Object of Desire

by William J. Mann

  Troy was waiting for us at the rest stop. I slid off Lenny’s bike and removed the helmet from my head, handing it to him. “Thanks for taking me,” I said.

  “Hey, buckaroo,” Lenny said. “You showed guts, standing up to the Rubberman.”

  I shrugged. “He’s just an old, skinny guy.”

  “He’s killed men with his bare hands.”

  That scared me. But I was determined not to show it.

  “You’re okay, kid,” Lenny said and tousled my hair.

  I watched him walk away. I kind of liked the fact that the smell of his leather seemed to cling to me.

  Mom was conferring with Warren. From behind me, I heard Troy calling.

  “Danny, what happened?”

  I approached the car. “Nothing much. Some freak in the woods said he’d try to help us find Becky.”

  “I was worried about you,” Troy said.

  I looked at his face peering up at me from the car window. A couple of shiny red zits had broken out on his chin. My face was reflected in his tinted aviator glasses.

  “Well, you didn’t need to be,” I said harshly. “I was with Lenny. He’s cool.”

  Chipper would have liked Lenny, I thought. I couldn’t wait to tell Chipper all about the ride on the motorcycle, about the Dobermans, about how I’d turned the TV off on the Rubberman. Chipper would love hearing that.

  But to Troy I gave no such information. We were utterly silent driving home. When we pulled into our driveway, Mom thanked Troy for the ride and told him never to drive again until he got his license. She’d square it with his father, she said, but Troy said again not to worry about it. His father didn’t care what he did.

  “You wanta hang out tomorrow?” Troy asked as I got out of the car. Mom had already rushed up the driveway to tell Flo Armstrong she could go home.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Chipper and I are hanging out.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t say any more to him. I was worried Chipper was watching from his window across the street, and I didn’t want him to see me with Troy. I slammed the car door and headed up the driveway. Troy sat there for a few moments. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head, burning me like laser beams. Then he backed the car out and sped off down the street.

  In my room, I pulled my Beautiful Men scrapbook out of my drawer and paged through the photos. The trip to see the Rubberman had disturbed me. I felt anxious and dirty. Looking through my scrapbook, I found some small comfort in the way John Travolta’s cheeks dimpled when he smiled.

  WEST HOLLYWOOD

  “So what makes you think you’re in love with him?”

  Randall was playing devil’s advocate. I was backstage, peeling off my jeans and strapping on my yellow thong. Aretha Franklin was pumping through the speakers. We goin’ ridin’ on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac….

  “Because when I’m away from him,” I said, “I just can’t wait to get back to him.” I was adjusting my cock and balls in the pouch. “And because he makes me laugh. And because he’s the sweetest, nicest, most considerate man I’ve ever met.” I looked at my image in the mirror, buck naked under the strobe lights. “And he wants me to quit this.”

  Randall took a sip of his sloe gin fizz. “Really? What will you do for money?”

  I squirted some gel into my hands and rubbed it into my hair. “Maybe get serious about acting. It’s time, don’t you think? Stripping has been a huge distraction.”

  “In other words, he said he’d support you.” Randall made a face. “He’ll be your sugar daddy. Okay, now I understand the attraction.”

  “You are being such a bitch.” I rinsed my hands off in the sink. “Frank is no sugar daddy. He is not rich by any means. He’s just a doll. You’ll see. He’ll be here tonight, and I want you to meet him.”

  “Guess I just didn’t see you ending up with a schoolteacher.” Randall sighed and took another sip of his drink. “That seems more my league.”

  It was then that I understood Randall’s reaction to my announcement that Frank and I were moving in together. Randall had always been more serious than I was, dating guys he thought would make good husbands. I was just turning tricks. No doubt he’d expected to land a steady, reliable boyfriend long before I did, but all he’d managed was a string of duds. I suspected he’d begun to worry, at the ripe old age of twenty-two, that he’d never find someone. That was certainly in character for Randall.

  “Hey, Danny,” Benny called, peeking his head around the door. “You’re on in five minutes. Carlos is exhausted.”

  “I’m all set,” I told him.

  “I just worry,” Randall said, once Benny had closed the door, “that in a few years the age difference will really start to matter.”

  I made a face. “You’re crazy. He’s in perfect shape. Better shape than I am. He doesn’t look his age at all.”

  “But he’s thirty-five.”

  “So?”

  “Danny, that’s fourteen years older than you are. When you’re thirty, he’ll be forty-four.”

  “Big deal.”

  “And when you’re forty, he’ll be—”

  “Randall!” I grabbed his ears. “I know how to add! Besides, that’s almost two decades from now! We haven’t even moved in together yet.”

  He smiled. “Sorry. Just wanted you to think it through.”

  “I have.” I took one last glance in the mirror. “Frank is the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep.”

  “Okay, so you’re in love,” Randall said. “But is he in love with you in the same way?”

  I was glad I didn’t have to answer the question. Benny came barging through the door at that moment. “Okay, Danny, you’re on!”

  I hurried out front and hopped up onto my box. Randall followed, leaning against the bar and watching me as he sipped his drink. Chaka Khan was playing. Baby, baby, when I look at you, I get a warm feeling inside. I began to swing my hips to the music. Men gathered around, waving their tens and twenties. I feel for you. I think I love you….

  I spotted Frank coming into the bar and saw right away that Gregory Montague, in sweater vest and oxford shirt, was with him. He was smiling his toothy Katharine Hepburn smile, glancing around the bar, careful not to look at me. That took some effort, since I was in the middle of everything, up on a box, with a spotlight shining on me. But Frank made eye contact immediately. His face creased into a wide smile, which I didn’t return right away. Why had he brought that man with him? I had no desire to ever see Gregory Montague again after what had happened at his house.

  I stopped dancing. I just stood there, shifting my weight from foot to foot. I heard a hiss from below. “What’s the matter with you?” It was Edgar, standing behind me. “You can’t be tired already. You just got up there.”

  “Sorry,” I said and began dancing again.

  Edgar gestured for me to lean down. “You need a little pick-me-up?” he whispered in my ear, his breath stinking of tobacco and gin.

  Right about then, a line of coke would have been absolutely fantastic. But I didn’t want to do it with Frank around. And I also knew that Edgar never offered any blow without a price. “What do I have to do for it?” I asked.

  “See that guy who just came in? The one in the sweater vest?”

  I looked from him over to Gregory.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He wants you. Came in here a couple days ago asking about you.”

  I laughed, straightening up and continuing to dance. “No kidding,” I said.

  “Yeah. He’ll pay us well.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he would,” I said. “But no sale.”

  “Danny, don’t be a prick.”

  “Fuck off,” I told him. “I gotta dance.”

  What an asshole Gregory Montague was. So I was still just a whore to him. I knew that Frank had told him that we were dating. But obviously, Gregory didn’t care. Or maybe he cared too much. Maybe there really
were feelings still lingering between him and Frank. Maybe Gregory was jealous. Maybe he was trying to break us up. Or maybe he was testing me to see if I was good enough for Frank.

  I watched them. Frank had bought a beer for himself and a cocktail for Gregory. They leaned up against the wall, in exactly the place I had first noticed Frank months before. Frank gave me a little wave. I finally acknowledged him with a smile. Gregory still didn’t look over at me. He was clearly waiting to see what message he’d get back from Edgar.

  I began bouncing in place, catching the rhythm of the music. One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster. The bars are temples but the pearls ain’t free.

  “Come on, baby, show me the family jewels,” one old man, with curly dyed black hair, called. He was standing right in front of me, his head level with my stomach. He flashed a twenty at me and licked his dry, chapped lips.

  I peeled down the thong just enough to expose my pubes and offer him a glimpse of my cock tucked inside. I didn’t often do that; he might have been a cop, waiting to charge Edgar with illegal nudity. But he was just a horny old geezer, and for the peek at my pubes, he tucked the twenty into my pouch, copping a little feel as he did so.

  I looked up. For the first time, Gregory was watching me directly. He had seen the whole little interaction.

  I felt dirty. His eyes appraised me, glassy and hard. A twist of a smile played with the corners of his lips. My face burned. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Frank.

  Why did it matter? Stripping was what I did. This was who I was. A stripper in a bar who showed his cock and balls for tips. And sometimes I went home with men who paid me money to have sex with them. This was who I was. Gregory knew this. Frank knew this. It was no secret.

  But suddenly I stopped dancing again. Murray Head went on without me. One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble. Not much between despair and ecstasy…

  It was strange. It had been a full year now that I’d been dancing at the club, and not once in all that time had I thought about the place I went to with my mother when I was fifteen. But standing now on my box, with Frank and Gregory watching me, I suddenly remembered that place. It was a stripper bar, much like this one, except it was grimier. And the dancers weren’t boys; they were girls. And the men watching them weren’t as lively as the men here, but rather sullen, hostile, and hunched over. Mom and I were following a lead the Rubberman had given us. Becky, he’d said, might be dancing there, using the name Heather. The place was called Les Chats, and it was up in Yonkers, New York, just off the Saw Mill River Parkway.

  Troy drove us, as he usually did in those days. It took us about three hours to get there, because we got lost and ended up in New Jersey before winding our way back. The building was a plain concrete rectangle, with a giant neon blue electric sign that flashed XXX. No longer did Mom make any pretense of trying to shield me, or even Troy; we just walked into the place behind her, all of us nearly knocked over by the smell of stale beer and piss. On the stage, three topless girls danced, wearing fringed boots and thongs—not so different from the thong I was wearing now. Two of the girls were obviously not Becky. They were short and plump and far too old. But the third might have been—if Becky had dyed her hair blond and gotten a tattoo of a leaping tiger on her thigh. The men hunched over their beers turned to look at us as we came in. We were hardly the type of clientele they were used to. We gathered around the girl who might have been Becky and looked up at her closely. She ignored us and just kept on dancing. My mother didn’t seem to care that Troy and I were gazing up at this naked girl. Suddenly Mom just broke down in tears, big, heaving sobs, her breasts rising and falling. The girl wasn’t Becky. But she might have been. Mom was crying out of both relief and disappointment. The men looked at us strangely. The bartender came over to us and asked us to leave.

  “She’s in a place like this,” Mom said when we returned to the car. “She’s taking her clothes off in front of men like those inside.” She heaved deeply with her sobs, so deeply that I had to grip her arm to keep her from losing her balance and falling down. “My baby. In a place like this. Men looking at her body. Touching her body. Her little body, which I once diapered…” She dissolved into sobs in my arms. I held her, stroking her hair.

  “Mom,” I said. “I will go into every bar in every state and look for Becky. Please don’t cry.”

  She looked up at me with bloodshot, swollen eyes. “My poor little Danny. My poor little boy. What have our lives become?”

  It was the first time she had ever voiced such sadness, such regret. I continued to stroke her hair as if she were a little girl. If I could have, I would have held her forever. I loved her that much.

  And now I never spoke to her. Now I kept her far, far down in my memory. When she did occasionally surface in my thoughts, I became quite adept at pushing her away.

  And now here I was, taking my clothes off in a place not so different from Les Chats, allowing men to look at my body, touch my body, the same little body my mother once had diapered…

  The same life she had so despaired of that day in Yonkers.

  “Hey, sugar meat,” the old man was saying to me, waving another twenty. “Flash me those family jewels again.” He licked his lips like a lizard.

  I couldn’t. My eyes moved from him to Frank to Gregory. Gregory was grinning.

  I hopped off my box and ran backstage.

  Edgar was right on my heels. “What the fuck you doing? You’ve still got fifteen minutes out there.”

  I pulled off my thong and stood stark naked in front of him. “Fuck you,” I said. “I’m done.”

  “You little bitch. You can’t walk out on me. You owe me money!”

  “Fuck you I do.”

  Edgar got up into my face, his drawn yellow skin stretched tightly over his wasting muscles, his cheekbones sticking out like knobs. “I’ve been keeping track. The last four guys I fixed you up with. You didn’t give me my share.”

  “Fuck you,” I said again. I could feel my face getting hot.

  “You little bitch!” Edgar shouted again and raised his hand to strike me.

  And just like in the movies, Frank was behind him to catch it.

  “Don’t even think about hitting him, you asshole,” Frank growled, shoving Edgar away so hard that he fell on the floor. He turned to look at me. “You okay, Danny?”

  “I’m quitting,” I told him. I was still naked.

  “Good,” Frank said.

  Edgar was getting to his feet. “You walk out of here, Danny, and don’t expect to come groveling back to me.”

  Frank’s eyes were burning. “Don’t worry. He never will. He won’t need to.”

  I just stood there, looking at my savior.

  “Come on, baby,” Frank said. “Get dressed and let’s get out of here.”

  “I love you, Frank,” I said in a little voice.

  He pulled me close to him, then let me go.

  Randall had asked me if Frank was in love with me in the same way I was in love with him. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I loved him. And he was going to take care of me. That was enough.

  I got dressed. I didn’t tell Frank what Gregory Montague had tried. To do so would have spoiled the moment. And that, too, didn’t matter. Not anymore. Frank might carry the torch for him, but it was me he had chosen. Me he had just rescued from a life that was destroying me, a little bit more each day. That was all that mattered.

  In two months, Edgar was dead from AIDS. The bar closed down. A year later it reopened under new management. Sometimes Frank and I would go in and watch the dancers there. I looked around the place but didn’t recognize it. It was almost as if I’d never been there at all.

  PALM SPRINGS

  “So what makes you think you’re in love with him?”

  Randall was playing devil’s advocate in the way only he could do. We were in my Jeep, Hassan in the back, heading over to the tram that would take us two and a half miles up the sheer cliffs of Chino
Canyon. Kelly was meeting us there. I wanted him to meet my friends.

  “Because I think about him all the time,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve tried to forget him, but it’s impossible. He’s just so special. He makes me laugh. And he reminds me of myself at that age.”

  “And what does Frank think about you being in love with someone else?” Hassan asked from the backseat.

  I sighed. “I haven’t used those exact words with Frank. I’ve only begun admitting them to myself in the last couple of days.”

  The night I’d left Kelly’s apartment after our sexual encounter, I had never wanted to see him again. Truthfully, in that moment, I’d wanted nothing more than to push him out of my mind. My fascination with him had become a terrible burden, and I hadn’t realized just how heavy it was until that moment. He had disappointed me, shattered my fantasy, and now I wanted to shake off my burden. I wanted to be free of him.

  I hadn’t told Frank I was out with Kelly that night, but when I came home, I revealed all. Or almost all. “He’s a cokehead,” I said, cruelly. I wanted to be cruel in that moment.

  “Well, you don’t want to get mixed up in that again,” Frank said.

  “Definitely not,” I said. “And sex with him was just a big waste of time. No intimacy. He barely let me kiss him.”

  Frank sighed, sitting with a cup of tea on the deck under the stars. “He seems wounded. Very guarded. He’s not going to let you in, because he doesn’t want to get hurt.”

  I was in no mood just then for sympathy. “Well, it’s certainly not worth it for me to spend any more energy on him.”

  Frank smiled. “I wasn’t aware that you were spending that much energy on him.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, really.” For a second time, I had just lied to Frank. “I guess I just wanted to get him into bed, and now I have, and it was a big bust.”