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Authors: Justin Luke Zirilli

Gianni (4 page)

BOOK: Gianni
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“Where do you live?” I ask bluntly.

“Jersey.”

“Oh, right. Then I guess your place is out of the question.”

“My place?” Danny coughs awkwardly. “Yeah, it is.”

“You can come back to one of my places, if you’re game.”

He laughs. “
One
of your places?”

“Yeah. I have a bunch of places I can stay.”

“How exactly do you have multiple places? Are you a real estate agent?”

“You ask too many questions,” I snap, smirking to lighten the potential blow.

“Who says I’m coming back to your place, anyway?” he asks, smirking back. Either he’s challenging me or he’s flirting with me. Both of which are kinda sexy.

“Nobody, apparently. So. I should really get going…”

“No.” He stops me before I’ve turned around. “I’d love to go back to
one
of your places. Hopefully the nicest of them, if I’m allowed to choose.”

“Cute,” I smile. He’s witty. He’s warming up.

And so it’s settled. I toss what was left of “his” cigarette and we’re off on our gay little way. My agent Rich has a place in TriBeCa he lets me use whenever I want. It’s a pretty big artist’s loft that I’ve let him fuck me in just so I could enjoy the view out his floor-to-ceiling windows — and so I could use it as my own shag pad whenever such a desire strikes. He’s got a king-size bed that I’ve spent about as much time in as he has. That’s the best place to bring this kid — it looks impressive and Rich is gone for the week scouting models in West Hollywood.

“Let’s hop a cab to TriBeCa,” I insist.

Danny looks to the street. The many, many occupied cabs speeding by. “You wanna stand here and get soaked trying to take a cab?”

No. No, I don’t want to do that.

“There’s a subway a few avenues away,” I say, turning in the direction of the Times Square subway hub.

“Let’s just walk a little bit!” Danny insists. “It’s not that bad. It’s already starting to lighten up.”

“Okay,” I say. “But if it gets worse I’m going to get really bitchy.”

“Moreso than you are right now?”

“Beware,” I snort. “You don’t want to see me in an actual bad mood.”

As we walk, the rain changes again from those fat, sopping drops to the kind that mists in your face like a spritzing at the salon. My forehead is slick and slippery, my clothing way soaked. It clings to my chest… but that’s never a bad thing. I catch Danny staring at my pec lines every once in a while.

“You look like my cat when we make him take a bath,” Danny laughs.

“Keep staring,” I wink at him.

Danny regains his self-confidence on the trip and starts talking to me. He’s using all these big words about his love of writing and acting. The kid’s a high school theater boy — well, college boy now, but they’re all the same. He’s been in this play and that; he’s written for this poetry journal and edited that newspaper. And then, as if he thinks it’s been expertly delivered, he mentions some random hookup he had backstage on opening night of one of his shows this semester.

“Oh. So you’re not a virgin?”

It’s not the question he expected, I can tell. He was hoping I’d be impressed.

“Do I look like a virgin to you?”

“Maybe,” I say. “I can’t tell yet.”

“I take that as a compliment. You, on the other hand…”

“Are you calling me a slut?” I fire at him.

“You tell me,” he winks.

But I won’t tell him… yet.

It’s cute. His attempt to play the educated hussy is commendable, but it’s not gonna work. Not with me, at least. I have to admit, he may be more experienced than I first surmised. And maybe, just maybe, he thinks
he’s
the player here.
My list of dalliances is longer than yours
, he’s insinuating, like we’re comparing dicks. (But surely I’d win that one, too.) I let him think that. It makes him more interesting and conversational and gets me out of dodging questions about my own flings. He doesn’t need to know that the list of people I’ve fucked in the past three months dwarfs the roll call of people he’ll fuck in the next decade.

Then again, he could just be stringing me golden lines of bullshit. His “hookup” may have been nothing more than a brief good luck kiss with his co-star. He fancies himself a writer… who knows what’s truth and what’s fiction here?

Then again, who the fuck cares? Not me! His ass is far more intriguing — a globe of a bubble, either a natural blessing or the result of an army regimen of squats. I was in the mood to bottom today, but I’m gonna have to tap that thing. The thought of burying my face between his legs is getting me hard, forcing my cock to rub up against the specks of dry splooge still in my jockstrap.

We’ve made it a mile when he yawns and says, “I need some caffeine.”

I am a little worn out from the shoot — plus, I didn’t sleep last night. Mostly because I was having a three-way, but also because I locked myself out of the apartment I planned on staying in and had to go all the way down to my agent’s place at seven in the morning.

We stop at some indie café in Chelsea and Danny buys me a latte. Good. Great. Wonderful. But it’s too rainy outside and he doesn’t want the drink to chill before he’s finished. We find ourselves sitting on a big fluffy brown couch in one of the dimly lit corners, just talking again. Now he’s asking about my life. There’s not much I want to say in this regard, so I push him to get the ball rolling.

He’s a rich Jersey boy, as it turns out. A McMansion out in some suburban town — a quick ride from the city in the car his parents bought him for his birthday this year. He’s lived the life. He’s been to this country, that city. He’s been to movie premieres with celebrities because his father works on the business end of entertainment. His mom stays home all day (and probably bangs their mailman or her personal trainer).

He’s bragging, and I don’t like it. He’s rubbing his millionaire life in my face. Of course, I could let him know that I, too, have seen the world. I shot scenes with horse-hung Swedish guys in Stockholm just a month ago. I’ve been to Mexico. Italy. Russia. Hawaii. All in the name of porn. All expenses paid. I flew and stayed for free in mansions on the sea and in five-star hotels. I partied all night at the bathhouses in Berlin. I kissed a fellow rent boy in front of the Eiffel Tower at midnight. As Danny regales me with his exciting life, I bite my tongue to prevent sharing a single word about mine. This is pissing me off. My life is exciting, but it’s also potentially damaging to this date.

I mean… this elongated hookup. Or whatever it is.

And then it slips out. I need to even the score, and if I can’t brag about boys I’ve banged across the globe, I’ll do it another way. I tell him about Mommy and Daddy and the Doc.

Okay. Mr. Barely Seventeen had a slightly rougher time than I originally let on. He left the house when Mommy and Daddy found out he sucked dick. He hadn’t even actually sucked a dick at that point… but he sure had been thinking about it. Mommy and Daddy sent him to a psychologist first, thinking he had some sort of depression. Wouldn’t that be convenient? Well, ten sessions in, when the truth finally came out, the Doc decided it would be best to tell Mommy and Daddy everything. So he did. And Mommy and Daddy kicked Mr. Barely Seventeen’s ass out of the house. No fags in their home! No way.

No biggie. Fag didn’t want to be in their ugly little house anymore anyway. Long Island is a suburban cemetery where real estate agents and yuppie businessmen go to die. New York City was calling, and Mr. Barely Seventeen practically cartwheeled all the way to Times Square.

I got to Manhattan with some cash I stole from my parents’ wallets, a backpack with a few changes of clothes, a few friends with couches to surf on, and a head full of plans. I sucked my first dick that very night, no longer under the watchful eye of Mommy and Daddy. Soon enough I caught on that cock-sucking is a fabulous form of currency. It bought me apartments to sleep in, food to eat, rides to the club, VIP entrance at parties, top shelf drinks at the bar. My fake ID, my piercings, my first pair of kicks — all came courtesy of cocks I hardly remember attached to guys who will never forget me.

Suck a bunch of dicks and sooner or later, you suck the right one. You find a porn scout. A major party promoter. A television news anchor or some eccentric billionaire who just wants to take care of you forever. I was power-playing the blow job lottery and, as I continued on my oral warpath through Manhattan, I began to make friends. I got noticed. I bought a gym membership and spent all my free time lifting weights and squatting my ass to perfection. Then LostBoyz found me, dancing at a pop-up party in the Meatpacking District. My agent, Rich, signed me the next day. That was literally six months ago. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, but a glorious one. Just like Dorothy, I’ve been whisked out of the black and white of Kansas, dropped into the Technicolor glory hole of Oz.

I wonder sometimes what Mommy and Daddy would do if they saw me now. Or if they accidentally tapped in the wrong web address and laid eyes on one of my banner ads. Wouldn’t that be fun? Hell, maybe I’ll drive up to their house someday, bang on the door, and hand them a disc containing a handful of Gianni Green’s most-watched LostBoyz scenes. Then I’d blow a kiss and hop back in the car, continuing on my way to the Fire Island ferry for a live sex show in the Grove, leaving them to try and erase the image of their only son being double-penetrated. Not that they could. It would be forever burned into their brains, a fitting mental memento — just like the look of utter disgust on their faces when I told them “I like boys” is tattooed in my memory. Permanent ink. I know Doc had the best intentions, but he clearly never met my dipshit parents. What would he do if he saw what happened to the boy he guaranteed a “safe coming out” to?

I guess I’ll never know. Apparently he’s dead now — cancer or something.

I only tell Danny the first part — my exile from happy middle class Long Island. It only takes a few minutes to get it all out as I watch his smile melt into a concerned frown. Pity? No. He’s ashamed. Suddenly his well-bred bragging is in stark contrast to what I’ve been through. He doesn’t know what to say. He says he’s sorry, but doesn’t say why.

I head out for a cigarette.

I’ve told the story so many times it feels like I’m reading from a book written by someone else. So much has transpired since, I sometimes wonder how much of it actually happened and how much I’ve embellished over a drunken, drugged-up, and debauched evening. You’d be surprised — a woeful tale of childhood gone wrong can be a hell of an aphrodisiac. Older dudes in particular like the idea of swooping in to save the day with their checkbooks and their father figure role play. Just what I need, right? Another fucking daddy. These guys have long since aged out of relevance in the gay world. It’s not cute past a certain age to need a shoulder to cry on, so they become the shoulder. “Allowing” a poor, wayward teen escort to bare his soul is foreplay for the baring of more risque parts. It makes them feel useful again. So I play the waif like I’ve traveled to their doorstep straight from the pages of Charles Dickens. If they’re so horny for Oliver Twist, they toss a shiny penny my way and I beg, “Please, sir!” for more.

The story always kicks me right in the heart when I tell it. I may play it off like I don’t care anymore, but the pain is still there. The loss and hurt and loneliness come like waves of nausea. They probably always will. It’s not as horrifying as it once was; time has dulled it a little. The hurt is smaller, fainter. Like a man screaming, but further and further in the distance, growing further still with every day and every telling.

Danny follows me outside after a few minutes. The rain picks up again as Danny actually lights a cigarette himself and smokes alongside me.

“Is your name really Gianni?”

“Yes,” I say, automatically. “Is
your
real name Danny?”

“Actually, no.”

“Huh?”

“Daniel is my middle name. My first name is Stuart.”

“Why are you going by your middle name, Stuart?”

“Stuart is a terrible name for an actor. I don’t want to botch my auditions before I’ve even gotten into the room.”

I have to laugh. “You changed your name to help with auditions?”

“Yeah,” Danny laughs. “Don’t you like Danny better?”

“No. Stu is kinda cute,” I say. I don’t tell him why I prefer his birth name to the one he’s chosen himself, but I’m in no position to judge a stage name. “Why’d you think my name was fake?”

“You don’t look Italian,” Danny shrugs.

“It’s starting to rain again,” I say, with a look skyward. “Let’s get moving.”

We gently stack our paper cups in an overflowing garbage can on the street and re-embark on our journey to Rich’s apartment. Despite the rain halting, cabs that pass remain either busy or off-duty. We’re so far west that it would be a ten-minute trek to the subway, which I think is under construction. At this point I’d rather be a little wet than standing, dripping, waiting for a train for thirty minutes.

“Are you out to your parents?” I ask, wiping rain off of my face as we cross from the numbered streets of midtown into the named streets of downtown.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, suddenly angry. “I told you my sob story. Is it worse than that?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s actually the opposite.”

Oh.

“Tell me about it,” I say. “Please?”

They threw him a fucking party. Danny-Stuart’s parents organized a surprise coming out celebration the weekend after he told them, complete with rainbow cake and close to fifty friends jumping out of closets, from behind plants and furniture. They even had Jell-O salad in the shape of a penis, for crying out loud. For a second there’s this burning feeling behind my face, like I’m going to burst into tears. But I’m definitely not going to fucking do that.

I wonder if any of the things he’s saying are true. What parents would actually do that? I can understand being accepting, welcoming, supportive… but a party? Dick Jell-O? He’s lying. He’s so obviously lying. Maybe every last thing he’s said tonight has been a lie… much like almost everything I’ve told him. This is his way of getting back at me for being my cocky self when I first showed up at the bar. He hates me, and instead of just telling me to fuck off and letting me get back on Grindr to complete tonight’s agenda, he’s going to waste my time and make me feel as shitty as possible in the process. Asshole.

BOOK: Gianni
13.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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