Venice Place Dispatch

Those crazy ladies of Venice Place are at it again. This time they have planted a listening device in Starsky’s car. On Wednesday night, after the shuffle board tournament, they gathered around the couch while Flamingo read from the latest transcript of a stakeout recording.

The “Venice Place Stories Series” started on the slash mailing list, VenicePlace, in the mid-90s. Members wrote short stories featuring Starsky & Hutch, still in their mid-thirties, who were living in the Venice Place building in the current day, along with all the mailing list members (“neighbor ladies”) who also lived in “apartments” in the building. The “VenicePlace stories” were eventually published in zines produced for our S&H slash convention, SHareCon.

Venice Place Dispatch was originally published in the zine, The Bay City Gazette, in 2014.

STARSKY: “Hutch?”

HUTCH: “Yeah?”

STARSKY: “I’m bored.”

HUTCH: “Starsk, we’re in hour fourteen of a stakeout. What do you expect?”

STARSKY: “I expect you to talk to me. You haven’t talked to me in over an hour.”

HUTCH: “We’ve run out of things to say. Put on the radio.” (The sound of candy wrappers crunching is heard in between the radio being switched on and then off.)

STARSKY: “There’s nothing to listen to at this hour.”

HUTCH: “Then hum to yourself.” (More candy crunching, followed by…)

STARSKY: “Okay, Hutch I got one for ya.”

HUTCH: “Got one what?”

STARSKY: “I guess you could call it a brain twister.”

HUTCH: “My brain is too tired to twist.”

STARSKY: “Come on, play along.”

HUTCH: “Are you sure there isn’t anything on the radio?”

STARSKY: “Here’s your question: Which Stooge would you fuck to save me?”

HUTCH: “What?”

STARSKY: “Which Stooge would you fuck to save me?”

HUTCH: “What the hell is in that candy bar, Starsk?”

STARSKY: “Chocolate. Now I’m serious. Answer the question.”

HUTCH: “I don’t even understand the question.”

STARSKY: “Okay, try this. We’re kidnapped by some lunatic psychopath—”

HUTCH: “We couldn’t just go with the non-lunatic variety?”

STARSKY: “Are you going to listen to me?”

HUTCH: “Since I don’t have ear plugs, I guess I don’t have a lot of choice.”

STARSKY: “Good, then shut up and listen. The lunatic psychopath—hell, the non-lunatic one if it makes you happy—anyway, he kidnaps us. And he tells you that unless you fuck one of the Three Stooges, he’s gonna kill me. Which Stooge would you pick?”

HUTCH: “You know, Starsk, every word coming out of your mouth is English, and individually I understand them all. But in combination… what the hell are you talking about!”

STARSKY: “Stop yelling. It’s a simple question.”

HUTCH: “Are you talking about The Three Stooges comedy team from the 1930s and 40s?”

STARSKY: “Are there more than one Three Stooges?”

HUTCH: “One Three Stooges, do you hear yourself?”

STARSKY: “How would I not hear myself? You already pointed out we don’t have earplugs. Now answer the question.”

HUTCH: “The Three Stooges are dead, Starsk. Do you and your lunatic know that?”

STARSKY: “He’s a psycho, and yes, in real life, they are dead, but for the sake of this question, they would be alive. I mean otherwise it would be necromancy and that would be plain weird.”

HUTCH: “Necrophilia.”

STARSKY: “What?”

HUTCH: “Necromancy is having magical control of the dead. Necrophilia—having sex with the dead—would be weird.”

STARSKY: “Okay. Necrophilia would be weird.”

HUTCH: “As opposed to this scenario?”

STARSKY: “Are you going to take this seriously?”

HUTCH: “You want me to seriously tell you which of the non-dead Three Stooges I would fuck to save your life from the lunatic?”

STARSKY: “Psycho.”

HUTCH: “Did the necromancer psycho dig up the Stooges and raise them from the dead, too?”

STARSKY: “Huh. Good point. I guess he would have had to, right?”

HUTCH: “You asking me? This is your cockamamie scenario.”

STARSKY: “Stop stalling and tell me which one.”

HUTCH: “None! I’m not fucking any Stooges. Don’t you have a comic book on the back seat you can read?” (A rustling sound is heard, then a long silence that is so thick, you can hear the tension over the recording static. Finally, three minutes and twenty-seven second later, Starsky speaks again.)

STARSKY: “I can’t believe you, Hutch. I would take a bullet for you. You wouldn’t even fuck a Stooge for me?” (There is an unidentified slamming sound followed by a long sigh and some muttered curses before Hutch speaks again, forty-five seconds later.)

HUTCH: “Okay, fine. Moe. I’d fuck Moe. Are you happy?”

STARSKY: “Moe? Seriously? Why the hell would you want to fuck Moe? He’d poke your eyes out for one thing. Are you sure you want to go with Moe?”

HUTCH: “Okay, fine, you’re right. Not Moe. Curly. I’ll go with Curly.”

STARSKY: “Hey, are you just naming Stooges now? You weren’t really gonna fuck Moe, were you?”

HUTCH: “At the rate you’re going, I’m not sure I even want to fuck you anymore.”

STARSKY: “Well, I don’t want to fuck you either if you can’t even do this one little thing to save my life.”

HUTCH: “Starsky, there are no lunatics…or, psychos…who go around kidnapping cops and undead Stooges and forcing them to copulate.”

STARSKY: “Hey, cut that out. You promised no more sexy words on stakeouts. You remember what happened to my jeans the last time?”

HUTCH: “That was your fault and so is this. You brought up fucking.”

STARSKY: “Get your Hutchinson poke finger outta my face. I brought up exploring the lengths you would go to in order to save my life…which I see ain’t all that far.” (Three more minutes of uncomfortable silence, followed by another exasperated Hutch sigh.)

HUTCH: “Are you seriously pouting over this.” (Silence. Radio static.) “Starsk.” (Silence. Radio static.) “Oh, come on.”

STARSKY: “I’m not talking to you anymore.”

HUTCH: “Because I won’t answer your ridiculous question?”

STARSKY: “Because you won’t save my life.”

HUTCH: “I’ve saved your life plenty.”

STASRSKY: “Sure. When it was easy. But now that you’ve got to do something hard—”

HUTCH: “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Okay, fine, I’ll play your little game. But you can’t keep rejecting my answers.”

STARSKY: “If you give me a serious answer with some thought to it, I won’t.”

HUTCH: “Serious answer.” (More grumbling, followed by a lengthy pause. More static.) “Okay, I have your answer. Larry. I’d fuck Larry.”

STARSKY: “Larry? Are you kidding? He’s the ugliest one.”

HUTCH: “Ugliest? How can you tell? None of them are exactly lookers. Besides, he’s the least popular. Probably has a lot of insecurities. He’d be the least aggressive in bed, which would be a good thing, because I’d want to get it over with quick—to save your life and all. And he’s got curly hair.”

STARSKY: “Curly hair? Wait a minute. What the fuck are you trying to say? Do you think I look like Larry from the Three Stooges?”

HUTVH: “Of course not, Starsk. I just happen to like curly hair and I needed some criteria to justify my choice, otherwise you’d say I wasn’t taking the question seriously.”

STARSKY: “So you’d fuck Larry?”

HUTCH: “Yes, I’d fuck Larry.” (Long pause as more candy bar wrappers crackle.)

STARSKY: “You’d really fuck Larry?”

HUTCH: “Yes, I really would.”

STARSKY: “So you’d fuck another guy? What kind of partner are you?”

HUTCH: “The kind that loves my partner enough to do what I had to do to save my partner’s life.”

STARSKY: “Oh.”

HUTCH: “Are you satisfied?”

STARSKY: “That depends.”

HUTCH: “On what?”

STARSKY: “Well, would you like it? Fucking another guy, I mean?”

HUTCH: “Hey, Starsk. Look! It’s him! That’s Blake coming out of that building. We gotta roll.” (Sound of the engine turning over.)

STARSKY: “Yeah, but you didn’t answer my question.”

HUTCH: “This is a new question. I’ll answer it when we get home.”

STARSKY: “You better, or you’re going to be sleeping alone.”

HUTCH: “I’ve got a better deal. You drop these questions all together and I’ll spend the rest of the night fucking you so hard you won’t remember who the Three Stooges are.” (Sounds of the engine roaring to life and the squeal of tires.)

STARSKY: “Deal!”