The sunlight shot from one end of Paul Anderson’s brain to the other when he woke up, and over him was a composed, slightly amused face.
“It’s good that you wake up now. Take this now. It will help you. You’ve been too screwed up to get up until now.”
Obediently he took the pills and lifted the drink to his mouth before snorting.
“What is this?”
“You know what it is. You can’t be that stupid,” Fenn said.
Johnny Mellow lifted the beer to his mouth again. “It’s so early in the morning…” And then he said, “Isn’t it? I mean, I’ve got to be back by—”
“It’s about eight,” Fenn said. He was in a long, very old red flannel housecoat. “And as for that—” he pointed to the beer, “Hair of the dog is the best thing.
“But you know, I am surprised. I thought all you guys were weight lifters and trainers and all of that. Into that good healthy life except when…”
“Fucking each other,” Paul said through the beer.
“I guess some of us are,” he said. “It makes you feel better to think of yourself that way. Ohhh.”
Paul groaned and lay back down.
“But a lot of us are what I am right here. Fucked up.”
Paul said, “I remember you. I dreamed you. I… Don’t know where I am.”
“Todd brought you home.”
“This is Todd’s house,” Paul tried to sit up again. “It’s very nice. You must be Fenn. He talked about you all day.”
Fenn tried to hide his smile and said, “Really? Oh… It must have been a long day.”
Paul laughed, tired for a while, and then said, “Well, it was. But…” he looked at Fenn thoughtfully. “You probably wouldn’t have much of an idea what a long day is for me.”
At this Fenn began to laugh.
“No,” he said, trying to recover. “No, I really don’t think I can. I would like to, though.”
“Really?” Paul said, grimacing.
“Yes, really? Why not really?”
“Well,” he said after a moment. “The only time people think what I do is interesting is when they are really stupid fat middle aged men who think that it means I’m an escort and maybe they’ll get a fuck out of me. For some money. Or, they are horny guys who are kind of young. But… they’re kinda dumb too. Sometimes they think they want to be pornstars. They feel all giddy and crap just to be next to you. And… if you don’t have any self esteem then it feel good that people feel good having you next to them. But… usually polite people, no matter what they do when they’re alone, they act like they have no interest in you at all. Like you are the lowest thing on earth. And maybe I am. I don’t know.”
Fenn shrugged and took back the empty beer glass, negligently pushing Paul back into the covers.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t seem very low. I’ve met low people. I…”
And then he said, “I should let you get back to bed.”
“No, it’s alright,” Paul said. “I’ve slept all night.”
Fenn nodded and sat back down.
“I’ve just wondered how you do it,” Fenn said. “I mean, skip the why. I would wonder how. I wouldn’t be able. I mean, I’ve heard people say they’d like to be pornstars, and I think well, I’d like to have the life of a porno. You know. Where good looking people screw you left and right to abandon. Hell, once upon a time I think I did have that life.
“But it’s the whole business of the cameras. The actual having to shoot a movie. I don’t even like it when a lover talks during sex, let alone a director. How you do that? I would like to know?”
Paul was quiet for a second. He sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, like someone at a slumber party.
“You know what?”
“Hum?”
“I feel like I know you. The same way I knew it was safe to go to Todd, and it was the only thing I knew last night. I feel like I know you.”
“Well…” Fenn shrugged. “Thank you.”
“I have never had a serious sex partner off screen,” Paul said. “Most of the time sex is my job, see? And when I first started doing movies, I really didn’t have a lot of experience, or a boyfriend I could have sex with a lot. So, for me, on screen was pretty much it. I was so horned up. And then, I think there was the whole thing about being watched. It sort of excited me that I was being watched. I think if it was someone like, say my priest back home. Or my mom or…
“All of these people made me feel ashamed growing up. I didn’t want to be seen… period. I mean I didn’t want people to see me walking or talking, let alone fucking. But here is this whole other world where people pay to SEE me do the dirtiest thing in the world. The thing people say is so trashy, but they can’t help watching.”
Paul looked over at Fenn and saw a secretive smile on his face.
“What?”
“Last night I did something I’ve never done before.”
“Huh?” Paul furrowed his brow.
“I took out Todd’s credit card—Todd’s—and I got Guy McClintock online. I saw you. I saw you in a movie.”
“Oh, God!” Paul sounded suddenly sick.
“No, just listen. I… wanted to understand. You know. That’s what I told myself a long time ago. People love to judge… everything. Don’t they? They just point their fingers left and right. Well…. I wanted to know. And so I watched.”
Paul waited for him to continue.
“I was so… turned on. Everybody gets turned on when they see a porno, but nobody really asks why. You… the way you looked, like you were in this zone. In this other place. Like when religious people go into ecstasy. It was like you and the other person didn’t care who was there. You all were so into each other. So into the moment. And it was scary. The way I felt. The way you looked, like you were on the edge of something. Something you might not come back from. Something I had to watch at two in the morning while my boyfriend slept because it was secret, it didn’t belong in the ordinary world. I don’t know… It was actually sort of amazing. So I don’t really have anything to say about it. Because I don’t know what to make of it. It’s just one of those things that sort of… defies a straight judgment. But then… I think that’s really most things.”
“OH, NOTHING. I’m just watching Todd get dressed,” Fenn said over the phone.
“Yeah,” he said turning back to Paul and watching Todd walk back and forth. “He’s still doing that movie. And you’ll never believe what he brought home.”
Paul shrugged.
“My sister,” Fenn explained.
“And how’d the date go? Really? And Layla liked him? Well… I am surprised.” Silence. “Because she doesn’t like anyone. She takes after Mama. Fine, tell her I said it.”
“Hought!”
Fenn put down the phone.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen my car keys?”
“You left them in your jacket.”
Todd nodded.
“And tell Guy McClintock I said hello.”
“You could tell him yourself,” Paul said.
“What?” Then, to the phone, “Hold on, Adele.”
Closing the closet door and taking the keys out of his jacket, Todd said, “You know… Johnny… Paul… uh…?”
“In this house he’s Paul,” Fenn said.
“Well, he has a point. You could come.”
“I couldn’t,” Fenn flushed with the thought.
“When has there ever been a time when you turned down the chance to do something that would make a great story?”
“And I’m sure we could put you in a film,” Paul said.
Fenn looked scandalized, but Paul said, “I was just kidding.”
“Who knows?” Todd leaned down and breathed into Fenn’s neck. “Maybe we could do one together.”
“That,” Paul said, looking from one to the other, “would make me hot.”
“Well, if you want to be hot you’ll have to go to Acapulco,” Fenn said, standing up. “Cause that’s not happening. But I need a few minutes to put some clothes on.”
“Well, don’t take too long,” Todd said. “We’ve gotta go soon.”
“You just invited me now,” Fenn said, heading up the back stair. “I’ll be finished when I’m finished.”
By the time they’d reached the house, Fenn Houghton was wearing his poker face as he gazed around the foyer, and he gave Guy McClintock a Mona Lisa smile when the director said, “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have missed it.” Fenn looked around. “You’d never know there was a party here last night. Well,” he looked to one corner of the room where a large Hispanic housekeeper in blue was scrubbing a patch of floor. “You’d almost never know.”
“Yes. Well, that’s why we pay the cleaning staff so much. Join me at the pool?”
Guy ushered them through the house saying, “Johnny, I wondered where you had gone too. Someone said they’d seen you leaving with Todd. I might add by the way, if the two of you,” he gestured to Fenn and Todd, “are interested in that sort of thing…”
“What sort of thing?” said Todd.
Fenn cleared his throat. “He thinks we had a threeway last night.”
“Oh. Ohhhh. No!” Todd said.
Fenn noted, “We could hardly make it to a two way.”
Guy smiled broadly. “Meradan, that’s what I like about you. Your innocence. But, you know, it’s a lot of my boys who start out very innocent.” Guy stopped and touched Johnny’s cheek, looking at him fondly. “Really, that’s the best kind of boy. The one who keeps his innocence while fucking like a jackrabbit.”
To Fenn’s surprise, when Guy had turned away and continued toward the pool, Paul also turned away, his face red.
“This is going to be the scene of my new movie,” Guy told them while they were sipping drinks around the pool, and Todd had set the camera up.
“It’s not going to be the usual stuff. You know, a short amateur porn thing of two wide eyed innocents discovering the pleasure of cock for the first time. No. This will be a movie. Like Caligula, only modern. I’m thinking we’ll use Johnny here, like in… Hey, did you ever see Pizza Slut? That was a brilliant film he did, back in California when I first was starting out. Well, now Johnny, I think you and Noah could be in a great film with me. Do you think you could memorize dialogue?”
“Well,” Johnny said, “I did used to want to be an actor. I did plays back in high school.”
“That’s the spirit,” Guy said. “This is going to be…” Guy sat back, opening his mouth and his hands to a revelation, “I’m thinking something like A Separate Peace. God, I fucking loved that book. It will be about boys discovering friendship in the midst of war. It will have all the deep, old themes. Forgiveness, faith, courage. Only… with lots of cock, and tons of hot, sweaty fucking.”
“Well, it sounds just like Shakespeare when you say it that way,” Fenn said.
“Yeah,” Guy said. “That’s just what I was thinking.”
Fenn, expressionless, looked to Todd, and Todd turned his head away to keep from laughing.
“Luckily,” Guy said, “Noah is here. And I was thinking we could get Burt into this too. Because… I’ve got the screenplay, and I thought we could give it a good ole read through. How’s that sound?”
“Uh… yeah,” Paul said.
“I’ll be right back,” Guy said, and Fenn said, “Goddamn, I’m so glad I came.”
“BUT I’M SO SCARED Bobby,” Noah said woodenly but, Fenn admitted, with a certain degree of true fear.
Todd leaned in and said, “Noah’s a really nice guy. But he’s very shy… Unless he’s doing his work.”
Fenn gave Todd a sardonic look and Todd said, “Don’t be like that.”
“I mean, Bobby, what if the war never ends?”
“Come here?” the guy who must have been Burt said, holding the script in one hand, and gesturing to Noah with the other. “Come here and let me am… amel… ame—”
“Ameliorate,” Guy said.
“Ameliorate,” Fenn mouthed to Todd, who stopped himself from sniggering and said, “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“No, you just can’t take me to a pornographer trying to direct War and Peace.”
“Come here,” Burt started again, “and let me ameliorate your fears.”
And then Burt got on his knees and Noah said, “But, Bobby, we shouldn’t. The Church says it’s wrong.”
“All, I know,” Burt said, not sounding like he was acting as he yanked down Noah’s shorts, “is I have to follow my heart.”
Fenn wondered why he had expected a pornographer to do a dry rehearsal. Of course Burt or Bobby or whatever was going to give a real blowjob. Which he was now doing. As if Todd knew what Fenn was thinking, he put a gentle, calming hand on Fenn’s leg. This was, of course Todd’s work, to film these peoples’ lives, and this was their work. So Fenn just sat there and tried to tune it out.
“Really get in there, Bobby. Really get in there and suck that cock.”
Then Fenn realized that even though Guy had held a camera this whole time, now was the first time he was using it to really film, going around them.
He’s going to sell the rehearsals online, Fenn realized.
Just then, on cue, Johnny walked in and shouted, “You said it was only me, Bobby!”
Burt and Noah stopped as if caught in the act, and Burt stood up and said, while Noah pulled up his shorts:
“It was just you. But…” and then he turned back to the script. “John needed me. He needed my comfort. He had never experiences the pleasure that only another man can give.”
Johnny opened his mouth in what, Fenn noted, looked like credible shock.
But then Noah said, “Don’t be upset… Bartholomew… I was thinking about you too. When Bobby was giving me his mouth.”
Giving me his mouth?
Burt reached out and took Johnny’s hand and then Noah’s. “I was thinking… that we could pleasure each other.”
“All…” Johnny began, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, “at the same time?”
“Together,” Burt said.
“Oh, Bartholomew,” Noah said. “I’ve always wanted to be with you.” He kissed Johnny. “And you.”
And then he kissed Burt deeply, and next Johnny, and then all three of them were kissing and rubbing each others chests, and Fenn whispered to Todd:
“Maybe, I’m getting soft, but if what I think is going to happen is about to happen, then I need to… get a drink or something.”
“You’re going to leave me here?”
“You’re the impartial film maker. I’m the one you can’t take anywhere.”
Hotter and embarrassed for being so easily embarrassed, Fenn stood up just as Noah was reaching into Johnny’s jeans and unbuttoning them.
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