by JD Ruskin
“Who did this? Why?”
“FYFB.com. You’ve heard of them, right?”
“Um, no,” replied Brandt, who was making his way to the computer to see for himself.
“You really are straight, aren’t you? It’s Fuck Yeah Frat Boys! Dot Com! They post reviews of the fine cinema that we produce and the lame stuff our competitors put out, and a front-page hit like this is pure gold! I’ve never seen anyone get New Meat so quickly—we normally have to promote the new guys, practically beg to get them noticed.”
As Nick rattled on, the site was coming up in Brandt’s browser window.
There he was.
The discerning critics at Fuck Yeah Frat Boys.com had chosen three stills from “Mason’s First Time” to feature on the front page. The first was Brandt lifting his shirt off (the second time), which he couldn’t really object to, since all it showed was the muscles of his upper body and the form he had worked hard to sculpt them into. As he scrolled down, though, he winced. The next picture showed him stroking himself in the shower, dripping wet and rock hard, looking for all the world like he was completely lost in the pleasure he was experiencing. Nick’s work, he recalled, not his.
The last shot, though, was all him. He was lying back on the bed, his red cock gripped tightly in both hands, every muscle standing out in sharp relief, and the first burst of cum was just beginning to emerge from the tip of his penis. His eyes were tightly shut, his head thrown back, and between his tensing buttocks could be seen just the shadow (Brandt leaned in close to the monitor, hoping he wasn’t seeing it) of his asshole.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” he said into the phone.
“I know, right? Well, we’re watching the traffic meter spin here like the odometer on the fuckin’ space shuttle, and Mr. Drake is getting very excited. He wants to meet with you tomorrow to talk about your future. This is fuckin’ awesome, dude!”
“Yeah, awesome,” Brandt managed. “When should I be there?”
“Come whenever you want. We’ll be here! I have some amazing ideas for your next video, and I bet you do too. See ya tomorrow, right?”
Brandt could think of nothing he could show on video that hadn’t already been displayed. But he knew enough now to suspect the limits of his imagination would soon be made apparent to him.
“Right. Tomorrow. Thanks.”
He slid open the keyboard on his phone and typed a message to Donnelly. “Good news. Going back to the house tomorrow for meeting with Drake. Have anything on him?”
He snapped his phone shut, and sat for a few moments, staring at himself on the computer screen.
Fuck.
THE NEXT morning, standing before his closet, Brandt suddenly realized he had nothing to wear. He had clothes in his closet, of course, but this would be the first time he was going to the house without Bryce’s ministering hand (and eye) to dress him. He wasn’t sure anymore what he should seem to be or to look like. For a moment he tried to think like Bryce, but that just made him a little dizzy, so he grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt without thinking too much about it. It was the kind of thing he would wear if he and Donnelly were going to grab a drink on a Saturday afternoon. And really, this was no longer about the clothes he was in, but about what he did out of them. He looked at himself in the mirror and shrugged.
His phone buzzed.
“So, what ya got?” he asked Donnelly as he walked to the kitchen.
“Not much. Timothy Drake majored in accounting and finance at State. Top grades, full honors. Licensed tax accountant. Went into mergers and acquisitions. Did an MBA, joined a big investment house. Huh. There’s really nothing on the guy.”
“Well, that doesn’t help me much,” Brandt muttered as he poured orange juice.
“Hang on. There’s another sheet here from the DA’s office. Looks like Drake filed a sexual harassment claim a couple years ago against his boss at the investment place. They fired him, and then he filed criminal sexual assault charges.”
Brandt waited. Donnelly was silent.
“Well, what happened?” Brandt asked.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing? Nothing doesn’t just happen when someone files a criminal complaint.”
“That’s what’s weird. There’s nothing else in the record. The whole thing looks like it just went away.”
“That can’t happen.”
“I’m telling you it did. There’s just nothing here. Look, I’m going to check back with the DA’s office and see if I have the whole file.”
“OK. I’m heading over to the house. Text me if you find anything more.”
“Roger that. Good luck today.”
“Thanks.”
Brandt spent the drive to the house spinning increasingly twisted scenarios about what might have happened to Drake’s complaint against his boss. By the time he arrived, there was a tangled plot involving blackmail, gunplay, and flying monkeys. Too much caffeine, he thought as he shook his head to clear it.
He rang the bell and was a bit startled when Nick answered the door wearing clothes. Brandt had gotten used to him being naked. This thought made him slightly uncomfortable.
“Jason! It’s great to see you!” Nick wrapped his arms around Brandt, gave a squeeze that Brandt thought lasted about a second and a half too long, and then pulled him into the house. “Come on in. Mr. Drake will be thrilled you’re here.”
They walked down the hallway, passing several groups of young men, in various states of dress, talking animatedly into the cameras on their laptops. Clearly Monday morning was a busy time in the porn mines.
Nick knocked on the door and announced that “Jason” had arrived.
“Come in, come in!” called Drake’s voice from within the office. As the men entered, he was coming around from behind his desk. “Jason, it’s great to see you again.”
“Good to be here, sir,” Brandt replied, taking the seat that Drake pointed him to. Nick sat in the other, and Drake perched on the corner of his desk.
“I assume Nick has told you about the success of your debut on the site?”
“He mentioned it perhaps once or twice,” Brandt replied, thinking of the several dozen texts he had received from Nick over the last two days. He looked over at Nick, who winked and grinned.
“Well, we’ve never seen anything like it. The response is phenomenal. It’s not just the people watching it, though you set records there. And it’s not just FYFB.com either, nice as that was. What’s been really amazing is the e-mail traffic you’ve generated. Plus, we’ve got discussion boards filling up with all kinds of begging for you to make another video.”
“So, is that what you want me to do today?” Brandt asked, hoping that his utter emotional devastation at the very idea didn’t show through.
“Actually, no.”
Brandt felt a warm wave of relief sweep through him. It was followed by an even deeper chill, though, as he suddenly thought about what Drake might have in mind if it wasn’t a video.
“Are you aware, Jason,” Drake continued, “of the services we offer besides the videos?”
Brandt thought for a moment.
“Nick mentioned that the guys do live shows sometimes.”
“Yes, they do. But there are other kinds of entertainment we offer as well.”
Brandt felt heat rising in his cheeks. He didn’t like the way this was going.
“You’re not talking about actually… I mean… you don’t mean in person, do you?”
Drake laughed.
“Oh, no, Jason. We never do that. That’s not actually legal in this state—or any state outside of certain areas of Nevada.”
Great. Now Brandt was getting a legal lesson about prostitution from a porn accountant.
“Then, what is it?”
“For very special, very wealthy clients we offer a one-on-one service. It’s a sort of video chat. Just you and the customer, alone, for an hour.”
Nick seemed surprised.
&nbs
p; “But, sir, we don’t usually do those until the guy has some experience, has done some live shows—”
“I know, Nick, I know. But our new friend here has such a big following that we think it might be most profitable to have him do a private show first. In fact, several of your fans, Jason, have already offered considerable sums of money to have the first private show with you. What do you think?”
Brandt’s chair seemed to be made of fire. He could feel sweat trickling down his legs.
“What would it involve, sir?” he asked, playing for time so that he could have a minute to think of what the hell to do.
“It’s simple, really. We set you up in a room upstairs with a webcam. Your client sits in front of his own webcam, so you can see each other. You talk to him, then you take your clothes off, then you do what you did on the video you made for us earlier. That’s it—no more.”
Oh, is that all, thought Brandt. Drake made it sound as though he would be doing nothing more than exchanging pleasantries with a pen pal.
“Mr. Drake, I’m not sure I’m ready to—”
“Jason, I don’t want to be dramatic here, but this is your moment. You will never be worth more than you are right now, at least not in this line of work. I think the bidding on your private show could go quite high.”
“Bidding?”
“It’s a new idea we’ve been wanting to try out. Eugene—you’ve met Eugene?”
“Yes,” Brandt croaked. You could call watching a guy jack off a meeting of sorts.
“He’s come up with an idea to have customers bid on private shows. You would perform a private show for the highest bidder.”
Brandt didn’t know what to do. This was clearly what Drake wanted him to do, and it would bring him closer to getting the information he needed, but the idea of this kind of performance made him a little queasy.
“If this goes well, Jason, there’s no limit to what you can do. In fact, the owner of the site wants to come to the house to meet you, and he has never done that before. If you do this private show, he just might offer you something even more exciting when he comes.”
That was it. Brandt was being offered the chance to meet the owner, the one he was supposed to be getting the goods on. Nick’s gasp when Drake mentioned this new development meant that this was a rare opportunity. He had to do it. He worked up his best gung-ho grin—actually, he borrowed it from Nick. It worked.
“I’m in, sir. Just tell me when, and I’ll be here.”
Drake smiled broadly.
“Excellent! I’ll have Eugene put up the auction today, and we’ll plan to do the show with the lucky winner on Friday night.”
“Great. I’ll see you then.” Brandt stood, as did Nick. They walked out of Drake’s office and back down the hall to the kitchen.
“So, you have plans for lunch?” Nick asked.
“I don’t have plans at all, for anything. This is all happening so fast.”
“I hear ya. Like I said yesterday, we’ve never seen anything like this. It’s gotta be kind of overwhelming.”
“To say the least.” Brandt was just trying to breathe.
“How about we grab a bite to eat, and we can talk about it?”
“Sounds good. I’ll drive.”
“I’ll give directions. It’s what I’m good at.”
This, Brandt already knew.
A half hour later they were in a booth at a restaurant in the next suburb over, waiting for their food to come.
“So, Nick? Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, man, what is it?”
“How did you feel about doing this stuff when you started?”
Nick chuckled and shook his head.
“I know I’m not normal or anything, but I loved it. The idea that there were people out there looking at me, getting off on my body, I loved it. I still love it.”
“But you’re straight, right? Mostly?”
“Yeah, mostly.”
“And the people watching you are guys, right?”
“Mostly. There are a few women sometimes, and once one of the sororities on my campus bought a month’s subscription, but mostly it’s guys, yeah.”
Brandt twirled the straw in his iced tea and sighed.
“It’s weird for you, isn’t it?” Nick asked, his voice soft with concern.
“Yeah, it is. I keep thinking I’ll get used to it, but it’s not really happening.”
“Then you should stop.”
Brandt looked up at Nick, startled. “What?”
“If it makes you uncomfortable, you should just stop. This isn’t the kind of thing you should be doing if you aren’t fully into it.”
Brandt shook his head quickly, certain he was misunderstanding Nick.
“But, you’re the one who’s all excited about my video, and about me doing more for the site.”
“Yeah, but only if you want it too. If you don’t, then you shouldn’t do it.” Nick said this simply, as if it must surely have been clear all along.
“But wouldn’t Mr. Drake and the owner be mad?”
Nick scoffed. “No. Jason, they’re good people. I mean, I work with Mr. Drake every day, and I know he wouldn’t want you to do anything that made you uncomfortable. And I’ve never met the owner, but the way he runs the site has always been decent—the guys always get paid, and no one is ever forced to do anything they don’t want to do.”
Brandt was touched by Nick’s concern and support, but it didn’t change the fact that he would have to go ahead with the private show if he was going to get further into the business of the site.
“Nah, I’m fine with it. It’s just something to get used to. It’s not the kind of work I’ve ever done before.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a strange way to make money. But it’s awesome money!” Nick lifted his glass. “To horny guys who pay the bills!”
Brandt laughed and raised his glass to Nick’s.
THAT EVENING, as Donnelly and Brandt ate dinner at Brandt’s apartment, they discussed the next steps in their plan.
“So, you want me to bid on you?” Donnelly asked, plainly uncertain as to what Brandt was getting at.
“Not on me, stupid, on an hour-long private show with me.”
This is the plan Brandt had come up with to accomplish his goal of meeting the owner of the Str8 Frat Dudes site without having to have video sex with a stranger. A strange man, to be precise. The thought still made Brandt shiver.
“And then what?”
“Once you win the auction, they set up the show, and then we have an hour on video to play chess or something.”
“Won’t they notice that we’re not doing the whole sex thing?”
“Nick says they don’t record the private shows in order to protect the clients. So no one will ever know that I didn’t do anything. Perfect plan, right?”
“Yeah, except for how we’re going to pay for it.”
“I’ll take care of that. I’ll talk to the Chief tomorrow. Meanwhile, you keep looking into Tim Drake. I want to find out how his assault case evaporated, and how he ended up running the porn shop.”
The talk that Brandt had hoped to have with the Chief turned into several—at least once a day he had to go into his office and ask for more money as the auction ratcheted higher and higher. Nick sent him hourly updates, and by Tuesday morning he and Mr. Drake had come up with a plan for pushing the bids even higher—they would tease Mason’s first private show by putting up some photos showing what he would be wearing Friday night.
“What, exactly, will I be wearing?” Brandt asked when Nick called him to tell him of this latest brainstorm.
“I’m thinking jockstrap. That should work.”
“Nick, I’m not sure if I even have one anymore. It’s probably not much to look at even if I did.”
“Ick. You don’t want one that’s actually been used much. You need something super sexy.”
“I don’t see how a jockstrap is sexy.”
“That’s why you�
��re leaving this to me. All you need to do is to go get a hot new jockstrap and meet me at the house tonight. We’ll do a shoot that gets the bids up. And the boners. Hah!”
“Okay, so I’ll swing by the sporting goods place on the way over.”
“No! I’ll send you the address of the place you need to go. Talk to my buddy Andy.”
Breathe, Brandt.
“Great. See you tonight.”
The text with the address arrived shortly after. He would be going back to Alta Avenue, apparently.
That afternoon Brandt and Donnelly headed out for what Brandt hoped would be his final outfitting. Judging from the address, this one was on the next block down from Camp & Dragg and Cabana Boy. They pulled up in front of a store called Sporting Wood.
Here, the sales staff wore referee’s striped shirts and hotpants; whistles hung around their necks, and they had yellow penalty flags sticking out of their pockets. As usual, Brandt and Donnelly were like chum in the water; their arrival attracted the attention of every member of the staff. The first to arrive, somewhat breathlessly, demonstrated by his fluster that he had never in his life played a sport that involved wearing clothes.
“Welcome! How can I help you sport wood today?”
“We’re here to see Andy. His buddy Nick sent us.”
“Ahh, yes. Nick! What a lovely personality that boy keeps in his pants. Andy is right this way.” They followed their referee down the aisle to where another ref was sorting compression shorts into colorful stacks.
“Andy, some friends of Nick’s are here to avail themselves of your services!” the bubbly salesref exclaimed. Then he turned to Donnelly and whispered conspiratorially, “His services are the stuff of legend, sister.” Donnelly stared back in alarm.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Andy asked as he placed the final violet stretch short on the stack at the end of the rainbow.
Brandt could see right away what it meant that Andy was a friend of Nick’s. He had a similar build, a winning smile, and his ref’s shorts were particularly tight.
“I need a jockstrap.” Brandt said simply. Better get it out there right away.
“I see,” Andy responded, his eyes flicking up and down Brandt’s body, again with an appraising gaze that reminded Brandt of Nick. “What’s your sport?”