Boy of the Westend

by Zack

  “You’re jumpy,” Jim greeted him with a tight-lipped smile.

  “Sorry. Hi,” he said to Donny.

  “Y’areet, hinny? Hoo’s yee fettle?” Donny came back unintelligibly while giving Mike a bright-eyed up and down appraisal.

  The Geordie kid looked snappy in smart button-up jeans of almost-white canvas with the type of matelot fly where the buttons are on show, inviting their being undone. The pants clung to his hips and showed off his “basket” nicely. Not for the first time, Mike noted how Donny’s skinny frame emphasized the bulge of his bunched up cock and balls. His pale blue cotton shirt had a huge wing-collar, which made the boy look vulnerable in spite of his sharp northern face. His well-brushed brown hair sat packed under an American-style baseball cap of a deep red color and a jacquard logo on the brow which Mike couldn’t decipher. The cap lent him a schoolboyish look which was obviously intended.

  By contrast, Jim appeared almost business-like in a smart three-piece suit of dark brown gabardine; sober pin-striped, button-down-collar shirt; and thin string tie in dark blue woolen knit. Mike felt underdressed in little more than his Ramones tee-shirt and a pair of colorful knee-length Bermudas he’d bought at Easter as a rebellious joke when the family drove to their Welsh cottage for a week’s break. In solidarity with my school friends forced to fly off somewhere exotic, he had explained petulantly.

  Jim grinned appreciatively. “Okay. The little lost American boy in London kind of works for me.” He reached out and pinched Mike’s rounded cheeks. “You look adorable. Should get a small packet for your services—”

  “You said you were just showing me the ropes, watching, tonight.” Mike pulled sharply away from the caress.

  “Sure, sure. Keep your hair on.” Jim rubbed his hands together and turned to Donny. “You ready to hustle, lover-boy?”

  “Ah need a piss.”

  “You should have gone before we came out.” Jim sighed. “Go on then.”

  “I’ll go too,” Mike threw in hurriedly, suddenly unhappy at being left alone with Jim, who waved his hands at them in a shooing gesture.

  Donny led the way through the press of people toward the Piccadilly South exit where, just off the wide ramp leading toward the steps, there was a Gents off to the left. A constant line of men, youths, and young boys came out as they shuffled into the cavernous toilets. Donny leaned in close. “Get loadsa them doon heor, but myest are just willy watchers. Not the best pick-up point, wha-ever ee says,” he said, jabbing a finger at a virtual Jim. “So watch yorsel.”

  Mike nodded knowingly. He’d used the place a couple of times before when cinema-going but couldn’t honestly ever remember seeing men eyeing him up. He liked Donny the more for waiting until two adjacent urinals came free. He took station next to him, and realized he was the center of attention. Well, it felt like it, or he had become over-sensitive. He now regretted the long shorts because he was forced to push the waistband down and the briefs beneath to get his tackle out, which put him rather obviously on display. He was self-conscious after what Donny had said, but made sure he at least got a glimpse of his companion’s cock. As though he felt the snatched regard, Donny waved it as he urinated. “Ahm not huge, yee knaa. It’s what yee dee wi it counts.”

  “Sure.” Mike half-smiled and concentrated. He really did want to pee but the thought that the guy standing so close next to him on the other side was staring down at him, stemmed the flow. He’s not really looking. Oh he is…

  Donny shook off like he was jerking, then nudged Mike’s shoulder. “C’mon. We’d betta hoof it, or Jim’ll hev conniptions. ‘Time is money, honey,’ he’ll be blethering.”

  As he tucked himself away under the Bermudas the guy next to Mike half-turned and threw him a penetrating look. Donny tapped the guy on his back. “Divn’t ogle wha yee canna afford.”

  The man whipped his head back to study the tiles in front of him. Mike followed Donny out. The air on the packed concourse almost seemed fresh in comparison. Jim was hopping impatiently from foot to foot and just jerked his head at the exit when they walked up. In single file the three pushed up the steps and out into the warm night air to join the throng waiting for the lights to turn so they could cross Shaftesbury Avenue. The crowds were less frenetic on the other side in the open space fronting Glasshouse Street and under the arcade of the first building on Regent Street. A slower pace presided, less aimless than the visiting gawpers, more concentrated.

  “Almost any point around the Circus will do,” Jim said to Mike, “but we seem to get the best steamers on this side.”

  When Mike went to follow Donny under the arches, Jim took his arm and pulled him back against the building’s frontage, where they looked like any others window shopping but had a good view of Donny as he hung around by the curb railings. The boy leaned back and raised one foot to hook the heel of his sneaker on the lower cross rail. A quick check down to ensure his cock and balls were nicely displayed under the white denim; an innocent schoolboy on a night out in town. The curved row of silvered fly buttons flashed enticingly, reflecting the rainbow colors of neon hoardings, baubles ready for plucking.

  “Watch and learn,” Jim hissed in Mike’s ear. “See the guy in the check shirt and light windcheater. He’s already passed by one way, now going back the other.”

  Mike fixed his unwavering gaze on the man, who looked to be in this late thirties, a little overweight though not gross. Donny produced a ten-pack of cigarettes and eased one out. The john moved from dawdle to quick-step. There came a flash from his lighter, and Donny’s face glowed brightly.

  “So what happens now?”

  Jim leaned toward him. “The john will make idle chit-chat for a minute and decide now he’s in close whether he’s into our bait. Oh, that was fast. Must be desperate. Now I join in, without scaring him off, hopefully.”

  Mike kept close to Jim as he crossed the space, wheeling between tourists to reach Donny’s side. The prospective customer looked around in alarm and immediately Jim spoke calmly. “Just making sure my friend here is okay.”

  “I don’t know what you want—”

  “Only making sure things are fair. Ah…”

  The man took off and hurriedly joined the tourists crossing back over Shaftesbury Avenue.

  “Just champion, that,” Donny complained with a drip of sarcasm from pressed lips.

  Jim shrugged at Donny and said to Mike. “Can’t win them all. Some don’t like managed boys.”

  Donny dipped his head in an urgent signal. Mike glanced back to see a smooth-faced, stocky man probably in his late twenties who looked the sort to know what he wanted. He stopped with the easy grace of someone comfortable in their skin, looked Mike up and down, then Donny, then addressed Jim. “What’s the deal?”

  “American.” Jim said.

  The man twisted his mouth in an amused sneer. “You can tell, huh? So? What’s the deal for both?”

  Jim had to think about it.

  “You are the dealer, huh?”

  “Yeah. What you have in mind?”

  The American guy eyed Donny and Mike with the faintest leer, then inclined his head toward Jim and spoke too softly for Mike to catch the words. Jim’s canny expression turned to one of mild disbelief.

  “That all? Okay, I’d need fifty each—”

  “Hey!” Mike grabbed Jim by the elbow, but Jim shook his hand off.

  “Get outta here! A hundred quid!” The American emphasized the British slang. “Tell you what, fella. I’ll agree to thirty total, both boys.”

  “You have somewhere to go?”

  “No problem. I’m staying with a pal’s got a place on Archer Street just up there.” He waved in the general direction of Shaftesbury Avenue.

  “Jim,” Mike began again, but the BBC pimp cut him off.

  “Seventy-five and it’s a deal for two hours.”

  “Forty and an hour’ll be enough.”

  “Money up front.”

  The American reached into his jacket and p
roduced a wad of ones and fivers. “That’s half. I’ll hand the rest over to one of the boys when we’re done.”

  Jim hesitated in taking the money, evidently calculating.

  “Look, buddy. If you’re worried about your merchandise, you can come and sit out on the landing one floor down from the apartment. It’s fun. One side is the ladies’ changing room, other side is the stage door to the strip club there.”

  While this exchange took place, Donny straightened up off the railings and kicked at a screwed up chewing-gum wrapper on the paving stones, occasionally giving the American punter sideways looks which Mike could see were designed to be a come-on. Mike felt nothing like that. He was frozen to the spot in terror. This wasn’t what he thought they had agreed to. He was supposed to watch, learn, no going with strange men tonight. But he could also see there was almost no possible way out without looking like a complete wuss. And… and… a part of him (probably his dick) felt drawn to the oh-so-certain American with his pleasant face and chisel-cold sparks of eyes. Mike saw it was his short stature made him appear bulky, but in fact, close up, his body looked hard, wiry, and his attitude utterly determined. A frightening combination, all the more so because as Mike began to sink into the inevitability of what was going to happen (while not having a clue what that would actually be), he thought the man attractive. And there was Donny. He’d be there as well.

  “It’ll be okay,” Jim said under his breath as he and Mike followed the American and Donny around the bustling corner into Shaftesbury Avenue. “He only wants to blow the two of you.”

  After shuffling along with the crowd a few yards, Great Windmill Street opened off the Avenue. The punter swung left and strode confidently along the center of the quieter road and then turned right into Archer Street, a narrow roadway of four-story buildings, its sidewalks guarded by periodic bollards. At the ground-floor level some Regency-style white stonework brightened a few buildings, but dark brick dominated the rest of what looked more like warehouses than stores or apartments. The American led the way to the middle of the short street and held his arm wide at a narrow doorway squeezed between the barred entrance of what looked to Mike like a gallery of some sort on the right and a set of three theater-style fire exit doors inset under bricked archways. It all looked seedy and grubby.

  The punter pushed the door open and sprang agilely up the stone steps beyond. The three followed, Donny first, then Mike, stomach churning with nerves and convinced he’d never get a hard-on. Jim brought up the rear. Mike kept close behind Donny with his nose almost in the Geordie boy’s ass as he swung around the bend in the stairs to the first landing and then on up again. A sudden burst of noise above suggested a door being flung open. The second landing acted as a wide throughway. On the left, the open door revealed something of a stage, with lighting and a heavy waft of cigarette smoke. Blowsy music rolled out over the landing. Mike pulled up short as a near naked girl skipped out from a self-closing door on the right and gave him a bright, slightly crazed look before sashaying through the stage door. It occurred to him that they were two sides of the same coin—entertaining horny men. With luck she might get away with shaking her butt while he was about… Oh shit, he’s only going to suck us off, and you can bear that, unless he lied.

  The American’s voice drifted down around the corner, aimed at Jim. “Take a seat over there, buddy. See ya in an hour.”

  Mike looked across the width of the tawdry space as the stage door closed behind the stripper, dimming the noise from the club. A sagging sofa leaned against the back wall of peeling flock wallpaper.

  “Oh,” the drawling voice floated back down. The American stuck his head around the corner of the wall rising up between the stair levels. He grinned. “I wouldn’t talk to any of the girls. They charge by the vowel. And none of them is very consonant, if you know what I mean.” With a deep chuckle he ducked back. Donny carried on around the corner up the stairs after him.

  Mike gave Jim a final, despairing look, and then followed.

  The American’s friend’s flat presented a happy contrast to the floors below, tiny but spotlessly clean. It smelled of wax polish and honey, and perhaps a faint, lingering hint of frying oil. Time ceased the moment Mike heard the apartment door close. A large hand closed on the back of his neck: encompassing, firm, maybe even friendly, but it allowed no backing out.

  “Weor dyer want te feck weh?” Mike backed into Donny in the confined space as the boy turned to question their punter. At least Donny seemed happy with what was about to happen.

  No fecking, Donny! Jim said just a suck, not any fucking! Mike prayed the American mistook the thick Newcastle accent and didn’t get any ideas.

  “Straight ahead,” he growled close by Mike’s ear and helped him along the narrow hallway with a firm grip on his right ass cheek. The room beyond was compact, with a medium-sized bed, not a single, not quite a double, but enough.

  “Strip, kids.”

  Donny glanced at Mike with a slight smile playing on his lips. He swiftly slipped out of his shirt and popped his jeans buttons. As he tugged his legs free, Mike saw he wore no underwear. Mike had never felt so self-conscious as he disappeared under the Ramones tee-shirt. The punter pulled him free and wormed a hand right down the front of his Bermudas. Donny’s long cock bobbed in his vision already getting hard.

  “Okay…” the appreciative voice breathed in Mike’s ear as, in spite of his nerves, the man jacked him up. “Shee-it, kid, but you have big balls on you.” The shorts fell down and the American’s expert hands quickly had his briefs off. He forced Mike around in his grip. “Strip me, kid. Now.”

  Donny pushed around between the bed, Mike, and the punter and swiftly helped to undress him. And then it all happened very quickly. The guy fell back on the bed, wriggled until he had his head propped up on two of the pillows, and indicated the space on either side. “Kneel up guys. Shuffle up. C’mon. Give me your dicks.”

  Unsure quite what to do, Mike followed Donny’s lead and knelt up opposite. He lost track of time, but for what seemed an age, the American took turns sucking them and Mike thanked the sensation for keeping him fully erect. A rumble down on the street intruded with passing lights. It felt odd, secluded up here, engaged in an intimate sex act with a total stranger while only yards away the West End hummed with the innocent life of fun seekers. The business of cinemas, theaters, street entertainers, restaurants, fast-food joints, dance clubs went on unaware of two teens getting gobbled by an American guy just around the corner. But also, down there, walked men and boys, all seeking sexual relief. There were moments when Mike swelled with the impossibility of encompassing them all, of getting off with everyone who surely would want him, rampant, urgent, desperate for sex; surely not love or affection. No one came up West in search of love.

  After a few minutes he had relaxed enough to begin enjoying the john’s attentions. Donny gradually pressed in closer and reached out to the Victorian bedhead to lean on it and press his middle down harder on their customer. Donny grinned across the inches of space between their heads. The bill of his cap, which he’d never removed, knocked Mike’s brow with a regularity born of the increasingly excited body movements. For his part, Mike became fascinated by the tight fit. The American had a small mouth which coped easily with Donny, who was long but not overly thick, while he struggled gamely with the girth of Mike’s still growing cock. It turned him on the way the guy’s greeny-brown eyes opened wide each time he bore down on Mike’s shaft to swallow it deep. It was as though there were physical connections between throat and eyes.

  The suck speeded up, the sounds became slurpier. Both boys were now fucking the guy’s mouth hard and he helped with a flowing supply of saliva. Donny murmured that he was about to come. The American john renewed his efforts.

  “Here we go,” Donny hissed as he took over and jerked himself hard against the American’s outstretched tongue, and Mike watched through burning hot eyes the first sudden ejaculation of Donny’s cum—good Northeas
t of England Geordie cream. The spurt coated the guy’s tongue as he flicked the tip over Donny’s spewing slit, and then he lunged forward and engulfed Donny’s cockhead again to swallow the rest of his orgasm. The slurping and gulping noises as he fed on Donny’s jizz went straight to Mike’s groin. He ground out a guttural moan and his big balls produced seconds later. The guy scrabbled around to catch it and Mike shot him hard. Donny leaned across so the tip of his cock trailed across the conjunction of the john’s spread lips and Mike’s enclosed meat until his slight shoulder rested against Mike’s upper chest and their heads met under the raised baseball cap. It made a weirdly close connection to Donny, all the warmer for Mike’s last urgent ejaculations. And then he felt a hard, hot splash on his thigh and realized the American had jacked himself to orgasm.

  Their customer knew how to take care of trade. The moment he recovered from his own climax and licked the last of their spunk, he swung off the bed and into a short toweling robe, which bore the logo of a spa and health club. Mike never saw where the bills came from, but they were thrust into his hand. “Okay, guys. Thanks for that. Dressed and out, please.”

  The door shut firmly behind them as Donny and Mike clattered noisily down the stone steps to the landing where Jim paced up and down from changing-room door to stage entrance. Mike thought he looked like a circus ring-master, weaving in and out between the flurries of strippers running to and fro in various stages of undress.

  And suddenly he felt nauseous.

  CHAPTER SIX

  An Eviction

  Jim looked pleased. He already had the twenty and smiled at the forty Mike handed over. “The steamer pays,” he crowed. He kept ten and handed Mike three fivers. Mike supposed Donny got the same, but as they split at Piccadilly tube station he didn’t see. Doesn’t seem right. Jim gets thirty and we get fifteen each. Huh! This goes on, that will have to change.