chuckled softly, almost the way Dad actually does. To the best of m
y knowledge, Jay'd never met our father, but I could almost
believe that it was Dad talking. I glanced at Clark; he seemed to be having the
same reaction.

"And
even though I've always thought 'fuck' was a perfectly good word, I try not to
use it in her presence, and I wish you wouldn't either. But there's no reason
for you to ignore the word or the act. Someday, God willing, you're going to
find the love of your life, as I have, no matter what most folks think. And
when you do, fucking will be a huge part of that love." He almost smiled.
"Take it from me, I know. And, whether she admits it or not, your mother
knows it too. We just leave the lights off."

We
couldn't help but grin at that one.

"Now,
I... I'm not real good at this bird-and-the-bees stuff, but I think you get the
idea. Once you're sure you've found your soul mate, no matter who it is, enjoy
it, embrace it, treasure it, I promise you, fucking is the greatest wonder on
God's green earth. But it's also very precious, so guard it with all your
might, and if you play your cards right, it'll last you all of your born
days."

"Thanks,
Dad." Those words weren't rehearsed, but they seemed the only ones to say.

Jay took
a deep breath and said, "Cut!"

Instantly,
we spoke. "Jay, can we keep going?"

He nodded
without hesitation. "Action!"

Clark and
I embraced as Phil and Felix moved in.

"I'm
gonna fuck you before the day's over," I whispered.

"And
I'm gonna fuck you."

After
that, the rest of the scene played out as if ordained. Just as we had in real
life, our first orgasm was reached manually, the second orally, and then we
stopped to have a cigarette, which we shared. Jay was concerned about our delivering
a third money shot, but he needn't have been. The filming resumed.

"Are
we going to flip a coin?" Clark asked.

I shook
my head. "It doesn't matter to me who goes first. Does it to you?"

Clark
shook his head. "Damn it, Ryan, I just wish we could fuck each other at
the same time." We snuffed out our cigarettes and melted together.

Less than
a week later, we were sitting in our English class trying to talk intelligently
about Sylvia Plath's suicide.

"Where
did you get that suitcase?" Mark asked.

"At
the Good Will. It was a real bargain."

"We
don't need another suitcase."

"It's
not for us, Doofus, it's for the memoirs." Clark started to transfer the
stash of spiral notebooks into their new hiding place. "If you haven't
noticed, there's no room for another single one in the attaché case. You know,
Mark, you write a lot."

"Are
you complaining?"

"Who's
complaining? Keep writing. Shit, this is the best part so far. Everyone wants
to know what happens on the set of a porn movie. And what happens afterwards."
He closed the suitcase and locked it. "There's two keys. One for you and
one for me."

Mark
shook his head. "No, we only need one. Let's give the other one to
Clay." He hesitated. "I guess we'll have to let him know it's for the
suitcase under the bed."

"I
guess. Only tell him he's not to open it unless we drop dead. Okay?" Clark
snickered. "He'll just think it's our collection of skin magazines."

Being back in the States
was not much fun, I can tell you. Of course, we couldn't touch or kiss or be
normal, so we settled for saying "ditto" a lot. The only thing that
made life tolerable was our escape to Casa Clay-Jay each weekend. Clay, Jay,
and Lily had returned only days after we did and had brought Phil along to edit
the film. Each day, Jay, Phil, and Lily took the commuter train to Chicago to
the editing room, and each Friday night, when Clark and I arrived, another
completed scene was shown to us.

But, I'm
getting ahead of myself.

The night
they got back, Jay called to check in, and the first topic of conversation was
our continuing search to find a title for the film. We batted ideas around for
half an hour.

The
second topic was selecting our stage names.

"We
could do what the Hudson twins did. You know..."

“...borrow
the name of a superstar. How about..."

“...Mark
and Clark Cruise?"

Jay
groaned and headed into the third topic: our ongoing cultural education. There
was a Judy Garland movie on the late show the next night, and he wanted to be
sure we saw it. We vaguely remembered her from telecasts of
The Wizard of Oz
during
our childhood, but when Jay told us she'd died sitting on a toilet the night
before the Stonewall Riots, we made it a point to watch the film. From her
first entrance, we were hooked, and when she sang "How You Gonna Keep 'Em
Down on the Farm (After They've Seen
Paree
)?" we
almost believed she was singing it just for us.