And he’s lying on top of Alec and they’re both sweaty and cum-soaked and exhausted. He pulls out of Alec’s still hot, still tight ass, trying to hold the base of the condom like he remembers someone telling him he’s supposed to, slips it off and slaps it onto Alec’s thigh just to be a brat, and unceremoniously falls asleep sprawled on top of Alec. Alec wrestles himself out from under Ben at some point and manages to grab pillows and blankets on his way back from the bathroom, and tucks back in with Ben on the floor of the living room. And they stay that way until well into the late morning.

  Alec wakes up first. He looks over at the sleeping skatepunk curled up next to him and gets hit by a wave of…something. Ben looks ridiculously angelic—face gone innocent in sleep. He doesn’t look capable of last night’s sexcapades.

  Alec has never really been able to figure Ben out. He keeps expecting Ben to freak, but it hasn’t happened yet. Alec keeps falling into his defensive hostile-flirtation thing, and Ben keeps surprising him by accepting it all. Nothing seems to faze him.

  The boy is tough and cool and keeps showing up with butch injuries from stupid skateboarding tricks; he’d puke to hear himself described this way, but he’s sweet. He’s got this openness—this friendliness beneath the sarcasm—he’s no more afraid of fags than he is of breaking his arm again riding his skateboard down the high school staircase railing.

  He’s a sweet little daredevil and I’m his latest skateboarding stunt, thinks Alec. Did he really fuck Alec last night? Did Alec push him too far? Is he going to freak out and never talk to Alec again? It wouldn’t be Alec’s first time. Alec nuzzles into Ben’s neck for a moment, Ben mumbles sleepily and throws an arm around Alec’s neck. Alec catches himself getting maudlin. Fuck that—if Ben never speaks to Alec again, then Alec had better make it worth it. He smirks, thinking of the one thing that they didn’t do last night…. Ben has not yet experienced one of Alec’s world-famous blowjobs.

  Slowly, so as not to wake the sleeping former virgin, Alec ducks beneath Ben’s arm and starts to make his way down Ben’s body. He stops at Ben’s armpit, deeply inhaling the musky clean scent of sleepy boy. Then he licks his way over to Ben’s left nipple. A couple of circles with his tongue and it’s sticking up; Ben moans and Alec’s suddenly worried that he won’t be able to complete his mission before Ben wakes up. Deciding not to waste any more time, he wiggles his way farther south and notices that Ben is already starting to get hard in his sleep. In porn movies guys always wake up hard. Alec doesn’t usually, but he’s fascinated to see that Ben might.

  He gently lifts Ben’s cock in his hand and begins licking long comforting strokes from balls to tip, ice cream cone style. Ben starts to breathe more heavily and Alec is suspecting that Ben may be climbing his way up to consciousness. Alec has a moment of self-deprecating panic, wondering who Ben is dreaming about, and glances quickly at Ben’s face, still relaxed in the closed-eye lines of sleep. He licks some more, beginning to trace smaller circles around the head of Ben’s cock. Ben’s weight in Alec’s hand, Alec’s mouth speaks to Alec of ownership; he can let himself imagine in this perfect quiet Saturday morning moment that this will last forever. Pushing back the maudlin thoughts threatening to kill his good mood, he goes to work for real, sucking harder and stroking Ben’s balls, lightly squeezing the base of his cock. He starts to suck more intently, and Ben is fully hard now, ass flexing in an effort to thrust and stay still at the same time. Alec smiles around Ben’s thickening cock, feeling his rhythm, knowing that this at least is something he’s undeniably good at.

  He falls into the rhythm of some song he can’t quite remember. How does it go? Something about walking hand in glove, with people staring…wait, wait, he’s got part of it. “And if the people stare then the people stare, I really don’t know and I really don’t care…”

  And then there’s a bit about probably never seeing you again. What is that song, anyway?

  Agh! It’s Morrissey! He almost spits out Ben’s cock in his horror. But Ben is bucking fiercely into his open mouth and he’s too far in to stop, and he notices Ben’s moans are more like shouts through the musical nightmare in his head. Ben’s coming in his mouth and he looks up and sees Ben’s brown eyes locked on him, hands in his hair gripping painfully hard. Ben pulls Alec up by the hair and kisses him as if he wants to swallow him whole, wrapping arms and legs around Alec like some puppydog octopus and Alec realizes he’s not going anywhere for a while. Alec realizes Ben is babbling into his shoulder and can only make out a few phrases here and there, “…fucking my dick is in love with you, man…moving into your ass full time…retiring my hand…fucking tidal wave of skaters pouring out onto the street…gahhh….” Alec pats him sympathetically with a sappy grin that he’s glad Ben can’t see, remembering the way he felt after getting his first blowjob. He’s thinking maybe Ben isn’t gonna jet after all.

  In the background the telephone rings. The machine answers, and it’s Ben’s fascist grandmother calling from Lake Jackson, Texas. “Hi Franny,” she says, “I’m just calling to see how you’re doing. I know that in your misguided Godless way you’re probably not excited about the election, but I want you to know that Jesus loves you and we’re in for four more wonderful years. Call me.”

  Alec pulls away from Ben and hides his head under a pillow. “How am I going to live through the next four years?” he moans, voice muffled by high-quality down.

  Ben pulls the pillow off and gives another sloppy kiss. “Every time you hear the word Jesus,” he says, “you have to stop whatever you’re doing, come find me, and suck my dick.”

  Alec starts to smile. “And whenever you hear the word nucular, you have to come find me and fuck me like you did last night. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  They shake on it.

  “…so…” Ben leers, “nucular Jesus?”

  FROM

  WHAT WE DO IS SECRET

  Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  May, 1981, the dawn of the Reagan era and the beginning of twilight for the hardcore L.A. punk scene that has provided the only family a fourteen-year-old throwaway kid named Rockets has ever known. It’s six months after the suicide of his onetime lover Darby Crash, leader of the legendary band The Germs, and Rockets is roaming the streets of Hollywood with Blitzer, another teenage punk who sometimes shares his squatting space in a forgotten corner of the Jell-O factory just off Santa Monica Boulevard. They’re looking to finance an escape from Los Angeles, and Blitzer has lined up prospective bankers in Tim and David, two gay men from Minnesota on their first visit to Hollywood after piloting a van filled with popcorn and cosmetics to the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. Blitzer’s plan is to stimulate Tim and David’s generosity by feeding them LSD, and after leaving them in the temporary care of Squid and Siouxsie—two punked-out lesbian hookers—Blitzer and Rockets head for the Spotlite hustler bar on Selma Avenue, where they find a trick to earn cash for the drug buy.

  Bill’s house can’t be any farther than the Jell-O factory, just a pricier direction, but Blitzer gets him to spring for a cab by saying I’m meeting my new girlfriend for some underage clubbing action at eleven, and otherwise I’ll keep her waiting at Crossroads of the World all by her girlie lonesome. He asks me her name, just being polite I guess, and Blitzer slides me a side of elbow, we’re all in the backseat and he’s in the middle.

  “Nancy.”

  Blitzer has to cough for laugh camo, and I wonder what his name’s supposed to be, and what’s up with the AKA action anyways, our names are mostly all made up in the first place, and second and third place too for some of us. Darby went by Bobby Pyn for starters, and then Richie Dagger before he wrote “Circle One” and settled on Darby Crash. Though Siouxsie’s comes from the nonfiction list, jacked from Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees.

  Bill says he doesn’t get out on the town as much as he might wish. He’s got this way of talking that reminds me of English accents, respectable ones, though without the sound of the accent itself. It’s hard to describe. Suave, you might call it. When he pays the fare he says to the cabbie, “And a very pleasant evening to you,” like he’s cruising into Opera Central in a tux with a babe in a Lucille ball gown on his arm instead of heading for the Betamax and the California king with a pair of punk rock rent boys in tow.

  The cabbie just grunts. He picked us up on Selma, after all. I wonder what he thinks we’ll do with Bill.

  Work him over with our studded belts?

  Pee on him in his bathtub?

  Force-feed him Milk-Bones?

  Those are all Stickboy stories. I’ve never done anything like that. The closest was last year staying at Skinhead Manor by Hollywood High. It was right after Sham 69 played the Whisky and we all had shaved heads and combat boots, and that jerk Eugene who’s in The Decline started scoring tricks with Jews and minorities who’d get the kinks out through abuse by skinheads, mostly just verbal, though. And I got in on that sometimes, they’d pay extra for a crew of us, I thought it would be creepy-Crowley, but basically it was Live from New York it’s Saturday Night. None of us were even prejudiced, the Stern brothers who rented the house were Jews themselves, so we had to really work it to be all hard and mean, though as long as it stayed at name-calling level with backup spitting now and then we definitely conned the vinces, we got lots of repeats.

  But this one black dude tried to get us telling darky jokes and no one even knew any. So he ended up flowing us these astronaut ones himself, with punch lines like “janitor in a drum” and “the jig is up.” Then to stay dry any refund demands we made up a song on the spot with Animal Cracker on guitar and Stickboy on bass called “I Hate Niggers,” and that was such a hit we did an encore later for this big-time Holocaust movie producer, “Anne Frank Was a Bitch.”

  It turns out Bill’s trip is more like the opposite, after we jam up the walk and he goes inside and closes the door while Blitzer runs it down for me, standing on the porch. But I don’t know about “fully” nonsexual, I’ll be stripping down to my shorts at least and our buddy Bill will be choking his cheetah like the night before the world’s end as long as I stick to the script.

  And as long as he does.

  So I ask Blitzer why he can’t go in too, I mean, how fun, being in a strange house almost naked with a stranger alone in his bedroom.

  “He wants one on one. I’ll be right here. I told him not to lock the door. If he tries anything weird, just yell.”

  He reaches for the doorknocker, but I grab his hand.

  “Just go in with me, okay? Walk me back to the room.”

  “What hey, sure. We gotta move, though. You ready?”

  “Wait. You didn’t tell me. Do I have to get a hard-on?”

  “No!”

  “And what’s your name supposed to be?”

  He hiccup-laughs.

  “Guess.”

  With Sid and Nancy taken, I say Johnny as in Rotten.

  “Nope.”

  Then he sings, I came into this world, like a puzzled panther, waiting to be caged— So he’s Darby.

  Not Crash, though.

  “O’Toole,” he says, and hiccup-laughs twice, in time with the knocker.

  The house smells like lemon furniture polish and jasmine coming in through open windows. No sign of any dogs. Walking down the straight-shot hallway to the bedroom Bill says something about his lover who died. Blitzer says a friend of ours died a few months ago. Bill says we have his deepest sympathy. In the bedroom he lights a scented candle while I settle down on the end of the mattress.

  “Have fun,” Blitzer says.

  Bill shuts the door and says, “Please make yourself comfortable, Sid.”

  Blitzer’s Hermans fade stomping down the hall, and I get a little panicked.

  “I want you to feel at home.”

  That’s the hint to show some skin, Blitzer said. So I hunch over and unlace my boots. Then peeling off my jeans I feel in my pocket the folded bills from the feet-ure presentation earlier. Which reminds me of the first rule of hustling, the rule you never break.

  Money up front.

  Everybody knows that.

  But I can’t ask him. Not now. I never thought I’d be this spooked. I don’t know what to do with my jeans, so I drop them on the floor. I pull off my socks. I wonder what the fuck is wrong with my feet. Why didn’t that dude like them?

  I sit back up and Bill puts a little pinner joint in my hand. He lights it for me. And it’s some raspy shit, it tastes fuckin’ awful, but I’m grateful, maybe it’ll calm me down. I try to pass it back, and he says, “It’s all for you.”

  So I burn it down while Bill gets comfortable too. He says his dressing gown is silk from Thailand.

  “Thailand’s a wonderful country, Sid. I think you’d like it there.”

  Before I remember I’m supposed to be part French I tell him I’ve never even been to Tijuana and he makes this tsking sound and says my whole life’s ahead of me and he’s sure I’ll make something of myself.

  Though he doesn’t say what.

  He’s sitting on the end of the mattress too but he swings his legs up and moves closer. He asks if I’d like to take off my shirt.

  “Okay.”

  “Could you use some help with that?”

  “Sure.”

  I raise my arms and he leans in close and pulls my T-shirt up from the bottom. His head follows it and he’s breathing in deep from like a weenus-length away. He’s wearing some kind of hair cream that smells like walnuts. When the shirt’s up past my armpits and covering my face he stops pulling for a moment and my blood runs Slurpee cold thinking Strangler! Strangler! and what harsher way than with my own fuckin’ shirt. But he’s just sniffing me, and I guess I make the grade, because once my Sid Sings is balled on the carpet he fires me another pinner and lets me know he wants me stretched out on the bed while I smoke it, stretched out just so, my chin propped up on one hand, one knee bent out toward him, my foot tucked under my ankle.

  Those goddamn ugly feet again.

  “And, Sid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you’d arrange yourself down there so you’re angling out?”

  I reach inside my boxers.

  “Ah. Perfect.” He takes a deep slow shuddery breath. “Christ, you’re lovely. Another young stallion. You Frenchmen.”

  So he really thinks I’m French, then. Fuck, these guys will believe anything. But I suck on the joint and I start liking the thought of being French like Kickboy, liking it a lot, actually, there’s no bigger smartass in the scene, he’s wicked ranking. “I can see you enjoy being watched, Sid.”

  He scoots even closer.

  “Don’t you?”

  Blitzer said to tell him what he wants to hear.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then we’ve got something in common, you and me. Because I like being watched, too. Oh, yes. Not because I’m young and beautiful and—virile. Like you. But for—other reasons.”

  He’s breathing harder now, and waiting, and I have no fuckin’ clue what to say.

  “Would you like to watch me, Sid?”

  In theory or in practice?

  Or sitting on a cactus?

  Jesus.

  But Blitzer said just stick to the script. And that must be what he does too.

  “Fully. I mean, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Then we’re going to have fun tonight, aren’t we? Because I like being watched, and you like being watched, and I’ll be watching you while you watch me. Doesn’t that sound fun?” “It sounds great.”

  “All right then. I’m going to play a videotape for us. And while I’m seeing to the machine, I’d like to ask a favor of you. May I?”

  “Sure.”

  “Once my back is turned, I’d like you to remove your undershorts.

  So when I settle back down beside you, and the tape begins to play, I’ll be seeing you in a new way, just as you’ll be seeing me in a new way.”

  I just push my shades up the bridge of my nose and nod. What-fuckin’-ever. Talk about Fantasyland. Then he sits up and maxes the Beta and next thing you know it’s Showtime. The Merv Griffin Show.

  “Here today live from Hollywood with Charo and Charles Nelson Reilly, and welcoming after a word from our sponsor, Bill McDaniel, Dog Groomer to the Stars.”

  And from now on I do the talking.

  “That’s you?”

  “On Merv Griffin! ”

  “Whoa!”

  “Dude, you’re a star!”

  “You know Bo Derek?”

  “Personally?”

  “Robert De Niro?”

  “Stallone?”

  “Damn, I want your autograph!”

  “That Charo chick sounds a little sweet on you, buddy.”

  “Who the fuck wrote your lines for you, I bet it was Chevy, wasn’t it?”

  “You just thought ’em up?”

  “No way!”

  “Zsa-Zsa’s poodle?”

  “Bob Hope’s bulldog?”

  “Angelyne’s whippet?”

  “Those guys in Vegas get paid millions for shit like this!” “Man, Merv is bumming.”

  “Seriously!”

  “You’re getting all the laughs!”

  “You’ve got them eating from the palm of your hand!”

  “You’re funnier than Merv!”

  “You should get your own show!”

  (Oh most defiantly, not a turd, not a plane, not a tumor or a rumor, it’s Here Comes the Groomer! Exclusively on Pay- Perve-View!) “I mean it, man!”

 

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