Chapter Twelve
Secrets that Would Go to The Grave
“SO, WHAT YOU’RE SAYING is you’re in love with him?”
“What I’m saying,” Paul said, “is that I am attracted to him.
I am attracted to Noah. In twelve years I haven’t been attracted to another man.”
“But have you been attracted to him for twelve years?”
“What?”
“To Noah Riley? For twelve years have you been wanting him?”
“No,” Paul began. Then, “I don’t know.” Then, “It’s hard to say. Does it matter?”
“It matters if you’ve been in love with him for twelve years.”
Paul’s face hardened. He said, “There’s no doing it right. Keeping it to myself, that’s not doing it right. Coming to you, that’s not doing it right, either. We need to work this out.”
“It seems like you have worked it out,” Kirk said.
“Kirk, sit down. Please sit down. We need to work this out.”
“I don’t want to work this out,” Kirk said. “You think you get tired of this? I get tired of it too. You think you get tired of me? Well, I get tired of you, too.”
When Paul said nothing, Kirk said, “Go on ahead, fuck him. Go and fuck Noah as hard as you can, just like you used to. I don’t really care.”
His voice was tired.
“Just fucking go.”
“WE THINK YOU’RE GOING to do really well in this campaign,” the man behind the desk said. “And so far we’ve got some really nice shots.”
Logan nodded his head and smiled.
“I mean, you’ve definitely come up the hard way into modeling, but I don’t really know that there’s an easy way. Look at me. I took the easy way. I could never be a model.”
Logan grinned and said, “Naw, you look great.”
He knew how to be charming and casual. “And you’re the one on the other side of the desk, right?”
“Well,” the man said, “I guess I am.
“Now, there’s one thing I’d like you to do.”
“Okay,” Logan nodded.
“I want you to try something. I want you to get on your knees, right here.”
There had been stranger things Logan had been asked to do, and for far less promise.
“That’s right,” said the man. “You’re a really good looking boy.”
Logan nodded. They wanted you sweet and gullible, affable and pliable. Even though you’d been fucked a million times and jizzed across a thousand faces, you were still the all American, affable boy.
“Just take off your shirt. I want to see what you’ve got again.”
Logan obliged, and the man got out of his chair and came around the desk. Logan wondered what was going on as his new boss stroked his shoulders and ran a hand over and down his chest.
“You’re nice. You’re nice,” he purred. His voice reminded Logan of the crazy man in Silence of Lambs.
It puts the lotion in the basket, Logan thought, and chuckled.
“You’re nice,” the man said, chuckling along.
Logan coughed and moved back, surprised a little.
“What are…? No, I’m not into that now. I’m modeling. Remember?”
Maybe he’d forgotten.
“I’m spreading out…. and all.”
“And that’s great, but everything is part of everything,” the man in the grey suit said, pulling his pants down.
“It’s all very sexual,” he elaborated, his voice not changing as he took out his penis and began stroking it.
“The things you’re going to be doing, your photo shoots, are already very sexual. This is just part of it. Now suck my cock.”
Logan didn’t have much practice in saying no and, what was more, he knew that this was the unwritten part of the contract. He’d done this before. He’d done it for a hell of a lot less. He imagined every hot boy who was getting out of porn had done this, so he did it. It would be over soon enough.
“That’s nice,” the man purred as he pulled Logan’s head forward and attempted to thrust his cock as far into Logan’s mouth as possible. “That’s nice,” he told Logan, tugging on his head, “Do it like you mean it. Do it like you love it. Swallow my fat white cock. Yeah, suck that cock.”
His voice never changed as he fucked Logan’s mouth. “Lick those balls too. Lick them. That’s nice. You’re a good little boy. How would you like it if I fucked you?”
Logan went on, enthusiastically sucking the man’s dick. If you weren’t going to do it with enthusiasm, you shouldn’t do it at all. They all got so upset unless you pretended.
“I’ve got a condom, don’t want to screw up your reputation,” the man said, pulling his penis out of Logan’s mouth. “Why don’t you get on your knees, kind of doggy style so I can see that round little ass of yours? That’s right. Hold on, let me get this on. I just really need to fuck you right now.”
Logan endured it, saying nothing as long as he could. The real mantra was that he’d been through worse before, and he had. He’d been roughly raped with no condom and a knife to his neck in his own apartment. He’d been blown by meth addict hillbillies living in a trailer park who had saved up for a night with him. This was nothing. Even when this man began tugging on his hair and saying, “Moan for me, baby. Moan like you like it. Tell me to never stop fucking you…”
Even then, Logan thought of the past and said to himself, This is nothing.
Noah answered the door for Casey. He was always surprised by what his old friend looked like. Casey was always a little too thin in those baggy jeans and that hoodie, always a little too nerdy in the black rimmed spectacles, a trifle apologetic. Once upon a time he looked like a porn star all the time, but then they had both been porn stars, they had both looked like that. What did people see when they saw Noah Riley, now Noah wondered?
“Come in.”
Casey nodded and Noah said, “Can I get you anything? Have you eaten?”
“Yeah, I don’t eat much. It was just a protein shake for breakfast. You know…” Casey lifted his shirt momentarily and Noah saw that Casey still had his body, “I’m not totally out of the biz. It still owns me.”
“I’ve got juice. Pomegranate juice. Orange juice?”
“Pom, yeah,” Casey said, and they went into the kitchen.
Noah poured the juice and sat down across from Casey. It had been years since he’d done a film, but starting in Rummelsville, and then especially in California, Noah had learned good health, so flax seed, pomegranate juice, things that would not be in most houses in Rossford, were here.
“I came here,” Casey said, taking a sip of the juice, “because I know how you’ve felt about me. I didn’t think you should have to come to me for help, and I want to help you in any way I can.”
“I don’t feel any way about you,” Noah protested.
“We used to be friends,” Casey said. “We used to both be these crazy party animals. We used to do so much shit together and have so much in common. Then you met James and went your way, and I went mine.”
“And you also decided to start sleeping with my son.”
“I was getting to that,” Casey said. “And I understand you never forgiving me. Cause you think I was just some perv doing something to Chay, and I’m not saying that how it started was right. You don’t understand, Noah. I had done a bunch of films by then. I’d done a lot of things. But me and Chay always scared me. That was the first time I was terrified of crossing a line. He was so young. But I was so in love with him. I mean, the same way you love James.”
“How is it the same?” Noah said. “I waited and waited for James and he waited and waited for me. You committed statutory rape with my kid. How’s that the same?”
“Cause I can’t live without him, and I’ll die before I hurt him.”
Casey took another sip of the tart juice. His lips were turning deep red.
“And anyway, he’s grown now, and we’re doing a damn sight better than he ever did with that Sheridan. And we’re not here about Chay. We’re here about you.”
“I don’t need a handout,” Noah said.
“Well, I’m not giving you one. Goddamn,” Casey swore. “You know what?” Casey added. “I don’t really think about God too much. Not seriously, but I really hope there is something like, I dunno, heaven or peace or whatever, cause maybe one day we can go back to being friends.”
“Only if heaven has blow and sleazy assholes who shoot us fucking each other, cause that was pretty much the context of our friendship,” Noah said. “I got over that period of my life. You live in it. Well, com’on, Casey, what was your offer?”
Casey hunched his shoulders.
“Dare I even offer,” he wondered aloud, “given the persnickitty tone of your holier than thou voice?”
“Persnickity?”
“Well, I will offer,” Casey said, adding, “but there should be a rule that says that once anyone has had a train pulled on them, he has to be a little bit humble concerning the morals of others. Between you and Paul shit gets awfully churchy.”
Noah cleared his throat, indicating that Casey should go on.
“How many times have you heard pornstars lament not getting treated right, not being paid enough, being asked to do dangerous things for no money, all of that shit? Basically notbeing protected.”
“All the fucking time.”
“Right. As far as I’m concerned we’re the gay military. We’re out on the sexual frontlines, and no one treats us right. We’re like war vets, born on the fucking Fourth of July.”
Noah couldn’t tell if Casey was serious or not.
“And when I started my company, it was about giving us some freedom, giving us some agency. Well, here is the next step in the Casey Williams porn legacy.”
“Are you serious?”
“You know what Noah? You were lucky. You found James, You found some money. Paul was lucky too. If none of that had happened, where would you be?”
Noah was quiet.
“I’m giving you the chance to get in on the ground floor of my next step for the betterment of gay pornstars.”
“Which is?”
Casey put his hands together and smiled.
“Which is,” he said, “the Noah Riley School for Gay Porn Stars.”
“SO WHAT ARE YOU going to do?” Mathan asked him. Brendan tagged along to breakfast with his sister and Mathan Alexander, and he shrugged, fork resting over his pancakes.
“I called off of work for the first time ever, and I’ve got to get back and work double time this week.”
“How can you work double, double time?” Carol demanded.
“I wasn’t even talking about your job,” Mathan told him. “I meant what about Kenny?”
“Kenny has really and truly made his decision,” Brendan said, soberly. “I can’t do a thing about that?”
“Don’t you care?” Carol said.
“Of course I care,” Brendan said. “What kind of question is that?”
Mathan looked at Carol, and then he looked to Brendan. “It’s actually a really good question,” he said.
“You left him all alone,” Carol reminded her brother. “And then, when he left, you didn’t do anything. Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you really are through, Bren.”
“I know we’re through,” Brendan said, a little heatedly, “because Kenny’s sleeping with Chad North. And I am not doing anything because there isn’t anything to do. There’s nothing to do.”
When neither Mathan nor Carol said anything, Brendan continued, “I don’t know what else I could do. I did everything I was supposed to do. There wasn’t a time I could have said, I can work less, or I don’t have to do this or do that. And I just found myself where I am, and now where that is—is alone.
“Well,” Brendan said, “To hell with it, I guess. I got a train to catch.”
Brendan stood up. “I gotta go to the little boy’s room, I’ll be right back. Don’t worry about the check, I got it.”
When Brendan was gone, Carol waited a minute and then said to Mathan, “I knew inviting Little Brother to breakfast would put a cramp in my game, but I never imagined how much.”
Mathan smiled.
“How much could you stand to see this old woman again?”
“What old woman?”
“The old woman who was twelve when you were born.”
“I,” Mathan said, spreading his hands out, “see no old woman, but this young girl in front of me I would be very glad to see again.”
“Well, good,” Carol said. “Can you wait to see her until she gets back from Chicago?”
When Mathan waited for an explanation she said, “The good thing about being jobless and almost homeless is that it frees you up to do what you should. And what I should do right now is be there for my baby brother.”
Mathan nodded.
“If you’re there for him,” he said. “I’ll be there for you.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I have any place else to go.”
DYLAN SAT READING ON THE steps of Saint Barbara’s High School. At last he had begun to thumb through his father’s old red Bhagavad Gita, hoping for some clarity. There was a section on duty. Well, there were several sections on duty, but this morning when he had a true duty, he couldn’t find them, and so he sat reading what was before him.
I am the ritual, I am the sacrifice, I am the offering, I am the herb, I am the mantra, I am the clarified butter, I am the fire, and I am the oblation. I am the supporter of the universe, the father, the mother, and the
It was all very beautiful. All ‘I don’t get it’. But there wasn’t anything to get. Not really. He remembered the one Bible class they’d had, the kids saying they didn’t understand it. Dylan understood it. He just didn’t care for it. He read on.
I give heat, I send as well as withhold the rain. I am immortality as well as death, I am also both the eternal Absolute and the temporal, O Arjuna. The Supreme Being has become everything.
Dylan read to the very end of the passage, the bit he had browsed very early this morning.
I personally take care of both spiritual and material welfare of those ever-steadfast devotees who always remember and adore Me with single-minded contemplation.
Ah, there it was. There was the promise. The tricky thing about Jesus is he never promised anything. The Father maketh the sun to shine on the good and the bad alike? Well, then what did it matter? How could he trust that? He needed to be protected. Especially now.
Dylan closed the little book, and stuffed it in his bag, toying with breathing out the sound, “OM.” He was watching his cousin kiss Alex, separate from him, kiss him again, link hands and then finally run up the steps to join him as Alex got in his car to drive away. When Laurel reached him, Dylan said, “I am not looking forward to what I have to do, today.”
As Dylan and Laurel entered the school, Lance, closing his locker, saw them, and the leggy young man, books swinging in his long arms, blazer flapping, waved as he heading in their direction.
“Hey, sports,” he said, catching Dylan’s hand lightly.
“I’m grounded,” Dylan said.
“I know, and that’s bad.”
“We need to talk.”
“I bet we do,” Lance said merrily. “I guess the old man won’t be letting me come around anymore?”
“No, we need to seriously talk.”
Lance’s handsome face changed.
“Alright?” he said, looking suspicious.
“Third period? Before lunch? We both got a free period.”
“Right,” Dylan said, his voice doubtful.
Lance leaned in and whispered something in Dylan’s ear. By the horrified look and the blenched expression on her cousin’s face, Laurel guessed that what he had said was that he loved him. Then Lance was off to his first period, and they were off to theirs.
When Dylan came out of third period, Lance startled him, standing right at the door, leaning on the lockers.
“You ready to talk?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. He was as ready as he would ever be. He hated himself right now, but he never backed down.
“Outside?” Lance said, and Dylan nodded.
They went to one of the little porches that overlooked the blacktop and sat down there. Dylan couldn’t help thinking how good Lance looked. He was tall and lean, growing into a man’s body. He squatted on his hams and Dylan was aware that, if he wanted it, they could go back somewhere and have sex. He loved having sex with Lance. The urge woke his body up right now. His father was right, he was too young for all of this. He had to make a grown up decision and he couldn’t get above his hard on.
“Hey, what’s up?” Lance said, concerned.
“I’m in love with you and you’ve never been so hot to me.” Lance chuckled offhandedly.
“That’s not a problem. Not so long as we keep it under raps. Remember when you got back from Chi, and we did it right over there?”
Lance’s face was red, and Dylan heated up.
“I love Ruthven more,” he spat out.
Lance looked at him.
“It doesn’t make any sense but I feel like as long as…”
He stopped talking while Lance’s eyes sat on him. They were very blue and very powerful, and a little bit angry.
“I feel like I am seriously stringing you along if every time Ruthven shows up I think about him.”
“You think about him when he doesn’t show up.”
“I know,” Dylan said, helplessly. “It’s like I said. I’m in love with him.”
Dylan added, “And he’s in love with me too.”
Lance took a breath and then, sighing, stretched back. He seemed to be thinking about something.
“We’re breaking up?” he said.
“Yeah,” Dylan said, but his voice sounded doubtful, as if he wasn’t exactly sure.
“Well, then you better go get your shit from my house.”
“Do I have anything there?”
“Yeah. Let’s go. Now.”
“We can’t just leave school.”
“Free period, and you got a lunch next. If you’re going to leave me, at least do this.”
“Alright,” Dylan said.
“Walking or driving?”
“Driving is best.”
