by Amy Lane
John allowed some residual laughter to float up between them. “Okay. I’ve got some employee forms all official and everything, and I’ll have you sign those so we can pay you, and you’re going to need a name.”
“A name?”
“You don’t really think some mother named her son Brett Sausagestuffer, do you?”
David laughed. “Gotcha. A porn name.”
“Yeah. Make it something you can recognize in a crowded room, okay?”
David didn’t even blink. “Dex,” he said, nodding. “I always wanted to be a Dex.”
(Carlos) Kane
Six Years Later
HE KNEW it wouldn’t last forever. Hell, it was never forever. But the next day at school, the same girl who’d drooled all over his cock the night before was holding hands with her boyfriend and making limpid eyes at him, and when Carlos walked by, she turned up her nose.
Carlos stopped right where he’d been walking on his way to science, the one class he didn’t fucking hate, and turned around.
“You’re gonna look at me like that?” he asked, and he knew he had a reputation for being a player, but the girls who were begging him to fuck them usually were at least a little grateful, right?
“I’m not lookin’ at you,” she said, her tiny little nose turned up, her plump brown mouth pulled up over her dainty white front teeth. “I don’t look at trash.”
Carlos pulled up his own sneer, and he knew it wasn’t pretty. “That’s not what you said last night when I was cleanin’ your chute,” he said, and he knew he had it coming, but he still didn’t see it coming when her boyfriend, Tomas, who was actually a decent guy and didn’t deserve to be two-timed like that, leveled a haymaker at him from the side.
His science teacher, Ms. Darcy, saw the whole thing, so Tomas got suspended. Carlos heard the news sitting in the nurse’s office with an ice pack on his cheek while Ms. Darcy looked at him skeptically.
“So, I know he’s the one who swung first,” she said dryly, giving him a gimlet eye. She was in her late fifties, graying and hatchet-faced, but she was also hella fuckin’ funny when she was pretty sure nobody like the weaselly little vice principal everybody hated, the one who curled her hair in her office while she was getting drunk, wasn’t listening in.
“Yeah,” Carlos said, his eyes wide. “He just up and hit me outta nowhere, I swear, Ms. Darcy—”
“Cut the shit, Carlos. What’d you say to him?”
Carlos kept his eyes (which were normally a little narrow and devilish looking, if he said so himself) as wide as possible. “I didn’t say shit to him, Ms. Darcy”—but he must have put too much emphasis on “him” and not enough on “didn’t say shit,” because she raised both eyebrows.
“What’d you say to her?”
Carlos blushed. He’d actually been raised better than to talk trash to a girl, but she’d made him so mad. Geez, this girl had chased him. He’d been checking out the lizards under the F wing when she’d followed him between the fence and the portable building, taken him between the two portables, dropped his pants, and sucked his dick. She hadn’t even said anything. And hell, it’s not like you just turned down that sort of shit, right? Carlos had been working out since the seventh grade, and carrying condoms in his pocket since the eighth grade because he wasn’t stupid. Girls just fuckin’ gave that shit away sometimes, and what kind of fool turned that down?
“I….” Some of his innocence slipped and his halo crashed to his feet. Ms. Darcy was cool. He hoped. “It just made me so mad, you know? There she was goin’….” He cut his eyes sideways and pulled up his teacher speak. “She’s, uhm, goin’ all… personal on me yesterday, right? And today? She just turns away like I’m trash, you know? And I didn’t expect hearts and flowers, but fuck, it would just be nice if she said hello, you feel me?”
Ms. Darcy did that thing with her lips that old people did when they felt sorry for you but knew they couldn’t explain why. “Well, Carlos,” she said after some consideration. He noticed he didn’t even make her blush.
“Well what?”
She sighed and took the ice pack off his cheek, checked the bruise forming there, and then put the ice pack back. “You know in the old days, when it used to be the boys chasing the girls?”
Carlos grimaced. “That was like, sixth grade, right? That wasn’t so long ago.”
She smiled then and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, well, they used to tell girls stupid things like ‘Why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free’ and ‘Only trashy girls give it away’—you’ve heard that?”
Carlos nodded glumly. “Yeah, well, everyone does that, won’t nobody get some.”
Ms. Darcy laughed then and looked around furtively before going to the little cooler that only the nurse was supposed to get into. She opened a big bottle of Motrin and pulled out two tabs and brought it over to him with a bottle of water that had been in the fridge too. “Here, Carlos. Don’t tell anyone I gave them to you, okay? The nurse is supposed to call your parents and all sorts of bullshit, but she’s at the other high school today, all right?”
Carlos took the medicine glumly, and when he was done swallowing, Ms. Darcy started talking again.
“Look, my dear, all I’m trying to say is that other people won’t value you if you don’t value you. You’re a good-looking kid, and you know it, and you’ve got girls chasing you all over the planet, and that’s fun, right?”
He nodded vigorously, and she laughed.
“Well, if that’s what you want, that’s what you’re going to get. But if you want it to mean more, it’s got to be something that doesn’t just happen. You’ve got to make it important, you understand? Give it value—just don’t give it away for free.”
Carlos grinned, thinking of something funny. “Yeah, well, it’s not like people are gonna pay me to do that, right?”
Ms. Darcy rolled her eyes. “That’s not a career we want you to aspire to, no. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to marry everybody you bang, but they’re going to think you’re trashy if you let them treat you that way.”
Carlos kept the ice on his jaw and shook his head. “Ms. Darcy, I know you’re trying to tell me something important, but all I can think of is that if I got paid to have sex, I’d be hella rich right now.”
Ms. Darcy covered her eyes with her hands and let out a long sigh, the kind that told Carlos he was being stupid even when he wasn’t trying to be.
“Or,” she said with another sigh, “you could do that. Either way, baby, you’d probably better not talk trash to the girls you sleep with, or your pretty face is gonna get way broken, okay?”
Carlos had been born with a cleft palate. He’d needed operations—several of them—before his palate had been completely closed and his upper lip was repaired with only marginal scarring. He’d been lucky—the operations had happened when his family still lived in Mexico, because some charity doctor had taken care of all of that and his parents hadn’t had to pay a dime. If he’d been born here in the States, odds were he probably would have had that big disfiguring gap all the way up to his nose like he’d had when he’d been three or four, before the operations. He had pictures.
So even though he knew his face was pleasing—he had high cheekbones and those almond-shaped eyes and Spanish pale skin and a nice square jaw—he didn’t take it for granted that someone thought he was pretty. Even if it was an old teacher lady, she was cool and he liked her, so he took the compliment seriously.
“I’ll be more careful with my face,” he said, nodding to show he meant it. “It’s all I got, right?”
Ms. Darcy closed her eyes. “You got so much more, Carlos. You know that, right?”
Carlos held the ice pack tight to his cheekbone and risked a look in the mirror. “Yeah,” he said without irony. “Like now I know I got a black eye.”
BUT Carlos did take something away from that conversation, even if it wasn’t all that Ms. Darcy probably wanted. For one thing, he stopped having rand
om sex with girls. He stopped looking for a girlfriend too, because his reputation in that school was too widespread anyway. He was graduating in a month, so it was no big loss, but he kept thinking about that whole money thing.
His sister’s husband, Hector, wanted him to work in his machine shop, but Carlos didn’t really want to. It wasn’t that he minded working hard, and he’d love to be a gardener or something—especially because he liked bugs and he thought he’d get to see a lot of them—but Hector was a prick, and Carlos thought Fabiola might be getting smacked around a little by him, and Carlos didn’t want to see that. Especially since there was the baby around. Carlos got so mad thinking about Fabiola letting Frances see that bullshit. But their parents were back in Mexico because sometimes it was a damned sight better than California, and it was just Carlos and Lola, and he wasn’t going to ditch her either. But God. He sure as hell didn’t want to work in the machine shop!
He got on his sister’s laptop and Googled Porn + Sacramento and was disappointed to get nothing but some hits on a former porn star who’d been born in North Highlands and some dirty old pervs getting busted for kiddie porn. Oh, hey, there were sex toy shops, and that was something he’d bookmark for later, but in the meantime, how about something he could do for money?
Finally, after hunting a little, he found a listing for a place called Johnnies. When he realized it was guy on guy, it hardly fazed him. After all, like Ms. Darcy said, at least he wouldn’t be giving it away anymore.
THEY were ripping up the courtyard in the middle of the office suite when he went in for his interview and his audition. A blond guy wearing a pair of jeans, a football jersey, and some flip-flops greeted him at the door. He had a narrow, almost delicately pretty face for a boy, and he grimaced at the noise.
“We’re not filming here until this is done,” he said apologetically. “If you want, you can follow me to—wait. Where’s your car?”
Carlos shrugged. “I took a bus,” he said, because Lola needed the car to take the baby to a doctor’s appointment. Since Carlos’s graduation, that baby—well, she was not quite eighteen months old—had gotten more and more sickly, and Carlos was glad Hector finally said they could go to the doctor’s. He loved the way she smiled when he bounced her on his knee, and he wanted to see that again.
“Okay, then,” the guy said, “I can take you to John’s, and if you pass the interview, we’ll use his backyard for your introduction video.” He grimaced and ran a hand through his hair. Carlos saw that he still had his class ring on his finger, and the idea that he still had one made him seem not so much older than Carlos himself. “John would rather have it here, because he likes the idea of professional and all, but I sort of like his backyard. It’s real nice.”
Carlos cocked his head. “Where you from?”
The boy had skin so fair it was milk-colored, and it pinked up a little. “Montana. Why, do I sound like it?”
“Yeah. Why’d you come here?”
The guy smiled and looked down, and for a moment, he looked almost shy. Carlos liked that, liked the way he looked shy. Carlos was pretty sure he was a porn star—wait, model—and he thought that maybe if this pretty boy could smile like that, then maybe he wouldn’t be going to hell for fucking for money. Nobody could send that smile to hell. It was against every rule of hell Carlos knew.
“I came for the school,” he said, shooting a look toward Carlos. “I sort of stayed for the porn. I’m Dex, by the way.”
Carlos shook his offered hand, enjoying how his palm was long and his fingers were narrow. “Carlos Ramirez.”
“Not for long,” Dex said seriously, and Carlos blinked.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You pass the audition, and you’re going to have to choose a name. Those things sort of stick.”
Carlos felt sort of cheated. “So Dex ain’t your real name?”
That yellow-gold hair was cut short, and it didn’t hardly move when Dex shook his head. “No. My real name is David, but don’t call me that, okay? The only one who knows it is John.”
Oh! That was an honor. “Then why’d you tell me?”
Dex kind of grimaced. “Because I’ve been doing this for nearly six years, and unless my mother calls me, I forget sometimes.” Dex turned to him with big eyes. “Man, whatever your porn name is, make sure it’s something you don’t hate.”
“You hate ‘Dex’?”
Dex shook his head, but he was thinking seriously about the question. “No,” he said after a moment. “Not anymore. Here. You’re not doing a scene with another person. Want to stop and get something to eat on the way? I’ll take you to John’s and then take you home if you want. How’s that sound?”
Carlos grinned. “I don’t never say no to food.”
Dex sighed. “You’re going to have to, you know. If you make it in.” And then he proceeded to tell Carlos shit Carlos didn’t even want to know about fiber and shit, honest to God shit, and what you don’t ever want to do when you’re getting your ass reamed by some other guy’s tool.
It helped, though. When they got to John’s, Dex walked in the front door without knocking and said, “He passed the interview!” and a guy with red hair stuck his head out of a small office and looked him over.
“He’s damned pretty. What’d he say that convinced you?”
Dex grinned. “He got the fiber speech and it didn’t scare him off.”
John laughed. “Aces, Dex. I should have you screen guys more often.”
“Or at least give the speech,” Carlos said, nodding fervently. Dex had been more than nice—he’d been fun and downright human. Carlos didn’t know if it was a blond thing (there weren’t that many blond guys at Carlos’s school. Hell, there weren’t that many white guys at Carlos’s school) or a Montana thing or just a Dex thing, but Carlos suddenly felt better about dropping his pants and jacking off on camera for a bunch of gay guys than he did about all those girls he’d nailed through school.
His audition went pretty good too.
He talked to Dex while John held the camera, and Dex asked fun stuff, like what his favorite part of sex was and where was the weirdest place he’d ever done it. He’d admitted that the couch in the drama wing of his high school got a good workout, and Dex cracked up, and the next thing Carlos knew, he’d dropped his cargo shorts and had his cock in his hand. Dex gasped softly when it was out.
“Damn, that’s big!” he said, and Carlos looked up and grinned.
“Yeah, and I still got a turtleneck!” He’d been born out of the country, so he was uncircumcised, and he’d learned from the girls he’d been with that this was a rare thing.
Dex laughed, but his blue eyes were focused on Carlos’s thick cock. Carlos grinned at him, feeling proud, and squeezed at the base and stroked. Oh God, it felt good, and he had a moment of panic. It felt too good. Sometimes when he was this swollen, this aroused, he had trouble getting off. He kept stroking though, kept fondling, let his noises amp up a notch because Dex and John seemed to get such a kick out of it, and he felt himself starting to soar. Oh God. This was good. These men thought he looked good, and they liked his cock, and suddenly what had felt trashy with all those girls felt classy on the rich green lawn of this guy’s backyard.
But he wasn’t going to come, and oh, fuck, he was so close when all of a sudden—
There was Dex’s hand on his cock, and that feeling of someone else’s fingers, that’s what did it. It didn’t matter if they were male or female, they were someone, and oh, oh no, oh hell there he went, spurting over Dex’s hand and arm, and Carlos’s knees got wobbly and he was afraid he was just going to collapse into the grass when he felt an arm around his waist.
He looked up and Dex was smiling kindly at him. “Easy, big guy. Gotcha.”
Carlos smiled weakly, remembering the way girls kissed and wishing he had a little of that now. Dex’s smile grew even gentler and he leaned in and kissed him and pressed that arm around his waist up over his shoulders in comfort. Carlos kis
sed him back without self-consciousness, because everyone needed to be held after they came with another person. That was just human, right?
Dex looked up where John was with the camera and winked. “I think he passed the audition,” he said, and John said, “Oh hell yeah!” and then they all laughed.
That laugh, that was the best part of all.
Dex took him to the bathroom and let him wash up in private, and then Carlos signed some more papers and made an appointment for a blood test. John said that once the blood test came back clear, that would be that.
“So,” Dex said as he was filling out the last of the papers, “what’s your name going to be?”
“Who’s that guy from the Bible who killed his brother?” Carlos asked, and Dex looked at him funny.
“Cain,” he said and started to write it down with a C.
“Spell it with a K—it looks cooler,” Carlos said sincerely, and Dex laughed and did just that.
“So, are you planning to kill a brother? Do we need to know where to hide the bodies?”
“Not my brother,” Carlos admitted, “but I think this job would really stick it to my brother-in-law, and he’s a major prick!”
Dex laughed and wrote “Kane” with a K, and Kane was born in John’s nice little living room with the corduroy couches and the plush olive-colored throw rug. Kane thought there were worse places to be.
THAT night Dex fed him again as he took his sweet red BMW through the line at Adalberto’s and told him when his next shoot was. Then Dex dropped him off at his sister’s house, where he had the little back room because he’d given up the bigger room so Frances could have all the toys she needed.
When he walked in, Fabiola started whining at him about how Hector said he needed to start paying rent and Hector was going to kick him out if he didn’t start working at the machine shop, but Kane was still high from the shoot, so it didn’t bother him none.