Suburban Porn

By Hank Fredo

They have always been regarded as losers right from their high school days. Now in their mid-thirties, four friends decide it is time to change the perception of the world about them.

It is one thing to dream and another to make the dream come true. They soon realize this when they decide they are going to get rich through filming porn. All they need is equipment and actors.

A loan shark lends them money at an outrageous interest rate, but they are confident of paying back until things go south.

Threatened by the loan shark's men, they are in a race against time to find actors and get their porn business going but their troubles just never seem to end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215575406

Book preview

Chapter 1

Brian

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I feel terrible. It has been a while since I felt this way. Okay, who am I kidding? I have always felt this way, like forever. One thing that has always kept me up, always kept me going is faith, faith that things would always work out fine. But I’m starting to lose it.

I walk sullenly towards the garden where we try to preserve what is left of us. There’s Dennis, Phillip, Ben, then there’s me. Four friends who have refused to grow apart. After high school, we thought we were living town. Turned out none of us could go to college, and we were all stuck in the same filthy old town where we had done our growing up. Willowbrook, an annoying place with an annoying name.

Work has been crazy, and my boss would not stop tearing into me. Sometimes, I think he feels insecure because of his height. Whenever he talks to me, I stare down at him from 6 feet, and I get how that must be getting on his nerves, but I don’t care. I guess I’m at that point in my life where I get tired of everything.

I turn around the corner and come face to face with the old house that my parents have left me. It does not matter that I’m still paying mortgage on the house every fucking day. It belonged to me at least. It might very well be the only thing in the world that belonged to me. I can’t wait to finish paying the mortgage. On the veranda, there are chairs around a table. This is where we meet and drink cheap wine. The trees nearly help us with air, and we are far from the other neighbors. In our circle, I am the only who has a house. The others live in tenements, not like I bring it up anyway, but something clicks in my mind.

You know that point where you can suddenly see the big picture clearly, where everything that had been so confusing finally comes to gather, and you map out a life to success? Yes, that point. I’m at the opposite. I can see nothing past my meals, and the days. Day, night, day, night. Fucking monotonous torture. And every week I have to face Woody, the short mall manager. He mostly only has insults for me.

I walk up to the veranda and collapse on one of the seats. I lean fully into the seat and shut my eyes. Weariness as sails my body, sweeping over like waves at the ocean.

We had big dreams, all 4 of us. We thought we would make it out of here, maybe come back after some years in shiny cars and fancy suits to walk around the neighborhood and show them what we have become, but none of that came through. All four of us came from poor families who could not afford to send any of us to college, and none of us was bright or fortunate enough to get a scholarship. So we are stuck.

Life fucking sucks.

Ben

For the last, Ben, come and carry these things inside or you quit working for me, Roger says. He has an annoyingly whiny voice and I think he should have come out a pony instead of a human being. But then, that would be an insult to the all the lovely ponies around the world. This man here is worse than ponies. Not that ponies are bad or anything... oh fuck, what am I even thinking?

Ben!

From where I sit, I glare at him, then I slowly stand up and walk towards the bag. I’m almost 35, and I got a nasty back pain that almost does not ever go away as my last birthday gift. I have been to some clinics, and they think I should see a chiropractor. Those folks don’t come cheap, and I don’t have any health insurance.

I lift the bag with difficulty and hurry into the store where I keep it on the ground.

That can’t stay there, Roger says. He could be 40 or 50, don’t know, don’t care. But he has a child’s voice, and stands at the same height as I do, 5’6". There’s not a day that passes that he does not threaten me with firing me. If I manage to stay out of trouble through the day, he would talk about downsizing his staff. The idiot has only 3 staff, and that’s including me, the security man.

Come on, up on the shelf, he says.

I hurl the bag up the shelf and drop it with rather too much force than I intended.

What are you doing, you nitwit! Roger screams. Do you want to break those appliances?!

It is then that I look around the shop to discover it was an appliances shop. I have never really paid much attention to the details inside the shop, not while I’m always outside or by the corner, thinking about my life.

I watch Roger scream. Suddenly, I can’t hear him. It’s like he has been put on mute. What am I doing all of these for? I wonder.

I’m about turning to walk to the corner of the room where I lurk and stay out of sight till Roger would declare I have not done anything and need to work, when a hand pulls me back. I swirl around to face Roger. He is still shouting in my face and the names are all unprintable. I smack his face without thinking.

The silence that falls over the shop is deafening. At the counter, I can see the cashier watching us, mouth agape. Theo, who is arranging the goods on one shelf freezes. The air passes slowly, and time stands still.

I quit, I say quickly. It is much better than waiting to hear ‘you are hired’ because after ‘you are hired’ comes ‘you’re fired’.

You...

I turn towards the exit and hurry down the mall.

Dennis

I have been in here all day, smoking and thinking about the good old days. I miss them. High school. I was the golden boy, the one that was tipped for success among my counterparts, which does not include the bunch of losers that I roll around with now.

Losers, I say, chuckling. That is what we all are now.

I make one mistake of staying back in the little town where I was born and I become marked for life. Life does not seem to be looking up anytime soon, for two reasons. One, I have just been fired. Two, I have nothing, no savings. With the money I have, I say one week tops, managing and trying not to eat too much, I would be out in the streets begging or doing anything.

Maybe I could rob a bank. Maybe I should rob a bank. People have done it and survived at the end with success stories. Some of them are living the good life now, with the worry that lack of money brings out of the way. Some others, I hate to admit, are in prison. Now, that does not sound like a bad idea. I’m pretty sure my landlord would throw me out one of these days, and I cannot bear turning up at Brian’s place to ask for a place to stay. What would he think of me? Poor, broke, miserable. But, then, some of the bank robbers are dead, killed in action. That cannot happen to me. Maybe robbing a bank is not the way.

Before they both passed away, momsy and popsy always told me about heaven, and I have this irrational fear that they could be right. If they are, dying at the scene of my armed robbery and my spirit being lifted into the clouds for judgment is something that I’m not looking forward to. I can imagine the face of their God now, stern to show that he means business, his eyes boring through me while he looks at me with disgust.

I have done so many things that I think it would take a lifetime asking for forgiveness if I wanted to become a Christian. I mean, there are still other things that I plan to do, and I would be damned if the opportunity goes away from me.

Bang bang bang!

Some motherfucker at my door. What in God’s hell is wrong with people. You don’t bang on people’s door in that manner. The sick fuck damn near gave me a heart attack. I stand to work towards the door, then I pause on the way. Wait... there is only one person that bangs on people’s door in this manner. The fucking landlord. Especially when I’m owing him.