The End of Billy Knight

by Ty Jacob

  Contents

  Praise for The End of Billy Knight

  About the book

  About the author

  Title page

  Part One: Runaways

  1. The Rifle

  2. Silver Lamé Solves Everything

  3. Good Looking Kid

  4. The Lucky Pony

  5. Bees to Honey

  6. Cougar Studios

  7. Pinned

  8. Under the Disco Ball

  Part Two: Working Boys

  9. Lipstick Emergency

  10. A Natural

  11. Staying for Breakfast

  12. Working Boy Needs Job

  13. Banging Billy

  14. Sick

  15. Doctor Wesley

  16. Tiny Bottle

  17. Tested

  18. El Mexicano

  19. Stripping at Exposé

  20. The Results

  21. Partners

  22. Cliff Hardman

  Part Three: Weights

  23. Muscle Party

  24. Fear of the Body Failing

  25. The Clinic

  26. A Distinguished Friend

  27. Country Cousins

  28. The Happy Couple

  29. Home Alone

  30. Piercing Whistle

  31. Old Fashioned

  Part Four: Silver Dicks

  32. And the Winner Is

  33. Glamorous Life

  34. Sisterly Love

  35. Drag Queen and Strippers on Tour

  36. Can’t Go Back

  37. Porn Star Roast Dinners

  38. Bi Bi Billy

  Part Five: Acts of Love

  39. Two Hooligans

  40. Unprotected

  41. Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy

  42. Moving Out

  43. Empty

  44. A Shocking Proposal

  45. Another Little Job

  46. The Color is Blue

  47. A Lonely Summer

  48. Handsome Buildings and Men

  49. Couch Potato

  50. Hit Me

  51. I’ll Take Care of You

  52. In the Closet

  53. The Blackness

  54. Looking for Change

  55. An Old Routine

  Spread the word

  Also by this author

  Copyright and credits

  Praise for The End of Billy Knight

  “Funny, poignant, unputdownable… Fast-paced, plotty and beautifully written, taking me to worlds I've never been to but now feel like I know.”

  - Sarah Laing, author of Mansfield and Me

  “A complex, poignant love story set in the intriguing (lost) world of 80s porn stars. Great, sympathetic characters and a compelling story.”

  - Bianca Zander, author of The Predictions

  “In his literary debut, Ty Jacob's The End of Billy Knight takes readers on a rocky tale of unrequited desire, desperate quests for fulfillment, and everyday struggles for people working in nightlife and porn... But what makes it worth following goes beyond the steamy sex scenes and carnal gazes Jacob pens in vivid detail. At the heart of the novel lies an empathy with people typically seen as shallow, cold and unlovable.”

  - Windy City Times

  “A ripping read… Once started I couldn't put it down… Billy and Sasha had a complex yet simple relationship that holds you enthralled all the way through.”

  - Shane Dangerfield

  “I loved this novel… The two protagonists have been written with a clear-eyed love. They are real & complex, and weeks after finishing the novel, they are still resonating with me.”

  - Susan Pearce, author of Acts of Love

  “Vivid storytelling, engaging characters, great visual descriptions, suspense and interesting character development make this book a must-read. Check out this well crafted first novel.”

  - Andrew D Deppe

  “Lively, engaging, witty and 'out there', The End of Billy Knight manages to be both hilarious and poignant in its depiction of the (highly dysfunctional) relationship between an aging drag queen and a hot young wannabe porn star. It's also a fascinating portrait of the US gay scene and the porn industry.”

  - Caren Wilton, author of The Heart Sutra

  About the book

  The End of Billy Knight is a surprising, genre-bending blend of dark literary fiction and playful gay romp. It moves between sex, humor, and sorrow to reach beyond the obvious stereotypes.

  Mike is a handsome young man who works as a gay hustler in the streets and bars of Cincinnati. When a trick goes wrong one night, he decides to change his life.

  Dale is an aging drag queen who spends most of his life performing as the fabulous Sasha Zahore. She's the star attraction at the Lucky Pony, a rundown bar in Los Angeles.

  It's the 1980s, and Sasha has a dream. She wants to break into the emerging gay porn industry and direct high quality films. “Porn so good it'll make even your mama proud.”

  The night Mike and Sasha meet, their lives become connected and their dreams intertwine.

  Very quickly Sasha becomes determined to make Mike hers - in more ways than one. But when nobody believes a drag queen can direct gay porn, and when Mike doesn't return Sasha's feelings in precisely the way she'd hoped, how far will she go to get what she wants?

  The End of Billy Knight is a complicated portrayal of two flawed and deeply sympathetic souls, both lost in their search for meaning, fulfillment and love.

  About the author

  Ty Jacob is the pen name of author Jared Gulian. The End of Billy Knight is his first novel.

  Jared’s memoir, Moon Over Martinborough, was published by Random House New Zealand and became a #4 national best seller. It tells the story being an expat American city boy living in rural New Zealand on a tiny olive farm.

  Visit his website at JaredGulian.com.

  You can also find him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

  The End of Billy Knight

  by Ty Jacob

  Part One: Runaways

  1. The Rifle

  MIKE DIDN’T KNOW how old he was when it happened, but he was young enough to be sitting on his mom’s knee when the man rushed into the back room with a mask over his face, carrying a rifle. It was his happiest boyhood memory.

  They had just finished eating dinner and the room still smelled of warm roast beef. The dingy peach walls were lit with the soft light of the daisy lamp that hung above the table. The dishes had not yet been cleared. The blue-white fluorescence of the shop out front spilled in, framing the man’s thick body in the doorway, an angry silhouette in a bright rectangle of light.

  Mike felt his mom’s arms wrap around him. She screamed and turned so that her body hid him from the gun. For a moment he couldn’t see. His mom’s arm was across his face, her chest heaving. He could feel her trembling. She was holding him so tightly that it hurt.

  When she reached out to grab his sister, Lisa, and pull her close, he saw that Lisa was crying. Lisa’s long brown hair jolted to the side as his mom pulled hard and fast.

  Then all at once his mom was standing up, directed by the man with the rifle. She was setting Mike down and moving into the corner, one of her hands holding each child on either side. His dad was standing in front of the man with his hands in the air, yelling. “Please don’t hurt my family, just please don’t hurt my family!”

  The pale skin around the man’s eyes stuck out against the dark mask. Mike grabbed the floral print of his mom’s skirt and hid. She kept her hand down in front of him, as if it were enough to protect him. The man came close. Mike saw the mud on his shoes, the dirty grey denim of his jeans. Looking up he saw the nearness of the rifle, the dusky black metal. He heard his mom screaming.

  His
dad shouted, “Abby, don’t move!” and ran out into the shop. Mike could see him through the doorway, opening the cash register, pulling out all the money and putting it in one of the white plastic grocery bags they used for the fruits and vegetables. Then he came back into the room, the bag in one hand and the other hand up in the air, empty.

  The man grabbed the bag of money and pushed past. Then he turned back and said, “Don’t call the police. I have men outside all around you. If you pick up the phone they will kill you.” He ran through the doorway and into the shop, past the tomatoes and carrots, beyond the eggplants and bananas, and he disappeared into the heavy darkness of summer night.

  What Mike loved about the memory, what would make him cling to it throughout the rest of his life, was not the man with the rifle, not the soft peach room turning suddenly dangerous. It was the way his mom had held him, the way his dad had begged for their safety as though he really cared, the way both his parents, in that horrible moment, did everything they could to protect him. He was someone who was cared for, cherished. There were people in the world who wanted to keep him safe.

  It would be years before he’d have that feeling again.

  2. Silver Lamé Solves Everything

  DALE’S HAPPIEST BOYHOOD memory wasn’t until he was sixteen. That was the day he wore a dress to school.

  He had planned it for nearly a year, ever since the silver lamé evening gown caught his eye at a secondhand shop. He was a plump boy. The dress hugged him across the stomach, a small dimple at his belly button, but it would do. Before then it had always been a secret – trying on his mother’s dresses when nobody else was home, staring at himself in the full length mirror on the back of his parents’ bedroom door.

  Now Halloween was his excuse to do it in public. Unbeknownst to his parents, on Halloween day he stood in the boys’ bathroom before first hour applying Sapphire Dream eye shadow, heavy rouge, and thick mascara – all of which he’d stolen from a drug store near his house. The blond wig he actually bought, with money from mowing the neighbor’s lawn. An old pair of socks gave the silver dress some much-needed cleavage. Black pumps, a little too small, finished off his look. When he stepped out of that bathroom and into the wide institutional hallway of Lincoln, Nebraska’s Fletcher J. Morgan High School, he was transformed. He was no longer timid and withdrawn. He was proud, bold. The wig was a helmet, the makeup a mask. The silver lamé was like armor.

  Everyone who saw him laughed. He didn’t care. He laughed with them. That was, in part, the point. People should laugh. It was fun. He smiled and even pretended to flirt with the boys, who then laughed louder. It was Halloween, and it was all a game. Doug Kohler – who was dressed in his varsity football uniform, blue and orange from head to toe, broad shoulder pads and Kohler 10 across his back – actually walked up to Dale and put his arm around him, saying, “Hey babe, you look good. Wanna see a movie after the game?” Doug’s friends snickered and someone shouted. “She’s as good as you’re ever gonna get, Kohler!”

  Dale was normally overlooked at school, and he loved the attention. His dress sparkled. Girls who’d never seen him before came up to him and cried out, “Oh I love what you’ve done with your hair!”

  “Thank you, darling,” he’d say, and flip his blond coif to the left, everybody smiling. He was a star.

  It was only the next day when it turned sour, when several of Doug Kohler’s football friends repeatedly collided into him in the hallway, pushing him hard with thrusting shoulders, knocking his books out of his hand and calling him queer under their breath as they continued on. The enchantment of Halloween was over, and Dale was once again just an odd, chubby boy with very few friends. He was convinced then that the dress the previous day had shielded him, as if the farce of wearing it had somehow created a spell of protection around him, for as long as he kept it on. He wanted that play, that safety, the happy attention he found in that dress, every day.

  3. Good Looking Kid

  TWO MONTHS AFTER Mike turned sixteen, he thought of the robbery as he slipped into the dark shop late at night, a large bump already turning purple on his forehead. It was the summer of 1981. His mom and Lisa were both gone, each departed in their own separate ways. His dad was passed out upstairs.

  Throughout the shop, the vegetables were lumps of shadow and faint color in the dark. He had heard over and over the story of how this shop would be his some day. His dad used to stand behind him and make him wait on customers when he got home from school. “Math is the only thing you need to learn,” his dad would say. “You need to know how to give change, count vegetables, pay the farmers at the market.” He would place his hand on the back of Mike’s neck, take another sip of the bottle he kept on the shelf below the register. Golden brown liquid sloshed behind clear glass as he tipped it back. A loud smack of his lips followed as he screwed the cap on and put it away.

  Mike didn’t want to own a pathetic little fruit and vegetable shop. He didn’t want to become his dad.

  He reached up and touched his forehead, wincing as he did. He walked over to the apples and filled his backpack, zipped it shut, and then stood behind the counter. The register was at least as old as he was. His dad had made sloppy repairs to it many times over the years. After the robbery he put a lock on the drawer and hid the key next to his bottle.

  Mike was never sure how long after that robbery his mom had died, but it couldn’t have been long. His childhood was a hazy country, the landscape hidden by fog and shadow. He couldn’t quite see the edges of things. When people asked, as they inevitably did, he just said, “She died when I was a kid,” and if they pressed him for an age the answer was, “I was little.” Then he started talking about something else. They usually stopped asking.

  He took the key from behind the bottle, still there after all these years, and reached out in the darkness, feeling for the small opening on the register’s left side. He didn’t think it would wake his dad, but he wanted to be sure. The bell in his fingers was smooth and cold. When he opened the drawer the only sound was a click, the feeble thump of the captive bell, the metal track sliding open, and there was the money. His dad hadn’t made a deposit in three days. Mike remembered the man in the dark mask, and he took everything.

  When he stepped out the front door, the night air smelled of freshly cut grass and pine trees. He walked toward the highway, his backpack heavy with apples and money. Eventually he saw the headlights of the highway through the trees, and his stomach tightened. He was this close to getting away from small-town Brewerton. He thought about all the things he was happy to leave behind, the things he hated: school, that pathetic little shop, his dad. Mostly his dad. Of course there were things he knew he would miss. Lying in the sun on the banks of the river, skinny-dipping with the other boys. The hay bales in the Thompson’s hay shed. Charlie, who he fooled around with from time to time.

  At the edge of the highway, he put out his thumb. It was just past midnight and there weren’t that many cars. Sporadic headlights glared into his eyes and passed him by. He walked along. After a while a big four-door sedan stopped at the side of the road. He couldn’t see who was inside. He walked up to the car, opened the door and saw a beard hiding most of a face, a Green Bay Packers baseball cap low over the eyes.

  “Where you headed?” the man asked. He was big. He sat tall in the seat.

  “Cincinnati, wherever.”

  “I’m going as far as Hillsboro. Hop in.”

  “Where?”

  “Just outside Cincinnati.”

  Mike’s side hurt as he got into the car.

  The man said his name was Jerry, and he pulled into the empty stream of highway. Mike said his name was Charlie.

  “Where’d you get that bang on your forehead there?” Jerry asked.

  “Fell down,” Mike answered. There was no way he was going to tell this man what had really happened. He was still reeling, still scared. He was amazed he didn’t get shot.

  “Okay. So, what’s in Cincinnati?�
�

  “Nothing much. Just going. What’s in Hillsboro?”

  “My wife and kids.”

  As they drove along, Mike felt Jerry staring at him in the dim light of the car, oncoming traffic sometimes illuminating the front seat.

  “You’re a good looking kid,” Jerry said.

  Mike turned toward him, meeting his gaze head on but smiling and speaking warmly. “You wanna watch the road?”

  Jerry turned away.

  Charlie used to say, “You could be a movie star, man.” At school the girls were constantly trying to flirt with Mike – something he found annoying and flattering at the same time. Although his sandy brown hair was slightly disheveled, he kept it short enough so people could see his face. Still, he never quite saw in himself what others said was there. It felt like being color blind, having to ask somebody else, What color is my shirt? He could only trust that what they said was true. What he did know, what he learned at an early age, was that when he smiled and gave people all his attention, it changed them somehow, made them easier to deal with.

  “How old are you?” Jerry asked.

  “Eighteen.” Mike turned his body in the seat so he was completely facing Jerry, his back against the door. Jerry was big and broad. Mike was only five foot eight, with a slim build.

  Jerry scratched his beard. “You look young for eighteen.”

  “How old are you?” Mike said.

  A slight pause. “Thirty.”

  “You look young for thirty.”

  “Well,” Jerry said, then fell quiet and stayed that way for the rest of the drive.

  After a while, Mike felt the heavy weight of sleep. His head nodded forward and jerked back up again as he tried to stay awake. In the end he gave in, tipped his head back on the headrest, and slept.

  When he woke up the car was stopped and Jerry was sitting in the driver’s seat, watching him. They were in an empty parking lot somewhere. To his right there was a large, unlit building. It looked abandoned. The night was thick and there were no stars. He wondered how long they’d been parked there.