Making a Porno (with Music)

The movie this time was "exotic," they'd said. Auteur but with a sublime je ne sais quoi. Those French ladies claimed to have captured that pivotal moment during sex when lust plucks away a woman's last thread of inhibition. On s'envoie en l'air? And they need a soundtrack.

Pretentious. I'd always made a point to avoid these types of gigs—and the French.

"It's classy. It's a nice studio," Dalia had reassured me.

She knew I couldn't argue. My whole world is a mental landscape of imaginary blocks. And every block was once a word that Dalia had spoken. Sometimes those blocks have a certain feel or a sound or a smell, but mostly those are secondary features that I tack onto Dalia's words.

I live without sight. Dalia calls it darkness. I don't know what that is, but it must be true.

Why that woman had tied herself to me, I'm not sure I'll ever know, but she's always been my guide—a friend of my family's and my family for life.

I feel her powerful fingers wrap around my arm, clear around until her thumb and forefinger touch. She leads me to a stool. It feels small and square against my knee. Odd shape. I sweep my hand through the "dark" until my knuckles nudge against a row of plastic keys—just to make sure the electric keyboard's actually there. I don't want a repeat of Chicago: "Ma'am, that's a xylophone."

"You're shaking." Dalia's voice comes from well above my head and conjures a splash of purple in my mind's eye. Synthesia, they call it. Apparently, my brain never forgot all the wonderful colors that I used to see as an infant.

"It's cold." I rub my arms.

Dalia doesn't comment on my rather minimalistic style of dress. She never does. As I sit, my bottom tugs my skirt up just past mid thigh. The fabric's strung tightly around my bum, but on top, it drapes across my lap like a thin TV blanket. And deep underneath, a string cradle of lace preserves a wedge of my modesty.

My loose blouse is cut such that it exposes my shoulders. Dalia's giant hands rest there and encompass my shoulders wholly. That girl pins me down whether she means to or not. My Dalia and her powerful six-foot build—and me, her waifish charge. A Valkyrie and her fairy in a box.

Her palms are sweating. They always get that way when she touches me. My skin dampens.

"Can they see us?" I whisper.

"Yes." Dalia squeezes my shoulders. I lay my ear on the back of her hand. "The studio is clinical," she says. "It's bright."

She purposefully uses keywords that I know. Clinical, meaning cold and bare. Bright, meaning nothing is hidden, all is exposed. How much can they see?

"What do they look like?"

"I can't tell. Our clients are sitting behind a mirror pane of glass."

I want to ask if this gig is safe, but that would be insulting. "Where am I?"

"You're facing the mirror. They can see your front."

That's never concerned me—at least, not in a bad way. Perhaps it should, but that kind of thing has always had the wrong effect on me. Dalia's always after me to close the blinds in my apartment when she visits, "people can see in," but I can't understand why that makes a difference. People can always see in, but I can never see out—whether the blinds are closed or not.

Dalia whispers into my ear. "I can see you, too." How much? She knows me so well.

My delicate fingers trace up and down the cracks between the keyboard's keys. It's my ritual. I have to feel every one. The client provided the instrument, but it's my job to know it. Sixty-one keys, I count. Not ideal.

"What brand?"

"Casio. CTK, and I see a three and maybe a five, but the model number is very faded."

It's clearly old. It feels big and boxy, too, like a nineties throwback. Or perhaps even a model from the nineties. From my understanding, the ladies who run the studio are not rolling in dough. Which, I assume, is exactly why they hired me.

An intercom crackles. "'Ello, uh, ah-vwee will play the clip. An' you can do the doot, doot, doots." My employer sounds husky and very French. I imagine her in a smokey dive, puffing on a cigarette with one of those long stemmed things. Like, she sits on a stool. The mic's in front. The act: She's Neil Diamond pinched in undies too tight.

Her voice triggers what I associate with "dusky yellow" in my mind's eye.

A second voice chimes in. "Iss, ah, the momont when Madame, the small one, opens her legs to Madame, the, ah, big one." She's a lazy pink—dull hearts. "Large, strong, forte. An', uh, la chatte spreads—"

"Please, stop," I interrupt. My voice is a translucent gray in contrast to the confidently opaque, if buzzy sounding, French women speaking over the intercom.

Dalia cuts in. "Ladies, I appreciate your interest, but Taja has a very specific process that she needs to follow, which was stated plainly in our contract. I find it disconcerting that you would disregard our sole request."

My friend's voice is so strong. I can't remember what real purple looks like. But I have been told that it's a royal color. And actually, it doesn't even matter what "real purple" is because Dalia's voice will always be my purple.

The French ladies seem much smaller in my mind now.

"Apologies," says the lazy pink one. "Less juss play the clip."

Good. My rule is simple: Don't describe the visual details. There's very little that I can do better than people who can see, but sound, I feel, is one of them. Even in film, my method makes my work unique. I genuinely believe that.

Their soundtrack plays. I hear that dusky yellow voice say, "au coin de la rue," like a narrator's introduction kind of thing.

Footsteps fade in and begin to clitter-clack on a hard surface. There's some tweety bird sound effects, so I assume the setting is outdoors, maybe a town center? A lady says, "Walla, walla," which is kind of funny. Another lady mimics her. And the "walla, wallas" keep piling on until it creates the effect of indiscriminate babble.

Despite the babble effect, every voice is one of the same two colors: Pink and yellow, the very colors of my two clients. Clearly they'd just looped in their own voices. Maybe they couldn't afford actors?

The soundscape begins to strain out the idle thrums of chatter and focus in on two voices in particular. They're the only voices saying anything other than "walla, walla."

"Non pas ici; no, not here," says a lazy pink voice, gratefully overdubbed in English.

A dusky yellow voice replies, "Tout le monde regarde; everybody is watching."

Buttons snap, snap, snap. "Non, non."

I hear a zipper. "Je vous en prie, arrêtez-vous! Please, stop!"

"Devraise-je? Should I?" The dusky yellow voice asks.

The crowd quiets to punctuate her decision. "No," Lazy Pink mutters.

The chatter returns and an ambient rain noise swoops in. The rain's a fuzzy black static that covers most everything up. It's hard to make anything out over the static. I do hear a woman's moan. Perhaps a soft slap against flesh, a muffled cry of surprise. Fabric tears, and I don't hear so much as feel a powerful undercurrent to all that noise.

It's not enough for my brain to process, but my body seems to recognize it, and my hips squirm. Dalia's sweaty palms still pin my butt down to the stool, so I can't wiggle much.

"Pause, please," I tell the ladies as professionally as I can manage. "Is it layered?" If it isn't, I'm not even sure I want to be working with clients that incompetent. "Can you remove it, that rain effect, and play it again?"

"Certainly," the husky one replies.

They play it again, minus the rain, and it's—Oh, wow—sucking, and so very wet, like they're lapping up a drink from a bowl on the floor. Can water be red? Because my mind sees it as drips of maroon. I can sort of understand the "artistic vision" behind the rain sound effect, now—still pretentious but I get it.

Lazy Pink moans, and Dusky Yellow slurps, but even now that the rain's gone, it's still partially obscured by the crowd's chatter.

I feel Dalia squeeze my shoulders. With all the sweat from her palm, her fingers feel soggy against my skin. Surely she's watching the actual scene on a projector or a television set or whatever regular people watch films on.

"Do you like that?" I ask her.

She doesn't answer me, but her thumb absently strokes the side of my neck. Her touch is so clumsy. She's just smearing sweat, but it flitters butterflies into my spine all the same.

This gig already feels rather unusual. Regardless of what the auteurs claimed on their ad, they basically need me to compose a porn soundtrack for them, which couldn't be further outside my wheelhouse. I do telenovellas and some Bollywood rips (those are fun), but Dalia picked this gig out special. She seemed so excited about it, too. And I know she wouldn't set me up to fail, so all I can do is my best.

"Can you please filter out the crowd's chatter, too?" I ask.

"Iss important context," Dusky Yellow tries to argue.

"I want to hear it—" I search for the right word. "—raw."

"Ahh." I can hear the smile in her voice. "Certainly."

The lazy pink one adds, "We will be watching," which stutters my heart.

"Just, just loop it, please." My face is burning up. Dalia touches my ear.

Their soundtrack plays, again. "Au coin de la rue," the narrator announces.

Now, the only ambiance is the layers of footsteps—click-clackity-clock, click-clackity-clock. They allude to a large crowd of possibly unwilling observers to the women's sex. Oddly, they're all on the same rhythm, as if they took a single gait and multiplied it a dozen times.

I know the theme is wet. So in that context, I imagine a perfectly still lake. It's yet to be defined, but that's where the women's story will occur.

I have to stretch my imagination a bit, but the colors that those click-clackity-clocks conjure in my mind become rows of taut blue strings that just barely graze the surface of the water. Every person who I can sort from the crowd has their own string, and every click, clack, and clock is a single pluck on that person's string. It ripples the water. At first it appears that the ripples are discordant, all criss-crossing and fusing together, but the thing is, they all have the same magnitude and spread at exactly the same frequency. I pick one out. That one's my tempo.

My fingers touch the keys, but there's nothing I can add here.

I imagine that lazy pink voice as an idle buoy. She says her line, "Non pas ici; no, not here."

Kerplunk. That's a bright green splash. I know that shade of green. I strike then hold a single C-sharp to match.

"Tout le monde regarde; everybody is watching." Dusky Yellow's line. Her words are rolling waves of yellow yearning, a low bass swell with my left hand. I keep it simple.

Buttons snap, snap, snap, pink, pink, pink. "Non, non." A right hand flutter to cut in between.

I hear a zipper. That sound tears open the front of Lazy Pink's buoy. Her insides are a fleshy red. "Je vous en prie, arrêtez-vous! Please, stop!" the pink voice cries out. A dissonant chord! Middle C and G.

"Devraise-je? Should I?" Dusky Yellow asks. Tentative bass proddings.

The crowd quiets to punctuate the silence. The water stills. "No." I skip a minor scale closer to the bass.

I hear the woman's first slurp, and—

"Stop, stop, stop. Iss all wrong," Dusky Yellow interrupts my playing. "There is no, uh—"

"Majique," Lazy Pink says. I can't tell if that word is English or French. "The notes are totally expected. No, no, no passion."

"Fine." I can take criticism. Really.

Dalia tells them to loop it over, and I try again, this time with a legato section to flow between the footsteps and more dynamic bass swells for Dusky Yellow's urgings.

"Stop, stop. Iss all—iss not right."

"If you'd give me some time!" I blurt out. Dalia pats my shoulder to calm me.

"But, ma jolie petite, no amount of time will add Majique."

Fucking French. I could cry. I chew on my cheeks, and plunk C sharp over and over. It's on beat, but—I hang my head—I just can't think of anything to add. "I'm not sure I'm right for this. I'm sorry, Dalia."

She squeezes my shoulder twice, then I feel her breath in my ear. "If it's not right for you, it's not right for you, but—" I feel her finger probe into the back of my waistband. "—if you're going to quit anyway, there's no reason not to. I know you like this."

I hiss at her. "Dalia, stop!"

"Is that what you want? You want to stop?" Her words are gentle, but the notes are crisp and choppy.

I deflect. "Our clients are watching." But I have no idea if they can actually see.

"I do wonder if they mind..." Her palm bridges across my bare cheeks. So sweaty, her flesh slathers mine. I want to push into her.

"You always tell me how you love to play other people's colors, but I wonder—" Dalia prods a single finger—her middle finger—up between my cheeks. It makes me clench and shudder. "—what are your own?"

"Dalia, I'm an, um, professional."

"Taja." She speaks my name as a soft exhale. "This job was for you. Enjoy this. There's no reason not to."

She pushes deep until her finger wedges between my intimate flesh and the hard stool that I'm sitting on. I have half a mind to shift upward to let her touch me farther. But...

She must have sensed my reluctance. Her hand slides out of me, one sopping inch at a time. "Do you want to go? We can stop right here."

I say nothing. My middle finger idly traces the cracks between the keys.

Dalia prods at the spot where my arms rest against my ribs. I raise up just a little bit to let her. Her hands slip through. They slide under my arms, around my ribs, and she nestles her palms right underneath my breasts. Her thumbs creep up to rub my side-flesh.

I know the Frenchwomen can see this. Maybe they mind, maybe they don't. This job is a bust, or it isn't.

That's when the intercom crackles.

"Now think about what, ah, Amelie is feeling," Lazy Pink makes no comment on Dalia's molestations. "She sits. She has a cigarette. She is in the crowd. But, ah, her lover, she tugs at Amelie's clothes."

She's breaking my rule, but what's it matter now?

"An' then Azavique—" I don't understand that word, but Lazy Pink continues on. "—touches her where she should not. 'No, no, not where people can see.'"

Dalia pinches my nipples. She knows exactly where they are, even through the padding.

My knees part. A cool draft touches my thighs. It blows in. It's there. I feel a faint twitch on the long hairs curling out from behind the string cradle of my panties. I know what that is: My lubrication drizzles down those strands. It tickles. I squirm. The draft freezes my leak against my skin.

Lazy Pink's voice drops. She practically coos, "Yes, and people can see."

I shift forward until the hard edge of the stool pokes a solid line across my bum. My mouth is parched. I lick my lips. "Can I—May I try again?"

They're quiet. Do they need convincing? My knees part just enough for one to gain entrance should she so desire. "Please?" My voice squeaks.

Dalia kneads her sweat drenched hands into my breasts. She's so much stronger—and bigger, too. Her hands engulf my meager breasts. She rocks me on the stool. My bum hinges on the precipice while her hands pull me over the edge then push me right back. Again and again she does this. I keep my fingers on the keys.

"My dear petite jolie, of course, of course, we expect you to." Dusky Yellow's voice feels sticky.

The clip plays.

"Au coin de la rue," the narrator announces.

Through my shirt, Dalia absolutely brute forces the cups of my bra down my breasts; they crumple beneath my mounds, and their tension pulls my breasts upward. Oh and my blouse is so thin, it feels like nothing but a dry lubricant between Dalia's thumbs and my nipples, erect.

I smell her body—woodsy pine from that essential oil she really likes with a salty post-workout aftertrace. I smell mine, too, and it's pure smut.

The footsteps fade into the clip. It's a chatter of blue plucked strings. I don't care to pick out the individuals. That's not the point. The point is there's a crowd, and it's absurd!

As it happens, Dalia fiddle-fucks with the top button of my blouse then the one below that.

I know what's to come. The footsteps, those represent people who are going to see, whether they want to or not. It's inevitable.

Mmm. That silence before was all wrong. The unwilling voyeurs should be a constant off-beat in the background. It's notes that are wrong. This song shouldn't happen here. There are people! Blue staccato. Syncopate weird steps. They're stumbling as they see.

"That iss good." The validation is nice, but more so the reminder that they see.

"Non pas ici; no, not here." Lazy Pink wants it, but she's thinking about all the eyes. She needs that pretense of resistance. I had it wrong before. That's not a single splash of green over the buoy. It's a jittery alarm, an arpeggio. She's nervous. I'm nervous.

"Tout le monde regarde; everybody is watching."

"Open me," I whisper.

Buttons snap, snap, snap in the film. "Do mine, too."

Dalia's clumsy fingers try to open more of my buttons, but in the end, she just pop, pop, pops the buttons off with brute force all the way down until my blouse splits right down the middle. That's turbulence on the water. Yellow breakers shudder the buoy at every pop.

"Non, non," Lazy Pink says in the film. "Wider, wider," I say.

My blouse parts; my breasts expose; cold air bristles their flesh. It's a tingle. That's a staggered scale. Maroon froths at the base of the buoy.

I've gone too far to stop now.

"Touch me," I whisper to my royal purple friend.

She does. She pinches my nipples. It shocks me; it hurts. She rolls my rock solid nipples between her forefingers and thumbs. My Dalia molests me as pain over pleasure—and it's perfect. She pulls my nipples straight out! It's too far, too far!

That sweat, her grip slips. My breasts feel elastic. They snap back; it knocks a jolt down my stomach, it strikes my crotch, and tendrils branch off; their little fingers prickle my vulva. I contract. My muscles suck my string panties into a very tender place.

Gods. I play those notes as best I can. They're noisy, and they clash. That buoy in my mind's eye is battered over the yellow turbulence and writhes in the maroon froth.

The intercom cackles. "Bien faite." "Est jolie." The French women say. I love their encouragement. I love their eyes.

"Down, down," I tell my friend and lean forward to give her access.

Grace is not a feature of my Dalia. She digs into my waistband and stretches the string sides of my panties up my hips, up, up and even above my waist. The cradle digs!

I hear the film advance. There's the zipper. It opens a hole. "Je vous en prie, arrêtez-vous!" And the pink voice tells her lover to stop.

"Devraise-je? Should I?" The dusky yellow voice asks.

The crowd quiets to punctuate her decision. "No," Lazy Pink mutters. She doesn't mean it. She sees the peak but she's scared of it. I play up to but not into C4.

Dalia doesn't give me that reprieve. She rips my panties upwards. The thin string of lace splits my vulva. A rush, a twinkling scale.

In the film, a woman moans. A molten gush pours out of the zipper hole and into the lake.

Dalia's so strong; she pulls my ass off the stool. She stands me up; she makes me bend.

My fingers graze C4.

She drops my skirt, just like that. It bunches around my ankles. The French ladies, they can see me split and dirty—my swollen labia parted by string and drenched in smut. And there's even my bedraggled unkept pubic hairs.