Black John

by Amy Lane

  “No,” John said, not wanting to rub salt in the wound. He’d made it through to give John strength—he had no idea how huge that was. John had been a junkie—he knew the basic selfishness that plagued the breed. He wasn’t sure he would have put off anything, not even a blowjob from the object of his affections, the way Galen had put off his fix to comfort John’s broken heart. “You’re a young, young man,” John murmured, dropping him into bed.

  Carefully, because he knew it was one of Galen’s good shirts and because the man had a sizeable closet of clothes that were close to being unfashionable but that he didn’t want to leave behind, John unbuttoned the shirt he’d worn to lunch and hung it up in the closet.

  “You are being very sweet to me,” Galen said, body slumping even further, “for a man who has almost bled out from the heart.”

  “But I didn’t,” John said. “Now lie down, and I’ll get your shoes and slacks.”

  Galen complied, the expression on his face almost petulant. “You must hate me,” he whispered. “I’m weak. Lying here rotting while the love of your life was dying in the next apartment. How can you even look at—”

  “Sh.” John kissed his forehead and unbuttoned his trousers.

  “But I was useless.” Galen wept—truly wept, and John’s chest hurt.

  “You were—are—in pain.” John pulled off his shoes and pants and wrapped the sheet tight over him because the air conditioning was fierce. “How am I supposed to hate you for being in pain? Don’t you get it, Galen? I can’t hate you and forgive him, or forgive you and hate him. I just….” He stood up, flailing, even though he was talking to a man who was mostly likely asleep. “I just can’t. Don’t you see? It all hurts so fucking much—how am I supposed to let it go if I’m angry at you? How am I supposed to be there for you if I’m pissed off? You are no better or worse a man than I am—you’re just in your addiction season right now. See, thing with Tory was, he didn’t think this would ever pass. But you have faith, right?”

  He sat down on the bed next to Galen, needing to hear his breath and feel the heat.

  “Faith? You are talking to a lawyer,” Galen retorted with enough asperity to make John smile, although the drugs were trying to suck him quickly into unconsciousness.

  “Yeah, but you still have faith, right? That this season will pass? Like winter? That we’ll be into spring soon?”

  “Until you,” Galen said, eyes hooded and vague, “I thought faith was for the suckers I defeated. But you’ve… you have faith that I never knew existed. Don’t lose faith for me, okay?”

  “Or in you,” John amended.

  Galen’s shrug was barely there. “That too. Leave the pill bottle by the bed, will you? I have the feeling I’ll wake up….”

  In pain. He didn’t even need to say it.

  John did, leaving a bottle of water on the bedside table along with the hated little brown vial, and kissed him on the temple.

  “I’ll be back… later,” John told him. “Don’t miss me too bad.”

  “Where are you—?”

  John tasted his lips and thought that imagining Galen asleep and peaceful would make him very happy. “I’ve got one more person to forgive,” he said, wondering when he’d figured it out.

  Galen was asleep, though, so John let himself out, making sure he had both keys pocketed before he let the door close behind him.

  Darkness Is an Old Friend

  JOHN COULDN’T have said when he figured it out or how he knew. He just remembered Zion—sturdy, dependable Zion—defensive and afraid for his boy. Just don’t yell at him, okay? And suddenly John had figured it out, and he realized that Tory’s most exploited victim needed—no, deserved—to know he was forgiven.

  John had forgiven him a long time ago.

  C’mon, Brant, gimme a blow job for the camera. I mean, you did get us kicked out of the house, right?

  No one said youth was subtle, but after long enough, who needed subtlety? The habit, the dynamic, of Brant owing Tory—that had been enough. Brant bottomed in the shoot because Tory wanted it that way. If Tory was getting stoned and John wasn’t, Brant was doing it to keep him company. There was a reason Zion had dragged Brant into their own apartment, and out of drugs, and away from Tory and John, and the reason had very little to John and everything to do with Tory.

  John had known it even then, but he couldn’t do anything to fix it. But I wanted you first. Brant had wanted John—had told Tory he’d wanted John. There was something fundamentally wrong in that, or at least there had been, when they were seventeen and Tory was the one John was trying to please.

  Galen actually lived in Daytona, which was a good forty-five minutes from Brant and Zion’s snug little house just off the beach. (“Snug” and “little” meant different things in Florida than they did in Sacramento. Brant and Zion’s “snug little house” was nearly twice the square footage of John’s house in the twenties block of downtown, and he wagered they paid half as much for it.) The rain—the irritating, blustery, motherfucking rain—hadn’t let up in the past three days, and driving through the murky twilight was an exercise in judgment and faith.

  By the time he arrived at the house, it was full dark, and he’d spent so much of his concentration on the road that he was headachy and exhausted. For a moment he just sat there, looking at the sand-covered walkway next to the driveway. The house was landscaped to the habitat—no attempt at a lawn, just lots of rocks and succulents, at least in the front where it was just across the highway from the beach. John knew that the house sat like a big L and provided a windbreak toward the back, and when he’d left, they’d been in the process of importing sod and planting ground cover.

  He seemed to remember from their Christmas cards that they had a dog. More than one, probably.

  The thought made him smile. Sitting here, planning to barge into their peace with all of his and Tory’s bullshit, it also made him feel like shit. God, what business did he have here? They had moved on.

  Don’t yell at him! He feels bad enough already!

  Maybe not.

  Brant opened the door. He stood on the porch for a minute, squinting through his glasses to peer into the rain. Glasses—wow. His blond hair was thinning a little, but his cheekbones were more prominent than ever. He looked… comfortable. Happy. Handsome and not pretty. Substantial.

  Brant, who had practically tackled John in his parents’ kitchen, who had lost his virginity in the back forty of Carpenter’s Park, looked like a real person, a solid member of his community. A good, grown-up man.

  John saw the moment Brant recognized the guy in the car, because his entire body opened up like the sun. He was happy.

  Then his shoulders slumped, and John couldn’t stand it anymore.

  He threw open the door to the convertible and jogged through the rain, trying not to slip on the sandy driveway.

  “It wasn’t your fault!” he called as he drew near. “Oh, baby—how could you think it was?”

  Brant stumbled off the porch step and fell into his arms, weeping. Zion followed hard on his heels, engulfing them both in the all-encompassing embrace John remembered from their time together, all of them fucking around, making pictures, being friends. This embrace in the rain—this was friendship, and he’d almost forgotten that he knew this feeling, that he’d left this feeling when he left Florida, left his friends, to get away from his lover.

  Later, when they had gone inside and (by Zion’s insistence) stripped to their boxers and wrapped up in towels only to be mauled by two wet, muddy mongrel dogs and thoroughly disdained by a ginger tomcat, John sat at his friends’ table and drank hot chocolate that seemed to fill the hole in his soul. Then he said it again, plainly and without the tears.

  “I don’t know how he could do that to you,” John said quietly, clutching Brant’s hand. “How could he ask you to do that?”

  Brant laughed bitterly, combing his hair back with his hand. “It was easy. ‘Hey, Brant, got a day off? I’ve got this picture I
want to take, but I need help.’ ‘Really? You’re into photography now?’ ‘Yeah. Well, it’s more performance art, but this time with my clothes on.’ And you know.” Brant paused and drank some more of his hot chocolate, his hand shaking as he clutched the mug. Zion stopped him, added more whipped cream, and took his hand from John as Brant drank some more. Brant’s smile at the guy who was only going to be a one-time hookup was just as winsome as John remembered from that first moment, the three of them on the floor. Just as winsome as the times he was tended to during their porn shoots. Hell, John had once gotten Brant to smile that way just by bringing home ice cream.

  It was good to know that somewhere in all of the mess John and Tory had created, some innocence remained.

  “Fucker,” John muttered with his whole heart. Zion and Brant stared at him with wounded eyes, and he cursed himself. “I meant Tory,” he clarified. “I’m sorry, Brant—I’m so sorry he ever pulled you into this. I take it he left instructions?”

  Brant nodded, curling his lip at the memory. “John, he planned it like… like you used to plan the business. He had the camera set up to track motion—had it pointed in the right spot and everything. I think he even studied traffic patterns so he knew when the cops wouldn’t stop us. He got to the spot—the camera focus—and waved three times. I hit Go on the camera, and then he… he sent me a text message saying to give the prints to his neighbor and to donate his car to charity.”

  “Did you?” John asked, surprised.

  “Yeah—God, anything to get it out of the fucking driveway, John.”

  “Asshole,” John muttered, and this time there was no mistaking whom he was talking about.

  “Your name was on the top of the envelope. I… I kept expecting your call.” Brant sounded exhausted. Well, he’d lived with this for over a month. “I just… what could I do? He was halfway across the bridge, and then….” He started to sob again, in earnest.

  This time John let Zion do the comforting.

  When Brant had calmed down, John looked permission at Zion and then moved in and took both of Brant’s hands in his.

  “I need you to hear me,” John said clearly, soothing his thumbs over the backs of Brant’s hands. Smooth, moisturized—desk worker’s hands. Well, that was okay. They weren’t bully’s hands. They weren’t weight lifter’s hands. They were the hands of a friend with a grown-up job and a small, happy life.

  Just touching them made John feel better about the world.

  He looked into Brant’s brown eyes. “This was not your fault. Tory… he had a way of pulling people into his bullshit, and I hate that he did it to you one last time. You and Zion—you’ve got a good place here. You’ve got—” He pushed the lab/boxer-looking thing away, but the damned dog kept panting in his face. He sighed and moved one of his hands to scratch the wet, stinky animal between the ears. “You’ve got peace,” he finished, feeling dumb. “I… I hate that he messed with that. He didn’t have to do that. I mean, he did, if he wanted to….”

  What? Be a dick about it? Could someone be a dick about committing suicide? Chase Summers had walked into the bathroom, shut the door, and taken a razor blade to his flesh. And then he’d stopped, wrapped a towel around his bleeding wrist, and started giving his girlfriend directions on what to do with his clothes once his best friend took him to the hospital. Was that being a dick about it? How could you commit suicide and not be a dick? Not leave detritus and wreckage behind you? But Tory—he’d taken it to the next level, hadn’t he? Like sex, like drugs, like Star Wars, like anything he’d done.

  “Punish you,” Zion said out of the blue, pulling John from a miserable trip to the existential zoo.

  “Wha—?”

  “He… he was punishing you.”

  John thought about the video. I can’t pretend anymore, that I didn’t do this to myself. “I don’t think he meant to,” John said, not sure if he hated himself for defending Tory or was proud of himself for forgiveness. “I think….” He grunted and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “God. I think….” What if they want to go back? “I think he was trying to set me free,” John said and hoped he was right. “He was just a fucking asshole about it!”

  To his surprise, Zion and Brant both laughed. His face—eyes, mouth, and forehead, which had felt crinkled up and cranked tight to his skull for the past hundred and fifty years—relaxed infinitesimally, and John took a deep breath. He sat up straight, letting his shoulders ease back and some of the tension in his neck slide out, and he liked that feeling. Liked it a lot. Brant and Zion looked at him kindly as he stood and started a series of yoga stretches in his underwear in the kitchen.

  He answered their questioning looks with a sort of tired smile. “My body hurts,” he told them unapologetically. “I have been dying with that weight since… God, since I knew about the envelope.” He finished his series of stretches and let his head drop, chin to chest, while his neck stretched.

  Zion’s warm, big-palmed hand heated the back of his neck, and John sighed. “Thanks, Zi. You guys are being really nice considering I just showed up on your doorstep and fell apart on you.”

  “Well, like Brant said, we were expecting it,” Zion told him. Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders and hauled him back against his broad, muscular body. John fell into that embrace. Oddly enough, he was reminded of the guys at Johnnies. He’d seen them lying on each other, looping arms around shoulders, grabbing hands, hugging spontaneously. Part of that was Dex, he thought, because Dex made it a nice place to work, but part of it was just… finding your brothers. Finding your tribe. John hadn’t grown tight with the guys at Johnnies because a part of him was mad that he’d lost his tribe here.

  He was unaware that he’d made a noise until Zion tapped his temple with his smooth-shaven chin.

  “What? What was that ‘hmm’ about?”

  “Just thinking,” John murmured. “I… I have friends in Sacramento.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I haven’t let them be friends.”

  “Ouch. Why not?”

  John closed his eyes, thought of Galen retreating into his high and his little corner of the world, afraid of rising again because the fall had been so horrific.

  “Because I missed you guys. I… I didn’t want to have you guys yanked away again.” Wow. Listen to him sounding like an emotionally stunted twelve-year-old.

  Zion sighed heavily, ruffling John’s drying hair. “John? Can I say something horrible?”

  “Yeah, why not.”

  “If Tory was what was holding you back, then I’m glad he’s gone.”

  John shuddered. “That is horrible,” he whispered. “Why can’t we just wish that Tory got better? Why can’t we just wish he called me up and said it was all okay? Why does it have to be—?”

  Zion tightened his grip. “Because Tory was not that guy.”

  “He might have been,” John said, feeling empty and small, so small. “If not for me.”

  Because who followed him into their sexual awakening without stopping him? Who grabbed a camera and did everything he said? Who followed him into drugs, longing to find something else they could share?

  “No,” Zion murmured. “John, do you remember me and Brant in rehab?”

  “Yeah,” John said. “They… they kept trying to separate you. You kept sneaking into Brant’s room.” Apparently they were loud. Well, they hadn’t learned restraint from John, that was for sure.

  “Do you remember what you did to stop us?”

  John frowned. “Nothing. I brought you real food while you were there, remember? Sonic burgers? Once a week? Why?”

  “’Cause Tory brought us smack.”

  John caught his breath. “I didn’t know—”

  “We didn’t tell you. He wanted us down there with him. You wanted us safe and happy. You were the one who helped me look up rehab in the first place. You were the one who helped fund it, remember?”

  A fire sale on their videos—John remembered. It
had felt like such an empty gesture when Tory had been the one to get them hooked in the first place.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I….”

  What if they come out and they can’t get back, John? Tory at nine, looking at butterflies.

  Shh… it’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry. I’m here. Tory at twelve, calming him down after his dad smacked him around.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again. Oh God, you’re bleeding—John, I never wanted to hurt you! Tory after their first try at sex, the one that didn’t end so well.

  “He was such a good kid,” John said quietly. “You guys didn’t see that. He was such a good little kid. Brant was a punk, remember?” He smiled and winked at Brant. “But Tory—he was a good kid.”

  “I was a punk,” Brant said quietly. He looked at John from the table, absently stroking the midsize terrier thing. “But you never held it against me. And I… John, you’re a good person. I thought you deserved better than Tory in high school. Nothing he did since changed my mind. Moving away was the best thing you ever did for yourself, you know?”

  John sighed and made to pull away. He thought of Galen an hour away, drugged, asleep, and alone. Galen needed him now, and unlike Tory, Galen’s need wasn’t a threatening black hole. It was simple need—human need. Galen’s need never left human wreckage behind him.

  Zion didn’t let him go. “You got somewhere to be?”

  “I left Galen alone,” John said quietly. “He’s asleep, but….” The pill bottle by the lamp. The terrible shakes. The way he’d fallen so easily into withdrawal. “It’s not a good time for him to be by himself.”

  Zion groaned into his hair. “John… John… Jesus, when are you going to learn?”

  John tilted his head back, still feeling curiously weightless. “If I told you that he wouldn’t let me use, would you have some hope?”

  Brant suddenly turned that winsome smile on John. “Lots,” he said, and in that smile John saw the kid who was just so happy to be touched. And then the smile faded. “When’s the funeral?”