NOTE: I hereby grant permission for all archiving and
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and credit to "theGreatxIam" is given and no alteration
is made to the body of the work. Copyright 2002,
theGreatxIam

The Fish Tank
in honor of ASSDÕs FishTank
Chapter 1 (of 5)
By theGreatxIam

Begin at the beginning? How pedestrian. In this story,
it may be best if we begin at the ending.

Or, to be precise, about 22 minutes before the ending
came for the story, for the careers of Larry King and
several CNN technicians, and for the swagger in the
walk of a million men.

Talkmeister Larry was hosting another of his
hard-hitting, newsy group interviews. This one was with
past participants from various so-called reality-based
shows -- both classics like "Survivor" and newer ones
such as "Poke in the Eye with a Sharp Stick."

Specifically, Larry had assembled couples who met on
the shows and stayed together afterward. As evidence of
the wide gap between King and such purveyors of
schlock-talk as Jerry Springer, not one panel member
had visibly missing teeth.

Such dental integrity and vocabularies rife with words
of two and even more syllables did not, however,
preclude controversy among the guests. Insults, not
chairs, were hurled.

The culminating incident began when Chuck, a "Survivor"
survivor, teasingly suggested that eating raw locust
larvae was a less frightening prospect than spending a
day, let alone a life, with one of the other panel
members -- to be specific, Des.

"She's a frigid bitch," Chuck said, catching the show's
assistant director in charge of beeps napping.

"Yeah," said Tony, the "Fear Factor" legend. "Man may
have the balls to take her on, but he ain't gonna have
none when she's done with him. Right, Pete? There's
nuttin' in your nutsack now?"

The director's leaping stab of the blooper button
rendered much of the comment inaudible, but that
prevented him from noticing that the wide shot he'd
last chosen gave the home audience a clear view of Tony
cupping his genitals as he pointed at Pete, Des's
partner.

Order and tight shots were returned in time for Pete's
soft-voiced response. Thus the screen was filled with
his craggy features and salt-and-pepper hair as he
said, "I'm afraid you bungee-jumped one too many times,
Tony. You've confused Des with the scrawny hag you're
squiring."

Chuck grabbed Tony to keep him from slugging Pete, so
it was Charlotte herself, the hag in question, who
responded. "Shove it up your ass," she said with the
gentility that had marked her progress through the
elimination rounds of "Fear Factor." "Everyone knows
yer woman's a goddam bitch. For crap's sake, she showed
her claws all over national TV!"

Larry tried to regain control, asking a cheerful
question about Tony and Charlotte's recent anniversary.
It was no use. As Charlotte wiped the spittle from a
face whose sunburn no pancake could adequately
disguise, Chuck re-entered the fray. His boyish good
looks beamed out at an international audience as he
said, "Let's be reasonable here. There's no need to be
insulting or resort to violence. We're all adults here.
But, Pete, you have to admit. The whole world knows.
She is a frigid bitch."

The camera briefly swung to a gaping Larry King before
returning to Pete. He was smiling tightly. "Are you
sure of that? I would hazard to guess that Des is far
more accommodating than the other women here tonight."

Tony's thick, black eyebrows lowered like
thunderclouds. "Bullshit," he said in rebuttal.

Pete rubbed a hand on his chin. "Would you put money on
that? Say, $1,000?"

"Damn right," Tony muttered.

"Count me in," Chuck said. "But what exactly are we
betting on?" He put a protective arm around his life
partner, Teresa. "What do we do, have sex?"

"Exactly." Pete nodded. "Right here, right now. Tell
Teresa to do you."

Chuck shook his head and laughed. "You're crazy. First
of all, I wouldn't tell her to do anything. She --"

Teresa herself interrupted. "He isn't the boss of me. I
do what I want, when I want. And you're sick."

Pete cocked his head. "Money's on the line, Chuck. And
pride. You can't even get a kiss, can you. You don't
even dare try for a hand job."

"How about it, honey?" Chuck put on a puppy-dog face as
he reached out. "You'd --"

"Get your paws off me!" She slapped him away. "You're
as sick as he is!"

As Larry frantically waved at the control room, Pete
turned to Tony and challenged him.

Charlotte intercepted the suggestion. "Don't even go
there," she said. "Whaddya think, I'm some kinda whore?
That's all behind, buddy. "

"I see." Pete sighed. "Easiest $2,000 I ever made." He
turned to the silver-haired woman at his side. "Des?"

She slid from the stool gracefully and unzipped him
with impeccably manicured hands. Kneeling before him,
her shiny bob was perfectly framed by his thighs on the
world's television screens.

The control booth was never so misnamed. Fingers were
poking buttons everywhere, and the fingers that weren't
poking were pointing. Blame was being exchanged like
gifts on Christmas morning. What no one there realized
was that an errant finger early on had transferred
command of the transmission to the back-up booth
upstairs. Theoretically the technicians there should
have noticed, but like the rest of the world they were
just staring at the screen.

Pete had swiveled, Des had followed, and the home
audience got a perfect side view of a mid-sized but
quite engorged penis sliding in and out of ruby lips.

The director was screaming into the camera operator's
headset to pan away, but the disaster heightened with
the inexorable speed of a train wreck. Stunned by what
he was seeing in the monitor, the cameraman zoomed in,
in, in. Across six continents -- reception was very
fuzzy in Antarctica that day -- screens were completely
filled by a thick rod pulsing with blood vessels,
getting redder and redder as it picked up lipstick on
its way in and out of Des's tightly pursed mouth.

It had a hypnotic attraction. In living rooms, dorm
lounges, bars, and electronics show rooms; in
Pittsburgh, Peking, Paris and Pemba off the coast of
Africa; to men, women, children and a startlingly large
number of dogs, the pulsing image flickered. No one
could look away. Quite the contrary. They drew closer
and closer to the screen.

In Ottumwa, Iowa, an old man confined to a wheelchair
craned his neck so far forward that he tumbled to the
floor. He just shook it off and crawled toward his
Sony.

In Rome, a convent's worth of nuns in old-style habits
banged wimples as they crowded around their set.

In a suburb of Tokyo, a 12-year-old boy assigned to
watch CNN for his English class vowed to never skip his
homework, never ever. And then he threw aside his
Pokemon and pressed his nose to the TV.

In thousands of cities, millions and millions of homes,
Pete's grunts and groans and a cacophony of slurps
echoed. Only in the control room in Atlanta could no
one hear it, not over the shouts of technicians.

On the set, the other panelists were frozen statues.
The only movement by Larry was the heaving of his
chest. (The bypass operation the next day was
successful.)

All of that was invisible to the viewers. As the
electric blue glow bathed their faces, all they saw was
a penis driving in, pulling out, driving in, pulling
out ...

The first splash of cum erupted into the global
village. Viewers recoiled in shock. On the big screen
of Kickers Sports Bar in Paterson, N.J., it looked as
if Des would surely drown under the ocean of gooey
white fluid that was gushing from Pete's howitzer.
Millions of women looked from the screen to their
husbands' laps. Millions of husbands curled up into
fetal positions and knew their sex lives would never be
the same.

And that's where the story ends. Or nearly so.

---- ---- ----

The guy who came up with the idea called it "A
Sustained Experiment in Biospatial Modes and
Interaction in a Non-Opaque Environment," but then
three years of grad school sociology classes will do
that to even the nicest person.

The company that bought the rights pitched the concept
as "Peeping Tom," but that was only used for the
British version, because a country that can sustain so
many Murdoch papers clearly has no shame left.

When it debuted on ABC, they called it "The Fish Tank."
This was considered quite witty at the network that
brought us "The Chair."

The TV critic from USA Today dubbed it "Sur-voyeur."
But focus groups said Americans who like colorful
graphics do not know what "voyeur" means, so his editor
electronically blue-penciled it. Still, that sums up
the show most succinctly.

The account that follows will be unfamiliar only to the
distressingly few who were not among the largest weekly
audience in the history of television. However, as
those who were in the audience lost, by scientifically
accurate measure, an average of six points off their IQ
with every episode they saw, the likelihood that they
remain capable of reading, let alone Internet use, is
quite slim, so the narrative will proceed on the
assumption that its readers are beginning with blank
slates.

To begin, the rules: Six men and six women were chosen
through a rigorous series of mental and physical tests
that largely determined which applicants were so
desperate for fame that they would put up with a
rigorous series of sadistic tests. Coincidentally
enough, the group of 12 that resulted from each
season's testing always contained the minimum daily
requirement of minorities, a representative sampling of
two people over the age of 45, and at least one young
woman who consistently underestimated the size of her
breasts when buying apparel.

The precisely diverse group, after signing several
waivers and each being the subject of at least one
fawning but inaccurate profile on a local ABC
affiliate, was ushered into building that would be home
for the next two to 13 weeks.

The building shared its name with the show, an entirely
appropriate choice because it was the star. The Fish
Tank was -- is; it stands today -- a standard one-story
suburban ranch except for two things. First, while it
has a modest three bedrooms, two of them are big enough
to accommodate six beds each, sharing use of two
adjoining bathrooms; use of the third bedroom, with its
king-size bed and private master bath, was determined
each week by a test of skill. Second, each and every
wall in the house is made of crystal-clear Plexiglas
specially treated for maximum durability and
invisibility. The only privacy available on the show
was that provided by blankets or, bizarrely enough, the
frosted glass of the shower doors. Bizarre, because the
other three walls of each shower stall are, of course,
utterly transparent.

Aside from its notable gimmick, "The Fish Tank"
proceeded along the same general lines as "Big Brother"
and all the other entries in the
Torquemada-meets-the-slumber-party school of
broadcasting. After one week to get acquainted, the
contestants were pitted against each other for
survival. Week by week, one player after another was
voted out of the house, always alternating between men
and women (exceptions being made for homosexuals, who
were assigned to elimination groups based not on their
gender but -- well, suffice it to say that Anne Heche
would have been counted as a woman even during her
lesbian interlude, but Ellen DeGeneres would have had
to fight it out with the guys).

At that point in the season when the house was down to
three men and three women, the regular schedule of
exilings was interrupted by a "best of" special.
Despite the questionable application of such a label to
the likes of "The Fish Tank," the special was actually
no worse than the so-called clip show compilations of
television series that budget for writers. The reader
may judge whether this speaks to a hidden quality in
"The Fish Tank," where hiding would seem impossible, or
simply the odds against finding an hour of worthwhile
viewing in a season's worth of anything on broadcast
TV.

Following the special, the axing of players continued
apace until four were left. Two of them were then
lopped off in one blow. The remaining couple had the
house to themselves -- themselves and a cleaning crew,
sound technicians, camera operators, and an assistant
director or two. At the end of two weeks of public
privacy, a winner was chosen, provided with wads of
cash and sponsor-provided gifts, and whisked away to be
bathed in publicity until such time as he or she was so
overexposed that even Barbara Walters wasn't
interested.

The reader should understand that the complete set of
rules, a printed copy of which was involved in the
tragic puppy-squashing of the second season, was much
more elaborate and even more boring. And specifics were
constantly changed to suit the producers' whims, making
it not so much a contest as a series of staged
humiliations with lovely parting gifts.

During the course of this ordeal, the participants were
featured in weekly TV shows culled from boxcar-loads of
videotapes of their activities. In a world where Andy
Sipowicz's bare butt can be shared with the viewers,
one might think ABC would be able to show just about
anything inside the Fish Tank. After the very first
episode's now-infamous bad batch of chili, however, the
somnolent FCC bestirred itself. As a result, the full
spectrum of action was seen only by those who pirated
the unedited satellite feeds or paid for the Internet
access package providing 15 minutes a day of heavily
compressed video, a feature truly appreciated only by
those who thought Picasso's "Woman with a Guitar" was
one hot babe.

There was one other select group of people privileged
to see life in the Fish Tank raw and uncut: Anyone
perverted, curious or bored enough to mosey over in
person.

---- ---- ----

The Tank was built, you see, in a normal suburban
enclave -- or as normal as any neighborhood is within
three hours' driving time (roughly 12 miles) of Los
Angeles.

After the first episode or two, the live audience was
present 24 hours a day, a huddled mass of citizenry
jockeying for position all around the house's exterior
walls. The producers set up ropes to keep the crowds
well back, but the system broke down and a harried
cohort of security guards could do no more than clear
out certain quadrants when the director wanted a shot
not filled with gawkers.

The rest of the time, faces were pressed to the glass
everywhere, requiring an army of burly window-washers
to squeegee away the smears and snot every few hours.
The crowd's behavior was in the finest tradition of
American zoos: making faces, pointing, banging on the
glass.

Especially banging on the glass -- to get attention, to
stir up the occupants, or just for kicks.

Despite earnest statements from the producers
beseeching people to stay away "to preserve the
integrity of the experiment," it must be said that the
onlookers did lend an air of authenticity to the show.
Being on the inside looking out really was like being
inside a fish tank, albeit without the little castle to
hide inside.

No wonder, then, that the people inside the Tank began
to behave like tropical fish.

There were the angelfish -- not saintly types; think
more Charlie's Angelfish. Though there was actually
little need to be seen naked -- the rules allowed
players to duck under the covers clothed, and a long
shirt could cover a lot on the toilet -- some women
insisted on strutting around in the altogether, making
sure to give everyone a good look as they drifted along
the outer walls.

Almost no men showed such exhibitionist tendencies, at
least not after they saw what the cameras on the
outside recorded. Paul, the 27-year-old stockbroker on
the original series, was the first to complain that the
glass was purposely distorted. "It's like looking
through the wrong end of a telescope," he said after
seeing the video of his nude frolic. When the experts
from Owens-Corning scientifically disproved that, he
suggested it was too cold inside and made a point of
bundling up. As he also refused to take showers after
the onlookers began bringing powerful spotlights to spy
on his nocturnal ablutions, it was no shock when the
other players quickly voted him out. Most of the men on
later series were known to have brought along full
complements of underpants and astonishingly large
quantities of socks.

Rather than an angelfish, Paul had been one of the
complainers known, naturally, as carp.

Every edition of the Tank had its carp. So, too, its
kissing gourami, those couples who couldn't keep their
hands or other body parts off each other.

It was Cheryl and Cal who took the concept to its
ultimate level in the third week of the first series,
when they shared the big bed and, as the smarmy host
put it during very blurry highlights, spawned like
bunnies. But the most notorious example might have been
Tom, the sixth-year college student with a curiously
vague major, and Tawny "The Body" Haskett, the rug
hooker with a heart of gold and ambitions of a similar
hue.

In the third season of "The Fish Tank," Tom and Tawny
latched onto each other early and formed a pact to
christen every room in the house. With the outside
audience cheering each incident and ratings soaring, it
was suspiciously providential that their antics did not
lead to speedy ejections by the rest of the players. No
doubt Tawny's success in the immunity challenge in Week
Four helped; what were the odds she would trounce
everyone else in identifying the weave of a selection
of Oriental carpets?

These incidents are well known to the readers of
publications such as Us, People and The National
Enquirer. There are other tales those high-toned
periodicals did not deign to print, but luckily the
First Amendment provides a shield for the investigative
efforts of the dedicated journalists on the staffs of
the Sun, the Weekly World News and Bodacious Ta-Tas
Monthly.

It was those Bernsteins of boob jobs, those Woodwards
of woodies who uncovered -- was ever a pun more
intended? -- who pulled off the raincoat, as it were,
from the public indecency records of three announced
male contestants before the second season. A valiant
Globe scribe revealed how Latrelle Vincent used a
laundry room vent in a most unexpected way to allow his
adoring fans on the outside to show their appreciation.

And it was Hustler's efforts -- so unfairly snubbed by
the Pulitzer committee -- that established, through
extensive use of night-vision cameras, that Sister Mary
Innocenta had a very liberal interpretation of her
vows.

To be continued...

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