Not even wearing a helmet, I caught myself thinking as I watched him pass. Then, considering this, I wondered if he was maybe one of T-Built’s (cronies) PAs driving by to check on us.
But something in that didn’t seem right.
Then, remembering myself, the corner, and, finally, Candy and her polite-yet-insincere question, I offered a shrug and said, “Just a vampire novel.”
She clucked her tongue at that and gave a knowing chuckle. “Like them Twilight books, you mean?” she asked.
I smirked at the question, secretly expecting it, and shook my head. “No, this one’s more scary than romantic, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say there was romance, too.” Then, considering what I’d read so far, I added, “Not just scary, though; it’s sad, too. It might have vampires and werewolves and all that stuff, but there’s all this real stuff—ugly stuff like abuse and pain and struggles with suicide and such—that make it feel like… I don’t know, like something more.”
“So why read it if it’s so sad?” Candy asked, seeming upset at the idea of me upsetting myself.
I smiled at that, more at her genuine concern than the challenging tone of the question. “Same reason you care enough to ask me that,” I explained. “There’s something about connecting with a person’s pain, making it your own—caring about them and their journey—and seeing them come out of it okay that makes you feel better to have been a part of it.”
“So everyone comes out of it okay in the end?” she asked.
I thought about some of the characters I felt like I’d personally watched die already and caught myself in mid-cringe. “Not all of them, no,” I admitted before scrolling back to show her the book’s cover, which featured crimson-eyed young man embracing a pained-looking, raven-haired beauty. Pointing towards the pair, I said, “But I’m hoping these two come out of it, at least.”
Candy studied the cover, squinting to take it in through the brightness of my phone’s screen against the otherwise dim world around us. Finally, she hummed to herself and shrugged. “Chick sorta looks like a whore,” she mused aloud. “One of them whores with a goth gimmick, sure, but a whore just the same.”
“That’s not very nice,” I whined, turning the phone away from her.
“Why not?” she asked, genuinely surprised by my words. “Them goth whores got a good thing going. That schtick sells pussy like crazy, I’ll have you know. Something to consider if you’re ever feeling up to a change.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” I said, sighing heavily and moving my finger across the screen in a cheap pantomime motion to turn the not-really-a-page.
****
“What is that?” the man who momentarily got to call me his asked, gesturing to a patch of black-and-white ink on my left calf. “That a monster tatt or something?”
“It’s Dracula,” I corrected half-heartedly, not interested in talking about my only tattoo. The man had paid for a blowjob, put cash in my hand upfront to get it, and I wanted nothing more than to get the rubber on him so that I could get started on finishing him.
While their differences weren’t always blaring or obvious, every John was unique. Some were chatty while others were quiet; some needed a bit of coaxing while others came loaded for bear; and some were all about getting to the action while others wanted to act like it was a first date. The ones that were first comers—no pun intended—were typically nervous, and these nerves typically were responsible for the chatting, the coaxing, or the feigned romance. It was for these reasons that I assumed that the man remarking on my tattoo was a first comer. The fact that he was softer than an abandoned ice cream cone on a day like today only served to prove this.
“Something wrong, baby?” I asked in a trained voice that was both sultry and motherly, a voice that said “I care, but I also really wanna gobble this cock; this cock, which is bigger and better than any cock I’ve seen and is surely packing nothing but future presidents and rock stars.”
It was a voice that Candy had worked long and hard to teach me.
It was also a voice that never failed to make me feel dirty and cheap.
“I just… it’s just…” the man sighed, obviously nervous and uncomfortable. Men in those circumstances often lost control of everything except their pride, and that was why I wasn’t surprised when he said, “I don’t understand why you’d have a Dracula tattoo.”
Right, I thought, suppressing the urge to roll my eyes, you can’t get it up because the whore’s got a little ink. There’s no way you’re thinking of all the guys who’d bust your balls for paying for it, or the things your mom might say if she found out, or even how I somehow remind you of an old girlfriend or, better yet, your cousin or even maybe your sister and it’s putting a bit of a stutter in your rudder, right? No, sir; it’s the whore’s Dracula tattoo that’s to blame for the dead worm in your shorts.
What I said, however, was, “Because I’m a creature of the night with an oral fixation, baby. Now why don’t you let me help you?”
“Help.”
Why that word seemed to work better than others in this line of work never failed to amaze me. Like they were paying me to find their keys or organize their closets instead of fighting to not wretch on their manhood. It wasn’t helping. I hated thinking of it that way, let alone wording it that way. But, hate it or not, it had a way of moving things along. As if to prove the point—or maybe just to prove me wrong for hating it—the word managed to slip past the man’s ears, wriggle into his brain, take a peek at the scene before it, and start a slow-yet-direct journey down to his midsection. No sooner had I said the word—that stupid, stupid word—than the dead worm decided that life was worth living.
This was usually the part where I was supposed to play the role of the startled and giddy lover. Cooing and cheering, maybe even gasping as one might when faced with an unexpected surprise. It was the sort of acting that Candy taught me to sugarcoat the otherwise awkward bridge that existed between the stages of “just give me a minute” and “let’s go!”
If I’d have known early on in my life how fragile men and their egos really were I wouldn’t have let Casey McMiller talk me into losing my virginity at sixteen. How quickly I could’ve ended the night if I’d just replaced my nervous stammer of “Will it fit?” to a more confident “Where’s the rest of it?” Casey would’ve driven me home, crying over the steering wheel of his dad’s truck, and I’d have had a more rewarding first time in college with Brandon Tulser, who was admittedly smaller than Casey but an all-around better guy.
I should have been sugarcoating the awkward moment, I knew, but the man was a first-timer who wouldn’t know any better and my mind was a million miles away. While he was still only half-hard, I slipped the condom onto him—a skill I wasn’t proud to have acquired with such swiftness and dexterity—and went to work “ice creaming” the glans like Candy had taught me on a Tootsie Roll Pop. It, like the word “help,” was stupid, but it got things moving.
The man moaned and said something, but it wasn’t my job to care. If he was expecting an answer then he’d obviously forgotten what it was he was paying me for.
I only got one mouth, and I’m not using it to talk.
Still distracted, my senses told me when things were at least awake enough to benefit from the “help,” and I went to work. Eager, throbbing life crammed into soulless latex filled my mouth and earned a stifled gag before I refocused my breathing through my nose. Then it was all a matter of rhythm and waiting.
I knew that moments like this likely meant something to the men. Even the seasoned patrons who’d done this a million times were there to achieve something, no matter how brief and insubstantial that achievement was. Whether they’d go on to remember the event or not, it meant something to them. When I’d first started, I worried that each time would mean something to me, as well; that every encounter would somehow feel either like an assault or, worse yet, like the start of something. I never really believed I’d fall for one of the men p
aying for my services—“Johns” as I came to know them—but I’d been to college, I’d had my crazy moments, and, yeah, the few casual blowjobs I’d given in those few dorm rooms had, in some way or another, felt like maybe they were the start of something more. In those moments, drunk or high from whatever party I’d been attending and working my sloppy routine, I’d catch myself wondering if the guy I was going down on would call me the next day, if maybe this lewd encounter might be the catalyst to something greater. I might have been naïve, but it wasn’t too farfetched to believe a random blowjob might, in some weird way, blossom into something more. And it was exactly that juvenile, college-born romanticism that had me so nervous about the job I was being forced to do.
Come to find that being a prostitute felt more like being a line operator at some sort of damp, sweaty factory. I could have just as easily been pulling a lever or snapping together pieces on an assembly line.
Up, down, twist, repeat.
Up, down, twist, repeat.
Quota’s not being filled? Crank up the speed on this baby! Show the boys down in scheduling what we can really do! Now, double-time:
Up, down, twist, repeat!
Up, down, twist, repeat!
Don’t forget your hardhats, boys; there’s dangers out there on the work floor!
Except when you let your mind wander in a factory you were at risk of losing a part of yourself to a hungry machine or letting a product slip by with an imperfection. Going down on a guy? You could lose yourself to the repetitive movements and the worst thing that’d happen is you didn’t realize they’d finished until they started squirming and grunting like idiots. Worst thing to come from that is the guy thinks you genuinely enjoyed “helping” them and they either pay extra or make sure to come back.
And so, getting to work—up, down, twist, repeat—I let my mind wander with reckless abandon.
I thought of how much I hated my big brother, Mack.
I thought of how much I envied Candy for any number of reasons.
I thought of how much I wanted to get back to my book and see how things turned out for the two vampire lovers.
And, strangely enough, I thought of a big, blue motorcycle adorned with a realistic flaming paintjob and sporting a long, jutting front tire and a rider who seemed to be avoiding any prolonged glances at the road ahead of him.
On a hot night, hating myself for looking so sexy and working hard to focus on anything except what I was doing, I felt like I could relate…
THREE
~JACE~
There was a heaving mound of flesh that called itself “Amy” and laughed like a cartoon character snoring softly in my bed. I did not know what to do about that, and so I did nothing about it. Instead, feeling like something of a suddenly unwelcome guest in my own home—like a sloppy mistake, a cheap one-night stand, in my own bed—I simply stared out into the darkest corner of the room. I hoped that a sort of sleep might come to me in doing so; as though I didn’t need to close my eyes and force myself into darkness to get the rest I craved so long as I stared, unblinking, into something that I might confuse for the back of my eyelids. It didn’t work. Somehow, dark as it was, shadows cast all the same, little wisps of darker darkness that glided hither and thither; just enough activity to keep my subconscious preoccupied and working my conscious mind into consciousness.
Enough consciousness to make me steadily obsess over words like “consciousness” while also thinking things like “hither” and “thither.” And, just like that, I was obsessing over more words…
The mound called “Amy” snorted, whimpered, and gave a little kick beneath my cotton sheets. The muffled tinging of her anklet resounded somewhere beneath a thousand thread count of cottony softness. Suddenly all I could think about was how badly I wanted to wash those sheets; how badly I wanted to roll the heaving mound off my bed, kick her out my door, and find someplace—goddam anyplace!—that was still open where I could bleach the ever-loving hell out of my entire bed set.
Then the mound whimpered again, more pained this time around, and farted.
I actually watched the material of the bedsheet balloon out between Amy’s legs—swelling like a living thing and then sinking like a dying man’s chest.
To hell with washing the sheets. The whole bed had to burn. Better yet if the heaving, groaning, writhing, farting mound that called itself “Amy” was still in it when it did. With any luck she’d keep the blaze going.
Not waiting to see if my night’s mistake had toxified the air, I stood up on sex-numbed legs and hobbled out of the room. I wished I could have stormed out, maybe expressed my disgust and rage in some way, but post-coital joints and exhaustion have a way of turning even the most graceful man into a stumbling mess. Even if it would have only been for myself, it would have been something; something better than the ego-crushing walk-of-shame that I was forced to endure.
Even in near total blackness—even with my sex-numbed legs and sleep-deprived mind—I managed to blindly navigate through my hallway, into my living room, around my furniture, and into my chair. I still couldn’t see a thing, but I knew that, if I could, I’d be staring at my dead (wife) stereo. The day’s decaying thought was as reflexive as a flinch in the wake of a punch to the face. I promised myself I wouldn’t think the word “wife” again, especially in conjunction with my old stereo, and almost instantly it’s the only word I can think and the only pairing I can imagine. Though there was nothing to see in any direction, I forced myself to look over my shoulder and back towards my (Amy’s) bedroom.
This thought I wasn’t nearly as begrudging to accept.
If I had my way, I’d seal off the windows and the door and trap her in there like some sort of awful, fire-breathing dragon in an old fairytale story.
At least the dragons in those stories breathe fire from their mouths, I thought.
I’d succumbed to the inevitable earlier that night. Even knowing that it was a mistake and that I would come to regret it—Hell, I was regretting it before we’d even made it back to my bike!—I’d brought her back here, shown off my apartment like any other douchebag thinking he’s got something to boast, made us a few drinks, and finally “retired,” as Amy had put it, to the bedroom. By some miracle, I’d managed to avoid saying “Retire you to pasture?” and the grand toilet flush that was the rest of the night had begun its swirling journey.
But I was already beginning to sober up enough to admit that I was doing myself a favor in condensing it so neatly. I was making the night’s abortion of my self-respect sound like nothing more than a miscarriage. No, no, no; I’d hunted for the address, staked out a parking spot, stalked past protesters waving signs that read “PRIDE KILLER!” and “YOUR DIGNITY HAS RIGHTS!” and pushed my way into the clinic’s air-conditioned waiting room so that the doctor could see me about all that positive dead weight.
It wasn’t such a simple case of we met, we went home, and we fucked.
There’s a dragon in your bed, Jason Presley, I reminded myself, and you’ll do well to reflect on how you came to invite it there.
Sighing, I pulled myself from the chair, aimed myself towards the liquor cabinet, and got my legs moving again. I was happy to find that my sex-numbed knees weren’t quite as jelly-like as before, and I managed not to topple in an ungraceful heap as my run of blind good luck finally ran out and I drove my shin into the corner of my coffee table.
True to the rest of the day, I said, “FUCK!”
Then I paused, listening, to make sure I hadn’t awoken the slumbering fart-beast that called itself “Amy.”
Danny’s words earlier had gotten to me. I couldn’t say exactly which one of his stabbing points had reached the deepest or which one had drawn the most blood, but by the time I was back on the road there was very little of me that didn’t want to break off and scurry away from whatever part of me could be considered the “source.” Just like that, I’d hit the road with just about every part of myself inwardly hating the rest of the body it belo
nged to. I’d been hoping that the movie and the bust—totems of better people and better times, in my eyes—might serve to heal my aching heart, or at the very least numb it; they’d only served to force me to reflect on what I’d since become. The irony of that reflection was that I, in many ways, had become my father, something I’d always aspired to do. He was a visionary, a pioneer, a rebel, and, in a modern day of gasoline-powered ships and kickstands replacing peg legs, he was the closest thing to a pirate a boy could hope for. And, as reward for being as kickass as he was, he’d landed my mother, a woman who somehow managed to fuse all the best traits of the quintessential biker babe with Betty Crocker with a healthy seasoning of Elvira. In a word: perfect. She was the perfect wife, and she was the perfect mom. Together with my biker gang-leader daddy, they were the perfect couple.
So why, now that I was wearing my dad’s leathers and occupying his role in the gang that he’d started, was I such a monumental fuckup? Why, after accomplishing my dream of becoming my father, was I like this?
As I reached blindly into the cabinet and grabbed the first bottle that felt less than halfway empty, I caught myself aiming sightless eyes back towards my dead (wife) stereo.
“Oh yeah…” I said out loud to myself. “That’s why.”
Earlier that night, back on the bike and reflecting on my purchases, however, I hadn’t had the stereo, or the ghost of it in the darkness, to reflect. I had a different, more blatant sort of ghost—cupping a rounded belly, waving my way, and (maybe) smiling my way.
They both served to prove the same point, though.
I’d wanted to become my father back when dreams of modern pirates and roaring, gas-guzzling land-ships were nothing more than a safe fantasy. But then, abandoning fantasy and falling into a plush, beautiful cushion of real life, I’d found something else. Wants changed after that. What I wanted as a boy was no longer what I wanted as a man.
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