PART FOUR
THE MODERN WORLD
NINE
RESOLUTION
Logan was bored with life in Rossford. The running of Casey’s studio had become incredibly dull. He only managed things. He didn’t do porn anymore. It had lost its thrill.
A year or so back, Ashton Reed wrote a book—well, someone wrote a book and the star’s name was on it—where he talked about his life in porn, how he faked enjoying being fucked by men, how he just wanted money, was really straight and despised the whole thing. Now it was all over. Now he was doing… what? Logan hadn’t thought there would be too many people who wanted to read a book like that, but he had been unpleasantly surprised. Now that Logan ran Casey’s old studio and was starting to run Port Ridge, he dressed as Casey had, lots of sweat pants, his weary eyes finally surrendering to glasses he actually didn’t mind wearing in the house. Reading an online article about this washed up porn star turned author caused unpleasant reflections.
People were full of shit and hypocrisy. They wanted to read that the porn stars they delighted in beating off to were penitent, that now that these men had been as hot and uninhibited as their viewers would never be, they were sorry for it. The happy moral ending. At the same time they wanted to hear that, even though they couldn’t make it out of their door to get laid, or even though sex filled them with shame and guilt and doubt, the low paid kids they watched were having the time of their lives.
Or worse still, all those poor fucks who stayed home alone and typed to each other on the Internet about the lives of their favorite gay porn stars—can you imagine that?—and though they would never find anything sane in their real lives, developed and wrote about crushes on Danny, on Sander on Logan himself, on Noah Riley back in the day, and especially Johnny Mellow. Oh, he’s so sweet. Oh, he’s so kind! Look how they’re doing it. You can tell they’re really into it. You can tell there’s real love….
Blah blah blah.
Logan took a swill of wheat juice—which he had come to like. He’d seen the recipe on a web show called A to Bajay. Bajay, who had been a hot and deeply slutty porn star—Logan had fucked and been fucked by him—briefly went on to be a mixed martial arts fighter and then become a personal trainer. Now he had a web show where, scarcely or scantily clad, he taught exercise and nutrition tips. In an interview Logan had done with him, Bajay said, “I don’t regret a thing. Everything I’ve done is part of who I’ve become.”
But as Logan learned, not quite ten years back when he had gone into a modeling shoot and ended up having sex with the producer, it was all porn. Bajay walking around naked, cooking horrible meals, was still being looked at, lusted over, and feeding the lust of people, feeding the hard eyes of the limp dicked.
People picked out bits of truth and made it the whole truth. Ashton did have a girlfriend, and he was the type of person who, looking at money options, would think—sex work, drugs or thievery. He would never think college and job. It was also true that he despised fucking men. And poor Billy, working as a veterinary assistant in Indiana who had fifty videos of himself getting joyfully slammed and slamming back, well it was true that he was frightened and irritated of people tracking him down. It was true that he hated what he had done. It was also true that there was Viagra and numbing cream and often as not no real affection.
But this business was a rush. It was true that it fed your desire to be loved, to be looked at, to be desired, to get off. It brought you to your dark side, and everyone wanted to know that dark side. There was a part of everyone he’d known, the sweet, the devious, the loathsome, the now become holier than thou, that longed for the dark side. Everyone longed for the trip to the dark, but not everyone could survive the journey. Once you loved it, if your experience was good with it, the truth was you became a little addicted. He knew people who had three strains of HIV and were willing to do porn till they dropped dead.
Maybe, in some way, it always remained a part of you. Casey didn’t make one damned film, but he still ran a business and did the filming. He’d stopped participating in them a long time ago. Noah worked downstairs at his strange academy for pornstars. Paul Anderson was a performer on the stage, but still a performer, and now his son was sleeping with two guys at the same time.
All Logan knew was, back in the day, when people would have felt sorry for him, when they would have said, “Look at that poor boy, selling himself in corners of clubs, doing it in cars, just barely paying his rent, taking off his clothes,” the truth was there had always been a rush. Whenever he was fucking a forty year old married man against a wall, or whenever he was being bent over a car, there was that part of him that felt how desired he was, that responded to the lust of the man he was with. There was that rush.
Running Casey’s studio was not a rush. It was boring. These people were boring. And what was more, even though, he’d spent so long doing what they did and enjoying it, when he saw the excitement on these boys, or the boredom he himself felt, he couldn’t help but think they were really fucking stupid.
And so several nights ago, when his phone vibrated on his desk he looked down at it, and smiled.
“Larry?”
“Good morning, Logan. How would you like to see what finally happens to Brunhilde?”
“The last part of Wagner?”
“Yes? A limo could arrive at four, and you could be here by six for an early supper. We could go on to the opera. And then you could spend the night?”
These days it was things like that which excited him.
Maggie was eating raw mushrooms and shredded cheese from a small Tupperware box. It wasn’t that she was especially healthy, in fact it was just the opposite. But she had been watching a news segment on the Today show that said the second meal of the day should be produce, and if she was real with herself, she didn’t do produce so well, so… here was a stab. It wasn’t fancy, in fact she frowned to realize there was still dirt on some of the mushrooms, but it was better than the crap she usually ate.
“I don’t understand why everyone’s in such a tizzy,” Maggie said.
“Because Maia’s married,” Dena told her.
Again, Maggie was not in Dena’s kitchen because she enjoyed Dena so much, but rather because she thought it was a positive step toward forging some type of bond with her family, or rather with her half siblings, her father, and the woman he’d married. She was, after all, Meredith’s sister—well, sort of her sister—and Ed loved Meredith even if Maggie couldn’t see why.
“Well, that’s too bad,” Maggie came as close to sympathy as she could, lifting a salted mushroom and sticking it in her mouth, “but Maia is a grown woman—”
“Look,” Dena said, “Maybe you don’t get it, but Maia is my family, and I don’t wish to see my cousin ruin her life.”
“Dena, not only do I not get it,” Maggie told her, “I don’t care about it. And, at any rate, you and Dad have been together since you were younger than Maia and Bennett, and his life isn’t ruined.”
“Dena’s just saying—” Milo began.
“Or maybe your life is ruined,” Maggie looked at Dena.
“This is what always happens,” Dena said. “Every time you come here.”
Maggie chuckled and said, “If you had your way I wouldn’t come here at all.”
“Are you and Mom fighting again?” Cara looked up at them.
“No baby,” Dena began while Maggie said, “Not yet.”
“See, that’s just it,” Dena said. “It’s your confrontational attitude.”
“Oh, you’re such a bitch,” Maggie said.
She turned to her father.
“I’m not going to let you have an awkward moment. I’m just going to get the hell out of here.”
Maggie picked up her dish of mushrooms. Then, on inspiration, she emptied it out on the table.
“Pick that up,” Dena began.
“Bite me, bitch,” Maggie said, and walked out the door.
Dena stood there, infuriated. Outside the car squealed down the street.
“Why don’t you do something?” Dena rounded on Milo.
For not the first time in the years since Maggie had come into the picture, Milo looked deeply desperate.
“I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“That woman is a bitch!” Maggie declared walking into the house where Jonah stayed.
Ruthven Meradan looked up from the sofa and tugged the bit of beard under his chin.
“By that woman I’m assuming you mean my cousin, Dena?”
“Oh, that’s right!” Maggie said, approaching him with a dangerous glimmer in her eye.
“Hey, don’t kill me over it. We’re not close like that.”
“She’s just so nasty to me. It’s my mother. She’s upset because my father made me with another woman.”
“That probably doesn’t help,” Kenny said, coming out of the kitchen. “But you smashing out her windows and fucking her car up probably didn’t help either.”
“Kenny, I hope you’re not taking her side,” Maggie said.
“The two of them are kind of alike,” Ruthven commented.
“Yeah, it’s scary fucked up,” Kenny agreed.
“I am not like her,” Maggie began. “I hate her.”
“Look,” Kenny put a hand on her shoulder.
“Did you know that she used to be Brendan’s girlfriend?”
“Brendan Brendan? Your ex Brendan? Her best friend, Brendan?”
“Yes. For a long time. Anyway, Bren found out some stuff about himself and the two of us started cheating behind her back.”
“Really?” Maggie smiled, delighted.
“A little less glee, Maggs. Please. This is ancient history. You weren’t even born.
“Anyway, to make a long story short, when she found out about it, she went to the grocery store where I worked—the Martin’s up on Dorr—and she checked out a bunch of shit in my aisle, and then she leaned across the register and cold cocked me. She actually went to jail for assault.”
“I don’t know to laugh or what?”
“A little of both,” Kenny said. “But my point is, I know what it is to be on the bad side of Dena Affren. I know how she can be. And I know you helped to put yourself there.”
“And what’s more,” Ruthven added, “we know how you can be, Maggie.”
Maggie took a very deep breath.
“There’s no use pretending you’re anything close to an angel,” Ruthven continued.
Kenny said: “You all need to make up.”
“What’s up?” Matthew said.
“I was looking for Dylan.” Thackeray said.
“Well, now your brother can’t be with you all the time.”
“I know,” said Thackeray.
“No,” Matthew said, seriously. Then he called across the room, “Riley?”
The narrow, golden skinned boy with the reddish hair came to the couch with them.
“We’re your family,” Matthew said to Thackeray. “Isn’t that right?”
“That’s exactly right,” Riley told him.
“You don’t have to always be looking for Dylan. You’re not on your own, and he won’t be here in a few days anyway,” Matthew said.
“But,” Thackeray began, and then was quiet.
“What?” Riley said.
“Nothing,” said Thackeray. “It’s just that it’s easy if you’ve always been here.”
“I’m adopted,” Matthew said, simply. “My brothers—one who just married Todd’s daughter—are not even blood related to me. Just to each other. And they are both my dads’ real kids. I know how you feel. But…” Matthew turned to Riley.
“But we’re family,” Riley said, simply. “And speaking of your other brother…”
“Com’ on,” Matthew said.
The other boys jumped up and followed him.
“Where you off to?” asked Claire.
“I don’t know,” Riley told his mother, and headed out of the door, and around the house.
“We are going to the apartment,” Matthew said.
Matthew reached the apartment and turned the door handle. The other boys followed him down and then Matthew cleared his throat.
“What the nut!” Elias started.
Thackeray, a step above, covered his mouth while Riley laughed.
“Thack!” Dylan’s voice was a little high. He and Elias had been making out.
“What are you all doing here,” Elias moved off of the couch.
“What are you all doing not locking the door?” Matthew said back.
“One big brother just got married and the other’s about to get naked with the door wide open. If we were blood related, would I have gotten the stupid gene too?”
“I’m locking the door behind you,” Elias said, getting up.
Dylan got up, though, and went to his brother.
“I’ll be up in a minute, buddy. Alright?”
“Sure,” Thackeray said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” Thackeray said, feeling less than sure, but remembering what Matthew and Riley had said, “You can’t be with me all the time.”
He hugged his brother quickly and then headed up the stairs. As the boys left, he heard Elias say, sourly, “Don’t forget to lock the door, Dyl.”
Matthew chuckled, walking ahead of them.
“Is Elias always mean to you?” Thackeray said to Matthew.
“He’s not mean,” Matthew said. “He’s just my brother.”
Thackeray paused over this. He couldn’t imagine Dylan being anything but what he was which was warm and protective.
“They’re going to kiss,” Thackeray said.
Matthew looked at Thackeray.
“What?”
“Don’t be rude,” Riley said to Matthew. “How would he know?”
“You don’t really know a lot of gay people do you?” Matthew said.
“Well, I guess I do now.”
“They’re going to have sex,” Matthew said, plainly.
Thackeray went red.
“They’re together,” Matthew said. “They’ve been together. And now they are… being together.”
Thackeray was totally red, and unable to comprehend his brother and Elias and what they were doing downstairs.
“I don’t even know… how it works.”
“Well, you don’t really need to,” Riley said. “I mean, unless you end up swinging that way.”
While Brendan drifted in and out of sleep with the baby on his chest, Sheridan sat on the sofa, reading.
“You’ve changed this a bit,” Sheridan said.
