Liam stood expectantly when his turn came. He posed like Michelangelo’s David, bowing his head slightly in a gesture of feigned modesty. Miss Apple Brown Betty kissed the rear of his powder-blue-and-white-striped briefs and moaned long and slow to the crowd. She then collected herself and said, “Now, you can be my superhero any day of the week.”
The crowd looked extremely anxious to see who would remain. After the audience applauded in turn for each contestant, the drag queen, who now guzzled from a chain of martini glasses, kicked Gene and the hairless boy-man off the stage. Liam and the swimmer stood demurely next to each other like two guys avoiding eye contact in the locker room while the two muscle-bound men flexed and flaunted before the admiring masses.
“Okay, shut it, people!” The drag queen let her ladylike voice lapse into a raspy baritone. “Hold tight. Things are going to get freaky.”
With that, Miss Apple Brown Betty made one more trip across the stage, stopping and fondling each man as she passed. She rolled her eyes and licked her lips to whip the men, who now filled Splash to capacity, into a frenzy. She then instructed Liam to bend down on his knees in front of Mister Swimmer while the shorter of the two beefcakes had to do the same before his ripped friend. It was then ordered that they simulate blow jobs through their clothing. Miss Apple Brown Betty reiterated in a domineering shriek that anyone who actually exposed himself, or caused someone else to be exposed, would be banned from the bar.
“Now, have at it!”
She scooted to the edge of the stage so that all the spectators could see the simulated sex acts. For a few seconds, Liam stared at the thin cotton briefs that clung suggestively to this lean man, and he pressed his face against the guy’s leg to feel the steel of his leg hairs against his face. Liam immediately felt turned on and rubbed his nose slavishly into the man’s briefs, playing with the cock head through the fabric. It didn’t take long for the guy’s shaft to stiffen. Then Liam licked along the outline, tracing the arc of his penis. The crowd erupted, but Liam had no idea if the noise was for him or for the fellatio simulators a few feet away. To cap off his performance, Liam bit into the fabric right by the swimmer’s penis and pulled it away, with a bark like a dog. Liam kept repeating the motion until he finally fit his mouth over the entire swollen cock head and grabbed the swimmer’s butt cheeks as he bobbed his head up and down over the fabric.
The drag queen stopped the show but needed a solid five minutes to calm the place down so that she could conduct the voting. Two more would fall, she announced. Liam received thunderous ovations, and his partner in crime met with a few scattered hoots. Liam had trouble discerning which of the other guys had scored better with the now very drunk and disorderly crowd. Glancing at his watch, Liam realized that almost half an hour had passed since they had ascended the stage. All the Fast Trackers still stood with their attention fixed on the stage, but many were now woozy-eyed and slurring.
Miss Apple Brown Betty declared it no contest—Liam and the muscleman who had been on the receiving end of fellatio were the final two standing. The big man flashed his biceps at the audience and then scooped Liam up in a King Kong–like embrace. Liam nudged the guy gently in the ribs so that he could stand again on his own two feet.
“I hope you two boys are sweet for each other. You better be! You’re going to make out like teenagers in the back of a Seven-Eleven. We want to see desperate, sexy steam come off this stage. Now get to work!”
Liam found the guy’s overly red face and thick meatiness a turnoff, but he played along and leaned in to softly caress the man’s lips. The prelude to intimacy was the most irresistible sex act. Nothing could top that. As Liam’s lips touched his partner’s mouth, the man shoved his tongue down Liam’s throat with a brute force that caused Liam to stumble back two steps. Feeling Liam slip away, the man grabbed him at the waist and drew him tight against his heaving chest. The man then ripped his mouth off Liam’s lips and focused hard and fast on Liam’s nipples, pulling them through his teeth as he pumped his fists and flexed his muscles at the audience.
After about two minutes, the drag queen pulled them apart as a referee might yank a steroid-fueled boxer off his pummeled competition. Liam could still feel the guy’s heavy tongue scratching his esophagus. His nipples were hot and raw. No decibel register was needed to gauge who the winner was. The crowd had thoroughly appreciated the sheer force and determination of the brawny contender whose veins popped as he cheered for Liam’s runner-up status. The five free-drink passes that Miss Apple Brown Betty presented as the second-place prize seemed a poor substitute for $250, but such is life, thought Liam.
As he slipped back into his jeans and pulled on his shirt, he could hear wisecracks from the crowd—“Take me home!” and “You’re the one that I want!” and “I’d treat you real gentle.” Oddly, Liam felt like he was under the microscope for the first time all evening and walked with his head down to the circle where his friends (was it too soon to think of them as friends?) enthusiastically supported him.
Ben took his glasses off to wipe away the condensation that had formed while he had watched the event. Without the heavy frames of his Elvis Costello glasses, Ben looked like a little boy with a round, Mr. Magoo nose and a circular mouth that was small for his face but alluring with its overly plump lips.
“You did good up there,” he said to Liam in a tone that made Liam believe that he may have actually been proud.
Liam could feel his face become warm with self-consciousness.
“It wasn’t higher math,” he said, finally.
“Can I kiss you?” Ben asked, so low that Liam had to scoot closer and ask him to repeat the request. “Can I kiss you? I have always wanted to be able to say that I kissed the prettiest boy in the bar.”
Liam stood stunned as Ben moved in and lightly pressed his lips against Liam’s.
MILE 6
After passing the last in a long series of stoplights on the West Side Highway, the taxi driver impatiently thumped on the gas, and Liam fell back in his seat from the shock of speed. The lights across the river in New Jersey raced by in streaks of yellow and green as the cab accelerated. Liam’s eyelids struggled against the weight of his exhaustion. Ben traced infinity signs on Liam’s leg, moving slowly from the top of his knee to the interior of his upper thigh.
“No, no, no!” Ben screamed suddenly. “You need to get off at 125th Street.”
As the taxi veered across three lanes of traffic, Liam slid down the fake leather seat and landed on the floor of the car. Ben helped drag Liam back onto the seat and used the opportunity to move his hand right under Liam’s groin. Ben’s fingers were now positioned around Liam’s balls. Broadway blurred by and Liam nodded off in the backseat of the cab, feeling vaguely indifferent as Ben undid the buttons on Liam’s pants and worked his fingers inside, reaching and feeling for his cock head. Liam’s beer buzz had faded into a dull headache, but the warm sensation on his penis still caused him to stiffen with anticipation.
Just as Liam was about to ask where in the hell they were heading, Ben instructed the cab driver to pull up on the right at the next streetlight. Liam re-buttoned the fly on his jeans as he exited the car; Ben stayed in the cab to settle up with the driver. No one was on the street, and all of the brownstones on the block were completely dark. The shine of bare branches against the old-fashioned streetlamps lent the surroundings the pristine and slightly artificial look of a Hollywood movie set. The street was so quiet that Liam could hear the idle of the taxi cab and the flicker and hum from the dying bulb in a nearby streetlamp. The signs on the corner read: 139TH AND DOUGLASS BOULEVARD. Liam could never correctly map out all the streets that were named after historical figures—“Adam Clayton Powell” and “Malcolm X Boulevard”—within the grid of Upper Manhattan. At the moment, he had no true sense of where he was.
“I love coming home in the middle of the night,” Ben exclaimed as he staggered out of the taxi. “The best part of living in this neighborhood is the desolation
.”
Ben grabbed Liam by both hands and walked a few paces so that they were standing directly under a streetlight. A bed of ivy and a gnarled cherry tree were to their right, and a large black Bentley gleamed beside the curb. In the harsh, incandescent light, the blemishes and discolorations in Ben’s skin showed prominently but only increased the charming goofiness of his round features and his chunky, black glasses. Liam leaned over and kissed Ben. The move must have surprised Ben; his thick lips stayed closed for a second before opening up to the press of Liam’s tongue. Ben’s self-consciousness at the idea of kissing in public turned Liam on. He forced Ben’s body against his own and slipped his cold, damp hands into the back of Ben’s jacket and under his wool sweater. Liam ran his fingers over the soft fuzz of Ben’s back hair and tilted his head to draw his tongue further into Ben’s mouth. A hard gust of wind tunneled down through the empty street, and Liam could feel his mouth sting and his eyes water from the bitter cold.
“Okay, my balls are somewhere up inside my large intestines. We have got to go inside!”
With that pronouncement, Ben yanked Liam up the stairs of a brownstone only a few yards from where they were standing. Stacks of books, some old marble busts, and a few antique mirrors cluttered the narrow hallway that led into Ben’s living room. Once inside, Liam reclined on the long green sofa that faced a wood-burning fireplace as Ben prepared a plate of cheese and poured glasses of Cab Franc in the kitchen. The room looked to have been decorated by somebody’s eccentric great-uncle, with three globes on tall bronze stands anchoring one corner of the room and books of collectible postcards lying open on the mahogany coffee table.
“Wanderlust?” Liam asked as he made space on the coffee table for the tray of food and drink Ben carried in.
“I don’t know … ever since I was a kid I always wanted to know where else I could be.”
“That’s funny. I always assumed city kids had the world at their fingertips. Isn’t New York City where everyone wants to be?”
“People who don’t live here,” Ben said with a deep belly laugh. “But that’s the way it is with everything. I moved up to this neighborhood to get away from the city. This is still Manhattan, I know, but it’s not the city of my youth—Madison Avenue boutiques and pretentious neighbors and the established protocols of affluence. It was so fucking claustrophobic. For eighteen years, I saw the same kids at the museums, at tennis lessons … the same parents hosting fund-raisers at the Boathouse, having cocktails at Island. It was a sea of gingham and plaid. So, yes, I dreamed of far-off places.”
Liam picked up his glass of wine and walked across the room. The warped floorboards creaked under his feet. When he got to the corner, Liam took a big swallow of the Cab Franc and felt the tart tingle of cherries along the back of his tongue. He ran his fingers across the faded landscape of the largest of the globes; the outdated names of countries like British Guiana and the Belgian Congo placed the antique somewhere in the earlier part of the twentieth century.
“My father owns an old store of collectibles on the Upper East Side,” Ben offered. “He supplies me with all these relics you see around here.”
Ben walked over toward the globes, and Liam downed the rest of the glass of wine in a fit of nerves.
“Hey, that bottle of wine goes for about sixty dollars. It’s to be sipped, not guzzled!”
Ben had cozied up behind Liam and pressed his tongue to Liam’s ear. All of Monroe’s warnings now flooded over Liam. If he slept with Ben, Liam knew that his relationship to the club would have to change in some fashion. Maybe he would be touted as a good lay. Maybe he would be criticized as a slut. Maybe he would enjoy the experience and fall for Ben. Or perhaps he would hate it and feel awkward enough to avoid the club forever. As Ben roped his arms around Liam’s rib cage and padded his lips down his neck, Liam knew he was going to have sex. To change his mind now would be impolite.
“Can I get a refill?” Liam asked as he disentangled himself from Ben. “I promise to savor it.”
Ben brought the bottle over to Liam and poured some more into his own glass before refilling Liam’s.
“Let me show you the rest of the place.”
Ben took Liam by the hand and led him through the oversized French doors at the opposite side of the living room. They walked into a large kitchen where two tall stools flanked a tile breakfast bar. Liam quickly thumbed through the stack of magazines by the blender; working in the industry, he had a sharply honed ability to judge people by what they chose to read. Ben blushed as Liam nosed through the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly.
“Let’s get on with the tour,” Ben said. “This isn’t a lending library.”
Liam noticed the notes and scribbles next to a short article he had written about the Olsen twins.
“I like to bone up on pulp and gossip,” Ben said with a hurried and nervous laugh.
Liam had pursued journalism as a career so that his thoughts and opinions would be read by thousands of people he didn’t know and bandied about over countertops just like this—but he felt embarrassed that five years into his professional life he was still writing about celebrity nonsense.
As they walked toward the back of the apartment, Ben changed the topic unexpectedly, explaining how he had converted the walk-in closet in the hall into a study. There was no door at the end of the long corridor; the space opened up directly into Ben’s bedroom.
“What do you like?” Ben asked as he turned on a small lamp on the nightstand next to the bed, one of the only pieces of furniture in the large, square room.
“What do you mean?” Liam felt his eyes turn away as he spoke.
“Are you going to play that game? You know. Top or bottom. Fast or slow. Naughty or nice. All those big, important philosophical questions.”
Ben’s mocking tone annoyed Liam. He had always hated the pigeonholes that gay men boxed themselves into and didn’t want to get into a long conversation about what they were and were not going to do. If they were going to have sex, Liam wanted to have sex—not talk about having sex.
“Stand right there and take your clothes off, Ben.”
Ben obeyed, pulling his sweater off quickly and undoing his belt. He unbuttoned his fly and his jeans fell to the floor. The cone of the lampshade cast a wide, swerving shadow over the bedroom walls. The uneven light lent the scene the forbidden sense of call girls in rented rooms, and Liam felt his penis move down his leg. With just a threadbare T-shirt, black boxers, and a thick pair of woolen socks on, Ben turned in a circle to model a little bit before continuing the strip show. Liam sat on the corner of the king-sized bed to enjoy the spectacle. Ben’s thick, hairy thighs and meaty butt surprised Liam with the possibility of hot, thrusting sex. Leaning down slowly, Ben peeled off one sock and then the other. Liam laughed as Ben hopped around dramatically to demonstrate the cold chill of the bare wood floors. Liam wanted to reach over and run his fingers up and down Ben’s muscular thighs but decided it would feel better to let the anticipation linger. Ben pulled his shirt off and assumed the vein-popping pose of a body builder in competition. His chest was in need of some muscle and his stomach some tightening, but Liam found something sexy about Ben’s casually athletic physique. Ben skimmed his fingers along the elastic waistband of his boxers before stepping out of them and tossing the underwear toward the hamper on the other side of the bedroom. Liam lay down and stretched himself across the heavy duvet. The linens smelled of vanilla.
“Now do me.”
“Oh, I intend to,” Ben said with a growl.
“Ha ha. Now, take my clothes off. Slowly please.”
Ben shook his head quickly and emphatically.
“Nope—my turn to make the rules,” he said, tugging Liam’s pants off and rushing to remove his sweater and T-shirt.
Within seconds, Liam was lying naked on the bed, and Ben had begun to rub the shaft of his cock.
“Could you turn the light off?” Liam asked.
“But I want to see every inc
h of your hot body.”
“Sorry, Ben. It’s just a habit. But not to worry, in Manhattan there’s always enough light to see.”
Liam wanted to imagine Ben’s strong, hard legs pressing down on him without having the reality of his love handles and his chicken chest jiggling above him and ruining the fantasy. There could be no light. As Ben walked over to the nightstand, Liam took stock again of his solid ass and tree trunk legs and jumped off the bed and grabbed Ben from behind. Liam turned the light switch off and then tackled Ben onto the bed. Once he had pinned Ben down on his stomach, Liam ran his tongue along Ben’s backside, starting at the center of his spine and working all the way down one leg and then starting over again and moving down the opposite leg. Ben’s skin smelled of sweat and tasted of salt. Liam could feel pre-cum trickle from the head of his cock as he spread open Ben’s butt cheeks and worked his tongue inside. Ben relaxed his sphincter as Liam probed farther inside his hole.
After a few minutes, Liam turned Ben over and repositioned himself so that he could stick his cock in Ben’s mouth while he sucked on Ben’s penis. Feeling enlivened and sexy, Liam began to do push-ups over Ben’s body. Each time he dropped down to start a push-up, his cock went down Ben’s throat, and Ben’s dick rammed down his own throat. As Liam moved, their cocks slid back into the front of their mouths. Liam’s arms started to tire after the first ten push-ups, and he dropped more heavily into position, with the force of his penis into Ben’s throat causing Ben to gag in pain. Liam immediately rolled off to the side so that Ben’s mouth and entire body would be free from any contact.
“Do you want me to get you a glass of water?”
Ben continued to gasp and to choke, dry heaving like someone in the throes of the stomach flu. He ran out to the bathroom and spat up into the sink.
“Sorry, I bet that just about killed your erection, didn’t it?” Ben gargled with some water from the faucet as he spoke.
“Not at all,” Liam said. “I still want to get off. Is that okay with you?”
The Miles Page 5
