Faggots (12 page)

“Who’s that?” Robbie whispered, hearing footsteps nearing him and wondering why the stage lights had not retwinkled in the East when the curtain had closed, as they’d rehearsed it.

He received no reply. He did however feel a heavenly wet sensation in his genital area and, being a good Mormon, wondered if perhaps something in the nature of a quasi-religious experience might be transpiring, much akin to a Catholic’s stigmata of the hands. He did not know whether to cry out in puzzlement or prayer. If God were in fact rewarding him in some way for being such a good Jesus, as his Mommy had indicated He might, he decided he’d better recite some passages from a particularly latter-day prayer of Joseph Smith’s.

As he mumbled and recited, Randy sucked and slobbered, and Robbie’s penis shortly heeded its call to glory. The bigger it got, the more fervent the liturgical incantations, and, at the moment of orgasm, Robbie, for one brief moment, thought he was entering the Kingdom of Heaven. He almost passed out. It was his very first coming. Randy had bagged his first virgin. Swallowing every drop that the young Jesus had given him, Randy then climbed down from Mr. Petronius’s three-stepped stairway to paradise and withdrew into the wings. And not a moment too soon!

The auditorium lights went on, the curtain swung open, and there, before a simply riveted audience of nine hundred boys and girls, swung a wan and exhausted Jesus, his panties down around his lipsticked ankles and his dangling (unfortunately uncircumcised and therefore historically miscast) penis dribbling the last few drops of distinctly mortal fluid. Neither Robbie nor his audience knew exactly what was up, or down, though all were beginning to consider that whatever had happened had nothing to do with Easter.

Randy, beside himself with the joy of completion, a task well mastered, stood now in a cubicle in the empty boys’ room, wiping his own wet member off with toilet paper. Yes, he’d brought it off. What next?

Let us not toil with his continued exploits in secondary school. Since he began more frequently tarrying with the fellows who hung out at the notorious Casa de Blanca, it was not long before he learned that the male body appeared to be limited in what it could give and receive from another male body. A fuck here and there, a blow job, a jerk-off—: once you’ve been to the White House, where’s left to visit?

With the solution of this problem he was fortunate, as have been so many successful men, in acquiring the services of a mentor. Lance Heather was a true teacher. Randy met the handsome young blond Alan Ladd while they were both on a college student tour of Universal Studios. Despite the effeminacy of his patronymic, Lance was the leader of the Los Angeles organization known as the Defenders of Zeus. This group met twice a week, more often if their bodies recovered, in an abandoned ranch house in Nichols Canyon. There they played not only with ropes and thongs and whips but also with chains and buzzsaws and live snakes. Lance had not been kidding when, on that guided tour, he had promised Randy “many a new kick and thrill.”

And so it was while watching one of the members fucking himself by sitting on a stationary twelve-inch rubber dildo while being bound hand and foot, the dildo impaled to a cross, the cross mounted on a stage, and the fellow also sucking the cock of a gentleman clad entirely in chain mail, except of course for his genitals, which were exposed, and enormous, and holding in his hand while mouth-fucking the impaled acolyte, not one but two hissing rattlesnakes, reputed to have been defanged but dripping something from their mouths nevertheless, all of this witnessed by forty-nine other members, each donged with grease, each jerking off either himself or a fellow clubber, in some sort of cockamamie version of the daisy chain, don’t Southern Californians have wonderful imaginations, whatever happened to King of the Mountain?, well, perhaps this was King of the Mountain—it was while watching all of this, and of course participating, he couldn’t be a spoilsport, that Randy had an epiphany. He began to realize to what lengths it would soon be necessary to travel to receive kicks sufficient to cause erection, and while he was finding these ceremonies reasonably exciting (and certainly a nice time-out from his studies), in that he had a good stiff one on while those two snakes were up there hissing away, he knew he had neither the time nor the abundant imagination to play “Can You Top This?” every time he wanted to get his rocks off.

So and thus, while he was dimly aware that his rejection of Lance Heather, who was mightily enamored of him, was not taken graciously (and might prove bothersome in the chapters of his life to come), Randy knew it was time to reroute his direction, to quit both the Defenders of Zeus and Pepperdine University (a rather right-wing, religious place, on the way to Malibu) and, with an appetite whetted by so much experience in theatricals, to enter show business at last.

His lengendary rise has been amply documented in the annals of business and finance, not to mention the tabloid press. He went from mail room to board room in lickety-split time by a combination of charm, insolence, innuendo, instinct, chutzpa, brains, various chicaneries and good lucks—in other words, your typical American rise to the top, stopping along the way to mingle among these woofs and warps those other typically American threads that have so helped to weave his legend. From the mail room of a major network he sighted and rescued the skids-ing career of a once-famous chanteuse, restoring her quite miraculously to international chirpdom while zinging from her new revenues an over-generous portion of her notes; through this song he met and thoughtfully escorted to premieres a famous actress, only to be shot, in a parking lot, in his groin, by her jealous husband, a major studio’s Head; he displaced said Head in said studio’s affections, elbowing out as well his own sagging Uncle Darrel; he conveniently married a convenient Lesbian, only to be shot at once again when she turned and took up with a jealous Mafia chieftain; he forged some checks and launched his first successful Number One Nielsen series,
Men At War
!—yes, he’d made it to the top, and the annals of business and finance, not to mention the tabloid press, noted all with grateful thanks. Such good copy! Such a captain of industry! And such a cocksman! (And still a virgin!)

He is of course now friendless. Such power does not allow for true friends. He has smiled rarely, offended many, and wound up King of the Pile. He has made Marathon Leisure Time Number One. He is now the leading purveyor of America’s film and television entertainment.

He sits, so high up there, sipping a Kir from a glass of Baccarat, waiting for Abe Bronstein, sooner or later they all come to Dildough, minioning to his feet, taking another sip, musing on his favorite pet project: he would find a new James Dean; another sip, pausing to reflect that his own personally supervised potential blockbuster of
Bronty, The Last Survivor,
the story of a dinosaur from another world who gets into a bit of trouble in this one, was premiering just this very day from coast to coast; another sip, and then an unsettling thought: What do I really want?, followed by: I could be President…of Pan-Pacific, certainly…but why not my country?…I obviously possess qualities others do not, and then the crepuscular realization, mustn’t let it in, oh, here it comes!: Why is there such contrast between what I might be and what I continue to be?…Why am I not utilizing to the fullest my abilities?…Why allow I my inner fantasies to propel me…the other way?…Why am I not becoming a part of a plot that would change my life, instead of plots about…dinosaurs…and cocks?…Yes, what do I really want? I have everything already, how can I surmount the fates, take bigger and bigger risks, the ones that could set the world and not my rocks atingle and aglow, bigger and bigger crap games, propelling me further and further…to…where?…and what?…and…whom?

And then…the final thought…: Do I want…can I have…am I capable of…a friend?

No, I must not do this again either.

On his way to the locker room upstairs, Fred had stopped and had his cock sucked in the basement toilet of his beloved West Side Y.

He had had to pee, and had headed directly for the open urinals, looking straight ahead (always look straight ahead at open urinals, because they are undoubtedly fronted by disreputable sorts), and he had noticed, by chance only of course, and only out of the corner of his eye, a handsome young man, in tight jeans and body-hugging T-shirt, with welcoming brown eyes under dashing, waving locks of black, fronting the next stall, standing right beside him, this creature for a fantasy, looking with those eyes from under those locks over the partition down upon Fred’s cock. Fred could hardly pee.

But could Fred not succumb to The Romantic Spirit?! The boyish open-eye-edness of young Coleridge, the noble nose of thoughtful Wordsworth, the brisk and winning way of wiry Keats, “I have been half in love with easeful Death,” no, that’s not apt, the innocence and charm of slender, shambling Shelley, “Love, love, infinite in extent, eternal in duration,” that’s more like it!, the zenithic swagger of dark and moody, Lord-ly Byron, (who hated his mother and whose daddy died most young), (and who felt himself an old man at only twenty-eight!)—all this and these were standing beside him, with a pinch of the Paul Newman’s thrown in. Lord Newman was looking at his cock!

And now he was stepping back and waiting for Fred to do the same, waving his thing with his hand and reaching down to take Fred’s, then leaning his head close to Fred’s so that they could kiss, then reaching round him and holding Fred in a hard, tough, heman’s embrace. Ah, yes, the Romantic Age and Spirit!

Suddenly a third man jumped out from one of the toilet stalls behind them. Fred jumped, too, but Byron-Wordsworth-Shelley-Coleridge-Keats obviously knew that the newcomer was an old-timer, not much to look at any way, certainly no threat, with the messy look of a perpetual student, no front runner, who, in any event, sat down at B-W-S-C-K’s booted feet, by the urinal’s Ubangi lip, and proceeded, from the floor, to suck that bardic cock, Lord Newman now bending over to suck Fred’s, at the same time—all at the same time—breaking open a popper and ramming it into Fred’s nose so that his orgasm, summoned hastily by the excitement of this Forbidden Moment, now flushing through him (along with further fantasies that it was Dinky’s mouth down there around him), all of this and these and them sending him through the roof in a way that no ordinary licit sexual encounter had in recent memory, what a way to begin a workout at the gym!, here it comes, Dinky baby, I’m whooshing a large load right out of me and into you and…

Fred stuck his thing back in and rebuttoned his fatigued marines. What had he done? He could have been caught. And arrested. Intelligent human beings do not go around doing it in public johns. With or without a muse. Or do they? Anyway, this one just had. Come on, Fred, admit it felt good. He recollected, from that seminal volume by Trudge & Naster: “The warring conflict in man between the intellect and the libido shall never be twinned.” From this he now took comfort.

“Thanks,” he mumbled to the kneeling poetaster, who now looked less like a Paul and more like a Herbert or a Harvey, a middle-aged derrick in a young man’s rig, who waved So Long, Honey, as he continued to be ministered to by Young Messy Student, who was now the popper’s recipient, and walked out, thinking to himself, OK, there’s nothing in the world like a good blow job, nothing in the world, particularly a covert one, yes, it felt good, and upstairs he went, to his locker and the early-evening crowd of worker-outers, joggers, lifters, gymnasts, squashers (with naked humpy bodies in the steam room later for dessert), in profusion, goodie, yummy, to smoothly jog his daily three. He’d had the pause that refreshes. Yes, today he’d tried two new things. A golden shower and a tea-room. His investigations were proceeding nicely apace. Progress was being made.

The jogging was followed by the pumping of iron, unh, phew, fush, straining, another rippling muscle for Dinky, my definition increaseth every day, two hours a day’s more than I ever spent with any shrink, uhn, umk, add another bench press, pucker out those tits for him to pinch and suck, leg raise for the stomach’s smile of beauty, arm curl, want my arms as big as his, unhh, yunk, rretch, no gain without pain, fewh, plutz, nunh, Dinky where the fuck are you? I’m waiting impatiently. Uhnh. Phew. Zlink. I’m ready for love.

At precisely this moment when Boo Boo Bronstein is considering being kidnapped, a handsome young stranger arrives on our scene. The good Lord giveth one just when He considereth a taking away. Ecology liveth.

At 7:03
P.M
. of this Friday Memorial Day weekend, Timmy Purvis arrived at Port Authority Bus Terminal on Continental Trailways 101 from Mt. Rainier, Maryland. He walked in, looking at the signs: Authority, Asbury Park, Adirondack, Amber Lantern—everything began with A. A new beginning.

Timmy had come to New York to have fun. He was sixteen years old and he knew that what he had been having in Mt. Rainier, Maryland, had not been fun. Though it was considered to be a suburb of Washington, D.C., it was as far away from that metropolis as the poor are from the rich. Timmy’s folks were poor, but of course noble and upright, and for Timmy—a perceptive one for sixteen, but then so many things are starting younger these days—dowdy, dull, and just not on the same vibrating wavelength. He knew this when he would look at his Ma’s big cow brown eyes or his Dad’s lined and honest face and he would say to himself: Who are these people, I don’t want to be like these people, I don’t want to be like anybody in Mt. Rainier, Maryland, ever, ever, ever. Imagine complaining about the price of food and getting up at 6:30 every morning to go to work.

Thus, a departure was in order and the sooner the better. He just up and did it, with a sense of direction, spirit, and commitment that would do any organism proud. He left them a note: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Purvis, I am now sixteen years old and desire to be my own man. I shall continue my education in the World. Please don’t hurt and please don’t look for me. I don’t want to come back. Good-bye and fond remembrances, Timothy Peter Purvis.”