Free Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

to light her fire a couple of times by showing her porn videos in his apartment after dinner, but it seemed to her that act two of all those stories consisted of jizz shots in a girl's face, and how that could excite anybody was way beyond her.
    Despite his hangup about gay men, Benny seemed to her like a dedicated officer, never badge-heavy, never manhandling anybody who didn't need it, whether gay or straight, so she had no complaints. And it was very comforting for Mag when Benny was standing behind her, eye-fucking some of those maggots who liked to challenge little cops, especially little female cops.
    They met Mr. Potato Head in the first porn shop they checked out. It was on Western Avenue, a dingier place than most, with a few peep rooms where guys could look at video and jerk off with the door locked, but this one had a makeshift theater, a larger room with three rows of plastic chairs posing as theater seats, and a large screen along with a quality projector hanging from the ceiling.
    The theater was curtained off by heavy black drapes and there was no lighting inside, except for what came from the screen. The occasional visit from uniformed cops was supposed to discourage the viewers from masturbating in public, whether alone or in tandem, while they watched two or three or five guys porking whatever got in front of them. To background hip-hop lyrics about rape and sodomy.
    Benny walked down one aisle, looking like he wanted to get it over with, and Mag started down the other, when she heard him say, "Do your pants up and come with me!"
    The viewer had been so involved in what he was doing that he hadn't seen that very tall black cop in a dark blue uniform until he was standing three feet away. He lost the erection he'd been stroking, as did just about all of the other guys in the room, but Mag figured some of these dudes were so bent that the presence of the law, the danger of it all, probably enhanced the thrill.
    She shined her light across the chair to see what was going on but he had already pulled up and belted his pants. He was being led by the elbow toward the black curtain and Benny kept saying, "Damn!"
    When they got him out of the video room, Mag said, "What? Six-forty-seven-A?" referring to the penal code section for lewd conduct in public.
    Benny looked at the guy, at the black elastic straps wound around his wrists, and said, "What were you doing in there, man? Besides displayin' your willie. What're them straps on your wrists all about?"
    He was a fiftyish plump, bespectacled white guy with a pouty mouth and a fringe of brown hair. He said, "I'd prefer not to explain at this time."
    But when they took him to a glass-windowed holding tank at Hollywood Station, they found out. He gave a short demonstration that caused Benny to exit the scene shortly after the prisoner dropped his pants and unhooked the intricately connected elastic straps that encircled his waist, wound under his crotch from each wrist, and finally threaded through holes in the end of a potato. Which he reached behind and removed from his anal cavity with a magician's flourish and not a little pride of invention.
    Performing before five gaping cops who happened by the glass window, the prisoner then demonstrated that if he sat on one buttock and manipulated the straps attached to his wrists, he could adeptly pull the potato halfway out simply by raising his arms, then force it back into its "magic cave" by sitting on it. He looked like he was conducting an orchestra. Arms raised, potato out, then sit. Arms raised, potato out, then sit. And so forth.
    "Probably keeping time with the background music on the video," Mag suggested. The guy was ingenious, she had to give him that.
    "I ain't handling the evidence," Benny said to Mag. "No way. In fact, I wanna transfer outta this lunatic asylum. I'll work anywhere but Holly-weird!"
    It disappointed her. Holly-weird. Why did they all have to say it?
    By end-of-watch, Benny would find a gift box