In the porno films — for money — he didn't have to be Ham-bone nor Cotton Mouth Joe but he had to shine. Damn Edith! Jack Pradel, Director Supreme, told Mason his instrument was impressive. After the checkup Mason handed Jack the doctor's report. Green light. He'd get three hundred a flick. They'd shoot for a week. Each morning from ten till noon. Okay? The cameraman was Joe Wembly. Nice guy. Edith herself was stuck in another series. Just as well. Mason didn't want to screw her on screen. Sordid? Too moral?… He showed up early — nine-fifteen — for the first. Faye (Undressed-to-Kill) Daltrey was to be his co-star. Brunette. Big hips. After the shower and make-up Mason stepped out under the lights. Faye had an instant eye for the camera. He approached her as she watched the lens. She winked at it as he slid her panties down. Title: Diamond Legs. She had long ones. Shapely. Kept stepping and moving. Twitching. This was a reflexive one: no story-line. She slid back on a leather couch and he went at her till body and spirit closed. Then she made her mouth into the C-shape of a clay pot as she pulled at him with great linear strokes. Next scene: he entered her from the rear. She was energetic. Her wide hips were gyrating, rocking: it was like disco dancing. Faye winked at the camera. Blew a kiss at it. When he came she winked again at the Eye… Next morning he got it on with Little Sally Walker — a grown woman dressed to look like a twelve-year-old. Sally wore bobby socks and had a mouth full of bubble gum which she kept smacking. Her blonde hair was in pigtails. She had a jump-rope with blue handles. Story: Mason was supposed to be a farmhand and she was the daughter of the farmer. First shot: Mason quickly, expertly driving the tip of a blade into the neck of a calf just behind the jaw. Little Sally Walker wanders into the shot. Hello. Good morning Miss Sally. And there you have it. Within minutes she's playing Pony Express with his Messenger. Next he's tonguing her lava in search of a formula for clarity. Then Coca-Cola Max Sanderson, a white guy from down-the-road-a-piece, arrives. Together he and Mason romp with Little Sally Walker making use of all her orifices… Then Lilia Pant on the third morning. Mason liked her best. She was a real actress. Dreamy. Dreamy, dreamy. Lilia's hair was some sort of iron ore color: thick fluffy. She too kept up a permanent relationship with the camera. She was supposed to be a call girl working in the back room of a bar called Pink Pussycat Lounge. The bartender sends Mason back to her. As he goes back he thinks: “You are not yet the casting director: save your energy, man. You're one with a future. Don't blow it on fuck films.” Joe Wembly follows Mason's erection to Lilia's face. Her crunch was crowded with charm and dance music and air-conditioned erotic finger-licking-good messages… Then Eve Hott, in Chatterley's Lady. Mason's Chatterley: a Black mafia Boss in Harlem. Dressed in tux. The first four scenes show him unfulfilled by his harem of hot mommas. Then Galaxy Creole, a thug from downtown, sends Louisiana Eve Hott up to see him. And, wouldn't you know, the show…
Mason was a motion picture: you could run him forward then backwards. He split, resisting the temptation to squat in the Mickey Mouse closet with his “enemy.” He was in reverse at the moment — anxious about Painted Turtle, he went to Forty-second Street and sat in a dark theatre, watching celluloid clambake, cluck, all the screensation of a quickie: couldn't keep his mind on the bark, the gelatin: something about a prison break. They have no idea, baby: one day he was bopping along First toward A when two plainclothesmen jumped out of a squad car before it even stopped. Sluff action. Gave him a one-eyed-fadeaway. Grabbed him. Twisted his arms behind him, banged his head against the building. Roughly rammed hands into all his pockets. He was clean. Slapped handcuffs on his wrists. Threw him in the back seat: barred in. The trial was quick. He couldn't afford a lawyer: at the mercy of city service, he lost and the next morning was driven out early in a huge Black Maria — a battleship floating on quicksand — with fifteen other black dudes smelling of sweat, grass, and rotgut… Up there Mason had lots of time to review himself: he'd grown up watching the chitlin' circuit, waiting to see the half moons in Freddie Washington's pretty eyes. When he daydreamed teachers shouted at him. Everybody was a potential enemy. If one wasn't playing with loaded dice one was about to bilk you in another way. He was just a run-by — out of focus. Every day was April Fool's: don't give a sucker an even break. One had to be a magician in such a world. He got a custard pie in the face at every curtain call. But at Attica, Mason was a model prisoner: with a head full of canned music, funnies, giddyappers, still he read books, books, books. Few others did: they were mostly into hick pics, horse stuff or close-up shots of Dirty Rats. (The young ones got raped: fucked in the ass by studs and jocks and heavy queens. The boys surrendered their assholes in exchange [so they were told] for protection from the bellybutton sweat of mass murderers, hit-men, and crazed maniacs. Public Enemy, Mason's old pal, was too old to get it up, although he, too, had, in his day, been one of these protection-granters.) In the joint Mason woke every morning with a bullfrog-headache and smelling like a shrike and unwilling and not ready to face the daily hullabaloo. His mind was a camera mount imitating the motion of a boat: seasick, ugh, vomit: his mother's words echoing just inside his eardrums: you, like your father, ain't never been no good… his side of the family… rotten. Before Mason realized it he was grown, his father dead, his mother old: not even a dummyhead focused on the action! Growing up he executed cats, frogs, grasshoppers, snakes: had a definite criminal streak — struck out with redhandedness at the “degenerate” world around: nothing was “innocent”—not even insects. With pals Mason discovered the mysteries of Halloween, New Year's Eve: a feeling of craziness and anarchy were everywhere on such nights. One could do almost anything—