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The Mystery of the Slick Model (Part One)

November 5, 2013 Leave a comment

By Dick Oakes, Jr.
Senior Staff Writer
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It was a family out in the suburbs.  They had a living room carpeted in greens with thick brown drapes that blotted out the sun.

Pops was a bookish type– an engineer maybe.  He had a little brown case of mysterious tools sticking out of his shirt pocket.  Mom sat off in a corner– distant and detached.  There was some coffee but it was instant.  I complimented it anyway.  No cream was offered.

“We want you to find our Jennie,” Pops said suddenly.  He handed me something that felt like a magazine, encased in ancient, flaking brown paper.

It was an old pornographic slick– saturated colors, clearly shot in a rented hotel room– I put it about ’72 or ’73.  There was a buxom blonde on the cover.  She was on all fours leaning over some asshole in tight briefs.  There were a bunch of decorated paper fans on the wall behind them.  I couldn’t make any of it out.

“This is Jennie?  On the cover?” I asked.  Nobody said anything.  Had to be.

I opened it up and scanned the copyright page.  1973.  Damn, you’re good Dick, I silently congratulated myself.  King Barry Productions– little fucking crown over the “King Barry”, some office address in Western Lankville.

“This is forty years ago,” I said aloud.

“I know,” the engineer said.  “The…police…they stopped searching a long time ago.”  He looked grey and ancient– too old even to have a daughter now in her sixties.  “That…that magazine is all we have.  All we have to go on.”

Nobody said anything further so I flipped through it.  It wasn’t a bad issue– a little on the fancy-pants side– bunch of complicated positions but no penetration.  The guys weren’t even hard in most of the shots.  I tossed it on the coffee table.

Mom cried out and Pops ran over and shoved the damn thing quickly into the bag.  “Mr. Oakes, it’s odious for us to have this– you understand?” I nodded and finished off the coffee; got out of there and huffed it over to an adult magazine dealer I knew in Western Lankville.  Fat piece of shit named Fritts but he was alright.

“What do you know about King Barry Productions?” I asked.  He was pricing some lubricants and watching a game show on the TV mounted to the ceiling.

“Yeah, sure, King Barry.  They put out 10 or 11 slicks back in the 70s.  Owned by a guy named Dean Nettles.”

“Yeah?  Where can I find this Nettles character?”

“Nowhere.”  He stopped and looked at me awhile, then looked back at the TV.  They were giving away a dinette set and he seemed suddenly distracted.

“Nettles? Where can I find him?”

“Right.  Dean had a lot of problems.  He was living in a tent for awhile and then they just took him out and cut his head off.  That was in ’79 or ’80, I’d guess.”

“This King Barry Productions– they must have had employees– photographers and the like?”

He thought about that.  “Yeah, there was a faggot by the name of Trent Nettles.  I remember thinking it was funny ’cause they both had the same last name but they weren’t related at all.”

“Fucking hilarious.”

“Yeah, right at that.  Anyway, this Trent Nettles guy came into the office one day and Dean hired him on the spot as his graphic designer.  I think he’s still around.  You should look him up.”

I thanked him and bought some lubricant just for show.

I caught a cab out to the address from the slick.  It was long gone– the building had been demolished and they had put up a Buntz Mallows Palace in its place.  Meanwhile, I had had my secretary do a little research on this Nettles character.  She called me with some gold.

“He works for Pappy’s Chicken and Biscuits,” she said over the phone.  “Draws little chickens and umbrellas on bags, umbrellas, that kind of thing.”  She gave me an address.  I thanked her and tried a couple of lines I had heard the night before in a bar.  Nothing doing but I was working my way in there.

Forty minutes later I stormed into Trent Nettles’ cubicle.  I’ve found over the years that it’s difficult to storm dramatically into a cubicle; nevertheless, I’ve developed a sort of a system.  I generally just take a wall out.

This, I did.  Then, I grabbed Nettles by the collar.  He was a thin, pasty sort.  Pretty easy to man-handle.

“Who’s Jennie,” I demanded.  “Spring 1973.  You know what I’m talking about.”

He opened his mouth to speak.

And that’s when the mystery of the slick model began to unravel.

Categories: Funny Stories by Dick Oakes, Jr. Tags: ,
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