Through the Mirrorball

by Browatzke, Rob

  From that first kiss, we became each other’s world. Yes, Dinah was my best friend even back then, but Taylor was my everything. He knew all my secrets, I knew his. Together, we found the courage to ignore the Nathans of the world. And as we explored each other’s bodies, we shared each other’s hearts.

  But then his mom walked in on us, and we were doing a lot more than math homework. The lights came on before we had time to pull away from each other, much less pull a blanket over us, and there was no denying what two boys in a naked 69 looked like. Her awkward apology was followed not too long later by his dad screaming out, “A fucking faggot? No son of mine!”

  Taylor kissed me as I crawled out his window. That was the last time Taylor ever got to kiss me. The next day at school, he could barely see. He wouldn’t even talk to me, but it was clear from the bruises on his beautiful, beautiful face that his dad had beat him up. That night, his mom wouldn’t let me talk to him on the phone, and I was terrified what would happen to him, what would happen to us. I knew it was stupid but I ran over to his place in the middle of the night and threw rocks against his window until he opened it up.

  “You can’t be here, Alex!” he whispered at me.

  “I had to know you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. Go.”

  “I don’t believe you. Can I come in?”

  “No!” His expression was terrified. “We can’t hang out anymore.”

  “I love you, Taylor.”

  “Don’t say stuff like that. It’s wrong.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s real. Two hearts, one heart, remember?”

  “You need to go, Alex. It’s over.”

  “Just tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m going to be fine,” he said. His terror had faded, and his face was just empty now. “Bye, Alex.”

  “I love you,” I said again, to the closing window.

  That was the last time I got to say that to him.

  The next morning, he was dead. He had shot himself with his father’s gun, and his beautiful face was gone forever. His beautiful heart was gone forever. He was gone forever.

  Chapter 24

  Somehow, I got back to my apartment. Somehow, I found my phone and made the call. Somehow, I made it through the twenty minutes it took for him to get there. Somehow, I buzzed him in. Somehow, I found the strength to find the cash and trade it, my money for his drugs. I cursed myself for smashing my mirror, but luckily, there was a backup on my wall. I ripped it off and cut out a fat line of the Caterpillar’s finest.

  There was a time and a place for sobriety. There was a time and a place for being on the wagon. That time was not now. That place was not here.

  White fire filled my brain and it pushed away the image of his picture. You killed me. Had that sick twisted fucker Nathan actually sent me this from jail? Didn’t they screen outgoing mail? Didn’t they make it impossible for a monster to keep attacking his victim?

  But no sooner did the cocaine rip through my brain than a wave of guilt swept over me. Why did I do it? No! I needed it! To be sent that picture . . . and no, not just sent that picture. It was loose among the rest. Someone had shoved it into my mailbox! Not Nathan sending me his venom from prison. Someone hand-delivering his poison.

  More coke followed. Line after line ripping through me, and gin, beautiful gin, to wash it down. I cradled my skull in my hands and screamed out in pain and rage and frustration and guilt, and I shook with sobbing, and all I could see was Taylor’s beautiful face and Nathan’s hate-filled face and Steven’s bruised and bleeding face and Jesse’s hurt and disappointed face.

  Maybe Nathan was right. Maybe Taylor was right. Maybe sorry faggots didn’t deserve to live. It sure didn’t seem possible that we could ever get that happy-ever-after. The writing was literally on the wall, and if a picture was worth a thousand words, even a ripped-up picture, then that was a thousand giant faggots demanding I pay, demanding I suffer.

  And I was powerless, but not powderless. The face in the mirror as I leaned over it to cut my next line was a stranger, and it was a stranger who wanted to forget. And what I couldn’t forget in gin and cocaine, I could forget in the pillow.

  I fired up Grindr, and each window was an invitation to forget. My square was faceless, just my body, which wasn’t as good as it once had been. Who had time for the gym when the world was falling apart? But I flipped through profiles, one after another after another, and there he was, a chiseled and smooth torso of a man, looking for a bottom.

  What’s up, I sent him, and added a picture of my ass.

  I had barely inhaled the new line before he replied back. Nice ass, bro, and the dick pic he reciprocated with had my hole twitching.

  I sent back my address, and poured out another gin. It burned going down. I stripped off as I waited for him to come, this faceless man with that impressive dick, and I cut out a couple more lines, in case he wanted to party before we played.

  I waited, flipping through the other profiles in case he didn’t show. They were never no-shows, though. The pic of my ass I sent out when I was looking to get plowed was a good picture. A really good picture. No horny top could say no, and I was flying high enough to believe my own hype. I was invincible and strong and there were no words and no pictures and no memories of Taylor inside this bubble.

  Finally, the buzzer rang, and I let him in without a word. My dick was half hard at the thought of him inside me, and it twitched when he knocked at the door.

  I opened the door, and there stood Allan.

  “I thought I recognized the address,” he said with a sneer.

  A thousand thoughts collided inside my head. Of all the people on all the cruising apps, it was this sketchy ex-fuck of Brandon’s who had helped Nathan torment me. But he did have a big dick, and the whole situation was fucked up enough to be extra satisfying.

  I pulled him toward me and my mouth closed on his.

  Chapter 25

  My mouth was dry and my dick was hard, and he pushed me into the apartment.

  “I always wondered what it would be like to fuck you,” he said. “Not just fuck with you,” he added, with that sneer.

  “Don’t talk,” I said. “I just want to get fucked.”

  “What would Brandon say?”

  “I said, don’t talk!” I shoved my tongue in his mouth again to shut him up.

  We fumbled our way to the couch, and he forced me to sit. He stood above me, and stripped off, and there it was, the body from the profile, the dick from my memory, and I dropped to my knees and went down on him, feeling it grow in my mouth. His hands tangled in my hair and he pulled me down, down, down until I was gagging on his growing meat.

  It was wonderful.

  I thought of Brandon and all the times he would have gone down on this cock, and I could see his abs flexing as he bent over to take it all in. My hand was on my dick, faster and more furious than any drag racing movie.

  Allan groaned as I picked up speed on his dick, my hands squeezing his ass and pulling him even deeper into my face. “Slow down there, Alex, I’m going to make this good.” He pulled my head off. “Mind if I have one?” He gestured with his head toward the coke.

  “Go hard.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said, and he leered at me. He bent down and sniffed up one of the lines as I licked his back down to his ass. Another night, I’d’ve buried myself balls deep in that ass, but I wanted to get fucked. I wanted to get fucked until I couldn’t walk. I wanted to get fucked until I couldn’t think.

  “You go,” he said, holding out the straw for me.

  I took it from him, and inhaled the storm. As I pulled back, eyes closed, breathing in the white fire, his hand was on my ass, spreading my cheeks apart, his fingers seeking entrance. His spit hit my hole warm and wet, and then he pushed his way in, one finger, two. I grunted, arching my back, pushing back onto his hand.

  I tossed him the bottle of lube I kept stashed under the couch for just such situations. “Get. In. Me. Now.”


  “Yah? You want it?”

  “Yes.” I looked back at him. “I want it.”

  “Beg for it.”

  “Please, Allan, please give it to me.”

  He slapped his dick against my ass. He was so hard. My whole body shivered. “Please, Allan.”

  “Say please again, you slutty little faggot.”

  I tensed. Faggot faggot faggot. But it was true. That’s what I was, what I’d always been.

  “Yah, I’m just a fag, and I want you in me now.” I reached down, grabbed his lubed-up dick, guided it to my twitching hole. He slapped my hand away.

  “My rules,” he said. He pushed my head down into the couch. I could barely breathe. And then he was in me, and I stretched to accommodate him, and he slammed hard and fast, and I screamed.

  It was wonderful.

  Over and over and over he pounded into me, and with every thrust, I was driven farther into the couch. He was silent now, relentless, a fucking machine that existed only to ruin me. I moaned louder as his speed increased. My own dick lay forgotten between my legs, but this destruction was better than any orgasm. “Fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me.”

  My heart was racing, from the exertion, from the coke, from the thoughts that kept eating away at the edges. My eyes were closed, and I could see Taylor, lying on his back, the first time I fucked him, so many years ago, and the way he would bite his lip to keep from crying out. I cried out louder. That was then, and we were young and new. Now, it didn’t matter, and this dick was attached to a vile and sick man who was nothing like my Taylor. He filled me, and made me emptier.

  He yanked my head back. “You like this, Alex? You like my cock in you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me you like it.”

  “I like it!”

  “Tell me you love it.”

  “I love it. Fuck me! Harder, goddammit! Harder!”

  He pulled out, and I gasped at the sudden vacancy. “On your back, faggot.”

  I rushed to comply, my hands holding my knees to my chest. He yanked me to the edge of the couch, lined up, and drove his cock mercilessly into me. His hands on my ankles bent me nearly in half and over and over and over again, he pounded against me. His head was thrown back, he wasn’t seeing me any more than I was seeing him. I reached out, touching his face, and he opened his eyes. They were cold. He smiled, a smile that didn’t reach those cold eyes.

  Suddenly, he pulled out again, climbed on top of me, and shot all over my face. I jerked myself back to hardness as he unloaded hot and wet, wiping his cum from my face and using it as lube on myself. He wiped his dick on a throw pillow and started to get dressed, his eyes holding mine as I continued to frantically fuck my fist.

  He leaned down and kissed me on the mouth, and I could taste his cum, and then he pulled my head down, and whispered in my ear, “Didja like that, faggot?”

  I groaned and came.

  I lay there and watched him walk out without another word. When the door closed behind him, I rolled onto my side, saw the coke-covered mirror, felt the semen drying on my skin, and started to cry.

  Chapter 26

  I was on fire.

  No wait. That was just the sun, bright and blinding and basically peeling away my eyelids.

  Gingerly, I opened one up and flinched. I was on the couch still, and there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t hurt. Bits and pieces of the night floated through the screaming corners of my mind, disjointed and blurry recollections of Allan fucking me, of the picture of Taylor, of lying there into the night, my heart racing from the drugs.

  The clock on my wall said two. It clearly wasn’t two in the morning. The sun outside was high.

  The gin was spilled on the mirror. What a waste of perfectly good wake-me-up coke! Wait. What day was it?

  Tuesday?

  Fuck.

  It hurt to walk but I moved around to look for my phone, and found it, kicked under the coffee table, slimy with lube. Griffin meowed, and it was like nails down the backs of my eyes.

  “Shut up, cat,” I said, but my own voice hurt just as much.

  Three voice mails. Never good. Texts were fine. Actual phone calls meant trouble.

  “What the fuck, Alex?! How could you? I spent the entire day helping you and then you invite him over and he fucks you? Are you fucking insane? I thought you were starting to get your shit together but clearly I was wrong. Lose my number. We are done!”

  Of course. Allan of course had to brag to Brandon. It was a punch in the stomach. All the good that had happened on Sunday, it was all set back.

  “Alex,” the next one began. It was my boss. “We’ve been trying to call you all morning. I don’t know what’s going on with you but this is too much of a common occurrence this past while. We will be sorry to lose you but it’s just not working out anymore. No need to come in. We’ll mail you your final check.”

  I slumped to the floor, and my mind raced, trying to think how many lates or absences there’d been the past few months. They added up. I started to laugh. Fired was just the icing on a shitty fucking life. I turned my phone off. There was no way I wanted to hear the third voice mail. After rock bottom, where else was there to go?

  Griffin rubbed up against my face. I shoved him away. He meowed again. “Shut up, cat!”

  I laughed even harder. It really was impossible to believe. Everything turned to dust in my hands. Relationships, jobs . . . everything. Even my past. That picture of Taylor, its taunt of You killed me. How was I supposed to move on, make things better, when everything kept pulling me back down? How was I supposed to get Nathan to stop?

  I needed my Dinah.

  Turning my phone back on, I called her, but of course, it went directly to voice mail. She, unlike me, was at work. She, unlike me, had a job. And a fiancé. And friends. And a life. I, unlike her, was just a sorry little faggot (faggot faggot faggot).

  What the hell. Might as well face it all. I checked the third voice mail.

  At first, I thought it was a hang-up, but then he spoke. I melted into tears at the sound of his voice. My Steven.

  “Alex. We need to talk. I don’t know what’s going on, but clearly a lot. Brandon, Colton, Walter, Mr. Carroll, everyone has called me. At first, I didn’t want to get involved. You’d made your choices, and the consequences were yours to deal with. But if you’re really in trouble, I’m here. Call me if you need to.”

  I could barely see my phone through the tears. Even after all I’d said and done, he was reaching out. Oh God, what would he think when he heard about Allan? Or that I was fired? Did he know how bad things had truly gotten? Aside from the new stuff, like the picture of Taylor. Did he know how bad the drug use had gotten?

  It had just cost me a job, and it had definitely cost me my dignity. Had I really let Allan fuck me? Allan? Of all people? And had he really made me orgasm with faggot? I hated that word. How could I have reacted that way? I just wanted things back like they were, before all this, before the kidnapping. When it was that practically perfect summer of me and Steven.

  He was saying hello before I even realized I had called him back. The sound of his voice pulled only sobs from me.

  “Alex?”

  I couldn’t talk.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  The phone went dead, but suddenly, I felt alive again.

  Chapter 27

  When we escaped from Nathan, Steven and I were both convinced the worst was behind us. We had survived, Nathan was arrested. He confessed to it all, and we were free. Steven had my ring on his finger, and we were free.

  But first, I had to tell him everything.

  I had wanted to propose, of that I had no doubt. But still, a panic set in, and that panic led to me visiting Wonderland and getting some drugs from the Caterpillar, one last snowy night before settling down to a white-picket-fence happy ending. Those were the drugs he found, and that fight was bad
. It ended with him saying he never wanted to see me again.

  In grief and anger, I went back to Wonderland, and left there that night, drunk and high with a twin on each arm. That threesome with Jesse and Colton was a mistake, but Steven had to know. He had to forgive. They had always had a strange openness to their relationship that neither Steven nor I understood, and they hadn’t thought twice about taking me home with them, whether Steven and I were together or not. The couple that played together, stayed together was their motto, and if it worked for them, it could work just as easily for us.

  Except I woke up the next day feeling horribly guilty, but whenever I wanted to reach out to him and tell him, I remembered that he had said he wanted nothing to do with me. And so I said nothing. And that night, I saw him in his window with someone else, and I thought we were even Steven.

  What if I had burst in on him that long ago Saturday? I would have caught him with Nathan, who was using Steven’s grief and his own good looks to trick Steven, to capture him. Everything else would have been avoided if I had simply gone all Brandon on him right there, bursting in, in drama and rage. But no, I had chosen to wander away, and the next morning, Steven was missing.

  Steven knew what Nathan was telling me to do. While I was waiting for the calls from this anonymous evil, Steven was subjected to Nathan’s crazy rants 24/7. Steven heard all about what Nathan had suffered as a child, in incoherent ramblings mostly, but he pieced it together. And as Nathan set out to prove that gay people couldn’t ever know true love, Steven held on to the idea that I would do whatever I needed to get him back.

  Which for Nathan meant me going to White Night at the local bathhouse, having sex with a stranger, and then confessing my infidelity to Steven. All the while, Allan was helping Nathan along, keeping watch on what I was doing, messing with my life, all for the promise of a fat wad of cash.