by E. Davies
But I wasn’t at work, and goddamn it, I was going to try to go eight hours without thinking about it. So I shelved work in my head and dragged my thoughts to the only other interesting thing in my life: who was going to drag me out for my monthly socialization.
I was pretty sure Hugh’s family and my college buddies had all set up some secret group to make sure someone was taking me out every month.
I couldn’t have asked for a better second family than my late boyfriend’s. Hugh’s parents were the kind of parents who’d known their son was gay before he’d even told them, and they’d welcomed me like a second son. Even after the fatal single-car wreck that had taken him from us, they’d been as close as my own family—closer, in many ways.
Once I was back in my own house, I checked my texts, and sure enough, there it was.
It’s been a while! Wanna hang out?
I appreciated the check-ins from Ben, my college roommate. His All-American sporty look had contrasted my nerdy engineer type, making us great wingmen for each other our freshman year. We covered a great range of guys, so if they weren’t interested in one of us, they might want the other. Many a gay bar in the New York City area had seen us in action.
That was, until I met Hugh.
Five years after his death, I could have dated again, but… why bother? I had too much else going on in my life to devote proper care and attention to a relationship. Plus, the idea of meeting someone new sounded awful right now.
On the other hand, I reflected, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to hear someone else’s breathing in the dark when I crashed in bed. The silence of my house was almost maddening. But loneliness was a bad fucking reason to start dating someone.
At least I had a new problem to figure out… in the morning, when the jet lag didn’t make me want to simultaneously run a marathon and sleep for a year.
Thankfully, sleep won.
2
Kev
“Don’t you think it’s weird that the neighbors haven’t robbed us yet?”
I cracked up as I stretched out along the couch, looking past my laptop on my stomach at Adam. I was waiting for my new photos to upload on my profile, so I kept the laptop turned away from him and he didn’t look too closely. He knew better by now.
“Really?”
“Really!” It wasn’t the Pabst talking, either. He was sincere in the way he waved his beer can at me. It made a change from him making fun of my career, at least. “I mean, your clothes are always… well, nice.”
“Not always,” I disagreed with a snort. “Just most of the time.” I wanted to be able to take a short-notice out-call appointment if I was out and about, and I didn’t want to scare away any repeat clients I happened to bump into. Living in New York—or, to be precise, Brooklyn—made that less likely, but not impossible.
Plus, dressing well was a perk of the job. I’d never gotten to wear nice stuff before. I was hooked now.
“And then there’s the wash-and-press. Not that I’m complaining,” Adam added, holding out one open palm and his beer can. He knew which side his bread was buttered, and he enjoyed having his boxers pressed and folded.
“I’m not trusting these,” I waved up and down myself, even though I was wearing my slobby old t-shirt and ripped jeans, “to any old laundromat’s high-rev torture machine. And if they wanna break in, fine. I’ve got insurance, and I can handle a shotgun.” I was a Tennessee boy still and it snuck through, as much as I toned it down for my big city clients.
“If only we had one,” Adam lamented. I knew he missed Tennessee sometimes, but he only let it sneak out in half-jokes like that. After all the shit he’d been through with his parents, no wonder he had mixed feelings.
I grabbed my crotch. “Who says I don’t?”
“Ew,” Adam laughed and flipped me off.
“Such a prude,” I teased him, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I sipped tea from one of my favorite cups—it had elaborate rose designs and a real pretty gold rim. I’d picked it up at my favorite thrift store last week, bringing my collection to… seven? Eight? I wasn’t sure now.
Adam choked on his beer and nearly sprayed it across the chair. He clapped his hand over his mouth just in time to manage to keep it down, although he was coughing. “As if!”
For a guy who’d barely hooked up so far as I could tell in the four months we’d lived together before we relocated here, he’d sure as hell hit the ground running. At least my own work often kept me out of the house overnight.
We had our own code for the situation: watermelon. That meant I planned to stay out for the night with a client. He could do whatever he wanted, as long as I could stroll in sometime after dawn and not be greeted with any scarring sights. If he sent it to me, it meant he wanted some space, and we’d negotiate a time.
My own dating life was pretty nonexistent. Not because nobody wanted to date a hooker, but because I hadn’t met anyone I thought was good enough for me.
It sounded egotistical, but it was also true. The guys who wanted me just because of my line of work… well, what if I saved up, went to school, and became an accountant? That wasn’t love, that was lust. And the guys who claimed not to care what I did for work? Jealousy would creep in sooner or later. Easier to avoid the whole mess.
Besides, I was young, single, and carefree, living in New York City. In my shoes, who the hell wanted to get tied down?
Not me.
“You done charging your phones?” Adam wiggled his own phone, indicating that he needed to top off.
“I dunno. The work phone, probably. You can check,” I shrugged. I had two, with different ring tones, but I tended to keep them in the same pocket. They were both usually kept on silent, except when I was free and able to text with prospective clients without interrupting anything with a current date.
Adam made a face. “I might see… things.”
“Ignore the sexts. I probably will, too,” I advised him, biting back my grin. He could be so overdramatic. He’d settled down a lot since we’d met, right after he’d done something really stupid and nearly paid for it.
We’d met on a ranch in Tennessee, and he’d been employed there until he’d gotten lazy and stopped showing up for work. They’d fired him and he’d tried some kind of stupid retaliation stunt.
In the end, the owners had hired both him and me, gave us a cabin to live in, and taught us a lot of valuable life skills. We could never pay Josh and Evan back for everything. I’d learned a lot about how to handle people who wanted to start a fight—kill ‘em with kindness. Although Adam could still be hot-headed, he’d grown up since that incident.
Aww. I was so proud of him, like a hen with her chick… even though we were both pretty much the same age, and both parent-free. Me more so—he kept in touch with his occasionally, but they didn’t seem to want to know much about him or his new life.
“You’re good.” He tossed my phone and I caught it, then cussed him out. Last thing I needed was to replace a goddamn iPhone X. “I’m not made of money, you know.”
Adam smirked. “Sorry.” That much was genuine, even if he acted like it wasn’t—I knew him well enough now to tell.
My profile was updated. With a lot of the major sites closing, it was harder and harder to find work without working the street corners again. If need be, I could go back to hustling in bars. It would be a lot less safe, and I’d probably make less money, but I knew what bars my target clients frequented. I wouldn’t be able to gauge whether they could listen to me or follow instructions ahead of time nearly as easily, but… everyone did what they had to in order to survive.
And at least I was on PrEP—a pill a day to stay HIV-negative. This way, if anyone didn’t take no for an answer, I wasn’t at risk of HIV. Other STIs could put me out of work for a few weeks, but they’d be treatable with antibiotics.
HIV was no longer a death sentence as long as it was detected and treated early, but it required expensive meds. Sure, they were the kind New York City c
overed, but being positive would also mean a lifetime of testing. And like I needed more risk of being jailed, being charged with a crime if I didn’t disclose my status to someone I slept with and they later found out—even if my blood levels made the virus intransmissible to other people.
Law hadn’t caught up with the modern world. Hell, most people hadn’t, either.
“If they rob us because I look too fancy, I’ll replace your shit,” I offered, which was magnanimous of me since I paid for the renter’s insurance myself. He hadn’t seen the need and he wanted a couple extra beers a month.
He rolled his eyes and flipped me off, but I ignored him as I opened Grindr.
“Goddamn it.”
“What?” Adam mumbled, paying more attention to his own phone.
I shook my head as I quit the app and deleted it. A reinstall, another email address, and I’d be back in business. “Nothing.”
Technically, solicitation wasn’t allowed on Grindr. But where the hell else was I gonna find work these days? The one site meant for us was pretty damn expensive to use, though I got a bit of work from them.
“I keep telling you, get a real job.” Adam’s casual insistence on not calling my job real grated on me, as it had for months.
I shook my head, refusing to get into it right now with him. “I happen to love mine. I’ll find a way to make it work.”
The idea of selling my body to a retail store for minimum wage, then having to smile and mentally chant the customer is always right when some asshole decided they were having a bad day and took it out on me? Gross. At least in my line of work, I got to choose what I did, which clients I’d accept, and what I charged.
Or, at least, I had. Things were different now that the law had changed. FOSTA/SESTA meant that I was walking a fine line. The laws protected some people; but for me, my relatively safe options for finding work were now gone. I was left with a few choices: I could try to sneak onto apps that weren’t made for my line of work, like Grindr, and deal with having my profile shut down and potentially reported, and keep reopening new profiles. Or I could work street corners and bars, which was much more dangerous and didn’t give me the chance to vet clients and see if they were planning to kill me beforehand.
I did a combination of the above, and I kind of got by. I wanted something more stable and less likely to get me arrested, so I was still thinking about going back to school.
That meant banking away enough to cover rent and expenses while I started studying something that would make me a profit quickly. Massage was the obvious choice, since I could segue from my existing line of work into offering the kind without happy endings, so it was my current goal.
I’d picked up a little of everything at my last job. If massage didn’t work out, I could try accounting or something boring like that. Apparently, I had more of a head for numbers than I’d given myself credit for.
None of that changed the fact that I needed work now, though. I sighed and created a new email address as the silence between us stretched out. From there, I registered on Grindr again and started uploading my new photos.
Eventually, Adam stretched and yawned. “I guess you’ll be out again tonight?”
“Yep,” I answered, keeping half my attention on him as I copied and pasted my profile from my phone notes into Grindr and set my vital stats. “Unless there’s a better offer.”
I didn’t have any bookings, but I planned to hit up a bar and see what happened. Best case scenario, someone would find me, pass my screening test, and I’d have a short-notice out-call. Worst case, I’d find a hot guy of my own for off-the-clock action. I was far enough ahead this month that I could afford a few freebies.
“I was just gonna crash early,” Adam told me, and I glanced up at him. He was looking awfully tired lately. Those “real jobs” he praised did so much to drain him—especially going back and forth between them all part-time. But I bit my tongue, just as he normally refrained from criticizing my job, and frowned sympathetically. I couldn’t help him change if he wasn’t ready.
“Yeah, you look like crap.”
Adam snorted and flipped me off. “Thanks, dude.”
“Welcome.” I winked and saved my profile, then pocketed my phone to feel any incoming notifications. Laundry day was the most exciting evening to go out, because I could get the most creative with my outfits. Not that I had anyone to show them off to.
Friends were lacking in my life. I knew a few other guys in my business, but we didn’t tend to socialize much. We shared info about bad clients, but weren’t hired to work together as often as female sex workers, I’d gathered.
Maybe that was what I needed to feel unstuck: friends. But how the hell could I meet them in this crazy, star-studded, boom-and-bust city of dreams?
3
Charlie
I couldn’t sleep.
Of course I couldn’t sleep. It was two o’clock in the morning here in New York City, which meant it was just past lunchtime in Singapore.
After a day of adjustment, my body was willing to accept that it was morning, but the rule of thumb held true—an hour per day. It seemed to be thinking “after lunchtime” and not “so late only cabs were running.”
God, I hated jet lag. It left me spinning for days.
I’d gotten up at midnight and taken a hot bath. That was my usual time-killing activity when I couldn’t sleep. It had almost worked, but not quite. After another hour of tossing and turning, I was forced to admit defeat.
These pre-dawn hours were rarely good to me. If I had my laptop, I usually dragged it to bed and started working on whatever my current project demanded. If I was getting up, that meant finding something else to do, though. I’d left work at the office for once.
“Fine,” I grumbled as I pushed myself out of bed, the silky sheets dragging against my smooth skin. I was tired of lying here and telling myself I had to be more awake. Tomorrow, I’d push through and fix this jet lag with a long, awful day if I had to.
I pulled on fresh clothes, making a mental note to do laundry this weekend, when it was daylight hours. That was the best part of my house apart from the resale value—I’d hauled my stuff three blocks to a laundromat in the dead of winter as a college kid. A washer and dryer had been a must-have in a new home of my own.
A casual shirt and jeans would do, but where the hell could I go in the city at this hour without getting shot or stabbed?
Friction, of course. I’d be set until four AM at that rate, and then I could hit up Bubbles—the nearby all-night diner—until six, then coffee and the office. Sounded like a plan. A lame, grown-up, sensible plan, but still a plan. God, I was going to gain ten pounds if I kept eating this much junk food.
My buddies would be happy I was getting out, at least. I didn’t have to tell them it was only to stop me dying of boredom or, worse, turning on late-night TV.
I did the sensible thing and grabbed an Uber to the bar. One of the best parts of living in New York City was avoiding getting charged an arm and a leg for a quick cab ride, or worse, having to haggle… or worst of all, living in a rural dead zone with no Uber at all. Uber charged an upfront price, no negotiation, and no wasting time fiddling with my wallet when I arrived. I liked that. It was efficient.
At least there was no line to get into Friction this late at night. It wasn’t even that busy—of course. It was a weeknight. The weekends didn’t seem much different when I was traveling and away for work during them. Only when I was based here did weekends become those few precious days that I only spent half my day working or thinking about work.
“Coke, please,” I told the bartender.
He slid it over and I handed him money, then leaned against the bar. I didn’t want to start drinking this late and then have to deal with the foggy head later. And I was okay being the sober designated driver at parties. Alcohol didn’t make me happy by any means, and I wasn’t dumb enough to try harder and make sure.
Some of my colleagues had issues that couldn�
�t quite fit in their recycling bins, but I wasn’t going to go that route. Too stereotypical, and too easy to lose everything I’d worked for the five years since my internship to build—literally and figuratively.
It was one of those weird evenings where everything familiar seemed strange. Not just because I’d been away for days, or the late-night fog that set in when I couldn’t sleep, but there was something else.
Too much thinking and not enough doing.
I turned to the guy next to me and checked my gaydar. Some straight guys in New York City didn’t mind going to a gay bar, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.
“You look like the most sober person in the room,” I said with a grin.
The other guy grinned. “Oh, thank God. The only decent conversation I’ve had tonight.” He stuck out his hand. “Darren.”
“Charlie.”
He seemed friendly enough, but there wasn’t an immediate spark. I hadn’t felt that with anyone in some time, so it didn’t surprise me.
“Been here all night?” I asked.
“Nah. I was working on a job site late, just got here at midnight. You?” Darren sipped what looked like orange juice and Sprite.
I shook my head. “Jet lag. I was trying to sleep and it wasn’t working.”
“Getting laid helps with that,” he said, then chuckled. “Or so I’ve heard. It’s been long enough. Oh, God. I said that out loud.”
Darren’s honesty and self-deprecation were refreshing. I’d met way too many guys who were desperate to impress me, even if they didn’t want to fuck me. Clients who bragged about their trophy wives and houses, old college friends who bragged about their career trajectories… hell, my few gay friends often bragged about how many guys they’d had.
“Me too,” I told him. “I only bend over and take it from work these days.”
