Chapter Sixty-Two - Tony
It seemed like a waste, driving to Vince's and then into DC for the close of Tyler's art exhibit, but first of all I wanted to see Vince and second of all Brent and Charles were giving us a room at the Hilton again. We might as well check in together. I pulled into the parking area of Vince's apartment and saw that his truck wasn't there. He didn't answer my text, so I parked and waited on the steps.
A young man, a boy really, shirtless and wearing cut-offs was washing his truck and provided me a little eye candy for passing the time, He looked over at me from time to time but didn't say anything until he had finished wiping his truck down.
“Hey, I'm Racer.” He gave me a fist-bump. “You waiting for Vince?” He got a big smile on his face at the mention of the name, triggering a stirring of jealousy somewhere inside me. “Tell him I'm red.”
A Communist? Were there such things any more? “What do you mean by 'red'?”
Racer turned back. “That's how far I get in the contest, I guess you'd call it.” My look must have told him I didn't understand. “Vince's underwear ad?” he questioned and I shrugged. “Give my your iPad,” he requested and stabbed at it. “You're gay, I'm guessing,” he said, not really asking or even looking up.
“Yes, but ...”
“So here …” He sat next to me and showed me Tyler's shot of Vince lying back on a black cloth. Instead of being naked Vince was shown wearing some black underwear with the Drafty Drawers logo on it. “Press Play,” Racer prompted. I did and the image cycled through a series of different colors of underwear and ended with some purchase choices. “Now here's the REALLY popular version ...” He made a few stabs at the screen and the same image showed up as a viral video. “Press Play,” he said again. A cartoon figure of a guy masturbating came up and the title read 'How far can you get?' Then the image of Vince began cycling, just as in the Drafty Drawers ad.
“Yeah? So?”
“Wait for it,” Racer answered.
At what should have been the end of the ad the cycling slowed and Vince was naked between the different underwear shots; he was naked for longer and longer periods; and then he got an erection. The next pair of briefs were labeled 'RED'. Racer quickly pressed stop. “I don't want to spoil the rest of it. So far 'Red' is as far as I can get before I shoot.” He gave me a big grin and walked back to his truck. “Have fun,” he called out and resumed buffing away non-existent blemishes on his truck's glistening finish.
Vince pulled up. “Hey, Race,” he called and waved to the young man who waved back. Vince turned to me with a huge welcoming smile. “Hey, hot guy,” he said. “Let's go inside and I'll change. I'm all wood dust.”
“Racer said to tell you he's up to 'Red'.”
“Oh, that stupid game ...” Vince groaned as he stripped. “I'd kiss you hello, but I got to get this wood off me. It's itchy.”
“You know about the game?”
“The photographer said he wasn't going to use those shots.”
“SUE HIS ASS OFF.”
“Can't. He paid me.” Vince went into the bathroom and I listened to the water run for what seemed like forever. He came out looking clean and beautiful with a towel around his waist. “Now we can say hello properly.”
I realized then what a hold he had on me. I was all his at the first touch of his hand. Twenty minutes later I lay back on his bed and sighed. He watched me like he had never seen me before and now and then caressed different parts of me.
“I think a guy, right after he has come, is probably the most beautiful image on earth. At least you are.” He kissed me. “I like thinking that I helped make you look this way with your face flushed and your dick still half hard ...” He kissed my cock. “And still a little cummy,” he chuckled, licking his lips before kissing my mouth. “When I think that I kinda made you look this way, I just want to keep fuckin' you forever.”
“Vince ...” I tried to answer him.
“I want to hold you against me, and kiss you , and fuck you, and sometimes I just want to look at you. Do you know how your eyes kinda glow? I don't know how to describe it? They're like fiery brown, not dark, but fiery, with flecks of yellow ...” He kissed my eye lids. “And, Tony, I think ...”
“What?” I wondered what I could say to him. I figured I was about to explode and I-love-you didn't seem near enough.
“... and I think we better get our asses out of bed and onto the highway or we'll be late to the reception.” He sprang off the bed and reached into a large carton. He pulled out some underwear in a vivid shade of green with the explanation, “Drafty gave me a whole carton of underwear. You want some?”
So setting my disappointment at what was unspoken aside, I have to say Drafty Drawers makes comfortable underwear. We dressed and drove into DC in Vince's truck. “Your car is too nice for DC traffic,” Vince as he braked severely when somebody pulled in front of him.
We checked into the hotel and then hurried right to the gallery. The closing reception was a much less staid affair than the opening. Nobody was wearing a tie and very few people bothered with a jacket. The nasty wine and cheese of two months ago, sherry and manchego Charles told me, was replaced with pretty much anything you wanted. “Try this frozen vodka,” Vince said. We clinked glasses and tossed down a large shot. Briefly my throat screamed in protest and then after I could breath again the glow set in.
“The gallery owns the reproduction rights,” I heard Brent telling someone. “We're thinking of a series of lithographs. Drafty Drawers will underwrite the costs if we put their logo in the corner.”
“Really!” the guy said. “You mean that guy,” he pointed to Vince, “is the Drafty model! WOOHOO!” Vince heard the noise and after downing another vodka waved to the guy.
“LIME GREEN!” the guy called to him. Vince laughed and pulled up his shirt, exposing about an inch of lime green underwear circling his waist above his belt.
The guy's eyes just about fell out and then he recovered, “I'll give you a hundred dollars for them!” While he waited for Vince's reaction, he called out, “Two hundred if I can watch you take 'em off!” Vince laughed out loud and with thumb and index fingers forming the O, gave him the OK sign.
The guy handed me his glass as if I were a waiter and called to Vince, “I'm going to an ATM machine. Be right back.”
“You're not!” I said to Vince.
“What the hell? Just go with it. He's harmless,” Vince answered. The guy returned and disappeared with Vince into a back room.
Back at the hotel, Vince asked me, “What?” when I resisted his kiss.
“Did you really sell that guy your underwear?”
“Get naked and let's talk … in bed.” I started to complain but Vince insisted, “Naked … In bed … Then we talk.” I watched him empty his pockets and the money he put on the dresser top looked like a lot more than two hundred dollars.
“Ok …” he began as we lay in the light coming from the window. “Have you ever been poor?”
“My family isn't rich but we're not poor either ...” He didn't want the details.
“My family was poor almost all of my childhood, I guess, but I didn't really understand that until the fifth grade. Momma got my back-to-school clothes out of a big tri-wall in the basement of the church. And that was ok. The clothes were in good condition, not too bad, really, except I needed new shoes. The ones she got me didn't match. One was black and the other was kinda red-brown; but they fit and the other pair I had didn't. The boys at school joked about them but the girls were nasty. They called me poor white trash when they were being kind.”
I tried to console him. “No,” he shook off my hand, “let me finish. They said I was wearing nigger clothes ... Which might have been true but the black guys were mostly better dressed than I was. They said stuff about my daddy and Momma … That hurt a lot. And it was starting about that time I figured out I was different. You know - gay. That was worse. That and the shoes …” He paused and reflected on some memory he didn't share. “So today I have a hard time saying no to easy money. And two hundred dollars for a pair of underwear that I got a carton of? That's REAL easy money.”
“But … that looks like more than two hundred dollars, Vince ...” Even in the dim light I could see the mounded pile of paper he had taken out of his pocket.
“It's four hundred and fifty seven dollars. Exactly four hundred and forty-five more than I started out with tonight. Don't you want to know why it's that much?”
“Vince you don't have to tell me anything you ….”
“The guy was kneeling in front of me jacking himself and watching me take my pants off. After I took off the underwear, he grabbed me by the thighs and stuck his face in my junk and rubbed it around. And then he sucked me a little … or maybe he just licked me. I don't know. It didn't feel very good to me. He came on the floor and I got out of the way just in time. I pulled my pants on and he said, 'Here.' He gave me all the money he had. A couple of the bills were singles. I gave those back to him. The rest is sitting over there on the dresser.”
“Vince ...”
“Wait. I felt dirty, like his cum had landed all over me. But it didn't. Just on the floor. I didn't even step in it. I went back to the party, had a couple more frozen shots and still felt dirty. And now I'm here with you explaining how I got four hundred and forty-five dollars the easy way. I can't turn down stuff like that. The Drafty photographer gave me five hundred extra for the Jerk-Off-With-Vince shots. I have a real hard time saying no, Tony.” He paused. “I know what you're thinking, but I can buy a lot of shoes with that money.”
I kissed him. He was very passive. I kissed him some more, trying to make up for questioning him, trying to make up for mean girls, and missing fathers, and churches that give away shoes that don't match. I tried to love him as best I could. He wanted me to fuck him; and when I did, I could taste the salt of his tears. And my heart broke for him. I love him more than I ever thought was possible. I love him so much it hurts all the time. I told him so. And then we slept.
In the morning I woke up first. “I love you, Vince.” I kissed him awake and he kissed me back. It was the kissing of intimacy but not sex. It was the kind of kissing that said the sex would come later.
We checked out of the hotel and drove west. On the Virginia side of the Cabin John Bridge, he said to me, “Not a useful concept. That's what a high school teacher
I had used to say instead of calling people wrong. 'Not a useful concept,' she would say. Kind of a nice way to put it, don't you think? She never called anybody wrong. I liked her. Learned a lot from her.” He put the radio on and let me pick the station; he's always nice that way.
We got back to his apartment, said 'Hey' to Racer, who was shining his truck, went inside and fucked. A long, unhurried fuck to end a great weekend. He kissed me before we went outside. “I'll kiss you goodbye here. Don't want Racer getting inspired,” he said.”The boy has a one track mind.”
We threw my backpack in the back seat and paused, the awkward part of the goodbye. He took my hands in his, disregarding whether Racer could see us and said, “Not a useful concept.” And then he almost pushed me into the drivers seat.
“What isn't?” I asked as he gently closed the door.
“Lovin' me.” I tried to interrupt but he kept talking. “Are you coming back for Thanksgiving?” I nodded. “Are you going to stay here ... with me?” I nodded. “Good. That's only four weeks to wait.” He patted the roof of my car twice in farewell and turned away. “She's lookin' good, Racer,” he said before he went inside.
Four weeks until what? I pulled off at a rest stop near Richmond. I had to walk around. I didn't know what to think. He didn't tell me not to love him. And he definitely didn't say he loved me. Not a useful concept. Totally wrong? Or just unlikely to succeed? I walked around the extent of the rest stop, going back to my car before people started thinking things. There was a text on my phone from Vince.
“I'm getting a new bed.”
An hour and a half later, back at the dorm I told the story to Roy, “What the fuck, Roy? He just drives me crazy!”
