by Damon Suede
Dante acted like it was the most normal conversation to have on his parents’ porch. “Eating it’s way easier. Good for you.” Man down! Man down!
If Griff had been standing, his knees would have buckled; he hoped he hadn’t made a weird sound, but he couldn’t be sure. As it was, a shiver chased down his length like he was a horse trying to lose a fly, and his traitorous cock chubbed up against his thigh.
Dante made everything seem so reasonable. Whacking off together; what’s the big deal? But this offer wasn’t “just” anything, and they both knew it. It crossed al kinds of lines. There was a reason that Alek was wiling to offer so much more for a scene involving both of them. And Dante didn’t even know how many lines they were talking about, because he didn’t feel the crazy things Griff did.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. A late October breeze shifted brown leaves on the tiles Mr. A. had put down beside the little garden back when they were in high school. Al of the boys had helped, including Griff; Mrs. Anastagio had cried when she saw it.
Right then, Griff felt older than thirty-one. How had so much time slipped by? It would be cold soon, and he was stil living in his father’s basement. The leaves skittered around the legs of the little iron café table.
But for now, the two of them sat in this little quiet bubble together—the family inside, the neighbors just over the fences, Brooklyn beyond, and this weird, impossible offer hovering huge in the air between them: Dante begging him to live out his secret fantasy.
Close. Because we’re so close.
Griff realized Dante was breathing quietly beside him, waiting for some kind of decision from his best friend that was going to change their lives, either way.
Dante was probably as scared as he was but for very different reasons.
Griff tried to imagine what it was like for a straight guy to ask a good friend to do something this ful-on, no-bones-about-it queer. He knew how much Dante loved that house. He knew how much Dante trusted him. He knew how bad things had to be to force Dante to ask for help. He knew what asking must have cost.
He knew what he’d give to share that kind of intimacy. And then, he just knew; he knew exactly what his answer had to be.
Griff checked the windows and the wals again for any obvious eavesdroppers before he broke the silence. “Do you have some kind of a plan?”
“I know how to jerk off, G.” Dante roled his eyes and made a dumb face. “If you don’t, I can give you pointers.”
“Idiot!” Griff smacked his head.
Dante yelped and held up his hands, laughing.
“No.” Griff glared at him. “I meant, do you know how much you need to get the bank off your back and get caught up?” Dante nodded and faced the low shrubs along the fence. “Four grand is the emergency number, but if I could put away, like, nine or ten grand, I’d have some breathing room through the holidays. Then there’l be construction stuff in the spring.” Griff felt his resistance slip for a moment. “And that wil get you out of the hole?” Dante looked like a little boy praying for a bicycle. “I hope so.”
“Hope is not a strategy.” Griff felt himself frown.
“Wel. Then I think….” Dante shrugged.
Griff wrinkled his forehead, shaking his head, trying to stop this runaway train. “What are you gonna tel your dad when he asks about the money?” They both knew the Anastagios would question money appearing out of thin air and bils getting paid on a house that everyone knew Dante couldn’t afford.
“Oh. Shit.” Dante heard that with no problem. Gears turned in his head. “Construction maybe? I can say you found a gig in Bayridge doing demolition. Like they’re paying cash under the table. And maybe, like, Alek can pay you for both of us, and you can loan it to me.” Dante looked back at his parent’s back door.
“Hel, they al know you’re the responsible one.”
Griff searched his friend’s, trying to resist that charm and the real desperation swimming in their inky depths. “Dante, you gotta know exactly what you need.
Not want, but seriously capital-N need.”
“I do.” Dante nodded and bumped their shoulders together. “No one has to know. He even said he can hide your face if you want. But we get more if you’l let him show it.”
“What does he pay?” Griff was literaly whispering now as he looked at the bricks between his old sneakers. His size fifteens seemed enormous down there.
“Two grand for us both… maybe a little more if we push some boundaries.”
Griff closed his eyes and tried to find the wil to stop himself. He thought of his dad’s empty house, and nights on the web like a horny spider spying on
“Monte,” and Dante needing him, and al these crazy feelings. His impossible hope. He knew what he was doing, knew it was madness, but truth be told, he couldn’t stop himself from saying yes, from helping Dante. And he couldn’t resist the temptation, the chance to see his best friend like that in the flesh. Knowing him in that way. Of being with him, just once, even under false pretenses. A completely selfish sacrifice hidden in plain sight.
No one has to know.
“Griff?” Dante was stil looking at him when he opened his eyes.
Because we’re so close.
The screen door creaked behind them. Griff stiffened and twisted on the steps.
“Uncle Dante?” One of Flip’s boys stood there looking annoyed and uptight in his striped shirt: a miniature version of his dad. He held a big spoon as a kind of scepter. “Grandpa says there’s more dessert if you both get your asses back inside.” Slam. And then he was gone.
Dante chuckled but stayed on the brick steps, waiting for Griff to say something.
Clank. Like a rerouted subway, Griff felt his whole life angle slightly in a dangerous direction without any idea of the destination, wiling to gamble for once because Dante needed him back. He got to his feet, brushed the seat of his tan cords, and looked down at Dante smiling up at him.
So close.
“Yeah, D. Okay.”
Chapter 9
THAT week, Dante drove them out to the HotHead offices in his beat-up jeep. Thursday the thirteenth seemed like shitty luck waiting to happen. Their turnout gear was in duffels in the back. Traffic was minimal and the neighborhood, when they reached it, looked rundown and warehouse-heavy—a ghost town of abandoned factories and storage facilities. The offices were in a former industrial building out on Avenue X. Yes, realy. Avenue XXX: Bow-chicka-bow-mow.
On the way out, Dante tried to thank Griff for coming along, for agreeing, but Griff had gotten so uncomfortable that he gave up.
After they parked, Alek met them in the street wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, rubbing his shiny head. He crooked an arm and gestured them over to a grubby loading dock.
Dante loped up and shook his hand; Griff did not. If he had been alone, he would have been worried about getting mugged.
Alek headed up a long ramp that led along the wal toward an old elevator. “My assistant quit over the weekend. He’s a student at Hunter. So I must wear several hats for the moment.”
They stepped into a creaky metal cage, which took them up five floors and opened onto a warren of crates and dusty boxes. Half-light filtered in through grimy windows, but the labyrinth of boxes kept their pathway shadowed. Alek led the way with Dante a step behind. Griff hung back, thinking about how sketchy it al seemed. Whose boxes were these? He’d expected something a little slicker. Was this the whole operation? Didn’t porno make money? Alek certainly didn’t dress like a bum.
Finaly, they reached a heavy metal door that opened into an open, sheet-rocked space that took up a corner of the building, maybe twenty by twenty-five.
The website’s “studio” was way smaler and less snazzy than Griff had imagined it.
Alek held the door open and ushered them inside, locking it behind them and flicking a switch that turned on fans. The wals were soundproofed with egg crate foam and thick, faded blue curtains. One end of the room was brightly lit, and G
riff recognized the hipster apartment set Dante had jerked off in.
It realy was a film set. Funny how real it had looked on the website and how fake it looked now in front of him. A smoldering “HotHead.com” logo was mounted in the air above the seating area, then, in smaler type running underneath the logo, “’Cause real men can’t control themselves.” No shit.
Behind Griff, Alek’s soft accent reminded him what they were about to do. “You wil give me a moment?” Dante moved around the room like he lived here. He headed straight for the hot lights of the sitting room set.
Alek gave them both some clipboards, contracts that needed initials and signatures. Little colored flags stuck out the side, directing Griff’s attention helpfuly.
The language seemed very impersonal and thoughtful, guaranteeing their payments and describing what they’d be doing for HotHead.com in vague euphemisms.
They would get $1,200 each for their services. Dante must have negotiated that. Plus there was an extra $150 if they provided their own uniforms. They agreed that their faces and bodies would be visible on camera, and they relinquished any and al rights to the footage. Then there was something about bonuses if they engaged in certain “extended activities,” whatever that meant. Oh, here it was: they got more cash if they climaxed more than once or penetrated themselves with a “latex toy” provided by the management or let the Russian “assist” them with his own hands/mouth/anus.
Yeah, thanks. No thanks.
Griff scanned his contract with due caution, but Dante had initialed where indicated, flipped quickly to the last page, and was already signing on the dotted line, standing in the fake living room, one leg bouncing. He just wanted to get the money and save his house, and he wanted it over. Griff sighed and stopped wrestling with his conscience. Dante needed him; that was enough.
Alek was on the side of the room fiddling with a slick-looking video camera on a high stand that had a view of the sitting room area. Near the door, a large bank of computers hummed like a hive. A HotHead screensaver blazed on the flat-screen monitor under a corkboard covered with polaroids: mostly built guys flexing in the buff. Shit. Apparently a lot of dudes wanted to jerk it for HotHead.
Trade you, Griff thought.
Dante flopped down into that wide leather armchair Griff had watched so many times in the past few weeks.
By now, Griff figured there had to be a groove running between his laptop and “Monte’s” page on the HotHead website. Griff knew every inch of this fake sitting room—the factory-made art above the fat black chair, the gray-green eggshel wals, even the nubby oatmeal carpet. Standing here looking at it in three dimensions made him feel like he had stepped through his laptop screen into the website, like he was a videogame character. Pornoman! The only unfamiliar furniture sat along the side wal: a matching black leather loveseat with fat arms.
Ha. Love Seat. Good one.
Griff opted for that, trying not to take up too much space. He gave up reading and just signed his clipboard on the dotted lines. What the hel did it matter?
He knew what he was doing, what they were doing. And no way were any extended activities going to take place. He realized that Alek was shifting the cameras around so that they were aimed right at the little loveseat. He realized Dante would have to sit right next to him, which was obviously the idea of having a couch this smal. Shoulder to shoulder, their legs would be pressed together. They’d feel each other’s arms flexing as they gave themselves a salty handshake.
Great.
Dante on his leather throne, Griff in the loveseat, they waited in awkward silence for Alek to finish fiddling with the cameras to refocus them.
“Those lights are gonna kil your eyes, so you should try to keep ’em on the lens.” Dante had turned to him to offer this helpful tip. He jerked his head at the lights on stands.
Griff grunted to let him know he’d been listening and to let out the breath he was holding. “Okay.”
“You good?” Dante leaned forward conspiratorialy, his elbows on his blue-jeaned knees. His voice was a low murmur, like he didn’t want Alek listening in from eight feet away, like he wanted to talk to Griff in private here in this fake room, on this fake furniture.
Alek was busy trying to untangle a long cable over by the door, his shaved head shiny in the overhead lights. He wasn’t paying any attention to them at al, maintaining a kind of polite distance that Griff appreciated.
“Nervous, I think.” Griff’s voice sounded muffled in his own ears. He tried to relax his shoulders. “I’m fine.” Dante winked. “Wel that’s the fucking truth. C’mon, G. You’l be great.”
Griff didn’t laugh, although he knew that was what Dante wanted him to do. Instead he turned toward Alek across the room. “You need any help with that?” Alek stood, wiping his dusty hands on his jeans. “No. It’s nothing. I am sorry for keeping you both waiting. The clutter distresses me, yes?” Under the circumstances, he seemed determined to be respectful, which came as a weird relief to Griff. He didn’t seem pervy at al.
Dante crossed the room to the duffel against the opposite wal.
Alek held up a bottle of shit whiskey and a couple glasses. “Would either of you like a drink? For nerves?” Again he spoke to them with exaggerated manners, as if he were a valet and this were a private gentleman’s club.
Griff reached for the bottle without even thinking. Pouring himself a double shot and then another, as fast as he could down it. And another.
“Whoa, buddy!” Dante raised his black eyebrows. “I’m not that ugly.”
Griff didn’t answer but did a fourth shot of whiskey. His throat and gut burned, but a welcome fog crept over his brain as the rotgut pumped into his system.
He rubbed his chest. “There somewhere we can change?” Modesty seemed pretty ridiculous at this moment.
Alek nodded, his face calm and reassuring. “Your handsome uniforms, yes. Go ahead.” They would change here, Griff realized. Dante was already toeing off his sneakers and shucking out of his pants, shirt on the floor. Griff turned toward the wal and puled his own shirt over his head. Beside him, Dante squatted at the duffel and unzipped it. Behind him, Alek whistled appreciatively.
“You are so pale! Beautiful.” Alek’s accent got thicker from across the room, but Griff kept his eyes on the wal and breathed in the smel of Dante’s freshly showered skin. His heart hammered behind his muscular chest, between his too-pink nipples. He could almost see it thumping away, pounding him into rubble from inside.
Down on the floor, Dante tugged out their bunker pants and jackets, passing one folded pile to Griff. He’d covered their engine and ladder numbers with duct tape. “Suit up, probie.”
Griff nodded and turned to him in time to catch the nervous grin. He felt awkward in his boxer briefs in this half-empty warehouse on Avenue X. Life was so weird sometimes. He noticed Dante was wearing a bulging jockstrap and then dropped his eyes to the folded turnout gear, wishing he hadn’t looked.
Alek was moving one of the cameras beside the loveseat, angling the lens down for a high view of anyone seated there. His shaved head shone under the lights like it was polished. Mr. Clean makes a porno.
Dante and Griff tugged on the quilted pants side by side in silence. Déjà vu spiked through Griff, but maybe he was remembering the two of them suiting up at Randal Island as trainees before Dante had transferred.
Dante hooked a suspender over one tan shoulder and bent to pick up his coat. “Hey, Alek. You want shirts under these?”
“No need, I think. I don’t see any point in covering up Mr. Muir’s beautiful skin more than it is.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Dante poked at Griff. “He gives me a complex. Two hundred forty-five pounds of solid muscle. You can’t believe how the girls eat him up. Sheesh.”
Griff felt the blush starting and covered it with his jacket. He kept his eyes on the floor as much as he could as he went to the loveseat.
Dante shrugged into his own jacket and reached over to s
queeze Griff’s shoulder gently. “Fucking redheads. Griffin’s like marble al over.”
“Pink marble at the moment.” Alek’s smile made the compliment into a tease. “And that fiery hair just peeking out under your arms. Amazing.” Griff snorted on the little sofa and wilted under Alek’s scrutinizing eyes. His heart was pounding. What if he couldn’t get a hard-on? What if he got a hard-on too fast? Which would be worse? His head ached. “Where’d you put that whiskey?” He found it under the coffee table and unscrewed the cap to pour himself another shot of courage.
“Easy, man.” Dante was standing in front of him, holding out his hand for the bottle.
“Yeah. I’m good.” As long as Griff kept his eyes on his friend he could keep it together. Easy enough. He could feel the alcohol starting to blur the edges of his anxiety.
“We’re going to cal you Duff.” Alek was looking at Griff as if asking for permission. He seemed to be asking for other suggestions.
“Yeah. Fine. Sure.” Griff kept his eyes low. Dante had been right about those overhead lights. The air in this part of the room was twenty-five degrees hotter.
They were gonna sweat their changs off before the afternoon was over. Dante sitting sweaty next to him, ankle to elbow. He groaned.
Dante nodded in agreement with the groan, but he was agreeing with something else. “Buff Duff. I like it. Better than fucking Monte. The worst.” He roled his eyes and plopped onto the leather beside Griff. “Sounds like a plumber.”
“No.” Alek shook his shaved head and smiled at them. “It sounds like a working-class straight man. But someone who’s horny enough to… experiment. That is the fantasy.”
“If you say so.” Dante took a swig of whiskey and plunked it on the coffee table next to an IKEA catalog that was there to make this room look less fake.
’Cause HotHeads prefer building shit from a kit. Just add tools. More bulshit.
It was al fucking fake except for what Griff was feeling about the man next to him. His laugh was a grim bark of resignation.