by Zack
The pub was quiet when he got there, obviously still too early for the lunchtime trade. Feeling a little self-conscious, he pulled out some of the unfamiliar money and stood by the bar. The barman looked up from a newspaper.
“What’ll it be?”
“Uh. I’m not sure. Can you recommend a cold, er…?
“Lager, sir? Hmm, most American customers seem to enjoy the Heineken.”
“Uh, okay… thanks.”
The man reached behind him to a refrigerator, extracted a tall can, and popped the tab. “Glass or handle?”
For a moment Gil was nonplussed, then got the reference. “Oh, a glass, I think.”
The barman poured the lager into a tall, slightly fluted glass. “That’s fifty pee, please.”
This was even more incomprehensible. For a flummoxed moment Gil wondered whether he was commenting on the beer’s taste, taking the piss, like. The barman took pity on him and reached over to pick out an oddly shaped silver coin with several sort of straight sides.
“Fifty pence,” he explained, holding it up.
“Ah. Thank you.” Gil was still perplexed, because by taking the exact amount the man obviously wasn’t expecting a tip as he certainly would in an American bar. Gil put the rest of the cash away and took his drink over to a table close to the door onto the street. He had only taken a couple of swigs, appreciating the taste over that awful British bitter, when the door swung open and Alan strode in. The sound recordist almost passed by and then did a quick double take when he recognized Gil.
“Hiya Gil. You already got something…?”
When Gil nodded down at his beer Alan went up to the bar and ordered himself a half pint. “Can’t have too much at lunchtime,” he said as he sat down opposite Gil and dumped a bag on the floor. “Are you waiting for Mike or something?”
“Yeah. He should be along soon. Went to check with the Union about work.”
“Actually, I’m glad I bumped into you.” Alan reached into his jacket pocket and produced a slip of paper. He offered the scrap.
Gil peered at it. Obviously an address and a phone number.
Alan said, “That’s where that lad Trevor works, you know, last night?”
“Oh, er, thanks…”
“Look him up. He took a shine to you.”
Gil thought Alan’s words rather overstated the case. “What, I can just walk in?”
“Oh sure. It’s just down the street on the second floor right next to De Lane Lea, the big dubbing theater. In fact, if you want an excuse, I’ve got a couple of tapes that need transferring for the Mitchener film. They’re some late sound effects. You could drop them off for me any time today or tomorrow.”
Alan peered at Gil’s uncertain look. “You’d be doing me a favor cos I’ve gotta go the other way after I’ve downed this. We’re doing some ADR later this afternoon out at Shepperton. Rosen’s well ensconced there for the time being… so you won’t run into him, if that’s what’s bothering you.” His face creased into a leer. “Or is it the thought of cheating on Mike?”
Gil flushed. “I’ll only be going to hand over the tapes and say, well, hello.”
Alan smiled amiably. “Sure, sure. I don’t mean anything. Ah, here’s the man himself—”
Gil looked over as Mike stood in the open doorway looking around for him. The immediate flood of warmth whenever he saw his friend washed over him.
“Can I get you another beer?” Mike bounded over, waved at Alan’s almost empty glass.
“Nah thanks, I’m off, mate. Here,” he said as he handed over two BAS-F tape reels to Gil.
Gil waved away Mike’s offer of a second Heineken as Alan gave a cheery salute and left, passing a mixed group of chattering men and women on their way in.
Mike carried over his beer—a half as well—and took the seat Alan’ had just vacated. “What’s that?”
“Tapes,” Gil replied unhelpfully. “So how did you get on at the Union?”
“Good. In fact I’ve got to dash off after this to make an interview over there. Will you be okay to find your way back home and I’ll catch you there later?”
“Sure. I know what a ‘pee’ is now, so I should be fine.” He held up a pence coin as an example, which dispelled Mike’s baffled look.
Mike took several large gulps of his beer, nodding questioningly again at the tapes.
“It’s just for Alan. He had to ‘dash orf’ as well, and asked me to drop these in at…” he quickly consulted the slip of paper, “Rex Sound Facilities.”
“Oh, that’s almost next door… well, a few down, where that guy Trevor works.”
“You know him well?”
Mike hesitated a beat before replying. “Yes, I’ve known Trevor a while now. We had a bit of a fling before I went out to Rome… before he hitched up with his boyfriend Dave.” He consulted his watch. “Shit, it’s half-twelve, I’ve gotta get moving. The other good bit of news is I might be able to sort you out with the Union. Have you got your U.S. ticket with you?”
“Ticket? Oh, my Union card. Yeah.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a billfold, from which he fished out a compact document. “What’s up?”
“I had a chat with Jim about you. The Union secretary. He’s a friend of Dorothy.” He waved an outstretched hand, palm down, from side to side.
Gil looked blank. “Who’s Dorothy?”
Mike rolled his eyes. “Blimey, mate, don’t you Yanks know your own movie history? Dorothy… Yellow Brick Road… Oz, Wizard of…?”
“I know the movie, but you still lost me.”
Mike sighed in mock exasperation, grinning all the while. “Judy Garland played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Like many divas, she’s beloved of camp queens… no? Shit, Gil, it’s a euphemism. If you’re a friend of Dorothy you’re a queer, a bender, shirt-lifter, faggot, cock jockey, butt pirate, arrrse-bandit—gay, in other words.”
“Oh. I never come across that before,” Gil looked crushed, which only made Mike laugh outright.
“You really did lead a sheltered life, didn’t you?”
“It’s not my damn fault,” Gil complained defensively. “I wasn’t a fuckin… shirt-lifter, before I met you!”
Mike wagged an admonishing finger at his friend. “Now that’s not the exact truth. Jeff, Harry, Angelo, stagehands too numerous to list—”
“Kay, kay, okay, enough.” Gil waved his arms in submission. “There’s something much stronger in the way English guys put rrr ’s into ass… makes it sound more… meaningful, or something.”
“To us, an ‘ass’ is a mutant donkey, whereas an ‘arse’ is something you can really get into. It’s from our Anglo-Saxon heritage. I guess the German knackarsch translates as bubble-butt, a firm and tasty bum.”
“Thanks for the lecture,” Gil said, trying for disdain.
“Anyway, he won’t just give you permission to work under your card like that,” Mike said, returning to the previous point of discussion. “You’ll have to prove you know your stuff, which you do. It’s just when he can he likes to give a helping hand to a—”
“Friend of Dorothy,” Gil finished.
“Right. I really must split. Sure you’ll be all right finding your way home?”
Gil gave Mike a tight grin and inclined his head affirmatively. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you there later.”
Mike drained the last of his quick beer and stood up. He grinned at Gil. “Just remember—NORWICH.”
Gil heard “Norritch,” and he arched his eyebrows and widened his eyes in puzzlement.
Mike rolled his eyes again, suggestively this time. “Knickers Off Ready When I Come Home.”
Gil gave a snort of laughter. “Not with your mom around. Go, go!”
L
eft to himself, Gil finished his Heineken while idly circling a finger around the edge of the nearest BAS-F tape reel. Thoughtfully. He took a shine to you. Not the way Gil recalled last night’s brief encounter with Trevor. But the image lingered; those penetrating green eyes…
Rex Sound Facilities announced itself on an engraved plate alongside others beside the wide brushed aluminum-and-glass doorway lower down Dean Street. Gil tried the door, which gave onto a wide hallway with stairs on one side farther along. He consulted the wallboard to the right and saw that his objective shared the second floor with Right Cut Editing. He took the stairs and climbed the one flight.
No sign of Rex or Right Cut, just access to De Lane Lea’s editing suites. He was wondering what to do when he recalled Mike explaining that in England the ground floor was not the first floor, so the second floor was another flight up on the third floor, so to speak. Rex was straight ahead when he reached the next level. He knocked on the broad chestnut colored door and after a minute with no reaction, depressed the handle and peered in shyly.
The space confronting him was not very large. Facing him, two tall windows overlooked the well between this and the next building. A waist-high reception desk occupied half the depth between the door and the windowed wall. Beyond the desk and facing the windows, a row of 16mm and 35mm sound recording units for magnetic film covered the wall to his right. Seated at a desk against the far wall he saw the unmistakable figure of Trevor, his head covered in large headphones.
“Hi there…”
Trevor swiveled on his desk chair. If Gil expected a happy smile of recognition, Trevor disappointed him. The boy simply regarded him quietly with those wide-spaced eyes. He gave a slight duck of his head, slipped the cans off, and put them on the desktop.
“Erm, I’ve got a couple of tapes Alan asked me to drop off… if you’re not too busy…?”
At that Trevor stood and came to the other side of the reception desk, the faintest twist of a smile playing on the left of his lips. The boy’s first word took Gil aback. “You ever been in a transfer bay?”
Trevor exhibited a very slight lisp, which Gil immediately thought of as attractive. He also managed to make the word “transfer” sound somehow suggestive. “Nope, I haven’t,” he lied. They had a small unit on his movie course.
Trevor jerked his head to indicate Gil should come around to his side. “Just drop those there,” he said, indicating a free space on the desk. “We can do the paperwork after.”
After what? Gil put down the tapes and glanced up. Trevor gazed fixedly right into his eyes, virtually unblinking. Gil was the first to break away. He rounded the desk into the main space. Trevor didn’t move, which forced Gil into an uncomfortably close proximity.
“We put your tape onto one of these Nagra tape recorders and play it back,” the boy explained in his quiet voice, pointing to three boxy machines on a rack by the desk. “The Nagra is ultra-high quality. Everyone uses them for film sound.”
Gil had used one on his film course, but he said nothing, content to let Trevor continue.
“When the crystal in the Nagra synchs up to the designated transfer unit through that patchfield there, it starts recording…” he indicated the bank of complex floor-to-ceiling upright reel-to-reel machines against the wall… “and the sound on the tape is transferred accurately, frame by frame, to the 16- or 35-millimeter oxide-coated film. Then the editors have the sound physically locked by the sprockets in synch to their film to cut on a Pic-synch or a bigger Steenbeck table, or whatever they’re using.”
Gil already knew most of this, but he was happy to let Trevor talk. It was the longest speech he had yet heard the boy utter.
“How many work here?” Again the unblinking cat-like gaze disconcerted Gil. After a second, Trevor gave a slight shrug of his shoulders.
“Just me and another assistant, and the boss, although he’s not in every day… like today.” For a moment he broke the stare to glance up at a wall clock. “The other guy left to get his lunch about five minutes before you came in. Most workers in this building go to the pub at lunchtime, or get a sandwich at one of the bars on Wardour Street, but they’re so expensive. So I bring mine with me.” His eyes wandered lazily across to the farther desk, where sat a small foil-wrapped package. “I always lock the door over lunch, and stay here, quietly.”
The languid eyes came back. This time Gil swore he would not be the first to back off. It was weird. They were standing barely two feet apart, Trevor gazing up. Gil found himself sinking into those inscrutably deep jade pools, as though they were communicating without the need for words. Yet he could not read the enigmatic message there. He swallowed nervously.
“You make your own, sandwiches, I mean?” Idiotic!
“No,” Trevor sibilated slowly, “Dave makes them for me.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yes. At least… in the evenings.”
Gil couldn’t interpret this mysterious utterance either.
Trevor broke his long survey and moved past Gil toward the closed office door. “I’d better lock it… lunchtime, you know. Are you staying?”
“Uhmm…” Gil had no answer. This strange English boy, who looked so shy and retiring, appeared to have removed his will power and now dominated.
The door lock snicked audibly and Trevor returned to his original position in front of Gil. He resumed his consuming stare. Gil glanced down at the carpet squares.
“What did you mean, ‘at least in the evenings’?”
Dimples appeared at the corners of Trevor’s lips, the tiniest of smiles. “My days are mine.”
Gil felt hollow in his chest. He realized he was holding his breath and took a shuddering gulp, which stuck in his throat at Trevor’s next words.
“Do you want to suck me off? There isn’t really the time for a good fuck.”
So blunt. Alternating hot and cold ran up and down Gil’s body. His legs felt floaty, yet he was aware of his sneakers pressed against the coarse carpeting.
“There’s a nice sofa in the office,” a slight backward flick of the head indicated the partly open door beside his work desk. “You could do me there… if you want. You do want to, don’t you? I’m sure I noticed last night.”
Gil accepted that he was being used but pushed the thought aside because in fact he did want this weird kid, well, a guy about his own age, no—definitely a bit younger. Trevor treated him to another of his mysterious little smiles, then quietly turned and crossed the space of the transfer area, pushed open the door at the far end.
What can I do, I’m locked in. A bubble of laughter threatened to escape his mouth at this thought. Gil was perfectly aware how ridiculous it was, but his stiffening meat suddenly took over control of his brain. He followed Trevor, who had already draped himself seductively on a four-seater sofa beneath a small high window that yielded the view of a blank wall opposite. Bookshelves, five tall file cabinets, and a small paper-piled desk occupied much of the rest of the space. Trevor slowly rubbed the front of his thin cord pants.
Gil knelt on the carpet beside the prone boy and gently took over the stroking motion. He felt the packed balls beneath his fingers, always aware of Trevor’s continued agate gaze eating him up. He reached up his other hand and slowly explored the hardening shape of Trevor’s dick under the material. He unfastened the wide leather belt. Trevor took a long, shuddering intake of breath and let it sigh out luxuriously as Gil pulled the zipper down.
He enjoyed a moment exploring the cock and balls through the cotton briefs before pulling them forward to release the contents. Trevor’s dick fitted neatly into his palm. Not over long, but nice and thick, the foreskin already peeled half way back.
Gil drooled saliva onto the tip of Trevor’s smooth cock head and quickly followed up with his lips and pointed tongue, slipping lightly ove
r the pink glans. He ran the tip up and down under the foreskin and over the frenum seam below the slit.
“Mmmm…” Trevor vented breathily. “Nice.”
“Mmmm…” Gil agreed as his lips fell down the full length of the thick column of flesh that swelled out wider below the pointed cock head. He laved his tongue against the pulsing vein running down the side of Trevor’s shaft and then buried his face in the light patch of pubic hair, loving the way the flare of the glans plugged the top of his throat.
Trevor lifted his bottom off the sofa to pull his pants farther down out of the way. Gil reacted instinctively to the movement by pausing his suck long enough to spit on the fingers of his right hand. He wormed the fingers down between Trevor’s thighs and deep into his crack, seeking his button and finding it. He slid two fingers with a wiggling motion into the hot ass, deeper and deeper.
The boy began to buck against the pressure, which drove his cock in and out of Gil’s engrossed mouth. Gil used his penetrating fingers to shaft Trevor’s sphincter and the boy responded by catching the back of Gil’s head in a surprisingly strong grip, urging him to jackhammer his throbbing weapon.
By this point, whenever Gil pulled back so that only the tip of Trevor’s plummy cock head remained between his lips, the boy’s foreskin sheath had all but vanished, so tight was his erection. Gil’s own was still painfully trapped in his jeans, but both his hands were occupied, one grasping the base of Trevor’s cock like a steel ring, the other humping his ass.
The frenetic rhythm generated shock waves along the revealed belly muscles, as Trevor pulled up his shirt with his free hand. Gil knew he had him in the zone—mouth down, fingers in, mouth up, fingers almost out, to shove back in deeper with every thrust, cock helmet between lips, tongue swirling the piss slit, cock head deep down, fingers in again.