Queer-as-fuck goth boys. They hurt too beautifully.
I’m also a boyeurist and a bona fide homeless-sexual. The more scruffy and out-of-pocket, the better.
Shiatsu rub with circulatory something.
Honcho cover, July 1999. Gay life partners Kim and Rick shoot me in front of a giant American flag, combing my pubic hair, doting over me like I was their prize poodle. I’m wearing an army jacket that’s so big it’s falling off. I wrap myself in the flag and give them my toughest sneers. It’s not military enough, so I have to wave around this black plastic revolver. After the shoot, they insist that I watch them have sex. Weird.
Fan letter to Honcho, August 1999: Dear Honcho,
Can I have Jaeven’s email address? If not, please tell him that I served in Iraq in the Gulf War, and every day I prayed I would run into someone as hunky as him in the munitions shed or in the showers after all the other soldiers had left. When are you going to do a shower scene with him? I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s asked. It would be great to see that ass all lathered up. I wouldn’t mind being the one to do it for him! Congratulations on a job well done.
Lynn in Sarasota, Florida
There are times when the money comes so easily that I want to flush it down the toilet, just for the hell of it. See old Ben Franklin drown. I swear.
But I never get the chance, because the money disappears all by itself.
People are starting to talk about the end of the world. There’s all this buzz over a puny little acronym:
Y2K.
The year 2000 is going to bring a terrible virus, they say.
They say that when the clock strikes midnight, January 1, all those zeroes are going to infect the computers of the world, eat through their wiring. The computers will think it’s 1900 and self-destruct, realizing that they won’t have been invented yet.
I’m mixing my verb tenses, but I’m sure you see why.
The lights will go out and civilization will crumble. We’ll be opening subway doors with our teeth, counting money by hand. We’ll all become savages, playing violin and drawing on cave walls.
So why hasn’t anyone invented this sooner?
I’ve already gotten a jump on Y2K to make sure it doesn’t bite me in the ass:
Pager: I upgraded again, and got one that’s Y2K-compliant. I can’t afford to lose any business on New Year’s, especially since it’s the busiest night of the year.
Currency: Because the US is likely to be hit the hardest, the money’s bound to be shit. I’ve converted most of my cash to Canadian, since Canada doesn’t have that much electricity and Y2K won’t be a big deal for them.
Survival: Every time I steal pens from the pharmacy, I make a trip to Fiorucci and add them to the survival inventory I keep in the stock room, just in case. There are now about thirty notebooks, sixty candles, three boxes of matches, and forty packs of double-A batteries waiting for the day I’ll need to disappear into music and write it all down.
Food: Stuff going bad all over the place. I’m looking forward to the world’s biggest ice cream give-away.
Walkman: No upgrade required. The geniuses who invented analog must’ve seen the future.
I was skeptical about doing a porn movie, especially when I found out that the producers were going to go the cliché way and make me a frigging pizza boy with red, red lips and an empty Domino’s box. Screw that. But I needed the money and found a way to bend my mind around the indignities of playing a delivery person.
“Are you Jaeven?”
“It depends if you have money.”
“Come in! Here’s a drink.”
“I’d rather pour it myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, he’s been around the block, hasn’t he?”
Ted and JohnSilas were this cutesy gay couple, JohnSilas a darkhaired, blue-eyed, puffy-chested Southern damsel and Ted a wry New Yorker with a busted nose and a ridiculous nose cast he was paranoid about people touching. They were the self-proclaimed New York extension of the Velvet Mafia, a porn empire based in San Diego. What an original name.
They introduced me to three nervous-looking twinks on the sofa:
Vince was an Asian kid with an eager smile, twenty, twenty-one, dressed in all-white casual wear from The Gap. The type of flake who took ten showers a day and had that perma-soap smell.
Miguel was a Latino dude, nineteen, twenty, a manicured thug with a Bronx bowl cut and Timberland boots. He lost street cred with me every time he bobbed his head.
Trey was a snotty little twink, seventeen, eighteen, who kept crossing and uncrossing his legs. He had a stuck-up face, the kind that could only be rearranged with a good smack.
We sat in a circle drinking Jägermeister on the rocks—Ted, JohnSilas, and I on stools in front of the twinks, waiting for the production crew to arrive. Awkward silence that we cut with random small talk. The Velvet Mafia had no idea how to set up a proper green room. Trey kept giving me these sickeningly coy little looks.
“Miguel, let’s go get Trey cleaned up,” Ted said, downing his drink.
“What do you mean?” Trey said. “I’m already clean.”
“Have you done your enema yet?”
“What’s that?”
It was official. Trey’s brain was actually an airfield. Ted cupped his nose cast and shook his head.
“It’s when you flush the shit out of your ass so it doesn’t get stuck to the condom and make viewers puke when they watch your first video.”
“Eww! That’s gross.”
They hustled Trey off to the bathroom and I wandered around. These guys were loaded. Wads of hundreds lying on the counter, real estate deeds for Florida condos in the fruit bowl, unused electronics spilling out of every cupboard. They clearly weren’t making porn for the money, but at least now when they went to Milk, or Splash, or The Cock—I’d shoot myself if they started hanging out at Jackie 60—they could boast that the New York chapter of the Velvet Mafia actually did something.
“Here’s a sock, handsome.”
I nodded to JohnSilas, pretending that I knew what it was for, so I didn’t look as dumb as Trey.
He opened the tanning bed and turned it on. Rows of squiggly, mauve UV bulbs lit up.
“We don’t want you to sunburn your dick,” he said.
First of all, I didn’t see any sun in there. Secondly, I didn’t know why they thought I needed a tan. And C, I couldn’t figure out how they had gotten this cancerous contraption through the door.
“How long do you want me in there?”
“Till our star is nice and Hollywood. We’re going to give you a Brooklyn accent when you do your monologue, but West Coasters won’t pay for pasty skin. In general.”
I shucked and got into the tanning bed, and was surprised to find it so comfy. It was nice to hide from the world inside a machine. There were headphones in there, so I put them on. Thomas Dolby was singing “She Blinded Me With Science,” and it made my escape complete.
Ting.
“Time’s up.”
JohnSilas reset the egg timer and Miguel took my place. The Velvet Mafia decided to give me some time alone with the twink brood. I guess the idea was to let the wolf stir up the henhouse (or is the expression with a fox?) and then turn the cameras on just before the kill.
I circled Trey, sipping a vodka cranberry in just my underwear, showing off my bulge. Something in him brought out the latent predator in me, brought out my swagger. I was seeing mauve sunspots, so I must’ve appeared extra dodgy.
“You know that by the end of the night,” I told Trey, “my dick’s going to be up your ass. There’s no avoiding it. Isn’t it great how some things are just meant to be?”
I had been drinking too much.
“Huh. Whatever. We’ll see what happens.”
He wasn’t flirting anymore. I could see a hangover starting to get to him, though he had been pretty good (like most teenagers are) at hiding the wear and tear.
I crunched an ice cube to sc
are him, but falling shards burned my over-cooked skin with their icy touch and made me jump instead.
“Is his ass nice and clean?” JohnSilas asked.
“As a whistle,” Ted answered with a smirk that Trey didn’t seem to appreciate.
We got down to business. I learned my lines and practiced them, channeling my best incarnation of a goofily sexy pizza boy for my shot at a Grabby Award and legendary status. The crew set up the lights and cameras, and scattered condoms and bottles of lube in convenient but hidden locations.
JohnSilas slipped a long blue horse-pill into my mouth and refreshed my drink. I must’ve let my guard down.
“Viagra. It’ll help our star feel frisky.”
I was about to point out that if he was worried about me losing my wood, then he should stop pumping booze into me, but I didn’t want to be rude so I kept my mouth shut and swallowed. Maybe he knew about the meth, which makes you horny as fuck but kills erections dead on sight.
Scene 1:
Inquisitive pizza boy finds the door open. I nose in, sniffing for boy butt. Vince and Miguel are sprawled on the carpet, looking despondent over their homework. In a sleazy Brooklyn accent that sounds like my mouth is frozen, I offer to give them a lesson in adult male anatomy. The pizza took more than thirty minutes to get there, so they can have my pepperoni for free. That’s the actual line I feed them. I’m serious. They take the pizza box and notice my growing erection. Vince gives me a noisy, wet blowjob with too many teeth. Trey walks in prissily and sits on the couch. I invite him to watch and wait his turn.
Scene 2:
Miguel and Vince trade rounds slurping my cock and foreskin. Miguel must have a thing for balls, because I can hardly have any screen time when he’s not humming on them. The pizza gets cold, the homework gets forgotten, and I lose my hard-on because all this saliva reduces the friction I need to stay boned up. So much for Viagra. Trey’s worked up a pathetic erection, a marker-sized tube hooked halfway up. His tongue’s hanging out. I can’t wait.
Scene 3:
Miguel is riding me emotively, but he’s just embarrassing the both of us. Vince is watching and jerking off. I’m on my back, working on a fever that I’m sure the Viagra’s given me, and I scan the vicinity for a bottle of Tylenol. Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” is playing. Ted and JohnSilas are giving each other high-fives, pretending that things are going well, that they’re taking their rightful place in the porn pantheon with Homework Hard-on 101. My dick goes soft again and slips out of Miguel’s vacuous ass. It takes time for me to work it up again. The lube is the kind that gums up quickly and it keeps messing up the condom. There’s a lot of waiting around. Vince chews on my nipple.
A burst of energy. I throw Miguel off me, scrunch Vince into the sofa, and pound his hole to the sound of his squeals. Miguel puts his head between my legs, and guess what? Gives me a hummer. Trey puts lip-gloss on and complains that he has to be somewhere. Ted tells him to “look alive or get off the set,” so Trey sweeps my chest with a weak hand and lolls off into space.
Here are some myths about the making of porn films I’d like to clarify:
When a cock slides in all slippy, it’s not the first time. It usually takes a few practice runs before it looks good enough for the cameras.
When two bodies are rocking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that penetration is actually taking place.
Erect penises are precious and rare, and account for only a fraction of the time that the film is being shot.
No, the condom doesn’t always come out clean.
No, the director doesn’t get to fuck everybody in the room after the scenes wrap up.
No, there’s no music.
And no, it’s not sexy.
Scene 4:
I find out that this whole film is a vehicle for a sex move that Ted and JohnSilas mistakenly think they’ve invented. I’m ramming Vince’s ass and thinking about Derek when Ted yells, “Helicopter!” which is my cue to make it happen. I pivot a hundred and eighty degrees on my cock and now I’m staring at the back of Vince’s calves. The Velvet Mafia has struck again. The “new” move plays out pretty smoothly and I improvise a few variations. Miguel is watching us, his face a melted, post-coital smush. I bring his ass to my mouth like watermelon so he won’t think I’m done with him. The lube tastes disgusting. More high-fives. I’m the only one in the room who knows that “the helicopter” is actually when you beat someone’s face with your propeller, as coined by John Waters.
JohnSilas tells Trey to “put the fucking People magazine down, and at the very least, touch your dick and pretend you’re watching.”
Break:
Ted and JohnSilas take me aside. At first, I worry it has something to do with my immunity to Viagra.
“No, no, you’re doing great,” JohnSilas says.
“It’s Trey,” Ted honks through his nose cast. “What do we do with this kid?”
“I have an idea,” I say, and immediately pop a boner so hard it hurts.
Scene 5:
I get Miguel and Vince to each hold one of Trey’s chicken legs apart. I lose control of myself a little, seeing that pink hairless wound in his bum, knowing that my boozy breath is controlling his goose bumps. Now not even the Viagra can make me soft, not with me ramming one, then two, then three unlubed fingers up his ass and biting his bottom lip until it bleeds. He cries exactly like I expect him to, in blubbers that include the words “asshole,” “cruel,” “rapist,” “police,” and “why me.” It’s that last part that sets me off down a track of tunnel so dark that everything but his ass disappears. Peripheral vision, gone.
Why anybody?
I sink my dick into Trey’s ass ever so slowly, giving him time to writhe as the pain sets in. I bury it to the hilt in a rectum I can feel isn’t empty, at least not as far up his guts as my head is pushing. I swallow his silent scream with my mouth and loosen him up until he starts to kiss back. The way I set things up, the only way for him to fight is to come around. My cock is getting mucky with blood and shit, and I slide it all the way out so I can admire the residue of two facts: that he has never taken a dick so deep before, and that his enema was half-assed and useless to protect his insides from me. I go into a death spiral when I realize that I’m breaking him open. My cock is the kind that swells when it shoots and it forces Trey’s eyes wide open. They focus somewhere behind me.
He cums into his own face.
End credits.
A burst of applause and the pop of Möet and Chandon, one of those giant magnums only a rich gay couple would buy. Ted and JohnSilas handed out rolls of hundreds and slow-danced with each other. Someone put on the Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money).”
My Viagra fever had by then turned into this weird kind of ecstasy flush. I took my plastic champagne flute into the tanning bed and flipped the mauve lights on, hoping to decompress and stop shaking. I stuffed my cash into the dick sock so it wouldn’t get burned, closed my eyes, and retreated to a place where people weren’t constantly fucking each other in the presence of money. I had to imagine that I was alone.
Now, with Homework Hard-on 101 in my repertoire, I don’t have to answer code 0020s or code 0099s anymore, and especially not code 0013s.
Maybe Derek was right. Maybe I have moved up in the food chain.
Having a sex life is a full-time job. I haven’t written in forever. Between you and me, have I had the time?
It doesn’t feel as bad as I thought it would. Yes, I had gone too far with Trey, but I could sense him conspiring with me to rewrite the boundaries of what was acceptable. If I hadn’t felt him surrender his body to its own undoing, I might’ve held myself back, reconsidered my brutality, or pulled out altogether.
Just so you know.
A typical entrance. I walked into the loft and was greeted by Derek’s back.
I figured that he was either painting or ignoring me. He had been acting distant lately, limiting his half of our conversations to a few pe
rfunctory words, sometimes pretending I wasn’t even there. He started to cook smaller and smaller meals until the leftovers I usually reheated disappeared altogether.
We’d worked out an unspoken agreement. He’d buy me anything I wanted, and I’d leave my latest story lying around somewhere for him to suck inspiration from. It had to have a young male protagonist experiencing some sort of beautiful agony. It had to be visceral and well written. I thought about buying him a stack of Dennis Cooper novels instead.
“Hey,” I said.
No answer. Wink and Nod hadn’t drawn in a while and had gone into semi-retirement. They smiled their ageless smiles at me, huddled against the outside walls of their TraceBox™, a structure they apparently couldn’t bear to leave.
I heard a streaming sound, the sound of piss landing in a plastic bottle.
“You’re just in time to see the birth of a new color, Booger. Now what would you call it?”
I peeked over his shoulder and squinted at the cloudy yellow.
“It looks like rancid honey.”
He looked pleased by that, wrote it on a strip of masking tape, and labeled the half-quart Poland Spring water bottle.
“It’s part of the collection. Go on, have a look at my latest before they go bad.”
“What are you doing with these?”
“I’ve realized that there are colors, great ones, actually, that’ve yet to be invented. And I have every reason to believe that my kidneys are involved in this.”
The brick wall under the factory windows had grown thick with piss-filled plastic bottles, each of them a slightly different tint of Derek. The color experiments were impressive:amber molasses
lemongrass
oxidized copper
diluted tea
bruised spleen
chicken soup
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