Hipster Brothel (contemporary gay romance)

by K. A. Merikan

  He switched to his e-mail when he got an update about it, but when he opened it, he almost spat his beer out at the phone. This couldn’t be happening. Mr. B had actually finished setting up the Lumbersexual website. And he wrote a newsletter about it. He probably had no idea that Jo was subscribed to it, since it was Jo who had set it up in the first place.

  The e-mail was very plain, and Mr. B must have not had any other subscribers, because all it said was ‘Testing! 1 2 3.’ and the website name.

  With blood hitting Jo’s brain in rapid waves, he clicked the link and quickly turned the computer away from the crowd, hunching over the screen so that no one would see the—oh, God—erect cock that strained the front of Mr. B’s open jeans on the front page.

  Jo picked up the empty bottle and rolled it across his forehead in an attempt to cool down. This was not good at all. How could Mr. B not see that this was a disaster? Mr. B was the kind of guy who liked to cuddle under a blanket next to a gas-stove, not give blowjobs to strangers for money. The sole thought made Jo clench his hands on his laptop as more photos enticed him down the rabbit hole of the website.

  And it really was a rabbit hole. Unorganized, with some links leading to nowhere. At least that could mean no one would find it for a while. But who knew if Mr. B hadn’t already handed out any of those goddamned flyers.

  And oh, God, the gallery of those incredible shots of Mr. B’s strong body, going from clothed to completely undressed and stroking his thick cock, which was pink in the close-up, like the sweetest strawberry lollipop.

  “Can I take this?” asked a server, and Jo closed his laptop so rapidly it almost fell off the table.

  “What?” he asked, panicking on the inside.

  “The beer,” said the guy, watching him with a frown. “Would you like another one?

  “Uh, no. No, I’m good for now. I’m waiting for a friend,” Jo said, to the server’s skeptical glare. The guy probably thought Jo’s date stood him up, but Jo didn’t really care at this point.

  He’d taken each and every one of those hot, amazing pictures that made Mr. B’s ass look so plump, so healthy. And for the frontal shots, Jo had been there to make Mr. B appropriately hard and sweaty for the eye of the camera.

  At the end of the photo stream was a close-up of Mr. B’s face, eyes staring straight at Jo. But then again, that meant anyone else looking at it would feel like they were the only person in the room.

  Book now to make the end of the summer special. Limited spaces available. First come - first served!

  Jo practically moaned with second-hand embarrassment. “Mr. B, no...” he whined, rubbing his face. This whole thing was just sad to look at, not only because of Mr. B’s obvious lack of any marketing skills, but also because he was promoting himself like a Cyber Monday deal.

  What if some idiot decided to book a night with him and made fun of the marketing? Or worse yet, of Mr. B?

  What if Mr. B actually slept with another guy, and what if he liked that guy better than Jo, and decided to never again give Jo another chance?

  That last thought gave Jo cramps in his stomach. He couldn’t afford the price Mr. B had decided on. It was a sum so outrageous it made Jo wonder whether Mr. B secretly hoped no one would book a slot, but when he refreshed the page again, the price was crossed out in red, with a new one written under it with an exclamation mark.

  Jo needed to end this madness.

  *

  After ringing the doorbell ten times and two messages that basically said I know you’re home, Juniper finally caved and opened the door with a bitter scowl. “What can be so important that it can’t wait till tomorrow?”

  Jo pushed past her and into her tiny studio apartment, stopping with his foot raised over the floor when he spotted a guy laid out in bed. At least he was fully dressed. “Um, hi.”

  The guy scowled at him and didn’t answer.

  Juniper raised her eyebrows. “Seriously, Jo. This is not on.”

  Jo took a deep breath. “Hear me out, okay? This is about saving someone’s life. I wouldn’t just barge in for no reason.”

  That had the guy sitting up with a more serious expression, and Juniper licked her lips when her—friend? Lover?—switched off the background music by swiping his fingers over an iPhone. “Um... okay. But I’m not a doctor or anything.”

  “You are a computer doctor”—said Jo—“and I seriously need your help, and I need it tonight.”

  “Did someone hack your bank account?”

  Jo swallowed, rubbing Juniper’s Ikea bookshelf, which was filled with computer games and graphic novels and stood in the exact same place as when they broke up in this room. “No. But Mr. B is about to make the biggest mistake of his life, and I can’t let him. Juniper, please, help me!”

  She gave a low sigh. “Is this about those porny pictures of him?”

  The guy blinked. “Some guy sent you dickpics?”

  Juniper looked as if she were counting to ten in her mind. “This is Jo, a good friend,” she told the guy before gesturing toward the bed. “My boyfriend, Antoine.”

  Jo chewed on his lips. “You never told me you had a b—”

  Juniper spread her arms. “No, I didn’t.”

  Jo rubbed his face. “Anyway, yes, it’s about those photos. He made a website with them, and I just got it in the freaking newsletter.”

  Antoine stretched, standing up and moving toward the kitchenette. “How is that an emergency? Can’t he take care of his own shit?”

  Jo’s fists curled up in anger and helplessness. “My boyfriend wants to fucking prostitute himself, so yes, it is a fucking emergency!”

  Antoine raised his eyebrows, but Juniper’s went much higher. “W-what? You’re gay?”

  Jo swallowed some air, taken by surprise. He was so agitated he momentarily forgot that Juniper still didn’t know of him and Mr. B, but now that he looked into her eyes, he knew it was sink or swim.

  “I—”

  Antoine sighed, seemingly more relaxed. “Come on, Juniper. He just told you he has a boyfriend. What else could he be? One of those guys who suck dick as a fetish?”

  Jo’s mouth dropped open. That was a thing?

  Juniper’s face contorted into a scowl, and she spun Jo around, pushing him out into the corridor. “We need to talk. Right now!”

  “I’ll make coffee, babe,” said Antoine, seeming to not mind Jo’s presence anymore.

  Jo didn’t have the energy to resist and let her force him into the tiny bathroom.

  Juniper whisper-shouted as soon as she locked the door behind them. “Are you fucking kidding me? You come here in the middle of the night to tell me you figured out you were gay, and you want my help on top of that because you’ve messed up something with Mr. B? Wait— were you guys on a date last week? What the hell is going on?”

  Jo took a deep breath and backed away until his ass pressed against the sink. “I am not gay. I am bisexual, and yes, that was a date,” he said, letting his hands drop. There was no use hiding it. She would know eventually anyway. Everyone would eventually find out if Jo wanted to be with Mr. B. He’d known this all along, and now he could not retrace the patterns his mind had wandered when it made the decision their relationship should be kept under wraps.

  Maybe because he hadn’t faced the alternative.

  Juniper took a better look at him and crossed her arms on her chest. “Are you sure you’re not gay? You seemed awfully eager for the pegging.” The resentment in her eyes pinned Jo to the sink. A part of him knew that it was just a dig at him because she was angry, but what if she really thought he deceived her? What if anyone who saw him with Mr. B thought that Jo was gay and had just straight-out lied to everyone before?

  Well… so what? He was Chinese, but he had no way of stopping strangers from thinking he was Japanese or Korean. He strived to look cool and stylish, so no one would suspect he lived in his parents’ basement. And if it didn’t bother him that people considered him straight when they saw him with a
girlfriend, so why would it be such a big deal if they saw Jo with Mr. B and thought he was not? It only hit him now, along with all the reasons why Jo’s coyness upset Mr. B so much.

  Juniper poked at Jo’s arm. “I’m waiting.”

  Jo sighed. “No, Juniper. I am 100 percent sure I’m not gay. But right now, I want to be with him, and we’re still friends, so I thought... you’d help me out. I would have helped you out with... Antoine if I knew you were seeing someone.”

  “You didn’t seem all that eager a few days ago when you told me Mr. B was seeing someone else. Or are you two in an open relationship?”

  Jo slumped against the sink. “I was worried you’d think I’d been gay all along and lied to you. It kinda... came out this way. So I guess this is me now. Coming out as bi,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  Juniper chewed on that for a while with a pout. “Okay.”

  Jo sighed, surprised and sort-of-expecting a blow in the face. “Okay?”

  “What do you want me to do? Smack you? Kick you out? We both moved on, so I guess if you haven’t been lying to me in the past, I can swallow it. Are you out? Can I tell my friends if the topic comes up?”

  Jo rubbed his face, looking at her, with his insides frozen, but if any of his plans were to actually work, he needed to stop keeping this side of himself in the shadows. “As long as you’re comfortable with all of them thinking you were my beard all along.”

  Juniper glared at him. “Aren’t you here to ask for help or something? What did Mr. B do?”

  Jo sighed, relaxing against the sink now that he saw Juniper’s gaze turn from irritated to inquisitive. “After he broke up with Mr. A, he thought he could only move on if he started doing something adventurous. And then we decided it would be cool to make boozy jams, because his preserves are so good, but we needed cash. And that was when he decided he’d do some escorting, and there’s no way to convince him otherwise. He won’t listen to me.”

  Juniper put her face in her hands. “That’s such a bad idea… But how can I help stop him?”

  Jo put his arms around her and hugged her so hard he lifted her off the floor. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  He felt good. Juniper took it much better than he’d expected when she’d actually have a personal reason to turn against him now that he told her of Mr. B. Maybe this whole coming out thing wasn’t that bad. He could come clean about everything, and he could accept flowers from Mr. B in public. He could make Mr. B happy.

  He could make himself happy.

  Chapter 9

  Mr. B was frantically cleaning the insides of the train car, but by now, the place was spotless, looking like straight out of the most stylish Airbnb listings, and he had to admit to himself that he was only carrying on with it because nerves were eating him alive. His first client had signed up, sent back the questionnaire, paid the advance, and there was no way around it. Mr. B would become an escort tonight.

  Only that he now wasn’t sure if it was what he really wanted. But if he didn’t at least try to go through with something he’d been planning all summer, would he then consider himself a failure on top of that? The kind of person who always chose the safest bet and hid in his shell whenever something was out of his comfort zone? Wasn’t it enough that he’d pretty much wrecked his friendship with Jo because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and his heart up his sleeve?

  But the start of his new career seemed like the least of his worries when he took a good look at the state of his bank account after a summer of barely earning anything and investing all his savings into this escorting project. He was surprised how quickly that first booking came through after he launched the website, but so far he’d had no other inquiries, and now all he could think about was complete financial ruin with no real perspectives of getting more funds in the near future. He really should have found another day job on top of the escorting gig.

  He kept looking at his phone, wondering if he should tell Jo just how stressed out he was, tell him he was a little bit scared, but Jo would only get angry with him so that wouldn’t work. Not to mention that Mr. B himself was still upset with Jo for rejecting him in public. What had he been thinking anyway? The whole idea behind the escorting was to live a little, meet more guys, and have sex with them—like all the others seemed to—and what did he do? Fall into the arms of his best friend and unconsciously already turn his back on the very idea of living as a single guy.

  Who else could he talk to then? Mom or Dad? They’d berate him for having sex for money, saying that making love was a circle of positive energy flowing from one person to another and adding money to the equation upset the harmony of the universe, or some shit like that.

  But he’d already received the money, and the few additional hundreds that fueled his bank account meant a great deal in his situation. He couldn’t turn his back on it. The guy didn’t seem like a freak either. He wanted to learn how to cut wood and have a campfire, then outdoor sex. He wanted to top, so Mr. B prepared himself for that, even if letting a complete stranger into his body seemed more intrusive with every second he spent thinking about it. He’d never done it with a person he didn’t know and feel comfortable around, and now he didn’t even know what his client looked like. Only his preferences.

  He had considered for the questionnaire to include questions that would reveal who the customers were, or even ask for photos, but that felt too intrusive. It could scare off most people. After all, Mr. B was there to provide some fun and pleasure, not think about himself and his own goddamned feelings. As long as the guy was clean and open-minded, he could work with that. Or at least he thought he could, since he had no idea how he’d feel when the guy actually arrived.

  Mr. B spent some more time keeping busy, preparing the fire pit for the evening, chopping wood, stuffing marshmallows on sticks, choosing blankets for the outdoor sex, but something kept nagging at the back of his head like that single tiny pebble in your shoe that wouldn’t give you peace. As if the whole world was full of invisible thorns, and everywhere he turned, they prickled him from each side.

  Mr. B walked into the train car to assess the place again, and as he did a walk-through, imagining how it would be to guide a client into bed, he decided he’d actually made too much furniture. Instead of cozy, the place felt cramped, so he pulled out two chairs and a little bench along with the extra table, and took photos of the pieces before hauling them off to the other train car so that the yard wouldn’t look messy. Funny how cozy the clutter had felt when Jo was here with Mr. B.

  There was one place where Mr. B’s stuff always sold well. The pieces matched the style of the store, and even with its commission, they could bring the much-needed additional revenue to the business that might not have been thought through as well as Mr. B originally imagined.

  He took a look at his watch and sighed, surveying the space once more, but he could not find a fault in it, and with the perspective of spending hours agonizing over what awaited him in the evening, he decided to go into town and do something useful. Like get his beard professionally groomed so that William, his customer, didn’t consider him a slob.

  *

  Just over three hours later, after being pampered by his barber and having eaten an extremely light lunch, because his stomach wouldn’t be able to accept much food even if he wanted it to, he found himself leaning against the bike parking close to Mr. A’s Artisan Furniture Manufacture. He couldn’t decide whether he should approach his ex again, especially with the less-than-civil way their last few conversations had gone, but at the end of the day, he trusted that Mr. A would eventually come around. He was a decent guy, even if their needs and goals didn’t match as much as he’d originally believed.

  As soon as he entered the storefront of the workshop, the scent of woodchips soothed him like few other things in the world could. Bradley, one of the junior carpenters, who usually dealt with the sale of complete pieces displayed in the shop, waved at him with a wide smile.

  “Haven�
��t seen you for ages,” he said as he approached through an obstacle course of reclaimed wood chairs and tables.

  The whole shop sounded like a symphony of wood, with something always being chopped, nails being put into place, wood being polished. Combined with the smell, it brought upon the kind of nostalgia that made Mr. B swallow in longing. He had really liked working here, friends with everyone else, but how could he had stayed if his former boss/ex found it uncomfortable? Maybe he really should have just found another furniture-making job in town? Maybe he’d have been better off than with today’s evening hanging above him like a guillotine about to chop off his head.

  “I know, right? We missed you, man,” said Bradley, smiling and relaxed in his purple and green plaid shirt. Mr. B envied him so badly. “Maybe we should all go out for a drink sometime?”

  Mr. B answered with a wide smile and shook his hand. “I’d love that. I miss you guys. But I’ve been working on some new projects at my place. Wanna see?”

  Bradley snorted and wiggled his eyebrows. “You do remember I’m not gay, right?”

  Mr. B stalled, unsure what that meant. “It’s just furniture. I’m not carving out wooden dildos.” Though at the moment that sounded like a much better business idea than the Lumbersexual Experience. He bet there were people who would be all over that idea. He bet his parents would have found it revolutionary. ‘Back to the basics dildos’.

  Bradley grinned. “No, I mean the escorting business. I never thought you’d be the type to do it, but hey, whatever works for you,” he said, offering Mr. B lemon-infused water from a pitcher.

  Mr. B took some, desperate to cool down with the help of the ice cubes floating in the glass. Mr. A must have told everyone about the escorting idea. Then again, it was also up online, complete with his naked pics, so he shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about people knowing about it. So why did he?