Tricks Of The Trade

by Ben Tyler

  “Happy to meet you, too,” Rusty said, ignoring Rod’s lack of manners and ill disposition. “Bart has told me about you, too.”

  “No way he said I was nice.”

  “As a matter of fact, the word asshole came up the most,” Rusty said, smiling.

  Rod laughed, involuntarily caught off guard by the quick comeback.

  Although such language was foreign to Rusty’s everyday vocabulary, he was adept at holding his own with almost any type of individual. He was accomplished at dishing out to others what they doled out to him.

  Rod finally looked up at Rusty and smiled, realizing the man was no pushover and was smart enough to know how to level the playing field when it came to interacting with difficult people. “Sorry,” Rod said. “It’s nice to meet you. And I actually mean that. It’s just been one of those days.”

  Bart and Rusty sat down and signaled for the bar boy to take their order. When he arrived, wearing short shorts and a tank top, showing off his assets, both men asked for red wine.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer beers,” the young man said, bending down to their level. In an exaggerated stage whisper he said, “Confidentially, the wine here comes with an aluminum twist-off cap. And there’s an expiration date and a skull and crossbones with a warning from the surgeon general—and Bea Arthur.”

  Rusty and Bart laughed. “Thanks for the words of caution,” Rusty said. He looked at Bart for approval, then amended the order to two beers. “Do you have Heineken?”

  “Ya. Das ist gut!” The bar boy spoke with an affected German pronunciation, pretending to be Colonel Klink, and pranced away.

  “So,” Rusty said to Rod, “one of those days, eh? What’s the scoop? I mean, I don’t have more than a slight clue about the reason for our being here, exactly. Something about you getting screwed over a screenplay you wrote?”

  Rod reiterated the story for Rusty’s benefit. “It sucks” was his concluding remark.

  Rusty was reaching into his pocket to hand the returning bar boy a ten-dollar bill to pay for their drinks. “Perhaps you’d better run a tab,” he said, giving the cute kid an ample tip.

  “Okeydoke.”

  “I just don’t know what to do now,” Rod said, nearly in tears again. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Worse than the time I had to blow Burt Lancaster.”

  By the time Bart and Rusty were together in Rusty’s king-size bed, after they’d enjoyed feeling each other’s velvet-skinned bodies and having excruciatingly intense sex, they were still talking about the day’s events. They agreed that given the mix of Rod and Shari and Jim and Michael and Cy, no one—not even Rod—was a truly reliable character. Each had an agenda, and each seemed to be more than competent at seducing their way into getting whatever they wanted.

  “You gotta be careful of them all,” Rusty warned. “I’ve been around these types of people long enough to know that where money and power are involved, nothing is ever as it seems. It’s like families of friends I’ve had who died of AIDS, or whatever. Everybody seems so compassionate until there’s an estate to divide. Then it can turn into a bloodbath.

  “The lover of one of the greatest guys I ever knew had to race back to their second home in Manhattan to try and beat his dead lover’s mother to the apartment to get his own things and a few mementos out. She got there first and had all the locks changed. The mother would not allow her son’s partner of fifteen years to even take his own possessions from the place. The lease was in her son’s name, and therefore Kurt, the widow, had no recourse. It happens all the time in the gay community because there are no civil or domestic rights for us.”

  “But out of that whole bunch, don’t you think that perhaps Rod’s at least the most vulnerable?”

  “Aren’t you?” Rusty queried.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Rod hurt you. Shari hurt you. She and Cy are close to destroying your career. It could be argued that even I’m using you—in a sense—to help my old pal Owen.”

  Bart lay cradled in his lover’s arms. He looked up at the mural-covered ceiling—a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment frescoes in the Sistine Chapel—which Rusty had painted himself. “‘Using’ is when you’re practicing something untoward. I don’t believe for an instant that you could ever do that to me, or to anyone. It’s just not in your nature. We could turn it all around and say I’m ‘using’ you to help ruin Shari and Cy and maybe to get back at Rod for the way he treated me.”

  Rusty rolled over on top of Bart and began passionately kissing Bart’s lips, his neck, his chest, and his nipples. “Oh, yeah, use me, baby.” Rusty laughed as his hands gamboled all over Bart’s body, tickling and fondling his partner.

  Bart giggled and screamed out, “No! No! Stop!” in mock torment as Rusty put aside their conversation for the time being in favor of ravaging his Bart all over again.

  Bart breathed in the scent from Rusty’s warm body with as much urgency as oxygen. For a moment, they stopped—merely to gaze upon each other. Bart looked up at Rusty, who stared down at his lover. Time, and the outside world, did not exist. All that mattered was the high-voltage intensity of their feelings for one another.

  Rusty rose up and straddled Bart’s hips. Rusty began rubbing his hard cock against Bart’s own steel-hard penis, which was already oozing fluid. Bart involuntarily moaned in exhilarated anticipation as Rusty’s hands began exploring his face, then his chest and stomach and arms.

  Bart reciprocated, touching the cleft in Rusty’s chin, then letting his hands wander all over Rusty’s beautiful torso. In perfect synch, each man anticipated the other’s every action and reaction. There was no need for Bart to say when he wanted Rusty to be inside him. It was a natural progression, from deep, harsh kissing to Rusty’s gently applying lube to Bart’s ass, then slathering his own cock and slowly sliding himself into his lover.

  With Rusty cautiously but rhythmically moving deep inside Bart, the nonverbal language that issued from their respective bodies made the world fade to black. The only thing that mattered was this moment, this ultimate in physical pleasure. Both men whimpered and gasped as they engorged one another and tried to keep the loving going on for eternity.

  As the sheets became saturated with perspiration from Bart’s body, he whispered, “I can’t hold it much longer! Oh, God,” Bart cried, half in apology and gratitude.

  “Let it go, baby! Come for me!”

  “I’m ready when you are! Oh, I’m so ready!”

  Bart abruptly released a loud cry as he climaxed. His explosive discharge reached as far as Bart’s nose and beyond, to the headboard of the bed. He continued to come as Rusty’s penis hammered at his prostate. Within seconds of Bart’s own climax, Rusty clenched his teeth. His throat constricted, and his face contorted, as if he were experiencing excruciating torture. Then he, too, cried out in waves of rapturous groans.

  Presently, Rusty eased himself from within Bart’s body and lay down on top of his lover, the moist, sticky fluid on Bart’s chest and stomach bonding them. Slowly, both men’s respiration began to return to normal. Rusty rolled onto his back, his skin still in contact with Bart’s.

  Suddenly, the bedroom door burst open. Three large dogs raced to the bed, barking. Rusty and Bart both exploded with laughter as their “kids” leaped onto the bed to snuggle with their masters.

  “I’ve never felt more at peace,” Bart said as he petted the coats of each of the dogs.

  “You’re reading my thoughts,” Rusty replied. He rolled back to his lover for a good-night kiss that lasted until one of the dogs joined in and began licking Bart’s face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Rod can be such a shit,” Bart complained to Rusty a few weeks later on a Saturday evening as they lounged together on Rusty’s living-room sofa, enjoying their merlot, petting the dogs, and listening to a Betty Buckley CD. “Here I am, playing Lady Bountiful, letting him camp out in my home-slash-office for nearly a month, and he repays me by
being a cockteaser, for crying out loud.”

  “You’re seldom home,” Rusty reminded him, dismissing the notion that Rod was sexually harassing Bart. “You’re with me five nights a week. The rest of the time you’re at the office until all hours. It’s not like he doesn’t know we’re a couple. I’m sure he respects the boundaries.”

  “I don’t think he respects anything or anybody but Rodrigo Dominguez and his libido. When I am home, all he does is play Jim’s porno tapes over and over, saying he’s going to someday force Jim into those same scenarios, but for real, no special instructions to take things only so far. Rod’s actually got quite a stash of tapes. He stole ’em from Jim’s vault. Says he’s keeping ’em in case Jim actually gets a shot at being in the movie. He doesn’t return Jim’s calls. He won’t go back to work because he knows Michael, who’s deigned to become his agent, would know where to find him.”

  “Usually it’s the agent who stops talking to his client,” Rusty said with mock sympathy. “My poor baby. Does it hurt to see the most beautifully constructed man on the planet walking around your apartment without a stitch?”

  Rusty set down his glass and began tickling Bart as if Bart were a pouting child, trying to coax a smile and change of attitude. “Is the sight of Rod’s silky brown, sinewy, muscled body too much of a turn-on for my little darlin’?”

  Then, playacting, as if he were Shirley Temple making peace between the Yankees and the Confederates, Rusty placed his index fingers in his own honest-to-goodness Shirley Temple dimples and said, “Do you need your cute new boyfriend to come over and protect you from the big, bad God of Physical Perfection?”

  “Stop!” Bart squealed with laughter. “You don’t know how tough it is to go home and see a naked God coming out from the shower, his body glistening from the oil he uses on his skin, for crying out loud. Stop! Don’t! I’m ticklish!”

  “And what about catching Narcissus jerking off to his own reflection in the mirrored sliding-closet doors?” Rusty continued as the Littlest Rebel. “What’s an all-American queer boy like you s’pose t’do?”

  “It’s a virtually impossible place for me to live without leaking in my pants,” Bart said, picking up the playacting thread and imitating Shirley’s pal Bill Robinson. “But I suppose somebody has to make the sacrifice. I’m just a man who wants to make the planet a better and safer place for the rest of the queers of the world.”

  Rusty sat back. “Then you’ll stop complaining?”

  “As best I can. I promise thisssssss much,” Bart said, opening his arms to express the breadth of his devotion to duty.

  “That’s my brave and courageous man of steel!”

  They both laughed and nestled into each other’s arms on the sofa. Then, suddenly, they both bolted up straight. Betty was singing “Children Will Listen” in her best Broadway belting show voice. Perfection.

  What Bart didn’t tell Rusty was that the mere sight of Rod’s body was enough to drive him mad, which was one reason he stayed away from his own apartment as much as possible.

  The next night was no exception.

  Sunday nights had always been sacred to Bart. He never went out, even when he began to date Rusty. It was a time to mentally prepare for the coming workweek. “A school night,” he called it. He read the New York Times, watched 60 Minutes, still missed all the years of watching Murder, She Wrote, and somehow got through Touched by an Angel. The show was sappy, but there was always a good message. And at least the Angel of Death was cute, although the producers obviously couldn’t settle on what color his hair should be. Then off to bed.

  The very night after he got through telling Rusty about Rod and how difficult it was to be in the apartment with him because he was always horny and seemingly just hanging around, hinting that he was up for any action, Bart turned in for the night. He fell into a deep sleep.

  Then, from down in the basement of his unconscious, he vaguely thought he heard the door open to his room. It wasn’t long before he was wide-awake. Indeed, the door had opened, and Rod had slipped into bed beside Bart.

  “What the fuck?” Bart said, awaking but groggy, feeling Rod’s naked body and hot throbbing dagger against his own bare skin.

  “Shhh.” Rod placed his mouth over Bart’s and rolled on top of him. Bart was dumbfounded. But all the images of the nights they had fucked together collided into one huge, passionate, deep kiss.

  Thoughts of Rusty and how much they loved each other rushed in, but the painful need for Rod’s muscled body deflected all rationalization. Bart hated himself for giving in to animal desire, but Rod was so passionate and demanding, there was no way to escape and to not fall completely in love with him all over again, even if the love was only physical.

  The two men indulged their most base desires and engorged themselves in each other’s bodies. Rod’s body was as hot and as ripped as Bart had remembered and dreamed about ever since their breakup.

  A part of Bart tried to convince himself that this was not at all premeditated. He decided that Rusty should never know about this encounter, telling himself that even if Rusty did find out, he was still the most understanding man alive. Surely he would not hold this one incident of bestial sex between him and Rod against their relationship. Anyway, what Rod and Bart did together was not the same kind of passion Rusty and Bart shared. It was something completely different and therefore not an issue in their love for one another.

  He could rationalize forever. The truth was he was so engulfed with lust, for the moment he didn’t care about the consequences.

  “Bart! Oh, Christ, Bart!” Rod groaned. “I am so fucking hard for you! I’ve got to fuck you! Please, Bart! I’ve got to fuck your brains out! You want me to, don’t you? Yeah, you remember how great it was. You want me up your hot ass, don’t you! Say you want it! Say it, Bart! Say it! Please, say you want it!”

  “I want it! I want it, Rusty! Fuck me, Rusty! Fuck me!”

  Rusty! Oh, shit, Bart thought to himself as he continued to kiss Rod, pretending the name had not slipped out.

  But they both had heard Rusty’s name spoken, in the darkness. Instantly, the spell was broken. Although Rod and Bart for a time continued to kiss deeply, and with their respective tongues fighting each other like moray eels in an underwater cave, they slowly drew apart. It wasn’t a conscious thing, but both men grew less fervent until they lay merely entwined in each other’s arms and legs and their breathing became less heavy, more controlled.

  Bart could feel Rod’s enormous, erect penis pressing against his stomach, and he longed to reach down and hold it with his hands. Instead, he breathed in the scent of Rod’s underarms and felt the sultry heat from his body. Neither man spoke, although they stayed wrapped together for the rest of the night.

  In the morning, after Bart had showered and was dressed for work, Rod still lay in Bart’s bed. “I’m not sorry I came in here last night, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

  “I’m not sorry, either,” Bart said, sitting on the edge of the bed. He put his hand out to touch Rod’s sculpted chest. “But I’m also not sorry that things didn’t go any further—if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

  “You didn’t do anything with me last night that should cause a problem for you and Rusty. Are you going to tell him?”

  “What purpose would it serve?”

  Rod didn’t answer. He guessed it would be stupid to reveal what were essentially two friends enjoying the comfort of being close together. They hadn’t even jacked off together, so it was completely benign. The sex, or at least the act of copulation, had been aborted. So, indeed, there was nothing to talk about.

  Then, apropos of nothing, Rod said, “I want you to read Jim’s manuscript. It’s not that I didn’t trust you before, but after your display of devotion to Rusty and keeping last night between us, I know you’re probably the only man alive who would keep my secret. I’ll give you Jim’s whole book. I’ve highlighted with a yellow marker the stuff I intend to use to blackmail the son
of a bitch.”

  Bart was incredulous. “Blackmail? That’s a federal offense.”

  “Your point being?”

  “I thought you ripped off his videotapes for that. Is the stuff in the book really worth the trouble of you possibly going to jail?” Bart asked.

  “I didn’t steal the tapes. I borrowed them and forgot to give them back when I had to leave so quickly. As for the content of the book, I don’t know. I need you to be the judge of its potential value. All I know is he deserves whatever happens to him.”

  “We all do,” Bart said. “It’s called karma. You know, cause and effect. Be careful.”

  “It’s also a matter of principle. He’s ruined my life. I don’t want to have happen to some other stud what happened to me.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” Bart said, standing up and looking down on Rod. “You just want revenge. You’re not trying to save some other poor street hustler from a fate worse than death. And you’re not even going about it the right way. Jim’s career is already in ashes. Also, you say he has chronic acne on his butt. I don’t know what else you could possibly come up with that would make things worse for him.”

  “He’ll never make a career comeback. I’ll see to it. Just read the book.” Rod slipped out of bed and padded out to the office-bedroom.

  Bart watched Rod and wished to hell he could undress, get into bed, and have the master fuck him until he was so raw he’d be unable to report to work. But Bart knew better than to act on a fantasy that could only land him in trouble.

  Rod returned moments later with a ream and a half of paper, held together with rubber bands. He handed it to Bart, who accepted the weighty manuscript and cradled it in his arms.

  Rod said, “A lot of the crap in there is really lame and boring. You can skip right to the stuff I’ve underlined. It’ll make you sorry you ever became associated with Hollywood.”