Ian smiles. He is at least ten years older than Simon, maybe fifteen.
“I’m hard as shit,” he says.
Simon startles, and a wave of desire builds inside him. Ian is already taking his pants off, now his underwear, and there it is: boldly red, its head proudly lifted—a king of a cock. Simon’s own erection presses against his jeans; he stands to pull them down, yanking when one leg snags on his ankle. Ian kneels on the ground, facing him. There, in the narrow space between the couch and the glass table, Ian pulls Simon forward by the ass, and suddenly—shockingly—Simon’s penis is in Ian’s mouth.
Simon cries out, and his upper body bucks forward. Ian holds his chest up with one hand and sucks as Simon gasps in amazement and exquisite, long-dreamed-of pleasure. It is better than he imagined it would be—it is agonizing, mindless bliss, this mouth on him, it is as concentrated and intense as the sun. He swells. When he’s at the brink of an orgasm, Ian pulls back and grins, slick.
“You wanna see this nice floor with cum all over it? You wanna come all over this nice hardwood floor?”
Simon pants in confusion, this being so far from any objective he had in mind. “Do you?”
“Yeah,” says Ian. “Yeah, I do,” and now he is crawling on his knees, his penis—so red it’s nearly purple—extending toward Simon like a scepter. A large, meandering vein snakes along the shaft.
“Hey,” says Simon. “Let’s just slow down for a second, okay? Just really quick, for a second?”
“Sure, man. We can do that.” Ian turns him around to face the windows and takes Simon’s penis in one hand, pumping. Simon moans until a dull pain in his knees brings him back to the room and to Ian, whose own penis is persistently nudging Simon’s ass cheeks apart.
“Can we just . . .” Simon gasps, so close it takes effort to speak at all. “Can we, you know . . .”
Ian sits back on his heels. “What? You want lube?”
“Lube.” Simon swallows. “Yeah.”
Lube isn’t what he wants, but at least it buys him time. As Ian springs to his feet and disappears down a hallway, Simon catches his breath. Remember this, he tells himself, the right-before. He hears the light slap of footsteps, a bony thunk as Ian takes his place and sets a bright orange bottle to one side. There is a gloppy squirt as the lube is dispensed, then the slick sound of Ian rubbing it between his hands.
“All good?” asks Ian.
Simon braces himself, pressing his palms into the floor.
“All good,” he says.
• • •
Sun slices through the blinds. There is the sound of a shower running and the bodily, other-person smell of unfamiliar sheets. Simon is naked in a king bed beneath thick white covers. When he sits up, his legs ache, and he feels he might be sick. He squints at the room: a closed side door, which must lead to the bathroom; stock photos of urban architecture in sleek black frames; a small walk-in closet, inside which Simon sees color-coordinated rows of suit jackets and collared shirts.
He climbs out of bed and scans the ground for his clothes before he realizes that he must have left them in the living room—he remembers it vaguely, the night before, though it feels less like reality than the most intense dream he’s ever had. His jeans and polo shirt are crumpled under the coffee table, his beloved 320s by the door. He scrambles into them and looks outside. Hordes of people stride down the sidewalk with briefcases and coffee. In some alternate reality, it’s Monday morning.
The shower stops. Simon walks back into the bedroom just as Ian comes out of the bathroom, a towel slung low around his waist.
“Hey.” He smiles at Simon, takes the towel off and rubs it vigorously over his hair. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“Um,” says Simon. “That’s okay.” He stares as Ian walks to the closet and pulls on a pair of black underwear, then thin black socks. “Where do you work?”
“Martel and McRae.” Ian buttons an expensive-looking white shirt and reaches for a tie.
“What’s that?”
“Financial advising.” Ian frowns into a mirror. “You really don’t know much of anything, do you?”
“Hey. I told you I was new here.”
“Relax.” Ian has a suspiciously handsome smile, as might belong to a personal injury lawyer.
“The people at your work,” says Simon. “Do they know you like guys?”
“Hell no.” Ian laughs shortly. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”
He strides out of the closet, and Simon steps away from the doorway.
“Listen, I gotta run. But make yourself at home, okay? Just be sure the door shuts behind you when you leave. It should lock automatically.” Ian grabs a jacket from the hall closet and pauses at the door. “It’s been fun.”
Alone, Simon stands very still. Klara doesn’t know where he is. Worse, Gertie must be hysterical. It’s eight in the morning, which means it’s nearly eleven in New York—six days since he left. What kind of person is he, to do this to his mother? He finds a phone on the kitchen counter. While it rings, he pictures the one at home, a cream-colored push button. He imagines Gertie walking over to it—his mother, his dear; he must make her understand—and grasping the receiver in her strong right hand.
“Hello?”
Simon is startled. It’s Daniel.
“Hello?” Daniel repeats. “Anybody there?”
Simon clears his throat. “Hey.”
“Simon.” Daniel releases a long, ragged breath. “Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, Simon. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in San Francisco.”
“And Klara’s with you?”
“Yeah, she’s here.”
“Okay.” Daniel speaks slowly and with control, as if to a volatile toddler. “What are you doing in San Francisco?”
“Hang on.” Simon rubs his forehead, which pounds with pain. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
“Yes,” says Daniel, with the same eerie calm. “Yes, Simon, I am supposed to be at school. Would you like to know why I’m not at school? I’m not at school because Ma called me in a fit on Friday night when you hadn’t come home, and being the good fucking son that I am, the only fucking reasonable person in this family, I left school to be with her. I’ll be taking incompletes this semester.”
Simon’s brain spins. He feels unable to respond to all of this at once, and so he says, “Varya’s reasonable.”
Daniel ignores this. “I’ll repeat myself. What the hell are you doing in San Francisco?”
“We decided to leave.”
“Yeah, I got that far. I’m sure it’s been groovy. And now that you’ve had your fun, let’s talk about what you’re going to do next.”
What is he going to do next? Outside, the sky is a clear, endless blue.
“I’m looking at the Greyhound schedule for tomorrow,” Daniel says. “There’s a train leaving from Folsom at one in the afternoon. You’ll have to transfer in Salt Lake City and again in Omaha. It’ll cost you a hundred and twenty bucks, which I hope to God you didn’t travel across the country without, but if you’re stupider than I’m giving you credit for, I’ll wire it to Klara’s bank account. In that case, you’ll have to wait and leave on Thursday. All right? Simon? Are you with me?”
“I’m not coming back.” Simon is crying, for he realizes that what he’s said is true: there now exists a pane of glass between him and his former home, a pane he can see through but not cross.
Daniel’s voice softens. “Come on, big guy. You’re dealing with a lot, I understand that. We all are. Dad’s gone—I can see why you’d get impulsive. But you have to do what’s right. Ma needs you. Gold’s needs you. We need Klara, too, but she’s more of a . . . a lost cause, you know what I mean? Listen, I get how it goes with her. She doesn’t like to take no for an answer; I’m guessing she talked you into it. But she had n
o right to rope you into her bullshit. I mean, Jesus—you haven’t even finished high school. You’re a kid.”
Simon is silent. He hears Gertie’s voice in the background.
“Daniel? Who are you talking to?”
“Hang on, Ma!” Daniel shouts.
“I’m staying here, Dan. I am.”
“Simon.” Daniel’s voice hardens. “Do you know what it’s been like around here? Ma has lost her godforsaken mind. She’s talking about calling the cops. I’m doing my best, I’m promising her you’ll come to your senses, but I can’t hold her off for much longer. You’re only sixteen—a minor. And technically, that makes you a runaway.”
Simon is still crying. He leans against the counter.
“Sy?”
Simon wipes his cheeks with his palms. Gently, he hangs up.
3.
By the end of May, Klara has filled out dozens of job applications, but she gets no interviews. The city is changing, and she missed the very best parts: the hippies, the Diggers, the psychedelic gatherings in Golden Gate Park. She wants to play a tambourine and listen to Gary Snyder read in the Polo Fields, but now the park is filled with gay cruisers and drug dealers, and the hippies are just homeless. Corporate San Francisco won’t have her, not that she would have it. She targets the feminist bookstores in the Mission, but the clerks glance at her flimsy dresses with disdain; the coffee shops are owned by lesbians who laid the cement floors themselves and certainly don’t need help now. Grudgingly, she submits an application to a temp agency.
“We just need something to tide us over,” she says. “Something easy, something that makes fast money. It doesn’t have to mean anything about us.”
Simon thinks of the club downstairs. He’s passed it at night, when it’s full of young men and dizzying purple light. The next afternoon, he smokes out front until a middle-aged man—barely five feet, with bright orange hair—walks up to the door carrying a jumble of keys.
“Hey!” Simon crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. “I’m Simon. I live upstairs.”
He sticks out his hand. The other man squints at him, shakes it.
“Benny. What can I do for you?”
Simon wonders who Benny was before he came to San Francisco. He looks like a theater kid with his black sneakers and black jeans, a black T-shirt tucked into the waistband.
“I’d like a job,” Simon says.
Benny nudges the glass door with one shoulder, then holds it open with his foot to allow Simon through.
“You do, huh? How old are you?”
He strides through the space: flicking on the house lights, checking the smoke machines.
“Twenty-two. I could tend bar.”
Simon thought it would sound more mature than bartend, but now he sees he was wrong. Benny smirks and walks to the bar, where he heaves down the stools that wait in stacks.
“Firstly,” he says, “don’t lie to me. You’re what—seventeen, eighteen? Secondly, I don’t know where you’re from, but you gotta be twenty-one to tend bar in California, and I’m not losing my liquor license over some cute new hire. Thirdly—”
“Please.” Simon is desperate: if he can’t get a job and Gertie keeps after him, he’ll have no choice but to go home. “I’m new here, and I need money. I’ll do anything—wipe your floors, stamp hands. I’ll—”
Benny holds up a palm. “Thirdly. If I were to hire you, I wouldn’t put you at the bar.”
“Where would you put me?”
Benny pauses, one foot propped up on the rung of a stool. He points at one of the tall purple platforms spaced evenly throughout the club. “There.”
“Oh yeah?” Simon looks at the platforms. They’re at least four feet high and perhaps two and a half wide. “What would I do up there?”
“You’d dance, kid. Think you can handle that?”
Simon grins. “Sure, I can dance. That’s all I have to do?”
“That’s all you gotta do. You’re lucky Mikey quit last week. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have anything for you. But you’re pretty, and with the makeup . . .” Benny cocks his head. “With the makeup, yeah—you’ll look older.”
“What makeup?”
“What do you think? Purple paint. Head to toe.” Benny drags a broom out of a side room and begins to collect the previous night’s debris: bent straws, receipts, a purple condom wrapper. “Get here by seven tonight. The guys’ll show you how.”
• • •
There are five of them, each with their own pillar. Richie—a forty-five-year-old veteran with bulky muscles and a military haircut—has earned pillar number one, by the front windows. Across from him, at number two, is Lance, a transplant from Wisconsin whose ready smile and round, Canadian o’s are playfully mocked. Pillar number three is Lady, six foot four and dressed in drag; number four is Colin, skinny as a poet and sad-eyed, so Lady calls him Jesus Boy. Adrian—devilishly beautiful, his golden-brown body entirely hairless—takes pillar number five.
“Number six,” calls Lady, when Simon enters the dressing room. “How do you do?”
Lady is black, with high cheekbones and warm eyes rimmed by long lashes. The rest of the men wear nothing except flimsy purple thongs, but Benny lets Lady wear a tight pleather minidress—purple, of course—and chunky platform heels.
She shakes her can of purple paint. “Turn around, honey. I’ll do you.”
Adrian hoots, and Simon turns obediently, grinning. He’s already drunk. He bends toward the ground, ass up, and shakes it in Lady’s direction, who screams with delight. Lance turns on the radio—Chic’s “Le Freak”—as Adrian takes a tube of purple makeup from his toiletries case. He does Simon’s face, smoothing dyed foundation around his nostrils and hairline, then the lobes of his ears. They finish moments before nine o’clock, when it is time to line up and parade into the club.
Even at this early hour, Purp is well populated, and for a moment, Simon’s vision goes dark. Not in his wildest San Francisco fantasies did he imagine doing something like this. If it weren’t for Klara’s bottle of Smirnoff, he would have already turned around, dashing out of the club and into his apartment like a runaway extra in a sci-fi gay porn. Instead, as the men split and take their places, Simon positions himself behind pillar number six. Because Lady is the tallest, she hoists each man up onto his pedestal. Richie is athletic and energized: he hops up and down with one fist in the air and occasionally whips an invisible rope over his head. Lance is goofy, sweet; already, an appreciative mass stands below his pedestal, cheering as he does the bus stop and the funky chicken. Colin sways listlessly, high on Quaaludes. Occasionally, he extends his arms and moves his palms through the air like a mime. Adrian humps the air and runs his hands over his crotch. Simon wills himself not to grow hard as he watches.
Lady appears behind him. “Ready for a lift?” she whispers.
“Ready,” says Simon, and suddenly, he rises. Lady deposits him on top of the pedestal, her hands sure on his waist. When she lets go, he pauses. The men in the audience stare at him curiously.
“Give it up for the new boy!” Richie calls from across the room.
There are a few scattered claps, a whoop. The music swells: ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Simon gulps. He shifts his hips left, then right, but the movement isn’t fluid like it is on Adrian; he feels jerky and awkward, like a good girl at a school dance. He tries again, jumping like Richie, which feels more natural, but perhaps too much like Richie. He points at the audience with one hand and rolls the other shoulder behind his back.
“Come on, baby!” shouts a black man in a white tank top and jean shorts. “I know you can come better than that!”
Simon’s mouth turns dry. “Relax,” says Lady from behind him; she hasn’t yet left for her own pillar. “Drop your shoulders.” He hadn’t realized they’d risen to his ears. When he lets them go, his neck releases, too, and his legs feel m
ore limber. Gently, he sways his hips. He tosses his head. When he listens to the music instead of copying the other men, his body sinks into a rhythm, as it does when he’s running. His heartbeat is vigorous but steady. Electricity circuits from his scalp to his toes, urging him on.
• • •
When he reports for his shift the next day, he finds Benny wiping down the bar.
“How’d I do?”
Benny raises his eyebrows, though he doesn’t look up. “You did.”
“What do you mean?”
Simon still feels high, remembering how it felt to dance with those beautiful, sculpted men, how it felt to be adored. For a moment, in the dressing room, he had friends. He wasn’t thinking about home, about his mother, or what his father would think of the crowd.
Benny takes a sponge from behind the bar and begins to scrub at a crust of simple syrup. “You ever danced before?”
“Yeah, I’ve danced. Of course I’ve danced.”
“Where at?”
“Clubs.”
“Clubs. Where no one was watching you, right? Where you were just another face in the crowd? Well, they’re watching you now. And my guys? They can dance. They’re good. I need you”—he points the sponge at Simon—“to keep up.”
Simon’s pride stings. Sure, he might have been a little stiff, but by the end of the night, he was jiving like the rest of them—wasn’t he?
“What about Colin?” he asks, boldly imitating Colin’s limpid sway, his mime act. “Is he keeping up?”
“Colin,” says Benny, “has a shtick. The art fags are into him. You need a shtick, too. Whatever you were doing last night? Shuffling around the pedestal like you had bugs in your pants? That wasn’t it.”
“Hey, man. It’s not like I’m in bad shape. I’m a runner.”
“So what? Anyone can run. Baryshnikov, Nureyev—you look at those guys, they don’t run. They fly. And that’s ’cause they’re artists. You’re a good-looking guy, no doubt about that, but the guys who come here have standards, and you’ll need more than your looks to keep up.”
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