Shuck (9 page)

“You don't shoot porn,” I said.

“Plastic go-go boys don't interest me. Come back in a few weeks and bring something else for show and tell.”

“I have a baseball cap.”

“As long as it's not new, you know I'm a goat.”

He stuck his nose in my sneakers, took a few pleasure snorts, and gave them back to me.

“Right,” he said.

I've gotten used to seeing Derek's back when I open the door to the loft. Square shoulders that shift and straighten when I click the door shut. I think he likes me walking in on him, catching him doing
whatever.

Based on certain patterns of coexistence, I have reason to believe that he never leaves home anymore. It's equally plausible that he spends as much time out-of-doors as I do, and our paths are hardwired to overlap only in the loft. And even then, sometimes we'll only see each other a few times a day: in bed, by the window, trading places in the bathroom.

“Hi, Booger,” he said. “There's some eggplant parmigiana in the oven. Pepper's in the grinder.”

“Booger? Am I another one of your pets?”

“Don't get testy. It's just what ... what people do.”

At first I thought that he was hanging up the latest turtle-trace canvas, but no.

He was painting.

Derek Brathwaite was creating, without the aid of reptiles. Mixing paint, cocking his head at the canvas on the easel, muttering incomplete words under his breath, dabbing, shading, and sighing. He had a brush in each hand and daubs of paint on his shirt and face. I felt a surge of guilt, like I was interrupting a most delicate process that could disintegrate at any moment.

Wink and Nod were roaming free, exploring nooks and crannies, finding caves where there were none before.

Derek shot me a loaded look. If I had to venture a guess, it told me about a valve he had bust open, a drain he had unclogged, a lid he had lifted. It was a miracle to finally see him in his element. Sure, I had been a part of this release, but he owned this moment with a singularity that changed his whole demeanor. He had the body language of a man who felt free to be dangerous.

“You're doing it,” I said, feeling like Richard Rorschach.

“Yes, I am ... You never come home with bruises anymore, so you've taken away my reason to procrastinate.”

“I was worried you might miss my injuries.”

“Not really.”

I noticed my notebook lying on the bed. I didn't remember leaving it there, and even if I did, I wouldn't have left it open. I often bounce literary ideas off Derek, but I never let him see my writing. For some reason, it's okay to share it with magazine editors, but it's too personal to share with Derek.

Huge, impressionist swipes of magenta. Agitated swirls where a hand would be. I moved in closer to his easel. He took a step back to let me soak it in, one stroke at a time. Charcoal ellipses, the outlines of plates on a dinner table. A looming figure made of layers of color, layers that looked like you could peel them back. Hazy, Monet-like washes hiding the brightest blue flame.

A handful of pills.

My latest story, told in acrylic.

“I'd like to talk about your jealousy problem,” I said.

“What the FUCK are you talking about?”

“Why did you go through my notebook? What were you looking for?”

“Listen, Jaeven, you left it open. What was I supposed to do, pretend I hadn't read the first couple of lines? It was already too late. Your story hooked me and then I read the whole thing and realized it's what I've been looking for all along.”

“You don't trust me.”

“Why can't you be happy for me?
You
have everything you want,” he said.

“I know it eats you up inside when I turn a trick or do a photo
shoot. All I'm trying to do is make a living.”

“Are you listening to yourself, Jaeven Marshall? We don't even have sex. How can I be jealous?”

“I know, that's what's weird about it.”

“Right.”

Derek wiped his forehead, smearing even more paint on himself. Nod was bumping into the jet engine, backing up, and making a metallic clunk with every go of it.

Maybe I was being a paranoid jackass, or maybe he actually mistrusted me. Whatever the case, I couldn't blame him for getting attached to me after all this time, and for feeling lonely when I was out gallivanting naked in the city. And I had to start accepting a certain loss of privacy that came with being in a relationship, as annoying as it was.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That's okay.”

He put down his brushes.

“It's the first time I've ever seen you paint,” I told him.

“It is,” he said.

“Your first show is going to be amazing.”

He dabbed a splotch of purple on the tip of my nose.

Now that I think about it, I'm not worried about Derek reading my short stories. He's bound to read them eventually, since I plan to publish them. That is, if the universe conspires to keep me alive long enough.

It bugs me only mildly that he might discover the Coney Island I
wrote about, that I might lose my secret hiding place.

But it drills a hole in my head, day and night, wondering if he read the other stuff. What I wrote about him. It makes me sick, thinking about how he'd react to the way I've been characterizing him as a gentle romantic with opaque moods I try to crack. He might be uncomfortable in that box. He might feel weak.

Or worse yet, he might think that I'm in love with him.

I PASSED A HOMELESS KID on Eighth Avenue today, twenty-two, twenty-three, looking scruffier than he had to. It's freaking summertime and he was wearing a winter jacket with rips in it, when there are shelters all over the city that give clothes away for free.

It's easy to steal disposable razors, so he has no excuse for the two-week beard. And as for his nappy hair, all he has to do is run a restroom faucet—tap water in New York is the cleanest in the world.

Couldn't he have hustled a room by now, a mildly compromising living situation, anything? A Prada liquidation center? He's crouching in a doorway under a pile of torn cardboard when he could be on the beach under the stars, eating hot dogs and clams for free.

This kid clearly has no skills. Put me back on the street and I'd have all the details worked out within a week, I swear.

I took a free subway to Broadway and Houston today and had a meeting
with Phil McDougall, lord and emperor of the gay porn magazine world.

It was intimidating walking down the hallway to his office, through a gauntlet of framed magazine covers all tilted down to make you feel small and unimportant if you weren't up there among the nudie idols.

Honcho
: The magazine for bears, bear-cubs, and the men who love them. Leather cross-straps, cigars, neck tattoos, and young turks with enough facial hair to ruin their boyish glee. Furry patches moistened with spit, hairy asses spread on pool tables, reluctant manly cherries, five-o'clock shadows, chains, dangling cigarettes, dark mischief, rimming, spit wads all by themselves, muscles, military deviance, revolvers, and pissed-on jock straps.

It's actually a less cliché read than it sounds.

Inches
: The magazine for size queens and those who get off on being consumed by envy. Rulers, measuring tapes, yardsticks, fisheye lenses, awe-inducing perspective, heft, swing, low-hangers, miles of shaft, off-the-page, white lies that nobody minds, foreskin fetishes, growers, curves, bulges, packages, centerfolds you want to ride to the moon, big dicks on little twink boys that make them look ridiculous and irresistible, Latino chulos.

Black Inches
: See above, but black.

Playguy
: The magazine for candy twinks and those addicted to their fruit-loop flavors. Bubble butts, twist-on/twist-off smiles, dimples, dorm-room play dates, popsicles, lollipops, sparkles and eye shadow, low-slung belts, hairless cracks, shaved pubes, Photoshop, coyness, fake ID cards, undies, go-go boys, parental consent, frolicking poolside with slender dildos, lip gloss, loose shorts, puppy dog love, necklaces and bracelets, pacifiers.

I wanted it all. Not because pornstar was my preferred career choice, but because it would pay enough to give me time to write. I was sure that publishers, no matter their stripe, all hung out together. I could use my porn fame to make connections that would get my fiction published. The challenge was to become everyone's perfect whore without taking myself too seriously.

Phil walked me over to his Wall of Polaroids.

“Do you know what it takes to become Boy New York?”

I looked at the thousands of awkward, posing boys and bit my tongue because I was about to answer “ugly.” I didn't want to spoil my big chance, so I tried to be innocent and cute by saying nothing and giving him nonchalant eyes. He returned to his desk.

“You have to be magic, pure and simple.”

I jumped on the desk, swept his Jeff Stryker dildo/paperweight to the floor, and reclined on one elbow.

“You know I deserve it.”

“No one deserves anything. A lot of kids come to New York and make that mistake.”

He had a nice shaved skull and drippy brown eyes that were either expressionless or consistently sad. I couldn't tell which.

“You mean if you weren't queen shit of this magazine empire that you wouldn't pay seven bucks to see me nude?”

“You're being cute,” he said.

It was time for Plan B.

“You need a massage,” I said.

I stretched Phil out on the floor and gave him what was probably the best workout of his life, a beating of the touchy-feely prescription.

He groaned an internal gush and went kind of limp.

“
Playguy
,” I said. “Then
Honcho
,
Mandate
,
Inches
. Your timetable.”

“Ooohhhhhhh fuck, that's good.”

Some judo chops in his most brutally tender spots, the shoulder blades and kidneys. I worked past his softness and into bone.

“I have some creative ideas about how I'd like to pose.”

“We'll have to see about that. When can you massage me next?”

“I'm not even finished and you're already talking about the next time?”

“It's just ...”

“Yeah, I know.”

Saw it all the time. The hands of the young are murder on men in their thirties.

“I want to be in
Black Inches
,” I said.

“Don't push it,” Phil said. “We'll see.”