But Kubrick had a secret. He used to sneak off to the garage and jerk off over beefcake mags. It’s not that he was pretending he was straight when he was really gay, or that he was more of one than the other. He just found himself bored of the sex he had with his wife and was looking for a new kick.
He started thinking about what else could get him off. He decided to let his imagination really fly and see where it would take him. He started collecting catalogues.
Not underwear catalogues. That would be far too obvious, too easy. Catalogues of garden furniture, of seeds and cereals and grains, of dental instruments, of woods and metals and concrete. He followed his whims and collected whatever tickled his fancy. He would look at the photos and he found out that he was pretty adept at constructing detailed sexual fantasies around inanimate objects, the more mundane the better, because Kubrick was training himself to sexualize the world around him.
He figured that was a world that would be a far more exciting place to live in, that it would take him out of the drudgery of his government desk job, his normal suburban life. It would be far more exciting than even beating off to beefcake magazines in the garage after dinner.
This is how Kubrick found his calling. As a fetishist.
One thing led to another and soon Kubrick had a whole library of the most bizarre beat-off material anyone’s ever seen. A library that to anyone else just looked like the kind of eccentric collection of books you’d find at a flea market or Goodwill. Soon there was no more room in the garage to house the collection, but it meant so much to him that, instead of moving it or paring it down, he decided to sell his car.
One day, Kubrick got to talking with one of his co-workers about his collection and they both realized they had something in common. They both realized they were living a lie. They decided to start a club to pursue their interests.
At first, they would meet in a room deep in the recesses of the building after work hours. There were only a handful of them and they would just sit around with a beer, each discussing their fantasies in turn for the others – like group therapy but for sadists and perverts. It was all very sedate and civilized. Until, one evening, as Kubrick was relating a particularly lurid sex fantasy involving a hosepipe, a sprinkler and a pile of manure, a guy sitting opposite him, who was new to the group, pulled out his penis and started to jerk off in front of everyone else. Instead of stopping to tell him to zip up, Kubrick carried on, incredulous. Now he had a new challenge. He wanted to see if he could get this guy off.
As he continued, the other guys in the room also started to unzip and soon Kubrick found himself in the position of trying to help them all, stimulating them to orgasm solely through the power of his imagination. And, to him, this was like the greatest kick of all. Way better than simply beating off over catalogues of cleaning products and jewelry and power tools.
The next time they met, a few of the guys brought their secretaries and interns. As Kubrick sat in the middle of the circle and told them stories, they started doing a lot more than just jerking off in front of each other. Kubrick’s little gathering very quickly turned into a support group for sex addicts where more sex was encouraged, not less. People started bringing props and dressing up. The scenes they acted out became more elaborate and involved.
As word got out and more and more government employees wanted to join, things started to get out of hand. It was getting harder and harder to keep it a secret. Around the same time, Kubrick decided he’d had enough of cooking the books for the government so they could prosecute dirty wars in far-flung territories across the world, then point at the accountants and claim plausible denial. He decided he wanted to devote his energies to his real passion, helping people to discover and activate their kinks.
I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing so I stop Anna there and say, ‘Are you telling me that’s how the Fuck Factory started? As an after-hours sex club in the Pentagon?’
‘I guess,’ says Anna. She doesn’t say anything after that for a few seconds, as if she’s deep in thought. Then she says, ‘You know, the strangest people work in government.’
Kubrick still has pretty good connections, Anna tells me.
‘You wouldn’t believe the kind of people that come here,’ she says.
I wait for her to tell me who but she doesn’t, and I don’t ask because I’m not sure I want to know. It’s not just the combination of those two statements that unnerves me, but the totality of everything she’s just revealed to me about the executive branch and what really goes on behind closed doors of government.
I’m inside the Fuck Factory and I feel like Al Pacino in Cruising. I’m Al Pacino pretending to be gay. And giving off all the wrong signals.