Monkey Suits (9 page)

Brian avoided thinking about why he kept taking escort jobs. Despite his good looks, he had something to prove, that if a man would pay money for him, he must be attractive. Keeping a day job that paid half as much seemed stupid. He spent a lot of time doing a lot of nothing, save working out at the gym, going to clubs and watching TV.

Sometimes, however, the work was fun. As he became more experienced, once in a while Tony would call for “a special act.” He’d ask Brian to bring one of several costumes loaned to him. After arriving at the client’s hotel room with his duffel bag, followed by a change in the bathroom, out would pop Chip the tight end, complete with shoulder pads, helmet and black smudges under each cheek. Then it was Chip the highway patrolman, ready for Hide the Nightstick. The rough stuff turned him off, and anything that left marks was out, as Tony had no employee health care benefits.

But Brian’s few trips to agents’ offices furthered his growing conviction that this might be his only paying gig. The walls of glossy head shots had almost leered at him, dozens of moussed haircuts, glistening eyes, airbrushed skin and white gleaming teeth, smiling, perpetually smiling.
Like me. Please, please like me.

The satisfied sighs of relief for his private performances left clients more than liking him.

But it was a matter of health that drove the young beauty away from private prostitution. A rather paunchy chain-smoking gentleman with a tawdry Hell’s kitchen flat and a taste for Smirnoff and poppers took Brian for all he could get.

After plying the boy with a drink (“Let’s just sit a while and get to know each other”), the paunchy man promised an extra hundred, and requested that Chip lie on his stomach and watch the television while getting fucked and moaning, “Stop it, Daddy! Stop it!”

Why not, Brian figured. The guy wasn’t too big, and he hadn’t had it in the backside in a while. He wouldn’t even have to look at the guy.

“Just put a rubber on.” Brian lay down, admiring the alcohol-induced blurred image of Joan Collins sporting a red lame gown on
Dynasty
.

“Ya got any porn?”

As he heard the familiar snap of latex behind him, he peered over his shoulder as the man prepared to mount him, rubber-sheathed joint aiming downward for the valley between his butt cheeks.

What Brian didn’t know, as he winced from the initial pain, was that the condom was a few years old, pulled from the dank recesses of the gent’s bathroom cabinet. Midway through a rather clumsy fucking, the rubber tore a large hole and the man’s seed dispersed into Brian’s chute. Two days later Brian got a cold, flu and a nasty case of chlamydia, cousin of the clap, plus a bad case of AIDS paranoia.

The bill for penicillin shots and pills spanked Brian back to reality. The day he was healthy enough, he visited Tony one last time to cash in three signed credit card slips and return several uniforms and props, including a football, whip, chains, leather harnesses, handcuffs and a red ostrich feather boa.

The road back to legitimate employment was a difficult one. A test at a midtown temp agency revealed that his typing speed was fourteen words a minute, and his computer skills limited to Nintendo. He got a job at Tower Records, late shift.

Following his escort days, Brian went through a period of straight boy obsessions and quite a few journeys into the sex clubs on the West Side. He’d missed the power of his whoring days, and to compensate, he’d simply get drunk after work, go to J’s or the Cellblock. It was at one of these late night encounters where he met Marcos Tierra. That night, or morning, rather, in Marcos’ bed (once again familiarizing himself with horizontal sex), Brian charmed Marcos into getting him an interview with Fabulous Food later that week, months ahead of the next training session.

“Do you have a tuxedo?” Philipe had asked.

“Yes,” he had lied.

Brian spent a hundred fifty dollars of his escort money on a good used tux at the Antique Boutique and another forty on a stylishly Aryan haircut. A week later he was booked for an intimate affair at Sotheby’s.

An Austrian jeweled dish: $30,000. Brancusi sculpture: $140,000. The piece of the evening, a Degas etching, sold for $300,000 to a Japanese investment corporation. Most of the high rollers weren’t seen. A phalanx of tense suited men walked back and forth from a bank of telephones.

After the auction, the small reception overwhelmed Brian. People loomed over him, holding drinks and looking down as he stuttered to name the hors’ d’oeuvres. Twice he nearly tripped as large men barreled past him. They seemed to exude an air of dominance and assurance. Some of them, while not obese, seemed to burst with the power and wealth he had occasionally touched as an escort. Yet now their power seemed remote, contained in their bodies. He remembered a
Creepy
comic book from his youth, where a man on a desert island, while walking and talking, was actually quite dead, only animated by spiders, which burst from his corpse, spilling out of the rotting mouth, ears and eyes. He imagined some of these people vomiting gold coins and chains, as if the wealth coursed through their portly bodies.

It was after that first party that he’d met Ritchie, who mentioned he was looking for a new roommate in his loft. Looking up at the half naked man, his curly hair and smooth chest striking in the crowded back room, Brian couldn’t resist. Less rent, more space and living with a guy this cute? He couldn’t say no, even if it was in Brooklyn.

Although Ritchie turned out to be straight, he felt a bond with the guy, even after their drunken coupling that proved both Brian’s persistence and Ritchie’s quick return to heterosexuality.

Brian dove into catering headlong, teasing the bookers over the phone in flirtatious tones he’d polished from his escort days. Still, it wasn’t enough, especially through the summer. He livd bumped around a few odd jobs, until, on a desperate night, looking for an older man who might buy him dinner, he walked into Christopher’s, a dark bar and restaurant on Christopher Street. An older man bought him a drink within minutes, listened to his tale of economic woe and offered him a job. He was the manager.

The Christopher’s job lasted a while, and so did Lee, whom he met there. Things got too sticky for Brian, and then Ed moved in with he and Ritchie. Brian felt free of his damaging passion, and almost forgot his less than legal days.

Until Tony called.

“How did you get my number?”

“Your ex-roommate gave it to me.”

“But I–”

“Not to worry. I am always discreet,” Tony soothed. “I have a very special client for you. He has very unusual needs.”

“I gave it up, Tony. I don’t need it anymore.”

“He can pay six hundred.”

“What is it, S and M?”

“Nothing like that. But it is a bit elaborate. You have to sign a contract of confidentiality.”

“Huh?”

“He’s rather well-known, and must maintain his, um, private life.”

“Must be loaded.”

“Quite. Like I said, four hundred. Cash.”

“Tasty.”

“It’s also a bit unusual.”

“Kinky?”

“No, just ... unusual.”

“When and where?”

“Oh, you are a dependable devil.”

At eleven that night, after signing a densely worded contract at Tony’s (he’d barely scanned the text), Brian went to the desk of the Helmsley Palace and picked up a key to a penthouse suite. After entering the silent yet lit front room, he entered the bedroom and took out his list of typed instructions:

Lay out the black silk sheet in the bag on the bed

Light the candles beside the bed

Undress

Shower and apply the ointment (on the dresser) to your body

Blindfold yourself with the scarf

Lay on the bed

Wait

Standing naked beside the bed, he poured the oil into his hands. It smelled of herbs and bitter animal fluids. He felt nervous, as if surely the man listened from the other closed door, or perhaps watched through a hole. He realized that rich people sometimes rented hotel rooms permanently. Maybe the guy lived here.

Brian lay on the bed a few minutes before he heard a door softly open. A voice, gravelly, with a New England accent, whispered low. “You are beautiful.”

Brian nearly responded. “Don’t speak,” the voice murmured. “Let me worship you.”

Not once did Brian see the man’s face. It was a relief not having to pretend he was attracted to what was assuredly a sagging wrinkled portrait of wealth and success. He let his body feel each sensation as the man’s hands and tongue delicately trailed the path of his light stomach hairs and muscular contours. The hands gently brought Brian’s arms up and tied them softly to the bedposts with scarves. The hands continued stroking his thighs and chest. Brian grew hard. His erection pulsed up against his belly, slowly warmed by a sensitive mouth.

“This is going to feel very unusual.” The voice said. “Don’t be afraid. You can wash it off later.” A warm trickle fell on his belly, causing him to twitch. More droplets fell on his cock and thighs. He heard a bottle set down on the nightstand next to him. The warm fluid spread over his skin, rubbed around by the hands. The smell was a spicy mixture, like a sort of sauce.

The mouth suckled over his body, then swallowed his stiff penis, sucking slowly, drawing the surging orgasm from him. Brian gasped as the mouth continued, swallowing his bursts of sperm. He knew it was wrong. This wasn’t safe, yet it felt so good, and well, it was the other guy’s decision, anyway.

Brian grew soft, but the mouth and hands continued, drawing his penis again to stiffness and to another orgasm. The hands and tongue licked the fluid from his skin, then finished.

“Stay here for ten minutes. Then you can wash up and leave.” Feet padded lightly to the door, which opened and closed. Brian heard traffic rustling below him. The liquid cooled on his skin. A dribble ran down the inside of his thigh. He relaxed, nearly falling asleep.
I am the best whore in a town of whores
, he mused.

At the time he had no interest in the identity of this strange client, for he was determined that this would be his last night as an escort.

After what seemed like only five minutes, he easily pulled his wrists free of the scarves and sat up, removing the blindfold. On the black silk sheet between his legs lay six crisp unfolded one hundred-dollar bills.

His body was smeared with blood.

Lying on his own bed, still undressed and unshowered, with only a bagel and a cigarette for breakfast, Brian considered that night a mere odd slice of his past. He’d worked very hard to forget the panicked moments of that strange night, how he had jumped into the shower, holding his mouth closed under the freezing water, watching the blood thin as it swirled down the drain. He’d checked his skin for cuts and told himself it must have been animal blood. Only when he was clean could he giggle a moment, remembering his fear of showering as a kid after he’d seen
Psycho.

He hadn’t considered how lucky he’d been not to bump into any of his clients, at least the ones he’d remembered. Sometimes, at the oddest moments, when he cut a finger, watched a violent movie, or leaned over the shoulder of a seated party guest, he’d try not to wonder who that man might have been.

He would soon discover that Manhattan could sometimes be a very small island.

10
“Don’t play with the pumpkins!” commanded Craig, his white paper
hat jutting up from his flushed face. He seemed like a life-size puppet behind the lengthy steel counter. Despite the complete kitchen MOMA offered, the meal was completely new, with recipes he’d only recently perfected. He wanted to scream at the waiters, their attitude and lax behavior infuriating him. They chattered like monkeys.