Boy of the Westend

by Zack

  Mike’s equilibrium did not reassert itself. He felt at a disadvantage and his interrogator’s smile was too knowing. He didn’t like the way Alan’s look took him in from thighs to eyes and, in flicking his own down, Mike was suddenly uncomfortably aware of a dark round patch on the fly of his jeans where Trevor must have slobbered a bit. Alan must have seen it too. He turned to look off up the stairs with x-ray vision which could obviously see through walls, floors, and doors into Rex Sound Facilities.

  “Young Trev up there?”

  Not that acute super-power sight, then. Mike swallowed hard and nodded.

  Alan eyed the damp patch, looked back at Mike, and smiled again. “Good lad, our Trev.”

  The appropriation smacked Mike as being out of place. “Yeah. We’re meeting up later…” he blurted out before he could stop himself from retaliating. He saw the implication settle in the other’s twinkling eyes. No, worse, he’d just confirmed a suspicion the guy obviously had. Well, if he knew James… Cher-ist, I’m off form today…

  Alan nodded and made to pass by Mike and, as he did so, patted his bottom familiarly. “Better go and get my stuff off Trev… if he’s not been held up by more important things.”

  The wink which followed the bum pat were too much and Mike was about to say something sharpish, but Alan cut his words off. “Have a good time later, and…” He leaned in for a second and lowered his voice. “He’s got the hottest tongue-fuck asshole I’ve ever rimmed.”

  The gulp hadn’t hit bottom before Mike was stood on the street. The outer door swung shut with an aluminum click, and the faint shape of Alan disappeared up the stairs behind the reflections of Dean Street traffic.

  Tongue-fuck…?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Forbidden Fruit

  It was ten after six when Mike pushed through the narrow door of the Nellie Dean. Trevor’s smile of greeting suggested relief that Mike had turned up, and that warmed him inside. He pushed through to where Trevor stood against the bar.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  Mike shrugged. “I’m not bothered.” He grinned suggestively.

  Trevor nodded, quickly finished what looked like a gin and tonic, put the glass down and said, “Good. Let’s go. I can’t wait to get you home… and properly unwrapped.”

  Typically, the quietly spoken words went straight to Mike’s loins.

  This was one liaison Mike had no intention of passing up. There would surely be time to warn Trevor of his situation. For now, as they strap-hung on a packed Bakerloo tube, his brain could think of little but the sensation under his questing hands of Trevor’s hard rump before the boy had gone down on him earlier. He was sure everyone surrounding them must know their intentions. Pheromones filled the carriage and the searing looks Trevor kept giving him did nothing to keep his erection from showing.

  Trevor’s denigratory description of where he lived proved to be deeply unfair. The “squat” was a small flat on the second floor of a four-story modern block on the corner of Warwick Avenue and Warrington Gardens, W9, a stone’s throw from Warwick Avenue tube station. That put Mike conveniently within a fifteen-minute walk home, assuming Trevor didn’t have plans for him to stay the night. Just as well James jetted off for Los Angeles the other day.

  The unwrapping began before Trevor got the key in his front door. In the few seconds it took to insert it, Mike encircled Trevor’s waist and copped a feel of his cock. Trevor twisted back to kiss him on the cheek, and then they fell through the open door. Mike had no time to take in any details. Trevor squirmed in his grasp and began tearing Mike’s clothes off. Collared shirt followed bum-freezer jacket while Mike struggled with Trevor’s corduroy slacks with hands dug down deep around cock, balls, underwear.

  They tripped over each other and fell to the carpet, where the divestment continued in a mad flurry of shoes, socks, and briefs. And then somehow, because Mike was never afterward sure how they got there, they were in the shower. Flesh, hard with urgent need, impacted under hot water; tongues and lips engaged; incandescent desire ground hips together in a perfect fit.

  “Are you gonna fuck me?” Trevor gurgled against Mike’s neck.

  “God yes, if that’s what you want.”

  And then they were rolling on Trevor’s small double bed, damp and tangled, head to midriff, and moving into a toe-tingling sixty-nine. Trevor’s getting seconds and I’m loving it. Such a suckable cock to go with a fuckable face.

  Trevor pulled his head up suddenly. “Oh, Mike, not yet. I don’t want to come yet.”

  Mike growled around the slick cockhead and then reluctantly let it go. He sat up and thought of Jez McGowran, so long ago. Without asking, he flattened Trevor on his back, grabbed him by the ankles and pulled them up and over, bent his legs at the knees so he could press down on the upper thighs, and bared Trevor’s asshole. Mike shuffled up, leaned in above Trevor’s prone form. He freed his right hand to take hold of himself and guide his straining cock up to the target. Below, two green orbs burned into Mike’s mind. He pushed. Trevor grunted. Harder, and the sphincter ring of muscle relaxed, inviting entry. Trevor rolled his head to and fro on the bed, but his hands gripping Mike by the ass cheeks, pulling on his buttocks, spoke better than words how much he wanted Mike’s big cock plumbing him.

  It was his first real screw since Kevin, and Mike wanted to make the most of it. Besides, Trevor’s own evident enjoyment made him feel even better. He thought he could love the boy, perhaps. But who knew on such short acquaintance? And always the lemur of James Rosen hovered unseen over his shoulder, a heavy backpack of dread. He owed so much to the movie mogul, but by Christ how much he repaid at a usurious rate of interest.

  “What? Don’t you dare shoot first,” Mike stuttered in answer to Trevor’s incoherent cry. “I gotta… taste…” He hadn’t even touched Trevor’s cock, but clearly he was on the verge of orgasm. Mike speeded up, faster than he’d ever done, out of and into Trevor’s squeezing ass, loving the way the muscular ring clipped him under the seam of his cock helmet as he almost exited before plunging back in. His balls roiled, contracted, prepared, and then with a convulsive shudder a flood rose up, every bodily cord and sinew ached with the need to come. And he did.

  Trevor moaned and writhed green-eyed delight, like a wriggling Pan figure as he took and absorbed Mike’s flowing orgasm. Mike pulled out, not quite finished but in a panic that he might be too late to take Trevor the way he wanted to. He stretched back on his stomach, still shooting his last jets of cum against Trevor’s bedspread, and fell down on a cock so hard and slick and tasty it almost brought him off again. Trevor bucked up off the bed into an arch which served to thrust himself even more tightly into Mike’s welcoming gullet. As he shot his load, hard, thick, and creamy, Mike moaned around the silky-smooth yet so hard flesh with the joy of swallowing every last drop. Only when Trevor was finished, and Mike had licked and cleaned him up, did they fall into each other’s arms, grinning and laughing in turn, still wet from the shower.

  Happy and existing for the moment in a Rosen-free area.

  For the moment. Looking back on it, his affair with Trevor seemed to have passed in a blink. There wasn’t the same calf-love intensity of the sex he and Kevin had enjoyed, but instead with greater maturity came a different kind of warmth and more inventive routes to arousal and fulfillment. Looking back, Mike couldn’t remember what he must have been thinking of to risk James’s potential ire… if he ever found out. He and Trevor had just a brief moment in the busy international schedule of a hot-shot film producer.

  The moment he stepped into the Hilton suite, following the usual brisk phone summons, he knew he was in trouble. James’s expression permitted no other interpretation—flat, shark eyes and slab-like unsmiling countenance. As luck would have it, Mike had reached home after a long school day via an hour’s frantic sex with Trevor over at his Warwick Avenue pad. The last thing he needed was an ass-pounding from James. Did the guy never suffer from jet-lag? Mike had no experience of the
phenomenon, but he had read weekend color-supplement articles explaining it, and its effects should have let him off bed duties with James for another day at least.

  And then James had his Burt Lancaster teeth out. “Bed,” was all he said.

  As Mike went to move past his immoveable bulk, James bent his head and sniffed loudly.

  “I smell another man on you.”

  Mike shook his head, but the lying denial exploded with the back-hander James delivered across his cheek. He reeled back from the blow, which to be honest hurt his self-image more than it delivered pain. Mike knew himself to be no pushover in a fight, and James was not obviously a powerfully built man, but his attitude reeked of a barely suppressed violence which drained Mike of spirit. The charm James exuded in buckets when it served a purpose shattered into splinters of cruelly delivered verbal daggers in seconds when anyone opposed him. His dead-eyed glare and teeth-bared snarl presaged physical brutality.

  Jez had been rough in throwing Mike to the BBC sofa and tugging his clothes down. James used no such tenderness, and in seconds, his head buried face down in the bed covering, Mike was fighting for breath, fearfully alarmed. No lube, no spit, James lammed into him with the grunt of an executioner delivering a lashing. There was no enjoyment in it, certainly not for Mike. Arms made powerful with anger locked around his throat as James fucked him. It became impossible to breathe, but James kept humping and throttling until Mike was sure he was about to die. There, on the huge bed at the top of the Hilton, the producer was going to kill him.

  His last thoughts were of how James had discovered his infidelity with Trevor, for it seemed clear he did know of it. But at that moment, as his vision faded from red to black, the pressure eased, and was then gone. He registered the removal of weight from his back, a faint creak from the mattress as James stood.

  When James rolled him over, Mike’s vision was hazy, the room appeared as a series of dissolved, revolving shapes. He was limp with asphyxia.

  “Let that be a lesson, Mikey-my-boy. I hate to give out with the Big Punishment, but I told ya at the outset. No screwing around. No dipping your wick. I’ll let the stupid punk you’ve been messing with off… this time. I know it was your fault. I know your type, you see. Can’t keep your dick in your pants. I shoulda known better than to take a kid from the gutter, been hustling his ass around. But no, good ol’ James always lives in hope of some gratitude for all he does.”

  He went on along this hard-done-by accusatory track for what seemed like an age to Mike’s frazzled mind. Absurdly, he thought of George Orwell essaying on how true tyranny coins phrases which mean the direct opposite of what is said. He also wondered whether it was the sound recordist Alan who snitched, or perhaps he just let it slip. Whatever, doesn’t matter now. At least Trev was let off.

  The first words to really sink in were in a similar vein to James’s stream of self-justification, yet different in their import.

  “—so make sure you got an up-to-date passport. God knows why I do it, but there will be a spot for you. I let you outa my sight a few days, and that’s how I get repaid. Still, Mikey-boy, it’s as well for you I’m as big-hearted as I am. My mother always told me I was destined for eternal heartbreak because it’s so fuckin’ big. As a lady, she never used that word, of course.”

  A week after his unannounced reappearance in London, and after leaving Mike with a last dire warning to behave, James had flown off again, this time to Italy to finalize arrangements at Cinecittà for a movie slated to start shooting in the summer, and which Mike would be joining in some as yet undefined capacity. He left Mike in a daze, thinking only about the amazing fact of his soon heading for Rome… with a job. A real movie job. Now he couldn’t wait to complete the final term at the London Film School. Italy! That was the real joy now in his strange kept-boy relationship with James Rosen. Whatever excitement—and to be honest, little of that—there had been at the start, had quickly faded. At the most obvious, James Rosen’s all-powerful, dynamic force of nature virtually advertised a future cooling of interest. He made little secret of his abundant need for ready sex in every port, that Mike was far from being unique… even if he was “the best fuck in years,” as James threw out on the few times he considered Mike had “behaved himself well.”

  Beyond that, having a very one-sided, paid-for affair with an older man—whatever side benefits it brought in clothes, prestige, and the promise held out long ago of a job in movies now coming true—had never been Mike’s idea of his future love life. Whatever James commanded, Mike couldn’t get Trevor out of his head or away from his cock, which convulsed at every thought of his transfer bay boy. Whenever he consulted his fantasies, it was Trevor’s face which loomed large. And then that reminded him of Kevin Manners: blond haired, blue eyed, fit, attractive to the point of ball-busting agony on thinking of him again; dry of wit and clever. And his own age. And kind… until it all went sour. James Rosen was many things—mostly impatient and demanding—but he was never kind. His kindness came from buying gifts to say “sorry for nailing your ass so hard last night that I can see walking’s a bit painful.”

  Thanks, James.

  Where’s my ideal friend?

  Where’s the essential-other I can love without reservation and who will love me back? It should have been Kevin. It might have been Trevor. I’m sure there was something there between us. Can there ever be another one?

  A recent reading (almost certainly a mistake) of Joe Ackerley’s My Father and Myself had been like a bucket of cold water thrown over the fires of his youthful hopes. In spite of the bright times in discos, the increasing sense of freedom in being gay, the book written about a past time had depressed him into believing that all the whirling dervishes of the screaming gay scene would nevertheless end their days alone and despised like the sad old queens of yore.

  “I’m going to Rome. James at least kept his promise. I’ll be part of the sound crew.”

  “With Alan?” Trevor knew of Mike’s suspicions, but a cautious questioning of the sound recordist convinced him that Alan had not been Rosen’s stool-pigeon.

  “Yeah. All-American crew, apparently, except for the sound.” Mike smiled warily at Trevor. He knew the risk they ran by his dropping into Rex if James ever found out. And truth to tell, since the Big Punishment he understood Trevor’s reluctance to see him in a place where any number of sneaks might get word back to the Pall Mall offices of Rosen Enterprises. Alan mightn’t have, but someone had. Mike had paid for the few weeks of pleasure they had given each other, but he didn’t want Trevor embroiled in Rosen’s bitter jealousies—and neither did Trevor want to be.

  “What about a Union ticket? They don’t hand them out just because you completed a course at the London Film School.” And then he smiled quietly to himself. “Silly Trevor. Obviously the matter of a Union ticket can’t pose a problem for a bully like James H. Rosen.”

  Mike shook his head in wry agreement. “No, no difficulty.” He rummaged in his jacket and produced a small card identifying Michael Smith as a member of the Association of Cinematograph Television and Allied Technicians.

  “Your ticket to the stars. When do you go?”

  “Couple of months. Meantime I’m being paid, if you can call it that, as—” He put on a fake American accent. “—poisonal assistant to Mr. Rose-en.”

  “Do you actually know how to make tea?”

  Mike cuffed Trevor affectionately. “If I manage, if I can get away for a bit before I leave, would you…? I mean, James won’t be here all the time. In fact I think he’s going to the States in a few days, and we could, you know, get together… maybe?”

  Trevor sighed and regarded Mike with an enigmatic expression. “It’s not like you’ve been around much—”

  “It’s been difficult. You know that.”

  Trevor cast his eyes down in uncharacteristic avoidance. “I’ve got a new boyfriend, Mike.”

  “Ah.”

  “Even if James didn’t scare the shit out of me, it
wouldn’t feel right, cheating on Dave.”

  “Dave.”

  “It’s his name. We met in Paradise. It just seemed to click. Sorry.”

  Mike sighed. “What for? New love and all that.”

  “Yeah, something like that. I want to give this a chance. He’s… he’s really nice.”

  Mike nodded, bit his upper lip between incisors. Damn, Rosen’s black heart. This might really have worked, me and Trev. It could have… “I understand. Well, I’d better get going before any Rosen- polizei turn up. I was only supposed to pop out for some staples. You take care, Trev.”

  “You too.” Trevor hesitated a moment. A sad smile licked at his lips. “You deserve better, Mike. Much better.” And then he brightened into feline impishness. “Watch out for those Roman ragazzi. I hear they’re full-on tricksy-dicksy. You know what they call Rome? Europe’s Vice City. I wish I were going with you.”

  Mike made his way back toward Trafalgar Square, smirked puerilely at Cockspur Street, and then into Pall Mall. As he strolled freshly rain-streaked sidewalks he heard again Trevor’s comment about his new boyfriend Dave— he’s really nice. It didn’t sound like much of an encomium. Pangs of sadness about Trevor kept striking home, even if he was forbidden fruit.

  But then, he had Rome to look forward to now, and the rest of life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  To Vice City

  The Smiths invariably took short breaks and longer vacations in north Wales at the Betws-y-Coed cottage, which was, like… in the middle of nowhere in the steep hills east of Snowdonia. It wasn’t even near a beach or a splash of freezing cold sea. As a result they had never taken advantage of the recently lowered prices for package vacations to warmer climes, so Mike had never experienced flying before. This his well-traveled colleagues in the sound crew found hard to believe and took advantage.

  “You know the wings are only held on by two giant bolts through the fuselage floor,” Alan said with glee. “They check them from time to time to see they haven’t rusted through.”