by Amy Lane
He slept in his truck that night, visited the Y the next morning, and tried again.
And again.
At the end of the week, he went home to lie to his mom.
She fussed over his thumb and clucked that he was getting too thin. All she had in the house was spaghetti and butter. He ate the last of it and hated himself. Jessica and Keith came to visit, and for a moment, Vern let himself fall into Jessica’s warm and willing hug and dream. Dream of safety and soft mattresses every night, dream of a small town where you never went hungry, and where if your boss pulled a gun on you, you could at least tell the cops and get the guy investigated.
Jessica wanted to stay the night.
Vern told her that he had to use his mom’s computer, and she said that would be fine—she’d wait up.
Oh God.
Vern had dreamed about nothing but Gomez and his sweet brown eyes and his yearning, and the way he’d saved Vern’s tools for him. Jesus God, Vern didn’t want to touch Jessica with that yearning on his skin.
He spent hours on the computer, filling out an application for every fast-food chain in a twenty-five-mile radius from Sacramento—anything, anything but to come back to Dogpatch again.
He crawled into bed and felt up a sleepy Jessica, knowing it was his duty. He got it up—because that thing never stayed quiet long—but as he moved inside her, the satin of her body squeezing him tight, her soft cries urging him on doggedly, he was thinking of Gomez and the yearning in his eyes.
THE NEXT day Jessica had to work at the Frostie, and Keith said, “That’s okay. Vern and me, we can hang.”
His almond-shaped eyes went to half-mast when he said this, and his even white smile, that made all the girls want to spread their legs for him, cranked up a notch.
“I need to leave early,” Vern said desperately, but his mother teared up.
“Oh, honey—my check went through. I was going to make something special tonight. Can’t you wait until this evening?”
He looked at her helplessly, wanting a meal his mother cooked more than anything in the world.
Apparently more than he didn’t want to suck Keith Gilmore’s dick, because “hanging out” meant going to the stables and going down on Keith while he grabbed the back of Vern’s head and knotted his fingers in Vern’s hair and tried to choke Vern on a six-inch cock.
He finished and Vern swallowed, and for a moment, a brief moment, Keith pressed Vern’s head against his stomach and the tight grip on his hair relaxed, turned into a caress.
“I missed that,” he said softly. Then he let go and pulled his pants up while Vern went to rinse out his mouth.
Vern didn’t anticipate the heat at his back, Keith’s warm body draping itself over Vern’s shoulder, the gentle hand at his backside—or the cash pressed into the back pocket of Vern’s jeans.
“Eat something,” Keith said, his voice low. “Your mom may buy that you’re okay, but you look like shit warmed over.”
Vern closed his eyes then and fought off the shaking that threatened to take over his body. He swallowed the last of Keith’s spunk and nodded.
Even when he was back in his truck, driving back down to nowhere, hoping for a goddamned job, he couldn’t have said what that moment was.
On the one hand, it was all the tenderness he’d ever dreamed of.
On the other, it was another step to whoring his ass out for food.
IT TOOK him two more weeks to get a job waiting tables at a little smoothie café called Hazy Daze. He wasn’t making a lot of money, but after a week or two, a few people there let him flop on their couch and use their shower for ten bucks a night.
He still had to go home and sleep with Jessica once a week. And suck Keith Gilmore’s dick.
It was almost to the point where the thought of driving home made him want to vomit, but at least he got an employee discount on food that didn’t make him break out.
He must have been looking particularly rosy and clean-cut then, because some of the guys who wandered into the place started to check him out.
Particularly when he came out from behind the counter.
“Hey, Dex—check it out!” The guy speaking looked like a dark-haired, brown-eyed gorilla with supermodel face implants and a soul patch. His fake whisper sucked.
The tall, blond, blue-eyed, angel-faced, pillow-lipped country boy with him obviously thought so too.
“That wasn’t creepy at all,” he drawled. He didn’t sound like California country, but Vern could hear the sound of someone who hadn’t seen a lot of city in his youth either. “C’mon, Kane—you’ll scare the poor guy.”
“Yeah, but, you know. You said you’re looking for guys who do girls.”
“You do girls, moron. We don’t have to work that hard.”
“Boys pay more,” Kane said, taking a philosophical pull on his juice. An actual juice, not a smoothie, something with lots of protein powder but no food. “But, you know. He’s kinda hot. And look.”
Vern had to smile at the long-suffering expression on the blond guy’s face as he swung his head around and, without shame or subterfuge, checked out Vern’s crotch.
And widened his eyes in appreciation.
“So?” Kane asked, looking from Vern’s package to his friend and back. “C’mon, Dex. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Dex grunted. “You’re not wrong.” There was a buzzing in his pocket, and he pulled out his phone, frowning. “Shit.”
“If it’s him, tell him to fuck off,” Kane said, an edge to his voice.
“It’s not him. But Ethan and Chase are there for the shoot, and we’re late.”
Kane’s disappointment was palpable. “Damn. How’s that happen? We work out, we have juice—just goes so fast.”
The expression on the blond guy’s face was fond. “I got no idea. But here. I’ll give him John’s card. Couldn’t hurt.”
He walked up to Vern, who had given up pretending to ignore what they were saying.
“Kid, c’mere.”
Vern had been bussing the small store and was about to walk around the counter to take the tubs in to wash. He paused at the entryway and turned around to face Dex, the blond guy, who had been friendly when he ordered and kind to the big gorilla who just didn’t seem that bright.
“What can I do for you?” he asked formally, because damn, he needed more hours, and his manager, Courtney, was eyeing him with suspicion from behind the counter.
To his surprise, Dex looked vaguely embarrassed. “Look, kid—if this offends you, do me a favor and forget we talked. I like this store, and it’s near my house and my gym, and it would really suck to have to change where I get my cleanse, okay?”
Vern nodded bemusedly, wondering what this guy could say that would piss him off. “Not a problem,” he said. “This convo never happened.”
Dex smiled appreciatively. “Solid.” He reached into the back pocket of jeans that looked too fancy to be jeans and pulled out a slick red leather wallet. “Look, this is the card for the company we work for. It’s not… uh, a PG-13 kind of place, but if you look at the website, you’ll see we’re, uh, equal opportunity. And it may be, uhm, up your alley, and it may be, well, not—but if it’s up your alley. At all. And you feel like maybe it’s something you’re interested in. And you don’t want to sue me for harassment, here.” He pulled a pen from the jar by the register and wrote a number on it. “This is my number, and I can set up an audition for you.”
Vern got a hit of aftershave and clean male sweat and swallowed against a wave of want he’d never anticipated.
“Uh, sure,” he said, thinking he’d call that number no matter what just to get another smell of the furiously blushing Dex.
Dex nodded, seemingly in relief. “So, uh….” He squinted at Vern’s name tag. “Uh, Vern. Do people still name their kids Vern?”
“Means ‘spring,’” Vern said, feeling foolish and off-kilter. “My mom wanted to go to college—likes to read fancy books.”
Kindness spa
rked in Dex’s blue eyes. “Of course. Well then, it’s a good name. But you’ve got your hands full, and we both have to bail. I’m going to tuck this card in your front shirt pocket—shit. You don’t have one. Okay, don’t take this as being fresh or forward. If you turn around, I’ll tuck this into your back jeans pocket, and you can look at it at your leisure. Is that okay?”
Vern nodded dumbly and turned around, presenting his ass, as it were. “Yeah. Sure. Thanks.”
Dex winked. “Don’t thank me yet. Right now I could be just some pervert who’s hitting on you ’cause you’re hung like a fuckin’ bear.”
He could feel Dex’s fingers pull the pocket back and push the card under the flap of worn fabric. The movement was executed smoothly and was over before Vern could even imagine the feeling of those hands sliding tenderly over his backside and squeezing his asscheeks with intent—but that didn’t mean his body didn’t jump to conclusions.
“What was that about?” Courtney asked as Vern shuttled his body back to the sink. “Was he hitting on you?”
Vern swallowed back a vehement “I wish!” He had a girlfriend. “I’ll have to look up his website and see,” he said gamely, but he remembered the way the two guys had checked out his body—checked out his package. Remembered Dex’s grim and practical discomfort when talking about “equal opportunity” and “not PG-13.”
He had an idea.
And he was pretty sure it was the sort of thing that would be blocked on the computer back in the manager’s office too.
LIBRARY COMPUTERS block porn—so do internet cafés.
Vern looked at the card on his break, though. It featured an artistic line silhouette of a shirtless man, and he knew exactly what he was getting into. He looked at the card again, which read simply [email protected], and wondered who he could flop with that night and if they would mind if he used their laptop.
Then he noticed that the card had an address on it.
One right there in Sacramento.
And he had the next day off.
THE PLACE looked… respectable. A little one-story office complex that appeared to be designed around a courtyard, since there were trees growing out of the middle. Solid. The girl behind the counter looked like a handkerchief in a hurricane, with flyaway brown hair and a sleeveless flannel shirt, and she stared at the phone like maybe it would bite. The thing rang, and she fumbled the receiver, then pushed a pulsing button with extreme trepidation.
“Uh, Johnnies? Kelsey speaking? How can I help you?” The voice on the other end spoke, and her elfin face lightened fractionally as things seemed to work. “Okay, yeah. I’ll hook you up with John. He can help you.” She stared at the phone and jabbed a finger at the board again. Raising an eyebrow, she muttered, “And I hit this to hold, and this to transfer, and—”
There was a solid tread in the hallway. “Oh, Kelsey…,” a voice sang, sounding like a man at the end of his patience.
Kelsey grunted. “Sorry, Dex. What’d I do this time?”
“Well, I got a real earful of the new girl getting an ass full. Was that your intention?”
Kelsey gave a weak smile. “Well, at least this time it wasn’t on speaker.”
Dex let out a weary laugh and massaged the back of his neck. “An improvement,” he admitted, then sighed. “Okay—show me who you were trying to transfer. Let’s try this again.” He looked up and saw Vern there, and some of the weariness eased up. “I was hoping for an email, but I got a visit,” he said with a bright commercial smile. “That’s even better. Give me a sec and we can talk.”
While Vern was waiting, he looked around, thinking the office looked so… normal. So pedestrian. Boring, even. With the exception of some kitten posters behind Kelsey, saying things like “Hang in there, baby!” and “Today’s going to be a great day!” most of it was beige. If Vern hadn’t heard something about the new girl getting an ass full, he never would have guessed porn.
While he was staring around the space and wondering if anyone had ever sat on the copier bare-assed naked, the bell above the door rang.
The guy who walked through didn’t look like a porn star. Not like Dex or Kane, who were muscular and waxed—down to their eyebrows, Vern was pretty sure, or Kane would have had a unibrow. This guy had scalp stubble dyed an obvious blond. His pale brown skin had the remnants of childhood acne on the cheeks, with cheekbones that made the league minimum for handsome and a short jaw with a pointed chin. Vern might have written him off completely in the looks department, but he had friendly almond-shaped blue eyes and a smile with a sort of pureness—like Keith Gilmore, but without the cunning or the self-awareness of being a douchebag.
He paused as he saw Dex and Kelsey working on the phone and waited until he caught Dex’s eye.
“The schedule in the office?” he asked, pointing to a door leading to what looked to be a conference room on the right.
“Yeah, but it’s a mess,” Dex muttered. “Tango’s off, probably for good, so gimme a minute, Reg—I mean Digger,” he said determinedly. “We might need you more.”
Digger—who was apparently also Reg—smiled sunnily, unfazed by the gaffe of his name. “Okay, Dex. I’m here.”
He turned to Vern and held out his hand. “Digger. Are you new?”
Vern shook his hand, wondering at that sunny smile and those guileless blue eyes. Was this guy hiding something? Keith’s good-ol’-boy smile hid an opportunist who thought forty bucks for a blowjob made him Mother-Fucking-Teresa, but this guy didn’t seem to have an angle.
“I don’t have a computer,” he said apologetically. “Dex there offered me an audition, but I wasn’t sure for what.”
Digger nodded. “Porn,” he said simply, wiping the mystique away with one pass of a battered, fine-boned hand. “You’ve never heard of Johnnies?”
Vern shook his head in apology. “Sorry. No. I don’t even know what kind of porn it is.”
Digger’s shrug seemed philosophical. “Mostly gay, but they’re trying to get girls now. Like branching out.” He smiled that easy bolt of sunshine again. “I like girls. I mean, guys are good, but I started with girls, and sometimes it’s nice to trade off.”
Vern’s brain sputtered and sparked. Such an easy way to think about it, right? But who did that? Who just said, “Yeah, I’ll do either one. They’re both nice”?
“So,” Vern said, trying to get his brain wrapped around the concept, “like bisexual?”
Digger’s frown made him look like a puzzled baby. “But isn’t that like gay? I’m not sure I’m gay.”
This conversation was officially the strangest thing Vern had ever done with a stranger. “Well, bi means you like both,” he said patiently, and embarrassment crossed Digger’s open face.
“Yeah. I knew that.” He shook his head. “Sorry—I’m not always… remembering stuff good.”
Oh. Vern got that. “No worries,” he said, smiling with all the reassurance he could muster. “I mean, it’s not like I’m an expert.”
And Digger chewed his lip, a sort of pained sorrow crossing his face. “I’ve been doing this for ten years,” he said in a stage whisper, like this was a confidence. “I just forget shit.”
“But you never forget to come in for your schedule,” Dex said, straightening up from the phones and giving Kelsey an absent pat on the shoulder. “That makes up for a whole lot of ills in my book.”
Digger gave Dex a comfortable wink. “You just say that ’cause you’re shorthanded.”
“Yeah.” Dex’s grimace was not nearly so comfortable. “I don’t think Tango’s coming back.” His voice sank low—this made him sad.
“You’ll still visit,” Digger told him. “Kelsey told me folks set up shifts in his room. We’ll take care of him.” Vern glanced at him sharply. He didn’t know who Tango was, but there was something childlike and trusting in this guy’s voice. Couldn’t Dex hear it? He thought this porn shop was full of grown-ups.
“Yeah, but Chance isn’t doing too good either,” Dex mutter
ed, then shook his head and smiled determinedly at Vern. “I’m sorry—you caught us on sort of a shitty day. Come on back with me into the office. I’ll get Reg—Digger’s schedule, and we’ll talk.” He squeezed Kelsey’s shoulder and stepped from behind the desk. “Sorry, Digger.”
“I should have picked a name when I started,” Digger said with a shrug. “I’m not that smart.”
“Well, John was new too then,” Dex said kindly. “We have more of our shit together now. C’mon back.”
The back office was just as ordinary as the front office, except the back office had framed watercolors on the walls. There was one picture—a bunch of shirtless, built guys in jeans, standing in a courtyard, arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling—that caught Vern’s attention. Dex was one of the guys, and Kane stood right next to him, both of them looking carefree and not particularly posed. It was almost like someone said, “Hey, let’s do this!” and it had turned into a publicity shot.
Maybe it had.
Digger was on the end of the line of guys, looking a little small in comparison. It wasn’t that he wasn’t ripped—and not obviously short. His body was tight and compact, every muscle group defined, but he was just not as tall or as bulky as the other guys in the shot, and Vern sort of liked him more for that. He was just… regular. Not a god. Just a guy.
So was Vern.
“That was a good day,” Digger said from the little utilitarian desk in the corner of the room. “We were all there for head shots, and John wanted to get a candid. He’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, he is,” Dex said, clicking at a laptop from a standing position. “And here he is!”
A slight thirtyish ginger-haired man walked into the office and smiled almost shyly. “You rang?”
“Yeah, John—look, I gotta go visit Tommy. I mean Tango. Fuck me. We’re getting guys to spend time with him, if that’s okay—”
“What about….” John looked at Vern and grimaced.
