Where the Boys Are, page 16
Even though he’d bought two hundred rounds of ammo, he quickly emptied his gun. An instructor retrieved his target, and Dell noticed only a few bullets had hit their mark.
“Fuck,” he said, pulling out his protectors. “I couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”
“It’s because you’re cockeyed,” cracked London, reloading her Uzi. She had her hair pulled back, safety glasses angled on her nose, and her rack looked stunning in a Radiohead T-shirt. He loved the way her breasts bounced in tandem with her gun’s short, violent bursts. It was almost enough to make him want to kiss her.
“I’ve got more than cock in my eyes.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Balls.”
“You’re jealous, right? Just because I’m having dinner tonight with a musician.”
London slammed the cartridge like an A-Team member and smirked. “Please. A DJ is not a musician. DJs steal other people’s music. They’re glorified plagiarists.”
“What’s wrong with plagiarism? It’s how we made it through high school.”
“Excuse me,” said London. “I’m Asian. I don’t need to cheat. And another thing.”
With that, she raised her Uzi one-handed and blasted a paper target of Saddam with five clean, efficient burps. Because he wasn’t wearing protectors, Dell flinched and may have actually pissed his boxers a little.
London pouted her lips and blew on the gun barrel. “God hates techno. You’re not in high school anymore, Dell. Be careful out there.”
“Aw, you really do care about me.” He couldn’t hear her reply for the ringing in his ears, so he added, “Maybe Bugsy and I will get an apartment downtown.”
London snorted and proceeded to reload.
They dined on Chicago-style Italian at a little hole in the wall in the downtown arts district. Having never been on a formal date before, Dell didn’t intend to order anything with garlic. But since Bugsy was slurping escargot with gusto, Dell caved in and scarfed down some garlic bread with his spaghetti and meatballs. It tasted great.
Bugsy poured Dell a glass of red wine, and the barback downed it in a single gulp.
“Hey, slow down, gorgeous,” said Bugsy. He’d finally removed his sunglasses, revealing dreamy blues eyes.
Dell felt good in the presence of this sophisticated soul, a DJ who had performed in clubs across the globe, from Ibiza to Iceland, and who now enjoyed residencies at clubs up and down the Strip as well as downtown. At the same time, Dell’s heart went out to an artist who could find his truest expression in a second-rate nightclub on Boulder Highway.
“You’re right,” said Dell. “Sorry.”
“No worries. It’s Sunday. We’ve got all night.”
Dell’s dick quivered.
He soon found himself giving Bugsy sloppy head in the DJ’s Land Rover behind a warehouse on Commerce Street. Dell performed a Lewinsky by popping an Altoid before going down, giving Bugsy’s engorged cock a new sensation.
“That’s nice,” said the DJ.
To give his jaw a rest, Dell gently nibbled on Bugsy’s nuts.
“Deep-throat me,” cooed Bugsy.
He pushed his cock into Dell’s mouth, hitting the back of his throat. Dell opened wide as if to yawn, and took Bugsy as far down as he could. He let the DJ’s cock rest there, holding down his thighs to keep him from thrusting deeper. And then Dell did something he hadn’t thought he was capable of—contracting the muscles in his throat and massaging the head of Bugsy’s penis.
“Oh god,” Bugsy whimpered.
They moved the encounter to a mattress inside the warehouse. Bugsy threw a few beach towels over it and propped a flashlight against a crate for a sexy, if somewhat sinister, atmosphere. He pushed Dell onto his back and gave him an incredible rimming. Dell lay with his legs spread. Bugsy kneeled down and pushed Dell’s ankles up, carefully guiding himself in. Gradually, the DJ accelerated his thrusts, pumping Dell’s tight bum.
“I love watching my dick go in and out of your ass,” said Bugsy.
Dell bit his lip. “Go as deep as you can.” With his legs up, Dell came when Bugsy began sucking his toes. The DJ’s deep penetration must have stimulated Dell’s prostate, because he exploded, his wad splattering his own chest. Bugsy licked the cum off Dell’s nipples.
“My turn,” said Bugsy.
“In my mouth,” said Dell.
Bugsy pulled out and stood up, fiercely clenching his dick to keep from spurting. Dell got to his knees, greedily vacuuming the knob just in time for the first blast of liquid love.
“Mmm.” Dell purred as Bugsy’s cum flooded his mouth. He swallowed dutifully, but Bugsy was firing off so fast, so thick, he couldn’t keep up with the ejaculation. Cum flowed down from his chin where it had spilled from his mouth, and more of the stuff oozed down the sides of Bugsy’s penis, toward the hand Dell had wrapped around the shaft to hold the DJ steady while he creamed.
Dell’s fist was sticky with goo, and slowly he worked that fist toward his mouth, scooping cum as his hand moved, his tongue roving about, searching for more.
“Good boy,” said Bugsy.
Afterward, they showered at Bugsy’s apartment and went back out into the desert night, dancing at Tarantula, a new nightclub on Fremont Street. There, Dell met an endless parade of local promoters, managers, and other DJs. They were all friendly, offering Dell drinks at every opportunity. Dell passed, wanting to keep his wits about him.
“Your friends are nice,” he said to Bugsy.
“They’re the best. But they have a mischievous side, too. You’ll see that on Friday.”
The music got the best of him, and Dell danced with most of Bugsy’s friends until three AM. Dell loved house, but Bugsy wasn’t impressed.
“I’ve heard this set a million times,” he observed on the drive back. “He had people dancing, sure. But he’s not transporting them anywhere.”
“Where do you like to transport people?” Dell asked.
Bugsy thought about it. “Someplace different. Someplace they’ve been curious about but never had the courage to explore. I want to be their guide.”
“Speaking of,” said Dell. “I want to get my own apartment downtown.”
Bugsy looked at Dell before fixing his gaze back on the road. “You should move in with me for a few weeks while you’re searching.”
Dell felt his heart skip a beat. “That sounds good. Thanks.” The next day, Dell insisted London join him for a shopping excursion at the outdoor mall near Main Street. They visited every store, including Baby Gap, and ordered ice-cold Frappuccinos to cool off in the heat.
“This can work,” Dell insisted. “Everything I need is within walking distance.”
From behind her Ray-Bans, London still managed to shoot him a look of profound disgust.
“All right, biking distance then.”
“Dell, you’re a product of the suburbs. You won’t last five minutes in this part of town.”
“Are you kidding? Look, here’s a Banana Republic.”
“If you want to move out of your mom’s house, fine. But maybe you should choose an area that isn’t overrun by homeless people?”
“No one is homeless here. And you’re being insensitive. Besides, London, you’re the one who works downtown.”
“Why do you think I bought a gun?”
“Well, I’ll get a gun, too. I was considering a pearl-handled revolver.”
“You would.”
“When I find a place, will you help me move?”
“Why don’t you get your boyfriend’s boyfriends to do it?”
“Now that’s an idea.”
Friday arrived, and Bugsy invited Dell to the Zone, an established downtown gay bar that boasted a drag queen revue starring Stacey Shockwave. One of Bugsy’s friends was in charge of the show’s lights and music, and Bugsy admitted that he and his buddies often threw jerk-off parties involving Stacey.
“He’s a total slut,” said Bugsy over dinner at Andrea’s, a French bistro just a stone’s throw from City Hall. “And he looks great, whether dressed as a man or a woman.”
“Where do you guys jerk off?” asked Dell, feeling the rush of blood to his groin.
“Usually in Stacey’s dressing room. You’re hard, aren’t you?”
Dell said nothing, using a fork to pick at his salad. Bugsy reached under the table and put his hand on the barback’s lap.
“Up for a party?”
Dell shrugged. “If you are.”
That night, Bugsy and five of his friends—mostly bartenders and bouncers who also lived downtown—made their way to the Zone. Stacey Shockwave ended up putting on a hell of a show impersonating Madonna and Gwen Stefani, while her fellow performers nailed Celine Dion, Bette Midler and Britney Spears. Dell despised drag shows, but he had to admit this one was pretty first-rate. In between numbers, he chatted with Bugsy’s friends and admired the guys walking around with colored shots at five bucks a pop.
After the show, Bugsy pulled Dell out of a conversation he was having with another club-goer.
“Time to party,” he said, a wicked expression on his face.
Dell followed Bugsy out a side door and into the parking lot. It was dark behind the club, and Dell saw Stacey squatting in the shadows before a group of men, sucking off a guy he’d been talking to earlier in the club. Stacey had wiped off his makeup and removed his wig, and Dell noticed that, with his sharp cheekbones, he was deadly attractive, even while wearing a miniskirt and fishnet stockings. And with his face stuffed with cock.
The guy standing over Stacey moaned loudly, obviously unloading. Stacey sucked him dry. Then he stood up and kissed the man hard, snowballing the man’s own cum into his eager mouth. Instantly, another man, a stocky dude with big biceps, stepped forward.
“Cum in my mouth,” Stacey said, back on his haunches. He opened wide and said, “Ah.”
The eager man unzipped the fly of his jeans and pulled out a nine-inch dong. The others unzipped and began stroking themselves.
Stacey sucked cock with a ferocity Dell had seen only in the nastiest porn movies. One by one, Bugsy and his friends stepped up and let Stacey suck them to a powerful climax. But now the guys were pulling out and jerking off right onto Stacey’s tongue.
“Don’t swallow until the last guy’s finished,” said Bugsy.
Watching Stacey catch the jizz of at least six guys in his mouth almost forced Dell to squirt early. But he slowed his stroking enough so he could watch the black guy in front of him shoot yet another thick load into Stacey’s hungry maw.
When it was his turn to blow a wad, he stepped up and stared right into the queen’s spooge-slicked mouth. Stacey did his best to smile, given the quantity of cum soaking his tonsils, and pressed a finger against Dell’s prostate, enhancing his pleasure. Dell could smell the other guys’ semen. He brought himself to a righteous orgasm, lowering the head of his cock into Stacey’s mouth and spurting huge white ropes, which were promptly gargled.
“Swallow it,” Dell said. “Swallow it all.”
Stacey did just that, wincing at the enormity of the collected load. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “That was good and salty.”
“I’m not done yet,” announced Bugsy. “Bend over.”
As the drained guys stumbled back into the bar for more alcohol, Stacey leaned forward, one hand on the Dumpster and the other raising his skirt. Bugsy spit in his hand for lubrication before plunging deep inside. Stacey had been rock hard for some time and now, with his skirt raised, his own man meat was on full display. Bugsy started hammering Stacey’s ass the same way he did Dell’s.
Dell couldn’t help himself. He knelt down in front of Stacey and began furiously sucking. Stacey immediately erupted, his sweet jizz making Dell want a double load himself. He reached between Stacey’s legs to touch Bugsy’s sac, which was still slapping relentlessly against Stacey’s ass. Dell felt Bugsy’s balls tighten.
“Pull out,” said Dell. “Let me taste Stacey’s ass mixed with your cum.”
Bugsy was already spurting as he switched holes, shooting a small but succulent wad directly onto Dell’s lips.
“God, I want more,” said Dell, wiping the jizz from his face. His heart was pounding, and he could feel blood rushing in his ears, at his temples. He remained on his knees, in shock at his own performance.
“Next time,” said Bugsy. He and Stacey smiled, the two of them patting Dell on the head like he was a puppy.
An hour later, Dell phoned London as he filled up his Honda Civic.
“You won’t believe what happened to me,” he told her.
“You bought a pearl-handled revolver,” quipped London.
“Tonight a DJ changed my life.”
“So now downtown is the place for you?”
“It definitely has its advantages,” he said.
LOCAL FAME
Ted Cornwell
It’s beginning to trouble me that so many of my dreams are set in a city where I spent a few precious years of my youth, a city in which I haven’t lived for twenty years. In some dreams, I live in houses that are absurdly large, with views of downtown and a veranda for sipping iced coffee during the humid summer. In others, I reside in a firetrap of loose floorboards, leaky plumbing and menacing strangers who apparently are my roommates. Sometimes, friends from my life in New York intermingle with people I knew back then. Last week I had such a dream—of sitting around with contemporaries, and suddenly X, my first boyfriend, walks in the door. He seems to know everyone in the room. Later in the dream, X and I are sitting alone in a winterized porch with floor to ceiling windows. It is snowing outside. X shows me his camera. It looks like a big old Polaroid, but he turns it over and begins to scroll through digital images on the back of the machine. He’s showing me photos he took that morning. The photos are of naked young men, sketchy and tough looking, who lean against rocks or tree trunks with their arms folded and their sex willfully exposed. They frown back at the camera. The pictures have been taken along the Mississippi River bluffs between downtown and the university, where dense forestry mixes with industrial ruins to form a particularly seedy and alluring landscape. Even though it is snowing outside in the dream, it is summertime in the photos, and the naked men are sweaty and honey-tanned. Suddenly, I look up and one of the young men from the photos, one of the most ornery looking, is standing outside the window, in his winter clothes. He and X stare at each other intently. I fear he might try to break into the house, but instead he pulls down his pants and masturbates, spurting onto the window in front of us. I wonder if I should be jealous of his connection to X, who watches indifferently.
There are many other dreams of course. But lately, they often occur in some version of Minneapolis.
There were four of us—me and three girls—giddy in that van that decamped from Decorah, Iowa for the glittering Aphrodite lights of Minneapolis in June of 1987. In the months leading up to our graduation from Luther College, none of us had any idea about what to do or where to go when school ended, until Jane came up with the brilliant idea of Minneapolis. Her friend Nancy, a few years older but like us a graduate of Luther, lived in a duplex near Lake Harriet. Her two roommates had moved out, and she would let us stay there, at least for a while, for just a hundred and fifty dollars per month for each of the two available bedrooms. Stacy and I planned to share one room; Jane and Melinda would be in the other.
It all went swimmingly for about two and a half weeks. Nancy was cosmopolitan enough to know where and when hip events were happening and collegial enough to invite us along. We went to parties where other recent college graduates and migrants to Minneapolis gathered to swap job leads and troll for dates. Kegs of beer were hoisted into garbage cans full of ice. At one party we met a novelist, much older than most of the crowd and mildly lecherous toward some of the women, who claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. At another event, we saw a performance artist take off all his clothes and declaim the poetry of John Berryman while beating on a rather plangent, homemade drum. Stacy was rebuked for giggling.
On the ride home, I was consulted on the question of whether or not the performer, whom we knew only by his stage name “X,” had been aroused during his performance, or whether it was natural for a penis to “stick out like that,” as Stacy put it. My verdict was that X had a “semi” when he first took off his clothes, which softened as the performance got underway. Jane concurred, saying his penis did seem smaller by the end of his show. She then listed an unlikely assortment of penises she’d seen, including Paul Newman’s in a movie about Alcatraz, and her brother’s, peeked at through a bathroom door keyhole. There had been a sculptor at the party who was widely esteemed in the Twin Cities art scene. He was said to be forty years old but looked younger. Jane and he made quite a scene in the back alley behind the miniscule theater where the performance and after-party had occurred. This, as it happened, turned out to be the downfall of our domestic arrangement.
The next day, Jane and Nancy had quite a row. It turned out that Nancy—whether or not this was known to Jane remains a mystery to me—had a substantial history with the sculptor, which included passionate lovemaking, bitter breakups, periods of platonic cohabitation, and eventual estrangement. She accused Jane of seducing him out of spite, or allowing him to seduce her out of spite. Melinda came into our room, where Stacy and I huddled on one of the beds trying to decide whether it was best to leave and give them space or to stay put with the door closed and pretend not to exist. We chose the latter option. Phrases such as “dog whore” and “anorexic shit-face” were bandied about. The culmination of the fight came from Nancy: “Get the fuck out of my house! I want you and your friends out of here.” Doors were slammed.
