Bobby Green

by Amy Lane

  But they weren’t opening up, so he guessed it was his turn to talk.

  “So when I was eleven years old, my dad beat my mom up until he had to take her to the hospital. He left me at home, hiding under the fucking bed, took her to the ER, and took off for I don’t give a fuck where.”

  “Jesus,” Trey muttered, and Lance just grimaced. Yeah, well, Lance was hella smart—he probably knew where this was going.

  “So I was home for five days before my mom could ask anybody where her kid was, and the police sent someone to get me. And I’ll give you ten guesses what happened.”

  “You ran out of food,” Lance muttered.

  “You bet your ass I did. The breakfast cereal and milk were gone by the second day, and then the tinned soup and the bread. By the time they sent somebody to my house, I was sifting old oatmeal through a strainer, getting rid of the bugs.”

  “That’s fucking gross,” Trey muttered.

  “You think?” Bobby threw an extra U-joint into the basket he was holding with undue force. “And when I came to Sacramento—you guys saw me on the upswing. ’Cause I spent a month—a fucking month—sleeping in my truck so I didn’t cook like a sardine with forty other poor bastards in the trailer. We had to live off fast food, but we were all saving money, so guess what. That was one meal a fucking day, and if you were loopy as a fucking butterfly by the end of the day, guess what happened.”

  “I know this one,” Lance said, voice dry and quiet. “That’s where you got the fresh scars on your thumb and your thigh.”

  Well, yeah. They’d been together, even if Lance hadn’t seen his porn.

  “You’re damned straight,” Bobby snarled, throwing six brackets in his basket, one at a time, hard enough that they bounced around a bit before they hit bottom. “And when I got fired from that fucking job, because—and get this—I was clumsy, I was living out of the back of my goddamned truck and trying to get a job. I went home and blew my girlfriend’s brother ’cause he was fucking blackmailing me, and he shoved forty dollars in my back pocket. And you know what I did?”

  “Kept it,” Trey whispered.

  Finally Bobby looked at him, because he sounded near tears. “You’re goddamned right I did. I was fucking starving. So c’mon, guys—I don’t get it. I don’t fucking get it. Why? You’re both fucking hot. You’re both fucking smart. Neither of you are stuck in porn for fucking ever—you got prospects. So tell me. Help me understand here. Why?”

  “Because I look in the mirror and I still see a fat kid,” Lance said, sounding broken. “I work out, I work my rotation, I do my classwork, I shoot my scenes, and I feel so in control. And I go home, and all I can hear is my parents telling me to do better, and stories about what a fat little kid I was. And how… how much it sucks to be gay. And… I just… food is the thing I can’t have. It’s the one goddamned thing I can’t have and—”

  Bobby sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, part of him trying to remember what else he needed to fix their goddamned bathroom.

  “Control,” he said, getting it.

  “You’re good.” Lance’s tone of voice would have melted the pipes if his stomach bile hadn’t.

  “I understand control,” Bobby admitted, thinking about how easy it had been to fuck for the camera. His body, his call, his idea. Little boy from Dogpatch got to be a god. “I get it. But Lance—” And suddenly Bobby’s hurt at the world at large flooded him. “Lance—these guys. They depend on you. And you know better. I mean—you know better, right? There’s shit everywhere that tells you how bad this is for you—”

  “Do you know how many doctors smoke?” Lance asked angrily. “What, I don’t get one lousy vice—”

  “Get fat!” Bobby snapped back. “Eat it. Own it. Have a fucking ice cream sandwich, for fuck’s sake. Don’t toss it down the fucking drain, man.” His voice wobbled. “Man, Reg looks up to you—do you know how much?” He looked at Trey, who was staring at his hands. “Either of you? He—he’s got nothing, but the way he looks at you guys, that gives him something, right? Like guys as smart as you will be his goddamned friends.”

  Trey wiped his eyes with his palm, one at a time. “You fucker,” he mumbled. “That’s… that’s playing fucking dirty.”

  “Then talk to me,” Bobby told him, his own eyes burning. A part of him was saying What? You lived with these guys for two months and suddenly you’re family? But most of him was saying God, I love these guys like my fuckin’ brothers. How’d that happen? I didn’t know there was that much of my heart to give. “Both of you—did you know?”

  Trey shrugged. “That’s why both sets of pipes, Bobby. One night I left the door unlocked, and Lance walked in, and it became our thing.”

  “You couldn’t have bonded over blowjobs?” he asked, hating that idea. “Because seriously—”

  “Look—we just knew, okay?” Trey muttered. “And you don’t know what it’s like. I’ve looked at your fucking reviews—”

  “For what?”

  Trey rolled his eyes and his head. “Oh my God—your porn, Bobby—don’t you ever look and see how people like what you do?”

  “Why would I care what they say?” Bobby asked, feeling stupid. “I just care that they download it so I can afford to bring my mom down here and get her the fuck out of Dogpatch.”

  Trey and Lance exchanged a pitying look. “Well, that’s great,” Trey told him savagely, kicking at the absolutely immovable pole in the center of the aisle. “That’s just fucking perfect. You don’t even fucking look. Would you like to know what those comments say about me? ‘Great smile but a big moon face—lose some weight, porky, and I’ll care how you pork.’”

  “Ouch,” Lance muttered, but Trey wasn’t done.

  “That one’s just clever. I get it all—I get fat face, fat ass, low body tone, concave chest—by God, there’s nothing those fuckers won’t criticize, and I get it, right? I get that you put yourself out there, you gotta expect some blowback, but I’m killing myself in the gym trying to fix that shit, and it’s just never fucking enough—never. And I need the money, and I actually like the fucking work, but that shit on the computer, man—it just echoes in my head all day, and it’s all I can hear and—”

  “Sh….”

  Bobby and Lance both moved in at the same time, folding Trey up between them, calming him down. He shook in their arms until the intercom sounded, telling them they had ten minutes to get their purchases and get the hell out.

  One more second, two, and a final squeeze, and Trey pulled away.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to come apart like—”

  “You’re both too bound up,” Bobby muttered. “I mean, we get back and Billy’s gonna have appointments with Chase and Tommy’s shrink lined up for you guys, but I’m telling you right now—this shit is all….” He used the hand holding the basket to make a circle around his stomach. “Bound up. Like too much meat and not enough fruit. Constipated. It’s all constipated in your soul. And you guys—you’re living with a bunch of gay guys—”

  “Billy’s straight,” Trey said reasonably.

  “Like that fuckin’ matters. You think he doesn’t love you guys? You’re living with a bunch of guys who can fuckin’ listen. That’s what I’m saying. You’re living with a couple of health food nuts who’ll turn your bodies inside out trying to make them perfect, but even better, you’re living with friends.” He felt this injustice keenly as he stalked toward the front of the giant musty vault of tiny bits and pieces used to repair the random shit in people’s lives. “I mean, I was calling to ask a favor, and Trey didn’t even hesitate—and I’m the outsider here, right? I bailed on your little flophouse ’cause….” He sighed. “’Cause sex would be too easy. I’m not wired that way.” He swallowed a little, met their eyes, and shrugged. “I already fell for somebody, you know? I liked that person. I didn’t want to fuck around with his feelings if I didn’t have to.”

  “We get it,” Lance said with a sigh. He placed his ha
nd on the back of Bobby’s neck and squeezed, his touch platonic and familiar and intimate all at the same time. This was why—this was why Bobby had stayed as long as he could. This was why he didn’t want to leave Johnnies unless he had to. All those years living in Dogpatch, thinking he was a freak, letting Keith Gilmore talk him into fooling around when he knew it was wrong—all that was because he wanted this. A group. A community. A tribe he could count on.

  And who could count on him.

  “What do you get?” Bobby asked—but he didn’t shrug Lance off.

  “You’re our friend. A good friend. And you care.”

  Bobby nodded. “Damned straight.” He took a step forward and gave the clerk his basket of stuff, and Trey moved in to pay for it.

  “I get a frequent-flyer discount,” Bobby said, pulling out his card mournfully, and Trey laughed.

  “You’re fixing our plumbing for free, Bobby. And apparently trying to fix our lives too. Let us at least pay for our own parts.”

  “Yeah,” Lance said. Then he wrinkled his nose in thought. “And weren’t you going to ask us for a favor?”

  Bobby nodded and waited for the clerk to bag their parts so they could leave.

  As they were walking toward the truck, he told them his idea and how he needed an overnight watcher for Reg’s sister.

  He wasn’t surprised when they said yes—but he was grateful.

  “So you’re taking Reg to meet your mom why?” Trey asked into the engine-rumbling quiet.

  “Because.” Bobby was glad he was driving. Trey’s voice sounded thick, and Lance had been mostly monosyllabic since checkout. He wondered if this was what an intervention looked like, and if there was always an exhausted calm after the storm.

  “And?” Trey prompted.

  “Because there’s not enough fucking moms here,” he muttered. He remembered Dex, trying not to cry. He hadn’t known, then, about Dex’s best friend, Tommy, about Tommy’s lover, Chase—but then Bobby had been dealing with Reg and the guys in the flophouse up close and personal. He was starting to know about how badly they needed some frickin’ moms.

  “Dude, we’re grown,” Trey snorted, and Bobby shook his head.

  “The hell you are. You may think you are, because going home is like going to a hostile country, but you’re not. I mean, I turn nineteen in May. I get that I have to register for the draft and I can get convicted for a felony, but I’m telling you! If I ever get arrested or deployed, the first person I’m frickin’ calling is my mommy!”

  Lance’s choked laughter told him he’d hit a nerve.

  “I know it’s not that way for everybody,” Bobby said quietly. “But Dex can’t mom the whole company. And I’ll do my best. But right now, Reg needs a mom. He needs to know it’s not all awful. And my mom lives in a shitty little house because the guy who owns it is an asshole, but you know what? She brings out her best cooking every time I go. And I may not tell her everything—she might never know about the porn. But whether she knows exactly who he is to me or not, I want her to know about Reg. Because it’s important, and she’s my frickin’ mom.”

  He’d left early on Christmas. That thought haunted him. Jessica and Keith—people he’d be happy if he never saw again—had influenced his decision, and he hadn’t stayed through Christmas night. Maybe he hadn’t felt how much he needed his mom until he saw how hard Reg’s life was without his.

  “So okay, then,” Trey said into the following silence. “We’ll let you take Reg to get mothered.” He let out a huge sigh. “I think that’s one of the most awesome things I’ve ever heard, actually.”

  “Think she’d adopt us?” Lance asked, and he pitched his voice playfully, but Bobby heard it. The longing. His stomach cramped with how much awful was in the world he couldn’t fix.

  But he could do something here. He could make sure Lance and Trey knew that hurting themselves was unacceptable.

  It was all he had.

  THE GUYS had cleaned up the mess with bleach and everything, so Bobby had no problem replacing the pipes and reconnecting all the clamps. He turned on the water again and flushed the toilet, then ran the water, just to make sure it all worked and nothing dripped. Then he turned to the watching roommates.

  “Done,” he told them. “But you’re gonna rot another hole through the pipes if you guys don’t fix yourselves.”

  Lance and Trey nodded soberly, and then Lance surprised him. “Hey—do you have to go back? You can stay and watch movies or something. We promise—everybody’s clothes stay on.”

  Bobby grinned. “Yeah—absolutely.”

  He ended up staying the night. In the morning he woke up on the air mattress in time to hear Lance finish making an appointment with someone—Bobby assumed it was the shrink.

  Bobby rolled over and saw him in the corner of the couch, arms wrapped around his shins, cheek on his knees.

  “That was hard,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” Bobby felt like he’d made him do it.

  “Don’t be. It came from the right place. I just… I hurt.”

  Bobby nodded, thought about Reg at home with his sister. About his mom stuck up in the snow. About all these guys in this apartment, doing the best they could. “I hurt for you,” he said. Meant it.

  “Reg is a really good guy.”

  Bobby sat up in bed, surprised. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Why didn’t you hook up sooner?”

  Bobby scrubbed his hands through his hair. “’Cause I was dumb. It’s hard, you know? Figuring the difference between sex and love and what you should do and what you really want. I have sex at work, I guess. I make love with Reg. I should date and marry a girl. I really want a guy. Reg. That’s as much as I’ve got figured out.”

  Lance half laughed. “I don’t know if I’ve ever made love. I get all the sex I can handle. I should date and marry a girl. I don’t want a girl. I’m supposed to become a doctor. But I’m so tired. So damned tired.”

  Bobby got up off the air mattress, grabbed his phone, and made it to the couch by the time Lance lost his shit. Rocking this guy—this guy he looked up to—in his arms and telling him it was all going to be okay made him more aware than ever how ill-equipped he was to be a grown-up.

  And how he was the guy Reg depended on.

  Navigating Strange Waters

  REG WOKE up the day after his scene wondering why it felt like Christmas.

  Then Bobby texted.

  OMW—bringing a couple changes of clothes and some more stuff to work on the hallway.

  And lube?

  Didn’t we still have some?

  We’re going to use more. Lots more. Swear.

  God, he missed Bobby.

  He’d come over during the day for lunch, to watch TV, keep Veronica company, and of course to work on the house. He kept eyeing Reg’s cabinets with serious intent, and Reg was starting to get scared. There were canned goods in the back of those cabinets that predated Reg’s twenty-first birthday. He honestly had nightmares sometimes about what would come out of those cans if opened.

  But that didn’t mean Reg didn’t look forward to the rattle of Bobby’s pickup as it pulled up next to Reg’s Camaro in the driveway. Bobby brought games for them to play at night, and he and Reg were reading the same books and…

  And Bobby kissed him at the car before he left. Long, deep, slow kisses, the kind that left Reg feeling breathless and young, like the world was wide-open and glorious and Reg could do anything with his life.

  Anything.

  And then Bobby would leave him, hard and aching and hating their jobs with a passion, and Reg would remember.

  He was a porn model with no education to speak of, and caring for his sister was a full-time job.

  Oh.

  Oh yeah.

  It was almost unfair how easy it was to forget all that with those long, powerful arms wrapped around him.

  The night Bobby spent in the apartment with the guys had been interminable. Reg wasn’t worried about Bobby getti
ng laid. The whole reason he wasn’t at Reg’s that night was because he had a scene, and there was an abstinence period.

  But he hadn’t been with Reg.

  The next day, though, he’d been thoughtful and withdrawn—and his kiss at the car had been particularly fierce, leaving Reg wrung out and shaky by the time he was done. He didn’t say what was wrong, and Reg didn’t know how to ask, but the next day had been his scene.

  Reg had done lights in the other room, so he hadn’t seen Bobby until after he was done, wrapped in a robe, and on the way to the shower.

  He’d smiled tiredly at Reg and held out his hand, like he was keeping Reg far away.

  “No kiss,” he said, voice sounding rocky. “Not now. Wait until I’m clean, okay?”

  And Reg stopped there, right in the hallway, and let Bobby pass, realizing what it meant, for him to be clean.

  Somebody else’s mark was on Bobby’s skin. Somebody else’s come was drying there. Maybe his voice sounded funny because he’d swallowed too much jizz and it had gone down the wrong tube—happened to Reg all the time.

  For the first time in twelve years, it hit Reg. What he did for a living. Like it was brand-new and he was a virgin with no fucks under his belt.

  And he was horrified.

  That thing he did in the dark with Bobby—even those times they hadn’t been naked, when Bobby had just come over and touched him, held him, kissed his neck or his shoulder, or even, once, down the bumps in his spine—those things were his things.

  Except Bobby had just done those things under the lights, for the camera.

  Reg didn’t feel any resentment for the other guy in the shot—but dammit. He had so little in life that was his. He wanted his things back.

  It was irrational. He told himself again and again; he knew this job. He knew what that kid brought into his house, into his bed, was special. Bobby wasn’t giving the same kisses on the set that he was giving to Reg. He wasn’t whispering the same things.