Gianni (6 page)

Through my smile I look back into his wild animal eyes and gasp as best as I can. “Please, don’t… don’t stop…”

But then I feel him starting to leave me. The warmth recedes like a tide, bit by bit, inch by inch.

“No… come back…”

But it’s leaving even quicker. The emptiness is returning.

“No, please… Danny…”

And then I hear the tide again… that white noise…

I’m crying.

Fuck.

Danny’s holding me in his arms and I’m sobbing. My jockstrap is still on, his pants are still on… we haven’t moved an inch since he kissed me.

“I don’t know who I am…” I gasp from my tightening lungs. “I have no idea who the fuck I am…”

I can’t make sense. I can’t communicate what I’m trying to tell him. I want to say that that kiss is the first real kiss I’ve ever had. He was sweet to me from the very start and I treated him like shit all the while, and here he still is, with me, kissing me. Every passionless mouth of every john I’ve ever invoiced races through my head, exploding in my senses. Every porno co-star. Every go-go boy. My ex.

And then this guy, so different from me. Seeing me for who I am, and… being okay with it?

“Why the fuck aren’t you calling me a crazy person and running out of this building right now? Is this what you wanted? To make your favorite porn star fucking cry?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck sorry. Stop fucking with my head!”

“This wasn’t my goal,” Danny says, kissing my tear-streaked cheek. “I promise. I just wanted to get to know you.”

All I can think of is how wonderful it felt to have him pushing deeper and deeper into me. It wasn’t sex. It was beyond sex. It obliterated the idea of sex and left it crying in a gutter next to cast-off Starbucks cups and paper bags. No, this was life. Life beyond flashing cameras and drugs and johns and circuit parties. Danny just filled me with… life. Something I never cared about much before.

I remember what I’ve tried to forget ever since my very first night in Manhattan. Some
one
, actually. Me. A boy from a place near Manhattan that isn’t Manhattan. With a mom. A dad. A life. Not so different from Danny’s, except for an absence of Penis Jell-O. That all changed in an instant; one tearful confrontation and I was exiled. Out of there. If I’d stuck it out in Long Island with a school friend for a day, two maybe, it might have blown over. Probably not. But words had been said, things I’d never forget, so instead, I became a new person. I became the very definition of a “fag” in their eyes; everything they feared and everything they hated. I became Gianni Green. Someone who wouldn’t exist if his parents had decided that instead of throwing him out of their home, they’d throw him a coming out party.

“How much time do you think we have left?” Danny asks.

I’m confused. “‘Til what?”

“Until it goes off.” He smiles, running his hand over my left shoulder. “Your time bomb.”

“Oh…” I say. “I think we have a little while. At least the rest of the night.”

Danny pulls me close and puts a finger to my lips. I stop crying. He leans in and plants one last, deep kiss on my lips. I smile.

“Wow.” He says, laughing and shaking his head.

“What?”

“This is definitely not what I expected tonight.”

“That makes two of us,” I laugh. But I still don’t get what exactly he expected. “So if your goal was to hook up with me, what was with the shy boy act?”

He shrugs and blushes, and I realize that it was not and never could be an act.

“I got dumped a couple weeks ago. The day before we started talking, actually. That was the day I downloaded Grindr,” he says. “We hadn’t been going out that long, just a couple months. It wasn’t even official. But I was pretty bummed. So I decided to just have fun for a while, yanno? I’d seen one of your videos, and when I recognized you, I thought — what more perfect person to have a hot, meaningless fling with than a porn star?”

“You didn’t say anything,” I object. “Not even a hint. No nude pics. You talked about some granny at the mall!”

Danny laughs, recalling the story. “I guess I’m not that forward. Plus, I knew guys must send you all kinds of pics and say all kinds of nasty stuff to get with you. I wanted to stand out. I’m still not really at the point where I want to show up at some guy’s door I’ve never met and just… get to it.”

“It’s generally overrated,” I agree. “Unless you’re getting paid for it.”

“I told my friends I was going on a date with you. They didn’t believe me. When you showed up acting all cocky I decided it might be worth sticking around for the story. But if I’m attracted to a guy, I can’t really help it. I want to get to know him more than I want to get naked with him.” He smirks. “And you, my friend, were a challenge in that department.”

He’s quiet for a moment, taking another glance out the window. Then he turns back to me. “So we both knew you did porn. And neither of us said anything. I guess that makes me as guilty of omission as you.”

“Oh? Then what’s our punishment?” I ask with a smirk.

“We have to see each other again. And this time, lay it all out on the table.” I’m so elated by that possibility that, for a second, I wonder if I am visibly floating. “Do you want to do that, sometime? Or am I the crazy one?”

I’m smiling. I’m about to start crying all over again.

“Daniel,” I say.

“Yes?”

“That’s my name. My actual legal name is Daniel. That’s who I am.”

Danny measures me up and down. Me, all snotty and red and blotchy and tear-drenched. Him, shirtless, slightly hairy, in fantastic physical condition. Despite my initial cockiness, he’s clearly soaked up all the power between us at this point. And strangely, I’m fine with that.

“I just realized… you and I could never work,” he says, turning for the door. “I should go.”

“What?” The tears are on their way. My stomach has plummeted through the floor and all the way down to the lobby. “But… I thought you said…”

Danny spins and wraps me in his arms and kisses me again. “Two Dannys dating each other? Now THAT’S crazy.”

I laugh. God, I’m laughing. What am I doing? Since when did this become a fucking romantic comedy? Next he’ll tell me he’s off to the airport to move away forever, and I’ll have to chase his plane down on the tarmac at the last second, just in time for our happily-ever-after tear-jerking ending.

“Anyway, I do need to head back to Penn Station,” he says, breaking our magical overloaded silence. “With my phone dead, my parents will start freaking out, thinking I got mugged or killed or something. Are you going to be okay? Can I give you my number?”

I nod and retrieve my phone so he can put in his digits, since I refused to give my number over the past few weeks, insisting we stick with Grindr.

“What kind of bomb is it?” he asks at the door, nodding to my shoulder.

“I’m not sure,” I say, wondering what the hell kind of a question that is.

“I mean, is it homemade? I hope it’s not nuclear… those can be messy.”

“It’s just a time bomb.”

Danny purses his lips, considering that. “I’m just wondering if I could dismantle it. If I studied up before I see you again. I think maybe I can stop it from going off.”

I smile. “Oh. You think so?”

“I’m pretty sure. If you give me time to figure out how it works.”

“There’s time,” I say, stepping forward.

We share one more kiss goodnight and I open the door, watching as he makes his way down the hallway to the elevator. He looks back with those flaming eyes for another silent second before he steps into the elevator and is gone. I hang back and watch the closed doors, as if he might suddenly reemerge to spend the night. My head is filled with residue of the white noise and nothing’s making sense.

What the fuck was that? Who the fuck is this gay boy who makes me feel this way?

Who the fuck makes me feel ANYTHING?

I cross the room to the bed and crawl up to the window. There he is, walking out of the building. I still feel the flames in my head. A conveniently available taxi skids right up alongside him. As he steps in I lose sight of him for the last time tonight. I feel tears warming my face. I’m crying again. Crying and smiling.

This college theater gay boy duped me out of an evening of high-paying tricks and low-maintenance Grindr hookups, persuading me to go on an old-fashioned date instead. Dinner. Drinks. Coffee. Though not in that order. He was actually playing ME the whole time that I thought I was playing HIM. He came back to my place and all he did was kiss me. I still don’t know how big his dick is.

It’s all so cute.

The night is still relatively young. Suddenly I’m so very tired. Night after night spent awake has finally caught up with me now that I have a moment to myself. But I have my priorities.

I sit down in front of Rich’s laptop and sign into my RentBoy profile. I scan a few recent unread messages requesting my services. Instead of opening them, I set my status to “Out of Town” to ensure that I am free to see Danny tomorrow night.

My phone vibrates on the bed. A quick, hopeful butterfly launches up from my belly and dies just as quickly as I remember: it can’t be him. It’s just a friend, requesting my presence at some hotter-than-hot party. Maybe the same one Mr. Sunglasses is shooting in his cum-stained suit.

It’ll be a long, wet night for those boys, I know, stretching on into morning. They’ll be helped along by coke or whatever they’ve chosen to get them through the night. They’ll most likely end up in bed with some other boy, getting their rocks off while the rest of the world is getting ready for work. But I don’t want this day to go on any longer, because it’s already ended so perfectly.

I ignore my friend’s text, opening a new message instead. I type: “I better be seeing you again tomorrow, Danny.”

I set the phone down and stare at it. His is dead, so he won’t read this until he gets home and plugs it in. Will he respond right away? Or will the long train ride back to New Jersey get him thinking about what it really means to date Gianni Green, the most desired porn star in the Tri-State area?

I wonder for a moment what it’d be like to give that up. The porn. The escorting. If he wanted me to. Would it be worth it? Would I be willing? Who would I be if I wasn’t Gianni Green anymore?

I’ve aged a lot in the past year, but tonight I feel young, imagining an unknown future stretching out ahead of me. I try to conjure an image of myself five or ten years from now. Is Danny there with me? Does Gianni Green still exist, or am I someone else again? Did that time bomb ever go off? It’s impossible to guess.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, something I don’t do often. I am who I am, and despite a rough patch or two, Danny stayed with me. That’s a good sign. I allow myself to believe that tomorrow night, Danny will be back in the city. We’ll be walking down 9th Avenue with his arm around me, laughing over dinner, cuddling up on the couch as we watch some stupid movie. We’ll have sex for the first time. And the second. And third.

I also allow myself to believe that the next hour might find Danny changing his mind about me. Maybe the beginning of the evening sticks in his memory rather than the conclusion. Maybe the thought of sharing me with a bunch of fat-wallet daddies isn’t so appealing after all. Is it possible to have such an extraordinary night with a guy and then never hear from him again? I have no idea, and even this suspense is exciting.

I pick the phone up and send Danny one final text:

“And this time, you’re buying dinner.”

Justin Luke is the co-director of BoiParty, New York City’s longest-running and largest gay nightlife events companies. He currently produces and promotes the three largest weekly gay dance parties in Manhattan and works with the largest gay dance parties in the United States. He is an atypical Capricorn that lives in Hell’s Kitchen with his spectacular ginger boyfriend Joe.

Justin is the published author of Gulliver Takes Manhattan, its sequel Gulliver Takes Five, and the best-selling Vampire Diaries Kindle Worlds Novella, “Time and Time Again.” Much more is on the way.

To find out more about Justin, visit his website at
www.JustinLukeNYC.com
.

To Mom and Ray and Jared, my family and cheerleading squad. To Joe, my in-house psychiatrist, inspiration, biggest critic, and the Jackie O to my JFK. To Alan Picus for the platform he gave me to do all this crazy stuff in the first place.

To Chris Alexander for his cross-coastal editing, thanks for making me look like a good writer. To Alexander T, the cover designer. To the team at 52 Novels for the amazing formatting for digital consumption.

Copyright © 2013 by Justin Luke Zirilli

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.