Once again, I would’ve expected more direction from the director. What I got was the director huffing and telling me, “You’re the last guy in the bar. Go from there.”
What I got from you, Jordan, was unexpected, too. You weren’t entirely there when you first walked into the bar. You didn’t look at me or say hello. You didn’t hug me. We had done one video together before this, but our history went beyond that. You used to come to my home, share my bed. You would fuck me, yes, and sometimes, the best times, we would lie together and kiss, kiss and talk, fully clothed. We didn’t just explore each other’s bodies. We explored each other’s mouths, each other’s faces. That was how I got to know the softness of your cheeks, the warmth of your neck against my lips, the way you kissed. You liked to bite my lower lip, softly, and then gently slide your tongue into my mouth and wet my own with your saliva. I liked to kiss your eyelids, feel your lashes tickle my chin, rub our noses together as a child does when discovering for the first time what it means to touch another human being. And in those kisses, you revealed yourself to me: you lost your father and your brother in a car accident when you were nine; together with your mother you loved to plant flowers that drew butterflies and hummingbirds to their color and bees to their nectar; you once rode your motorcycle naked across the Palm Springs desert to bask in the kiss of the sun, the caress of the sand.
The day of the porn shoot, you were distant, not the distance of a stranger, rather the distance of someone leaving without saying good-bye. You were cutting me off and I didn’t know why. Perhaps you had a reason. When two guys hook up over the Internet, that’s all it’s supposed to be—a hookup, one night of instant gratification, sometimes several nights of repeated gratification if the connection’s right. Nothing more. That was how it started out between us. But at times we stumble away from the groin and plummet into the messy pit of the heart. Such is the emotional dynamite when chemistry simmers.
You’re the last guy in the bar. Go from there.
You took two shot glasses from under the bar and filled them with vodka, one for me, one for you. We downed our drinks. You burped cockily into my face.
Me: Thanks for the drink. Where is there to go at a time like this? I’m fucking horny, man.
You: It depends. What are you looking for?
Me: Someone like you.
You: You might not have to go far. Take off your shirt.
Me: Now your turn.
You: Fair enough.
I leaned across the bar and kissed you, and it was as though we were on my bed once more. Maybe I wasn’t losing you after all. You closed your eyes. Our lips parted. You gently probed my mouth with your tongue. I lowered my head to your chest and buried my face in your pecs, teased your nipples with my teeth. And I sighed. I’m so much smaller than you, Jordan. When you embraced me, your entire body ate me up in one greedy swallow. I glanced sideways. At the opposite end of the bar, across the pool table where the light was dim, the director was watching, arms crossed over his chest—a shadow. He wasn’t huffing. He wasn’t peeved. I didn’t detect niceness from him, either. I saw something more, something better. I saw a man who understood the euphoria and the pain of male bonding. His eyes met mine. In his eyes I could read his thoughts: This is too sweet for porn, too caring, too loving. But it’s fucking beautiful.
You walked out from behind the bar, over to me, had me balance on all fours on a stool, yanked off my jeans and my boots—I almost toppled off the stool—and shoved your face between my buttcheeks and licked and lapped and kissed and sucked, wet me up for penetration with gobs of spit.
Then it was my turn.
You lay spread-eagled on the bar, on your stomach. Your ass was as round as sculpted marble; your thighs were half the size of my torso; your hole was twitching for my attention—the stuff of fantasies. Then again, you’re a big name in the industry. I didn’t know that until one night you told me your “other name”—your nom de porn. The day after, I Googled that other name. My computer screen popped up with page after page of your alias, video credits and pics.
Of all the pics of you growling at the camera over your shoulder while showing off your fuzzy buttocks, stroking your glistening cock, flexing your rippling muscle, my favorite is this—you in a T-shirt of Popeye flexing his biceps while clenching a pipe, your face beaming with a smile. You’re gorgeous when you’re naked. The whole world knows you’re gorgeous. But when you smile, you’re perfect.
Later, on the phone, you laughed and said, “Yeah. I’ve been around for a while.”
Now, lying before me, was the unreal deal, the other you. I parted your buttcheeks with an eager tongue, shoved it as deep as I could, relished the taste and feel and smell of your moist insides. My nose was wet from the perspiration on your asscrack. You had been riding your motorcycle all day, and I felt the heat from the cycle seat on your butt, tasted your manly muskiness. You turned your face sideways, toward mine. I could see you puckering your lips and I could hear your oohs and your ahhhs.
And then the fuck: you rolled over on your back and I stood on the bar. I lowered my asshole onto your fat eight-incher. Your Prince Albert was lubed with precum.
“Rip me up, man,” I said as I rode, slowly at first, and then building momentum so that I was slapping my asscheeks against your groin.
“You want it?” you teased.
Fuck, yeah, I want it. For always. I’m your bitch. Forever.
You shoved me from behind onto the bar, doggie-style, fucked me harder, then pushed me down so that I was flat on my stomach and the weight of your manly frame was on top of me. I was losing myself in your warmth, your muscles, your spit, your sweat, your tears, your piss, your butt skank. I fuck with other guys. You fuck with other guys. We’re dude sluts and that was what brought us together in the first place, a pair of goddamn manwhores.
That afternoon, though, nobody else mattered.
I tightened my sphincter.
“Ahhhh!” you yelled. You fucking yelled. Your cum gushed out of your pulsating cock, filling my bowels with its hotness. But you didn’t stop. You pumped some more, and kept pumping.
There it is, now—an instant between us videotaped for posterity, a testimony of my absolute surrender to your manlove. What the world will never see are the private nights when you possessed me. Once the sun rose and you walked out my door, you probably never gave me a second thought. But for the hours when the rest of the world was dead to us, when the only two people alive were you and me, you would look at me with your gorgeous smile—part mischievous imp, part tender lover—and I never doubted the sincerity of your pleasure in feeling yourself one with my muscle, with my body, even with my soul. It was always my pleasure to let you inside of me, as deep as you wanted to go. Whether you were gentle or whether you plowed away, it was my honor to move with the rhythm of your body. Yes, my goddamn honor, because it was you I was letting into the most private, sacred crevices of my inner being. You, Jordan, you.
I wasn’t losing you. Not entirely. We met from time to time after that shoot. A year later, you took me for an evening ride on your motorcycle. The helmet you made me wear had all sorts of piggish trash scribbled on it: CUM DUMPSTER…RAW ALPHA-SLUT…JOK FUCKER…BUTTHOLE BUDDY…
It was autumn. If it was cold, I don’t remember. We weren’t wearing jackets, just flimsy T-shirts. I asked, “What do I hold on to? You?” You said, “That’s pretty much it.”
As I wrapped my arms around you, you raised them higher so that my hands were on your chest, and you squeezed your fingers around mine, goading me to pinch your nipples throughout the ride. Streetlights were shining like gold under violet water. Friday night revelers crowded outside of bars, distant as onlookers gaping into a fish tank. That was how it felt in tandem with you, whizzing past strangers as the wind carried your voice toward me. It felt as if I were soaring on the crest of a wave.
We continue to meet. But it’s always touch and go between us, and often our meetings start with a text message from y
ou, out of the blue, a text message following weeks, months, of silence.
You: Hey big guy, what are you up to?
Me: Good to hear from you. At work right now. This weekend?
(That weekend…)
Me: Hey, Jordan. Love to get tribal with you.
You: (silence)
Me: Love being your porn whore.
You: :)
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN 1969
Dirk Vanden
Brad and I rented a place of our own, the top half of a duplex, on a street called Castro. Ours was in the middle of a group of brightly-painted two-story Victorian houses—most of them rented to gay men, many of whom stood in the street, or on front steps, or watched from their windows, as the Cosmos’s Twin Bartenders, as we came to be known, moved in.
We were in love, completely enthralled with each other. It was magic and wonderful, and we played it to the hilt. We walked hand in hand down Castro; stared at each other, moony eyed, holding hands over a sidewalk table at the Sagittarius, a gay coffee house near our apartment; chased each other naked in the surf out at “bare-ass” beach near Land’s End. And we entertained hundreds nightly as we groped and goosed each other behind the bar.
To love somebody and to be loved in return—that’s what it’s all about. That’s what makes the whole rotten world worth putting up with. When you’re in love, life is heavenly. When you’re out of love, life can be hell. At the moment, Brad and I seemed to be sharing paradise.
For the first time in my life, I had a partner I could share it with. Even though we quickly learned that we were two very different people, there were many things we both enjoyed—the same movies and TV shows, the same kinds of food and, most importantly, the same kind of people. And he would actually listen when I talked. He was interested in what I had done and where I had lived.
I was fascinated by this man who looked so much like me, but was so very different. He had grown up in California, moving up and down the state, settling wherever his carpenter father could find work in the postwar housing industry. He had lived in most of the large cities of the state. And he had been gay since high school—when he’d been seduced by the boys’ phys-ed coach.
I’d spent most of my young life as a sheltered Mormon farm boy, in a very Mormon community in Idaho. After two years at Brigham Young University, I decided against going on a Mission, and went to work on a cattle ranch in Colorado instead—where I’d met Brad.
Since Brad had been my first, the one to “bring me out,” as he called it, we decided we were meant to be.
At first, it was fantastic, having sex with someone whose body looked and felt so much like my own, whose cock liked the same things my cock liked. Brad was a fantastic cocksucker—he’d taught me, originally—so we usually ended up having a sixty-nine. It was the fulfillment of a boyhood fantasy—of sucking myself off. Fucking myself in the face. Brad had remarked that it seemed the same way for him.
But after a while, things started going wrong. Brad wouldn’t be able to get a hard-on for me, no matter how long or deep I sucked, or I’d have to strain to come when I was fucking him because he seemed bored or distracted. We took turns being “too tired,” or having headaches.
That’s when the silences began. Sometimes days would pass before we would talk to each other about anything not absolutely necessary. It was hard to figure out what had started the silences; I’d wake up in the morning, already annoyed because he was banging around in the kitchen, or vacuuming the front room, or doing something noisy. Whenever he got really pissed off at me, he would clean house—and for some reason, that made me furious. I hated cleaning house—so when I watched him intently and silently scrubbing and polishing everything, I hated him.
And I hated myself for hating him.
And we both started getting jealous. Inevitably, in a gay bar like Cosmos, customers have their favorite bartenders—usually because they want to have sex with them—and I found myself getting irritated whenever some customer seemed to prefer Brad to me. What, I wondered, did Brad have that made him preferable to me?
He seemed to be having the same problems with my favorite customers. From time to time I would catch him glowering at two of us, laughing or joking. I caught myself deliberately embellishing some conversation with a hot customer, simply because I knew it was pissing Brad off.
And it wasn’t just affecting the two of us—one night I heard someone remark, “You know, I’m getting just a little bit sick of those two assholes. I mean, just because they can’t get along is no reason for me to get snapped at. Let’s go someplace else.”
Then one Monday night—Brad’s night off—Ash and Dave, Cosmos’s owners, came in and said they wanted to talk to me. I already knew what they wanted to talk about: Brad and I were ruining their business. We were letting our problems affect the customers.
“What’s wrong, Warren?” Ash asked. “What’s happening with you guys?”
“Frankly,” I said, “I don’t think that’s any of your fucking business.”
They looked at each other, obviously startled by my attitude.
“In fact,” I said, feeling furiously reckless, “I am sick of your fucking business. I am sick of the whole fucking gay thing. Brad was right. It isn’t a fucking bit gay.”
I took the large set of keys from my belt-loop and tossed them onto the bar, then grabbed my jacket and hat. “You know my address. Just send the check there.” I stomped out and slammed the door after me.
The instant I stepped into the alley and heard the door close behind me, I knew I had just pulled the stupidest trick in my life. I knew Ash had just tried to be friendly and helpful—and surely had no intention of firing me. But I hadn’t been able to stop myself. For weeks now, the pressure had been building and building, and I’d finally exploded without thinking. I knew I ought to go back in and apologize—sit down and tell them honestly what was wrong. They had been together five years; maybe they could give me a clue as to what was happening.
But I couldn’t go back. I tried to reach for the door handle, but my arm refused to work. I couldn’t go back in after my idiotic dramatic exit.
So I drove around for a while, trying to figure out what to do—whether or not to go back to the bar, or to go home and tell Brad what had happened—try to get him to talk about what was wrong between us—or just get so fucking drunk I wouldn’t care about anything.
I decided to go home. Right now, the important thing wasn’t the bar or my job, or even my frustration—the important thing was us, the two of us, our relationship—whatever the hell that was. The trouble was, there were no definitions. Neither one of us really knew what to expect of the other. We weren’t husband and wife—but what were we?
The lights were out in the apartment. There were no notes to indicate where Brad had gone, or when he expected to be back.
I sat for a long time in the dark kitchen, drinking several beers as I imagined all sorts of things he could be doing: cruising the parks, sucking cocks through those “glory holes,” fucking some new lover. He wasn’t expecting me to be home until three o’clock, so he could be almost anywhere, doing almost anything.
I decided I was only making things worse by sitting in the dark, brooding. There was a possibility that Brad had gone to the market for something and had met one of our neighbors, or an old friend. They could have gone into the Shoo-Fly, a neighborhood gay bar right around the corner. I decided to check it out.
The bartender looked up and grinned. “Back so soon?”
“What?”
He leaned across the bar confidentially. “What happened? Didn’t he dig getting tied up?”
“What? What are you talking about?” But, as soon as I’d said it, I knew what he was talking about: he thought I was Brad.
“Oh, come on, honey, don’t give me that innocent shit. He was hot.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think you were watching that closely.”
“Honey, I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. Wh
at’ll it be, beer or booze?”
“Well, neither, actually. You just gave me what I came in for.”
“My goodness. I must be good. I didn’t even notice.”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, that’s a fact.”
“Then you must be his twin brother, honey.”
“No, I’m his lover. And, thanks to you, I know where he is—or at least what he’s doing. Thanks a lot—honey.”
For just a moment, he looked contrite—almost ready to apologize. Then he started to laugh. “Oh, shit. It’s you, isn’t it? You’re them. Oh, this is just too delicious for words. Was he cheating on you? Yes, he was, wasn’t he? We had heard rumors—ugly, ugly rumors. But, I mean, you have reason to be upset, don’t you?” He laughed triumphantly. “My dear—you have my condolences. Not all of them, mind you, but a great big gob of them.” The phone started ringing and he walked away laughing, to answer it. “Shoo Fly. We’re open for business. Cum and get it. Who is this? Mom? No, really, who is this?”
I went home and gave myself a deep enema, then showered and put on my tightest pair of Levi’s, thinking, It’s sauce for the gander time.
As I drove along Folsom, a car pulled out of a parking space in front of Leather Country. Without even thinking, I made a U-turn and parked. For a minute, I sat staring at the doorway to the bar, trying to decide whether or not I really wanted to go in. There was a tap on the window, and I turned to see a guy standing there in full leather-biker regalia, looking at me with a shitty grin. I rolled down the window. “Yeah, what’s your problem?”
His smile vanished. “Actually, sir, it’s your problem.” He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a black leather pass-case, which he flipped open to reveal a silver shield—from the San Francisco Police Department. It looked real. “Would you step out of the truck, please? Lean on the hood with your hands where I can see them, and spread your legs…please.”
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