by Ty Jacob
“Excuse me? CLM?”
“A Career Limiting Move, babycakes.” Steve stroked his mustache.
Sasha rolled her eyes. Jesus, this man annoyed her. “And how can you limit my career any more than by not letting me direct?”
“At least today you have a job.”
“Look, you know I’m your best salesperson. And you know I want to direct. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I thought you liked what I did with my Muscle Party scene. You said it was good sex.”
“Billy Knight is good sex. A monkey could direct him and you’d have a top notch scene.”
“A monkey? Is that how you see me?”
“Of course not. But you know you’re not right for us. In sales, yes. In the director’s chair, no. Your whole image is wrong. Even changing your name, I still can’t get rid of… of this.” He gestured to her body, from her large wig to the rolls of her stomach. “My customers don’t want fat drag queens directing their porn.”
“Excuse me? Do you hear that?” She looked around the room, then back at Steve. “It’s a broken record. How can you still be going on about that? Listen doll, as long as our customers get off, they don’t care if Captain Kangaroo directs their porn. Damn it, I’m good. I can direct.”
Steve stood stock-still and said nothing. Sasha, keenly aware of the futility of repeating the same arguments, began down a different path.
“I can make you a lot of money,” she said. “I discovered Billy, picked him out of a crowd in a smoky bar. I can sniff out talent like a bloodhound. You let me direct, and I can bring you more and more like him.”
For a moment it looked as if Steve was actually considering this. But then he turned away and sighed, and she could almost feel her entire future being brushed away. He didn’t even argue. He just walked out of the room and stopped at the door, looking back at her. “Will you bring him in, or won’t you?”
Sasha leaned forward and held her head in her hands. She wanted to hide her face. It felt like she might actually cry, right there in front of Steve. The edge of sadness was too close.
“Well?” Steve said at the doorway.
There was a long moment when nothing was said, while Steve stood watching her and she continued looking down. The pens in the coffee mug in front of her pointed at odd angles. Fluorescent light bounced off the cold, white walls. Down the hall, a phone rang. Finally she shook her head, braced herself, and looked back up. She would not cry in front of this horrible, annoying man. She would not give him that. Her face became a thick veneer.
“Steve,” she said. She spoke softly. “If you really want him, and you don’t want me, there’s nothing I can do about it. I love that boy. Love him, I tell you. And if you’re willing to offer him a Cougar exclusive, that would be fantastic for him. I’ll bring him to you. You can have him.”
“When? Today?”
“Umm, he’s in New York right now. Yes. He left over the weekend. I’m afraid he’ll be there until the end of May sometime. He’s playing boy toy to some rich client. Travel companion. Whatever. I’ll bring him in when he gets back. How’s that? Deal?”
Steve eyes narrowed. “If another studio gets him before I do, your job’s on the line.”
“Of course it is, doll. I understand.”
“But you know, I’m not a bad guy. If you bring him in and we manage to sign him, I’ll give you a finder’s fee.” He smiled, obviously proud of himself for having thought of the idea, and then quickly walked out.
Sasha mumbled to herself after he was gone. “Well, lah-dee-fucking-dah.” She looked down at the skin on the back of her hands. From the top of her desk, the young men in the Country Cousins box cover photograph remained blissfully happy in their perfect, fake world. Alongside them, the merchants’ list looked like a death certificate. She thought of all the calls she had to make that day, and the next. She felt chained to that horrible office chair. This was death from monotony, death from having her three wishes remain so far away. She’d always thought this job was a means toward an end – a kind of stopover on the way to her true destination – but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this was actually the end.
Maybe this was as much as she was ever going to have.
28. The Happy Couple
IT WASN’T THE sex Mike liked the best. It was the few minutes just after he woke up in Kerry’s bed, hearing that steady, comfortable breathing on the pillow next to him. He would lie there completely still for as long as he could, trying not to break the moment, looking at the way the midday light came in around the edges of the thick blind, at the square shape where Kerry’s white ceiling met his chalky green walls, at the peaks and troughs of the sheets all around them. Eventually, when Kerry stirred, Mike would roll over and cuddle up against him, lay his cheek down on his chest, and breathe.
He began waking up at Kerry’s at least twice a week, often three. They would meet at Kerry’s late at night after doing overtime with clients. Then, like an old married couple, they would watch a movie on TV, or order Chinese from a late-night takeaway nearby. They would curl up on the couch together and talk about the clients they’d just seen, saving their own tender fuck for the morning.
Sometimes they would go out, meeting at Tricky Dick’s or The Powder Room, dance clubs around Los Angeles where the music was intense and thumping and they could hold each other, where they could stand in the middle of the room and kiss if they wanted. They would drink beer and dance and laugh and sweat.
Mike liked getting drunk with Kerry. There were so few times when he didn’t feel the need to stay in control. Only with Kerry was he free to allow himself to let go, without fear, without wondering if Kerry would cross some kind of line or do something to hurt him.
When Dale told him that Steve Logan was in New York for a month, that he’d have to wait until the end of May to meet Steve and talk about a contract, Mike was disappointed. He decided that he could pass the time by allowing himself to be completely distracted by Kerry. There was nothing else worth thinking about. He went with Kerry to join Built, and he began paying monthly gym fees. It seemed like a kind of stability. Mike hadn’t paid anything monthly since his rent back in Cincinnati. They worked out together regularly, and it felt as though in Kerry he’d found not only a first-time boyfriend – someone who had never once paid him for sex – but a personal trainer as well. Kerry showed him how to do reverse flys and military presses and Bulgarian split squats. Once he tried to pull Kerry into Built’s boiler room, but the door was locked. When he explained that was where they’d filmed the Muscle Party scene, an angry look flashed across Kerry’s face, but it faded quickly and was replaced with a sigh.
At work they flirted shamelessly, putting their arms around each other in front of all the teddy bears and lechers, grabbing quick kisses before they went up onto the stage. Mike thought they’d get in trouble for it, but Pascal never told them to stop. It turned out the customers liked it. Everyone talked about them, called them ‘the happy couple.’ They developed a routine where they stripped together – Mike getting down on his knees in his jock strap and pushing his face into the crotch of Kerry’s G-string, then Kerry holding him from behind, pretending to fuck him while all the lechers cheered and the teddy bears smiled.
Sasha had said it was important to make sure your act never got old, and he enjoyed having a new routine, especially because it was with Kerry. Most nights he would catch Kerry’s eye as they stood side by side, thrusting their hips at the crowd, and Kerry would give him a little wink, as if even up on stage they were still sharing some great private joke together, as if nobody else mattered.
Pascal warned them never to actually have sex on stage because he was afraid of being closed down. By then Mike had heard that even dances in private rooms were supposedly prohibited in LA. Mike figured so much illegal activity was already going on at Exposé that it would hardly matter if they had sex in front of everyone. But they did what Pascal said just the same. Kerry never wanted to actually have sex on stage, and Mike
didn’t want to lose his job for fucking in the wrong place, although it was tempting when the crowd cheered for more. Instead they arranged to do their overtime together as much as possible. It was great to be paid to have sex with your boyfriend, even if somebody else had to join in.
He was aware that Kerry had begun turning frequent tricks with Burt. Knowing about Kerry’s clients didn’t normally bother him, but it felt different with Burt. Kerry talked more about Burt than any other client he’d ever had – about how rich Burt was, about how well he knew Paris. It made Mike uncomfortable, gave him a hollow feeling in his gut.
To help Mike get over his unease, Kerry asked him to do a three-way with Burt. “You should get to know him. He’s really nice,” Kerry said, and Mike eventually agreed to do it.
It didn’t go well. Mike felt jealous. Burt paid more attention to Kerry. Even when Burt was simultaneously fucking Mike and kissing Kerry, it was obvious. Mike’s ass was just a place for Burt’s dick but Burt’s real attention, all his energy and focus, was directed at Kerry. Mike felt unwatched and nonessential, completely powerless. He wanted to push Burt away, to shove him off the hotel bed and yell, “Back off, he’s mine!” but he knew he couldn’t. Burt was Kerry’s regular. Burt was Sasha’s friend. So Mike lay there and tried to imagine that he was somewhere else. He disappeared, the way he’d first discovered he could years before, so that he wasn’t really there anymore, wasn’t in the bed with Burt kissing Kerry. It was a relief when it was finally over.
Afterward, he asked Kerry not to see Burt again. Kerry got angry and actually started shouting, something he’d never done before.
“Why would you not want me to have such a great regular?! How can you be so fucking selfish?”
Mike had begun to suspect that it was true, that he was selfish. He let the topic drop. After that, they stopped talking about Burt.
29. Home Alone
DALE NEVER FELT Mike’s absence as intensely as when he knew Mike was away with Kerry. It was all the time now. Very quickly, weekends became tedious and empty. The evenings, in spite of the slowly lengthening days of spring, seemed to grow darker. Mike was never home.
After coming home from work Dale would step out of the bathroom, having removed the dress and the makeup, and he would be in his pajamas by 7:00. He would shuffle into the kitchen and stare into the refrigerator. It was all he could do to move a frozen dinner from the freezer to the microwave. He ate alone, in front of the TV, sitting on the sofa where Mike might or might not be sleeping that night.
Mike’s bag of clothes sat in the corner, and sometimes Dale would open it, just to touch Mike’s T-shirts and underwear, just to make himself feel not quite so abandoned. Other times he would lose himself in sewing costumes for Sasha, the TV on to keep him company. Wednesdays at the Lucky Pony had become the only evenings he wasn’t at home alone, but even those fabulous performances had begun to feel just a little bit empty, because Mike was never in the audience anymore.
Still, Dale did what he could to keep Sasha fresh – new costumes, new dances. It was important to never let the people who watched her get bored. Dale pushed white satin under the presser foot and thought of songs Sasha could do in this fabric or that, what music went well with purple taffeta or teal crêpe. He would spend hours working on the movements Sasha would do in this new skirt or that blouse.
Eventually, as each lonely evening at home came to an end, Dale would brush his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at the flesh under his chin that lately had begun sagging even more. Then he would walk back out into the TV room, throw the plastic tray from his frozen dinner into the trash, and slip into his bedroom. Sometimes he would pull the chair from his vanity over to the window in order to do a little mending where he had a view of the street. If Mike came home then, Dale had an early warning, and he would quickly run back out into the TV room, sit on the sofa with a book in his hand, so that he could be there when Mike walked in, as though he’d been there all along. More often than not he just climbed into bed, rolled over and turned off the light.
He would wake at odd hours of the night and wonder if Mike was out there, on the other side of the bedroom door. Often Dale would slip out of bed, open the door quietly, and walk up to the sofa. The only light in the room was from the street lamps outside and the pale green glow of the display from the video player. He would find himself leaning over in the darkness to see if Mike was there and, if he was, feeling a sudden tiny bright spot of joy, but if not, feeling only the cold void of the empty room, his own solitude. Either way he would turn around and slink back into his bedroom, close the door behind him, and struggle to return to sleep. In the darkness, lying alone, he would think about his plans to get rid of Kerry. He hoped it would happen soon.
30. Piercing Whistle
MIKE DIDN’T KNOW why Kerry wasn’t meeting his eye. They were stripping together, the audience cheering, but Kerry was always looking past him, or down, as Mike bounced and danced.
Kerry reached out and grabbed him, twirled him in. Somebody in the audience whistled loudly and everything in the room spun. With his back to the audience and facing Kerry, Mike wiggled his ass. Kerry looked off to the left.
Mike was glad this was the last set. Although he still enjoyed the power he felt when the audience was watching him, dancing almost every night was becoming tiresome. It would have been so much more honest, so much more sincere to suck Kerry’s dick right there on stage. After all, wasn’t sex what people really wanted when they pretended to want to see you strip?
Mike trailed a hand across Kerry’s chest now, but every time he tried to catch Kerry’s eye, Kerry was again staring out to the left. Somebody whistled again, from over where Kerry was looking, a loud and piercing shrill.
It was only later, when the five-dollar dances started, that Mike saw Burt holding up a bill and waving it at Kerry, doing that horrible whistle. It looked like a fifty. When they were done, Kerry and Mike ran back up on stage and bowed together, then slipped through the burgundy curtain and into the changing room. Tony came in behind them with their clothes, saying “Nice one, guys.” He left right away.
Mike pulled a five-dollar bill out of his jockstrap and said, “Was that a fifty Burt gave you?”
“Yeah.” Kerry was already pulling on a pair of khaki dress pants over his purple G-string. “I have to talk to you about him.”
Mike paused. He threw his five-dollar bill into his gym bag with a bunch of others and pulled out a bottle of water, taking a long drink. “What about him?”
“Well, I don’t know. Tonight I’m staying at his place.”
“You and I have plans. After overtime. We’re getting Chinese.”
“His wife’s away. He wants me to spend the night with him.”
“So tell him no.” Mike looked at Kerry head on. “Tell him you’re busy.”
“I can’t. He’s leaving for Paris in a couple days.”
“Thank God. Get the creep out of here.”
“He’s asked me to go with him.”
Mike froze. All around him the air felt cool where it touched his skin, still damp from dancing. He said nothing. He watched as Kerry put on his shirt. It was new, blue with long sleeves. It had a Polo logo on the chest. It was expensive.
“I already told him yes,” Kerry said, and he sat down to put on his socks, as if what he’d just said was no big deal. “Burt’s only going to be there for a month, but he told me I can stay longer. I can stay in his apartment in the seventh. I can travel. I just have to be there for him when he comes back to Paris.”
Mike leaned down slowly and set his water bottle on the long bench in the middle of the room. The music was thumping out in the bar. This was what he’d been afraid of, and now here it was. He cleared his throat and spoke carefully. “I’ll save some money and come join you in Paris, when Burt’s gone. Okay?”
“I’m sorry, Mike. I’ll be busy.” Kerry was already slipping on a pair of brown, tasseled loafers. These new shoes had shown
up in the past week, along with the expensive shirts. He’d suddenly begun dressing like a preppy boy. “I’ll be working,” Kerry said. “Or traveling.”
Mike felt like he was going to cry. “It’s okay. I’ll travel with you. I’ll work with you.”
Kerry stopped fiddling with his shoes and looked up at Mike. “It’s not going to happen that way. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to be in Europe alone.”
“What have we been doing together, Kerry? What have we had here? Nothing? Have I been alone in this?”
“No. Look, we’ve had a lot of fun. You’re a great guy. But now I’m going.” Kerry stood up on the other side of the bench. The blond curls in his hair spun circles. He seemed very far away.
“Is it because I do porn? Is that the problem?” Mike could hear that his voice was starting to crack.
“Not at all. It’s just, well, I have Burt now.”
“What do you mean, you have Burt? He’s just another john, no better than the lechers out there. He’s just got more money.”
“Don’t make this ugly.” Kerry pulled out a gold watch from the pocket of his dress pants and put it on.
“Don’t make this ugly? Me? You’re suddenly dumping me like this? In the fucking changing room at work? You’re going with some married closet case to be his kept bitch, and you think I’m the one making it ugly? Fuck you, Kerry. I might do porn but at least I stand on my own two feet. Nobody owns me.”
“Sasha owns you.”
“What? She does not.”
“Do you pay rent?”
“What the fuck do you know? You can go to hell!”
Mike looked at the floor. It was true. He didn’t pay rent. He hadn’t given Sasha any money since they were saving money to make Banging Billy. She bought the groceries every week, never said anything about money.