ETTA JENKS
“You have to like to travel. People you call friends become strangers. You can’t keep anything, because everything disappears.”
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So concludes the title character of Marlane Meyer’s Etta Jenks, a young woman who arrives in Los Angeles seeking a career as a film actress and ends up a rich and successful businesswoman in the pornographic-movie industry. Along the way she meets a variety of physically and/or psychologically deformed types indigenous to the trade, some clinging to a semblance of civilization and some honest enough to admit that they have none. Spencer and Ben are owners of a skin-flick empire–“Do you remember decolletage?” the former asks nostalgically, to which his partner groans, “Aw, Spencer, you’re such a romantic!” Sherman and Burt are twin brothers, one a blind rifle-toting veteran, the other a deaf station porter in love with Etta. Alec and Max are professional assassins, the former a homicidal robot, the latter an effete moralist–“Pornography provides a public service for lonely men who can’t stop thinking about their cocks,” Max confides to Etta. “I’m Catholic, and I believe it undermines the family . . . I’m not a psycho like Alec. He really likes this work, but I’m just a sociopath.”
