lucky ’cause I’m off tonight, but right now I’m going to sleep. Come back at four or five and you can take me out on a proper date and then maybe we’ll see what happens.”
When she shut the door on me she had a look on her face that was almost affectionate.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER a cab was dropping me off outside a dingy office building on Troost. The building directory led me to a suite on the top floor, and when I rang the buzzer no one answered at first. After a third and a fourth buzz, a baldheaded man with a painfully annoyed look on his face answered.
“Whatever it is I don’t need it. Scram,” he said. He was in his shirtsleeves and his suspenders were frayed. One lens of his black-framed eyeglasses was cracked.
“Hold on,” I said, and stuck my foot in the door.
“Scram,” he said again.
“Used to be a customer. United States Army Quartermaster Corps in Rome. Wayne Ogden’s the name, if that means anything to you.”
He cocked his head. “Ogden. The hell you say. I’m Merle Tessler.”
“I used to order quite a lot of material from you. I was in town, thought I’d look you up.”
“Huh,” he said. “Never ever had a customer visit in the flesh before.”
“Glad to see you’re still in business. I have a buddy stationed in Japan right now, running the same type operation I used to. Thought maybe you could send him a set on approval.”
“Hell, come on in. We could sure set something up like that.”
IT WAS LIKE any other photographic studio, with a skylight above and a portrait lighting kit. A corner of the room was used as a set, with various pieces of furniture. There was a darkroom in the corner, and a number of cameras in different formats, including one I hadn’t expected to see.
“Is that a Bolex, there? Swiss?”
“You know your gear, don’t you?”
“My grandfather was a photographer, and my dad was an amateur. So you’re making movies.”
“Yep. Sixteen millimeter. Started making stags right about six months back.”
“No fooling. I bet my buddy in Japan would like to get his hands on some of those.”
From a file cabinet he extracted a folder and handed it to me. Inside were pictures of girls, most of them better-than-average looking, getting fucked by an assortment of disreputable-looking men. Most of the men had the haggard, hopeless look of dope fiends, skinny degenerates with well-defined ribcages and jutting Adam’s apples.
“That’s the regular sex stuff. Shot those last month.”
“I don’t recognize any of the girls from the sets I was selling.”
“No, the turnover’s pretty high. Plus which the customers like to see new girls every once in a while.” He handed me another folder. In this one, girls in lingerie and black stockings abused one another. One of them showed a blonde in a girdle using a cat-o’-nine-tails to torment a sallow brunette tied face-forward to a painter’s ladder. The brunette was no actress, the expression of horror on her face laughably false. “These here are real popular too.”
“I know the genre. I remember one, had a gal in a French maid’s costume with a feather duster sticking out her ass.”
Tessler laughed fondly at the memory. “You never ought to have gotten the likes of that one. That was made to order for a customer in Marshall, Minnesota. Model was a hillbilly gal from Tennessee someplace, damned if I can remember her name. One of those who’d do just about anything, I used her when I got special requests. Stuff the other gals wouldn’t.”
“Like what?”
He reached into his file cabinet and pulled out a third folder, marked “MADE-To-OrdEr,” and handed it to me with an odd, crooked half-grin. Inside was a passport to a whole wide wonderful world of idiosyncratic sexual interests most of the world didn’t dream existed: amputee pin-ups, Tijuana-style bestiality, even crisply and artistically rendered coprophilia. “Crazy what gets people going, ain’t it?” Tessler
When she shut the door on me she had a look on her face that was almost affectionate.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER a cab was dropping me off outside a dingy office building on Troost. The building directory led me to a suite on the top floor, and when I rang the buzzer no one answered at first. After a third and a fourth buzz, a baldheaded man with a painfully annoyed look on his face answered.
“Whatever it is I don’t need it. Scram,” he said. He was in his shirtsleeves and his suspenders were frayed. One lens of his black-framed eyeglasses was cracked.
“Hold on,” I said, and stuck my foot in the door.
“Scram,” he said again.
“Used to be a customer. United States Army Quartermaster Corps in Rome. Wayne Ogden’s the name, if that means anything to you.”
He cocked his head. “Ogden. The hell you say. I’m Merle Tessler.”
“I used to order quite a lot of material from you. I was in town, thought I’d look you up.”
“Huh,” he said. “Never ever had a customer visit in the flesh before.”
“Glad to see you’re still in business. I have a buddy stationed in Japan right now, running the same type operation I used to. Thought maybe you could send him a set on approval.”
“Hell, come on in. We could sure set something up like that.”
IT WAS LIKE any other photographic studio, with a skylight above and a portrait lighting kit. A corner of the room was used as a set, with various pieces of furniture. There was a darkroom in the corner, and a number of cameras in different formats, including one I hadn’t expected to see.
“Is that a Bolex, there? Swiss?”
“You know your gear, don’t you?”
“My grandfather was a photographer, and my dad was an amateur. So you’re making movies.”
“Yep. Sixteen millimeter. Started making stags right about six months back.”
“No fooling. I bet my buddy in Japan would like to get his hands on some of those.”
From a file cabinet he extracted a folder and handed it to me. Inside were pictures of girls, most of them better-than-average looking, getting fucked by an assortment of disreputable-looking men. Most of the men had the haggard, hopeless look of dope fiends, skinny degenerates with well-defined ribcages and jutting Adam’s apples.
“That’s the regular sex stuff. Shot those last month.”
“I don’t recognize any of the girls from the sets I was selling.”
“No, the turnover’s pretty high. Plus which the customers like to see new girls every once in a while.” He handed me another folder. In this one, girls in lingerie and black stockings abused one another. One of them showed a blonde in a girdle using a cat-o’-nine-tails to torment a sallow brunette tied face-forward to a painter’s ladder. The brunette was no actress, the expression of horror on her face laughably false. “These here are real popular too.”
“I know the genre. I remember one, had a gal in a French maid’s costume with a feather duster sticking out her ass.”
Tessler laughed fondly at the memory. “You never ought to have gotten the likes of that one. That was made to order for a customer in Marshall, Minnesota. Model was a hillbilly gal from Tennessee someplace, damned if I can remember her name. One of those who’d do just about anything, I used her when I got special requests. Stuff the other gals wouldn’t.”
“Like what?”
He reached into his file cabinet and pulled out a third folder, marked “MADE-To-OrdEr,” and handed it to me with an odd, crooked half-grin. Inside was a passport to a whole wide wonderful world of idiosyncratic sexual interests most of the world didn’t dream existed: amputee pin-ups, Tijuana-style bestiality, even crisply and artistically rendered coprophilia. “Crazy what gets people going, ain’t it?” Tessler
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