Steve nodded, I thanked him, and once again, I allowed a run-in with Ron to banish me to my office. I just didn’t know how to interact with the man after something like that. What to do, what to say.
And I have no idea what Steve said to him either, but before leaving the office, Ron scheduled an appointment for the following month—the final appointment of the day.
So yeah, maybe I do work with a bunch of assholes all day… but, once in a while, the only way to deal with an asshole is to be a real jerk-off.
MR. LAUNDRY
Lee Houck
While I’m standing at the window, he appears.
Every Friday night the heavy door swings open and Mr. Laundry carries his dirty clothes to the Laundromat. He drags the army green bag down the stairway and then, with one thick heave, using his shoulder like a crowbar, he brings the load to rest behind his head, arms stretching out to the edges of the bag. Tonight he’s wearing a red T-shirt with the sleeves torn off (I can see a tattoo on his right arm), worn jeans, and frumpy tennis shoes. I want to rake my hands underneath his shirt, feel the soft warm fibers against the tough tight sinew of his body. Snake my mouth along the textures of his chest—smooth and hard near his shoulder, mushy padded sweaty near his armpit, the relaxed weight of his pectoral, the delicate change of flesh around his nipple, sensitive and flooded with blood. Slowness, gentleness, pours out of every pore of his body. I wonder if this is who he is.
I’ve been watching him for two months.
I gather my clothes, dividing items that can wait another week from the worst-smelling stuff, which I wad down into a drawstring sack. I scrounge quarters from the change jar, walk down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk.
When I get to the Laundromat, a short Mexican woman is washing the tops of the machines with a rag and talking on the phone. She’s chatting with whoever about whatever in a language that’s all vowels, lugging a heavy cart of wet clothes behind her, rolling it through the aisles. Mr. Laundry is here, and he isn’t supposed to be. It’s Tuesday—not his day. His eyes follow me as I walk around the other side of the folding table. Part of me wants this to happen. Part of me is really horny. Part of me can’t speak.
He walks right up to me. “Can I borrow some soap?”
I know I’ve got a script somewhere for this kind of thing. How many times have I drummed up stupid conversation? But this is something different, and I’m nervous.
He repeats himself. “Soap. Can I borrow some?” He tugs at his shirttail.
“I don’t bring it with me.” Brilliant answer. What are you, a genius?
He leans against the vibrating machine, arms folded across his chest, his feet crossed at the ankle. Seeing him up close, the details appear: jeans worn at the cuffs, left leg more frayed than the right, skin wrinkled in the crook of his elbow, the tattoo on his arm, a lot of hair on his knuckles. I don’t know what to say. Then I do.
“Here’s fifty cents. You can use the vending machine over there.” I pull two coins from my pocket and stretch my arm out to him. He pauses, stands up straight, and walks over to me. He lifts his hand up and everything zooms in on this tiny moment, the part where my fingers drop the coins into his rough dark palm. The world slows.
“Thanks,” he says, smirking, charming.
“Sure.”
“Slow morning.”
“Yeah.” I notice my arm is still hanging out in the open.
“So you live around here?”
It’s an odd question to ask at a Laundromat, I think—is this supposed to be his pickup line? “Yeah, right across the street.”
“You like it?”
“I love it.”
“I’ve been here almost a year,” he says. “I see the same people walking around, same people coming home from work every day. Same people going to work every day.”
“You start to recognize them and then you wonder if anyone starts to recognize you.” We pause. He smacks his gum. I see his clean white teeth.
“So what do you do?”
“You mean for a living?”
“Yes.”
I look over my shoulder for a hint of how to answer his question. None comes. So I concentrate hard, pushing all the synapses in my brain to work together. Pushing toward a synchronized electronic buzz. I count to four. Like a brown blanket tossed over a fire, the world becomes flat. The air smells like ashes, molten marshmallow cinders.
“I’m a hustler,” I say.
“You’re kidding,” he says.
“No.” The flat place is wide and blank, and you can see for miles if you want to.
Mr. Laundry leans in close and whispers to me. “Can I ask you something?” I can smell the mint on his breath. The same Doublemint gum that my grandparents gave me in church, to make me stop squirming.
“Sure.”
“How much for the whole night?”
The parade of spinning clothes pulsates behind him in a long syncopated line. I look closer at the squareness of his jaw and the stubble along his neckline. I want to touch his lips with mine, taste his tongue, smell him tomorrow on my fingers. “What do you want?” I ask.
“I’ve got five hundred in cash at the apartment. I’ll get you more if you want it.”
“My clothes,” I say. He pulls some money from his back pocket and walks it over to the attendant. He talks to her in Spanish. “What did you tell her?” I ask when he returns.
“She’s going to fold them and you can pick them up tomorrow.”
“What a gentleman,” I say.
“I do what I can.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“A little.” He opens the door and the cold air from outside collides with the warm air from the dryers, blowing around the runty dust bunny tornadoes.
“You’re not a serial killer are you?”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“You’ll have to excuse him, he always does that.” The dog, furry, brown, and dripping with slobber, nudges his face into my crotch.
“It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
He grabs the dog by his collar and tries to tug him from between my legs. “He mostly sleeps all day. He’s kind of old. Nine. I mean, pretty old for a mastiff.” He scratches his shoulder, then his head, scrunching his face like he’s thinking hard. I can’t wait to get my mouth on that tattoo.
“What’s his name?” I say.
“Caleb. It means brave. Or victorious, depending on who you talk to.” The dog laps at his face, covering his beard in drool. He smiles and laughs. I’m going to have to kiss the mouth that just kissed Caleb.
“Right.”
“It’s stupid, I guess.”
“No. It’s nice. Fitting.”
Nervous again, I send myself to the place where everything is flat. Where the senses perk up, the vision clears, and the animal in you can float up to the surface. I’m sort of absently rubbing my dick, habit I guess, but it’s not hard yet. I wonder if I’ll be able to fuck him. I wonder if he wants me to.
“Yeah,” he says. He picks mail off the table, stuffs it under some junk in the kitchen. He snaps a dirty shirt off the back of the chair, like he’s trying to impress me, throws it into the bathroom where it falls onto a heap of socks and underwear, a quiet lump. I sit in a big leather armchair and open my legs. The leather feels like safety and goodness.
Caleb jumps into my lap. He weighs a ton. His paws are as big as my hands and drool drips out of his mouth onto my jeans. “I think he needs a bib or something.”
“Sorry. Here.” He hands me a towel that’s only semidry. “You can wipe it up with this.” It only spreads the goop around on my pants. “God, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It’s okay.”
“You want a drink or something?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Smoke?”
“Or smoke either.”
“Good, I hate cigarettes.”
“Then why did you offer me one?”
“I don’t know,” he says
.
“If I had said yes, would you have had a cigarette to offer me?”
“Never mind.”
“So what’s your name?”
“Aiden. What’s yours?”
“Simon.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Yes.”
Aiden holds a knotted rope down near the dog’s mouth, half playing with him, half talking to me, and Caleb slides off my lap. I wonder if he has bought sex before. Maybe.
“Well, I thought you would use a fake name or something.”
“No, just Simon.”
“I guess not.” He counts five hundred dollars in twenties and puts the stack on the table near the kitchen. He turns away from me as he counts.
“This is going to sound weird,” he says.
“I’ve heard it all.”
“No, I mean—are there things you won’t do?”
“I told you I do everything.”
“Because in Pretty Woman she wouldn’t kiss on the mouth and stuff like that.”
I laugh. “No. I’ll kiss you on the mouth. That’s fine.”
“Sorry,” he says.
“Stop apologizing.” My dick is hard now, but I don’t remember it happening.
He kneels. He plays with my dick through my jeans and then unbuttons the fly.
“So, you’re not going to beat me up are you?”
“No,” he says. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“You never know.”
Next, we’re in his bed and I’m naked. He rubs his hand up and down my whole body. I’m thrusting my cock slowly into his mouth while he’s got one finger in my ass. He feels like wet velvet. I lay my head back.
The flat place shrinks, pulls away first at the edges, then begins to look a little like this room. The horizon bends to make doorways, and furniture appears. The burning marshmallow stink vanishes, leaving only the clean sheets, the hardwood floor. The change happens so slowly that I don’t realize it’s changing until it’s different, the previous moment gone forever, and then I’m here. Right here with him.
The flat place echoes like a memory, its absence like a sickening déjà vu that amplifies the details, and the curious, gentle minutes spent with Aiden. If I wanted to remember them, could I?
Everything in the world is dissolving.
Aiden has his pants undone. He jerks off and comes while he’s sucking me, which isn’t rare, really. After he gets his rhythm started up again, sucking harder on the upstroke and letting it slide on the down, I come. He takes his pants off and then the rest of his clothes. He lies down next to me and rubs his hand across my head where I’m sweating.
He closes my eyes with his fingers, then touches them, barely, to my lips. He pulls the sheets and blankets over us. I turn over, onto my stomach, and he reaches his arm around me, runs his thumb up and down my spine.
Things settle and congeal. No noise. Only breathing. And the flat place is another country, inaccessible, a muddy Polaroid of a strange land where you once were.
I turn and press my face into his chest. I nuzzle my nose in the hair between his pecs, inhaling the moistness. I burrow my head under his chin, both palms flat against his chest. I can’t get close enough. Aiden bends his head down and kisses my forehead. His fuzzy chin tickles my face.
In the morning I get up and take the money off the table, taking only two hundred and fifty, leaving the rest—feeling sort of bad about overcharging. Aiden is still sleeping, the sheet wrapped low around his waist, his shoulders spread out on the mountain of pillows. I stare down at the tattoo on his arm, a hollow hand, with a wheel of symbols inside—a tiny horse, a star, and a curvy line that looks like a river—bluishgreen, smaller than I thought, and oddly soothing. I refill the dog’s water dish and let myself out.
GIOVANNI
Logan Zachary
I stood in the doorway, uncertain of where to go or what to do. Remington’s was a male strip club in Toronto. The sign read COVER CHARGE $5, but no one was manning the front door. I pulled out an American five and looked around.
A young man danced on the stage, wearing only a pair of white briefs and tennis shoes. The music blared around the semicrowded room. It was early. I looked to the bartender, who was busy filling mugs of beer. My glance returned to the stage, where the lad’s briefs were now down around his ankles. His business stood semierect and danced in time to his pelvic thrusts.
Arms wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Enjoying what you see?” a young voice asked in my ear.
I turned to see a shirtless man with a smooth, pale chest. His torso looked sculpted from stone. A thin triangle of fine dark hair ran from his belly button and disappeared into his surf shorts. His black hair was cut short and spiked straight up.
My mouth was dry and I couldn’t swallow. “I just got here. Where…where do I pay the…” I waved my bill at the sign.
“Forget about that, spend it on what counts.” He winked at me. He stepped back so I could get a better look. No fat on this boy. Young and firm. Very nice looking, but not my type; he looked barely nineteen.
Still, my eyes caressed his form before I looked over his shoulder to the stage. The dancer was exhibiting his dick in full glory as the music came to a close.
“Give a hand to Dante. He’ll be walking around soon,” said an anonymous voice from the speakers. The dancer pulled on his underwear and descended the stairs. He walked to a back hallway and disappeared. “Give it up for Chance,” said the voice. A man strolled to the stage wearing a cowboy hat, chaps, and holster. His vest flapped open, showing a six-pack to die for.
“I’m Carlos. I’ll be dancing soon.” The man next to me guided my attention back to him.
I smiled and nodded.
My confusion must have been easily read, since he continued. “Do you know how this place works?” He took my hand and ran it down his warm chest to where the fine hair began.
This was my first time, I didn’t have a clue.
“All the dancers have a set on stage and then they walk and work the floor. We talk to the customers.” He ran his fingers through my blond curls and continued. “And if you like what you see, you can have a private dance.”
My eyes widened.
“Upstairs.” His eyes looked to the back of the bar. “Private rooms, so you can be alone with the dancer, and get a special dance.”
I swallowed hard. That wasn’t the only thing hard.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
My mind was spinning. Alcohol was not a good idea. “Just a Coke.”
“I’ll be right back.” He started off and then returned. He took the five from my hand and walked to the bar. Tight shorts hugged his perfect butt.
“Keep the change,” I called. At least I hoped there would be change.
A thin blond wearing a wrestler’s unitard sauntered toward me, paused, then walked by. An olive-skinned man approached, also paused, looked over my shoulder, and veered to the left.
What was wrong with me? Could they tell I was a tourist? Was I marked by Carlos?
A warm breath blew across the back of my neck. Someone was behind me.
I turned slowly and saw why everyone was making a wide berth. My breath caught in my throat.
My five-year-old nephew collects Rescue Hero figures. I buy them for him for Christmas and his birthday. Here was one of them, live and in the flesh. This was the one I wanted to play with. A pair of Levi’s were painted on his perfect body. A thick, black leather belt with two hooks surrounded his narrow waist. He wore black leather boots on his feet and he had no shirt. Thank you.
He walked up to me and smiled. Holding out his hand he said, “I’m Giovanni.”
I bet you are, I thought.
His chest hair was cropped short against his tanned chest, an even covering that added contrast to his rippling muscles. His pecs fanned out and sloped to a washboard stomach. His treasure trail made the perfect hourglass pattern. He was—just right, a Rescue Hero come to
life.
Carlos returned with my Coke. Giovanni thanked him. He took the glass and handed it to me. Carlos stood for a second, started to glare, but before he could say anything, the announcer called him to the stage. He ran his hand through his spikes and headed away.
My body swooned and I sidestepped to a table nearby. I leaned against it, hoping it would hold me up.
“Enjoying your stay in Toronto?” Giovanni’s hand played down my side as he moved next to me. We watched Carlos untie his drawstring. His surf shorts slipped lower. The crests of his butt glowed in the spotlight. My heart quickened.
Giovanni’s voice was smooth. “Did he tell you how this works? You pay by the song for the special dances upstairs.” I watched as the wrestler guided a man in his sixties to the back hall, then glimpsed Dante, back on the club floor, with the hand of a blond football player tucked into the back of his underwear, both men laughing and whispering.
“So, do you want a dance?” Giovanni’s hand stroked my neck and played with my curls .
I couldn’t speak. He was perfect, but I wasn’t sure what to do.
“You’re shy. I think that’s cute.” He continued to play with my hair and ran a finger down the opening of my shirt. His nail combed through my chest hair. “Is there another dancer you like better?” he asked. He pointed to Carlos. “He’s very hot. Tight butt, big cock.”
On stage, Carlos’s shorts were off and the yellow jockstrap was working its way down his hips. His ass shone in the spotlight.
I wanted to look at Giovanni, but I also wanted to see what was underneath that pouch.
Giovanni laughed as he watched me struggle. “Enjoy him on stage and enjoy me upstairs.”
I took a big sip of Coke, and almost choked as Carlos’s cock sprang free from the jock. Giovanni slapped me on the back as ten inches waved at me from the stage.
“I need a little more time,” I said between coughs.
Giovanni signaled to the bartender and spun his arm in a circle in the air. The bartender—his voice no longer anonymous—picked up the microphone and announced, “The legendary Giovanni is next.”
Best Gay Erotica 2009 Page 9