by Kol Anderson
What the recent school paper was about and what the teacher thought of my artwork and how Mrs. Hernandez next door still invited me over for milk and cookies, and I went because it made me feel loved. In my own house I had officially become persona non grata. Mrs. Hernandez, the seventy-plus year old lady didn't know or care about that. Maybe because she was lonely, too, and a part of her sensed my loneliness. For that hour or so when I went up to her house, we gave each other what no one could provide us—companionship without judgment. She didn't make me feel inadequate, she accepted me as I was.
After about an hour of exchanging useless small talk, my father finally told me he had a meeting to attend. He said he was going to give me a ride back home and when we went downstairs, the chauffeur-driven company car was waiting for us. I rode in the back with him and even though we were that close, he never once tried to touch me. He didn’t even talk much. Most of his time was spent talking on the phone. Once we were at my house, he finally put the phone aside. He looked at me a long time and I couldn’t understand why but I noticed his blue eyes were just plain mesmerizing and I wondered if mine were too.
“Don’t give your mother a hard time, okay?” he said. “She’s been through a lot.”
I didn’t give him an actual response, I think I might have just nodded or something. But those blue eyes were still watching me, and I could feel them burning right through my skin. “I’ll see you around, Sammie.”
And just like that, it was time for me to make my exit.
***
I managed to finish high school but it wasn’t easy. Senior year, my friends introduced me to crystal meth. Life would never be the same. Suddenly, real problems didn’t exist. I must have spent months after my graduation fooling myself with plans to attend college just like everyone else, but even then I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I knew I was too far gone down an entirely different path. I think I might have kept up the pretense more for my mother’s sake than anything else. In a way, I still subscribed to her ideas of what a normal life was. Sadly, my mom found some pornos in my room and found out I was gay. I don’t know why she was so surprised. Of course that wasn’t the only thing she found. She also got her hands on my drug stash and she promptly kicked me out. It almost felt as though she had been waiting to do it, she just hadn't found a good enough reason until now. I handed her a reason all on my own. Two reasons in fact.
I wasn’t exactly hurt by it to be honest, though that might have been the numbing effect of the drugs, but I thought it had something to do with the fact that I knew how much she detested me. We had grown apart so far in the past couple of years, it was impossible to feel anything but casual remorse. I was eighteen years old and I still hadn’t been with a guy. I never pretended to be straight; I just kept it out of conversations with the guys at school. Now that I was out of that house and no longer in high school, I felt a certain amount of freedom and I wanted to make use of it. The only problem was I barely had enough money to last me a day. Things with my father were the same as always. He’d come around once every few months. Sometimes he would bring an appropriate gift and we’d have an awkward encounter in his hotel room and then he would drop me back home. That was the extent to which he was willing to go for me. He finally told me he couldn’t see me anymore because he didn’t want his other family to suffer. I realized he had built a life with them which I wasn't a part of. I tried not to judge him for it, but it was difficult not to, because inside me I'd always felt a hole, a missing portion of my life where my father should have been. That hole was always empty and it was physically impossible not to feel the hurt, no matter how much I tried.
I ended up at my junkie friend’s place. It was a sad, sorry excuse for an apartment, but it was better than being on the street. He told me I could stay as long as I helped with the bills, and that was a better deal than I could find anywhere else. But I needed money, for the drugs, for food. My friend barely had enough to keep himself going, I couldn’t possibly ask anything of him, and I couldn’t ask my parents because they obviously wanted nothing to do with me. So wandering around in the city on my own that first evening, I knew I had to do something to fix the dwindling cash situation. I couldn’t find any actual job openings but there was a sign near a club entrance that said they needed male dancers and I decided to apply.
***
There wasn’t an actual application process. When I went to see the owner, Levi, he gave me the once over, then asked me to take off my shirt. I think he was just trying to see if I had the balls. I would have stripped for him right there, if he had asked me to, but he didn’t. He just asked me to go to the back room and talk to Jeff. Jeff was the lead dancer, a hot guy of about thirty and straight, as he told me right off the bat before he explained to me how things worked around the club. Best of all, they told me I could start that day, which made me think they were desperate to find someone.
What did I have to lose?
I was about ready to head out to the floor when Jeff stopped me. “I need a name,” he said. “Your old one won’t work.”
A word came instantly to my mind and it was perfect. “Sin.”
“Sin?” he asked. “As in S-I-N?”
“Yes.”
Jeff scribbled something in his notebook and left.
Samuel ‘Sin’ Taylor.
I think it has a nice ring to it, don’t you?
***
With all those hot bodies around me, I was under a lot of pressure to make a good first impression. Stripping isn’t as lucrative if your audience isn’t ready to eat you alive. The cocaine in the bathroom helped, everyone was doing it. It took the edge off, made me feel like I was in charge of the universe even if that feeling wasn’t going to last till eternity. Pretty soon, people were giving me their undivided attention and it made me feel like I was in control.
Imagine living on a life track where everyone around you wants you gone and you have no idea where you’re going and suddenly, someone stops you in the middle, takes you on a completely different track, and shows you a side of life that you never knew even existed before. That’s kind of what it felt like. Everything was new and exciting and the sense of adventure was making me delirious. I must have danced for hours, generated a lot of tips and when I was done, I was still high and ready to go home.
But life, as it turns out, had other plans.
***
He must have been around thirty. The kind of guy who knows he’s good looking and a total hotshot; whose net worth exudes from him in the clothes he wears and the way he smells. The fact that he was looking at me, trying to get my attention was a plus.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.
Not like I had anywhere to go but the dingy apartment I shared with my junkie friend, so I said yes. We sat in one of the booths and his eyes never left my face. It was a little unnerving but it also felt like an unspoken compliment.
“So, Sin huh?”
I grinned. “Yeah.”
“I realize you’re new here.”
“Yep,” I said. “Started today.”
“I figured,” he said. “I come here often and I’ve never seen you before. I know I would have remembered you.”
“Yeah?”
“It was a compliment.”
“No, I… I get that. Sorry, I get a little nervous around strangers.”
“Well you did well on the dance floor, considering.”
“Yeah, I was in the moment, you know?” I didn’t tell him I had a side helping of benzoylmethylecgonine to make the performance possible.
“My name’s Aiden by the way.”
“Aiden.” Now I had something to remember him by.
“It’s no Sin I suppose, but it works,” he said, and I smiled, letting him know I understood the joke. “Would you like to go back to my place, Sin?”
I sipped on the drink in my hand, using the time to think, but I had already made my decision. I know you’re going to judge me for it, but if you saw him, you’d want to hook up with
him the first night too.
***
He took me to a hotel.
I know, not exactly original. He helped me take off my coat and I went to sit on the bed. He offered me a drink, but I was already high so I politely refused. He sat right next to me and we started making out and it was perfect, it really was. Better than you could imagine. It was everything you'd dream making out should be like. I kept breaking off during the kissing, trying to catch a glimpse of his face as if I couldn’t believe this was really happening. Of course I hadn’t yet broken the news that I was a virgin but I was hoping I could do that after I’d at least given him a blowjob. I thought maybe then he would be too far involved to feel any aversion to it.
Anyway, I started off blowing him.
And to tell you the truth, I always fantasized about it this way. In my mind, every time I watched a porno, it was never quite enough because I couldn’t actually taste it; couldn’t smell the man’s skin. But now finally, I was there in that moment, his cock was in my mouth and he tasted great, and he smelled good down there too, kind of musky and the precum—it was all real and I was doing it—I couldn’t get over how much I wanted this to lead somewhere even better. The way he was moaning, saying fuck over and over again, I knew I was doing a good job, too.
My first blowjob and I was rocking it.
Finally, Aiden pulled me up. “You’re so good,” he said. “Fuck, you’re so good!” And then he kissed me on the mouth. “You taste of my cock,” he said. “You know how hot that makes me?”
I was proud of myself.
Like I’d won a damn trophy or something.
He kissed me once more, and then he took off his pants. He had nice strong legs that looked perfect with his sturdy physique. The kind of guy who could pin me down and I wouldn’t be able to leave unless he permitted me to. “I’ll get the condoms,” he said, and got off the bed to go to the bathroom.
On one hand, I wanted to just let him do it and face the consequences later but on the other I wanted him to know because I was scared. And I know I like to think of myself as the person who isn’t afraid, but that time the fear took over and when he came back with the condoms, I stopped him. “There’s one thing,” I said, still unsure how to break it to him.
“What is it?”
“I’ve never… um… I’ve never done this before.”
There, that felt better didn’t it?
Actually no. It felt just the opposite. Horrible. And judging by the look on his face, I was certain he was going to leave. “Are you kidding me?”
“Look, it’s not a big deal,” I said, not wanting him to think I was going to be reduced to some weeping virgin drama queen if he fucked me in the ass. “I just thought I should let you know.”
“Are you sure?”
I was just thankful he wasn’t leaving. “Positive.”
Aiden heard that and started taking off his shirt. I took mine off in response, still on the bed and he got on top of me and started kissing me again. “I’ll go slow,” he said. “You don’t have anything to worry about, alright?”
“Okay,” I said casually enough, but it was a big relief to actually hear him say that. He kissed my chest, his hands going everywhere and then he pulled off my jeans and turned me over. I felt his hands touching my bare ass, heard him uncapping the lube and I felt his slick finger inside me, opening me up and it was the best feeling in the world. “Fuck,” I grabbed onto the bed frame and squeezed my eyes shut, glad that this was happening and that it was with him. When he finally tried to get his cock inside me, he’d loosened me up enough but the pain was still there and I was freaking out again just a little. But he went slowly like he’d promised and soon I stopped being afraid.
***
We must have stayed in bed for hours afterward, most of that time spent asleep. Finally, close to morning I felt Aiden stirring and it woke me up. When he saw me awake, he came over and kissed me. “I had a great time last night,” he said, and handed me his phone. “Why don’t you save your number so we can do this again sometime?”
I typed my number, a little disappointed that he was leaving, but still content. He was as sweet as he was handsome, almost too good to be true.
“When can I see you again?” I asked when he was done putting on his shoes.
“Soon,” he said. Then, when he was about to leave he stopped at the dresser and picked up an envelope. He tossed it toward me and checked his image in the mirror one last time.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Payment for the night,” he said. “I hope it’s enough, it’s what I pay the others.”
The weight of that envelope was heavier than anything I’d known.
For a minute, I couldn’t understand what was happening, but it dawned on me that this guy to whom I had just given my virginity wasn’t some lucky hook up. He was with me because he thought I was a prostitute. I don’t know if I was angry or hurt. At least now it made sense. The only way a guy like that would be interested in me, was because he wanted to take out his frustration for the night and then forget I existed. I wanted to react, to say something in my defense to make him think otherwise, but instead I just sat there on the same bed where we had sex last night, the bed that in my opinion should have been preserved in a fucking museum because it still had cum stains on it.
He went off without saying goodbye and I clutched that sad little envelope, afraid to find out what amount someone had determined as my price.
Chapter 2
A Man Walks into a Bar
Once Aiden paid me for having sex with him, hustling just kind of happened. Working through the strip club I had started to make some good cash. It wasn't like I had a lot of options and there was no way I could hold a regular job thanks to my constantly shifting meth-enhanced mood swings. I couldn’t take the pressure of a regular work atmosphere, I just couldn’t do it. Besides, I liked fucking. I took every client as if they were there to make a difference in my life, instead of just paying me cash for their time spent with me. I truly had fun. Sadly, most of the money I made, I spent on drinking, drugs, and doing random things that made me feel better for the time being, getting a flat screen TV for instance or blowing a week’s worth of money on my newly-acquired ‘friends’ who changed more rapidly than my tricks.
But truly it was one client who helped me take things to the next level: Alex Cooper. He was the highest paying client I had ever had, and in a mere couple of months, Alex helped me save up enough to move out of my junkie friend’s apartment and start paying my own rent. Compared to what Alex paid me, what I used to earn looked like pocket change. He was the kind of guy who’s made it to the Forbes lists. If you met him anywhere else, he would seem like a normal person to you: boss, husband, father. If you found out what Alex likes to do to twinks in his spare time, you wouldn’t believe it.
That day I was waiting for Alex at the bar of the hotel he normally books a room in, and I was constantly fending off advances from both men and women because Alex likes it when I give him my full attention. For the kind of money that he gave me, I could make that happen.
“Hi.”
I turned to find Alex standing right next to me, his almost-white hair and the smell of his cologne always made me a little nervous. “Hi.”
“Shall we go upstairs?”
“Sure,” I said, getting off the counter.
When we were in the elevator, Alex shoved his hands inside his pockets. “You want to hear how my day went?”
“Okay.”
“Jenkins thinks I should cut a deal with FlatBrands,” he said. “He thinks I’m stupid. He thinks just because he’s on good terms with Abner he can undermine my authority and get some newbie company's massive account. He thinks I don’t notice that he’s manipulating me and everyone on the board.”
I had no idea what he was saying but I went on pretending to be interested. “What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to get Abner to fire his ass,” Alex said. “Jenkins
won’t know what hit him.”
I guess one of Alex’s kinks was that he wanted to be heard. He wanted to feel like his work, everything he made of himself was just as important to others as it was to him. I think that gave him a sense of accomplishment that even having his name on the Forbes list couldn’t. “You think Abner will listen to you and not to him?”
“Are you saying you don’t trust my judgment?”
And that would be my cue. “I’m saying maybe you’re underestimating your enemy.”
The elevator dinged and came to a stop.
Alex stepped out and I followed him to his suite. When we were in the main room, he turned to me. “So?” he said. “What were you saying back in the elevator?”
I took off my coat and put it aside. “Nothing,” I said, sitting down and taking off my shoes. Socks too, until I was only left with a shirt and the jeans.
“I want you to tell me what you were telling me before, son.”
“Fuck you.”
“What did you just say to me?”
I looked up at him. “I said fuck you.”
He started taking off his tie, went to sit on the sofa. “You know I’m going to have to punish you for that,” he said. “Come here.”
I stood, pretending to be bored like a teenager and walked over to where he sat. He tapped his right thigh. “Sit.” I put an arm around him, because it was the only way I could get in the right position and I sat on his lap. “You know daddy loves you, right?”
I nodded.
“You’re beautiful you know,” he said, raising a hand to my face. “So beautiful it hurts me every time I look at you.”
For some reason I found myself staring into his eyes and I realized then that I wasn’t faking it anymore. “I’m sorry I was rude to you before.”
“It’s alright,” he said.
“Are you still going to punish me?”